myStaffingPro Applicant Tracking System Blog

Get Feedback from your Hiring Managers!

Over the years, we have heard a lot of recruiters talk about how difficult it is to receive feedback from hiring managers on an applicant. Most of them have stated that their struggles relate to:

• Sending the appropriate applicant information to the hiring manager for review
  
• Ensuring the hiring manager RECEIVES and READS the applicant information
  
• Obtaining feedback on which applicants the hiring manager would like to move forward with
  
• Coordinating interview schedules between the applicant and the hiring manager
  

To remedy the information tug-of-war, myStaffingPro applicant tracking system created the Hiring Manager Quick Response (HM QR) enhancement in 2008. Since its inception, HM QR has been enhanced to:

• Send an applicant feedback request to the hiring manager(s) through email or text message
  
• Provide hiring managers with a simple web based portal to review applicant information and insert their comments
  
• Allow hiring managers to define their preferred interview times
  
• Enable the applicant to schedule their interview and receive pertinent information
  
• Send an email to the hiring manager with the applicant’s confirmed appointment slot and functionality to add the appointment to Outlook
  

To learn more about the myStaffingPro HM QR 3.0, join the informational webinar on May 27^th at 1:00pm by registering at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/652925763

Does your HRIS have Applicant Tracking?

More and more HR technology vendors are jumping on the applicant tracking bandwagon with an end-to-end offering.  Before signing on the dotted line, use the following questionnaire to determine if the applicant tracking system you are receiving is what you are looking for.

I am looking for a system that:
-       Manages resumes
-       Prescreens applicants
-       Interacts with social networks and job boards
-       Collects information for my compliance requirements
-       Is or can be integrated with my: background vendor, behavioral assessment, etc.
-       Tracks the applicant through the hiring process progression
-       Automates email communication to applicants
-       Includes reports on sourcing, EEO, time to fill, sub cycle, aging, etc.

When an applicant applies, they should be asked for the following information:
-       Contact info
-       EEO data
-       Minimum qualifications
-       Resume
-       Cover Letter
-       Application information
-       Behavioral assessment

When I log into the system, I should be able to:
-       Define the online application process for the applicant
-       Create and post job openings
-       Review ALL applicant information
-       Manage and track the applicant’s process in the hiring process
-       Run keyword searches on applicants’ resumes
-       Send mass email communications to applicants
-       Share applicant data with colleagues for review
-       Invite applicants to complete prehire paperwork through onboarding
-       Transfer new hire data to an HRIS system
-       Submit reports to executives

Does your  end-to-end solution meet all of your applicant tracking needs?  If not, consider a stand alone applicant tracking system that can be integrated with your HRIS.  Just remember, just because you CAN buy them together, it doesn't always provide you with the solution you need!

Applicant Tracking Systems: Decipher the Pricing

Applicant tracking systems can include a variety of ongoing and one-time fees. Before you sign on the dotted line, make sure you know what you're agreeing to with this helpful guide. Setup Fees:

• Implementation: Upfront fee to configure the system
• Training: Initial fee to teach users how to use the system
• Configurations and Customizations: Fees for configuring or customizing the system to your process
• Consulting: Costs associated with receiving professional advice

Usage Fees:

• Installation Cost (For installed software) or License Fees (For hosted solution): Fee to acquire ongoing access to the system. Usage fees can vary by:
  • Number of Users
  • Volume of Applicants
  • Number of Openings/Requisitions
  • Required amount of Storage
• Maintenance Fees: Cost to upkeep and or upgrade your system
• Support: The price for ongoing assistance after your system is implemented

Questions to Ask the Applicant Tracking Vendor:

• What is included in the pricing?
• What would cause this pricing to change?
• What happens if I go over the limits set?
• Are these fees ongoing or one time?

Be prepared to receive quotes on all ends of the spectrum. Ask the vendor for firm quotes with detailed descriptions of the product and services offered. For pricing on the myStaffingPro applicant tracking system, please request a quote.

