E-re­cruit­ing: Applicant tracking systems for better applicant man­age­ment

Making personnel re­cruit­ment easier for all involved – that’s the aim of e-re­cruit­ing. From job ads to ap­pli­ca­tions all the way to the final hire, e-re­cruit­ing is intended to alleviate the process both for the applicant and the hiring company. Digital tools are used to simplify complex processes, make them quicker and more stream­lined. Various forms of e-re­cruit­ing can be applied for this purpose.

Almost every company is on the lookout for new talent from time to time. In the best case, plenty of ap­pli­ca­tions are received – with varying degrees of quality. It is important to maintain an overview and respond ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. The solution is applicant man­age­ment, a clear system that can be used to take care of or­ga­niz­ing ap­pli­ca­tions. And the benefits shouldn’t be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. After all, in­ad­e­quate man­age­ment can create two problems for your company.

1. First, you might lose the best can­di­dates: if you lose track or respond too slowly, the top talent may slip away and end up working for the com­pe­ti­tion.
2. Second, your pro­fes­sion­al image could suffer: if you don’t act in a manner expected of a pro­fes­sion­al company, you risk harming your good rep­u­ta­tion. Employees are often networked better than it seems, and criticism of your ap­pli­ca­tion process can quickly spread through the industry.

If your applicant man­age­ment is adequate, you can benefit from major ad­van­tages:

1. Time and cost savings
2. Con­sis­tent data pro­tec­tion
3. Strength­en­ing of the employer brand

Good applicant man­age­ment en­com­pass­es all steps of the process and is con­sid­ered to be a holistic concept. Plan each step to lead directly into the next to obtain an effective system.

Write an in­for­ma­tive job ad as the first step. An appealing and suitable text is important in applicant man­age­ment, but the right timing is ab­solute­ly essential. Only publish the job ad once you and your company are ready to carry out the ap­pli­ca­tion process in full. Also pay attention to the status of contracts, public holidays, and vacation periods in this regard. Before pub­lish­ing, you should also consider the channels you want to use to share your job ad.

As soon as the ad is published, the first ap­pli­ca­tion documents can be received by the company. Here, it is important to maintain an efficient system to ensure no ap­pli­ca­tions get lost. Bear in mind that you may receive ap­pli­ca­tions through a variety of channels: in writing, by mail or email and in some cases even verbally, depending on your re­quire­ments and company structure. Also consider sending the applicant a con­fir­ma­tion of receipt. By doing this you can open a channel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion at an early stage.

Once you have received all the ap­pli­ca­tions and the deadline has passed, you can start to sort the cover letters and resumes. Selection usually takes place over several steps. A first quick look at the ap­pli­ca­tions will give you an initial im­pres­sion of which can­di­dates are suitable and who can already be excluded from the process. By comparing the ap­pli­ca­tions against the re­quire­ments profile, you can then select the can­di­dates you consider eligible for an interview. After the in­ter­views, you should have found one or more suitable people for the job, providing every­thing went well.

After you have sorted the ap­pli­ca­tions, you will need to contact all the ap­pli­cants. You will have typically sorted the can­di­dates into three cat­e­gories:

• Those who are not suitable at all
• Those who are very in­ter­est­ing but are not suitable for the position
• Those who can be con­sid­ered for the job

The latter group will then either be invited to the next step of the ap­pli­ca­tion process (such as an interview) or will receive an offer for the new job. The first group, in contrast, must be sent a rejection. Do not make the mistake of simply ne­glect­ing to respond to the rejected can­di­dates. Not only will this give you a poor image as an employer, but it may even result in ad­di­tion­al work for you as many of the ap­pli­cants will contact you with an inquiry.

The second group, com­pris­ing people with in­ter­est­ing profiles and resumes, which un­for­tu­nate­ly do not suit the ad­ver­tised position, should be kept in mind and con­sid­ered for any job vacancies in the future. Let the ap­pli­cants know about this situation and ask them for consent for their ap­pli­ca­tions to be included in your talent pool.

