What hiring data are you missing without Applicant Tracking Software?

Where does your hiring data live? If you’re managing hiring in spreadsheets and emails or using a rigid applicant tracking system (ATS), then it’s more than likely you’re missing out on crucial recruitment intelligence. Without a single, unifying source of truth for hiring data, recruitment decisions are based on fragmented or incomplete information.

This blog examines:

• The limitations of manual and fragmented hiring data
• How you know when your ATS is the problem
• How to turn recruitment data into better hiring decisions

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) bring all your hiring data together in one place, giving you a complete picture of your recruitment process from requisition to onboarding. So much more than ‘just’ candidate management or workflow tools, the right ATS software turns recruitment activity into measurable insights; these help by reducing inefficiencies, identifying bottlenecks and optimising hiring outcomes over time.

So, is your current applicant management software giving you all the intel or is your data MIA? Let’s take a closer look.

The limitations of manual and fragmented hiring data

If your applicant tracking system software is rigid, or your candidate information is kept across a variety of spreadsheets, emails and informal conversations, then hiring data becomes fragmented and limited. It’s difficult to get a clear picture of how your hiring is performing. Common pain points you might experience are:

• Inconsistent tracking between roles and hiring managers. If hiring managers hire for similar admin roles, but move through the hiring stages differently, there’s no clear data on whether that role type is genuinely quick or easy to fill, or whether one manager has a faster sign-off process.
• Limited visibility into hiring funnel performance. If you had 80 applicants and made two hires but have no visibility of how many made it through initial screening, interview or offer stage, then you can’t determine where your process might be causing drop-off.
• Difficulty identifying patterns across multiple vacancies. If you’re repeatedly losing candidates at offer stage, but can’t produce a cross-vacancy report, it will be difficult to work out if the problem is salary, process length or a specific role type that’s driving the issue.

Without a comprehensive view of all hiring activity, and consistent recruitment practices, it’s almost impossible to know how or where to improve your hiring process.

What hiring data often gets missed without the right ATS?

Without the right ATS, hiring activity generates plenty of data, but most systems fail to turn it into anything usable, leaving key details buried.  Some systems will offer basic functionality and then charge for additional costly bolt on features which companies simply cannot avoid, meaning they never quite see the full picture.

The right ATS goes beyond basic cost-per-hire and personal information, and collates data on every aspect of your hiring, allowing teams to truly interrogate the information and refine the hiring process. For example:

Application source performance and quality indicators are a vital part of the hiring picture. Without this information, advertising budgets are allocated erroneously, costs rise as roles have to be re-advertised, and time to hire expands.

Equally, without the right analytics, spotting drop-off points is tough, and rectifying issues becomes almost impossible. The right ATS software highlights drop-off points at screening, interview and offer stages, allowing you to identify and resolve issues as they arise.

If your hiring process feels sluggish and your time to hire is growing, time-in-stage data is a great indicator of where delays exist. Excellent ATS software identifies process inefficiencies fast, letting teams rectify problems within the stage. This in turn also improves the candidate experience, reduces drop-off and speeds up time to hire.

Both candidate and interviewer feedback form a crucial part of the hiring process jigsaw. The right applicant tracking software requests both interviewer and candidate feedback as part of its standard workflow, automatically sending reminders for completion and giving teams back valuable time lost to follow-up calls and emails.

If you don’t have data for every aspect of your hiring process, then maybe data isn’t the problem…

It’s not your data, it’s your ATS that’s the problem

If you’re recruiting, you’re producing data – the problem isn’t a lack of data, it’s an ATS that can’t centralise, report on, or make that data usable. If you’re using a mix of spreadsheets and emails, or a rigid ATS for your hiring, you’re more than likely missing out on access to that valuable data – so how can you tell what you’re missing?

What signs show my recruitment data lacks visibility or accuracy?

