Collaborative hiring is a growing trend in recruitment and the tool of choice for this is an applicant tracking system (ATS). If you don’t understand the benefits of collaborative hiring, and the tools that go with it, then it’s very difficult to convince your team to participate.
This article will serve as a cheat sheet to help get you and your team on board with collaborative hiring by using an applicant tracking system as a tool for success.
Benefits Of Collaborative Hiring
Collaborative hiring offers numerous benefits to recruitment teams due to its ability to crowdsource input from different people in the organization. Some of these benefits include:
- Less stress on a specific recruiter. The important job of choosing the right person is decentralized and crowdsourced to more people.
- Better chance of hiring cultural fits. Collaboratively assessing a candidate enables many people to judge whether that person will be a cultural fit. Culture is an inherently collaborative phenomenon, so looping in multiple people is essential.
- Improved candidate experience. Allowing candidates to talk to more of the people they would be working with gives them a better and more complete picture of the job and work life.
- Increased buy-in to your talent acquisition strategy. Regularly looping in people from across the organization will enable a free flow of information about what’s working and what isn’t. When people are engaged in a process, they’re more likely to give their commitment to it.
- Better employee retention. Collaborative hires are usually vetted much more carefully than ones that are centralized to one or two people. Because of this, the chosen candidate is more likely to be a good long-term fit.
- Limits bias. Subjectivity in recruitment can lead to issues with choosing the wrong candidates for the wrong reasons. Opening the process up to more people helps to remove this subjectivity, enabling a more unbiased decision.
Of course, to achieve true collaborative hiring, you need the proper tools. That’s where your advanced ATS comes into the picture.
What Is An ATS?
An ATS is a software application that enables recruiters to handle a variety of different recruitment needs, with the goal of making the process more effective for the recruiter and candidates. Generally, these modern applicant tracking systems are cloud-based SaaS solutions that can be accessed anywhere, and at any time.
Applicant tracking systems can be used to collect and store candidate information and can be used collaboratively for:
- Sourcing
- Candidate management
- Pre-screening and screening
- Extending offers
- Onboarding
- Recruitment process optimization
Many modern applicant tracking systems also support task management, notes, and change of status notifications. These features enable deeper team collaboration by allowing recruiters to assign specific tasks to teammates and notify them when changes are made to a candidate profile. Additionally, your team is able to make notes and comments on candidates to enable two-way communication and decision-making.
Getting Your Onboard With Collaborative Hiring
After diving into the nuances of collaborative hiring and the functionalities of Applicant Tracking System (ATS) platforms, as well as their respective benefits, let’s wrap up with an expanded guide on effectively integrating your team into a collaborative hiring framework:
Highlight the Importance of Collaborative Hiring
It’s absolutely essential to make sure everyone on your team truly understands why bringing everyone together for hiring decisions is so vital. Take the time to really dive into the benefits this strategy offers both the organization and each individual. Paint a clear picture of how this approach is in perfect harmony with what our company stands for, highlighting how it can significantly improve our decision-making process and strengthen our team unity.
Facilitate ATS Platform Familiarization
Making sure every key player has easy access to our applicant tracking system is the groundwork we need to lay first. Let’s roll out some detailed onboarding sessions to get everyone up to speed on how the system works. We’re talking about real, hands-on training here – showing how to find your way around, keep track of candidate info, and use all the bells and whistles to make hiring smoother. And yes, we’ll definitely be reaching out to our ATS folks for all the support and training guides we can get.
Clarify the Collaborative Hiring Process
Once we’re all on the same page about the why and how of our ATS, let’s get everyone together and map out our collaborative hiring plan. We’ll break down each phase of the process, delegate responsibilities, and set clear expectations for how we’ll communicate and provide feedback along the way.
Build Confidence and Address Concerns
Let’s have a real talk and get everyone’s take on this team-based hiring approach and our ATS setup. This conversation is key to boosting confidence and addressing any questions head-on. It’s our chance to fine-tune roles and make sure we’re all ready and eager to move forward together.
Initiate a Pilot Run
Why not pick a new job opening and give our collaborative hiring process a test drive? This pilot project will let everyone see the process in action and get a feel for how our combined efforts and the ATS can make our hiring even better.
Iterate and Improve
After our trial run, we’ll bring everyone back together to talk about how it went. This is the moment to listen to feedback, pinpoint what needs tweaking, and make those adjustments. It’s all about keeping the lines of communication open so we can keep getting better at this.
Concluding Thoughts
Looking forward, it’s pretty obvious that recruiters are going to have their plates even more full. The race to snag the best talent is getting fiercer by the day, ramping up the competition in the recruitment world like never before. To keep up and stay ahead in this tough game, we need to think differently. Sharing the load and making decisions as a team stands out as a smart way to handle the heat.
Making team-based hiring a key part of how we find and bring in talent isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s pretty much a must-have now. By tapping into what each team member brings to the table and making the most of the latest tech tools, we can totally change the game in how we attract and lock down the right people. This approach doesn’t just make things easier on each recruiter but also brings a wealth of viewpoints into the mix, making our hiring choices smarter and more spot-on.
Adopting this mindset is all about seeing the big picture — the incredible impact of working together and using tech to make our recruitment efforts smoother and more effective. If we get this right, collaborative hiring can seriously be a game-changer, keeping us in the lead and thriving in the constant race for top talent.
