Can Applicant Tracking Systems Improve the Selection Process?

27 July 2021

How Can Applicant Tracking Systems Improve the Selection Process?

Your business’s success greatly depends on your ability to hire highly skilled and qualified employees. To achieve your organization’s growth, you must build a team of individuals who possess the necessary skills.

Even though hiring is an important process, it can be hard and time-consuming. Therefore a variety of people must be involved – both inside and outside of your organization – and several steps have to be taken to identify the best person for your organization. This sponsored post from MindK discusses how an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is often used to manage talent during the hiring process.

It’s easy to keep track of everything with an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). In this way, companies can narrow down their search to candidates they believe will fit best for the position. An ATS can help organizations of any size and industry to:

• Hire new talent more efficiently
• Improve their candidate experience
• Streamline their recruitment process

So, have a quick look at the whole process of creating an applicant tracking system (ATS) and improving your selection process.

What is an Applicant Tracking System?

An applicant tracking system simplifies the recruitment process by analyzing resumes and identifying the most qualified candidates for an open job posting. The resumes are stored in a central database, where they can be filtered based on keyword terms or specific job requirements. The data centralized within an ATS is used to screen candidates, check references, schedule interviews, and tests, send new-hire paperwork, and more.

How ATS can Improve the Selection Process

While you may receive a large number of applications, there may be gaps in your screening, leading to missed opportunities for both the talent and the recruiter. Thus, to improve both selection and overall hiring processes, it is essential to use advanced applicant tracking systems.

Here are several ways in which an applicant tracking system can help you increase the quality, efficiency, and consistency of your hiring process.

1. Reduce the time to Hire

The applicant tracking system speeds up the recruitment process by automating numerous administrative tasks. As a result, HR managers will be able to spend more time accomplishing more productive tasks rather than spending time going through stacks of resumes at their desks.
ATS systems promote productivity and efficiency by reducing the amount of time spent because they can:

• Post to multiple job boards with one sign-on by making information available to multiple job boards
• Automate the process of filtering and screening resumes so that only qualified applicants reach you
• Schedule interviews for candidates automatically
• Standardize the scoring of applicants
• Provide structured interview templates
• Ensure applicants and candidates are notified of stage changes via email

All these automated features minimize time spent on time-consuming administrative tasks and help hiring teams focus more on hiring qualified candidates.

2. Lower Cost-Per-Hire

Basically, the cost per hire refers to the amount of money a company invests in its recruitment of new employees. It is the second most important metric of the recruitment process.
You must consider many factors when determining the cost-per-hire, including:

• Advertising cost
• Recruiter salaries
• Employee referral bonuses
• Relocation costs

Time is money when it comes to business. The time-to-hire of new employees needs to be shortened. By automating the majority of tasks, ATS has greatly reduced the amount of money needed to fill a position. This enables you to reduce your cost-per-hire and improve the effectiveness of the hiring process.

3. Compiles Your Recruitment Data

By tracking your recruitment process, you can locate more qualified applicants, identify good-fit candidates, and empower yourself to put the right candidate in the right position. Spreadsheets will take dozens of hours to enter data, so it’s not worth it.

Data tracking can be simplified with an ATS, automating the process so your staff can focus on the important tasks rather than crunching the numbers. You can even generate reports from certain systems so that you can see your most important recruitment initiatives.

Furthermore, you can store all your metrics data in one location when you use an Applicant Tracking System. In addition, you can collect data from multiple applications using your ATS.
Using well-compiled data you can:

• Make more strategic goals
• Identify problems
• Refine your recruitment process
• Identify better quality candidates

4. Improves Your Job Posting Reach

You’ll have a good hire if your candidates are good. You have to attract talent and convince them to apply before you hire them. In reality, only 2% of applicants make it to the interview stage. In order to reach as many people as possible, you need to post your job openings in a wide range of places. Sadly, it can be frustrating to have to upload the files manually because it is so time-consuming.

This type of system can be automated for you by using an Applicant Tracking System that will do all the work for you. By posting your job opening across several job boards and social media accounts via an ATS, you can easily and efficiently take full advantage of the many job boards that are already integrated into the system.

5. Improve the quality of Hire

To formulate a quality-of-hire measure, we need to consider the total value that your new hire brings to your business by their performance. In order to determine it, different variables are taken into consideration, including:

• Turnover and retention rates
• Performance evaluation
• Ramp-up time
• Hiring manager satisfaction

It was found in research that 80% of recruiters felt that their applicants’ quality of hire improved when they used an applicant tracking system. ATS systems also include the capability to send automatic emails to candidates, which allows you to communicate with them consistently.

Conclusion – Final Thoughts

The ease and success of the candidate selection can be greatly enhanced by implementing an applicant tracking system. By ensuring everyone has an excellent hiring experience, ATS improves the hiring system for candidates as well.

You can get the talents you need for your organization with the right applicant tracking system effectively, in a positive, efficient manner. In summary, creating an applicant tracking system helps increase the productivity and efficiency of your recruiting strategy in addition to organizing and tracking your recruitment applications, thus it helps you to save both time and money.

Investing in human resources with PERFORM

Once you’ve recruited the right people, knowing how to motivate them is one of the most important aspects of a manager’s job.

One key to this is understanding and managing the factors that contribute to that motivation, and creating the conditions for people to perform and realise their potential.

Our tool to help you achieve these management skills is the Apex PERFORM model. It stands for:

P – Potential
E – Expertise
R – Results
F – Focus
O – Opportunities
R – Resources
M – Motivation

>> Return to the Managing Performance Knowledge Hub