How to choose the best ATS software (or ATS + CRM) for your recruitment firm?

In today's job market, it's essential to diversify your sourcing and job posting channels to attract top talent. Given the numerous tasks involved in the recruitment process, it can quickly become necessary to implement tools to centralize and automate these processes.

Many recruitment agencies have already adopted applicant tracking systems. Automating numerous tasks allows you to save time and add value to many other aspects of your daily work. 

At a time when recruitment continues to be accompanied by numerous digital transformations, there is strong pressure within companies to find the best talent under the most optimal conditions possible.

Let's discover together how ATS ) can adapt to your needs and save you time.

The essentials 

• An ATS, or Applicant Tracking System, is software that simplifies the management of applications within companies, in order to improve quality and save time on recruitment.
• Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) offer a range of key features for effective recruitment management : CV databases, career sites, job posting distribution, HR messaging, and evaluation grids. ATS thus centralize all recruitment-related tasks.
• Overall, using an ATS is accessible to all types of profiles within your company, although it remains most relevant for the recruitment team.

Definition of an ATS

The ATS , or Applicant Tracking System , is historically a recruitment software used to receive and manage applications.

It's essentially a digital solution used to source and track the hiring process of candidates in one or more companies. An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) now addresses many challenges for recruitment managers in recruitment agencies.

In a context where the recruitment market is becoming ever more strained, the latest generation of ATS includes talent pool management to simplify the search (sourcing) of candidates.

Following the digitalization and increased complexity of recruitment processes, the use of organizational and collaborative tools has become necessary.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) allow recruiters to have a comprehensive view of all stages of the recruitment process. Overall, they help reduce the workload of recruitment managers on low-value and previously manual tasks.

The return on investment in an ATS is seen very quickly, because you will save time on your time-consuming tasks and thus be able to devote more time to the search for candidates.

Who needs to know how to manage your ATS? 

For recruiters and managers

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is primarily a tool designed recruiters with all their operational tasks. In practical terms, an ATS does not replace recruiters. Human interaction will always remain central to recruitment. On the contrary, it allows recruiters to be valued and their work to be leveraged.

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This tool can also be useful for managers who can use it as a support for meetings with their employees and to track the success of their teams .

A tool accessible to all

One of the strengths of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) is their ease of use. No specific skills are required ; the interactive guides included with the ATS are more than sufficient to learn how to use the tool quickly and efficiently.

A tool that needs to be adapted by the entire team

When recruitment is collaborative , ATS software enables good communication and visibility on ongoing recruitment processes by all people involved.

Indeed, in order to optimize the recruitment process, several people in your company need access to the ATS. On the one hand, recruiters will use it daily as their primary work tool to manage all recruitment-related tasks.

On the other hand, managers also need access to the ATS to monitor their teams' activity, measure their success, and use it as a tool for one-on-one meetings with their employees. ATS systems enable and facilitate collaboration among all stakeholders in the recruitment process. To choose the right ATS, you need to consider several key features it must be able to handle. 

What are the important features? 

ATS - an all-in-one tool

In practical terms, recruitment management software is used to set up recruitment campaigns and to easily track the recruitment stages of candidates.

No more endless Excel lines, lengthy emails or lost files, with an ATS, everything is centralized in a single tool .

The main features of an ATS

Your ATS can, among other things, allow you to: 

• Finding candidates for you : Thanks to AI, Marvin's ATS is the first ATS capable of automatically suggesting profiles that best match the recruiter's job pipeline. This intelligent sourcing is key to saving time and quickly finding the best candidates across existing databases, social networks, and other online resources.
• Add candidates in just a few clicks : The ATS allows you to obtain a candidate's contact information in just a few clicks. It's the ideal solution for easily adding profiles to your candidate database and then easily leveraging this data.
• Easily track the entire recruitment process : The ATS streamlines the entire recruitment process by facilitating candidate management, from initial contact to the end of the probationary period. All these processes can be viewed directly in the ATS in a simple and clear format.
• Being able to do collaborative recruitment: The ATS allows you to share the candidate's profile with your colleagues and to exchange with the rest of the team in the comments section of each profile.

ATS at Marvin's

At Marvin , our ATS primarily allows you to centralize all the information about your potential candidates and those already in the recruitment process.

Overall, the entire team can access information on ongoing processes

Better qualification of candidates

As you've probably gathered, an ATS provides better visibility into your recruitment processes and across all your company's teams. With an ATS, you can also have more meaningful interactions with candidates and track them throughout their careers.

Marvin's ATS 

Candidate Qualification

Marvin 's ATS is its candidate qualification management. You may often find yourself taking notes during interviews, but these notes often end up lost in a note or folder on your computer, right?

With an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), you benefit from these notes by having them readily available and more legible. This allows recruiters to easily share candidate qualifications with colleagues. The organized notes also make it possible to find a candidate's most recent qualification in just a few clicks, providing ample context.

Within a firm, it is important to be able different types of notes a note taken during the interaction with the candidate during the recruitment process.

It is therefore important to separate the notes according to their typology in order to see more clearly and above all to know where to find the information quickly, distinguishing between information related to the candidate only, to the recruitment process or to the client.

Manage the entire process

With an ATS, there's no need to search through different parts of your notes! The ATS allows you to manage the entire process, with clear visibility for each step.

Being able to store a candidate's profile in a qualitative way is also key to saving time and increasing efficiency throughout your recruitment processes. 

Tracking profiles over the long term

If a candidate you've identified doesn't join your company immediately , an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will allow you to track their profile over the long term and support them throughout their career. This will cost you less in resources. This solution is far more cost-effective than prospecting for ten new candidates.

Post job ads on all job platforms

For markets with rarer profiles, such as developers, a key advantage of the ATS will be the multi-distribution of job postings on job platforms.

Sourcing these profiles is very time-consuming and the acquisition cost is very high. For each job posting created on each different platform, you lose time that could be spent on other tasks.

Analyze the data

Beyond the features, remember to take the time to analyze the data collected on your ATS. This tool is a goldmine for analyzing key performance indicators such as the number of qualifications completed, the number of deals, and the number of open opportunities.

Manage customers 

Marvin's ATS can be very useful to recruitment agencies, as it allows them to:

• Easily track business prospecting
• Add contracts and open opportunities
• Fill in the job postings

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Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are tools that allow you to optimize your recruitment process from start to finish. They provide real added value to recruiters in terms of visibility and clarity of processes with their candidates.

However, the tool does not define your recruitment strategy and does not allow you to find the best candidate without having thoroughly worked on your processes beforehand, and truly identified your employer brand. 

In a context where the candidate market is very tight in many sectors, equipping yourself with an ATS adapted to your needs will allow you to spend more time on what can enhance your company on job boards, and to attract candidates more effectively.

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