After 6+ years of in-house talent acquisition work here at the lending division of Toyota Motor Corporation, and countless frustrating hours spent digging into our Taleo (which we aptly names TalentLink internally) applicant tracking system sourcing for resumes, we are finally upgrading to version 12.0 next month (let the ooohhhsss, aaahhhs and hurrays! be heard from miles away). Thanks to Monster (in the first 2-3 years) and LinkedIn (in the latter 2-3 years) my sourcing activities have been rather fruitful at times using very focused boolean searching criteria to hone in on the "right" talent out in the marketplace. Oh and by the way, utilizing the Toyota brand name on my phone calls to candidates didn't hurt either :)
What's been ghastly missing with Taleo 7.5 has been the ability to utilize those same boolean tools (that are a staple within those off the shelf external resources) within our in-house ATS to source the vast array of candidate resumes (and significant number of them high caliber) numbering in the tens of thousands who have applied to one of the many Toyota affiliates/divisions over the past few years...we share our system with both the motor sales and manufacturing affiliates/divisions. The fact that I put in a very general position name in the job title field, hit Search, and only come up with 3 candidate profiles has always been baffling to me!!
I've always been taught by my talent acquisition mentors from the past, that the number rule when starting with a large company that has a robust ATS, is to first mine the resumes that are already in the system of people who have shown an interest in the company. It's in-bound recruiting at its core. If your running 20-30+ requisitions at a time, it's probably your best sourcing tool, especially if you do not have focused sourcers on your team who can be in LinkedIn all day sending out hundreds of in-mails to prospective applicants. At companies prior to Toyota, I relied on this method especially when I was new to an organization, and just learning about the "hot buttons" to push when I was sourcing outside of the system.
We have day 2 of our Taleo upgrade training tomorrow, so I'll be asking a whole bunch of questions when we go over "advanced candidate querying" during the morning session. Hopefully, I'll be pleasantly surprised with all of the new boolean capabilities the new system has in place! I can then spend the summer looking for those "A" players who have shown a propensity for Toyota.
Morale of the story is to tap your ATS for candidates first, make sure you have the right querying tools, and build upon your in-bound recruiting skills for maximum impact.
What's been ghastly missing with Taleo 7.5 has been the ability to utilize those same boolean tools (that are a staple within those off the shelf external resources) within our in-house ATS to source the vast array of candidate resumes (and significant number of them high caliber) numbering in the tens of thousands who have applied to one of the many Toyota affiliates/divisions over the past few years...we share our system with both the motor sales and manufacturing affiliates/divisions. The fact that I put in a very general position name in the job title field, hit Search, and only come up with 3 candidate profiles has always been baffling to me!!
I've always been taught by my talent acquisition mentors from the past, that the number rule when starting with a large company that has a robust ATS, is to first mine the resumes that are already in the system of people who have shown an interest in the company. It's in-bound recruiting at its core. If your running 20-30+ requisitions at a time, it's probably your best sourcing tool, especially if you do not have focused sourcers on your team who can be in LinkedIn all day sending out hundreds of in-mails to prospective applicants. At companies prior to Toyota, I relied on this method especially when I was new to an organization, and just learning about the "hot buttons" to push when I was sourcing outside of the system.
We have day 2 of our Taleo upgrade training tomorrow, so I'll be asking a whole bunch of questions when we go over "advanced candidate querying" during the morning session. Hopefully, I'll be pleasantly surprised with all of the new boolean capabilities the new system has in place! I can then spend the summer looking for those "A" players who have shown a propensity for Toyota.
Morale of the story is to tap your ATS for candidates first, make sure you have the right querying tools, and build upon your in-bound recruiting skills for maximum impact.
