15 Best Applicant Tracking Systems and Software Tools of 2024

You run a hyper growth startup. Things are going great and you’re closing new customers left, right, and center, faster than ever. Now, you need to hire more people to keep the well-oiled machine that is your business running smoothly.

So, you create job descriptions for the positions you need to fill and advertise them on LinkedIn, Indeed, and other job boards.

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you know what comes next: a flood of applications.

On average, 118 people apply to every job posting. Multiply that by the number of open positions you have to fill and the problem becomes obvious: how do you keep track of all these applicants?

Enter applicant tracking systems (ATS).

If you’ve ever had to deal with the headache of wrangling applicant data manually using spreadsheets and calendars, applicant tracking systems may just be the solution you’ve been searching for.

Besides organizing and keeping track of applicant information, some applicant tracking software come with resume scanners that can filter applications so that you only have to look at the resumes of applicants that meet all your criteria.

Of the 75% of recruiters and hiring managers that use ATS, 94% say it has improved their hiring processes.

There are several other benefits of applicant tracking systems and several options to choose from; so, you’re sure to find something that works for you.

Best Applicant Tracking Systems and Software Tools

There are abundant applicant tracking tools out there. In this article, we've researched and reviewed 15 of the best applicant tracking software to help you choose the right one for your business. Let’s get started.

1. SmartRecruiters

Best Applicant Tracking Software for Ease-of-use and User Interface

SmartRecruiters helps recruiters make better hiring decisions. It promises—and delivers—benefits such as improved collaboration in hiring teams, improved candidate experience, increased productivity for recruiters, and many others.

SmartRecruiters provides companies with branded career sites. The website builder features a drag-and-drop interface, making it possible for non-developers to build career sites. Websites can be deployed to any device, from mobile to desktop.

You can also post job descriptions to over 200 job boards. Candidates can apply easily in a single click either by adding their Indeed or LinkedIn profiles or uploading their resumes.

Your candidates gain access to a branded candidate portal where they can fill out applications, contact recruiters, and stay informed about the status of their application. With the portal, candidates enjoy complete transparency of the hiring process.

Collaboration among interviewers, hiring managers and recruiters is encouraged by the presence of a social feed. The hiring team can provide feedback on candidates, exchange notes privately, and receive alerts about upcoming interviews.

They also have access to each candidate's profile, including resumes, applications, comments, background check results, and interview notes, all in one place.

Company employees can refer friends or former co-workers as job candidates through SmartRecruiters' advanced Referrals Engine. You can also manage all your recruiting activities from one platform, from scheduling interviews to requesting background checks or comparing feedback on candidates from the hiring team.

You can source candidates on LinkedIn Referrals portal. SmartRecuiters allows you to keep track of candidate applications and communications from LinkedIn right within the platform.

You can also optimize your hiring process using SmartRecuiters' analytics tool. You can measure important metrics such as candidate demographics, job board performance, and advertising spend, all within the platform. You can then share insights with the hiring team or company executives.

SmartRecuiters also features a Native Interviewing Scheduler. It allows recruiters to automatically find open interview slots across multiple interviewers' schedules. In addition to scheduling resources and rooms, it provides free/busy checks. The scheduler syncs with Outlook and Google calendars.

With mobile apps for Android and iOS, recruiters and hiring managers can remain productive even outside the office. Although SmartRecuiters does not feature native onboarding and video interviewing, you can easily add these capabilities through third-party integrations.

Pricing

SmartRecuiters does not publish any pricing information publicly. Contact them for a custom quote.

Pros

• Offers an extensive integration marketplace that includes over 350 pre-built integrated third-party tools
• Small businesses can take advantage of the free SmartStart plan
• Social feed encourages collaboration among members of the hiring team.

Cons

• Not suitable for companies with low-volume hiring needs

2. Greenhouse

Best ATS for Automating Recruiting and Hiring Tasks

Greenhouse is an end-to-end platform that streamlines recruiting activities by helping you plan hiring processes, source job applications, manage interviews, and organize post-hiring activities such as onboarding. Greenhouse also offers professional recruiting services.

The Greenhouse ATS can help you make a positive impression on applicants and new hires. Instead of making a phone call or sending individual emails to each applicant, you can send interview invites to promising candidates via the interview scheduling function. The applicants can then use a self-service tool to choose the most convenient date and time for their interview.

Greenhouse's robust onboarding features allow new hires to fill out forms and documents at their convenience through a self-service portal.

New hires also get access to a welcome hub that provides links to useful information, introduces them to their team members, and tracks the number of HR hours saved by using the system. And, with the mobile app, hiring teams can remain productive anywhere they can find an internet connection.

The hiring process begins with sourcing the right candidates. Greenhouse lets you search a wide variety of sources, from job boards and in-person events to external agencies and in-house referrals.

You can post job openings on popular job boards or share them on leading social networks. With the application review tool, Greenhouse automatically accepts or rejects a candidate's application according to the criteria you set.

Interview scheduling is a breeze with Greenhouse Calendar which displays available slots for upcoming interviews. I

t syncs with Outlook, Google Calendar, and iCal so that you can keep track of all your meetings in one place. And it automatically sends reminders to all the parties involved in the interview meeting, including the candidates, interviewers, and recruiters.

Greenhouse offers total visibility of the hiring pipeline and is most suited to growing and mid-sized companies.

Pricing

Greenhouse doesn't publicly release pricing information, but pricing is based on how many employees you have. Contact them for a custom quote.

Pros

• Shows hiring progress
• Allows candidate rating
• Provides comprehensive reports for tracking each candidate's experience
• The platform is highly customizable

Cons

• Expensive
• No candidate portal provided

3. Workday

Best HR Software for Onboarding Processes

Targeted towards medium- and large-sized enterprises, Workday HCM includes all fundamental HR functions in one package so that companies don't need to purchase multiple software. It also streamlines manual tasks, allowing HR teams to focus their energy on strategic planning and other initiatives.

