Oh how the standards of the recruiting process have changed. As recruiting technology continues to evolve, so do those standards. Each year brings with it a heightened bar for the candidate experience, as well as the success of recruiters. I refer to this evolution asKeeping up in the HR tech arms race. While there is more to the equation, attracting great talent now means having great technology.

1) Application abandonment rates are climbing.

If you aren’t paying attention to these, you’re going to need to start. As the recruiting competition ramps up, candidates are less likely to go through a process that isn’t welcoming, quick and easily accessible.

CareerBuilder recently did a study and found that as much as 40% of mobile candidates abandon the application process when they are notified they are about to encounter a non-mobile friendly application process. The same study found that nearly one in ten companies said mobile accounts for at least half of their applications. 

Going mobile is just one of the many fixes that employers can do to improve the chances that candidates will see the application process to the end. ERE contributor and HR pro, Kate Sensmeier also has some great insights on the matter in her article, “Dear Candidate 5a26jd7: Your Application is Very Important to Us”. (Great title, right?!)

2) You have to manually post on job boards and social sites.

She’s a one-trick pony. Your ATS will assist you in creating job ads, but that’s where the help ends. If your ATS doesn’t manually post job ads to job boards or social channels, you’re wasting a lot of precious time and resources in redundant processes. Automated posting are now a standard in the ATS industry because they boost efficiency so drastically.

3) Your ATS stops at parsing.

A lot of the applicant tracking systems out there will do a great job at parsing resume information, as well as offering efficient searching tools. That’s great, but recruiters are still left with dozens, or hundreds of applications and resumes to sort through.

A good ATS takes on more of the heavy lifting with a scoring function. The ATS can automatically place a rank on a candidate based on comparing information from the job description and the application.

4) Everyone’s in the cloud…except for you.

It’s no fun down there, especially for the IT folks. Traditional ATS generally requires that an in-house IT team be responsible for maintenance, upgrades and other hardware needs. This puts an unnecessary burden on the organization.

Cloud-based solutions don’t require software, or hardware in-house. They can be accessed over the internet, with no need to burden the IT team. Upgrades or fixes that used to be pain staking, are now done automatically and effortlessly. Furthermore, cloud-based ATS can be accessed from anywhere there is internet access, and that includes smart devices. Recruiters are no longer chained to the 9-5, or the office. Corporate HR analyst Josh Bersin said:

“Nearly every major HR software provider now offers their solution in the cloud, making it possible for corporate HR managers to stop the frustrating cycle of upgrading systems every year or two.” Bersin said, “And once you buy a cloud-based system, you are out of the cycle of major upgrades every few years because the vendor does this for you.”

Improving as a recruiter and as an organization starts with technology that empowers. Outdated technology creates a ceiling for recruiters, inhibiting their efforts with inefficient processes.

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