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ATS Applicant Tracking and Employee Turnover

Keyboard showing a Tracking System button for Job Application Tracking.

ATS Applicant Tracking Systems matter because time and money are the bottom line.

In the recruiter space, employee turnover and hiring applicants are the two big dollar drains.

Sourcing, processing, interviewing and hiring — when done right — is the answer to both.

Enter Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).

Still, that first step to automated assistance isn’t easy. In a world of continuously evolving technical possibilities, the acronym ATS means different things to different people.

Even today, most would likely describe an ATS as something to aggregate and manage resumes, with basic applicant tracking stemming from that benefit. 

Depending on how much you’re willing to spend (more later) — the best ATS’s can help organize and automate:

  • Management of job requisition
  • Posts on job search sites
  • Application forms
  • Candidate search
  • Templates for candidate emails
  • Interview alerts
  • Recruiting metrics reports
  • Background checks
  • Candidate information verification
  • Creation and delegation of tasks
  • Collaboration
  • Duplicate candidate alerts/prevention
  • Personalized outreach
  • Advertising
  • Social media posting

And more.

Connecting your existing ATS to Ladders would ensure timely and highly accurate job delivery, track candidates and posts all the way to hire, and sync candidate data with your system for flawless management. 

Investing in Success

While most ATS’s are cloud based, there are vendors who provide on-prem hosting.

On-prem will require an upfront payment (perpetual licensing), while cloud-based hosting comes with a monthly or yearly subscription. 

A company looking into this kind of investment can usually expect three pricing models:

Pay per User — based on the number of users granted administrative access.

Pay per Position — based on number of open job requisitions each month.

Pay per Module – based on unified HR solutions rather than best-of-breed.

The Keyword Is Candidate

Of course, there’s nothing like the ability to write a job description that works.

And key words do play a big part in that. The right key words — informed by a clear description of who is wanted to do what — get your job description found by people hunting for those jobs.

And that in turn is informed by some useful XML job post management.

On the ATS side, keywords are used to reject resumes that don’t contain them, and approve those that do.

How effective that is in separating enthusiastic amateurs from qualified experts is up for debate, particularly in a downturn, where ambition and enthusiasm can meet desperation.

And all in a world where technology has made applying for a job very easy to do.

So to the bottom line: The better you target your candidates in the first place, the more time and money you’re likely to save.

Targeting Talent – Tech & the Human Touch

Let’s say, for example, that you have a $100K-$500K+ job opening. You decide to create an XML job feed with Ladders.

Now your high-end job is being targeted directly at $100K-$500K+ professionals, with keyword targeting directing it to the experts required within that field and range.

When you close the job on your end, it automatically closes on Ladders, too.

Leaving your ATS with far less of the heavy-lifting to do in the initial stages, and you with far less of the heavy-lifting to do during the following stages.

Sometimes your easiest investments can get you the best results. It really boils down to knowing who and what you want, then taking the smartest route to it.

And the human touch remains a key differentiator, especially when technology works with it.

An example of this comes with the challenge of moving forward with a shortlist of candidates, with a view to successful interviews and long term retention.

Ladders ThirdPage™, for example, combines technology with member interaction to collect key interview questions.

20 million questions answered so far.

This enables recruiters to gain key knowledge about an individual before sending an email or picking up a phone.

Knowledge is power. And answering the bottom line will always be less about technology than it is about intelligent choices.

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Recruiter Outreach: That Personal Quality

Image saying Targeting with icons and images showing various methods.

In some circles, the term spray-and-pray covers recruiter outreach to potential job candidates in a wide variety of situations.

Essentially it’s a potentially reputation-damaging spam campaign (to the majority of recipients), in the hope of netting a couple of good prospects.

In other circles, it covers sending a job post to as many job aggregation sites as possible. The ATS system is then depended on to help sort applications that are increasingly easy to send — and which multiply in a downturn.

We’ll deal with outreach here, but in both cases the problem can be solved with just a couple of easy upfront investments.

Outreach Personalization

If there’s one thing most recruiters have going for them its personality. Gregarious, fast on their feet, discerning, and always easy to talk to.

Pride in these strengths is the first step to investing a little time into the resources that are almost always at your disposal.

Personalization of approach is about personal style.

Imagine the difference between receiving a generic email and one that greets you with an upbeat reference to some achievement you’ve earned. Something you and the sender have in common.

Or any personal reference — probably pulled in a matter of seconds from a social media profile.

It might be a professional connection, a shared school, hobby or virtually anything that stands out. That message says: “I’m reaching out because you made a genuine impression.”

This includes the subject line, to win that initial open.

Using the person’s name (obvious), along with current company, some achievement, or anything else that shows you know them, is potent:

John, your work at {{company}} has gained attention.

This small effort is the best investment a recruiter can make.

In fact it can be the antithesis of the foot-in-the-door technique. It triggers Dr. Robert B. Cialdini’s groundbreaking 6 Principles of Influence:

Reciprocity — the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit.

Your recipient feels complimented. You are clearly writing a personal message. You know something about her. And you are impressed enough to reach out.

The recipient knows you did your homework. You spelled the name right. Heck, you’ve probably been showing the profile around, with various important heads nodding and smiling as they stared at it.

Your recipient is now warm inside and feels you deserve time and effort.

And what was the cost?

In another instance, you could quickly discover that a qualified expert out there is actually connected to somebody who works at your company.

You would know what to do next, right?

Because a personal email from that person would go a long way to getting a result.

Ladders as a Quality Example

Hey, if you don’t blow your own trumpet, right?

Imagine you’re tasked with a high-end position. It’s important and lands between a $400K-$500K salary range.

You bring Ladders into the picture for targeted $100K-$500K+ professionals, with resumes that spell out “expertise” “experience” and “highly qualified” at every step.

And you use Ladders Experts and pull some interesting profiles. 

Great, but results are key. So how do you optimize personalization?

Easy — make yourself invisible.

You pick any personalized talking points you’ve discovered. You draft an email. Then you talk to a key hiring manager about putting her name and picture with it.

Back to another principle of persuasion — authority.

Now the personalized correspondence, with personal touches, comes from the authority figure. 

Instant compliment. Instant personalized experience.

Your win is your smart thinking — your strategy.

Every small investment of time and effort pays back in a potentially major way.

And every smart thing you do that isn’t spray-and-pray protects your reputation and your company’s reputation.

Also, any extra effort you put into areas such as networking and relationship building will reward you with great ROI. 

Ladders makes it easy for its recruiters to create their own member profiles on Ladders, for example, and encourages them to do that. So here’s our recommended mantra:

Personalization is productivity. Results earn rewards.

Job Expertise & Engagement

So taking a few minutes to find a personal way to connect is an easy investment. Approaching through a relevant connection or a hiring manager is a smart tactic when applied properly.

As is knowing your target’s field.

A little research into the field you’re recruiting for is always a good idea. Maybe there are upheavals or new innovations there that people are talking about, or worried about.

However, acting like you too are an expert is going too far. Maybe you’re aware of something via friend in the field, for example.

Your target now feels you respect him as a professional.

Maybe certain approaches don’t work well with certain professionals: being overtly positive and upbeat with journalists or PR people could lead to guardedness and mistrust, for example.

We shouldn’t indulge in stereotypes, but we should respect the kind of work performed and the culture that goes with it. It can shape the way professionals respond.

Cold-calling is a thing of the past. Personalization is everything.

Small investments do gain great rewards

And when good people, who you very quickly built something of a relationship with, don’t work out for a position, make sure you keep their details and throw them a friendly line for others.

Because relationship building is as personal as it gets.