An applicant tracking software is an application that enables automation in hiring and recruitment processes. An ATS can be deployed online by any business regardless of its size and type. It assigns a score to every resume or CV. Only the applicants with the highest score go from the database to the HR desk.

Benefits that the best applicant tracking software can yield 

Here is what you can expect from the best applicant tracking software: 

1. Enables collaborative hiring process

Have two HR executives called the same candidate twice? Is your HR colleague reaching out to the candidate that you have already rejected? Are your current employees unhappy with your new hires? 

If the answers to these questions are yes, then you need applicant tracking software.

Having proper internal communication within the HR team and between the HR team and other departments is a prerequisite to hiring good talent, and unfortunately, this fact is often overlooked.

One of the main problems faced during the hiring process is inadequate information and poor communication between the departments, for example, the CEO and the hiring manager. 

An applicant tracking system allows improved communication among the recruiters and others involved in the recruitment process. 

Here’s how:

It allows all team members involved in sending messages easily to each other and assigning tasks in an organized timeline to individuals. Furthermore, all team members can leave notes, ratings, and also feedback on each candidate.

Applicant tracking software can furthermore easily integrate with a host of collaborative tools useful for communication during the recruitment process. Here are some of the main ones: 

• Google Calendar 
• Various Email Systems 
• Slack 
• Asana 
• Trello

2. Aids Faster, Better, and Confident Decision-making

One of the reasons why the hiring process takes a long time, even when you’re hiring a single candidate, is a lack of confidence. The hiring manager would often doubt if the information shared by the employee is true or not or if there is any other candidate somewhere stuck in the email with the resume and opened. When every other aspect of recruitment takes a lot of time, there is also less time for interviewing and assessment, which for the most increases decreases their confidence in the employee they are thinking to hire.

And the reasons to be less confident is also true because while hiring a workforce for a company, there is no space to make a mistake as that may cause the entire company big losses afterward.

An Applicant Tracking System gives you access to all applicants that you have received and presents them all in the same place for you to see and compare. You can also filter resumes by keywords, so you do not decide to hire the wrong employee who doesn’t have the required prerequisites but otherwise has an impressive profile or personality.

GetApp, is a comparison site for business software, and it found that respondents who used an applicant tracking system (ATS) were seeing clear benefits — 86.1% said their ATS had increased the speed at which they hire. 

ATS gives you data-driven and tangible proofs to move ahead with the candidate. This increases the hiring managers’ confidence and, therefore, their speed in hiring. 

3. Provides advanced filtering process of unnecessary resumes

The majority of the time, people looking for jobs apply haphazardly to all the companies that think is appropriate without looking at the job description and whether they are a good fit for the job not. 

What’s wrong with applying? They think. 

This causes immense trouble and frustration for the HR department. They are loaded with the heap of resumes in CVS, where half of them are completely irrelevant to what you are looking for, and the good candidates are stuffed somewhere in this heap. 

In the applicant tracking software, recruiters automatically collect resumes and display applicant data for you to make quick comparisons. 

However, these days candidates can tailor their resumes based on tools available in the market that help them get their resumes picked up by the ATS. 

So, to tackle this, recruiters must create their own search queries and not the conventional ones based on Job descriptions.

Boolean search is a potent tool to help recruiters with finding the right candidate in ATS. Here recruiters can enter new search criteria, and every time they make the ATS run through applicants. 

Here’s an example of how Boolean searches work:

You can download the Boolean cheat sheet for recruiters here.

4. Smart Interview Scheduling

One of the challenges recruiters face is scheduling an interview with a candidate. If you’re hiring for multiple positions, you don’t want candidates to wait while another is getting interviewed.

Scheduling time slots is time-consuming and often difficult when done manually. Applicant tracking software automatically does this for you and sends out email invitations to employees. You can also see which slots are open and which are not for you to schedule the interviews.

5. Reaching out to a wider base of potential candidates

It is quite possibly most of the time that your competitors are also seeking the profile you are looking for. Potential employees always have options on their sleeves, and if you’re looking to bag great candidates, then they are possible neck-deep in opportunities. In order to create the right talent pool for your company, you need to make your searches wider. 

And how do you do that? You do that by using recruitment software. 

Recruitment or applicant tracking software can help you reach a wider audience of potential employees in two ways. Firstly, it administers search engine optimization techniques to gather as many possible leads for you as possible. And secondly, it automatically collects resumes and CVs across different job searching and social media platforms for you. 

6. Auto-generation Of Accurate Reports

We have talked much about the benefits of applicant tracking software. But what about tracking its performance? The best applicant tracking software allows you to measure its performance. This in itself is another benefit. Efficiently creates precise real-time reports by collecting data from different stages of the recruitment process.

It analyses the efficiency of different job postings and social media platforms in terms of their lead generation. It also measures the time it takes for the different stages of its recruitment process. The detailed reports will help you identify the loopholes in your recruitment processes. Therefore, helping you enhance the entire workflow.

7. Improved GDPR & EEO

Data Privacy is the biggest concern of potential candidates when it comes to providing personally identifiable information to any news source here, your company.

This is more so when you’re using automated software because people will tend to think that the data could be easily misplaced or duplicated. 

But contrary to popular opinion, the best applicant tracking software will enable you to abide by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) rules, offering steel-clad privacy to your potential candidates’ data.

Conclusion

With large companies receiving hundreds and thousands of CVs and resumes each week, it is so important for them to have a helping hand. 

The adoption of applicant tracking software is growing among small and medium-sized enterprises and not just large companies. Small and medium-sized companies have realized how automation in the resource department will bring profits to the overall business operations, from reducing costs of hiring new employees to gain big revenue from a good hire.  

Moreover, when applicant tracking software is combined with human interaction, prospect candidates have an amazing onboarding experience. Also, rejected candidates are made aware of the same immediately. This factor leads to a positive brand image for the business. That’s an added benefit that is often overlooked. 

We hope you found this article of value. If you’re looking for the best applicant tracking software, here’s a list of recommended best applicant tracking software companies.