Applicant man­age­ment can be very complex; the risk of losing an overview of ap­pli­ca­tions can therefore be con­sid­er­able. For this reason, it is advisable to handle the full process – or at least parts of it – using computer tools. Effective applicant man­age­ment software should support both sides of the process: the ap­pli­cants and the company. You will mostly notice the benefits of e-re­cruit­ing during the actual re­cruit­ment ac­tiv­i­ties – i.e. the job ad, employer branding and talent man­age­ment. The over­ar­ch­ing goal of e-re­cruit­ing is to attract the best talent for your company. The actual ad­min­is­tra­tive work involved is not com­plete­ly ignored in this respect, but is ascribed a sub­or­di­nate role.

E-re­cruit­ing measures most fre­quent­ly take the shape of job ads. There are still companies that ex­clu­sive­ly or ad­di­tion­al­ly use offline channels for their talent search (news­pa­pers, magazines or posters), but the majority of job offers can be found on the internet. A range of channels can be used for this. Online job boards are par­tic­u­lar­ly popular among HR staff. Any company can use these to publish vacancies. Potential can­di­dates can then use search queries and sorting mech­a­nisms to find ap­pro­pri­ate job ads.

While some platforms only provide in­for­ma­tion on the de­part­ment or person re­spon­si­ble for the position, including their contact in­for­ma­tion, others enable users to apply directly via the portal. In general, no costs are incurred for ap­pli­cants, although companies often have to pay fees for their ads. Some online job boards are com­plete­ly open to any company, while others focus on certain in­dus­tries.

Besides job boards on the internet, social media websites are also being in­creas­ing­ly used as a tool when searching for talent. Social media re­cruit­ing allows people to be reached who do not use online job boards. Maybe because they have not even con­sid­ered switching employer yet! Companies mostly use pro­fes­sion­al networks like LinkedIn for this purpose, but employees can also be found via Facebook or Twitter. The right choice of channel has a lot to do with the industry and ad­ver­tised position.

However, social media re­cruit­ing also serves another function of the HR de­part­ment: image man­age­ment. Social media can be used to conduct marketing measures for consumers. What's more, the employer’s image can also be cul­ti­vat­ed using a social media strategy, making the company more at­trac­tive to potential new employees.

Online behavior and therefore job searches are in­creas­ing­ly tran­si­tion­ing to tablets and smart­phones: mobile re­cruit­ing is becoming more and more important. This begins with op­ti­miz­ing the company website for mobile use and ends with the company’s own apps that can be used for all com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the ap­pli­cants. The advantage here (for both sides) is that people carry their smart­phones with them and are able to respond quicker. If a push service can also be used with an app that offers job boards and social media platforms, those in­ter­est­ed can also be informed even when they are not actively looking for new positions.

However, the un­con­test­ed leader when it comes to dis­play­ing job ads is still the company’s own website. Large companies es­pe­cial­ly set up their own career section on their website for this purpose. It can even go so far that companies build their own online platform for entirely handling applicant man­age­ment. Other companies may not have installed such an extensive system but may still work with applicant man­age­ment software.

A software-based applicant man­age­ment system's primary advantage is that it makes it easier for the HR de­part­ment to ef­fi­cient­ly optimize the whole process. Nonethe­less, it should also improve the candidate ex­pe­ri­ence during the ap­pli­ca­tion phase. Ideally, this software should cover every step of applicant man­age­ment from the job ad to the personnel file, which the applicant man­age­ment system then connects with other HR systems.

The pub­li­ca­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion of job ads can involve a lot of work, es­pe­cial­ly when the vacancy is placed on multiple channels to reach as many potential can­di­dates as possible. Good e-re­cruit­ing software should take over this work: you can use the software to create the job ad and publish it on a wide range of job portals, the company website as well as in the careers section and emails with just a few clicks. After viewing the ad, visitors should ideally be able to access the online ap­pli­ca­tion form, where ap­pli­cants can enter their data, upload documents and in some cases even link their ap­pli­ca­tion profile to accounts on other platforms like LinkedIn.

