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 or­gan­ising 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 holiday 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 CVs. 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 CVs, 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 behaviour and therefore job searches are in­creas­ingly trans­ition­ing to tablets and smart­phones: mobile re­cruit­ing is becoming more and more important. This begins with op­tim­ising 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 optimise 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 CV parsing. Each applicant has their own CV 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 CV into the entry form. CV 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 stand­ard­ised 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 digitised 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 analysed. 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 or­gan­isa­tion­al 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.

Please note the legal dis­claim­er relating to this article.