Applicant tracking system to streamline your recruitment

Choosing a new Applicant Tracking System, or finally making the move from Excel to an ATS, is a big decision and a big investment for your business, your recruiters and your candidates.

Questions to ask

There are a bunch of questions you should ask when you start comparing ATS providers and choosing an ATS for your business, including:

• What do you want out of your recruitment software?
• What are your goals?
• Why are you changing (from spreadsheets or another ATS) in the first place?
• What existing features can you not do without and what is your utopian idea for a super-efficient and profitable recruitment process?
• How do you rank each in terms of importance?
• Is it essential or nice to have?

Conduct a SWOT analysis

Strengths could include:

• The supplier brand and reputation
• Patents and intellectual property held by the supplier
• Sales and Support location
• Key employees and experience
• Advanced technology or leading-edge processes, and QA

Weaknesses could include:

• A lack of expertise, skills or funding for the software
• Aging infrastructure and technology, no innovation or progression in functionality
• An inflexible workforce or delivery/support infrastructure
• Communication restrictions (email only for support etc)

Opportunities could include:

• New markets the software supplier approaches
• New technology and innovation
• Changes in customer support and success
• Events, webinars and conferences for education
• Evolving knowledge base through client contribution to evolve the product and service

Threats might include:

• New regulations at the state or federal level restricting functionality or data
• New competitors emerging
• Operating system and hardware changes
• The state of the economy in particular market sectors

Go beyond feature comparisons

Comparing features is an inevitable part of your decision-making process. This is crucial when considering features and processes that form the baseline of what you need to even consider a product in the first place.

When it comes to your shortlist of providers, most people take into consideration time-saving and money-making features that exist in front-office automation or back-office efficiencies.

But what about your long-term growth plans? It’s equally important to consider the product roadmap and whether this aligns with the rate of growth your company is aiming towards.

Though due diligence should be done to ensure that features actually work for you and function properly, it’s also important to consider the ability your considered product has to support and accelerate the long-term goals of your business.

It can be costly and disruptive to switch systems, making it a decision that should be made with future-proofing in mind.

How to get the most out of a demo request

Start with a list of requirements that you need. Rank the features or items that you want with different rankings of importance, research the providers’ websites and check out their reviews on G2 and Capterra.

Don’t get caught up in the detail during early demos. You don’t want to demo every system for five hours or you’ll lose focus and interest.

Conduct a high-level evaluation and then drill down on further calls, removing suppliers at each round until you have three or four options. It’s then time for due diligence, details, deep dives and a little bit of a gut feeling.

Budgeting and shortlisting

Try not to start with a budget and instead align it to value. Ideally, the evaluation process should start without a strict budget in mind.

You can purchase solutions for $25 a user a month or build technology stacks that cost $400 per user a month, but if you can hire 50% fewer people and make 100% more money with the latter it’s much, much more profitable and budget, in a simplistic form, goes out of the window.

When it comes to shortlisting your top options, while there are a number of providers out there, generally once you get through your must-haves and key nice-to-haves and understand why you’re leaving your current provider, it’s pretty easy to narrow the field down to three or four candidates.

Kickstart a successful implementation

This is an integral part of the valuation process as you need to ensure your data is moved across and tested at multiple stages, the system is configured to your liking and your users have regular access to training.

Many providers overpromise and underdeliver here and some providers use third-party implementation to accommodate this.

You need to ensure your chosen provider has the right processes in place, a dedicated team, your goals are clearly aligned, and there is honesty, accountability, and clarity at each stage of the process.