What is ATS?

1What does ATS stand for?

ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System.

An applicant tracking system is software used by recruiters to track their interactions with individuals who have applied for a job. Applicants are also referred to as candidates. Check out this article on Wikipedia for more info.

Applicant Tracking System

2What is an ATS?

An applicant tracking system allows you to plan, execute and track the hiring plans for an organzation.

Within a hiring organization, the applicant tracking system acts as the single source of truth for all hiring activities. The ATS resume database can store millions of applicant resumes and organize all of the historical correspondence with job seekers.

ATS systems ultimately represent the organization's hiring plan. BrightMove is the most configurable ATS on the planet. It can be configured to fit your specific recruitment strategy. With BrightMove, you can rest assured, when a recruiter on your talent team enters their ATS login credentials, they are being asked to follow organization's recruitment process.

3What does an ATS do?

ATS systems optimize the interactions between applicants, jobs, hiring managers and recruiters.

Depending on the supplier, ATS systems have different features and functionality. BrightMove's applicant tracking systems can help your recruiters be more effecient by automating many repetitive tasks. ATS automation increases the efficiency of your talent team. ATS recruiting reduces the acquisition cost of job applicants. By implement an ATS in recruiting within your organization, you will save time and money. Additionally, as the name suggests, an ATS allows you to track all of the interaction that occurs between recruiters and job applicants.

BrightMove is the most configurable ATS on the planet. Through ATS mods, it can be configured to fit your specific recruitment strategy while providing specific and deep analytics into the performance of your talent acquisition team. The omnichannel applicant tracking system can be configured to integrate with your website's career page, automatically post jobs to all of the major sites and centralize all candidate engagement.

4What is the difference between an ATS and an ATS resume database?

A standard feature for most applicant tracking systems is to store applicant resumes within the ATS database.

Recruiters using BrightMove can automate ATS format resume instantly for sharing with potential hiring managers. ATS automation like resume parsing saves recruiters a lot of time by eliminating repetitive data entry. BrightMove's applicant tracking system resume check helps keep an organization's ATS resume database clean by preventing duplicates. When loading a new applicant record into the system, the ATS resume checker scans the resume database for similar candidates, and enables recruiters to merge with duplicate records when found.

BrightMove has a ATS resume scanner feature too. Using our Chrome Extension, recruiters can load an applicant's resume directly from any webpage or LinkedIn profile. Using BrightMove's ATS portal candidates can view posted jobs, upload different versions of their resume and manage communication preferences with recruiters.

5Do I need an ATS?

This question is best answered by the organization.

If you've made it here, the answer is probably yes. With an applicant tracking system like BrightMove, you would benefit from features like automated job posting, resume parsing and improved candidate engagement. If you are expecting a hiring increase and you are currently struggling to keep up, a fresh look at your recruitment process would be a good idea.

6How much does applicant tracking system cost?

Prices may vary, depending on your solution provider.

At BrightMove, our retail pricing is public. We often get the question, are applicant tracking system free? The short answer is no. Our pricing is based on number of users and which features are required. We do offer a free trial and our ATS system has a monthly fee, depending on which plan you select. For more information, check out our

pricing page

There are other ATS solutions on the market, each with their own pricing strategy. Generally speaking, there isn't such a thing as an applicant tracking system free of charge to use.

7What is an Applicant?

Also known as candidates or job seekers.

An applicant is a person who has applied for a job. Typically, the terms applicant, candidate and job seeker are all used interchangeably. When recruiting for talent, often times recruiters seek out passive applicants. This means they are not proactively seeking a new job, but they look like a great fit for the role the recruiter is trying to fill. Even though the person is passive and hasn't applied for a job, they typically still referred to as applicants. Applicants have resumes, cover letters, contact information, communication history and other data tied to them. This is the data that an ATS will track.

8What is ATS Resume?

A core feature of an ATS is a searchable resume database.

The resume of an applicant is an important attribute stored and managed within the ATS. ATS Resumes will become stale. The resumes of applicants change over time along with their career. As the applicant changes jobs or moves, their resume changes as well. If the ATS resume isn't updated by the applicant or the recruiter it will be incomplete. An ATS can help recruiters manage multiple copies of resumes, reach out to applicants with stale resumes, use resume templates to generate well formatted resumes for submittal and manage the master data tied to applicant contact information.

9What is a good ATS Resume?

Why are you a great match for this role?

This is a complex topic. It's tricky to define what is ATS resume optization best practice. If you are an applicant, a simple recommendation is to ensure all of your contact information is up to date and easy to find on the resume. Applicants should also ensure their resume has their most recent job history and relevant skills. Within the applicant tracking system, recruiters search through resumes using criteria like level of engagement, key words, geographical locations and credentials. Search results are ordered by relevance, where relevance logic varies from ATS to ATS. Keeping an applicant's resume up to date within the ATS can improve the relevancy of it's positioning within search results.

10What is an ATS Resume Cover Letter?

A cover letter sometimes is shared with the recruiter, does it store in the ATS resume database?

Cover letters are less common in today's digital world than in the past. Historically, cover letters were commonly shared with very specific content relevant to the job the applicant was applying to. It was within the cover letter that the applicant would cite employer or job-specific aspects of their candidacy to compel potential employers to interview them. Today, most ATS will store any type of document (Email, Word document, PDF, txt file, etc.) and associate that document with the applicant's profile. Document management and association is a core feature of applicant tracking systems.