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5 Signs Your Company Needs a New ATS

In Hiring Software & Tools — by Dave Anderson

A solid Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is the hub for a successful hiring process. It connects with all your hiring sources so applicants automatically flow into the solution. It also allows hiring team members to easily accept interview requests and provide feedback on the candidates they meet with.

However, those are only the primary features of an ATS. Each solution on the market is a bit different than the next and ideal for different types of businesses. In this blog post, we explore five scenarios that can help companies identify when it’s time to start shopping for a new hiring solution.

1. You can’t setup your current hiring workflow

Any good ATS should allow you to replicate the exact steps of your hiring process in the solution. That means you should be able to attribute applicants to the right sources, schedule multiple interviews with different team members, perform structured evaluations and advance candidates through the different stages – all within the ATS.

If your company’s hiring process has evolved and become more complexed, you need to ensure your ATS is robust enough to handle the complete hiring workflow. Your solution should perfectly suit your company’s unique approach to hiring and should never force you to come up with hacks or workarounds.

2. You have too many candidates stuck in your pipeline

One of the primary benefits of an ATS is it automates tedious tasks so companies can hire more efficiently. Your solution should allow you to quickly screen the applicants you receive, schedule the right ones for interviews and make favorable hiring decisions.

Hiring at a steady pace naturally benefits your company, while also providing candidates with a good experience. Your ATS should provide reports that tell you how long candidates spend at each stage before advancing or being removed from consideration. If you find that it’s taking too long to make simple candidate decisions, it’s a sign that your solution isn’t helping with all the busy work.

3. It takes too long to fill open roles

Once again, your ATS is supposed to come with numerous features that help your company make fast, smart hiring decisions. Similar to providing hiring pipeline insight, your ATS should tell you how many total days it takes to fill an open role after it’s posted.

That means your solution should not only provide an efficient screening and interviewing process, but an efficient end-to-end hiring process. It should help you generate candidates from a variety of sources, who then quickly progress through each hiring step. Time-to-fill is a valuable recruiting metric that can help you audit the effectiveness of your ATS. Make sure your solution lets you generate time-to-fill reports, so you can work toward optimizing your process.

4. Your hiring team has expanded

Everyone involved in your company’s hiring efforts should reap the benefits of your recruiting solution. Each hiring manager or recruiting team member should be able to log in and screen candidates, schedule interviews, post open roles and much more. And everyone involved in interviews should be able to access the solution to provide feedback on the people they meet with.

Some ATS vendors charge per user or provide a limit on the number logins. Those solutions work fine for small teams but don’t make sense for large, expanding hiring teams. There are plenty of ATS options that don’t limit user access so find a solution that is flexible as your team grows.

5. Your company has increased its hiring targets

Some hiring solutions work fine for small businesses or companies that hire for only a few roles at a time. However, if your company has ambitious expansion plans, your ATS should have the necessary features to grow with your company.

There is a lot that goes into achieving hiring growth targets. You need an effective careers page, the ability to source from a variety of channels, a solid interview process and smart evaluation procedures, to name only a few examples. In this case, a barebones ATS just won’t do the trick.

Find an ATS that fits your company’s hiring needs

Be sure to do thorough research before upgrading your ATS to ensure it’s the right solution for your company. Hopefully, you already have experience with a hiring solution so you can determine which features are helpful and which ones you need from your next vendor. You can check out online reviews, schedule demos and review the functionality of each product to find an ATS that has everything your company needs to achieve its hiring goals.

Photo courtesy of Pablo Garcia Saldaña

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Trakstar Hire is considered the most user friendly hiring software on the market. If you’re ready to take your recruiting and hiring to the next level, request a Trakstar Hire demo today.