You may find it incredibly surprising that so many companies don’t yet have an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Or, if you're reading this, you might actually be someone that isn't?
Despite 98% of the Fortune 500 doing so, only about 60% of mid-sized companies use an ATS. Some larger corporations, like startups and smaller organizations, are relying on Excel sheets and similar solutions instead. While it is certainly possible to do this, it’s often really inefficient. And in a climate where an ATS is starting to get less expensive can the spreadsheet way still be justified?
Getting an ATS opens up a whole lot of new opportunities for a company, allowing them to more efficiently run their recruitment marketing, keep better track of candidates, build more insight, and integrate with third party services that can help transform your recruiting efficiency and experience.
What An ATS Is
An ATS does a lot of work for a company that is normally done manually.
Instead of having to individually input and track all of the crucial information about a given applicant, an ATS gathers and organizes that data for you. It can speed up the recruitment process by screening incoming candidates and prioritizing the ones who best fit the job description. It also streamlines common or repetitive activities, like sending engagement emails or scheduling interviews in some cases, to maximize efficiency.
While not every company needs an ATS, there are a few signs that it is time to consider one. Are you experiencing any of the following?
- Significant business growth
- Not enough people on your recruiting team
- Poor candidate experience
- Difficulties managing recruiting workflow
- High turnover rate
If so, or if you find yourself in these situations, then an ATS might be right for you.
Reasons Why You Should Invest in an ATS
- Automatic Data Entry - No longer will you have to manually input data from a resume in order to keep track of your candidates. An ATS collects that information directly and populates the relevant fields in your system.
- Better Data Retrieval - Need to find the candidates with at least 3 years of experience? Or ones with experience using a particular kind of software? An ATS makes it easy to filter the results that you’re looking for so you can focus on the candidates that best fit your needs.
- Increased Productivity - A good ATS comes with a number of productivity tools included that can help take some of the burden of dealing with repetitive tasks off of your recruiters. Email templates, automatic posting to various job boards, and advanced sharing features allow your recruiting team to work together and get the best possible candidates.
- Enhanced Screening - One of the best things about your ATS is that it can screen out unqualified candidates. By comparing the incoming data to your job requirements, you can filter out applications that don’t meet those requirements.
- Performance Reports - Knowing that a recruitment strategy is working and understanding why it’s working can often come down to having easy access to the data. An ATS can tell you how various recruitment channels are performing so that you can adjust your efforts to focus on what is bringing you qualified, long-term employees.
- Third Party Integrations - Once you have an ATS, you can customize your experience with third party software that will act as a force multiplier on your recruiting for a fraction of the cost. For example, not only does Talentify automatically post/search for qualified candidates and put them directly into your ATS for you, it also introduces a mobile-first application experience and pre-screening to improve not only the volume of applications, but also the quality.
An ATS can be exactly what you need to navigate your business through growth and to operate at scale. There are a number of very good ones out there that can help you to better manage your recruiting and reduce wasted time and effort throughout the process (and we would be happy to point you to some that might be good for your company).
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