5 Advantages of Using an ATS When Hiring in 2021

2020 was a year of unexpected events. The virus changed our lives and wounded the world economy. The pandemic has also greatly impacted the way we work and HR departments have been playing a key role in building an agile and innovative workforce culture to help navigate through COVID-19. After a tough and tiresome 2020, all of us are looking forward to a better 2021.

Needless to say, a lot of companies had to let go of some of their employees last year, therefore increasing the number of unemployed. However, as we are moving into a more stable and progressive year of recovery, one of the top priorities for HR leaders is getting the right people with the right skills to help businesses thrive in this new world of work.

Many talented people desperately need jobs and many companies need capable people to join their teams. Given the unemployment scenario, the volume of applications for open positions will be very high and it will be challenging for the Recruitment team to find and engage with the best candidates. Using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will help drive a much more efficient hiring process in order to hire the best talent. Here, we will examine 5 reasons why an ATS can be a best friend of the HR and Recruitment team in the year ahead.

1. It is a Time Saver

When you have all the job information, applicant data and communications related to an open position in one place, it helps you to analyse candidates and make decisions more quickly. The right ATS will also save you a lot of time by populating the job posts on multiple job boards and automatically importing applicant data to the platform and presenting it all in a standardised format.

Our partners at skeeled offer a complete Talent Acquisition suite with built-in ATS and market-leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that save you even more valuable time. Their AI-based pre-screening features will match applicants against job requirements and will accept or reject candidates based on their suitability for the role. With skeeled, recruiters don’t need to spend one more minute on completely unqualified applicants.

2. Improved Quality of Hire

Talent Acquisition and ATS systems can help the hiring team by filtering out applicants that do not match the requirements of the role, thereby making it easier to start meaningful conversations with better candidates in the applicant pool. skeeled’s AI-based automation of candidate screening gives recruiters the opportunity to concentrate on the top talent at a much earlier stage. Also, the automation of administrative tasks allows recruiters to focus on reviewing candidates in greater detail to make a more informed hiring decision. These benefits will ultimately help recruiters to improve the quality of the hire.

We all know there’s more to a candidate than education and experience. skeeled can take you beyond a candidate’s CV with pre-employment assessments that evaluate their reasoning ability (to predict how they’ll perform), personality (to know how they’ll behave) and motivations (to know what drives them). These assessments help to predict an applicant’s ability to succeed and thrive in a role with more accuracy. Combining AI and automation with assessments will significantly increase the likelihood of identifying the best and most suitable candidates for a role, avoiding disruptive and costly bad hires. This is what skeeled calls predictive talent acquisition.

3. Better Collaboration

If you’re in the Talent Acquisition space, you’ll be fully aware of the ongoing shift from traditional hiring methods to a more collaborative approach, and the benefits it can bring. Applicant Tracking Systems have helped to push collaborative hiring from a buzzword to a tangible practice where everyone in the decision-making process has a say and has full visibility. An ATS will come with some amazing features that enhance collaborative hiring. Team members can quickly and easily share notes, ratings and evaluations of candidates in order to drive a collective decision-making process. This improved collaborative approach can have major benefits for your organisation as it helps to nurture more diverse and successful teams.

4. Enhanced Candidate Experience & Employer Brand

Candidates often become your future ambassadors. An effective ATS assures a more modern, organised and engaging recruitment process that enhances the candidate experience. Features such as mobile friendly application processes that allow candidates to apply in minutes will attract and delight users. Moreover, customisation and branding options for career pages, job posts, application forms and email communications ensures that your company brand is maintained consistently throughout the candidate journey. Using an ATS can boost your employer branding successfully, without having to spend big bucks.

5. Reduce Human Bias

Alongside the pandemic, racial equality in and out of the office took centre stage in 2020. Social movements and protests last year have added urgency to concerns over inequality at work. But it is not only a matter of social responsibility or compliance; diversity in the workplace can also give your company a competitive advantage and lead to more profitability in a globalised economy.

Companies are increasing their efforts to bring together a diverse workforce. However, whether it’s gender, age, race or religion, there are many forms of unconscious human bias in the hiring process that hinder such transformation efforts. skeeled uses AI-powered tools that can eliminate age, gender and demographic information from the initial steps of the recruitment process, to provide recruiters with a more diverse talent pool. Their AI technology can help to prevent bias, removing gut feeling from the equation and enabling evidence-based hiring decisions.

In summary, technology that enhances the hiring process is a vital cog in the digital transformation of HR and Recruitment departments. With their complete Talent Acquisition suite including an ATS, our partners at skeeled offer you the perfect opportunity to bring innovation and digitalisation to your hiring.

If your company is not currently using a hiring software or you feel that your current tech solutions are not up to the job, then contact us here for further information and to discuss your needs.