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The Future of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

Do you know how many top quality hospitality candidates you’re losing by using a traditional Applicant Tracking System? Up to 70% of candidates drop out of traditional ATS, which can have a huge and lasting impact on your business. You may be letting the best people get away!

But using an Applicant Tracking System is almost unavoidable: As many as 50% of midsize companies and up to 90% of large corporations rely on them.

The traditional Applicant Tracking System was used to store data and started appearing shortly before the new Millennium. This technology is therefore 20 years old, and showing its age.

We believe that your ATS should help you manage and automate your sourcing and hiring processes - instead of being something that you have to manage.

Below we’re chronicling some of the cutting edge ways in which ATS is getting better by the day - and how you can make it work better for you.

Improving Candidate Quality

Boost the quality of new hires by using tools to your advantage. First, make sure you’re getting a good feel for candidates through a personality-infused platform. With Harri, candidates can customize their applications with photos, videos, and special skills. As an employer or recruiter, all you have to do is review!

Employers and recruiters can also do their part to attract top candidates by showcasing their unique hiring brand. Savvy candidates want to see that you’re keeping up with digital trends, and building a custom career story page is a good start. Stay on the cusp of modern technology by utilizing mobile apps to assist in sourcing and hiring.

Carefree Compliance

Staying compliant is more important than ever. Protect yourself from costly fines by always having the right paperwork on hand and stored. Being able to access it at a moment’s notice is of utmost importance in the hospitality industry. Harri helps by providing digital compliance forms, such as I-9 and W-2. Plus, candidates and new hires love being able to fill out forms electronically. 

Enhance the Candidate Experience through Engagement

Before you say “I don’t have time to personally reach out to every applicant and candidate,” keep in mind what it may be costing your business. It’s important to keep applicants and candidates engaged throughout the hiring funnel, or else up to 70% may lose interest and drop off.

One way to mitigate this is by showing a vested interest in an applicant or candidate through personalized communication. With Harri’s Total Talent Solution, employers can communicate with applicants and candidates through instant messages, calendar invites, phone calls, and more. Don’t let a great person end up with your competitors!

Also, engagement should extend through the first few months of a new hire’s lifecycle. By keeping new hires engaged, you are minimizing the risk of what we at Harri call ‘Short-Cycle Turnover’ - which is when a new employee leaves the company within 90 days of being hired. This can cost you thousands of dollars. Keeping up with your candidates and new hires is a small price to pay to save big in the long-term. Retain the employees you worked so hard to hire!

Integration

Many of the changes to ATS in recent years have been in regards to integration, allowing companies to do everything from one interface. Harri partners with companies like ADP, Paylocity, and Upserve to promote synchronicity in the talent management process.

Innovation

Automated reporting and insights provide employers with crucial analytics to predict parts of the sourcing and hiring process that can be made more efficient. For example, Harri is planning to implement reports around candidate sourcing to provide valuable insight into the number of views, applications, hires, and conversion rates per hiring channel to identify the best ROI; pipeline reports to tracking the number of applicants in each of the hiring stages for each job opening; and time-to-fill reports to determine how much time it takes to fill and hire a position by category and position.

Additionally, we just launched an I-9 expiration report (you can read more about it and our other May launches here) that alerts employers to current or upcoming I-9 expirations, ensuring they're always compliant.

Beyond Sourcing & Hiring

The old school of thought was that ATS were used as static systems to track applicants during the sourcing and hiring process. We believe that the ATS should serve you by automating your processes and streamlining them to help you actively manage the workflow and associated tasks of bringing on a new team member. Innovative tech, like Harri’s Search + Connect, Talent Pool, Custom Swimlanes, and digital paperwork with e-sign capabilities all allow employers to streamline and automate the process.

In Conclusion…

The higher the interaction quality, the higher quality of candidates that you will discover, attract, and hire.

Making the shift to the mindset of a candidate-centric, collaborative system will serve you well. Think of it less as at ATS, and more as a TAS: Talent Acquisition Solution.

Interested in learning how Harri can help your business usher in the next generation of applicant tracking? Schedule a demo with one of our talent specialists today to learn more about our end-to-end workforce management solution.