Glossary
What is an applicant tracking system (ATS)?
Also known as: ATS.
An applicant tracking system, or ATS, is the software that runs a hiring process end to end: opening a role, collecting and sorting candidates, moving them through interview stages with scorecards, and making an offer.
An ATS organises recruitment around the requisition and the pipeline, so a hiring team can see every candidate for a role, where each one is in the process, and what interviewers thought, in one place rather than in inboxes and spreadsheets.
An ATS that sits inside an HR system has one useful property: an accepted offer can become an employee record in a single step, with no re-keying, so the person who was a candidate on Friday is onboarding on Monday without anyone retyping their details.
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