Some say leadership is an art. Some say leadership is a science. But in project management, great leadership is the engine that drives results within a remote working team.

That’s because remote project management requires a different mindset. You need to be motivated, focused and self-disciplined to manage a remote team. And as the great Orrin Woodward once said, “A leader must inspire or his team will expire.”

But managing a remote team can be a tricky business, especially when doing it from home.

It’s easy to pop down to the kitchen to prepare a cup of coffee and get distracted by the sweet pancakes aroma from your neighbor’s house, only to find yourself whisking the flour. Before you know it, you’ve missed your 9.00 am video meeting, but made some killer pancakes.

So how do you manage remote teams effectively? How do you create a positive working environment? What about performance, how do you ensure your teams are motivated and not slacking off? In this post, you’ll learn how to be a great PM when managing a remote team.

Essential Skills Every Project Manager of a Remote Working Team Needs

To effectively manage a remote team, there are some skills you need that will help you get the job done faster, and with less effort. Here are the 6 operational skills every remote project manager must-have.

•          Stellar communication skills
•          Team management skills (leadership)
•          Negotiation skills
•          Personal organization skills
•          Contract management
•          Meetings management

Operational skills will help a project manager to lead the team and maintain a good relationship with other parties such as suppliers.

In addition to operational skills, a remote project manager needs to have some technical skills, such as risk management and cost management skills to help them execute projects as planned without incurring losses.

Technical skills are gained through education and you may need to pursue an advanced degree or the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. This page shows a list of and detailed reviews of the top PMP preparation courses that can help you pass the certification exam.

How to Manage Remote Project Teams Effectively

To be a great project manager, skills alone are not enough, especially when managing a virtual team. You’ll need time, strategy, and commitment. Here are 5 golden tips to help you manage remote teams effectively.

1. Move Beyond the Role Matrix

Before diving straight into a project, make sure to clearly define the roles of each project member. Every team member should understand the goals and objectives of the project, even if they’re only involved in a small part of it.

But defining the roles and responsibilities isn’t enough.

You’ll need to move beyond the role matrix and ensure every team member is on board and are satisfied with the assigned task as well as the company’s culture.

This may call for you to have preliminary meetings from time to time and a one-on-one call with each team member. Hear their thoughts about the project, establish a timeline that’s favorable to all, and discuss the roles and project expectations in detail. This gives the team members a clear picture of the project and the importance of their roles.

2. Promote Frequent Communication

In a remote work environment, with team members potentially located in different time zones, frequent communication is essential—it helps to bring the team together. 

One of the first things every project manager should do, especially when managing large teams is to select a communication platform that every team can easily use to collaborate and stay informed of the project updates and timelines.

Some popular communication tools ideal for remote project management include Slack, Zoom, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Office 365, and Slack for Business. Project managers should also use instant messaging and one-on-one calls to reach out to team members. This can come in handy when some individuals are located in remote areas with no internet access.

3. Be Open to Feedback

Being open to all feedback is vital, as it promotes a conducive team environment ideal for delivering results.

Feedback clarifies expectations, helps team members to build trust in their leaders, and provide more avenues to simplify the processes and improve the project details.

The key is to analyze all the feedback and give a response to the team, either individually or during the regular meetings. If you act defensively or ignore the feedback, you’ll not only lose their trust but also create communication boundaries—a recipe for poor productivity and project failures.

4.  Find Ways to Motivate Them

Want your remote working team to be more productive? Devise ways to motivate them and make them appreciate their roles. A 2015 Social Market Foundation (SMF) survey found that happy and motivated employees are up to 20% more productive than unhappy employees.

But how do you motivate a group of people located in different countries and time zones?

Well, first you need to create a healthy atmosphere for them to thrive. The other thing you can do is to make it part of the company culture to celebrate successes and recognize individuals who perform exceptionally.

Even if it’s just a Slack shout out, it makes the team feel good and appreciate the fact that their efforts are recognized and admired. Good monetary compensation and performance rewards can also go a long way in helping the team feel valued.

5. Get to Know Your Remoting Working Team on an Individual Level

Constant interaction makes your team feel they are not just another cog in the machine.

Get to know your team on a personal level. What do they do when not working for you? Where do they hang out? What are their interests? Such knowledge can help you implement a reward program and give your team tasks that best fit them

Besides, research has shown that individual recognition helps people to feel appreciated, which can improve their commitment to your business.

Team members who feel appreciated can go the extra mile to provide exceptional services and ensure your business thrives. If possible, plan to meet in person. If geographical barriers exist, make sure to hold regular meetings and conference calls with each member.

We hope these tips will help you become a better project manager, especially when managing a remote team.

Best Free Applicant Tracking System for Remote Working Teams

Ready to try Recruiteze? Our applicant tracking system software is a great way to make sure you’re able to acknowledge remote working team applicants, offer them the next steps in the overall hiring process, and list job ads on important job boards and streamline your entire operation with just one software. No more countless spreadsheets and scattered information to keep up with! Recruiteze keeps everything you need at the touch of a button!

You’ll be able to ensure your recruiting process is easy to use, valuable, and efficient. You won’t need to worry about storing valuable information needed to hire new employees. Recruiteze helps you build a candidate database, keep notes, and communicate with active and inactive applicants. You’ll be able to eliminate endless spreadsheets full of notes and information by adding your feedback and applicant information into the ATS. It will be housed in one place that is easily accessible and useful.

In addition, you’ll be able to send out personalized emails to each candidate to help save time and effort. Communication with applicants won’t fall to the wayside and you’ll be gaining a great way to keep the applicant engaged and informed.

There are tons of benefits you can gain from trusting our remote working team applicant tracking system! Recruiteze will help your team save time and money, become more organized and streamlined, and help you track applicants without worrying about top talent falling through the cracks.