With Workday, companies can manage and organize their global workforce. The solution works for employees of all types, from full-time to contingent workers. It has global compliance functionality to help companies stay on top of changing regulatory requirements.

This is achieved with a network of subject matter experts who continually monitor the regulatory environment in over 80 jurisdictions and share insights with clients. The changes are automatically applied to the software.

Powered by machine learning, the Employee Experience feature monitors the employee's individual journey within the company and makes recommendations to help them do their best work.

The employee can request time off, see their pay information, and do much more with the Workday Assistant. It integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams so that teams can collaborate from their preferred workspace.

The Help feature also provides answers to common HR questions asked by employees. But more complex questions are handled by the HR staff who can open a case on the software and provide a personalized response using relevant HCM data.

The talent management module includes functionalities for onboarding, goal and performance management, succession planning, and career planning.

In the recruiting module, there are functionalities for internal and external talent sourcing, recruiter-hiring team collaboration opportunities, mobile access of candidate information, and social media recruiting. Workday also provides mobile-friendly career sites and recruiting analytics.

You can create various learning content such as videos, documents, and surveys. You can track attendance and the performance of your training courses.

Pricing

Workday does not publish a definitive price list on their website or anywhere else. Contact them for a custom quote.

Pros

• You can assess your workforce with advanced analytics.

Cons

• Generating reports may be complicated for some users.

4. Workable

Best Recruitment Solution for Customization

Workable is a comprehensive cloud-based recruitment solution that offers candidate sourcing, applicant tracking, talent CRM, and hiring team collaboration. Working with Workable, you enjoy several benefits, including:

• flexible spending with a pay-as-you-go plan
• faster hiring,
• reduced cost per hire,
• a mobile app, and
• better candidate sourcing with advanced search tools.

People Search, Workable’s built-in candidate sourcing tool, allows recruiters to search millions of online profiles by keywords, skills, and target location, among many other criteria. Workable provides branded career pages with no hosting fees and customizable web addresses.

There are custom job application forms with various question types, including automatic disqualifiers for candidates. And with a single click, Workable submits your job posting to over 180 premium job boards.

Workable's advanced search functionality empowers you to search millions of candidate profiles using keywords or location searches, auto-suggestions, hyper-targeted social media ads, and a Chrome extension.

The solution comes with social media tabs, sharing, and referrals to target passive candidates. It also boasts employee referral tools that don't require manual data entry. And you can upload resumes in bulk and parse them to create automatically-enriched candidate profiles.

On the applicant tracking side, Workable presents you with a hiring process dashboard that displays visual hiring pipelines and includes search and filter functionalities.

You get candidate profiles that comprise resumes, email correspondence, scorecards, and evaluations. You can send bulk emails to schedule interviews, disqualify candidates, or move them further along your hiring funnel.

You also get templates for offer letters and approvals, complete with status tracking and signature management. You have analytics tools that track and report candidate sources, measure hiring speed over time, as well as analyze pipeline efficiency. And you get a mobile app, and background checks powered by Checkr.

The talent CRM module helps you track and nurture your relationships with potential candidates. You can search for and add candidates from a database of millions of profiles, view histories of interactions, and snooze communication with currently unavailable-for-hire candidates.

The team collaboration features allow users to modify other users' rights to access account settings or confidential information. You can also assign and audit user roles and responsibilities. And you can invite external recruiters to submit candidates through the platform.

When you need to, you can contact any of the customer support teams based out of the US, Europe, or Australia via email, the mobile app, or online help ticket. For phone support, the availability is 2 am to 6 pm EST on business days.

Custom and enterprise users get a dedicated account manager and can expect to receive a response from customer support in no more than 3 hours.

Pricing

Workable offers a 15-day trial and the most basic plan is the Pay-as-you-go plan which costs $99 monthly per job. For other plans, you need to get a specific quote from Workable.

Pros

• People Search and Talent Pool are unique talent sourcing and tracking tools
• Increased flexibility offered by the mobile app and customizable modules

Cons

• No video interviewing, automated reference checks, and onboarding
• Limited features not particularly suitable for larger companies

5. iCIMS Recruit

Best ATS for Advertising Job Postings

With its AI-powered products, the iCIMS Talent Cloud platform helps you streamline your recruitment processes.

The platform allows you to conduct efficient and comprehensive marketing campaigns, stay engaged with candidates on any device, and analyze your recruitment efforts.

You can reach out to candidates via text or messaging apps, host virtual job fairs, and track the progress of new hires. Its machine learning and AI features help companies eliminate subjectivity from their Diversity & Initiatives programs.

Besides streamlining the hiring process for new hires, iCIMS Talent Cloud also helps you provide your current employees with current job opportunities through an internal career site and an AI-powered chatbot. iCIMS Talent Cloud has four modules:

1. Attract Talent: create simple, easy-to-use candidate portals. Construct career sites that attract search traffic with iCIMS Career Site SEO. Measure ROI and efficiency with marketing analytics and reports.
2. Engage Talent: Fill in openings faster by staying engaged with candidates during the hiring process. Host virtual job fairs. Launch targeted and automated text and email campaigns. Manage job postings and track applicants, even on social media. Get your employees to refer candidates for job openings.
3. Hire Talent: Manage offers and new-hire onboarding. Create employee onboarding portals. Streamline communications about benefits. Create and fill e-forms seamlessly. Track onboarding completion. Integrate with third-party tools like video interviewing, reference checks, and background screenings.
4. Advance Talent: Offer internal opportunities such as promotions to current employees. Create internal career sites. Recommend open opportunities to current employees based on their skillets and tenure through an AI-powered chatbot. Connect with employees via text messages.

iCIMS users gain access to a newly-created Customer Community that contains a knowledge base, webinars, and a forum for HR professionals.

Pricing

Pricing is dependent on the number of users and how many products you want access to. Contact iCIMS for a custom quote.

Pros

• Automates communication with, and engages candidates for, improved hiring experience.

