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Measure your KPIs: Reports launched!

Posted on September 20, 2011 by aatir.abdulrauf

This has been a much-requested feature from our community and its not hard to see why. Reports on your hiring pipeline and application influx can surface areas of improvement and the key performance indicators that will help you objectively assess your recruiting efforts. At the end of the day, if you’re not benchmarking your performance, you’re losing out – Its as simple as that.

As with every other department, employers need to be well informed on how their recruitment efforts are faring with time and whether they are investing in the proper channels. Answers to questions like “Are their any bottlenecks in the hiring process?” or “How much time does it take for us to fill a vacancy on average?” help you understand your hiring workflow better and in turn, enable you to take action to address problems and improve performance over time. More than being just a bunch of numbers, Simplicant’s reports are key performance indicators that will help hiring departments optimize their processes, which essentially translates to saved costs.

So, what reports do we offer? Here’s a quick summary:

1. The Dashboard

This is a brief summary regarding what’s been happening lately. It tells you how many applications were received against open jobs and what your candidate status pipeline looks like right now in the form of a nice pie chart.

2. Activity Summary

This tells you a detailed view of how many applications you have received on a monthly basis. You can use this report to asses the visibility of your company and how candidate interest has varied over time.

3. Status Pipeline

This report gives you a summary of the number of applicants in various stages of your hiring pipeline – extremely useful in identifying potential bottlenecks in your hiring pipeline.

4. Average Time to Hire

This simply shows you how much time does it take to fill a vacancy on average. Why is it important? Think of it this way. Every employee that you hire translates to revenue for your company. And the more time you expend in finding a suitable hire means more costs for your company. Therefore, the higher the time to hire, the higher your costs and longer it takes your company to convert recruitment efforts into tangible revenue.

5. Applications Per job

Which jobs are the most popular? This is a simple report that will allow you to understand which job openings need more attention.

6. Compliance Reports

Say goodbye to all the hassle in compiling EEO information and submitting it to comply with federal laws. We simplify all this by allowing you to download a formatted report with a click of a button.

So, check out reports and start evaluating your hiring process. You never know, you might find something surprising.

Recruit the Social Way!

Posted on September 20, 2011 by aatir.abdulrauf

Referrals have historically been a major source of quality performers for any company. The concept behind it is simple: Its classic word-of-mouth marketing in play. Smart people on your team know other smart people who become applicants, which ultimately raises the bar of the candidate pool.

To leverage the power of referrals, Simplicant have just launched a useful set of tools that will allow members to easily post job vacancies to specific individuals on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn within seconds. This instantly expands your audience and the visibility of your job opening increases manifold. The result is that the viral nature of this strategy starts bringing you excellent resumes that make you simply smile.

So, how does it work? Its simple. Create a job opening and then explore your options on the “Viralize your job” panel on the right of the job detail page.

You can choose to refer the job yourself to handpicked individuals on your social network with our new social recruiting tool. This helps you spread the word to only those people who are relevant to the job or might know people who would be suitable for such positions, as opposed to spamming your entire contact list.

On the other hand, you can choose to update your social profiles on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and even Google Plus without ever leaving the app. Moreover, Simplicant will craft a nice little message that you’ll post plus automatically drop in the link to your careers page where your contacts can simply visit and apply.

Wait, there’s more.

Now, when you open you applicant’s detail page, you can actually see the referral source of the applicant i.e. whether he was directed to apply from a social site like Linkedin or a job board like Indeed or by simple email. This information is terrific for employers as they can now assess which referral channels are working for them and which are not.

Now, what if you want to trace back how you know a certain applicant who has applied from your social referral efforts? After all, if you initiated the viral wave, there must be a chain of social contacts that will eventually lead to the applicant in question. Not a problem – Simplicant gets you this information built-in. While viewing an applicant who was referred from a social network, check the “Social Connections” panel on the right to see what channels and people were instrumental in spreading the word to the applicant you’re viewing.

So, go ahead. Leverage the power of “social” and attract more quality candidates – the simple way.

Application tracking system- Cut costs, employ smart

Posted on August 6, 2011 by raza.saeed

Recession is spinning the world round in it’s two little fingers and businesses of all sizes all around the globe are looking to cut down their costs to a bare minimum. Recruitments costs are one of the costs which take up, along with money, good time and effort. Where the HR departments are supposed to be working for more productive measures to support the companies, they are just left to recruit people- go through piles and piles of resumes, short-list, record data, make calls, take interviews. The dilemma of finding exactly the right candidate for the job becomes a hefty process which stretches on for months and months and considering the small number of recruitments required (which is low) and the number of candidates applying (which is higher yet), this grueling employment process is just not ‘worth’ it. The situation is even worse for SME businesses who do not have qualified recruitment managers or proper HR departments to manage the recruitment process. The problem sustains because although companies are looking to working on their cost savings, the concurrent lack of skilled and experienced employees require this recruitment system to continue.

