If you’ve already mastered the art of attracting great applicants, your business is way ahead of the curve. But what good is it to invest in attracting talent if you can’t efficiently track your applicants throughout the hiring process? Even worse, what if your current applicant tracking solution is making the hiring process more difficult and burdensome than it should be?

Dealing with one or more of the following scenarios situations could be a sign your organization is using the wrong applicant tracking system:

• You spend valuable time posting positions to online job boards every week.
• Your applicant tracking system creates obstacles that detract from the candidate experience.
• You have to sift through applications and decide which applicants you want to interview.
• Your applicant tracking system stops once an interview has been scheduled.
• You have an on-premise applicant tracking system, rather than a cloud-based solution.

As your hiring needs increase and finding top talent becomes more competitive, you will need an applicant tracking solution candidates and recruiters can use to simplify and streamline the hiring process.

There are hundreds of applicant tracking software options for every small to mid-sized business, staffing agency or enterprise, but there are several things you should take into consideration to make sure you choose the best solution for your business. To get you started, here are four simple questions you can use to help you make your decision on an applicant tracking system.

1. How Many People Do You Hire Each Year?

If you are already tracking resumes and coordinating the entire hiring process manually, you understand how disorganized and stressful the process can be. As your company grows and your hiring needs rapidly increase, you will need a sustainable applicant tracking process that can keep up. If you hire tens or even hundreds of employees per year, implementing a web-based recruiting platform will lay the foundation for efficient and effective recruiting for years to come.

2. How Many Applicants Do You Typically Process for Open Positions?

Processing applicants can be rewarding. But processing applicants can also be maddening as manual recruiting processes put the burden on you to figure out if each applicant is qualified or not. You have to read through every resume, email or paper application, and you have to manually determine who should move forward in the hiring process.

The right applicant tracking system should dramatically reduce the amount of applicants you need to process for each open position. The system should present applicants in a pre-scored and ranked format, thereby allowing you to focus on the applicants that are likely to have the skills you desire. You can focus on processing the right candidates and stop wasting time on unqualified applicants that clutter your inbox.

3. How Many People Are Involved in the Hiring Process?

You may do all the hiring yourself, or you may have a team of recruiters you work with. Most likely, your hiring managers and field supervisors are involved to evaluate the applicants you’ve prequalified and interview top candidates.

Web-based tools and easy-to-use applicant tracking systems make hiring a more collaborative process. Your applicant tracking software should be flexible enough to work with your internal processes and not limit your team based on a defined number of users. To make for a truly collaborative and efficient process, you should be able to include anyone and everyone involved in hiring in using your applicant tracking system, from your HR team at the corporate office to hiring managers and recruiters in multiple locations.

4. What Do You Want the Candidate Experience to Be Like?

Recruiting is like dating—first impressions matter. Using generic application forms, requiring applicants to create user names/passwords and lengthy application processes are all deterrents for job seekers.

Stay tuned for “How to Choose the Right Applicant Tracking Solution – Part 2” in which we’ll share more tips for choosing the right online hiring and recruiting system. Subscribe to our blog to get this post and more recruiting and hiring tips delivered straight to your inbox!