A Checklist for Successful Onboarding

Onboarding has been gaining momentum as the latest and greatest applicant tracking feature. Before you get swept up in the hype, use this checklist as a guide to creating a successful onboarding process.

Personalize the process
Don’t make the applicant feel like hire #234234872302345. Personalize the process to keep the applicant engaged, interested, and enhance your brand.

Be concise and informative
Keep in mind that the applicant’s time is valuable, and don’t torture them with every document created since the beginning of time. Keep the information presented relevant and concise to the job they will be performing.

Be Upfront
Don't send your new applicant on a scavenger hunt to collect various items. Provide them with instructions upfront with details on what information will be required and the estimated time needed to complete the process.

Provide assistance
Filling out all the new hire paperwork can be daunting and confusing to new hires. Provide assistance to help them work through the information and instructions provided. It’s important that the applicant understands and agrees to all the information.

Make it Convenient
Provide the applicant with 24/7 access to review and complete their pre-hire paperwork. With an online process, the applicant can complete the information at a time that works for them and from the convenience of their own home.

Congratulate Them!
Everyone likes a little pat on the back. Congratulate your new hire and make them feel welcome to join your team.

Explain Next Steps
Once they have completed the pre-hire paperwork, take your onboarding a step further by explaining the next steps. Explain your expectations, and how/when they will receive instructions for their first day.

myStaffingPro is an applicant tracking system provider with an integrated online onboarding process. For more information, please go to http://onboarding.mystaffingpro.com.

2010 Planning: Tips to get your ATS Budget Approved

Year-end is fast approaching and the door will soon close on budget approvals for your 2010 fiscal year. How do you “sell” your leadership on the value of an Applicant Tracking System? When the bottom line is the primary focus, you need to make the case for your ROI on the investment in new software. When compliance is the major issue, you should be able to make that case with ease! ATS Return on Investment CAN be quantified, measured, and calculated:

1. Department efficiencies can reduce costs when a manual process is eating hours of the day that could be more productively utilized using an applicant tracking system.
   • ROI Question: How many hours per month are spent manually handing applicant resumes and processing new hires?
   • Compliance Question: Are the processes you are manually facilitating consistent and not inflicting adverse impact on candidates?
2. PAPER costs money and has to be touched, signed, filed, and hopefully easily retrieved. Most ATS systems can facilitate a completely paperless hiring process, even addressing new hire paperwork.
   • ROI Question: How much paper, ink, wear and tear on a copy machine, professional printing costs, forms purchased, etc is used in your offices?
   • Compliance Question: Can you actually document that your candidate processes are in fact meeting OFCCP guidelines?
3. Advertising costs can be reduced using an online process.
   • ROI Question: Are your jobs getting any tracking on the web? SEO tools and maximized Web 2.0 programs come with most hosted Career Pages.
   • Compliance Question: Is your internet job exposure meeting the requirements of the OFCCP?
4. Web-based software products are not a drain on your IT resources.
   • ROI Question: How much storage space is needed to manage resumes and HR documents?
   • Compliance Question: Does your IT department have the knowledge to support the needs of your HR department in the area of compliance?

Make your case using quantifiable information, and throw in the fact that companies without an efficient online process are perceived as lagging behind others when it comes to their recruitment processes. Go for it and good luck!

What should an applicant tracking system do?

More importantly, what do you want and need from your applicant tracking system? In theory, it is an easy answer, “I want an applicant tracking system that will save me time and money.” But, what features and tools will you need to accomplish this? To select an applicant tracking system, start by identifying your software needs:

1. Review your Hiring Process

• Document the steps, interaction, and points of frustration in each step of the hiring process.
• Recruiting
• Qualifying the Applicant Pool
• Interviewing/Selection Process
• Hiring
• Determine the information you want to collect, and how you want to collect it.
• Examine the HR software programs that you are currently using, and decide if it would add value to integrate with the applicant tracking system.