Application Tracking System looks to be the best solution there is to the current problem. With a fixed fee, the online system handles your entire recruitment process. With an interface for your company, the online tracking system handles the applicant data and makes the communication between employer and prospective employee- don’t mind the cliché- just a click away!

Simplicant is an ATS which is just about perfect for SME businesses. It is simple to browse through and that is the most important feature in any ATS. Why companies run away from drawers flowing over with resumes is because they are difficult to manage. A complicated application tracking system with complex features irrelevant to companies would just need a new set of staff members to understand and navigate, very much like the manual recruitment system. Simplicant gives you a site tour to make your familiar with the system and any one who can use their gmail inboxes can find their way through it. The company does not need to employ a highly skilled recruitment manager or an HR staff force to sift through resumes from all over. Since it is an online system, advertising for a job opening is easier and reaches more people, hence, a chance to hire the best. Simplicant provides a customizable job board for their clients integrated in their career sites. The system provides a job board for people to drop in their resumes or a unique email address to which job seekers can correspond with, in reference to a particular job. The system increases the effeciency saving time, extra effort and miscellaneous monetary costs which the company would have had to incur, had it let it’s HR staff to do the job.

Attachments support & Application Archiving

Posted on July 27, 2011 by raza.saeed

We are happy to bring you some more features on popular demand. The new version of Simplicant has been launched with some of the changes highlighted below:

Attachments:

Some of our clients wanted to be able to send attachment to the applicant along with the messages. In this case if the Applicant replies with an attachment, system will accept it and the attachment will be visible in the messages tab and will be downloadable.Example of the usage: If you send a pdf application form to the applicant. The applicant fills it and emails it back to the Simplicant user. The filled form will be visible in the messages tab as an attachment.

Application Archives:

On popular demand we have added the feature of archiving the old applications and those applications will no longer be displayed in the normal search.

Simplicant users can archive and unarchive the applications at their convenience.

Newly Added Features

Posted on May 25, 2011 by raza.saeed

Thank you for all of your valuable comments and suggestions on how to improve Simplicant. We are happy to announce the release of next version of Simplicant with some of the changes highlighted below:

Job Details Page:
On popular demand, we have introduced a new job details page so that you can manage all the internal information regarding job opening easily. You can enter additional information for internal use, post notes or upload additional files related to the job opening.

Take Additional Files from Applicants:
We have added an option to let you add file upload fields in job questionnaire so that now you can take those additional files (cover letter, picture or anything) from applicants when they apply for the job.

Login Link on Simplicant Home Page:
Some of our customers forgot their Simplicant login page address and in order to avoid such situation again we have added login link to Simplicant home page for your convenience.

Job List Searching & Sorting:
You can now search any job in your account using the job search option on the job listings page. Moreover we have added sorting option on all columns on job listing page so that you can sort them as you like!

User management:
No need to delete a user from Simplicant account when they stop working for you, all you have to do is make them inactive. This way they will not be able to login and the data which was added by them will remain intact.

If you have any questions or feedback about this feature, please let us know at support@simplicant.com or at our Feedback Forum.

Track your applicants’ status in style!

Posted on May 22, 2011 by raza.saeed

Now you can track the detailed status of each of your applications in Simplicant! With this feature, you can find out which of your applicants are in which stage of the hiring process, e.g. New, Screened, Interviewed, Hired and so on. In addition to this, you can even define your own hiring work-flow, and change the work-flow that is provided by default. For example, a software firm may want to use multiple interview statuses, “Technical Interview” and “HR Interview” followed by “Final Interview”.

On the applications page, you can view the status of each application as shown in the screenshot below.

You can also sort and filter the applications based on their current status in the system. The system also tracks when an applicant status was changed, the to/from status, and the name of the user who changed it. This “History” option is available from the Application Summary page.

And if that isn’t enough, each status has its own color to make the system more intuitive and for you to be able to quickly identify candidates’ status. These colors are also customizable, and you have a whole set of colors to choose from!

To change your hiring work-flow and select colors for each, go to the “Statuses” tab within the Settings page. Here you can add new statuses to your work-flow, edit the current ones, assign colors to each of them, and remove the ones that you do not need.

Customize status colors:

The feature is up and running, and is available on both new and existing accounts (all packages)! A note for existing customers: The new status has replaced the old “Processed / Unprocessed” status field.

