The common misconception is that an applicant tracking system, or ATS, is only meant for large companies, but almost any business could benefit from using one. Don’t assume they’re too expensive either. Applicant tracking systems come with varying features, fees, and payment options so anyone can afford them.
If you own a small company and wonder if you need an applicant tracking system, it is definitely high time to move away from spreadsheets and use a far more efficient system, available to all your users from anywhere. Plus, it allows you to become a paperless hiring organization.
Check out this article on why it is time to move away from a recruitment spreadsheet.
What is an ATS for small business?
An ATS is on-premise (stored locally on your PC) or cloud-based (stored on a secure external server for remote access by owners and authorized persons) software that helps business owners streamline all of their hiring efforts, from accepting applications, selecting candidates, interviewing candidates, to onboarding.
Common features include:
- Accepting, storing, and sorting resumes
- Allowing resumes to be searched by a variety of parameters
- A custom careers page
- A custom job page
- Resume formatting to make resumes easier to read
- Custom emails
- Automated responses
- Tracking each candidate’s progress through the hiring process
Features vary greatly depending on the ATS itself, but the idea with all of them is to automate and streamline as many tasks as possible to make hiring more efficient, so you can hire better candidates, save on hiring costs, and spend more time doing other things for your business.
Why does a small company need an applicant tracking system?
Hiring involves a lot of actors, notes, and communication. Without an efficient way to manage all the factors involved, the information will be scattered between emails, documents, printouts, and memory. You will not be able to effectively analyze whether your hiring process is efficient and is working.
The primary actors involved in a hiring process are:
- Hiring Managers – The hiring process usually starts when a hiring manager needs one or more new resources. This can happen when an existing employee leaves, the workload has increased for the current team members, or there is a new project in the pipeline.
- Decision Makers/Approvers – Depending on the organization’s size, decision-makers may either approve or disapprove of a new job requisition. Decision-makers can also be involved in approving the hiring decision to make an offer to an applicant/candidate.
- Recruiters – Once a job requisition is approved, a recruiting company or recruiter gets involved. They will gather the hiring manager’s detailed job requirements and post the job on the various job boards. Once the applications start coming in, the recruiter reviews the resumes and does preliminary screening before submitting them to the hiring manager to get feedback. If the hiring manager requests an interview, the recruiter schedules a suitable time with the applicant and one or more interviewers.
- Interviewers – These are the current employees who either conduct a phone interview or an in-person interview and provide their feedback on the applicant.
- Candidates/Applicants – Candidates apply for open positions if they come across the job from either the company’s career page or one of the job boards where the job has been advertised.
- Human Resources – Human resource administrators work with management, negotiate compensation and benefits, set up onboarding processes, and conduct orientation.
With so many people involved, there is a lot of communication and notes that are distributed across individual emails, memory, and notebooks. For this reason alone, you should sign up for an applicant tracking system. But there are a lot more reasons that justify the use of an applicant tracking system.
You don’t need to hire a staffing firm for Recruiting
A typical staffing agency commission is about 20% of the first-year salary, so there are definitely pros and cons of using a staffing firm.
Here is an article that discusses the benefits of using a staffing firm for your hiring.
Here is another article that discusses the