Good reporting is critical to achieving hiring success. Without a reporting strategy, how can you know if you are attracting, selecting, and hiring the best talent, within budget, and in the most efficient way? But often, reporting for talent acquisition is harder than it sounds. Gathering reports from disparate systems or business units can take up vast amounts of time, and sometimes a lack of data accuracy prevents the reports from being useful.

Why Implement a Reporting Strategy?

A solid reporting strategy can help you and your organization improve hiring outcomes in multiple ways:

• Evaluate real-time progress against goals
• Uncover hiring process roadblocks
• Measure the progress of DEI recruitment efforts
• Track the effectiveness of new strategies so that you can pivot when necessary
• Align TA with other business functions
• Inform stakeholders across the organization 
• Build credibility with executive stakeholders and the C-Suite
• Inform the next steps toward developing a more mature TA function
• Get support for future TA initiatives
• Build effective strategies to stay competitive in the talent marketplace
• Gather career-building win stories

How to Build a Talent Acquisition Reporting Strategy

Whether you’re still pulling reports manually or have some automation already built into your reporting strategy, you can start afresh and rethink your approach. The goal is to meet the needs of talent acquisition today, which may mean adjusting processes that worked in the past. Here’s how to get started:

1. Conduct an Audit

A reporting audit answers these questions.

• What reports are currently being run? At what time intervals?
• Who is responsible for running the reports and distributing them? How much time does it take?
• What reporting tools are available to us? Do we currently leverage our existing dashboards to the fullest?
• Who receives the reports? Are they the right people?
• Who makes decisions based on the reports? How is the success of those decisions being measured?
• Are the current reports effective at measuring what your company needs? Is there information missing that would help with decision-making? Identify the gaps.

2. Understand Business Goals

No reporting strategy can be effective without understanding the needs of the business. This may include differences across business units, locations, role types, etc. Then you need to look closely at your TA processes for each business concern. At SmartRecruiters, we encourage our customers to take the Hiring Success Business Assessment. The assessment helps them define their maturity status across people, processes, and technology in 21 compenents of talent acquisition. These components are grouped into three buckets: Talent Attraction & Engagement, Collaboration & Selection, and Management & Operating Model. 

By looking at the needs of the business against your current hiring practices, you can start to see where accurate reporting will have the most impact as you make improvements.

3. Ensure you Have Clean Data

Talent acquisition systems are designed to deliver good data, but only if they are used properly. Your reporting strategy will be ineffective if data is missing due to poor system adoption or missing links between tools. To ensure accurate data collection, you may need to identify where you need to improve processes or link systems.

4. Determine KPIs and Set Benchmarks

Every business needs KPIs that matter to the specific situation. While benchmarks may differ across different groups, it’s important to have goals in your sight. Then, individuals can be held accountable to reaching those goals. For example, if hiring velocity is a priority and hiring managers routinely slow down processes by taking too long to make decisions, they should be expected to make the necessary adjustments to hire on time. 

5. Establish a Reporting Cadence

Which reports get run weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually? Determine who is responsible for creating and reviewing reports. To level-set teams and build the expectation of accountability, schedule meetings to review results well in advance.

Establishing a structured reporting plan may reveal knowledge gaps among stakeholders. It may be useful to enable data literacy through additional training from an expert. With greater data literacy, stakeholders can learn to ask better questions of the data and answer them on their own. Data literacy sets the stage for continuous improvement. 

6. Set Up Dashboards and Iterate

Developing a good reporting strategy is an iterative process. The first dashboards may not be as useful as you thought once the data starts coming in. It may take some time to start getting clean data, or some individuals may require education to understand all the data points on the dashboards. Over time, your team will become more fluent in reading the reports and discovering insights that can move the business forward.  

An Expert Can Help Guide the Way

Reporting for talent acquisition is a highly specialized function that other business analytics teams may lack the expertise (or bandwidth) to accomplish. Accurate, actionable reporting is essential in your path to hiring success and crucial to unlocking the full potential of your recruiting function.

SmartRecruiters SmartSuccess Talent Strategy & Insights consulting packages help you level up your reporting strategy. Working with an experienced consultant, you’ll dive deep into what’s working and what’s not. Together, you and the consultant will come up with action and success plans tailored specifically to your business needs. You’ll receive:

• Analytics and insights strategy sessions to identify what stories the data can tell you, giving you the ability to translate TA goals to measurable outcomes 
• Monthly insights maintenance and strategy alignment sessions to ensure you have the full picture of your talent organization to make informed business decisions
• Personalized Tableau dashboards that consolidate the most frequently needed data in one place

There’s no reason a sound reporting strategy should stand in the way of Hiring Success. Get in touch with us to learn more about SmartRecruiters and SmartSuccess. And for a deep dive into how you can lead more strategically with data, download our ebook, A Seat at the Table: A Guide to Leading a Strategic Talent Acquisition Function.

