7 common reasons companies switch their ATS to Hire

As part of Hire by Google's Sales & Partnerships team, I regularly speak with recruiters and HR professionals who are looking to switch their applicant tracking system (ATS) to a solution like Hire. When we discuss their hiring goals, and how they want their ATS to support those goals, I hear the same things: Organizations want to save time, use fewer tools, and offer a better candidate experience.

When a company switches their ATS to Hire by Google, it's usually because they see how we can support them in achieving one or more of those goals. But that's not all we have to offer. Hire also gives HR teams access to a number of powerful integrations and reporting options, both of which are crucial for growing organizations.

The companies I talk to have many different reasons for switching to Hire. Below are seven of the top reasons organizations choose Hire over other applicant tracking systems.

1. A better experience for everyone

I like to say that using Hire is as easy and intuitive as using your calendar or email tool, and our customers agree. Since Hire was built by the team at Google, the user experience is familiar and intuitive — just like using Gmail or Google Drive.

This familiarity translates to less training time internally for HR and hiring managers. With traditional ATS', extensive training or a confusing user experience lead to feedback, emails, and other valuable hiring data still living outside of your ATS — ultimately resulting in lost time. But Hire's familiar interface helps onboard users faster with less training from your team, so everything that should be in your ATS, is.

Hire also encourages ongoing use in a few smart ways. One example: The ATS surfaces candidate information to the interviewers in their inbox the morning of the interview. With one click, interviewers can access the feedback form with all the info they need. No more trying to remember passwords or dig through email threads.

Hire's intuitive user experience also helps you worry less about losing valuable candidates during the initial application process. Did you know that about 60% of applicants say they've quit the job application process because it was too long or complicated? Hire's option to customize application questions by role reduces length and complexity, preventing you from potentially missing out on strong candidates.

2. More team members using the ATS

I hear a lot of HR professionals say that they can't include hiring managers or other leadership in the hiring process simply because they've hit the maximum number of seats on their current ATS. We do our best to avoid this with Hire by providing you with domain-wide access. That way, your team can customize the recruiting process for your organization to include everyone, both now and as your company grows. This, coupled with the ease of use, can really transform how your team hires.

One of our customers, Trader Interactive, saved their HR team about five hours a week by switching their ATS to Hire with our domain-wide access model. The switch eliminated the time the HR team members spent tracking down hiring managers and interviewers for feedback on candidates. Giving hiring managers ATS access allowed candidate feedback to be logged immediately. That had a big impact on Trader Interactive's candidate experience, according to Courtney Perry, Senior Recruiter at Trader Interactive:

“Hiring managers have been willingly undertaking some tasks that only recruiters used to do - such as rejecting or moving candidates forward in the hiring process and using email templates to communicate with candidates. The recruiters and hiring managers are also now able to discuss a candidate in the system, so there is a clear record of feedback side by side with any communication they’ve had with a candidate.”

Hire team communication

3. More customization

Many of the HR professionals I talk to want and need more customization in their ATS, but don't think they can afford it. The good news about Hire is that we have scaling pricing based on the size of your organization, not the number of features. This way, your HR team gets everything necessary to customize your recruiting workflow, like email templates, reports, and more, right out of the box.

Some of the most effective ways you can customize Hire include:

  • Different hiring stages based on role, like coding tests for engineers or on-site presentations for sales team members: This ensures the ATS reflects every stage of the interview process across all your different roles and candidates.

  • An interview feedback scale: Customize your ratings scale to use what your team is most familiar with, including numbers, icons, or custom text. You can even choose to add or exclude a neutral rating depending on what works best for your team.

  • Application forms: Customize your screening questions by role so you can offer candidates an application experience that makes the most sense to them.

Customizing pieces of the hiring process improves the candidate experience and can save your team time, freeing you up to do more impactful work like personalizing candidate outreach.

Hire team communication

4. Consolidated hiring tools

Your team doesn't need to use multiple tools for reporting, interview scheduling, job board posting, or contacting candidates when you use Hire. Because the ATS consolidates the tools you use the most, your team needs fewer external tools, which translates into fewer logins to remember, user licenses to buy, and open browser tabs to search through on a daily basis.

