As I near my 11 year mark working with recruiting teams helping them build sourcing tools and process (I customize Salesforce.com for talent acquisition) that follow sales and marketing concepts, I have learned that an ATS is where data goes to die.

I’m not trying to degrade ATS companies, it was never supposed to be a tool for marketing and relationship management, so it does do the job it was designed for…to process applicants.

But applicant processing does not get the best talent in front of hiring managers in a timely manner when a new req gets created… direct candidate engagement does. Nor does it provide the structure for a staffing leader to design an overall recruiting program.

A CRM candidate model does. When someone applies for one of your jobs in your ATS, they are expressing interest in your company… but the odds are they will not get that specific job they applied for. Don’t let that interest die there.

Take those qualified candidates who did not get the job (aka Silver Medalists) and move them into your CRM and continue to engage with them over time. As we all know, a key part of hiring is timing.

You have gained their interest and qualified them to some extent… now you just need to find the right job and the right timing. That’s what the marketing industry is founded upon.

This sourcing model has been tried and tested for 10 years by various companies that I have worked with. This is not something that the recruiting industry created, the marketing industry did. It’s called “Permission Marketing.”

We just “tweak” it a bit to match the recruiting process.

This is where candidate engagement comes into play in such a way that it is not just a few recruiters sending off “Invite to Apply” emails to a few candidates that they found randomly while searching the ATS, but rather a company wide process and program that gets developed and measured.

Candidate Engagement comes in 2 categories, passive and direct.

Passive Engagement: Keeps candidates warm and helps the company stay on the mind of the candidate. Facebook posts on a company page, tweets on a company twitter account, email newsletters, etc

Direct Engagement: Direct contact between the Recruiter and the Candidate. Emails (not LinkedIn Inmails) and phone calls directly to the candidate regarding an open req.

When your data “sits” in your ATS, it is not set up for campaign type direct engagement by multiple recruiters over long periods of time. That’s what CRMs do.