Boost Employee Growth: How ATS Supports Internal Mobility Programs
With more and more employers turning to Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to help boost the intake of external candidates, many businesses are realizing that the same systems are well-poised to support internal candidates too.
This is greatly beneficial to businesses that are keen to reduce recruitment costs, retain and build employee knowledge, implement modern hiring strategies, and foster a positive upward mobility culture. ✅
5 Ways an ATS Can Support Internal Mobility Programs
ATS carries a wide array of benefits for businesses looking to boost their internal recruitment, from communication improvements to candidate analysis.
Here we will take a look at some of the most significant features for businesses that are looking to realize their internal mobility strategy. 💡
1.Communication and Internal Advertisement Benefits
The first set of benefits that ATS carries for internal recruitment programs are sophisticated communication features that enable both employers and candidates to keep up to date with proceedings and ensure internal applications progress smoothly.
ATS enables employers to effectively announce new job listings to employees, meaning that opportunities for internal mobility are highlighted to employees looking to progress with their career paths.
Candidates for these openings will also benefit from interview scheduling features, allowing them to easily structure interviews around the working day using enterprise web conferencing.
Candidates are also able to make use of the open communication lanes with management teams in order to get information on job responsibilities and the structuring of teams.
The combination of sleek communication, opportunities for open discussion, and powerful internal advertisement tools means that ATS can ensure that the application process goes as smoothly as possible for managers and candidates alike.
By supporting candidates through the internal recruitment process and keeping them in the loop, businesses can hope to encourage employees to look to internal mobility programs when thinking about advancing their careers.
2.Resume Parsing
Another benefit of ATS for internal recruitment is resume parsing, accounting for a significant portion of the administration required of a given talent acquisition team when looking to fill positions.
An ATS can pull contact information, qualifications, work experience, and more from candidate resumes to support internal hiring.
By cutting down on administration time, managers can focus on the aspects of the recruitment process that really matter to better manage role mobility and job openings.
3. Candidate Screening
ATS also brings a host of benefits to businesses when it comes to screening and highlighting the most impressive candidates.
Managers can input a set of criteria which the ATS will then look to implement – this means that the system will rank candidates based upon these customizable criteria such as adherence to top leadership values, helping managers to make these important internal hiring decisions.
Candidates can also be filtered according to these specific criteria, meaning that managers can be confident that they won’t spend too much time filtering through candidates who lack specific skills or experience.
By reducing the amount of time spent on the recruitment process, ATS is able to give a boost to recruitment metrics such as time to hire and cost per hire.
The rankings that the ATS provides are also useful for providing unsuccessful internal applicants feedback on how to improve their application. The data compiled on these candidates provides insight that unsuccessful candidates will find essential for their own personal growth.
Receiving detailed reports on areas for improvement will also help encourage internal applicants not to give up on applying for internal job listings and help foster a culture of internal mobility in the business.
It is extremely important to ensure that unsuccessful applicants feel supported and encouraged, otherwise they will be dissuaded from applying for internal job offers in the future.
By embracing the screening abilities of ATS, managers will find that they are well-positioned to provide detailed feedback to all internal candidates.
4. Candidate Management
Candidate management features are another positive asset that an ATS can bring to the table.
As well as further aiding managers to make decisions by organizing candidate profiles and information into accessible data pools, candidate management capabilities enable managers to progress candidates through the various stages of the recruitment process via handy dashboards.
An ATS is also useful for providing an AI meeting summary for interviews, something that enables managers to go back and review all of their interviews with candidates to help make informed decisions.
5. Recruitment Metric Analysis
One of the most important benefits that an ATS can provide is the ability to provide comprehensive metrics for essential recruitment KPIs that enable managers to view the performance of internal mobility programs.
By studying these metrics, managers can get a good idea of the areas in which they need to improve so that they can get internal recruitment schemes firing on all cylinders.
Metrics such as cost per hire, time to hire, comparisons with diversity indexes, and candidate conversion rates enable recruitment managers to focus on particular aspects of the process so that they can be continually improved.
These metrics are also essential for tracking the successes of changes as they are implemented, providing live data on recruitment outcomes.
This feature means that an ATS is not only useful for providing an initial boost to internal recruitment but it also ensures that recruitment managers have the tools that enable them to keep reinforcing the process in the long term.
In short, an ATS is able to make itself continually relevant, enabling businesses to structure their internal recruitment programs around the software in order to adopt a data-driven approach.
How to Further Support Internal Mobility Programs
Now that we have analyzed some of the primary benefits of an ATS for internal recruitment programs, it’s time to look at some of the actions that businesses can take to further support internal recruitment alongside an ATS. ✅
It is essential that businesses ensure that they are fostering the right kind of environment if they want their internal recruitment programs to flourish, and these tips will help businesses do precisely that.
