Recruiting quality hires is the most challenging and daunting task and that is the reason recruiters and HR managers are paid heavily. As a recruiter, it’s pretty obvious that the main quest is to attract the best top quality talent. The need of the hour is to use the topnotch technology and recruiting tools in order to create an ideal hiring pipeline. ATS or Applicant Tracking System is indeed the best tool to automate the hiring process, boost candidate experience, and leverage hiring results.

This article throws some deep insights on why ATS is a must have tool for recruiters. Let’s begin.

1.  Application Tracking and Automation

The work of HR professionals is never ending and they are managing hundreds of things in a single day. An applicant tracking software eases the life of recruiters and HR managers by fully automating most of the recruiting tasks. As per BusinessInsider, around 95% of the Fortune 500 companies are using ATS (robots) for scrutinizing job applications and improving their recruiting pipeline.

Also, the recruiting software automatically sends notifications to the candidates at every stage of the recruitment process. Sending emails and notifications is undoubtedly a tedious job. Most of the time recruiters forget to send regret emails to the candidates who are rejected

or do not qualify for the next rounds. This negatively impacts the candidate experience as well as an employer brand. By automating all the notification processes, a recruiter can give ample time to understanding the top candidates better.

An ATS is the best way of keeping recruiters and candidates on a single platform. All the interview scheduling tasks including deciding dates, time slots, etc are all done by the software. Also, the reminders for interviews are automatically sent by the recruiting software.

Want to know the background of Applicant Tracking Systems?Click here to read.

2.Job Posting Distribution

An ATS takes care of all those monotonous and time-consuming recruiting tasks for the recruiters. All the job board postings across the online platforms, email templates, and schedule saving inbox management tasks are automatically streamlined by the ATS.

The ATS available today comes with built-in integration of plugins to support all the big online job boards such as Monster, Indeed etc. Recruiters can post and manage jobs on several websites and job boards in just a single click. All the database (talent pool) additions, deletions, and other edits are done instantly.

3. Attract Passive and Hard-to-Reach Candidates

One big reason why recruiters should prefer an applicant tracking system is that it helps reach out to passive and coveted candidates not actively looking for jobs. So, an ATS offers an added advantage of finding the candidates almost immediately without wasting a single penny. The ATS, being a product of smart technology, is fully capable of tapping mobile traffic as well.

4. Centralized Hiring Pipeline

Every time a candidate applies to the job through any medium (job board, email or web portal), the resume gets stored in the recruiting software’s database. The ATS maintains a centralized hiring pipeline and stores the resumes of candidates even when the position gets filled. A lot of hiring time is saved when an urgent requirement arises as the recruiters can simply sift through resumes stored in the ATS database and find a perfect match. This way HR managers and recruiters never lose track of a deserving candidate. In fact, the recruiters can directly manage the career page of the organization’s website from the ATS. ATS makes it easier for recruiters to add photos, descriptions, logos, and job openings and it has buttons for social sharing as well.

5. Exact and Refined Results

Creating a database of potential candidates is not difficult but searching the right candidate is a difficult task. An ATS offers a great searching capability. Recruiters just need to type in the right set of keywords and the results that are obtained are precise and refined. The information stored is well organized which makes the data easily searchable.

Read More: Understanding the Features Offered by a Resume Formatting Tool

6. Drives Diversity

Diversity and multiculturalism are the two major factors determining the existence of an organization. These factors make the companies a lot more innovative, thereby making it possible for them to generate more ROI or return on investment. It is essential to attract diverse talent. Furthermore, using an ATS avoids the risk of unconscious bias while recruiting and making hiring decisions. An ATS shortlists the candidates on the basis of search keywords and not on the basis of country, gender, class, etc.

7. Reliable Talent Pool

An ATS keeps all the candidate information in one single database which helps recruiters operate from a remote location as well. The recruiters can easily share the candidate’s information with teammates and can also assign roles and responsibilities to the team. The information and access control can also be managed through an ATS. This helps the recruiters engage the whole team in the selection process.

All the data is automatically parsed and stored in the ATS database. The ATS supports every format type including .doc, .pdf, .txt and more.

It stores data by applying suitable filters to make it possible for recruiters to carry out instant searches. There are inbuilt email templates and a resume formatting tool in an ATS which helps to format the resume in a predefined template.

