Top 10 questions to ask when selecting your new ATS
What is an ATS?
ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. An Applicant Tracking System is a software that enables recruitment teams to manage their end-to-end hiring processes, from attracting talent to preboarding. To get a robust ATS that suits your organisation’s unique needs you’ll want to ask some specific questions during the vendor review process. We’ve compiled our top ten suggestions below:
- Can the ATS help you manage your talent pool?
A talent pool is a database of candidates who have the necessary skills, experience and desire to work for your business. Creating and managing a talent pool is imperative for recruiters today and makes the hiring process far easier and more efficient.
With the right ATS software, you can easily and effectively keep track of a wide pool of candidates and increase both the quantity and quality of applicants, making sure you recruit the very best. A robust ATS should provide the ability to build bespoke talent pools, use skills tags to identify top talent as well as skills you may be lacking in your talent pool, and provide an automated removal process to ensure you comply with Data Protection Act (DPA) laws around storage limitation.
- How do you address my unique hiring needs?
Is the ATS flexible, with the potential to be configured and customised around the growth and challenges your organisation may encounter in the future? The vendor should have referenceable clients in your industry who saw tangible ROI and long-term benefits of the ATS that will help your team make the case internally for a new ATS.
You may also want to inquire about the support offered during the process of implementing a bespoke solution. How will the vendor ensure your organisation is able to hit the ground running with your new ATS, and ensure your team aren’t left feeling around in the dark?
- What kind of reporting and analytics feature does your ATS support?
Reporting has become key for recruitment teams to keep stakeholders updated on talent strategy and will also prove crucial for displaying the ROI of a newly implemented ATS. Some reporting and analytics feature you may want to look for in your new ATS include:
- Comprehensive suite of standard reports.
- Option to export data to Microsoft Excel.
- Report scheduler to provide a secure and reliable method to process reports and deliver the results via a regular email.
- Integration with Google Analytics.
- Report Builder so your team can create custom reports to suit your organisation’s needs and
deliver data for your specific success metrics. - Track recruitment cost types against each vacancy to capture the true cost of your recruitment activity.
- Report on your recruitment costs for your specific requirements, such as ‘Organisation’, ‘Business Area’, ‘Campaigns’, ‘Locations’, etc.
- Is the ATS easy enough to use that I can get hiring managers to embrace it?
An ATS that is going to be truly utilised and see a strong ROI has to go down well with hiring managers.
After implementing Hireserve ATS, The Hiring Manager Portal has proved ‘exceptionally popular’ with Merton Council’s hiring managers, who have particularly benefited from the single sign-on functionality and the user-friendly, interactive dashboard.
- Can the ATS help me drive ROI?
With budget cuts and reduced resources becoming a reality for more and more talent teams, an ATS that will empower your recruitment department to cut costs will be a winner with key stakeholders when making your business case.
After implanting Hireserve ATS, HR & Recruitment team has been able to automate almost every element of their recruitment administration, which has made hiring processes significantly quicker. In fact, RBG Kew was able to rethink its team structure and make a tangible cost-saving of around £16,000/annum due to the reduced administrative work.
Read the full case study here.
- Does the ATS integrate with a HR system?
A strong integration and partnership between your recruitment solution and your HR software can have immense payoff. It makes moving data easier, enables a collaborative people strategy, and improves communication between the two departments.
Hireserve ATS integrates with the xcd people platform, a single HR and Payroll solution.
- Can the ATS support diversity and inclusion in my hiring practices?
Many businesses are becoming more aware of the need to put in place processes which are proven to reduce prejudice and bias in the recruitment process, ensuring fairer recruitment and a workforce made up of people who were hired based on their skills, abilities, and experiences rather than any other characteristics.
Robust reporting can play a key role in spotting any past or present problems – but does the ATS vendor you’re speaking with have features which prevent the issue occurring in the first place. A CV anonymisation feature, for example, will provide the customisable tools to blank out information that could prompt unconscious bias. This could include their name, postcode, or university names. The best-in-class CV anonymisation tools will allow you to adjust what information you can and cannot see – for example, knowing the city they live in may be necessary if hiring for an in-person role, but the postcode specifically may prompt bias and need to be obscured.
- Will the ATS reduce the admin load of my team?
Reducing the administrative workload of your recruitment team is one of the simplest yet important boxes your ATS should tick. Despite budget and resources being at a minimum, recruiters often face significant hiring targets and must work through swathes of CVs, scheduling interviews, and paperwork.
With Hireserve ATS, Lincolnshire County Council were able to see significant changes in their Recruitment Administration team, where they were able to save c. £25,000 through automation and a refreshed team structure.
- How does the ATS support job ad posting?
To maximise the reach of your vacancies, an ATS that supports job ad posting is a non-negotiable for many organisations. Hireserve ATS integrates with Broadbean so you can benefit from their
job-posting technology and post vacancies to multiple job boards instantly.
- Can the system support video interviews?
Video interviews have become even more popular since the rise in remote work. Whether you’re interviewing and international candidate or talent who may have a disability that makes commuting for an interview challenging, video interviews are a brilliant way to ensure skilled applicants aren’t forced to drop out of your recruitment process.
Learn all about Hireserve’s online interviewing tools here.
About the author
Hannah Elliott