The most important process in any company is hiring people. Organizations can be hindered by poor recruitment management. Therefore, it is important to streamline the recruitment management process as much as possible.
The recruitment process can be very complex. Every step of the recruitment process is complex. It includes Sourcing potential candidates and interviewing them. On-boarding selected candidates presents its challenges. Each stage of the recruitment process requires approval and checks. It requires coordination and communication. Recruitment requires a team effort from multiple people within an organization.
The Applicant Tracking System is a tool that simplifies hiring for both agency recruiters and HR departments. It is a highly sought-after tool that allows recruiters and HR managers to filter through thousands and even hundreds of CVs to find the one qualified candidate for a job opening.
An ATS is a computerized system that allows employers to filter resumes quickly and select the best candidates. It also reduces time spent on manual tasks. Its primary task is to find the best candidates for interviews.
The Applicant Tracking system for recruiters has many facets. This system streamlines the entire recruitment process, from creating job posts and ads to publishing them to multiple job boards, screening, recruiting candidates, tracking the status of applications, etc.
An Applicant Tracking System, also known as a “Recruitment Management System,” is a program that electronically manages the recruitment process. It reviews a lot of resumes to determine which one is the most suitable for the job. It processes resumes similarly to a recruiter who looks at them for a few seconds. Both of them look for specific criteria to accept or reject your resume.
The recruiters look for reasons why resumes are rejected routinely; such as lack of skills or spelling errors. Applicant Tracking systems function by searching for CVs that match the keywords they have accepted for the job posts.
Applicant Tracking Systems help companies save time and paper while also helping them stay organized. Recruiters often spend their time filing, shredding, and moving papers. Sometimes, an employer or recruiter might accidentally delete an email with a candidate’s resume. You can minimize such risks by using an applicant tracking system.
Large enterprises initially used Applicant Tracking Systems to manage thousands of applications. Large enterprises initially used Applicant Tracking Systems to manage thousands of applications. However, small and medium-sized businesses are now making the most of them. These allow recruiters to keep track of all relevant information about candidates easily.
An Applicant Tracking System reads a resume with artificial intelligence when submitted. It uses the keywords programmed by employers to identify the best job candidates. It will send the resume to the next stage of the recruitment process if the employer has selected the keywords from the resume.
All these factors mean that businesses cannot rely on manual hiring strategies in the current business environment.
We now have an integrated applicant tracking system, or ATS, to streamline and automate the entire recruitment process.
Need ATS? Here are the 10 Ways.
No proper data to formulate hiring plans effective recruitment plans require realistic timelines. Applicant tracking systems provide crucial metrics like ‘time to fill’ or an estimate of the time it will take to fill a job. These data can help organizations forecast their workforce needs, budget their resources, and plan business activities.
- Tracking Applications through Emails, Spreadsheets, and Paper Trails.
You will likely receive hundreds of, if not thousands, applications for various job openings within your company. These applications must be managed by recruiters who need to communicate with applicants. Interviewers and hiring managers may also be required to participate in the recruitment process.
It can be quite overwhelming. All these problems can eliminate with applicant tracking software. It organizes all applications in a single platform. It allows everyone involved in the hiring process to track each application’s status on one system.
- Manually posting the same vacancies on multiple job portals.
Companies try to reach as many people as possible to hire the best talent. The talent acquisition team must post job openings on several job portals and social networking platforms.
It is not only time-consuming but also repetitive and tedious. You can post jobs to multiple platforms with applicant tracking software with just a few clicks.
- Ineligible Candidates Obtaining Irrelevant Applications
Spreading the word about your company’s job openings is a great way to get people talking. It also has its downsides. People who are not eligible for a job end up applying anyway, often because they don’t understand, misinterpret or ignore the information in the job description.
It means that recruiters can waste significant time reviewing irrelevant applications. It is where applicant tracking systems can be of great help. They allow you to add questionnaires, tests, and forms for pre-screening that will filter out applicants who don’t have the required skills.
- Have trouble updating and maintaining your career page
Nearly all companies have a page on their websites that lists’ Careers’ or ‘Work with Us.’ This page is a great way to draw attention to your company’s job openings and gives potential candidates a glimpse of what it is like to work in your company. It’s a great way to impress potential candidates and teach them about your brand.
It is therefore important to keep the careers page updated. A job applicant tracking system will keep your career page current in just a few clicks. You can even create a customized careers page with no coding required.
- The candidate must follow a complex and lengthy application process
No longer are candidates required to jump through hoops to get a job. It is much easier to find the right job openings thanks to technology. Candidates expect a certain level of candidate experience. They are open to pursuing other options and will not hesitate to leave if they have had a bad experience with potential employers.
Lengthy and complex job application processes cause a significant drop-off rate. Research shows that applicants drop out of the application process if they take more than 15 minutes to complete.
They also expect to be able to fulfil these requirements via their smartphones. A leading job portal found that over 70% of Gen Z and millennial candidates prefer to manage their job leads via their smartphones.
An applicant tracking system allows recruiters to create short and easy application forms. Everything is optimized for mobile devices.
- Increasingly difficult to find candidates
It will be more difficult to find new applicants over time, especially if you have multiple job openings. It is essential to have a steady stream of applicants. Even if all applicants are qualified, not everyone can hire. You should keep track of your applicants and contact them when there is a new opening. It cannot come easily.
Searching through your email, spreadsheets, and resume stacks can be overwhelming. Applicant tracking systems allow you to keep a complete database of all applicants. You can save profiles from being used in the future. You can retrieve older applications using the advanced candidate search feature.
- Scheduling interviews is time-consuming and challenging
It takes a lot of coordination, collaboration, email exchanges, and coordination to hire. It is easy to get overwhelmed when scheduling interviews manually. You need to confirm the availability of candidates, and you must also consider the availability of the hiring manager. To ensure the interview goes as planned, you must follow up with them to confirm their availability. It is more difficult to deal with multiple people at once.
Your digital calendars can be integrated with applicant tracking tools so that your recruiting team can keep track of hiring managers’ availability and candidates. ATS solutions can also send reminders to interviewers automatically.
- It would be best to regularly approach external recruiters for mid-level hiring to reduce administrative burdens
External recruiters can be a great resource for critical closing positions requiring a unique skill set or senior-level talent. It is expensive to use their services for standard job openings. It can also signify that you are overwhelmed by the manual recruitment process.
Applicant tracking systems can streamline the entire process. These systems automate repetitive, mundane tasks and take out much manual work. It gives recruiters the freedom to concentrate on strategic rather than transactional recruitment activities. You will soon realize that you don’t need to rely on outside recruiters to fill standard job openings.
- Follow-ups with candidates are delayed or fail
According to estimates, at least half the applicants don’t receive updates about their status. It is a very empathetic and unprofessional situation. Every candidate who has spent their time interviewing with you should know the status of their application.
Manually handling communication can cause communication to slip through the cracks. You can provide applicants with greater visibility to the status of their applications by investing in candidate track systems. You can create custom templates that allow you to email and message candidates politely, letting them know if their application has been rejected.
Wrapping It Up
Tracking applicants can streamline your hiring process and allow you to make the most of your resources. They reduce manual intervention and make it easy to track everything. They allow your recruitment team to quickly pursue the best talent and close positions. ATS solutions make it possible for both candidates and recruiters to have a positive experience during the recruitment process.
Advika Apte is a serial entrepreneur at Techimply, with writing experience in the Applicant Tracking System in India technology-driven field. She’s keen to share her knowledge on a few technology-related topics with readers that can assist any kind of business. Her passion for helping others keeps her motivated.