The Sorry State of RSS Feeds in ATS

For the past 6 months I have been scouring the web looking for RSS feeds to index on my green job search engine, GreenJobSpider. What I have seen shocks and dismays me.

As I troll targeted company career pages in search of the elusive feeds, two things strike me as lacking in the world of applicant tracking systems (ATS).

1. Most ATS simply dont even provide an RSS feed as an option.

2. If they do, the feed is many times missing important elements such as city, state and zip code. There is no standardized way of displaying RSS job data in the industry.

Why is this bad?

Well lets start with the fact that having your jobs published publicly in RSS format gives more exposure to them and frees up your recruiters time by having to only post them once.

Wouldn't you like more time in the day?

Don't you want more candidates coming through your career site?

Once your feed is established you can send it to the major job search engines and even your favorite job board. Many job sites now can accept your feed and add it to their database with ease. This means you can post your jobs once and maximize their exposure across the job search landscape from niche job boards to major aggregators like Indeed.

I do have some kudos to lavish on Taleo, one of the top ATS providers. They have done a good job providing RSS to the career sites they power. If your ATS is from Taleo, chances are its already there.

So when will the rest of the ATS providers get on board with RSS? Its the information age. Candidates want information on their terms. Its time you enabled this functionality all across the spectrum.

RSS is an easy, cost effective, efficient way to distribute jobs.

Lets get it done.

Chris Russell is the founder and CEO of the regional job board network AllCountyJobs.com LLC. He has worked in the job search industry for 11 years and counting.