8. Excellent Onboarding Experience

Apart from the recruiting phase, a recruiting software helps with quick onboarding of new hires. A good onboarding experience further boosts the candidate experience and increases the chances of employee retention. All the HR manuals can be stored in the ATS. This further helps the new hire to better understand the company norms and other protocols. Also, all other information related to joining bonuses and other paperwork formalities can be included in the offer letter. It drastically speeds up the time to hire as well as the onboarding process.

Still confused? Click here to enjoy a 15 day free trial of Applicant Tracking System.

Unleash the Power of Applicant Tracking System

Buying an ATS for small business recruiting is a one-time investment which pays well over time. Apart from optimizing the recruitment process, it boosts candidate experience and increases employer branding. Investing in the right ATS will eliminate all the tedious tasks related to recruitment.

Bid farewell to manual resume formatting, interview scheduling, searching for candidates, résumé sorting, etc by saying “Hello” to an Applicant Tracking System.

Recruiting or hiring in small businesses could be challenging and stressful at times. In fact, it could be even more challenging than normal business chores. It becomes a tedious and time-consuming activity to filter the resumes, schedule interviews, and promote job openings on multiple online job portals manually.

Many small companies are unable to hire a manager completely dedicated to recruiting activities due to budget constraints, unlike giant companies. As a result, the small company owners themselves have to spend a lot of time and effort in the hiring process to be able to source great talent for their company.

To expedite the entire recruitment processes and save a lot of precious time and effort, a small business applicant tracking system is a perfect solution for all recruitment needs. An ATS will help small companies with job posting, accepting applications/ resumes, filtering them, and scheduling interviews with the shortlisted candidates.

You may want to check out our article on small company applicant tracking system for more information.

Traditionally, applicant tracking systems were expensive, complicated, and could not fit into the budget of small companies. But, today with exceptional and unprecedented growth in technology, an ATS is affordable and has a user-friendly interface with some awesome web-based features.  Now the cost to use a small business applicant tracking system is much lower.

Let’s explore some things which are unknown about small business applicant tracking systems. But before that have a look at the advantages that give small companies an upper edge against those big giants!

1. Flexible options

Unlike the MNCs and bigger industry giants, a small or growing company offers a flexible environment to employees such as work from home options, more vacations, flexible timing, emergency leave, lucrative performance incentives, job rotation, part-time facilities and more.

2. Better grasp on processes and procedures

There are lots of paperwork and legal formalities involved in bigger companies. This is the prime reason that small businesses have more control over the sourcing cycle.

3. Remote opportunities

A small business that offers remote job opportunities to its employees can fill the job openings much faster.  In fact, it is easier to monitor and manage the work from a remote position in case of small teams.

4. Perfect work-life balance

It is much easier to stay happy and strike a work-life balance when working for a small company because the process is flexible instead of rigid in nature. Moreover, millennials love this kind of flexibility, freedom, and autonomy when it comes to working.

Benefits of Recruitment Software for Small Businesses

The ATS for small companies automate much of the recruitment legwork and helps improve internal communication within the team. Have a look at some of the stellar secrets about small company applicant tracking systems.

1. Improves recruiter’s productivity

With traditional recruitment methods, the recruiters were often confined to the office and it was mandatory for them to have access to the computer all the time or do the paperwork. The applicant tracking systems boost the recruiter’s productivity immensely. Most of the ATS available today are cloud-based which allows the recruiters or users to connect using any device such as a smartphone, tablet, or computer.  So, the recruiters have the power to work and operate from anywhere across the globe.

2. Improves social reach

A small business applicant tracking system helps recruiters connect to the various social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. This mode of networking helps the recruiters reach a wider array of potential candidates. Nowadays, all the recruitment software or ATS have an option of social media integration which enables the recruiter to link to their social media profiles as well as other online job portals.

Check out some professional recruiting tips for small business owners.

3. Improves communication times and efficiency

For a better candidate experience, it is really important to have a quick response time when the teams are communicating internally or with the candidates. An ATS is really a game changer as it automates important components of the recruitment process such as response emails. This further helps improve the organization’s communication channels and improving the candidate experience.

4. Streamlined data collection

Recruitment software enables the organization to receive job applications from various resources such as the company’s own website job portal and other job boards. This facilitates the recruitment team’s ability to gather candidate data and analyze it which further improves the recruitment process.

Apart from streamlining the data flow, recruitment software provides various analytics such as the number of applicants, number of viewers, recording candidate response, etc.

