Ever wondered why recruiters do not see 70% of the resumes they receive?

This is primarily because of an ATS that stores, ranks, and scores CVs based on main keywords, formats, job titles, work experience, and so many other factors.

An Applicant Tracking system (ATS) simplifies the hiring process for recruiters, hiring managers, and HR departments.

It’s one of the most sought-after tools in the recruitment tech stack that help them filter and sort through hundreds and thousands of CVs to locate that one qualified candidate for an open position. 

This further implies that in order to land a job interview, job applicants would have to go that extra mile and optimize their CVs to make them ATS-friendly.  

Don’t worry! We’ve got the A-Z of applicant Tracking systems covered here. 

How does an applicant tracking system work?

An applicant tracking system is generally multi-faceted.

It can accomplish all these remarkable feats only because it streamlines the entire recruiting process, from creating job postings and job ads to publishing them on multiple job boards, screening, and sourcing candidates, tracking application statuses, etc.

Some of the significant features that you’re bound to notice in a good web-based recruitment software include—

• Resume parsing
• Advanced search
• Candidate sourcing
• In-built CRM software
• Email templates
• Advanced reports
• Various integrations

Now let’s find out how an ATS works—

1. It imitates a human mind & scans a resume for keywords

There are several misconceptions about how using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recruiting can dehumanize the entire hiring cycle.

This is not true.

The AI functionality in an applicant tracking software is developed and programmed to mimic the human thought process.

If a recruiter were to scan a resume manually, he/she would have looked for keywords in the same manner too. An ATS makes this process faster with added functionalities, saving time and money with fewer margins of error.

For instance, if you’re hiring for the role of a Sales Assistant, your ATS will search for resumes with the same keyword “Sales Assistant.”

2. Sources for the right candidates

There’s no doubt in the fact that an applicant tracking software can track down the most qualified candidates for an open role. It makes your first step towards hiring much easier.

You will fail to draw valid candidates if your job description is not right and if you miss out on including the right keywords.

ATS’ also use a series of “knockout questions” that help eliminate any candidate who is not a right fit.

These questions are typically in the form of a checkbox or short answer-type questions. If a candidate fails to answer them, he/she gets knocked out by the system automatically. The system will move on to the next step of the hiring cycle once a candidate answers the questions satisfactorily as per company standards.

Certain recruitment technology providers even have Chrome Extensions that automatically scan a candidate’s LinkedIn profile and add it to your recruiting database.

3. Scans & sorts applicants

Applicant Tracking Systems have in-built resume parsing features that pull out important information from a candidate’s CV and lay it out for recruiters to take note of.

Several ATS’ usually allow recruiters to hotlist favorite candidates’ CVs and even include short notes, making your hiring easier and collaborative.

Recruiters can even assign which keywords the software should scan, including educational background, specific skills, or even manual filters that might be useful.

This scanning and sorting feature allows recruiters to glance through resumes and schedule interviews accordingly.

4. Tracking applicants

Once you’re done scanning resumes and sorting them, you can track them in each phase of the hiring cycle.

For instance— if you are in the process of recruiting ten candidates, your ATS will show you whether each candidate is a new applicant or they’re in the first or second interview stage.

Even if a candidate gets eliminated in the middle, they will still stay in your recruiting database for future positions.

Top 20 benefits of an applicant tracking system

The job of a recruitment agency is two folds, to speed up the whole process of finding and hiring the right talent and to make sure the hired candidate and selected company make the best fit.

A recent online survey conducted by Recruit CRM revealed that more than 98% of recruitment agencies with 10 recruiters or more used an Applicant Tracking System. The percentage was significantly lower at 76% for agencies with lesser recruiters.

The functionality of an ATS is somewhat similar to that of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system but with a slight change in the main focus on the search functionality.

1. Saves time for value added work

The topmost advantage of an automated Applicant Tracking System is that it saves a lot of time compared to conventional application processing and hiring procedures.

An average of 75-88 % of resumes received are not qualified for the job. By eliminating the manual posting and listing on job boards, then filtering out the irrelevant applications, this whole process is done in a matter of seconds rather than spending hours on it.

2. Flexible system for both employer & the agency

Recruitment agencies obviously gain a lot by using an ATS. It is a blessing even for the client as listings, interview feedback, and all other co-ordinations can seamlessly be handled online.

Imagine the efficiency if you do not have to deal with loads of emails, excel sheets, and remember notes or appointments that are now handled on a single platform!

