Talent is the central key to success and every company knows that. But the labor market is highly competitive, and there is already a severe shortage of skilled workers. This makes transparent and simple application processes all the more important. For 85 percent of prospective job applicants, transparency and ease of application are key factors in their decision for or against a company, as revealed by the comprehensive german study "What will be important in 2021 when it comes to job searches and applications?" conducted by the job portal StepStone. At the same time, executives expect efficient applicant management.
This article shows you how to avoid problems in the recruiting process without using expensive HR software, how to optimize your applicant management, and how to make it 100 percent GDPR compliant.
Transparency and rapidity in applicant management in demand
According to StepStone, the application process still doesn't satisfy the majority of applicants. Only five out of a hundred rate the process as "very good". For transparency, almost half of all respondents in the study only awarded the grade "sufficient" or worse. A lack of clarity in terms of the application process, its duration, and the decision-making process is the most criticized aspect.
Stackfield not only facilitates team workflows and combines all useful features for increased employee productivity. It is much more than just a simple project management tool: Stackfield is ideal for transparent, fast, and privacy-protected applicant management.
Advantages of Stackfield
The reasons for delays in the application process are numerous. Whether it's email ping-pong between team members, missing deadlines, or the applicant's documents disappearing - many things can get lost in the flood of applications. To untangle the clutter and get the overview you need, targeted software can help.
With the help of Stackfield, application processes in a company can be optimally mapped and controlled - everything 100% GDPR compliant. No matter whether the company is an agency, a fintech, a law firm, or an insurance company. Familiar problems in applicant management are solved for all industries equally here. How easy and fast this works, is explained in the next steps.
Easy Recruiting: Step by step to success
To successfully manage applicants at Stackfield, it only takes a few clicks and steps. All without the need for additional HR tools or software.
Step 1:
For starters, you need to create a new room for your applicant management. Rooms offer the best possibility to organize work thematically. For more information, visit our Learning Center: Working with a room
Step 2:
Activate all the modules you want to use. Modules help structure the collaboration with your team members and realize individual workflows. You can freely configure this according to the requirements of your company. The following modules are the most important ones for the application process: Tasks, Pages, Files, and Calendar. How it works in detail, you can read in the Learning Center: (De-) Activating and modifying the modules within a room.
Step 3:
Next, you should give the module "Tasks" a more unique name - such as "Application Process". This is the only way to make it absolutely clear in which module the process is mapped. It provides orientation for all room members - and makes it easier for them to find their way around (Learning Center: (De-) activating and modifying the modules within a room).
Step 4:
Now, the invitation of all team members involved in the applicant management process follows. This may be the HR team, your department head, or the boss. Users can be added or removed at any time (Learning Center: Adding / Removing users to / from a room).
Step 5:
The rights of the users can be adjusted according to your individual needs or the respective internal guidelines. You can define who is admin, contributor, or reader at any time. In addition, you can manually restrict both functions and the visibility of entries (Learning Center: User rights)
Stackfield: Problem-solving made easy
Steps 1 to 5 solve several problems that often drag out the recruiting process unnecessarily. Important notifications and documents are often scattered across multiple locations such as emails or servers - sometimes even stored only locally with one HR employee. Stackfield clearly bundles all applicant management information in one room. All persons involved can access it with just a few clicks - always up-to-date and traceable. The result: more efficiency and absolute transparency.
Full control over process participation: You decide who gets to do what. In some cases, department managers are not directly involved in the application process. Nevertheless, they should be able to view the current status quo for individual applicants. You can easily control this via rights management.
The process definition
After setting up the basis for your applicant management, the next step is the concrete definition of a process that fits your individual requirements.
Step 6:
Define a process or pipeline in your application process module. A helpful view is provided by the Kanban board, which can be divided as follows: Application received (column 1), Application interesting (column 2), Interview (column 3), Personal meeting (column 4), Contract negotiation (column 5), Rejection (column 6), Closed (column 7) (Learning Center: Working with tasks).
-> Better overview of the application process
The Kanban board ensures that the status quo of each application is immediately visible at a glance.
The HR process can be mapped in the Kanban board
Step 7:
Emails become tasks: Set up an email forwarding system. All emails arriving at your organization's address will be automatically converted into task cards by Stackfield and moved to the first column in the Kanban board (Learning Center: Email Integration).
-> Avoidance of errors
Applications no longer have to be sifted through in the mail program and contents such as resumes or cover letters do not need to be transferred to another tool. The process is automated and the company's responsiveness is improved.
Email forwardings in the Kanban board
Step 8:
Exchange information with your team members on the current status of the applicant or open questions via the comment function directly in the task card. Assign subtasks and set due dates. All changes to the task card are displayed directly in the dashboard, so you can see them immediately and react quickly (Learning Center: Working with tasks).
-> Clear structures for everyone involved
Email ping-pong between team members is no longer necessary - information is no longer lost. In Stackfield, each candidate has a task card where deadlines, timing, and documents are clearly bundled.
Important information can be stored directly in the task
Step 9:
Send an appointment invitation including a link to the video conference to the applicant. In the event, the applicant is asked directly whether he wants to accept or decline. All participants and their status (accepted, rejected, pending) are displayed in the event (Learning Center: Working with events).
-> Direct contact via video - without an additional tool
Normally, initial interviews with applicants are conducted by telephone. However, in the digital age, this is impersonal. Companies often need to access a separate tool in video conferences and additionally keep track of documents. With Stackfield, you can directly send an appointment invitation including a video conference link, and keep an eye on the status quo.
Via events you can start audio and video calls incl. screen sharing
Step 10:
Create all job advertisements to be filled as separate pages in the module "Pages" (Learning Center: Working with pages).
-> All open positions at a glance
The pages in Stackfield serve both as a knowledge database showing which jobs are still open and as a tool for all room members to edit and optimize them together. If the text of a vacancy needs to be adjusted, it can be done directly in Stackfield. Word documents that have to be sent back and forth are no longer necessary.
Create job ads in pages
Step 11:
During the fourth quarter, you can define so-called "deletion rules" in Stackfield. All tasks including file attachments - such as CV or notes on the applicant - can be deleted. This means that the entire application process can be 100% GDPR-compliant.
-> Thanks to Stackfield, one hundred percent data protection succeeds
The law states that companies must delete applications after six months, as the standard legal basis no longer applies here (GDPR § 14 (1) AGG, Art. 5 para. 1 lit. c). However, the personal data of applicants often remains in the mailboxes of HR employees. In Stackfield, there will be an automatic deletion rule in the future: all personal data will then be deleted in due time. A huge advantage that saves time and potential fines.
Conclusion
In summary, no company can afford not to continuously optimize its application process to remain competitive and attract talent. Current figures show that the pressure on the applicant market is even growing: In June 2021, a total of 693,316 vacancies were registered in Germany. Compared to the same month last year, the number of job vacancies is thus up by 21.6 percent.
Stackfield is a universal tool that covers all essential aspects of applicant management. And it does so without additional HR software. It bundles important recruiting information simply, quickly, and transparently - and everything is one hundred percent data-compliant.
The advantages of Stackfield at a glance:
- Time and cost savings
- Transparency in recruiting processes
- Central administration and storage of application documents
- Simplification of the online application process
- Optimization and automation of workflows
- Reporting of the recruiting performance
- Access to digital talent pools
With Stackfield well-known problems in applicant management are thus solved for all industries.