5. Provides automation to the recruitment process

This is what all recruitment software is designed for. It aims to eliminate all possible manual aspects in recruiting except for the personal interviews. Recruitment software can also schedule time and dates for the HR team. This automation provides an extra degree of control for the hiring team and allows them to maintain full focus on conducting the personal interviews and short-listing candidates.

6. Allows recruiters to find better candidates

The HR team can find better suited candidates with the help of recruiting software by providing them accurate search results and saving their precious time. Every ATS is equipped with versatile features and set of tools that can be used to tailor the recruitment searches and help to find a better match with minimal effort.

7. Helps improve a business’s sourcing strategies

Framing a good sourcing strategy is one of the most common challenges faced by the recruitment industry today. Companies are not sure if they are hiring the right person or hunting the resource in the right direction or right place.  The ATS helps small companies analyze their sourcing strategies and detecting the loopholes. The same software helps the organizations customize the software as per the modified sourcing approach and improvise accordingly.

8. Helps create unique and engaging recruitment posts

Creating attention-grabbing and engaging job posts is an important characteristic of recruitment. Many ATS provide a customizable template for the job posts. If no member of the HR team is capable of writing professional job posts, then the same can be done by outsourcing the task to creative writing experts. These experts will help the hiring team create eye-catching and interesting recruitment posts that will appeal to the type of candidates the organization has been looking for.

9. 24/7 availability

The team can work on the recruitment process only during the office working hours unless they are interested in carrying a huge pile of paperwork home with them.

With recruitment software, access to any recruitment service or process can be made at any time of the day 24/7. This certainly improves productivity and allows the recruiters to respond to the applicant’s queries on time, thereby, improving the overall efficiency.

10. Secure cloud-based storage

Traditionally, paper applications were kept in a file cabinet. After the inception of computers, the e-applications were kept on an internal computer server database. Both these approaches are highly insecure. A slight data breach or hack may not only cost the company the loss of applications but will also increase the risk pertaining to misuse of candidate’s data or other sensitive data.

The ATS today are totally backed on cloud-based servers which are secured against the data breaches and natural calamities as well.

11. Internal & external recruiting

Yes! The small company ATS helps to recruit both internally as well as externally. Internal recruitment refers to giving chances to the outstanding employees already working with the company to move up the hierarchy whenever the positions are available. A small business applicant tracking system provides an excellent employee performance tracking component that records the skill sets of the employees working within a team and identify the top performers. This helps the company mark a comparison between the employee who is already onboard and the external candidate and find the best fit.

12. Hiring is more collaborative

Stats prove that organizations that communicate seamlessly and effectively are more likely to retain the best employees for a longer run. Collaboration and communication go hand in hand. Collaboration ensures that the entire recruitment process is a teamwork rather than solely relying on a single shoulder.

From delegating tasks to sharing notes and recording feedback, ATS makes the complete process easy for a multi-member team in order to partake in the recruitment process. ATS provides an equal opportunity to every team member to contribute which makes them feel valued. Consequently, the unity in diversity swells across the board.

Winding up

There is no rule indicating that having recruitment software is only a cup of tea for big industries or organizations. Even if the openings are limited and the budget is stringent, there’s an ATS available to meet every requirement and budget constraints. Having an ATS is a long-term investment that will reap good returns in terms of compliance, collaboration, and efficiency.

Free Small Business Applicant Tracking System and Recruiting Software

Recruiteze offers efficient recruitment tools to help HR and recruitment professionals meet the staffing future head on. Our small business applicant tracking system allows you to parse, format and easily navigate candidate information, so your online recruitment process is more efficient. You get a custom careers page and application system, which ensures your candidate experience is top-tier. Stop doing recruitment the hard way, and start using Recruiteze today.

Applicant tracking systems in the past were only affordable to large and medium enterprises. Now small companies can find online applicant tracking systems at an affordable price.

Check this article on the history of applicant tracking systems.

If you own a small company and you are wondering if you need an applicant tracking system, it is definitely high time to move away from spreadsheets and use a system that is far more efficient and available to all your users from anywhere. Plus, it allows you to become a paperless hiring organization.

Check out this article on why it is time to move away from a recruitment spreadsheet.

If you are already looking for a small company applicant tracking system, Recruiteze is the perfect software for your needs. Recruiteze has been rated the 2018 best small company applicant tracking system for ease of use and value for money.

Why does a small company need an applicant tracking system?

Hiring involves a lot of actors, notes, and communication. Without an efficient way to manage all the factors involved the information will be scattered between emails, documents, printouts, and memory. You will not be able to effectively analyze whether or not your hiring process is efficient and is working.

