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Candidate Touch and Making Your ATS Disappear

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

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Dec 18, 2006 10:44:00 AM

I just noticed this story on ERE's Inside Recruiting news talking about how company career websites seem designed "to keep human contact to a minimum." This just reinforces the point I made last month in talking about how most ATSs serve as barriers to making contact with high-quality candidates.

The ERE story quotes from a vendor study in which 10 "Michael Jordan" resumes were submitted to 10 companies just to see what would happen. The result?
One of 10 resumes submissions yielded a response, and that response was a form email rejection letter.
Ouch.

This is exactly why we developed our Hotlist Alerts feature which allows you to set up watch lists of critical skills, job titles, or the names of your top competitors, and get notified immediately when a matching candidate applies. We'll actually email a copy of the resume straight to the recruiter so you can move on the candidate without any delay.

There are a lot of other good tips in the article, including this one:
Reassess critical information. To make the process less time-consuming for applicants, determine whether you can shorten the initial application process.
Of course, most ATSs require candidates to complete a lengthy application form and go through a registration process. While this is perhaps useful for dealing with serial jobseekers who apply for every job on the website, it is far more effective at driving away the rare highly-qualified people who you really want. It's worth noting that the average TPR, who makes her living from making placements, will almost never ask candidates to do any more than email a resume.

While it makes some sense to dig up a moat around your castle, most companies and ATS providers forget to put in a drawbridge to go with it.