Top Applicant Tracking Systems (5 minutes read)

In our previous article, we talked about how important candidate experience is for the employer and the candidate both. As a company, if you want to ensure a good candidate experience, then your applicant tracking system has to be able to pull its weight. There are some very effective applicant tracking systems out there, but not all are equal.

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software application that enables the electronic handling of recruitment and hiring needs. The software also helps companies to respond quickly to the applicants, which increases the overall candidate satisfaction. These are designed for recruitment tracking purposes which filter applications automatically based on given criteria such as keywords, skills, former employers, years of experience and education. Choosing the right ATS, and setting it up correctly, can hugely impact the way candidates feel about applying for the jobs which are open. This can be the difference between hiring your top choice for the job – or never having them complete an application in the first place.

What’s the use of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?

With so many applicant tracking systems in the market now, most people already know this answer, still here’s what they do

• For the company: An ATS organizes information about candidates, their backgrounds, and where they stand in the interview process. It’s like a CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) for hiring, whereas a standard CRM tracks customer behaviour.
• For the candidate: ATS is  the process the candidate has to go through to apply. This usually means the amount of information to be entered, screens to move through, items to upload, etc. An ATS often becomes the main source of communication throughout the application process.

As a company grows, applicant tracking software is necessary to automate and optimize routine aspects of hiring. A company’s recruiting efforts should be as efficient and effective as possible—especially when just one job posting can generate hundreds of resumes. A 2018 Jobscan survey found that 98 percent of Fortune 500 companies employed some form of applicant tracking system. These systems help employers scan through thousands of resumes to quickly find candidates with the right qualifications and experience.

CareerBuilder found that 86 percent of candidates expect companies to treat applicants with the same respect as employees, but only 42 percent of applicants feel they are treated as well as employees. Applicant tracking tools, which streamline the application, interview, and follow-up process, give your company the advantage of improved candidate experience. So, we have to find out the right applicant tracking system in order to select the best candidate and simultaneously provide a good candidate experience too during the entire process of recruitment.

Let’s discuss some of the top applicant tracking systems: 

SmartRecruiters: SmartRecruiters provide everything you need to attract, select and hire great talent. They provide users with a customizable applicant tracking experience that can easily replace the one you already have. It builds career pages, post placements on relevant boards  as well as find and hire the best applicants.

Salient features:

• Easy tracking of message records
• Easy communications and collaborations within the hiring team
• Consistency and compliance with the creation of a template library
• Personalized tags to manage and coordinate talent pools better
• Advanced filter search

Best For: The best collaboration features for the hiring team.

Oracle Taleo: Oracle Taleo is a cloud-based software that provides best solutions for talent acquisition, development, and retention. With end-to-end automation of recruiting processes, it can be modified to suit the needs of any business.

Salient features:

• Recruitment marketing.
• Employee Referrals.
• As it is cloud-based, data is accessible anytime, anywhere.
• The system can be integrated with Microsoft Outlook, MyYahoo & iGoogle, and other Oracle products.
• It uses social media tools.

Best For: Best overall system.

JobVite: Cloud-based and candidate-focused, Jobvite ATS enables social recruiting, the creation and management of mobile-optimized career sites, and onboarding functions. They also have a mobile app for the tool. The software provides specific features for interviews, requisitions, and employee referrals. This solution is best suited for medium and large-size companies.

Salient features:

• Automatic screening and interview-based candidate ranking
• Mobile-friendly application processes for candidates
• Easy employee referrals
• Smart Scheduler feature, which looks at the schedules for multiple interviewers and picks the best time to schedule a new interview
• Single record maintained for all conversations with a specific candidate across channels
• Powerful search tool to look for candidates by name, keywords, workflow, location, or date of application

 Best For: Interview Scheduling

Greenhouse: Greenhouse has arguably the best ATS for the mid market, and is aggressively going after the enterprise.  Their partner ecosystem, bolstered by best in category APIs, allow their customers to take advantage of third party applications with no upcharge.  Nearly every HRTech vendor that integrates with the ATS starts with Greenhouse.  

