Designing Applicant Tracking Systems : A user-centered approach to improving recruiter efficiency

Sammanfattning: Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) help the recruiter keep track of all candidates and applications for a job. However, there is a large amount of information regarding candidates and their applications. Therefore, the interface that displays a candidate profile needs to be designed to help the recruiter manage all candidates in an efficient way. In this thesis, a user-centered design approach to designing a candidate profile was applied. User research consisted of contextual inquiries and content analysis of user reviews, to understand what activities and information are relevant for the recruiter throughout the recruitment process. The contextual inquiries focused on how recruiters screen an application, and the activities tied to an interview with a candidate. User needs were defined, and wireframes of the design were created and tested by users. Finally, a hi-fi design was created based on the usability test feedback, and a conclusion with recommendations for designing a candidate profile in an ATS. The result from the user research revealed that many recruiters have their own way of working with the recruitment process, leading to one of the recommendations for designing an ATS being to let the users customize parts of the candidate profile. Additionally, some recruiters use ranking or scoring of a candidate, while others do not. For those recruiters that use scoring, the score should be based on the job application and not stick to the candidate if they apply for another role. The results also revealed that reducing clutter, unnecessary information, and scrolling in the candidate profile was requested by users. Right before an interview was held, the recruiters needed to remind themselves who the candidate was. Additionally, the recruiters had candidate-specific questions to ask during the interview. This finding led to another recommendation for designing an ATS, to have a feature to let the user highlight interesting parts in the application. Future research could focus on which scales (linear or non-linear) a recruiter could best use to assess a candidate, based on the impression gathered either when screening an application or after an interview. Another area to further research is more reliable data on what candidate information is prioritized by the recruiter.