I while ago I did a tip of the week that covered testing your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to find out if automated emails are getting sent out correctly. This week I would like to suggest testing the email tracking capabilities of your ATS. Please note that not all ATSs have this functionality.

Okay, so why would you want to test this? It is important for you to have accurate information that keeps you out of the “Inbox / Sent Items” shuffle. This ensures the messages that you rely on in your ATS are accurate should you have to quickly reference communications between hiring teams and candidates.

The following are some key areas to check when validating your tracking information:

• Check to see that the sent and received times match up to the primary messages
• Be sure that the content of the messages are the same between the message in your ATS and the original email
• See if attachments are accurately tracked
• Make sure messages are not being lost

If you do find any issues, contact your ATS support and first find out how the communications are tracked. This this functionality will differ from vendor to vendor.

Sound familiar? Well it doesn’t necessary need to be a Friday, but many companies experience this type of high candidate volume for certain positions. Even with an applicant tracking system, this could be a quite the chord to review all the information and resumes. This is where candidate and position matching features can help save the day…or at least some very busy work.

The candidate and position matching feature available in certain ATSs serve users “pre-qualified” candidates to help ease the burden of reading resumes one-by-one. The ATS can identify either keywords or the skill sets required for the position then run a search against a resume as it is submitted. If there is a match, the ATS can send a notification such as an email to the recruiter/HR professional.

For this weeks tip, try testing the accuracy of your ATS’s matching system. Apply with a resume that you created as a “perfect match” and see how it ranks or if the ATS identified it as a match. Then try working your way down to the George Costanza resume. Be sure to generate a bogus position so you don’t skew performance in your reports.

An ATS is designed to post positions, organizing candidates and streamline the hiring or recruiting process. One of the other key elements is the reporting component. Many reports enable decisions to be made based on the historic performance of other hiring campaigns. Depending on the ATS, when users start deleting candidates, they may start deleting valuable data. The following are some examples of the type of information which could be lost:

- How many candidates actually applied for a position

- Where the candidates were coming from (source tracking)

- The accurate timeframe for candidates to apply

For this week’s tip, instead of deleting the candidates, try moving them to a “not in consideration” status. This will maintain the accuracy of the data, and allows the candidate database to continue to grow. You never know who you might need in the future!

This week’s tip is to send yourself a position from your applicant portal. This will enable you to review the accuracy of the information and ensure the branding and functionality is correct.

For this weeks tip, try developing a report or a list of reports which highlight your performance over the past few quarters or years. Assuming you have a positive performance report, these can be very helpful during a review and great if you ask for a raise.

This week’s tip is to try subscribing to the RSS feed. By doing so you will be able to:

1. Ensure the functionality is correctly working and in a timely manner.

2. Receive the same information as your potential candidates. This is important for checking accuracy of position information and being able to quickly relate to the format if a candidate contacts you with a question or issue.

The same tip applies if your career portal has the ability to email candidates when a new position opens. In the end, it is about attracting quality candidates back to your career portal while ensuring a smooth and positive experience.

For many, the ATS offers the first impression of their company. This week’s tip is to go through the experience of a candidate by applying for one of your company’s positions. You may want to generate a fictional position for this exercise.

Try to put yourself into the candidate mindset, and go to your career portal and apply for a position. This will help you relate with your candidates if they happen to contact you with an issues or questions about the application process. You can also try and make a couple mistakes to see how your ATS handles errors. Be sure to take notes. This can help you later address potential career portal branding/design issues, ease of use problems, etc. Also, review the automated email that gets sent to you as a candidate. Depending on your ATS, try taking it a step further by advancing yourself through the workflow of being hired. Review all of the automated scheduling appointments and emails you receive. Lastly, clean up your newly created candidate and position so your ATS reports don’t get skewed.

This process can help you identify areas of your hiring process that might benefit from a small change. However, if any changes are made, I would suggest going through the steps again. By doing so, you help ensure a better first impression that can attract quality candidates.