How to choose an applicant tracking system (ATS system) for an IT company quickly and correctly

Selecting and setting up a recruiting automation system in an IT company is a very relevant issue for many of  those who work in this field. Today, this is a trend that is developing at a rapid pace and allows you to effectively optimize hiring processes.

And since the best way to understand the topic is to research the opinion of real practitioners, we reached experts who work with ATS and have experience in selecting and implementing such automation. Each of them has a different approach to choosing a system, so such a detailed study of this issue will allow you to look at it from different points of view, weigh all the pros and cons and, as a result, make the right choice.

Marta Shevchenkо, Head of Recruitment Department at inVerita

1.1. What, first of all, do you recommend paying attention to when choosing an applicant tracking system for an IT company? If there was a need to implement such a system today, how would you choose it?

First, I would recommend describing the main problem that the company’s recruiting is facing and highlight the purpose of implementing an ATS. A clear understanding of what exactly you want to get from the system will allow you to objectively approach the choice of ATS, taking into account the requests of your company.

First of all, you need to write down the processes that you plan to optimize. You should start with what tasks and tasks you want to solve with the help of automation of recruiting processes.

In general, the hiring process, even globally, can be described both in three points and in a hundred pages. But the more detailed you write down the processes, the clearer it will be what exactly can be automated, and how much effort and money it will require.

Also, when choosing a recruiting automation system, you should clearly consider how many people you have now and how many people you plan (or not plan) to grow further.

Personally, for me, the presence of functionality for creating a customized pipeline of candidates for each vacancy and its visualization at each stage of the hiring process was important to me. This makes it possible to see at what stage which vacancy and predict its closing and risks for the vacancy.

The second point I would pay attention to when choosing an ATS is the presence of deep integration with search sources and job sites. The steeper (literally in a few clicks and in a couple of seconds) the integration, the less time the recruiter will spend on filling in all possible data, fields, filters, and accordingly, more time will be left for quality interaction with the candidate and a quick result.

The third important point, if we talk about the most necessary thing when choosing an ATS, is the price-quality ratio. As a rule, the more you can automate, the more expensive the system will be. But, again, id depends on your needs.

And the last thing I recommend paying attention to is the presence of competent functionality for conducting analytics. Without analytics, it will be difficult to work out difficulties that may arise in recruiting, work with KPI, and understand hiring forecasts for one or another vacancy.

If the system closes the majority (or the most necessary processes), it is appropriate to consider its implementation.

1.2. In your personal opinion, from what number of people in an IT company can it no longer be possible to use Google spreadsheets for recruiting people and is time to switch to an automated system?

I would be guided here by several factors: the number of job vacancies (that is, how many people the company hires and plans to hire), the level of the company itself, as well as the number of recruiters in the team.

For example, when a recruiter works with one stack and is looking for candidates from one direction (for example, a company is looking for only Python developers), then this is one sample of candidates. If the company hires people from different stacks (QA, DevOps, JS, Python, etc.), then the selection and filtering is different.

In my opinion, the team can somehow still work in spreadsheets (in Excel files) for up to three recruiters in the staff. When the number of recruiters becomes larger or is already significantly larger, you should move on to the search and selection of ATS.

1.3. How to “sell” the business owner the need for such automation?

Much depends on how much the owners are involved in the hiring process. In our case, management involvement was high, so we didn’t have a problem with that.

But if I were faced with such a task, I would focus on numbers.

How long does the hiring process take (from the moment the vacancy opens until the employee leaves the company). Can having an ATS make it faster? How long does the search take? How many candidates does the recruiter process per day? How much time will having an ATS save when working with candidates?

For example, in 8 working hours, the recruiter has time to process the X number of candidates. The processing also includes manual entry of all information about the candidate (contacts, CV, profile, salary, stack, level, years of experience, key nuances, etc.) – let’s say 10 minutes for 1 person. With ATS, this is done in 1-2 clicks and in less than 1 minute. That allows you to process a larger number of candidates at the same time.

Another figure worth operating on is the performance of the team and the progress of the vacancy.

For example, having an ATS, the manager can see how the recruiter is moving on vacancies at each of the stages. It happens that on one vacancy the candidate actively moves from stage to stage (every day he advances through the process), and on another the candidate stays at the communication stage for 5 days. This allows you to highlight blockers when working with a vacancy and, accordingly, quickly eliminate them and hire more efficiently. It is rather difficult and time-consuming to control such situations manually in the table.

