In my role I'm often lucky enough to be working with newly-funded startups about to embark on their very first "serious" recruitment campaigns. These are always amazingly fun and exciting projects; working closely with passionate company founders and seeing the immediate impact a few key hires will make.
Getting this ramp-up period right is very important to smooth and successful hiring. So before we even think about posting their first job ad, we work together to develop and implement a complete recruitment process tailored to their needs. A big part of this is choosing the right ATS.
Without some way of tracking applicants (and maybe agency submissions), interviews, feedback and the eventual offer process, even the smallest hiring projects can (do!) fall into disarray. Choosing the right platform can be tricky - and migrating later is not always easy.
Lots of solutions are workable - you can start with a spreadsheet or splurge $$$$ per month for all the bells and whistles - but you need something in place from Day 1.
Lots of solutions are workable - you can start with a spreadsheet or splurge $$$$ per month for all the bells and whistles - but you need something in place from Day 1.
In this series I'm going to explore some of my preferred solutions...
ATS mini-review #1 - The Resumator
Name: The Resumator
Cost: Min $99/mo (for 5 concurrent jobs)
Used by RB clients: Yes
PROS: Fast and easy to get started, basic workflow functionality, pretty career page layout, good job board syndication, nice social media integration
CONS: Doesn't play well with agencies, hard to manage lots of jobs/candidates, can't enforce workflow, collaboration between multiple recruiters/hiring managers is tricky.
Best for: Smaller companies (1-10 job openings) looking for an 'out-of-the-box' solution to manage their own recruitment, and who don't rely heavily on agency submissions.
The Resumator is simple, easy to use SaaS ATS. It offers quick online signup and comes pretty well configured 'out of the box'. At $99/mo it's not the absolute cheapest option available - but it does come with some nice features.
I quite like their branded Career Websites. They are easy to customize (no HTML knowledge required) and to embed within your website. The default look is fairly good - and those with the skills can go to town with custom CSS and really integrate the layout.
Job board syndication works well and there are plenty of free and paid options - if you're in the USA. You can also upload resumes manually or via a dedicated email address which is perfect for Craigslist or other forums. If you're a social media newbie you'll also appreciate the painless Facebook/Linkedin/Twitter integration.
Once you're candidates are in the system. reviewing and rating resumes is quick and painless for a recruiter (or hiring manager) but it starts to come apart as you scale up. Trying to get multiple people involved doesn't work that well. There's a decent attempt at supporting notes, ratings and evaluations (interviews) from multiple people - but I find it clunky.
The resume database and search functionality is also very basic. Perfectly fine for a small number of jobs, but if you grow to the stage of having 100's of resumes in the system, searching for that perfect match is only possible using simple keyword searches - which doesn't really cut it.
I also found no practical way to automate duplicate detection, nor to open up requisitions to external recruitment agencies.
Despite its few shortcomings, it does make a cost effective self-service solution. We do use and recommend The Resumator for smaller clients with under 10 job openings who are looking for a quick and simple solution to manage their career website, online applications and basic recruitment.
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