Modern ATS’s (Applicant Tracking Systems) … What’s Changed?

Technology that automates and optimizes the recruiting process can certainly be confusing with respect to solution labels and categories. Applicant Tracking Systems or ATS’s can now find, source, proactively engage and evaluate the suitability of prospective talent, including those not “on the market” or passive candidates. The subset of ATS’s that include “Recruitment Marketing” capabilities can then be leveraged to stay connected to targeted talent, create communities of value to keep them engaged, communicate personalized messages that market an organization’s brand and culture, and track what types of communications and outreach efforts work best with different types of candidates and roles.

Really? Yes, really!

This is one of the main ways ATS’s (aka Talent Acquisition Technology) evolved in recent years. While a traditional ATS automates the application process for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers, and provides a repository to search for relevant applicants, it doesn’t allow you to market to your candidates. A CRM capability -- within or outside an ATS -- allows you to create a private talent pool and automate the nurturing of job candidates. The two tools serve different, but interconnected purposes and they complement each other. Today’s active candidate is tomorrow’s passive candidate and CRM functionality helps you easily deliver the right message, to the right people, at the right time.

Recruiters now utilize technology (sometimes included within an ATS platform) to go where potentially relevant talent is, and not just prominent social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube, but also discussion boards, on-line forums and blogging sites where comments can be as useful as the posts themselves for identifying exceptional talent. Of course social media and mobile computing go hand-in-hand with almost all early-career job seekers and passive candidates, and with arguably the majority of mid and later-career talent as well. These are the vehicles for starting the engagement process with relevant candidates, but inherent system intelligence is often what closes the deal in terms of getting the best talent to consider a certain organization and/or role. It’s the system intelligence, a vital component missing from the first wave of ATS’s on the market, which guides the employer / recruiter on the best ways to engage with each person on their radar … what message will resonate and entice the most, across content, style, medium and frequency.

Additionally, the screening and interview process can now readily be technology-enabled with video interviews, sometimes built around validated predictive communication patterns; and these systems don’t stop delivering value when a hire is made, as analytics can now link job performance and retention back to sourcing channels and screening methods to highlight those that are most effective for different roles.

Navigating a Complicated Vendor Landscape

There are likely at least 15 Applicant Tracking System (“ATS”) purveyors with a 1% market share or greater, led by such established players as Taleo/Oracle with perhaps over a 30% market share, Brassring (Kenexa, IBM), iCims, Jobvite, ADP, SAP/SuccessFactors, PeopleFluent and Silkroad. Additionally, the landscape includes other relatively mature ATS offerings from PeopleSoft, Ultimate Software, Lumesse and Kronos … plus more recently launched recruiting solutions from HCM  powerhouses Cornerstone OnDemand and Workday. Additionally, several smaller operators are gaining serious traction such as Greenhouse, Lever, SmartRecruiters, HireBridge, ATS OnDemand, PCRecruiter and ApplicantPro.

And  rounding-out the broader solution category are the well-known brands with a heritage in job boards -- Monster, CareerBuilder and Dice … and the emerging recruitment marketing sub-category players Avature, Jibe, Broadbean, Findly, Smashfly, Talemetry, etc.

Obviously it’s a fairly cluttered and complex recruiting technology market; which is why it’s recommended that prospective customers go through the typically laborious due diligence process of mapping their most acute talent acquisition pain points and challenges to solution vendors with relevant capabilities – as tangibly demonstrated in product demo’s. Narrowing the field to a short list for detailed evaluation should then involve examining factors such as product investment patterns, efficacy of the vendor’s customer success model, pricing, proposed SLA frameworks, findings from customer reference calls -- and the sometimes (perilously) overlooked -- alignment of company cultures.