The Consumerization of Applicant Tracking Software

September 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There is a lot of talk today about the “consumerization of HR software”.  Sometimes Newton’s applicant tracking software gets mentioned in such discussions.  When we started building recruiting technology, our goal was not to consumerize applicant tracking software. (As a matter of fact, I don’t think the term “consumerization” even existed when we started building Newton). But, the principles were all there and we became (and still are) obsessed with making Newton as different from run-of-the-mill enterprise software as possible. We knew that if we made the experience of choosing and using Newton more like using your favorite websites, and less like applying for a loan, we’d be creating change in the industry and more importantly, we’d be creating value.

People were ready for straightforward HR technology that does the things they need it to do without the typical rigmarole. Check-the-box feature matrixes don’t matter if the features aren’t thoughtful. The buying experience has to be informative and the activation process should follow suit and be straightforward and efficient. Once the platform is up and running, support should be fast and free.

It’s not enough just to write about what ought to happen; you must structure your entire company to design and deliver a consumer-centric HR technology experience.

From day one, Newton’s core values have always been same: build a product that we’d want to use and sell it how we’d want to buy it. Three years after starting Newton Software, our formula is the same and has proven to be a huge competitive advantage. While larger companies with more money and revenue pretend to offer simplicity, it’s evident they not structurally positioned to do so. Most small companies in the Applicant Tracking space aspire to be the big companies and follow the same path. Not us. We march to our own drummer and it’s working. We’ve managed to grow by at least 600% in the past two years and are on pace to do so again this year. Our customers like using our product and enjoy working with our teams. Best of all, the formula we use is simple. Here’s how it works.

Usability is king

Usability is, and always will be, the killer feature. The era of IT or even HR buying technology and mandating its use is over. Today, users expect easy-to-use websites that require little to no training to serve as productivity tools. If this comes at the expense of limiting customization or “me too” features and functionality, so be it. Usability is king. If people don’t use the software, nothing else matters.

Little barrier to acquisition

Hiring great people is hard but a good recruiting process is not rocket science.. That said, applicant tracking software, as with most HR tech products, is too important to merely buy over the internet with a credit card without speaking with someone that knows recruiting.  On the other side of the coin, an ATS doesn’t need to be so complicated that it takes a sales person, a sales engineer and 18 hours of discovery calls to evaluate a platform. Valuable HR products are still sold by humans. The process can take a little as an hour with an honest sales person and an at least somewhat informed buyer. We’ve always looked at it this way: if recruiting software requires a sales engineer to present the platform – it’s too complicated.

Simple to get started

The length of an activation cycle directly correlates to the complexity of the product. If a product is easy-to-use and easy to acquire, it will naturally be easy to activate and onboard.  Configuring a recruiting product should take days not weeks and should require little if any support from IT. Training users should take minutes not days. With today’s software delivery models, there is no excuse for a protracted or failed activation.

Provide free support

We asked ourselves, “If we bought a product, would paying for support make us happy?”

Everyone hates paying for support, but most companies still sell it, and some people still pay for it.  Now this doesn’t make any sense to the old guard enterprise software people but we believe that support should always be free. We’re not talking about 8 or 10 hours per year of free support, we’re talking about providing customers with free support for as long as they use our product. If you build intuitive, easy-to-use recruiting software providing free support is only logical.

Constantly enhance the product

Like your favorite consumer tech products, we’re constantly releasing new versions of Newton. Our customers receive these upgrades for free. On average, we’re releasing new functionality and enhancements every 8 weeks. This year alone, we’ve already made 6 major enhancements to Newton (approval processes, document viewer, enhanced reporting, integrated background checks, a Facebook application, Newton Touch). Customers expect enhancements. We give them more product, more innovation, more advancement and we do so by listening to them and accepting feedback and suggestions. Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Innovation is not a one-off fix, a custom report or a tweak. It’s a constant force that plays into the success of a product.

We’re not members of the “in” crowd.