The journey to Hiring Success is not always straightforward. The ability to attract, select, and hire the best talent for any role, on-demand and within budget requires an alignment across people, processes, and technology. Companies looking to improve their hiring practices often make the choice to implement a new ATS (applicant tracking system), but success will remain out of reach unless they develop a holistic strategy to create a compelling candidate experience, enhance recruiter productivity, and engage hiring managers.

When implementing any new system, a “Northstar” vision of the desired future state helps align the configuration and change management processes required. An enterprise-grade ATS like SmartRecruiters offers all the cutting-edge features that allow you to build a highly automated and fully integrated and customized TA function. But if your current process involves a decades-old system that has outlived its purpose, each people and process component of hiring will need to be evaluated carefully before you can successfully reach the next level of maturity with an ATS upgrade.

Building TA maturity doesn’t happen the instant you make the flip of a switch to a new ATS. The process starts long before that and continues long afterward.

To help you get started, we’ve developed a strategy to ensure that your new system gets implemented in a way that takes you to that next level of hiring success.

1. Evaluate

In this stage, you take stock of your current hiring practices and systems used. This includes a close look at the people, processes, and technology used across every area of your company where hiring processes might differ, such as hourly roles vs. corporate roles. If you’re implementing SmartRecruiters, you would take the Hiring Success Business Assessment, which would give you an overall maturity score after scoring you on each of the 21 dimensions.  

Once you have identified what’s working well and what needs improvement, it’s time to develop your Northstar, that desired future state where you’re hiring best-fit candidates at greater velocity. This evaluation stage helps you make sure that you choose the right options to implement and design processes that fit your team’s needs and your existing technology stack.

2. Strategize

In the strategize phase, look at each area that must be changed and consider how it fits into the big picture. The choices in this phase will determine configuration decisions in your ATS that cascade through each pillar of Hiring Success. The three pillars of Hiring Success are

• Talent Attraction & Engagement: Sourcing, CRM, job advertising, referral management, global mobility, brand, and candidate experience.
• Collaboration & Selection: Screening and candidate review, hiring team collaboration, interviewing, candidate selection, offer management, and onboarding.
• Management & Operating Model: Compliant and secure systems, mobile accessibility, global reach, integrations, reporting, and analytics.

Considering the big picture of how these processes work together sets you up for a smoother implementation. If this portion of the implementation process is overlooked, decisions can get made in a vacuum and cause unnecessary process breakdowns when the system goes live.

3. Transform

Innovative technology won’t stick unless people adopt it. To get the most out of any technology, the people who set it up need to know what’s needed so that it will be most effective for the people who use it. A typical change management process for an ATS includes:

• Identification of key stakeholders
• A detailed project plan with key milestones
• Strategic communications plan to inform and excite users

A common pitfall in this stage is omitting key stakeholders, business regions, or roles. It’s important to recognize that not everyone might not use the system in the same way.  You don’t want to catch people off guard when you roll out training and find out that the system will have an adverse effect on their hiring process.

4. Optimize

Transformation doesn’t stop once you’ve implemented the system. In the weeks directly following an ATS implementation, the system is tested and rapid adjustments may need to be made. As reporting reveals gaps in workflows, further adjustments may be required; you may not have considered everything you need to get accurate metrics on performance, productivity, and spending. Over time, business needs may change that necessitate further adjustments. Optimization is a continuous process that helps you uplevel your TA function over time – and move up the ladder of talent maturity.

You don’t have to do it alone

After implementing SmartRecruiters to more than 4,000 customers, we know the journey to hiring success is a complex process. At SmartRecruiters we support companies in navigating their new system implementation with SmartSuccess and TA Consulting and Insights packages.  These holistic implementation and consulting services support customers in assessing, planning, and configuring their instance of SmartRecruiters based on their unique needs. SmartSuccess gives companies everything they need to successfully launch SmartRecruiters with a predictable and proven approach that includes ongoing expert support.

With a dedicated Hiring Success consultant, you’ll get facilitated implementation sessions, configuration workshops, and train-the-trainer sessions. The consultant will take you through each of the four steps listed above so that your organization gets the most out of your new ATS and get closer to your Northstar – that next level of TA maturity where you’re hiring great people at greater velocity, on time, and within budget.

Talent Acquisition has changed forever. Rising volatility and competition have dramatically changed the way you source talent. Remote work has transformed the way you hire. The great resignation is reshaping how you manage and retain employees. Job openings have reached record heights, putting recruiters under pressure. Clearly, the first generation ATS hasn’t moved fast enough to meet the challenges of the day. What do you need to stay competitive in this new world?

Table of Contents

• A traditional ATS is no longer enough
• Compelling candidate experience
• Engaged hiring managers
• Productive recruiters
• Take our ATS Quiz!

