How an ATS can help scale your startup’s hiring process
Lavanya Bhatt
Customer Success Manager
August 28, 2024
•
3 min
First things first – what is an ATS? ATS stands for applicant tracking system, and these software solutions are designed to help simplify the recruiting and hiring process. Features and functionality vary by platform, but generally you get features to help you track candidates, automate manual tasks in the hiring process and make more great hires in a fraction of the time.
Applicant tracking systems not only save time, but they also make things easier on recruiting and hiring teams. This is essential for startups, where most team members already have plenty on their plate. Rather than spending hours on sourcing and hiring, an ATS can simplify everything and give startups the tools they need to fill those essential roles as soon as possible.
If you run a startup, you know that any way you can save time is a win. Think about your recruiting and hiring process. Are there frequent frustrations and bottlenecks? Does top talent sometimes slip through the cracks because you didn’t move their application forward fast enough? Do you want to fill a position sooner than later? Do you want to save time and money by making your hiring process more efficient? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, then you could benefit from an applicant tracking system.
An ATS can prevent the hiring process from becoming chaotic, helping you to track candidates and keep them organized through every step of the process. There’s also the fact that your hiring team members are likely wearing multiple hats, and you don’t necessarily have an expert recruiter on board. That’s where an ATS comes in. You don’t have to be an expert to use one, and it gives you incredible tools to run a professional hiring process.
Applicant tracking systems offer numerous benefits for startups. Let's go over some of the biggest benefits that you'll reap when you add an ATS to your hiring software stack.
1. Streamline the recruiting process
A GetApp survey found that more than 86% of recruiters say that using an ATS has reduced their time-to-hire. That’s a hard statistic to ignore, as it can be difficult to streamline the recruiting process without the right tools. An ATS gives you the power to automate and organize many steps of the recruiting process to not only speed it up, but minimize the likelihood of errors like forgetting to respond to a top prospect.
Here are a few ways that platforms like Dover can greatly speed up the recruiting process:
Generate job descriptions - Dover can help you generate job descriptions and then automatically post them to over 70 top job boards. Instead of spending hours getting your perfect job description and posting them to a few boards, you can broaden your reach to attract applicants in seconds.
Automate sorting - Dover offers AI-powered resume scoring, allowing you to set parameters and get the top candidates pushed right to the top of your applicant stack. You can still review every candidate, but this helps you find the potential best options sooner.
Track candidates - You can easily view which candidates are at which stage of the pipeline using a user-friendly and intuitive dashboard. This way you have a top-down view of your hiring pipeline.
2. Improve communication
Communication and collaboration are key to making great hires. An applicant tracking system helps you improve communication both internally and with candidates. Internally, you can use your ATS to talk to other stakeholders in the hiring process and get feedback about candidates in one centralized location. This ensures everyone is on the same page and you can make decisions about candidates with the most up-to-date information possible.
Externally, an ATS can also help you keep candidates engaged and moving through the hiring process by automating responses and interview scheduling. Whether you’re letting a candidate know you received their application, sending a polite rejection email or scheduling the next phase of an interview, you can ensure candidates are getting timely and professional communications to keep them up to date. This makes the candidate experience better and helps you avoid missing out on top talent.
3. Make data-driven hiring decisions
Remember the GetApp survey that said most recruiters mentioned their ATS reduced their time-to-hire? That wouldn’t matter much if those candidates weren’t good quality, but GetApp also found that 79% of recruiters found that there has been an increase in the quality of the hires once they started using an ATS. In other words, most recruiters feel like ATS platforms help them make better hires, faster.
That’s because applicant tracking systems like Dover put the power of AI in your hands to improve your hiring process and make data-driven hiring decisions. Our advanced applicant scoring system puts top candidates in front of you first. Top talent is in demand, so you want to get candidates in the hiring pipeline as fast as possible. With data-driven features like applicant scoring, you’ll get more quality candidates that are joining the team for the long haul.
4. Support scaling in a growing startup
As your startup grows, you’ll need to continue to add new talent to keep things running. Scaling the hiring process can be difficult while things are growing quickly, but the right ATS can make it easy. An ATS will keep the new influx of applicants organized, so your hiring team members don’t get overwhelmed. With platforms like Dover that offer unlimited job postings, you can always rest assured that your ATS will work for you regardless of how big you get.
This is also where those automation features come in handy. As your startup grows and you have to field more candidates, there won’t be much time for the tedious tasks of recruiting. Automating many of these tasks will save a ton of time and make sure you’re still bringing in those top candidates.
How to choose the right recruiting software
Now that you know the benefits of an applicant tracking system, the natural next step is to find an ATS for your startup. But where do you even start? As with many software solutions, there are a lot of ATS options out there. You’ll need to make sure your ATS has all of the features you need to get the benefits we covered here, and you’ll also need to make sure it fits your budget.
It can be frustrating to wade through the numerous ATS options only to end up with one that is too complicated or costly for your startup. The fact is, a lot of Applicant Tracking Systems aren’t really built for startups. Fortunately, that’s where we come in.
Try Dover’s free ATS and recruiter marketplace for founders!
At Dover, we made sure our ATS is specifically designed to help startup founders. Firstly, we made sure that our ATS fits into the budget of any startup by making it completely free. But just because our platform is free, it doesn’t mean we skimp on quality. Our features are best-in-class and will help you with sourcing, tracking and every other step of the hiring process.
We also made sure our ATS isn’t difficult to configure or overly complex. Not every team has someone who can get into the nitty-gritty of an ATS for hours every day. Our ATS is designed to be user-friendly and easy to set up in minutes. And if you decide you still need help with hiring, we offer a recruiter marketplace where you can connect with our experienced full-cycle recruiting partners to help you make your next great hire. Our recruiting partners are priced for startups too, only charging hourly as you need them rather than locking you into an expensive contract.
Ready to give our ATS a try for free? Get signed up and start using Dover today!
