Is Your ATS a Black Hole?
Most recruiting and staffing organizations, ranging from executive search sole proprietorships to staffing agencies and Fortune 500 companies, have internal databases filled with information on thousands to literally tens of millions of applicants, candidates, and professionals.
You would think that a private internal database of people that an organization has actively and passively, tactically and strategically collected over the years would be a prized posession and be viewed and leveraged as a significant resource and competitive advantage.
However, I recently read this post on Weddles and found out that a recent Online Sourcing Survey conducted by TalentDrive found that almost two-thirds (64%) of the employers represented by the survey’s participants did not know how many qualified candidates were in their own ATS databases.
Yes – you read that correctly. Most companies don’t even know how many people are in their Applicant Tracking Systems.
Surprised?
While that is an especially disturbing statistic and a sad reality, I’m actually not that surprised. Most Applicant Tracking Systems have horrible search interfaces and extremely limited search capability. Prospective candidates go in, but they don’t come back out. If you can’t easily search your internal database, how can you find the top talent hidden within, let alone determine the total candidate population?
How Searchable is YOUR ATS/CRM?
Deposits and Withdrawals
Having an ATS/CRM/candidate database that is not highly searchable is like putting your money into an insolvent financial institution - you can deposit money/assets in – but you can’t easily or reliably make withdrawals! Anything designed to store something should have strong retrieval capability – once you put it in, you should expect to be able to get it back out. Quickly and easily, no less. If you can easily enter prospective candidates into your ATS but you cannot easily retrieve the right ones at the right time – you’re essentially sitting on a giant Hidden Talent Pool.
Illiquid Human Capital
Everyone agrees that people are an organization’s most valuable asset. However, if you cannot quickly, easily, and precisely search for and retrieve highly qualified candidates from your private database, your ATS is essentially a source of illiquid (human) assets. In other words, you cannot easily convert the human capital data stored in your system into hires or placements.
The Black Hole
Just like light heading into a black hole, applicants and candidates often go into applicant tracking systems - but they don’t come back out. Presumably, there are only 2 main ways a person can end up in a company’s ATS: #1 They responded to a job posting #2 Someone ran a search (manual or automated) and found the candidate’s profile/resume and entered it into the database In both cases, someone – either a candidate or a sourcer/recruiter – has shown interest in a potential match at some point in time, and this should be worth something. People applying to jobs should be able to expect a response of some kind, and recruiters should be able to easily find well qualified candidates they found and entered into the system in the past.
Sourcer/Recruiter Behavior
Can we blame sourcers and recruiters for NOT searching and leveraging their ATS/CRM if other sources they may have access to (such as LinkedIn and job board resume databases) are 10X more searchable? If trying to find appropriately qualified candidates in an ATS is as difficult and painful as pulling teeth, we should not be surprised when sourcers and recruiters search the Internet for candidates first, and the ATS last (if at all!). A company’s private candidate database should, if anything, be MORE searchable and EASIER to use than publicly available systems and databases. As mentioned previously – people in your ATS have either shown specific interest in your company or were found elsewhere by a sourcer or recruiter and entered into the system. Both types of people should receive “priority handling.”
Expect a Return on Investment
Many companies spend tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars on their Applicant Tracking/CRM systems, and they should expect a significant return on that money invested. I say that the value of a database lies not in the information contained within, but in the ability of a user to extract out precisely and completely what the user needs. If you can’t easily, quickly, and precisely retrieve talent out of your ATS – you didn’t get what you actually paid for. If you’ve been a corporate recruiter at some point in your career – did you ever have a 3rd party search firm/agency submit candidates to you that you already had in your ATS? Did you know that some companies will pay a fee or a premium (contract to hire) for candidates that 3rd party firms source and recruit that were in fact hiding in the company’s ATS? Without going into why companies would actually pay another firm for candidates they had buried in their ATS – the $64,000 question is why didn’t the corporate sourcers/recruiters find the candidate themselves? The answer is usually quite simple – because the company’s ATS isn’t very searchable. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the “20-30% of the first year’s salary” question. Ouch!
