There are many reasons you may tell yourself you don’t need a small business applicant tracking system, or ATS, but you should reconsider. If you do any hiring beyond the stray person here or there, you probably need an ATS for small business. Let’s go over all the reasons why many people delay getting one to see if you don’t decide it’s time to get yourself a small business applicant tracking system. It’s both game-changing for your business and easy.
Don’t Tell Yourself You Don’t Need An Small Business Applicant Tracking System
Cost
Many small business owners think an applicant tracking system is too expensive for them. First, you should know that many small business applicant tracking systems are free, like the free version of Recruiteze. We offer three options, the free version, one for $9.95 per month, and one for $39.95 a month. These are not expensive.
One should also know that whatever money you do spend on your small business applicant tracking system is an investment in massive cost savings and increased profits.
Rather than looking at a small business applicant tracking system as a cost, it should be seen as money gained. A better question than how much will this cost is what will it cost me to not use an ATS.
How a small business applicant tracking system saves and makes you money:
- save time spent reading every resume
- save time spent inputting resumes into a spreadsheet
- save time spent finding information on a candidate for interviews and communication
- save time spent manually writing and/or sending emails that could be automated
- save time spent sharing hiring information with other owners and managers
- save time spent posting jobs to job boards
- attract better candidates with better employer branding
- attract better candidates by having time to add self-screening measures to job ads
- acquire better employees with a top-notch careers page
- acquire better employees with online and mobile responsive application options
- acquire better employees by having more time to carefully vet them
- have more time to devote to strategizing
- enjoy less turnover and less hiring costs
- enjoy higher productivity
Impact on candidate relationships
Applicant tracking systems have gotten a bad reputation for making candidates feel unimportant or even discarded unfairly. They hear that an ATS for small business ranks their resumes by keywords and discards resumes because of formatting errors and feel that the hiring process is holding them back from the job.
While this does happen, it shouldn’t. Everything candidates complain about with an ATS could be rectified by more efficient planning and diligence on the part of the human behind the ATS.
If you are not purchasing a small business applicant tracking system because you’ve heard candidates don’t like it, that decision is negatively impacting both you and your candidates.
An ATS should actually help candidates. They should be receiving a better candidate experience because of the greater efficiency the hiring manager has to devote to them.
How an ATS can improve candidate experience:
- a more responsive careers page
- more frequent communication
- more informative communication
- feedback on rejections, including notification, explanation, and an invitation to apply again
- a more thoughtful hiring process because the hiring manager has more time to be strategic
- quicker hiring times
- less confusion and unprofessionalism than with inefficient hiring processes
What makes your hiring processes more efficient should mean a more efficient and considerate hiring experience for applicants. So, you don’t want to avoid one for their sake. The best answer for your candidates is to get a small business applicant tracking system and use it effectively. Then they might get the candidate experience they crave while you stress less and spend less giving it to them.
You think it’s going to be hard to implement or learn
It may seem that a small business applicant tracking system is this major thing to install and to learn how to use. You’re already super busy, you feel you don’t have time to devote to all this setup and education to anything. But the busier you are, the more you need the time-saving benefits of an applicant tracking system.
#1, applicant tracking systems get easier to install all the time. Usually it’s just like installing any other program on your computer, just click a few buttons and viola! There will be a little setup to personalize it for your business, but again, many programs you are already using are no easier.
#2, while choosing your small business applicant tracking system, it’s a good idea to try out some of them to determine how comfortable you feel with them. You can find free trials and even demos, with expert live assistance, to help you get acquainted with the software before purchase. The right small business applicant tracking system should be easy for you to learn and use. Start by searching for easiest applicant tracking systems and/or reading reviews of popular applicant tracking systems to see how users like you will presumably be feel about it. There are so many different kinds, you are sure to find one or more you like.
As more and more small business applicant tracking systems hit the market, they get easier to use all the time. Vendors learn what people want and need from users, and some of them, like Recruiteze, actively listen to their users and frequently update the ATS to match or exceed demands.
You worry about security
Most small applicant tracking systems are based in “the cloud,” which can make potential new customers wary. With their information stored on another server in this system they don’t even really understand, they may visualize a hacker easily picking off their data or their information being lost. It’s easy to feel your spreadsheet housed on your computer is more secure from both data loss and hacking.
The truth is that information stored in a small business applicant tracking system is much more secure than what’s housed on-site in your computer.
ATS vendors take great precautions to secure the data they house from hackers, which is probably much more advanced than any security measures a small business would have on-site.
Also, your information will be housed in a secure location and frequently backed-up to prevent data loss from server failures, fires, and natural disasters. If one of these events occurred on your property, you may lose all your data when it can be stored off-site and protected against such a devastating loss in your small business applicant tracking system.
How to Decide if You Need a Small Business Applicant Tracking System
Do you hire enough people in a year to be concerned with hiring costs, communications, candidate attraction, and internal information sharing regarding hiring?
If so, then you would benefit from an ATS for small business hiring and recruiting, and you could start with a free or very low cost version to make sure you are getting only what you need.
There aren’t really any downsides to using an ATS, unless you run a really simple business and do virtually no hiring. What downsides people do encounter come from either an unfortunate choice of ATS or inefficient use. Let’s discuss some ways to address both of those issues.
Invest a little time in finding a small business applicant tracking system that:
- charges monthly rather than relying on a contract
- allows you to change plans and features as needed
- updates frequently
- has a free trial and/or demo
- tells you their security measures
- has a good reputation for customer service
- is not more ATS than you need
- is easy for you to use, as tested in the trial or demo
Use your small business applicant tracking system effectively by:
- using a wide range of keywords, from both have-to-haves to nice-to-haves and include ones for soft skills, such as for friendliness, creativity, or emotional intelligence.
- send thoughtful automated communications through your ATS. this is too valuable an asset to waste.
- invest a little of your saved time to occasionally double check rejected applications to ensure the applicant tracker didn’t erroneously reject someone you wanted.
- apply to your job using your ATS with the ideal application to ensure the ATS’ results match your expectations, right after you’ve set it up and every six months to a year.
- be mindful of candidate experience across the board; an ATS can’t fix lax candidate experience.
Conclusion
People often drag their feet purchasing a small business applicant tracking system because they worry about adding what seems to them like an unnecessary cost, offending their candidates, misunderstood security, and the headache of learning a new system. These fears stem from a lack of information about applicant tracking systems. Nearly all business owners benefit from an ATS. The only reason you wouldn’t, is if your business is too small to have much issue with hiring.
The Best Free Online ATS For Small Business Hiring for 2019
Recruiteze is a free online ATS for small business recruiting, talent tracking, and hiring. There’s so many benefits to using our free applicant tracking system that I can’t list them all. The best option you have is to give a try! Click here to get started with your free trail. iReformat allows you to format up to 10 resumes per month, for free! If you’re ready to take the redundant administrative work out of your daily tasks, start using our free recruiting software today.