3. Better overview of applications

Keeping all the documents in your recruiting database gives you all the necessary details you need in one location.

You can easily switch between apps, compare candidates, change candidate status, and select and scan candidates without leaving the system.

This removes the risk of a submission being missed or trapped on a team member’s desk.

Few ATS’ have just a simple Kanban view to make things easier. You can view a sample of the Kanban view here.

4. Easy job posting

An Applicant Tracking Software lets you upload your job openings on several platforms with a single click.

You do not need to set it up manually to log in to individual accounts from each social platform and post the job. You also do not need to track each social media platform and the results generated from each post individually.

The software will gather the analytics from each platform and collate them together for you.

An ATS like Recruit CRM allows you to integrate a careers site page on your website. You can then use this website to collect online applications.

You can also save some serious cash in recruitment marketing. These job boards will automatically provide you with plenty of traffic for your openings.

5. Improved cost-per-hire

Most businesses cannot invest hundreds of dollars ongoing through the expensive screening process every time they have to hire new talent.

Similarly, they also cannot afford to hire the wrong resource because of an inefficient screening process. This would cost them much more afterward.

Tim Sackett, one of the most famous recruitment experts in the world, says an ATS is one of the most affordable and amazing recruiting technologies to exist ever!

He believes that this technology has enabled SMEs to carry out a competitive recruiting & staffing process.

According to him-

SMEs can move faster to integrate the latest and greatest tech on the market. It’s such an exciting time to be in talent acquisition. The availability of world-class technology is transforming how we all recruit daily.

Since introducing an ATS in the market, the cost per hire has significantly reduced.

The minimum cost of a recruiter per month is $2000- $3000, and the cost of an Applicant Tracking System is somewhere around $100 – $150 per month per user. 

Do you really think an ATS cannot improve your recruiter’s sourcing efficiency by more than 5% per month and make up for the cost?

6. Improved quality of hire

The early bird catches the worm!

According to research, 80% of recruiters claim to have an improved quality of hire ever since they incorporated an Applicant Tracking System in their businesses.

Another research states that the shelf-life of an application of a qualified candidate is approximately 10 days.

By speeding up the recruitment process, you can easily grab these talented candidates which could otherwise have been poached by your competitors.

7. Improved inter-departmental communication

One of the main problems faced during the recruitment process is insufficient information and poor communication between the departments, for instance, your agency and the hiring manager.

An ATS allows improved communication among the recruiting team members and with others involved in the whole process. It also allows you to send messages easily, schedule emails in bulk, and assign tasks in an organized timeline.

All team members can partake and leave notes, ratings, and also feedback on each applicant.

Most ATS’ nowadays integrate seamlessly with google/outlook calendars and various other email systems. You end up with less paperwork and a more organized process.

8. Faster & better decisions

When it comes to onboarding new hires for your client, there are chances of a mistake, and a single wrong decision can prove detrimental to the firm’s financial position.

An Applicant Tracking System gives complete access to all applications, presenting them on the same front. This helps in making better and faster decisions.

GetApp, a comparison site for small business software, found that respondents who used an applicant tracking software were seeing clear benefits — 86.1% said their ATS had increased the speed at which they hire!

It gives recruiters the confidence to make data-driven decisions.

9. Promotes collaborative hiring

Collaborative hiring allows a company to have an organized approach to developing a diverse and talented team.

ATS’ come with integrations with innovative apps that make it easier to work collaboratively. 

HR departments and both internal and agency recruiters can efficiently exchange feedback and reviews on each candidate and lead a joint decision-making process in which everyone has a voice.

10. Entire recruitment cycle speeds up

The benefit of having all applicants’ information centralized and organized in a single platform allows you to optimize the hiring process.

Once the ATS software has established everything from receiving applications to narrowing down the best candidates, scheduling interviews, and hiring the right person for the job, everything catches up at a pace, making the whole cycle faster.

Bulk emailing, calling, and automated email follow-ups improve the recruiting process, allowing you to have faster communication.

11. Improved candidate experience

Whether hired or not, a candidate is bound to have an impressive experience with an automated Applicant Tracking System.

Paired with human touch, this can significantly impact the entire process, making your talent pool speak favorably about your business in the market.

12. Improved employer branding

Having an attractive employer brand is important as it helps a business secure a strong position in the market.

