Jeremy Langhans says:
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I re-posted this amazing article over at:
http://sourcecon.ning.com/forum/topics/sourcerrecruiter-behavior

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.

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.

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.

Jer

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.