An A-Z Guide to Applicant Tracking System Features and Benefits

Tech terms and jargon can intimidate many folks, including small and medium-sized (SME) business owners, some of whom lack the time and resources to stay on top of digital trends and products.

An inability to “talk the talk” tech-wise, should not be a barrier, however, for SME owners (and others), who want to transform their business operations with new digital solutions. 

Convenience and inclusion should be as important as functionality, and new digital offerings enhancing talent recruitment and retention, for instance, are designed and priced to be accessible for everyone in the business world. 

Talent acquisition and retention 

Talent recruitment software is especially relevant because finding and keeping skilled employees is the biggest challenge facing many companies today, including SMEs. 

This was one of the key findings of the “Future Readiness of SMEs” report released by the World Economic Forum in 2021. Of the 300+ SME executives interviewed for the report, 52.2% said talent acquisition and retention was their biggest area of concern followed by survival and expansion (43.8%), and funding and access to capital (35.7%).

Applicant Tracking Systems allow SMEs to chase talent more effectively and competitively

SME owners can now implement a sophisticated recruitment management system with an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) - a hiring software tool that manages recruitment online. 

How? In broad terms, ATS platforms provide streamlined, integrated functions that identify better candidates, and speed up and simplify the hiring and onboarding process. 

So no more mass email trails, reading through hundreds of CVs, and drawn-out processes to identify, rank, shortlist, and organize interviews with strong candidates.

While large corporations were among the first to embrace ATS solutions, they no longer have a monopoly on the technology, nor the automatic first pick of candidates in the market because ATS offerings are now available for businesses and agencies of all sizes. 

They have leveled the hiring playing field, while also bringing peace of mind to busy SME managers who often juggle multiple responsibilities every day. 

Thanks to the ability of ATS platforms to establish and automate a robust recruitment database, hiring teams can reduce errors and make the process of finding talent faster, smoother, and easier for all stakeholders – business owners no longer have to worry about hiring tasks slipping through the cracks. 

An A-Z of ATS features and benefits

Considering an ATS platform for your company but would like to know more about the features, and more importantly - the benefits they deliver?

Help is here - below, is a handy A-Z (in plain language) of ATS features to help you better understand how, and why, recruitment software could be a gamechanger for you, and your business.  

Automation is one of the biggest benefits offered by ATS solutions. It’s essential if companies want to compete in today’s fast-moving, dynamic recruitment market where candidates expect responses in days not weeks. ATS features automate and personalize many key functions such as setting up interviews, gathering candidate feedback, scheduling meetings, and personalizing response messages at scale, quickly. Automated integration is another benefit enabling hiring managers to build closer relationships with great candidates for current roles, and opportunities in the future.

Background check and enrichment features enable users to build a bigger, deeper picture of candidates beyond the information shared on their resumes. ATS resume data software can scan their social media posts and other online channels to verify credentials and build deeper insights. Manatal’s AI tools, for example, can scan more than 20 social media platforms to display all of the key information pulled from a candidate’s social media accounts on a single page.

Boolean search functionality refers to the ability for users to combine keywords or modifiers such as AND, NOT, and OR in their search to finetune their results. For example, a Boolean search could be “engineer” and “Singapore” to only find resumes containing the two keywords.

Candidate relationship management features build closer relationships with candidates – whether successfully placed or a high-potential applicant who you want to stay connected with.  Key features to enable strong ongoing relationships include the ability to tag, filter, and quickly search the candidate database, and analytics and insights features to better track candidates and the talent pipeline.

Career pages serve as an important “shop window” for a company – they enable candidates to learn more about a company, its culture, and career opportunities. One of Manatal’s most popular features is its offering of a career page layout that can be customized – users can also incorporate a search tab for job seekers to search for job openings and display which locations or departments have openings.

Candidate experience is an important benchmark in recruitment today. Hiring agencies and teams overseeing company career pages strive to provide a fast, simple, easy-to-use online application experience for everyone. Job seekers who find an application page to be clunky, slow, or hard to follow, and use, will probably decline to apply. A smooth experience for applications, allows job seekers and recruiters to provide information intuitively, without hassle, and quickly.   

A good experience also makes candidates want to work for that company more – making a good first impression matters. On the flip side, if job hunters have a poor experience, they are very likely to share their experience with friends, colleagues, and on social media platforms. 

Centralized resume database are a godsend for hiring teams. Pre-ATS, recruitment was a time-consuming and paper-heavy activity requiring many spreadsheets, email trails, job descriptions, application forms, updating multiple job sites, and more. ATS platforms offer a host of features to keep all candidate data, information, and correspondence in a single, accessible place, making it easier to create concise workflows where candidate profiles, feedback, interviews, communications, and more are organized.

