Master Applicant Spreadsheet

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Overview

This Master Applicant Spreadsheet enables you to create and maintain an applicant/candidate tracking ‘database' and gage the effectiveness of your company’s efforts to attract qualified candidates.

Once modified for your company, it'll be used by HR to:

• Capture a permanent record of the application process
• Extract applicant information for Hiring Managers for specific open positions
• Keep a record of strong, already-qualified candidates for future openings
• Search for suitable candidates for open positions
• Prompt regular communication with applicants
• Determine applicant ratios – received vs. phone screened, phone screened vs. interviewed, etc. 
• Gage the effectiveness of your company’s efforts to attract qualified candidates 

Why use it

Implementing a Master Applicant Spreadsheet and process to track applicants is an important HR fundamental because it helps to manage the sourcing of qualified candidates.  

By using a Master Applicant Spreadsheet and rigorously tracking applicants and prospects, you will:

• Know if you have potential candidates BEFORE advertising externally
• Know how effective your recruitment tactics are when you do advertise externally by tracking the number of:
  • Applicants per posting
  • Applicants screened in
  • Applicants hired
• Be able to determine if you need to adjust efforts to attract top talent
• Communicate more effectively with applicants

One of the end goals of the Master Applicant Spreadsheet is to be able to access, search, assess and ultimately hire from the pool of talent you’ve already sourced. Using an Excel spreadsheet to mimic an online candidate management solution has the potential to save your company thousands of dollars.

Hiring managers should always consider applicants already in the ‘database’ before they spend money to attract new ones. If you hire one staff member a year from your tracking database, the effort will have paid for itself.

Tracking applicants also gives you a thorough understanding of your talent pool, and the effectiveness of your attraction strategies. You’ll know exactly who is applying and how frequently, and you’ll be able to determine if your recruitment methods are attracting enough suitable applicants to move from ‘applied’ to ‘screened-in’ candidate status.

Your CEO and senior management team typically want to know details about applicants and prospects, especially if you want to justify spending more on attracting quality applicants or changing your hiring strategy.

What you risk by not using it

• Losing knowledge gained by managers who have already screened or even interviewed candidates
• Starting from a blank page every time you need to hire someone
• Lost opportunity to monitor and improve effectiveness of recruiting dollars spent