How to Help Employees Fall Back in Love With Your ATS

Choosing the right applicant tracking system for your business can be a complicated process. Chances are you’ve gone through the selection process more than once. You have pros and cons to weigh, price points to consider, multiple stakeholders to please. Not to mention the ROI to calculate and efficiencies to examine. Not to mention the fact that there are over a hundred different ones available on the market. Even if you’re an absolute genius businessperson (which we’re sure you are), it can get complicated. It’s hard to make a choice, let alone the right one. 

All too often we hear recruiting leaders share with us their struggles to both achieve and maintain widespread adoption of their applicant tracking systems. Recruiters were excited at first, but now they’re  in the trenches and their love has waned. But you’ve got an ROI to prove, goals to meet, and a team to keep happy. So what do you do? ? How do you get them reinvigorated? 

1. Ask them why they fell out of love

The current unemployment rate is at 3.5%. That’s lower than it’s been in decades. Fewer people are looking for fewer jobs. Things are becoming more specialized and competitive. Long story short: it’s difficult to be a recruiter right now. Their jobs are challenging, and they always need help simplifying and accelerating the way they’re finding and engaging with talent. If your ATS isn’t living up to their evolving needs, you’re left with an unhappy team - or worse - rogue recruiters working outside the ATS. 

That’s where you need to step in. Open up the dialogue and ask for their opinions. Give them an opportunity to be anonymous. Their pain points are likely valid, and even likelier something you’ll be able to address. Maybe they’re having trouble keeping leads warm. Maybe they feel like they don’t have enough recruiting sources. Whatever it is, open up communication so it can be fixed sooner rather than later.

2.  Re-invest in training

It's common knowledge that there’s high turnover in the recruiting industry. Add to that the speed at which ATS providers are releasing new products and features, you’re likely left with lots of new team members without the proper training. 

When we say it’s important to re-invest in training, we mean a few things:

• Dust off training materials. The documentation and support you received when you first implemented won’t be relevant forever. Proactivity when it comes to the latest, greatest training from your ATS provider is crucial. 
• Create a training schedule. You can’t just retrain everyone once and hope it will help. You'll want to schedule retraining for all your recruiters on, at the very least, an annual basis. Twice annual is ideal, but not all companies will have the time to achieve this. Either way, retraining will allow you to get employees refreshed on important base features and discover new ones.
• Customize provided training to fit your company needs. Even if you receive a lot of training information from your ATS provider, that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone you employ. Not all people learn the same. The techniques that work for one of your recruiters might not have the same impact with others. Find out their preferred ways to learn and adapt provided training materials accordingly.

3.  Go back to the beginning

You can always “re-implement” your existing applicant tracking system. One important note: we don’t mean actually restarting implementation. The idea of that is frightening and costly: exactly what you’re trying to avoid. What we are saying is that you can go back to the beginning to reintroduce your recruiters to the ATS they’re working with more thoroughly.

There are a few reasons why restarting the implementation process will help you. First, you give your employees an opportunity to be frank about the things they do and don’t know. Restarting the adjustment process gives everyone a fresh slate. It allows them to be honest about their struggles and ask questions as if everything was new. You don’t have to actually restart the process since you’ll likely already have all your applicants loaded into the system. You can still “soft restart”  by reintroducing everyone to the information and processes as if they were brand new.

Not only that, but this also gives you a special opportunity to add additional software to your workflow. Software that can make things even easier. Being able to do their job more efficiently makes all recruiters happy. For example, you could introduce an advanced social recruiting tool like ZapInfo. Being able to import and export talent from dozens of sources instead of just one is a huge boon. Suddenly, with so much more data to work with, your ATS becomes a much more important and useful employee tool.

4.  Help them understand data

To an especially busy recruiter, an applicant tracking system can feel like a hindrance. Inputting data takes time. Managing schedules in more than one place is a hassle. So on and so forth. This couldn’t be further from the truth. While you know this, some of your employees might not. That’s why they not only need to be trained on how to use your ATS, they need to be shown how beneficial the data they’re collecting is as well. 

For example, knowing which social sites, cities, and states you’re finding the best candidates can help recruiters narrow their searches. This data can be collected from social profiles and implemented in your ATS. Social profiles can also give you insight into reasons a candidate might have abandoned the process midway through. That’s not the only actionable information your recruiters could be missing out on, either. ATS data can answer a lot of questions. Which roles are filling slower vs. faster? Are there trends in the information regarding rejected applicants? What about successful ones? If an applicant gets stuck in the funnel, are they jumping ship or trying again? This data will make your recruiter’s job easier… as long as they’re accessing it.

5. Count on customer support

Recruiters and candidates can become frustrated with the ATS they’re working with. You know this already. That’s why you’re reading this post. What is easy to forget is that most ATS providers also offer high quality customer support. If problems arise and you don’t have the answers, you have immediate access to someone who does. Use it - that’s what it’s there for, after all. Feeling less powerless when they’re stuck or frustrated will help your employees better love your applicant tracking system. Additionally, a Candidate Relationship Management system can help you better keep your candidates warm while you navigate road bumps.

Just because some love stories involve heartbreak doesn’t mean they all have to. To guarantee the story between your employees and your ATS has a happy ending, you’ll have to be a proper wingman. Listen to their pain points and make changes accordingly. Take additional time to implement training that works for each individual. Don’t hesitate to reach out for support as you need it. 

These steps will lead to a positive, long-lasting, respect filled relationship. Both between your recruiters and your ATS and between you and your recruiters. If you’d like to make that process even easier, get in touch with the team at ZapInfo. We have the social sourcing and data management solutions you’re looking for. You can register to try them out for free in less time than it takes to write a Valentine.