How an ATS helps simplify E-recruitment?

What does the term ‘e-recruitment’ mean? The scope of e-recruitment and what it entails is similar to traditional recruitment. But, here, you have the bonus of technology to make a recruiter’s job easier.

The term e-recruitment first came to be through the establishment of job boards. These boards were places where recruiters and companies alike could go and advertise vacancies in hopes of finding the right talents.

Over the years, though, through the development and rise of technology came a time for new methods to be applied. Adopting new tools such as an applicant tracking system paved the way for new strategies and a new way of recruiting, doing the job of a recruiter hassle-free and less time-consuming.

An applicant tracking system could be seen as a turning point and a symbol of a new age for the recruitment industry. An ATS is a vital tool in a recruiter’s toolbox and integral to e-recruitment.

Let’s venture into the world of e-recruitment by first and foremost understanding what an applicant tracking system is; the challenges recruiters often face in the recruitment industry, as well as the functions of an ATS like Manatal’s that can solve the challenges, and ultimately giving you a boost to stay ahead of the competition.

Understanding what an Applicant Tracking System is

What does an applicant tracking system do? It’s a recruitment platform that helps recruiters manage their recruitment process, from sourcing to the point of new hires onboarding. It includes many more features designed to make the recruiting process more efficient.

An applicant tracking system isn’t exactly new in the world of recruiting. However, the platform has gained popularity over the years for several reasons.

Continuous increases in competition, the changing demands of employees, and a global pandemic created a shift where recruiters had no choice but to rely on automated tools to cut down time doing manual tasks fundamentally.

Anyone in the recruitment space knows how challenging and draining it can be when sourcing candidates. Recruiters are constantly scrambling to ensure they’re grabbing the best candidates before competitors quickly snatch them up. To do this, they must find the best and quickest ways because if they don’t, they won’t be able to climb to the top of the ladder.

This is where an applicant tracking system comes into play by answering all the challenging pain points recruiters seem to face today.

Challenges recruiters often face in the industry

While recruiters are shifting to incorporating more automated tools into their recruitment strategies and processes, several challenges are still thrown their way.

These challenges make it tough for any recruiter to try and have a strong foothold in the industry because it can be draining for a recruiter if they aren’t accustomed to using tools as a solution.

Although there are many challenges, recruiters often face some of the main challenges.

1. Building a Talent Pipeline

To climb to the top of the ladder seamlessly, you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of building a talent pipeline. In a fiercely competitive industry, you should take advantage of the abundance of opportunities and make connections.

But this isn’t always the case for some recruiters as sometimes the importance of having candidates on hand - such as passive candidates - gets overlooked. This comes down to a failure in establishing healthy and lasting connections with previous candidates, either through not giving them the coveted feedback they desire or not really connecting with them throughout the application process. 

As a result of this, you lose out on a potentially great candidate in your talent pipeline. 

2. Hiring Speed

The speed at which a recruiter goes about hiring candidates can be a challenge because if you take too long to hire a candidate, you could lose out on that candidate.

It slows the hiring process when recruiting is carried out manually without the assistance of automated tools such as an applicant tracking system.

Without the added assistance of an applicant tracking system, a recruiter would have to look through, organize and select countless resumes per day. Sorting through these applications can be a hassle, especially when the resumes/CVs are sent in incompatible formats.

Sometimes, a recruiter will take time to provide feedback, even if that candidate has been chosen for the position.

Not being proactive to quickly hire candidates can lead to having fewer options to choose from because what tends to happen is that proactive recruiters in the industry soon source the best.

3. Crafting a Solid Employer Brand

Attracting and retaining candidates also determines how the employer brand is perceived. Often, this can be challenging because it can be tricky to craft a solid employer brand that does the job of attracting the best talents.

You need to know the demands of the talent you are sourcing for and how best to meet those demands by not making flashy promises and comments about your employer brand.

For recruiters looking to recruit on behalf of an organization, the challenge lies in ensuring the company's vision, goals, and missions are reflected in a manner that is to the point but once again presented in a way that comes off as attractive or eye-catching.

4. Candidate Experience

A candidate’s experience can make or break a recruiter’s chances of success because of the perception a candidate has of the overall application process. A negative experience can affect the employer’s brand, as negative remarks can spread like wildfire through word of mouth.

It is essential for a recruiter not to overlook the importance of providing all candidates with a great candidate experience. Regardless of whether the candidate has been chosen for the vacant position or not, you still want them to leave with an overall positive feeling.

Recruiters who are slow at providing candidates with feedback don’t only cause detrimental impacts on the hiring speed, as mentioned earlier, but, in turn, impact the overall experience a candidate has. Take too long to provide feedback to inform the candidate of your decision, and you might find that the candidate will not be coming back to apply for other positions with you.