2. Define the Goals, Needs, and Wants of your System

• Complete a list of goals, needs, and wants by answering the following questions:
  • My company’s goals are to…
  • The system should improve my….
  • I need a system because…
  • The current process lacks….

3. Select who you want to access the system, and how they will get there

• Are you interested in a system that is installed on a computer, or a hosted solution that is available online?
• Whom do you want to provide access to the system? (Recruiters, Hiring Managers, other professionals?)

4. Determine a Budget

• If possible, have your budget preapproved making certain you have allocated for all possible costs:
  • Implementation – Upfront fee to configure the system
  • Installation Cost (For installed software) or License Fees (For hosted solution) – Fee to acquire ongoing access to the system
  • Training – Initial fee to teach the users how to use the system
  • Ongoing Costs – Additional costs associated with maintenance, support, upgrades, etc.
  • Customization Fees – Fees for configuring or customizing the system to your process
• Be prepared to receive quotes on all ends of the spectrum. Ask the vendor for firm quotes with detailed descriptions of the product and services offered.

For more information, download the applicant tracking selection toolkit.

Top 10 Free Ways to Advertise Your Job Openings

Save quite a bit of cash by taking advantage of these free ways to advertise your job openings:

10. Blog Writing a blog is free (we recommend using WordPress.com), and allows you to put your message on the web without involving your IT department.

9. Twitter With TwitterFeed, you can easily setup your jobs to auto-post on your Twitter site - just follow these easy instructions.

8. SimplyHired.com Simply Hired is a free job posting site that also powers the career sites of popular sites such as MySpace and US News.

7. Indeed.com Indeed accepts free job postings, and also optimizes your postings for search engines. Quite a few of our clients get the majority of their online candidates from Indeed.com, because the jobs rank highly on Google. myStaffingPro has a free add-on that will post all your jobs to both Simply Hired and Indeed automatically.

6. Linked In Linked In is a powerful way to source new candidates. Even though many of the recruitment features built into Linked In require cash, recruiter Erin Campbell wrote an informative blog on how to leverage the power of Linked In, without spending a dime.

5. Business Cards For a very small investment, you can print business cards that advertise your career site. Hand these out to your employees to encourage employee referrals, and keep a stack at the front desk to pass on to walk-ins.

4. SEO SEO, or search engine optimization, is the art of creating a career site and job descriptions that are ranked highly on popular search engines like Google and Yahoo. If your jobs show up on search engines directly from your career site, you may never have to pay for a job board again! (At myStaffingPro we build SEO right into our customer's career sites. For more information, download the myStaffingPro SEO checklist).

3. Your Organization's Career Site You'll want the careers section of your organization's career site to be easy to find. The candidates most interested in working for your company will get there first. So lean on the web site designers to put Careers somewhere on the home page - better yet, include careers in your main menu.

2. Your employees Employee referrals are still the most popular source for new hires. Encourage more referrals by creating an employee referral portal, communicating new job openings with your employees, and designing incentives for employees when a referral is hired.

1. The reputation of your organization The number one free way to attract applicants is the reputation of your organization. If your employees enjoy their job, they will recommend more applicants. As the word gets around, you'll have too many candidates to handle for some of your jobs!

Integrating with myStaffingPro is Easy as Pie

Potential partners will find integrating with myStaffingPro applicant tracking system is easy as pie with their new Open Platform.  The myStaffingPro Open Platform provides partners with the information and resources they need to plug their solution into myStaffingPro.

The Open Platform provides partners with:

• Technical specifications on how to integrate with myStaffingPro
• Account information to beta test the integration
• 24/7 access to review data transfer information

Upon completion, partners will also receive support from our marketing department to assist in communicating the new integration to each respective client base.  Our goal is to integrate myStaffingPro with best-in-class systems so that we can continue to provide our clients with a configurable end-to-end system.

If you are a vendor interested in integrating with myStaffingPro, please go to http://partner.mystaffingpro.com to request access to the Open Platform.

