Applicant tracking systems (ATS) help organize large numbers of applications to keep recruiters’ workflow streamlined and less stressful. Large companies have been using this technology for years to keep track of their potential hires, and smaller businesses are beginning to use this technology as well. As such, it’s important to understand what an ATS can and can’t do for your recruiting operation.

What exactly does an ATS do? On the hiring side, it consolidates candidate information into a user-friendly format so that it’s easy to find and easy to contact potential hires. For the candidate, it provides a clutter-free interface on which to put their application materials. As companies grow beyond the scope of manual database maintenance and outreach, an ATS is almost a must-have to keep track of candidate flow.

Here’s where an ATS doesn’t help you: It doesn’t have the functionality to filter out unsuitable candidates. So hiring managers and recruiters still have to sift through potentially hundreds of resumes to find someone who may be the right fit for their company.

And that’s speaking simply skills-wise. From a resume and a cover letter, determining company fit is almost a fool’s errand; companies currently use interviews to weed out the final candidates, but these also take time.

The goal of the hiring process is finding the right fit between prospective employees and companies. No matter how well organized an ATS may keep candidates, most will not help you determine fit with a given business. 

Pre-hire assessments at the sourcing stage are better equipped to figure out which candidates you should be talking to before they ever get entered into your ATS. Personality assessment tools measure critical attributes such as cultural fit, and environment fit, which are practically impossible to suss out from a resume but are as critical as skills and experience when it comes to successful hiring.

If you choose to use an assessment tool in conjunction with an ATS, you’ll get a curated list of candidates with which you can manage correspondence with ease.

Submitted by SquarePegHires.