Poor recruitment data usually traces back to three causes: DIY workflows, slow reporting and weak integrations:

1. Your ATS requires users to build their own workflows. Not all HR teams have the time, expertise and resource to build workflows. When workflows are rushed or badly put together, quality and consistency become an issue. Incomplete configurations can lead to skewed data and an unfulfilling candidate experience. In contrast, systems that offer templated or bespoke workflows save time and provide more consistent data.
2. Reporting exists in theory but requires significant manual setup or effort to export. If it’s taking more than a minute to assemble reports, it’s taking too long. To be useful, reporting must be user-friendly, effortless and fast.
3. Limited functionality or paid-for extra features mean sourcing data never makes it into the system properly. Systems that are missing essential ATS features (such as onboarding) require manual workarounds to avoid extra cost. Some data is then stored outside the ATS, causing issues for strategic decision making and leaving teams open to manual inputting errors and heightened compliance risk.

How does centralised hiring data improve decision-making?

Centralising hiring activity into one source of truth means that every vacancy can be tracked, compared and reported on consistently. When each role moves through the same defined stages, with the same data captured at each stage, it’s much easier to compare roles and departmental performance and to refine the entire hiring process.

Real-time dashboards offer HR teams clear visibility of all live roles. At a glance, teams can see which roles are progressing, which are awaiting action, and who is responsible for those actions. This removes a great deal of the chasing and guesswork a more manual approach to hiring involves. It also ensures that every action is logged within the system for audit.

Alongside live roles, centralised data also lets HR consider pipeline health, from analysing sourcing data, to proactively nurturing passive candidates in line with future workforce planning.

“Reach adds a lot of value to to all areas of the recruitment process from advertising the role itself through to screening and sending CV’s to hiring managers, booking interviews via the system, and then sending offers out and and contracts are all on the system. It’s literally the one tool for the whole of your recruitment process.” – Will Kaye, Recruitment Advisor, Agrial Fresh Produce

Can ATS software help identify recruitment bottlenecks?

ATS software identifies bottlenecks like stalled roles and compliance delays through real-time dashboards and advanced reporting tools, preventing problems from being hidden in the process.

The devil may well be in the detail, but it’s not always easy to spot delays or hold-ups when you’re hiring at volume or across multiple vacancies. Modern ATS make the invisible, visible – surfacing bottlenecks such as stalled roles or compliance delays and allowing teams to pinpoint and resolve issues quickly.

Comparing hiring performance across roles and departments becomes simple with applicant tracking software. Recruiters can easily pick out high-performing roles or departments and use that information to improve consistency across the board. This type of intelligence feeds into workforce planning too – teams can build in extra time for roles that are traditionally harder to fill, or drill down into the best sourcing platforms for frequent roles to make hiring more cost-efficient.

The right applicant management software also helps identify roles that have high rejection or withdrawal rates. Flexible software will not only highlight this type of data but also enable teams to easily implement candidate feedback loops within workflows, resolving issues and demonstrating a responsible and proactive employer brand.

Turning recruitment data into better hiring decisions

With the right data, there’s no hypothesising or relying on gut feelings; every decision made is based on solid evidence. Rather than making assumptions that a particular degree indicates who to shortlist, intelligent ATS tools gather data on previous hires and use skills matching to predict best-match candidates, reducing screening time and bias simultaneously.

With a clearer understanding of time to hire for repeat roles, workforce planning strategy becomes more accurate. Recruitment ATS software also supports continuous process improvement, showing where delays typically occur, where time to hire increases and where delays on compliance slow the offer process. This wealth of data can be used to inform process change, strategic decision-making and budget allocation.

Most importantly, recruiter workload doesn’t increase when the right software is in play, quite the opposite. With time available to plan and make more evidence-based decisions, data plays a key role in reducing recruiter workloads.

Your data, where you need it

Is your hiring data front and centre, or is it MIA? Without complete, consistent and easily accessible data and reporting, hiring suffers. Time to hire increases, workforce planning suffers and ad spend grows.

Reach ATS is flexible applicant tracking software designed around the way you hire. Our platform offers all the essential functions to take you from requisition to onboarding, included as standard, with no hidden bolt-on costs. With workflows built for you, and intelligent and custom reporting in minutes, your data is always where you need it, when you need it.

Reach for data-driven hiring that’s built for pace, clarity and control. Book a demo today.