Need an Applicant Tracking System? Here Are Your 10 Best Options:
Welcome toTop 10, Recruiter.com’s weekly rundown of the best of the best in recruiting! Every Friday, we release a list of some of our favorite people, things, and ideas dominating the industry. From awesome tech tools and cool companies to great books and powerful trends, no stone in the recruiting space will be left unturned.
This Week: Top 10 Applicant Tracking Systems
Applicant tracking systems (ATSs) are fixtures of the modern recruiting landscape – which makes the widespread disdain for them all the more disheartening.
It’s not that ATSs don’t deserve the hate – after all, they tend to knock perfectly qualified candidates out of the running for small errors like using the wrong keywords or listing job titles that don’t totally match the filter. They can also be very unwieldy to use, making it a pain for recruiters to source candidates from their own databases.
But if ATSs are a must, shouldn’t, you know, not be terrible?
As it turns out, some ATSs actually do fulfill the promise of making recruiting easier and more efficient. Don’t believe us? Here are ten such top-tier ATSs:
1. iCIMS Recruit
To call iCIMS Recruit an ATS is to sell it short. Sure, the software performs all your typical ATS functions, but it also offers one-click job postings, automated communication tools, mobile-optimized branded career portals, and social media publishing. Heck, you can even get your employees involved in the recruiting process through automated job posts to their own social media accounts.
2. Workable
Workable’s online ATS is widely noted for its intuitive interface and ease of use.
“It’s easy to set up new jobs and move candidates along in the hiring process,” says Nicholas Smith, CEO of Geo Owl, which uses Workable for its recruiting process.
Smith’s favorite aspect of the ATS? The “applicant timeline.”
“All emails are routed through Workable so all parties are completely up to date on the communications that have gone back and forth, including notes and interview feedback,” Smith explains.
3. Zoho Recruit
Zoho Recruit is a powerful ATS tailored for use by both corporate HR departments and agency recruiters.
On the corporate HR end, Zoho’s most impressive feature is the activity stream, which captures a log of all the activities taken with regard to a particular candidate. Agency recruiters may be most interested in Zoho’s capacity to manage relationships with both candidates and clients in the same platform.
4. Bullhorn
Where Bullhorn really stands out is its customizability. All great ATSs can be customized to some degree, but Bullhorn really molds itself to each organization’s particular needs.
“Bullhorn was adopted by our company much faster than I thought it would be,” says Ann Bartnik, vice president of client services at MedSys Group. “It was just so easy to use, and it was so customizable that we could make it fit our exact business model. We could incorporate our lingo and our processes and everything about our business into Bullhorn, and that made a huge difference in the adoption rate.”
5. Jobvite Hire
Is speed of hire important to you? Jobvite may be just the ATS you’re looking for, as the company’s customers see an average decrease of 27 percent in time-to-fill. This is due in part to Jobvite’s focus on streamlining the recruiting process: The platform can automatically schedule interviews, and it gives recruiters access to easy-to-navigate dashboards that allow them to complete critical action steps in no time.
6. PCRecruiter
According to Daniel Miller, vice president of recruiting for Empowered Staffing, PCRecruiter is the best ATS option for headhunters and agencies.
“[I]t allows individuals to become clients or candidates versus just having one large candidate pool,” Miller explains. “It also does not lump all candidates together. It separates them out by company, which is a huge advantage if you are looking to target candidates from certain companies.”
7. Recruiterbox
Small businesses may want to check out Recruiterbox. Its value, ease of use, and powerful features make it a perfect choice for organizations operating on a smaller scale, according to Jonathan Marsh, owner of the small business Home Helpers of Bradenton.
“The balance of services and support of Recruiterbox at the monthly price we pay for services is just right for our small business,” Marsh explains. “Recruiterbox is very intuitive, making it easy for all staff members involved in recruiting and hiring to track candidates, contact candidates, schedule interviews, etc. Collaboration is very simple, allowing all involved to see the communications, comments, and activity of their colleagues surrounding each candidate.”
Some of Marsh’s favorite features include email templates, mass communications, bulk resume processing, and automatic parsing.
8. JazzHR
For those who want to give candidates an excellent experience during the hiring process, uShip recruiter Angie Meier suggests JazzHR.
“When we began our business expansion, we were able to quickly command a ton of top performers,” Meier explains. “Applicant emails started to stack up, though, causing major delays in our ability to respond, engage, and retain these top performers, who expected speedy, personalized communications. Some applicants felt especially snubbed and left poor reviews on Glassdoor. JazzHR is fantastic because it’s all about branding and giving candidates a 5-star experience. I saw that we could use their email and reporting tools to create a tactical hiring practice that targets performers. In one year, we almost doubled in size, having accelerated average hiring time by 400 percent. There’s no way I could have done that without the reporting, branding, and communication tools in JazzHR.”
9. BambooHR
PC Magazine named BambooHR one of the top 10 ATSs of 2017, and we’d have to agree.
BambooHR’s reporting features are particularly noteworthy, as they can give recruiters insight into which job descriptions perform best, which sources yield the most candidates, and more. In this way, BambooHR enables recruiters to fine-tune their strategies in order to optimize the candidate experience and maximize their quality of hire.
10. Jobscience
Jobscience specializes in “CRM-based recruiting.” Built on Force.com – the cloud platform that powers Salesforce –Jobscience emphasizes relationship management above all else. Treat candidates like customers and deliver the best possible experience in order to woo the cream of the crop to your corner.