Human assets professionals in every single place are dealing with a rising problem in terms of navigating the constantly-evolving job market. With the rising competitors for prime expertise and the necessity to streamline hiring processes,applicant monitoring methods (ATSs) have develop into a staple within the trade.
These methods assist recruiters handle and set up candidate info extra effectively and automate expertise acquisition duties that was once time-consuming. In actual fact,94% of recruiters say that their ATS has positively impacted their hiring course of.
With the rising demand for ATS software program, the market has seen a surge infree ATS distributors, making it simpler for organizations to select from a variety of choices earlier than making a monetary dedication. This text will discover the highest ATS options that ought to make it to each recruiter’s want record.
For extra steerage, seek the advice of our applicant monitoring system purchaser information for arecord of well-known ATS choices with the options you want to make nice hires.
What Are Applicant Monitoring System Options?
Applicant monitoring system options are integral instruments, native to an ATS system, that assist hiring managers streamline and optimize their recruitment course of to rent the most effective candidates. Applicant monitoring methods make the most of a wide range of options to effectively handle job postings, monitor purposes, and set up candidate info in a centralized database. Subsequently, each characteristic an ATS has aids the decision-making course of for hiring groups to safe the most effective folks.
In consequence, these methods supply a complete recruitment course of overview and supply essential insights and analytics that allow hiring groups to be as efficient as potential.
The 12 Should-Have Applicant Monitoring System (ATS) Options
Having the appropriate Applicant Monitoring System (ATS) is crucial when recruiting. Nevertheless,choosing the proper ATS in your firm means understanding your wants and the options (options) a software program you are contemplating can supply.
Listed below are 12 must-have options to search for when shopping for an ATS:
Automated Resume Parsing
With so many resumes for every job opening, it will probably take time to type by means of all of them and discover probably the most certified candidates in your shortlist. That is the place automated resume parsing is available in.
It permits the hiring group to rapidly and effectively evaluation and analyze resumes, figuring out essential expertise, expertise, and training markers. This complete strategy saves the hiring group time and assets by narrowing purposes all the way down to a professional pool with out spending human hours, permitting them to deal with deciding on probably the most certified candidates.
For instance, an HR group might use automated resume parsing to determine candidates with 5 or extra years of expertise in a specific subject. They might then focus their “in-depth” search on these candidates who meet this criterion and make a better-informed hiring choice.
Job-Particular Filters
Job-specific filters refine your job submit concentrating on to solely show related content material to job seekers. As an example, if a software program engineer job posting requires expertise in a particular coding language, the job-specific filter will be certain that solely candidates with that have and listed talent will see the advert. Some prime applicant monitoring methods leverage huge knowledge and machine studying algorithms to slender the candidate pool on this means.
This may save job seekers a number of effort and time sifting by means of irrelevant job postings whereas additionally saving recruiters the difficulty of receiving purposes from candidates who don’t meet the necessities. By narrowing down candidate attain with job-specific filters, hiring groups scale back prices and enhance productiveness.
Customizable Job Utility
Customizable job purposes allow you to tailor the appliance course of to your wants so that you get the required info for a particular function moderately than only a pile of resumes.
For instance, an organization wanting to rent an analytics specialist might arrange its job software from scratch or in keeping with a template hosted on the ATS to incorporate candidate assessments about knowledge evaluation and statistical expertise. In the identical vein, candidates could be filtered by wage expectation, willingness to relocate, and years of expertise relying on knowledge captured by the job software kind.
Filtering out purposes this manner ensures that potential candidates perceive the job particulars and show the right information or expertise earlier than being thought-about for an interview. This may save appreciable time in the long term by serving to slender the candidate record rapidly and effectively.
Profession Pages
Hiring groups can use a profession web page, generated and hosted by their ATS to showcase open positions, job descriptions, firm values, mission statements, and different info for potential candidates to browse. This affords full performance for job seekers to use on-line whereas viewing the group’s job alternatives.
Because the profession web page is mechanically built-in with the applicant monitoring software program hiring funnel, candidate knowledge is captured in the course of the software course of to develop into a part of the group’s expertise database. No want for hiring managers to manually seize candidate info, or hold promising CVs bodily filed away.