Also, with the domain-wide access I mentioned earlier, Hire makes it easy for everyone to have access to the critical features of the ATS like candidate emailing, team discussions on candidates, interview scheduling, and follow-up reminders. This further increases the likelihood of adoption internally, which I know is a big challenge for HR professionals.

One of our customers, Framestore, saw a 50% uplift in internal usage when they consolidated all of their tools with Hire. According to Amy Smith, the Head of Talent at Framestore, this ultimately led to an increase in hiring manager engagement that translated into an improved candidate experience:

“Having hiring managers so much more engaged makes us far more efficient. We can get back to candidates much faster, so our responses are now almost instant.”

5. Integrations (and even more time saved)

Not everything you do as a recruiter or hiring manager will be contained within an ATS. After all, HR is about much more than hiring! So for the times you need to work with other applications, Hire has multiple integrations that allow you to easily connect your data to other platforms and save even more time.

Hire's integrations streamline the hiring process from start to finish by doing everything from posting to multiple job boards with one click to automatically syncing with your HRIS once a candidate is hired. We also have an API available so you can create your own integration with your favorite tools.

Some of the integrations I see our customers most excited about are with:

  • The leading job boards: Post vacancies to multiple boards with one click.

  • HRIS systems: Send your new hire data to your HRIS directly from your ATS, and start onboarding your newest employees with accurate information right out of the gate.

  • Google Sheets: Analyze reporting data, or make your own custom reports.

  • Google Voice and Meet: Call candidates and conduct your interviews right from the ATS.

6. Intuitive candidate search

Re-engaging previous candidates is a fantastic way to quickly fill your recruiting pipeline with qualified applicants. These candidates can be up to 6x more likely to be hired than those you source elsewhere (Bock, Laszlo. Work Rules! (https://www.amazon.com/Work-Rules-Insights-Inside-Transform/dp/1455554790). Twelve, 2015). In order to do this effectively, you need to be able to find the right candidates at the right time. One of Hire's biggest strengths is its search function, which gives you the power to find and re-engage the candidates you’re looking for much faster than other ATS'.

Something I often say to recruiters about this feature is “search should work like a search.” Looking for candidates shouldn't require you to learn a new coding language! Since Hire comes from the same team that works on Google Search, our candidate search works just as you might imagine: Type in what you're looking for and get results, no complicated Boolean strings necessary.

Recruiters can tag candidates with specific skills, knowledge, or experience, or add them to Collections for later use. Then, when it's time to find a specific candidate to re-engage, just type in a freeform search query to find what you need, like “developer JavaScript.”

Your HR team is spending a lot of time and effort building your database, so why not have it be smart and work for you? With Hire, it can do this by surfacing candidates quickly and efficiently.

Hire team communication

7. Actionable reporting data

Reporting recruiting metrics to senior leadership can be a challenge with many ATS’ because reports aren’t intuitive, or are packed with so much data that they aren’t actually helpful. Data for data’s sake isn’t useful for anyone. The Hire team has designed our reports to be intuitive and actionable so you can identify where you need to make improvements in the hiring process and use those insights to make data-driven improvements.

Your HR team can easily view metrics like time-to-hire, source efficiency, and disposition reasons, plus track how they change over time. Reports can be shared with your leadership team within the ATS, or you can export raw data into Google Sheets and create your own custom reports.

By offering reports on the metrics that matter most, you get the insights you need to improve your recruiting processes and provide a better candidate experience, while your leadership team gets the information they need to make decisions on staffing.

Hire team communication

Switch your ATS to Hire for a better experience

Organizations using G Suite are already committed to a collaborative work experience, and it makes sense to translate that into your hiring process as well. By switching to Hire, you can make the recruiting process faster and more collaborative for everyone, from senior leadership to your candidates.

If you're interested in switching to the Hire ATS, I'd love to hear from you! Reach out to me or another member of the Hire team by requesting a demo, and we'll get in touch with you right away.