It's not news that corporations are investing many, many thousands of dollars in their Applicant Tracking Systems. The often hidden and sad part of this story is that despite this hefty investment, the typical company realizes a very poor return on their investment. It doesn't have to be that way. When you consider upfront ATS costs such as: implementation, data migration, and training, employers are now investing in the range of $190,000 to $330,000 for their ATS solution. Larger employers are investing much more. While this is a significant investment, that's just the beggining! Even after you add the ongoing annual costs of about $6,000 per recruiter, we still haven't calculated the unnecessary costs resulting from poor utilization of the ATS search capability, and that is the focus of this week's article. Costs associated with inefficient use of the ATS search engine fall squarely on the shoulders of the user, not the ATS vendor.

Great candidates often play hide and seek in your ATS database. With the right planning and set-up of your ATS search engine, you can find them every time! But don't just think of using the ATS search engine to find candidate matches, use it to help you automate your day and save valuable time. Here are some quick tips that are available in most ATS.

If you're using an ATS, you're likely wasting 4 to 8 hours of time per week because of its poorly designed work flow. If you implement the tips contained in this article, you'll regain at least 2 to 4 of those hours. In the process, you'll learn how to focus on the things that will make the biggest impact in your recruiting. I'll show you how to use tools already in your ATS to make it happen. That's certainly a pretty good reason to invest 15 minutes to implement these ideas.

I spoke to a recruiter recently who has named his applicant tracking system (ATS) "the beast". I wasn't surprised. I've discovered most recruiters have a love-hate relationship with their ATS "beast". Recruiters almost always have a different view of the ATS from their HR manager colleagues, but for the purposes of today's article I'm focusing on the following four most common complaints from recruiters.