Recruiting software like an applicant tracking system (ATS) is a crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to attracting the most qualified candidates on the market.
From creating careers pages to parsing resumes, applicant tracking systems are a necessary component of any modern recruitment strategy, with nearly 75% of businesses using an applicant tracking system to help them find qualified talent and move candidates quickly through the funnel.
However, while applicant tracking systems bring many benefits to your talent acquisition and recruiting process, everything comes at a cost and convincing the decision makers at your company to allocate budget towards an applicant tracking system can be a bit of a struggle.
In this article, we’re going to cover 5 ways to get budget for recruiting software, and how you can convince skeptics at your company that an applicant tracking system is the way to go.
is right for your business?
1. Look at Your Current Recruiting Budget
The first step is to take a close look at the money already being spent on traditional recruitment efforts.
Most companies are already spending some amount of money on recruiting (external hiring agencies, candidate sourcing, candidate screening, etc.). However, the questions that need to be asked are:
- How fruitful have those efforts been?
- Has the company been able to quickly fill open positions as they come up?
- Has the company built a strong and up-to-date candidate pool that can be called upon at a moment’s notice?
- Have new employees been successful at the company or do they quit six months later?
If any of these questions receive a negative answer, then chances are the company is flushing precious resources like time and money down the toilet.
It is in these situations that you can make your strongest pitch for the adoption of an ATS to those in charge of your company. If the current recruitment strategy isn’t working, how does it make sense to keep doing the same thing?
Instead, shift the resources being spent on traditional recruitment practices to a different, more practical recruiting solution and see what the results are.
2. Improve Turnover Rates
It costs companies almost 33% of a worker’s annual salary to hire a replacement if they decide to quit and find other employment opportunities.
For an employee making $50,000 a year, hiring a replacement could easily end up costing the company almost $20,000. How does this happen?
First, to fill the vacant position, companies who do not already have a strong candidate pool will have to build one by launching an internal or external recruitment campaign. Additionally, once a candidate has made it through the hiring process, they will need time to adjust to the role while the company loses out on productivity.
This can be especially troublesome when a company has a high turnover rate, as losing multiple candidates at once can put the company in an extremely tough financial spot.
As it turns out, this is also something that an ATS can help with. By helping speed up and streamline the hiring process, applicant tracking systems help lower the time to fill. They can also potentially increase the quality of hires through better and more consistent hiring manager feedback.
3. Hiring the Best Talent First
Those familiar with recruiting will immediately understand just how important building a qualified candidate pool is when it comes to filling an open position. A candidate pool is a vetted pool of potential candidates that a company keeps track of, so when a hiring need arises, the company already knows exactly who to call.
This is important because a strong candidate pool means that a company will be better positioned to minimize any loss of productivity associated with a departure.
Additionally, if your company doesn’t have a strong candidate pool, it will be poorly positioned to compete against companies that do. This is because while your company is scrambling to put together a basic recruitment plan, your competitors are already making offers and starting the onboarding process.
This is a disastrous situation for any company to find themselves in because a company is only as strong as the talent it possesses, and if your competitors are consistently beating you to the punch, you will never be able to catch up.
Luckily, building a candidate pool is one of biggest benefits of having an ATS. Items such as resumes, CVs, qualifications, mailing addresses, phone numbers — you name it — are kept in a searchable, user-friendly database that makes it easy for employers to find who and what they’re looking for at a moment’s notice.
4. Where Else is Money Being Wasted?
Besides wasting money on recruitment campaigns that go nowhere, it might also be the case that your company is paying for tools that it doesn’t need.
Take a hard look at every tool or piece of software that your company is currently paying for. You might be able to pitch the idea that the budget can be readjusted to make room for an ATS that has the potential to bring about a whole host of benefits and savings. Think of an ATS as a recruiting assistant that can streamline and speed up the entire hiring process, without the costs that additional headcount brings.
5. Reduce Headaches with Government Compliance
Being out of compliance with the government can cost your company hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is why it’s important to ensure that your recruitment campaign is both EEO and OFCCP compliant.
This is also something that an ATS can help you manage and streamline.
An ATS can automatically collect and store all candidate information required for EEOC and OFCCP compliance, like applicant flow logs, minimum qualifications, reasons for non-selection and features like a built-in EEOC and OFCCP reporting system that makes it easy to see everything at a glance.
By taking everything outlined in this article into account and weighing it against how your business operates, it will be much easier to build a business case for recruiting software to pitch to decision makers at your company.
Aiden Mathieu is a digital marketing associate at Newton Software, a leading applicant tracking system provider. Built by recruiters for employers, Newton makes it easy to streamline and manage every stage of the recruitment process, saving you time and money. When not blogging about topics related to HR and recruiting, Aiden can be found drumming for his band Carrot Cake or playing a round of disc golf.