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Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

Is one ATS the same as another?

By Hannah Perella

By Hannah Perella

Having recently started at MyPeopleBiz I wanted to tackle the question is one Applicant Tracking System the same as another? The conclusion I reached was; not really. Any ATS can act as a central pool for applicants whom employers can then communicate with but it’s about how they connect with and contact these candidates when vacancies arise that is key. It’s also about the question of whether you want your system to be proactive or reactive in recruitment.

So what’s the difference between our recruitment portal and a normal ATS?

Our recruitment portal is an end to end recruitment system that includes a career site which helps source appropriate candidates and to automate the recruitment process. It is proactive rather than reactive. Through our partnership with leading U.S intelligent technology provider Burning Glass, our portal uses the latest word-matching engine which works automatically without requiring users to specify keywords. Therefore, it expands access by providing highly relevant matches regardless of a job seeker’s previous search experience.  Many clients using our portals generate automated job referrals on a fully user-passive basis.

When it comes to Applicant Tracking Systems they do not generally have search engines but instead require the job seekers and employers to structure their search queries and choose what keywords to specify. This limits the user, as many job seekers lack the job search literacy to know what terms to specify as well as wasting valuable time.

ATS’S are keyword, concept-based, or other semantic engines which match on the basis of word overlap and correspondence.  The relevance of results is limited by the fact that there is no sensitivity to context.  There is an intrinsic difference between someone who took a course in Java ten years ago and someone who has been programming in Java every day for the last ten years.  Keyword engines don’t know the difference.  This also makes them very easy to manipulate.

For example: Keyword search technologies often require a “direct hit”.  If you ask for a job as an “accountant” and the job title is for a “CPA”, a keyword engine won’t know that it’s a good match since there was no direct match between the words. 

A number of other engines use O*NET code-based matching. In some cases, this means that the results are too broad – a sales manager at Gap codes the same as the Director of Sales at a software company.  In other cases, this means that good matches are missed because they aren’t in the same O*NET code.

What makes MyPeopleBiz unique?

Our portals through our matching engine, leverage past patterns of placement rather than simply relying on code-based or keyword-based matching, thereby delivering the broadest array of relevant options for careers in transition. With our portal employers can maximise candidate attraction at no additional cost by posting their vacancies automatically onto recruitment websites and aggregators, whilst leveraging jobs through social media.

The advantage for job seekers is that they can speed up the application process for a faster review of relevant qualifications making the process much more efficient.

Most importantly the MyPeopleBiz model brings you this artificial intelligence platform to you at a fraction of the cost that you would usually pay for one of the better known ATS’s in the market. So now that I have brushed up on my ATS’s I can report that it’s clearly about the technology behind the ATS as well as the processes.