Managing applications
This guide will take you through how to review and manage your applications at each stage of the hiring process.
Now that your adverts have received some applications, it is time to begin your shortlisting and hiring stages. From applying to your school's jobs to the streamlined selection process, our Applicant Tracking System (ATS) offers a suite of features designed to optimise every step of the recruitment journey. Our ATS will also help you receive more applications than if you were to use your own application form or divert them to another website.
Applicant Tracking System
The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is an online tool that simplifies your recruitment process and enables you to act quickly to secure the perfect candidate. All of the applications your vacancy receives will automatically go into the ATS.
You can then:
- Create shortlists of potential candidates
- Respond individually to successful candidates
- Bulk email unsuccessful candidates
- Share and review applications with other staff members
- Download and print all your applications in one go, or individually
- Manage reference requests with automatic reminders and validated forms
Once you’ve clicked on the drop-down of an individual job advert, you can manage each stage of the hiring process. You can view applications, view advert statistics, preview the advert on tes.com, and edit or cancel the job listing.
In Applications you can view and review your list of applicants, create shortlists, easily create a scorecard to complete during the interview process, invite other staff members to review candidate applications, respond individually to successful candidates, bulk email all unsuccessful ones, download and print applications, and manage reference requests.
Tick the boxes on the left-hand side of an application to contact candidates as a group, e.g. with a rejection email, or select a candidate individually to invite them to an interview or request references. By clicking the drop-down next to each application you can shortlist or change the application status.
You will also see the Applications anonymisation tool. This feature will allow you to hide the names of your candidates by changing them to a coloured animal. You are then free to review the applications without unconscious bias, whilst still being able to identify each applicant by their animal alias.
Once you click into an application, you will be able to review the applicant's full application details and supporting statement. Once this has been done, you can score the candidate using the Scorecard. Here you can score the candidate based on the criteria you choose.
You are also able to leave any Comments for you and your colleagues to come back to when reviewing each candidate. These are not seen by the candidate, only by administrators and reviewers you have invited to the Tes Portal.
Underneath the Comments area, you will see the full application from the candidate (including their supporting statement) for you to review.
When you are ready to begin checking references, you can use the in-house References area to request referees from the candidate to send a reference form. Please note: This functionality can only be used if your advert uses the Tes application form. Once received, they will appear underneath this section.
If you do not hear from the referee, you can Request a new referee or new contact details. If you are requesting an update from one referee but not the other, ensure the other reference has Do not action checked.
Towards the bottom of the ATS, you will find the Documents and Downloads section where you can upload items, like interview notes, to keep them all in one place.
Beneath this, you will also be able to view the Audit trail. This is used to keep an eye on where you are up to with the applications and what has changed since you received that application.
