What are the benefits of an applicant tracking system

Hiring the perfect candidate can be integral to a company’s success, but the recruiting process is time-consuming and resource-heavy. With an applicant tracking system, many of the headaches associated with the hiring process are streamlined to create a better experience, so staffing and non-staffing organizations can focus on hiring the best.

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software solution designed to help recruiters, hiring managers and professionals within staffing companies to optimize the entire recruitment and onboarding process. An effective ATS will allow recruiters to source, manage and process all candidate data while providing a number of tools to better search, sort, filter and categorize the resumes and applications received based on given criteria so that HR professionals can better understand which candidates are more suited to the position they are hiring for.

From one-click job postings, to interview scheduling tools, approval flows, onboarding and document management, an applicant tracking system is a centralized space for managing the daily routine of HR.

Let’s take a deeper dive into ATS and the most important features that make them effective for creating successful recruiting and onboarding strategies:

1. Easy application for jobs: improvement of the candidate experience
   ATS integrate careers pages into companies’ websites.
   For non-HR specialists, company careers pages are often undervalued. Instead, they are high-quality sources of applicants. They not only contain job advertisements but also allow jobseekers to learn more about a business, culture and values before they decide to apply for a job. In addition, they showcase companies’ employment brands better than on a generic job board.It is extremely important to host an attractive careers page: an applicant who takes the time to research a role and then applies directly through a company careers page is more likely to have spent time considering his/her own fit for the role and the company. Above all, the most attentive applicants might be the passive ones, who are not looking for a job but might get curious and decide to leave their application for a future. Furthermore, according to a survey, candidates who applied directly from a company careers page were 23 times more likely to be hired than an applicant from a job board, just because they personally visited the careers page.
2. Integration with recruitment sites and social networks for job multiposting: increase in the applicant pipeline
   ATS often offer multiposting tools to spread jobs on recruiting sites.
   Posting open jobs on different platforms increases the chances of engaging and hiring the right candidate. Apart from automatically posting the company’s vacancies on the career site, an ATS quickly shares a consistent and branded job posting across multiple recruiting sites, free and paid job boards as well as social media.Consider that any successful marketing strategy within any kind of organization places products where its customers will actually see them; similarly, when creating a successful recruiting strategy, HR want their job opportunities represented in the places that contain the most active job seekers. After all, today’s candidates may become companies’ future ambassadors and/or clients, therefore, it is necessary to attract them and create long-term engagement with them.Not least, an applicant tracking system aggregates all applicants into one tool and allows tracking applicant sources so that HR professionals can identify which are the most effective for their business.
3. Automated resume pre-screening and CV sorting with AI-based CV matching tools: quickly identification of the best candidates
   Once a candidate’s profile is created, the ATS can automatically leverage keyword, Boolean search and semantics algorithms to scan resumes for specific professional skills and experiences.That is the case with Arca24’s technology: the engine integrated with the ATS JobArch (LINK A HOME JOBARCH) by Arca24 reads the text of the job advertisement, extracts the required professional titles and skills and returns useful tags to be compared with those identified in the database resumes. It carries out a logical analysis of the text and associates professional title and competence/task carried out.So, instead of manually parsing through resumes, recruiters can automatically generate a list of top candidates who make a good fit for their open job positions. Such a tool also reduces the likelihood of unintentional bias during screening and the chances of missing out on any important information, helping HR make a fair hiring decision, faster.
4. Automated communication between recruiters and candidates and automated interview scheduling: valuing the individual candidate
   The recruitment process is the first chance a candidate gets to experience what it might be like to work at a company. One of the things that a candidate looks for is hearing back from the recruiter. Whether it be a positive or negative response, job seekers want to stay updated about their hiring process. If recruiters take weeks to reply and communicate in a haphazard way, they are going to have a negative brand image.Applicant tracking software solutions allow recruiters to automate important tasks such as sending an email when a candidate is moved to a different stage, resulting in a better candidate experience. Applicants realize that they don’t forget about them and each of them is valued. ATS improve the speed and accuracy of the communication with candidates and allow presenting an image of a well-run and organized company.
5. Centralization of all information on candidates and processes: greater speed in HR process and facilitation of collaborative hiring
   The best part about Applicants Tracking Software is its flexibility. Earlier remote working or collaborating with remote recruitment teams was not widely accepted, but it became a necessity after the pandemic. When it comes to manage HR processes, if HR professionals jump between emails, forms, spreadsheets, job boards and social media trying to manage candidates, their daily routine is filled with time-consuming and slow tasks. An ATS helps them centralize everything and collaborate.Applicant Tracking Systems come with features that facilitate collaborative hiring. HR teams can easily and quickly share notes and ratings on every candidate and drive a collective decision-making process, in which every recruiter has a say. They can easily compare candidates, change candidate status and select and scan candidates without leaving the system, as all the necessary details they need are stored in one location.Collaborative hiring removes the risk of an application being missed or trapped on a team member’s desk and has major benefits for companies, such as assembling more diverse and successful teams.

ATS reduce chaos within HR processes and increase efficiency. With the help of these tools, businesses can interact to bring the best out of each member’s effort.

…In brief, ATS help achieve a competitive advantage in the fast-paced staffing industry. They allow:

1. Saving time and money on recruiting, reducing cost-to-hire
   Publishing open positions on job boards and social media, follow up conversations, tracking candidates’ reactions and recruiters’ evaluations are time-consuming tasks. Automating all of that boost recruiter productivity levels by 80% and reduce cost-to-hire by 60%.
   The use of ATS and the automation of HR tasks save a lot of time when compared to conventional hiring procedures. Applicant Tracking Systems increase recruiters’ productivity and helps organizations do their job easily and quickly.
2. Improving the quality of hire
   An applicant tracking system helps make better decisions about which applicants to move forward. Especially with a built-in pre-screening tool based on semantic search, like that powered by Arca24 with its ATS JobArch, candidates are automatically sorted, whether active or passive; that allows focusing one’s efforts on higher-quality candidates and removes the legwork of sifting through countless CVs from applicants who don’t suit the job requirements. Not least, when hiring the right people for a team, you reduce turnover.
3. Higher productivity once hired
   A candidate who is constantly updated on selection processes and with whom a stable relationship is established will be a good employee tomorrow. A happy employee who feels wanted by an organization is likely to carry that high morale into the organization long after he/she joins the team. High morale also almost always translates into high productivity, which is a major benefit for organizations in any increasingly competitive marketplace.

An ATS not only has a positive effect on the first steps of the selection process, but it improves the quality of the whole by being a professional. By reducing repetitive tasks and digitizing HR workflows, an applicant tracking system makes candidate experience a priority and makes everyone’s job easier.

To face daily HR challenges, many large and mid-size companies and staffing organizations have adopted applicant tracking systems (ATS) like JobArch, ATS & CRM for startups and SMEs. Ready to try an ATS for yourself? Try JobArch for free.