Pros and Cons of Using an Applicant Tracking System

Applicant Tracking System Applicant tracking systems are also known as ATS that are essentially recruitment software systems that enable electronic managing of an enterprise’s hiring needs. Such systems allow businesses to gain information and intel and filter them by skills, experience, and other qualities. Such recruiting software help in a lot of ways to save time for the recruiters in large companies and even smaller ones and you don’t exhaust the tie of the applicants as well as the recruiters.

An ATS integration facilitates better hires faster in a highly optimized and clear recruiting process. Below given are the advantages and disadvantages of using such a system and software. No matter how good something looks on the surface, it can always have underlying problems that are waiting to be found out. It is our job to find them out at an early stage as prevention definitely is better than cure in such cases and then decide and weigh both sides and know what works for you.

Pros

1. Very time saving — Such technology saves a lot of time for the recruiters and this is mostly because they help you single out applicants on the basis of a lot of separate skills, experience, and other qualities that you specifically require. This results in saving time for both, the applicants and the companies. 2. Helps to cut down bias and discrimination — No matter how much a company says it doesn’t discriminate and provides everyone with equal opportunities, somewhere, the bias does come into action when there is a difficult choice to be made. This is very prevalent when choosing males over females and younger over older. This also comes into play when people have ethnic names and looks. Such systems can help prevent this kind of bias and discrimination.

3. Improves quality of hire — The biggest advantage to companies is that it shows some of the best hires that match your specifications and requirement. You can ask any recruiter and they will give you an answer that more than 60% of the applications are unuseful as they are irrelevant. The benefit of ATS integration is that it shows the best applications as per your requirements.

Cons

1. Automatic elimination of resumes — The resumes that have a different and non-typical and extraordinary format are canceled instantly in the very beginning itself because the ATS can’t decipher them as easily. Even if fancy text styles are used they can’t be recognized by the system, and get eliminated.
2. 2. Highly Dependant on Keywords — These systems have algorithms that identify predefined phrases and keywords in the applications. This however can backfire when a candidate is highly qualified or uses a different format and ways.
3. 3. Technical issues — It is AI but that does not mean that it is immune to technical issues that can result in the slipping of very good candidates and applicants. This can eventually be termed as a loss in investment as you are investing in an ATS expecting returns in the form of great applicants.