Recruitment is changing fast, where businesses need better tools to keep up. Managing hundreds of applications manually is just no longer a viable option for growth. This article will explore the applicant tracking system, a crucial piece of software for modern talent acquisition.
According to MyCareersFuture, more than 90% of large organizations use applicant tracking systems (ATS) for their recruitment process, especially during a recession when they receive thousands of job applications. This adoption underscores the increased need for firms to expedite hiring and remain competitive in a rapidly changing labor market.
We will cover what an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is, how it works, the Best ATS software in Singapore, like ScaleOcean, Reccoty, Zoho Recruit, that can streamline your hiring process and boost hiring success, and why it’s important for your business.
Key Takeaways- An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software that enables you to manage your recruitment and hiring processes in one centralized location.
- The key benefits of using an ATS are improved efficiency, faster hiring cycles, better quality of hire, and an enhanced experience for every single applicant.
- Discover the best applicant tracking systems in Singapore 2025, such as ScaleOcean, Reccoty, Zoho Recruit, Workable, Breezy HR, and more.
- ScaleOcean’s talent management software provides a comprehensive solution that automates workflows and enhances collaboration to solve modern recruitment challenges.
What is an Applicant Tracking System?
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software that enables you to manage your recruitment and hiring processes in one centralized location. It centralizes job advertising, applications, and communications, making the process easier for recruiters and hiring managers.
An ATS functions as a computerized filing cabinet and project manager for hiring. It eliminates the need for multiple spreadsheets and emails by consolidating all recruitment data in a single system, resulting in a more efficient and structured hiring process.
How Do Applicant Tracking Systems Work?
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) automates and streamlines hiring by posting job vacancies to numerous boards simultaneously, saving time and reaching more prospects. It organizes applications into a searchable database, saving recruiters from laborious tasks and allowing them to concentrate on evaluating talent. This is how ATS works:
1. Resume Parsing
Resume parsing is a pretty central function, where the applicant tracking system software scans a candidate’s resume and pulls out all the key information. It extracts details like contact info, work history, skills, and education, organizing them into a standardized profile for easy candidate comparison.
This whole parsing process is what really makes the candidate database so powerful and genuinely searchable. Hiring managers can easily search for specific keywords, ensuring no candidate detail is missed due to a resume format.
2. Candidate Screening
Following the parsing step, an applicant tracking system then assists with the initial screening of candidates, a pretty crucial stage. Recruiters can set up knockout questions or specific criteria that applicants must meet, and the system can then automatically filter out candidates who just don’t meet these basic, essential requirements.
This automation really cuts down on the sheer number of resumes a human needs to manually look through. It allows the team to really focus their attention on the most promising applicants from the start, making sure the hiring process is faster and much more quality-focused right out of the gate.
3. Workflow Automation
Workflow automation is, honestly, another massive piece of how an online applicant tracking system functions. The system automates repetitive tasks, such as sending acknowledgment emails and moving candidates between hiring stages based on triggers like positive interviewer feedback.
These automated workflows really ensure no candidate just falls through the cracks, and communication stays pretty consistent throughout. This streamlines the process, allowing the recruitment team to focus more on engaging top talent rather than handling administrative tasks.
4. Talent Pipeline Management
An applicant tracking system is genuinely excellent for building and managing a strong talent pipeline for future roles. Even if a candidate isn’t quite the right fit for an immediate opening, their information is kept safe in the database, creating a ready pool of pre-vetted talent that can be tapped for future hiring needs.
Recruiters can tag candidates with very specific skills or interests, making it super easy to find them again down the line. When a new role does open up, they can actually search their existing pipeline first, which is a proactive approach that can dramatically reduce time-to-hire for those upcoming positions.
5. Enhanced Collaboration
Collaboration across the entire hiring team becomes so much simpler with an ATS. It really does. Everyone involved, recruiters, hiring managers, even interviewers, can access all candidate information in just one place, where they can leave comments, share feedback, and get a complete history of interactions with each applicant.
This centralized communication prevents those annoying information silos and really ensures everyone is on the same page, which is invaluable. Decisions get made faster and more collaboratively, ultimately helping to build a more unified and effective hiring team overall.