As one negative impression can spread quickly, this results in recruiters losing out future candidates because once there’s already a negative perception of that recruiter, other candidates will be reluctant to apply for positions with them.

PODCAST: Listen here to learn more about why you should emphasize the candidate experience to ensure you’re not leaving talents hanging.

While there are numerous challenges recruiters face in the competitive industry, candidate experience, hiring speed, crafting a solid employer brand, and building a talent pipeline are some of the most common challenges plaguing most recruiters today.

To solve these challenges, recruiters should incorporate an applicant tracking system and a solid recruitment strategy.

When an ATS is utilized correctly, recruiters can find that they have streamlined the process. In no time, you will be recruiting top-tier candidates.

There are several applicant tracking systems available in the market today for recruiters to choose from, but let’s take a look at why Manatal should be the one you choose.

Solving challenges with an Applicant Tracking System

Manatal’s applicant tracking system can be the solution to all the challenges recruiters seem to have today, especially the four main ones mentioned above. With a range of features to choose from, this ATS could boost your chances of success, placing you ahead of recruiters.

Let’s dive deeper into how each feature of Manatal’s ATS can answer all the key challenges.

1. Candidate Tracking

As the name suggests, an applicant tracking system in e-recruitment allows a recruiter to track their candidate's progress at different stages of the application process.

Manatal’s ATS can do this through a candidate pipeline feature. Depending on your criteria, you can place candidates at different stages of the talent pipeline, even passive ones.

What challenges does this answer? Well, building a solid talent pipeline. When you have everything on one accessible platform, you can refer back to past candidates and easily connect with active candidates, thus giving you countless options to choose from when finding the right talents for each vacant position.

Not only can you keep track of passive and active candidates, but you can also monitor different stages. So as a candidate goes through the interview stage or is awaiting feedback, you can easily monitor that through the pipeline.

For recruiters who aren’t fully accustomed to using technology, don’t fret because Manatal’s ATS is an easy interface where you can drag and drop a candidate to various stages. With ease in functionality, you will get the hang of using an applicant tracking system to monitor all your candidates.

For those who are visual learners, you will quickly pick up on how to organize your candidate pipeline, as the platform is easily accessible as a simple board. From a visual perspective, you can easily see where a candidate’s profile is, job descriptions, departments of the company, and much more.

The takeaway of an applicant tracking system that solves the challenge of building a talent pipeline is that an ATS provides a systematic and organized approach to sourcing and tracking candidates which simplifies e-recruitment. 

2. Career Page

Applicant tracking systems aren’t designed to facilitate a recruiter’s e-recruitment strategy for sourcing and tracking candidates. When used with the right intention, the career page feature of an ATS can go a long way in enhancing your employer brand.

A career page lets you tell your story, brand, and what you want to achieve, such as your mission, vision, and goals. Through an applicant tracking system, this can be done efficiently and quickly because of how accessible everything is. Not only that, but you can also track how well the career page is performing based on data collected through an ATS.

Manatal’s career page feature takes it one step further and is easy to use even if you don’t have much technological knowledge. Templates are available for recruiters to use and adapt according to an organization’s specific needs and wants.

Templates make it easier to set up the career page, but they are also compatible across many platforms, such as WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace, to name a few. You’ll be broadcasting your brand to a range of potential talents without having to do much work to get your brand out there.

What if you already have an existing career page? You can integrate yours with Manatal’s through the integration feature that optimizes each career page using API.

What challenges does a career page solve? It solves the challenge of crafting a solid employer brand from scratch, significantly when candidates are constantly changing demands.

Manatal’s career page also grants you endless possibilities for customization, with options of adding videos, images, links, and even the possibility of adding your company logo to the page. This makes the content branded content and personalized to your brand. If your organization has a specific color palette, you can change the colors on the template to align with this aspect of your company.

The endless features of a career page are there for you to optimize and use in enhancing your e-recruitment strategy by emphasizing the importance of a career page.

You might want to learn more: Ways a good career page can help shape your brand.

3. Team Collaboration

As the recruitment industry is becoming highly competitive, the importance of collaborating with a team if you’re working in a team should be highlighted.

Sometimes connecting with teammates and sharing information on potential and active candidates can be tricky because everyone’s busy actively recruiting their candidates. Connecting through email, sharing updates on a separate chat system, or uploading resumes on a shared folder can sometimes be overlooked, and specific issues aren’t addressed promptly.

Not collaborating with a team again boils down to how it impacts your chances of building a talent pipeline and crafting an employer brand. 

An applicant tracking system can provide the solution to working efficiently as a team. Take a look at Manatal’s ATS with its team collaboration feature.

Team collaboration features allow you to effortlessly connect with your team, receive feedback on your recruitment process/strategies and discuss a candidate’s progress. With Manatal’s team collaboration feature, you cannot only do all that but can easily manage access by changing permission settings.

