An Alternative To Building Your Own Applicant Tracking System

Hiring Remains a Top HR Challenge

As of 2023, 77% of employers are finding it difficult to fill open job roles with qualified talent. 

Organizations are turning to technology to combat recruiting challenges and increase their applicant flow—90% of organizations invest in HR technology. Recruiting, and retention are the top challenges driving HR technology acquisition, including applicant tracking systems (ATS).

A steady stream of applicant flow is the lifeblood of any company looking to expand their team. While many organizations are happy to purchase a prebuilt ATS for their hiring needs, recruiting is not a one-size-fits-all process. Many organizations have niche hiring challenges they’d like addressed, so there’s been an uptick in organizations looking to build their own ATS solutions from the ground up, ranging from employers to SaaS organizations that provide HR tech solutions, but building a solution from scratch is time-consuming, expensive, and requires ongoing maintenance once it’s finished. 

We believe customizing your hiring solution (ATS) is key to taking your recruiting to the next level. An alternative that enables you to bridge the gap between the affordability and convenience of buying and the benefits of a bespoke solution is white or private labeling an applicant tracking system.

This post will go over the pros and cons of building your ATS, cover the basics of buying, and discuss why private labeling is a practical, affordable, timely alternative that gives you all the benefits of building your own ATS without all the hassle. 

• Building Your Own ATS
• Buying an ATS
• Private Labeling an ATS: Build the Bridge vs. Buy Debate 

Building Your Own ATS

There’s no way around it. Building your own ATS is expensive. Estimates place the range for developing a  SaaS market viable product (MVP) between $50-250k. Now, this is simply an estimate, and if you’re looking for a competitive product, costs are likely to be much higher—70% of software development costs occur after implementation, and unexpected challenges are why 53% of projects cost 189% more than the original estimate.

You’ll also want to consider allocating money and time to update the product once it’s finished. Remember that time is money—your team members will have to work on the development and/or you’ll need to pay for outsourcing talent. 

Build times can range from 9-8 months to get a platform up and running, but recruiting challenges are besetting companies now, so many organizations with niche needs settle on buying.

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Buying an ATS

The benefits of buying a prebuilt ATS are that it is immediate and typically cheaper than developing a solution yourself. Since the bulk of SaaS services is subscription-based, you’re essentially noncommittal. 

Typical pricing models include usage-based pricing, where you pay for what you use, subscription-based pricing where you pay for monthly or quarterly packages or per-employee-per-month (PEPM) pricing based on the company’s internal employee count. 

As stated above, the downsides of buying an ATS are that they’re often superfluous, one size fits all, and don’t have the specific workflows or functionalities businesses need for their niche challenges and HR frameworks—there’s a reason so many organizations are researching how to build their own ATS.

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Whether Building or Buying, Seamless Integration is a Necessity

The HR Research Institute reports that only 16% of talent professionals say their HR tech integrates seamlessly with the other pieces of their HR tech stack, which is a huge consideration when deciding what route to take for your ATS acquisition. 

If you’re buying a solution, you need to ask if it has an open API that connects to the other systems you’re using. If not, how will that affect the teams using your ATS? Is your engineering team prepared to take on a new project? When building your own ATS, you need to ensure you’re going above and beyond to ensure your product integrates well, which could entail extra time and money. 

Seamless integration is another reason we’d urge you to consider a private label applicant tracking system. Competitive private label applicant tracking systems are developer-forward, built with seamless integration in mind.

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White Labeling an Applicant Tracking System Bridges the Build vs. Buy Debate

A white label ATS enables you to offer recruiting solutions to your customers quickly and efficiently. White labeling is when one organization creates a solution—in this case an applicant tracking system—and allows others to purchase it and present it as a proprietary solution. Private labeling, a type of white labeling, enables organizations to take things a step further and customize that solution. 

Private Labeling Allows for In-Demand Customizations 

Private labeling allows an ATS developer to create a bespoke recruiting solution that offers branding, customized workflows, and an open API that partners can present as a proprietary solution. 

You may have also heard private labeling called “white labeling.” Though often used interchangeably, there’s a crucial difference between private and white label applicant tracking systems.

White-labeled platforms are produced by a SaaS company and rebranded by other companies. Private labeling goes a step beyond a white label applicant tracking system to allow companies to brand the ATS as their own and work with the developer to customize the platform to suit their organization's needs.

Competitive private label applicant tracking systems are subscription-based, like the off-the-shelf solutions. You can start utilizing your ATS almost immediately and spend a fraction of the money you would if you were building an applicant tracking system from the ground up.

Unlike an off-the-shelf ATS where you have the traditional purchaser/customer relationship, a private label solution is a partnership, so you’ll extend the bandwidth of your team, gaining the expertise and resources of your partners’ customer service, product, engineering, and marketing teams—private labeling is an especially savvy move for organizations that want to sell and market a proprietary recruiting solution to their customers. 

With private labeling, you don’t have to worry about development costs going over, integration issues, or hiring staff to support customers. You gain an expert recruiting partner. We’re adamant that private labeling is an exceptional alternative to building your own applicant tracking system. However, if you still need convincing, we’ve created an entire guide, What is a Private Label Applicant Tracking System? that breaks things down in more detail.

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About HiringThing

HiringThing is a modern recruiting and employee onboarding platform as a service that creates seamless talent experiences. Our white label solutions and open API enable technology and service providers to offer hiring and onboarding to their clients. Approachable and adaptable, the platform empowers anyone, anywhere to build their dream team.