Key Benefits of Using an ATS
Using an applicant tracking system (ATS) increases efficiency by automating repetitive operations, allowing recruiters to easily manage more applications. This accelerates the hiring process, allowing you to secure top personnel faster and remain competitive in today’s market. Key benefits include:
1. Improved Efficiency
An ATS lets recruiters pretty much run their whole workflow right from one dashboard, which is a game-changer. This means no more bouncing between a bunch of different platforms like email, spreadsheets, and job boards. Seriously, consolidating all those tools really does lead to a much more streamlined and efficient process overall.
Automating those repetitive tasks is truly what makes an applicant tracking system software so efficient. Think about it: things such as automatically sending rejection emails or scheduling interviews can be handled seamlessly by the system itself. This lets the recruitment team focus on engaging top candidates.
2. Faster Hiring Cycles
Look, an ATS can seriously cut down the time it takes to fill an open position, which is huge. Because it automates initial screenings and communications, candidates just zip through the pipeline a lot faster. This kind of speed gives you a real competitive edge when you’re trying to attract top-tier talent.
Plus, the sheer ability to quickly search and pinpoint qualified candidates from the system’s database really makes things move along faster, too. Instead of having to start from zero with every new role, recruiters can just dip into their existing talent pool. This approach can reduce sourcing time from weeks to hours, helping fill roles faster.
3. Better Quality of Hire
According to EDB, Southeast Asia will be the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2030, with Singapore providing a strong talent pool. Using an ATS improves hiring quality by guaranteeing that only qualified candidates advance to the interview stage while focusing on key job criteria.
What’s more, the data and analytics you get from an ATS are incredibly helpful for really fine-tuning your hiring strategies. By keeping tabs on metrics like which job boards actually bring in the best candidates, companies can truly optimize their sourcing efforts. This data-driven approach helps attract and hire better-quality employees.
4. Enhanced Candidate Experience
A really solid ATS can genuinely boost the candidate experience, and that’s not something to overlook. Automated communications make sure applicants are always in the loop about their application status, which is a big deal for them. Keeping candidates informed builds trust and improves their perception of your company.
Beyond just communication, a smooth and professional application process itself really reflects positively on your brand. When candidates find it easy to apply and actually get confirmation that their application went through, it just leaves a good impression. This experience is key to building a strong employer brand.
5. Streamlined Compliance
Compliance with all those hiring laws and regulations is, let’s be real, a pretty big concern for every business out there. An ATS steps in here, providing tools that really help streamline things, making sure your hiring practices are both fair and consistent. The system tracks data and generates reports for audits and compliance checks.
When you standardize your application and screening process with an ATS, it really helps cut down on the risk of unconscious bias, which is important. It essentially ensures that every single candidate gets evaluated against the same criteria. This ensures a fair process and protects the company from potential legal issues.
6. Access to Analytics
In modern business, data just runs everything, and talent management, especially with an online applicant tracking system, is absolutely no different. An ATS provides really valuable analytics and reports on all those key hiring metrics you need to know. Track time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and source effectiveness for key insights.
All this data really lets you pinpoint exactly where the bottlenecks are and what areas in your hiring strategy need a bit of a tweak. You’re empowered to make way more informed decisions, truly based on what the numbers are showing you. This helps optimize recruitment for better business outcomes.
Also Read: What Is Talent Management and How’s the Process?
Who Uses an Applicant Tracking System?
Recruiters, talent acquisition teams, hiring managers, human resources experts, and company leaders all use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to streamline the recruitment process. These solutions help to organize and track applications, resulting in a more efficient and collaborative hiring process.
Recruitment and staffing firms rely largely on ATS technologies to manage candidates for numerous clients. Job seekers engage with the system via online application portals, but they do not directly use the ATS. Their applications must be designed for maximum visibility within the system.
Key Features of an Applicant Tracking Software
A strong ATS should be more than simply a resume database; it should work seamlessly with your hiring strategy. Powerful platforms provide a set of tools that work together to simplify the process for both recruiters and candidates. The key features include:
1. Centralized Database
The actual core, or you could say the heart, of any decent applicant tracking system is truly its centralized candidate database. The database stores applicant info, resumes, and communication history, with a powerful search function to quickly find candidates by skills, experience, or keywords.
