October 12, 2023

Are you at your wits end in the search for great candidates? Is this you? Talent is hard to find, and reputation is on the line. Poor skill matching has crept into your recruiting practices. You are inadvertently shoehorning candidates into less-than-ideal positions. Cultural fit and soft skills have taken a back seat. Bad hires are coming back to haunt you. Clients are getting frustrated with the time it’s taking to fill positions. You’re trying hard to do more with fewer people. Given how challenging recruitment is right now, you probably identify with some of these points. A talent drought puts immense pressure on recruiters. But in times of adversity, instead of grasping at straws, reviewing processes and the systems and tech we use is a savvy idea. In part three of our ‘Art of Candidate Sourcing’ series, we give you the lowdown on ways your database and (the right) applicant tracking system can rocket-boost candidate sourcing and improve matching, sourcing, and posting to ensure you clinch the best hires. Sourcing From Your Own Database The most under-utilized resource is a recruiter’s own data, a fact confirmed in research by Staffing Hub, which shows that one of the most impactful sourcing channels for firms is from their proprietary database, ATS, or CRM. Hiring strategies tend to look outwards and focus on drawing new talent in, so recruiters can forget there is already an entire database of candidates at their fingertips. Consider this - a candidate may not have made it through to hire for a job a year ago, but they might be open to new opportunities today. In the interim, they may have gained new skills and could be just the person you are looking for. The great thing about connecting with candidates from your database is that they already know you and will likely be more receptive to you reaching out. And since you already have information about their achievements and skills, you can tailor your content and personalize your messaging to make it highly relevant to them. They will most likely feel flattered that you remember them. You’ve already made a connection in the past, so you can adopt a friendly and conversational tone. You are primed with information to make them feel important, which can help entice engagement. Even if you discover they’re not in the market for a new job, they might know someone else who is, and because you are trusted, they are more likely to give you a referral if you ask. Re-engaging with candidates is also an excellent opportunity to update skills and keep your database information fresh. It sounds simple. So, why isn’t everyone sourcing from existing data if that’s the case? Well, to mine data efficiently, you need the right tools. Searching for candidates is easy with a great ATS and CRM, like Tracker. Tracker offers over 80 individual filters, including core statuses, types, resume skills, skill profiling, address, availability, salary, contact history, and any number of our unlimited custom fields so that you can instantly carry out a comprehensive and relevant search. In addition, you can view search results in various formats from standard lists or as a geographical map showing the precise location of each candidate in relation to the job or client, then sort, save, and share with others. With Tracker, you’ll never lose sight of a candidate in your mountain of data again. Supercharge Search with Automatic Candidate Matching Think of all the candidates in your database who applied for a job but didn’t get it. How are you managing to offer them alternative vacancies? It can take hours and hours to get suitable matches. Even with a CRM or ATS, if there’s no auto-matching feature, many profiles remain unused, and lots of time gets wasted searching. Tracker’s automated matching can supercharge your search. Designed to enable constant automated matching of candidates with job openings, Tracker’s Auto-Matching compares the resumes of all new candidates against the search criteria defined on open jobs and alerts consultants when a candidate is cross-matched as suitable for a role. Candidates are matched with jobs, without you lifting a finger. No candidates fall through the cracks, and oodles of time is saved. Optimize Your Skill and Profile Building Skill profiling is essential for putting forward better candidates. According to McKinsey & Company, 87 percent of companies say they have skill gaps, or expect to within a few years. This is where savvy recruiters can step in. Here’s a quick recap of skills profiling and why you should optimize it. Skills profiling establishes links between the essential requirements of a job with the abilities and characteristics required for performance. It is helpful to clients, as it confirms suitability for roles and establishes if someone will be a good cultural fit. It also reassures candidates about job fit, which can boost interview performance. Skill and profile building will also help to leverage non-obvious candidates from your database. Remember, more refined matching leads to more successful hires. There are payoffs in retention, engagement, and productivity, which is a sure win for your recruitment reputation. The Power of AI Ranking and Search Artificial Intelligence (AI) is moving fast, adding a new dimension to recruitment tech and transforming how recruiters evaluate talent, from screening resumes to assessing candidates’ skills and personality. For now, let’s focus on AI Ranking and Search. Most mainstream systems focus on the search terms, then weight and rank results based on recency and prevalence within candidate resumes. This is great and can produce solid results. But what if you could add another ranking layer, like a candidate’s recruitment history? Well, with Tracker, you can! It gives you a new perspective on ranked results and further refines your search. So, for example, you can assess each candidate’s previous successes (or failures) in similar roles. You can even factor in the consensus of consultants who have previously engaged with these candidates. You can rank candidates with consistent interview/placement histories over those rejected. Tracker’s AI Ranking constantly learns about everyone during their life in the system and applies this in tandem with resume ranking to ensure the best candidates are presented every time. Up Your Recruitment Game with ChatGPT Have you experimented with ChatGPT yet? If you haven’t, you must. ChatGPT can be a great assistant. So, what exactly is ChatGPT and what can it do? ChatGPT stands for ‘Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer’ and is an extensive language model–based chatbot. The AI tool can answer simple questions, compose blogs and articles, describe art, have philosophical conversations, and even produce simple code for you. In recruitment, ChatGPT can write simple Boolean strings, create a list of interview questions, rework complex technical job jargon into lay terms, script emails, and write templates and job descriptions. As a writing tool, ChatGPT can excel. We all know that a well-written job description is vital to the recruitment matching process. It gives candidates a clear idea of the role, required skills and experience, and what the company can offer. Writing this in a job description can take up a lot of time. ChatGPT can write a beautifully crafted job description in seconds! At Tracker, we always, always have our nose to the ground when it comes to tech advancement. That’s why we’ve incorporated ChatGPT into our ATS system. Imagine that! Your job descriptions can be written in an instant directly from your ATS! We’re pretty proud of that! Skyrocket Your Job Board Workflow with Job Board Integration All staffing and recruiting firms use external job boards to some extent. Job boards hold a lot of value, from posting jobs to searching resumes. The problem is that you are dealing with dozens of separate and unique job boards in many industries. It’s a time-consuming and exhausting process to manage. You must log into all your job boards separately, search within each board, using unique criteria, and then attempt to import the promising candidates you’ve found or add them manually to your database. This does not sound fun to us! We have great news. Job board integration with your ATS can rescue you from this hell. We’re excited to share how Tracker can skyrocket your Job Board Workflow. Tracker’s Job Board Integration features include: Job Board Posting Job Board Search Boolean and semantic search Watchdogs trawl job boards searching for candidates while you sleep Auto-matching Matching from within your database Job Sourcing Here’s how some of these features will help you in your day-to-day. Firstly, you no longer have to spend hours posting jobs. Tracker’s job board posting starts with a fully automated parsing of the job specification, creating a post-ready version that you can instantly post to your website and push out to your subscribed job boards. In a few clicks, your job is online and attracting candidates. As candidates apply from any job board, Tracker collects and presents them to you within the job. Then you can instantly sweep hundreds of job boards (using industry-leading search from Daxtra - the license is included in our Job Board plan) to start searching and collating key candidates immediately. Then, our Watchdogs feature keeps your search going through the night! If the candidate is already in the system, we will tell you directly on the results list, so there are no wasted credits downloading resumes already in Tracker! Like to know more? Book your demo here.

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The Art of Candidate Sourcing Part 3: Proactive Matching, Sourcing and Posting