 Let’s face it! One of the main aims of every ATS is to offer a confusion-free interface to the HR’s working on it and great application experience for the applicants. Believe it or not, somewhere down the lane user adoption has become a prime aspect for an ATS success. The modern-day applicant tracking systems are built keeping users in mind and focus primarily on enhancing the user experience by providing a user-friendly and engaging interface and functionality. Here are a few key attributes that should be given priority so as to increase user adoption of ATS for small businesses.

1. A User-friendly ATS interface

The ATS available in the market often come over-loaded with features that may overwhelm the recruiters. But the harsh truth is that such ATSs are inimical which turns out to be the biggest blip for a small business.

A recruiting software having an intuitive interface is the need of the day. Practically, no one has time for long training hours in today’s time. A user-friendly interface is well engaging and self-explanatory. The hiring teams and the candidates do not require any technical knowledge to work on the ATS. Here are a few ways to determine the intuitiveness of an ATS. An ATS is good to buy if the users:

·        can learn and understand its functionality without guidance or much training.

·        may freely explore the features without fear of ATS crashing.

·        feel satisfied and engaged while using the system.

 Planning to buy a new ATS, click here to try a demo version for free!

 The small businesses don’t really bother about technology, what matters to them is the functionality offered by ATS in terms of reducing their workload. It’s a fact that a friendly interface means less confusion and lesser hours of training. Therefore, more and more users are willing to use it.

2.     Great Customer Support

Helpful, polite and quick customer support is essential to deal with the tech troubles faced by the users. The users can browse the internet for reviews, testimonials and other feedback comments on social media and search engines. This gives a fair idea regarding the functionality and features of the ATS. Another way is to sign up for a free trial version. This helps the users to get a crisp and clear picture regarding the working of the ATS.   

3.     Apply the 80/20 Rule to Increase User Adoption of the ATS

Any software that achieves its goal without requiring hours of training and getting distracted, would yield maximum ROI (return on investment). As per the 80/20 rule, 20% of the activities are responsible for 80% of the output. So, an ATS that performs 80% of the company’s work should be chosen. It includes creating a great user experience so as to promote user adoption.

4. Must-Have ATS Features

An ideal Applicant tracking system helps the recruiting teams to focus more on hiring processes and less on the monotonous administrative tasks. Here are some of the must-have features of an ATS which are essential in imparting a killer user experience.

·        Customizable and ready to use email templates offer an effective way to boost candidate experience. Multiple candidates can be notified with a single click.

·        A diverse range of customizable job description templates makes the job of a recruiter easy.

·        Prodigious pipelines and effective scheduling.

·        Seamless integration with the calendar.

·        Leverage every recruitment activity and hiring workflow.

·        Searchable candidate database.

·        Streamlined candidate management.

The ATS should be designed in such a way that it needs fewer clicks for every task such as reading the resume, rejecting candidates, leaving comments, etc. Also, the candidate application should be designed in such a manner that it is able to parse everything from the resume rather than taking every input from the candidate.

5. Want to Increase the User Adoption of ATS? Integrate with your Existing HR Suite

The ATS should be seamlessly integrated with the company’s HR suite. There is no point in having two different databases that are totally out of sync. An ATS should offer a single point of communication between all HR processes and the HR person.

The applicant tracking system should integrate well with every HR tool, platform, online job board, email system, employee database, etc. The ATS vendors provide several APIs to support every hiring requirement of the small business. Also, if not available, the vendor can be requested to build the customizations as per the needs.  

Some points to ponder. All the integrations should

•  Allow the employees to continue using their existing tools along with the ATS such as online job boards, social media platforms.
•  Boost the effectiveness and efficiency of ATS as well as existing tools.
•  Automatically sync the data from either software (ATS and the existing one). 
•  Be done with an aim to improve the overall hiring processes.

 6.     Reporting Metrics and Statistics

It is very important to gauge the recruiting metrics as they play a quintessential role in improving and evaluating the hiring efforts made by the business. To boost user adoption, the ATS should be able to generate reports automatically which helps to save a lot of recruiter’s time. A deeper analysis into some reports such as time to hire, productivity, source of hire, hiring velocity, etc may help recruiters take desired actions to take the recruiting to the next level.

 7.     Amazing Revamping Potential

A good ATS helps in understanding the core functionality of the recruiting process and how it can be improved. By analyzing the metrics, the recruiters can easily revamp the entire hiring process. The HR managers can work upon the areas where they are failing or need improvement. An ideal ATS software should have a phenomenal revamping potential for all the recruitment efforts made by the company.

The users today are not concerned about one damn good feature but the thing that counts is a damn good user-experience. An ATS that requires minimum to zero training is the one that is mostly adopted by the users. This in turns indicates an intuitive user-interface.

An ATS is always purchased on the basis of usability of the features and not for loading a plethora of unusable features. Having the right ATS onboard makes the life of employees easier and helps them in hiring great allegiant employees for the business.

Free Applicant Tracking Software

Looking for an ideal ATS solution that streamlines and automates your daily recruiting tasks? The next generation of hiring teams loves to use Recruiteze. Have you tried?

This free online applicant tracking system (ATS) is an amazing system that can help you become more effective, productive, and streamlined, without having to worry about the day-to-day hassle of keeping track of your recruits on a never-ending spreadsheet.

Recruiteze is offering a free 15 day trial of any of their memberships and paid packages start at only $10 per month with unlimited support, users, and more. Contact for more information.

Congratulations on bringing new ATS onboard. Things have become much easier and faster but by how much? 

For that, recruiters need to calculate hiring costs before and after ATS implementation. Have a look at some of the metrics which will help you calculate ROI of an ATS for small business.

Determine Your Hiring Costs

To begin, the first step for calculating hiring costs is to know the number of actual hires. This is done by taking a product of your number of employees currently working with you and your turnover rate. This figure is very essential in case the hiring managers are anticipating to add some new roles. To calculate the current hiring cost, you need to calculate the average cost per hire. Now, multiply these two figures to get the exact hiring cost.