If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to get in touch with us at support [at] simplicant [dot] com

Share applications by e-mail

Posted on April 5, 2011 by raza.saeed

A lot of our customers have told us that they want to be able to send resumes from their system to other people in their company, who are not necessarily added as users in their Simplicant account, and get their feedback about the candidates. In many cases, the intended recipients of the resumes were team leads, direct supervisors, interviewers, and sometimes even C-level executives. To cater to this need, we have recently released the “Share Application” feature, which lets you share an application from within Simplicant, to anyone else through e-mail. Simplicant also gives you the option to send the applicant’s questionnaire response (if any), messages exchanged with the applicant, and notes saved against the application along with the resume.

How it works:

From the Application Summary page, click the Share button.
Simplicant asks you for the recipient’s name and e-mail address, your personal message for the recipient, and what other items (messages, notes, etc.) you want to send along with the e-mail.
After filling out these details, you click the Send button, which sends an e-mail to the recipient with the candidate’s resume and other selected details.
To give feedback, the recipient simply replies to the e-mail with their comments at the beginning of the e-mail. These comments are saved as Notes against the relevant application, and you, the user, are notified of the response by e-mail.

Keeping our promise of simplicity, we have kept the flow of this feature as simple and intuitive as possible, and hope that you will find it a very useful and easy-to-use feature. If you have any questions or feedback about this feature, please let us know at support [at] simplicant [dot] com or at our Feedback Forum.

Welcoming feedback with open arms

Posted on March 20, 2011 by raza.saeed

User feedback is one of the best things that could happen to a service-oriented organization. It gives the organization knowledge of what customers are really looking for, and saves them from firing shots in the dark and hoping that users will be excited about their new and upcoming features.

We at Simplicant understand this and want to harbor the power of your feedback, in order to make Simplicant more useful, while keeping the application simple and user-friendly.

To achieve this, we are proud to announce that we have launched the Simplicant Feedback Forum, powered by UserVoice. The forum allows you to submit your ideas, feature requests, bugs and other feedback about Simplicant, and cast your votes or post comments on the ideas already submitted by other users.

You can access the forum at http://feedback.simplicant.com . You can also give your feedback by simply clicking on the small Feedback button (shown in the left) you see on the right side of the screen in the Simplicant user panel and home page.

Receive job applications by e-mail!

Posted on February 22, 2011 by raza.saeed

A lot of customers have asked us to make it easier to integrate Simplicant with their current hiring process, and for candidates to apply for job openings. For the past few weeks, we have been working hard on a new feature that does exactly that.

Many candidates are used to “e-mailing their resumes”, and many startups and small companies are used to receiving job applications through e-mail, and then tracking these candidates on spreadsheets and similar tools. Moving to an applicant tracking system usually means changing most of these habits for both the employer and the candidates. However, Simplicant allows you to continue receiving applications by e-mail, and be able to track them through Simplicant at the same time!

How it works:

Upon sign-up, you get a free e-mail address at which you can receive applications. By default, this address is jobs@yourdomain.simplicant.com. This address is directly linked to your Simplicant account, and candidates can send in their resumes and applications to this address. Simplicant then parses these applications, and they appear under the “Applications” tab in your Simplicant account, and can be tracked just like normal applications!

For example, company XYZ used to ask their candidates to apply to jobs@xyz.com. XYZ decides to sign up for Simplicant. Upon sign-up, Simplicant automatically generates the address jobs@xyz.simplicant.com. XYZ just asks their website administrator to change the address on their Jobs or Careers page from jobs@xyz.com to the new address jobs@xyz.simplicant.com. Candidates can now send in their applications to this new address and XYZ management can track these applications in Simplicant. Really, it’s that simple!
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Your job board in a widget!

Posted on January 7, 2011 by raza.saeed

When our customers sign up for an account, many of them complain that they aren’t very comfortable with completely replacing their Careers page with the simplicant jobs page, typically because they have a lot of other information on the page, for example what kind of people they are looking for, how it is like to be working at the company, and so on.

Listening to our customers (as we always do!), we are proud to announce the new Jobs Widget feature! With this feature, you can show your job openings within your careers page, simply by embedding a code snippet in the HTML. Any changes to your job openings in simplicant will be reflected in the widget, so you don’t have to worry about making changes to your site every time you add/modify/delete a job opening. When candidates click on a job opening in the widget, they will be taken to the job details page, from where they can apply for the job.

We obviously care about the aesthetics of your website and Careers section, and therefore allow you to change the look and feel of your widget, so that it blends in with the rest of your website. Custom CSS gives you complete control over colors, font sizes, list images, and a lot more.

To change the look and feel of your widget, and to get your widget code snippet, just go to the Widget page in the Settings section. You can also preview your widget on this page before finalizing it and embedding it in your website.

We believe that this is a major step forward towards seamlessly integrating simplicant with your website, and we hope that you will find this feature useful. In case you need any help or run into any problems, feel free to contact us at support [at] simplicant [dot] com!