What Your Applicant Tracking System Data Isn’t Telling You

Do you know how many top candidates are dropping out of your apply process every day? Likely not, because most Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are not providing the full picture because of the limited analytics they provide.

What your ATS data isn’t telling you

The out-of-the-box ATS analytics offered by products like Taleo, Workday, PeopleSoft, and SuccessFactors, aren’t equipped with the software to tell you critical information about your talent acquisition performance that you need to improve your recruiting efforts and results over time.

One of the reasons for this is that your ATS only starts collecting applicant data and providing insights after an applicant registers for an account. In other words, your ATS is overlooking parts of the candidate journey that exist prior to the account creation step of your application process. 

Let’s go through a common example to get an idea of how this works:

When a candidate clicks “apply now” on one of your job descriptions they have indicated their intent to be considered for a position with your company. Most people in Talent Acquisition would consider this the point when a candidate converts to an applicant. 

But there can be many additional steps that candidates have to go through BEFORE they get to the job application. Such as, seeing a duplicate job description page, signing up for a talent network, opting in, creating an ATS account, etc. In fact, our research shows that candidates have to click 9 times before they even get into the actual job application. 

Your ATS isn’t able to provide any visibility into the applicant drop off that’s occurring at these steps. It will only record someone as an applicant once they register for a user account or sign in. 

Unfortunately, the average pre-registration applicant drop-off rate is about 50-60%, which means (because of an ATS technicality) organizations are receiving a highly skewed view and are missing insights about their drop-off rates and overall recruiting funnel performance. 

How to get the full picture of your ATS and increase candidate conversion

The InFlight Experience Platform provides the critical insights that your out-of-the-box ATS analytics are missing. 

With InFlight’s Apply Flow Analytics & Insights, your organization receives an end-to-end view of what candidates are doing throughout their journey. This way, your team can focus on the factors in your hiring process that will increase candidate conversion.

Once you have the insights you need, InFlight’s Enhanced Apply Flow can target areas of your process that need improvement to reduce drop-offs. Our solution lets you brand your application experience, eliminate redundant registration forms, and shorten the overall apply flow.

What else can you find out with InFlight’s Apply Flow Analytics & Insights?

InFlight provides detailed candidate analytics to help you increase your quality of hire for the long term, improve recruiting efficiency, and discover which recruiting sources, programs, and decisions have the biggest impact.

InFlight’s Apply Flow Analytics & Insights also helps identify:

• Career site conversion and applicant conversion rates
• When candidates drop off in between stages of the recruiting funnel.
• How many applicants are at each step of the apply flow, and how long each step has taken.
• How candidates behave at each step. For instance, are candidates uploading their resumes or not?
• Which devices, browsers, and OS candidates are using
• What sites and regions your candidates and applicants are coming from
• How many candidates are completing the post-application survey.
• Your organization’s Candidate Net Promoter Score (CNPS). Are candidates likely to recommend your application process to a friend or colleague?

If you can measure it, you can improve it. Make sure you’re tracking critical factors that will help you determine strategies for decreasing the likelihood of losing strong candidates and improving your end-to-end candidate experience.

The takeaway

Your organization’s ATS data doesn’t provide the full picture. You’re likely missing the valuable candidate behavior information you need to improve your recruiting efficiency and capture applications from the best candidates. When you have the right analytics and insights, you can make strategic decisions to improve your overall talent acquisition strategy over time.

Want to learn more? Contact our team to learn how InFlight is helping organizations improve their Applicant Tracking System analytics and candidate experience to convert more candidates.