The primary actors involved in a hiring process are:

• Hiring Managers – The hiring process usually starts when a hiring manager has a need for one or more new resources. This can happen when an existing employee leaves, the work load has increased for the existing team members, or there is a new project in the pipeline.
• Decision Makers/Approvers – Depending on the size of the organization, there may be decision makers involved to either approve or disapprove a new job requisition. Decision makers can also be involved in approving the hiring decision to make an offer to an applicant/candidate.
• Recruiters – Once a job requisition is approved, a recruiting company or recruiter gets involved. They will gather the detailed job requirements from the hiring manager and post the job on the various job boards. Once the applications start coming in, the recruiter reviews the resumes and does preliminary screening before submitting to the hiring manager to get feedback. If the hiring manager requests an interview the recruiter schedules a suitable time with the applicant and one or more interviewers.
• Interviewers – These are the current employees, who either conduct a phone interview or an in person interview and provide their feedback on the applicant.
• Candidates/Applicants – Candidates apply for open positions if they come across the job from either the company’s career page or one of the job boards where the job has been advertised.
• Human Resources – Human resource administrators work with management and negotiate compensation and benefits, setup the onboarding processes, and conduct orientation.

With so many people involved, there is a lot of communication and notes that are distributed across individual emails, memory, and notebooks. For this reason alone, you should signup for an applicant tracking system. But there are lot more reasons that justify the use of an applicant tracking system.

Do you need to hire staffing firm for Recruiting?

A typical staffing agency commission is about 20% of the first year salary, so there are definitely pros and cons of using a staffing firm.

Here is an article that discusses the benefits of using a staffing firm for your hiring.
Here is another article that discusses the difference between in-house recruiting and a staffing agency.

If you are a small company and you are willing to put in a little extra effort, you can save thousands of dollars in commissions. This is especially true for startup companies, who may not have a lot of cash to burn during the early stages.

How can an applicant tracking system help your recruiting?

With a small company applicant tracking system, like Recruiteze, you can post and publish your jobs to numerous job sites including Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Google, LinkedIn, and a number of other job boards for free. This job posting and publishing is included in the monthly price of the applicant tracking system.

Here the benefits of using an applicant tracking system to post and publish jobs:

• Post to multiple job boards with one click – With an online applicant tracking system that supports job publishing, you can post your job and also publish to all the popular job boards with a single click of a button.
• Save time – Since you do not create accounts with every popular job board and post them individually, you save at least 6 hours of time in the process.
• Employees’ time is better spent – Time is more valuable, since it increases the productivity of the employees to do more useful things that help the bottom line.
• Receive applications in one place – When you post to the various job boards using an applicant tracking system all your applications come into the database of the applicant tracking system.
• Build your database – When you receive applications to your ats database, you are building a useful list of candidates. This can help in your future hiring.
• Automated acknowledgement – When you receive an application, an acknowledgement is automatically sent to the applicant. This shows you are a professional organization, this also saves you time responding to each and every applicant personally by automating this process.

This is another huge benefit for a small company. You save time, money, and increase your hiring efficiency.

Why do you need a customized workflow?

Every organization uses a different hiring workflow. A workflow is the different stages that candidate is taken through before your company makes a decision to either hire or reject. With Recruiteze, we have created numerous custom workflows for our clients.

For a small company a simple workflow could be:

• Application Received – As soon as a candidate applies to a job, the state could change to Application Received.
• Application Reviewed – Once the application is reviewed by a recruiter, the state can be changed to Application Reviewed. The candidate can be rejected after the review or proceed to the next step of phone screening.
• Phone Screen – During the phone screen, the recruiter evaluates the skills, experience, and communication fit for the position. The candidate can be interviewed after this step, or rejected.
• Interview – This can involve one or more interviews. The candidate can be selected for an offer or rejected at any step.
• Offer – If the applicant passes the interview phase, an offer can be extended.
• Candidate Accepted Offer – The state changes to accepted offer, if the candidate accepts the offer.
• Candidate Declined Offer – The state changes to declined offer, if the candidate declines the offer.
• Rejected – A candidate can be rejected from any of the steps outlined above.
• Withdrew – The applicant can also withdraw the candidature at any time.

The outlined workflow is more commonly used among the small companies using Recruiteze applicant tracking system. A customizable workflow is very important of an applicant tracking system. All the hiring metrics can be derived from the workflow. You can run reports like how many applications received, from which sources, how many were interviewed, how many were offered employment, how many were rejected and hired.

