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Valentine Dike, Senior Talent Acquisition Business Partner at Food Concepts PLCSince my HR Career journey in 2014, I’ve had a passion for technology and relished every moment I laid my hands on one. I have a penchant for technology and a huge passion for human resources. With a Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources and a Senior Professional in Human Resource International (HRCi), I was eager to make my mark in a unique field that values employee welfare. In the course of my career, I have been able to blend my functional HR knowledge with technical expertise to improve business performance. Utilizing an Applicant tracking system has been the heart of my professional HR journey, and I have recouped achievement and discovered valuable insights.
Appreciating Technology in Talent Acquisition
In my early career in HR and in the talent acquisition space, my first job was in an engineering firm, where I managed 30 engineers/ operators and 20 support staff. Starting as an entry-level talent acquisition specialist, my sole aim was to track and manage candidate information and simplify the hiring process using ATS software. It was a welcome development, shifting from the mundane manual processes that were previously practiced. I discovered how this could transform the hiring process via this software.
Looking back to my early achievements on ATS, I successfully consolidated ATS with our social media pages. This integration enabled us to automate candidate profiles and applications from popular sites such as Monster, Indeed and LinkedIn. This led to a 30% increase in on our candidate databank within the first three months, remarkably boosting our capability to source for the best candidates that match open job roles. In addition, our recruitment efficiency and effectiveness improved because of the vital intervention of technology in recruitment.
Advancing in My Career as a Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist
After I had gathered valuable experience, my work rate increased, and I transitioned into a senior talent acquisition professional. As a senior talent acquisition specialist, I was afforded the opportunity to broaden my insight into how ATS could be leveraged in every phase of the recruitment process. I became more curious about how to apply analytics and explore reporting functions to become more strategic and inform my hiring decisions.
A remarkable accomplishment in my senior talent acquisition career was creating compelling frameworks and dashboards in the ATS to enable me to track key metrics and analyze key performance indicators that drive results. The dashboards provided analytics in real-time that was used to measure our sourcing effectiveness, such as time to hire, percent of acceptance rate, quality of hire, percent of candidates that passed the 1st stage of the interview process, and sourcing channel efficiency. In analyzing these metrics, some tailbacks were discovered in our recruitment process, which led to us devising expedient means to solve them with the help of technology. A pragmatic example of the foregoing was the realization that internal recruitment and employee referrals constituted the largest part of our sourcing, which led to expanding our internal hiring program and embarking on a broad employee referral program. This accounted for a 40% reduction in time to fill, especially hard-to-fill positions and a 10% decrease in recruitment cost.
Furthermore, my career took a giant stride, given my recent elevation as a senior talent acquisition leader, where I manage the full implementation of our ATS across all states/provinces within our organization. This was a daunting task because every state/ province within our business had its own unique sourcing specification and therefore each requisition were tailored according to the job demands region.
One key takeaway I learned in the course of my transition was the essence of implementing change management initiatives through innovation. This was to ensure all stakeholders were familiar with the new recruiting system and that continuous training and general support were provided. The importance and benefits of the ATS were clearly explained, and this improved my leadership and project management skills.
To sum up, here are some learnings and important lessons to note while implementing ATS:
Data Analytics: The ATS software brings a huge amount of data to leverage and helps make good hiring decisions based on past trends. ATS can provide expository insights in improving sourcing strategies. Data Analysis in recruitment has been influential in enhancing recruiting processes.
Implementation and Training: The value of an ATS is largely dependent on its utilization and how well it's adopted and implemented by the various users. Clearly defined objectives and adequate training are essential in ensuring talent acquisition specialists can recoup the benefits of the software.
Regular Process improvement: Regular and periodic updating of the software will ensure Talent acquisition specialists are up-to-date with the latest features and trends in recruiting to keep the recruiting process seamless
Personalization- Made to Order: Personalizing the ATS to fit the demands of the organization rightly is necessary to ensure maximum value is gained and aligned with the company’s goals.
I am thrilled about the tendency of evolving technologies, that is, machine learning and artificial intelligence, to bring increased value to the usage of ATS. These will further improve recruiting processes and further enhance the candidate experience, thereby adding some spice to recruiting.
Finally, all through my talent acquisition career journey, the use of ATS has been at the heart of it all. I have leveraged continuous leanings and digital transformation. The key leanings and achievements I have gathered over the years accentuate the remarkable role that ATS plays in reshaping the recruiting process, making it seamless and an indispensable data analytical tool in finding the best talents.
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