The Labor Shortage Problem
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The applicant tracking system (ATS) software is designed to automate the organization’s hiring and recruitment process.
In fact, the ATS software makes the overall recruitment process efficient, effective, candidate-centric, and business-driven. It ensures companies hire the best people.
Fact: 90% of job seekers find it essential to work for companies that embrace the recruitment process as essential for success.
The primary purpose of applicant tracking systems is to ensure a smooth hiring process and fulfill the recruiting objectives. In today’s competitive job market, ATS has become vital for optimizing the recruitment pipeline.
With the help of an ATS, the recruiter can easily attract, identify, and recruit the best candidates. The recruiter will also benefit from ATS software in making the right decisions in choosing the best candidate by centralized systematic scanning and preparing for the interviews.
Remember that a candidate’s engagement and motivation are essential factors to ensure the best possible experience. Namely, 97% of candidates who had a positive experience with the recruitment process would refer others to apply to your job postings.
However, price is an essential factor when choosing any software, and ATS can come with a hefty price tag. Fortunately, you can find functional free ATS plans to suit your recruiting needs.
Why do You Need an Applicant Tracking System?
This software tool offers solutions to any function related to the hiring process.
It aids with posting job openings on multiple platforms, providing a centralized system of all applications, better CV screening, scheduling candidate interviews, setting up an assessment center, and offering a better candidate experience.
Major organizations may have tens or even hundreds of job openings at the same time. Keeping track of the constant stream of applicants, sifting through hundreds of CVs, and selecting the best-qualified candidates is time-consuming and strenuous work for any HR team.
On the other hand, small enterprises and startups simply can’t afford to invest in a robust ATS. This puts them at a significant disadvantage when competing for the same candidate pool against large companies. Businesses that use an ATS have a more extensive reach by posting on multiple platforms simultaneously.
Time is also of the essence when recruiting and negotiating with candidates. The longer it takes to select and recruit a candidate, the more likely it is they will be offered a contract from another company.
A solution for small businesses to consider is using a free ATS, which we have selected for this article.
Historically, ATSs were used only by big companies as they were too expensive and complicated for small businesses to utilize. Nowadays, many ATS provide basic free plans, making this software more accessible to companies of any size.
The Best Free Applicant Tracking Systems List
- Breezy HR – For small and midsize businesses that aren’t planning a rapid expansion
- Zoho Recruit – For staffing agencies
- Hiretual – For businesses looking for industry-based talent pools
- Freshteam – For any business with fewer than 50 employees
- Recooty – For startups and SMEs looking for basic ATS
- Smart Recruiters – For fast-growing small businesses looking for a robust, user-friendly ATS
- Recruiteze – For small and medium-sized fast-growing business
- Grove HR – For small and medium-sized companies that want to automate HR processes
- Jobsoid – For startups and small companies
- Homebase – For businesses in the service sector looking for hourly workers
Breezy HR has four pricing plans and an additional customizable pro plan. Their bootstrap plan is entirely free of charge and provides all the basics for one job posting or candidate pool, which is ideal for smaller businesses.
The free plan gives access to over 50 job boards and unlimited candidates and users. Users can also create customizable career and employee referral sites, making it easy for candidates to familiarize themselves with the organization they are applying for.
Breezy is praised for its modern design with a simplicity that makes it very user-friendly. Its drag-and-drop interface gives a visual overview of the entire process, where users can simply drag candidates as they move along the recruitment pipeline.
To top it off, Breezy offers its users training and support, video tutorials, webinars, ensuring fast and easy implementation of this system.
Zoho Recruit is available in various pricing tiers with complete solutions for staffing agencies and recruiting departments. Their forever free plan has basic features like candidate management, email management, client and contact management and interview scheduling.
Users can have up to one active job posting, and they can publish the job opening to 15+ free popular job boards.
This powerful solution lets you manage all your job openings, resumes, candidates and contacts more quickly and efficiently. If you are a small business looking for an innovative and seamlessly integrated business solution, check out Zoho.
3. Hiretual
Hiretual is a leading recruitment software solution relying on AI and data analysis to help businesses make smarter hiring decisions. Their free starter plan allows users to test out the use of their Chrome extension, which sorts and ranks best-fit candidates on the open web so recruiters don’t have to spend hours scrolling through irrelevant candidate profiles.
Users can look up to 25 candidates per search, directly on LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, and more, with three contact credits per day used to uncover contact information in a candidate profile.
With the free Chrome extension, companies get to try out AI sourcing before investing.
Hiretual offers an innovative and unique solution that streamlines sourcing efforts. It can support individual recruiters for small and medium-sized businesses and recruiting teams that need advance AI capabilities and a centralized talent data platform.