Cons

• Reporting often lacks depth and usability
• Certain email features may feel clunky

6. Bullhorn

Best Combination CRM-and-ATS Solution

Bullhorn is a recruiting software targeted towards staffing agencies. It is an end-to-end solution that helps them manage their business on both the front- and back-end.

Its modular structure includes customer relationship management (CRM), applicant tracking, onboarding, business intelligence, and vendor management system (VMS) integration.

Bullhorn helps improve productivity by streamlining workflow. Its built-in reporting tools empower you to make better business decisions.

It offers a relationship intelligence solution that helps you improve your service and relationships with clients and candidates. And, with an API that enables you to build customized applications, Bullhorn is scalable and extensible.

Bullhorn's applicant tracking system includes an accelerator feature for capturing candidates' information directly from the web.

With its application and resume parsing functionality, Bullhorn can automatically pre-populate fields within candidate records. Finding candidates is a breeze with advanced search functionalities like the Fast Find search bar and Boolean search.

Bullhorn also offers integrations with Gmail and Microsoft Outlook, as well as LinkedIn Recruiter. It provides both standard and customizable analytical and reporting tools, mobile functionality, and automatic tracking of email activities in each candidate's records.

In the CRM module, Bullhorn offers relationship tracking technology to monitor the progress of sales rep-prospect relationships. It also includes standard and customizable reporting templates such as job-specific and salesperson activity reports. You can view and edit records from a mobile device. The CRM also makes lead and opportunity management easy.

Bullhorn's Pulse Relationship Intelligence solution helps recruiters communicate more transparently with candidates and clients. Phone and email conversations are synced with Pulse, making it possible to store these conversations within the platform.

Pulse then gleans insights and generates action plans from those conversations, equipping recruiters with the knowledge of when to follow up or act on specific details.

The onboarding module, though included at a separate cost, integrates with the ATS. It includes document management, signature management, and a customized online portal. It also provides integration with E-Verify.

Bullhorn's other features include back office (which includes time and expense tracking features), Bullhorn Canvas (which provides advanced business intelligence), and integration to vendor management systems.

Through the Bullhorn Academy program, Bullhorn offers public and private training options. You can also participate in webinars and gain access to on-demand training videos.

Through its Marketplace partner network, Bullhorn integrates with different applications such as job boards, background checks, video interviewing, marketing software, and VoIP.

For support, you can contact Bullhorn by phone, live chat, or support ticket. You can also get information on product updates, access training videos, or send feedback from the customer portal.

Pricing

Bullhorn’s pricing takes into account which features you want and how many users need access to the system. They offer three pricing plans namely, Team, Corporate, and Enterprise. Other modules (onboarding, VMS integration, Canvas, and back-office) are priced separately.

Pros

• Provides business analytics and relationship intelligence features
• Includes a Marketplace network for integrations with many applications
• Comes with an Accelerator feature for automatic capture and pre-population of candidate information.

Cons

• Not suitable for companies with in-house hiring teams
• Tends to be sluggish sometimes with occasional bugs.

7. JazzHR

Best Talent Acquisition Software for Small Companies

JazzHR breaks the talent acquisition process into three stages:

1. Fill the talent pool
2. Identify performers
3. Hire the best

At each stage, there are comprehensive features on offer from finding niche applicants to sharing applicant profiles with team members. The steps closely align with and optimize existing approval processes within the most common hiring practices so that you enjoy a rich experience without the feeling of being lost.

JazzHR optimizes your search by upgrading your most trusty tool, email. The dashboard displays all correspondence with candidates, allowing you to customize certain fields (such as applicant names, job vacancies, and interview dates) when reaching out to applicants.

JazzHR also allows you to create an advanced career site for attracting candidates, in addition to their application portal. The website is customized with your company's brand and allows social sharing of job openings.

You can create custom questionnaires for applicants and have streamlined responses for quick review. You can create custom assessments with reusable evaluation templates. And you can get automated scores for each applicant based on set values and skill set requirements so that you can more effectively compare applicants.

JazzHR's scheduling features sync with Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange Calendar so that you can set interview dates that align with your team's availability. You can choose whether to show or hide the events on your calendar depending on how much transparency you prefer.

Your team can also collaborate to rank and comment on each applicant, and the software can combine the rankings to come up with an overall ranking that captures the general sentiment of your team towards each candidate. Communication is straightforward and further simplified by the mobile app.

Other features such as automated reference checks, onboarding, and video interviews are available through third-party integrations with Zenefits, TalentWise, SparkHire, GoodHire, Aurico, and others. And recruiters can send and receive text messages from candidates with the texting tool.

JazzHR is entirely web-based and as such, does not require on-premise installation. It can be accessed from any web-browser.

The support page offers training and advice through webinars and videos, and you can troubleshoot any issues you have. There's also a comprehensive onboarding suite and live chat functionality.

Pricing

There's a free trial, after which pricing starts at $39 per month for the Hero plan, $229 per month for the Plus plan, and $339 per month for the Pro plan.

Pros

• Offers social media integrations
• Provides branded career site
• Seamless interview scheduling functionality
• Dozens of integrated tools including candidate texting, video interviewing integrations, and more.

Cons

• No resume database.

8. Jobvite

Best-in-class Recruiting Platform with Powerful Referral Capabilities and Streamlined Candidate Engagement Functionalities.

Jobvite aims to provide the best possible experience to job seekers while helping hiring managers and recruiters every step of the way.

Jobvite is an easy-to-use ATS with a comprehensive onboarding solution. It provides mobile-optimized, branded career sites, text and social recruiting, CRM and recruitment marketing, and advanced analytics and reporting.

Other benefits that Jobvite grants you include:

• a unified platform that encourages smooth collaboration across teams
• a seamless end-to-end candidate experience
• improved visibility into hiring data with advanced reporting and dashboards
• access to a comprehensive partner marketplace that allows extensive integration across your entire hiring funnel
• an increase in referral hiring
• a decrease in time-to-hire and cost-to-hire.

