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Applicant Tracking System Cost: How Much Does Hiring Software Cost?

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A common question people ask when approaching an ATS provider is: “how much does an applicant tracking system cost?” The answer is challenging because many variables come into play when buying applicant tracking software. This often leads to the answer that no one wants to hear: “it depends.”

But let’s put that answer aside for now, and begin by helping you understand the variables that impact cost. Then, I’ll  give you a good idea of the pricing your organization can expect.

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Applicant Tracking System Cost Basics

Most pricing for applicant tracking software is based on the following criteria:

  • Size of the organization (based on sales or employees)
  • Number of locations and/or users
  • Hiring volume
  • Other complementary products wanted (employee onboarding software, video interviewing, etc.)

ATS Features

Below is a listing of some of the more common features that may be of importance to your organization. Pricing will typically fluctuate based on which of these items you need for your company:

Possible Limitations

The final component in determining price for applicant tracking software is understanding what restrictions or limitations exist in the solution. These limitations typically exist in lower-priced or “free” tools and are listed below:

  • # of open jobs at a given time (often 3 or fewer)
  • # of applicants in the system (often 200 or fewer)
  • # of system users (often just 1)

Similarly, many providers offer different tiers of pricing based on which features you need and what limitations you’re willing to accept. Be sure to understand exactly what you get in these “Gold” vs. “Silver” vs. “Bronze” packages. Otherwise, you may end up with a higher price tag or less functionality than you anticipated.

Applicant Tracking System Cost Scenarios

Now that you understand some of the parameters, let’s look at some examples of pricing. Please keep in mind, these are only examples and are not meant to provide definitive figures for your particular situation.

  • Scenario 1 — under 50 employees, single user, no more than 3 jobs listed and fewer than 100 applicants
    • Here you might expect to see little to no implementation fees and anywhere from $50 to $200 per month in ongoing access fees.
  • Scenario 2 — 100 to 200 employees, 3 users, unlimited jobs and unlimited applicants
    • Here you might expect to see $0 to $500 implementation fees and anywhere from $150 to $400 per month in ongoing access fees.
  • Scenario 3 — 300 to 500 employees, 10 users, unlimited jobs and unlimited applicants
    • Here you might expect to see $300-$1,000 implementation fees and anywhere from $300 to $650 per month ongoing access fees.

As you can see, shopping for an applicant tracking software solution isn’t a simple task. Determining if you’re really comparing “apples to apples” takes time and due diligence. I hope this helps in your efforts to find the best solution at a fair price for your HR department’s and company’s needs.

Contact us today to schedule a live demo of ExactHire’s applicant tracking software and discuss pricing for your organization.

Image credit: Money Tunnel by Cameron Russell (contact)

What if Applicants Charged You for Their Time?

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Recently I received an article forwarded from a friend that discussed applicants charging companies for their time during the interview process. Sounds a bit outlandish on the surface, doesn’t it? In summary, the article, “Ask The Headhunter: Should Employers Pay to Interview You?” (by Nick Corcodilos) is really about managing expectations.

There are tons of questions that could be asked if this were a serious threat:

  • What if you had to pay applicants for their time once they made it past the first interview?
  • What would you do differently?
  • Would your decision timeframe be shorter?
  • Would you make an external status code from your applicant tracking system visible so that applicants knew where they stood without having to ring you?
  • Would you send mass email updates to your applicant pool with personalized email templates?
  • Would you have a stricter selection process workflow with your hiring managers?
  • You told the applicant you would follow up…did you actually do it?
  • What about when the applicant followed up on the promise you made to follow up and you never returned his/her phone call?

Not every applicant has the luxury of disposable time. And let’s be honest, the ones who do, may not be at the top of your candidate list. I challenge you, for one month, to start acting as if your applicants would charge you for their time. If you were on the other side, acting as the applicant, would you prefer the manner in which your company already conducts the hiring process; or, would you likely prefer the way in which it is conducted during the one-month challenge period?

It is no doubt that the applicant experience is an extension of your brand. “More than one-quarter of US consumers (26%) say they are more likely to tell family, friends, and coworkers about a bad experience with a product or service than a good one (MarketingProfs).” Keep in mind, we’re all six degrees of Kevin Bacon and somewhere, somehow, your company will be impacted if your hiring process is lackluster.

Looking for ways to improve the applicant experience at your organization? Contact ExactHire for more information about our applicant tracking software.

Improve Your Hiring Process: Manage Your Applicant Pipeline Effectively

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Now that you’ve made candidates aware of your position, leveraged contacts to draw applicants, and have gone through the process of thinning the initial herd of applicants, perhaps the most important part of the hiring process begins. Now is the time to dig deeper and take applicants through your remaining steps to hire.