Numbers are important when making the case for ATS. The recruiter or head of the department must clearly understand why you need this system right now and how it will help improve the efficiency of recruiting in the company.

I calculated that my team spends more time on Excel files and manual work with them. This time can and should be devoted to work with candidates, so we had no problems in terms of implementing ATS.

Agnieszka Stoch, Recruitment and Adaptation Team Lead at Maklai

1.1. What, first of all, do you recommend paying attention to when choosing a personnel recruiting system for an IT company? If there was a need to implement such a system today, how would you choose it?

First of all, you need to understand what the requests are. In general, tasks may be different in different companies. Some combine HR tasks and recruiting in one system, so they use different ATS. It’s very good that this is quite a popular topic in the HR community, and you can get a lot of feedback from HR/recruiters of different companies.

If I were now faced with the task of choosing an automated recruiting system, I would pay attention to:

1. The tasks and goals we set for ATS. For example, my main goal is to choose a system purely for recruiting, so that most processes can be automated and an internal database of candidates can be created for the reserve.
2. Availability of adequate integration with job sites and speed (quality) of resume parsing. The speed of the recruiter’s work depends a lot on such integrations, and this is really important to me.
3. The simplicity and intuitiveness of the ATS interface. The system should be clear and easy to use.
4. Ability to customize analytics. It is a big plus if you can set up clear analytics and integrate it separately for each vacancy.

Next, I would just google (plus, publications in specialized communities work well) and take trial or demo versions to feel the product and the automation of the processes I need on my own, with my hands.

1.2. In your personal opinion, from what number of people in an IT company can it no longer be possible to use Google spreadsheets for recruiting people and is time to switch to an automated system?

Using tables for recruiting is quite difficult and chaotic. But here I would make an amendment about the type of vacancies.

If you have a vacancy, conditionally one a year, for example a call center operator and you need to hire many people with the same profile, you can probably keep them in tables. If you are engaged in recruiting for various vacancies, especially in IT, then it is very difficult.

Therefore, I think, already from 5-7 different vacancies, you definitely need to think about ATS.

1.3. How to “sell” the business owner the need for such automation?

You need to talk to stakeholders based on business needs. It is not always easy to convince to allocate a budget for HR software, so you need strong arguments, preferably in numbers.

For example, to show how the automation of the recruiting process can save time for both the recruiter and the Hiring Manager, how the created reserve base of candidates will close a critical vacancy much faster, or how much more transparent and open analytics will become, with the help of which it will be possible to find bottlenecks in the recruiting process and immediately to correct them, thereby making the recruiting process better and faster, which saves hiring costs.

In general, if a certain platform can show the information necessary for a stakeholder in a few seconds, this is already a big advantage.

In my opinion, this is the most effective way to sell the need for such software to a stakeholder.

Yuliia Odyntsova, Head of Recruitment in Academy Smart

1.1. What, first of all, do you recommend paying attention to when choosing a personnel recruiting system for an IT company? If there was a need to implement such a system today, how would you choose it?

Obviously, every company (even every manager) has its own unique processes, so there will be no universal list of those processes that need to be automated.

But in my personal opinion, when looking for an automated recruiting system, I would consider the following factors and criteria:

1. Integration with job sites and LinkedIn
2. Integration with the calendar
3. Job posting directly from the system
4. The possibility of distinguishing roles and accesses for different team members
5. Statistics, analytics and reporting, by department or by individual recruiter
6. The presence of a recruitment funnel by vacancy
7. Ability to add hiring manager to “your” vacancies
8. Availability of mass mailings by status (senior or middle, or by programming language, etc.)
9. Candidate testing directly in the system (especially useful for junior positions)
10. Value for money

It is clear that there are points with the absence of which you can put up with, and there are things without which it is impossible to work.

If I had to search the system now, I would use all available search schemes. From banal Google and tips from colleagues about software, to professional communities in which the experience of implementing similar systems is shared.

I would collect the maximum amount of information about the systems, their varieties and practical nuances of application, and only then would I make a decision.

1.2. In your personal opinion, from what number of people in an IT company can it no longer be possible to use Google spreadsheets for recruiting people and is time to switch to an automated system?

In my opinion, it all depends on the professional level. At first, we had only two recruiters in our team, we worked in spreadsheets and it somehow worked out.

If the vacancies are of the same type or there are not many of them, then up to three recruiters can probably work in tables.