Every Jobvite customer gets a dedicated implementation manager. You also get data migration assistance if you need it. As for training, Jobvite offers webinars, in-person boot camps, dedicated strategic services, and the Jobvite Community.

Through off-the-shelf and custom integrations, Jobvite integrates seamlessly with other recruiting and HR platforms.

Jobvite offers integrations for assessments, background checks and I-9/e-verify, reference checks, candidate engagement, onboarding, job board aggregators, free job boards, HRIS/HCM/HRMS, candidate sourcing, eSignature, scheduling, and social networking.

Jobvite provides live 24/5 support via chat, phone, and email.

Pricing

Contact Jobvite for a custom quote as pricing is dependent on the number of employees at your company.

Pros

• Focus on providing great candidate experience
• Robust collaboration tools
• Acquisitions of Talemetry, Canvas, and RolePoint provide an integrated platform across the entire hiring process

Cons

• Not a great solution for recruiting agencies or staffing firms.

9. BambooHR

A Candidate Management System Designed to Help Small- to Medium-Sized Companies Recruit More Efficiently.

The applicant tracking module of BambooHR is designed to help small to medium-sized companies hire more efficiently. Its user-friendly interface makes it easy to find information such as candidate profiles.

Job postings from BambooHR are mobile-accessible, and hiring managers and recruiters can collaborate more effectively and share feedback on candidates directly from the software.

As email communication is the standard for recruitment, BambooHR provides customizable email templates. You can also send out bulk emails to save time. You can create single or multiple job postings and post them to your websites, job boards, and social media in a single click.

The collaborative hiring feature allows you and your hiring team to rate applicants on a five-star system and make comments. And recruiters can determine what hiring managers can and can't see with the software's access permissions.

Another key feature that BambooHR offers is the self-onboarding platform. This allows new hires to remotely complete HR forms before their first day at work. The new hires receive forms to fill and sign electronically, as well as welcome emails from their new manager and team.

This way, they can spend their first day on other introductory activities, such as learning about company culture and job roles.

Implementing BambooHR is a short three-step process that involves importing your employee data (or migrating them from your old system), customizing the system (setting up email alerts, inputting new-hire/termination checklists, configuring leave policies, and so on), and deploying the system live to your entire company. BambooHR provides training via videos, webinars and customized training.

BambooHR offers several third-party integrations such as Ximble, OfficeVibe, Workable, GoodHire, Bonusly, Litmos, Boomr, and LeverThis.

The community support feature allows users to communicate about the software and get answers to burning questions, troubleshooting help, etc. This is in addition to the standard email and phone support.

Pricing

BambooHR starts at $6.19 monthly per employee for the Essentials plan and $8.25 monthly per employee for the Advantage plan. Varying discounts apply, depending on company size.

Pros

• Seamless integration between ATS and HRMS
• Mobile-accessible job postings
• Collaborative hiring functionality

Cons

• Not intended for larger companies
• No video interviewing

10. Breezy

A User-friendly Applicant Tracking System with a Drag-and-drop Visual Hiring Pipeline

With Breezy HR, recruiters manage their hiring pipeline by dragging-and-dropping applicant information through each stage of the pipeline. Besides, they can invite other hiring team members to give feedback on candidates through a real-time comment stream.

Breezy allows you to source candidates from LinkedIn, Github, and other similar sites. It also allows you to post job listings to free and premium job boards or to your customized career portal.

With a single click, Breezy automatically distributes your open job positions to national and local career sites, as well as the Facebook Jobs tab on your company's Facebook page to source passive candidates. And Breezy's Chrome extension allows you to source and import candidate profiles from social media sites into Breezy.

Breezy furnishes your business with a dedicated portal through which your external recruiters can manage the entire recruiting process.

You also gain access to a customized career portal that includes information, pictures, and videos about company benefits, employee testimonials, and open positions, among other things. These are in addition to a referral portal through which your current employees can refer suitable candidates.

You can pre-screen candidates via short video responses and questionnaires, and the Job Widget feature allows you to automatically import candidates' applications from your career portal into your hiring pipeline.

Your pipeline is customized with the ability to set up and execute automated actions for every stage of the candidate experience. Called Breezy Stage Actions, these automated actions include sending emails or requesting feedback from the hiring team.

Breezy lets you check candidate references automatically via questionnaires. It has interview guides with flexible templates and questions that can be personalized for a department or hiring manager. And each candidate gets a scorecard with a provision for ratings and open-ended feedback on specific attributes or metrics.

Also, Breezy offers interview scheduling and integrated live video interviews. It has offer and signature management features. Candidates can receive offers and sign them digitally. And it adheres to the rules of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program (OFCCP).

Breezy integrates seamlessly with BambooHR, Microsoft Outlook, and Office 365, as well as Slack and Google Apps. It has both Android and iOS apps that offer all the features of the web-based version.

Pricing

Breezy offers a free trial that doesn't require a credit card and four pricing plans. The four plans are:

1. Bootstrap Plan: This is a free plan that allows users one active job position, unlimited candidates and users, and access to over 50 job boards.
2. Startup Plan: This plan costs $143 per month and includes all the features of the Bootstrap Plan plus custom pipelines, unlimited job positions and candidate pools, and email and calendar integration.
3. Business plan: The Business Plan costs $399 per month and includes all the features of The Startup Plan plus background checks, nurture campaigns, customizable scorecards, external recruiter portal, and priority support.
4. Pro Plan: This plan includes all the features of the other plans plus video interviews, advanced reporting, SSO integration, phone support, a dedicated account manager, developer API, custom fields, custom integrations, custom data migration, and full data export. Contact Breezy to get a custom quote for this plan.

Pros

• Intuitive hiring pipeline management with a drag-and-drop interface
• Video interviewing and short video questionnaires
• Facebook Job Tab feature for candidate sourcing
• Integrates with many HRM software

Cons

• Does not offer full onboarding functionality

11. Zoho Recruit

Recruitment Platform Designed to Help Hiring Teams Source, Track and Hire the Best Candidates.

