The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) has become a must-have tool for an organization to automate the entire recruitment process with a defined workflow.
There are many applicant tracking software available online, so how do you choose the best ATS software that will be suitable to handle your recruitment process? Here are eight key considerations when choosing your applicant tracking system.
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| Eight key considerations when choosing your ATS |
How To Choose The Right Application Tracking System: Eight key considerations when choosing your ATS
Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application that acts as a database for job applicants and helps HR teams organize recruitment and hiring data. There are several reasons why you need an ATS. Most human capital management suites offer the sub-functionality of an applicant tracking system.
Hiring the best-suited candidate is integral to the success of any company, but the hiring process is a time-consuming and resource-intensive task. The ATS module has become part of a comprehensive human resource management system.
ATS software can simplify many of the issues associated with the hiring process and create a more efficient and effective experience so that the HR team can focus on hiring the best candidate.
The ATS Software helps manage to hire efficiently while ensuring an enjoyable candidate and hiring manager experience. Make sure that there is a complete trace of data about applicants.
For many companies using an ATS, access to the data, processing, and reporting provided via an automated system and ensuring compliance with GDPR, is essential. of course, not the case if the risky and messy alternatives of spreadsheets inboxes interest you. It's not only big companies; we're seeing more SME businesses using ATS's to meet compliance.
1. What do you think your desired ROI (ROI) in the future will look like?
The first thing to consider when choosing an ATS is its return of investment (ROI). Also, how much value can you anticipate getting by investing in an ATS by reducing the time and cost and risk of your recruitment process and enhancing the experience of candidates and hiring managers?
It is necessary to develop a basic understanding, backed whenever you can search by data and figures of your current process for recruiting talent. When you do this, you'll not only enhance your business case. However, you'll also gather valuable information that will aid you in choosing the most suitable technology to resolve your issues.
The main reason why most HR & TA teams are currently considering an ATS is that they aren't able to have access to baseline performance numbers initially. In this case, it's likely to be straightforward to get the baseline numbers you require; however, it's worth the effort.
2. Have you got your needs clearly defined in all aspects of your company?
Although a single method of working across the entire business may be efficient, it's our experience that many companies cannot fit every aspect of their business into a smooth process flow. Thus, your ATS needs to be able to handle these different variations. In the absence of this, your ATS could be utilized only for specific regions, business sectors, or skills, resulting in inconsistent and disjointed data. You will not be able to get a complete picture of the image of the recruitment process.
An excellent example is when it comes to screening requirements. Certain positions may require thorough screening, but that does not mean that you are forced to incorporate all positions into the same screening process to meet more expansive needs. The ATS must be able adapt to changes in the process while still providing complete transparency.
3. Is the software reflecting the organization you work for?
The ATS marketplace is indeed an ATS multi-billion-dollar business, and each platform has unique strengths, capabilities, weaknesses and "bolt-on" alternatives, which are evident in the price. It's no surprise that the system's price must be in line with the company's budget. If you are spending the entire budget on the system's core, without turning on any additional function that is important to your business or having the money for bespoke changes to the system could result in HR & TA teams needing to devise manual solutions. It means that they will have to go into and out of the ATS to comply with your organization's procedures, which, while not efficient, could open the possibility of double-entry or human error within the system.
4. Do you have the resources and time resources to put in place an ATS?
Each change management plan requires a commitment to ensure that the program is appropriately managed and the changes achieve the expected results. An ATS upgrade is no different. If you're able to manage this transition in-house or if you're capable of relying on an employee solutions provider to implement your new ATS will require dedicated resources. Time must be spent reviewing your current recruiting software India processes thoroughly and ideally before purchasing the system. Removing manual processes and expecting an ATS to follow the demands to "that's how we do it" could result in you missing out on vital capabilities that will provide better customer experiences and improve the efficiency of your recruitment process.
The person who is responsible for implementing your ATS must concentrate on the particulars of the system. How users will be interacting with the system, and how to do it and what the customer experience will be (candidate attraction is an important aspect when it comes to this) and making sure that the appropriate data is collected to help meet current or future Management Information (MI) requirements. These are just a few of the issues.
5. Does the ATS connect to your other systems?
When making an ATS purchase, the most crucial consideration is integrating the ATS with payroll systems, HR systems, or procurement systems. Many departments purchase technology from one another because the list of requirements is different. However, there are crossover areas in which data must transfer between systems.
The integration issue might be a reason to think about whether you should purchase an ATS instead of an HRIS complete (HR Information System) that could integrate the concept of Talent Acquisition.
In any case, having bespoke integrations is undoubtedly an advantage that companies should think about incorporating into their budgets before deciding on an ATS. If they don't, TA team members are faced with the choice of having to manually fill out handover forms. Even if the ATS permits downloadable reports to take away, the manual part of filling out a handover form is to pass the burden onto someone else who will need to manually load data into another system.
6. What does the ATS adjust if your organization is changing?
Many organizations don't sit for too long. They transform, explore new markets and align their strategies to keep up with the latest innovations. It's crucial to recognize the elements of an ATS that are easily modified to reflect these changes and those that require the involvement of the technical team of the provider.
Suppose you are buying an ATS, and you are considering buying one. In that case, it is recommended to look over the roadmap for future development to ensure that it does not rapidly become outdated and force the TA teams to come up with different manual arrangements. There may be a time when you need to establish an internal development budget and an approval process for the time and place this budget is to be used or have the appropriate person educated internally to make adjustments themselves. These two approaches ensure that you're always using the most innovative technology available and that the process doesn't get outdated.
7. What management information can the ATS offer, and how can you handle it?
The primary reason for buying the ATS is to give you an ideal picture of the trends in recruitment within an organization, which candidate attraction strategies have succeeded, the bottlenecks within the system, and so on.
An ATS will offer a component of "out of the box" reporting or provide more precise and sophisticated reporting features that can be turned on or integrated. But all those beautiful pie charts and graphs only convey a message if the data container stored in the system is reliable.
One of the most frequent complaints we get from our customers is that the information coming from the system isn't accurate due to how the system is built into the system and isn't suited to its use. TA teams using manual solutions to carry out their work is a direct result of the points discussed throughout this article. If the system isn't able to deliver a smooth user experience that delivers the desired results, as specified by the company and the TA team will likely be left with no other choice than to come up with an alternative method of doing it.
8. Does the ATS help you attract and retain potential employees?
As technology advances and applicant behaviors continue to shift in the workplace, the days of candidates sending a CV along with an impressive cover letter are fast getting old news, so it's worth taking the time to think about how modern-day proved the tools within the ATS are.
There are a lot of questions to ask yourself. Are your social media activities able to be integrated into the ATS? What can the ATS assist you in determining the best candidates for your marketing efforts? Does the ATS permit applicants to apply in a variety of ways? For instance, could candidates submit a video that explains why they're interested in the job and the reasons they believe they're a good fit instead of the standard cover letter that you insist on? Do you have an ATS that has an online portal for candidates that allows candidates to look over and manage applications that they have submitted, schedule and manage assessment centres, and interview? In addition, could all of this be completed electronically (which is more vital now that there is a Coronavirus outbreak)?
Final words:
These are the primary considerations you need to consider when looking over your current ATS or buying a new one.
Don't forget that the more information you can keep in your ATS, the better. You'll enjoy greater efficiency, a more pleasant experience, more reliable data, and less potential for errors by humans or manual solutions.