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How to Source Candidates with an ATS

5 min read

Advertising a job opening follows many of the same principles as modern marketing. Your company website has a beautiful careers page that shows how great it is to work there. It also lists the different roles you’re currently hiring for. You now need to get the right candidates there so they can apply.

There are many different places online you can source candidates from. The key is to use your applicant tracking system (ATS) so candidates for different sources flow into one place.

In this business guide, you’ll learn how to use your applicant tracking system to generate candidates from a variety of sources.

Push openings from your ATS to job boards

A job opening posted on your company’s website is like owning a business on a quiet street. The right people have to know it’s there for it to be successful.

Most people start their job search on popular online job boards. When you create an openings in your applicant tracking solution, it will automatically be posted on your corporate website and your favorite job boards.

For example, Trakstar Hire will instantly push a new job opening to five different websites: SimplyHired, Glassdoor, ApplyIQ and Recruit.net. Active job seekers who find the opening on these sites will be redirected to your company’s careers page where they can apply.

Push openings from your ATS to paid placements

Job boards are an excellent candidate source but they can also be a crowded space. Your job opening can end up buried under dozens of other similar ones, preventing the right candidates from seeing it.  

Sometimes you need to jump to the front of the line. Many job boards offer the option for paid placements. If you take advantage of this service, your job listing will go to the top of the heap so you’ll generate more applicants than the ones below.

You can buy paid placements and publish your ad directly through your applicant tracking solution. Trakstar Hire automatically pushes paid placements to Stack Overflow, ZipRecruiters and SnagAJob.

You don’t need separate accounts or to enter payment information on each site. You can buy multiple paid placements at once in your applicant tracking system.

Post openings from your ATS to social media

Job boards are a great way to reach active candidates but what about the elusive passive candidate? The talented person who is already employed and doesn’t need to go on a job hunt.

Social media has become a great way to connect with talented people, including passive candidates. Many people use it to showcase their work, share their professional accomplishments and of course look for career opportunities.

When you create a new opening in your applicant tracking system, you can instantly share it on your company’s Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. People who follow your brand can click through to your website to apply or share the opening with their network.

Your applicant tracking solution also makes it easy to include social share buttons on your job openings. A visitor on your careers site can share your opening with everyone who follows them on social media, with the click of a button.

Easily accept referrals with your ATS

Referrals are one the highest converting candidate sources. Most people will only stake their professional reputation on recommending a person who is highly qualified for a job. And external recruiters are skilled at uncovering great candidates to refer to hiring companies.

Your applicant tracking solution makes it easy to manage every referral in one place. Every job opening you create has an unique email address and URL associated with it. You can share them with others so they can easily refer people to apply or forward a resume through email.

You can also create specific email addresses or URLs for people who send a lot of referrals. That way you can see who you’re top refers are when you generate a sourcing report.

Consider previous applicants stored in your ATS

You’ve likely collected a lot of resumes prior to setting up your applicant tracking system. Fortunately, it’s easy to convert those resumes into standardized candidate profiles in your ATS.

You can upload all your resumes at once as a ZIP or CSV file or forward them from your email to your applicant tracking solution. Your system will automatically pull relevant details from the resume and auto-fill the correct fields in the candidate profile.

Every time someone applies to your company, your applicant tracking system creates a candidate profile for them. As your organization grows, you’ll have a pool of past candidates you can reconsider for new roles. Your ATS makes it easy to search for a combination of relevant terms using “AND”, “OR” or “NOT” qualifiers.

Let’s say you’re hiring a jack-of-all-trades graphic designer. You can search your candidate profiles for the terms “graphic designer” OR “web designer” OR “graphic artist” to identify past applicants who have design chops.

Past applicants are an often overlooked candidate source. The good news is your applicant tracking solution makes it simple to find people you already know are interested in working for your company.

Know the source of every candidate with ATS reporting

As you use your applicant tracking system to expand your candidate sources, you can use the solution’s reporting feature to learn what your best channels are.

The report will not only tell you what sources send you the most candidates. You’ll also be able to see what sources send you the most candidate who result in new hires.

These reports help you determine where your time, effort and recruiting budget is best spent. You can ensure the sources you focus on deliver the highest quantity and quality of candidates.

Source candidates far and wide with an ATS

In today’s competitive hiring landscape, companies have to put their best foot forward when it comes to sourcing candidates.

Using a quality applicant tracking system, you can move candidates from variety of sources into one, centralized database. That way you can focus on finding the best ones to interview and ultimately hire.

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Trakstar is a multi-product HR software provider helping organizations put the people back in people management. Develop and align your staff through better recruiting and applicant tracking, performance management, and learning management. For a more integrated solution to talent management, check out our website and request a live demonstration today.

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