Zoho Recruit is an applicant tracking system that offers complete solutions for both in-house recruiters and staffing agencies. It helps you source, track, and hire the best candidates without having to shuttle across different media.

Recruiters and hiring managers can automate tasks like sending emails, interview status updates, and others. With reports and analytics at their fingertips, they can plan more effective and efficient hiring strategies.

With Zoho Recruit, you can post job listings automatically to job boards and have your candidates apply directly with LinkedIn. You can also have your employees refer candidates for open positions. And you gain direct access to background screening services such as Checkr.

There is an advanced resume management toolkit that includes resume parsing and formatting, a resume inbox, and a resume extractor. There's an advanced search functionality with semantic, radius, and smart search capabilities. And the software offers automatic skill set assessment and evaluation.

Also, with Zoho Recruit, you can conduct video interviews with candidates and issue offer letters. Candidates can sign your offer letters with e-signatures made possible by the software's signature management functionality.

Zoho Recruit offers client portals for staffing agencies, as well as advanced analytics and support for multiple languages for both in-house recruiters and staffing agencies.

Users can take advantage of Zoho Recruit's live and online training. Their YouTube channel hosts several overview videos explaining the software.

Besides, they also offer extensive support through a globally-available 24/5 phone and email support team. Their help pages include a searchable FAQ database, and they also offer e-books, webinars, events, and forums.

Pricing

In addition to a Forever Free plan, Zoho Recruit comes with three other pricing plans: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise.

The Forever Free Plan comes with email management, candidate management, interview scheduling, and client/contact management.

The Standard plan costs $25 monthly per user. It includes all features of the Forever Free plan plus: career site, source boosters, resume parsing and inbox, resume extractor, hiring pipeline, review and feedback forms, formatted resume, reports and dashboards, job templates, premium job boards, workflow management, bulk email, associated social profiles, an Outlook plug-in, and support for integration to other Zoho products and Google Apps.

The Professional plan costs $50 monthly per user. In addition to the features in the other plans, the Professional plan includes semantic candidate management, radius search, SMS and Phonebridge integration, pre-screening assessments, candidate login, candidate assignment rules, social recruiting, roles and profiles, field-level security, custom modules, multiple currencies, advanced analytics, custom links, domain mapping, webhooks and attachment permissions.

The Enterprise plan costs $75 monthly per user and comes with these additional features: autoresponders, Blueprint, custom function and button, territory management, web tabs, custom roles and profiles, unlimited records, and unlimited resume parsing.

Pros

• All pricing plans come with robust features
• AI Assistant helps recruiters find the right candidates
• Support for multiple languages.

Cons

• Has a steep learning curve
• Customer service is slow.

12. Oracle Taleo

Best Enterprise Applicant Tracking System

Oracle Taleo Cloud Service is a cloud-based talent management offering that improves recruiters' and managers' ability to better attract and retain talent. The offering is divided into a number of different platforms with functions ranging from recruitment management to learning management.

The Recruiting Cloud Service platform helps you keep track of applicants and save on recruiting costs. You can access applicant data anytime, anywhere. This platform integrates seamlessly with desktop productivity tools such as iGoogle, MyYahoo, and Microsoft Outlook. In addition to helping ensure fair and equitable hiring practices, this platform also relies heavily on social media sourcing tools.

The Onboarding Cloud Service helps ensure that new hires are ready to work from their first day. It comes with features such as a custom new-hire portal for storing new employee information, and a hiring manager dashboard to help them keep track of the status of new-hires and any onboarding issues they may face. There's also an eSignature functionality.

The Learn Cloud Service allows you to offer training and courses to both new and current employees and can be customized to fit your business. This platform offers such features as online content management, sub-portals (for specific partners, employees, or customers), blended learning plans (for example, for users who might want a traditional classroom setting, online learning, etc), and social learning (that is, allowing class discussions between learners). And there's an e-commerce function, allowing you to offer paid courses to external participants and partners.

Enterprise customers also gain access to the Succession Planning Cloud Service. This platform helps recruiters fill roles that will soon be vacated by a current employee. You can look internally for a suitable candidate for the role or look outside for applicants if preferred.

Besides, Oracle Taleo also allows recruiters to take advantage of social recruiting by posting job openings to social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. They can make job postings mobile-accessible, and also increase candidate referrals from their employees.

Oracle Taleo offers extensive training for its software in five formats: live virtual classes, classroom training, self-study courses, on-demand training, and private events. You can choose whichever option you prefer depending on your schedule, budget, and willingness to travel.

Pricing

For pricing, you must contact Oracle Taleo directly for a custom quote as they do not publish pricing information publicly.

Pros

• Cloud-based solution

Cons

• Limited search functionality

13. SAP SuccessFactors

Best Recruiting Software for HR Analytics and Reporting

A powerful cloud-based Human Experience Management (HXM) platform, SAP SuccessFactors empowers SMBs to improve employee engagement.

SuccessFactors builds upon SAP's existing HRMS offerings and is divided into four products namely, Core HR and Payroll, Employee Experience Management (SAP Qualtrics), Talent Management, and HR Analytics & Workforce Planning. The Talent Management product contains several tools and modules for recruitment and new-hire onboarding, and these tools will be the focus of this review.

The recruitment module, SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting, contains robust features to streamline the hiring process. You can source talent from all over the world with its support for 46 languages. You can set up a global career site that spans multiple languages and brands.

It also includes highly-intelligent technology that helps you make fair and equitable hiring decisions by eliminating hiring bias. It features candidate relationship management and application management.

With the Fieldglass Contingent Workforce Management module, you can also manage your contingent workforce, from temps to freelancers to independent contractors. This module offers features such as performance management, onboarding, timesheet approvals, recruiting, and so on.