Time Savings by Using ATS

The small companies that are hiring in-house have their own ATS comprising of messy spreadsheets and long email chains. A huge time and energy of HR managers and recruiters get wasted. 

Let’s calculate ROI with an example. Say, one technical manager, two HR members, and one CEO are involved in every hire. HR Team spends approximately 30 hours in recruiting per week. Suppose the market rate is $20/hour. Per week rate pre-ATS is

30 hours * $20 per hour= $600 per week

With ATS, we can say the cost per week is $37 but the time spent reduces to 20 hours. That equals

20 hours * $ 20 per hour +$37 (ATS)= $437 per week

The company can easily reduce at least 30% of the total amount and time to hire. 

Enjoy a 15 days free trial of the Applicant Tracking System to get an exact picture.

Cost of a Bad Hire

An ATS undoubtedly helps recruiters to customize the job descriptions, enhance employer branding and get acquainted with passive and active recruiting strategies that help to bring in the top talent. But, even if we consider the worst-case scenario, the company still saves a lot of money by making better hires than following the archaic system. 

The cost of a bad hire depends upon his seniority level, rank, and cost of the ATS which a company is using to find the substitute. It’s no big deal that a recruiter may have taken a bad call of hiring an employee under pressure. But with an efficient ATS, the HR team can review the candidates all-together and get an accurate grasp of the applicant’s true personality. An ideal ATS allows the recruiters to cross-check with references that the person being hired is the same as depicted on the resume.  

Track Labour Hours 

No matter whether the recruitment is done by a third party or in-house, there are recruitment activities such as job postings, sifting through resumes and other hiring activities that are bound to be done by employees. You can easily calculate ROI weekly, monthly and annually on these monotonous activities which could have been easily automated using ATS.

Assess Recruitment Agency Costs

Most of the small businesses outsource their hiring activities to third party professionals. The recruitment agency cost can easily be calculated by multiplying the average placement fee (for each hired employee) and the total number of hires placed by that particular recruitment agency or staffing firm.  On average, after integrating ATS with the HR suite, the small businesses can save a lot more as their reliance on recruitment agency is drastically reduced.

Market Research

It is always better to conduct a market analysis to understand how much savings will be made on every recruitment aspect. The recruiters should look out for similar companies that have implemented ATS. Check out their profits, major turnovers and other recruitment costs to get a fair analysis of ROI estimation. 

Estimate Direct Savings

To get a tentative ROI figure, add up the hiring cost, recruitment labor cost, recruitment agency cost. Now subtract the figure received by market research. The result is not the profit but an estimated cost that can be used to determine ATS cost.  This is just an estimated ROI and may or may not be exactly the same as the actual one. These are all rough estimates just to get the ball rolling. 

Evaluate Indirect or Intangible Benefits

Apart from ROI, there are many indirect benefits of acquiring an ATS. An applicant tracking system significantly improves employee retention figures, raises the company’s hiring standards, increase productivity by delivering great hires, etc. Recruiting software eventually frees up labor hours which can be used by the recruiters for other productive tasks such as marketing and revenue generation. 

Cost of Marketing and Advertising

We are in a job seeker’s market and the competition is getting steeper and fierce every moment. With the advent of social media, the recruiters feel the constant pressure of staying in front of the candidates.

By building talent pools using Applicant Tracking System, the companies can save tons of dollars in job marketing and recruitment advertising. Having a great talent pool will mean faster filling of roles. ATS allows the recruiters to connect with the social media platforms easily, thereby, enabling them to share their open positions. This ultimately leads to a decrease in paid job ads and a significant boost in high-quality applications. 

It is evident that an ATS is worth the investment and guarantees great ROI over the years. The ATS will easily pay off for itself within a year of implementation. 

Recruiteze has one of the most popular and free applicant tracking systems in the e-world. This system is a great way to make sure you’re able to acknowledge applicants, offer them next steps in the overall hiring process, list job ads on important job boards, and streamline your entire operation with just one software. No more countless spreadsheets and scattered information to keep up with! Recruiteze keeps everything you need at the touch of a button.

Recruiteze offers a cloud option with our non free applicant tracking system now that can be a great way to keep up with data, software, and anything you need, no matter where you are! You just need an internet connection and you’re ready to use our system. There’s no longer a need to have a server or system administrators that manage and operate software or servers. You can house all data in the ATS cloud and access it anytime, anywhere.

There are tons of benefits you can gain from trusting our recruitment software! Recruiteze will help your small business save time and money, become more organized and streamlined, and help you track applicants without worrying about top talent falling through the cracks. Be sure to try it for free if you haven’t used an ATS for small business recruiting and hiring!

As your small business grows, you may feel like expanding your Human Resources Team or outsourcing the recruitment business to another company. But when it comes to hiring for top Management, you cannot fully rely on a Human Resource team. Now what you need is a  dedicated recruitment team which will cherry-pick exceptional talent for your company. You just need to tell them the desired qualification and other professional requirements regarding the job post. Rest of the work from hunting till on-boarding the employee is taken care of by the dedicated recruitment team. 

But everything that shines is not gold!

Things may look good but there are chances that your dedicated recruitment team may not understand your business goals and may end up hiring a mismatch. 

Let’s have a look at the benefits and limitations of a dedicated recruitment team and how an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) acts as a game-changer.

Benefits of a Dedicated Recruitment Team

1. Relieving Burden

Gradually as your startup or small business grows you keep on adding new employees and locations. Eventually, it becomes really difficult to micromanage every aspect of the business at the base level. Having a dedicated recruitment team helps you relive the extra burden of time-consuming activities such as recruitment and implementing policies. This saves a lot of time which can be spent in other fruitful activities such as marketing, business expansion, and promotion which will help in increasing ROI and capturing a bigger market share. 

