Efficiently is key in business and ensuring your organisation is a well-oiled machine is what many Managers and Directors strive to achieve – with some businesses even dedicating whole departments to find ways to shave time off the stopwatch. After all, time is money.

Yet, for so long many businesses are so hooked up in cutting time off their operations and day-to-day processes that they forget one area that could really benefit from optimisation, hiring and recruitment.

This is where an applicant tracking system (ATS) comes into play.

We’ve explored what an applicant tracking system is before in a previous blog where we addressed some of the features and benefits of an ATS, and one key topic repeatedly cropped up – time saving. 

Once you begin to implement a time saving system in your business, it can leave you shocked at how much time has been wasted in the past doing your old, laborious practices.

Here are 13 ways an Applicant Tracking System can save you time and money.

1. Spend less time on administrative tasks with intelligent automations

One of the biggest killers of time in the hiring process is administrative tasks, where individual tasks begin to pile up and time lost can really add up. An ATS can save you time on administrative tasks, or even strip some tasks completely out of the process, by utilising triggers and actions.

Progressed a candidate to the next stage of the recruitment process – where you need to notify them each time of the next step? With a simple drag and drop, or updated funnel stage, an ATS can trigger an action such as sending candidates emails, SMS’s, or moving them through the process, saving you time and repetitive tasks.

Even if your recruitment process has three simple steps, doing that for just a handful of candidates each time you hire becomes time wasted and takes you away from more productive tasks.

Triggers and actions can be customised to reflect your recruitment process, meaning no need to change the way you recruit – just time saving.

2. No more chasing references with automated reference collection in just one click

Gone are the days of chasing references from candidates. Reference collection can be fully automated, saving you chunks of time as your hiring process comes to a close.

If you’re spending more time chasing references then you are reading the references, the scales are imbalanced. With an ATS you can put your reference collection in auto-pilot by sitting back and knowing we’ve taken care of…

• Collecting reference details from candidates without even having to type out an email.
• Sending emails to referees with the reference collection request with a simple click.
• Automatically chasing referees who have not responded within a set time period.
• Notifying candidates when references have been received.

With less time spent sorting references, you can put more time into getting back to the job you love.

3. Streamlined RTW check workflow

Right to Work checks are a crucial part of many recruitment processes, and understanding how you can streamline this process can not only save you time but also give you immense peace of mind that documents are in top shape.

Just like reference collection, automatically trigger a request for Right to Work documents from candidates if they are moved to the next stage of the process and the ATS will do the rest.

Link your ATS with third party providers such as Trust ID and get notified as soon as the documents are given the green light that they meet Home Office standards and pass the RTW checks. Optimise your workflow correctly, and once they pass it can automatically trigger the next step of the process, saving you further time; the possibilities are astonishing.

Furthermore, you’ll never need to chase Right to Work documentation for incorrect evidence, poor quality or expired documents with third party software – with the added bonus that it is all stored securely in a GDPR compliant database.

Document collection taking longer than anticipated? Set up a time-based trigger to automatically follow up and chase candidates if they don’t upload their documents within a certain time frame.

4. One-click onboarding with intelligent integrations and APIs

Ready to welcome your shiny new hire? Just because the selection process is over, doesn’t mean there still isn’t time to be saved.

With one-click onboarding, you can request payroll details from candidates, then with intelligent integrations and API’s, you can forget about manual data entry. Not only are you gaining back precious time to focus on your daily activities, but you can sit tight knowing you’ve reduced the chances of data input errors too. 

Save yourself the time and hassle of your new starter’s first day being filled with completing missing onboarding information with automatic reminders sent to your candidates and with an ATS.

5. Never re-type the same email twice with personalised email templates  

Typing out emails can be more time consuming than you think. 

Whilst a quick follow-up email to a candidate could take 30 seconds to type out, needing to send out ten of those each day of the week adds up quickly and could mean you’re spending over 100 minutes a month typing out follow up emails – that’s more than a football match and that’s only emailing ten candidates daily!

Now imagine that across your whole team in the office, across your restaurants or in your shops. It adds up fast and is taking away valuable time away from your decision makers.

Email templates with data fields allow you to personalise email content, shaving off potentially hundreds of hours throughout your recruitment per year by automatically populating content such as names, location, job roles, job type and more. Your templates then feed into your automation too, and with fully editable templates you can alter your tone of voice, branding or approach at any time.

It gets better. Type out an email and realise you could need it again? Create email templates on the go by saving them as you type then, meaning you don’t even have to go into the settings to create templates once you’ve got your ATS set up.

6. Group Actions

Many asked, we listened. If your recruitment attracts hundreds or even thousands of applicants, then even with standard automation you could still be spending huge amounts of time on numerous recruitment tasks and comms.

With group actions, you can do exactly what it says on the tin. Easily apply the same action across a huge range of candidates and remove the need for repetitive tasks.

Need to communicate the same action or next step to 1,000 candidates? Send 1,000 emails in seconds with just a few clicks.

Need to reject 100 unsuitable candidates for the same role? Select, click and done. Whether you want to select candidates individually, or those all on the same page, an ATS makes it simple. 