SuccessFactors also offers an Onboarding and Signature Management module that empowers you to give new hires a personalized onboarding experience through a portal that introduces them to their new role and colleagues.

The onboarding tool also offers offboarding and cross-boarding (for internal transfers or promotions). And with the Signature Management tool, new hires can provide an e-signature and fill out electronic forms.

Also, with SAP SuccessFactors Learning, you can offer learning programs to new and existing employees to help them grow within your organization. You can offer off-the-shelf courses from SAP Content Stream and other third-party content providers, or even use the e-commerce functionality to sell your own courses.

SAP SuccessFactors can be deployed either as a prepackaged or fully-customized solution, depending on your needs. Their Advisory Services team will discuss your unique needs with you to figure out the best deployment method.

Then their Integration Delivery team can help you integrate SuccessFactors with your existing toolkit and other SAP products.

Besides, SAP offers specialized training and certification for some SuccessFactors modules. And SAP Learning Hub, which is a subscription-based service, grants users access to training content on any of its products from anywhere in the world.

Pricing

Pricing for SAP SuccessFactors depends on which modules you opt for as each module is priced separately.

This means that you don't have to pay for the entire system when you only need a few of the modules; you only have to pay for the modules that you use. Listed below are the starting prices for some relevant modules in the Talent Management product, which is our focus in this review.

• SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting starts at $3 monthly per user
• SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding starts at $1 monthly per user
• SAP SuccessFactors Learning starts at $2.17 monthly per user

For a custom quote, contact SAP SuccessFactors directly.

Pros

• Streamlined HR processes
• Supports global workforce with multiple currencies and languages
• Accessible for employees, management, and leadership

Cons

• Challenging to learn
• Not always intuitive

14. Lever

Build your talent pipeline, engage with candidates, and track insights on cost-to-hire and quality-of-hire.

Lever is a web-based applicant tracking software designed to meet the needs of businesses of all types and sizes. It makes recruitment easier through advanced administration, automation, and reporting features.

Lever ensures that you get more inbound job applications, increasing the likelihood that you'll hire someone more quickly. The candidate experience is also improved significantly as Lever tracks and displays inadequate follow-ups.

Because Lever uses a single hiring pipeline and supports collaboration, you can manage all that concerns applicant tracking with it. This ensures that all applications are processed properly and no information is lost.

In addition to key features like candidate search, job requisition management, and email templates and reporting, the system also offers seamless integration with other third-party systems.

Lever has a LinkedIn plugin that allows recruiters to gather details from candidates' LinkedIn profiles and import them right into Lever's database. This feature allows hiring managers and employees to make referrals without requiring their contacts to send in their resumes.

Lever also seems bent on providing its users with an enjoyable experience, offering superb ease-of-use that goes beyond popping colors and nice fonts. Moving from one part of the hiring process to the next is a seamless process, and performing tasks like tagging candidates, sending and tracking emails, managing postings, and others is easy.

Lever offers unprecedented insight into the entire recruitment process. It allows you to see where every candidate is at every stage of the hiring process. This also means that you still have access to information even after the position is filled if you need it later down the road. By this, Lever ensures that jobs and talent aren't falling through the cracks.

As for scalability, Lever is one of the most scalable options in the market, growing with you as your business expands. From prospect lists to pipeline management, integration to data and analytics, and access to past information, Lever is designed to carry you all the way.

Pricing

Although Lever does not publish a definitive price list on its website, our research reveals it can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $125,000 per year, depending on the number of employees your company has and what package you choose.

Pros

• Cloud-based solution.
• A great option for companies of all sizes, from small to enterprise-sized.
• Allows job postings to multiple hiring sites.
• Simple, clean, and easy to use.
• Good customer support.

Cons

• Does not offer onboarding tools
• Does not offer background screening

15. Ultimate Software

Candidate-centric Hiring Platform that Helps Boost Candidate Engagement.

Ultimate Software's affordable HR software, UKG Ready (formerly Kronos Workforce Ready), is a solid offering for SMBs. Its vast set of features belies its price. It combines the power of HR, talent, time, and payroll management in a unified platform to deliver a holistic human capital management (HCM) experience.

UKG Ready comes with a robust recruitment management module. It helps streamline the hiring process, attract top talent, and achieve time-to-hire and cost-per-hire goals.

And, being part of a complete, consolidated HR platform, candidate information flows seamlessly from the recruitment management module to the employee record upon hire. This saves administrative effort and provides a single source of truth for employee data.

UKG Ready helps simplify job requisitions and candidate sourcing. It achieves this by allowing you to create and track both internal and external job requisitions with standard approval workflows.

It offers searchable career sites in addition to free and premium job-board integrations so that you can extend your reach to tons of additional high-quality candidates.

You can also use analytical tools like heat maps to glean insights (such as turnover) about your existing workforce that you can leverage to help you hire people that best fit your organizational culture.

Additionally, the platform makes it easy to deliver a top-notch candidate experience. Candidates can easily search for jobs and upload resumes. It can auto-populate applications from a candidate's LinkedIn account.

Parsing tools automatically pull information such as contact information, work history, skill sets, education, and so on from applicants' resumes. You can also easily identify top candidates via pre-screening questions in your online applications.

You can also manage every stage or step of the hiring process through the platform. You can view everything about each applicant on a single screen. And with configurable email templates, you can communicate and engage with candidates each step of the way.

Meanwhile, UKG Ready offers onboarding features that empower your new employees to integrate and adapt seamlessly through dynamic content, personalized welcome messages, goals establishment, and outlined required tasks, among other things.

Pricing

UKG Ready does not have any publicly-available pricing information. You must contact the vendor for a quote-based plan.

Pros

• Mobile apps
• Complete HCM solution allowing for seamless data flow

Cons

• Does not sync with Google Calendar, iCal, or Outlook Calendar.
• No integration with LinkedIn Recruiter

What is an Applicant Tracking System?

