Best ATS Software for Your Business

What is an Applicant Tracking System?

Applicant trackings systems (ATS) help companies organize and filter candidates for the purpose of hiring and recruitment. Such systems help organizations collect information about candidates and organize it upon their skill set, experience, and stage of recruitment.

An applicant tracking system is designed to simultaneously find, collate, organize and store job applications for different positions. They make it easy for organizations to search, filter, and keep track of their applicants, saving time and ensuring that they can hire the best candidates.

Applicant tracking system software is used extensively by recruiters worldwide to simplify and streamline their recruitment process. ATS software often makes use of automated intelligence to skim through huge lists of candidate data and find out the most ideal applicants for different positions within an organization.

Applicant tracking systems provide an easy interface where applicants can sign up with their information, apply for jobs, and get noticed by recruiters. They further help the recruitment process by allowing users to shortlist candidates, provide feedback, and track applications digitally.

Modern-day ATS systems allow hiring managers to collaborate with candidates via mobile devices and use technologies like NLP and AI shortlisting. They can automatically scan thousands of resumes, find a specific keyword, and shortlist profiles use algorithms to analyze data.

Things You Need to Know About Applicant Tracking System

When top recruiters are hiring for several job positions simultaneously, they receive thousands of applications that are difficult to go through. Moreover, since most applications nowadays are online, allowing instant data updation, there is a lot of data to be processed. Additionally, many of the applicants might not be qualified enough for the roles applied.

Applicant tracking systems help store all candidate information in one place and sort them based on eligibility, essential skills, and experience. They can help to hire managers by automatically highlighting and surfacing the top candidates for a given role. Thus applicant tracking software is an effective tool for narrowing down the pool of applicants without letting the best candidate profiles slipping through the cracks.

Applicant tracking systems primarily help recruiters in three ways, which are:

1. Applicant Viewing/Shortlisting:

Since recruiters find it difficult to open and go through each job application manually, most ATS software helps them to view snapshots and highlights of each applicant., saving organizational time. The software highlights key skills, experience, and qualifications from resumes of different formats and allows recruiters to contact or shortlist them.

2. Ranking Applicants:

ATS tracking systems also help organizations rank applicants by their eligibility and suitability for a job role. Once a job description and key skills required are provided by hiring professionals, the software can search through a vast pool of applicants to match the profiles that are best suited for the role. Thus instead of reviewing each application, the ATS tracking system allows users to find the applicants that are a good fit for the position.

3. Keyword Searching:

Most applicant tracking systems allow users to filter resumes by searching for specific keywords mentioned in the critical skills and application titles. For example, if a recruiter searches using the keywords ‘Java Programmer’, only the applicants with the term mentioned in their resumes will appear in the search results.

Keyword searching in applicant tracking software also allows you to perform complex searches containing a combination of skills and titles required for jobs. For instance, they can help you perform searches like ‘Experienced Java Programmer with working knowledge of Pyt,’n,’ saving much time and reducing workload.

Key Features of Applicant Tracking Software

Recruiters can save time and stay organized while finding the best candidates using an ATS system. They offer various features that automate the entire recruitment process and find the best candidates for any role. Here are a few features that are present in most applicant tracking systems:

1. Careers Page Management

Companies often manage their recruitment processes and information about open positions via the ‘Careers’ page. ATS tracking systems allow organizations to organize and process such job applications, enabling recruiters to add job descriptions, photos, logos, etc., along with social sharing buttons to advertise openings easily. Moreover, communication between applicants and the company over multiple channels and the status of their applications can also be viewed by recruiters through such software.

2. Job Distribution & Promotions

Getting your job posts advertised across multiple platforms and channels improves the probability of finding the perfect applicants. However, posting jobs across various job boards and sites all over the internet and individually filtering them can be a big hassle. Applicant tracking systems are a blessing to recruiters since they integrate and partner with multiple job sites and applications, helping them post simultaneously on various job boards. Additionally, they help you track which applicants are coming from which portal, allowing you to adjust your job promotion strategy.

3. Managing Job Applications

Once job postings are published on different websites, applicant tracking system software starts pulling out suitable applicants from each source for you to view and shortlist. They often allow you to filter candidates based on specific criteria and add additional criteria to find out the most eligible candidates. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, they quickly figure out the expertise you need and the ideal sources from where you can procure them. Thus all posting, profile creations, data management, and interactions can be managed through a single interface.

4. Team Collaboration Tools

To choose the right candidates and evaluate them effectively, hiring teams need to work closely with each other and communicate seamlessly. Applicant tracking systems offer various functionalities to facilitate teamwork and improve visibility. For example, most ATS software allows for quick information sharing between teams and offers role-based data access. Additionally, hiring managers can assign tasks to teammates and request feedback/updates whenever they want.

5. Interview Scheduling

Once candidates are selected, HR managers need to interview them to determine their suitability for different roles. Applicant tracking systems help you to coordinate and communicate with hopefuls and ask questions. Besides scheduling interviews, ATS systems also help recruiters conduct assessments and answer candidate queries. They can also be used to set up reminders for interviews and offer instructions/guidelines for tests.

6. Onboarding

After selecting employees, employers need to ensure they need to be onboarded and trained well before they commence working for the organization. Applicant tracking systems can be very useful for companies since they can speed up the onboarding process for new hires. Firms can not only create pages with learning resources for on-boarded employees but can also create digital forms so that new hires can complete their paperwork faster.

7. Social Sharing

Social media has turned out to be a powerful social media tool for promotions and awareness. Thus firms regularly use it for advertising their open positions and finding suitable candidates. Modern ATS software integrates easily with multiple social channels, making it easy for companies to share their job vacancies on various platforms with a single click. Thus, they not only help improve your reach but also help you communicate with candidates coming from multiple platforms through a single interface.

Benefits of Applicant Tracking System

There are several benefits of using an applicant tracking system for recruiters. Not only do they centralize and digitize candidate information derived from various sources, but they also help screen incoming job applications to determine the best candidates for a role.  

The best ATS systems help organizations create efficient hiring strategies and improve the agility of their core processes, saving time and reducing administrative workload. Instead of manually publishing job listings on various portals one after another, recruiters can use applicant tracking systems to post simultaneously on multiple channels.

ATS software can automate the screening process for applications by using algorithms that match applicants with job requirements. They filter out applications that do not meet the set requirements and rank the rest based on their qualification and experience. This dramatically improves the quality of each hire as recruiters spend less time on shortlisting and more time assessing candidates before making a decision.

Applicant tracking software can shorten recruitment cycles by centralizing data on a single platform and improving communication between recruiters and applicants. Additionally, automated communication ensures that general follow-ups and onboarding are smooth. This improves the candidate experience and also enhances the employer’s brand perception. ATS software is, therefore, a must-have for any recruitment agency wanting to improve efficiency and save time.

Related Trends of Applicant Tracking System

Today more and more businesses are using applicant tracking software to streamline their recruitment processes. However, manually tracking candidates is a thing of the past. Instead, automated tracking, filtering, and interactions are among the most in-demand features in applicant tracking systems.

The demand for cloud-based (SaaS) ATS software has also plummeted since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Online access and mobile-friendly candidate tracking have also become more popular. There has also been an increasing demand for social media integrations that allow users to directly post and communicate with candidates from various social sites.

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