A traditional ATS is no longer enough

An applicant tracking system, often referred to as an ATS, is a software application that automates the hiring process. Applicant Tracking Systems were originally designed to store job applications and track applicants through the process. Over time, their capabilities expanded to incorporate candidate sourcing and hiring, among other recruitment needs. The problem is that many of these newer functionalities were designed to be process-centric rather than candidate and engagement-centric. Because these new functionalities were bolted on to the legacy solution, and not developed as an integrated tool, the UX is often clunky and not easy for recruiters to use.

Today, organizations need to be agile and engagement-focused to attract, select and hire the best talent at scale. This is achieved when the 3 pillars of Hiring Success are aligned: candidates have a compelling experience, recruiters are productive, and hiring teams are engaged. If you’re struggling to achieve this with your ATS, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s explore some of the critical capabilities you should look for to achieve your hiring goals.  

Compelling candidate experience

Qualified candidates are a lot like prospective customers. They have bargaining power and lots of options. Their entire experience matters – from how candidates learn about your company, to how you interact with them, to the tools they use to apply. To find and engage them, recruiters need to think like marketers. An ATS that only addresses the bottom of the funnel (candidates trying to apply for jobs) will not position your team for hiring success. Instead, you need to look for a robust set of recruitment marketing features that will help you attract passive candidates and engage them towards conversion. 

A career site that’s geared for conversions

Most ATSs offer basic career sites – static job pages with long lists of open positions. This might have worked in the 90s, but in 2022, your career site needs to do a lot more. It should be part of  your recruitment marketing tool belt, and it should be used in a more strategic way. Think about this: about 70% of job seekers start their search on Google. They do some high-level research. They want to educate themselves about the market and their specific role, and possibly your company and your product before they decide to apply. A career site that contains high quality, personalized content that’s optimized for search helps you attract them. We have seen companies using this strategy increase the number of organic search conversions by 40%. 

The success of your career site will also be determined by its ease of use. Candidates want to be able to apply quickly and easily, on the device they choose. Long and drawn out application forms are things of the past. 

Besides an optimized career site, you need tools to build a digital marketing funnel. That’s where programmatic advertising comes in.  

Programmatic job advertising and sourcing 

Your talent acquisition team needs tools that will help them discover top talent, understand what they are looking for and attract them with targeted campaigns. A first generation ATS should help you post jobs to your job page. A second generation ATS should post automatically to job boards, LinkedIn and other channels. A third generation ATS goes further: it intelligently places ads on job boards that drive the highest conversion for each job type, and dynamically shifts budget to the highest priority roles. Modern ATSs need to have a sophisticated job advertising capability that is pipeline aware, automated, and dynamically allocates budget to the highest-converting job boards.

Obviously not everyone who lands on your job postings will be ready to apply. But that’s ok because you can invite them to subscribe to your newsletter or job alerts. Once candidates make it into this talent pool, you need candidate relationship management (CRM) capabilities to nurture them towards conversion. 

Candidate nurturing and talent relationship management

According to Fosway, “Applicant Tracking System vendors without a TRM-offering are at high risk of being replaced.” An ATS with CRM or TRM capabilities helps you nurture candidates and match them with the right roles. This critical functionality should also help you track all touchpoints and candidate journeys in one system, just like you track customers. 

These recruitment marketing capabilities help you find the right talent and engage them with a compelling experience, so you can ultimately convince them to apply. This brings us to the second pillar of hiring success. 

Engaged hiring managers

According to recent findings from Josh Bersin, collaboration between recruiting and hiring managers is the number one indicator of high performance talent acquisition. This is where effective applicant tracking, evaluation and collaboration play a critical role. 

Applicant tracking

The original ATS was designed to move a paper or email-based process to a computerized system so that recruiters could scale. A modern ATS is more like a system of record, a single source of truth across the entire talent acquisition process. It should make it easy for recruiters to work with many different candidates and spot an applicant’s status quickly, across multiple workflows. It should include advanced candidate search functionalities. It should also help you screen and evaluate candidates faster. 

Evaluation

Modern ATSs come with chatbots and automated Q&A or screening tools to help you speed up the evaluation process at the beginning. Some also include AI capabilities that help you screen hundreds of candidates down to dozens, and create a shortlist of potential matches. Once the recruitment team sources the right talent and makes the key connections, it’s up to the hiring team to close the YES candidates. With the right data at hand, the hiring team is better positioned to collaborate with their recruiting counterparts. 

Collaboration

Modern ATSs should foster collaboration with hiring managers so you can make better and more informed decisions. For example, it should enable you to assign focus areas to each interviewer. It should allow interviewers to collaborate on their findings, in a way that minimizes bias and groupthink. It should come with a central messaging engine and let you configure tasks and notifications to keep your team on track. 

