One of the key obstacles to an ATS playing a winning role in a successful recruitment strategy is frustration.

And it comes in many shapes and sizes: frustration from HR managers who feel their ATS isn’t giving them the dexterity they require to find and handle applicants swiftly, frustration from hiring managers who find the interface clumsy and tech-heavy, frustration from users who face bottlenecks caused by not being able to access simple support, frustration from company execs who spend more time on managing their ATS than the more important task of creating and evolving their recruitment strategy, and – probably most importantly – frustration from candidates who tire of unwieldy application forms and time-sapping processes.

As technology advances, it’s only natural that the spheres of recruitment, talent acquisition and HR start to adopt more and more complex methods to source talent and bring the most suitable candidates on board. But in the race to beat the competition in what’s become one of the world’s most aggressive markets, it is easy to forget that the most vital role of any recruitment software is its usability.

In a Texas recruitment market where the 3.9% unemployment rate at the end of 2017 (November, Bureau of Labor Statistics) was a 40-year low and .2% lower than the US jobless rate, technology can certainly give companies the edge – but only when it’s used properly. Its role, after all, is to do the heavy lifting, not add to workloads.

QJumpers Sales Exec Michael David has first-hand experience of how poorly designed technology can actually be detrimental to a company’s recruitment strategy – in fact, it’s one of the reasons why he came on board when QJumpers started up in the US.

“Because Taleo, which is owned by Oracle, have about a 24% market share for applicant tracking systems, as an applicant you run into the Taleo system about a quarter of the time you apply for a job,” Michael says.

“The whole reason I took this job with QJumpers is that I had been looking for jobs and was frustrated at coming across this system which took forever and was so outdated. I had even got to the point that I didn’t care what the company was, if I was asked to fill out another application in that way, I wasn’t going to do it because it wasn’t worth my time.

“I, like so many other job applicants, had to weigh up the opportunity cost versus the time spent chasing that opportunity.

“When I heard about QJumpers I wanted to check it out not only for this role but also from an applicant’s perspective because there’s certainly plenty of demand for a system that allows an applicant to apply for positions easily.”

Now that Michael has joined the QJumpers team, he realizes that many ATS systems in the US provoke the same frustrations at the back end too from HR and hiring managers who want an intuitive package that is easy to operate.

“The people we’re working with now are thinking about strategic HR,” Michael says. “What’s important to them is what they can do to retain employees longer and what they can do to improve the culture of the organisation, they’re not there to be software geniuses.

“So, introducing them to a system that is not only easy on the candidates’ side of things but easy to use on the back end from the HR and hiring managers’ side too is great. QJumpers was specifically designed to decentralize the hiring process and, because hiring managers are the ones on the front line, that can only happen if we if we make it intuitive and easy to use for them.”

Some of the initial comments from Texas companies unhappy with their existing ATS when QJumpers first surveyed the state a little over a year ago included not only frustration at “cumbersome” software and “You need a tech brain to use all the functions – I’m in recruitment not IT”, but also the common catchcry that they didn’t receive enough tech support.

Michael says personalized, professional support is key to the QJumpers philosophy and why the company immediately rolled out a game-changing support setup that includes:

• Free support
• Coverage 18 hours per day (NZ and US hours)
• Human support via Telephone or face to face
• Online knowledge centre
• Feature requests and voting
• Online issue management system (keeps clients informed of any updates)

“In QJumpers we genuinely care about people not just because it affects revenue, but because it affects people and can deal directly with their frustrations,” Michael says. “It comes across in meetings and how we communicate with clients, how we react to issues, how we problem-solve, and how we work together as a team. I’ve never worked in such an environment before, and that sense of team stands out clearly.”

To experience QJumpers’ innovative approach to recruitment technology and seamless talent acquisition, or for more information on how QJumpers can help you develop a successful recruitment strategy and system [email protected].