With potential hires spread across the length and breadth of the digital landscape, it is tough for recruiters to locate the right candidates for a vacant job position.
Talent is available, but it becomes hard to identify prospects with the right skills and experiences among hundreds and thousands of applications. Hard because screening the applications manually is time-consuming. Moreover, the amount of data that needs scrutiny is voluminous, which adds to the challenges of finding the right candidate from the pool.
This is why recruiters use Application Tracking Systems (ATS) to save time, and energy and identify the right candidate faster and more efficiently. Statistics suggest that 99% of Fortune 500 companies use ATS to assist human resources recruitment and hiring.
Trends suggest that more companies are realising the benefits of using ATS in saving costs and achieving a better and error-free hiring experience. Finding the right kind of ATS is not a difficult task, but the wrong tool could cost you time and give your recruits a bad hiring experience.
This article explores why ATS is one of the most powerful tools recruiters can use.
What is an Applicant Tracking System?
An Application Tracking System (ATS) is essentially a type of software to help automate the process of sourcing, hiring, and retaining human resources for an organisation. ATS not only scans through the applications but goes beyond the textual content to enhance the hiring efficiency on various parameters.
Effective Advantages of an Application Tracking System
There are compelling reasons for using ATS software for the recruitment process. The advantages are many. Artificial intelligence integration with ATS is slowly becoming indispensable. ATS helps in the following:
- Auto-fill online applications
- Improved quality of hiring
- Quick recruitment processA
- Collaborative hiring
- Automatic process of job posting and interview scheduling
- Enhance brand credibility
- Lower cost per hire
- Increased engagement
- Faster response time
- Improve onboarding process
- Consistent communication
- Easy, automated onboarding for new hires
ATS Vs. Manual Hiring: How Does an ATS Improve the Process?
ATS uses AI technologies and gets smarter as the user continues to interact with the software. An ATS can learn your preferences and adapt to your workflows.
Let’s see how an ATS can improve your HR team’s hiring process versus manual hiring:
Manual hiring process:
- Manually publishing new job openings on the company website and various job portals
- Good candidates may be skipped over due to manually acknowledging and screening all applications
- More time spent while responding to candidates via messages and email
- Manually scheduling and intimating interviews
- Finally, recruiters onboard the newly hired individually
Since the manual hiring process requires a person to do all the work, it can get daunting when you’re looking at hundreds of applications.
ATS-powered hiring process:
- New openings are automatically published on multiple platforms
- Thousands of applications are automatically scanned to match unique requirements
- Chatbot integrations can result in prompt replies to candidates
- Short-listed candidates can self-schedule interviews
- Recruiters get insights into each stage of the recruitment cycle
- ATS makes easy-to-follow onboarding guides accessible for new candidates
ATS-powered hiring isn’t completely manual, which makes it easier for people to go through more applications and only pay attention to the ones that fit the bill.
An ATS thus completely changes and improves your company’s hiring process by automating various tasks, and freeing up time for people to think less about the process and more about the candidates.
How to Choose the Right ATS Software?
If you represent a company that does the hiring at a large scale, purchasing ATS will be critical to your hiring budget planning since most organisations consider software expenses as part of a department’s budget.
However, before you choose an ATS, you must decide your long-term requirements.
The following points, as well as other attributes, will determine the pricing of an ATS.
- The number of users allowed per team
- Number of job postings per month
- Candidate management process
- Ability to create custom career sites
- Auto job-posting features
- Chatbot features
- AI-powered featured
- Data analysis and insights
- Self-scheduling features for candidates
- Onboarding features for hired candidates
After weighing the pros and cons of different software in the market, you can opt for demos to get hands-on experience and understand which ATS will work best for your use case.
Look out for the following before choosing your ATS:
1. Real reviews
Reviews are a great way of knowing what customers think of the ATS solution you’re considering. So make sure you check reviews by real people.
2. Social media compatibility
An ATS that has social media integration always comes in handy in today’s day and age. This makes it easy to share your job postings to multiple social media platforms with just one click, improving your reach to potential hires as well as enhancing your brand as an employer.
3. Cloud compatibility
You may be able to find the best recruitment tool, but if the software does not have cloud compatibility and data security, it’s not worth it. Hence, cloud compatibility is a must.
4. Security
During the process of calling for job applications, a lot of confidential data is provided by each candidate based on the credibility of the recruitment agency or the company.
Therefore, your ATS software should comply with all necessary data security guidelines and adhere to your organisation’s privacy policy.
The Bottom-Line
Imagine screening thousands of job applications. Traditional methods are slow and inefficient. Advanced Applicant Tracking Systems manage the end-to-end recruitment process of any organisation, from job openings to onboarding new hires. This is the reason why large corporate houses depend on ATS.
As an employer who attracts thousands of candidates and doesn’t want to miss out on the good ones, an ATS can help your teams worry less about manual processes and focus more on improving the candidate’s experience while hiring and working at your organisation.
If you’re looking to streamline hiring, Naukri Hiring Suite offers a new-age hiring solution that meets—and exceeds—most hiring requirements. In addition, these tools provide everything under one umbrella, from talent planning, sourcing, and hiring to employer branding and recruitment automation.
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