Productive recruiters

As we discussed above, talent acquisition teams that are highly productive operate more like marketing and sales teams. We talked a lot about the importance of collaboration throughout the process. Recruiter productivity and hiring optimization are just as important, especially at a time when job openings are at an all-time high. 

Analytics and AI to improve decision-making

Great recruiting teams know “their numbers” and leverage them to not only prioritize tasks across the hiring spectrum, but also provide accurate hiring forecasts and achieve desired business outcomes. A legacy ATS is not positioned to support this. Legacy solutions don’t capture nearly enough data to assess hiring performance. Much less to measure if your hiring process is working for or against the bottom line.

An ATS with robust analytics provides deep insights through trend analyses on historical hiring decisions and dashboards on pipeline performances, with all the data stored in one place. Josh Bersin’s latest study on global TA teams reports that high-impact TA teams are 6x more likely to use AI and predictive analytics and see 30% greater profitability compared to those that don’t use these tools.

Internal mobility

The great resignation is keeping recruiters and HR teams up at night. But according to a recent Sapient Insights survey, only 22% of companies have an internal mobility program in place. Recruiters should be looking for talent internally and externally. The problem is that they don’t have the right tools. Companies are at risk of losing their talent to the competition if they don’t compete on an equal footing. 

A modern ATS should enable you to build an internal career site and build talent pools of team members who are interested in different career paths. Match people to jobs using AI matching and set up internal interviews the same way you do external interviews. 

Onboarding support

Successful recruitment teams also know that the first 3 months of employment are the most vulnerable period. In some industries, a poor onboarding experience can lead to a 22% turnover rate. That’s why many are looking for a comprehensive solution that will address this critical part of the journey as well. Your onboarding process should not just be about legal formalities, it should facilitate a smooth transition from applicant to employee. 

The final word & our ATS Quiz

As Fosway explains, “standalone ATSs that only cover the lower part of the recruitment funnel are a thing of the past.” Your ATS should go beyond workflow automation and candidate tracking. It should incorporate recruitment marketing for active and passive candidates, and career sites that boost your employer brand. It should also facilitate enhanced HR decision making based on your desired business results. Moreover, it should be built for today’s complex talent market, offering you a competitive advantage with internal mobility features and a great candidate experience that’s optimized down to the onboarding stage. 

Take our quiz to find out if you should replace your ATS. 

Google Hire has been scheduled for discontinuation. In September 2020, the applicant tracking system (ATS) will be removed from G-suite, affecting recruiters and business owners across North America and the U.K.

This news comes as a disappointment to those who rely on the ATS to source and hire new talent. As a company devoted to connecting people to jobs, we can empathize. A well-made recruiting platform can mean the difference between company-wide growth or total stagnation. Finding such a tool can be hard; having to give it up even harder.

Therefore, to make the transition easier, we’d like to offer a demo of SmartRecruiters with free data migration to all existing Google Hire customers. We’d love the opportunity to share with each and every one of you something we’re very passionate about—Hiring Success. 

We define Hiring Success as the ability to attract, select, and hire the best talent for any role, on demand and on budget—an outcome enabled by the SmartRecruiters technology. And to-date we’ve empowered over 4,000 companies in 100+ countries across the globe to achieve such outcomes. This is what Hiring Success has looked like for many of those companies: 

Don’t take our word for it, though. Here’s what one of our clients—Sandi Lurie, VP of Global Recruiting at Optimizely—has to say about SmartRecruiters and Hiring Success:

SmartRecruiters is not just a great ATS, they are an incredible partner in the journey to hiring exceptional talent. The platform itself promotes easy collaboration across hiring teams and the UI is intuitive.

Sandi Lurie
VP of Global Recruiting
Optimizely

Interested in writing the first chapter of your company’s Hiring Success story? Then schedule a demo today. And, as mentioned above, to make the transition as seamless as possible, we’ll offer full support with free data migration. We look forward to hearing from you!

Recruiting operations are mission-critical to enterprises searching for top talent, yet the majority of hiring teams continue working with legacy systems that fail to deliver ROI. 

Modern businesses are under continuous pressure to remain competitive in today’s economy, with an increasing focus on adopting technologies that enable agility and strategic thinking. In fact, digital transformation is a top priority for C-level executives, with 74% of enterprises already employing, or currently implementing, a digital transformation strategy. As businesses prepare to tackle future disruptions, such change is inevitable. Change, however, is scary.

As a result, many organizations stick with the status quo, betting on traditional processes and legacy systems to deliver successful future outcomes. Meanwhile, technology is evolving at an exponential rate, and organizations that embrace digital transformation know full well the role of technology in keeping businesses organized, productive, and communicative. 

SmartRecruiters recently surveyed Talent Acquisition (TA) professionals about their existing recruiting technologies, and found that the vast majority (89%) fail to see value in their legacy systems, particularly among enterprise companies. What’s more, when asked the likelihood of recommending their current ATS to a friend or colleague, survey respondents gave a -67 NPS score. 

