Job requisition management isn’t t just for large companies anymore. Now small and medium sized businesses can leverage Newton to create user friendly, effective job requisition approval processes. Designed by recruiting industry experts (like the rest of our product), our latest feature enhancement is our answer to the rigid, nonintuitive requisition management tools prevalent in most applicant tracking systems.
Our products team has been working on this feature for over a year and they’ll be the first to tell you that Job Approval Management is a full product in itself. Those of us on the marketing side of the house are proud of our product team’s effort and congratulate them on shipping their 4th major release of the year – unheard of in the HR Technology industry. And, they’re not done. Rumor has it (hint) they’ve started working on Newton Mobile and a host of other useful features that we know will be equally elegant and thoughtful.
Here is a preview of Newton’s Job Requisition Approval Manager.
Newton Software develops corporate applicant tracking software for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Unparalleled usability, industry leading user adoption rates and exceptional customer service set Newton apart.
Automated Job Approval features aren’t a new thing. We’ve decided it’s high time to make the job approval process better. We’re excited to announce the arrival Newton’s Automated Job Approval feature, the latest addition to our popular corporate applicant tracking software.
First, we have something to admit. This was the hardest feature for us to design to date. We’ve been redesigning and enhancing this feature for nearly a year. We could have shipped our original design months ago, most vendors would have so they could add Job Approval to their feature matrix ASAP. Instead, as with all of the enhancements we make to Newton, we wanted this feature to work great.
3 reasons to love Newton’s Automated Job Approval feature.
1. Easy for Hiring Managers and Approvers
What we’ve learned is that when applicant tracking software achieves something valuable without being distracting or requiring hours of training, only then will it live up to its potential. The 80/20 rule applies here: we want to do well what 80 percent of your users do all the time and together we will create a great user experience that promotes adoption. With Newton’s Job Approval feature, managers can simply login and request to get a job approved with a few simple steps. And, job approvers will love the easy approval process: Green is go. Red is no.
2. Ultimate Flexibility
Hiring is dynamic. Your tools need to be flexible. Newton’s email driven Job Approval Process is the most flexible on the market. Some companies don’t really want to reinvent the wheel. They have a ‘requisition form’ that works well and they just need a vehicle to expedite and track the actual process. We do that. Some organizations want to start over and create an optimized automated requisition process. We do that too.
3. Ultimate Visibility
If you know anything about Newton Software, you know that we are the ones that bring transparency and visibility to corporate recruiting programs. If you don’t know us, we used to be corporate recruiters and we understand that having visibility into all aspects of the recruiting process is not only critical – it’s power. True to form, we’ve provided our users with a dashboard that allows them to see where all their approvals are in real-time. Anything less would be…..annoying.
If you’re a Newton user, please contact our support team to enable the Automated Job Approval Process starting on Monday, August 1st. Support@newtonsoftware.com
If you’re investigating Newton for your organization, please know that we may not have every feature that other ATS systems have. BUT, the features we do have, the 80% that people use all the time, are easy-to-use, intuitive and work great. Please contact us for a demo today, we’ll prove it to you. Sales@newtonsoftware.com
We’ve all heard the recent hype about cloud computing. From competing Microsoft and Google commercials to Apple’s recent iCloud deployment, there certainly is a lot of buzz about ‘the cloud.’ What exactly IS the cloud though, and more specifically, what impact does cloud computing have on human resources and corporate recruiting?
The cloud essentially means taking all the IT and software infrastructure off a company’s hands and placing it in the capable hands of a cloud computing provider. Most often, a provider is a large company, like Amazon, that has the server infrastructure and technical expertise to handle the needs of millions of business customers. A company like Amazon can agilely deploy servers in order to maximize efficiency and provide customers the throughput they need for their product or service at any given time.
So why is the cloud good, specifically for human resources departments? The cloud means cost efficiency, security, and dependability. Think about utilizing cloud computing like you would think about hiring any other specialist. Let’s say you needed some carpentry done – you’d obviously hire a carpenter. If you hired a plumber to do the job, he’d likely take longer, cost more and provide an inferior service.
