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Can Recruiting Software Improve Efficiency for Small Companies?

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Recruiting has many components to it. While all companies (large and small) will differ with their own specifics, there are some common things that are part of most everyone’s recruiting process:

  • establish your brand for potential applicants
  • consider different ways to attract applicants
  • nurture them if the time isn’t quite right for one party or the other
  • move them along in the process to avoid missing opportunities
  • keep track of what has been or needs to be done with these applicants

Larger organizations have used technology to help with these items for 10-15 years, but only recently has it become feasible for smaller organizations to do the same. Good recruiting software (also referred to as Applicant Tracking Software or ATS) is now a cost-effective way for small companies to gain efficiency in these common recruiting tasks.

A good analogy is accounting software. Unlike 25 years ago, small companies today have access to very functional (and affordable) tools to automate the various aspects of their accounting. Today, the thought of handling these functions manually is almost laughable, given the technology available. In many cases, smaller organizations are finding the same to be true with recruiting. Below are some quick examples of how these types of tools help companies streamline the common aspects of recruiting:

  • Branding — great recruiting software will reinforce the existing web presence of an organization. This levels the playing field against larger competitors who have been doing this for years.
  • Attracting applicants — making potential candidates aware of openings is critical. Beyond traditional job boards, leading-edge recruiting software solutions are utilizing technology available to help leverage the social and business contacts of existing employees to drive more passive candidate traffic. These are the people who are potentially open to a change, but haven’t yet started actively seeking opportunities on job boards.
  • Nurturing candidates until the time is right — more progressive ATS offerings will allow an organization to “drip” on potential candidates with new openings and/or social media updates to keep them engaged. This keeps the organization more top of mind for that potential candidate.
  • Move them along in the process — knowing which applicants have applied, where they are in the process, and the next steps to be taken are keys to successful recruiting. This keeps good applicants more engaged and helps to avoid losing them to other opportunities. This is one of the core functions of a good applicant tracking system.
  • Keep track of what has been done — this is important to any organization, as documentation can be invaluable for situations where discrimination or unlawful hiring practices are alleged. For organizations that are required to comply with Affirmative Action regulations, the right software application is imperative.

 

Using this type of technology can certainly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the recruiting process for an organization. To learn more about ExactHire and our solutions, please visit our resources section or contact us today.

Image credit: Internet Open by Blaise Alleyne (contact)

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Employee Referrals – Use Technology to Help Track and Reward

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There’s a lot of talk in our market these days about where recruiting is headed. Many experts feel that we are on the cusp of some significant changes in the next few years. Less reliance on traditional job boards, heavier use of social media and allowing applicants to leverage mobile technology are some of the more consistent topics of change that I see on a regular basis.

Whether you see these trends affecting your organization or not, there is a recruiting strategy that is worth considering — employee referrals. This is nothing new. In fact, employers and their staff members responsible for hiring have been trying to find ways to consistently tap this market for years.

Employee Referral Program Benefits

There are several benefits to using employee referrals for sourcing applicants:

  • Better applicants — good people tend to know and refer other good people
  • Passive applicants — this approach reaches people who may not yet be actively looking for work and would never see your opening on your career site or a job board
  • Lower cost — even if you pay employees for referrals, it is widely acknowledged that this cost is far lower than the typical costs born through standard recruiting techniques
  • Better potential for cultural fit — your current employees understand your organization’s culture and are in the best position to help answer questions about the organization from those applicants they refer

Here’s more good news…technological advances are continuing to help make this employee referral process better for both employers and their employees. Social media on its own allows employees to make others in their networks aware of job openings in their organization. However, some of the more progressive applicant tracking software (ATS) tools in the market make this even easier for employees. Employees may click and share openings through their social channels without any copying/pasting. This makes the overall program more sustainable and successful.

To learn more about social referral tools available within HireCentric ATS, please schedule a live demo with ExactHire.

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Hiring Solutions and Technology for Auto Dealers

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With the automotive industry rebound in recent years, we’ve had the opportunity to customize our applicant tracking system technology for auto dealers around the country. In doing so, it dawned on me that there are some common reasons many of these automotive groups are looking for help with their hiring process:

  1. Turnover — With the improved economy, turnover figures are trending back to pre-recession levels. Salespeople, automotive techs and customer service representatives are the main positions where dealers experience turnover.
  2. Demographics — A high percentage of the applicant pool for auto dealers are job seekers who are very tech savvy. These applicants are used to doing things online and expect potential employers to follow suit.
  3. Limited resources — Managers in most dealerships are busier than ever with their day-to-day jobs. This means they don’t have a lot of excess time to review resumes and try to decide which applicants are qualified for their openings. These managers are looking for ways to automate as much as possible.
  4. Cost — Dealers are seeing margins squeezed like everyone else. This means they want technology solutions with low upfront costs, low ongoing costs, and no long-term contracts.