Check out the complete survey results in the infographic below:

While some shy away from challenging the status quo, it’s clear that most enterprise companies are open to the possibility of change. Of course, with myriad options to choose from, how can one decide? Choosing a new ATS solution may appear challenging, but companies that switch to a modern, intuitive, and enterprise-ready ATS are seeing measurable ROI on hiring, particularly around budget optimization and candidate quality.

While technology adoption is only one element of implementing a digital transformation strategy, it is a crucial piece that cannot be overlooked. Contact SmartRecruiters today to find out why over 750 enterprise customers have already embraced our modern recruiting platform, and are experiencing immediate improvements to their talent acquisition processes.

Local hiring managers are frequently tasked with making recruiting decisions at many global organizations, but are their decisions only as good as the technology behind them?

Decentralized hiring models are like beehives, with different company branches each managing their own roles to contribute to the organization’s overall success. This structure is common for many large and enterprise-level companies, which benefit from shifting staffing and recruitment responsibilities to local hiring managers in order to streamline processes, boost productivity, and provide a greater candidate experience.

In these situations, decentralized hiring systems are more effective when paired with an innovative, collaborative, and flexible Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that fits the unique needs of the business while maintaining consistent employer brand throughout. There are also a number of additional benefits to this type of recruitment model:

1. Greater Productivity. Decentralized hiring quickens the pace of decision making so that hiring managers can move at the speed of their market.

2. Localized Experience. Hiring managers can select candidates based on their knowledge of local markets and the individual needs of their branch.

3. Personal Touch. Communication between candidates and the hiring manager is more individualized, which positively impacts the candidate’s experience.

4. Empowerment. Hiring managers can operate independently without unnecessary involvement from corporate headquarters.

All of these benefits sound great in theory; however they become a bit more convoluted because—just like that ice cream stand in the middle of the desert—a successful decentralized hiring process may very well be a mirage for some companies. Depending on the company’s ATS, implementing a decentralized hiring model could have a negative impact on business.

For ill-equipped hiring managers, battling industry challenges like shortages of skilled local talent becomes exponentially more difficult with a subpar ATS. Outdated systems unable to handle high volumes of resumes, provide realistic follow-up times, or lack collaboration & transparency into the hiring process often leave managers feeling isolated and unsupported. Without the right tools to make great hires, managers of decentralized hiring models may also feel:

5. Lack of Consistency. Without a clear sense of the company’s best hiring practices, local managers can easily run into problems of inconsistent branding, poor candidate experience, and clunky workflows.

6. Reliance on Contractors. Many hiring managers don’t have the time to play recruiter. This often leads to contracting outside agencies to provide specialized services, causing further strain on limited hiring budgets.

7. Greater Industry Challenges. Resource-strapped departments might flounder in the face of obstacles unique to their industry. For example:

Retail:

• Challenge: Last year’s holiday sales accounted for nearly 20% of all retail industry sales. At the same time, approximately 1 in every 4 retailers are unable to hire enough temporary workers to meet the spikes in staffing needs during the holiday season.
• Effect: An academic study of a large US apparel chain found that 33% customers who had a poor experience cited not being able to locate sales help as the main offender, resulting in at least 6% loss of all possible sales.

Manufacturing:

• Challenge: Manufacturers report a moderate to severe shortage of skilled workers. Plus, a significant portion of the manufacturing workforce is nearing retirement age, and manufacturing careers not appeal to younger people entering the workforce.
• Effect: The US National Association of Manufacturers warns that 2.4 million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled between now and 2028, according to a recent joint study with Deloitte.

Technology:

• Challenge: Rapid growth and scale, along with fierce competition for top talent leaves many companies struggling to hire workers with specialized skills like: business intelligence, cyber security, and software development.
• Effect: Seventy percent of IT companies expect challenges in hiring mid-level tech talent in the next year, particularly for cyber security jobs.

The immediate impact of many of these challenges affects many organizations’ bottom lines and employer brand. Tied to this is the impact on a business’ hiring metrics, from hiring velocity to NPS score. Best-of-breed technology solutions can address these industry challenges with robust functionality:

• Source candidates through CRM and recruitment marketing campaigns
• Complete transparency backed by on-demand analytics
• Platform customization and global configurability across all locations
• Intuitive UX and mobile functionality
• Innovative service with continual improvements

End-to-end Talent Acquisition suites allow hiring teams to adapt processes to navigate each of these industry-specific challenges. This means that, in any situation, a hiring manager has the tools needed to attract, select, and hire the best talent on demand and on budget.

Learn why recruiters need a “best of breed” solution to win the war for talent from our expert webinar with Glassdoor and SmartRecruiters.

