Excel vs ATS table: what to choose?
On average, each job offer in business attracts 250 CV. Among these candidates, 4 to 6 will be summoned to an interview, and only one will obtain the position. It is therefore essential to organize and follow all the candidates , the notes, the calendar and the results.
Excel is an excellent tool for storing and sorting relatively simple data and, with advanced knowledge, Excel is capable of much more. But is it capable of effectively managing the requirements of a modern recruitment professional ? With the advent of ATS, this no longer seems to be the case. Excel vs ATS , which one will win the match?
What is an ATS?
What is an ATS?
An ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is software that manages the recruitment and hiring process, including job offers and applications. He organizes information on job seekers and makes them available.
As the name suggests, an ATS follows the candidates throughout the job process . It helps to plan the interviews, issues notifications and alerts, and sends automated emails to candidates and employees, such as recruiters and recruitment officials.
But these systems are much more than organizers. An ATS is also used to sort the applications and recommend the best candidates. He can also search for keywords or use IA type algorithms to carry out a more in-depth analysis of the candidate. The objective is to accelerate the examination of applications.
Hiring managers can then preselect the candidates using the ATS and follow their progress in the hiring process. By thus digitizing the hiring process, an ATS allows employers to save time and money.
How do the ATS work?
A candidates monitoring system helps an organization to manage each stage of the recruitment process, from the writing of the job offer to the job proposal . The ATS keeps traces of all the activity that takes place around the candidate.
The following steps are typical of a recruitment process:
- The job request is created and, if necessary, approved in the system.
- The position is published in one or more places , especially internally for employees, on the organization's website and on external employment sites.
- The candidates apply to the post . They may have to answer questions relating to the position, such as their professional experience and their training. Some ATS can be configured to automatically reject candidates based on answers to certain questions.
- ATS can analyze CVs and classify new applications as they are subject.
- At the same time, a head hunter approaches candidates . Thanks to the ATS, it can automatically download all data from the candidate from Linkedin in a single software, accessible to recruiters.
- The recruiter examines applications in the system and selects the candidates to continue.
- Interviews can take place with the recruiter, the recruitment manager and other people if necessary. Notes can be entered in the ATS after each interview for subsequent reference.
- When the favorite candidate is identified, the recruiter generally uses the ATS to send the offer to the candidate .
- If the candidate accepts the offer , the ATS reception functions are made available to him, he can read and digitally read and sign policies, fill out online forms and learn more about the organization.
Advantages and disadvantages of an ATS vs Excel
10 advantages of ATS software
→ 1. Less administrative tasks that exhaust resources and waste time.
Managing the day-to-day recruitment process with the right ATS means that you will spend much less time repeating tasks such as copy and paste, search, storage and backup.
→ 2. An ATS allows you to develop talents and obtain a long -term value of your candidate pool.
There are pearls to find in previous applications, but buried in spreadsheets and reception boxes, they lose all value.
→ 3. It allows you to develop an enlightened hiring strategy .
It is difficult to make long -term decisions based on data concerning future recruitment with disparate systems. ATS allows you to apply a coherent process thanks to its recruitment analysis tools.
→ 4. The job time is shortened.
Key measurement of the efficiency of recruitment, the hiring period is a strong indication of the performance of a recruitment team. By automatically managing tasks that were done manually, it takes less time to spend the application stadium to that of acceptance and it costs less.
→ 5. The candidate's experience meets his expectations .
A group and full management system will offer a transparent process, enriched and informed to job seekers and candidates.
→ 6. The employer brand is reinforced
A good experience of the candidate improves the reputation of your business and has an impact on your activity . Companies whose brand is strong have a lower hiring cost and attract better candidates.
→ 7. The automatic publication of job offers is effective and fast
The automatic publication of job offers on ad and social media sites save you time, lightens your list of administrative tasks and offers more guarantees of success.
→ 8. Quality candidates are more easily targeted
It is now easy to know where the candidates are in the hiring process, and therefore, none are lost along the way. A rich and frequent communication leads the candidates to remain concerned.
→ 9. Compliance is respected
With a standardized approach and specialized tools for the verification of professional history, it is easier to protect the sensitive data from candidates and to demonstrate that you respect data protection laws and regulations.
→ 10. The collaboration within the team is stronger
If you use a group approach to manage recruitment, it is easier to coherent and efficient recruitment team , with shared access to all relevant information and communications.
3 reasons why Excel does not do the case for recruitment
- Storage, presentation and data search
Excel can store a massive amount of simple data. The amount of data that Excel can store is not the problem, it is the type of data, the way in which the data is presented and the possibility of research that limits recruitment professionals.
If you work with Excel, you will have to go from one program to another and have an extremely organized classification system to avoid leaving essential information.
As new candidates register, the data accumulates quickly and it becomes more and more difficult to find what you need, when you need it.
- Collaboration and confidentiality
Standard Excel documents are limited because they can only be modified by one user at a time . Documents downloaded from cloud storage, modified and then placed on the network often cause data loss , as the changes made by users are crushed.
It may happen that you want to hide data specific to a selection of users. In Excel, you can protect individual sheets by a password, but that does not guarantee data security. A potential problem if you use Excel to store sensitive information.
- Integrations and workflows
If you use Excel to store data, there is a good chance that you are using a word processing to take notes, as well as a calendar and a messaging to manage communications.
The more you go from one software to another, the more time you have . As recruitment evolves, you will be more and more dependent on several applications. This will create a disjointed and complex workflow, which will increase the probability of errors.
Excel is an excellent application that has many uses in the business world, but it is not made to manage the workflow of modern recruitment.
Marvin ATS, why is it practical?
Marvin Recruite is ideal for supporting recruitment activities.
The addition of candidates offered via the 1 click platform thanks to AI allows you to save a lot of time on sourcing , and advanced research in the database makes sourcing smarter and better targeted to offer more qualitative support.
On the other hand, the workflow allows you to simply organize the working day , by centralizing the candidates to call in one place, without being polluted by other information. Everything a recruiter needs on a single platform: statistics, follow -up of the processes and a pool of candidates.
The Marvin Recruité team is also available to personalize the platform as much as possible.
On the management side, the tool allows you to follow the overall and individual performance of my team to make sure that each salesperson achieves its objectives.
Conclusion
Although Excel is an excellent application with a wide range of business world uses, it is not designed to manage the workflow of modern recruitment.
Like Marvin Recruiter, there are many solutions that develop recruitment software for recruitment professionals. These ATS manage the entire recruitment process from a unique and highly integrated system.
Thanks to features such as the automation of key tasks, intelligent CV analysis, connectivity to social networks and employment sites, the powerful integration of LinkedIn and the bidirectional management of emails, the ATS have demonstrated their efficiency and profitability.
Marvin Recruiting solution and thus make your own opinion on Excel vs ATS !
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