2.      Maintaining Compliance

The professional recruiters are very talented and have expertise in every area related to compensation laws, labor laws, and other compliance laws. They ensure that the recruiting completely adheres to all rules and regulations set by the government or other law-making bodies. This helps the small business to avoid breaking any laws by the owner even by mistake. The dedicated recruiting team avoids undue fines and other possible lawsuits. Thus, the recruiters help the organization to maintain a good reputation for the business.

3. Technical Expertise

A recruitment team comprises of well seasoned recruiting professionals. Their skillset is at par with any in-house HR. They have a good experience which helps them to judge the candidate better according to his qualifications, body language, and experience.   A dedicated team knows what is expected by the employee, candidate, and the market.  

4. Global Reach

It makes the recruiters fight tooth and nail when it comes to finding quality candidates for top management positions. The main reason is that candidates are in top management positions are usually not actively seeking any job opportunity. The recruitment team, therefore, has a major task i.e. to find them and ask them if they are interested. These professional head-hunters have an enormous database that helps to find even the passive candidates easily. 

5. Cost-Efficient

Talking about small companies or startups, they don’t have enough funds to have an internal recruitment team of their own. On the same hand, recruiting is an important aspect of the business which cannot be neglected. So, small businesses often hire dedicated recruitment teams on a project basis or part-time. This eventually saves a lot of the organization’s capital.

  Limitations of a Dedicated Recruitment Team

1. Relinquishing Control

It may happen that you need to relinquish your control regarding various aspects of business operations. Now you have “other individuals” who make the hiring decisions even for the top-level management. It may happen that the recruitment team may hire a potentially good employee but he may fail to get accustomed to the company culture.

2.     Time, Money and Effort

For any startup or small business, you need time, money and strenuous efforts to build a dedicated recruitment team. You have to expand your team along with your business and that is again an additional cost. That’s a major reason why most of the small businesses prefer to have the complete hiring process outsourced. 

3.     Time-consuming

Inevitably, recruitment is a time-consuming activity. For a single job-post, it may take up to a month to fill the vacant position. Even if there is an urgent opening, the recruitment team can’t do anything to fill that position immediately.  Most of the recruiters are busy in resume sifting for shortlisting ideal candidates for interviews. This hardly leaves quality time for the recruiters to understand the candidate and his needs as well.

4.     Lack of Coordination

It may happen that no two recruiters come to terms. This adversely affects the quality of hire. If more than two recruiters are involved in any recruiting activity, there are chances that there is a lack of communication and coordination. The exact status of the candidature gets lost and no one is able to track the candidate’s progress.    

5.     Deteriorating Quality of Hire

As there is a lot of manual work involved such as reverting to candidates, sending notifications, scheduling interviews, formatting resumes, etc, the recruiters aren’t left with a good amount of time for the interviews. Moreover, there is an increased risk of bad candidate experience consequently affecting the employer’s brand.   

The limitations of a dedicated recruitment team dominate more than its benefits. Here is where an applicant tracking system comes to play. Not only it automates the time-consuming recruitment tasks but improves the candidate as well as the application experience.

Have a look at some of the awe-inspiring advantages which make the life of a recruiter, a beautiful bliss.

Read More:An ATS for Small Business? Yes, You Need One Too

Advantages of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

1.     Employer and Employee Flexibility

An ATS automates and accelerates the hiring process multi-folds. It allows the candidates to directly apply through their social profiles, thereby boosting the application experience. Talent acquisition software allows the candidates to submit their resumes without navigating to the company’s career page or website. The entire application process can be completed on a mobile device as well and that too, with instant acknowledgment emails.  

2. Time Efficient

Every single activity related to recruitment gets automated such as sending emails, scheduling interviews, notifications, etc. Time-to-hire is significantly reduced. Moreover, ATS stores every profile in its database. A single search query on the database will give you a list of all the most suitable resumes in just a mouse click. 

3. Cost-Effective

An ATS helps the recruiters to cut back the cost incurred per hire as all the tedious tasks are automated.  Thus, it makes the overall recruitment process more cost-effective and productive by reducing recruitment expenditures.

4. Time Efficient

Talent acquisition software sends timely acknowledgment emails, notification after every interview stage and offers an easy onboarding experience to the candidates. This incredibly boosts the candidate experience.  

5. Better Quality Candidates

Our free applicant tracking system is a great way to make sure you’re able to acknowledge applicants, offer them next steps in the overall hiring process, list job ads on important job boards, and streamline your entire operation with just one software. No more countless spreadsheets and scattered information to keep up with! Recruiteze keeps everything you need at the touch of a button.

Check out more features here

The applicant tracking system is the need of the hour and a much-needed tool to capture the best talent in the market for every small to medium business. An ATS plays a crucial role in your company’s longevity and sustainability in this competitive world.

Have you tried yet? 

Enjoy 15 days free trial right now. 

The biggest concern for every organization in this globalized economy is to retain and recruit top talent. As more and more companies are realizing the importance of equal gender representation, recruiting, retaining and support working women is a matter of deep perturbance.

Many corporate giants such as Apple and Facebook have taken some surprising and praiseworthy decisions to attract more women workforce in their teams and have also offered a handsome pay hike for their female employees.  

Following similar lines, many companies have started working in the same direction and are working tooth and nail to retain the expertise and talent of top women in their organizations. One basic thing that every company strives to achieve is to build a good environment that subsequently acts as a catalyst in attracting and retaining top women talent.

Here are a few prodigious ways to support working women in your organization. Check them out.

1. Support Working Women by Offering Flexible Schedules

The organizations should solely focus on the performance of the employees rather than counting the unproductive desk hours. If the employee is giving results then it doesn’t matter how they are achieving the results. Employers should offer flexible schedules or work from home opportunities. The schedules should be truly flexible. For example, A schedule of 10 to 6 rather than 9 to 5 is something that cannot be counted as flexible. Offering truly flexible work hours means to allow the employees to adjust their work timings- allowing them to strike a balance between sick parents, school plays, sick children, etc and work.