If your hiring process is very short and compact, keeping track of applicants as they go through it likely isn’t much of a challenge. However, this is pretty rare. More often than not, the biggest complaint I hear from organizations is how cumbersome it is to know who’s where in their hiring process at any given moment in time.

Smart Workforce Planning

When you think about it, it’s not much different than than managing a sales pipeline. Since sales are the lifeblood of most organizations, lots of dollars and time are devoted to making sure all necessary team members internally know what new sales are in what stage of the pipeline. Knowing where applicants are in your pipeline is every bit as critical. This allows your organization to plan when certain positions may be filled, what type of background finalists have that may (or may not) work with the team to which they’ll be assigned, what additional dollars may be needed to secure your selected applicant for a given position, etc. In other words…it’s a big deal.

The Downfalls of Tracking Applicants Manually

The challenge for most organizations in the market we encounter (50-1,500 employees) is that this must be tracked manually. Sometimes this is done with paper folders that include an applicant’s resume, physical application, phone screen & interview notes, etc. Other times, applicants are logged into a spreadsheet and categorized by how far along in the process they are.

The paper folder approach accomplishes the objective of keeping most of the relevant information for the applicant in a single place. On the other hand, using this process makes it nearly impossible to keep track of any reasonable number of applicants at a given time, especially if you have multiple openings simultaneously. One other significant drawback is the scenario where one hiring manager needs to review an applicant’s information, but the file is with another hiring manager.

The spreadsheet option is the preferred option, but presents challenges. Chief among those are:

  • who maintains the spreadsheet — one master administrator, each person who participates, etc.?
  • how often is it updated?
  • where are notes for candidates kept? who has access to it?
  • what happens to candidates who look good, but aren’t hired? How are they considered when the same or similar positions open up down the road?

A final point to consider is that in either of the above scenarios, it is very difficult to protect your employment brand — as referenced in my last blog in this series. Trying to keep applicants updated on their current status, notifying them when the position has been filled, etc. is possible, but requires more time/effort than most organizations are willing to devote.

Applicant Tracking System Benefits

For this part of your process (assuming you hire more than a handful of people per year), using applicant tracking software should be a huge benefit. Applicants are now consolidated in a single data pool, where they may be accessed by those hiring managers and leaders you determine. In addition, you now have the capability to see who has made what notes, what applicants have been moved to different points in your unique process, and easily reference them when similar positions open up down the road. Finally, this also dovetails nicely with the objective of protecting your brand.

Managing your process more effectively allows you to repeat that process more consistently. This continuity, in turn, will improve your hiring results — leading to better employees who stay with you longer.

To see how our ExactHire’s applicant tracking system can help your organization manage the applicant pipeline, schedule a live demonstration.

Image Credit: Traroth (Own work) CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why Use Employee Assessments in Your Hiring Process?

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We all know that turnover is expensive; however, so is the cost of having an under-performing employee who continues to work for your company. Consider also that terminating employees is more difficult due to the number of laws that exist. Is it any wonder that companies are becoming more diligent and taking additional steps in the hiring process to ensure they are hiring the right people? By “right people” I mean, candidates that have the same characteristics as your current top performers and ones that fit the job and the culture of your company.

X Factor Company Culture

Many different studies conclude that the companies that have proven to be great at identifying, hiring and retaining top talent are the most successful companies in their space. These companies usually have higher market capitalization values. One of the reasons is because having a top performing organization is hard to replicate, and leads to great cultures and the “X factor” that makes companies grow at accelerated rates and become more creative.

Many companies, when hiring, struggle with finding that right person for the job. While using tools like applicant tracking software and external job boards makes the process more efficient and helps with initial screening, help is needed when you get down to the short list of candidates you are considering.

As a result, more companies are using employee assessments to help with this process.

Identify Success Factors in Top Performing Employees

To start, consider how good of a job you have done in determining what the true success factors are for the job. A starting point should be to determine the traits/characteristics your top performers possess. This needs to be an objective process that you can utilize when interviewing potential candidates. To accomplish this, we recommend that our clients give their top performers a validated employee assessment to identify these success factors. From this you can develop a job success pattern against which potential candidates can be compared. This makes the process more objective, allowing you to be more prepared in your interview process and to focus on the areas of concern. It also helps to reduce the subjective nature of the questions and the answers that we typically see in an interview.

