We’re in a time when it’s hardly surprising to find a business using an applicant tracking system to manage their recruitment. But what if your company hasn’t got one? Would that be a problem?
Given that 99% of Fortune 500 companies use ATS platforms regularly, there might be a fear of missing out that drives us to hastily consider purchasing one. As someone who has transitioned from a recruiter to a tech writer, I can assure you that this is not always necessary.
If you're wondering whether your small business needs an ATS, a good rule of thumb is to assess if you have at least 20 job vacancies per year. At this level, you will most likely see the significant ROI the ATS brings to your hiring process.
If your hiring needs are below this threshold, not having an ATS in place probably won't make or break your team. That said, starting early by experimenting with different options can yield significant benefits as your team expands.
And here’s why.
An ATS Is Not Always Needed If You Hire Fewer Than 20 People Annually
Since we launched our free advisory service to help companies select the right recruitment and HR software, we have frequently asked this one question: “Which ATS is the best for us?” Almost always, we respond with, “How often do you hire?”
An ATS is designed to simplify the applicant tracking process, which includes everything from one-click job posting and career pages to candidate screening, social media referrals, interview arrangements, and onboarding.
But, how much of a positive impact it can have on your hiring workflows majorly depends on two factors:
1. The ATS feature set, i.e., its capabilities, and
2. How heavy your current application process is. This factor largely depends on the number of hires your team makes each year rather than the size of your workforce.
A common pitfall people make when buying HR tech is mistaking the company size for the hiring need. While the number of employees plays a part in the buying process (because fewer TA people often mean a heavier workload for each), the more vital figure is the number of new hires you make per year.
As an example, an ATS can make sense when there are just five of you at your startup, yet you plan to double in size within the quarter. On the contrary, if you have a hundred people on your payroll, but low turnover and no new positions, perhaps you don’t need to shell out big bucks for a top recruitment tool. In other words, the likelihood of justifying the cost of an ATS is much higher for a five-person startup that is Series C funded and plans to expand globally x5 in the coming year compared to a 162-employee retailer that is downsizing and cutting down branches.
So, how many hires signal buying an ATS is the right choice? We’ve briefly mentioned in our ATS buying guide that an ATS becomes essential when you hire 20 people in a year—and for good reason. Below that, you might not see much of a difference compared to when you keep track of the hiring process through spreadsheets or LinkedIn. In some cases, optimizing your current recruitment processes may even provide better value than adopting a new HR tool.
That said, if you want to start early, there are some notable free ATS and free recruitment software available for you to do just that. Just bear in mind that you should treat them as a sample, temporary solution, not your long-run, end-game one.
The following points detail the best recruitment software tools for different hiring volume needs. I've also included some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of these tools.
Recruitment Tools Teams Hiring Under 20 People Each Year Truly Need
1. Use Free Job Boards the Right Way
Finding the right candidate often means looking in the right places. While most employers are familiar with household brands like LinkedIn and Indeed, niche job boards tailored for specific industries and roles can help you avoid the deluge of unqualified applications common on larger platforms and thereby, deliver better job applicant relevancy.
For example:
- PeopleOpsJobs: Specifically designed for HR professionals, this job board can help you find talent for People Operations (PeopleOps) and HR roles. It’s a go-to platform for organizations in need of experts in employer brand, employee engagement, compensation strategies, and organizational design.
- Remote.co: This platform is particularly great for screening candidates in content creation, customer support, and software development, where physical location isn’t a constraint.
- Wellfound (formerly AngelList): This platform focuses on startups and tech-savvy candidates and is ideal for small business owners with job openings in software engineering, product management, and startup operations. Many of the job seekers on Wellfound have entrepreneurial mindsets, making them more likely to embrace versatile roles in medium-sized businesses. What’s more, they now offer a free ATS with no restriction on the number of job postings you can have.
2. Utilize Your Existing Project Management and Team Collaboration Tools
Is your team using Monday.com, Trello, or Asana already? Good news for you: these apps are not only versatile for task management but they can also be repurposed as lightweight ATS software with a bit of creativity. Here’s how:
- Candidate Communication: Good team collaboration tools offer a wide range of communication channels, like group chat, direct messaging, video meetings, voice calls, and screen sharing. Technically, you have just what your small business needs to manage candidate interactions and enhance their experience.
- Collaborative Hiring: From a company perspective, being able to tag and communicate in real-time with other hiring team members means faster feedback loops, more transparent and inclusive hiring decisions, and less miscommunication.
- Task Automation: These solutions are also good at automating and organizing tasks, with task delegation, automated reminders, and deadline setting. If you think about it, these can also work amazingly well for applicant tracking purposes. With Kanban, custom workflows, and rules, you can tailor and automate your recruitment process, assign specific team members, and automate reminders to keep things moving smoothly.
- Integrations: Most project management platforms can integrate with business apps like Slack, Google Drive, or Outlook. This makes it easy to share candidate data, schedule interviews, and communicate with applicants. And importantly, they can also play well with your HRIS, given that you’re on the plan where their API access is offered.