SEO and HR

Ask any marketer about search engine optimization and they gladly go to into a dissertation on its benefits.  Although marketing is talking purely about sales leads to the website, the same principles can be applied to attracting applicants to positions.  Below is a quick guide to SEO and how you can apply it your recruiting process.

What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
According to Wikipedia: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.  In “English”, this means that you attract people/applicants to your website for free.

How does SEO apply to Human Resources (HR)?
Recruiters can apply SEO techniques to job openings to increase awareness and distribution of job openings WITHOUT paying any job posting charges.  Applicants can find search engine optimized job openings by simply going to a search engine entering keywords.  Try going to Google.com and run a search for a position at your company.  Does your opening appear?

What are the benefits of optimizing my job openings?
By applying SEO techniques to your career portal, you can reduce your spend on paid job boards while increasing your online exposure.  The more “optimized” your job openings are, the higher they will be listed on the search results.

Are my job openings optimized?
Go to Google.com and search for an opening at your company.  Although your opening might not appear on the first page of the results, it should appear somewhere.  If you do not see your opening, or need a little assistance, please contact us and our SEO Specialist will review your career site.

Effectiveness and Efficiency are Key in RPO

It is becoming increasingly important in today’s market that companies are able to effectively and efficiently respond to the needs of their clients.  RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) companies can be negatively impacted by processes that limit or inhibit their ability to provide proper feedback to their clients.  Some of the challenges facing RPOs:

• Effectively prequalifying to ensure only the qualified applicants are reviewed  and processed by busy recruiters
• The ability to allow applicants to self-schedule for a phone interview, assessments, or a face-to-face interview with Hiring Managers freeing up recruiting resources
• Conducting standardized Phone Interviews that allow the recruiter to enter the applicant’s responses and then create data sheets that can be sent to hiring managers for review to determine the best fit candidates
• Establish and maintain communication between the applicant, recruiters, and hiring managers throughout the entire recruiting process

This list may seem trivial but to busy recruiters, these challenges can either make or break a recruiting deadline and the relationship with the client.  There are applicants tracking solutions that can solve the challenges discussed above and more.  One system to review is myStaffingPro.  This solution offers recruiters the ability to manage their daily activities as well as building and maintaining a relationship with their clients and prospective candidates.

Go Green with an Applicant Tracking System

The average U.S. office worker goes through 10,000 sheets of paper a year. Instead of relying on a manual paper intensive hiring process, go green with the online applicant tracking system! Going green with an applicant tracking system:

• Reduces your carbon footprint: Remove the paperwork from your hiring process by accepting applications and viewing applicant data online.
• Improves accessibility: Data is at your fingertips 24/7 from any internet-enabled computer. The online process eliminates digging through piles of paperwork to find back information.
• Provides accountability: Timestamps record when an applicant record was updated or reviewed. The built-in accountability provides you with up to the instant details on the applicant’s progress in the hiring process.
• Builds repertoire: Customers will view your company as environmentally responsible, and will translate that responsibility to the product or service that you provide.
• Saves Money: Going green reduces your printer, toner, and administrative costs.
• Increases recruiting and hiring efficiency: Post and fill jobs faster with an online hiring process. Some companies boast that they have reduced their time-to-fill by 40% with an applicant tracking system.

For more information on how you can Go Green with myStaffingPro applicant tracking system please contact us at 800-939-2462 or sales@mystaffingpro.com

Top 10 List : Why Use an Applicant Tracking System?

My Top 10 List as to why you should use an applicant tracking system:

10. EEO and OFCCP collection will fend off the compliance brigade

9.The cool reports look fancy in the Directors meeting

8. The online system gives you more  space on your desk for knickknacks   

7. It is so easy, anyone could use it

6. Your email box will be filled with more than resumes

5. It costs less than my shrink

3. A hosted career site will free up your lobby since applicants can apply online 24/7

2. Automatic  emails save you from the 10oth “when are you going to hire me” phone call

And, the number one reason is:

1. Prescreening saves you from reviewing applicants who “THINK” their experience qualifies them for the position in Neurology