Clients like Air BnB, Pinterest, Hubspot and more rely on this solution to make data driven recruiting decisions and execute on their hiring plans.

Salient features:

• Easy tracking with the help of candidate scorecards
• Creation of customized assessment plans for interviewers to evaluate the right skill set and qualifications
• Customization of career pages, job boards, and email templates
• Simplified configuration of reports

Best For: Good reporting capabilities.

RecruiterBox : Recruiterbox's simple-to-use ATS has over 2,000 customers including Olark and Lonely Planet.  This platform has many added features like video interviewing, scheduling, and automated reminders. The employees and hiring managers collaborate on hiring/interviewing without having to log in to the system. Recruiterbox can be setup in as little as 90 minutes for smaller companies.

Salient features:

• Recruiterbox provides candidate profile management features.
• You will be able to search for the applicant.
• You will get a centralized hub for all hiring-related communication.
• You will be able to track the application status.

Best For: Small to medium-sized businesses as easy to use.

iCIMS: The iCims Talent Acquisition Software Suite supports businesses of all sizes, in all industries. They have been around since 2000 and are dedicated to “getting recruitment right.” The suite is easy to use, separated into three modules: recruit, connect, and onboard.

Salient features:

• Personalized dashboards with real-time insights
• Management of job advertisements
• Better searches through collaboration with Google and social media
• Real-time screening and assessment results

Best For: The best reporting features.

Bullhorn: Bullhorn is a cloud-based applicant tracking and customer relationship management solution. Their goal is to automate your entire recruitment process, from front office to back office. Bullhorn helps to increase recruiter productivity, improve candidate experiences, and make better business decisions using faster search, insights and reports. 

Salient features:

• Viable reporting and management options for the recruiting team’s progress
• Easy access and management of candidate data
• Allows the addition of notes to records
• Easy tracking of all email interactions with any specific candidate
• Real-time updating of records
• In-system access to LinkedIn records

Best For: System is best as Applicant Tracking System.

Workable:  Workable’s applicant tracking system is great for small and large companies alike, so it’s no wonder that they have over 20,000 customers worldwide.   The most interesting aspect to Workable’s solution is their AI powered sourcing capability, which they have integrated with the rest of the ATS and gives you access to over 400 million candidate records.

Salient features:

• The system allows you to set the access rights for the hiring team.
• Assigning roles, job creation and posting.
• The confidential zone will allow limiting the visibility of emails at a certain stage of the hiring pipeline.
• Productivity report and Activity Reports of the hiring team.
• Posting of jobs to multiple Job Boards.

Best For: This system is very easy to use.

SAP SuccessFactors: SAP SuccessFactors provides a holistic, cloud-based HR management system from sourcing, screening, and onboarding to payroll management, employee engagement, and performance metrics. Specialized recruiting software enables all processes of the recruiting cycle.

Salient features:

• Creation of a responsive career site
• Centrally managed global job distribution and access
• Insight into 4,000 job boards, social media portals and campuses from 80 countries across the globe
• Effective candidate relationship management
• Online offer letter and e-signature solutions

Best For: Talent management

Summary:

• Oracle Taleo has the highest market share for ATS.
• Oracle Taleo and Bullhorn are best as Applicant Tracking System.
• SmartRecruiter has the best collaboration features.
• Jobvite is best for interview scheduling.
• SAP SuccessFactors is best for Talent Management. iCIMS, Greenhouse has good reporting capabilities. Workable is extremely easy to use. Job board posting is available for Jobvite, Oracle Taleo, Greenhouse, iCIMS and SmartRecruiters

While choosing an Applicant Tracking System for your company, you should consider the organization’s size, user-friendliness of the system, reporting capabilities, new functionalities, and flexibility of the system.

Make the best use of the ideal tracking system from the very start to avoid missing out the perfect hire.