Using Amazon or another cloud computing provider, essentially means hiring a specialist for your company or product’s software and IT infrastructure. They can get the job done as efficiently as possible because they have the resources to do so. They’re also often a massive company (like Amazon) that places the utmost responsibility in providing their cloud customers with maximum security and dependable server uptime. After-all, it’s the cloud provider’s business to make sure your business is up and running at all hours.
Hreonline recently published an article that highlights the proliferation of cloud computing as well as Software as a Service (SaaS) in the HR industry. John Malikowski of Deloitte Consulting provided an insightful quote within the piece: “We have seen a lot of business cases and implementations where CIOs, CFOs and top HR executives all are getting involved,” he says. “The cost savings are there, and total cost of ownership is now more than ever a big part of the business case for HR. Also, usability and intuitiveness are high. SaaS and cloud computing just work.”
Essentially, companies that take advantage of cloud computing can pass that advantage onto their customers. This means passing on cost-efficiency, scalability, access and dependability. Newton Software does just that by leveraging Amazon’s AWS cloud computing environment for our SaaS application.
Newton’s customer can easily deploy the best applicant tracking solution on the market in a matter of days and hours, never weeks or months. Not only is the software deployment refreshingly uncomplicated, but the software can be accessed on-demand from any computer, anywhere, anytime and from any browser or platform. Newton provides an affordable, subscription-based pricing structure that can be scaled up and down based on customer’s size and demand, just like cloud servers can be deployed based on that same demand. Newton’s application security is backed by a multi-billion dollar corporation whose public stock depends on this very reliability.
We’ve worked hard to establish Newton as an innovator in a space that has for nearly two decades has been purely focused on what we refer to as the feature arms race. Today, we stand, for the most part alone, as the only modern, pure-play ATS on the market. As our peers continue to drift (rather aimlessly) into talent management and human capital management, they now purely just maintain their applicant tracking modules, all but abandoning new development. Not us. We just invested in the infrastructure necessary to help us more effectively solve the problems that still linger in corporate human resources departments, hiring managers’ cubes and executives’ minds.
This is why Newton Software is proud to be a cloud computing pioneer for applicant tracking software. We provide businesses and human resources departments the efficiency, dependability and security that cloud computing is all about.
One of the first things we tell any customer when they choose Newton, our popular applicant tracking software is, “If you don’t understand something, no matter how small, it’s our fault, not yours. Let us know.” We ENCOURAGE technical support emails and phone calls. Yes, we’re being serious. The hardline, old school enterprise software folks tell us that we’re crazy but we’ve always had a problem with authority and, frankly, we haven’t met too many customers that love their legacy vendor. Most importantly, having been customers of other ATS vendors in the past, we’re not fans of long hold times, negative attitudes and cookie cutter responses.
At Newton, we don’t expect you to have any problems getting started or running our applicant tracking software, however, we also make it our priority to provide fast, friendly and free technical support for all of our customers. Our motto has remained the same since the beginning: “If you don’t understand something, no matter how small, it’s our fault not yours. Let us know.” There, we’ve said it again.
Not only does Newton want customers to email or call when they have the slightest problem, but we also encourage customer feedback. Our “support driven” design team thrives on taking customer’s suggestions about making a better product and implementing them within each successive software update. We realize that our customers are the best gauge of how to improve our product – so we take suggestions seriously.
Given our commitment to customer service, we’re proud to see that our customers have some great reviews and feedback on our support system. Here are a few highlights of what they had to say:
Catia O’Neill, a human resources professional, commented on Newton’s ‘support driven’ design team: “During the implementation process we contacted Newton several times for assistance with application and customization inquiries. Newton’s team always assisted me promptly. They always tried to go the extra mile in order to accommodate our special requests. If the customization request was not possible, Newton always tried to develop it later on. The thank you letters and the EEOC compliance features are two examples of their proactive approach.”
Newton’s response time and commitment to customer service was very important for Hannah Adams, a human resources manager: “Newton has been extremely responsive and very helpful on the customer service side of things. When I contacted them originally I was pleasantly surprised that they provided such outstanding service.”
Ro Carbone, a VP of human resources, highlighted Newton’s general positive attitude when providing support for customers: “I tend to be a bit of a high-need client. To that end, I have dutifully pummeled the Newton folks with ongoing questions. And, yes, I have been known to ask the same question more than once. I have to say that I’ve never been made to feel technologically inferior or lazy when calling the Newton folks. And I can’t think of a time when someone wasn’t there to pick up the phone and give me relevant and accurate information in return. They are not only very responsive to clients, but tend to proactively reach out to see how things are going – for no other reason than to ensure things are going well.”
