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Applicant Tracking Solution Delivers Abundant Reporting Metrics While Increasing Productivity and Efficiency for Recruiters
TMCnet News
Job seekers want an effortless experience when searching online for career opportunities and, at the same time, corporate recruiters long for a smooth solution to streamline the hiring process and create efficiencies in finding high quality talent for their organization. Recognizing an opportunity to improve its recruiting approach, technology leader Internap Network Services ( News - Alert) Corporation traded in its existing applicant tracking system (ATS) for a more robust solution. Internap’s selection of iRecruiter™ from iCIMS has enabled the recruiting department to build a bounteous database of qualified candidates, gain efficiencies in its approval process, improve communication to internal and external audiences, ease compliance requirements and take advantage of powerful reporting capabilities.
Providing services throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, Internap is a market leader of intelligent route control solutions that bring reliability, performance and security to the Internet. Internap currently serves more than 2,200 customers, including Fortune 1000 and mid-tier enterprises in the financial services, government, travel/hospitality, manufacturing, media/entertainment, technology and retail industries.
The company’s patented and patent-pending technologies address the inherent weaknesses of the Internet, enabling enterprises to take full advantage of the benefits of deploying business-critical applications such as e-commerce, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video-conferencing and streaming audio/video across IP networks. Through a portfolio of high-performance IP and wide-area network (WAN) optimization solutions, Internap’s customers can bypass congestion points, overcome routing inefficiencies and optimize the performance of their applications.
Like other technological innovators, Internap competes for highly skilled and talented IT professionals across a variety of job spectrums such as product marketing, network engineering and installation engineering. With only 340 employees serving its global customer base, it is imperative that the company continually source qualified candidates to support its growing business.
Seeking to improve the job search experience for candidates and recruiters alike, Internap began looking at its existing processes and how to improve them. Although the recruiting department had an ATS in place, the solution, like many others, was onerous. Page refreshes were slow to load, tracking of candidates was challenging, navigation was not smooth or logical, database searching was labor intensive and time consuming, along with a myriad of other frustrations and difficulties rendered the system useless.
“Because our system was so cumbersome, I started using two systems,” said Randy Shute, senior manager of Recruiting for Internap. “I would try to input data into the database of the ATS but I found it more effective to create electronic folders in our e-mail application and hard drive. It was rather archaic but it was more effective and accessible than the ATS we were using.”
Upper management recognized there was a serious problem in applicant tracking and EEO/OFCCP compliance and knew recruiters were frustrated with the difficulty of navigating the system and spending an exorbitant amount of their time performing administrative tasks rather than actually recruiting candidates into the company. Since recruiters were left with less time to recruit, managers became increasingly frustrated with limited candidate pools and the excessive time required to fill open positions. As a result, managers were relying heavily on outside recruiting agencies, which quickly ate away at the recruiting budget. Constantly falling back and relying on manual processes meant locating information in overflowing filing cabinets, desk drawers, manila folders, and other HR staffs’ hard drives, which was very time consuming and too often fruitless. Furthermore, compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and OFCCP regulations became even more challenging.
“We knew there had to be a better way,” said Shute. “We were spending too much time collecting paperwork, filing, organizing, and tracking signatures down rather than on actual recruiting. The system we had was too difficult to use and hindered productivity. When people stop having faith in the system and do things their own way, using individual work-arounds, there are no defined methodologies and the database becomes worthless.”
Having previously worked with numerous applicant tracking solutions over the past 10 years, Shute’s biggest observation is that most systems force recruiters to work the way the system works as opposed to working the way a recruiter works. All too often, recruiters find themselves stuck in a particular window, lost on where to go next with no clear navigation of the system. Shute also didn’t believe that applicant tracking systems should take days or weeks learning to use them. They should be easy to understand and navigate and there should be common sense in the flow of daily activities, tasks and tracking. A solicitation touting the iCIMS advantage – speed of data delivery, breadth and depth of experience, strong client list, and top-notch customer service as well as the solution’s ability to fit with existing workflows – caught his attention.
“I received an email invitation to check out iCIMS’ iRecruiter and liked what I saw,” he said. “In addition to being offered at a cost-effective price point, it was immediately apparent that the system is more powerful and simpler to use than any system I have ever used.”
Recognized as the mid-market’s leading applicant tracking solution, iRecruiter combines unmatched flexibility with an easy-to-use interface, helping corporations address not only current needs, but also fulfill the long-term vision of their evolving talent management initiatives. Most appealing to Shute were the solution’s integration with Microsoft ( News - Alert)® Outlook®, the manager self-service module that enables managers to have total access to their jobs combined with the ability to view and immediately disposition candidates, and the capability to search within a search to modify skills criteria. Other key features include the mass disposition of candidates, ultra-fast viewing and printing of resumes, and an automated requisition and offer approval process to fluidly move candidates through a designated chain of command.
“Implementation was a breeze, and the iCIMS team went out of their way to import existing data into the system and configure iRecruiter to meet our business needs,” said Shute. “What is really noteworthy is that the solution improved the experience for candidates, managers, employees, executives, and the people who use the system the most, recruiters.”
For candidates, the system has made applying for jobs at Internap easier than ever. Applicants simply visit the company’s online career center to view and apply for open positions. At the Website, candidates are able to create a profile so they can return to the career portal anytime to review their application status, update their profile or apply for other new openings.
“Candidates know exactly where they are in the recruiting process because they can log into the system to see if their application is moving forward or if they have been rejected for a position,” said Shute. “iRecruiter also has a report that enables us to identify source effectiveness and learn how applicants linked to the corporate career site. This valuable report provides key information that allows the Human Resources department and the executive team to drill down into how effective our sources are and if we are allocating our recruitment advertising dollars appropriately.”
For recruiters, the intuitive user interface makes the solution easy-to-use and the speed with which they can click through the system has improved productivity. One feature fueling efficiency is the search within a search capability. Using keywords, recruiters can refine searches and drill down further into details to rapidly identify candidates who fit desired criteria.
Hiring managers looking to fill open positions are also reaping the benefits of improved efficiency by utilizing the self-service module to rapidly create and load new jobs to the corporate career center. What used to require multiple people and pieces of paper can now be executed with a few simple clicks of the mouse. The process has been reduced to minutes rather than days or weeks. Job description templates and screening questionnaires are preloaded into the system and the online approval process configured within the system moves requests seamlessly through the chain of command.
“The solution provides a great deal of visibility, and we can now easily see where there are bottlenecks,” said Shute. “It is a better way of managing the process. Everything from job approvals to offer approvals is done in the system, quickly and efficiently.”
Making the biggest difference for Internap is iRecruiter’s robust reporting capabilities. Now, information such as related expenses, cost-per-hire, candidate skill sets, EEO candidate data, as well as pending, approved, and filled jobs are readily available with one click. Accurate, detailed information can be extracted in seconds and is easily exported to a spreadsheet.
“Having all of this data in the system enables us to have intelligent conversations with everyone and greatly enhances management of our workforce,” said Shute. “iRecruiter delivers a terrific experience for everyone that touches the system. The incredible speed with which I am able to move about the system means more effective and more efficient productivity. This is the way technology should work.”
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