Recently, my organization launched a survey of hiring managers and search committee participants that use our Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to enter and approve job vacancies, post the vacancies to our corporate job site, and review applications and candidate documents.;)
Flickr - jacorbett70
As we sort of expected, the initial results are less than stellar. Some highlights:
On 'Ease of Use and Navigation', 65% of respondents rated the ATS either 'Below Average' or 'Extremely Poor'.
For 'Overall Look and Feel', 48% of respondents rated the ATS either 'Below Average' or 'Extremely Poor'.
But in answering the question, 'I am getting sufficient qualified candidates for my vacancies', 65% either 'Agreed' or 'Strongly Agreed', with only 24% disagreeing strongly or mildly with the statement.
There are also lots of interesting comments, ranging from the simple, 'I hate it', to the witty, 'I would rather have candidates apply by carrier pigeon'. There are some positive comments as well, mostly having to do with having all candidate information and documents stored in a central repository and the fact that some internal administrative tasks are now a bit easier.
The survey will stay open for several more days, so it may be premature to draw final conclusions yet, but I think the overall trends and tone of the responses are clear. But what is not clear to me is what, if anything we should do.
A majority of users don't like the system, the look and feel, layout etc., but the same respondents indicate that for the most part we are attracting plenty of qualified candidates. We are making hires.
And since the ATS is a ERP-based package application, there is only so much we can do easily and inexpensively to try and re-architect it to address many of the user concerns.
I have a feeling it is going to come down to a basic decision between spending time and resources on this 'problem' versus pursuing other initiatives that actually may be more impactful to the organization.
Do we need to 'fix' a system many users don't like, if the end result, finding qualified candidates and making good hires, is apparently not broken?