Modern Applicant Tracking System (ATS) Features

Expertise Acquisition has modified without end. Rising volatility and competitors have dramatically modified the best way you supply expertise. Distant work has reworked the best way you rent. The nice resignation is reshaping the way you handle and retain staff. Job openings have reached report heights, placing recruiters beneath strain. Clearly, the primary technology ATS hasn’t moved quick sufficient to fulfill the challenges of the day. What do it’s worthwhile to keep aggressive on this new world?

Desk of Contents

A standard ATS is now not sufficient

An applicant monitoring system, sometimes called an ATS, is a software program software that automates the hiring course of. Applicant Monitoring Methods had been initially designed to retailer job purposes and observe candidates by the method. Over time, their capabilities expanded to include candidate sourcing and hiring, amongst different recruitment wants. The issue is that many of those newer functionalities had been designed to be process-centric relatively than candidate and engagement-centric. As a result of these new functionalities had been bolted on to the legacy answer, and never developed as an built-in instrument, the UX is commonly clunky and never simple for recruiters to make use of.

Right now, organizations have to be agile and engagement-focused to draw, choose and rent the very best expertise at scale. That is achieved when the three pillars of Hiring Success are aligned: candidates have a compelling expertise, recruiters are productive, and hiring groups are engaged. In case you’re struggling to attain this along with your ATS, you’ve come to the fitting place. Let’s discover a few of the important capabilities it is best to search for to attain your hiring objectives.  

Compelling candidate expertise

Certified candidates are so much like potential clients. They’ve bargaining energy and many choices. Their whole expertise issues – from how candidates find out about your organization, to the way you work together with them, to the instruments they use to use. To search out and interact them, recruiters must suppose like entrepreneurs. An ATS that solely addresses the underside of the funnel (candidates making an attempt to use for jobs) is not going to place your workforce for hiring success. As an alternative, it’s worthwhile to search for a strong set of recruitment advertising and marketing options that may make it easier to appeal to passive candidates and interact them in direction of conversion. 

A profession web site that’s geared for conversions

Most ATSs supply primary profession websites – static job pages with lengthy lists of open positions. This might need labored within the 90s, however in 2022, your profession web site must do much more. It ought to be a part of  your recruitment advertising and marketing instrument belt, and it ought to be utilized in a extra strategic method. Take into consideration this: about 70% of job seekers begin their search on Google. They do some high-level analysis. They need to educate themselves concerning the market and their particular position, and probably your organization and your product earlier than they determine to use. A profession web site that accommodates top quality, customized content material that’s optimized for search helps you appeal to them. Now we have seen firms utilizing this technique improve the variety of natural search conversions by 40%. 

The success of your profession web site may even be decided by its ease of use. Candidates need to have the ability to apply shortly and simply, on the machine they select. Lengthy and drawn out software varieties are issues of the previous. 

Apart from an optimized profession web site, you want instruments to construct a digital advertising and marketing funnel. That’s the place programmatic promoting is available in.  

Programmatic job promoting and sourcing 

Your expertise acquisition workforce wants instruments that may assist them uncover prime expertise, perceive what they’re in search of and appeal to them with focused campaigns. A primary technology ATS ought to make it easier to publish jobs to your job web page. A second technology ATS ought to publish routinely to job boards, LinkedIn and different channels. A 3rd technology ATS goes additional: it intelligently locations adverts on job boards that drive the very best conversion for every job kind, and dynamically shifts price range to the very best precedence roles. Fashionable ATSs must have a complicated job promoting functionality that’s pipeline conscious, automated, and dynamically allocates price range to the highest-converting job boards.

Clearly not everybody who lands in your job postings will likely be prepared to use. However that’s okay as a result of you may invite them to subscribe to your e-newsletter or job alerts. As soon as candidates make it into this expertise pool, you want candidate relationship administration (CRM) capabilities to nurture them in direction of conversion. 

Candidate nurturing and expertise relationship administration

In line with Fosway, “Applicant Monitoring System distributors with no TRM-offering are at excessive danger of being changed.” An ATS with CRM or TRM capabilities helps you nurture candidates and match them with the fitting roles. This important performance also needs to make it easier to observe all touchpoints and candidate journeys in a single system, identical to you observe clients. 

These recruitment advertising and marketing capabilities make it easier to discover the fitting expertise and interact them with a compelling expertise, so you may in the end persuade them to use. This brings us to the second pillar of hiring success. 

