If you’ve hired employees before, you know how quickly things can get messy.
You post a job and applications start coming in. Some come through a job board. Others get emailed directly to you. A manager may have a resume sitting in their inbox. Before long, you’re trying to remember who you talked to, who needs an interview and who still needs a follow-up.
That’s exactly what an Applicant Tracking System is designed to help with.
What Is an Applicant Tracking System?
An Applicant Tracking System, usually called an ATS, is a tool that helps you manage your hiring process in one place.
Instead of keeping track of resumes, applications, emails and interview notes in different places, an ATS brings everything together.
You can see who has applied, review their information and keep track of where they are in the hiring process.
Think of it as a central hub for hiring.
What Can an ATS Help You Do?
At its most basic level, an ATS helps keep hiring organized.
You can use it to post open positions, collect applications, review resumes and communicate with candidates. You can also track candidates as they move from application to interview and, hopefully, to a new hire.
It also makes it easier when more than one person is involved in hiring. Instead of forwarding resumes back and forth or asking, “Did anyone ever call this person?” your team can see what’s happening in one place.
Why Would a Small Business Need One?
Applicant Tracking Systems aren’t just for companies hiring hundreds of people.
In fact, they can be especially helpful for smaller businesses where the person doing the hiring is also responsible for plenty of other things.
You may not have a full recruiting department. Hiring might fall on an owner, office manager or HR manager who already has a full plate.
An ATS helps take some of the administrative work out of the process and gives you a consistent way to handle each opening.
Even if you only hire a few employees at a time, having one place to manage those applicants can make a big difference.
What Happens When You Make the Hire?
Hiring someone is really just the beginning.
Once you’ve found the right person, you need to get them onboarded, set up in your HR system and eventually into payroll.
This is one of the advantages of working with ASAP Payroll as an isolved Network Partner. Applicant Tracking is part of the isolved HCM platform, so recruiting doesn’t have to be a separate system that sits off on its own.
The same platform can help manage the employee from applicant tracking and onboarding to HR, timekeeping, benefits and payroll.
That means less jumping between different systems and less entering the same employee information over and over again. You have one system that can help manage the employee experience from applicant to employee and beyond.
Do You Really Need an Applicant Tracking System?
Not every business needs an ATS.
But if you’re regularly hiring, losing track of applicants or spending too much time managing resumes and emails, it may be worth considering.
An Applicant Tracking System isn’t there to choose who you should hire. That decision still belongs to you.
It simply gives you a better way to manage everything that happens along the way.
As an isolved Network Partner, ASAP Payroll can provide Applicant Tracking as part of a complete HCM platform. Instead of piecing together separate systems for recruiting, onboarding, HR, timekeeping and payroll, you can manage it all in one place while still having the local service and support of the ASAP Payroll team.
Want to see how Applicant Tracking works? Contact ASAP Payroll Service to learn more.