Today, Newton has over 15,000 users. This year the business will grow another 600+%. We didn’t listen to the venture capitalists that told us to give our product away for free and we don’t follow the enterprise software model that predicates that you charge your customers at every turn.  We listen to our users, the consumers, the people that need to use our technology to do their jobs with as little friction as possible. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re just building simple, smart, safe applicant tracking software. Along the way, we’re using common sense and some of the same ideas that made the most admired consumer technology companies successful.

 

Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Corporate Philosophy, Customer Service, Design Philosophy, Industry Trends, Trends

Fistful of Thank You Letters

June 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This week on the influential recruiting and HR industry blog Fistful of Talent, blogger and HR Director, Steve Gifford tackled the sensitive issue of rejection letters, those notifications that some organizations send to provide closure to candidates.

In the article, Steve writes:

“Now, you may notice that I’ve got a good handle on the amount of traffic coming onto my careers site.  We use Newton Software for applicant tracking software, which was profiled in FOT a few years back.  I can’t say enough good things about these guys; hiring managers thank me for this system almost weekly, and the credit is due to Joel’s team.  All this storytelling is to tell you this: Every single rejected candidate in Newton gets an email when they’re rejected.  No black hole, no wondering – there is a follow-through, at very least.

Because of this, I have a dummy “careers” account that originates these emails.  I check it every few weeks, just to make sure nothing critical went into the account.  And, I get responses.  Here are four of them, across the spectrum.

Thanks for considering me for the warehouse position. If you find that I may of value to your company please contact me.

See, that’s actually very nice!  He didn’t have to do that, but these things get saved forever, so it can’t hurt.  The bulk of the emails I get are along these lines.

Thank you for the short time you spent on my resume’.

OK, that’s fair.  Steve Boese’s statistic about six seconds per resume is about right for how I go through them.  What’s more, I have Newton open on my desktop pretty much all the time.  If I don’t quite want to start something new, I’ll browse through resumes for a few minutes.  The newest applicants go to the top, so I occasionally reject someone who only applied a few minutes ago.  This particular emailer applied at 8:30 AM, and got my email at 3:30 PM, but can be forgiven for thinking that no one had actually looked at their resume.  In fact, I did look at it, and looked at it again for this piece.  I was right the first time, they didn’t have the credentials I needed for that job; but I get where they’re coming from.”

Rejection letters aren’t new. Newton just deals with them more thoughtfully.

Listen, automated rejection letters (we call them Thank You Letters) aren’t a new thing. But, having tried use these features ourselves over the years as corporate recruiters, we felt it was time to reinvent them.

Newton users like Steve Gifford, quickly and easily send automatic, stage specific thank you letters to any candidate that applies to or interviews for any job without additional administrative work. And, best of all, the feature is smart so you’ll know if applicants are assigned to other jobs or have received previous thank you messages. Our product team spent a lot of time working on the experience (both employer and applicant), the interface, the workflow, and the efficiency of this feature. Many variations and hundreds of little tweaks later, we get a ton of positive feedback regarding this feature in Newton.


Filed Under: Applicant Tracking, Applicant Tracking Software Reviews, Blog, Corporate Philosophy, Customer Service, EEOC, Industry Trends, Optimism, Trends

3 things you must do to improve your recruiting program this year

January 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment
As a part of our blog series “HR and Recruiters the New Marketers“, I want to share practical ways HR and recruiting professionals can put real marketing concepts to work to improve corporate recruiting programs right now. Now, I am not advising everyone to run out and spend tens of thousands of dollars on full-blown employment branding initiatives (if you want to, we have a great partner for that). Rather, I am suggesting that while the year is young, HR and recruiting pros should consider creating (or revamping) a marketing framework to optimize recruiting communications. Here is where to start.


Create / refine your corporate recruiting story

The company that provides candidates with the most information almost always ‘wins’. Remember, when people look for jobs, they are simply assessing risks. Relevant, well organized information mitigates risks and assuages fears.  Your organization may not pay the most. You may not build the sexiest product. You may not provide free organic juices or host foosball tournaments. But, if you provide opportunities that truly leverage people’s strengths, reward hard work, have flexible working hours, provide good benefits, allow people to work from home, you absolutely need to communicate this and highlight your unique attributes as part of your corporate story.


