What is Applicant Tracking System?
Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application which has been designed to help recruiters to manage candidates effectively.
Applicant Tracking System can be used by the organizations for a variety of purposes like
- Posting openings on sites
- Requisition tracking
- Customizing input forms
- Screening the questions
- Automatically ranking of resumes and multilingual capabilities.
Nowadays it is widely used and on an estimate, about half of mid sized firms use some or other kind of applicant tracking systems.
The importance of communication cannot be denied by anyone and resolving of communication hurdles means triumphing over half of recruitment conflicts.
ATS Email Integration Importance for Hiring Companies:
The importance of ATS and Email Integration can be understood as follows:
1. No Loss of talent:
Candidates often wait a long time to know the outcome of their interviews with the organizations.
An organization which responds quickly definitely gets preference. Sometimes even the organization loses talent due to lack of communication with their desired candidate.
Hence organizations should use it to communicate with the candidates and seal the deal faster and also to reduce the chances of risk of losing out the right person.
2. Bulk Recruitment:
Bulk recruitment processes means a huge task of managing and handling a number of vacancies and people.
The recruiter may lose personal touch with them and this may disorient the candidate. Also, remembering the details about each and every vacancy is not a meager task.
3. Coordinating with the team:
Recruitment process is not an easy job and coordination with the team is a vital aspect of this process.
Even after regular meetings with the team and updation, sometimes crucial information may be missed by the recruiter and this is where an applicant tracking system comes handy.
All the team members are logged in and updation is done automatically and the need to manually inform them is done away with.
4. Automatic Communication through ATS:
Sending numerous mails manually is a tough task and even more, if this is to be done on a daily basis.
Even most reputed professionals may miss out a point and this may lead to serious errors.
Modern day systems with email integration help the organization to ease the process. It removes the requirement to manually log in client accounts and send mails.
5. Tracking Communication:
Applicant Tracking Systems with email integration offer advanced features for tracking communications with candidates for each and every vacancy.
The whole process becomes a breeze. Each thread is attached to the respective candidate’s record and can be easily viewed as per own convenience.
6. Sorting resumes:
Sorting and selecting the required resume from thousands of resumes becomes difficult for the recruiter.
Integrated Applicant Tracking Systems help by automatically parsing attached resumes and thus it saves the trouble of manually sorting and reviewing all emails.
7. Competitive advantage:
Successful and unsuccessful recruiting firms have one difference between them and that is effective recruitment firms have a long list of qualified candidates waiting to fill the positions in the pipeline.
Applicant Tracking System does much more than merely tracking the applicant as it allows the recruiter to manage his relationships with qualified individuals.
Email integration helps them to manage the candidates through their communication and thus pools talent.
8. Multiple platforms:
Applicant Tracking System helps organizers to operate across multiple client accounts like Gmail, YMail, Hotmail, etc.
All are integrated into one using this system and there are no cluttered mail boxes. Few easy steps and the resume inbox is configured for easy access.
9. Saves time and efforts:
Integration of ATS with email provides the users seamless interface to operate both the applications simultaneously.
Few of these tracking systems allow users to work from any device, including mobiles and tablets and there is no need to download any plug-in or software to use ATS. It reduces the time between switching the ATS and Email account for details.
Efforts are reduced and it allows users to focus more on monetary activities rather than administrative tasks of maintaining separate detailed databases. Time spent in updating records is also saved.
10. Automatic posting of vacancies:
Applicant tracking systems allows automatic posting of opportunities to the career section of the sites and any response received is integrated with the email account of the recruiter thus making it easy to find and respond to candidates.
11. Security:
If manual actions are done to stack up candidates’ resume, it makes it vulnerable to mishandling and misappropriations by any person.
It may be an employee or any other person who does not wish any particular candidate to get selected.
Using ATS integrated with email ensures that the system is well secured and only authorized persons have access to the pool of data. It provides fair opportunities to candidates based on their merit alone.
12. Managing ongoing process:
ATS Email integration allows the hiring managers and recruiting executives to change the employee’s status with a simple click.
Interview feedback can be captured online in minimum time. Jobs and offers are integrated by a single click and that too in real time.
The user does not need to log out of mail and sign in applicant tracking system separately; it can be done through a single click by using the email account itself.
13. Track details:
Apart from tracking the resumes and response of candidates, ATS helps to track all the details of the prospective candidate like name, telephone number, email contact, etc.
It also allows users to access the training details, licenses, certifications, salary, employee handbook, hiring checklists etc. all at a single place in the email account itself.
There is no need to switch applications for searching any kind of detail about the employee. All information is available right in the inbox of the recruiter.
14. Schedule mails:
Emails which are integrated with ATS can be used to send mails automatically at scheduled times.
The recruiter can send an automatic system generated mail to candidates if a particular candidate is chosen for the job by updating this information in the ATS.
This informs other candidates about such selection without requiring the recruiter to send mails to everyone individually. Bulk emails to specified groups can also be done through ATS.
Conclusion:
As discussed above, Applicant Tracking System’s main purpose is to automate and organize the process of recruitment. ATS email integration streamlines the whole system and enables recruiters to manage the process more effectively and efficiently.
It saves time and enables the organization to synchronize the activities of whole team in real time with least efforts.