What Companies Can Do
To ensure that your private candidate database/ATS isn’t just one big fat black hole where candidates enter but they never come back out, here are a few things you can do:
Replace or upgrade your ATS/CRM
Yes, this will likely involve spending money. However, if people really are the greatest and most valuable asset of your organization – investing in a system that allows you to effectively capitalize on this asset is well worth the cost, nearly at any price! From a corporate perspective, moving to a system that makes it easy to find appropriately qualified candidates that you have already sourced can significantly reduce your cost-per-hire as well as your reliance on 3rd party search firms. From a search firm/agency perspective, investing in replacing or upgrading your candidate database/tracking system can help increase your productivity (and likely profitability) by enabling you to more quickly and effectively capitalize on candidates you have already sourced, interviewed and qualified rather than having to try and source ”new” candidates from scratch for each job order/client request you receive.
Integrate a New Search Interface/Engine Into Your ATS
Typically less expensive than switching out your whole ATS/CRM – there are several 3rd party search applications available ranging from highly configurable text search (Lucene, dtSearch, etc.) to conceptual/artificial intelligence search/match applications (Autonomy, BurningGlass, TalentSpring, Pure Discovery, Actonomy, etc.) that you can integrate into your existing ATS/CRM to significantly boost its “searchability.” Some of the aforementioned solutions are free (Lucene) and others are surprisingly affordable.
Train Your Sourcers and Recruiters (AND/OR Yourself)!
Sometimes an ATS/CRM is a black hole from which candidates never return because the sourcers and recruiters simply aren’t very proficient in how to effectively search information systems for talent identification (aka Talent Mining). If you already have a highly searchable ATS or CRM, invest in training your associates with the latest search best practices, tactics, and strategies. You don’t need a super-expensive “state of the art” search application to quickly find the right people. In fact – all you need is a search interface that supports full Boolean logic. I personally averaged 8 hires per month only after 3 months of experience as a recruiter – and my sole source of candidates was an old CPAS ATS developed by VCG. No Monster, no Linkedin, no cold calls – just a plain old resume database with about 80,000 records and a search interface that supported full Boolean logic. How’s that for ROI?
The Bottom Line
If your ATS/CRM is as easy to search as it is to put candidates in, you will be able to fill more of your company’s openings from talent you’ve already sourced. Any opening you can fill with candidates already in your internal system saves you the time, effort, and cost of advertising and searching for “new” candidates. Filling openings with candidates already in your ATS can afford you significant and measurable cost-per-hire and time-to-fill savings. Additionally, having a highly searchable ATS/CRM can help you reduce your reliance on paid resources if you currently use them (such as Monster, a premium LinkedIn account, etc.). Is it easier to search public systems such as LinkedIn or Monster to find appropriately qualified candidates than it is to search your private ATS/CRM? It shouldn’t be.
How Many Candidates Are In Your ATS/Private Database?
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Glen, as usual you nailed it. Most ATSs are under used. it appears as though recruiters go for the the latest applicant. There it a wealth of information in legacy data in the AYS. Few people want to make the effort to mine that data. It is my impression that the latest applicnat represents the “past of least resistance to the recruiter.
Good content here. Many legacy ATS systems are so complicated, antiquated and slow that recruiters rely on outside tools as their primary means of mining candidate information thereby ignoring arguably the most valuable sources of information available- data you already own!
It is unlikely that a legacy ATS vendor will allow you to customize the existing search interface without a hefty charge and this is likely not going to solve the entire problem. In fact, most popular ATS systems are relying on search technology that was developed over 10 years ago. Thus, these systems are slow and return crude results creating a lack of confidence, the reason recruiters commonly use their ATS as a last resort.
Glen, you also touch on a great point regarding productivity. An ATS system is a tool that should improve the way your company recruits. Too many legacy ATS systems are time vampires. We hear time and time again that, “we are stuck with this system or that system because we’ve invested so much time and energy and we don’t want to go through another implementation nightmare”.