Companies often push their talent acquisition (TA) team to use the recruiting module of the human capital management (HCM) system already in place to manage employee facing administrative tasks like payroll, benefits, and performance tracking. On the surface, it seems like a good idea.  IT is happy because there are no further integrations needed, and finance thinks it will be better for the bottom line. However, time and again, we see that the costs greatly outweigh the benefits.

For a deeper understanding as to why HCM solutions aren’t the software answer for recruiters, we turn to four takeaways from our “Hire Smarter” webinar with experts Rob Symons, VP of Northern Europe at SmartRecruiters and Ravi Edwards, sales leader for EMEA at Glassdoor.

1. Scale: Recruitment happens on a scale more comparable to sales or marketing than employee management. For example, the Royal Post hires 30,000 temporary employees every year around Christmas. In order to hit this target, they have to receive one-million applications, and one can imagine that the number of marketing touches has to be exponentially greater. Companies who chose to use HCM recruiting modules may think they are saving money only to be surprised by rampant server expenses.
2. Interface: Employees may deal with clunky systems (when it’s crucial to their job function), but candidates (and many hiring managers) certainly will not. Sixty percent of candidates abandon job applications midway through because they are too complicated. A consumer-grade user interface (UI) is a must, that means the system uses design philosophy to ensure little or no training is needed to navigate the platform (think Facebook or eBay).
3. Compliance: The newly enacted General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in Europe, and similar legislation in England and California, are elevating the level of concern around the proper handling of candidate information. A system without compliance at its core forces teams to create timely manual solutions that negatively impact productivity.
4. Complexity: Recruiting is a complicated process with many moving parts. Most hires are made with a minimum of 15 resources. For example email, text, social media, job boards, psychometrics, background checks, video interviews, digital signature, and the list goes on. The recruiting system needs to support these applications, and HCMs just can’t.

The bottom line is, HCM  is an internal-facing system that cannot keep pace with the recruiting demands of today’s talent economy. TA needs more than applicant tracking systems (ATS), they need dedicated talent acquisition suites (TAS) in order to remain competitive.

To learn more watch the recording below, or join us live for our next webinar with Glassdoor, “How to Hire Smarter – Discover how data-driven recruitment can revolutionize your business – from hiring at scale to measuring success”, December 5th, 2018 | 11 am GMT. Register here!

The candidate experience is traditionally split into pre and post application, but does that really makes sense for how TA leaders work in the real world?

Today, there are tech solutions to enable every workflow under the sun, and most likely not just one – many! Want to track vacation days, plan work trips, onboard new employees, or even organize a gift exchange? There’s an app for that. In fact, the Human Capital Management market as a whole was valued at 14.50 billion last year, and it’s projected to grow by nearly 30 percent by 2022 to $21.51 billion.

This is great news in terms of innovation, but for talent acquisition leaders already trying to stretch 24 hours into 25, it means a deluge of SaaS decisions. That’s why we are answering one of the most pressing questions – ‘When do I go with a blanket solution and when do I specialize?’ and applying it to candidate relationship management (CRM).

CRM has become an imperative consideration in the current climate of talent scarcity. Unemployment in the US is at a 17-year low of 3.9 percent in May of this year, there is a predicted worker shortage of 8.2 million people from 2017-2027, with an increasing number of employers already reporting a lack of qualified candidates across multiple industries. Organizations with their sights set on growth will need to distinguish themselves as A+ employers at every point of contact.

Think of CRM as “keeping in touch at scale”. One of the top candidate complaints in the hiring process is a lack of communication, which is where CRM solutions step in. Without getting too technical, CRM helps nurture potential candidates, including passive ones, so that an organization has ready access to top-talent ahead of demand. That means resurfacing formerly rejected candidates as well as finding new connections. With the right system in place, recruiters become recruitment marketers thanks to features like branded landing pages, targeted email campaigns, messaging templates, and custom reporting and analytics.

Learn the difference between ATS and CRM here!

Back to our original question: when it comes to CRM, is it better to bundle your CRM with an ATS for an all-in-one solution,  or to specialize with a third-party CRM?

The argument in favor of native CRM solutions is rooted in data quality and ease of use while specialization makes sense if the solution will significantly increase the quality of experience and work produced.

The deciding factor between native and non-native CRM is whether the candidate journey should be split up into pre and post application or not. Which makes for a better experience?

A non-native CRM breaks the candidate flow into two distinct parts— pre-application and post-application while the non-native CRM covers the pre-application phase through a nurturing system. Once the candidate has applied, their data is transferred to the ATS and funneled through the recruiting process.

This workflow would make sense if the candidate journey was linear. Unfortunately, that typically isn’t the case. Let’s say a sourcer nurtures a candidate in the CRM, processes them through the ATS, but doesn’t make the candidate an offer. Does the relationship end there? It shouldn’t. At this point, the candidate’s information must be transferred back to the third-party CRM.

