With Great Software Comes Great Responsibility

I grew up in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s and watched enough Saturday morning cartoon’s to know that anytime somebody creates a powerful tool that is a force for good, there are always a pair of “wrong hands” grasping for it. What is this powerful force for good? Your applicant tracking system! Dun, dun, dun.

OK, maybe your ATS wont help the “wrong hands” take over the world, but it could ruin your professional wellbeing.

In my bizarro recruiting world, the candidates swimming in my talent pool have been fed poison. Oh not enough to kill them, just turn them into insidious zombies the likes of which makes Brad Pitt wake up at night in a cold sweat (What? Did you expect me to go Will Smith on you?). Oh the humanity of it!

A few weeks ago I was sitting in on interviews for a Director of IT position. The executive hiring manager would end each interview by telling the candidate that we’d get back to them in the next two weeks. As I walked each candidate to the front door and handed them my card, they all looked a little surprised. Each of them fell to their knees and cried, “you mean you’ll actually give me a way to communicate with you? You mean I’m not just a random bit of data that will be deleted once you’ve chosen your final candidate? You mean, you meant it when you said you’d let me know if I get the job or not?” Tears streamed down their faces in joy and they shook my hand all the way to the door praising my extreme professionalism.

OK, that didn’t really happen… well, at least they didn’t fall to their knees, but each of them were surprised. They were surprised because they were being treated like a real human being.

Don’t treat candidates in your recruiting pools like zombies that relentlessly, mindlessly pursue open positions or else they’ll turn into that. Candidates around the world have learned that some recruiters and HR professionals use ATS’s to weed through the vast number of resumes they get in a human numbers game.

Don’t be the wrong hands. Your ATS is a powerful tool and it gets powerful results. Use it wisely, grasshopper. We all pay the price when you don’t.

Tony Benjamin is the Head of Human Resources for Air Medical Research Group, and the owner of redline P&C. Photo Credit