From a range of grouped tasks such as…

• SMS updates
• Adding tags
• Funnel changes
• Exporting (all candidate data)
• Invite to interview
• Rejecting
• Forwarding
• Downloading (applications + CVs)

Applicant Tracking Systems are here to make life simple and be your ultimate recruitment companion.

7. Contracts

Having prepared contracts at your fingertips can be a real game changer. Utilising pre-populating data fields, you can quickly turn around contracts for your new hires in seconds with the contracts sent out in e-signature format – recruiting no printing, scanning and storing of the contacts, all of which take time which adds up; not to mention knowing your storage solution is GDPR compliant.

Whether you have ten or a hundred new starters across numerous different roles, hours or pay, an ATS will make life easy and ensures all the important details matchup and the correct contracts are signed. All sent with a few clicks and visible in one place. 

As day one for your new hires approaches, see at a glance who is yet to sign and send out auto-reminders to get them signed on the dotted line before they arrive.

8. Tailor the candidate table columns

Having a clean workflow and clear vision of your recruitment process can really help remove stumbling blocks from your day, and having a clear indication of what you need to do next with candidates, without even opening their records, can be a real game changer.

After all, having to open up numerous candidate records may take a few seconds in the short run, but during a busy recruitment drive you could be losing valuable time on unnecessary, repetitive actions.

You can save further time by using filters too, so you can easily find the candidates you need to take action – saving you the time and pain of scrolling through hundreds of records.

9. Streamline your processes with powerful APIs to connect your favourite software

Just because you get an ATS, doesn’t mean you need to ditch your favourite programmes. Combine previous or explore new programmes and software to create a powerful combination that will seamlessly integrate your workflow and unlock your full potential.

We’ve visited API’s with your payroll providers before, but that is just the beginning. How about your employee training? Workforce planning or shift booking? Gone are the days of repetitive, manual data entry.

An ATS allows you to connect a whole range of programmes to bring all your work under one roof.

You can even link your API’s to your automated sequences, giving you more time to focus on your job and not time-intensive administrative tasks.

10. Gain back valuable time from your interviewing

Interviews are one of the most crucial parts of the recruitment process – yet the most timely. An ATS cuts the time spent planning and reviewing interviews, and gives you back time to spend meeting your candidates.

With easy self booking to reduce the back and forth of discovering each others availability, auto interview reminders to candidates 24 hours prior to events to prevent costly no-shows, 

But why stop there? An ATS can cut the behind the scenes work needed for an interview in half, saving you mountains of time in intelligent ways. We’ve reviewed a whole host of interview processes to analyse where time savings can be made, meaning…

• Never send a reminder to candidates again with auto reminders to anyone who is yet to book an interview.
• You don’t even need to copy and paste, let alone type out an email again, with email templates to prefill event details  – drastically minimising your workload when creating interviews and follow ups.
• No need for your interview notes to be stored in hundreds of documents. Store and view your interview notes online, right alongside the candidates’ details.

Need that all important audit trail for your interviews? With instant interviews, you can automatically keep a record of events and record notes in one place, even if an interview is unplanned – removing the headache of file keeping and making evaluating top candidates easier and quicker.

11. Speed up decision making with powerful reporting in just one click

Every successful business needs data to help with decision making, yet as powerful as spreadsheets can be, creating tables, graphs and infographics can still take considerable time.

With powerful reporting in just one click, get a full oversight of your recruitment with real time calculations built in, and intuitive graphics to give you all the information you need in seconds, not minutes.

An ATS can present a host of metrics throughout your organisation; whether you want to see the number of hires over specific date ranges, average time to hire for individual accounts, or number of candidates by referral for a soaring vacancy, ATS reporting empowers you and cuts the hassle out of interpreting ambiguous data or creating spreadsheets.

Having reports at your fingertips can further allow you to gain oversight and streamline your recruitment process, not just save you time generating reports – saving you time in the short and long run. What more could you want?

12. Posting to multiple job boards in seconds, not minutes

Getting more eyes on your vacancies is every recruiters target, but posting to job boards can be a huge time waster – especially if you’re posting a batch of jobs to numerous boards.

With an ATS linked with Vacancy Poster, you can create a job advert in one place and post to thousands of job boards, in a matter of clicks. Not only saving you time, but helping you work towards your objective of getting more candidates into your pipeline, all through an effortless but highly effective integration.

After all, one minute to post a job individually on the likes of Indeed, Reed or Monster Jobs may not seem like much, but over the course of a year those minutes can turn into hours of lost productivity. If there is a way to do it in 60x quicker, then why still spend your time unnecessarily posting manually

13. Spend less time worrying about GDPR and data protection

Rest easy knowing your recruitment is GDPR and data protection compliant with an ATS which follows strict guidelines to keeping your candidates and their data safe.

Recruiting means you’re handling not only large amounts of data, but also highly sensitive data as you hold full names, dates of birth, National Insurance details, bank details and more – meaning your data handling is crucial. 

Whether it is data security, data retention, right to be forgotten or right to access, an ATS has been built with security and data protection in mind, and can even go one step further with automation for elements such as auto deletion of data outside your company’s retention period.