Published on Wednesday, Dec 27, 2006
THAT turnover and attrition rates are going through the roof is old news. Nevertheless, employees' cataclysmic predilection to job hop spawns a huge recruiting volume and companies have to fill open positions speedily. Any delays in hiring or wrong hirings will work in favour of the competitors.
Even as resourcing directors have their hands full with meeting staffing needs, inopportune inefficiencies of the recruiting systems come to the fore. The long-drawn-out process of constantly formulating job requisitions and interviewing applicants takes an inordinate amount of time. Not to mention the entailed sifting through a deluge of applications in the exasperating hunt for the optimal candidate. Therefore, even as hiring managers work against time, more positions fall vacant before the previous ones can be filled.
The ongoing hiring also drains the company with mammoth costs and lost time that could be spent on other productive activities. According to the Corporate Advisory Board of Washington, USA, the cost of replacing staff can be anything between 50 per cent to175 per cent of that person's annual salary. Therefore, even after spending millions on recruitment, most companies are still unhappy with their staffing systems and fantasise about alleviating the hiring workload and simplifying the process.
What if someone said that they can actually manage their corporate recruitment right from their desktops!
Technology to the rescue
A degree of automation is the need of the hour as HR can no longer (and should not, either) meet the perpetual staffing needs manually. The time is ripe for revolutionising the hiring process with technology-enabled tools like an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
An applicant tracking system is an innovative web-based software that maintains a comprehensive database of applicant and job information which can be stored and retrieved electronically. It comprises of a corporate career site that allows companies to post job opportunities on their own websites or job boards, inviting applications. Thereafter, it catalogues the information from resumes in its massive and detailed record-keeping system.
As and when needed, the ATS automatically spews out matches between job openings and candidates, thus facilitating timely detection and hiring of well-qualified and competent employees. Its effective solutions allow constructive searching, filtering and routing of candidate data.
Even the previously time-consuming tasks of candidate comparisons and compliance monitoring are computerised leading to timely and unbiased evaluation procedures.
The hallmark of an applicant tracking software is its ability to standardise and streamline assorted hiring processes by linking information from various sources and integrating data storage on a single platform. As Jonathan Kubo, director of recruiting for a prominent hotel management company in USA states, "I like our applicant tracking system because we have the option to post positions on job boards and community organisation sites through a one-step process for posting on multiple sites, but then all applications are brought in to a single point. We can track the status of the application and manage on line all the data related to selection and interviewing".
Companies can customise an ATS to their needs by adding/eliminating functionalities to an existing system. They can choose from a wide array of recruiting solutions right from candidate-required mode to employee-hired to at times, even orchestrating final exit and everything in between (with multilingual options and audio support to boot). For instance, apart from regular resume screening and generating interview requests to potential candidates, an ATS can also be customised for seamless pre-screening through weighted job-specific questions to sort applicants by their probability of success in the job. Or, an online initial orientation service to onboard new employees and/or cyclical performance reviews can be chosen. Other personalised features include automated job requisition analysis, requisition tracking, input forms, resume acknowledgment email, auto-ranking criteria, interview scheduling/tracking, background checking, selection parameters, offer approval and welcome letters. Even paramount and concentrated processes like candidate sourcing, mining centralised candidate pool, employee referral programs, vendor management, ad hoc reporting, cost analysis, payroll integration and real time data management can be accelerated with an ATS. The possibilities are almost endless.
Key to survival
Needless to say, the electronically automated handling of overwhelming corporate recruitment needs expedites the hiring process radically. The ability, at a glance, to determine a candidate's suitability for the job he has applied for, individually and in comparison to other applicants plummets time-to-fill and cost-per-hire with significant reduction of inefficiencies.
The quicker decision-making facilitates filling urgent staffing requirements too. And, with the efficient organisation of candidate data, no applications will get lost or be misplaced in the wrong file!
Administrative, advertising and placement agency expenses fall drastically with a concurrent rise in new employees' time to productivity leading to gains galore. Even the talent acquisition team can work with a smaller squad thanks to reduced hiring workloads.