How to manage applicants using an applicant tracking system?

Based on research, a job posting receives an average of 250 job applications. That is a lot of job applications to manage. If you use an applicant tracking system, all the applications go into your applicant tracking system database.

The one thing you will need is to create a customized workflow that suits your current processes. As you are reviewing candidates, you put them through the different stages of the workflow. For each job, there is only one person that will be hired. So, out of the 250 applicants, most of them will be rejected. This is where having an applicant tracking system helps you filter out candidates so that your list becomes shorter and shorter until you find the one person to fill the job.

It is very important to use the workflow and notes to keep track of the candidate review and feedback.

How does an applicant tracking system help productivity?

Just imagine having to reply to every one of the 250 applicants that apply for a job. It can get pretty taxing. With an applicant tracking system, an automated acknowledgement goes out to each applicant with instructions and next steps. It also makes the company’s hiring process look far more efficient.

Also at each step of the workflow, if proper email templates are setup, with the click of a button a personalized email can be sent out to the candidate. This saves tremendous amount of repetitive time. It also streamlines the communication across everyone involved in the recruiting process.

Just imagine having to sift through spreadsheets and emails to find out feedback and notes. If all your notes and communication are maintained in an applicant tracking system you will have all information about the candidate in one place, no need to sift through emails, spreadsheets, and notebooks.

Hiring continuity?

Imagine your recruiter leaves the company. If they have been maintaining the recruitment process through their emails, notebook and spreadsheets, you have lost a lot of valuable information. There is no continuity in your hiring process, you have lost all the tribal knowledge. This is another big reason to use an applicant tracking system. You start building your candidate database, your communication, and notes. If there is a need to look up the information or reach out to the semi-finalists later, it is all there for you to refer back.

Just like disaster recovery, you need a hiring continuity process to run an efficient organization. In the past these types of systems were only available to large organizations. Now with the advent of cloud, small companies have access to these smart online systems to manage the hiring process.

Cloud applicant tracking system

With the advent of cloud software, everything is available as a monthly subscription. This removes the barriers of the earlier on-premise systems. Now you do not need to own servers and hire system administrators to manage the servers and software. All you need is a browser and an internet connection. Your data and systems are available from anywhere. Cloud software has become the great equalizer for small companies. With plenty of affordable online software, small companies can run more efficiently without needing a lot of upfront investment buying hardware and software.

Small Company Applicant Tracking System

Now that you have seen the benefits of an applicant tracking system. Recruiteze is the best small company applicant tracking system. With Recruiteze, you can post your jobs to popular job boards like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Google, and a host of other job boards with one click. You can manage the numerous applicants received with a simple customizable workflow process. You can streamline your emails and communication with email templates. Work in teams across the world seamlessly, since the software is available online. Try Recruiteze free today!

That is an interesting question in the present day and age. The good old applicant tracking system is much more than it was originally intended for.

Why did we need an ATS in the first place?

Businesses have always been hiring employees. Initially when there were only a few different types of jobs and smaller job markets, applicants would find jobs from “help wanted” signs on shop fronts. Advertisements in the local newspapers would be the go to place to find job ads. Hiring was more personal, they could hire easily through personal references.
Before we go into the need for an ATS, we need to see the history of the resume. See this infographic which shows the 500 years history of the resume.

Now that we know resumes have existed for a while now, we can look at the LFPR (Labor Force Participation Rate). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_force_in_the_United_States
As per this Wikipedia article, between 1930 and 1950, there was an increase of women participating in the workforce due to the increased demand for office workers and electrification which reduced the time spent on chores. In the US, the labor participation rate increased from 59% in 1948 to 66% in 2005. The participation among women rose from 32% to 59%.
Economists who analyze LFPR for those prime aged workers between 25-54, found that the prime aged LFPR peaked at 84.5% at three times between Oct 1997 and April 2000. The reason we need to look at the LFPR is to understand how the number of resumes or applications increased with time.

With the increase in jobs as well as paper applications, there came a need to track these applications. This article which shows the history of an ATS, states the first applicant tracking systems were created in the early 1970s. Since at this time, there was not widespread internet use, these systems were just a way to store and organize the applications.

From storing resumes, they evolved to be able to scan paper resumes and track the candidate’s workflow to getting employment.

A modern ATS is usually a combination of the following core functionalities:

• Online Job Publishing System
• Job Portal Management System
• Online Job Application Management System
• Candidate Management System
• CRM

Let us look at each of these aspects on its own merit.

