It’s your hiring process.
Your ATS
The problem with your ATS is that you either use it or you don’t.
Great, that’s insightful isn’t it?
Here to help.
You don’t use it.
I joke that the ATS is where candidates go to die. Many more seasoned agency recruiters know this in the literal sense.
“Hi, my name is Gareth, Bob sent his resume to us a few years ago and I was hoping to talk to hi about a role”. “I’m sorry, Bob died 4 years ago”. Cue pregnant pause…..
The challenge for our clients is poring through the ATS ahead of reaching out to us. We can’t submit if a candidate applied directly within a certain time period so we just back away. Even if the candidate is perfect for the role.
Or you post a role and get slammed with response so stop looking at resumes after the first 400. The trouble is the ideal candidate is #401. They’re still inn the ATS, never to see the light of day again.
You use it.
Let’s say you keep it up to date as much as possible. All 30,000. OK, you don’t. You can’t.
So now you’ve got a whole bunch of potential candidates that have applied in the past for something similar. 3 years ago they weren’t experienced enough or they had some short stints or didn’t have any relevant experience, where are they now? What are they doing now?
You have 3 choices basically; phone them, email them or check their LinkedIn profiles.
You don’t do any of that do you? Or maybe just a cursory look.
So now you’ve had a cursory glance at a thin sliver of the candidate universe. Hardly a recipe for success.
Posting a job vs actively recruiting
Talking of thin slivers of the candidate universe, LinkedIn estimates that around 20% of its users are actively looking for work while a further 50% are passively looking.
So now you’re literally hoping that those 2 in 10 candidates are looking at your posting and they get far enough through it to be interested. That’s a big ask.
Let’s contrast that with an agency recruiter. I’ll tell you what we do. We have 3-4 people who source potential candidates, their email addresses and wherever possible their phone numbers.
Then we get to work with proactive outreach, SELLING the role to everybody in the candidate pool an screening out the weak fits. Typically, it’s 5 emails, LinkedIn outreach, phone and text.
I know what you’re thinking. If they don’t get back to you then clearly they’re not interested Gareth.
I’d counter that by asking why is that your default position? If they haven’t replied it’s true they haven’t said yes but they haven’t said no either.
Keeping hold of that top talent
By relying on the ATS or posting jobs you’re basically getting a look at a thin sliver of the candidate universe so you may not need to worry about keeping hold of the top talent as you’re not hiring it in the first place.
In which case don’t finish reading. Go phone somebody on the ATS instead.
But let’s say you’ve got top talent that you want to keep hold of.
How do you do that?
All of the research points to employee engagement. Money helps but that’s an easy one.
Understanding what makes them top talent and what makes them tick is the secret sauce.
Employee engagement is basically connection to the company, the team and the work and if you can foster those connections then motivation goes up through connectedness and discretionary effort increases beyond the just do what the job description asks for.
We use Predictive Index to help our clients understand what makes their new hires tick and to get the best out of them so that they are ALL top talent.
If you want me to show you in 6 minutes how it’s done, drop me a note, you won’t even need to talk to me (that in itself is an absolutely massive benefit!).
Gareth Callaway
PRESIDENT