An applicant tracking system is essentially a recruiting robot. It is a software tool that helps you sort job seekers in your hiring funnel according to the criteria needed to fill a job position.

With ATS, you no longer need to spend time poring over application after application, trying to find the ideal job candidate.

Using keywords, qualifications, and other criteria that you specify, ATS automatically singles out applicants that could be the best fit for the position you seek to fill. As such, job seekers now submit ATS-friendly resumes and cover letters to increase their chances of getting the job.

An applicant tracking system can also serve as digital storage for applicants' data that you can always go back to if you need to fill a role in your company. With such a system, you do not have to post a new job opening or scour hundreds or thousands of applications each time you need to fill a role. Instead, you can check the ATS for resumes of past job seekers that meet your requirements and make a choice.

ATS used to be the preserve of large companies but is now used by companies of all sizes, and has grown in popularity over time.

In addition to organizing and storing candidate information, HR managers can also use ATS to schedule interviews as it ensures that there are no scheduling clashes.

Recruiters can program mail responses that are always right on time. This encourages increased communication and engagement between recruiters and applicants.

These days, a lot of job seekers send out their resumes and cover letters en-masse to recruiters without checking to see that they meet the job requirements and can fulfill all the criteria. As a result, HR managers and recruiters have to deal with too many applications from unqualified candidates.

A good ATS with a resume scanner can filter out and shortlist the most qualified candidates so that the hiring manager saves themselves the hassle of having to sort through too many unqualified candidates to find the right one.

Besides, applicant tracking software can help recruiters to quickly scan through selected resumes, looking at past workplaces, educational qualifications, achievements, skills, and titles, all within a short time.

The recruiter may then decide if a resume is worth another look or if they’d like to schedule an interview with a specific applicant.

How Do Applicant Tracking Systems Work?

An applicant tracking system sweeps through a large pool of applications, identifying and separating applications that are relevant to what your organization is searching for.

It filters out the applications of candidates that do not meet your requirements, separating them from potentially good resumes.

This is why it is important for candidates to submit ATS-compliant resumes.

ATS collects and saves resumes that have previously been sorted in a database for hiring managers to access at a later date. Even long after filling a job position, resumes may still be stored. Depending on the system used, recruiters and hiring teams may then search through the resumes in a number of different ways.

While some recruiters follow the recommendations of the ATS, you may prefer to at least glance at every job application that comes through the system. In a quick glance, you can check out applicants’ employment history, job titles, and highlights. In about 7.4 seconds, most hiring professionals decide whether or not they want to learn more about a candidate or not.

Some applicant tracking systems don't just select or filter candidates. They also automatically compare resumes to the job description to rank applicants in order of relevance. This way, you know who to interview next if your initial choices don’t work out. This allows HR departments to fill roles quickly by focusing squarely on those candidates that the ATS recommends as the best candidates.

You may also filter resumes in your ATS by searching for specific skills and titles. For example, if you’re looking to hire a Graphic Designer out of 300 resumes, your first step may be to search for “Graphic Designer.” This will filter out those candidates that most likely have experience in that exact job and eliminate those who don’t.

You may be able to apply multiple terms to a single search, creating a complex search that includes as many titles and skills that are relevant to the job as you like.

For example, you could search for “Graphic Designer, illustration, and photoshop” in a single search. Candidates who analyze the job description and choose the correct keywords for their resume have the greatest chance of showing up in the search, and these are often the best candidates to hire.

After selecting qualified job candidates, your ATS can also contact applicants by automated mail to schedule interviews or set up tests online. And even after employing an applicant, some software can sort out payment processing and paperwork for the new employee.

ATS can also help youchoose the best channels to focus your job advertising efforts. Posting job ads to every available channel can be a waste of time and cost you a lot of money because not all channels work for everyone.

But by tracking where applicants obtain information about job openings, ATS can help you choose the best channels for your job advertising, thereby saving you time and money.

Benefits of Applicant Tracking System

Applicant tracking software affords your business several benefits and advantages to help you win in today's highly-competitive candidate market. Of all the benefits of ATS, we'll be looking at the three benefits that matter the most.

1) ATS will drastically reduce your time-to-hire

Time-to-hire is one of the most important recruitment metrics. It is the total time taken to fill an open job position and encompasses activities like creating and advertising job postings, as well as sourcing, interviewing, and hiring candidates.

This metric shows how efficient your recruitment process is and provides insight into how difficult it is to fill a particular position.

A study by GetApp reveals that 86% of recruiting professionals agree that ATS helps them hire faster. ATS has also been shown to increase hiring efficiency by an unbelievable 41%.

This is because, with ATS, tasks that used to require several man-hours can now be executed very quickly and efficiently, or even automatically, in some cases.

Tasks like interview scheduling, resume parsing, disqualification of non-qualified candidates, and email can now be automated to a large extent.

ATS also saves time by helping you build a pool of talent from which you can draw to fill job openings in the future.

2) ATS will dramatically slash your cost-per-hire

Cost-per-hire is the second most important recruitment metric. It measures the total monetary investment required to recruit a new employee.

The metric accounts for recruiter salaries, travel and relocation costs, job advertising costs, employee referral bonuses, and several other variables.

It highlights how cost-effective your recruiting process is and helps you manage and allocate your hiring budget according to insights about the least and most expensive job positions.

Simply by saving your precious time, ATS automatically saves you money. Since many administrative tasks are automated by ATS, you need fewer man-hours to fill a job position. This improved process efficiency translates naturally to cost-efficiency.

Besides, your cost-per-hire falls as you build and maintain a talent pool. It might be a stretch, but you might even get to a point where you have the perfect candidate for any position that opens up in your organization!

Additionally, ATS gives you insights into what channels bring you your best new hires, and this means that you can eliminate the unnecessary expense of marketing job openings via channels that don't work well for you.

You don't need to spend money advertising job openings on job boards if you know that you get your best candidates on social media or through referrals.

3) ATS will tremendously improve your quality-of-hire

Quality-of-hire is another crucial recruitment metric. It measures the total value that a new employee brings to your company with their performance.