Online Job Publishing System

To understand the online job publishing system, we need to understand the history of the job boards. This nice infographic details the history of the job board.

So, the first job aggregators started in the 2000s. Also, the job aggregation was happening at a massive scale with the advent of Indeed and Simplyhired around 2004/2005. With the advent of the aggregators the applicant tracking systems started distributing the jobs that were posted on their platforms. This provides a nice way for an employer to distribute their jobs to tens or hundreds of job boards by just posting the job in the ATS.

Here is an article that details how Recruiteze publishes your jobs to the job boards.

Early on, the job publishing was available only with select enterprise ATSs, now it is available with most cloud-based applicant tracking systems. This feature was also expensive early on, now it is more affordable and available for all employers.

Job Portal Management System

The first website created by the inventor of the internet Tim Berners-Lee went live in 1991. The early websites took off when the Mosaic web browser was created in 1993. As the popularity of the career’s pages took off, there was a need to manage the jobs on these pages. So, the online applicant tracking systems were also capable of managing the active job listings on the career’s page. When a job is posted in the ATS it will be displayed on the career’s page. When the job is deactivated or expired, it is removed from the career’s page. This allows the seamless management of your career’s page with the ATS.

Most modern applicant tracking systems allow the creation and management of your career’s page from the software.

Here is how Recruiteze is able to create and manage your smart career’s page.

Online Job Application Management System

With the ability to post and publish jobs to the career portal as well as the job aggregators and job sites there was a deluge of applications received. Statistics show you receive an average of 250 applications per job posting. With that many applications, there surely is a need to manage these applications.

With the modern applicant tracking system, a candidate can apply for a job from the career portal or through a custom online application from a job site. At a minimum, an acknowledgement has to be sent to the candidate acknowledging the receipt of the application. The recruiter has to be notified about the receipt of the application, and the resume and application have to be added to the ATS.

An online job application management system will also allow you to create custom applications with your desired prescreening questions to make it easy for you to reject candidates that don’t match your requirements.

With more and more candidates searching and applying from mobile devices, it is very important that the online application is responsive. Most modern applicant tracking systems offer the ability to manage applications.

Here is an article that shows how you can manage your applications with Recruiteze.

Candidate Management System

With all the applications received, there is a need to manage all the resumes and candidates efficiently. If you receive 250 applications per job you will have soon thousands of resumes and candidates. There is also a good chance all the applications are not received online. Quite a few them can end up in your email inbox. You need a way to add these resumes to the applicant tracking system and manage them.

Once the applications are received, they need to put through a workflow to review, screen, interview, and hire or decline. You need an efficient customizable workflow to manage your candidates. Also, your workflow can be different from some other company. The number of steps involved in hiring is usually different based on the number of people involved and decision makers required.
There needs to be a way to add notes, send emails, and maintain employment information.

The biggest feature you need from a CMS or candidate management system is the ability to sift through the resumes when you need to see them. You need several views of the candidate list:

• Ability to search candidate resumes by text.
• Ability to view all applications per job.
• Ability to view all applications in a specific workflow.
• Ability to bookmark candidates.
• List of all candidates.
• Ability to search a candidate by name or email.

Check out these articles on how Recruiteze candidate management system can help you manage the candidates.

Recruiteze: How to Use the Candidate Workflow Feature?
Candidate Management System: How It Can Help Resume Handling Challenges?

CRM

The hiring process involves several actors. For a staffing agency the actors are:

• Client/Customer – A customer provides the job requisitions.
• Prospect – A prospective client/customer.
• Vendor – A sub vendor who provides candidates for hard to fill job requisitions.
• Hiring Manager – Hiring manager provides the candidate specifications and usually makes the hiring decision.
• Interviewers – One or more interviewers interview and provide feedback for the hiring process.
• Account Manager – Staffing agency account manager who usually works with the client/customer.
• Recruiter – There can be a corporate recruiter on the client side involved, depending on the size of the organization. There will be a staffing agency recruiter who sifts through the candidates and short lists the candidates for submission.
• HR – The HR on the client side, who work on the offer with the candidate.

For a small business the actors can be:

• Hiring Manager – Hiring manager provides the candidate specifications and usually makes the hiring decision.
• Vendor – A vendor who provides candidates for hard to fill job requisitions.
• Interviewers – One or more interviewers who interview candidates and provide feedback for the hiring process.
• Recruiter – There can be a corporate recruiter depending on the size of the organization.
• HR – There can be a HR department on the client side who work on the offer with the candidate. It could be the small business owner if it is a small organization.

