I love this time of year. Not only does the temperature rise above FREEZING, but it is also when I clean like a champion.  Spring cleaning is my cleanse diet.  I toss, and declutter while creating a lemon-lime scented fog of cleanliness.  While tackling this year’s accumulation, I couldn’t help but think of the paper nightmares I used to manage as a recruiter.  Applications, resumes, W4, 19, another resume, interview notes…the list goes on and on.  As a recruiter, I would interview and process over 50 applicants a week.  That’s 2600 applicants a year, and with a 10+ page file that’s 26,000 pieces of paper!!  But the fun didn’t stop there.  To round out the torture, we would then manually add the applicant’s data into our spreadsheet for “tracking”.   Then, when we hired someone we would manually enter them into our payroll system.  Fun times!

Thankfully, the applicant tracking marketplace has emerged since then and provided an array of tools to collect, qualify, track, and export information.  As you start your spring cleaning, I encourage you to replace your manual paperwork nightmare and  go green with an applicant tracking system!