Interview scheduling companies play an integral role in helping their partner organizations hire the right talent by streamlining the candidate communication and end-to-end interview process.
The first step towards smooth interviews is getting a pool of candidates to choose from. Here, most companies rely on ATS or Application Tracking Systems to pull in candidate and job data.
While building and maintaining all the ATS integrations is a tedious and resource-intensive process, it can be made simpler and faster with unified ATS APIs. We will get to that, first let’s look at all the use cases you can enable with ATS integrations.
ATS integration in interview scheduling workflow
Let’s quickly look at how ATS APIs can streamline the interview scheduling workflow.
Step I: Integration setup
Essentially, the first step is to get the ATS integration in place leveraging popular ATS APIs. As an interview scheduling company, you can choose the appropriate approach to ATS integration via in-house integration building, embedded iPaaS, unified API or workflow automation tools.
Read: Build vs Buy: Best way to build product integrations
Step II: Data synchronization
Once the integration setup is complete, data synchronization regarding the job requisition, interview schedule, candidate information can be commenced.
This will ensure that whenever data from a new candidate is entered in the ATS, the interview scheduling company gets an automated alert to initiate the next steps to set up the interview and following processes.
The right ATS integration approach will ensure that the interview scheduling company receives new candidate alerts automatically, without pushing for updates.
Step III: Calendar and interview slot coordination
ATS APIs can help interview scheduling companies with real-time calendar and interview slot coordination. Once the applicant profile screening is complete and the profile has been shortlisted in the ATS, the interview scheduling company can automatically capture this update directly from the ATS app and identify potential slots for the interview based on the calendar availability for the candidate and the interviewer.
Step IV: Candidate communication
Once the interview slot has been decided, the interview scheduling company can extract ATS API data to automate interview invitations and reminders and even personalize candidate communication as per the role, position and context.
The same information about the communication will be automatically updated in the ATS to ensure that the hiring organization using the API has a clear picture of the candidate status.
Step V: Real time candidate status update
As soon as the interview is complete, the ATS API enables the interview scheduling company to update candidate status in real time.
For instance, Knit WRITE APIs enable you to update candidate status about whether or not the candidate appeared for the interview, status in the interview process (selected, rejected, moved to next round, add notes etc.). See docs
This information is then reflected in real time in the ATS to help the HR and hiring managers understand where they stand for that particular position and whether they need to source more applications.
Step VI: Interview feedback and evaluation
In addition to the status update, the ATS integration also enables the interview scheduling company to provide a detailed feedback and evaluation of the interview which can be captured directly in the ATS.
In case the hiring organization prefers, they can share it with the candidate or keep it in their ATS records for future reference.
Step VII: HR analytics
Finally, the ATS integration can help interview scheduling companies capture key hiring metrics and facilitate HR analytics.
For instance, the integration can help capture the metrics including Application-to-Interview Conversion Rate, Interview Scheduling Efficiency, Interview-to-Hire Ratio, Time-to-Fill (TTF), Time-to-Hire (TTH), Offer Acceptance Rate, etc.
Data from these metrics can help identify the gaps in the hiring process and facilitate better outcomes.
ATS integration challenges
While scaling ATS integrations is crucial for any interview scheduling companies to close more deals, building and maintaining ATS integrations is not easy. Here’s why most companies struggle with scaling their integration efforts:
1. Data compatibility issues
First, different ATS applications use different data fields, models and nuances, which may or may not be compatible with other ATS or even with the data models being used by the interview scheduling company.
This can lead to data compatibility issues leading to larger bandwidth requirements to understand and use different ATS APIs, with the danger of data corruption as well.
2. Candidate data sensitivity during transfer
Second, since both sides of the data transfer contain sensitive candidate information, the ATS integration must have robust security measures for authorization and authentication as well as others like rate limiting etc. to prevent unauthorized access or DDoS attacks, among others.
With policies like GDPR and most recently the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) law (in India), any data misuse can lead to serious repercussions, especially because ATS and hiring processes use a lot of personal candidate data.
3. Engineering and maintenance costs with increasing number of ATS being used
Third, as you scale and onboard more customers, you will be bound to further ATS integrations to their preferred ATS application.
The engineering and maintenance costs associated with adding more ATS applications can be huge and difficult to maintain in-house. Each integration can cost an average 10K USD or 3 months of developer time just to build and deploy.
This can dilute your engineering team’s bandwidth from focusing on the core product. Scalability with the growing number of ATS applications to be added can pose a resource and cost challenge.
4. Vendor (ATS) coordination and cooperation
In addition to the engineering costs, scaling ATS integrations also comes with additional coordination and cooperation with the ATS vendors.