As you see, there are multiple actors involved in the hiring process. There needs to be a way to maintain the list of the actors, and track communication and notes. This helps keep everyone in the loop regarding all the conversations and increases the efficiency of an organization.

So, applicant tracking systems have also evolved into customer relationship management systems for this purpose.

Reports

Now that you have candidates, applications, jobs and users we need reports that show how the hiring process is working. The reports should show how many applications were received and where they were received from. They also need to track how many candidates were interviewed, how many were offered, and how many were hired.

Reports are very important to fix any inefficiencies. Also, it helps track the user activity for an administrator. They can see if a recruiter is doing their job correctly or if they need additional help.

Who needs an Applicant Tracking System?

When the applicant tracking systems were introduced they were mainly used by large enterprises. Now with the SaaS based systems anyone who manages jobs, candidates, and applications can use one.

It comes down to your desire to increase your hiring efficiency. If you are using a recruitment spreadsheet to manage your hiring it is definitely time for you to switch to an online applicant tracking system.

With an ATS, you manage all your jobs, candidates, resumes, applications, notes, and communication in an online accessible system. It also prevents you from losing valuable hiring information if an employee/recruiter leaves your organization.

Check this article on why “Using a Recruitment Spreadsheet Is a Thing of the Past”.

How to choose an Applicant Tracking System?

Now that you know what constitutes a modern applicant tracking system you should be able to choose an applicant tracking system from the myriad of options available out there. For certain organizations, I would say an on-premise applicant tracking system is better. For example there are countries where you receive 2,000 applications for one job. In a given month you can easily receive 15,000 to 20,000 resumes for a small organization. If it a little bigger, it can be a very large number of resumes. There are a lot of disadvantages with an on-premise ATS, especially the fact that they can quickly become outdated. Also, you need someone maintaining the servers, patches, and security.

If you are looking for something mobile, available everywhere, always updated and secure, you should look for an online applicant tracking system.

Once you made a decision on whether to go with an on-premise or online ATS, you will need to short list the features that you need for your hiring process. Do not subscribe to an ATS with every single feature that you may or may not need. There are quite a few ATS systems that offer way more features than you need, they will also charge you more for all the features. Pick the most optimal solution for your business. You should also read reviews on sites like Capterra to understand how your choice stacks up against the rest of them out there.

Check out these articles on how to choose an ATS:

On-premise ATS vs Online Applicant Tracking System
How to Choose an Online Applicant Tracking System?

How much does an Applicant Tracking System cost?

Depending on what you need, you can even get it for free. There are some free applicant tracking systems, which offer a lot more like mightyrecruiter. The catch is all your resumes are part of their resume database and they rent the resume database. You will get resumes and so will your competitor for candidates if they rent the resume database.

Then there is the pricing per job and pricing per user. The price per job can range anywhere from $25 to $60. Then there is the price per user, which can range anywhere from $10 to $120. Yes, there are systems that cost you $100 plus a month.

The big thing you should look for is whether or not they are  distributing the jobs to the major job boards like Indeed, Ziprecruiter and Google. These are the major sources of candidates/applications. Do you really need the job publishing feature?

As we have discussed above, you can subscribe to an applicant tracking system for just one of the functionalities like job portal management, candidate management or tracking. You may not even need the publishing to job boards feature.

Now that you know what an applicant tracking system is and how to choose one. Check out Recruiteze.

Recruiteze Is Capterra’s 2018 Best Applicant Tracking System for Ease of Use and Value for Money

Recruiteze offers all the important features for an applicant tracking system. It is available online, all you need is an internet connection and browser. It is a secure, reliable and affordable ATS, which allows you to manage your career portal, jobs, applications, candidates, workflow, notes and communication in one easy to use interface. Try Recruiteze free today!

With the advent of modern cloud based software, it is easier than even ever to subscribe to an enterprise class candidate management system at an affordable price. If you are having issues managing your candidates, resumes, notes, communication, and schedules you should seriously consider a candidate management system. Read our other article on why using a recruitment tracking spreadsheet is a thing of the past.

If you have more than 50 resumes on your hard disk, you seriously need a candidate management system. Making good hiring decisions can happen only when you have all the information in one place. If your recruitment data is spread across spreadsheets, emails, and documents it is hard to remember all the information when making hiring decisions. Sometimes, you may want to analyze your hiring decisions even after the hire. By looking at your past data you can make better hiring decisions in the future.