4. Freshteam
Freshteam offers a hassle-free recruitment process for any business with its feature rich ATS. Their free plan provides hiring, onboarding, time-off, employee data, and HR workflows in one place.
This ATS offers the most in its free plan with all the basic HR functions for organizations with up to 50 employees. Three published job postings, a professional-looking career site, and access to their mobile app are just some of the features included in their free plan.
Freshteam has pricing models that can suit any business’ growing needs and the company lets you explore the software before committing to buy it. Over 5000+ companies use it simply because it is easy to use. This ATS has many smart integrations and features that help improve the recruitment process overall.
Recooty is an all-in-one recruitment software where you can post jobs, review applications, schedule interviews, and hire, all in one place. Their basic free plan has limited features and allows a single user to have up to three active job posts.
Users can also create a branded careers page or use a job widget to directly integrate the open positions from the already existing career page on your business’ website. This makes it easy for potential applicants visiting your website to check all the job details and apply directly.
This well-designed platform and user-friendly interface make it easy for start-up businesses that are testing out all the basic features an ATS has to offer. Although it offers fewer features than other free applicant tracking systems, the integrations Recooty offers are very straightforward and fast, making it a perfect match for beginners.
We chose Smart Recruiters because their SmartStart plan is designed specifically for teams and smaller organizations that are not suitable for a paid platform. Their SmartStart plan is entirely free of charge with an unlimited number of users and candidates. Up to ten active job postings at once are allowed, which is the only limitation.
Recruiting is a team effort, and SmartStart makes collaborating a breeze with its unlimited users feature that enables a larger team to participate and communicate effectively during the hiring process.
Aside from this great perk, the platform offers plenty of features in the free plan, something that is rarely seen in other free ATSs. Publication to over 200 available job boards at a single click, job widget to integrate your jobs on any webpage, customizable interview scorecards, scheduling management tools, and candidate database management are just some of the included solutions.
Praised for its seamless UI that displays data in a single view dashboard, it has earned the user-friendly title. SmartStart is the complete talent acquisition suite and everything a company needs to attract, select, and hire great candidates.
Recruiteze is an applicant tracking system tailored towards small businesses with tools that help track, organize, and sort through online applicant data. The Starter plan is free for one user and is limited to 500 total candidate applications. This online ATS enables publishing to over a dozen different online job boards all at once, including Indeed, ZipRecruiter, GlassDoor, Google Jobs, and more.
Users can conveniently manage jobs, candidates, and applications within a single user-friendly platform. Recruiteze does not require a credit card to sign up, no contract, and there is no setup fee.
Grove HR is an all-in-one platform for businesses of all sizes, with the capacity to automate core HR processes and manage the whole employee lifecycle from one place. Their generous free start-up plan provides unlimited usage regardless of the size of the business.
Grove HR streamlines your recruitment process, integrates hiring sources, and has all the tools needed to operate and organize your hiring pipeline proactively. Whether you are a small business owner or the CEO of a larger company, the features Grove HR has to offer are worth looking into and are scalable for any business.
While other free ATSs on the market offer a broader list of features and integrations, Grove HR is ideal for small businesses looking for a holistic and comprehensive HR platform. No credit card is required.
Jobsoid is a modern ATS, fitting for startups and small companies. Their beginner free plan allows recruiters only one user account and one job opening posting. In addition to this, users get access to the entire software except for add-ons that are available on paid plans.
Posting job openings has never been more accessible. With one click recruiters can reach candidates across multiple free job boards. They can also source prospects through LinkedIn and extract all the necessary information with the Chrome Sourcing Plugin.
Jobsoid’s platform aims to simplify and optimize all talent acquisition efforts with powerful online tools. There is no set-up fee, no credit card is required, users can upgrade, downgrade, and cancel anytime.
With the Homebase hiring and recruitment software, posting jobs and applicant tracking is easy and fast. This platform can meet the staffing needs of busy businesses with high turnover rates and entry-level job requirements. Industries such as food & beverage, retail, services, hospitality & leisure can particularly benefit from using this ATS.
Their basic plan is free of charge for unlimited users at one location. It includes various features such as customized pre-written job descriptions, applicant tracking, interview scheduling, collecting walk-ins and referrals, and filtering applicants with screener questions.
Homebase is a comprehensive platform providing small businesses all the tools to hire, onboard, and manage their employees. It is designed with the intention of hiring hourly staff and has all the necessary components to help manage work schedules and clocked hours.
Bottom Line
In conclusion, ATS solutions are essential in today’s recruitment climate because of their ability to help businesses manage their most important asset. These free ATSs are pocket-friendly solutions to SMBs, helping them further reduce costs and streamline their hiring cycles.
Written by shortlister editorial team
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