It is based on variables such as turnover and retention rates, performance reviews, ramp-up time, hiring manager satisfaction, and many others. It spotlights how effective your hiring process is and measures the accuracy of your hiring assessments.

According to research, 78% of recruiters who use an ATS have reported improvements in their quality-of-hire. Research also shows that high-quality candidates stay available on the market for only 10 days!

Besides, in 2017, the biggest challenge recruiters expected to face was a shortage of qualified candidates. So, by speeding up your recruitment process, ATS sets you up to hire those high-quality candidates before the competition does.

Additionally, by communicating regularly and in a timely fashion with your candidates via automated emails, you improve your candidate engagement and experience significantly.

And candidates who have a positive recruiting experience are more likely to accept your offer, reapply in the future, or refer other high-quality candidates to your company.

Besides the benefits discussed above, applicant tracking systems also improve the candidate review process with faster resume screening, allow collaboration in the hiring process, boost employer brand, and many others.

Which Features Should You Look For in the Best Applicant Tracking System?

We've established some of the benefits that a good ATS can afford you.

But with so many good offerings out there, how can you make a choice? What features should you look for in the best applicant tracking system?

Here's a checklist you can follow to make this difficult decision a bit easier.

1. Collaboration and ease of communication

One overarching advantage of ATS is that they save time and boost the productivity of hiring teams and recruiters.

And one way they achieve this is by simplifying and consolidating communication and collaboration tools among team members. In other words, a good ATS should allow the entire hiring team to collaborate efficiently on the platform.

A good ATS should also equip all stakeholders in the recruiting process with ready access to the right information at the right time. The ATS you pick must be able to automate the process of obtaining this information, possibly by embedding it in your events calendar.

2. Superb candidate experience and employer branding

A frustrating candidate experience could cost a company several potentially great candidates. Candidates who suffer a slow or poor career site experience are also likely to abandon their applications and may never return to your website.

And a poorly-designed candidate experience that takes them through several unnecessary steps or requires that they enter redundant information could also lead to candidate frustration.

These issues reflect poorly on your employer brand, which 75.1% of candidates say is important when applying for a job.

3. Social recruiting

Recruiting in the current age would be incomplete and inefficient if it does not take advantage of social media. These days, top talent hang around on social media networks for networking, work, or other reasons. And naturally, you need to go where your targets are to get them to join your team.

A good applicant tracking system will offer integrations with social media platforms. It should make it easy to share job openings on social media and track the success rates of the postings.

Whatever system you choose, make sure to test the social recruiting features and ensure that they work well enough for you.

4. Employee referrals

The best companies understand that their employees are a great source of talent as they often know a lot of ex-colleagues in their field. They know that employee referrals provide both the shortest time-to-hire and the highest quality of candidates.

As such, these companies create and manage an employee referral program to find new talent.

You also need to do the same, too, by putting an employee referral system with bonuses in place. To do this, you must make sure that whatever ATS you choose includes integrated employee referral features.

You need a system that allows you and your colleagues to share referral information with minimal friction.

5. Quick, easy, and accurate candidate search

A large part of streamlining your recruiting activities and hiring funnel is being able to quickly and easily search, screen, and filter the large number of applications you receive. But not all ATS are created equal in this regard.

A good ATS not only allows you to quickly and easily search and filter through candidates, but also provides and displays great results in a logical, easy-to-understand format.

Additionally, a good ATS will offer resume parsing functionality to make search easier and more accurate.

So, you must make sure to choose a system that provides great search capabilities and allows you to drill deep into your candidate repository to find exactly who you're looking for with keywords and other criteria.

6. Third-party integrations

In a world as connected as we live in today, it is unacceptable for information to be stuck in one platform without any way to automatically move it to another one.

Companies today operate different systems that need to share information and “talk” to one another.

When it comes to ATS, at the very least, you want to be able to integrate the system with your website so that you can source candidates directly from there. You may also want to integrate the ATS with your HRM system or any other in-house system.

Ergo, you must choose a system that offers ready integration with your existing systems. Your vendor must also be able to offer custom integrations.

7. Task and workflow automation

Some level of automation is expected from all recruiting platforms as companies need to minimize friction in the hiring process.

But even here, not all offerings are created equal. A good applicant tracking system will eliminate unnecessary delays and obstacles from the recruiting workflow and automate reminders and notifications so that things keep moving forward to meet deadlines and company objectives.

Besides, it takes some time for companies to figure out which sources and talent acquisition methods work best for them.

By providing full visibility into your hiring workflow, a good ATS can quickly uncover these key details. A good system will offer analytics that provides necessary insight into what works and which areas you need to work on.

8. Easy data migration

You want to make sure that your ATS allows you to import data from your old system into the new database. Ask your vendor if they provide this functionality. No matter the size of your database, your vendor should be able to perform the migration without any hiccups.

Performing the due diligence required to select a good ATS for your business is a time- and effort-intensive task. But with the checklist above, it should be easier to identify exactly what you want from an ATS and make a choice without having to go through too many product demos.

Applicant Tracking Systems FAQ

Which ATS Should I Pick?

Ultimately, your choice of ATS boils down to your company's unique needs. Understanding your business needs is critical to deciding which system would serve you best.

In general, users can be classified at a high level as small enterprises, medium enterprises, large enterprises with global operations, or staffing agencies.

You don't want to take a cookie-cutter approach to recruitment, and so you shouldn't just choose a system because another company uses it. Find a vendor who is willing to work with you to understand your peculiar business needs and that offers a solution that can be customized for you.

• Our overall top recommendation is SmartRecruiters for its ease-of-use and intuitive user interface.
• For small businesses, it's hard to beat JazzHR.
• For larger enterprises, Oracle Taleo is the way to go.
• Staffing agencies will be best served by Bullhorn as it combines a CRM and ATS in a single solution.

If customization is paramount to you, look no further than Workable.

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