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A good Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is at the crux of successful recruiting. It connects and automates most of the recruiting processes.
Streamlined recruiting workflows – this is the basic feature of an ATS, so any ATS you pick will be good…right? Wrong. Not every ATS is ideal for every business, and
Know Your Recruiting Workflow
Any good ATS should allow you to replicate the exact steps of your hiring process in the solution/platform. That means you should be able to attribute applicants to the right sources, schedule multiple interviews with different team members, perform structured evaluations and advance candidates through the different stages – all within the ATS.
If your company’s hiring process has evolved and became more complex, you need to ensure your ATS is robust enough to handle the complete hiring workflow. Your solution should perfectly suit your company’s unique approach to hiring and should never force you to come up with hacks or workarounds.
View Candidates in the Talent Pipeline
One of the primary benefits of an ATS is it automates tedious tasks so companies can hire more efficiently. Your solution should allow you to quickly screen the applicants you receive, schedule the right ones for interviews, and make favorable hiring decisions.
Hiring at a steady pace naturally benefits your company while also providing candidates a favorable experience. Your ATS should provide reports that tell you how long candidates spend at each stage before advancing or being removed from consideration. If you find that it’s taking too long to make simple candidate decisions, it’s a sign that your ATS solution isn’t helping with all the busy work.
Time to Hire is Too Long
Once again, your ATS is supposed to come with numerous features that help your company make fast, smart hiring decisions. Similar to providing hiring pipeline insight, your ATS should tell you how many total days it takes to fill an open role after it’s posted.
That means your solution should not only provide an efficient screening and interviewing process, but an efficient end-to-end hiring process. It should help you generate candidates from a variety of sources, who then quickly progress through each hiring step. “Time-to-fill” is a valuable recruiting metric that can help you audit the effectiveness of your ATS. Make sure your solution lets you generate time-to-fill reports so you can work toward optimizing your process.
Your Recruitment Team Expanded
Everyone involved in your company’s hiring efforts should reap the benefits of your recruiting solution. Each hiring manager or recruiting team member should be able to log in and screen candidates, schedule interviews, post open roles, and much more. Everyone involved in interviews should be able to access the solution to provide feedback on the people they meet with.
Some ATS vendors charge per user or provide a limit on the number logins. Those solutions work fine for small teams, but often don’t make sense for large, expanding hiring teams. There are plenty of ATS options that don’t limit user access, so find a solution that is flexible as your team grows.
You’ve Set Ambitious Targets
Some hiring solutions work fine for small businesses or companies that hire for only a few roles at a time. However, if your company has ambitious expansion plans, your ATS should have the necessary features to grow with your company.
There is a lot that goes into achieving hiring growth targets. You need an effective careers page, the ability to source from a variety of channels, a solid interview process, and smart evaluation procedures, to name only a few examples. In this case, a barebones ATS just won’t do the trick.
Find an ATS that fits your company’s hiring needs.
Be sure to do thorough research before upgrading your ATS to ensure it’s the right solution for your company. Hopefully, you already have experience with a hiring solution/platform, so you can determine which features are helpful and which ones you need from your next vendor. You can check out online reviews, schedule demos, and review the functionality of each product to find an ATS that has everything your company needs to achieve its hiring goals.
