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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.