Anytime there is more than one software solution as part of a recruiting workflow there must be an exchange of data, which can lead to data duplication or misplacement. This effort is worthwhile if you are siloing distinct workflows while providing a better candidate experience, but in this case, the cost outweighs the benefits.

In a general context, when and where a company decides to split the systems has to reflect the workflow or the candidate journey. This is where non-native CRM becomes problematic. The reality is that separating the nurturing process from the application process is a huge headache for recruiters and sourcers, not to mention for candidates as well.

Larger companies may have sourcers working with a CRM and recruiters/hiring managers working with an  ATS, which means sourcers may not know what has happened with candidates that pass into the ATS, causing them to neglect rejected applicants when the demand for future hires arises. For smaller companies, sourcers and recruiters are required to constantly toggle between systems,  and be unable to provide a consistent flow for the candidates as they move through the hiring process.

With native CRM is fully integrated with the applicant tracking system so there is one data flow. That means candidates have a universal profile as they move through the candidate lifecycle, which makes for consistent, updated candidate data for all parties. In addition, sourcers and recruiters can use the marketing tools of the CRM like branded landing pages in the latter half of the hiring process, for great brand consistency.

For recruiters, a quality CRM solution balances effective functionality with strong design that delivers impactful communication and consistent employer branding. While there are multiple third-party CRM solutions available on the market, a native CRM offers seamless integration with your existing workflows that doesn’t compromise candidate experience.

Learn more about SmartCRM with our VP of Product, Rebecca Carr.

Don’t lose great talent to the competition because of bad recruiting software—here’s why your hiring team needs a TA solution that makes no compromises.

Recruiting is changing on a fundamental level. Today, 36 percent of the US workforce currently freelances, and reports project this figure will grow to over 50 percent within the next decade. Conversations about the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning replacing human jobs are at the forefront of our social consciousness, and recruiting is becoming exponentially more difficult in this economy.

Traditional sourcing channels are no longer yielding the quality candidates they used to, and truly exceptional talent is not actively seeking new work opportunities, though 82 percent admit they are open to them.

As a result, recruiting is shifting from a reactive function into a proactive one, with a greater focus on candidates. Attracting passive candidates requires your company brand to stand out from others, your job offers to be highly competitive, and your recruiting practices to be fast-moving and engaging. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through feature-rich recruiting software.

The recruitment market is currently worth over $215 billion worldwide, and at a projected growth of 5.6 percent over the next few years, is estimated to be worth over $330 billion by 2025. Today’s market vendors offer talent acquisition suites and recruitment technology solutions to organizations at the enterprise, SMB, and startup level. With so many offerings available in the market—HCRM, ATS, CRM—it can be difficult to wade through the alphabet soup to decide which solution will work best for your organization.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) systems are top choices for recruiters; however, many believe that they don’t need CRM if they already have an ATS. In reality, top recruiters rely on a solution that offers both CRM and ATS in one platform, as each focuses a specific function within the hiring process.

But what’s the difference between an ATS and CRM? And why should you use both in order to source, attract, and hire the best talent?

What is an ATS?

An ATS is a type of recruiting software that facilitates and optimizes the hiring process. It acts as a repository where recruiters and hiring managers can create and post job openings, collect and organize applications, and screen, evaluate, select, and move candidates through every step of the hiring process in one platform.

What is CRM?

A CRM system is designed to strengthen relationships between potential candidates and recruiters so that recruiters can use these candidates for future job openings. In this way, CRMs are considered part of Recruitment Marketing strategy, allowing TA professionals to create talent communities and deliver targeted messaging that helps build and nurture relationships with passive talent. That way, when it comes time to fill a rec, recruiters already have a pool of vetted candidates from which to choose.

What’s the Difference Between an ATS and CRM?

CRM systems work to scale a recruiter’s sourcing efforts by attracting passive candidates ahead of demand. Meanwhile, ATSs are built to make selection and hiring as streamlined as possible by eliminating unnecessary administrative tasks and improving the three most important hiring metrics: hiring velocity, hiring budget, and net hiring score.

In other words, an ATS is a workflow and compliance tool for managing applicants, while a CRM system is a pool of all passive and active candidates, as well as previous applicants already in your system. A bad ATS does little more than execute repetitive functions, meaning recruiting teams waste time on non-value added tasks rather than focusing on strategic initiatives.
Here are some signs that your ATS is not fully optimized with CRM:

• Multiple entry fields that require manual input
• Candidates are categorized by their current jobs or work rather than their desired work.
• No way to evaluate the candidate-recruiter relationship (i.e. measuring the candidate’s level of activity or engagement)
• No ROI (time to hire, cost per hire, quality of hire are still low)
• ATS functionality is mostly administrative work
• Hard-to-fill positions remain open for months

Why Integrating CRM With an ATS Makes Sense

Today’s candidate-centric work economy means that companies need to be aware of candidate experience now more than ever, and technology solutions that prioritize this will be critical for the success of talent acquisition leaders. Between 70 and 80 percent of recruiting happens during the pre-applicant stage, so delivering the right messaging to the right people at the right time gives companies an advantage when attracting top talent in today’s ultra-competitive market.

