What are applicant tracking systems?

Consider the position of HR any time they place an ad for a new job. The company can be inundated with resumes, job histories, and an overall field of applicants that seems nearly impossible to parse into a list of final candidates.

Applicant tracking software helps parse them out, while also assisting with the transition to onboarding and getting a new hire hooked up with human resources. A good applicant tracking system is more than a tracker—it’s a way to manage the hiring process from start to finish.

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Who are applicant tracking systems for?

• Large businesses. This may be the audience who gets the most value out of applicant tracking systems. Large businesses have the highest volume of applicants to sort through. And large organizations may sometimes have the slowest reaction time to a bad hire—not knowing what went wrong in the process.
• Small businesses. Gauging the best applicant tracking systems for small businesses is still important, as even small businesses can have a lot of applicants to sort through.
• First-time hirers. Maybe you’ve been a one-person business and you’re making your first hire. Or maybe you’re a new HR professional, and you need to bring an applicant tracking system into the fold. Which are the best introductory tracking systems for you?

What does applicant tracking software do?

• Onboarding. This helps introduce a lot of new hires to the business. A scalable onboarding system can make it possible to add a lot of qualified candidates.
• Resume parsing. The flood of resumes a large business can receive can be overwhelming. Resume parsing helps organize and prioritize them according to the job description.
• Job posting. Not all applicant tracking systems offer job posting features, but for small businesses, it can be a key way to get the word out without the resources of a larger business.
• E-verify and HIPAA compliance. When you’re making a hire for the first time, you can sometimes forget the important line items to check off for each candidate. Good applicant tracking systems can help fill that void.

Benefits of using an applicant tracking system

Making things easier on HR is the most obvious benefit. But let’s get more specific. What kinds of benefits does applicant tracking software offer?

• Organizing resumes. What if you have 102 resumes to review? Organizing them becomes paramount. Look for the “resume parsing” feature in this review to see which tracking software offers that.
• Onboarding new hires. Once you make a decision, what happens next? The best applicant tracking systems will have an answer to that question.
• Promoting your job post. If you have a big-time ad budget with a large company, this isn’t as big a concern. But for small companies, you can also use ATS tools for recruitment to help get the word out.

How much do applicant tracking systems cost?

Typically, business software with specific goals in mind will tend to run at predictable prices. That wasn’t the case here. We found prices all over the place—from free applicant tracking systems you could sign up for today to completely non-transparent enterprise-level solutions. If you’re searching for “applicant tracking system free,” you’ll find some options. You’ll also find some very expensive options. So, unfortunately, the answer to this one is: we dunno.

What we can tell you, however, are some of the specific prices and how to think about them. Rippling’s $8/month/user tier is a pretty straightforward approach that scales up with the size of your business. Another option, like Workable for example, is a more static $129/month per job you use, which means that it doesn’t even measure its pricing on the same system. We recommend evaluating pricing on a case-by-case basis, especially with applicant tracking systems.

Who should use applicant tracking systems, and what are the different types?

According to a Columbia study on applicant tracking systems, 90% of Fortune 500 companies use ATS. Anyone making a hire should at least consider applicant tracking systems for their business. But applicant tracking systems for recruiters are especially important to use. Recruiters have a lot on their plate with any given hire. They have to make sure their job postings are visible, they have to find where the talent is, and when the talent does apply, recruiters have to sift that down into a manageable interviewing process.

We found there were a few different types of applicant tracking systems to consider. Some are solely built for promoting a job posting, while others are more comprehensive, HR-type offerings that can also handle onboarding, employee benefits, and even payroll. Which you choose will depend on your business needs. Generally speaking, if you’re making the first hires for your business, you should choose the robust options that can help manage employment concerns after your hire.

Applicant tracking systems FAQs

What is the most popular applicant tracking system?

On our list, we found stellar reputations for BambooHR, Rippling, and Greenhouse. We don’t award a “5/5” score for reputation unless there are both high scores and large sample sizes to draw from, and all three of those application tracking systems were able to resonate with users on both counts. Get matched.

What is an applicant tracking system in HR?

The Applicant Tracking System, or ATS, is software to help manage potential recruits for hiring into a company. It can include parsing and organizing resumes, streamlining the interviewing process, and onboarding new potential employees into a company’s existing system.

What makes a good applicant tracking system?

A good applicant tracking system should make your life simpler and easier to manage anytime you need to make a new hire. For some companies, that might mean software that plays well with other features, such as employee onboarding. For others, it might mean a focus on getting the word out about the job that’s being filled. Either way, it will help you facilitate a good hire without having to perform every step of the process manually.

Do recruiters really use ATS?

Yes—in fact, many swear by it. You’ll find there is some difference of opinion as to which ATS to use, but that’s what we’re here to resolve today.