Implementing flexible schedules will make the female employees feel more satisfied and valuable for the company and keep their career paths intact and geared towards leadership positions. 

2. Focus on Advancement

The working women today expect good advancements and opportunities from their careers. If they are not satisfied with their growth or development in the company, they prefer changing jobs.

Establishing a formal employee career progression graph/ plan by the company would help to attract, retain and support working women. This will not only boost female employees’ allegiance but also keep them motivated and committed.

3. Want to support working women? Put Women in Leadership Positions!

With men dominating the company C-suit entirely, women feel that climbing the corporate ladder is not a worthwhile endeavor. It has been proved that gender diversity reaps better 

Business profits. The companies nowadays are more serious into recruiting a mixed bag of talented employees and ensure that the leadership team includes talented and strong female leaders as well. 

It is the responsibility of the top management to unleash the leadership potential of women and work hard to promote, develop and sponsor them. 

4. Reexamine Outdated Policies

The organization and the HR members should keep reassessing their policies and ensure that all policies stands the same and are not gender-biased. All the policies such as professional development, career progression, leadership advancement, work flexibility, etc should be designed to put employees first and not the gender. This unique way will surely enhance the company’s brand power as well as help employers attract the best of talents both men and women from the markets. 

5. Equal Pay

Believe it or not, the wage gap still prevails and is one of the bitter realities of the world. Still, a woman earns 80 cents if a man earns one dollar. If an organization is following pay equality, it will not lose talented women to their competitor. Make sure that the organization follows and supports a policy of transparency.

6. Vigilant about Excising Sexism 

There are many companies that air podcasts, videos and publish big articles about discrimination against women at workplaces. They tend to be idealists in publishing and speaking so. But the need of the hour is to implement these documented policies and create a bias-free culture. Take a vigilant action against the culprits who commit the heinous crime of berating women. 

The management and the leadership department must exclude gender bias in every form of the workplace. 

An Applicant Tracking System helps in eliminating the unconscious bias by totally automating the resume filtering process during the recruitment.

Enjoy a 15-day trial of ATS absolutely free. 

7. Returnship Programs 

There are millions of women across the world from senior to mid-senior level, who have taken a break to raise their children or families and are now ready to get to work once again. Offering a returnship program to your past employees would be a commendable step. The organizations can also outsource the returnship placement program to consultancies or staffing agencies.  

8. A Culture of Diversity and Inclusiveness 

Most of the working women feel that they are often ignored and their talent is overlooked at workplaces. This extremely demotivates the women and therefore they tend to leave the company. Organizations should build an inclusive workplace and a bias-free culture that supports all the employees based on their performances and capabilities. Companies should strive to create such an environment that values sexual diversity not only for the sake of appearances but also for gaining a competitive edge over their competitors and other multiple perspectives. 

9. Acknowledgment of Female Success 

The women should be given due credit for their success and contribution to the company’s growth. The organizations should celebrate their success just like they celebrate the success of male employees. They should also be acknowledged for their innovative idea/s which help the companies to edge out threatening competitors. This acknowledgment will turn out to be their biggest motivation and will gear them up to contribute more towards the company’s success.

The crust of the article is that if the organizations have a great female talent then they should work hard to retain them. Organizations should try to re-assess which policies are working for them and what is not desirable. Offering competitive wages and excellent opportunities are yet another way to retain and attract the best of female talent. The employers should try to fill the gaps of leadership wherever possible to make a difference and stand unprecedented in the market. The best thing which organizations or individuals can do is respect the women and treat them with full dignity.

Free Applicant Tracking System to Recruit Working Women

Ready to recruit working women? Our free applicant tracking system is a great way to make sure you’re able to acknowledge female applicants, offer them the next steps in the overall hiring process, list job ads on important job boards, and streamline your entire operation with a few simple clicks. No more countless spreadsheets and scattered information to keep up with! Recruiteze keeps everything you need at the touch of a button.

In addition to tracking important documents, you’ll also be able to send out personalized emails to each of your female candidates. Communication with applicants won’t fall to the wayside and you’ll be gaining a great way to keep the applicant engaged and informed.

Recruiteze even offers a cloud option with our non free applicant tracking system now that can be a great way to keep up with data, software, and anything you need, no matter where you are! You just need an internet connection and you’re ready to use our system. There’s no longer a need to have a server or system administrators that manage and operate software or servers. You can house all data in the ATS cloud and access it anywhere, at anytime.

There are tons of benefits you can gain from trusting our recruitment software! Recruiteze will help you save time and money, become more organized and streamlined, and help you track applicants without worrying about top talent falling through the cracks.

Recruitment processes are getting automated globally regardless of where they are executed- in-house, staffing agency, placement and consultancy firm or any outsourced recruitment agency. The e-market is flooded with recruitment software and the technology is being upgraded at a very fast pace. The companies are left with no choice than to implement the software as they might otherwise lose on their competitors. Finding a good recruitment software is the need of the hour.

Around 80% of companies across the world hire staffing firms to get their employees on-board. Hiring through ATS or recruiting software helps the staffing firm to provide best-fit, talented and qualified candidates to the client company. 

Here are the top reasons why staffing agencies should consider recruitment software as part of their process. 

1. Acquiring Contracts, Nurturing and Tracking Clients made easy for Staffing Agencies

There is a lot of difference in the working of in-house ATS and recruitment software for staffing agencies. A recruitment software exclusively designed for recruiting firms has to deal with client acquisition, repeat business for the same client, contacts, and contracts as well along with resume sorting and formatting. The software has much to do in acquiring contracts, tracking and nurturing clients as well, just like what a CRM does for the company. 

2. Streamlines Candidate Search Process

Unlike in an in-house organization, the main focus of the staffing agency is to offer seamless coordination for recruitment. Here, the HR aims to devise the right interviewing methods to evaluate which candidate fits best with the company’s culture. But things are entirely different for staffing firms. Their prime focus is to search for the best candidates which may turn into prospective employees of the company.