While not unique to auto dealers, these core reasons certainly seem to resonate in this industry. In particular, these issues are magnified for those dealers who happen to have multiple locations — a more common occurrence than years ago.

Popular Applicant Tracking Features for Car Dealers

Below are some of the features to which our clients have gravitated when using our HireCentric applicant tracking software (ATS):

  • Branded career portal to match the rest of your corporate web presence
  • Flexible employment application setup to gather what’s important to a particular dealer’s needs — this includes the ability to break the application into more than one step, if desired
  • See multiple applications for an individual tied to a central applicant profile — especially helpful for “serial” applicants
  • Track all notes, email correspondence and internal feedback for each applicant in a single database
  • Reach out to previous good applicants when positions open up unexpectedly
  • Communicate with groups of applicants simultaneously to keep them informed of progress in filling a position — this protects your brand for applicants who may also be existing or potential customers
  • Easily see what the “pipeline” looks like for any given position or group of positions

Using applicant tracking software isn’t right for every automotive dealer. However, if any of the features mentioned above resonate as potential options for your organization (automotive industry or not), please contact ExactHire to discuss whether this type of solution is functionally and economically viable for your group.

Use our pricing calculator for HireCentric ATS.

Image credit: Honest John’s Used Car Lot, Los Angeles CA, 1947 by Alden Jewell (contact)

How Do I Calculate ROI For Applicant Tracking System?

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There are several ways to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for an applicant tracking system (ATS). But to start, you need to first determine the cost of your hiring activities without an ATS.

Equation #1: Time Cost

Let’s say we have an HR Employee who handles hiring (I’ll call her Joy). Consider the number of hours that Joy works on hiring activities in a week (H) and multiply that number by her amount of pay per hour (P).

If H = 40 hrs.

and P = $20 per hour

Then, H x P =  $800 per week focused on hiring activities without an ATS

An applicant tracking system could easily reduce that employee’s work by 25% and cost as low as $30 per week (C). So let’s look at the ROI in that scenario:

If H = 30 hrs.

and P = $20 per hour

and C =  $30

Then, (H x P) + C =  $630 per week focused on hiring activities with an ATS..a savings of $170 per week or a 560% ROI.

Equation #2: Labor Needs

But what if Joy can only review 40 applications per day and your organization really needs to review 60 applications per day? If you want to get through 60 applications in a day without a backlog–and without investing in applicant tracking software, you’ll need to hire another person.

So if one employee (E) can review 40 applications per day (A) and you need 60 applications reviewed per day (N), let’s determine how many additional employees you’ll need.

If N = 60

and A = 40

Then, N ÷ A = 1.5 employees to review 60 applications per day.

Equations #3: Labor Cost

Now, let’s combine the results of both equations to find the time cost for this scenario where hiring is the solution to meeting capacity requirements.

(H x E) x P = $1200 per week focused on hiring.

Now we have a ball-park figure we can use to see if the cost of the ATS is equal to or less than the additional labor cost.

Reducing Labor Cost With Applicant Tracking Software

An ATS can review applications more quickly than a human through the use of automatic scoring and/or disqualification filters associated with answers given for application screening questions. With the aid of these filters, the applications can be sorted and the reviewing process can begin with those applicants that most closely align with what you are seeking for that given position.

This means that Joy in our example above should have no problem reviewing 60+ applications per day, saving the organization from hiring a part-time employee and saving $400 per week in labor costs…or $1600 per month. When you consider that the price of HireCentric ATS starts at $120 per month, that’s a big return on your investment!