This can only happen when hiring teams leverage a powerful and comprehensive TA suite that seamlessly integrates CRM with an ATS in one platform. Recruiters who maintain their talent pools with CRM systems can make better, data-driven hiring decisions. And because CRM nurtures strong relationships with past, current, and future candidates, speed and efficiency are built in when it’s time to hire, making the applicant’s journey through the ATS a better experience.

With the right tools for the job, all recruiters can make great hires that drive business growth. As future industry trends emerge, the technology solutions designed to meet these demands will evolve in response, and recruiters who stay on top of what today’s exceptional candidates value will be in prime position to hire them.

Hiring is all about predicting the future—is your applicant tracking system doing the same? Here’s a look at five features that aren’t just trends, but must haves for the new year.

Better Buys previously identified the top trends for the ATS solutions market as social media integration, greater emphasis on interviewing and assessment tools (i.e. video interviewing), and predictive analytics. In the two years since that report, recruiters and hiring managers have encountered challenges with reactive hiring, thinning talent pipelines, and a greater need for automated processes—all while fighting to secure great talent.

Looking ahead at 2019, these new demands are driving the future direction of applicant tracking systems across the industry. As companies continue to build out their ATS platforms to be more feature-rich and provide better solutions, here are some of the trends we can look forward to in the coming year.

1. Candidate Relationship Management

With job openings at a record high and unemployment at record low numbers, the competition for great talent is even more fierce. Companies are struggling to hire quality applicants, and many qualified potential candidates are not actively seeking work. Finding the right person for a role will require more robust sourcing tools, and Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) solutions will provide recruiters with stronger talent pools ahead of demand. CRM solutions will ultimately change the recruiting function from reactive to proactive, enhancing talent pipelines before companies post their open jobs.

2. AI

“Gut feeling” prediction of whether a candidate is a good fit for a role isn’t going to cut it in 2019. For example, candidates with impressive diplomas or certifications do not necessarily make great employees, and assessment tools struggle to test for traits like work ethic, a positive attitude, dependability, and working well under pressure.

Recruiters need to know which candidate is most likely to accept a job offer and stay with the team long enough to make an impact. Native AI solutions like SmartAssistant will offer recruiters measurable insights into a candidate’s skills, cultural fit, the likelihood of accepting an offer, and probable retention with greater efficiency, and less bias. AI will also help recruiters make better decisions with candidates who are moving between fields with comparable skills and promote more internal mobility within their organization.

3. Automation

Recruiters are constantly being pressured to fill more roles with the best talent at a faster, more cost-efficient rate, and this means that automation will continue to be a top priority among the best Applicant Tracking Systems. Automation will help optimize repetitive tasks like interview scheduling and applicant pre-screening, but ATS automation in 2019 will include targeted email campaigns and recruitment marketing platforms, allowing recruiters to deliver specific messaging to nurtured talent communities.

According to Rebecca Carr, VP of Product at SmartRecruiters, automating these processes will make “it faster and easier for businesses to build and convert their talent pipeline within one system.” Ultimately, automation and native AI solutions will work together to “challenge the old way of “tracking” candidates through a workflow.”

4. Collaboration and Communication

The future of recruiting is all about “the team” effort, where recruiters, interviewers, and hiring managers work in tandem to source, attract, and hire the best talent for their organization. But there’s often a disconnect. If not everyone involved in the hiring process is using the ATS, then time is wasted relaying information and collecting feedback. An ATS should be intuitive and allow for greater communication between all team members, which directly affects an organization’s time to hire and overall candidate experience.

Features like different access levels within an ATS to ensure each person sees the right amount of information and more comprehensive dashboards that give candidates an overview of where they are in the hiring process will be highly valuable in the coming year.

5. Integration

Enterprises are no longer the sole entities in need of end-to-end recruiting solutions. Startups are just as eager to hire great talent for their teams, and are often much faster adopters of new technology. For these organizations, an ATS that offers open APIs and a large marketplace of third-party vendor integrations is highly attractive.

Martin Snyder, President of Main Sequence Technology Inc., argues that, “key drivers of market share changes for 2019 are not likely to be technically revolutionary, but rather more operational efficiency.” Meaning, an ATS that offers features like streamlined integration with email, calendar, and Slack—systems that teams are already using—along with “easier solutions to teach and learn, easier ways to get data in and out, and lower pricing” will become the top choices for enterprises and startups in 2019.