Recruitment Tool: A Home Care Agency Owner’s Guide to ATS Software

What does an ATS software do?

ATS software save your staff a significant amount of time by automating processes in your recruitment workflow. They have the ability to automate posting job ads, manage the applications on job sites and follow your applicants’ journey from application to hire. Most ATS software are designed to attract, hire and onboard new applicants, driving the employee life cycle faster and more efficiently.

How can an ATS software improve caregiver recruitment?

With caregiver turnover being at a record high this year, home care agency owners are anxious for new solutions to decrease turnover and improve recruitment. ATS systems can help improve caregiver recruitment by lowering the cost-per-hire and increasing an agency’s pipeline of applicants. They optimize for the lowest cost-per-hire, meaning they focus on giving you the highest volume of quality applicants at the lowest cost. As a hiring manager, you’ll still need to filter who to bring in for an interview, but the larger pool of candidates will give you more hire opportunities.

ATS software also have the capability to capture in depth analytics that can improve efficiency and cost of finding and hiring applicants. Valuable data points found inside the analytics will save your home care agency significant time and money refining your recruitment process. Adopting new technology can feel cumbersome in the beginning but automating processes can improve the quality and consistency in your recruitment efforts.

Top ATS Providers

Hireology—the only ATS built specifically for home care. Hireology goes above and beyond and can manage the entire employee lifecycle from onboarding, payroll, compliance and scheduling. They are well-known in the industry and are used by agencies from companies including Brightstar Care, Griswold Home Care, Comfort Keepers, Visiting Angels and Always Best Care Senior Services. Additionally, Hireology integrates with some of the most-common scheduling software, including ClearCare and AxisCare.

BambooHR is a multi-dimensional software company that helps businesses with hiring, onboarding, compensation and culture. Bamboo HR’s ATS system is known for creating a great candidate experience, helping employers and team members collaborate on the hiring process and speeding up communication and flow for the applicant. Bamboo HR also has the ability to send out job offers electronically, speeding up the time from interview to hire with electronic paperwork. Bamboo HR also makes the employer’s life easier with a mobile app to manage the employee hiring process all from a smart phone.

Applicant Stack provides businesses with an easy-to-use ATS and employee onboarding system. Applicant Stack works great for any sized organization that needs help sourcing, qualifying and hiring talented employees. Some of the benefits included with Applicant Stack include: no credit cards required, no contracts, no installation, no IT software, excellent customer service and fast technical support. Applicant Stack’s ATS unique features include the ability to import hires, centralize all your information, create tasks, electronically sign documents, set reminders and use customizable templates.

Jazz HR helps business optimize recruiting processes by allowing you to customize your process, discuss candidates as a team and eliminate redundant tasks. In the process, Jazz HR gives you recruiting workflows and task automation while capturing feedback from your recruiting team and applicants all through email sync and automated emails.  Jazz HR prides themselves on improving the candidate experience and simplifying your job as an employer.

Career Plug offers recruitment aid in candidate sourcing, applicant tracking and paperless onboarding. Career Plug actually creates the job posts and distributes them across your network and to job hosting websites for you. It also uses assessments, scorecards and other tools to help you hire all-stars and avoid bad hires. Once the candidates have been sourced, applied, interviewed and ultimately hired, Career Plug can help you launch your new hires by moving them through a smooth paperless onboarding process.             

Hiring Thing – Krispy Kreme, Chick-fil-A and Cinnabon are a few of the thousands of happy customers using Hiring Thing. Hiring Thing is a white label Applicant Tracking System used to recruit without the stress of building out the recruitment strategy yourself. A white label product is a product made by one company that other companies rebrand and make it appear as if they made it. Hiring Thing eases hiring managers burdens by simplifying the recruitment processes, building efficient workflows and integrating seamlessly into your current HR or payroll systems.

Don’t Use an ATS as a Crutch—Vet Your Candidates Thoroughly

Now that we’ve outlined the core functions of an ATS and some providers, we want to provide some cautions around ATS systems that your agency should keep in mind. The data below is taken from the 2019 Home Care Benchmarking Study and shows that agencies who use an ATS have noticeably higher caregiver turnover than agencies that don’t.

Providers that Use an Applicant Tracking System – Caregiver Turnover

Because ATS platforms typically optimize for the lowest cost-per-hire and focus on providing a high volume of applicants, they may lead to higher turnover while still providing powerful hiring resources.

It’s important to understand that with the right applicant screening and interview process, you can still avoid this side effect and reap the cost and automated benefits of an ATS. Analyzing the data one step further, keep in mind the need for 1) hiring managers to be more selective in choosing candidates from an ATS pipeline, and 2) ATS providers to acknowledge the need to track turnover rates based on recruitment channels and facilitate better ways for hiring managers to incorporate this factor into their selection of said channels.

ATS Software as a Recruitment Tool

Now that you know what an ATS is and what it can do for your business, could your agency benefit from one? We recommend you check out a few of the ATS providers mentioned above and see if one of them would be a good fit for your agency.

Adopting a new software can be intimidating, but don’t stress. Most ATS systems are low maintenance and user-friendly. These providers understand your struggles and genuinely want to help your business grow. Most provide training videos and resources to learn their software in addition to 24/7 customer support.

If you have more questions about ATS systems, feel free to leave a comment below… and if you want more content like this, subscribe!