Jim MiltonThere’s a joke in the software industry that “building software would be easy if it weren’t for end users.”
It’s more sad than funny, really, especially if you’re a recruiter that happens to use software to coordinate a hiring process involving other people. You know – like candidates, and the managers that want to hire them. Those guys.
Turns out that any software development team can gather requirements and whiteboard an idea for a product. But from my eight years in the business, I can tell you that designing a product that people can and actually want to use is really, really hard.
Which brings me back to those pesky candidates and hiring managers.
The truth is that recruiting software was simply not designed for them. Period.
It’s a stunning fact: Product managers at ATS vendors are not and have never been experts in the consumer user experience, or even on the workflow requirements of non-recruiter end users. This represents the biggest untold problem in recruiting technology, and the reason that the ATS product category as a whole is going away.
According to my friends who are recruiters, the ATS exacerbates at least two of their biggest problems overall:
#1 – MY HIRING MANAGERS WON’T PARTNER WITH ME
“Hiring managers are typically unrealistic with their expectations. They get frustrated when I don’t deliver exactly what they want. Then in their frustration, they are slow to give feedback on candidates. It’s a downward spiral… God forbid they log into the ATS to participate in the process. They won’t touch the thing.”
…If only my hiring managers had easy access to the data, they could see the sourcing analytics and candidate pipeline,” one recruiter recently said. “They would see that I’ve been thorough in my sourcing strategy, that I know my stuff, and I’ve been working hard. Maybe they’d get more realistic about their requirements, and maybe even help source…”
#2 ITS HARD TO SELL CANDIDATES ON A HARD-TO-SELL JOB
“A recruiter has only so much control over the candidate’s decision,” another friend said. “I’m stuck selling my employer’s reputation for better or for worse. And not every job description is a sexy one. It’s hard to get candidates to look past a dull description, let alone make it through a cumbersome [ATS] apply process.”
It’s clear from listening to recruiters’ top problems that in order to be successful, they must leverage a recruiting platform designed not just for themselves, but for the needs of candidates and hiring managers.
Only through empowering everyone else in the process can a recruiter conduct the symphony of engagement and cooperation that leads to hiring success. On the flip side, a system that doesn’t work for the whole hiring team is a system that doesn’t really work at all.
There is only one product in the world designed from the bottom up for EVERY user that takes part in recruiting – the first product truly designed to drive Hiring Success.
See it to believe it: Get a demo, today.
Lee Ann Prescott
Anh Nguyen