Some software is even capable of per­form­ing resume parsing. Each applicant has their own resume with an in­di­vid­ual layout – typically saved as a PDF file. For HR, it is more efficient to define a uniform format using an entry form, but this creates ad­di­tion­al work for the ap­pli­cants as they now have to re-enter all the data from their carefully crafted resume into the entry form. Resume parsing sim­pli­fies this process: the software in­de­pen­dent­ly extracts the in­for­ma­tion from the document and enters it into the correct fields. Af­ter­wards, the applicant only needs to check to ensure no errors have worked their way into the resulting document.

The advantage of an extensive applicant man­age­ment system is that all ap­pli­ca­tions are stored in a struc­tured database and do not have to be manually collated in one place. Moreover, it results in a stan­dard­ized model, since every candidate uses the same format. This makes it much easier to find key in­for­ma­tion. Since contact in­for­ma­tion is also included in the system, the software can also con­ve­nient­ly dispatch in­vi­ta­tions as well as offers and re­jec­tions.

As all the steps are software-supported, an initial selection can even be performed using al­go­rithms. Using the pre­vi­ous­ly created re­quire­ments profile, the ap­pli­ca­tions can be evaluated by the software itself. Of course, this cannot fully replace the personal selection of can­di­dates; HR staff must decide how much trust they are willing to place in the al­go­rithms. But there’s no harm in running the software cal­cu­la­tions at least for the first shortlist.

Once you have decided on a candidate, many of their details have already been digitized and can easily be trans­ferred onto the em­ploy­ment contract and personnel file without much ad­di­tion­al effort. Fur­ther­more, rejected yet in­ter­est­ing ap­pli­cants can be added to the talent pool and contacted as soon as a suitable position becomes open. However, it is important to respect data privacy in this regard! Firstly, you need to ask the applicant for per­mis­sion before you store their personal data for the long term. It must also be ensured that no third parties have access to the data.

A final advantage with this far-reaching system: since all the steps are performed via a single system, the entire process can also be analyzed. Good applicant man­age­ment software can be of par­tic­u­lar help in measuring the success of job ads. How many people viewed the vacancy? How many of them decided to submit an ap­pli­ca­tion? An analysis of the mea­sure­ment results can provide key insights for preparing job ads.

If you decide to use e-re­cruit­ing software, you have a range of options to choose from. Either you opt for a finished product that can be used in many different sectors, or you work with a man­u­fac­tur­er to produce a software program tailored to your in­di­vid­ual needs. Since the second option is probably much costlier, this course of action is best suited to larger companies. It is also important to have some initial ex­pe­ri­ence with e-re­cruit­ing so that you can describe your own re­quire­ments precisely.

There is clearly a trend in the use of e-re­cruit­ing. The various measures are applied in most companies – with varying degrees of con­sis­ten­cy. According to re­cruit­ment sta­tis­tics, 80% of employers say social re­cruit­ing helps them find potential can­di­dates. 75% of potential hires aren’t actually actively searching for a job, but are contacted by re­cruiters that use social media to find them. 70% of hiring managers praise this type of re­cruit­ing since they have suc­cess­ful­ly recruited new employees with it.

One tool that is still rel­a­tive­ly unused in e-re­cruit­ing are chat bots: the ability for ap­pli­cants to directly com­mu­ni­cate with the company (albeit virtual com­mu­ni­ca­tion based on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence) could become a major future trend. 50% of ap­pli­cants would use such a feature and obtain in­for­ma­tion about the ap­pli­ca­tion process from a chat bot. Con­verse­ly, only 2.8% of the top 1000 companies currently satisfy this wish.

Some programs, such as Pymetrics, show what else the future of e-re­cruit­ing could hold: greater use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and the in­te­gra­tion of software-based as­sess­ment. Here, the software not only handles the or­ga­ni­za­tion­al part of applicant man­age­ment, it also plays a key role in the as­sess­ment process. The applicant undergoes a test and the computer program then decides whether the person is suitable for the ad­ver­tised position. But this may not be the ultimate solution. After all, math­e­mat­i­cal al­go­rithms can also operate on the basis of prej­u­dices. However, the man­u­fac­tur­ers claim that these factors play a smaller role than is the case with people, and that al­go­rithms can be trained to provide more neutral as­sess­ments.

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