Would you stay in a relationship that was miserable just because you invested a bunch of time? Maybe. Is it fair to your business partners? No!
In some ways the ATS industry is similar to the US automobile industry. For years the automakers resisted requests for change because they thought it would hurt their business model. People wanted big cars with 10 cup holders and didn’t care that these cars got 14 mpg. So, the automakers designed huge, inefficient cars with all sorts of bells and whistles. But, over the years people started to become more aware of the environmental impacts of automobiles and then fuel prices spiked. Competitors caught and surpassed Detroit’s shining stars.
Similarly, like Detroit, enterprise software companies, legacy ATS vendors included, are reluctant to change their business models. They design and build software that instead of doing one thing really well, they do a couple of things just ok. They lock buyers into long term contracts and hold users captive because they boast integration. Well, competitors are starting to catch up. Smaller companies with evolved business models are developing beachhead applications that make users more productive.
I re-posted this amazing article over at:
http://sourcecon.ning.com/forum/topics/sourcerrecruiter-behavior
FYI
Jer
Glen, thanks for confirming importance of internal candidate db.
Our ATS is very simple and very searchable and is our first and primary source of qualified talent. JB
Someone has to defend the honor of the ATS industry- that’s my job according to the Recruiting Animal, as the Beadle. First off, there is nothing wrong, in some cases, with 10 year old search technology. We are going back to 50 year old technology for manned spaceflight and ATS ain’t manned spaceflight.
The ATS business is in many cases a service business. Sizable and even medium firms can have complex data needs. We are doing a job right now with keywords in the billions for a customer; it takes some pretty big brains some serious work to get it done, on both sides of the table.
Reasonable quality of user experience is vital- its the sine qua non of successful solutions, but there are considerations that may not mean much to a typical user, but are meaningful to a system owner. There is always some pressure in industrial design for all kinds of systems to design for end users or system owners where there are conflicts.
I think the ATS business is similar to many niche industries- some vendors get it, some vendors don’t, and times change.
On the actual subject of search scalability, our solutions are engineered to run Lucene if users want it- its a custom setup on our ASP, it’s not 10 years old, and its pretty slick indeed. I can’t type any more about how AI can be overrated and misunderstood in this application…have to go get some tiki outi for the fam.
Although the point you make is very true I completely disagree with the assertion that the ATS is to blame. Yes its true that many ATS’ have poor search facilities this is particularly specific to ATS vendors who focus on corporate solutions. We operate in the market supporting the needs of staffing/recruitment agencies as well as corporates where search functionality is essential.
I would recommend that recruiters experiencing the problems you describe should look not at ATS software but instead focus on using the same software as the successful recruitment agencies who are providing companies with the majority of their resumes. Search terms can make all the difference – search for “recruitment software” in google and there is a very different calibre of software available.
I would encourage you to have a look at our software on http://www.arithon.com, and I would be very happy to demonstrate some of the standard features of our software for you to review.
I think you and our Adjunct Faculty Jim Boessel see eye to eye on this in a big way! Check this out: https://aces.arbita.net/blog/jim
My pet hate is when we talk to companies and they say that they are happy with what they have. The reason we are calling them in the first place is because we know that they probably don’t have an ATS in place and yes, I will agree that, they are too busy to look at an ATS because they have to spend so much time manually processing applications and manually searching through CVs. So the quickest answer is the one to get rid of you so that they can spend more time in administration rather than managing.
To view a brief example of a system favoured by recruiters and employers – http://partner.hr-manager.net/KalaTechnologies/Demo.html
HR/Recruitment managers need to educate themselves in the new tools available and this is where the Boolean BB is worth it’s weight in gold.
Jer, can’t find your article you posted regarding ATS…
Jeremy Langhans says:
at
I re-posted this amazing article over at:
http://sourcecon.ning.com/forum/topics/sourcerrecruiter-behavior