A good employer brand will make a significant difference by encouraging a passive candidate to join your client.

Using an ATS software, you can evaluate, assess and develop your branding strategy by integrating it with your careers page and providing a superior onboarding experience.

13. Lower bounce rates on job ads

Nothing is more frustrating than a job advertisement that gets bounced every now and then. This tosses away all the hard work in the trash can.

Applicant Tracking Systems are a simple and improved solution to a better understanding of how to post and carry out job advertisements and in what ways you can have better results.

Using an ATS will help you maximize the time spent on the web page and further increase the number of applications.

Here is a very informative article on reducing the bounce rate and getting more relevant applications.

Writing better job descriptions also contributes to achieving lower bounce rates. We have created this resource page with great job description templates for your daily use.

14. Streamlined recruitment process

With a streamlined development between successive tasks, the HR department can easily manage and review multiple applications in a few hours, which could otherwise take days.

This helps the recruiting agencies work faster and at an efficient rate. To be precise, an ATS will help you get rid of spreadsheets.

15. Riddance from unnecessary resumes

Most of the time, candidates apply to jobs blindly, without paying heed to what are the job requirements and whether they meet all of them.

In such cases, there is a lot of frustration on a recruiter’s end, who has to sift through these applications, filter out the relevant job applicants, and then screen the best ones for the task.

By using a Recruitment CRM, you’ll make everything a lot easier.

A CRM will manage the resumes you collect and display applicant data to make comparisons short and convenient.

Nowadays, several tools in the market allow candidates to tailor resumes as per job descriptions to beat the ATS search algorithm.

This means it’s important for you to create your own search queries (rather than use automated ones that are based on job descriptions).

Boolean search can be a powerful tool to help you with shortlisting. Here you can enter your own criteria for search every time and save that as well.

Recruit CRM parses your resumes and stores them in the system to make boolean searches perform faster and more accurately. The parsing is accurate and collects most of the data from the resume. This also helps you build your resume database with each resume you parse.

16. Easy interview scheduling

We understand how tough it gets when you’re allotting time slots to each one of your qualified candidates.

On top of that, you’ll have to make sure no time clashes with the other, so each one gets an equal opportunity to express their abilities.

Most agency recruiters believe that calling each candidate separately and fixing interview timings is a much more hectic task than scheduling the interviews. This consumes a lot of time and leads to inevitable confusion ushering in one or two mishaps during the scheduling.

Applicant Tracking Systems can send automated emails to the shortlisted candidates to inform them about interviews, saving a lot of time and hurdles for the HR department.

17. Better utilization of budget

When it comes to recruiting solutions, it is difficult to identify the right direction as to where to spend the budget. This confusion can often lead to a lot of unnecessary cash burn by a company, leading to losses.

You can spend a lot of money by posting job advertisements to multiple mediums when it should have only been invested in the right social platform.

An Applicant Tracking System finds out the most suitable platform to invest in through several personalized data collection techniques, making your tech stack scalable.

18. Wider scope of audience

A limited reach will only bring limited talent.

If a company wants to hire the best candidates, it needs to spread its wings in the market and let the hiring team know how they are looking for a compatible individual. And widening your scope in today’s competitive world is a tough task.

An Applicant Tracking System makes reaching the right candidates possible easily through SEO.

It can easily source CVs from various social media platforms & job boards with automated integrations.

An ATS helps you tap into the world of social recruiting. Many ATS’ like Recruit CRM come with social media integrations, where you can post a job from your system directly to your favorite social media sites in just one click!

19. Auto-generation of accurate reports

Applicant Tracking Systems not only help with the hiring process but also gives a hand in keeping a check and balance of the entire workflow.

It takes all metrics into account and creates auto-generated accurate reports in real-time.

This is done by collecting data from different segments of the process. The system then analyzes the efficiency of social platforms and how well they perform.

This helps companies identify loopholes in the process and even implement strategies to improve.

20. Improved GDPR & EEO

Data privacy is the biggest concern when it comes to providing information to a new source.

Especially since the whole recruiting procedure is automated, most candidates are not convinced that their data would not be revealed to any other sources or made public. This often makes them hesitant to proceed with this medium.

Despite new GDPR regulations being enforced and data security as a whole being more internationally regulated, it is important to find a way to manage personal data safely and efficiently. See how Recruit CRM handles compliance with GDPR & EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity).

