ATS vs CRM in recruitment– What are they and do you really need both?

Using an applicant tracking system (ATS) or a candidate relationship management (CRM) tool could save your hiring managers hundreds of hours filling open job positions. But how exactly can HR Technologies like an applicant tracking system or a candidate relationship management tool make a difference for you? Do you really need both? Are there tools that combine the best of both?

What is an ATS?

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is an on-premise or cloud-based tool that helps you automate crucial steps in your recruitment process to save you significant time and also help you lower your cost per hire. A good applicant tracking system will also help you visualize your whole recruitment process, set and customise recruitment stages and create a recruitment experience for both candidates and hiring managers that you can be proud of.

TL;DR: The main purpose of at ATS is to help HR teams manage the hiring process and job applications.

Teamdash’s recruitment pipeline will help HR teams set up a fully customised recruitment flow and save significant time using triggers. 

For example:

• Instead of manually posting a job ad to each individual job board, you can publish to several job boards at once.
• Instead of manually going back and forth with each person and the hiring manager to schedule interviews with your candidates, you can automate the interview scheduling by integrating your ATS with the default calendar tools you use.
• Another useful feature is the ability to sort resumes based on keywords or phrases to help you filter candidates. The ATS can then automatically send candidates a response to let them know if they’re successful or not.
• If someone is the right fit for a role, the ATS can forward that candidate’s application to the hiring managers automatically for review. If they’re not, it can automatically send a rejection letter based on the pre-determined recruitment process and steps you have in place.

There are countless recruitment automation opportunities you can use with an applicant tracking system that will help you offer a stellar candidate experience and get feedback from hiring managers faster. A good modern applicant tracking system will offer all necessary AI and recruitment automation tools to modernise your recruitment processes and make sure don’t miss out on your best candidates because you take too long to get back to them.

Teamdash’s drag-and-grop job ad and career page builders allow recruiters and HR teams create on brand employer marketing materials with ease. 

What is a CRM?

Candidate relationship management (CRM) systems help you track relationships with candidates and build a solid candidate database. We have all been in situations where a candidate might not be perfect for the current open position, but we know we’d like to consider them again in the future.

TL;DR: The main purpose of a CRM is to build and nurture relationships with potential candidates.

For example:

• Build a candidate database.
• If you want to nurture a passive candidate pool, a recruitment CRM is the perfect way to keep in touch with them or perform candidate outreach.
• Conduct in depth searches of your existing database.
• Search saved CV-s by keywords
• Send surveys to candidates.
• Track candidate progress during onboarding (some CRMs)
• Maintain a GDPR compliant database.

A CRM for recruiting also has advanced search features that allow you to find candidates within your network who may be the perfect fit for an upcoming role, even if they’ve applied for another role previously and been unsuccessful.

The key benefits of an ATS

Using a modern ATS will help organisations get more suitable candidates, offer a better candidate and hiring manager experience and give recruiters much more control of the outcome of each hiring project. The automations that come with an ATS can save your hiring managers huge amounts of time. They don’t have to manually submit to each job board or filter through resumes manually resulting in much less stress.

It even becomes a quicker process to schedule an interview, something which can often be a cause of friction if multiple interviewers or stages are involved.

As a result, you can also provide a better candidate experience.

The key benefits of a CRM

Recruitment CRM software helps HR teams build and maintain a high quality candidate database to speed up future hirings. A modern CRM will help you track all your candidate interactions in one place, so no one ends up repeating themselves to the same candidate and you can easily refer to past conversations.

Unlike an ATS, which sometimes deletes candidate data once the interview process is over, a CRM for recruitment allows you to store candidate data in a compliant way and nurture them to make sure future hirings are fast and smooth. So you can keep the details of your runner-up for a role, just in case something else opens up for them.

Retaining this data allows your hiring managers to engage with passive talent easier, so when new roles open, you can search for candidates with relevant skills or experience. This means it can be quicker, easier, and cheaper to fill a role because you have a pipeline of interested talent waiting to hear from you.

If you go to recruitment fairs, you can also add event attendees’ contact information into your recruitment CRM and keep in touch with them.

Key differences between an ATS and a CRM

When to Use an ATS vs. CRM:

• If you’re actively hiring and need to process applications efficiently, an ATS is essential.
• If you want to engage passive candidates and create a pipeline for future hiring, a CRM is the better choice.

