When you look at the job search function of your ATS are you immediately baffled by its presentation? The layout, wildly unintuitive, is more like a long form job application than a search engine, often spanning half the page in options with no clear delineations of function.
Even your recruiters search for their own postings by the requisition number. If few ever attempt to go through the search process to find the req because of the confusing process, how do you expect a candidate to succeed with it?
The job seeker entering your ATS to search for a job is untrained in its use. As mentioned, there is no intuitive design to the thing.
And this leads to a lot time spent in searching for a job than applying for a job. Most candidates today are tuned in to fast results. And if they can’t find what they are looking for quickly, they will abandon the search.
Most ATS code base is outdated. The functionality hasn’t been updated in the decade or more of its existence. And that means its performance has become slow and unwieldy with newer technologies, like mobile.
Having an accurate and agile search function with speedy results that are clearly presented is important to retaining the attention of candidates searching for your jobs.
How Candidates Search and How To Cater to Them
In our research we’ve discovered three main ways candidates prefer to search for jobs.
1. The majority of candidates already know where they want to work and what job class they are suited for. And that’s how this group of job seekers prefers to run their search.
So offer a clearly marked search feature that lets them choose a preferred region and a preferred job class.
When it comes to this type of search, speed is important. You want the search to facilitate the process as quickly as possible so that job descriptions can be read and applications completed.
To ensure this process is agile it helps to offer the number of availabilities beside the job class so the individual doesn’t waste time in the results page looking for something that isn’t there.
Moreover, if zero openings are available, don’t bother listing the job class in the selection. This gives the candidate a quick glance at what you offer without having to spend a tremendous amount of time in the process.
2. The second most used option in our research included a map search. It works similar to the search by region function but gives the candidate a visual representation to where your jobs are.
Again using clear identifiers to delineate the map search, the candidate should be able to select a job class which will then load a visual map where those jobs are available.
Like the region search feature, only those areas with jobs available will be highlighted for candidates with the number of jobs shown.
It’s a beautiful way to add engagement to your otherwise dull and clunky ATS search.
3. Finally, the third and least used search feature is keyword search. This is the old standard for which your ATS is known to be wildly inaccurate.
I won’t go into details as to why there are inaccuracies because the reasons are manifold. But whether the reliability is an issue for candidates or not, they generally opt for the other two searches nine times out of ten.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t offer keyword search. After all, you don’t want to exclude that ten percent that does use it.
How Do You Offer These Features Using Your Current ATS?
You’ve seen these great features that would certainly enhance the candidate experience on your ATS, but your current system doesn’t provide customization of the search function. How do you offer these features to users?
With an inexpensive overlay that integrates with your ATS.
By incorporating a custom job search with your existing site architecture while integrating with your ATS, you can provide all these wonderful options to job seekers looking for your jobs and give them an experience they will never suspect to be an ATS.
We offer this kind of functionality with RightJobNow Search. Plus our search has even more goodies to offer, like filtered searches and scrolling results so candidates don’t have to go through page after page of listings.
If you’d like to read more about this, visit RightJobNow Search on our products page.
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