What is an ATS?

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software that recruiters use to organize and streamline the hiring process. It manages job openings and applicant intake, providing a platform for recruitment automation to optimize for efficiency, track candidate progress, facilitate communication, and ensure compliance with hiring regulations.

Definition and Meaning

"ATS" stands for Applicant Tracking System, meaning a type of recruiting technology that employers use to collect and store information about job applicants. As technology has advanced, the software now often includes features beyond simple data storage to provide a platform to automate candidate communications, coordinate and schedule interviews, curate candidate profiles, conduct reference checks, and so much more.

Top ATS Features

There are numerous platforms available, each offering different features and functions. To best understand which features are most important for you, assess both your current and future hiring needs. Consider the following:

With a more defined understanding of your ideal process, now consider which features are most important to realize your vision.

Database Features

• Candidate database: A centralized database is the core function of an ATS. This involves storing applicant profiles and documentation, interview notes and ratings, communications, assessments, and evaluations all in one place.
• Onboarding assistance: An ATS serves as a central point of storage for candidate data, which means it can be used to help streamline the transition into employment.
• Resume parsing: An ATS will upload and re-organize resume information to create candidate profiles that your team can filter and search through.

Automation 

• Automating workflows: A recent SHRM report defines the average time-to-hire as 36 days. However, top talent stays on the market for far less, with reports suggesting it’s as little as 10 days. This means automation is crucial in saving time, as well as reducing the resources needed during recruitment. You can set-up automated workflows to perform a number of different recruiting tasks.

Here are some examples of workflow functions that may be automated:

• Marketing automation: An ATS allows recruiters to maximize visibility on open positions with very little manual work. You can post your latest openings on multiple job boards and your careers page with one click.
• Automated reporting, analytics, and dashboards: Through advanced reporting, recruiting teams can create dashboards and gain insights into their applicants. They can also pull predefined data across all stored profiles into a single report. Here are some popular types of reporting:

Job Requisition Capabilities

Job requisition workflows help to streamline the workforce planning process in an ATS, meaning the collaboration between managers and human resources. It also allows you to automate the approval process so that new roles move forward automatically once sign-off is received. As a centralized storage facility, applicant tracking systems can store predefined contracts and order forms as templates.

Careers Page Hosting 

The top ATSs have the ability to build and host a careers page on the company website. Some allow careers pages to be customized with branding, tailored messaging, and videos to showcase the organization's brand. Some solutions can build custom career sites from scratch. These pages can include more complex features, such as visual maps showing candidates the exact location of all nearby positions.

Integrations

Many organizations find it beneficial to integrate additional tools into their ATS, as this increases their capabilities and improves end results by ‘plugging in’ to tools for HRIS/payroll, skills testing, reference checking, etc. Integrations with other hiring tools can help streamline your recruitment workflow, consolidating visibility and control over the entire hiring process from a single platform.

Onboarding

Onboarding management can be an important feature, especially in environments like unionized workplaces and government organizations where consistent application of rules and procedures is paramount. An effective ATS streamlines the onboarding process by automating new hire tasks, including triggering the appropriate workflows and integrating with HRIS to create a new employee profile. This can include customizable workflows for specific roles or departments, organizing required training or assessments, managing crucial documents, and ensuring compliance with legal and organizational standards.

How and Why Use an ATS

In a modern workplace, ATS are indispensable tools that help recruitment teams efficiently manage and fill open positions. They not only track job openings but also organize, coordinate, and guide applicant flow throughout the hiring process. ATS streamline collaboration among recruiters and hiring managers, improve organizational efficiency, and automate key processes to reduce the time-to-hire.

Key Functions

• Job posting: Automatically post open positions to job boards and career pages to attract applicants.
• Maintain applicant profiles: Update applicant profiles in real time for accuracy and consistency across the system.
• Screen and filter: Organize applicants by experience, skill sets, and qualifications, and use automated workflows to advance or disqualify candidates.
• Communication: Engage with applicants via SMS messaging, and re-engage saved candidates for future roles.
• Coordination: Ensure smooth interactions between stakeholders at appropriate recruitment stages.
• Documentation: Handle essential documents like contracts, offers, and background checks.

Major Benefits

• Centralized data: Keeps all potential hires in a searchable, centralized database, making it easier to manage large volumes of candidates.
• Analytics: Provides valuable insights into your applicant pool and recruitment process efficiencies.
• Applicant ranking: Allows for quick filtering and prioritization of applicants, facilitating faster decision-making.
• Compliance management: Helps ensure adherence to legal and regulatory standards throughout the hiring process.

