Choosing the right candidate is the first step of developing a great workforce to take your business to a better level. Every organization is in the race to hire the best candidates. But identifying the best candidates is not that easy. To make the task easier, many organizations have enabled the best applicant tracking system software. But some are still in confusion about the effectiveness of any ATS or how to choose the best applicant tracking system. If you too are stuck in the same situation, this blog rather guide is going to help you at the best level.
What is this applicant tracking system (ATS)?
The applicant tracking system is basically a software solution designed to manage the entire hiring and recruitment process of any organization. This software solution is truly efficient to boost candidate management and effectively reduces the time to fill. From preparing and posting the job online to offering the offer letter to the right candidate (s), an applicant tracking system software tracks and manages every activity with zero error. An efficient applicant tracking system is enough to completely transform the hiring and recruitment experiences of any organization.
How does an applicant tracking system software work?
It seems that the right applicant system is truly useful and brings lots of benefits to an organization. But how does it make everything possible? We know that an ATS perfectly streamlines the entire hiring and recruitment procedure. How? Let’s explore below-
Sourcing the best candidates
Once there is a vacancy or you have decided to hire a new candidate(s), you have to activate the hiring process. It starts with tracking down the most eligible candidates according to the requirements of the job position. With the help of an ats, it is easy to prepare job posts and publish them at the best online job portals. Apart from this, an ats also helps in doing the same on the company website, various job boards, and via email marketing.
While creating a job posting, you have to ensure that you are including all the required skills and other required details. If you miss to include all, the ats will not be able to find the best candidates with all the mentioned skills. You have to choose details wisely otherwise the ats can bring wrong candidates.
Duplicating the human thought process
It is not that an applicant tracking system will dehumanize the entire hiring process. Generally, these systems come with AI functionality to copy the human thought process. In this stage, the system deeply scans each resume in order to find the required skills just like a human HR does. But the system does it with more accuracy and requires much less time than human HRs.
Resume storage for review
Previously, HRs used to receive candidate applications via email. At that time, lots of applications used to be on their desk and there were many scattered resumes in their email. The entire situation used to become a complete mess! But with an ats, there is no chance of such a mess. You can easily download resumes of all candidates directly onto the software and keep them properly safe and organized. You can put resumes that you got from external resources in the same ats storage with proper security. In this way, you can easily store everything and keep them super secure.
Scanning and sorting job applications
After posting a job ad, you may get thousands of applications. Scanning each one manually and selecting the best ones are tough tasks if you go manually. The manual process also requires a lot of time. An ATS can do the same without requiring hours and hours and with more accuracy.
ATS comes with built-in parsing features and that’s why they are way more efficient in scanning and sorting candidates. An ATS searches for critical pieces of information in a resume in order to successfully sort it. Based on the skills, education, experience, and so many other decided factors, applicant tracking systems sort all resumes and rate them. According to the rate, you can easily find out the best candidates to schedule interviews. There will be various filters in an ATS and these filters also help in sorting the best candidates without wasting a lot of time.
Crawling resumes again specific keywords
ATS software solutions are robust enough to initiate crawling for each resume against selected keywords. For example, an organization searches for a copywriter. In the ats software, ‘copywriter’ and related skills will be selected. The system will search for these terms in all resumes and only select those resumes which have these words. HRs also use the same keywords in the job posting so that relevant candidates find job posts easily. While preparing the job post, we always suggest including keywords so that it becomes easy for the ATS to find the most suitable candidates for you.
Tracking and selecting candidates
The applicant tracking system software will sort and select candidates for the next rounds of your hiring process. The applicant tracking system software will help you in tracking and selecting candidates. How candidates are responding, in which interview stage they are, and so many other details will be there when an advanced applicant tracking system software will track and select candidates for your organization. The entire procedure will be done without wasting any additional time and there will be zero error.
There are a lot of application tracking system software solutions available in the market. According to your requirements, you should choose the best one. While choosing an ATS you should concentrate more on the feature set. Actually, quality features make a software solution truly efficient to satisfy all present and future requirements.
Features you will find in popular and efficient applicant tracking systems
- Resume reporting
- Resume sorting
- Applicant stage tracking
- Passive candidate sourcing
- Job board management
- Branded career sites
- Employee referral management
- Multilingual management
- Mobile applications
- Candidate texting
- Text-to-apply
- Interview scheduling
- Video interviewing
- Recruiting analytics
- Interview feedback
- Predictive performance analytics
- Applicant background check
- Quality of hire algorithms
- Offer letter management
While selecting the best applicant tracking software for your organization, you should always look for these features. These features are nearly available in all leading ats software solutions. There are a lot of other things that you need to know to pick the best ats for you. What are those?0 Let’s explore below-
How to choose the best ATS for your organization?
