What is the applicant tracking system (ATS)? How does it works

Every new technology adds value and gives a new dimension to the corporates. It’s more about smart work which talks about productivity rather wasting resource on unnecessary tasks. ATS falls under the same category helping recruiters to skip the first line work of checking innumerable applicants. The applicant tracking system (ATS) is nothing but a recruitment software to track about the job posting, resumes, applicants, to speed up their placement or in short, the entire hiring process!

ATS in quite common in most of the organisations for the recruitment process. Even the small and medium organisations adopting ATS as the regular domain while recruiting. The primary function of ATS is to create a centralised database for the recruitment process. Most of the online job portals work through Applicant tracking system so make the working smooth.

Manatal is a cloud-based applicant tracking system (ATS) with powerful AI features built for HR departments and recruitment agencies to streamline their entire recruitment process. Manatal is designed with a user-friendly interface that it takes only about 15 minutes to learn. It comes with a robust set of features, like AI-based candidate recommendations, candidate scoring, social media enrichment, career page builder, and many more. The AI-powered recommendation function automatically generates a list of highly qualified candidates from your database for each job, all of which have been rated through Manatal’s scoring system. This increases screening efficiency and improves the quality of candidates. Make the most of their 14-day free trial to increase your team’s productivity.

Why ATS?

Large multinationals receive thousands or lakhs of applications every year.  And with the limited time frame & human resource, it’s not easy to filter all the applicants at once.  Moreover, online portals are the easiest way of applying for the job, the chances of receiving unlimited job applications are inevitable. Application tracking system helps to keep all resumes in one place, organising, helping recruiters to fine the suitable candidate as per the job posted.  This system saves time by filtering, parsing resume and highlighting the right resume matching job profile

ATS is everywhere

As per jobcan research more than 98% of fortune 500 company, 66% large companies, and 35% or small organisations rely on applicants tracking system. In fact, all the job sites or dream job has ATS built in and one cannot skip before landing to a human interview. To make the recruitment process smooth, ATS is making its way in most of the organisations irrespective of big or small.

How does it work?

Whenever an organisation roll-out jobs online the tendency to receive numerous applications is quite obvious. The applicant tracking system is the first preface to each applicant and this cannot be skipped at any point of time.  The moment applicants apply online, ATS collects and store those resumes in a database. Most of the resumes are stored for a much longer period and kept as a database, sometimes can be used later for some other requirement.

Filtration at the human level (exception)

While ATS helps in accumulating data at a single place, few recruiters prefer to glace on most of the applicants. They might take just a few seconds on each resume so that they can filter out the best even if they fail to clear the ATS test. But most of the preliminary scanning must go through Applicants tracking system. Humans come at much latter stage and that’s why its important to know how ATS works? Not only about the software but the challenges one can face if apply online.

Easy comparisons

ATS compares various resumes as the experience and job posting. It also helps to get the best out of many as per rankings made by ATS software. Like, if there are thousands of applications for the managerial role, then ATS would pick top rated resumes out of all, making the process easy and manageable.

It’s all about the keywords:

Applicant tracking system specifically works around keywords like key skills and titles. Like, if the job posted is for software engineer then it will scan the same keyword and filter those resumes if the search matches. Sometimes a search can be done with multiple keywords or a little complex

A search can contain multiple terms. For example, they might perform a complex search that contains a combination of titles and skills important for the job.

ATS works on a set format

ATS helps to decipher the document(resume) into a digital profile which further helps recruiters to maintain uniformity. As its impossible a recruitment team to go through all the uploaded resumes and filter few. This tool makes it easy and bridges the gap between job creator and job seeker.

But on the flip side, if the applicant’s resume is not formatted as per applicant tracking system then there is quite a possibility of missing the action. Not every ATS is designed in a way to crack all the formats in which resumes are written. They might miss human touch and chances are high that the Resume robot might not crack a few good candidates just because of the standard format required to crack the ATS. This means the keywords play an important role in ATS. Any miss on format without required keywords can miss the show, ultimately giving rise to ATS friendly resume to crack the code!

ATS has made the recruitment process easy, else its not easy to filter candidates when they are in thousands, but it cannot be denied that any resume if for ATS friendly might fail at the first place, even if eligible. ATS has its set of Pros and Cons, but one should learn how to crack the code!

Jayakumar Muthusamy

Jayakumar Muthusamy is a Digital marketer at Freshworks Inc. He generally writes about software that improve your marketing, sales or hiring process.