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One purpose of an applicant tracking system (ATS) is to quickly filter candidates according to the criteria you have set for an open post. This may be location, years/type of experience, or particular skills.
Instead of having to manually sift through a stack of resumes, the system does it for you. This also ensures that you have time to focus on the candidates who do fit the bill.
But this approach has downsides. You may miss out on candidates who would be a great fit but don’t quite meet the criteria. Some candidates leave information out of their resume, either by accident or by design, and may be rejected even though they meet the requirements.
It’s common knowledge that recruiters use this process to screen candidates. This has led some people to tailor their resumes to get through the first test, or even try to beat the system by creating an ATS-friendly resume.
An ATS-friendly resume is formatted and optimized to give it the best chances of getting through the first screening process. Some people might use this to game the system when they know they don’t have the required skills, while others will ATS-optimize their resume to increase their chances of making it through. Some companies even specialize in ATS optimization.
If a candidate wants the job, they want to give themselves the best chance of making it through to the next round. It shows they’ve made the effort to find out the requirements and taken the time to do the necessary work to not be rejected by the ATS.
People use many types of resumes. If you’re in a creative industry, you might spend a long time creating a beautiful design. Or you might try to make your resume stand out when it reaches a human by taking a different approach.
An ATS can’t understand and parse the information from unusually formatted and designed resumes. For example, most ATS don’t recognize tables and images.
An ATS-compliant resume takes these factors into account and is designed simply so the system can easily parse the information.
It can be hard to decide whether you need an applicant tracking system. Look over these four reasons why you should invest in a new solution to help make the decision easier.
While we mentioned a few downsides above of using an ATS to screen resumes, the upsides are that it makes your recruiting process much more efficient, saves you time and money, and improves the candidate experience.
When you respond slowly to candidates because you’re busy manually sorting through a pile of resumes, they might form a bad opinion of your company or have found a position elsewhere. You don’t want to keep talented candidates waiting.
An ATS also ensures you only look at resumes from people who match the requirements. If you’re recruiting for a sought-after position, you might get a lot of irrelevant resumes. For example, if you’re recruiting for a social media manager at a fashion brand, you’ll likely get a ton of resumes from people who don’t have experience but just really want to work at your company.
It can also help eliminate unconscious bias through blind hiring, as the system decides solely based on the set criteria and no other factors.
When you automate manual tasks, you’ll move candidates through the recruiting process faster.
With an applicant tracking system, you can automate recruitment tasks, such as
This also helps with pipeline recruitment, as you can ensure candidates move through each hiring step quickly.
Some skills are in high demand. Think technical skills, such as artificial intelligence. Applicant tracking systems can help you recruit for these positions by tapping into a wider, deeper talent pool.
These systems automatically post new roles to free and paid job boards, and other channels such as social media. They can also source candidates by searching job boards.
Workable has an artificial intelligence-powered Auto-Suggest feature that searches public online profiles to find candidates who match the skills and requirements you have specified in your job description.
It then helps you create highly targeted campaigns on channels such as Facebook to make these people aware of the job and encourage them to apply.
An ATS tracks the performance of all areas of your recruitment process so you can make better decisions and resolve issues.
These systems collect and centralize data, which they then use to provide reports and actionable insight.
Zoho Recruit can help you track:
It provides customizable reporting templates and lets you build your own dashboards with these metrics to help optimize performance.
The answer is almost always yes, but we’ve detailed times when an applicant tracking system makes sense and times when it doesn’t help you decide.
If you’re not sure your business is ready for an applicant tracking system, here are some key signs you need to take the plunge.
Recruiters and small businesses might convince themselves they don’t need an ATS, but they’re surprised how much easier their job becomes when they finally invest in a solution. However, consider these exceptional circumstances when it might not be the best time to get new software.
Yes, an applicant tracking system can work wonders for saving time and money, speeding up the process, and finding better candidates, but it’s not the answer to all your prayers. You still need a solid recruiting strategy and an efficient hiring process to reap the benefits.
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