By: TimeForge Labor Management

If your customers’ applicant tracking systems (ATS) consist of pens and stacks of post-it notes, chances are they‘re not hiring the right candidates. Why? Human error makes people more likely to miss qualifications, questions, and background checks, especially if the merchant has a large hiring team. An applicant tracking system is a digital alternative that takes the guesswork and errors out of the hiring process. Large companies use them for one important reason: they work.

Below, we‘ll show you how an online workflow-based system can help your customers save time on each step in their hiring process. By learning more about applicant tracking systems, you can provide more value to your customers and help them find the best people for the job!

Posting Jobs
Writing a job description is easy. Writing a great job description that attracts the right candidates is a lot harder. If your customers miss important information, they’ll waste a lot of time sifting through a lot of unqualified candidates.

An online applicant tracking system helps attract the most qualified candidates. Once the hiring manager is done writing a job description, they can turn it into a template and save it for later, so it’s right where they left it when they need to hire again. The merchant can automatically publish the job posting on their website, or publish the description on career sites and job boards like Indeed.com. An ATS helps your customers get recruitment marketing right with the right job description in the right place, every time.

Screening Candidates
One of the most critical steps in the recruitment process is screening candidates. Time is money, so don’t let your customers waste it interviewing candidates that aren‘t a great fit. How does one find the right candidates to interview without also spending hours analyzing resumés?

It gets a whole lot easier with an ATS! The merchant can create a customized job application right in the software to ensure they’re asking all the candidates the exact same questions. Once candidates start filling out their applications, all of that info ends up in the same database. Then, the software filters the information to tell the hiring manager automatically whether or not candidates are qualified. That means your customers can streamline talent acquisition by only reviewing the resumés of qualified candidates.

Interviewing
Have you ever found yourself digging through your inbox (or your desk) for a candidate‘s resumé before an interview? Your customers probably have, too. When you‘re recruiting and hiring, being organized is key to a quick hiring process. Recruiting software can help keep hiring managers organized during the interview process and even help them come up with the right questions to ask.

Cloud-based software means your customers can access candidate information anywhere, from any device – securely. As long as the manager is somewhere with a computer or smartphone, they can pull up any resume in the system. Managers can also save notes from the interview right to the candidate profile, meaning they can add any vital info about what the candidate’s soft skills were like in the interview. At any step in the process, the hiring manager can rank candidates so they’re easier to compare later.

Background and Reference Checks
It‘s common for hiring teams to skip this step, especially when a candidate seems promising. But these background and reference checks can uncover some critical information! Checking food safety certifications, criminal records, and forklift licensing are all as important as checking references. 

When your customer has an ATS, they’ll be able to see whether or not a specific check has been completed for a candidate. That means large teams can more easily delegate this task to HR assistants instead of paying management to do admin work. They can also attach reference letter emails and any other documents to the candidate profile. That way, they’ll always have the necessary certifications and background checks on hand in the HR system.

Onboarding
Once a hiring manager is ready to hire, they usually have to sit down and type out all the employee‘s information into their HR software. At the same time, they have to make sure they‘re going through the proper onboarding steps—adding a mountain of work to their day!

With the correct software, such as a TimeForge offering, customers can simply transfer all the new candidate’s contact information from the hiring database to their employee profile. The manager will have more time to spend on actual training and will waste less time doing data entry. Customizable onboarding checklists can help them make sure that each new hire goes through the same training process.

ATS software is a great asset for large recruiting teams, especially if your customers are trying to create consistent recruiting and hiring standards across multiple locations. Everyone will have access to the job descriptions, workflows, and talent management features that make recruiting efforts a snap. 

Even if your merchant is operating independently, applicant tracking software can make the process a lot less time consuming and frustrating. Show them how to hire the right candidates every time with online applicant tracking software.