5 Ways an ATS Can Streamline your Hiring Process

Whether you’re a recruiter, hiring manager, or job seeker, you have used an applicant tracking system. You may not be aware of how far this technology has progressed in recent years. Below, you’ll learn more about how an applicant tracking system works and five ways it can streamline your hiring process. You’ll see how the right ATS can save time and improve the candidate experience for top talent looking for a job change. 

What is an ATS?

An applicant tracking system helps companies not just store job applications, but also screen applications and match them to job descriptions. 

In modern recruitment systems, the applicant tracking system can also help automate workflow. For example, it can help with interview scheduling for qualified candidates, or improve the job application process by sending reminders, thank-yous, or other communications.

An applicant tracking system can automate job postings

The leading applicant tracking systems allow you to post a job on multiple sites with a few clicks. They can also help track performance, providing valuable data that optimizes advertising spending.

Whether you’re hiring for a medium-size business or a Fortune 500 company, you are likely posting jobs in numerous locations. You may be trying to reach active job candidates on general job boards or on more niche websites. You may want to find people through industry/trade association job boards or online/social media communities. Or, you may want to distribute jobs to websites that aren’t job boards at all, but may be viewed by experts in a given field, such as publications for people passionate about entertainment, medicine, engineering, or other fields. All of this can be streamlined through the use of an applicant tracking system.

Applicant tracking software streamlines candidate screening

Resume parsing extracts information from a job application so that it can be organized and analyzed. For example, resume-parsing technology could identify from a job application, LinkedIn profile, or a biography of a candidate that the person has graphic design skills, and ensure that those skills are extracted from the candidate’s profile and matched with the skills needed in an open job. 

An applicant tracking system that excels in resume parsing can improve candidate screening and ultimately improve the recruitment process for both the job candidate and the recruiting team. It can help ensure that people with certain skills are not omitted from a talent pool, and that a hiring team doesn’t waste time on people who are not qualified for the job.

An applicant tracking software can enhance collaboration among hiring teams

An ATS can offer tools to improve recruiting team communication. Some of many examples include:

• A hiring manager getting a message on Slack that an interview has been scheduled, so they know how the hiring process is going for a given job
• Reminders before an interview so that no one forgets about the appointment
• Reminders to the hiring manager to provide feedback after an interview
• Notifications to hiring managers that a job candidate has sent a text message

Applicant tracking systems can show where a candidate is in the recruitment process in real time, similar to keeping track of a package being delivered. This helps bring transparency to the hiring process for employees, and it keeps recruiters and hiring managers aware of where each candidate stands.

Data-driven decision making is possible with the right ATS

An applicant tracking system can now generate a lot of data and a lot of valuable intelligence that legacy systems did not. The ATS can identify trends, bottlenecks, and opportunities at a glance. ATS users can create custom dashboards tailored to an organization’s needs. 

The analytics available with some new applicant tracking systems can even improve the candidate experience. For example, recruiters can see where there is an excessive number of interviews. Or the ATS analytics can pinpoint screening questions that are being used but are actually unnecessary. Or the hiring team can see that there’s a job requirement (such as a requirement that the job candidate have a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree) that is not necessary and could be screening out quality applicants. This can improve diversity. For example, it can help military veterans who have all of the skills needed to take on a given job but may not have received a bachelor’s or master’s degree.

How you can improve the candidate experience with your applicant tracking system

An applicant tracking system can make the job candidate experience a lot smoother. Here are some examples.

Career sites

Applicant tracking systems can now seamlessly integrate with career site software, helping companies present jobs in an attractive way without integration problems that can be a hassle for a job candidate.

Better communication with candidates

Managers can get reminders to look at a candidate profile before a job interview, so that the candidate doesn’t show up only to have the manager say, “I haven’t looked at your resume yet.”

Conversational AI

Instead of chatbots that understand only a limited amount of information and often end up frustrating the job seeker, conversational AI can handle natural language. Job candidates can ask questions about the job or the hiring process and receive answers as if a recruiter was speaking to them.

Interview scheduling

With some applicant tracking systems, job candidates can self-schedule their job interviews, saving time and hassle for the candidate as well as for the recruiting team.

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) 

CRM systems are now available from some of the same companies offering applicant tracking systems, making integration smooth. These CRMs can provide candidates a much better and more personalized experience than with previous versions of CRMs. Companies used these legacy CRMs to send one-size-fits-all newsletters to everyone in their talent communities. They can now be easily personalized so that job candidates can hear what the company is up to, whether it be upcoming events, recent awards, or media mentions that specifically are of interest to the job candidate.

Improved fairness for job candidates

If you’re using an applicant tracking system that’s powered with artificial intelligence, the AI technology can make a match based on adjacent skills. Perhaps an individual does not have all the knowledge required for a cybersecurity job, but has very similar experience and has shown the ability to learn new subjects quickly. The ATS can identify candidates like this person who may have otherwise been screened out but have skills that are similar to the ones required in the open job.

An applicant tracking system can improve your recruiting process

An applicant tracking system can do a lot more than collect, store, organize, and help analyze job applications. It can improve workflow. It can make the candidate experience better. An ATS can help identify candidates who may have been overlooked otherwise. Most of all, it can make the hiring process quicker, smoother, more data-driven, and streamlined for the entire recruitment team.