Applicant Tracking Systems are So 1998…

Today’s guest blogger is Brett Iredale, the CEO and founder of global cloud-based recruitment software company JobAdder. Founded in 2007, JobAdder has offices in London, Denver and Sydney and over 1300 customers in 20 countries.

Brett started his business career by founding a successful IT recruitment agency before going on to develop an online job board business and then JobAdder. With a technology background and extensive recruitment experience, Brett is uniquely positioned to be building and leading the fastest growing software platform for recruiters.

The term ‘Applicant Tracking System,’ or ATS, is often used to describe a system used by recruiters to assist in managing the recruitment process. Applicant Tracking Systems were technology-based solutions developed to automate some of the more tedious manual tasks associated with recruitment. In particular, the original ATS’ were developed to assist with:

• Electronic distribution of job ads to job boards
• Automated capture of job applications into the system
• Providing a simple system to organise open jobs and manage the people who had applied for them
• Basic email-based communication and note tracking

As technology has developed, so have the breadth and capabilities of modern employment platforms. Applicant Tracking is now typically just one small component of a recruitment platform and today’s systems are no longer referred to as an ATS.

Modern recruitment technology platforms now refer to themselves as Recruitment Management Systems (RMS) or Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM).

To give you an idea of what a recruitment platform should look like in 2016, here is a list of some key functions that modern RMS or recruitment CRM systems perform:

1. Integrated customer and contact management system. Managing customer and contact data, communication relationships are a key part of a recruitment CRM. They are no longer focused only on jobs and applicants.
2. Deep integration with social media platforms. As a place where all job seekers (active and passive) spend time, modern recruitment platforms allow users to utilize social media as an effective talent acquisition tool. Modern platforms allow users to socialise any job ad immediately after creation, at the point where it is posted to traditional job boards and advertising channels.
3. Without exception modern providers are cloud-based, meaning they run on any web browser or mobile device. It is essential that today’s systems are just as mobile as today’s recruitment professionals and candidates.
4. They offer a suite of fully integrated mobile applications.
5. Modern recruitment systems come with public APIs (Application Programming Interface) and dozens of out-of-the-box integrations with key systems that recruiters use such as email systems, business productivity tools and backoffice systems such as HR, online timesheets and payroll.
6. A strong focus on candidate sourcing, rather than just applicant tracking. An example is integration with sites such as HiringSolved.com.
7. Continuous, rapid product development. Typically, if a platform is developing and releasing new software every 2-3 weeks, users can be confident in the provider’s adaptability and commitment to continuous improvement.
8. Highly visual, dashboard-driven user interfaces. These interfaces put key decision making data front and centre, allowing all users to get access to the data they need more quickly and efficiently and to take action and make decisions accordingly.
9. Email tracking, allowing users to see when important emails have been read and actioned. Knowing that emails have been delivered and read is critically important for recruiters.
10. Recruitment platforms with an international presence are better equipped to support today’s modern, mobile workforce. Recruitment is an increasingly global activity so in 2016 recruiters should expect multilingual resume parsing as well as 24 x 7 worldwide customer support from their recruitment software providers.

*Note: if you are working with a company that refers to their system as an ATS, then it may be a good idea to organize some demos of more modern recruitment platforms.