Introducing an ATS people can use

Your colleague has seen the demonstration and can log in. But can they link a candidate to the right vacancy, record an arrangement and hand the work over? That’s where the practical side of an ATS implementation begins. Issuing an account doesn’t prepare someone for their working day.

Organise the introduction around familiar tasks, practise with the permissions colleagues will use and arrange help for the first few days. An adoption gap here means the difference between having access and being able to complete the agreed work independently. Observing where a task gets stuck will help you find it.

Key takeaways

• Choose which tasks each role needs to complete at the start.
• Practise a realistic situation, including a change and a handover.
• Distinguish learning, checking readiness and fixing configuration problems.
• Give questions an owner and update instructions when working practices change.

Where should preparation for the new ATS begin?

Start with an ordinary working day. Ask recruiters, account managers and administrators what they need to finish after the switch. For each task, record the outcome, who takes it forward and what changes from the old approach. Prioritise work needed at the start.

Don’t write only ‘candidate management’. Write: ‘Record a new application against the correct vacancy, agree the next action and leave a record a colleague can take over.’ That gives a trainer something to demonstrate and a colleague something to practise.

Refer unresolved working agreements to the responsible person first. Where does client feedback about one candidate belong? When should an application close? Training can explain where to click, but it won’t automatically settle a disagreement about the process.

Check the practical requirements too. Do the accounts work, are permissions appropriate and do the practice records exist? Someone using only an administrator account may not discover until launch that a recruiter can’t open the field used in the exercise. Allow time to resolve these differences before the working week starts.

Which exercise belongs to each role?

Match the exercise to the person’s work. Not everyone needs to manage the same settings or see the same information. An account manager might need to hand over a client agreement; an administrator needs to know how to investigate a report about missing access.

Simply sets up your workspace for the type of recruitment you choose, with stages, fields and document templates you can then adjust. You can build pipelines for candidates, contacts, companies and jobs. Make that distinction part of the first session. A recruiter practises with the application for a vacancy; the administrator learns how to configure custom fields and relationships. Match the exercises to the names your team actually uses.

Role	Exercise before starting	What shows that the work is complete?
Recruiter	Process a new application	Correct vacancy, current stage and next action can be found
Account manager	Hand over a changed client request	A colleague can see the current arrangement and what still needs confirmation
Team leader	Investigate a stalled handover	Cause and responsible person are clear without guessing missing information
Administrator	Handle an access problem	The user receives appropriate help without unnecessarily broad permissions

Include colleagues who use the ATS only occasionally. A short instruction for an infrequent task may help them more than a tour of every menu. Ask which format helps: written instructions with an example, a demonstration or guided practice.

How do you create a useful practice scenario?

Choose a situation requiring someone to find information, change something and record the next step. Use fictional details resembling your work. Decide what should be visible afterwards, so you’re checking more than whether someone clicked the same buttons as the demonstrator.

Here’s a fictional example. Sarah handles an application for a planner vacancy at Westhaven. The candidate can’t attend the proposed Thursday interview and asks for Friday. Sarah needs to record the change and hand the work to a colleague. The candidate also has an older application for a different vacancy.

The exercise is complete when the colleague can find the right application, see which time still needs confirmation and identify who’s following up. A note on the old application doesn’t meet that outcome. Neither does recording a date as though the client has already agreed.

Demonstrate the task together first. Then let the participant handle a similar change independently while you observe where guidance is missing. Give the goal, not the clicks: ‘Leave your colleague able to identify the interview still awaiting confirmation.’ This follows the GOV.UK usability testing method, which uses believable tasks without supplying the answer.

Record whether the task was completed independently, with a prompt or not completed. Then note what’s needed: more practice, a clearer agreement, revised instructions or an investigation into the setup. ‘Attended training’ doesn’t tell you this.

What should you plan for the first working week?

Allow time to address questions arising from real work. Tell colleagues in advance who they can contact and when. Keep the first week focused on the agreed basic tasks. Introduce more work when the people involved and the configuration are ready for it.

Prepare a small first-week pack: a worked record for each role, the agreement about old and new systems, and a named help contact. Begin with guided handling of a new application. Then let a colleague manage a change and handover independently. Record unresolved blockers separately; adding more training won’t resolve an access problem.

Agree where new information will be recorded. If the old system remains temporarily available, specify its permitted uses and which system is authoritative. Don’t leave a candidate update stranded in two places because colleagues have to invent a transition rule themselves.

Keep reports brief and useful. Ask what the person wanted to do, what happened and what help they need. Give each report an owner. A question about where to put a note needs a different response from an inaccessible record or a message reaching the wrong recipient.

When are colleagues sufficiently prepared?

Check whether the agreed tasks work with ordinary permissions, handovers remain understandable and colleagues know how to get help. Training attendance is useful administration, but it isn’t evidence that people can finish the work. Discuss remaining obstacles before confirming the start.

Ask participants to explain what they’ve recorded and why. If colleagues interpret a stage differently, revise the working agreement and exercise. If the agreement is clear but the system prevents the action, investigate the setup. Repeating the same training won’t fix that.

Give the working instructions an owner and identify the configuration they describe. Keep a short worked example alongside the steps. The next colleague can use it to understand the purpose, even if a button later moves elsewhere.

Use Simply’s ATS and CRM configuration to align instructions with your own work. A workspace administrator can change objects, fields and relationships. Have that person settle the exercise fields beforehand and name the person who handles change requests. Practice records using outdated field names make the first working day harder than it needs to be.

By the end of preparation, each role has a completed practice record, short working instructions and a known route to help. Still choosing the configuration? Use a Simply demo to walk through the recruiter’s first task together and establish what the instructions need to cover.