Use Your ATS Software to Help Pool Applicants for Future Use
My friends categorize me as a “Mary Poppins Person.” For a long time this irritated me because I did not understand what it meant. Remember in the movie where Mary Poppins opens her bag and pulls out a million different items? It is as if she’s prepared for anything! I’m a perpetual preparer (but not to the point of non-movement). You would be surprised at how many things a safety pin can do.
If you are the same way in business you might want to make sure you are ready for whatever comes your way. Imagine this: you see growth on the horizon for your organization and you want to begin proactively gathering applicants for your potential needs. The question on your mind becomes, how do I use what I have to do this? Your applicant tracking system, or ATS software, can help you do this.
With HireCentric ATS, all of your applicants must apply to an open job listing. But let’s say you currently do not have any officially open job listings. We encourage you to create one – or three – (whatever way you would like to pool your applicants) “future opportunity” job listings. You want to be clear to the applicants that this is a FUTURE job listing and not something you plan to be hiring for any time soon.
Identify Applicants’ Interests With Screening Questions
You could create one job listing for “Future Open Positions.” Then tie job-specific screening questions to that job listing. Asking questions like in what department would you be interested working?…or why are you interested in working at our organization?…will prove to be helpful sorting questions. The other route you could take is to create multiple openings labeled using the following format: “Future Open Positions – Department/Position.” With these, you would place the department name or generic position name in the title. Job-specific screening questions tied to these types of future open positions will reveal more details about applicants’ focus and talents.
To keep applicants interested in your organization, it is highly recommended that you continue to “court” the applicants to keep them engaged. Sending follow up emails, letting the applicants know if they are not eligible for hire with your organization, etc. is still very important. The applicant does not want to feel like his/her application has gone into a black hole.
When other departments are ready to begin hiring, you will have a receptive group of applicants in your system. Quick, simple follow up emails or phone calls to see if the applicant is still actively interested puts you further down the path than you would have been had you not been using your applicant tracking system to help pool applicants. These types of future-focused job listings may be a great opportunity to use our two-step employment application option, as well. Be sure and ask us for more details if that is something in which you may be interested.
You may not be able to prepare for every future event in business, but this is an approach that can help to reduce time to hire in the future when its important that you fill a position quickly, but with top talent nonetheless.
If you are interested in engaging your future applicants using applicant tracking software, please contact ExactHire today.
