Having a solid employer brand foundation is essential to attracting the right candidates during the recruitment process. Your brand represents a candidate’s first impression of your organization. The story a brand tells can hint to job-seekers as to whether this is the kind of place they want to dedicate their time and energy.
ATS Strengthens Company-to-Candidate Communication
Many job seekers constantly experience frustration with the lack of communication from companies that are hiring. It’s unfortunately common for candidates to feel like their application has disappeared into a black hole. Some companies fail to confirm that an application has been received or don’t let candidates know the results of an interview unless they were successful. This can burn bridges with candidates that the company may still want to consider later on.
Using a top ATS can help keep candidates in the know and establish your company’s reputation as one that clearly communicates.
Candidate Clarity
ATS chatbots or email messaging can make sure that prospective candidates know exactly where they stand. It can be challenging as an HR professional to keep everyone informed in a sea of applications, but ATS can streamline the communication process and increase candidate clarity on when or if they are moving on to the next step, or if the hiring team has specific feedback for a candidate. Many ATS software platforms offer candidate portals so they can check in on their status.
Nurturing Professional Relationships
Even if someone is not hired for a role, nurturing the professional relationship through ongoing communication and branded messaging can keep a solid rapport in the field. Even if some candidates are not selected for one position, you may never know if they need that specific candidate again in the future. HR professionals can use ATS to strengthen those relationships within their network in the long run through exceptional company-based communication.
Social Media Branding
An ATS can also enhance social media branding. It can help create and schedule social media postings for various roles and save HR professionals time. Social media plays an important role in building your brand. Many customers and candidates may see only a company’s social media presence. It’s important to maintain a good image and reputation on social media platforms in order to show candidates that your company is one they would want to work for.
Digital Media Management
Digital media management in itself is a full-time job, and hiring teams typically don’t have the time in their schedules to draft up social media post copy, design graphics, and keep up with scheduling on different social media platforms. It also involves keeping up with platform analytics and post-performance, which can help companies understand their audience reach. With an applicant tracking system, it can post quickly for you and keep track of posts that successfully reach the preferred audience base.
Online Brand Presence
Having an active brand presence tells potential candidates that as a company you are present with your audience and respond to their questions, wants, and concerns. When there is consistent posting online it builds trust within professional communities and helps companies become industry leaders. ATS can help cultivate your online brand presence, especially when you are actively hiring.
Branded Career Page
Having a career page that accurately reflects the voice of the company is crucial to attracting the right talent. An ATS can build a career page for you without the need for using a coder or web developer. While a social media post or a job listing may represent a candidate’s first impression of your company, the career page can be a very strong second impression that could make or break top talent’s decision to apply.
Visual Storytelling
A career page is the perfect place for visual storytelling. As much as the home page of a website needs to cater to prospective customers or stakeholders, a career page should tell a story about what it’s like to work for an organization as a potential employee. Management teams can easily add brand logos or colors to the page without professional web development, or add photos or videos that capture the voice of the company.
Organize Job Openings
As new roles open up or close, HR teams can utilize ATS to easily house all of the information in one place on the career page. The software also makes it easy to move the information blocks around and edit, or rearrange them as necessary. Keeping a career page up-to-date can also build brand presence and show prospective employees that you are active and transparent in your processes. This also makes it easier for prospective top talent to check for new positions they may be interested in.
Direct Feedback & Process Improvement
Effective branding goes hand-in-hand with change. While staying consistent and present as a company is important, it’s also important to continuously be open to feedback and improvement.
Candidate Surveys
ATS can create automated surveys for candidates to fill out to receive feedback on the hiring process. This creates an open stream of communication and lets active job seekers share their thoughts on the successes or places of improvement in the recruiting process.
Continuous Learning
To continue growing as a company, ATS can continually learn the more it gets data and feedback from outside sources. This improves the strength of a brand as it helps companies stay in touch with the best solutions for prospective candidates or other stakeholder audiences.
