How Universities can boost recruitment with an Applicant Tracking System
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) face some of the most diverse recruitment challenges. One day the talent you’re sourcing is gardeners, the next astrophysicists. From the ground beneath our feet to the stars in the sky, no two days are the same when you’re recruiting for universities – yet the admin burden stays the same.
With a population at least the size of a small town, most universities are constantly on the hunt for new employees. But many are still using generalist HRIS systems to recruit, rather than specialist Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software.
If you’re juggling financial restrictions, skills shortages and compliance, whilst also trying to beat global competition to top academic talent, getting bogged down by your hiring process is the last thing you need.
Using a purpose-built, bespoke applicant tracking system will not only elevate your candidate experience but also provide deep data insights to inform and refine your recruitment strategy. Want to know how a tailormade ATS can boost your recruitment? We might just know of one ATS that graduated top of its class…
How can an applicant tracking system improve the efficiency of university recruitment?
ATS systems streamline your recruitment by collecting applications, screening candidates (by your predefined criteria) and scheduling interviews. By automating these regular administrative workflows, your team has more time to focus on finding the right talent for your institution.
But not all ATS are created equal. You need a flexible, intuitive and fully customisable ATS to deal with the variety of workflows university hiring requires.
Reach ATS can:
- Improve candidate tracking
Automating your hiring allows you to track your candidates throughout the hiring process, ensuring you never miss out or overlook a qualified candidate again.
- Facilitate compliance management
A fully documented and transparent process helps you adhere to recruitment policies and procedures.
- Enhance data analysis
Scrutinise your data in real time to spot hiring patterns, predict skills gaps before they happen and refine your recruitment strategy. With standard and custom reporting, our software is also compatible with Power BI, for simple visualisation of all your hiring data.
- Integrate with other software and systems
Our software offers easy integration with third party applications, for example pre-employment checks such as DBS and Right to work, as well as your existing HR software, payroll and HRIS systems.
- Speed up time to hire
Keep the hiring process moving along effortlessly with task reminders, self-serve interview scheduling, automatic reference collection and DocuSign for contracts and onboarding personnel forms.
- Improve the candidate experience
Personalised scheduled communications, a bespoke candidate portal, self-serve interview scheduling and simple integration with all major video conferencing platforms support a smooth and engaging candidate journey.
- Encourage internal collaboration
Our Hiring Manager Portal facilitates internal collaboration – with documents stored centrally, task reminders and candidate score sharing, our smart ATS empowers your hiring managers. Your HR team retains complete oversight of the entire hiring process via our brilliant central dashboard.
How can an ATS reduce time to hire for academic positions
One size does not fit all, especially when it comes to recruitment. Quick apply forms and applications via socials are brilliant for hiring temporary staff, estates workers, catering staff and cleaners. But when it comes to hiring your leadership team or core academic staff, you’re going to need more than speedy application options.
Beating off the stiff competition to academia’s top talent isn’t easy. But a flexible, fully customisable ATS will allow you to adapt your hiring workflows to suit those more specialist roles.
Hiring a Professor of Economic History to head up a new department in your Social Sciences faculty, is going to involve a much more detailed and in-depth process than hiring a barista for the campus coffee shop.
With Reach ATS you can easily adapt your application process to suit your job role, you can:
Adapt applications to allow space to upload links to research papers, professional honours and qualifications, list grants, funding and professional affiliations.
Build in multiple interview rounds, all supported by our self-serve interview scheduling – letting both parties find the best times to meet (even allowing for international time differences!)
Assemble interview panels through our dedicated Hiring Manager portal – allowing colleagues to shortlist, interview and score candidates effortlessly.
Make it official with automatic reference collection, integrated third party pre-employment checks, and online contract signing (with DocuSign). Get all the ‘paperwork’ completed before your newest colleague even steps inside a lecture theatre.
All these features have been designed to maintain momentum during more in-depth recruitment workflows. Automating your hiring enables you to streamline necessary but time-consuming admin tasks whilst keeping your candidates engaged with the hiring process. Reach ATS helps expedite what would otherwise be a lengthy hiring process.
How does an ATS support internal collaboration for university recruitment
When you’re spread across a large campus that might span a city (or even two) collaboration can be impacted. Using software like Reach ATS helps bring everyone (virtually) closer together. With centralised documentation and simple task reminders, everyone is accountable, and everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.
Our hiring manager portal allows interview panellists to share interview questions, availability, candidate applications and score sheets without ever having to look up an email address or trawl their desktop for a document. Our hiring manager app also means that, even when doing the ‘day job’ your colleagues can keep on top of hiring needs for their department, view the progress of candidates through the hiring process and support their onboarding.
How can an ATS support fair and diverse candidate hiring practices in universities?
Universities have a responsibility to uphold fair and diverse hiring practices and using an ATS will definitely support more equitable recruitment practices. Automating communications means that all candidates will be treated equally and kept engaged with the process, with no applicant overlooked or slipping through the cracks due to human error.
Reach ATS can also perform the first screen of candidates, addressing them solely on the set of skills or qualifications set by you, minimising the possibility of unconscious bias.
Our simple but smart system allows you to track the progress of all candidates and documents the entire recruitment journey. All candidate data is stored in line with GDPR (or the data regulations of the country you’re hiring in) and automatically wiped from your system once that permission expires.
Finally, our system offers both custom and standard data reporting, meaning you can have your equality and diversity hiring statistics at your fingertips in seconds.
How can I get support for my university’s talent acquisition?
Even the best hiring teams sometimes struggle to find the right candidate for their top tier roles. Our knowledgeable Candidate Attraction Team has huge experience working with HEIs and will guide you to the best job boards (nationally or internationally) as well as helping you polish those ads to make them really stand out from the competition.
Reach for a better ATS.
You wouldn’t use a Modern European historian to teach Tudor Politics. So why use a generalist HR tool do your recruiting? A fully customisable ATS is a specialist tool. It helps recruitment professionals expedite and elevate their hiring process. And surely that’s what your HEI deserves.
If you’re ready to graduate to a top class ATS, Reach for a demo today