A recruitment system that best meets your requirements and wishes is something every recruiter hopes for. But the situations and wishes of organisations are too different for every recruitment system to be the same. Yet there are a number of principles that a good recruitment system must meet. This checklist contains 16 principles to consider when looking for a recruitment system provider.
Checklist for perfect ATS
Below are the 16 requirements for a good recruitment system.
1. The recruitment system adapts to your recruitment process
Not the technology but the recruitment process within your organisation is leading. A recruitment system merely provides the technical facilitation of the process. The recruitment system should therefore adapt to your recruitment process and not the other way around.
2. Applicants must be able to upload their CV
Why should an applicant have to fill in many fields when they have a complete CV in Word or pdf? Make sure an applicant can upload their CV to minimise the number of fields they need to fill in. Also make sure that all the data is automatically fed into your recruitment system. The candidate is happy because he/she does not have to fill in much manually and you are happy because you have all the data searchable in your system. Well-known solutions for this are Text_kernel, Broadbean and Daxtra.
3. Pull data from LinkedIn
When you have many vacancies, the possibility to retrieve data from LinkedIn is very candidate-friendly. Instead of a CV, data is retrieved from LinkedIn. Especially with latent searchers this can be very handy, because they don’t have an up-to-date CV, but do have an up-to-date LinkedIn profile. Furthermore there are systems that even allow, after the candidate’s approval, changes in the LinkedIn profile to be updated in real time in your recruitment system.
4. Link with Microsoft Office
With a link to Microsoft Office, you can use data from the recruitment system in Office programmes such as Word. Also handy is a link with your Outlook calendar, so appointments with candidates are not only in the recruitment system, but also in your Outlook calendar. A number of recruitment systems also offer links with Google Apps such as Calendar.
5. Good search and filter possibilities for candidates and employers
As almost all job sites nowadays work with filters, searching becomes a lot easier. But candidates also expect to find this in recruitment systems. With a filter function the candidate can, for example, select a function group and province and only the results that meet this filter will immediately appear. A well-known technique for this is SolR.
On the other hand, users of the recruitment system, like recruiters and HR personnel, should be able to search the recruitment system properly. Think for example of the possibility to search recently added CV’s by date or in certain fields. A filter option in the back office is also useful for quick searches.
6. Being able to communicate and register directly
Being able to communicate directly with candidates in the system via e-mail or an e-mail link saves time. Being able to note down conversation notes also ensures that every user knows when the last contact was with the candidate. Provided it is completed, of course.
7. Be optimally findable for search engines
Search engines like Google are essential when it comes to being found with your vacancies. Yet not all recruitment systems are search engine friendly, which results in a low ranking within search engines.
8. Recruitment system must be browser friendly
Internet Explorer is no longer hegemonic since the arrival of competitors such as Firefox and Chrome. Apple users also tend to use a different browser (Safari). Make sure the pages and forms within the recruitment system are visible and work within the different browsers and also the most common versions. When recruiting internationally, take into account international differences in browser usage.
9. Recruitment system must be mobile friendly
A recruitment system should also work for candidates on a smartphone or tablet. This means for example that uploading a CV does not have to be mandatory, because people do not have a CV on their smartphone or tablet. And for example, that the recruitment system has a mobile version or is responsive and adapts to the size of the device the candidate is using.
10. User-friendly back office
HR people, recruiters and/or vacancy holders might spend hours every working day in the system, so it has to be user-friendly. A good back office should allow someone without training to discover how it works overall. When many actions have to be taken for simple things, this costs a lot of time and therefore money. There are recruitment systems where individual users can compile their own dashboard.
11. Back office must be mobile friendly
HR personnel and recruiters must be able to log into the back office from a smartphone or tablet while on the road. Some suppliers offer apps so recruiters can manage candidates and vacancies on the go.
12. Statistics and management reports
Every recruitment system has statistics or you can order an extra module for this. Make sure you know in advance what you want to get out of it for statistics and management reports. And how these will be presented. Do you first have to draw up the entire report to send to the management or do you get ready-made analyses with tables and graphs?
13. Integration with recruitment site through XML
When you already have a recruitment site you can link your recruitment system to your recruitment site. The best link for this is an XML feed. This way your vacancies are easy to find on your own recruitment site. A link via iframe is out of the question! An advantage of having your own recruitment site instead of using the recruitment system’s supplier is that you will not lose your recruitment site when you want to switch recruitment systems.
14. Candidate friendly design
When using the recruitment site of the supplier of the recruitment system, it is important that what the candidate sees looks good. Neat tables and forms, nowhere the name of the recruitment system visible (not even in the url).
15. Integration with recruitment tools
When you want to let candidates add a video to an application or want to apply pre-selection via an e-assessment, it is important the recruitment system offers this itself or can be integrated with other recruitment tools.
16. Good service and helpdesk
This is not offered by the recruitment system, but by the supplier of the recruitment system. Is there an easily accessible helpdesk? Is it accessible by email, phone or chat? Is there an active user group where customers can communicate to help each other? You can find the answers to these questions by asking existing users of the recruitment system.
Demand or wish
In this we presented you with 16 requirements that a good recruitment system should meet, but ultimately the decision is op to you to decide whether it’s for you and your organisation a requirement (need to have) or a wish (nice to have). You can, for example, present this checklist to colleagues and make an inventory of what they see as a need or a wish.
