What is an ATS? The Most Comprehensive Article About Applicant Tracking System You’ll Ever Read!

The hiring and recruitment process, mostly overlooked, is a time-consuming journey for recruiters. Right from posting the job requirement to releasing the offer and onboarding the candidates, it is a lot of work. 

It can be challenging for recruitment managers to manage & keep track of every step in the recruitment process. Right from Recruitment Planning – Strategizing – Profile Searching – Screening – Interview & Evaluation and so on. 

With every challenge, a solution is born. The challenges that the recruitment industry faced gave birth to the Applicant Tracking System or ATS, as it is often called.

Okay, what exactly is an Applicant Tracking System?

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a workflow-oriented tool that helps recruiters manage and track the applicants in each step of the recruiting process. In simple terms, it is a piece of software that automates the searching, screening, scheduling, recruiting, and finally selecting the candidates and rolling out their offers. 

ATS can be used to streamline the recruitment process systematically, saving time, and boosting recruitment productivity. Also, most Applicant Tracking Systems have options to comment on and rate resumes so that anybody involved in the hiring process can work in collaboration in closing the position. 

Even when the idea of an Applicant Tracking System was in its infancy, corporates used some kind of talent management system, each customized to their company requirements. But ATS has now become the standard of the recruitment industry. 

Who uses an Applicant Tracking System?

In a recent KellyOCG digital recruiting survey, it was found that 66% of recruiting organizations reported using some form of Applicant Tracking System for recruitment management. In the same survey, 23% of recruiting organizations reported using some form of integrated ATS and CRM technology.  

Further, according to HRNews, it was found that close to 99% of Fortune 500 companies use an Applicant Tracking System. 

This goes to show that ATS is the de facto tool for all Corporate HR personnel and hiring agencies.  

Why do you need an Applicant Tracking System?

Now you have a gist of what an Applicant Tracking System is, let us discuss why corporates, hiring agencies and recruiters need one. 

• Cost – The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) states that the average cost-per-hire was around $4700. If you’re unwilling to believe, go and check for yourself the real costs of recruitment. This article has even more shocking news on the costs incurred in filling a position. With a properly configured Applicant Tracking System, you can save a lot, especially on ad spending, etc. 
• Time – With ATS on steroids, you no longer have to spend time searching for the right resumes manually. ATS supports not only in matching the resumes but screening, scheduling & following up on the interviews too. You have automated e-mail sequences thanking the job seekers for applying until releasing their offers (or a rejection note). ATS has it all. It is estimated that Applicant Tracking Systems save time in hiring by up to 20% 
• Integration – Most of the ATS now have the power to integrate themselves into any of the online job boards. You will have a pool of never-ending profiles rolling into your system, so finding the perfect matching resumes is easier than ever. 
• Customization – Hiring for manufacturing companies will not be the same as hiring for technology companies. It could be very different for a chain of retail stores. The flexibility to customize your Applicant Tracking System to fit your industry is one of the reasons it got popular. 

Benefits of using an Applicant Tracking System

ATS helps increase recruiter productivity, and increased efficiency for talent acquisition staff and job applicants. Not only recruiters but also job applicants, and HR departments can all benefit from using an Applicant Tracking System.   

• Easy Job Posting – Recruiters can post job openings on several platforms with a single click 
• Choosing Right Candidates – Selecting the best candidates is no longer a humongous task. It is reported that 86% of recruiters agreed the Applicant Tracking System helped them hire faster   
• Interview Scheduling – The life of a recruiter managing multiple recruitments together is not easy. Allotting time slots for each interview, ensuring they don’t clash with one another, and handling all these manually are tedious  
• Streamlined Recruiting – When we have a streamlined hiring process in place, managing and reviewing multiple job applications becomes an easy task for HR’s 
• Collaborative Hiring – To have a diverse and talented workforce, organizations are now switching to collaborative hiring, and most ATS support that 
• Quality of Hire – The Applicant Tracking System helps you distinguish the best profiles from the rest. Connecting great companies with extraordinary talents is now made possible with an Applicant Tracking System 
• Low Applicant Rejections – Rejections are drastically reduced with the AI-powered pre-screening facility of Applicant Tracking Systems 
• Low Cost/Hire – The process of hiring is more expensive than we might think. Not all companies can afford that. ATS reduces the cost-per-hire rate drastically 

Key features of an Applicant Tracking System

• Resume Parsing – Most of the ATS have this feature which helps in extracting data blocks from resumes such as their name, contact number, email, work, education, skills, awards, etc. You could parse thousands of resumes through ATS in minutes 
• Advanced Search – The advanced search filters help to sort the huge database of applications by keywords, skills, education, designation, etc. 
• Candidate Sourcing – The time required in sourcing the right candidates, whose skillsets exactly match the job description is now easy 
• Email Templates – All the mail correspondence with the candidates will be consistent across all communications. A basic feature in any ATS 
• Analytics & Reporting – You can get in-depth analytics on any part of the hiring & recruitment workflow 
• Collaboration – Collaborative hiring process helps different teams of the organization get involved in the recruitment process in real-time 
• Automation – How about automating & scheduling the interviews, never having to worry about sending reminders and coordinating? Also, event-based triggers wherein the ATS does a specific task if a predefined situation happens 
• CRM Integration – ATS applications often come integrated with CRM so we have a unified platform 

Downsides of an Applicant Tracking System

Few recruiters believe that ATS gives more emphasis to keywords rather than the candidate’s skills, experience, or other qualifications.   

An interesting Harvard Business Review study revealed that 88 percent of recruiters felt that qualified candidates were ignored by an ATS because they “did not match the exact criteria established by the job description.”  

Considering the advantages an Applicant Tracking System offers, this is something we have to overcome. More documentation should be made available on how to write resumes optimized for ATS bots.

How To Choose the best Applicant Tracking System?

• Able to streamline and manage your end-to-end hiring process 
• Offer a wide range of benefits (discussed above) 
• Fits within your budget 
• Extend AI-enabled features (that help create dynamic job descriptions, automate the interviews, etc.) 
• Connecting great companies with extraordinary talent 
• Friendly customer support, in your geographical location 

If you’re looking for an Applicant Tracking System that is comprehensive and that supports end-to-end seamless hiring, look no further than WebPipl.  

You can register an account for free with us at WebPipl and explore the features. 

The future of Applicant Tracking System

Applicant Tracking Systems continue to keep evolving to match the pace of change happening in the recruitment & hiring industry. Any ATS tool that is looking to stay in the market should keep itself updated with most of the features below.  

• AI-enabled – Those ATS systems that are not AI-enabled might have a short life span. Applicant Tracking Systems should leverage the power of AI-driven recommendations to unveil top talents 
• Responsive UI – There is still a lot of scope in the mobile app space for ATS and those who see this opportunity will soon be the leaders in the space. Regardless of the device, they are using, ATS should offer the same functionalities everywhere 
• CRM Integration – In the same KellyOCG survey we cited in this article above, close to 38% of organizations are looking to implement a CRM in the next two years. So, integrated ATS and CRM technology is a need in the future 

There are plenty of Application Tracking Systems available on the market. The best ATS should be address most of the challenges faced by recruiters in hiring. Selecting the right ATS tool could be a time-consuming process. If you have never used an ATS before, look at WebPipl Applicant Tracking System. This is one of the few tools in the market to have most of the futuristic features already in place. 

Steve Jobs once said, “The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world”. We at WebPipl, an AI-powered community hiring marketplace, can help you hire such top talents for your requirements. Call us for a FREE demo and you will agree for yourself that we have revolutionized the hiring space.