When you are building and managing ATS integrations in-house you have to take care of coordinating with every ATS vendor in case of any error or challenge in data transfer, security, etc. This can be highly time consuming and counter productive.
5. Limited real time update capabilities
Next, if you use a polling infrastructure to power your ATS integration, you will need to take care of the heavy lifting of polling data from ATS applications, dealing with different API calls and rate limits.
Invariably, this will prevent you from accessing data in real time as soon as there is any update in candidate information or a new candidate is onboarded to the system. This can lead to delays in interview scheduling and missed opportunities.
How interview scheduling companies can 10X their growth with unified ATS API
While there are certain operational challenges to using ATS integrations, unified APIs like Knit, can help address all such challenges and even achieve 10X growth.
Centralized data management with one data model
Knit periodically pulls data from all connected ATS platforms and processes the data coming from different platforms in different formats to convert them to one unified data model.
The heavy lifting of pulling data from various ATS apps, dealing with different API calls, rate limits, formats etc are completely taken care of by Knit.
Real-time data sync for higher productivity
Depending on the infrastructure used, your data sync frequencies can be set. A webhook driven architecture will facilitate real time data sync without requiring you to initiate polling.
For instance, Knit, having a 100% event-driven webhook architecture, refreshes data in real time by periodically pulling data from all connected ATS platforms and processes the data coming from different platforms in different formats to convert them to our unified model. As a result, you won’t have to manage any polling infrastructure on your end or worry about missing any critical data update.
Faster time to market with quick deployment
Adding an ATS integration can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. But, with a unified API, you can add multiple ATS integrations in as little as one day.
This quick deployment ensures that you are able to leverage the benefits of ATS integration faster.
Easy scalability to integrate with multiple ATS APIs in one go
Not only is deployment faster with unified API, it also supports accelerated and unlimited scalability. You can connect with various ATS applications in one go.
For example, as an interview scheduling company, you can simply embed the Knit’s UI component in your frontend to get access to the full catalog of 20+ ATS applications, regardless of the auth type, credentials, nuances for the application.
All credential management, verification, token generations become the responsibility of Knit in this case.
Not only that, each time a new app is integrated to the Knit’s ATS API category, you get immediate access and sync capabilities with the new app without writing a single line of code. Get your Knit unified ATS API key now! (Start for free)
Better reporting and analytics to manage integrations seamlessly
Reporting and analytics with a unified API like Knit can help facilitate high customer satisfaction.
For instance, Knit allows interview scheduling companies to monitor and manage the health of all ATS integrations for each connected customer using a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page.
Companies can keep track of all API calls, data syncs and requests made by users as well as status of each webhook registered on a single dashboard.
Enhanced security
A unified API helps interview scheduling companies facilitate better security and data privacy.
For instance, Knit fosters double encryption for data—when it is at rest as well as when it is in transit.
At the same time, most unified APIs comply with the key security protocols such as HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR etc and ensure constant monitoring with top intrusion detection systems. A unified API generally supports all forms of authentication like OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication.
Note: As a unified API, Knit goes a step further to promote end user security. Knit is the only unified API which considers your data sacrosanct and doesn’t store a copy of your data. The syncs happen over a 100% webhook-based architecture for enhanced data security. Furthermore, an additional layer of application security protects and prevents all PII from any security vulnerabilities. Learn more
Expand market reach and serve more customers
By providing instant ATS integration with multiple ATS applications, interview scheduling companies can leverage unified APIs to expand their market reach and acquire new customers.
They no longer have to worry about missed opportunities or make their prospects wait till they are able to build new ATS integrations.
This allows interview scheduling companies to close deals faster and serve a higher number of customers, leading to increased revenue and greater profitability.
What else do you get with Knit Unified API?
Interview scheduling companies using Knit as their unified API for ATS integration automatically retrieve new applications from all connected ATS platforms.
Knit pulls the data and sends the relevant data to the interview scheduling tool, reducing the need for making API calls or manually starting data syncs. Owing to the webhooks architecture, Knit ensures high scalability and delivery, irrespective of the data load.
You control when data syncs happen
While Knit supports real time data sync, it also allows users to control when syncs happen, which can be set by the CX team directly from the dashboard, without involving engineering resources.
Furthermore, filters can be set on the information being retrieved from the source system to only consume the relevant data to save network cost and storage cost.
Get started with ATS APIs
Staying on top of ATS integrations can be overwhelming and time consuming due to the sheer number of the ATS APIs available in the market today.
Knit helps you integrate with 30+ ATS and HR applications with a single unified API. Plus, we have built Knit with a developer friendly setup which requires minimal coding and maximum onboarding support.
If you want to know more about Knit, talk to one of our experts or try our unified ATS API yourself, today. (Getting started is completely free)
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