This is really a mind-boggling task! Even most organized and tech-savvy human resource recruiters face the same situation. No matter if you are choosing candidates for your own company or for your clients, choosing the wrong candidate can waste your time, money, and even ruin your reputation.
- Know your budget
While selecting the best ats for you, you should also concentrate on the purpose that you plan to solve using the ats. Applicant tracking systems are available at various price ranges. You should find out the factors that decide the price of such a product. You should also check if a high-priced solution is offering up to the mark solution or not. Apart from these, you should check the number of user licenses, candidate management ability, job postings, etc should be evaluated before making the purchase.
- Map out the workflow
Every organization is unique in its hiring requirements. Each company has its own style of moving candidates via its hiring pipeline. Generally, leading ats solutions offer free demo before you purchase it/ take a subscription. Apart from this, read reviews carefully so that you get a feel of what others feel about the software.
It is also true that not all requirements will be satisfied by a single applicant tracking system software. You have to look for a solution that will satisfy your maximum requirements.
- Evaluate the software solution well
Nearly all applicant tracking system makers claim that their solutions are easy to use and custom. But the reality is truly different. And that’s why we always suggest spending a solid time with the software before purchasing via the demo facility. You should take your time and evaluate each software solution minutely. You can prepare a list of the best ats solutions and then pick the best one. You should have first-hand experience with all solutions and only after that, you will be able to choose the best applicant tracking system software for your organization.
- Check for mobile recruiting
Mobile recruitment is not a luxury wish rather it has become an absolute need. The mobile recruiting facility actually helps you to be at a desk round the clock even if you are managing some other tasks outside. We always suggest going for a solution that has a mobile version too. Or you should go for a SaaS solution so that you can access it using any browser and from anywhere in this globe. An advanced applicant tracking software comes with the mobile recruiting facility and keeps you 24/7 connected with your candidates.
- Check for data security
Apart from all these previous, there is another gravely important thing and that is data security. In resumes, there is so much personal and sensitive information about candidates and you have to keep those safe with proper security. If there is robust ats software, there is no need to enable any external security measure. While choosing the best applicant tracking system software, you should ensure that it is following the required privacy policy framework. Apart from this, you should also look for a facility to enable data encryption. Enabling all the best measures is important to keep organizational and candidate information safe.
Know the pros and cons of ATS to make an effective decision
Pros:
- Fast-paced recruitment process
- One-click job posting
- Quality hire
- Improved candidate experience
- Reduced cost per hire
- Facilitate collaborative hiring
- Employer brand boost
- Redefine recruitment metrics
- Assist in finding candidates
- Reduced time-to-fill
- Easy interview scheduling
- Eliminate bias
Cons
- Elimination of well-qualified applicants
- Difficulty in reading common fonts
- Chances of major user mistakes
- High dependency on keywords
- Auto deletion of resumes
Who requires the help of an applicant tracking system software?
We must say that the present job market is tougher than ever. When it comes to recruiting, HRs feel like riding a rollercoaster. When it comes to satisfying the requirements of the diverse industry, ats have created two markets for ease such as corporate HRs and staffing agencies.
Benefits corporate HRs can enjoy with ATS:
Being a corporate HR, finding as well as retaining the best talents for the organization while ensuring a standard candidate experience is tough. But it can be easy with an advanced applicant tracking system software.
- Easily post job openings onto the organizational website
- Automate job posting for all boards (free and paid)
- Use existing workforce for referral
- Easy candidate sorting using robust resume parser
- Screen candidates based on predefined assessments
- Accurate filters to select candidates based on skills
- Easy and quick background check
- Easy integration with existing HRMS
Benefits staffing agencies can enjoy with an ATS:
Satisfying clients with the best candidates is a challenging task especially when the hiring market is filled with tremendous competition. Make it easy with an advanced applicant tracking system software (ATS)-
- Easily reach out to thousands of applicants across the globe
- Parse thousands of resumes within minutes to the ats database
- Candidate screening with pre-defined assessment techniques
- Skill-based candidate matching
- Effective relationship with all clients
- Automatically bulk email sent to candidates
- Data-driven reports
Conclusion
By the end of the blog, we can see that an advanced applicant tracking system is greater than we could even imagine. But the number of benefits depends on which software you are picking for your organization. Just like any other thing, it also brings some cons to the plate but careful usage can eliminate all those disadvantages easily. While choosing the best applicant tracking software, you should be more careful about features, benefits, reviews, drawbacks, and budget and you will land with an effective one.