Knowledge Safety and Stability
Safety and stability are among the many most important options of any ATS system. These methods are designed to safeguard delicate candidate info, equivalent to social safety numbers and addresses, from potential hackers or cyber-attacks.
Moreover,investing in a steady ATS system ensures that your knowledge is all the time accessible and accessible when wanted. That is essential when streamlining the hiring course of, as you possibly can simply retrieve resumes and candidate info with a button.
Earlier than shopping for an ATS, ask the seller about safety measures equivalent to two-factor authentication and the flexibility to limit consumer entry. The system’s stability can be an essential consideration. You’ll need recruiters to keep up their workflow with out interruptions from upkeep and failures.
Superior Search Capabilities
The actual magic of an ATS lies within the superior search capabilities the software program has to pinpoint candidates in keeping with standards inside its personal database. These search capabilities are designed that can assist you determine probably the most appropriate candidates in your job openings from an current pool of candidates who’ve already expressed curiosity in working in your group — a extremely sought-after useful resource.
By comparability, a recruitment software program answer pulls its candidate sourcing from a common database. This could possible embrace expertise who don’t have any particular curiosity in working at your organization, making them a cooler lead in comparison with these in your individual expertise pool of previous candidates.
You may rapidly filter by means of 1000’s of resumes by organising a couple of essential parameters. This characteristic is invaluable as a result of it permits you to uncover hidden gems in previous candidate swimming pools. For instance, HR groups can rapidly discover the most effective particular person for a job by trying to find expertise, instructional background, expertise, and different standards. Because the candidate would have an current profile on the ATS, you may as well immediate them to replace their info with any expertise or expertise they’ve acquired since their final software.
Pulling from an current candidate database considerably reduces the effort and time required to supply and display screen new candidates for every job opening. Your ATS’s search performance additionally offers detailed insights into common applicant knowledge — what demographics are responding to your recruitment advertising, and what eventual hires seem like. This perception permits for extra knowledgeable hiring selections, particularly round range and inclusion efforts.
Cellular-First Design
As expertise continues to form the recruitment course of, mobile-first design is a crucial characteristic that each recruiter ought to be conversant in. Over the previous few years, job seekers are more and more utilizing their cell gadgets to look and apply for job alternatives.
This makes it essential for recruiters to make sure their on-line software performance is optimized for cell gadgets. Nevertheless it’s not nearly accessibility — mobile-friendly design improves the candidate expertise, making job seekers extra prone to apply in your marketed roles.
By making certain the appliance course of is straightforward and streamlined, recruiters can improve the standard of candidates they obtain and supply a optimistic first impression of their group.
Analytics Dashboards

Hiring analytics present priceless insights into candidate habits and priceless success metrics, such because the variety of candidates in your hiring funnel, time-to-hire, and candidate conversion charges.
A user-friendly analytics dashboard affords a streamlined knowledge view, permitting recruiters to make knowledgeable selections rapidly. By leveraging this perception, recruiters can regularly refine their recruitment technique and optimize their hiring course of.
Knowledge-driven selections result in higher outcomes and extra profitable recruitment efforts. With analytics supplied by an ATS, groups can monitor progress on filling positions, monitor range initiatives and evaluate previous and current tendencies to see what works finest.
Analytics dashboards supplied by prime ATS options present actionable knowledge in real-time, which helps HR professionals keep on prime of their recruiting initiatives and guarantee they meet hiring targets.
Candidate Evaluation and Analysis
Evaluation software native to an ATS or accessible by way of a software program integration permits recruiters to evaluate the technical expertise of job seekers sooner and with extra accuracy than they in any other case would be capable to. Via the evaluation course of, recruiters can rapidly determine appropriate candidates for job openings and streamline the hiring course of.
Automated candidate evaluation performance ensures that solely appropriate candidates progress by means of the hiring funnel and are ultimately employed.
Video Interviews
In an age the place digital communication is our new norm, on-line interviews have develop into an important ATS characteristic.
Video interviews, whether or not carried out asynchronously with one-way interview instruments or in real-time, assist to eradicate geographical limitations and scheduling conflicts. This will increase the effectivity of a hiring group exponentially in comparison with conducting solely in-person interviews— typically requiring the candidates to journey throughout workplace hours and take day off from a present place.
