How an ATS Can Slash Your Firm’s Rising Recruitment Costs

Recruitment is in a strange place right now. The labor market is bucking trends. At a time of economic uncertainty, soaring inflation and rising interest rates, the labor market is surprisingly stable, and the demand for workers is strong. 

Now the race for talent is fiercer than ever, but the cost of hiring new employees is rising. In the current economic climate, recruiters are caught between snapping up the best hires and preventing recruitment costs from spiraling. 

Meeting both demands is a tough ask, but don’t despair. An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is THE ULTIMATE recruitment game changer – it will leverage up your recruitment game and save you big bucks at the same time.

How Much Does Recruitment Cost?

Chair-elect Edie Goldberg at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) says that while the average cost per hire is often quoted to be around the $4,700 mark, the total cost to hire a new employee could be much higher – up to three or four times the position’s salary. This means a firm with a job vacancy salaried at $60,000 could spend as much as $180,000 to fill that role!

Four Ways an ATS Will Slash Recruitment Costs

1. Stamp Out Inefficiencies and Claw Back Time

Leaving a role unfilled for weeks is detrimental to business, and a lengthy hiring process is a turn-off for candidates. For recruiters and HR teams, time is money, so filling vacancies in the shortest amount of time possible is essential. Time-to-hire is a crucial metric for a good reason. 

A slow and clogged hiring process wastes a lot of time. With the pressure on to cut rising recruitment costs, recruiters can no longer afford to ignore inefficiencies and bottlenecks that have been baked into the hiring process. 

An ATS eliminates many day-to-day inefficiencies that have become accepted as the norm simply by automating menial tasks. With an ATS, workflows get streamlined, and the workload is instantly reduced, giving recruiters more control over processes and more time to focus on building relationships.

Here are just some of the ways an ATS saves time:

• Automated resume parsing saves hours of time reviewing CVs
• Email templates, message triggers and automated email sequences make email comms so much more efficient
• An easy-to-use single dashboard facilitates quick and smooth collaboration
• Increased visibility of the hiring pipeline means bottlenecks and snags get nipped in the bud
• Automated job board posting and searching eradicates this time-consuming manual task
• Video interviewing improves interview efficiency by 60 per cent
• Easy reporting and data analytics keep recruiters on the front foot
• Automated web forms and surveys save hours of admin time
• System integration means no more manual inputting of candidate information in several places

With a smoother and faster hiring pipeline, candidates get put forward for positions faster. Automated responses mean steps in the hiring process get completed quicker, keeping applicants interested and engaged, and minimizing dropouts – a no-brainer in today’s tight job market. As a result, an ATS increases speed to market, reduces time to fill positions, and enables recruiters to make more hires.

2. Build Stronger Communication for Slicker Recruitment

As already mentioned, dropouts in the hiring pipeline are costly. Strong communication is essential in preventing candidates from losing interest and going elsewhere. In today’s job market, candidates expect professional and timely responses. Slow responses can cue candidates to cut their losses and put effort into another application.

To keep your candidates keen, you must be focused, offer support, and, most importantly, keep in close contact. The hiring pipeline is an important aspect of the new job journey, so candidates will be seeking reassurance they are joining the right company. And robust communication works both ways – recruiters will gain insights into candidate competency throughout the hiring process.

An ATS supercharges communication and candidate engagement. Using time-based or behavior-based triggers, an ATS can automatically send timely, relevant, and personalized email or text messages that inform, nurture and engage candidates. As a result, communication is strengthened significantly, and recruiters can be alerted immediately when a candidate goes off the radar and hasn’t responded. No one falls through the cracks.

Alerts also mean recruiters can add in the human touch at optimal times.

3. Sharpen Searches, Match Skills Better and Understand Candidate Values

Americans were quitting their jobs at historic levels during the pandemic. And still, according to research by McKinsey, two out of five employees say they are considering leaving in the next three to six months.

But people don’t quit their jobs without good reason. Statistics by Zippia found four significant causes. 

• Increased job openings gave employees more options for where to work
• People burned out during the pandemic, causing them to re-evaluate work-life balance
• Lockdowns made many employees realize they preferred to work remotely
• Others re-evaluated their lives during the pandemic, realizing they were overworked, underpaid, or undervalued, causing them to switch jobs

Another survey of employees who quit their jobs during the pandemic found that one-third (34 per cent) did so because the company’s mission no longer aligned with their values.

You may be wondering what this has to do with an ATS. Let’s go back to the point ‘people don’t quit their jobs without good reason’. 

We know people are re-evaluating what they want from life and their jobs. Yet, according to McKinsey, “Employers continue to rely on traditional levers to attract and retain people, including compensation, titles, and advancement opportunities.” 

McKinsey argues that employers must now take a multipronged approach to reach different talent pools and “showcase different facets of their employee value proposition to a broader number of workers.” This means understanding candidate values, getting more creative with offers, and growing more varied talent pipelines.

More and more, recruiters must go deeper to understand what they are looking for and attract candidates with targeted campaigns. It means matching skillsets with skill requirements in a much more refined way and looking beyond the go-to job boards and traditional talent pools.

A sophisticated ATS, such as Tracker’s, intelligently places ads on hundreds of job boards, trawls job boards for candidates while you sleep, and automatically invites potential candidates to sign up for your newsletter, growing your talent pool. In addition, automated screening tools scan hundreds of candidates and create a shortlist of possible matches, taking the heavy work out of candidate matching. It also removes the unconscious bias that creeps in when applications and resumes are vetted manually.

Searching for candidates with an ATS is fast and easy. Tracker’s Boolean Search gets you unrivalled intelligent results in a fraction of a second, and a semantic search engine puts you in control of the terms that matter.

4. Maximize Use of Data and Optimize Your Feedback Loop

Getting ahead of the competition means you must stay on top of the patterns and trends in your field. Candidate feedback, and if you are a recruitment firm, client feedback, too, is essential for improving hiring processes.

By listening to your candidates (and clients), you can identify pain points, learn more about expectations and preferences, and use this information to enhance the hiring experience.

An ATS provides you with a customizable survey tool, enabling you to create surveys that are relevant and easy to complete. Then, response-based triggers ensure surveys get sent at optimal times.

Applicant tracking systems also equip you with a powerful data and reporting suite. In-depth reports and analytics are instrumental in tightening processes and evaluating success. And with a great ATS, analyzing data won’t take up time. 

Tracker’s scheduled reporting, for example, automatically gets your favorite reports collated and delivered to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly. And from Tracker’s easy-to-use dashboard, you can quickly review and drill down into critical information whenever needed.

Take your recruiting to the next level and slash recruitment costs with Tracker’s ATS.

We will help you save time and money, so that securing the top talent you need becomes a breeze. So, call our friendly team now. We’d love to help you succeed.