ROI for Applicant Tracking System Analysis Factors

Beyond the time cost savings, let’s consider some of the other items to factor into your ROI analysis:

  • Focusing on just the more-qualified applicants (as determined by the screening questions mentioned above) usually leads to better hires, because recruiters and hiring managers are no longer buried by resumes. Better hires tend to ramp up faster, perform better and stay longer. This means a better bottom line for your organization.
  • Candidates no longer “slip through the cracks” — the better ones are more quickly identified and may be contacted quickly to avoid them going elsewhere.
  • You’re now building an actual candidate pool from which to draw later. This means fewer postings to paid job boards and dollars saved because of it.
  • Jobs may be shared through social media by both your applicants and your existing employees. Again, this means more quality applicants without over-relying on paid job boards.

My experience is that focusing ROI efforts on time savings alone tends to fall on deaf ears when approaching a CEO or CFO for approval. Using some of these alternative ideas, along with the time savings and low cost nature of an applicant tracking software tool, should improve your odds of making a business case to executive management and getting the solution your organization needs.

If you would like to discuss pricing and/or ROI for ExactHire’s applicant tracking software further, please contact us today.

How to Write a Job Description Optimized for Job Boards and Internet Search, Tip 5

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Location, location, location! No, I’m not talking about prime land real estate; however, the same old catchphrase can apply to your job listings and job board real estate depending on how well your company’s geographic location aligns with the location of your targeted applicant pool. In this fifth installment of the “How to Write a Job Description Optimized for Job Boards & Internet Search” series, I’ll discuss how strategically using features available within your applicant tracking system can remedy an organization’s ailing efforts to get listings in front of out-of-town applicants.

Skills Gap: Qualified Applicants Don’t Live in Your Neighborhood

Awhile back I was chatting with one of our clients. She works for a company within the automotive industry and frequently needs to hire individuals skilled in trades, such as mechanics and technicians capable of working on large diesel engines. She usually has a number of similar positions open across multiple facilities, but the facilities are not in really large metropolitan areas…rather bigger towns scattered across the Midwest. In particular, one of those larger towns happens to be about thirty minutes from Indianapolis via interstate.

She has found that if she can get the word out, sometimes skilled individuals who reside on the edge of Indianapolis are willing to drive to her facility for work…after all, it is in the opposite direction of most rush hour traffic. However, it is much more challenging for her to engage qualified applicants that are closer and, perhaps at times, more aware of her job openings. She is definitely experiencing a skills gap in her town when it comes to technical positions.

So naturally, having had some success reaching Indianapolis residents and engaging them to come to her town for work, she wants to continue to get the word out and expand the geographic scope of her applicant pool. However, with so many postings skimmed by job seekers, she needs to do it in such a way that it is still clear that the opportunity is based in her town…and not in the city thirty minutes away. After all, she doesn’t want to waste her time, or even the time of her hiring managers, if a few applicants that don’t realize the position is really in the smaller town (and therefore do NOT want to make the commute) get through the cracks.

Strategic Job Locations & Setting Expectations Clearly

The key to this obstacle is to use your job description to make it clear that your opportunity is based in the town, but also ensure that it appears in the search results for applicants who may not be specifically looking for jobs in that town…but rather in the nearby city. Check with your applicant tracking system provider to see if alternate job locations can be enabled for the job boards to which you push your job ads.

For example, it is important to be upfront about the fact that your position is based in your town on your careers page. You may go so far as to also say as much in the first two sentences of your job listing to be sure that the town name appears in snippets of your posting in search engine and job board results pages.
Setting Location Expectations - Job Listings
Then, when pushing certain job listings to free and paid external job boards, designate the larger nearby metropolitan area as the “job board city” since applicants often do geographic searches on external job boards. After all, many more searches are likely to be done on the city than on the smaller town. And, while some of those applicants will dismiss the small town job opportunity when they note in the first few sentences that it is based in the town a half hour away; others will check it out–as they might reside in an area of the city that is relatively close to the town. Plus, they never would have thought to search for opportunities in that town, specifically. This can be especially compelling when you consider that a city like Indianapolis is so spread out that it can take nearly an hour to go from a suburb on one side to another on the opposite end of the city.
Specify Job Board City | ExactHire

Big City Skills Can Meet Small Town Opportunities

If you ever find yourself in a similar scenario scrambling to entice applicants to come to your quaint out of the way town, consider the approach I’ve outlined here. However, bear in mind the importance of still making it clear to applicants that do view your job description that the position is indeed located in your town…and not the big city. This technique isn’t about bamboozling applicants with the location bait and switch, it’s about harnessing the power of job board geographic searches to put your listing in front of applicants when it might not otherwise have been seen. Then, it is still up to the applicant to consider the merits of the scenic drive.