Interview effectivity is even greater when utilizing an ATS that has native interview scheduling instruments as a characteristic. This permits the system to mechanically ship interview and reserving info to candidates who make it by means of your preliminary screening. Moreover, any recordings, notes, and proposals concerning the interview develop into a part of the candidate’s profile on the ATS.
Built-in Textual content Recruiting (ITR)
Built-in textual content recruiting (ITR) is an built-in characteristic of some applicant monitoring methods that makes use of textual content messaging as a main communication channel between recruiters and job candidates. ITR permits recruiters to rapidly and simply join with candidates, acquire and display screen resumes, and schedule interviews.
ITR could be particularly efficient for reaching youthful job seekers, who’re extra possible to make use of textual content messaging as a main type of communication. Moreover, textual content messaging will help scale back the time it takes to fill positions and enhance the general candidate expertise by offering a extra environment friendly and streamlined software course of.
Nevertheless, it is essential for recruiters to make sure that they’re following all relevant laws concerning candidate communication by way of textual content messages, equivalent to acquiring consent in the course of the preliminary software course of.
Worker Referral Program

A well-executed worker referral program could be immensely useful in sourcing new, high-quality expertise who already really feel linked to your employer model. Candidates referred to an organization by an acquaintance are extra possible to slot in with the corporate tradition and develop intolong-term workers.
A referral program that incentivizes referring workers saves time spent on promoting job vacancies and reduces the price of recruiting. Moreover, as referred candidates usually tend to perceive the corporate tradition and expectations than somebody with no inside supply of knowledge, you’re extra prone to get candidates who will settle for a proposal.
Overrated ATS Options
The ATS you select in your firm ought to be environment friendly, adaptable, and priceless to your total recruitment and hiring course of. That being stated, it also needs to becost-effective.
Though each characteristic your ATS vendor affords is probably going very spectacular, there are a couple of bells and whistles you might most likely forgo if you wish to save on price.
Automated Job Posting
The concept behind automated job posting is that recruiters now not must manually submit job descriptions to every job board or profession web site – they’ll enroll with an ATS supplier who handles all of the tedious particulars, saving time in the long term.
In idea, this appears wonderful, however what these suppliers don’t inform you is that there are penalties to utilizing automation moderately than taking a handbook strategy. Your message will get muddled as a result of a number of methods aren’t clever sufficient to tailor your job description completely for every platform. Your ATS additionally received’t be capable to match the tone and formatting of every job board completely which, to a candidate, may seem like you could not be bothered to get your job itemizing proper.
Automated job postings could prevent time initially, nevertheless it’s essential to not skimp on high quality by counting on automation. With human perception and knowledge, recruiters can develop a transparent messaging technique tailor-made to every channel.
Key phrase-based Resume Screening
Many applicant monitoring methods use keyword-based screening to rapidly filter out resumes that don’t include particular key phrases. Nevertheless, this technique could be unreliable and should end in certified candidates being neglected if their resumes do not match the precise key phrases and phrases being looked for. Trade phrases typically differ between nations, so this strategy of elimination is particularly counterproductive for worldwide hiring funnels.
Customizable Workflows
Whereas customizable workflows could be helpful for some corporations with distinctive hiring processes, they may also be time-consuming to arrange and keep. In some instances, the advantages of customized workflows in your candidate relationship administration (CRM) journey could not outweigh the prices of implementing and managing them. When selecting an ATS, keep in mind that your ideally suited candidate journey ought to be achievable utilizing as many system defaults as potential.
Built-in Social Media Sourcing
Some ATS distributors supply social media sourcing options native to the system. Whereas there may be definitely advantage in utilizing social media as a recruitment channel, these options is probably not as efficient as devoted social media recruiting instruments (equivalent to LinkedIn Recruiter) or handbook sourcing methods.
TL;DR
Because the recruitment course of continues evolving with technological developments, recruiting groups must up their sport by leveraging customary and superior ATS options.
Moreover, AI-powered instruments and integrations with different HR instruments present recruiters with extra insights into hiring funnels, enabling them to make higher hiring selections. It’s, subsequently, crucial for recruiters to maintain abreast of the newest developments in ATS expertise.