Wednesday, June 10, 2009

How to Choose and Implement an ATS

It sometimes seems as if recruiters and technology are like oil and water ? almost impossible to mix. I am rarely at a client for very long before the "issue" of technology comes up. Usually, it's in the form of a complaint. I hear things like, "Our ATS can't do what?" or, "I wish I could get better metrics, but my ATS can't create the reports I need," or, "The recruiters here never bother to enter the right data or they don't use the system at all."

When I talk with finance groups or engineering departments, technology is never an issue. They seem to live together in harmony, albeit with a few blips here and there. While a few people I know have said that they feel computers are just too impersonal for people-oriented recruiters to be comfortable with, I know many very warm and successful recruiters who are advocates and users of very sophisticated systems.

There are several reasons why these systems are hard to sell, poorly utilized, and rarely praised.

Poor Understanding of Current Processes

No system can do what you want if you don't know what you want to do. Many recruiters cannot tell me the entire process of getting a new employee hired. When I ask them to pretend they are a candidate or a job requisition and then take me through the various steps to get to a hire, they can only get through those steps they play a part in.

Many pieces of the recruiting process are vague or ill-defined, even to those who do them. Often, many people do a small part of a process and no one really knows it all. Just as often, the processes themselves are not efficient.

Employees in manufacturing environments have had process improvement goals for years. Consultants and academics have been hired to analyze and probe into every aspect of producing a product, until today we are able to produce products of all types with fewer people and greater quality and at lower cost than ever before in history. The spotlight is now being turned on to the "soft" processes, such as recruiting, and these processes will be examined and streamlined immensely over the next several years.

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Source: By Kevin Wheeler – Published Mar 25, 2005
©2001–2009 Global Learning Resources, Inc.

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