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Best Practices for Using and Maintaining the ATS

To help you use and maintain your Applicant Tracking System, we have created a list of best practices to ensure successful adoption and use of the ATS for you and your organization. 

Bookmark this page so you can refer to it in the future!

Account Setup/Adding Users

  • Utilize Indeed Apply - Indeed Apply is a feature from Indeed that allows candidates to quickly apply with an Indeed Resume or a traditional resume file. These job postings will have a label indicating this capability which can improve the applicant flow.
  • Utilize External Email Tracking - External email tracking keeps email communication in the ATS even when the applicant replies.
  • Review Users and User Roles - Review users and user roles regularly to ensure your users and their permissions are up to date.
    • Only assign one user role per user. If a user has multiple user roles, the system will pull from the user role assigned with the lowest level of permissions. Multiple user roles can unintentionally limit system functionality.
  • Review Job and Email Templates Every 6 Months - Your job and email templates should be reviewed every 6 months to ensure they are up to date for your organization to ensure consistency for all job postings and email communications.

Job Postings

  • Audit Job Posting Every Quarter - We recommend reposting a job after it has been open for 120 days even if you are utilizing our Auto Refresh feature.
  • Review your Career Page - Make sure your job postings are easily located on your career page and are up to date. We recommend utilizing our widget to ensure open jobs are added and closed jobs are removed from the career page.
  • Create Job Templates - Job templates allow you and your users to have uniform job postings, which can be crucial if you have many different users creating job postings for your organization. 

Candidate Flow

Are postings getting good applicant flow? 20 or more applicants for a job posting is a solid applicant flow. If not the candidate flow is not to your liking, here are the things to review:

  • Review Job Posting - Are your job postings long and formal? Job postings are different than job descriptions as job postings should sell the job seeker why they want to work at a specific company in the advertised position.
  • Utilize Your Marketing Team - If your organization has a marketing team, work with them to help create an eye-catching job posting.
  • Check Out Your Competitors - Review your competitors’ job postings to learn what others in your industry are doing.
  • Simplify Your Job Application - Keep your job applications short and sweet. You have about 3 minutes to get an application from a job seeker. If your job application is too long you will see candidates drop off.
  • Screening Your Applicants - Utilize Screening or Qualification questions to help manage applicants but keep the number of these questions to 3-5.
    • Only use Qualification Questions if you really want candidates ruled out based on their answer(s). If you are willing to consider candidates who answer no this should be a scoring question.
    • If you need to collect additional data, such as DOT information for drivers, consider creating this as a second step of the application process.
  • Review Job Boards - Confirm you are distributing job boards to all available options. Utilize the external link URL and how to direct candidates back to the ATS to apply.
  • Utilize Referral Networks - Job Boards are only one tool for recruitment. Create referral networks for these groups (universities, associations, churches, etc.) for easy job distribution. Networking and word of mouth is another great avenue.
  • Remove Images or Videos From Job Postings - While images and/or videos are great for website posting, job boards like Indeed, do not accept these. If you want these in your posting consider creating two job postings, one for a website and one without images/videos for job boards.
  • Clean Up Job Titles - Keep your job titles clean for search optimization and save the fun title for your job posting
  • Add Salaries to Job Postings - Some job boards add an estimated salary to your job posting if you do not do it. We recommend adding salary information to ensure accuracy.
  • Manually Add Candidates - You can manually add candidates to the job posting which can help for walk-in applicants or paper applications.
  • Sign Off On Official Job Description - If you need the candidate to sign off on the official job description it can be added to Onboarding paperwork.

Managing Candidates

  • Use Candidate Labels - Candidate labels help signify the skill sets you are looking for in an applicant. Labels will be attached to applicants when they apply for a job, can be manually edited, and are used to create a searchable database for skill sets in your candidate pool.
  • Use Candidate Stages - Candidate stages track where the candidate is within the hiring process.
  • Create Email Templates - Email templates allow for quick communication with applicants, hiring managers, etc.
  • Use Disposition Codes - Disposition Codes are essential for keeping data clean, keeping track of the recruiting process, and allowing you to easily provide candidate feedback.
    • Attach e-mail templates to your disposition codes for easy communication when ruling out an applicant.

Reporting

Utilize reports to understand metrics such as Candidate Source to determine where your applicants are coming from. This shows you which campaigns are successful and where you may need to shift efforts.

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