When should you consider integrating a separate ATS to your CRM?

Your ATS and CRM are perfect complementary tools as they can work together to save hiring managers time and provide a better candidate experience. You can see where each applicant is within the hiring process, share notes on candidates, and avoid duplicate applications.

Integrating the two allows you to retain information on past candidates and boomerang employees.

The tools can also give you access to more data and therefore better reporting, so you can see things like your time and cost to hire for each role/department. Your team don’t have to flip through applications to find the information they need, which quickly adds up to time saved.

However,

The best applicant tracking systems combine top benefits of both to offer HR teams a seamless recruiting experience.

Teamdash ATS is a modern recruitment tool that offers best in market ATS features while also offering key CRM functionalities to make the lives of HR teams easier and get results faster. 

Without the need for any extra training, Teamdash can help with everything from candidate sourcing to interview scheduling, while also helping you build and maintain a GDPR compliant candidate database.

Teamdash has shown to save you up to 70% of the time you spend on an average recruiting project and cut your cost per hire by up to 3x.

Giving your team this time back means they can spend more on human-to-human interaction that will make your candidates feel welcome and like your business is somewhere they truly want to work.

Automation and AI

Teamdash also stands out for it’s full stack of recruitment automation and AI tools that help teams save significant time:

• Our AI writing assistant can help you create compelling landing pages where you can even personalise messages to candidates.
• To streamline the application process, Teamdash can automatically fill in candidate profile fields using information from their CV or LinkedIn profiles. Not only is this great for them, but it means you get more data points, too.
• Our AI-powered interview transcripts and summaries mean you don’t need to worry about note taking pulling you out of the conversation. You focus on asking the right questions, we’ll focus on the transcript.
• And much much more. Learn more HERE.

Teamdash’s AI tools help recruiters speed up communication with candidates, give specific feedback while also saving teams significant time.

Branded career page and job ads

With Teamdash ATS, HR teams can create branded career sites and job ads without the need to use the help of an graphic designer or the IT department. You can easily create job ad templates in an easy to use drag-and-drop page builder that will make sure you are always recognisable for your candidates and build a top notch employer brand.

• Bring your brand to life by creating branded career pages and job ads. Without the need for a designer, you can create a career site to match your brand and showcase your company culture.
• It’s completely customisable to you, helping make your brand more memorable in your recruitment marketing. You can even adapt it to multiple languages.
• To ensure everything is consistent and on brand, you can create a template library to store your branded designs.
• You can then publish the customised job ads to hundreds of job boards with just a single click.

Teamdash’s user Roofclaim has taken done a great job using our drag-and-drop career page builder to create an on brand and easy to navigate careers page.

Better candidate and hiring manager experience

Tools that streamline the hiring process make everyone’s lives easier. Candidates don’t have to wait to hear back from you, while hiring managers have more time to dedicate to other aspects of their role. No more ghosting of candidates!

• Automated messaging and customisable triggers have helped Teamdash users save up to 12h on filling an average open position.
• Triggers and notifications can be set up based on your current recruitment flow.
• You can save up to 80% of time on interview scheduling that tends to be a major headache for recruiters as it’s a very time consuming task with many stakeholders.

For example: In Teamdash, you can set up triggers. If a candidate passes through the vetting process, your hiring manager can automatically receive an email about them, if the candidate gets approved by the manager, you can send out automatically pre-selected time slots by the hiring manager to the candidate to significantly speed up the process. All of this will be done automatically if you choose so.

Teamdash’s recruitment pipeline will help HR teams set up a fully customised recruitment flow and save significant time using triggers. 

GDPR compliance and data security

Keep your growing talent pool database up to date, accessible, and GDPR-compliant.

• Teamdash allows you to automatically anonymise talent pool data past the consent period, ensuring everything is always compliant. Or you could automatically request consent renewal.
• To ensure everything is as secure as possible, in Teamdash, you can assign different roles to different stakeholders, so people only see what they need. For extra security, you can create confidential projects for internal or external hires.

Teamdash makes it easy to make sure your talent pool is GDPR compliant at all times. Send out automated renewal messages and get notifications to take action where needed. 

Want to get a personal free consultation and an overview of Teamdash? Our customers see real ROI.