Engaged hiring managers

In line with latest findings from Josh Bersin, collaboration between recruiting and hiring managers is the primary indicator of excessive efficiency expertise acquisition. That is the place efficient applicant monitoring, analysis and collaboration play a important position. 

Applicant monitoring

The unique ATS was designed to maneuver a paper or email-based course of to a computerized system in order that recruiters might scale. A contemporary ATS is extra like a system of report, a single supply of reality throughout your complete expertise acquisition course of. It ought to make it simple for recruiters to work with many various candidates and spot an applicant’s standing shortly, throughout a number of workflows. It ought to embody superior candidate search functionalities. It also needs to make it easier to display screen and consider candidates sooner. 

Analysis

Fashionable ATSs include chatbots and automatic Q&A or screening instruments that can assist you velocity up the analysis course of firstly. Some additionally embody AI capabilities that make it easier to display screen lots of of candidates right down to dozens, and create a shortlist of potential matches. As soon as the recruitment workforce sources the fitting expertise and makes the important thing connections, it’s as much as the hiring workforce to shut the YES candidates. With the fitting information at hand, the hiring workforce is healthier positioned to collaborate with their recruiting counterparts. 

Collaboration

Fashionable ATSs ought to foster collaboration with hiring managers so you can also make higher and extra knowledgeable selections. For instance, it ought to allow you to assign focus areas to every interviewer. It ought to enable interviewers to collaborate on their findings, in a method that minimizes bias and groupthink. It ought to include a central messaging engine and allow you to configure duties and notifications to maintain your workforce on observe. 

Productive recruiters

As we mentioned above, expertise acquisition groups which can be extremely productive function extra like advertising and marketing and gross sales groups. We talked so much concerning the significance of collaboration all through the method. Recruiter productiveness and hiring optimization are simply as essential, particularly at a time when job openings are at an all-time excessive. 

Analytics and AI to enhance decision-making

Nice recruiting groups know “their numbers” and leverage them to not solely prioritize duties throughout the hiring spectrum, but additionally present correct hiring forecasts and obtain desired enterprise outcomes. A legacy ATS is just not positioned to help this. Legacy options don’t seize practically sufficient information to evaluate hiring efficiency. A lot much less to measure in case your hiring course of is working for or towards the underside line.

An ATS with strong analytics offers deep insights by development analyses on historic hiring selections and dashboards on pipeline performances, with all the information saved in a single place. Josh Bersin’s newest research on world TA groups experiences that high-impact TA groups are 6x extra possible to make use of AI and predictive analytics and see 30% better profitability in contrast to people who don’t use these instruments.

Inside mobility

The nice resignation is holding recruiters and HR groups up at evening. However in keeping with a latest Sapient Insights survey, solely 22% of firms have an inside mobility program in place. Recruiters ought to be in search of expertise internally and externally. The issue is that they don’t have the fitting instruments. Firms are vulnerable to shedding their expertise to the competitors in the event that they don’t compete on an equal footing. 

A contemporary ATS ought to allow you to construct an inside profession web site and construct expertise swimming pools of workforce members who’re fascinated with completely different profession paths. Match individuals to jobs utilizing AI matching and arrange inside interviews the identical method you do exterior interviews. 

Onboarding help

Profitable recruitment groups additionally know that the primary 3 months of employment are probably the most weak interval. In some industries, a poor onboarding expertise can result in a 22% turnover price. That’s why many are in search of a complete answer that may handle this important a part of the journey as nicely. Your onboarding course of mustn’t simply be about authorized formalities, it ought to facilitate a clean transition from applicant to worker. 

The ultimate phrase & our ATS Quiz

As Fosway explains, “standalone ATSs that solely cowl the decrease a part of the recruitment funnel are a factor of the previous.” Your ATS ought to transcend workflow automation and candidate monitoring. It ought to incorporate recruitment advertising and marketing for energetic and passive candidates, and profession websites that enhance your employer model. It also needs to facilitate enhanced HR choice making based mostly in your desired enterprise outcomes. Furthermore, it ought to be constructed for in the present day’s complicated expertise market, providing you a aggressive benefit with inside mobility options and an important candidate expertise that’s optimized right down to the onboarding stage. 

Take our quiz to search out out for those who ought to change your ATS.