Modern-day recruitment has become more fast-paced where hiring tools are required for companies to stay on top of all the onboarding tools. Applicant tracking software is one of the best tools for maintaining a strong recruitment strategy while ensuring all steps are managed in one central location.
Has your company ever utilized ATS software? If not or if you want to upgrade your ATS, enjoy this applicant tracking system overview containing general information, features, and benefits.
Applicant Tracking System Overview
An applicant tracking system overview monitors and documents all stages of the application and onboarding process throughout the employee lifecycle. It collects, manages, and tracks statistics of application volume received for a requisition. The system also automates manual tasks such as resume analysis, interview scheduling, and sending communications to candidates.
Cadient’s applicant tracking system software offers their clients a professionally branded career site for candidates to learn about company culture, apply to open requisitions, and check on the status of their applications. Its job board integration capabilities, effective screening with AI features, and high-quality management console help your company keep up with the trends in modern-day recruitment.
Applicant Tracking Software Essentials
Here are the essential features of ATS software, which is one of the most important talent acquisition tools in the recruitment industry.
Resume Parsing
ATS software can analyze resumes with advanced AI algorithms to pick out specific keywords and phrases that align with the job description to find the highest quality candidates to fill the requisition. Its data extraction capabilities can focus on more than just skill sets but also on different qualifications, licenses, and certifications that set one applicant apart from another.
Candidate Tracking
The system documents every stage of the recruitment process from application submission to the official offer letter sent when a new hire is decided. Communications between recruitment and candidates, interview schedules, and notes and observations on each candidate are all stored in the system for easy tracking capabilities.
Reporting and Analytics
Review your hiring metrics at any time with the Cadient Analytics Portal. Learn your current time-to-hire, time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) that impact your company’s recruitment process. From there, you can institute improvement strategies to enhance those metrics while streamlining recruitment. You can also ensure your company is compliant with new hire paperwork by looking at the compliance reporting section.
Compliance
Depending on the employee’s designated job type (W2 or 1099), the new hire will have to complete specific paperwork for your company to remain compliant with local and national employment laws. Data protection regulations, Equal Employment Opportunity mandates, and other compliance measures need to be met to lawfully operate in your business.
Job Posting
Once you have written a job description for a requisition, ATS software can help you post it on different platforms with the touch of a button. It can be automatically posted to various social media platforms and popular job boards to expand candidate outreach and increase time-to-fill and time-to-hire metrics.
Choosing the Right ATS for Recruitment
The best ATS software needs to have these key features to soar your company to the top for maintaining effectiveness in recruitment.
Scalability
Scalability is a form of customization that applicant tracking software offers to customize the system to meet a company’s needs. Larger companies need greater volumes of data handling and management, especially with an influx of applications coming in during an open requisition. Hence, performance speed should be quicker to accommodate this extra incoming data.
Having a scalable ATS also means refining customizable workflows. This means calibrating the ATS to send out a mass hiring email or text to interested candidates and refining approval requirements to advance to the next stage in the hiring process. Automated actions on manual processes and delegating tasks to recruitment team members at each stage will also refine the customizable workflows.
User-Friendliness
Not everyone is a tech whizz. User-friendly ATS software enhances efficiency throughout recruitment. There will be less time spent training HR and recruitment to use the software and more time spent on getting tasks done.
Integration Capabilities
Applicant tracking systems should have the best integration capabilities with HR tools and job boards. Cadient integrates with top job boards like Indeed and Monster to help clients enhance candidate sourcing.
Even social media platforms such as LinkedIn are becoming an important resource for recruiters vying to find the best talent. A Jobvite 2018 study showed that 77% of recruiters utilize LinkedIn for candidate sourcing measures when there’s an open requisition in their company.
Mobile-Friendly Features
ATS software should have mobile-friendly features for candidates to complete their application on a smartphone or tablet instead of a laptop or desktop. Appcast revealed in a 2023 study that 67% of job seekers are placing applications utilizing mobile devices.
The ease and convenience of placing an application from wherever you are on a mobile device trumps in comparison of waiting to get home to use a desktop or lugging a laptop around. Plus, the Pew Research Center indicated that 15% of smartphone owners can only access the Internet with these devices because they do not have Wi-Fi at home.
Customization Options
The applicant tracking system can be specifically customized to fit the steps in your company’s application process. You can set up the different stages in the application process on the ATS portal to show which candidates are at what specific part of recruitment. For example, some companies have only one interview, but others like to have 2 to 3 interviews to find the highest-quality candidates. Hence, you can customize the software to display an initial and final interview as the prerequisites for hiring.
Benefits Of An Effective ATS
An effective ATS will deliver a streamlined recruitment process with many other benefits for enhanced candidate quality for refined employee retention.
Efficiency
Reduce the administrative burden on the recruitment team by automating manual tasks with ATS software. From scheduling mass emails to candidates to applicants self-scheduling interviews from pre-approved time slots, your company can take back time for your recruitment team to focus on refining other hiring strategies.
Improved Candidate Experience
Keep candidate engagement high with a user-friendly career page interface. An easy-to-use communication system can help everyone stay in touch. Cadient’s texting solutions can capture candidates’ attention to respond quicker to communication from the recruitment team to lower the time-to-hire and time-to-fill metrics.
Enhanced Collaboration
The recruitment team and HR can communicate more effectively by sourcing all candidates’ information from this centralized system. Besides communication channels between candidates and recruitment, there are also collaboration tools for HR and the recruitment team to stay connected.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Analyze data analytics related to hiring metrics to make informed decisions about how to refine your recruitment strategy. If your cost-per-hire is too high, you might want to try evergreen job posts to build a steady applicant pool and spend less on temporary outreach campaigns on social media and job boards.
