February 17, 2023

In today’s tight job market, landing top talent is getting harder and more costly to achieve. Perhaps the greatest challenges in recruitment are finding applicants with the right skills and reducing the cost per hire. What if we told you that it’s easier to achieve than you might think? All you need is a decent Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to get you to the top of your game. We promise it will revolutionize your results and your day-to-day! An Applicant Tracking System is the most effective tool for organizing recruitment processes. Using an ATS, just from time savings alone, you can considerably reduce the cost per hire. But there are other ways an ATS contributes to better hires while keeping costs down. Why Is the Cost per Hire Important? Cost per hire is one of the most critical metrics in talent analytics. It tells you the average amount of money spent on each new hire and measures all the costs involved in the hiring process (external and internal costs and onboarding). It is calculated by adding the relevant costs over a given time and then dividing this by the number of hires in the same period. So why is cost per hire such an important KPI? Recruitment isn’t cheap. Data from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) says the average cost per hire is nearly $4,700! With accurate cost-per-hire information, recruiters can identify the most effective pipelines for winning candidates and gain insights into where they are most effective. Then recruiters can make more informed decisions about where to allocate their resources when hiring new employees in the future. Five Sure-Fire Ways an ATS Will Reduce Your Cost per Hire Applicant Tracking Systems enable recruiters to streamline workflows and ensure all steps in the hiring process are carried out efficiently and effectively. When a recruiter can attract, source, engage with, and hire the right candidates faster, it naturally reduces the cost per hire simply through time saved. So, the first question you are likely pondering is: Are the costs of an ATS justified? In short, yes! SaaS (Software as a Service) provides a financially viable solution. There is no heavy initial outlay or ongoing development costs. Instead, subscription fees are charged monthly or annually, enabling recruitment agencies or corporates to spread the costs. And besides, the costs of a SaaS ATS are quickly superseded by efficiency savings and winning the best talent. So, how exactly does an ATS reduce cost per hire? 1. Increased Quality of Hire Quality of hire is a vital KPI. Let’s face it, efficiencies are only valuable if it leads to the best-matched candidates being put forward for ideal roles. You can select as many people for a job screening as you like, but if no candidates get picked for an interview or are hired, a lot of time and money is wasted. This kind of sloppy recruiting increases cost per hire instead of reducing it. An ATS instantly improves your job posting reach and increases your ability to attract highly skilled and qualified employees. You can post to multiple job boards in an instant, automatically filter and scan resumes to match candidates to roles, streamline processes, and communicate with candidates much more effectively, improving the candidate experience. Also, with an ATS, all relevant information is available in one place. It makes data tracking and locating appropriately qualified candidates quicker and easier. Skills profiling allows for highly targeted results. An ATS funnels the most suitable candidates. You get information about potential job seekers more quickly and can use tags to sort and find the best-quality candidates for specific roles. You can send messages, create workflows, adjust candidate status, and assign tasks to different people with ease. According to the leadership site, the Happy Manager, for 80% of recruiters, the quality of hire improved when they used an applicant tracking system. That’s a pretty good endorsement, don’t you think? 2. Automate Tasks One of the most powerful benefits of an ATS is automation. You’ll be all too aware that conventional processing and hiring procedures are incredibly time-consuming. The automation of many tasks, such as posting and listing on job boards, parsing resumes, filtering out unsuitable candidates, and notifying candidates of the next steps in the recruitment process, can happen in a matter of minutes, not several hours. Take Tracker, for example - you can upload job listings on multiple job sites in just a few clicks! An ATS can automate so many processes, from candidate screening and interview scheduling to email communications. With Tracker, you can customize email, text, and workflow sequences, auto-match candidates to jobs, auto-engage, auto-parse, set up job-specific or generic job site watchdogs and alerts, and build data through automatically triggered web forms and surveys. Workflow automation doesn’t get any better! 3. Build a Talent Pool Building a refined and well-nurtured talent pipeline is much easier within an ATS. With ready-to-hire talent in the pipeline, the need to advertise is eliminated, candidates can be put forward immediately, and hires secured faster. So, how does an ATS help to achieve this? The key to great talent pooling is information retention. With an ATS, candidates are entered into a system that enables you to track, rate, and segment unplaced talent. There is also a powerful search facility, meaning you can scan hundreds of resumes on job boards and social media, and quickly review candidates’ experience, skills, and qualifications. Locating talent quickly and more effectively reduces the time to hire and cuts costs. With Tracker, you can search for candidates using over 80 filterable fields, full Boolean and Semantic search, and radius geo-coding. Scanning your database is fast, relevant, and comprehensive, meaning every potential hire is on the radar. 4. Gather Insights and Knowledge Minimizing costs relies on building a better understanding of your business. Looking at ways to reduce your cost per hire means you must be able to quickly review and drill down into critical information. Such insights don’t just magically appear! A cool feature of an ATS is its reporting and analytics. Tracker offers an array of standard reports and a custom reporting wizard, which enables you to extract data from any field and report on trends. Recruiters can turn reports into tables or charts with a simple click. They can also view reports individually or as part of a series from an easy-to-use dashboard, schedule favorite reports, and get them emailed to themselves and team members daily, weekly, or monthly. With all this information at your fingertips, you can spot gaps in the hiring process, review the effectiveness of hiring sources, identify staff support needs, and evaluate low-quality hires to prevent them from happening in the future. 5. Streamline Processes, and Save Money on Other Apps and Tools The automation of tasks can really take the load off recruiters. This means they can spend more time on other essential hiring tasks, such as offering more support to candidates, building relationships, and improving candidate experience to prevent dropouts. What is more, with an ATS, recruiters don’t have to manage multiple processes across a variety of different Apps and tools. It’s not unheard of for recruiters to use several different tools with multiple usernames and passwords! There could be spreadsheets, scheduling apps, project management software, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and more. With your information and processes in multiple places, there’s duplication of tasks, more chance of mistakes, and it’s easier for candidates to fall through the cracks. An ATS incorporates many of the functions previously managed by third-party tools. This saves time not having to switch between applications, reduces the chance of errors, and saves money overall. Tracker goes a step further than most applicant tracking systems, offering integrated ATS, CRM, and Recruitment Automation software. Tracker can help your team create better relationships, streamline processes, improve the quality of hire, and reduce cost per hire. Why not get a Demo and see how.

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5 Sure-Fire Ways an ATS Will Reduce Your Cost per Hire