With unemployment rates breaking records, hiring companies are being bombarded with applicants. National media outlets recently covered an open janitorial position at a school in Ohio that received 835 applicants for a full time job that pays $15 to $16 an hour with benefits. With numbers like these becoming more the norm than the exception, it becomes almost impossible for hiring managers to find the needle in the haystack.
During a recent conversation with one of our customers in the outplacement business, we learned how some hiring managers are dealing with the record number of candidate resumes that have been pouring in recently. The customer pointed out that hiring managers should view the thousands of resumes received as an opportunity to find the best candidate and a resource to build a candidate database for future positions rather than a never ending maze of paperwork.
After my discussion, I thought it would be worthwhile to share the advantages of using on online database with email collection to streamline the applicant review process:
1. No need to manually re-enter applicant emails received into your database. Enable online database’s email collection feature to automatically collect emails received from company’s career email address (careers@company.com) and applicant database records will automatically be created in your database and resume attachments will be uploaded into the notes section.
2. Don’t worry about forgetting to send out acknowledgment of resumes received. Enable the auto reply to automatically send out an email acknowledgment once a resume has been collected.
3. Categorize and organize applicants through the use of powerful database field types. Create fields to track progression of the applicant through the hiring process and record notes on the applicant.
4. Easily find the needles in the haystack. Use the powerful search functionality to search the entire database for key words or phrases used in the cover letter text included in the body of the collected email.
5. Control access to applicant data. Assign user permissions to give the hiring team the appropriate permission levels to view candidates in the pipeline. For example, if human resources should only view certain fields, you can restrict access to these fields.
6. Coordinate interview schedules within the database. Create a calendar view and set up a email campaign and mail merge feature to send out emails to those candidates who did not meet the qualifications for a particular job opportunity.
If you are hiring, I’d like to know how you are handling the volume of resumes being submitted to your company. Also, if you’d like help getting your applicant process on track with TrackVia, give me a call.
Read following case study to find out how an outplacement firm is using TrackVia:
