Recruiters and HR teams don’t need to work for large companies to find themselves buried in resumes and job applications. Hiring new employees can eat up hours, days, even weeks, depending on the position and the number of openings. That’s why—according to Capterra (a software solutions review service)—75% of large businesses use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to streamline the hiring process. In fact, Jobscan reports that 98% of Fortune 500 firms consider an ATS to be a must-use.

Simply put, an applicant tracking system is a software application that helps you track and manage candidates—from receiving applications to hiring employees—in one organized database. Here’s why your business, regardless of your company’s size, should consider an ATS as well:

They Save You Time

Simply stated, an ATS helps you better manage the hiring process while drastically reducing the time spent filling new positions. You can automate many processes, such as posting jobs on your website and top job boards, organizing resumes, giving and receiving referrals, filtering through candidates, conducting interviews, and even mailing or emailing rejection letters. Gone are the days of having to individually read and sort each resume and application. With an ATS, you use templates to rate candidates easily, move them through the funnel faster, and identify the right candidates for the right position more efficiently. These automated systems are also integrated, so once an employee is hired, HR can use the same information to onboard them and get them on the payroll.

They Save You Money

How much does employee turnover cost your business? Probably more than you think. The Work Institute’s 2017 Retention Report puts the replacement cost at $15,000 per person for an employee earning a median salary of $45,000 a year. And as salaries go up, so do the replacement costs. Yes, some of those numbers are due to separation and productivity costs, but a lot falls under the recruitment process and the many hours of work the whole hiring process takes. An ATS will cut that number significantly by reducing the amount of time spent gathering, parsing, interviewing and re-interviewing, not to mention the fees for job ads and recruitment agencies. And because the information you’re gathering is handled digitally, you don’t have to pay the administrative costs associated with sorting and filing paper applications, and the time spent on interviewing unqualified candidates.

They Minimize Human Error

Mistakes happen. You don’t have to receive thousands of resumes a week like Starbucks or Microsoft for one to fall through the cracks…or get accidentally deleted…or improperly filed. As recruiting data continues to increase, so too does human error. Using an automated system allows you to collect, analyze, compartmentalize and retain data from multiple channels, all in a single system. This makes it simpler to access the information you need and harder to lose it! And even if you don’t hire a candidate for a specific position, his/her information will remain in your database should the right job arise, even if it’s months or years later.

They Maximize the Candidate Experience

Often, in the scramble to fill positions, companies don’t take into account what the hiring experience is like for the candidates themselves. They should. According to CareerArc’s Candidate Experience Study, nearly 60% of applicants rate their candidate experience as poor, largely as a result of irregular updates. An ATS can positively impact their experience, allowing you to personalize emails and eliminate the paperwork required of them. Also, with its predictive intelligence, an ATS will alert you to reach out to candidates at the appropriate time.

If you’re thinking of using an application tracking system at your workplace, contact an Accu Data Workforce Solutions specialist today! Our cloud-based solution helps you manage the entire recruiting process, from application to onboarding, with features including customizable dashboards, on-demand analytics, the ability to post to multiple job boards at once, and much more.