The boom in remote jobs has created a need for better remote recruitment systems. You’ll need to optimize your ATS to recruit remotely in order to leverage this increase and attract top talent from across the world. Tapping into all that an ATS has to offer will allow your company to transition smoothly to the future of the workplace.
What Is an ATS?
An applicant tracking system is software that companies use to collect candidate information, organize applicants based on qualifications, and filter resumes for hiring managers. By utilizing an ATS, recruiters can streamline the hiring process and get the most qualified candidates instantaneously.
Why Use an ATS?
Using a top ATS is an overall time saver. When it comes to remote employment, you can ensure that you’re only touching base with those candidates who are most qualified for the position. This prevents recruiters from wasting time building relationships with candidates who don’t have the necessary experience to perform the job or those who aren’t a good match for your company’s culture.
Additionally, an ATS has many different functions that recruiters can use to track and filter out candidates based on the company’s needs. Just having an ATS by itself isn’t enough to optimize your hiring workflow.
What Are Some Key Features You Should Use?
Utilizing the different features that an ATS offers can allow you to get the most out of your system. There are many features that are beneficial to hiring managers and recruiters seeking to hire remote candidates.
Candidate Sourcing
When looking for top talent to fill your company’s vacancies, you have to know exactly what you’re looking for and how to find that in a candidate. With candidate sourcing features, prospective employees can create a candidate profile with all their information on it. Having these profiles makes it easier for recruiters to track down qualified candidates.
Candidate Sourcing for Remote Hiring
For a remote work model, you want to be sure that the talent you’re having fits all of your requirements. Candidate sourcing features can help you find candidates that have previous experience with remote work as well as the availability of these candidates. With remote work, you want candidates that know how to work alone effectively and can hold themselves to deadlines.
Managing Interviews
It can be a hassle to manually set up all interviews, especially in a remote setting. Fortunately, technology has ways to automate these processes to take the time and pressure off of the recruiters. You can have an ATS that makes scheduling interviews seamless and integrates all the necessary information (date, time, employee information, time zones, etc) into your online calendar. Not only does this help save time for recruiters, but it can create an enjoyable experience for the candidates as well.
Managing Interviews for Remote Hiring
Remote work allows candidates from all over the world to have access to jobs they otherwise wouldn’t. However, time zones can make scheduling interviews and meetings more difficult. With an ATS, you’ll be able to find times that work for all parties. A bonus feature is that the system automatically translates the times to fit the user’s time zone, so no figuring out time difference is involved.
Reports All in One Place
Having an ATS means that all your candidate information is in one place. You can track your hiring process and your candidates’ demographics, as well as locate strengths and weaknesses within your hiring pipeline. Having all the information in one place gives recruiters the chance to be proactive in who they’re hiring, ensuring that the top talent is being selected. It’ll also help when it comes to writing those quarterly reports.
Reports for Remote Hiring
Working remotely means having a lot of work documents saved to your personal computer, online cloud, and even USB drives. An ATS takes away the pressure of using your personal storage space. With an ATS, all the important documents are located in one place within that system. This also makes tracking down information a lot easier than scavenging through different folders on your computer.
Recruitment Marketing
The reality of today’s job market is that every interaction you have with candidates is essential. You want to always leave a good impression on potential employees, even if they aren’t the right fit for the open roles. Having subpar interactions can cause a company’s reputation to decline, preventing good talent from applying for your jobs. Having a solid ATS prevents negative experiences. The candidates will be pleased with your organization, quick response times, and streamlined application process.
Recruitment Marketing for Remote Work
Obviously, marketing is predominantly online, especially in today’s technical age. It’s very rare that marketing happens outside of the digital realm. This is especially true when it comes to remote work. Having employees all across the globe makes having in-person marketing events difficult and unnecessary. With remote jobs, a candidate’s first interaction with your company is through your marketing campaigns and different social media posts.
Automation
Regardless of your ATS needs, there are hundreds of features you are able to mess around with and utilize to perfect your hiring process. These features should create less work for you, not more. If you find yourself still doing a lot of manual inputting when it comes to interviews or candidate profiles, then you should change the way you’re using your ATS. By automating things like interviews, profiles, candidate feedback, and other outreach materials, you’re able to free up your time to get other tasks done.
Automation for Remote Hiring
Working remotely means becoming more independent in your work and holding yourself accountable to different deadlines. With automation, you’re able to make your work much easier, which increases productivity and the completion of tasks per day. If you were used to spending hours at a time manually inputting dates and times into your calendar, automating this could allow you more time for more important tasks.
Job Listings
Job boards are the main ways potential employees and employers find work and talent. Job boards like LinkedIn, Indeed, and many more use different tags and filters to help candidates and employers match. Using an ATS helps recruiters write them inclusively and can ensure that they contain the necessary information about the job.
Job Listings for Remote Hiring
These job listings can then be posted to these job boards and other social media platforms automatically. The ATS is allowing recruiters the opportunity to optimize and automate their job postings, saving time on making individual listings for each job board and social media platform.
What Are Ways You Can Optimize Your ATS?
To get the most usage out of your ATS, it’d be wise to do your research and figure out what you need and what features are necessary for you to reach your goals. Your goals as a remote recruiter will look different from an in-house recruiter.
Determine What Your ATS Should Do
Different ATS systems have different features that you can utilize. You’ll want to figure out just what exactly you and your company need from an ATS and how it can benefit you in the long run. You can look at reviews, discuss with different colleagues and coworkers, and even request a demo of an ATS.
How Does This Work for Remote Recruitment?
As a remote recruiter, maybe you want to focus on the job listings so they’re getting correctly matched with candidates who want remote work. Filtering out candidates who don’t want remote work is a huge time saver. Or maybe you want to focus on creating an optimized interview system to save time and give the candidates a more enjoyable application process. Be sure you have an understanding of what you want out of your ATS.
Have an Audit in Place
Utilizing an ATS for the first time or even switching to a different ATS is a huge change in your organization. You want to be sure that you’re looking at this new system from all points of view. While you in your position might think the ATS system is the best thing, other people in different positions (customer service teams, hiring managers, and even the employee candidates themselves) might be able to point out flaws or necessary improvements. It’s imperative to get feedback from multiple avenues.
How Does This Work for Remote Recruitment?
This is especially imperative for remote recruiters. Communication is essential in a remote work environment, so being sure that your ATS isn’t going to negatively affect your coworkers or inhibit their work is essential.
Make Sure Your Leadership Is on Board
When you’re looking into an or a new ATS, you want to be sure your executive leadership agrees with what ATS you’re getting, why you’re getting it, and the benefits/uses of the ATS in regard to the company. Without your leadership’s approval, you won’t be able to go forth, so it’s essential to make sure you have their permission before spending the time and energy finding an ATS.
How Does This Work for Remote Recruitment?
Set up video conferences with your leadership and present to them your goals, different ATS features you’d like to utilize, and the overall benefit the company will experience. This can also be where you hammer out any of the possible negative side effects of implementing an ATS. This allows you all to be on the same page and create a plan that works for the whole company.
Try Multiple ATS Features
It takes practice to find a workflow that works best for you and your needs. Don’t be afraid to try new features out within the ATS and scrap the features that aren’t working. Be mindful not to change this too much though, as it can cause candidates and other workers within your company to become confused. Always be sure you’re communicating changes and you’re testing out the features before implementing them.
How Does This Work for Remote Recruitment?
With remote work, you don’t want to change too much too fast. Any changes that you’re making with an ATS should be discussed beforehand in a meeting. You should also allow others to have input on different features they would like to be used. An ATS is there to make work easier, so be sure it isn’t having the opposite effect.
