Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are incredible employee recruitment software. Though many of us are familiar with ATS, we may need to learn why employers use it in recruitment or what ATS recruitment services are available. 

ATS recruitment systems manage your entire hiring and recruitment process, including job postings and applications. Some software organizes job seekers and makes the submissions searchable, while others manage job promotions and hiring offers. This enables employers to sort and rank applications with ease.

What Is ATS Recruitment?

Applicant tracking systems, or ATS, are a tool that helps employers connect with job seekers through an automated system. ATS has numerous qualities designed to fit into your specific business model.

Through ATS recruitment software, your business can match the correct candidate with the right job to ensure an efficient onboarding process and workflow. The software analyses resumes and organizes them into searchable documents that employers can manage based on experience, skill sets, and rankings.

At the end of the day, this HR recruitment software takes a load off your hiring team, constantly seeking and screening every resume in cyberspace. This frees up resources within the company for other efforts and can reduce labor costs.

Why Use ATS To Optimize Recruitment?

In a world where most job seekers virtually complete applications without person-to-person interaction, companies need a way to organize applications and stand out amongst job seekers. With cloud recruitment software, everything is more manageable.

The online process makes it effortless for large volumes of applications to come in daily, which can quickly drain resources if a company needs to go through each of them individually. With Saas recruitment software, employers can forget about these issues.

The ATS will help source talent, assess application potential, track job applicants’ interview processes, evaluate performances, and can even make previously approved offers and hire new employees. Businesses can set up an automated system beforehand for easy hiring.

Features of an ATS Recruitment Tool

Here are a few standard features of ATS tools that amplify your company’s hiring process. 

Career Page Hosting: Even though your business already has a career page, many ATSs help you manage it directly from their platform. Since career pages are where job seekers land when searching about your company, you’ll want it to have everything that reflects the position and company values.

Job Distribution: If you don’t post your job positions, no one will apply. Most employee recruitment software sites have partnerships with ATSs, enabling you to post your job openings on multiple pages at the click of a button. The ATS will also track applicants from job sites, so you know where to focus your efforts.

Social Sharing: Similar to job distribution, the ATS can share your job listings to social media platforms with one click. This enables your postings to be seen by more individuals on mobile devices for a more accessible application process. One of the best recruitment software solutions an ATS offers.

Receiving and Sorting Applications: The ATS will pull all applications from every job site into one database for easy sorting and ranking. Some newer ATSs have AI software that will discard applicants that don’t fit the job qualifications, automatically narrowing the pool. This exemplifies how great talent recruitment software can achieve more with an ATS.

Resume Storage: ATSs will hold onto resumes even after filling the position. You can use the database from the recruitment software for it. This can be useful when you see a candidate who may be perfect for a different role.

Collaborating with Teammates: Through the ATS, you can share applicant information with colleagues, assign hiring tasks to different team members, and restrict access to specific information. The entire team can be involved when choosing a new member. A must that every staff recruitment software should allow.

Interview Schedulers: The ATS will help you contact candidates directly through the recruitment CRM software instead of individual job boards. Say you have two applicants from Indeed, one from LinkedIn and another from Snagajob. Instead of bouncing between all three platforms, you can communicate directly through the ATS to all four candidates. 

Onboarding Tools: You and your hiring experts can modify the ATS to whatever your business needs. This includes onboarding tools like resource pages, breakdowns of employee benefits, and examples of work expected.

Pros and Cons of Using Recruitment ATS Software

Even spectacular technology, like the best software for recruitment, can sometimes malfunction, especially when there’s little human interaction required. Here are some pros and cons of using a recruitment applicant tracking system.

Pros of ATS

• Speeds up your recruitment process by automating almost everything
• Elevates the candidate experience with automated emails, listing responses, and job offers
• Creates a collaborative hiring experience for teams
• Helps to reduce bias in resumes
• Boosts employer visibility on job sites and media platforms
• One-click job postings
• Accessible applicant communication in one location, even when across job sites
• Thorough recruitment analytics software

Cons of ATS

• Automatic elimination of any resume the system can’t read or understand (yes, even the best ones)
• Eliminated resumes that don’t fit the exact hiring criteria for the job when the applicant may be great in a different position
• Have trouble reading graphics and may not understand portions of the resume, which makes the information unsearchable/unrankable
• Incorrectly organize and rank resume data created in unusual formats

How To Choose the Best ATS for Your Industry

To know what ATS you need, consider your business model. Since there can be a lot to evaluate, focus on these main points to find the best ATS for you.

Know Your Budget

Different recruitment applicant tracking software costs different amounts of money. You may not need the top-tier options depending on what you’re looking for or need. You shouldn’t have to pay for recruitment software that costs a ton if you’re only looking for an easier way to post job listings or organize potential candidates.

