CATS Applicant Tracking System

Finding the right applicant tracking system for your company is not an easy task. With hundreds of applicant tracking systems in the market, it’s difficult to figure out which software fits the needs of your company. Brian Westfall recently wrote a Software Advice article with Billy Linley, to explain the “5 Questions To Answer Before Buying an Applicant Tracking System.”

To make your search a little easier, CATS answers these five questions for you.

1. How is the system priced?

Understanding pricing is an important part of deciding which ATS is right for you. A majority of software has transitioned from desktop-based to cloud-based, bringing price changes with it. However, pricing plans aren’t always easy to decipher and sometimes you end up paying more than you initially expected.

Whether you are a small business or a Fortune 500 company, CATS offers all of its features at no additional cost. What you see is what you get. With CATS, you’ll always get unlimited candidates and jobs.

2. Will the system help you find the applicants you’re seeking?

A list of hundreds of job boards might seem appealing, but does it include the sites your candidates visit the most? Software Advice, a site that guides ATS buyers states:

“You know what works and what doesn’t in terms of your recruiting strategy, so finding a system that supports your existing best practices is key.”

CATS makes it easy to automatically post to the most important job boards (LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, Twitter, etc.) and get feedback. Applicant sources are tracked in CATS and are viewable in a simple report showing you where your candidates are coming from and allowing you to track your marketing efforts.

Even though CATS is based on streamlining the hiring and recruiting experience, it doesn’t lose focus of the candidate experience. A recent Software Advice survey found human contact and communication throughout the hiring and recruiting process improved candidate experience and helped companies attract better candidates. In CATS, you can customize your workflow to automatically update candidates about where they are in the hiring process, integrate your email to view all activity within CATS, and integrate with Slack to notify you and your team when candidates apply or advance in the hiring process.

3. Will this system fit your business needs five years from now?

Buy an ATS that is not only the perfect fit now, but a software that your company can grow into as well. The CATS platform was designed for companies of all sizes, allowing it to scale easily. Since the system is extremely customizable, it’s easy to create a process as efficient as you want and still remain organized.

The CATS team is always listening to customer suggestions and updating the system when possible. Our customers are extremely important to us and we value any feedback we get. We believe it’s important to stay up-to-date with what’s going on in the industry, and set new standards of quality whenever we can. Keep an eye out for our growing list of integrations and system updates based on what our customers have suggested.

4. Which features do you actually need?

The list of ATS features described as “innovative”, “robust, or “leading” could go on forever. However, what that list doesn’t always tell you is why you need those features. It’s important to find an ATS with features that are right for you, not just the industry as a whole. Or as Linley, from Software Advice, states:

“A lot of buyers hear a big name, and they think they need that system because everybody is using it.”

CATS originally started as a recruiting company and quickly found it needed an applicant tracking system that was tailored for the recruiter. Every feature in CATS was created to serve a specific purpose, decrease time spent organizing and recruiting, speed up the hiring process, and continue to provide the great customer experience candidates deserve. CATS believes that there is no “one size fits all” feature set, so we provide a system that is easily customized to your company’s needs.

While CATS provides the basics, like the ability to search your entire database, view and store activity, import and parse resumes, and hire from start to finish, we also know that it takes a lot more to provide an exceptional applicant tracking system. CATS allows you to customize your hiring workflow to automate the process, search INSIDE all resumes in your database, track all emails and notes from right within the system, and integrate with leading industry applications seamlessly.

Integrating with leading industry applications (like Slack, BambooHR, PreciseHire, MailChimp) allows you to continue using the applications you know and love, but view them all while in CATS. As cliché as it sounds, there is no reason to “reinvent the wheel”. These integrations decrease the clutter in CATS and give you the power to tailor it how you like.

5. Does the vendor offer local, high-quality support?

Software Advice said it best, “Because software implementation and usage rarely goes as planned, having high-quality vendor support should be a big factor in determining what ATS system you choose.” An ATS is designed to make your hiring/recruiting easier and faster, so it’s important to have a support team that doesn’t slow you down.

CATS Software is proudly based out of Minneapolis, MN – everything, from our developers to our support team, is in one location. Having the entire team in one office makes it easier to resolve issues, pass on information, and turn suggestions into action. CATS operates the same way your applicant tracking system should: putting customers and candidates first. We greatly value our customers and do our best to make sure they are getting the most out of CATS. This means that we do not require customers to pay extra to access any of our lines of support (chat, phone, email), or to wait days to hear back from us.

If you have any questions from this post or about CATS, our support team is available by phone (952-373-4010) and chat Monday-Friday 8:30am-5:00pm Central time, or you can email us (support@catsone.com) during or after office hours.