How to use ATS when recruitment is on hold

Almost 99 % of companies that appeared on the Fortune 500 list already use an ATS (Qu 2019).
In recent years, the percentage of companies who are no longer satisfied with using a shared MS Excel for recruitment has been increasing in our country as well.

Having an ATS brings many benefits during the recruitment process. Thanks to the transparency and automation of manual tasks, it saves both your time and company costs, takes the cooperation of the entire team to a whole new level, and also helps to improve the candidate experience. During the pandemic, however, the recruitment of many companies slowed down or came to a complete stop. But even at such times, there are ways to put the ATS to good use. A good-quality database should quickly provide you with relevant candidates and speed up your position search. However, having a great ATS is not enough. We will show you how you can influence the quality of your database with simple steps.

1. Order in ATS

Be sure to clean up your virtual desk as well. Create tasks for the upcoming weeks, update your clients’ contact information, add more keywords or end candidate statuses in closed recruitment processes. Put your focus also on GDPR. Filter and send out expiring requests for consent to the processing of personal data. At the same time, you will find out whether any of the candidates might be suitable for a position that might soon open up in your company.

2. Make a list of the most promising candidates from the database

The moment your time freed up due to canceled interviews and several closed positions, you may have turned your attention to active sourcing and adding potential candidates to your talent bank. However, did you think that you could already have many promising candidates in the ATS, and you just need to dust them off a little bit?

Browse through older processes, search by keywords, or use the Boolean Search ("Google" style of searching directly in the database, which should be a part of a modern ATS). Prepare a contact list for when recruitment takes off again. Use the LinkedIn plugin to find out the latest information about them and the list is ready.

3. Analyze data of previous recruitment processes

During recruitment processes, you put valuable data in the ATS, which you can then present to your managers in the form of various reports, depending on which system you use. However, you might not always have the capacity to examine the reports in detail. If you make the time, you can easily find out how long your recruitment processes usually take, and which phases slow them down the most.

Whether it is feedback from Hiring managers (although with a high-quality Hiring Manager portal within your ATS it should not be a problem), the number of interview rounds, or waiting for an offer. Use these statistics and data to improve your recruitment in the future.

4. Optimize!

Focus on the future. While the recruitment situation may not be the most favorable these days, it may soon be different.

Follow current news on the market and review your cooperation with job portals. Consider which positions you can fill yourself and which deserve care from a third party.

The numbers of reactions and candidates in the market are growing and will continue to grow. Maintain or further improve the candidate experience with your recruitment. Update your career website, approaching styles, job descriptions, etc. Make your recruitment system an effective tool and a competitive advantage that will decide in your favor when fighting for talent.