What is an Applicant Tracking System?
The Dover Team
CEO @ Dover
July 2, 2024
•
4 min
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are software applications that employers use to manage the recruitment process. They typically work by collecting and organizing job applications, allowing you to efficiently sort, screen, and track candidates through the hiring process.
When a job seeker submits an application, the ATS parses the resume and stores the information in a structured format. It then uses various criteria, such as keywords, skills, and qualifications, to rank and filter candidates. This enables recruiters to quickly identify potential matches for job openings.
Many Applicant Tracking Systems also offer features like automated email responses, interview scheduling, and reporting tools to streamline the hiring workflow. Some advanced systems leverage AI to help with candidate evaluation and even provide insights into the recruitment process.
While all applicant tracking systems help you manage job candidates, they all have different features so it's important for you to evaluate what your company needs from an ATS. Dover's free ATS was built for startups, and our kanban view allows you to easily track and manage candidates throughout the interview process.
Why are Applicant Tracking Systems useful for hiring?
An ATS will help you streamline your hiring process by helping you rank applicants, schedule them for interviews, and evaluate their candidacy so you can hire candidates quickly. With Dover's help, businesses can streamline their hiring processes and cut their time-to-hire significantly.
This frees your team to spend less time on hiring and more time helping your business grow.
There are a few factors that you need to consider when choosing the right ATS for your startup. The most important ones are:
Effective CRM: An application tracking system is an excellent investment for effective customer relationship management since it allows you to keep tabs on candidates and establish relationships with them. The right ATS tool will not only store candidate details like resumes and contact info, but will also allow your team to store interview feedback, notes, email communications, and more. Keeping track of each candidate's record should be a piece of cake!
Helps schedule and manage interviews automatically: When using a high-quality applicant tracking system, scheduling interviews with potential hires should be a breeze. A great ATS should enable you to create personalized scheduling links for candidates to book an interview, allow easy rescheduling, have interview rubrics to fairly evaluate candidates, and make complex interview scheduling tasks easy to do in the ATS.
Allows personalization: Every startup is unique. Choose an ATS that allows for customization according to your company's needs. You may wish to choose an ATS that allows you to showcase your company branding, that enables you to create custom email templates and feedback forms, and allows you to move candidates quickly through the hiring process.
Helps find & source candidates: Many Applicant Tracking Systems do not have sourcing tools, however your talent pipeline may be enriched by reaching out to top talent. This is especially useful for positions that are difficult to fill.
Excellent, prompt, and expert customer service: Choose applicant tracking systems that provide live chat, email, and prompt support as part of their core features. You should be able to learn all about ATS's features through their website.
Building the right team as a founder of a startup is crucial. A startup's success hinges on its innovative idea or product and the people you hire to build it. However, finding the right people for a startup can be difficult.
Here are five essential strategies to leverage an applicant tracking system to help you hire:
Organize and clarify the interview process
The effectiveness of your applicant tracking system depends on how you use it. Align internally on what you're looking for in an ideal candidate and then build your interview process to evaluate candidates based on what you're looking for.
An applicant tracking system (ATS) can help you build an interview process and allow you to monitor a candidate's progress from the first interview to the final interview.
Centralize the storage of candidate data
It's essential to store all candidate data in one centralized place. Whether a candidate is a referral, applied to your job, or was sourced for the position, they should all be tracked in an ATS so that everyone on your hiring team can see them.
Storing all your candidate information for all of your roles on a spreadsheet or Notion doc is not a scalable solution and does not allow you to store email communications or easily move candidates through the interview process.
Take advantage of templates
No hiring team is immune to the monotony of drafting and revising. Your team should be able to save and reuse templates in an applicant tracking system to speed up repetitive tasks.
In Dover, you can create templates for everything. For example, there are email templates for confirming an application is received, for sending interview invitations, for rejecting candidates, etc. Authorized coworkers can access and use the templates to communicate with candidates.
Assess candidates objectively
Your hiring team can rely on standardized feedback by using assessment forms customized for each position, division, or company, as well as supplementary input and quantitative scores.
With Dover's ATS, you can build feedback forms using our role-based templated questions or you can add your own.
Collaborate internally efficiently
The first step in the hiring process is identifying all of the internal stakeholders to add to your hiring team. At a startup, this often includes the hiring manager, members of the team the candidate will be joining, and executives.
Members of your hiring team should be able to leave each other notes and share candidate feedback in the ATS itself. With Dover, you can "tag" teammates about candidates and they will receive an email notification.
Try Dover’s Free ATS for Startups Today!
Equip yourself with the proper resources to bring new employees to your startup. Hiring managers can save time, energy, and worry with an applicant tracking system (ATS) like Dover.
With Dover’s fee ATS, you can easily find qualified prospects, keep track of their information in one place, track candidates through the interview process, all while improving the quality of your hiring.
Don't hesitate to schedule your personal online discussion with Dover’s experts now!