There are many, many applicant tracking systems and recruitment tech providers in the market, many of which offer incredible, game-changing innovations to help improve recruitment outcomes and candidate connectivity.
But how do you know which ATS is the right one for you?
Finding the perfect ATS for your organisation can be a thankless labour of love. From navigating generalist search engine results to setting aside time to demo tech, to finding your way through the SaaS packaging fog to find exactly the right balance of plug-in integration for your budget – without a solid recruitment tech strategy and some awareness of applicant tracking system particulars, it can be like operating blindfolded.
But, before you take a leap of faith into Google, think about the alternatives for identifying which vendors should be on your radar. You can ask your network for an applicant tracking system recommendation, or review any number of the online software directories for inspiration.
But are they really going to give you the right answer? After all, how will your network understand your business requirements well enough to make an effective recommendation, and how is a software directory, listing hundreds of vendors, going to make the process of pinpointing the right solution any quicker and easier?
An effective ATS search needs to focus on your business requirements. It must consider your objectives, your processes, your current user experience, and any potential changes within your organisation too.
You want to make sure you’re approaching your ATS search from a place of knowledge, and that you’re fully prepared to engage with the best ATS in the market for your particular needs.
So ask yourselves the following questions:
Do you already use recruitment tech? If so, which elements of it do you want to keep?
While many companies are in the middle of a surge of digital transformation, sometimes the “old faithfuls” just work – those tried and tested excel spreadsheets are sometimes impossibly hard to get rid of because they fit your company’s needs and everyone knows them like the back of their hand.
So when you’re considering moving to a new ATS provider, whatever tech you know works you more than likely want to keep, or at least emulate. Whether it’s payroll integration into recruitment CRMs, marketing automation or social media integration, each recruitment team or agency has their recruitment tech quirks and their trusted forms of tech interaction, and that’s no bad thing.
But to make any ATS window-shopping effective you need to highlight the key features you know you need and create a feature list as a magnet for ATS providers.
One of the key features of our own ATS and recruitment CRM comparison service Rectec Compare is our product search engine: we break down your ATS search criteria into hundreds of identifiable ATS requirements, all of which you can select (or not select) based on your needs. You can also weigh these requirements, based on how important they are to your business. Our sophisticated matching algorithm instantly gets to work, providing you with a list of the best matching applicant tracking systems or recruitment CRMs in the market.
This ability to highlight certain ATS features as absolute must-haves features of any prospective ATS supplier is genuinely game-changing and saves an inordinate amount of time…but you have to know what your ATS criteria feature list is!
What ATS features or recruitment tech do you most definitely not need?
Although it may seem counterintuitive, it’s worthwhile making a partner list to the above with features of ATS platforms you most definitely don’t need.
We advise doing this purely for one reason – streamlining.
ATS platforms are efficient, fast, often very easy to implement and super productive, but you can quickly fill your recruitment tech stack above and beyond what you actually need, especially if you have tiers of user, myriad consultant platform access and sprawling cross-department feature sets.
These sorts of vital data sets and ATS user pointers actually make our ATS comparison services more efficient. The more you know about what you need and what you don’t need, the better ATS implementation choice you can make.
Have I consulted my team?
Finding the perfect ATS for your business can be an incredible challenge if you don’t have stakeholder commitment.
While most great recruitment leaders never forget what it’s like to be in the trenches of a consultant desk, when you’re wrapped up with platform rollout and L&D on new pieces of software, not to mention running consultant teams or HR departments, it’s easy to lose track of whether your chosen recruitment tech actually works for your team.
So take a leaf out of the “Brain Trust” school of thought – invest some time into getting your consultants involved in the ATS and CRM procurement cycle, and seek their feedback on certain features and your teams’ requirements. Our ATS comparison service Rectec Compare is free for anyone, so your teams can use it for free too!
Do I need to build a relationship with the demo team?
You have to trust your ATS partner, and the only way you can trust them is by building a good relationship with their business development leads and account teams.
Business Development Reps, Sales Development Reps, Account Execs, Implementation Consultants, Customer Success Managers, whatever your ATS provider calls them and however they structure resources, these people are your first and last port of call for all training, integration, digital transformation and data migration, and as such you need to have a very close professional relationship with them.
An ATS implementation will be made so much easier if you know the person conducting the demo and training, and they understand your business needs, and organisational processes.
To find the perfect Applicant Tracking System for your business, register for Rectec Compare or check our our Guide to Applicant Tracking Systems.
A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.
At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complementary technology marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.
You can click here to register for Rectec Compare – and best of all, it’s completely free of charge.