Many other applicant tracking vendors see their customer support as an ‘add-on’ to their software. At Newton, we don’t believe in add-ons for our software or our support system. Every applicant tracking feature built into the software is meant to be useful and integral, just as our support process is a central part of the system. Our customer support is built into our service to provide regular assistance as well as take customer feedback and utilize it to improve our product.
Our next applicant tracking review entry will concentrate on what customers have to say about utilizing Newton on a regular basis. Stay tuned!
CIO.com recently published a very informative article titled “Social Networks: A New Hotbed for Hiring Discrimination Claims.” The article gives an in-depth perspective into the world of corporate recruiting, in particular how recruiters are using social networks more and more to evaluate potential hires.
Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter give recruiters and hiring manager the opportunity to peer into a potential candidate’s everyday life, work habits and personal information. More and more, recruiters are using information gathered from social networks to determine whether a candidate is a good fit for their company. However, using this information as the basis for a hire can lead to a bevy of discrimination claims against the company.
In this recent article, CIO.com spoke with HR consultant Jessica Miller-Merrell about some of the risks involved with using social networks to make hiring decisions. She outlines potential legal risks including the niche demographic breakdown of specific social networks as well as the necessity for concise affirmative action reporting for government contractors.
She goes on to talk about how using someone’s personal information to determine their qualifications can be problematic: “if you make hiring decisions based on protected information that a candidate provides on the Internet—if you decide not to hire someone because you find out they’re Muslim, pregnant or their child has a health condition—these are hiring decisions that can get you in hot water.”
There’s been a growing trend of more and more claims of workplace discrimination getting submitted over the past several years, and the addition of social networking as a hiring tool is bound to only increase the rate of claims. Every year, companies face an uphill climb to follow confusing regulations that require them to provide detailed reports to various federal agencies.
These are the very factors Newton took into account when we decided to build EEOC / OFCCP compliance features into our recruiting software. We realized that companies already face a great risk in regards to complying with the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs for government contractors.) Bad or ignorant hiring practices and decisions can sink a business due to costly litigation battles over wrongful discrimination.
Newton’s EEOC /OFCCP Compliance tools make sure that all the right information gets collected, stored and tracked regardless of the source of the data. Voluntary self-identification surveys, reasons for non-selection, hire/offer logs, minimum qualification questions and flow logs (EEO1 reports) are just a few of the tools that can help recruiters and human resources professionals keep track of all the mandatory information. Newton makes EEOC and OFCCP compliance a seamless part of the hiring process, so that when the time comes, a company doesn’t need to scramble to deal with a problem.
While we haven’t yet seen a pervasive precedent set regarding social networks and social recruiting, experts agree that it’s just a matter of time. As more companies are learning to use social networks as recruiting tools, there will be a social media recruiting precedent before you know it. For now, our advice is to seek guidance from counsel especially before using social media to vet applicants and to always have a consistent, compliant process in place when distributing job related information to social networks.
Citations
Levinson, Meredith. “Social Networks: A New Hotbed for Hiring Discrimination Claims.” CIO.com. April 18th, 2011. http://www.cio.com/article/679830/Social_Networks_A_New_Hotbed_for_Hiring_Discrimination_Claims_?page=1&taxonomyId=3123
This past weekend, our technical team made some final adjustments and now, Newton, our popular applicant tracking software, joins services from industry leaders like Microsoft, IBM and Netflix in Amazon’s AWS cloud computing environment. Our decision to move to the cloud was as much driven by the growth and success of our business (quite profitable) as by the operational efficiencies that the Cloud offers. Amazon Web Services provides us the scalability and agility for continued fast-paced growth and the reliability to continue to exceed our customers’ expectations.
This isn’t another one of those ‘all hat no cowboy’ marketing stunts. Newton’s product team has been testing and preparing for our Cloud activation since Amazon announced its public availability in 2009. We’ve anticipated moving to the cloud for since the beginning and our development team has meticulously architected our applicant tracking software to take full advantage of the cloud computing infrastructure.