A recruitment software does exactly what is required, such as maintaining the candidate database, maintaining good relationships with candidates, quicker and more diverse search options that are delivered quickly to the clients. Ideal recruitment software helps to:

• Reach out more candidates through various sources 
• Handle more volume of candidate data
• Shortlist great candidates and make perfect matches in just a blink of an eye

3.Saves cost

Most of the staffing agencies are small to midsize and it becomes an expensive affair to have a full-time recruiter(s) as the firm has to offer the employee salary along with all other benefits. A recruitment software needs an initial investment but the benefits are worth the expenditure and are instant and long-lasting. As most of the work gets automated, the firm can work on other areas such as building relationships with clients and candidates, pitching more customers, etc.

Click here to know the list of incredible marketing tips for Staffing Agencies.

4. Scrutinizing Work for the Staffing Agency

The applicant tracking system or the recruitment software automatically uploads the resumes received from various platforms such as websites, social media or job boards. After resume collection, everything starting from resume formatting to resume sifting is done by the software. It is capable of handling hundreds of resumes in just a second. The notifications are sent to the selected candidates automatically. The only work left for the staffing firms is to interview and finalize the candidates. 

5. Work from Anywhere, Anytime

The modern-day recruiting software is cloud-based or what you call as SAAS based. As everything is online, the agency members can easily work from any remote location and all that is required is an internet and a mobile device. Now the staffing firms can also schedule a preliminary test online with the help of recruiting software and that will help save a lot of paper and hassles.  

6. Tracking Passive Candidates

For running a successful staffing firm, the members of the staffing firm should know how and from where to get the candidates. The growth of the gig economy has posed several challenges for the staffing firms as most of the specialized professionals are becoming freelancers. 

So, tracking the availability of the candidates is something very crucial for a quality result. 

The staffing firm doesn’t need to take the pain of creating and maintaining a candidate pool, as the recruiting software does that free of cost. 

7. Fulfilling the KRAs

The Key Responsibilities Areas or the KRAs are different for a staffing agency and an in-house organization. On one hand, if an in-house organization gauges the quality and speed of hire, there is a lot more to do in a staffing firm. The staffing agency owner has to gauge metrics such as growth over the previous year, margin per recruiter, client satisfaction, etc. Here the ATS or the recruiting software helps the owner to achieve their KRAs and track growth.

Do you have a blog? Find out how having a recruitment blog expediates your success rate. 

8. Formatting Resumes

Apart from parsing the resumes, the inbuilt resume formatter does wonders. Now all resumes can be aligned in one pre-defined template. The recruiting software comes with some pre-defined templates which can be customized as per the needs and requirements of the client company.

The resumes are automatically parsed, formatted and appended to the candidate database instantly. Formatting the resumes such as text, borders, font, borders, etc all are done within seconds. 

Try 15 days free trial of iReformat-The ultimate Resume Formatter

9. Fully Secure and 100% Authentic

Staffing agencies hold sensitive data for both clients and candidates.  Therefore, they need an ultra-strong software which not only secures their database and portal access but other transactional keys also.

10. No Infrastructure needed

Having a cloud-based recruiting software eliminates the need to purchase any additional server or infrastructure required by the firm. Most of the software in the market, follows a subscription model or pay-as-you-go model which means that you need to pay only for the services used.

Apart from that, the firms no longer have to take the pain of calling the professional and getting your software updated. All the upgradations or patch fixing are done automatically when the system is idle. This offers a seamless and uninterrupted environment for recruiting firms to help them stand above the crowd. 

Check out some exquisite ways to reinvent your recruitment strategy. 

Hiring great people has nothing to do with the company size. In fact, you can pitch some great employees for the big companies, all that you need is the right direction, the right equipment, and the right recruiting software.

Recruiteze offers one single platform to address all your staffing needs including executive search, recruitment, placement, resume filtering, formatting, etc. All the processes are designed keeping in mind the agency side of things. Get in touch with us today and experience this magical difference for free. Limited Period Offer. Try now! Explore more at recruiteze.com.

Sales Funnel is one of the best tried and tested success mantras for almost every company. A perfect sales funnel ensures that each and every step is fully gauged and optimized so that every future prospect stays interested in the company and eventually pays off; so, why wouldn’t you use this same process to create the perfect applicant funnel?

On similar lines, the millennial recruiters today are also using applicant funnels to hire stalwart employees. But the funnel has turned more complex over time. Today the recruiters need something more than traditional marketing campaigns. This article will share insights on hiring best employees using applicant funnel and how an ATS can help recruiters and the hiring managers cherry-pick the employees without cobbling up the things.

First, let’s talk about the steps involved in the ongoing applicant funnel and how it helps the companies hire most allegiant and talented employees. 

#1 Candidate Awareness for the Perfect Applicant Funnel

The candidates are far smarter and intelligent then they used to be. Offering a lucrative compensation or an attractive job ad won’t suffice. The candidates need more. As per the survey conducted by Glassdoor, 76% of the candidates seek information on what all the company has to offer. It is very important to define and promulgate the company profile and brand value if recruiters and hiring managers want great candidates to apply for the job.

Make sure that the company’s website or blogs or social media pages do include things like career advancement opportunities, work-life balance, benefits offered by the company and everything else that explains every single reason to join the company. Apart from content, try to cover up the stories by including photos, videos and testimonials.

#2 Sourcing Ideal Candidates

After building a great company image, it’s time to drive the potential candidates into your perfect candidate funnel. There are different ways that can be used to source the candidates. Some of them are:

1.      Job Boards– Almost all the job seekers whether active or passive have their profile registered on one or more job boards. So, having a good presence on job boards helps to convert a lot of candidates into potential applicants.

2.      Employee Referrals – It is always a great idea to go for employee referrals. The reason is simple. All the candidates who would be applying to the company would be genuinely interested in the company.

