To begin with, I don’t get any kickbacks from any ATS supplier (If you are an ATS supplier who wants to give me kickbacks let me know!!!!) I’m also not going to recommend a particular ATS what would suit a tech start-up might not suit a massive multinational. During my time as a freelancer as an internal recruiter, I have seen several ATSs including Bullhorn, Greenhouse and *Shudder* Taleo.

User Interfaces/ experience 

of course, you want to make sure it looks pretty and all the buttons to be in sensible places but there are other things to consider the big one for me is what information is can you see when performing a search or viewing the “Dashboard” as some ATS’s call it. Some prefer to show you more candidates but less information on them whereas some tend to show you every little bit of information about a candidate and as a result, take forever to load the trick is to find the right balance of being able to see enough information without slowing down your search (and crashing your browser).

Another thing to consider is ensuring candidate history and communication is clear and easy to keep track of especially if you have multiple teams recruiting similar profiles no point 2 teams meeting a candidate and getting the same conclusion.

Integrations

There are a million and one tools and websites that can help a recruiter in their day to day job. The prospect of creating an interview in the ATS and then having to do the same in my calendar as I had to do with one system recently fills me with dread so this would be top of my must have list. But also look at Social media integration not only job posting but also for profile creation, if you have technical tests as part of your process perhaps look if you can integrate with that. Integrations can assist from the initial job postings (most ATS will brag about this side of things) all the way through the process to e-signing of contracts and onboarding into payroll and your HRIS.

Candidate Experience

We quite often overlook as recruiters that it’s not just us that use an ATS we also have to consider hiring managers and in my opinion most importantly we have to remember that candidates interact with it. I have used some that are absolutely amazing (I will actually take a moment to praise Lever on this one) that parse CVs brilliantly and application is over and done with in a couple of clicks. I have also filled in some applications for jobs where at the end of it the ATS knows more about me than my mother does. Look into what information you really need to make a first stage assessment of a candidate and don’t be afraid to test out the CV parsing with your own teams CVs (also be sure to download your LinkedIn profiles try them) you will be shocked by how poorly some ATS’s parse CVs

Flexibility

Whilst rigidity has many perks when it comes to software (mainly in terms of reliability of both the software and the data you collect) it does have some many downsides in recruitment where things can change very quickly. One system I worked with required 5 members of staff to approve a job spec, changes to that job spec and any offers. Due to the way the company was set up this meant that we had to eventually have our staff in Seattle approve this proved to be a massive hold up especially when we only had 5 working days to replace our more junior staff. Also, 10 total stages of verification for a role which barely paid 12k per annum was simply unnecessary whilst I could understand it for our director level roles for most roles I was hiring it was more time consuming than the actual hiring. A good ATS can flex to your needs if you have the right to draw up an offer yourself you should be allowed to without getting extra levels of approval if you want to skip the first stage of interview and bring a candidate straight into final stage that should be fine or if you want to add an extra interview this should be easily done.

Analytics and Reporting

Any recruiter who spent any time in agencies will know the importance of analytics and reporting. Knowing what your team is up to and being able to dive into the numbers and work out exactly where your process is slowing down or who isn’t pulling their weight is vital. Whilst being able to build custom reports is an important feature some ATS’s go far too in-depth some I’ve worked with pretty much require a working knowledge of SQL to work out how to draw up a report that isn’t already in the system. Another important element is making sure you can pull up data relevant to you if you ever as a recruitment manager or team leader have to ask your recruiters to pull together a list of candidates they are currently interviewing or anything like that or ask them to fill out any data on a google spreadsheet you are either in possession of a bad ATS, or you aren’t using it properly and failing your team in the process by creating unnecessary extra work.

Access to your data and break clauses

This is the main trick of the ATS suppliers not giving you proper access to your data and locking you into long contracts with no break clauses. DON’T fall for it. Get break clauses written in as early as you can and make sure you can always access raw data (if they aren’t based in the UK blame the data protection act it’s so confusing 9/10ths of suppliers will take one look at it and assume your right). Ultimately the speed with which ATS’s are improving it makes little sense to lock yourself in too long. 3 years ago everyone was using jobvite but then along came greenhouse and workable and now there is a whole collection of good ATSs out there to use. If the one you choose doesn’t keep with the times and doesn’t give you features which many others do you owe it to your team to move to one which is.

 

Well I hope this gives you something to think about next time you look for an ATS if you want more personalised advice drop me an email or write something in the comments section.

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