Moving to the Cloud gives us a huge advantage over our peers. We will continue to innovate and scale with better infrastructure, fewer resources and less operational overhead. Translation: we will continue to offer cutting-edge, easy-to-use applicant tracking software to more customers with less effort at more affordable prices.
Why should Newton customers care?
Scalability:
Amazon AWS enables us to increase capacity within minutes, not hours or days. We can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously. This allows us to automatically scale Newton up and down depending on our customers’ needs. This scalability critical as Newton Software averages nearly 20 new customers a month and is by all accounts the fastest growing ATS in the marketplace.
Reliability:
Amazon AWS offers a highly reliable environment where database instances can be quickly and predictably commissioned. If a server fails (because they just do from time to time), Newton will just bounce to a server that is working without a noticeable service interruption. Amazon AWS service runs within Amazon’s proven, SAS 70 datacenters. That’s right, if you can buy a book on Amazon, you can status a candidate in Newton. The Amazon AWS SLA commitment is 99.95% availability in any Amazon AWS region. This means that Newton is ultra-reliable all over the world all the time.
Speed:
This is where our product team gets really geeked up. By switching to the Cloud, Newton has become even faster. And, it allows our team to do some really innovative things too. Most recruiting software bogs down when running complex reports. Not Newton! We leveraging extra computing power and read-only database technology to enable users to run complex customized reports instantly.
Security:
Amazon AWS has some of the world’s most trusted brands on the platform and Amazon takes security very seriously. Amazon Web Services’ security controls are evaluated every six months by an independent auditor in accordance with Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS70) Type II audit procedures.
Newton Software has only begun.
We’ve worked hard to establish Newton Software as an innovator in a space that has for two decades purely focused on processing and storing resumes. Today, we stand, for the most part alone, as the only modern, pure-play ATS on the market. As our peers continue to drift (rather aimlessly) into talent management and human capital management, they now purely just maintain their applicant tracking modules, all but abandoning new development. Not us. We just invested in the infrastructure necessary to help us more effectively solve the problems that still linger in corporate talent acquisition departments, hiring managers’ cubes and executives minds. We’ve just begun.
In today’s always-online world, consumers utilize reviews for almost everything. Whether it’s locating the best pizza spot in Boulder, CO or finding a recommended place to stay on TripAdvisor people like to know what their peers have to say about a product or service before they jump into it.
The same goes for business software. Any human resources leader, corporate recruiting manger or company executive knows that an important purchasing decision needs to be properly vetted through research. Part of this research naturally must involve investigating what other similar business leaders are saying about a product or service.
This is especially true when moving forward with an applicant tracking software platform. At Newton we know that any potential customer wants to know “why Newton?” In other words: what makes Newton’s applicant tracking solution the best choice, and what do our customers have to say about the product and our team’s ability to deploy Newton quickly to any sized organization? It only makes sense to have these questions answered before moving forward with an applicant tracking solution.
For that reason, we’ve asked a couple of our customers to review their experience with Newton. Although these applicant tracking reviews are fully downloadable as PDFs on our Why Newton page, we’d like to highlight a few of them over the next couple of months through the Newton blog.
For this entry of Newton’s applicant tracking software reviews, we’ll concentrate on what customers had to say about getting started and setup with Newton Software:
Hannah Adams, a human resources manager, let us know how easy it was to get Newton setup in the first place: “I was definitely pleasantly surprised about how easy Newton was to get started with and how well integrated it is into our own website.”
Other customers like Brandon Thurman, a technical recruiter, spoke of Newton’s implementation simplicity: “Newton’s implementation process was very simple. Since it is operated as a software as a service, it is as easy as logging on to the site. Newton’s implementation team was helpful in establishing a foundation for us to work off of; including loading our jobs, current candidates, etc.”
Ro Carbone, a VP of Human Resources, put an exclamation point on the applicant tracking reviews with her experience in getting started with Newton: “Never has so little expended effort brought so much benefit!”
It’s not surprising that Newton’s customers are extremely satisfied with Newton’s activation methodology. After all, unlike our peers’ software, the Newton recruiting platform is designed around its deployment model. We make every effort to build Newton to be easy-to-use and intuitive and therefore easy to deploy to customers of all sizes.
