A large percentage of an HR professional’s time is devoted to the process of talent recruitment and acquisition. When all is said and done, a new hire can be quite a time consuming endeavor. Poring over resumes, conducting series upon series of interviews, hiring and on-boarding – it can be a lengthy, time intensive process. But, there are some best practices regarding applicant tracking and scoring that can help to expedite the process, while still ensuring you make the right hiring decisions for your business. Here are a few of them.
Develop a process for receiving applications
Any HR professional has experienced receiving piles and piles of applications and resumes for a single role. Indeed, often they receive many unsolicited resumes that aren’t even aimed towards particular positions. To manage the influx of candidates, many HR departments take the “toss a pile” approach; keeping some and throwing the rest away, using no particular method. While this cuts down on the number of applications you need to rifle through, it runs the risk of you missing the best potential candidate for the job. That’s why having a more efficient process for receiving applications is so important.
Effective HR automation solutions often have applicant tracking systems or capabilities built within them. This gives organizations the ability to capture, sort and distribute applications and resumes automatically, rather than spending hours – even days – poring over them manually.
Improve application storage/filing
Effective application reception allows you to receive all forms and supplementary materials, from resumes to profiles and beyond, within a single online system. But it is the filing and organization of the applications themselves that truly help improve your recruiting process. A good HR automation system will not only capture resumes and applications, but it will logically store all information against a candidate’s name and automatically route it to relevant personnel for future use. This significantly cuts down on the time and effort expended on administrating applications.
Develop a consistent applicant scoring system
The right HR automation software will allow you to integrate any application scoring documents or matrices you have in place directly into the system. A good method for applicant scoring is including questionnaires or a similar information gathering tactic in the initial application itself; that way, you automatically pre-screen candidates before delving further into the hiring process. Additionally, such a method allows you to assign scores to candidates so that you can prioritize them based on fitness for the role. As a result, when the time comes to consider candidates, much of the legwork has already been done for you.
Automate on-boarding
While not a part of the applicant tracking and scoring process per se, on-boarding new employees is an important aspect of talent acquisition. An HR automation system can ease this stage – once a new employee is engaged, the system which has been used throughout the application and hiring process automatically routes all the necessary paperwork to them and feeds back checks on compliance and completeness for management to act on.
Ultimately, adhering to these applicant tracking and scoring best practices can significantly reduce inefficiencies in the talent recruitment and acquisition process. The result: HR professionals can focus on more role-critical tasks that serve to improve operations and ensure that your business attracts the best talent.