Having a secure cloud-based applicant tracking system lets businesses stay safe and away from all unnecessary and unwanted applications that waste a lot of time and resources.

5 things to know before buying an ATS

You might already have an Applicant Tracking System that you’re looking to replace or buy your first system.

With dozens of systems to choose from, choosing the right ATS and Recruitment CRM for your business is daunting! We’ve got you here!

We have shortlisted a few questions you can ask yourself to help you decide on how to increase productivity and take care of your day-to-day recruiting tasks like a piece of pie!

Let’s get started!

1. What is my budget & what is the “real” price of an ATS?

ATS systems can cost anywhere from $25 to $250 per user/per month. It’s essential to know your budget before you actually begin your research. You should be ready to spend anywhere from 1%-3% of your recruiters’ salary on their Recruitment CRM.

Basically, if you pay your recruiters $3000 per month, expect to spend between $30-$90 on their CRM software.

An ATS can be both an asset and a liability. It can massively increase productivity and help you gain an insight into what your recruiters are doing. But, if you buy an ATS that doesn’t do the things you want, you can get stuck with something that just burns money and valuable time while giving you nothing.

You would want an ATS that is not a liability but an asset that adds long-term value to your business. This happens all the time. You buy something only to realize that half of the things you need are unavailable in the software you bought.

Now, let’s talk about the REAL costs of implementing a new ATS/CRM system apart from the yearly subscription fee.

1. Data Migration Fees – The cost of getting your current data & CVs into your new system.
2. Customer Support – Is this free, or do you have to pay for someone to talk to you?
3. On-boarding Charges – Some companies force you to pay them to teach you how to use their software.
4. Software Implementation Charges – You might have to pay to customize the software for your business.

Make sure you discuss this with the ATS provider before purchasing.

2. What are the features of an ATS?

As soon as you think about money, you should also consider the features you would need. Now, this can change greatly depending on the size of your search firm and the kind of clients you’re hiring for.

If you’re an independent recruiter, features like resume parsing, an in-built emailing system & invoice management are all you need.

Now, your needs will change if you run a recruitment agency with 5-15 recruiters. You’ll need reports & analytics to help you track how each of your employees is performing.

Reporting is necessary because it helps you track KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Besides tracking your employee’s performance, reporting also helps you make data-driven decisions like which clients you should focus on based on where most of your existing revenue comes from relative to candidates submitted.

Good reports change the entire game!

3. What is the right time to set up or get started with an applicant tracking system?

Getting a new ATS is not rocket science. You should be able to buy & set up your system on your own in a few hours. Implementing an ATS includes 3 steps—

1. Customizing your system
2. Importing data
3. Inviting your teammates

Unfortunately, not all ATS systems are easy to implement. Some are hard, and ATS providers will charge you a fortune for this, while some are super easy & don’t cost a dime.

Always consider the time to implement while making your final decision.

Keep in mind that data migration may take a day or two, depending on your data volume.

4. How will an ATS help you find the right applicants?

Your ATS can help you find the right candidates from your database with a quick Boolean Search or even let you source new candidates from LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

An ATS with powerful social recruiting tools will go a long way in helping you make more placements.

5. How is the customer support? How quickly can I talk to a human?

Who will save you when you are in trouble? The customer support team!

You should be upfront and ask about customer support. Let’s be honest. You’ll always have some questions that a human can answer a lot quicker than going through pages of documentation.

Hint – judge their customer support while you are trying the product for free. If they suck, it’s not going to get any better.

The best ATS vendors today have chatbots in their systems to help you reach support in seconds. Make sure your applicant tracking system provider has something like a chatbot. This is not essential, but it will help you judge the quality of support you’ll likely receive.

8 features you must look out for in an applicant tracking system

Using insight and proper feedback from our past and current clients, we have narrowed down 8 remarkable features that you must be searching for when choosing an ATS/CRM for your agency.

1. The best customer support

When a recruiter first starts using an ATS, they will have innumerable questions to which they would want answers.

That’s why it’s highly significant that the ATS you choose can provide you with the best customer support, something that is immediate and professional.

Look into an ATS with built-in live chat support or via email or phone.

The SaaS provider should also be able to provide you with a training or onboarding program that lets you understand its features in detail. For instance, how to set up the careers page, how to use the resume parser, whether you can set up an employee referral system, various integrations, and so on.

If you’re not someone who prefers the self-serve option, this is something very essential!

2. Can be customized & configured according to your needs