The right choice
With a glut of ATS providers available, organisations should carefully select an intuitive and flexible software application by meeting the suppliers and discussing their unique needs. In India, a plethora of popular software packages are available and patronised by leading organisations
Even as resourcing directors have their hands full with meeting staffing needs, inopportune inefficiencies of the recruiting systems come to the fore. The long-drawn-out process of constantly formulating job requisitions and interviewing applicants takes an inordinate amount of time. Not to mention the entailed sifting through a deluge of applications in the exasperating hunt for the optimal candidate. Therefore, even as hiring managers work against time, more positions fall vacant before the previous ones can be filled.
The ongoing hiring also drains the company with mammoth costs and lost time that could be spent on other productive activities. According to the Corporate Advisory Board of Washington, USA, the cost of replacing staff can be anything between 50 per cent to175 per cent of that person's annual salary. Therefore, even after spending millions on recruitment, most companies are still unhappy with their staffing systems and fantasise about alleviating the hiring workload and simplifying the process.
What if someone said that they can actually manage their corporate recruitment right from their desktops!
Technology to the rescue
A degree of automation is the need of the hour as HR can no longer (and should not, either) meet the perpetual staffing needs manually. The time is ripe for revolutionising the hiring process with technology-enabled tools like an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
An applicant tracking system is an innovative web-based software that maintains a comprehensive database of applicant and job information which can be stored and retrieved electronically. It comprises of a corporate career site that allows companies to post job opportunities on their own websites or job boards, inviting applications. Thereafter, it catalogues the information from resumes in its massive and detailed record-keeping system.
As and when needed, the ATS automatically spews out matches between job openings and candidates, thus facilitating timely detection and hiring of well-qualified and competent employees. Its effective solutions allow constructive searching, filtering and routing of candidate data.
Even the previously time-consuming tasks of candidate comparisons and compliance monitoring are computerised leading to timely and unbiased evaluation procedures.
The hallmark of an applicant tracking software is its ability to standardise and streamline assorted hiring processes by linking information from various sources and integrating data storage on a single platform. As Jonathan Kubo, director of recruiting for a prominent hotel management company in USA states, "I like our applicant tracking system because we have the option to post positions on job boards and community organisation sites through a one-step process for posting on multiple sites, but then all applications are brought in to a single point. We can track the status of the application and manage on line all the data related to selection and interviewing".
Companies can customise an ATS to their needs by adding/eliminating functionalities to an existing system. They can choose from a wide array of recruiting solutions right from candidate-required mode to employee-hired to at times, even orchestrating final exit and everything in between (with multilingual options and audio support to boot). For instance, apart from regular resume screening and generating interview requests to potential candidates, an ATS can also be customised for seamless pre-screening through weighted job-specific questions to sort applicants by their probability of success in the job. Or, an online initial orientation service to onboard new employees and/or cyclical performance reviews can be chosen. Other personalised features include automated job requisition analysis, requisition tracking, input forms, resume acknowledgment email, auto-ranking criteria, interview scheduling/tracking, background checking, selection parameters, offer approval and welcome letters. Even paramount and concentrated processes like candidate sourcing, mining centralised candidate pool, employee referral programs, vendor management, ad hoc reporting, cost analysis, payroll integration and real time data management can be accelerated with an ATS. The possibilities are almost endless.
Key to survival
Needless to say, the electronically automated handling of overwhelming corporate recruitment needs expedites the hiring process radically. The ability, at a glance, to determine a candidate's suitability for the job he has applied for, individually and in comparison to other applicants plummets time-to-fill and cost-per-hire with significant reduction of inefficiencies.
The quicker decision-making facilitates filling urgent staffing requirements too. And, with the efficient organisation of candidate data, no applications will get lost or be misplaced in the wrong file!
Administrative, advertising and placement agency expenses fall drastically with a concurrent rise in new employees' time to productivity leading to gains galore. Even the talent acquisition team can work with a smaller squad thanks to reduced hiring workloads.
The right choice
With a glut of ATS providers available, organisations should carefully select an intuitive and flexible software application by meeting the suppliers and discussing their unique needs. In India, a plethora of popular software packages are available and patronised by leading organisations
PAYAL CHANANIA
It is more than word!
ReplyDeleteGreat blog! Continue the useful posts.
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