The Secret Aid For Hiring Success

How Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have proven to be game-changers in the recruitment industry

The term ‘Applicant Tracking System’ or ATS is not a new one for recruiters. In use for over a decade and increasingly popular among recruitment specialists, these software systems offer a host of features beyond the ability to just store and sort resumes. Modern-day ATS platforms offer end-to-end candidate tracking capabilities from sourcing to screening, assessments, interviews, offer management, onboarding, and candidate engagement, all in one place.

On the one hand, recruitment cycles are getting shorter and more dynamic. On the other, hiring managers expect to hire increasingly within narrow bands of specializations and experience. These factors act as a forcing function for recruiters to cast increasingly wider nets to source qualified candidates. Besides, online interviewing and remote hiring have become the norm in these COVID-stressed times. In such conditions, a good ATS can be an invaluable aid for talent sourcing specialists.

Here are four key ways ATSs help recruiters, especially for remote recruitment:

1. Transparent recruitment workflow:

With candidates, talent sourcing specialists, HR teams and hiring managers all scattered remotely, a single system that transparently tracks the recruitment lifecycle and offers data and information on demand becomes imperative. Fragmented Excel spreadsheets or isolated trackers just will not do the job. This is where a best-in-breed ATS excels.

2. No-code customization:

As organizations grow, the variety and complexity of hiring go up in tandem. From niche hiring of CxO-suite candidates to volume hiring of 10s of thousands of freshers, HR teams grapple with a myriad of flows and cycles. Good ATS platforms provide no-code customization capabilities that allow recruiters to develop recruitment process flows just right for their evolving organization.

3. Reduced costs of hiring:

Think back to college hiring of even a few years ago. The operational and logistics costs of entire teams travelling across a country in hiring season, lugging servers, and setting up shop in college campuses were immense. Such exercises are tremendously streamlined today, courtesy ATSs, forced partially by the pandemic.

4. Industry-standard data security:

Data, they say, is the new oil. Databases of tens of thousands of candidates and information about their qualifications, tests were taken and personal information can be invaluable in the wrong hands. It is the expectation of every stakeholder in the recruitment journey that data stored in an ATS is secured in a bullet-proof manner. The best ATSes guarantee this.

Such reasons make it inevitable that recruiters and HR specialists evaluate and adapt the best ATS in the marketplace. Advanced ATS capabilities like fraud-proofing assessments, virtual interviewing capabilities, and digitized onboarding, not to mention analytics and reports are features that are emerging as game-changers in the world of HR.

ATS software is evolving rapidly to meet the demands of HR teams and hiring managers worldwide.