Applicant tracking systems are particularly beneficial for high-volume hiring, enabling organizations to manage hundreds or thousands of applications effectively. They support global hiring efforts and adapt to seasonal hiring peaks by automating communication and progression notifications. By implementing an ATS, organizations can scale their hiring processes and make more informed, efficient hiring decisions.

How To Integrate With Your Hiring Process

An ATS should simplify your hiring process by automating routine tasks, freeing up your team to concentrate on more important activities, like engaging with qualified candidates. On average, recruiters spend about 13 hours, or a third of their work week, sourcing candidates for a single job opening. An ATS significantly reduces this time. Here are some examples of how it can enhance specific stages of your hiring.

Managing the Candidate Journey for a Great Experience

The employer-candidate relationship has undergone a significant power shift during the past decade. The focus of candidate sourcing, and their management in the process, is now on how employers can provide a positive experience for all applicants. Candidate experience, a candidate's perception of their participation in your hiring process, is a key consideration when evaluating software options and setting up the process flow.

ATS with premium communication features can facilitate faster response times, increasing applicant engagement, and keeping top candidates moving forward in the process. ATS can also provide specific stage metrics that can help identify and reduce bottlenecks in the process. Within the platform, candidate perspectives can also be collected from automated surveys to get a full view of the hiring process.

AI and the Future of ATS

The recruitment landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by technological advancements and changing job seeker behaviors. The explosion of AI enhanced technology is certainly one, but not the only consideration. Here are some defining features that will shape the future of ATS, ensuring they meet the dynamic needs of a modern workforce. 

Advanced Use of AI

Many recent ATS developments focus on incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance functionality. AI recruiting features include resume parsing, candidate matching, and predictive analytics, which can speed up the hiring process. However, it's vital to balance technological advancement with responsible use. This means being able to address the AI risks associated with regulatory and ethical concerns. Ensuring transparency, fairness, and compliance with evolving AI regulations is crucial to maintaining ethical hiring practices. A durable ATS, built for the future, should balance current AI expectations with a responsibility for what is coming in the near future. 

Mobile-First and Adaptive Design 

Candidates currently prioritize mobile accessibility, looking to search and apply for jobs easily on mobile devices. ATS should adapt in real time to accommodate different generational expectations and technological advancements, ensuring a frictionless candidate experience.

Integration and Interoperability 

ATS will increasingly need to integrate and operate with other platforms and digital entities. These include external job boards, internal systems like HRIS and enterprise software, and even social media platforms for marketing open jobs and attracting candidates.Automated The ability to integrate with all of these systems will certainly define an ATS’s measure of relevance in the future. 

Focus on Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

An ATS, supported by clear internal policies, can leverage analytics and automated workflows to minimize the impacts of hiring bias on recruiting. This is an important part of advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within an organization. Similarly, it can pinpoint barriers that limit accessibility for certain groups. As social expectations evolve, future demands on human resources departments will extend beyond simply meeting ethical standards to ensuring an equitable hiring experience for candidates and employers alike.

ATS in the Evolving Hybrid Work Environment

Recently, hybrid work environments are becoming the norm. To stay efficient in this asynchronous setting, organizations need a robust ATS to coordinate decision-making, manage hiring, and communicate with candidates. These key benefits highlight the role of an ATS in a hybrid workplace.

Automated communication: Employers can send SMS and email reminders for interviews or post-interview 'thank you' notes, ensuring consistent communication with candidates from anywhere.

• Scalable recruitment: In global hiring, ATS can pre-screen thousands of applications, streamlining the process.
• Enhanced onboarding: ATS can facilitate onboarding by coordinating acceptance letters, integrating with payroll/HRIS, and sharing resources, optimizing collaboration across varying schedules.

Cloud-Based and Online ATS

Most organizations now use an online applicant tracking system as opposed to an on-premise system where the ATS is hosted in an internal network. For global talent acquisition strategies, using an online ATS means organizations can efficiently manage recruitment at the local level while maintaining company-wide standards and policies worldwide. This brings up the idea of evaluating the ATS’ data security features.

When considering a cloud-based ATS be sure to fully vet each vendor’s encryption and cybersecurity measures. Cloud-based providers should be able to demonstrate their security competencies like showing credentials or accreditation for industry-leading security standards (GDPR, PIPEDA, CCPA, VPAT), certifications (SOC2, ISO), and data encryption, in transit and at rest.

Industry-Specific ATS Solutions

Applicant tracking systems are one of the most popular tools for talent acquisition teams, meaning that most Fortune 500 companies use them. Many small to mid-sized companies also use ATS to reduce time spent on administrative tasks and to ensure hiring resources are optimized.

Below, we explore how different types of ATS can help many organizations, from start-ups to healthcare organizations.