Applicant Tracking System (ATS): the recruitment software for Talent Acquisition
Managing the recruitment process is one of the most difficult and also most important challenges within a company. It’s a lengthy and expensive investment: posting ads, tracking applications, CV screening and conducting interviews, all in search of the ideal candidate.
The biggest risk is that, along the way, along the candidate journey, there is the chance that you can lose the best talent; candidates that have excellent skills, can add great value and are well suited to a specific role.
But don’t worry, to assist and rescue your talent acquisition, there’s the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
In this article, we will learn more about what an ATS is, how it has evolved most recently and what advantages it can bring for companies that choose to implement it.
What is an Applicant Tracking System?
An Applicant Tracking System is a recruitment software designed to manage and optimise the search and selection process within a company. It is also known as Applicant Tracking Software or a Candidate Management System (CMS) and is used to collect and organise candidate data during the various stages of the recruitment process.
An ATS doesn’t replace the role of the recruiter or the recruitment team, in fact it should be considered as a tool to support their talent acquisition activities and goals.
At its core, the ATS can manage countless applications for each job announcement, providing the company with a high number of relevant candidates that can be evaluated for existing or future vacancies.
For this reason, using recruitment software to automate some steps of the selection process is a great opportunity for the candidate, the recruiter and the company. The candidate benefits from a swifter screening process (less waiting around for a response!); the recruiter can invest more time in the high value, detailed reviewing of candidates, as the initial filtering, which is very manual and takes a lot of time, is handled by the ATS; and, critically, the company has a more effective talent acquisition process, with better results.
Traditional ATS and smart ATS
Many companies have already adopted recruitment software. The aim of all types of ATS is to scale down the work of the recruiting team through better management of:
- Routine activities. Such as manually uploading CVs, managing e-mails, organising applications in Excel, monitoring job advertisements.
- Selection time. With a swifter screening process the company can maintain strong talent acquisition policies and a strong employer branding image.
- Costs. The costs associated with hiring are extremely high and a more efficient process contributes to reducing these costs.
In addition to this, there are now ATS available that integrate Artificial Intelligence to even further improve the recruitment process and arrive as efficiently as possible at hiring the best candidate.
A traditional ATS monitors the recruitment process from the initial selection phase to the actual hiring of the candidate. The software allows you to manage the publication of Job Ads, organise candidate CVs and information according to the frequency of keywords, plan interviews, and provide feedback from the interview.
A smart ATS is an intelligent recruiting software that uses artificial intelligence. Unlike traditional ATS, the application of AI provides the automation of various aspects of the selection process, such as the screening of CVs. Through parsing, information extraction and semantic search technology, it is possible not only to distinguish different types of CV, but also to extrapolate the candidate information that responds to specific keywords and / or linked words. All of this is aimed at enhancing the talent acquisition process and arriving at the best candidate decision.
Why choose an ATS?
If the company’s goal is effective Talent Management, whether the company is small or medium-sized, or companies that specialise in search and selection services, it’s really valuable to know all the advantages of an Applicant Tracking System.
- Reduction of hiring times and all associated personnel and business costs
- Automated publication of announcements on multiple Job Boards (Multiposting) and monitoring of Job Ads
- Optimisation of selection and CV screening with semantic search aimed at specific skills
- Planning of interviews and video interviews
- Integrated reporting to monitor the main KPIs
- Smoother internal communication: feedback and comments from the recruitment team are centralised and distributed as necessary
These are just some of the features available with Inrecruiting, the cloud software for recruitment. Inrecruiting is equipped with a customisable interface, it is mobile friendly, with constantly updated features, includes Multiposting and Social recruiting capabilities, there is support and continuous training available, and you can try it out for a free 14-day trial!
If you have not yet integrated an ATS into your recruiting system, what are you waiting for?
