Industry Research: High-Volume Hiring: 7 Features to Look For in an ATS

High-volume hiring is not for the faint of heart. Most recruiters rank sourcing and screening candidates as their top pain points. When it comes to hiring hundreds or thousands of hires at once, those challenges and headaches are magnified. A traditional ATS doesn’t adequately address the problems found in high-volume recruiting, which is why we detailed 7 crucial features to look for when selecting your next system.

With a significant portion of job seekers owning a smartphone, they expect to be able to apply from their mobile devices. Text to apply will simultaneously help you keep your applicants engaged while also driving higher conversion rates. It allows job seekers to text a keyword to a shortcode, beginning the application process.

These shortcodes and customized keywords can be displayed on everything from social media posts and digital ads to windows and takeout bags. A recent study conducted by Glassdoor found that mobile-friendly applications increased candidate pools by 11.6%.

When searching for an ATS that utilizes text to apply, identify systems that are able to incorporate geolocation. This feature will help to give you a more relevant applicant pool as it only shows candidates job openings most relevant to their area.

There are a number of qualified, potential applicants that are visiting your website and job boards every day. The lack of engagement is ultimately what is stopping them from applying to your open positions. Chatbots are available 24/7 on desktop or mobile and are able to answer questions, provide information, and engage with online visitors, ultimately converting them to interested candidates.

Applicants appreciate the easy-to-use nature of a chatbot. They are traditionally simple interfaces, that allow for simple communication. Over 58% of candidates surveyed on the Fountain platform agreed that they like interacting with A.I. during the initial screening processes.

It doesn’t matter whether a person arrives at your website directly or from a job board. Chatbots are powered by machine learning and natural language processing and will instantly engage with them.

Over 64% of candidates surveyed on Fountain agreed they research a company online before applying to a job. In order to attract those candidates, your career site needs to be updated with accurate information to help “sell” passive candidates.

While job boards are important in filling applicant pipelines, applicants that come in through your company’s career site have a greater hire rate by comparison. If they are coming in through your personal site, you can be assured that they are familiar with your company’s brand, values, mission, and the like.

Customized career sites put an emphasis on the candidate experience by helping you upgrade your application process through rich visuals and content that are an extension of your employer brand. Not only does it help increase your conversion rates but it also helps provide a seamless application experience for your candidates.

High-volume recruiters don’t have time to enter in individual candidate data. The more applicant volume you manage, the more necessary this feature becomes. It’s far too time-consuming and is ultimately increasing your time-to-hire.

Instead of having to manually enter applicant information, resume parsing analyzes a resume and extracts the desired information into a structured format for your pipeline.

Once the resumes are uploaded and analyzed, you can search for keywords and phrases to better identify the right candidates for your positions. Talent acquisition teams can save countless hours reviewing and comparing applications, reducing time-to-hire and time-to-fill.

When dealing with a high-volume of applicants, it’s difficult to assess them all effectively if they’re not organized properly. A holistic view of all applicants across all job openings, provides the flexibility to execute different responsibilities associated with managing a recruiting funnel. As a high-volume recruiter, you’re often screening applicants across various roles and locations. 

Look for an ATS system that has powerful filtering capabilities within their applicant view, so you can create subsets of applicants you need to communicate with across these two domains. No other feature is as crucial to helping you stay organized with your applicant pool.

It’s no secret the addition of video interviews has become increasingly essential this year. It allows hiring managers and candidates to connect in real-time or at your and the candidate's convenience, and there are advantages to both synchronous and asynchronous video.

In addition to video interviews replacing in-person interviews, many aspects of communication are also non-verbal. Having a live, face-to-face conversation in lieu of a phone call allows you to account for some of the communication gray areas, giving you the opportunity to more adequately assess your candidates. The same can be said for pre-recorded videos. Using a structured interview guide for applicants allows you to assess candidates equally, across different variables.

For high-volume recruitment, candidate dropoffs are always an issue. This is where video interviews can help mitigate because they have lower no-show rates than in-person interviews.

Many of us have received recruiting emails with messages so generic that we immediately dismiss them. Oftentimes recruiters fail to even attempt to personalize the message, or when they do, it's poorly done.

Whether it’s through texting, emailing, phone calls, video interviews, or one of the other ways in which recruiters communicate with their candidates, high-volume recruiters don’t have enough time in the day to personalize outreach to every applicant in their pipeline.

There has to be a healthy balance of automation and personalization. Candidate screening and feedback is a step that can’t be automated, but a “thank you” email after applying can be.

There are enough candidate touchpoints in a candidate’s lifecycle (at least 5 within the first 48 hours) that some can be automated.

The workflow of a high-volume recruiter is different from a traditional recruiter, which is why a traditional ATS doesn’t work. Find a system that allows you to automate your workflows properly, and it will dramatically increase the effectiveness of your recruiting.