Over time, this very database actually becomes a pretty valuable asset for the company, you know. It acts as a private talent pool, saving time and resources by allowing easy access to candidates for future openings.
2. Automated Screening
For talent management, automated screening tools are genuinely a must-have feature, especially if you’re aiming to save time, which is always important. This functionality lets you set pre-qualification questions and filters, automatically ranking candidates for your team to focus on the most promising applicants.
What’s really quite good about this feature is how it helps to ensure a consistent approach in that initial screening process, you know, making things a bit more uniform. It removes manual, subjective steps, making the shortlist process fairer and more efficient.
3. Multi-Channel Job Posting
The sheer ability to post a job to, like, multiple channels with just one single click is truly a huge time-saver for any kind of recruitment marketing strategy. A good ATS integrates with job boards, social media, and your career page to maximize job visibility.
This specific feature really simplifies the whole advertising process quite significantly, making it, you know, much easier to handle everything. Manage job postings in one place and track the best candidate sources to optimize recruitment marketing spend.
4. Branded Career Page
It’s often the case that your career page serves as the very first impression a candidate gets of your company, so, you know, it’s a pretty big deal. An ATS should let you create a branded career page that integrates with your website, offering a consistent brand experience and an easy application process for candidates.
And crucially, this career page absolutely needs to be mobile-friendly, especially since so many job seekers are, these days, searching for roles right from their phones. A clunky, unresponsive page can turn top talent away, so a good ATS ensures a smooth, user-friendly experience.
5. Communication Automation
Automating communication is, frankly, super key for providing a truly positive candidate experience throughout your talent management efforts. A decent applicant tracking system should really allow you to easily set up email templates and automated messages for all those different stages of the hiring process.
This automation, what it does, ensures that every single candidate actually receives timely updates, which, let’s be honest, is absolutely crucial for maintaining your employer brand. It frees recruiters from mass emailing, allowing them to focus on personalized communication with high-priority candidates.
6. Interview Management
Managing interviews, especially when you have, like, multiple interviewers involved, can very quickly turn into a total logistical nightmare, it’s true. An applicant tracking system equipped with dedicated interview management features can genuinely simplify this entire process, which is a lifesaver.
These sorts of tools actually ensure that the interview process runs, you know, smoothly from start to finish, and also that feedback is captured in a really structured, actionable way. This makes comparing candidates easier and ensures informed decisions, keeping the hiring team aligned and efficient.
7. Reporting and Analytics
For anyone looking to build a truly data-driven recruitment strategy, robust reporting and analytics are just, honestly, non-negotiable. An ATS should offer clear dashboards and reports on key metrics like time-to-hire, candidate sources, and pipeline health to help assess what’s working and what’s not in your hiring process.
Having these kinds of insights readily available means you can effectively identify bottlenecks, really optimize your sourcing channels, and even get a clearer picture of forecasting future hiring needs, which is quite helpful. This feature transforms recruitment from a cost center to a strategic partner, enabling smarter decisions that impact the bottom line.
8. Compliance Tools
It’s just a fact that hiring always involves a whole lot of legal and regulatory requirements, which, frankly, can be quite complex to keep track of for any online applicant tracking system. An ATS with built-in compliance tools helps navigate regulations like EEO/OFCCP and GDPR, ensuring responsible candidate data management.
These specific tools are designed to genuinely help mitigate risk and also to ensure your hiring practices are always fair and equitable, which is really important for everyone. They generate audit-ready reports, ensuring compliance and protecting your business from future legal challenges.
9. Integration with HR Software
Truthfully, an applicant tracking system just shouldn’t operate all by itself in a silo. That really doesn’t make much sense in today’s talent management landscape. It should integrate seamlessly with HR software like HRIS and payroll, ensuring smooth candidate data transfer into employee records once hired.
Integration automates data entry and reduces errors, streamlining the HR IT stack. ScaleOcean’s ATS easily interacts with HR services, including onboarding software, all on one platform, increasing efficiency and collaboration, earning it the best rating.