Emphasize the Benefits of Internal Recruitment to Management Figures
Getting managers on board with internal recruitment drives can prove, make, or break many internal recruitment programs.
At the end of the day, if managers aren’t looking to prioritize internal recruitment, then businesses will find it hard to make a transition.
This is not only due to the fact that in large businesses, lower-level managers make many of the decisions surrounding recruitment but also because lower-level managers need to be trained so that they can make the best use of an ATS to boost internal recruitment.
The responsibility for reminding employees that employers are keen to promote internal recruitment also falls to team leaders and lower-level managers, so they are an essential link in the communication lines for employers.
Managers also have the necessary experience to be able to recommend employees for a given position, meaning that they are best placed to interact with ATS and make recruitment decisions.
Since they are essential to the implementation, promotion, and decision-making processes of internal recruitment processes, employers need to do all they can to provide managers with all of the information and support that they need to fully realize internal recruitment program goals and milestones.
Normalizing Internal Recruitment
Company culture is also crucial in the fostering of a successful internal recruitment system.
Businesses that fail to normalize internal recruitment will find it difficult to get their internal recruitment programs off the ground – these businesses will often find that internal recruitment becomes both rare and sporadic, meaning that it can be difficult to refine processes and measure the success of new internal recruitment policies and criteria.
Businesses that are looking to build a culture of internal recruitment can count on an ATS to support this process by utilizing the communication and job listing benefits mentioned above.
By encouraging employees to use ATS digital customer support tools to get in contact with team leaders and department managers regarding potential job switches or promotions, businesses can begin to create an open climate in which employees feel confident about reaching out and discussing open positions and career advancement with their peers.
This normalizes internal recruitment and boosts employee satisfaction in the process.
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Another important aspect of establishing an internal recruitment program is encouraging employees to make use of both lateral and vertical mobility.
Businesses can encourage employee retention within the business by encouraging employees who are looking for something different to consider applying to a position in a different department on the same pay scale as their current role.
The encouragement of lateral movement can also help to encourage a positive work culture around internal mobility.
Businesses that only encourage vertical mobility can fall into the trap of accidentally creating a burnout culture, where employees see their mental health decline due to pushing themselves too hard in order to secure a promotion.
By encouraging lateral mobility as well as vertical mobility, businesses can hope to encourage a healthier culture – one that supports ambitious employees on their way up the career ladder, as well as employees who are comfortable on their current payscale and simply want a change of scenery or a role that makes them feel happier and more fulfilled.
It is through this combination of lateral and vertical mobility that managers can create internal opportunities that encourage employees to drive productivity and set ambitious personal goals whilst also stemming hits to the retention rate caused by burnout.
The last tip for supporting internal recruitment relates to creating the conditions in the business that allow employees to build their skill sets and gain the knowledge necessary to propel them through the business.
This is achieved by enabling employees to get access to the training courses which will allow them to take these next steps.
Providing training in this way is not only crucial for building expertise amongst employees, but it also helps to create a positive culture in the workplace.
The availability of training opportunities signals the commitment of a given business to their employees. If employees are confident that your business is prepared to invest in them, then they are much more likely to consider investing their future into the business.
Furthermore, by providing opportunities for training, managers can be confident that they are helping to develop first-rate candidates who can fill specific roles within the business.
This can greatly help with metrics such as time to fill, as if a business receives notice that an employee in an important role is set to retire, for example, they can begin to enroll candidates in courses that will help them bridge skill gaps.
For example, a digital support business with outgoing employees could begin training internal candidates early to ensure quality assurance for call centers.
When all of these benefits are considered alongside one another, it becomes clear that training opportunities provide clear benefits to a business that wants to empower its employees, generate an impressive work culture, run efficiently, and create a thriving internal mobility program.
Takeaway💡
Overall, it is clear that an ATS can provide critical support to internal recruitment schemes, enabling businesses to take a data-driven approach and operate with great speed, planning, and efficiency.
An ATS provides the bedrock upon which great internal recruitment programs are built, providing both the tools to ensure a smooth process and the data to help encourage impressive results.
An ATS can also help foster a healthy company culture surrounding internal recruitment by opening communication channels and allowing employees to reach out to managers and team leaders so that they properly prepare themselves for the application process.
When paired with an openness to lateral mobility, increased opportunities for employee training, the normalization of internal recruitment, and enthusiastic managers, an ATS becomes a truly powerful tool that allows businesses to take their internal recruitment to the next level.
By implementing these tips, businesses can begin to craft a working environment where employees feel confident that if they apply themselves and work hard then they’ll have a fulfilling career – something any employer would be proud of. ⭐
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ATS carries a wide array of benefits for businesses looking to boost their internal recruitment, from communication improvements to candidate analysis. Here we will take a look at some of the most significant features for businesses that are looking to realize their internal mobility strategy. 💡
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