With the advent of modern cloud-based software, it is easier than even ever to subscribe to an enterprise-class candidate management system at an affordable price.
If you have issues managing your candidates, resumes, notes, communication, and schedules, you should seriously consider a candidate management system. Read our other article on why using a recruitment tracking spreadsheet is a thing of the past.
If you have more than 50 resumes on your hard disk, you seriously need a candidate management system. Making good hiring decisions can happen only when you have all the information in one place.
If your recruitment data is spread across spreadsheets, emails, and documents, it is hard to remember all the information when making hiring decisions. Sometimes, you may want to analyze your hiring decisions even after the hire. By looking at your past data, you can make better hiring decisions in the future.
Recruiteze is the perfect simple small business candidate management system that is cloud-based and available as a subscription. With Recruiteze, you can manage your careers page, jobs, candidates, communication, and notes in one place.
Consider the case where you have one recruiter using their email to communicate, schedule, and hire a candidate. When the recruiter leaves the company, all that information is lost. When a new recruiter joins the organization, they will have to start all over again. You cannot have a standard operating hiring process if it is spread across different individuals, email accounts, and spreadsheets.
This is where a candidate management system can streamline your processes.
Here are the top features to look for in a candidate management system:
- Ability to post jobs,
- Career page,
- Career page widget,
- Personalized application acknowledgment,
- Custom application,
- Custom candidate workflow,
- Workflow notes,
- Create email templates,
- Notes,
- Tracking communication,
- Edit candidate,
- Repository, and
- Reports.
Let’s get into each of the features more in-depth!
1. Ability to post jobs
You should be able to post jobs in your candidate management system. Once a job is posted, all the applications, notes, communication, and scheduling can be associated with a job.
The first step to publishing jobs is to create a Recruiteze smart career page.
2. Careers page
It is very important that you subscribe to the right service since you will need a service that allows you to customize the logo, headers, and colors to match your employer’s brand.
This modern smart job board feature is available only with the premium version of the software.
Check our article on how to create your careers page with Recruiteze for an in-depth guide on how to set-up career pages.
3. Careers page widget
This is another important feature, which will allow you to insert the careers page widget into your careers page. It is vital that it is very easy to implement and manage.
Click here for an in-depth guide on how to set the careers page widget.
If you want to see the sample job widget live, click here.
4. Personalized application acknowledgment
You should be able to create a personalized application acknowledgment.
You must address the candidate in the email. This enhances the candidate experience. Based on a study, most job applicants expect a confirmation acknowledging the application. They would also like to know the next steps after the application. Here you can let them know how you are going to communicate with them about the next steps.
5. Custom application
You should be able to create a custom application to help you prescreen candidates. A few additional questions or information can help filter out the suitable candidates that quickly suit your needs.
With the custom application form feature, you can add the following types of fields to the form page:
- Text-Input
- Paragraph
- Select.
- Phone
- Checkbox
- Radio Button
- File Upload
- Terms Check
For a detailed guide on how to create a custom application in Recruiteze, check this link.
6. Custom candidate workflow
The candidate workflow is the most important feature of a candidate management system. You should be able to put the candidate through the workflow and customize the workflow.
Based on what we have heard from our users, we have created a standard workflow for our candidate management system. But you do not have to require all the steps. If you are a small business, your workflow can be just 8 steps:
- Review application
- Reject application
- Phone screen complete
- Schedule interview
- Offer candidate
- Decline candidate
- Candidate accepted offer
- Candidate declined offer
We offer a highly customizable, advanced, and simple-to-use workflow feature. This feature is available with the paid version of our software. Candidate workflow is available from all the candidate views. It works exactly the same from all the views.
For the purposes of this article, we will use the “Applications” feature as an example. You can update your application’s workflow status from the applications view, from the candidate details view, and from the job detail view.
The image below shows the applications view:
Clicking on the workflow tag from the list opens up a popup that will allow you to update the workflow. If the candidate is not already associated with the job, you will need to add the candidate to the selected job. This helpful article details how to add the candidate to the job.
The image below shows the updated workflow status popup:
You can change the workflow status from the popup. It will be immediately reflected in the list.
You can also update the workflow status for one or more jobs for the candidate from the candidate detail view like shown in the image below:
We have designed the following workflow transitions that are available by default when you first start using the feature.
- Application Received – This is the first step in the workflow. When a candidate applies for a job from the job application link, they are automatically transitioned to this state. Also, when a candidate is manually associated with a job, they are transitioned to this state.
- Application Review Complete – At this step, the recruiter has reviewed the application. They can either reject the candidate or go to the next step of doing an initial phone screen.
- Phone Screen Complete – At this step, the recruiter talks to the candidate to better understand the candidate’s skills and experience to determine the job’s match. After this step, they can either reject the candidate or submit the candidate to the hi