7 Signs That You Need a New Applicant Tracking System 

Applicant tracking systems were built in the 90s to streamline the recruitment process and make the lives of recruiters easier. In the last decade, digital transformation has accelerated the proliferation of hundreds of recruitment software solutions in the marketplace, giving end users a wide variety of options. Despite the many choices in the marketplace, some organizations still haven’t incorporated Applicant Tracking Systems into their recruitment process, while others that have ATS systems in place may not be achieving the desired ROIs.

Each Applicant Tracking System is built primarily to solve a problem in a segment of recruitment or built to cater to the specific size of the organization. If you feel that you haven’t been able to unleash the full potential of your ATS, it may be that you are using outdated software or that you were sold the wrong software in the first place. 

7 Signs that You Need a New Applicant Tracking System

1. Candidate Data is Scattered All Over the Place 

The candidate database is the backbone of the entire recruitment system. Recruiters get thousands of resumes/profiles from different sources daily. If the database is not sorted to provide easy searchability features, recruiters end up spending their valuable time going through multiple excel sheets or scanning throughout the ATS, hunting for a good candidate. Good ATS systems give result-driven search results without bulldozing recruiters with irrelevant applicant matches or duplicate profiles. 

To excel in a candidate-driven market, it is important to create a diversified recruitment marketing strategy. Varied sourcing options ensure a constant flow of candidates despite the failure of particular sources letting recruiters function more efficiently. To attract candidates today, it is important to understand that neither recruiters nor job seekers can avoid AI or recruitment technologies. With organizations using resume parsing and ATS software running as the backbone, everything is intertwined – job boards, career sites, and internal databases. The more sources you use for candidate sourcing will help you place more candidates and improve business outcomes. 

2. Advertising Job Openings Takes Too Long

Are you still relying on third-party sites to advertise your job requirements? Still manually updating your career pages? Spending too much money on job boards? It’s high time you started looking for an Applicant Tracking System. An ATS enables you to easily post job openings and advertise them on multiple sites with a single click without having to go to different sites and publish each opening separately. 

3. You’re Unable to Track Recruiter Performance

Staffing leaders often make the mistake of leaving out tracking and reporting, forget about it, and then struggle to include it at the end of the quarter. Almost every Applicant Tracking System gives visibility into the recruiter’s performance and productivity. This enhances the teams’ performance and provides insight into what is working and what is not in the recruitment process, enabling hiring managers to make data-driven decisions. 

4. You Still Haven’t Invested in Branding

Are you just beginning to build a brand and create a voice as an employer but haven’t been able to start anything? You can start by investing in an ATS. Integrate that into your career pages and social media sites and ultimately build an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that attracts candidates, tells the story of your brand, promotes DEI, and places you on the top in line with your competitors. 

5. You Have No Support From Your Recruitment Software Provider

The simpler the hiring process, the better recruiters perform and the faster they find candidates. You may already be using an Applicant Tracking System(ATS), but the real question remains: Does the service provider give you adequate support, or did they leave you hanging right after the onboarding process? It is imperative that ATS vendors provide ample training, support, and regular product updates with dedicated support. 

6. You’re Unable to Engage Properly With Your Leads and Candidates

Recruitment CRM capabilities enable recruiters to automate and centralize the communication segment of their process. With CRM built into your ATS, you can manage relationships with existing clients and maintain a strong talent pool with consistent candidate engagement. These CRMs enable recruiters to sync all the communication into the ATS,  including emails, calls, and meeting notes, and create automated workflows to send out triggered communications.  

7. You’re Not Sure How to Expand Your Talent Pool

To build a better talent pool, you have to access passive candidates, but you also need a strong system to manage them easily. Applicant Tracking Systems are a data repository of every resume that enters into the system. To increase your talent pool, you have to nurture candidates, build talent buckets based on various job profiles, skills, locations, experience, etc, and then follow up with them periodically. You need to employ an ATS that automatically does the work, so you can focus on building relationships with those candidates. 

Time for a Change?

Applicant Tracking Systems exist to make recruiters’ lives easier by streamlining the entire recruitment lifecycle. If your system is not helping to improve your processes, it may be time to consider a change.

CEIPAL’s recruitment software provides an end-to-end solution for staffing companies and other hiring organizations to find talent faster, build long-lasting relationships, and future-proof their operations.n abundance of resources available to find candidates in the market depending on the requirements like location, skillset, experience, educational background, etc.