3.      Social Media- Having a great and updated social media profile is another way to engage and attract candidates. The recruiters can share pictures, videos and other content about the work culture of the company.

4.      Past Applicants- If recruiters and hiring managers possess records of the past applicants or other talented employees who have worked for the company at some point of time, the connection can be maintained with them by sending regular updates regarding new job roles and other opportunities. You never know when a passive employee turns into a potential one.  An ATS plays a vital role here. Check out the advantages in the next section.

#3 How Applicant Generation leads to the Perfect Applicant Funnel

It is very important for the recruiter to specify what exactly they are looking for in a candidate and what the expectations are. Your perfect applicant funnel is only as good as your specifications. Also, it’s best when the job application process is kept short and crisp. Most of the applicants leave the lengthy application processes in the middle. So, it’s better to grasp more from less, as the hiring managers cannot afford to lose out on quality candidates. 

#4 Assessing the Candidates

Now, at this point, the recruiters and the hiring managers have reached the middle of the funnel. Only 20-25% of the candidates make it to the interview round.  The interviewers need to be very quick in assessing the candidates of their experience, skills and attitude. The candidates may have a lesser skill but the attitude should be correct and they should be ready to work in a multi-cultural environment. One thing the recruiters can’t fail in doing is taking every measure possible to offer the best candidate experience to the candidates. An ATS is an exceptional software which not only automates the entire recruitment procedure but also boosts the candidate experience.

#5 Perfect Onboarding Experience

It has been seen that hardly one-third of the finalized candidates join the organization. They opt out due to more lucrative offers being made by other companies which they don’t want to refuse. So, the HR Manager has to be very convincing while deciding on the remuneration and other perks.

Let’s dive into how an ATS helps the recruiters to build perfect applicant funnel.

An Applicant Tracking System, ATS or often known as recruiting software, when integrated with the company’s existing HR suite, can do wonders.   

1. Sourcing from the Past Applicants

Every time when a job is posted, it is greeted by hundreds of applicants. The job becomes tough when there is an urgent requirement that requires immediate joining. An ATS creates a profile database for all the resumes parsed through it for whichever job posting. So, it becomes easier for the recruiters to directly search into this pool of candidates first rather than kick-starting starting another recruitment cycle.

2. Reach More Potential Candidates

The Applicant tracking system seamlessly gets integrated with social media platforms and online job boards. This helps the recruiters to widen their domain and even reach the candidates who weren’t viable through other marketing channels such as career sites and other classified ads. As ATS opens up new touchpoints to reach the right candidate with the desired experience and skill set.

3. Boosts Candidate Experience

An ATS helps both in initiating and maintaining the engagement between the company and the candidate. Right from the moment of application submission until the selected candidate gets on-board, the candidate is sent notifications regarding every development taking place in the recruitment process. An ATS plays a crucial role in staying connected and building a strong relationship with the talented candidates so that they are not lost to the competitors.

 4. Streamlining and Automation of Recruitment Processes

An ATS automates almost all of the recruitment tasks such as resume sifting, parsing, formatting, sending notifications, emails, scheduling interviews and offers a seamless process as well. This leaves ample time for the recruiters to spend quality time interviewing candidates from the perfect candidate funnel. All the communication and information sharing is completely done by the recruitment platform.  

5. Smart Candidate Assessments

Sifting through all the resumes is a tiring and time-consuming activity. Even if the recruiters are able to attract a lot of candidates to a specific job requirement, finding the best talent is going to be the toughest job of their life as most of the applicants may not even be eligible for the job.

An ATS automatically rejects the applications that are unsuitable or do not meet the criteria set by the recruiter. This significantly helps to build a perfect applicant funnel as only the best ones are sent down the funnel.

ATS helps to build the entire applicant funnel in the most strategic way, thereby making the recruitment process faster, easier and affordable. It helps to streamline the entire recruitment process so that the recruiters can completely rely on ATS to fill every vacant position in the most effective way. 

Best Free Applicant Tracking System

Ready to create the perfect candidate funnel and make online recruiting easy? Our free applicant tracking system is a great way to make sure you’re able to acknowledge applicants, offer them next steps in the overall hiring process, list job ads on important job boards, and streamline your entire operation with just one software. No more countless spreadsheets and scattered information to keep up with! Recruiteze keeps everything you need at the touch of a button.

Recruiteze helps you build a candidate database, keep notes, and communicate with active and inactive applicants. You can eliminate endless spreadsheets full of notes and information by adding your feedback and applicant information into the free applicant tracking system. Everything you need for your recruitment efforts is under one roof.

In addition, you’ll be able to send out personalized emails to each candidate to help save time and effort with our staffing agency applicant tracking system. Communication with applicants won’t fall to the wayside and you’ll be gaining a great way to keep the applicant engaged and informed.

There are tons of benefits you can gain from trusting our recruitment software! Recruiteze will help your small business save time and money, become more organized and streamlined, and help you track applicants without worrying about top talent falling through the cracks. Be sure to try it for free if you haven’t used an ATS for small business recruiting and hiring!

Hiring candidates who have the desired skills, determination to succeed and a positive attitude and then witnesses new hire underperformance is a nightmare for the hiring managers. The situation is not only frustrating for the recruiters but for the employees as well.  Before calling them for a performance review meeting, ask yourself “Did I contribute to their underperformance?”.

Thinking deeply have a look at some basic reasons which make employees underperform and check out if you are contributing to their failure.

1.  Hiring Too Fast

Most of the time hiring takes place when there is an urgent requirement or an immediate role needs to be filled. And most of the time when the hiring process is rushed under a given deadline, chances of hiring a cultural misfit employee shoot up.  When interviews and other subsequent rounds are rushed, neither the interviewer gets enough time to understand and learn everything about the candidate nor the candidates are given enough time to ask a question regarding the job. New hire underperformance is inevitable when this occurs.