If you’re currently sourcing for a candidate but don’t want the rest of the team to know the details until you’re sure this candidate is the right one, you can restrict access as you see fit.

You can do this with ease through an integrated chat component when it comes to receiving feedback and communicating promptly on which candidates should be prioritized. Easily keep track of messages, share notes, and seamlessly communicate with one another on urgent matters all on one platform.

Not only do you have access to an integrated chat system, but the overall team collaboration feature allows for centralized communication to happen across the board. It’s a single platform for recruiters, HR managers, founders, and leaders to correspond.

Suppose you feel that your recruitment strategy is working, and it is something you would like to share with the rest of the team. In that case, you can share templates and other important information in one unified inbox, which is Manatal’s inbox feature as part of its team collaboration feature of an applicant tracking system.

4. Resume Storing and Formatting

We’ve covered what it takes to overcome challenges, such as ensuring you’re providing candidates with a great experience, the importance of employer branding and how you can achieve this with a career page, and how to nail teamwork down with team collaboration. Now, it’s time to see how we can solve the challenge of dealing with many resumes and making sure parsing through them doesn’t take up too much of your time.

When technology comes into play, especially when an ATS is added to your recruitment toolbox, you can save much time in scouring through resumes, verifying and fact-checking whether the candidate does match the job you’re sourcing for.

If you are finding it difficult to keep track of all the resumes you’ve received via email and other channels, then you should switch to using a single platform that allows all resumes to be stored together. Sometimes you don’t select that candidate, but they have a great resume, so you want this information to be kept secure and on one platform.

Well, you don’t have to worry about not being able to keep track of the resumes you receive, and you can rest assured knowing that you can always go back and refer to them with Manatal’s resume storing and formatting features.

You can store resumes you receive from multiple channels, all on one central platform. Having resumes on hand can also aid in helping you build a strong talent pipeline. That’s because you already have these resumes, and with a click of a button, you can just refer back to this candidate for any future job openings.

Even if the candidate doesn’t fit the mark, once you’ve uploaded and parsed their data using Manatal’s system, the information is stored for future use. You don’t have to worry that you’ll lose out on a potential prospective candidate because you’ve lost their contact details or specifications about their education or prior work experience.  

Perhaps you’ve received a resume from a particular candidate but encountered a problem – the resume’s formatting is all wrong. You can easily reformat such resumes with the click of a button, thus enhancing the candidate’s resume further.

If you want to emphasize your brand, you can even format resumes into becoming branded resumes. Add your company logo with ease. All you have to do is click to add a watermark to an existing overview, and there you have it, your very own branded resume.

5. AI Recommendations and Suggestions

There’s only so much a recruiter can do to make sure they verify and double-check whether the talent they’re hunting fits the mark or not. Sometimes, a recruiter might miss out on quality candidates because they’ve overlooked certain specifications or aren’t searching for talent using specific criteria.

AI recommendations and suggestions for an applicant tracking system can help to solve this challenge. When used and understood well, AI suggestions can go a long way in providing recruiters with resourceful and quality candidate recommendations, in turn simplifying e-recruitment. 

An applicant tracking system's artificial intelligence component can identify certain specifications or issues with a candidate’s information that a recruiter might not have picked up on. Sometimes, AI can also assist in figuring out which job is suitable for a particular candidate.

Manatal’s applicant tracking system has AI recommendations and suggestions in the form of scoring and ranking systems.

A scoring system can act as a boost in cutting down sourcing and hiring speed because all you have to do is input your criteria for the type of candidate you’re looking for and watch the magic happen. The AI system will cross-reference information and present you with suggestions for jobs that are suitable for that candidate.

You will also be presented with a ranking system that will prioritize high-ranking candidates who meet all the specifications for a particular job and present you with low-ranking candidates who don’t meet the complete requirements.

The takeaway of an ATS for simplifying E-recruitment   

E-recruitment has slowly become the new normal of recruitment, and with a new normal comes new strategies and tools that recruiters should familiarize themselves with. This type of recruitment is here to stay for the foreseeable future because a shift in work practices such as hybrid work and work-from-home is seen across several industries worldwide.

There is now a heavier reliance on technology and various tools to make the job of a recruiter easier and ensure that hiring candidates is no longer time-consuming.

Adopting tools aligned with solid strategies, a recruiter will always find one step ahead in the recruitment game. While many tools are available in the space, one such tool that stands out is an applicant tracking system.

An applicant tracking system provides you with endless opportunities to track candidates, parse through resumes, build your talent pipeline and even consider AI-based recommendations and suggestions. It’s a must-have when it comes to e-recruitment in the modern day.

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Why not begin your journey into enhancing your recruitment strategy with Manatal’s ATS? Consider this your one-stop solution to all your recruitment woes. Start your 14-day free trial, and watch your recruitment game strengthen and your prospects grow.