Candidate Source Tracking

ATS Report Card Updates

It's been too long since my last ATS Report Card update, and there actually are some great updates to share. Good news from a bunch of applicant tracking systems has allowed me to change the status for the following systems:

• HealthcareSource
• HRLogix
• Taleo Business Edition

I also added Kenexa 2x Recruiter, the latest version of the Kenexa ATS.

Automation - Populating Source Menus

When I look at ways to automate candidate source tracking for clients, using the manual drop-down menus they already have sometimes is an option, as the ATS supports populating those menus with the correct source data. Now, the question I always get from employers – and I honestly don’t know the answer – is whether job seekers take the time to change these preset menus when this automation is in place. In an ideal world, they would go away altogether (topic for my next post), but it’s great to take advantage of what the ATS offers to help clients get more reliable candidate source data. Two good examples of this approach are Taleo Enterprise Edition (7.0-7.5) and ResumeWare - you can see screen captures of how it works over at ATS Report Card.

Dealing with Source Duplicates

This week, I found a Taleo 7.5 client that had recently launched its new ATS. Upon checking it out as a job seeker, I noticed that the company already had duplicate sources listed for candidates to choose from (highlights added). This can cause some confusion with job seekers - which CareerBuilder do I choose? What's the difference between the two Absolutely Healthcare options? Why make this so hard for the user?

This seems to happen often when the company is using a job distribution product to send its jobs to third-party sites. In order to properly track the inbound applications from those sites, each of them is added as a new source, even if it already exists in the menu. Hence, our duplicates.

While this may help the company with tracking (I say may because differentiating the dupes can still be challenging), it worsens the user experience. If there are sources required for automated tracking driven by job distribution, why would you need to show those to job seekers? Users should only see options that they can understand ("AJE - Compliance?") and should actually choose - including duplicates only increases bad candidate source data.

Related Post: Let's Delete Candidate Source Duplicates