Ultimately, an organization is only as good as the people who work there. A company can have a great product, but if they don’t have the right people in marketing, getting consumers to hear about their product and buy it will be nearly impossible. A business might be led by a true visionary, but if that leader surrounds themselves with subpar candidates, then that business is likely to fail. That’s why so many organizations invest so much in finding the right candidates.
Hiring can take a lot of time, though, distracting management from focusing on their core tasks and responsibilities. Many businesses hire a recruiting agency, but then that agency needs all the right tools to simplify the many hiring processes it executes on behalf of its clients. Whether you’re looking to level up the hiring practices at your small business, want a new tool to streamline workflows at your recruiting agency or want to make your work as an HR professional easier, the answer just might be a new applicant tracking system.
What Is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?
An ATS is a recruiting solution that can optimize and streamline an organization’s recruiting and hiring processes. A business or a recruiting agency can funnel recruiting and hiring through an ATS, using it as a central hub for job openings and applications.
An effective ATS can make the tasks of hiring managers and recruitment teams much easier and more efficient. An ATS can facilitate an expedited, repeatable way of making effective job postings, bringing in numerous applications. Furthermore, by tracking candidates from when they apply up to the hiring phase, an ATS allows recruiters to identify and engage the best candidates efficiently.
An applicant tracking system can also improve the candidate experience, bringing positive benefits for job seekers and applicants, too, as the best ATS solutions come with scheduling and correspondence tools that make communication and collaboration easy. Lastly, the best ATS solutions are highly integrable, so they work well with other tools a hiring team or HR department might use.
ATS vs. Other CRM Tools
Of course, an applicant tracking system isn’t the only tool an organization might use for communication and workflows. There are numerous customer relationship management (CRM) systems that can have similar features. A typical CRM system centralizes customer data, logs and monitors interactions, and helps sales, marketing and customer service departments improve customer relationships. An effective CRM tool provides a unified platform for managing contact information, tracking sales, automating tasks and analyzing data.
An ATS offers many of these features, too. However, an ATS focuses on the recruiting process. The data it tracks relates to job applicants. An effective ATS serves as a recruiting software, an interview scheduling solution and a useful tool during the onboarding process.
How Does an Applicant Tracking System Work?
So, applicant tracking systems make the hiring process more efficient and make it easier to find qualified candidates. But how exactly does ATS software work?
An ATS can help a recruiter or hiring manager sift through resumes, CVs and applications efficiently, keeping track of the job candidates with the most promise. A good ATS makes it simple to identify and communicate job requirements and search applications for those requirements, whether they’re specific skills, work experience or education.
Moreover, the best ATS software makes all this information easily digestible, providing an at-a-glance view of each potential employee’s status and offering clear next steps to bring a new hire on board. Let’s look at three distinct phases of the process and examine how an ATS works in the recruiting, hiring and onboarding processes.
Recruiting
With automation tools, an ATS helps post and amplify job openings to multiple job boards. It can collect and organize candidates’ applications, saving hiring managers and recruiters valuable time. Using technology such as AI, an ATS can process large numbers of application documents, searching for keywords in each resume, narrowing down hundreds of job candidates to the select few who have the critical credentials.
For example, a recruiter can use an ATS to refine and collaborate on the perfect job description and then post it on numerous job sites, widening the potential talent pool. Let’s say the recruiter is looking for a candidate who has at least a bachelor’s degree and conflict resolution as a skill. The ATS can automatically search for the keywords “bachelor’s” and “conflict resolution,” and then manually review the applications that mention these.
Application Management
Recruiters and hiring managers can use an ATS to parse, sort and rank candidates. And with a centralized hub for communicating with candidates, recruitment and hiring teams can make sure their top candidates don’t slip through the cracks.
Interviews often come next, and a good ATS makes it easy to schedule these. Whether they’re in-person or video interviews for remote teams, recruiters and hirers can use the hub to coordinate with one another and the job candidates.
Onboarding New Hires
After the recruiters have made their choice and agreed to terms with a candidate, the next step is getting the new employee up to speed. An ATS is great for storing and disseminating all the essential documents a new employee needs to get started. And if the ATS has texting and email built in, recruiters have the necessary tools needed to communicate what they need effectively.
Why Recruiters Use Applicant Tracking Systems
Here are some of the key ATS features that benefit recruiting teams and agencies:
Centralized Information
Centralized information is a core feature of applicant tracking systems. An ATS that provides a centralized hub can collect relevant candidate data, such as resumes, cover letters, contact information, interview notes and communication history. An ATS then stores all that information in a single database.
For recruiters, this means no longer having to sift through emails, spreadsheets or physical files to find what they need. With quick access to a candidate’s complete history, including all interactions with the company or agency, recruiters and hiring managers can deliver a more personalized and informed candidate experience.
It’s possible to see the full context of a candidate’s journey, including interview feedback from other team members, which helps make a more confident and timely hiring decision.
Document Sharing
Document sharing within an ATS allows for easy and secure distribution of candidate-related files among the hiring or recruitment team. This simplifies the process of sharing resumes and other materials, eliminating the need for email attachments that can easily get lost. It also ensures that everyone is looking at the most current version of a document.
This accessibility speeds up the review process and enables faster feedback. It also helps in keeping all interviewers on the same page, as they all have access to the same information before meeting a candidate.
Streamlining
The automation and simplification of repetitive and time-consuming tasks streamline the hiring process. This includes resume screening, interview scheduling and sending automated rejection emails. For recruiters, this frees up a significant amount of time, allowing them to focus on more strategic activities like sourcing top talent, building relationships with candidates and conducting high-quality interviews.