When you consider the fact that most of us are not that good at interviewing, we need all the help we can get. In fact, the interviewees are usually better prepared than the interviewer. Unfortunately, we tend to hire candidates that are more like us as interviewers, regardless of what the job requires. To make matters worse, we tend to reach that conclusion early in the interview.

The cost of these employee assessments and the additional time you spend in determining success factors really do pay big dividends. The payoff shows up in reduced turnover, shorter learning curves, less conflict in the workplace and better overall job and culture fit. You should work with your trusted advisors to help guide you through the process of selecting the right employee assessment tool and learning how to use it in your hiring process. Like they say, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”

If you’d like to learn more about which employee assessment tools might be right for your company, contact ExactHire.

SMB Pre-Employment Screening Guide Ebook

Image credit: generator.x show by jared (contact)

[VIDEO] Job Requisition Approval Process

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Is your organization struggling to get job openings approved by relevant managers across multiple locations in a timely fashion? Do delays in the job requisition approval process cost your company money, time and lost applicants?

If so, then consider incorporating an automated job approval tool into your hiring workflow. In this video, learn how the optional requisition management feature within the HireCentric applicant tracking system can help organizations to better control the time frame and costs involved with the recruiting process.

Schedule a live demonstration to see the job requisition management feature in action.

Transcript:

An easy-to-use job approval process is key to a consistent, controlled approach to managing your hiring efforts and staying within budget.

ExactHire’s applicant tracking software has an optional requisition management feature that allows small and mid-sized companies to digitize the job approval process.

With the flexibility to allow both hiring managers and HR administrators to start new requisitions, companies can customize the approval process by business unit or even by job listing.

It’s easy for hiring managers to access the Requisitions tab and click the green plus icon to start a new request.

Configure user logins to give managers access only to templates within their department.

Then, managers complete the quick and easy form, customized for your company, to capture whatever job info you require…for example, number of openings, salary grade, job board preferences, and budgetary considerations.

The management approval chain can vary by user or job. With HireCentric, HR Admins may pre-configure approval layers for groups of users; or, allow them to choose the appropriate requisition approval layers for themselves.

Once a request is launched, the first recipient logs in to view details and then may simply approve or deny it. Leaving comments is optional.

If declined, the requesting manager receives a notification and may make edits. Once approved by all layers, an HR Administrator receives notice.

Then, with just a few clicks, the HR Admin can push the job to external job boards and social media sites.

Having a paperless job approval process allows your business to streamline hiring…getting jobs posted and applicants sourced more quickly. Forget the pains of paper pushing and waiting for wet signatures – ask ExactHire about requisition management and our applicant tracking system.

To see the HireCentric requisition approval feature in action, please schedule a live demonstration or request a free 14-day trial.

Improve Your Hiring Process: Thin the Herd

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As you might gather from the title above, this is the first blog in a seven-part series about core concepts your organization can use to improve the efficiency and overall results of your recruiting and hiring process. While not the most glamorous topic out there, I think the majority of people involved with recruiting will agree that doing it right, and with as little wasted effort as possible, is critical to the ultimate success of any organization.

To be clear, this blog series isn’t about “process change” or anything nearly that advanced. Instead, I’ll be writing about simple concepts that are easy to incorporate into your existing process and can dramatically improve results. So, off to our first suggestion — thin the herd efficiently.

Screen Employment Applications

I don’t mean to imply that your applicants are a herd of animals, although you may disagree in some instances! However, this analogy holds true for most organizations when you look at what chronically-high unemployment rates have created. We’ve all read the stories about hundreds or thousands of applicants lining up when career fairs are held for new job opportunities. The simple fact is there are a lot of people continuing to look for work, so open positions attract larger volumes of applicants than they did 10 years ago. The “herd” of applicants is typically pretty big depending on the role.

On the one hand, that’s a good thing for you as an employer. There are more options from which to choose and a more diverse pool of potential hires available. On the other hand, it creates a dilemma many of you have encountered…”how do I possibly review all of these applicants for this opening?” That’s usually followed by…”I don’t have time for this AND my actual job!” So, how can you thin the herd?

Screening Questions Are Your Friend

The easiest solution I’ve found is to develop job-specific screening questions for your different positions. While there is initially a little time involved in creating these questions (including making sure they are legal & non-discriminatory), they can allow you to separate the clearly-unqualified job candidates from the possibly-qualified individuals much more quickly than the traditional option of reviewing resumes and applications individually.

It’s possible to do this with existing paper applications or downloadable PDF applications, although these options take away the ability to have the screening done in an automated fashion. Similarly, some of the more prevalent job boards allow you to require applicants to answer screening questions before they can submit their information for your job openings.

