A Comprehensive Guide to Implementing a Unified Employment API
A unified employment API brings all the metrics from the entire candidate journey into a unified interface. It enables organizations to track essential data like candidate demographics, qualifications, attachments, and identity proofs in a single place.
It also helps them automate the resume parsing process and shortlist candidates based on role fit. Moreover, the software enables them to manage interviews by scheduling, assessing candidates, and managing interview-related travel information.
Candidate Sourcing
Candidate sourcing refers to finding and qualifying candidates (active and passive) who have not applied directly to an open role through an applicant tracking system. Recruiting teams spend considerable time and energy cultivating candidate pipelines, and they rely on these to source talent when they have open positions.
Traditionally, a company would post job openings on websites or social and professional networks to find interested applicants. This is a common and still valuable method for attracting candidates to apply to open roles. It can be challenging to reach candidates who aren’t actively looking for jobs—most people in the workforce.
A more modern approach to finding candidates is to track and leverage referrals. This is an excellent way to increase the number of qualified candidates and also reduce hiring costs. Referred candidates tend to stay in their roles longer and have a higher performance rate than candidates found through other methods.
As a result, recruiters must be diligent in building up their valuable talent pools. They must scour their networks, use online resources like social media and candidate databases, and attend in-person networking events to create and cultivate talent pools they can rely on to source candidates for open roles.
Pipeline Management
Clearly understanding pipeline health helps sales leaders and managers establish a single source of truth, forecast accurate goals, and keep tabs on all the processes that impact sales performance.
The unified pipeline structure helps bring metrics from across the recruitment journey together in one place, so talent acquisition teams have visibility into their recruiting funnels and can make more informed hiring decisions. The unified pipeline has an opportunities section, segmented by stages that candidates pass through during the candidate experience, and an archive section for inactive opportunities. Each opportunity in the pipeline can be viewed in detail, with a timeline of key events and an activity log that includes all activities performed by recruiters on the candidate.
A unified API like Finch normalizes the data schema of different HR systems into a common one, making it easy to integrate new tools. For example, the unified API may have an Employee schema with only 20 attributes. In contrast, some integrations might have a more complex Employee schema with dozens of attributes. The unified API ensures that these disparate systems work harmoniously, regardless of the number of attributes.
Reporting
Reporting is collecting, aggregating, and analyzing data within an organization. It’s the basis of making business decisions, enabling a company to communicate with internal teams and stakeholders about performance.
In the world of ATS, reporting comes in many different forms. One crucial aspect of ATS APIs is that they normalize the data schema of each source application. This can be challenging for a team that needs domain expertise in each application and uses different terminology for the same objects.
The next step in the candidate sourcing process is interviewing. ATS APIs help facilitate this process by automating the collection and storage of resumes and storing interview notes and other relevant data. Additionally, ATS APIs can help identify candidates who best fit a role by performing resume parsing and matching skills, expected salary, job history, etc. Lastly, ATS APIs can also provide the tools for extending and accepting offers and managing documentation in a streamlined way. These functions enable an efficient hiring experience for candidates and employees alike.
Integrations
An integration is a software, website application, middleware, or a single line of code that combines data from two or more siloed systems. It solves and simplifies the need for additional or different tools as your business grows or evolves.
For example, a unified API connects several software categories or verticals in a specific market, such as HRIS, into one platform. This helps reduce the number of APIs needed for a given product and reduces the time and complexity of onboarding new systems.
Unified APIs also help to eliminate the need for ad-hoc integration development and increase productivity by automating the transfer of information between systems, eliminating manual steps, and minimizing errors. In addition, they allow for more flexible and customizable user experiences to meet the needs of each business.
In terms of the candidate experience, unified APIs provide access to data from the entire recruitment process. This includes ATS, applicant tracking systems, candidate management platforms, and social media sites. This data enables employers to understand their recruiting process better and identify any bottlenecks or gaps in hiring, such as a lack of diversity in the candidates they hire.
Another key metric to measure is the time it takes for candidates to move through the hiring pipeline. This metric allows recruiters to optimize their hiring processes and resources by investing in channels that quickly yield the best candidate fit and hiring.