If the vacancies, their direction and technologies are complex, or there are many of them, then this is already a sign to the fact that you need to look in the direction of process automation.

1.3. How to “sell” the business owner the need for such automation?

I am lucky, I have a very good manager (laughs).

In general, I was the first recruiter in the company, so there were no questions. We used Zoho products, but due to the lack of adequate integration with job sites, we changed the system without any problems.

Nina Semenova, Head of Talent Acquisition at Devox Software

1.1. What, first of all, do you recommend paying attention to when choosing a personnel recruiting system for an IT company? If there was a need to implement such a system today, how would you choose it?

For me personally, the speed of work is always important. When I was actively searching for candidates myself, it was important for me to have the most free integration of software for recruiting and job sites. For this, it is very convenient when you can download and upload resumes directly from the browser.

Everything that can be automated should be automated.

Therefore, software integration through the browser speeds up work many times over, and when choosing a recruiting automation system, I would first of all pay attention to the presence of such integrations.

The main problem with such browser extensions is that they are either complex or work incorrectly. It is quite rare that such integrations are really working or that work adequately.

The second thing to pay attention to when choosing a system is the possibility of maximum customization of the software for the company’s processes. You need to select the processes that you want to automate and select the system for them, and not vice versa, adapt the processes to the system.

The third parameter by which I would choose an automated recruiting system: the system should be intuitive to use, that is, have a good UX/UI. In my opinion, intuitive comprehensibility is one of the key factors when choosing such software.

The fourth point is Ukrainian products. Especially now, I really want to support and use domestic developments. Yes, it is clear that not all Ukrainian products are perfect, but if there is a choice, I would choose our products.

And finally, the fifth is the availability of adequate and complete analytics. I really like numbers and I talk to the CEO or top management from the point of view of numbers. If the personnel recruiting system does not allow to adequately record and then analyze the numbers, then I would refuse such a system.

1.2. In your personal opinion, from what number of people in an IT company can it no longer be possible to use Google spreadsheets for recruiting people and is time to switch to an automated system?

In my personal opinion, recruiting processes should be automated from the very first vacancy. As an analyst, I don’t know how to deal with simple processes in tables. Maybe it can be organized somehow, but I don’t see the feasibility of it.

In our company, we focus on speed and quality of work. Recruiting in Google Sheets is neither about speed nor about quality.

1.3. How to “sell” the business owner the need to automate recruiting processes?

If I had such a task, I would calculate the actual time that we in the team spend on certain tasks, calculate (at least roughly) the time recruiters spend on processes, especially typical ones.

Saving the recruiter’s time is the way to new opportunities, because the recruiter can devote the freed time to communicating with candidates.

Again, I really like numbers, so I would sell owners the need to automate recruiting processes precisely because of the specifics.

Yuliia Drobot, Talent Acquisition Lead at Roosh

1.1. What, first of all, do you recommend paying attention to when choosing a personnel recruiting system for an IT company? If there was a need to implement such a system today, how would you choose it?

The first thing I would pay attention to is the needs of the company itself and the number of recruiters in the staff.

The decision to automate recruiting processes should be based on these two main factors.

First, we need to analyze, and then prescribe the processes that we want to automate. Personally, I made comparative tables for selection, where on the one hand the needs were written, and on the other hand I marked specific systems, whether they can close and automate our processes or not.

I will give an example from my practice.

In one of the projects, I needed a ATS that would meet certain criteria. At that time, it was especially important for me to automate the processes of correspondence with candidates and feedback, sending questionnaires and integration with Slack.

On the other hand, we could put up with the lack of direct integration with LinkedIn. It would be nice if there were, but there are no perfect systems. Therefore, I highlighted the processes, without automation of which I am not interested in considering a specific ATS, and processes, the presence of automation of which would be desirable, but not critical.

I chose several ATS that covered my needs and at the same time collected recommendations from colleagues. Then you can take demo versions or trials from ATS vendors and integrators and learn them in practice, literally “hands on”.

Thus, we have made our choice.

Well, the last, but also important question is the price ratio for setting up and using ATS in relation to those processes that it should close in a specific company.

1.2. In your personal opinion, from what number of people in an IT company can it no longer be possible to use Google spreadsheets for recruiting people and is time to switch to an automated system?

I started my recruiting career with spreadsheets, but it was not only inconvenient, but also inefficient. Much of the recruiter’s time is wasted on typical processes that can and should be automated.

In my opinion, it all depends on how active your recruiting is in general. If you have one HR Generalist who closes one job per quarter, it’s possible that they can keep track of it in spreadsheets.