- Security Features: Last but not least, these tools often come with robust security measures like SOC2 compliance, role-based access controls, and data backup capabilities, which are critical when handling sensitive candidate information.
3. A Free ATS is Great to Test the Waters
While free, if you’ve done rigorous research or sought help from the experts, you can find some real gems that would cost you little to nothing and in return, serve you with some efficiency boosters like resume parsing, branded career sites, and interview scheduling automation. Not to mention, most come with advanced functionalities that give you a taste of their premium offerings.
Check out a few of them below:
- Manatal: A very budget-friendly ATS option—its pricing starts at just $15 per month by the time of this writing. This vendor also offers a free trial which you can easily sign up for online, no credit card information is required. It’s also known for its ease of use and numerous in-app AI recruiting tools.
- Zoho Recruit: Though its starting price ($25 per month) is slightly higher than Manatal, Zoho Recruit offers a forever-free plan that covers both ATS and candidate relationship management tool (CRM), making it one of the top choices for both in-house recruitment teams and staffing agencies.
- Monday.com: With Monday.com, you just have to be a bit more creative, and you can enjoy a user-friendly applicant tracking tool without spending extra on another platform. Its customizable templates allow teams to organize candidate profiles, schedule interviews, and monitor progress all in one place.
4. ATS Alternatives That Also Worth Considering
Beyond ATS platforms, several other free recruitment tools can help small businesses manage their hiring process with minimal overhead plus a chance to see whether a solution would work for their businesses in real life. An example would be Willo, an SMB-oriented video interview platform that stands out for its easy implementation, transparent pricing, and free tier that provides one job and ten responses per month—a good starting point for a test run on how aligned the tool is with your recruitment needs.
Recruitment Tools to Consider When You Hire 20+ People Each Year
When your company hires more than 20 people annually, the limitations of tools like Excel and spreadsheets quickly become apparent.
You’ll find it increasingly time-consuming to manage candidate flow, keep track of interviews, and ensure you’re hiring the right talent on time. These are some clear signals it’s time to invest in more advanced talent acquisition technology to streamline your hiring process.
Best Applicant Tracking Systems for SMBs
As your hiring needs grow, applicant tracking software becomes essential for keeping everything organized. The right ATS provides features like job description optimization, resume parsing, interview scheduling, and team collaboration without overwhelming your budget.
Options like Workable and VIVAHR, for example, are not only affordable to most SMBs but also flexible enough that you can count on them to handle everything from humble beginnings to rapid growth.
Candidate Sourcing Tools
Filling multiple roles within tight deadlines is one of the biggest challenges for growing companies. Rather than overloading your recruitment team with manual sourcing tasks, consider adopting specialized talent sourcing tools. These solutions help you expand your talent pool, attract more qualified candidates, and improve sourcing effectiveness.
Examples like Fetcher, Gem, and Loxo offer features such as AI-powered sourcing, automated candidate engagement, and access to vast talent pools, which better your chances of finding top talent with less recruitment effort and shorter time-to-hire, among other recruitment metrics.
Recruitment CRMs
If you want to better candidate relationships over time and nurture a talent pipeline for future roles without exhausting your recruiters and hiring managers with manual data hygiene and engagement setups, a recruitment CRM is a solid bet. Unlike ATS systems, which focus on active applicants, CRMs are designed to sustain a talent pipeline for future roles.
Tools like SmartRecruiters, Bullhorn, and Recruiterflow are among the best recruiting CRM software in the market for bettering candidate experience and nurturing long-term relationships with talent.
FAQs
What is an applicant tracking system?
An ATS is designed to streamline the entire applicant tracking process. This includes functionalities such as one-click job postings, creating career pages, screening candidates, managing social media referrals, coordinating interviews, and facilitating onboarding.
How much do applicant tracking systems cost?
The cost of an applicant tracking system, which charges per user or vacancy, typically ranges from $250 to $3,000 USD annually. Visit our ATS pricing guide for more details.
How does an ATS improve the recruitment process?
Using an ATS can assist recruiters in sourcing the best-fit candidates, scheduling interviews, automating job postings, and improving and analyzing recruitment metrics. 79% of surveyed recruiters agree that the quality of their new hires has increased after implementing this type of recruitment software.
Which applicant tracking software do most companies use?
The top 10 ATS vendors with the largest market share in 2023 include iCIMS, Oracle, Workday, SAP, Greenhouse, UKG, SmartRecruiters, Dayforce, and Paycom.
What are good applicant tracking systems for a startup?
Workable, VIVAHR, and Zoho Recruit are some of the best applicant tracking software for startups and small businesses for their user experience, affordability, and flexibility.
Summing Up
Is an ATS necessary for your small business? In short, it may not be too much of a difference, and therefore, wouldn’t be necessary to invest in an ATS when you have fewer than 20 positions to fill each year. Nevertheless, preparing early by staying informed with recruiting software insights from subject-matter experts can go a long way in securing the best candidates as your hiring needs grow.
