For far too long recruiting technology has not been aligned with hiring success and applicant tracking systems have been designed to do just that – track applicants. As a result, technology providers of these solutions have failed miserably in helping companies engage and hire the best talent in a meaningful way.

The primary reason is enterprise applicant tracking systems were designed over 15 years ago to automate the application process by replacing paper with a computer. While this made a lot of sense at that time, recruiting technology hasn’t evolved at the pace required. And more importantly, it just doesn’t work in a competitive marketplace for hiring great talent.

How do we know it doesn’t work?

• Today, 97% of candidates who are interested don’t apply or don’t complete the application process once they start.
• 95% of hiring managers we speak to don’t use, and don’t want to use an applicant tracking system. They rely on email back-and-forth and a manual process. These managers also complain about recruiting.
• Recruiters find as many workarounds as they can because there is layer after layer of technology to cover up all of the pain points, also known as the frankenstein syndrome.

Four years ago I made a decision a decision to build a single leading-edge platform to actually make hiring easy and more importantly make our customers successful in hiring. And while making customers successful in hiring is a bold statement for a technology provider, it’s the foundation that we have built the SmartRecruiters hiring success platform around.

How do we define hiring success? Simply put, it’s finding and hiring great people. This is accomplished by extraordinary recruiters who focus on a modern hiring process, including:

1. Marketing: Targeting campaigns for active hiring and pipelining, investing wisely based on position and delivering the right candidate experience.
2. Collaboration: Screening talent and selling as a team to get to a quality short list, comparing feedback to make the best hiring decisions and aligning efforts in one group conversation that flows in real time.
3. Insights: Democratizing access to key metrics, Helping hiring teams answers their own questions and optimizing decision making on the fly.

All of this should be done through one platform and ecosystem, where you are in control and compliant. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done for companies that have a recruiting process that isn’t optimized or even worse for those that have had to purchase add-on modules to their applicant tracking system that didn’t work properly in the first place. This is the reality of a bad situation, primarily because there was no real alternative.

The good news is that thousands of companies have already made a decision to abandon their applicant tracking system and declare a commitment to achieving hiring success. And hiring success is more than a marketing slogan, it’s a real statement that SmartRecruiters is here to help companies be successful in hiring. And now today, there is finally an alternative for for the worlds largest companies who want to stop tracking applicants and start hiring great people.

Applicant tracking was born from the processing of computers, and it will die at the hands of social networks. Applicant tracking had a bloated enterprise run. The infancy of the Internet promoted rapid growth of collecting and numerically grading resumes, creating an era of interviewing (and not interviewing) candidates based on resume keywords. That time has passed. Remember, interviews occur because people want to work together.

Social networks have given expanding businesses everywhere a chance to cut the automation. People are not automated.  The social profiles layout more information than a resume. And they are easier to read. While resumes list skills and tell of past work, social profiles verify skills, as well as, show past and current work. A social profile offers more accurate and up to date information, resulting in online footprints that are ever evolving and not recyclable. A database of resumes is more useful than LinkedIn to recruit top talent in the vein that the eroding skeletons in the graveyard are more likely than the working people in the office to produce the next great American Product.

There is no need to preach, you know the wealth of a social profile (see the IPO of LinkedIn and the evaluations of Facebook). The question is: what does the Internet’s maturity mean for recruiting? The social aspect of the Internet has given businesses a second chance. To recruit right. The social aspect of the Internet gives business an opportunity to bring recruiting back to its roots as a social activity.
To recruit, the principles of social networks must be applied, as in, you show up for the people. Social Recruiting is about sourcing. The source is people. You cannot upload a person into a database. But recruiting software can bring company to where the people are. Recruiting software is not a tracking platform.

Recruiting software is a sourcing and engagement platform. Recruiting software distributes your job openings to find people. Recruiting software shares job openings within your network to create the “Kevin Bacon” effect and find your perfect candidate. Don’t forget, when talent is engaged by your product, browsing your site or facebook page, recruiting software makes sure they see your open jobs through features such as Career Sites, WordPress plugins, and Facebook apps.  Because at the end of the day, recruiting is about finding people to build great products together.  Recruiting software gathers people from all sources.

Post originally appeared on Talent Management Tech as “Why Do We Need Applicant Tracking?” Word Cloud Credit Wordle.

 
“We see ATS systems with a lot of bolt on fancy tools to help you connect in social media and find candidates on social platforms better. When in reality what we should be focusing on with our ATS systems is how to search our own ATS systems better, and I’ve seen a couple of interesting products at this show that are actually doing that well.”
 
“A couple of the products I’ve seen today are actually helping their clients in the recruiting teams, search their own databases better – that’s how technology can make recruiting more efficient and help the labor market.”
 
Do you see technology driving down unemployment?
 
“I do. When effective, recruiter’s time to fill shrinks, and time to fill drives down unemployment. It’s a proven thing.”
 
Craig Fisher is VP Sales for Ajax Social Media, the Founder of TalentNetLive, and a father of three boys. Some know him as FishDogs.
 
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