It also helps reduce the chance of human error. For hiring managers, streamlining means a faster and more efficient hiring process. Automated scheduling, for example, reduces the tedious back-and-forth communication required to set up an interview. A streamlined workflow means they get to see qualified candidates sooner and can make a hiring decision quicker, which can be crucial in a competitive job market.
Standardization
Standardization ensures every step of the hiring process is consistent for all candidates and across all open positions. Standardized application forms, structured interview scorecards and uniform evaluation criteria can help ensure a fair and equitable process for all applicants, which is essential for diversity and inclusion efforts.
It also makes it easier to compare candidates because you can evaluate them all against the same set of criteria. Standardized interview scorecards provide a clear and objective way to evaluate a candidate’s skills and qualifications, reducing the risk of unconscious bias. This leads to more data-driven and objective hiring decisions and helps recruiters select the best candidates based on merit and not on subjective factors.
Tracking of Metrics
Metric tracking enables an ATS to collect and analyze data on various aspects of the recruitment process. This includes metrics such as time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, candidate source effectiveness and offer acceptance rates. For recruiters, this data provides valuable insights into what’s working and what’s not in their recruitment strategy. It helps them identify bottlenecks in the process, determine the most effective sourcing channels and optimize their efforts to be more efficient.
These metrics can help you understand the efficiency of the recruitment process for specific roles. For example, you can see how long it takes to fill a position and identify areas for improvement. This data helps you make better resource planning decisions and justifies the need for additional recruiting support or changes to the hiring process.
What To Look for in an Applicant Tracking System
When evaluating different ATS options, it’s important to select a solution that can meet the needs of your organization or recruiting agency. Here are some key features that are valuable to many recruiters and HR teams:
- Applicant tracking and recruiting: An effective ATS allows users to create and manage job postings, distribute them to multiple major job boards and social media platforms and track applicants through a customizable hiring workflow. Features for screening candidates with pre-screen and knockout questions, as well as interview scheduling tools, can be major time-savers.
- Onboarding: A good ATS can facilitate paperless onboarding, allowing organizations to manage new-hire paperwork, create checklists and use e-signatures for documents.
- Communication: Email templates and texting features allow for quick communication with candidates and new hires, which can increase response rates and reduce no-shows.
- Reporting and analytics: The best applicant tracking systems provide customizable reports and dashboards to track key recruitment metrics, helping businesses and agencies identify issues within their processes and make data-driven decisions.
- Customization: Effective ATS software is highly customizable, allowing companies to create branded career pages, tailored workflows and custom questionnaires to fit their specific hiring needs.
How To Choose the Right Applicant Tracking System for Recruiters
To choose the right ATS solution for your recruiting agency or organization, consider following the steps:
1. Establish What You Need From an Applicant Tracking System
With so much business-focused software available, it’s important to invest in solutions that deliver specifically what your company needs. What do you feel is holding your hiring process back? What insights do you hope to gain? Are you focused on making communication and education easier? Or do you want AI and automation tools that make sorting candidates easier? Or maybe both?
Sit down with your team and figure it out. If you’re part of a recruitment agency, talk to the other recruiters to find out where they struggle. For an organization with an in-house recruitment team, find out what aspects of the candidate-sourcing, interviewing and onboarding processes aren’t operating as efficiently as they could.
2. Find an ATS With the Features You Need
Once you know what features you need, you can find an ATS that delivers them. It’s important not to be wowed by chic appearances or brand names if the software itself doesn’t have the features you’ve previously identified as being salient.
3. Prioritize the Ease of Use
Many applicant tracking systems have similar features. Then it comes down to selecting the one that’s easy to use. For this, it’s best to focus on options that come with a demo session where someone from the company that built the ATS can walk you through it and show you how it works.
4. Consider Customization
Whether you run a recruiting agency or HR for a business, you know your organization is unique. The way you and your team do things won’t be the same as another company’s processes. That’s why it’s best to invest in an ATS that’s easily customizable so that it delivers exactly what you need precisely when you need it.
5. Think About Scalability
Most companies want to grow. As you do, will your ATS be able to keep up with you? You don’t want to invest in a new ATS every other year, so it’s best to go with an option that can scale up as your business does.
6. Determine What Integrations You Need in an Applicant Tracking System
One of the great things about an ATS is that it doesn’t silo information; all the information an effective applicant tracking system collects is easily accessible to everyone on the recruitment, hiring and onboarding teams. But that’s of limited use if that information only stays in the ATS. Integrability with other platforms and applications makes for a smoother, more efficient workflow.
7. Examine What Reporting and Analytics an ATS Offers
“Tracking data” is important, but what data, and why? When seeing a demonstration of an ATS, make sure to ask about the analytics features, such as what data the system can monitor and what you can do with that information.
8. Factor in Compliance Requirements
If you operate in a sphere with a lot of regulation, or help organizations that do, it’s important to always consider compliance. For example, when hiring in the healthcare sector, it’s crucial that an ATS provides the security and features required to remain compliant.
Why Recruiters Choose ApplicantStack
ApplicantStack has all the features mentioned in the blog and more. It stores all data in a centralized hub that’s easily accessible. Furthermore, all that information is highly visible thanks to an easy-to-read dashboard. We offer demos and free trials, so recruiters can get to know ApplicantStack and how it works before making a commitment.
See ApplicantStack in Action
Words are great, but if you really want to understand how a top-of-the-line applicant tracking system can help your recruiting efforts, you should see how ApplicantStack works. Schedule a demo today and see for yourself.
- How to Build a Consistent, Compliant Hiring Process Across Locations - April 15, 2026
- How an Applicant Tracking System Helps Reduce Hiring Bias - April 8, 2026
- Top Hiring Metrics Every Employer Should Be Tracking in 2026 - April 1, 2026