Data security is the absolute top priority for ATS providers and Manatal software for example, is SOC 2 Type II certified, verified by a top third-party auditor. Industry-leading security measures protect data, ensure access is only granted to authorized users, and ensure all data is handled securely. 

Feedback, whether positive or otherwise, is important in shaping career development and is especially valued after unsuccessful job applications or interviews. Many candidates want to know why they were not considered for a role, and ATS systems provide the opportunity to keep candidates informed. This is a good way to maintain good relations with strong candidates who could be a good fit for future roles – in addition, they can also learn from advice or tips shared. 

Interview management features allow users to streamline interview processes to benefit hiring managers and candidates. How? ATS platforms allow users to quickly schedule interviews and integrate with the online calendars of all stakeholders. They can also provide structured interview kits and easy-to-use feedback forms. 

Job board integration is a great feature for time and resource-challenged hiring managers. Many candidate management systems can integrate with job boards to advertise and post vacancies on multiple hiring sites simultaneously. And when candidates click and apply for the role from their preferred job board, or hiring website, their information will be directed to a single candidate management system – so all applications can be gathered, read, and assessed by recruiters from one place. 

Mobile optimized ATS platforms are essential because 90% of job seekers use mobile devices as part of their search today. In addition, recruiters, and hiring teams can track and respond to applications on the go to reduce the time to fill positions. They no longer have to sit in front of a computer to review or discuss applications – decisions can be made via mobiles at any time from anywhere. 

Job board multi-posting allows hiring managers and teams to save time and effort to do more productive tasks. Industry-leading recruiting software enables the posting of job positions on multiple job boards in a few clicks – so no more posting on one site at a time. Posting to multiple job boards simultaneously increases exposure to drive more applications and interest in the openings. 

Rating and ranking candidates are enabled by AI-powered recommendation engines that identify the most suitable candidates for your jobs in seconds. The software cross-references the skills, education, and experience needed for the role with the talent pool in your database to match the candidates who fit the position best. It can also rank candidates based on the criteria set – the higher the candidate’s score, the more suitable they are for the role. 

Reporting, analytics, and dashboards are terrific ATS features that enable better-informed decision-making and a more proactive approach to recruiting. Increased data and deeper analysis help hiring teams develop more insights about candidate pipelines, and if there is a need to extend the recruitment net to attract a more diverse applicant base. Dashboards play a vital role in this regard – the ability to collect, store, and present data in a single page accessible by key hiring managers supports faster decision-making and action-taking. 

Resume parsing refers to the “filtering” of resume content (after being scanned by the ATS platform) into set categories for convenient storage, reporting, and ranking of candidates to accelerate the early part of the hiring process. 

Social media enrichment is sourcing and recruiting candidates via popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Hiring managers can use ATS platforms to search for candidates based on their social media profiles and information shared on the channels. Recruiters can also use social channels to boost the reach of job adverts. 

Tags offer another way to finetune the search for right-fit candidates. ATS platforms enable users to attract top talent using tags (keywords associated with a job or candidate) to filter resumes to reduce the time sorting irrelevant applications. Tags can relate to skills, education, experience, industry, career milestones, or other information. 

Talent pool management is enabled by an ATS. Using it, companies can invite current employees and external candidates to register their details to receive customized job alerts. These candidates will then be placed in talent pools and contacted promptly as/when a “right match” job comes up. 

Transform at your own pace and price 

If transforming recruitment and HR best practices is a top business priority in 2022, Manatal’s software will simplify, speed up and enhance every step of your current hiring process. 

Accessibility and affordability are other important features of Manatal’s three packages. 

1. The Professional Plan for $15.00/month. For smaller operations, this is the perfect recruitment app plan that won’t break the bank. The plan includes as many as 15 jobs per account, unlimited hiring managers, and more. 

2. The Enterprise Plan for $35.00/month. Fast-growing companies and middle-to-large operations may consider the Enterprise Plan. This package includes unlimited candidates, hiring managers, and jobs for a very reasonable price. 

3. The Custom Plan. This option enables companies to tailor a plan for their specific needs – it includes everything available in the Enterprise Plan with other customized features. 

Manatal solutions enable recruiters, managers, and others involved in hiring to focus on more added-value tasks such as analyzing and getting to know candidates better, and less on repetitive, time-consuming tasks that are prone to human error.

Leveraging the best available ATS will fast-track your talent development programs in the near and medium-term and we invite you to start your 14-day Free Trial today.