Recruiteze is the perfect simple small business candidate management system, that is cloud based and available as a subscription. With Recruiteze, you can manage your careers page, jobs, candidates, communication, and notes in one place.

Consider the case where you have one recruiter using their email to communicate, schedule and hire a candidate. When the recruiter leaves the company, all that information is lost. When a new recruiter joins the organization, they will have to start all over again. You cannot have a standard operating hiring process, if it is spread across different individuals, email accounts, and spreadsheets.

This is where a candidate management system can streamline your processes.

Top 14 Features of a Candidate Management System

Here are the top features to look for in a candidate management system:

1. Ability to post jobs – You should be able to post jobs in your candidate management system. Once a job is posted, all the applications, notes, communication, and scheduling can be associated with a job.

2. Careers page – Ability to create a custom careers page and display your posted jobs. This is very important you subscribe to the right service, since you will need a service that allows you to customize the logo, headers and colors to match your employer brand. Check our article on how to do create your careers page with Recruiteze.

3. Careers page widget – This is another important feature, which will allow you to insert the careers page widget into your careers page. It is very important that it is very easy to implement and manage.

4. Personalized application acknowledgement – You should be able to create a personalized application acknowledgement. It is very important that you address the candidate in the email. This enhances the candidate experience. Based on a study, most job applicants expect a confirmation acknowledging the application. They would also like to know the next steps after the application. Here you can let them know how you are going to communicate them about the next steps.

5. Custom application – You should be able to create a custom application to help you prescreen candidates. A few additional questions or information can help to quickly filter out the right candidates that suit your needs.

6. Custom candidate workflow – This is a very important feature. You should be able to put the candidate through the workflow. You should be able to customize the workflow. Based on what we have heard from our users, we have created a standard workflow explained in detail in this article. But you do not have to require all the steps. If you are a small business, your workflow can be just 8 steps:

• Review application
• Reject application
• Phone screen complete
• Schedule interview
• Offer candidate
• Decline candidate
• Candidate accepted offer
• Candidate declined offer

7. Workflow notes – You should be able to record a note for each workflow step. This is very important to understand why the candidate was put into that state. This also helps you review the hiring process.

8. Workflow Notifications – You should be able to notify the candidate, hiring manager, or another colleague through email notifications your decision for that step and candidate. This can also involve attaching the resume of the candidate. This can involve scheduling interviews, sending rejection notifications, acceptance notifications, or anything from your custom workflow.

9. Create email templates – You should be able to create email templates, especially workflow email templates. This will greatly enhance the standards of your communication. This also shows a lot of professionalism when everyone in the company has a standard communication for each step. It also avoids any discrimination based on any factor. This is one or the most important features along with the ability to create a custom workflow.

10. Notes – Ability to add and edit notes and the ability to attach documents as notes. Attaching a document helps when you want to add additional information like reference notes or any other candidate specific documents. This will also allow help you consolidate the information associated with a candidate in one place.

11. Tracking communication – When you communicate to the candidate from the candidate management system you are able to track communication. You should be able to view all the communication history in one place. This will help you make informed decisions.

12. Edit candidate – You should be able to edit the candidate information. You should always strive to keep the candidate information complete. Whenever you talk to the candidate you should ask them if all their contact information is still the same. If it has changed, you should update the database immediately, so that you keep the most up to date information.

13. Repository – You should be able to build your candidate repository so that you can keep in touch with the candidates. You will also have a place to go to find the next best candidate, if the one you hired quits in a few months.

14. Reports – You should be able to see the reports to see how many applications were received, how many interviewed, who was rejected and who was hired. This will greatly help you understand the hiring process and will help you increase the efficiency of your recruitment.

Yes, these were all features available only to the Enterprise at one time. Now you can afford it! A modern simple candidate management system costs you about 4 Starbucks lattes in a month. That is worth money spent for all that it has to offer.

Recruiteze Is a Simple Small Business Candidate Management System

Now that you know the most important features of a candidate management system you do not have to look far. Recruiteze is the best small business candidate management system. It offers all the features you need at an affordable price. With Recruiteze you can manage your hiring process efficiently because you will have all the information in one place. It helps you improve your hiring efficiency by identifying areas of improvement with the available information. You can build your candidate repository, so that you can go back to the next best candidates. Try Recruiteze free today!