But if you have active recruiting and many recruiters, each of whom leads 5-10 vacancies per month, the automation of these processes should already be in place. In this case, ATS should be searched for and implemented into the company’s processes as soon as possible.

1.3. How to “sell” the business owner the need for such automation?

I had such an experience twice in my life. The first time everything did not end well enough. The owner was only interested in direct profit, I tried to calculate in numbers, like us, how much such an automation system can save time.

I then mentally sold the story to the owner, but the ATS was set up a few months after I left the company.

In the second case, the business owner emphasized the quality of internal processes, so it was difficult not to sell. But, again, here I also counted on saving time for certain processes.

Vasylyna Kapetsiak, Recruitment Lead at 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

1.1. What, first of all, do you recommend paying attention to when choosing a personnel recruiting system for an IT company? If there was a need to implement such a system today, how would you choose it?

First of all, when it comes down to it (you have done all possible research, tested all demos, negotiated with all parties and finally settled on one option, ready to sign the contract), it is important to understand how easy the migration will be from the previous ATS or spreadsheets , how automated the migration processes are, how much support is ready to adapt to your situation and help, what time support is available for you, what hours, for what period an individual consultant is allocated (if any) for your adaptation.

In addition, integrations with mail, calendar, zoom, Linkedin, job boards, etc., were important for us.

Also, various analytics and reports were an important component, for example – time to hire, cost per hire, response ratio, etc. Apart from that, there were also many small needs that would allow us to automate manual work, such as automating the scorecard, setting up various templates, mass mailing, etc.

1.2. In your personal opinion, from what number of people in an IT company can it no longer be possible to use Google spreadsheets for hiring and adapting people and is time to switch to an automated personnel management system?

I will be radical in this matter, the sooner the better. If there is more than 1 person in the team and you close more than 1 vacancy per quarter, then it is worth switching, this will free up time for employees for manual work, thus qualitatively strengthen the team without its full-time expansion, and will allow you to see the broader picture and result, see analytics, predict and look for bottlenecks.

Oksana Makarova, Recruit at MWDN

1.1. What, first of all, do you recommend paying attention to when choosing a recruiting personnel management system for an IT company?

If you simplify the steps a lot, then I would do it as follows:

1. First, I would conduct independent market research for such software. At this stage, you can weed out the systems that are definitely not suitable for you, and highlight those that are possible for use in your company. The software market is constantly changing, so it is better to first look for acceptable options yourself.
2. Then, you can try trial versions of those products that you liked and basically fit. The task of this stage is to make sure that the software has the same, intuitive interface, and all participants in the process will be comfortable using this software. This should be done with an understanding of which people (and what roles these people have) will work in the system. It is important.
3. Calculate and determine how much the price of licenses and (or) system settings corresponds to your budget and try to calculate all the benefits.

1.2. In your personal opinion, from what number of people in an IT company can it no longer be possible to use Google spreadsheets for hiring and adapting people and in time to switch to an automated personnel management system?

From four people! (laughing)

Currently, our internal team consists of 7 researchers and 5 recruiters. And this is already too much for recruiting in Google sheets. It is simply impossible to control, which creates chaos in the processes.

Therefore, if you have such an opportunity, you should automate the recruitment processes as soon as possible.

Let’s summarize

Different points of view on the issue of automation will help everyone draw their own conclusions, but there are several important things that must be taken into account when choosing a recruiting system for an IT company:

1. Remember that there are no companies with completely identical recruiting processes, even in your field.
   Sometimes it seems that if companies are from the same field (for example, IT), then the recruiting processes should be, if not identical, at least very similar. However, this is a misleading opinion. Do not be lazy to digitize what needs to be automated in your company at a specific moment in time, but taking into account the perspective of the next expansion.
2. Choose an ATS system for your own recruiting processes, rather than adapting the processes to the system.
   If from the very beginning you choose a system that does not exactly satisfy your tasks and processes, you will adapt your processes to the system, and not the other way around.
   The correct option is when the system is configured for specific processes. Consider this before you start selecting an ATS for your business.
3. Score twice before you cut once.
   The ATS market is quite diverse, so it would be logical to first explore the maximum number of options that fit your processes, and only then make a decision.

Don’t rush to buy the first thing you find. Mistakes in the selection of ATS can be very expensive.

The correct choice of the ATS system is already 50% of success in implementation.

Good luck with your implementation!