Streamlining Your Recruiting Practices: Q&A with Talent Acquisition Specialists

“Finding perfect candidates is so easy!” said no recruiter, ever.

We get it – it’s a hard market out there. Not only are talent acquisition teams competing with one another for top talent, they’re also juggling company initiatives and team personalities. As a result, time-to-fill has increased 18% in the past three years, costing companies thousands of extra dollars in the process.

Luckily, there’s a way to simplify and streamline your recruiting practices: storing all of your people data in one place. People-first leaders are beginning to democratize their data – usually within a people operations platform – so that the right people have the right information at the right time.

For talent acquisition teams, that means arming them with a modern platform that has headcount approval workflows and integrations with your applicant tracking system (ATS). Hello, informed and confident hiring decisions.

However, it’s one thing to read about a talent acquisition strategy that uses people data, but it’s another to see it in action. That’s why we sat down with ChartHop’s Ai-Mei Zhu Levine, Talent Acquisition Manager, and Melissa Adamo, Principal People Business Partner – who have over 30 combined years in the people space – to discuss best practices for talent acquisition teams and ATS tools.

What are the biggest challenges faced by Talent Acquisition teams?

Ai-Mei Zhu Levine: Four things come to mind:

1. Finding the right talent for your people strategy. We want to build an inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible company. And that starts with candidates who look like all backgrounds and abilities. As a result, it takes time to find the right talent for the company we're building.
2. Winning over people who are happy in their current role. If their expertise fits perfectly into our long-term plan, we have to be aggressive to successfully recruit.
3. Transitioning to the role of advisor. We educate managers on the current market and advocate for why candidates are a good fit for their specific team. This can, of course, lead to some pushback.
4. Lastly, data, data, data. Having accurate metrics, such as time-to-fill or pipeline passthrough rates, is incredibly important as we strive to improve our practices.

Melissa Adamo: It can be challenging to find and engage with top talent. And once you find them, you have to catch their attention, especially if they’re not looking for a new role. That’s why our talent acquisition strategy includes pipelining candidates, early sourcing, and networking to help us develop relationships.

Why is it important for Talent Acquisition managers and teams to have a reliable, centralized platform with ATS integrations?

Zhu Levine: A centralized location eliminates errors and keeps things organized. Before, I’d communicate back and forth with hiring managers via email or Slack using different spreadsheets. More often than not, we’d work on different versions, which led to disjointed decisions. With ChartHop’s People Operations Platform, you see everything in a shared environment, which ensures you’re working with the same people data as Finance, Operations, and managers. And with the embedded approval workflow process, we’re able to communicate directly with those needed on hiring plans. Doing all of this in one spot is also a huge time-saver. Since our people operations platform and ATS are linked, we can see all the ATS data in ChartHop – from when a job was opened, how many applicants are in each step of the process, and the time-to-fill once the position is closed.

Adamo: Your data is so important. As a recruiter, when you know your data, you know your business – and when your business is people, you have to know your data backwards and forwards. You therefore need one spot that houses up-to-date information that helps foster collaboration and visibility across teams to move with speed and intention.

When your approval workflows are integrated into your people operations platform, there's no more back-and-forth emails or wondering if-and-when a role will be approved.

How can having a strong ATS integration with your people operations platform ultimately affect the quality of hires?

Zhu Levine: Having a very strong integration is key because it keeps recruiters organized. It’s really nice having a one-touch, one-click platform to reduce the back-and-forth communication and the number of open browser tabs. Ultimately, being an organized recruiter leads to a better hiring experience, which makes a positive first impression for the candidate. Since recruiters are the first point of contact for a candidate, that impression is critical.

How does an ATS help you and your team overcome day-to-day challenges?

Zhu Levine: An ATS – like Greenhouse, Lever, and Jobvite – makes the talent acquisition process much more efficient. And when your ATS integrates with your people operations platform, you can see how new hires may impact your organizational structure, hierarchy, and team makeup. One administrative time-saver is that our ATS pulls previous job templates. This seems simple, but it’s incredibly helpful if we’re hiring three of the same role. No more creating the same job posting multiple times.

How does having a people operations platform help you in your role as a strategic partner?

Adamo: To be a true strategic partner, talent acquisition teams should have views into future forecasts for budgets and headcount planning. And luckily, a robust people operations platform allows you to create scenarios and have continuous conversations from afar. It also retains historical data, thereby allowing all stakeholders to analyze hiring trends and salaries. These capabilities, of course, drive insights about previous and future decisions. And the whole hiring process becomes streamlined when your platform connects to an ATS. It helps you improve recruiting practices, reduce time-to-fill, and hit headcount planning goals.

Scenario planning within ChartHop allows you to create, edit, and move jobs around to find the best fit for your people and teams.

Transform Your Talent Acquisition Strategy

When you use an ATS, your talent acquisition team can work collaboratively with candidates and managers to meet hiring goals. But to really boost and streamline your processes, consider investing in a people operations platform with ATS integrations and approval workflows.

By doing so, you’ll equip your talent acquisition specialists with a one-stop-shop that houses your applicants, people data, headcount plans, and hiring approvals. More importantly, you’ll create a stronger organization by inviting your talent acquisition team to the table when it comes to strategic headcount decisions.

It’s crucial to have a strong talent acquisition team to find the best candidates. And to help them save time, reduce errors, and align with managers, it’s important to invest in a people operations platform. Interested in learning more about how your team can use dynamic people data for headcount plans?