We believe that a customer’s experience getting started with a product is reflective of the product as a whole. We’re glad our efforts to achieve this are apparent through what our customers are saying about the setup process.
Our next applicant tracking review entry will focus on what people are saying about Newton’s customer service – stay tuned!
Occasionally, folks will send us screenshots of Newton but this takes the cake. Check out how this Newton user is using their living room wall as a monitor. Our team got a real kick out of this. We love when people take our popular applicant tracking software to a new level – literally. Oh, and yes, Newton works on a Mac.
One of the most prevalent issues that ATS buyers face even before choosing a recruiting software vendor is deciphering what type of applicant tracking software is the best fit for their business. There are two main categories of recruitment technology, each with a distinct feature set designed to manage a specific type of recruiting. Here’s a short video that breaks down the key differences between corporate applicant tracking software and applicant tracking software that’s designed for recruiting agencies and staffing firms.
I used to dread Fridays.
While the rest of the company was hoisting their coffee cups on Friday morning in reverence to the coming weekend, I had dread. Friday was the day that I had to turn in my recruiting status report. The report would be reviewed the following Monday at 9:00am by the executive staff at their weekly meeting. Depending on how busy I was during the week, the report would take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours to complete. Instead of hitting up happy hour with the sales team on Friday afternoon, I was knee deep in a spreadsheet. And, I know that I wasn’t the only one frustrated on status report day. There are thousands of recruiters that bristle at the thought of compiling status reports and wasting time exacting data instead of actually recruiting talent.
So, why has compiling status reports been such a burden for corporate recruiters? Well, to date, the challenge with providing reports has been exacerbated by existing applicant tracking tools that fail to reflect the realities of the recruiting process. If you look at what vendors in the ATS marketplace are producing currently, it’s clear that they are still focused on what they’ve always been pushing: developing highly cumbersome data repositories with a bunch of check-box features, none of which are designed to make reporting performance metrics any easier. Let’s be real: the harden an ATS is to use, the harder it is to get any information out of it. And, if you do manage to get some workable data after hours of effort, you’ll end up with spreadsheets that look like Da Vinci’s code.
As many of you know, Newton’s core team is made up of former corporate and RPO recruiters. We understand as well as anyone that corporate recruiters are certainly not the only ones responsible for the success of recruiting programs, but they are typically left holding the bag. We also know that a lack of systemic accountability costs corporate recruiting departments money, time and resources and often leads to animosity and plenty of petty misunderstandings. Only the consistent capture and reporting of real data can back up a responsible recruiter and ultimately allow them to be more than just purely tactical or only as good as their last placement.
Good news for corporate recruiters.
There’s no need to be a victim of reporting madness on Fridays any longer. In fact, we may give you reason to throw on a cape and wow people with your reporting superpowers. Check out Newton’s custom reporting engine, a powerful tool that makes generating reports refreshingly easy. It’s not just easy to use: similar to Newton’s real-time analytics dashboard, this new tool spits out reports that are digestible, even a bit flashy. If you’re a data junky (or your manager is) the Newton custom reporting engine is like kryptonite.
Our new reporting engine empowers users to build, save and share customized reports comprised of every piece of data collected during the recruiting process. Users can generate reports on talent pipelines, user activity, requisitions, advertising performance, interview statistics, hires and more. Reports are easily built with Newton’s drag and drop interface and exported to auto-formatted spreadsheets that are production quality and ready to share with anyone. And, processing large amounts of data will not cause latency for users because the reports are generated from a reports-specific database in the Cloud. The new reporting feature even enables users to save the report structure created by an individual user so that the report can be run anytime with the click of a button. Think weekly staffing report with one click!
There’s more to come.
2011 will continue to be busy year for Newton’s product team and another great year for customers. Our custom reporting engine is just one of several important features that we’ll release this year. Our idea has always been to build the most innovative corporate applicant tracking software and we’re constantly studying the evolving recruiting marketplace so we can meet and even exceed the needs of modern recruiting programs. At the end of the day, the most rewarding part of our business is providing the tools corporate recruiters need to rise above the challenges that can plague their roles (and performance). Can we really give you superpowers? Maybe not. But we know Newton can make recruiters more effective, save them time, and elevate them into the strategic roles that can, on some days, make them heroic.
