An ATS (Applicant Tracking System) automates, streamlines, and simplifies an organization’s recruitment process. ATS helps you manage your end-to-end recruitment process, from identifying an open job to hiring. Move applicants through the recruitment funnel seamlessly, reduce costs, and time-to-fill job vacancies, and get real-time reports and updates.
Benefits of using an ATS
- Streamline and simplify your recruitment process
- Mobile-friendly interface
- Move candidates swiftly through the recruitment funnel
- Hire better-quality-talent
- Automate Job postings or post jobs with a single click
- Share open jobs to social media channels instantly
- Use AI for candidate rating and selection
- Provide an improved and personalized candidate experience
- Reduce cost per hire
- Coordinate collective hiring and keep recruitment team in sync
- Improve Brand equity of employer
- Get notifications, alerts, and reminders for timely completion of tasks
- Retrieve in-depth metrics with real-time data, updates, and reports
- Streamline interview scheduling
- Reduce time-to-fill and costs
- Remove bias and avoid discrimination in candidate selection
ATS features for the HR department and staffing agencies
HR Department
HR department’s priority is to search, find, attract, hire, and retain the best resource for the organization, reduce time and costs, and provide an enriched applicant experience.
With ATS you can:
- Customize career pages with employer branding to engage and attract talent
- List open positions on the career page with a single click
- Use inbuilt Job descriptions for a wide range of positions
- Post your open vacancies on free and premium job portals. Automate job board posting
- Leverage social media sharing and employee referrals using your current employees.
- Use a resume parser that scans and updates information
- Automated resume ranking, and pre-screening questions/assessments, to select the right talent and eliminate misfits.
- Screen candidates with pre-set criteria
- Search a huge database of candidate profiles. Filter by skill, location, previous employment, experience to find qualified candidates.
- Find the best candidates in the talent pool using skillset match
- Use AI-enabled candidate selection to rate and rank candidates
- Schedule your interviews using interview scheduler software
- Notifications, alerts, and reminders for timely completion of tasks
- Perform background checks
- Integrate with your HRIS system
Staffing Agencies
For Staffing agencies, ATS gives you the ability to perform high volume hiring, filling multiple open positions with the right talent while reducing time and costs.
With ATS you can:
- Process and fill multiple open positions at the same time
- Perform high volume resume parsing within a short time
- Screen multiple applicants with pre-set hiring criteria
- Post to multiple job boards instantly with a single click
- Share with internal and external networks with a single click. Perform social media sharing.
- Retrieve data that provide insight into your hiring. Real-time reports, customized reports, and analysis into source performance, job boards, and bottlenecks
- Search a huge database of candidate profiles using skillset match algorithms to find the right talent
- Leverage AI-enabled candidate selection and skillset match to find suitable talent
- Rate and Rank talent by relevance, experience, and skill
- Send bulk emails with inbuilt email templates and conditions
- Notifications, alerts, and reminders for timely completion of tasks
- Nurture and built a relationship with candidates and track their status
- Streamline relationship with clients
Why do you need an ATS?
An efficient ATS(Applicant Tracking System) has the ability to transform your recruitment process and make it more streamlined, simplified, and productive.
Companies with an Applicant Tracking System experience:
- Greater efficiency in the recruitment process
- Better quality of talent hired
- Intuitive dashboard and real-time reports
- Reduced time to fill an open position
- Reduced costs
- Increased hiring each month
How to choose the right ATS?
While selecting an ATS, ensure that the solution fulfills your firm’s specific requirements. The following steps help identify the specific needs of the ATS for your organization and industry.
Set the recruitment objectives for your organization
- Analyze the number of new hires recruited each year
- List out the number of open positions currently in the organization.
- Find out the Turnover rate in the organization (the percentage of employees in a workforce that leave in a year. Employees who leave/Total number of employees)
- Evaluate the cost of turnover in the organization(Cost of turnover—all of the costs incurred for replacing an employee (e.g., recruitment costs, interview costs, training costs)
- Measure the Time to fill—the number of days from the job vacancy to the time it is filled
- Analyze Cost per hire—the cost of filling one position
- Forecast the number of skilled resources to be hired in the next 5 years
Analyze your current recruiting process
- Detail the recruiting process at the organization, specifying activities of the recruiter
- Indicate the frequency of each of the steps involved in the workflow
- Identify the organization’s strengths – What it does very well? What is its employee value proposition?
