Audit and Reporting Features: Key Audits Your ATS Should Deliver

Unlock the full potential of your hiring strategy with an ATS that performs essential on-demand audits, ensuring you never miss out on top talent.

The Importance of Candidate Experience in Recruitment

When a job candidate excites you there's pressure not to lose them and we trust our applicant tracking system (ATS) to help. What can I learn about this person to move the process forward? Can I figure out what's most important to them to keep building a connection and their interest? 

Let's imagine you land that candidate but want to look company wide at how you can invest in the year ahead. Unfortunately, you discover the reporting and data analytics within your ATS fall short on giving you the information you need to find the blind spots you don't see in your candidate experience. To avoid this frustrating scenario, select an ATS that not only tracks applicants but also performs audits on demand. This gives you the vital data you need to make informed decisions leading to quality hires who perform, live your culture, and stay long-term. The candidate experience, the interconnected moments that influence candidate thoughts, feelings, and intentions, is core to successful recruiting. Precise and useful reporting makes it possible to confidently know the experience you're executing is what was intended and supporting your success.

Key Audits Every ATS Should Perform

An ATS that drives results will provide the following key audits, or analytics, that give you a crystal clear view of the steps of your hiring process and what your candidates experience.

While our ATS, CorvirtusHire, delivers each of these, you can determine how you can retrieve this information from your own ATS or any HCM platform you're working with.

1. Activity logs. What happened to that promising candidate you noticed applied last week when you were slammed with meetings? Activity logs are vital, tracking actions taken by users. You're equipped to see which job postings were created, modified, or deleted, as well as which candidate records were viewed, updated, or deleted. Know what communications were sent to candidates, and if workflow changes were implemented like advancing or rejecting candidates. Precise time stamps make it easy to know what happened when and get back up to speed after a day or two away from reviewing candidates.  
2. User-based tracking logs actions by specific users, driving accountability and compliance. We often work with companies that are planning for growth. With growth the hiring function naturally diffuses from just the a key manager or leader to a number of hiring managers. These logs are one piece of making sure everyone is united in delivering a consistent (wobble-free) candidate experience. Time stamps provide detailed records of when actions were performed making it easy to know what happened when and follow-up with your team and candidates as needed.
3. Compliance reporting is another critical aspect. One quarter of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) cases are about hiring decisions and in those cases data and reports are the difference that can make a difference. This ensures that your firm adheres to all regulatory requirements, thereby minimizing the risk of legal challenges and enhancing your ability to drive your vision and values through how you hire. It may go without saying, but maintaining accurate and up-to-date records is the first step for increasing legal defensibility. If there are other key regulations affecting your hiring process, like GDPR or OFCCP, see how your ATS can support ongoing tracking of key metrics.
4. Sourcing and Candidate Flow Comparisons. How did your hiring process change in 2024?  What about your ad spend? Simple sourcing and candidate flow reports allow you to visualize how these changes affected applicant flow. If your sourcing strategy changed, knowing that your resources drove more efficient hiring of great people validates those decisions.  If you added new elements to the candidate experience, like a pre-employment assessment, candidate flow reports illustrate how those steps influenced applicant flow from completing the assessment through candidates hired.  Precise reporting that delivers first-glance understanding, builds understanding and confidence about how hiring assessment tools in recruiting support your success. Candidate flow reports supported several of our clients this year as they re-envisioned their hiring process, candidate experience, and implemented new steps like structured interviewing.
   
   

A strong applicant tracking system will provide easy-to-use core features that nurture the candidate experience by giving you the leading indicators that drive success. Take communication templates. When well-executed communication templates ensure you're delivering consistent messaging to candidates at each step of the candidate journey. With that compliance in place the ATS can set you up for success by helping you evaluate the success of those communications understanding how time-to-fill and candidate volume are affected after implementation.

Take a closer look at all the features of the CorvirtusHire ATS for both candidates and hiring managers.

Enhancing Transparency and Compliance

In the realm of recruitment, transparency and compliance are not just buzzwords—they are essential and impact the efficiency and integrity of your hiring process. Your ATS can either further, or slow, your progress to these goals depending on the clarity it gives you on the what, why, and when of how you recruit and hire.

Unfortunately, while hiring tools for recruiting, and assessment, continue to advance, the number of leaders satisfied with the reporting and data provided by those tools remains disappointingly low. Just about a quarter of organizations are satisfied with the data management features provided by their applicant tracking and hiring tech stack. This includes basics like the -

• Accuracy and integrity of data. Literally the most elementary, users often lack confidence that the data they have in front of them is accurate.
• Ease of reporting. Einstein said that genius is the ability to make the complex, simple. If reporting is tedious and difficult to understand it creates another frustrating barrier to action.  To this end, less than a quarter of organizations are satisfied with the ease of importing and exporting data.
• Consistency of data capture. You run a report, but then struggle to figure out how it exactly came together. Does your ATS reporting functionality make users work through a steep learning curve? Intuitive, user-friendly features (and automation) make acquiring data and reports easier and in so doing make it more likely we'll regularly seek out and rely on them when making decisions.

In short, reporting provides a view into your reporting processes enabling you to look at leading indicators, like candidate and user engagement, across each step of the hiring process. Whether it's tracking the number of applications received, the time taken to fill a position, or the sources of your candidates, audits and reporting identify blind spots while simultaneously optimizing your strategy.

Moreover, usage metrics provide valuable insights into how the ATS is used by different stakeholders, such as recruiters, hiring managers, and other team members. Perhaps your ops team is great at communication, but struggles with onboarding. These metrics can reveal patterns and trends in system usage, highlighting areas where additional training or resources might be needed. When we know which ATS features are underutilized we can provide the right training and support.

Boosting Efficiency with Real-Time Data

Writing this as we're ending 2024 and looking ahead to 2025 we're in a unique moment of time. Nearly half of companies radically changed their recruiting and hiring workflows and technology in 2021 and 2022 as workforce dynamics changed around the pandemic. 

While the push for speed has opened up some great opportunities, it has also brought along a few bumps in the road when it comes to getting the hang of new technology. As it stands, just 3% of companies are making the most of all the features in their ATS, and only 2% are fully utilizing their recruitment marketing platforms. In the rush, some companies might overlook the technical details that are key to making the most of their talent acquisition tech investments.

The majority of hiring managers question more than half of their hiring decisions, carrying significant doubts about whether they've made the right decision. There's urgency to solve the efficiency puzzle. In addition to questioning the utility of the tools before them, they also find talent acquisition diverting valuable resources away from core operations. Not surprisingly, most cite the talent acquisition process, and its related technology, as the cause. 

To make talent acquisition technology really work for you, consider if you need to take a step back. How could looking at your hiring process and candidate experience with fresh, data-focused eyes drive focus on the key results that matter?  By building a solid foundation that includes data management, automation, clear reporting on leading indicators that drive the lagging ones you most care about, and seamless technology you'll set yourself up for success. When this foundation is laid out just right, it supports every part of your talent acquisition efforts, allowing you to grow and improve. 

Choosing the Right ATS for Your Candidate Experience and Results

In short, an ATS with powerful reporting and audit functionality not only supports compliance, but your ability to hire, build your culture, and retain remarkable people long-term. By leveraging the reporting and monitoring capabilities of an ATS, you can enhance your recruitment strategy, improve efficiency, and build a more compliant and transparent hiring process.

Maximize reporting and your candidate experience. Demo the CorvirtusHire ATS.