VIDEO: What is an ATS? Applicant Tracking Systems, Explained

hey everyone i'm meredith today i want to talk to you about applicant tracking systems or ats software first things first what is an applicant tracking system software now applicant tracking system or ats software is a centralized tool where human resource teams can manage candidate sourcing evaluation and hiring your hr team will be able to use this platform to do things like make careers pages parse resumes schedule interviews and send offer letters now just to clarify an ats is not the same thing as an hris or human resources information system and while you might find some ats features in an hris you will not find many hris features in an ats so in other words sometimes an ats system comes as part of an hris but you can also buy them as standalone products ats solutions are usually better for small to medium-sized companies that don't need all the bells and whistles of a full hris okay that's a super brief overview of what an ats is but the question now is do you really need one for one thing an ats can really help your hiring process become faster and more efficient it's paperless which mother nature appreciates and it comes with features already integrated that are going to help parse through resumes and scan over incoming resumes for certain keywords to make sure that you see the most relevant and exciting candidates first it's also a great aid in your organization's dei efforts by building customized workflows to standardize the hiring process and remove bias some ats solutions also include a resume blinding feature which hides a candidate's name location and demographic info so that the only things that you can see are skills qualifications education experience finally ats solutions help with candidate engagement many ats products they work like a crm in that you can email call and sometimes text a candidate right from the system some systems let you set up contact cadences so that outreach happens as soon as possible and communication doesn't slip through the cracks alright so let's recap really quick using an ats can help your company speed up hiring make progress on dei efforts and help keep candidates engaged so they don't ghost you so how does it all work all right well first you can build a careers website where people can apply for the jobs the ats parses their resumes according to the keywords that you define ahead of time and candidates that best match your requirements get put in a priority list for recruiters to review once you have some candidates recruiters can collaborate with one another to exchange thoughts review any documents a candidate may have been asked to include with their application and vote yay or nay on those candidates i already mentioned this briefly but recruiters can also use an ats to communicate with candidates so for those promising candidates you can use your ats to schedule interviews these usually integrate with your calendar software like outlook or google calendar so the whole process can be seamless and then when the exciting time comes and you're ready to hire a candidate you can use your ats to send those offer letters some of these systems even come with tools to help you negotiate compensation packages and they do things like the background checks you can also use your system to send the candidate information to government programs like e-verify to confirm their employment eligibility another really cool feature that most ats solutions will give is the ability for applicants to request that the company keeps their information on file in case another relevant opportunity arises so this means that even if you don't hire a candidate but you kind of like them you think they could be a good option you can keep their application on file to help build a passive talent pool for future job openings all right so that's kind of the functionality that you can expect from an ats so now let's break that down to specific features that you'll want to look for when you're shopping around so these are six key features that we think you should look for in your ats software first off is the career website builder now this is pretty self-explanatory you can build a careers page for your website using a drag and drop builder with the ability to customize it using your company's branding usually this is used to sell potential applicants on applying to work at your company second is the requisition management this feature lets you manage the request and approval process for creating new positions in a company it allows for input from multiple key stakeholders and helps you build out job responsibilities target compensation packages and so much more next is an advanced search feature now this can also come in the form of filtering features you would use this feature if you needed to narrow down the applicant pool to a certain set of criteria a fourth key feature are the candidate profiles think of these as kind of like a contact cards in a crm they show you everything you need to know about the candidate and they feature a kind of social timeline so you can see major updates like when the candidate applied any decisions made by the recruiters when the interview was etc recruiters can also contact the candidate from here and then comment back and forth with other recruiters another key feature are the interview tools now these are super useful to help keep the process efficient some systems have a built-in video interview feature while others integrate with third-party programs like zoom other common tools in this feature are going to include standardized job interview questions that just helps reduce hiring bias there's also automated pre-recorded video interviews where the system records video responses to different questions that you've programmed into it to ask and there's also simple note-taking tools for during the interview and lastly look for that analytics and reporting feature most systems come with some sort of pre-built reports but they also you build custom reports and then you can use those reports to identify the bottlenecks in your hiring process identify any equity problems like a gender or experience pay gap see which job sites your best candidates come from and view careers website analytics so those are all the features that you can usually expect to encounter in an ats system but depending on what kind of company you work for and the degree of functionality you need you might want to also consider recruiting software if you're wondering what the difference is between ats and recruiting software you're not alone the lines are a little blurry but the big difference between an ats and recruiting software system is that an ats solution will work for pretty much any kind of business of any size while a recruiting system is usually made specifically for recruiting agencies and enterprise organizations but like i said the lines are a little blurry some systems that appear to be ats solutions market themselves as recruiting software systems while other vendors may prefer terms like human capital management or hcm software or talent lifecycle management software sometimes the distinction between these two types of software really just comes down to branding so the important thing to stay focused on is the problem you're trying to solve the functions that you're hoping to automate and the capabilities that you wish your current or your old software system had now if you remember nothing else from this section let it be this the way software vendors market their products can change over time so keep an open mind about the terms that you search for while you're shopping around speaking of change let's talk about some trends in the ats market so here are some of the current trends on the ats platforms first up are candidate assessments now these can be questions or assignments that you ask candidates to complete in their job applications next are video interviews these are usually pre-recorded questions that you program into the system a question flashes on the screen and applicants have a certain amount of time to record an answer on video now due to the kobit 19 pandemic live video interviews are another huge trend whether through a built-in feature or through third-party integrations and then social recruiting employee referrals and online talent networks some systems let you automatically post new jobs to social media sites like linkedin and twitter and others come with cutting-edge features like tools for gamifying employee referrals and then of course job listing syndication to job sites like indeed linkedin and glassdoor those are all big trends as well you also have to consider the applicant experience if you've ever had to apply for a job on a clunky outdated system you'll understand why this is a huge trend especially when the labor market is tight you might lose applicants if your ats doesn't provide a good applicant experience it's crucial for your system to be easy to use for applicants good performance on mobile devices and intuitive design are all areas that vendors are seeking to improve upon and of course artificial intelligence now it's hard to find something that doesn't use ai nowadays and ats solutions are no different some systems have smart algorithms that learn from your actions as you recruit scanning job applications and resumes to help you find the candidates that are most likely to be a good fit now if all of this seems like a lot of information don't worry we can help use our product selection tool at technologyadvice.com to get a free list of ats software recommendations that best match your wants and needs thanks for watching this video i hope it was helpful and i'll see you next time bye guys

This transcript was generated automatically from the video's captions and may contain errors.