I spoke to a recruiter recently who has named his applicant tracking system (ATS) "the beast". I wasn't surprised. I've discovered most recruiters have a love-hate relationship with their ATS "beast". Recruiters almost always have a different view of the ATS from their HR manager colleagues, but for the purposes of today's article I'm focusing on the following four most common complaints from recruiters.

1. Our ATS is so administratively intensive I'm limited in the time spent sourcing and talking with top candidates.
2. The system doesn't work like I do. I have to use other methods, systems and "work arounds" outside of the ATS.
3. HR management is so concerned about ATS features like reporting, they lose sight of the impact of how the ATS impacts my day-to-day efficiency.
4. I had little or no input in the ATS buying decision regarding what I need to make me more productive.

ATS: love'em or hate'em, they've become a necessity. Beginning with this article, I'm going to explore some valuable tips, tricks, insights and ideas on how to tame this beast and recapture some of your lost time. We'll start with the recruiter desktop in today's article.

Understanding the Recruiter ATS Desktop
To better understand the problem, it's important to recognize that most ATS designs are linear, beginning with requisition creation and ending when the requisition is filled. Recruiters simply don't work in a linear fashion. Recruiters work by priority and that means constantly jumping from place to place within the recruiting process. One minute you're scheduling a phone screen, the next debriefing with the hiring manager and the next making an offer, etc.

What's needed is a recruiter dashboard, and this becomes critical for recruiters handling 10 to 50+ open requisitions at any one time. As a recruiter you have to know where your priorities are on an hour-to-hour basis, at every step in your recruiting process.

Lack of an effective ATS dashboard is typically one of two missing links affecting recruiter productivity. I'll discuss another one, lack of an intuitive sequential step system, in a future article.

What does a good dashboard look like?
A dashboard is one location in the ATS that takes all of your critical data and displays it in a way that provides you with an overview/snapshot of how to execute your day. Think of a car dashboard or airplane cockpit. From one location the driver/pilot can monitor all systems and make important judgments on next actions. A dashboard is much more robust than working from an ATS generated status report. The difference is that a dashboard provides you with all the tools you need to take immediate action with the candidate from the dashboard using a minimum amount of mouse. A report typically provides a link back to the candidate and at best is cumbersome and time consuming to use. Ideally you should be able to stay on the dashboard and work with your most important candidates. When this dashboard system is either missing or weak, recruiters deviate from the established recruiting process, and/or do not keep the ATS records up-to-date and/or begin to utilize processes outside the ATS. Priorities are missed and ATS reports are inaccurate.

Making the Most of Your ATS
Despite the fact that most ATS have non-existent or weak dashboards, there are likely some creative things that you can do to increase your efficiency. In today's article we only have space for a couple of specific suggestions. These suggestions allow you to get a quick view of every candidate that is active in your work flow by status/priority, regardless of how many requisitions you are working on. These tips can also be used to add some sub-recruiting process steps that you personally find useful.

Use Saved Queries - If your ATS doesn't quickly give you a list/view of all candidates at each step in your recruiting process, you can usually get a quick snapshot by setting up a search query where you search on the candidate status field. For example, this would provide a list of everyone who is currently phone screening, invited for an interview, have already interviewed, pending background checks, offers pending, starts pending, etc. This saves time spent looking for this data on a requisition by requisition basis so you can focus on candidates by status/priority regardless of specific requisitions.

Use Folders or Hot Lists - If your ATS offers the ability to create ad hoc lists or folders, you can use them to set up groups of candidates based on a specific need. For example, you could use this approach instead of saved queries as explained above. However, using saved queries is often faster and less work provided you change the candidate status as you move the candidate through the process. Queries will pick up these changes automatically without having to manually move candidates to a new status folder.

Using numbers to force a list order - Sometimes you may want things to appear in a set order within the ATS. For example, suppose you wanted to use the saved queries approach above and set up a series of queries, one for each important step of your process. When saving and naming your query, just add a number in front of each query and they will display in numerical/recruiting process order. As a recruiter, I use this approach to organize my ATS. Here is what I use so that the queries appear in the order I want them to.

1 Calls Out
2 Candidate Screens
3 More Info Requested
4 Submitted to Client
5 Clients Screening
6 Clients Interviewing
7 Offers Out
8 Placed
9 Offers Rejected

I'll soon be conducting surveys and starting a Blog on ATS to get your feedback and address your most pressing concerns and questions, but first I want to see what's on your mind regarding applicant tracking systems. Send me an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and tell me: 1) about a challenge you faced in your ATS and how you creatively solved it or made it better, and/or 2) about the most significant challenge you have with your ATS that negatively impacts your efficiency as a recruiter. Over time, I'll get into a lot of other related ATS issues that are important to you. I'll be discussing some of the most common ATS technology bottlenecks with you. Not all bottlenecks will be common to all ATS, but overall I'm confident you'll learn some valuable tips. Until next time...