More commonly, organizations are looking to automated applicant tracking software tools to help with screening. If implemented properly, web-based recruiting solutions like these can automate this screening process significantly. In many instances, you can automatically “score” applicants’ answers to your unique questions and designate certain responses to mark applicants as not qualified for a given position.

Download our hiring process questions guide

 

Streamline and Improve the Hiring Process

An applicant tracking system shouldn’t be viewed as a way to “automate” hiring — in an impersonal sense. Rather, it’s merely a tool, that when used properly, can help you quickly identify which applicants merit further consideration for your particular job openings. Once you’ve “thinned the herd” initially, you will then be in a position to focus more time and effort on engaging with the shorter list of qualified applicants moving forward.

Be on the lookout for the next blog in my series where I relate the concept of comparing apples to apples to the recruiting process.

Could you use an ATS solution to help streamline your applicant screening process? Contact us to discuss our applicant tracking system.

Image credit: Stampede by Gopal Vijayaraghavan (contact)

[VIDEO] EEO and OFCCP Reporting – HireCentric ATS

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Keeping up with compliance-related EEO and OFCCP reporting tasks is one of the many essential responsibilities for human resource professionals employed by federal contractors today. From assessing whether applicants’ qualifications meet minimum job requirements to including diversity posting sources in your external job board mix to generating applicant flow logs, there are many factors to coordinate for an affirmative action-minded employer.

Finding an effective applicant tracking system to help automate these tasks allows an organization to make HR paperless and reduce overhead costs. In this video, ExactHire shows how the HireCentric ATS can accommodate the reporting needs of a company’s affirmative action plan program.


Are you a federal contractor that would like to evaluate options for automating your compliance reporting efforts? Schedule a live demo with ExactHire.

Transcript:

HireCentric ATS makes it simple to attach minimum qualification questions to jobs, and the system automatically disqualifies any applicants who fail to meet minimum requirements. Then, quickly view the disqualified applicants for a specific job and assign them a reason for non-selection.

Invite applicants to voluntarily self-identify EEO information within your branded portal stating that you are an equal employment opportunity employer. Hiring managers won’t see EEO information as they review applicants…survey answers are kept separate so that only HR Admins can run compliance reports.

It’s simple to assign a reason for non-selection. Save as many disposition status codes as you need to explain the why and when of each applicant’s departure from the hiring process. The ATS records the date and time for each status assignment so that it can be viewed from the applicant’s record as well as on compliance reports.

Automatically maintain an applicant flow log that contains information necessary to perform an adverse impact analysis. Customize the log to include must-have affirmative action info such as EEO-1 category, Job Group, disposition code, race and gender. And, export your reports with the click of a button.

Use our built-in job posting service with tons of external job boards to save time.
And, access a record of your posting history, including diversity sources and local employment agencies.

The HireCentric applicant tracking system is a key part of your compliance toolkit, and will easily meet your EEO & OFCCP reporting requirements, while also maintaining a positive recruitment brand.

Applicant Tracking Software for Blue Collar Employers

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In my dealings with organizations around the country, I occasionally (though not as often as in the past) hear concerns about moving the hiring process online for positions that are entry-level or blue collar in nature.  I especially run across this objection when speaking with individuals from manufacturing companies. When digging a bit deeper with these organizations, the concerns typically boil down to two things:

  • Do their applicants have internet access readily available?
  • Are their applicants tech-savvy enough to complete employment applications online?

The first question is probably a bit easier to evaluate than the second.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent publication on the topic, “Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2018,” around 85% of American households had internet access in 2018.  That means three out of every four applicants (on average) have internet in their home.  Beyond that, we also have to consider how many people have access to the internet through their smartphone or tablet device?  While there may not be any solid statistics to bring clarity to that question yet, I’m a believer that some reasonable percentage of the 25% population without home internet access do have access through one of these alternate devices.

Strategies for Applicants Without Internet Access

However, let’s look at this from a more pessimistic perspective.  To be fair, if I’m recruiting for positions that are more entry level or blue collar, I don’t want to potentially miss 15% of my applicant pool because they don’t have internet access.  If you subscribe to that theory, below are some things our clients have done to make our applicant tracking software more accessible for those who may not have regular access to the internet:

  • Set up kiosks so applicants may apply on-site.  Going this route doesn’t mean you have to purchase new laptops or desktops (or even tablets).  Instead, simply have your IT staff (or an outside group for very few dollars) repurpose older computers so that they may be used in a lobby or office for just this purpose.
    • If applicants do not have a current email address, then make sure your web-based employment application includes a link to a free email provider within its instructions – so that the applicant may create a new email account on the spot and then use it to complete the required email field on the application.
  • Suggest to applicants that they may access your career portal for free from most libraries.  All they need is a library card (also free), and they may apply like any other applicant.
  • Partner with your local Workforce Development office.  Given that its mission is to help create and/or fill jobs for local organizations, the staff there may be happy to allow applicants to complete your online application from their office.
  • As a last resort (if none of the above work), suggest to applicants that they use the computer of a friend or family member.  While I don’t anticipate it would come to this often, it does virtually guarantee that they’ll know someone with internet access.