When comparing ATS, understand how they’re pricing their product. Is it based on the number of user licenses, job postings, and landing pages? Or is it priced with a flat rate for all or nothing?

Evaluate the Software

Not all applicant tracking systems used for recruitment are easy for the employer. Making an ATS wishlist is a great way to determine if the product meets the requirements of your hiring team. Don’t be afraid to use the free trials and play around with the software to determine if it’s right for you.

Map Out Your Workflow

Every company is different, which means they’ll have different hiring needs. Do you want to hire through social media, job sites, and mobile recruiting? Maybe your company has a partnership with a specific job board, and you want the ATS to work with the site. 

ATSs are a great option if you’re hiring at a high volume, but not all ATSs are made equally. Does some software handle higher candidate volumes than others? These are the questions you should ask before jumping in.

Improving Your ATS

Now that you’ve decided to purchase an ATS, you’ll need to know how to optimize ATS recruitment. Here are a few places to get started when looking at your new ATS.

Find the Gaps

Consider the beginning and end of what you will use the ATS for. Is it starting at job posting websites and ending at onboarding activities, or will the program finish somewhere between? Locate the steps you want or need your hiring team to do manually, like checking specific resumes, so they don’t fall through the cracks.

On the other hand, is there a manual process that you want the ATS to handle, such as organizing which applicants came from which site or automated emails to applicants that thank them for their time? These tasks don’t require a person to sit down and do them all day long – especially if you’re getting hundreds of applications daily.

You want to find a balance between the ATS and your hiring team that creates the most efficient and healthy environment for your team. 

Automate and Simplify

After you find the gaps between the computer and your team, consider how much you can automate. As long as it’s done correctly, you can automate the ATS to send out interview evaluation forms, email templates, office letters, and hiring approvals. 

These types of automation should come with your ATS. If the option isn’t there, you may need to reconsider what the software is doing for you. 

Consider Where Your Company Is Going

Nowadays, the hiring process is entirely different from 10 years ago. Consider the next ten years or even five years. Where will your company be, and can your ATS keep up? 

Take the time to sit down with your hiring team and colleagues and discuss the hiring process six months, one year, three years, and five years from now. Depending on those answers, you may have additional needs from your ATS. If not now, you will soon.

For example, say you want to double your clientele over the next five years. To do this, you may need one new employee representative for every five new clients. If you already have 5,000 clients, you’re looking at 5,000 more clients over five years – 1,000 new employees.

That’s an average of 17 new employees a month, and recruitment management software that aligns with those demands is a must. You don’t want your hiring team sifting through thousands and thousands of applications for the next five years – which is why you need an up-to-date ATS to do it for you. 

Understand Your Data

Not all ATSs capture and record the same types of data. Knowing what’s essential to your business is crucial to programming the ATS work for you. Consider these three questions:

• What information is the ATS capturing?
• What information does your hiring team need?
• Is there a gap between those two points?

If your ATS captures more data than your hiring team needs, it’s a great resource if you need a tie-breaker or extra analytical information. If your hiring team needs more data than the ATS is capturing, there’s something wrong with your hiring process. Why have the software if it doesn’t give you everything you need?

Integrate the ATS with Previous Systems

Suppose your goal is to have your ATS perform every hiring task, from job posting to onboarding activities. In that case, you’ll need a program that cooperates with your business’s technology.

Sit down with your hiring team and ask which tools and sites they use daily for their job. These tools may include:

• A human resource information system
• Criminal record verification system
• Onboarding programs
• Payroll system
• Scheduling tools
• Communication tools
• External job postings

If all of these tools already function separately from your ATS, you’ll need a way to integrate them. You’ll need an ATS capable of taking over some of them (like communication, external job postings, and onboarding systems). Tools like a criminal record verification system may need to be kept separate.

Reach Out to Hiring Experts

Because we’re in a highly saturated job market, a single job posting can generate hundreds of resume applications a day. Sifting through those resumes can be impossible when your hiring team isn’t getting what they need from an ATS.

The hiring team and the company must be on the same page. The hiring team may need access to a specific dashboard, custom interfaces for each personnel, role-based permissions to control personal information, and mobile compatibility for decisions on the go.

If your ATS doesn’t accommodate what your hiring team needs, they won’t be able to perform their job as effectively. That’s why we recommend you reach out to the creators of ATSs and see how they can help you create the perfect software for your business.

Summary

We hope we’ve answered what ATS means in recruitment and how to optimize your ATS business potential. When looking for an ATS, make sure it has the capabilities to perform the tasks you want to automate and the potential to grow with the company. Check if the ATS gathers the information the hiring team needs to make proper decisions.

While there are cons to an ATS system, like the automatic removal of applications the system can’t read, many pros speak to the software’s capabilities. Speeding up recruitment, reducing resume bias, and creating a collaborative hiring experience are only a few pros when working with an ATS.