The recruitment process is one of the significant aspects when it comes to running and growing an organization. Irrespective of whether a business is small or big, investing in recruitment software will prove beneficial.
Today, every company is investing in new technologies to meet their ultimate goals of customer and employee satisfaction and enhance their working efficiency.
What is an Applicant Tracking System?
An applicant tracking system is software that assists HR departments of companies, recruitment agencies, or individual placement consultants in optimizing and tracking their recruitment process. It is an online tool that helps you organize your entire recruitment effort like your candidate flow as they move through the recruitment process.
It helps in streamlining the job openings and the numerous applications received by recruiters. Applicant tracking system makes the intimidating process of resume parsing and assessment of applications easier. By automating these manual tasks, the recruiter’s time is saved and can be utilized for other critical tasks that need time and attention.
Who is ATS meant for?
An applicant tracking system is meant for the recruitment agencies or HR of any organization which is recruiting candidates. It is thus a requirement or a beneficial tool for enhancing and making the recruitment process effective and easier.
ATS is a Blessing in Disguise
75% of big companies use an Applicant tracking system for shortlisting resumes before they reach the recruiter. Evidence also suggests that mid-sized companies are also adapting to the automation of the recruitment process. However, small businesses perceive that automating and organizing the hiring process is reserved for large businesses that have high-volume recruiting.
The manual approach to screening candidates has become obsolete. Every business aims to grow and expand. Applicant tracking system eliminates the drudgery and unnecessary labor work, facilitates business growth and expansion, and proves to be a blessing in disguise for business.
Here are the top 5 reasons for investing in an applicant tracking system:
1. Sourcing and Shortlisting Candidates
A typically hectic task in the checklist of a recruiter involves gathering multiple resumes within a stipulated period of time. With the applicant tracking system, you have multiple ways of sourcing candidate profiles with ease. You can source candidates from job portals and Linkedin with one click.
It makes sourcing simple, quicker, and easier. It saves time and cuts down costs substantially. It opens doors for more candidates and the company can have a big pool of talent to choose from rather than restricting to the limited sourcing that manual recruiting facilitates.
The applicant tracking system enables you to track each applicant, evaluate the suitability of a candidate for the applied job profile and update them through the process.
The ATS is designed in a way that enables the customization of input forms. So you can search for candidates with a particular skill set and experience with the assistance of an applicant tracking system. It facilitates pre-screening questions and helps in tracking the responses.
2. Aggregating Resumes
The notification about the job opening is posted and updated on the company’s website and sometimes it is directly sent to the recruiter. There exist some resumes which have been received in the past and have not been shortlisted earlier. Such resumes are perched safely in the folders of the laptop or desktop.
With the applicant tracking system, the tedious work of rummaging manually through the folders is not required. The applicant tracking system meticulously organizes all your resumes in the candidate pool. You can easily add any of the candidates to a new job.
3. Candidate Communications
The applicant tracking system tool enables tracking the communications exchanged between the candidate and the recruiter. From scheduling the interviews to the on-boarding of the employees, it keeps a track of the interaction thus simplifying the recruiter’s task who would not have to carry the burden of ransacking the information through numerous emails.
With an applicant tracking system, you can also send bulk emails, meeting request emails and other such emails thus saving a lot of time. It does the work of personally reaching out to every candidate which if done manually is extremely wearisome.
4. Managing Subcontractors
Very often, there is an inevitable need to subcontract the hiring process to a vendor. A dedicated module to manage the submissions of candidates from these vendors is a prerequisite for this purpose.
Therefore, enabling the audit trails to avoid confusion that may stem from manual errors is helpful. Applicant tracking system assists in vendor management efficiently enhancing the experience while also building the relationship with the vendor for future transactions effectively.
This certainly is a requirement of every business and involves a lot of effort if done manually. Leveraging technology to perform these tasks is of great advantage and thus investing in such technologies proves to be wise.
5. Data Analysis and Metrics
A robust applicant tracking system is capable of pulling data that is informative and gives insights into the efficiency of the entire recruitment process. For example, the number of jobs that were closed and open, the speed of the recruitment cycle, the number of candidates communicated with, and the time of the communication.
The most advantageous thing about recruitment software is that you are not required to do guesswork and you can utilize the data and metrics to make rational decisions, predictions, and analyses.
Take-away
- Without an integrated system, the hiring experience is sure to be a nightmare for recruiters and candidates alike. An applicant tracking system serves as a single-point update for all your recruitment needs.
- Simply put, ATS automates the recruitment process and enables it to be analytical and accurate.
- A glaring statistic highlights the importance of this in business: Companies that invest in effective recruitment software end up getting an average growth of 13% on a yearly basis.
- Once you invest in good recruitment software, it inevitably increases the productivity of the recruiters. In turn, with better hiring productivity it is possible for recruiters to invest in other areas of business.
- By investing in an applicant tracking system early, you give a good chance for your business to win big tomorrow.
- The best workaround to the situation of non-compliance wherein you are subject to hefty fines and lawsuits is to invest in a recruitment software that has been built to primarily support compliance.
- For small businesses, it can prove to be a boon especially when the job postings double or hiring expands to new locations. The software will help you scale and expand your resources as and when the demand for hiring increases.
As inferred from the points above, an applicant tracking system will speed up your recruitment process, make collaborations easy, save time and money, improve productivity and results, and increase the volume of applicants.