Applicants Who Are Not Tech-Savvy

Now, on to the second question from above — are the applicants tech-savvy enough to complete online employment applications available through your applicant tracking software?  The reason this is more difficult to answer is because there are a handful of things that can influence the answer.  Chief among them are:

  • How user-friendly is the paperless application you’re using?  If designed properly, a good ATS should walk applicants through the process of finding and applying for the right job in a very simple, intuitive way.
  • What is the typical demographic you’re hiring for these positions?  There are some groups of people where access to internet and overall computer usage is lower than the national average.  Again, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s data, examples include households where the median age is above 65, and households located in rural areas with limited availability to purchase/use internet services.  If you happen to target these demographics, you may need to have manual options available on very limited stand-by for cases where accessing a web-based application doesn’t work for applicants.

So, if you hire entry-level or blue collar staff regularly, please take a look at your hiring landscape.  Feel free to use the guidelines above to help determine whether the advantages of applicant tracking software may be realized for your company, despite any initial concerns regarding affecting your applicant flow.

Image credit: Perfection is our Direction by Nick Harris1 (contact)

Make a Business Case for Paperless HR Software – How to Talk Your Boss’s Language

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A challenge for many Human Resource professionals has always been getting a seat at the proverbial table. In other words, how can HR and the workforce, in general, be viewed less as an expense and more as an asset? After all, that’s what we all want, right?

Speak the Same Business Language

One of the primary reasons this remains a difficult task is because the language and analytics traditionally used by human resources professionals may not be as meaningful to others in leadership roles. For instance, while turnover percentage and time-to-fill are reliable indicators to many in the human resources arena, these HR metrics don’t necessarily translate well to CFOs, COOs, or presidents.

In many of my conversations with prospective clients, I hear this same scenario played out again and again. However lately, I’m seeing more frequent instances where changing how HR folks think to more closely align with other organizational leaders can turn this tide. Let’s take human capital, for instance. In particular, let’s focus on applicants and new hires, as that’s where our solutions work for most companies.

When adding applicant tracking software or employee onboarding software, many HR leaders focus primarily on justifying these web-based software applications by focusing on efficiencies gained and/or staff time saved. While these points certainly have merit, they also fall outside the common terminology of most finance and operations leaders. Because efficiency and staff time saved in HR are difficult to quantify and not directly attributable to the bottom line, these savings are usually discounted or dismissed entirely.

However, focusing on what direct impact those efficiencies can have on the revenue growth or profitability of the organization changes that conversation completely. Here’s what I mean – instead of focusing on time saved, work with metrics that are meaningful to your boss.

Metrics That Are Meaningful to the Bottom Line

Revenue per employee and profit per employee are very common ways to look at your workforce as an asset. Fewer employees with more revenue equals more profit — nothing too complicated about that. Thinking this way allows the human resources department to make a true business case for recruiting automation that will resonate with other leaders. Logically, here’s the case:

  • Automating job board postings and using social media recruiting tools drives more applicant traffic to the organization
  • Allowing applicants to apply online (vs. paper applications or emailed resumes) converts more applicant traffic to actual applications
  • Leveraging job screening questions allows the recruiting team to focus on the higher quality applicants more quickly — even with a potentially higher volume of applicants
  • Focusing more effort and spending more time with those quality applicants leads to hiring better people — this will be even more pronounced if you choose to utilize employee assessments to increase your potential for optimal job fit across your workforce
  • Good employees ramp up more quickly, stay longer and perform better than average employees
  • This drives more revenue, improves customer satisfaction, reduces operating costs, improves output, and the list of positive benefits goes on…

Now you’re making a business case for using solutions, instead of asking for something under the appearance that it will simply make life easier for you and your staff.

This may not happen overnight in your organization, but continuing to think more like your boss and communicating in his or her terms will improve your perceived value to the organization. Oh yeah…it will also help you get more of what you want and need for you and your team.

For help with making a business case for paperless HR software in your organization, please contact ExactHire.