13 ATS benefits and what they mean for your business

Whether you’re a small business owner or the hiring manager of a growing company, finding, vetting, and onboarding quality candidates is often an arduous process. From shuffling through job applications to delivering an appropriate job offer to potential new hires, the recruitment process can be overwhelming at the best of times — and it tends to be even more complicated in a competitive job market.

An applicant tracking system (ATS) streamlines the hiring process by automating and organizing each step along the way, making it easier to connect with qualified candidates more efficiently. Using an ATS benefits your talent acquisition strategy in the following ways:

1. Automate boring and time-consuming administrative tasks

One of the greatest challenges of finding new employees is the sheer amount of work required. It’s far more involved than simply reading resumes and making a list of questions to ask during an interview; it involves posting listings for job seekers to find, follow-up messaging, interview scheduling, and other tedious tasks that are important but don’t feel like a productive use of time.

2. Improve collaboration and easily involve relevant people in the hiring process

Due to the many tasks involved, it’s fairly common for multiple people or departments to be involved in the hiring process. Aside from the administrative aspect, including relevant managers and team members in the decision-making process is an effective way to protect and promote company culture, as well. ATS software offers a collaborative space to evaluate applicants, offer feedback, and more.

3. Say goodbye to wasted time on non-relevant candidates

Correctly identifying top talent takes time. There are so many different facets to what makes a candidate a high-quality hire — do you want the smartest person in that stack of resumes if they lack the ability to communicate effectively? Is the most experienced candidate a good fit if they’re incapable of accepting feedback? An ATS can help you strike the right balance between cognitive ability and personality with assessments that offer a deeper look at candidate data.

4. Reduce recruitment cycle and time-to-hire

Streamlining the recruitment cycle and reducing time-to-hire helps minimize the distraction of hiring efforts and maximizes productivity. Collecting and assessing recruiting metrics helps deliver actionable insights about your hiring process, and can highlight potential bottlenecks or recurring patterns. Using an ATS to collect and report data can help answer valuable questions about how your business is handling hiring and what improvements could be made to speed up the process.

5. Streamline your hiring process and make it predictable

Regardless of how refined your talent acquisition strategy is, the process of finding, processing, interviewing and onboarding ideal candidates involves a lot of moving pieces. Writing a job description, posting job openings on social media, scheduling interviews, and guiding new team members through the onboarding process could easily involve four or five different departments. It’s easy for confusion to crop up along the way. One of the most significant ATS benefits is organization; the system ensures that no follow-up email or interview appointment is forgotten and helps create a replicable routine around fulfilling hiring needs.

6. Scale your hiring pipeline without losing your sanity

Growth is good for business and managing an abundance of potential candidates is a nice “problem” to have. ATS software can create and scale a talent pipeline strategy so that you can source, attract, and screen hundreds of candidates more efficiently and effectively.

7. Supercharge employer branding

Although the main objective of the hiring process is for prospects to impress you, the reverse is true as well—presenting your company well can help attract top talent. Having a branded job board, customized emails, and a polished look for all collateral and communication that relates to recruitment assures candidates that your business is established, professional, and trustworthy.

8. Offer a better candidate experience

The functionality of an ATS can help streamline the hiring process from the candidate’s perspective, as well. Prospects can initiate the application process via mobile or desktop, receive follow-up communication that keeps them informed, and offers greater flexibility in scheduling interviews. Using an ATS benefits your business and its prospective employees by making the process more convenient and keeping all parties informed along the way.

9. Put an end to hiring bias

Creating uniformity around the talent acquisition process helps prevent hiring bias. An ATS ensures that everyone is going through the same steps, which protects candidates (and employers) from the risk of unconscious bias. Eliminating unconscious bias in the hiring process provides the opportunities that come with selecting from a larger pool of talent.

10. Measure, report and improve

Good data helps drive better decisions. The ability to track and report recruiting analytics can help you refine the hiring process and improve your quality of hire. Tracking metrics that relate to time of hire, candidate sources, and diversity surveys helps accurately gauge the productivity and performance of your hiring process.

11. Make compliance easy

Build inclusive hiring processes and demonstrate compliance with EEO/OFCCP/GDPR guidelines with ATS tools that optimize job posts, expand your hiring reach, and help navigate local, national, and international regulations. Automated tools and reports take the administrative effort out of compliance.

12. Sourcing tools

Job boards are an important piece of the hiring puzzle, but an ATS can help expand your reach even further by using AI and public data to search, sort, and deliver qualified candidates before your job listing is even posted. Reach passive and existing candidates as well as valuable prospects with instant sourcing.

13. Integration with job boards

Attract more candidates with automated posting to hundreds of job boards and social media platforms. One click can help you instantly reach millions of prospects without the time investment of finding, visiting, and posting job openings on sites across the internet. Diversify your applicant pool and stand out in a crowded hiring space with job board integration features.

Ready to discover your own ATS benefits? Let’s grow together. See Workable in action.