How to Find the Best Applicant Tracking System for your Needs

To be successful, professional recruiters and staffing agencies need to find, manage, sort and leverage information quickly and effectively.  Whether its sorting through applicants, scoring candidates or researching prospects, its imperative to find the best applicant tracking system for you firm's needs.

So how do you find the best applicant tracking system?

Step 1 - Identify your requirements.  Every recruiter is different.  Are you filling full-time or part-time needs?  Temporary or permanent?  White collar or blue collar?  A headhunter who places C-level executives will have different needs than a firm looking to fill entry-level programming or engineering positions. How essential is speed of searching through candidates in your system?  What about resume parsing?  What about tying in web 2.0 tools and social media?  Do you want something web-based or on your desktop?  What about cost?

Step 2 - Weight your requirements.  This is fairly straightforward.  Don't just make a pros and cons list, but weight requirements accordingly.  Figure out what you can compromise on if needed, and what are your non-negotiables.  The best applicant tracking system for you will be the one that best fits your key needs.

Step 3 - Seek Other Input - Look for ratings, reviews, testimonials, etc.  Take a demo.  Don't just look at the features, but also get a feel for the vendor's service levels, update frequencies, etc.

Follow these steps above, and add in your own common sense and judgement, and you should be happy with the results.  Buying recruiting software and beginning with a new applicant tracking system is a big step that requires not just a monetary investment, but also a time investment.

And the Best Applicant Tracking Software Is...

Ha!  Nice try!  Read the above and pick the best software application based on your needs.  We've reviewed and demoed about a half-dozen and were very pleased with about half of those, and were left wanting with the other half.  Our favorite though - and this is probably skewed towards professional recruiters - is Sendouts. 

The Sendouts applicant tracking system set itself ahead of other big-name competitors based on its integration of Web 2.0 and social media sites, the fact that its web-based, and the frequency of their updates.  We felt like this was the application we would be most comfortable with when it comes to trusting our key business data.  But again, please look around as there are several best applicant tracking systems out there - its a matter of personal choice and what fits your needs.

Looking for More?

Check out the guide to selecting an ATS system on About.com.