Applicant tracking systems have grown greatly in prevalence and functionality in recent years, enabling HR departments across multiple industries to find the perfect candidate more easily than ever before. Applicant tracking software has simplified a process that previously required a significant amount of paperwork and employee time to review every resume—which at a large company could number in the thousands—in order to find the candidate that best matched their criteria and their business needs. Technology has made this process much easier by creating sorting algorithms, storing previous applicants, and highlighting the top candidates to aid hiring managers in this daunting task.
Applicant tracking systems are not the only technology for evaluating individuals to have become more prevalent in today’s world. Millions of people around the world now use the app Tinder, which helps single people find their ideal partner for a date or for life by facilitating conversation between people who have each indicated that they’re interested in the other. Tinder provides users with a limited scope of data on their prospects—pictures, name and age, and a small written profile encompass most of the information. Based on this, users choose preferences for what type of users they’d like to see—gender, age, distance—and “swipe” right or left to indicate if they want to connect. If both users ask to connect, a chat window is opened.
What does the prevalence of this app demonstrate in relation to applicant tracking? Well, it helps understand how an algorithm can easily condense an immense pool of possible connections down to a small set of relevant data points. Based on a set of pictures and a small bio, users are easily able to determine if, out of the millions of possible local connections, this relationship is one they’d like to pursue.
While hiring decisions are very different from choosing your next dinner date, applicant tracking technology is now advanced enough to allow hiring managers to make similarly quick decisions, narrowing talent pools that may include thousands of resumes down to the handful of qualified candidates that may make a good fit with your business. Based on several sorting categories—for example, work experience, education, and skills—hiring managers can drastically cut down their pool of resumes from those thousands to double digits. The algorithm can compare keywords and key phrases and score resumes based on their compatibility and give precedence to the best candidates, making it easier for hiring managers to look through the sea of candidates and begin the hiring and onboarding process.
As with Tinder, applicant tracking software makes a complex process much simpler and helps hiring managers make better matches right from the start, before opening up a dialogue. In this way, candidates that are a good company fit are found more easily, and the entire hiring process is simplified and streamlined. While dating may still remain something of an elusive process, hiring doesn’t have to be—applicant tracking software makes it easy to “swipe” on the best candidates for your business.