When building or refining your corporate story you need to really think about your audience. Who are you trying to appeal to?  Next, think like a marketer and build a framework to organize your message. The story needs to be personal, genuine, compelling, and delivered with commitment and consistency (we’ll get into the delivery in a bit).  Below is a framework that I’ve used to build and organize Newton Software’s corporate recruiting story. When you create this think Twitter not War and Peace.


  • Mission statement: short company history, clarify our purpose, who we serve, how we provide value
  • Key differentiators:  what makes our product exceptional in a market of mediocrity
  • The culture:  how we treat our employees, why people choose to work here, what to expect

Select and educate your ambassadors

Anyone who has the opportunity to interact with a potential employee has the privilege to tell the corporate recruiting story.  Keep in mind, interview processes should be bi-directional exchanges. It’s critical to choose interviewers that will not only effectively assess skills,talent and character but are willing and able to convey the right message.  Additionally, it’s imperative that anyone that will be exposed to candidates is a trained ambassador for your recruiting brand. Everyone’s behavior has a direct impact on each candidates’ perceptions about the organization. This is easily and often forgotten.


To take this further,think about this concept in practice. You’re  a job seeker. You’ve spent a couple of hours preparing for an interview. You arrive at the interview and are greeted at the door (yes, this should be part of HR’s plan) by someone that is expecting you. Throughout the interview process, all the actors know who you are, everyone has a consistent message and  they are clearly prepared to spend time with you. Whether you loved the content of the job or not,  your impression would be that this company has its act together and they took the process seriously. More importantly, they took you seriously. That goes a long way. The bottom line is that HR and recruiting teams must build the message and everyone that touches the recruiting process  from beginning to end. Error to the side of being a control freak.


Personal Note: While I haven’t been a job seeker in a long time, I do visit lots of businesses that are interested in our applicant tracking software. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into a company and stood around looking for someone to help me find the person that I am supposed to meet.  My first thought: is this what happens when people come in for interviews? Probably.


Create a customer experience.

As our service economy has evolved, recruiting isn’t just about processing people anymore. To attract the quality of hire necessary for modern businesses to grow, we must build relationships with candidates just as we would with potential customers. As HR professionals and recruiters, our marketing responsibilities now include creating an experience for our candidates that mimics how we treat our customers.


Professional candidates spend countless unpaid hours preparing for interviews. They research our companies on LinkedIn and Glassdoor.  They build up expectations. Unfortunately, all too often, they are met with an experience that is disappointing at best. Many candidates are still subjected to disorganized, disjointed, uncommunicative and even adversarial recruiting experiences.


By creating a recruiting process that provides candidates with a great experience – a customer experience,  you put your company in a position to make the decision as to whether you want to hire the candidate or not. Some would refer to this as being in the driver’s seat. Think of it this way,  it’s a lot easier to hire applicants when they want to come work for your organization.  Furthermore, if your recruiting process is disjointed, inconsistent, unfriendly or all of the above, you’ll not only lose the opportunity to hire top talent,  you’ll lose other hugely important hiring by-products  like employee referrals,  repeat candidates, word-of-mouth candidates, etc.


Some closing thoughts.
There is no better time for HR and recruiting professionals to build and refine marketing communication programs to support the initiatives that we own – like hiring the best people. Find time, no matter how painful that sounds, to take a step back and reflect on how your organization communicates with candidates. Examine your interview processes and find out what’s being said and how candidates are being treated. Ask yourself if you’d be excited about the opportunities being presented by your firm. I’ll bet you’ll find some things that surprise you and that you’ll want to adjust. And, I guarantee that even small changes will make a difference and allow you to be in the driver’s seat more often.



Filed Under: Blog, Corporate Recruiting, Customer Service, HR and Recruiters the New Marketers, Industry Trends, interviewing, Recruiting Advice