Are you using an applicant tracking system for recruiting young people to your company? If not then this article might convince you otherwise by pointing out the benefits of making use of one.
If you are an employer at a small or medium enterprise and you have always thought Applicant Tracking Systems are just for the use of large corporations then you might be surprised to learn that they are also beneficial to you, too.
Businesses of various sizes are making use of an ATS so that their recruitment process is significantly improved.
What Is An ATS Applicant Tracking System?
First of all, what is an Applicant Tracking System? Put simply, an ATS is software that is in place to make your life a lot easier when it comes to recruitment of new staff. If you feel you have lost out on the best talent, previously, because they have slipped through the net, an applicant tracking system is designed to help you make sure you identify those people.
There are many roles out there that attract hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants and sifting through all those CVs is time consuming. It’s also, therefore, costly.
Many of those applicants may not be suitable for the role because they don’t have the appropriate skills or qualifications and a lot of time can be wasted identifying those people whilst, at the same time, trying to spot the most suitable candidates.
An ATS processes high volumes of applicants for you and keeps everything organised. All your candidates’ information is digitised and stored on a single platform. This means the ATS can quickly scan and highlight the most suitable candidates. They are easy to use and save you valuable time. Can you afford to not be using an Applicant Tracking System?
An ATS can also improve your whole recruitment process. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of making use of an ATS for recruitment…
Use The Analytics
How much money are you spending on a particular recruitment drive? How much time is that recruitment process taking?
An applicant tracker system can give you access to analytics that will give you the numbers you need to streamline your recruitment process.
Save Valuable Time
When you save yourself time during the recruitment process, this makes space for more productivity because you can concentrate on other projects. Let the applicant tracking system do all the labour intensive work for you in just a few clicks.
An applicant tracking system can:
- Post to jobs boards for you so that you don’t need to manually add your vacancies.
- Make a scan of your applicants, sort through them and rank them so that the most suitable applicants are highlighted.
- Move suitable applicants along to the next stage of your recruitment process as you narrow down your pool further.
- Reject the applicants who don’t match your job description. This is particularly useful when you are receiving hundreds of applications for your vacancies.
- Invite your top applicants to interview.
- You can still have the human element and view CVs for yourself at any stage. However, the applicant tracking system can still save you time at these stages by allowing you to look at particular areas of the CV. You can do keyword searches, for example or select particular areas of the CV that are important to you. Because everything is centralised by the ATS, you can do this quickly and easily.
An ATS Can Boost Diversity In Your Workplace
We have asked the question in the past on our Recruiter blog: How inclusive is your workplace? We’ve also discussed ways of encouraging gender diversity within your workplace.
Using an applicant tracker system for your recruitment can help you to create a more diverse workplace. If you have a recruitment team, it is possible to share CVs and leave notes for each other about applicants. This can result in candidates being selected for interview who you might not have considered in the past.
An Applicant Tracker System Can Improve Your Employer Brand
Your employer brand is not just about your customer service and the quality of the products and services you sell. There are many other factors that come into play which can either have a positive or a negative effect on your employer brand.
One of these factors is how you conduct your recruitment. Whether you are recruiting graduates, Apprentices or young people and students to part time roles, their experience during the recruitment process will affect your employer brand.
People talk. Young people will talk to others about their experience when applying for a position within your company. If this was a bad experience where they didn’t feel valued, this can put other people off from applying for your roles and you could miss out on top talent.
Job applicants will often do their homework before they apply for a job with your company. They will listen to the feedback of previous applicants and check out your recruitment process. If they don’t feel your recruitment process is organised and effective then they are more likely to put their efforts into applying for jobs elsewhere.
This is where an ATS will prove useful. An ATS will give you an effective recruitment process where your candidates can be kept in the loop rather than being left in the dark as to the status of their application.
The way you reject your candidates, for example, can taint your reputation. If you can inform them as soon as possible, this gives you more time to engage with your remaining applicants. In turn, this also gives the rejected applicants more time to move on and apply for other roles without thinking badly of your brand.
Applicants that are being moved to the next stage of your application process can be kept in the loop so that they know their status. This gives them a positive experience and, in turn, boosts your employer brand because you will be seen as a company that values its job applicants.
And, because people talk, those applicants who have had a positive experience will refer your company to future applicants. This means, in the future, your employer brand will be such that you can attract some of the most talented applicants to your roles.
If you are viewed as a company which values its applicants, this can have the knock on effect that you are then viewed as a good company to work for. And those applicants are also more likely to champion your products and services.
Are You Ready To Use An ATS?
Now you know the benefits of using an Applicant Tracker System, why not contact us to find out more and get started?
- Bespoke job descriptions and application forms
- Customisable applicant search criteria
- Customisable results list
- Full applicant history
- Add your own notes
- Bespoke reference form data
- Reporting on the effectiveness of your advertising.
Contact us now to streamline your recruitment process and attract the most suitable applicants for your vacancies.