It is always better to hire before there is a dire need. An Applicant Tracking System comes handy at this position. As the ATS stores the profiles of all the candidates that have applied anytime in the past, the recruiters just need to run a search query on the database as per their requirement. The results are immediately there making it possible for the recruiters to easily pick the desired one.

Read More:

How to find candidates through niche social networking?

Which small company ATS is right for you?

12 Unknown things about the small business applicant tracking system

2.  Managing Everyone in the Same Way

A team comprises of people with diverse personalities and skillsets. Managing them using a similar style won’t work. In fact, the boss should adapt his style as per the employee. It is important that the boss or the manager should know how their employees deliver their best. You can inquire about their preferred working style and if they need the training to hone their skills etc.  Gaining or losing respect, is in your hands. The more you get to know them better, the more respect you gain.

3.  Soft Skills 

The employees should be hired on the basis of their potential success and not their previous success. Being a recruiting manager, concentrating on soft skills such as openness, leadership, empathy, abstract thinking, cooperation, etc during the hiring process will help you to align the employee better with the organization.  You can take the help of psychometric tests for soft skills evaluation. This will help the recruiters and the hiring managers to hire a candidate that matches the company’s requirements and to avoid new hire underperformance.

4.  Proper Feedback

The moment you feel that an employee is going off track, communicate him regarding the same. “A stitch in time saves nine”.

There is no point in discussing a five months old issue in the performance review meeting.  Having regular one-on-one meetings will help to understand the company’s goals better.

Apart from giving negative feedback, inculcate a habit of motivating or rewarding the employee when he performs best.

5.  Roles within a Team

It is very important that job roles should be clearly stated to the new hires, else they will become disengaged consequently leading to new hire underperformance and then resigning from the company. When the new hires know that how they are contributing to the company’s success and how their work is benefiting the organization, they have a sense of belonging and purpose. 

6.  No Real On-Boarding

A bad or mismanaged onboarding process fails to impress the hires and this ultimately results in their resignations. Every company should have a streamlined onboarding process which helps to create a brand image in the eyes of new hires.    

An ATS offers an incredible onboarding process. All the formalities can be completed on the ATS portal only. In fact, the initial induction can also be completed from ATS. The reports generated through ATS helps the candidates to understand the work culture in a better way.

7.  Not Sharing Goals and Expectations

Employees usually need just two things from a hiring manager or recruiter. First is the company goals and the second is their individual goals. The employees should have a direction and should know their targets. Sailing in two ships with different directions will take them nowhere.

It is very essential that every team manager should communicate the quarterly goals to the employee. The Manager should ensure that all the goals are crisp and clear in the direct reports. 

It’s Not Them. It’s You!

If the recruiters are consistently hiring underperforming employees, then there is a probability that the problem is at the recruiter’s end and not candidates’. Even the best of employees fail to succeed if there is no proper communication, coordination, and shortage of tools.

i. Lack of Direction

Every recruiter should understand that their employees should know what to do and a standard should be set to achieve the benchmarks. Proper work and direction should be assigned to them. Assigning tasks in a half-assed manner will result in half-assed results.

ii. Poor Communication

It is the responsibility of the manger to share the deadline of the project with the team. Wrongly communicating the timelines may adversely affect the project’s efficiency and productivity. It’s the responsibility of the project manager to keep everyone on the same page. Regular feedback from the employees regarding the things that are working for them and the ones which are not and how the problems that arise are being addressed must be taken. 

iii. Bad Management 

The project manager is the only person accountable for delving an atmosphere of trust, confidence and seamless communication.  Distrust and fear will squash out all the creativity, project ownership, and innovation, resulting in the project achieving only minimal standards.

iv. Lack of Teamwork

For any project to succeed, the internal teams should work together, communicate on the same page, celebrate and succeed together. If the project manager is not motivating, encouraging and facilitating these things, then don’t regret on getting everything washed up.

How to Know if Employees are Struggling?

Some small signals are enough to tell that things aren’t working as per the expectations and require immediate action.

Some signs to watch out for:

·         Missed deadlines

·         Procrastination

·         Mistakes

·         Silence

·         Higher attrition rate

Online Applicant Tracking System Free Trial

Managing new hire underperformance is not an easy task and may make you feel frustrated when your decisions are questioned. But, with a little awareness, patience, and the help of an Online Applicant Tracking System, managers can drive their employees back on track. Recruiteze is an amazing system that can help you become more effective, productive, and streamlined, without having to worry about the day-to-day hassle of keeping track of a never-ending spreadsheet.

This free applicant tracking system will help you get your job ads published on important job sites like Google, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, and more. Don’t take the time to post your ad multiple times when you can trust Recruiteze to do it for you! Many times small businesses will hire staffing agencies to help them with the ins and outs of recruiting tasks. However, with an online applicant tracking system like ours, you can save time, effort, and money by allowing our system to help! Here, you’ll find all the benefits you’ll gain:

• Set and measure goals
• Reduce the time involved in hiring and recruiting
• Market job postings
• Manage travel expenses, background checks, job fairs and more
• Manage staff recruitment, internally and externally
• Reduce paperwork for recruitment and other processes
• Increase retention and productivity
• Increase internal and external communication
• Improve simple workforce budgeting and planning
• Improve employment brand
• Improve all inefficiencies
• Get help with strategic decision making
• Form sourcing strategies with ease
• Eliminate duplicate submissions
• Directly access social media outlets
• Develop internal mobility through organizations
• Decrease in recruitment costs
• Create a streamlined process for overall hiring and recruiting processes
• Create a database
• Automate the requisition approval process

Recruiteze is the applicant tracking system you’ve been looking for and the key to avoiding new hire underperformance. Why wait to try it? We have an online applicant tracking system free trial for you today. You’ll be able to manage the overall hiring process with ease, streamlining daily tasks in a way that makes your recruiting procedures easier, faster, and more efficient.