What is the Best Applicant Tracking System?
While Bullhorn is the most recommended ATS, according to a 2019 Staffing Industry Analyst’s survey of staffing professionals, as you’ll see below, the more important question to ask when building your tech stack is how do I find the best applicant tracking system for me?
The best applicant tracking system for you is more than the sum of its parts. That said, some features are essential to success. We surveyed Bullhorn customers to find out which features they can’t live without.
- Notes: Every interaction you have with a candidate counts, so everything should be in your ATS. Add notes on a candidate record after an initial conversation or second interview to stay organized and keep your team up-to-date on your candidates’ status.
- Tearsheets: Use tearsheets to organize your records into intuitive categories, such as “Top Sales Candidates” or “Available Engineers.” Now when you have a job to fill, you can take action immediately.
- Submission Lists: Submission lists provide your team with visibility into your submissions and open jobs. Filter the list to see relevant information like candidate status and job status quickly.
- Email Integration: With an email inbox gadget, you can see all the relevant information about your candidate in one place. Add notes, parse resumes, or attach files without leaving your inbox.
The best applicant tracking system has the power to overhaul your entire staffing operation into the most productive, profitable, and efficient business it can be. With proper implementation, they increase recruiter productivity, save time, and provide organization and structure for your staffing operations.
Staffing firms that use an applicant tracking system report more placements and less unproductive time than firms that don’t. Ninety-four percent of recruiting professionals say their applicant tracking system has positively impacted their hiring process.
Why Invest in the Best Applicant Tracking System?
What is it specifically about an applicant tracking system that makes it so crucial to your staffing success? You can find a comprehensive list of ATS benefits here, but here are some of the top reasons people invest in an applicant tracking system.
- Avoid Errors: As your business grows, it’s easy for bad data to slip through the cracks. And spotting an error in thousands of rows of numbers and names can be near-impossible. As your team’s data—and potential mistakes—pile up, it can have costly repercussions on your reporting and business.
- Source Candidates More Efficiently: Want to step up your candidate sourcing game? According to a survey of staffing professionals, existing candidates within an ATS are the number one source for identifying quality candidates—outpacing referrals, social media, and job boards. With the organization an ATS provides, it’s easier to place and redeploy candidates.
- Find the Solutions That Match Your Needs in an Open Ecosystem: Your firm’s needs are never going to be the same as another agency’s needs, so how do you get around that? The best applicant tracking systems have an open ecosystem. With an open platform, you can customize your ATS to meet your specific needs by integrating third-party vendors, adding partner extensions, and building new applications on your platform.
- Improve the Client Experience: A good recruitment ATS can help you better manage your client relationships in several ways. For example, it can automatically log all of your conversations with a client, so nothing gets lost in transit. You can also harness the power of AI to avoid getting blindsided by unhappy clients through predictive intelligence that flags potential problems before they become terminations.
What to invest in the best applicant tracking system? Check out the ATS Buyer’s Guide for everything you need to know to make a worthwhile investment in your staffing firm’s future and request a personalized demo of Bullhorn’s ATS & CRM.