8 Best Applicant Tracking Software Recommendations
Choosing the proper ATS can be difficult, but the best system relies on your company’s size, industry, and hiring requirements. Look for a product that is simple to use, connects well with other applications, and provides excellent customer support. Below is a list of the finest applicant tracking software:
1. ScaleOcean’s Talent Management Software
ScaleOcean’s best talent management software streamlines hiring with unlimited users and no hidden fees. Its ATS offers industry-specific solutions, scalable flexibility, and timely technical support. AI-driven insights help businesses achieve faster ROI and make smarter hiring decisions.
ScaleOcean’s ATS improves recruitment through AI-powered analytics and customized features. ScaleOcean offers a free demo that allows businesses to see its full potential, which helps optimize recruiting. Furthermore, ScaleOcean’s CTC grant support provides a smooth implementation for long-term effectiveness and efficiency.
Key Features:
- AI Resume Parsing: AI extracts key data from resumes, speeding up initial candidate screening for efficiency.
- Smart Candidate Evaluation: AI-driven insights help HR assess candidates’ skills and suitability for better hiring decisions.
- Automated Workflow: Automates tasks like emails, shortlisting, and interview scheduling, reducing manual work for recruiters.
- Collaborative Hiring: Centralized scorecards and feedback enable seamless collaboration across the recruitment team.
- Multilingual & Job Portal Integration: Supports multiple languages and integrates with Singapore job portals for wider candidate reach.
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Best For: ScaleOcean’s ATS is perfect for small-to large-sized enterprises in Singapore, offering scalable, customizable solutions with AI-driven insights. It’s ideal for businesses with complex recruitment needs, seeking industry-specific solutions and transparent pricing to optimize hiring.
2. Reccoty Applicant Tracking System Software
Then there’s Reccoty, especially known for its really user-friendly interface and overall simplicity. It tends to be a great option for those small to medium-sized businesses just bringing in an applicant tracking system for the very first time.
Now, while it might not pack all the advanced features you’d find in bigger enterprise systems, its real strength, I’d say, is its accessibility. Recruiting really helps teams get their hiring process organized without a huge learning curve.
Key Features:
- User-friendly interface
- Simple setup and easy-to-navigate dashboard
- Customizable workflows for efficient recruiting
- Collaboration tools for team communication
- Cloud-based for access anywhere
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Best For: Reccoty is best for small to medium-sized businesses that need an easy-to-use and straightforward applicant tracking system without a steep learning curve, particularly for first-time users looking to streamline their recruitment process.
3. Zoho Recruit Applicant Tracking System
Zoho Recruit, as you might guess, is part of that larger Zoho suite of business applications. They offer both a staffing agency edition and a corporate HR edition, so it really caters to different kinds of needs. The platform itself is quite customizable and provides some really good features for sourcing and candidate management.
What’s really great about Zoho Recruit is how well it integrates within the whole Zoho ecosystem. This allows for a truly seamless flow of information between your recruitment efforts, CRM, and other essential business functions.
Key Features:
- Customizable platform for diverse hiring needs
- Candidate sourcing and management tools
- Integrates seamlessly within the Zoho ecosystem
- CRM and HRIS integration
- Offers both staffing agency and corporate editions
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Best For: Zoho Recruit is ideal for businesses looking for an integrated applicant tracking system that works well with other business tools, particularly within the Zoho suite, making it suitable for both small companies and larger enterprises.
4. Workable Applicant Tracking Software
Workable, you know, is pretty well-known for its sourcing tools and those extensive job board integrations it offers. It really helps companies cast a much wider net to find both passive and active candidates, which is a big deal. The platform emphasizes mobile recruiting, allowing hiring teams to manage the process from anywhere.
The system itself is designed to be quite intuitive, so it typically requires minimal training to get everyone using it effectively. It comes with features like simple one-click job posting and even AI-powered candidate recommendations.
Key Features:
- Extensive job board integrations
- AI-powered candidate recommendations
- Mobile recruiting tools for on-the-go management
- One-click job posting
- Simple and intuitive user interface
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Best For: Workable is best for businesses aiming to source candidates across multiple platforms and integrate their recruitment processes with job boards, especially for medium to large organizations that require robust sourcing tools.
