With 10.9 million open jobs in the U.S., employers are frenzied to hire for top talent; however, built-in hiring systems could be causing them to miss out on highly qualified candidates from under their noses.
Advertising jobs online is now the default route many employers use to recruit workers, but in order to streamline the hiring process, they utilize Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to automatically filter out job applicants who are not qualified for the role. ATS software programs typically use keyword-matching algorithms to see if a job applicant’s resume mirrors the words in the job description. Though these systems are highly effective in showcasing resumes that are relevant to the job, it has the tendency to overlook job applicants who could also be qualified but are just missing certain keywords in their resumes.
According to an extensive study on Hidden Workers conducted by Harvard Business School, 90% of the 2,250 employers surveyed said they use an ATS to initially filter or rank middle to high-skilled candidates.
Though they are confident in the effectiveness of using these talent-sifting software, nearly nine out of 10 said they know it has the tendency to prevent them from seeing other hirable candidates.
Problem #1: The longer and more complicated the job description, the more people get excluded by the ATS.
- 88% of employers who participated in the survey believed high-skilled candidates were being filtered out because they didn’t meet all of the criteria listed in the job description.
- On the job applicant’s side, 84% would find the application phase difficult; then as many as 60% would abandon the application process due to its complexity and length.
Problem #2: The ATS would eliminate job applications with wide employment gap
- ATS often eliminated applications with employment gaps. This algorithm was designed based on the predisposition that people who are actively employed are more capable of filling the role successfully.Â
- According to Harvard, this oversight tends to cut off huge swaths of the population such as veterans, working mothers, immigrants, caregivers, military spouses, people who have some college coursework but never finished their degree, or those who have been laid off due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.Â
Though cumbersome, a simple solution to these issues is to bring a human touch to balance the filtration methods these ATS use to eliminate potential candidates. Actively reading each resume and interviewing job applicants to review their qualifications, work history, education and possible professional setbacks could be the necessary step to make an eliminated job applicant the next hire.Â
The need to adopt this method may not be applicable to all jobs, however, they should be utilized for high-skilled, hard-to-fill positions such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, etc.
Bringing in a staffing partner with expertise in sourcing and recruiting for highly technical professionals can take away the heavy lifting of vetting individual candidates.
Why miss out on qualified candidates screened to meet your specific requirements and culture? To see if SoloPoint is the right partner for you, call us today at (408)246-5945.