Three Ways an ATS Is Different Than a Job Board

A rapidly growing number of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are making the smart decision to save themselves time and money by using an applicant tracking system ( ATS ) to manage their recruiting process. Most employers are used to posting their jobs to online job boards in order to get applicant traffic. But, if you are new to the world of recruiting software, you may be asking yourself, “What is the difference between an applicant tracking system and a job board?”

What's an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?

An ATS is human resource software that helps companies organize, automate, and optimize the recruiting process. An ATS provides a centralized repository for job candidate data, including resumes, applications, references, background checks, and whatever else an organization requires to make a hire. An ATS helps businesses create job postings, post jobs, track candidates, and guide both sides through the hiring process. 

 A good ATS has the power to transform a recruiting strategy to become more productive, profitable, and efficient—98.9% of Fortune 500 companies use an ATS to streamline and strengthen their hiring, and 94% of recruiting systems say adopting an ATS has positively impacted their hiring process. 

What's a Job Board?

A job board is a website used by employers to advertise open positions to job seekers. Job seekers use these websites to find and apply to open positions. Indeed, Glassdoor, Monster, and CareerBuilder are some of the better-known job boards (niche job boards, like Culinary Agents, are tailored specifically for various industries, in this case, hospitality). 51% of today’s job seekers utilize job boards as part of their career search. Job boards are powerful for employers because they benefit recruiters trying to fill current openings and build a talent pipeline integral for keeping applicant traffic steady.  And an ATS can post to multiple job boards at once, giving employers a big advantage. 

Unsure which job board to use? Check out Seven Steps to Selecting the Right Job Board.

Below, we'll explore three other major advantages an ATS has over simply posting to a job board. 

Three Advantages of an ATS

Create Solid Job Descriptions

The first step toward attracting great candidates for your open position is to craft a strong job description and then market the job posting online so qualified applicants can apply. If you aren’t using an ATS , you need to manually post your job posting on every single job board you want to advertise on. Using an ATS enables you to create your job description once and advertise it to multiple online job boards quickly and easily.

Keep Everything Organized

If you’ve advertised your job posting via online job boards and social media sites, get ready for a deluge of applicants. Without an ATS , your email inbox can quickly get overloaded with hundreds of applicant resumes, leaving you pulling your hair out as you struggle to keep up. Even if you’re using folders, your email inbox can get cluttered faster than a college freshman’s dorm room. With an ATS , you can direct applicants from any source to apply online to your job posting and then collect those online applications in a single place, leaving your inbox free for work communications.

Screen Candidates More Efficiently

If you’re trying to manage applicants through your email inbox, you know how much extra time and energy it takes to stay organized. You have to open each resume and cover letter attachment to perform an initial review and then create folders and move applicants to folders based on their rating. You might even be forwarding applicants to hiring managers to get feedback before it’s finally time for you to get in touch with the applicant and schedule an interview. By then, so much time has passed that you have to open up their resume and cover letter files all over again to remind yourself of their qualifications. An ATS makes every part of your recruitment workflow easier and more efficient. You can set up screening questions to weed out unqualified applicants, quickly review and rate applicants without ever having to open a resume file, and communicate with both hiring managers and applicants, all without ever having to open up your email.

What's the Difference Between an Off-The-Shelf ATS and Private Label ATS?

Incorporating an ATS into your recruitment workflow will save you a significant amount of time and money. When you use your ATS to advertise your open jobs to online job boards, you’re effectively taking two great online tools and combining them to create a super-charged recruiting strategy.

Organizations looking to take their hiring to the next level or looking to add additional value to their hiring tech stacks often take advantage of a private label ats.  Private-label software is purchased by a company from a SaaS provider and customized with robust, user-friendly solutions, including tailored workflows and single-sign-on capabilities. Organizations that partner with a private label SaaS provider work with said provider to ensure their specific recruiting needs are met.

You may have heard private label applicant tracking systems called white label applicant tracking systems before, and while the two are similar, they have a crucial difference: customizations. With a white label ATS, customers will purchase the ATS, which will be outfitted with their branding. A private label ATS will take things a step further than a white label ATS, offering the tailored workflows and SSO options. 

The strength of private labeling is that consumers who buy or use the end product are not aware it was initially produced by the private-label provider, strengthening the brand of the private label purchaser. You may have also heard private labeling called “white labeling.” Though many use private labeling and white labeling interchangeably, there’s a crucial difference between the two in the world of SaaS‒customization.

Read more about the benefits of a private label ATS.

Related Resources

• Innovative Strategies to Improve Recruiting and Retention
• Seven Steps to Selecting the Right Job Board
• The HiringThing Guide to Increasing Your Applicant Traffic
• Rethink What You Know About Job Postings

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.