- Identify third-party tools used in the recruitment process, such as LinkedIn, social media platforms, job boards, portals
Ascertain lags in the present recruitment process and identify the bottlenecks
- Identify the core areas that require improvement
- Identify stages where time and resources are invested the most
- Determine features that are vital yet lacking in the present system
Prepare a need-based report
- Outline the ATS system and its features as analyzed from the steps above
- Pinpoint features that are vital and otherwise
Identify vendor
- Share with solution providers the need-based report
How to identify the right ATS provider?
Before scheduling demos with ATS providers, and finalizing the right solutions manager for your organization, here are a few questions you would want to ask them.
- Does the ATS solution have the required features to meet your requirement needs?
- Does the vendor offer a free trial of the software? Can you use the solution to see if it works for your business?
- Which are the notable clients that currently use the ATS?
- Analyze a few customer references and reviews from existing customers of the ATS provider?
- Is the vendor financially stable? Do they possess a healthy balance sheet?
- Does the ATS satisfy the specific requirements of third part staffing and outsourcing firms?
- How many staffing organizations utilize the ATS system?
- Is the ATS mobile friendly? Does the ATS system have a mobile App, and can it be used across geographies specific to your organization?
- Is there an open ecosystem that allows seamless integration with other partner solutions such as background check provider, onboarding, payroll, or HRIS?
- Does the ATS have a search feature that is fast and provides accurate results?
- Does the ATS provide a recruitment dashboard with insightful data, real-time reports, customized reports, and analysis into source performance, job boards, and bottlenecks?
- Can the ATS handle bulk imports of data?
- Does it offer an easy employee referral option with a single click?
- How often is the ATS updated and improved upon? What are the investments made towards this and what kind of improvements have been made? Is the ATS scalable as the company grows?
- What is the USP of the particular ATS system?
- Can the ATS system provide a solution that provides a simplified workflow for HR managers? Does it provide a feature-rich front to back experience?
- Does the ATS enrich the candidate experience? Is it easy for candidates to apply for jobs?
- What support is provided for learning and understanding the ATS? Will, there be training programs to familiarize with the system?
- To what extent is customization possible?
- What customer support capabilities would be provided? Do they provide the necessary onboarding and training in the beginning? When an issue crops up, is there support available 24/7?
So how do you choose the right talent acquisition software in 2024?
- Define Your Recruitment Goals: Owing to the diverse range of talent acquisition software available today, it is paramount to identify your recruitment goals before making your selection. Whether you aim to speed up your hiring process, improve candidate experience, reach a wider talent pool, or all of the above, defining these goals will guide your choice of software.
- Features That Fit Your Needs: Look for software that offers key features relevant to your business. These might include AI-powered matching, candidate scoring, data analytics, mobile compatibility, and integrations with other HR tools.
- Ease of Use: A user-friendly interface is critical. Your chosen software should be simple to use and quick to understand, ensuring that your HR team can utilize it effectively.
- Vendor Reputation and Support: Considering the reputation of your software vendor is essential. Check for customer testimonials and reviews to determine their credibility. Further, efficient customer support will ensure your queries are promptly addressed.
- Pricing: Choose software that offers good value for money. An overly expensive system doesn’t necessarily guarantee the best results and an overly cheap one may lack essential features.
- Compliance: Your chosen software should help you meet all legal and ethical hiring regulations, reducing your risk of non-compliance penalties.
- Scalability: As your business grows, your recruitment needs will evolve. It’s vital to select talent acquisition software that can scale alongside your organization. Consider whether the software can accommodate increasing numbers of users and candidates without compromising performance.
- Customization Options: The ability to tailor the software to fit your specific recruitment processes can greatly enhance usability. Look for platforms that allow for custom workflows, branded candidate communications, and reporting options that align with your company’s unique requirements.
- Integration Capabilities: Your talent acquisition software should seamlessly integrate with other tools you are using, such as HR management systems, job boards, and payroll software. This integration helps streamline processes and ensures data consistency across platforms.
- Reporting and Analytics: Robust reporting features are crucial for understanding the effectiveness of your recruitment strategies. Opt for software that provides insightful analytics on key performance indicators (KPIs), such as time-to-fill, candidate sources, and offer acceptance rates, to help you make data-driven hiring decisions.
Remember, selecting the right ATS is an investment in your company’s future success, so take the time to carefully evaluate and choose the best fit for your organization. With the right ATS in place, you can streamline your recruitment process, attract top talent, and drive business growth.
An efficient ATS is more than just a tool – it’s a partner in your hiring strategy. So don’t hesitate to invest in technology that will help take your hiring efforts to the next level! So keep these factors in mind when considering an ATS and see how it can revolutionize your recruitment process.
