Is the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) Another Dying Office Trend?
The world is revolving too fast sometimes its hard to keep up with the trends that seem to come and disappear even before we get our heads wrapped around them. Everyday, and this is not exaggeration,New technological trends and innovations hit the market-space. Which is quite intriguing, coming to think about it, but just how long are their lifetime? Most organizations sometimes get caught-up with the excitement of new technology being incorporated to their businesses, which serves for a little while then it gets faced off. Before you realize it, a new trending solution comes by.
In recent years, creators and innovators seem to be closely inclined into making job seeking, hiring and recruitment processes not only easier and faster, but also more effective and efficient. All with promises of making recruitment less tedious and with better candidates by the end of the tunnel.
Applicant tracking system commonly referred as ATS is one of the most common modern ways to acquire the best talent during recruitment. How it works Applicant tracking software is software that has been adopted by both employers and recruiters for both large and small companies.
The software is designed to be used during the hiring process. It works by collecting, sorting, scanning and eventually ranking the candidates who applied for the open job position. Statistically, during recruitment, a small scale company receives approximately 250 applicants. Traditionally, the HR will have to spend a lot of hours and resources skimming through the applications, crossing their hearts and hoping to get at least top 5, would be invited for interviews and maybe one of them will land the position.
The idea is that it's time consuming and resource intensive. ATS can scan the resumes within seconds and present the HR manager with top 5 candidates who might be the best fit for the position.
For a large company, during the process of recruitment, they get to receive 1000+ applications. The ATS scans and presents the top 5 candidates within seconds. You see where I am going with this?
Truth is ATS is revolutionizing the hiring process big time. However, concerns have been raised on just how effective ATS is.
Candidates who are best fit for the role oftentimes get tossed out to the famous ATS “black hole” and less qualified candidates get passed on basis of keyword matching and sorting. Every tech has loophole, this is a concerning loop-hole. It is as such that employers and recruiters have decided to get a little bit more creative when it comes to recruitment. Many companies are doing away with the traditional ways of recruitment. Instead other creative ways of recruitment such as:
- Talent pool database searches, which includes searching through the company’s talent pool for previous applicants who are not hired but were fit for the job.
- Employee referrals. It's a common trend that companies ask their employees to refer to them candidates that they think they might be best fit for the role. It's cost effective, quick and it will be easier to trust the new hires.
- Linked-In hiring.
- Re-hiring past employees also referred to as boomerang employees. This is a trend where companies rehire past employees who had left the company – in good terms ,that is.
- Promotions and department transfers. Better the devil you know, it's easier to tame. Internal employees who have the talents and capabilities are identified to fill up the position.
- Employee exchange. This is still a new concept and it's not available in all countries. This is where employers submit vacancies to other employers, which in many cases is the government and in return, the other company sends back details with suitable employees.
Are being adopted. However, other organizations have decided to come up with their own styles of recruitment. Elon Musk’s “Join AI at Tesla” is just another example of newer creativity in the recruitment space, which well, does not conform with traditional forms of recruitment.
More and more companies are doing away with traditional forms of recruitment which at the end of the day consumes a lot of resources and ends with lumping some of papers at HRs desk. Meanwhile, more creative and hustle-free ways of hiring even better talent are being adopted. Which raises the question: is new, innovative and handy ATS just another dying trend?More and more companies are doing away with traditional forms of recruitment which at the end of the day consumes a lot of resources and ends with lumping some of papers at HRs desk. Meanwhile, more creative and hustle-free ways of hiring even better talent are being adopted. Which raises the question: is new, innovative and handy ATS just another dying trend?