5 steps to choose the right Applicant Tracking System for your company
An exhaustive guide for those who are just starting out!
Employees are a huge asset to the company, so many companies don’t hesitate to invest in a good recruitment software. The right recruiting software should cover all your end to end recruitment needs from posting job openings on multiple job boards to having a seamless onboarding process. An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is the right tool to manage all these tasks and to have an organized and centralized platform for all your candidates’ information.
To free you from the time and stress often associated with selecting a new ATS, we have developed a quick and comprehensive outline of the critical points that you need to hit on while going through your selection process.
1) Note down your requirement
Get the whole HR team involved in this process. You can also send a survey to your HR team asking them what are their requirements from an ATS. Having a clear knowledge of requirements and expectations will help to analyze better and come up with a decision. Here are some of the common requirements which you might be interested in
- Job board posting
- User-friendly Interface
- Integration with popular video conferencing tools
- Attractive career page
- Open API
- Talent Pool Management
- Automated report
- Quick searching and filtering
- Data security and privacy
- Interviewers notes and feedback
- Soucing extension
- Employee Referral Programs
- Hiring on the go with mobile application
- Integrated emails and messages
- Video Proctoring
- Ranking and rating candidates
- Easy candidate evaluation
- Quick interview scheduling
These are some of the requirements, but you can explore more based on your business needs and jot down the must-have features to narrow down your choice.
2) Set a budget
During any Hiring process, a high amount of recruitment budget is often allocated to job postings and marketing. However, if you invest in right ATS you can reduce these costs, as well as automate certain hiring processes, saving efforts and time.
Here are some of the common pricing models:
Pay per position: In this pricing model, the ATS vendor focuses on job postings on multiple job boards but has few features for screening candidates, such as video interviewing capabilities. They offer prices based on the number of open positions in a company. They accept unlimited applications for each job and allows an unlimited number of users to have access while charging for a capped amount of openings each month.
Pay per recruiter/user: ATS’s with this pricing model charges companies based on the number of employees who have administrative access to the software. These accounts allow users total control to post jobs and view candidate information. Recruiters are the standard users in these kinds of pricing models, although some solutions allow access for hiring managers.
Pay per module/feature: It’s offered by ATS vendors that may also provide solutions for onboarding, training, and talent management. These vendors often have a complete Human Resource Management Software (HRMS) suite and may not allow their ATS to integrate with other HRMS solutions. In turn, clients must purchase their HRMS and either pay for the whole suite or individual modules.
Pay per month/annual: In this pricing model, the ATS vendor offers no limitations on job postings and login users. All the features are available for the billing period and the pricing is decided based on the number of employees in the company.
3) Determine ROI for your ATS
Now that you have set your budget and taken some trials, make sure that the money you are putting down in your ATS is worth it. For that, you first have to calculate the current cost of your hiring activities without an ATS. These are some of the important equation you need to calculate without ATS and with ATS:
Time Cost: You can calculate this equation by multiplying the number of hours an employee works on hiring activities in a week(H) with the amount of pay per hour(P). For example, Joe works on the hiring activities for 50hrs and his pay per hour is $25 per hour. So the time cost will be (H x P) = $1250per week focused on hiring activities without ATS
Now an ATS could easily reduce employee work by 20% and cost as low as $30 per week(C). So the time cost will be (H x P) + C = $1030 per week focused on hiring activities with an ATS.So with an ATS, you can save up to $220 per week.
Labor Needs: Reviewing hundreds of applications with human eyes can be tedious and at the same time quite stupid when you can do it within minutes with technology. ATS can review a hundred applications and can segregate these applications according to the candidate’s skills, experience, and qualifications within minutes.
Consider an example without ATS where Joe reviews(R) 30 applications per day and the company needs(N) to review 60 applications per day. So the labor need will be N / R = 2 employees to review 60 applications per day whereas the labor need to review applications in ATS will be 0
Labor Cost: Now you combine both the results. That is 2 employees(E) working on hiring activities for 50hrs per week and their pay per hour is $25 per hour. So labor cost will be (E x H x P) = $2500 per week focused on hiring. Even if you wish Joe to worn on 60+ applications lone you end up saving $1250 per week or 5000 per month. When you consider ATS the price based on employees for GoogleHire ATS or any similar ATS is $4800 per year for 100 employees, that’s a big return on your investment.
4) Take test trial from you top choices
By now you should have selected top 4–5 ATS by considering features and Pricing. Testing out these ATS will give you a hands-on-experience and insight into whether your team is comfortable with the software or not in the longer run. Make sure all the members of your team test the software, are aware of the activation plan and check out all the features offered by the ATS vendor in their demo.
5) Take the pitch and confirm your ATS
Understand the working of the software, Key features, Customizations, and policies pitched by the ATS vendor and select the best ATS which meets your recruitment need for your company. Now that you have confirmed the ATS, integrate the software in your company, and put it to real-time use. Take constant updates from your team whether the features are working properly or not? Do they deliver the expectation? How is their ongoing support? Do they update you with the up-gradation done in the software?
An ATS is an essential tool for any hiring team but the features and options can sometimes be overwhelming. You just have to remember that your chosen ATS fits your current and future recruitment goals.
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