5. Breezy HR Software
Breezy HR is great for its visual way of handling pipeline management, using a simple drag-and-drop interface, which is intuitive. This just makes it incredibly easy to visualize exactly where every candidate stands in your hiring process, which is always helpful.
Breezy HR genuinely focuses on making that whole hiring process much more collaborative and, importantly, transparent for everyone involved. It’s a good choice, then, for teams who truly value simplicity and a clear, visual workflow.
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop visual pipeline management
- Collaborative tools for team communication
- Customizable workflows for recruiting
- Real-time collaboration with hiring teams
- Candidate screening and assessment tools
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Best For: Breezy HR is great for small to medium-sized businesses that value an easy-to-use, collaborative, and transparent hiring process, especially for teams looking to manage recruitment visually.
6. Greenhouse Applicant Tracking Platform
Greenhouse is one of the popular choices, particularly for mid-market and enterprise companies, often known for its focus on structured hiring practices. The platform gives you solid tools to help reduce bias and, crucially, make more data-driven hiring decisions, which is always a plus.
You’ll find it offers some pretty deep integrations and a really high degree of customizability, which is important for many. Greenhouse is genuinely designed to support complex hiring workflows and cater to diverse teams.
Key Features:
- Bias reduction tools for fair hiring
- Deep integrations with various business tools
- Highly customizable platform
- Data-driven decision-making features
- Comprehensive recruiting workflow management
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Best For: Greenhouse is best for mid-market to enterprise businesses looking for a structured and customizable recruitment solution, with strong data-driven tools for improving fairness and scalability in the hiring process.
7. BambooHR Online Applicant Tracking System
BambooHR, you know, is a really well-known HRIS that also happens to include a good applicant tracking system built right in. This makes it a great choice for companies really wanting a single platform to manage that entire employee lifecycle, from the moment someone’s hired all the way through to retirement.
The real strength of BambooHR, then, truly lies in its all-in-one nature, which is a big draw for many. Now, while its applicant tracking system might not be quite as feature-rich as some dedicated, standalone options, the sheer convenience of having everything in one coherent system is great.
Key Features:
- All-in-one HRIS platform with ATS functionality
- Employee lifecycle management
- Onboarding and offboarding tools
- Employee self-service portal
- Reporting and analytics capabilities
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Best For: BambooHR is best for small to medium-sized businesses looking for an all-in-one HR solution that includes applicant tracking as part of a larger system to manage the entire employee lifecycle.
8. Lever ATS Software
Lever, it actually blends an ATS with CRM functionalities, creating what they term a Talent Relationship Management platform. This allows companies to do more than just track applicants. You can proactively source and really nurture relationships with passive talent, which is key today.
The platform itself is quite known for its focus on both candidate engagement and fostering robust team collaboration. Features like their Nurture Campaigns are super helpful for keeping potential candidates warm for future roles.
Key Features:
- Combines ATS and CRM functionalities
- Candidate engagement tools
- Nurture Campaigns for passive talent
- Robust team collaboration features
- Customizable pipelines for recruitment management
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Best For: Lever is best for businesses focusing on long-term talent relationship management, with strong candidate engagement tools, making it ideal for organizations that need to nurture passive talent and improve team collaboration.
Conclusion
In today’s competitive employment market, an applicant tracking system (ATS) is required for effective hiring. Moving away from manual methods such as spreadsheets is an important step for any organization seeking to expand. An applicant tracking system (ATS) may speed up, manage, and strategically plan your recruitment process.
ScaleOcean provides an ATS solution for organizations of all sizes that interacts smoothly with your existing HR operations. This technology automates repetitive operations, which improves productivity and decision-making. ScaleOcean, as a vendor, also offers a free demo to allow you to experience its strong features for yourself.
FAQ:
1. Is ATS used in Singapore?
Yes, ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is commonly utilized in Singapore, especially by larger corporations and recruitment firms. It plays a key role in streamlining the recruitment process, automating candidate filtering, and enhancing recruitment efficiency.
2. How to check if a resume is ATS-friendly?
To determine if a resume is ATS-friendly, make sure it uses standard fonts (such as Arial or Times New Roman), simple formatting (avoid graphics and tables), and incorporates relevant keywords and job titles from the job posting. You can also use online tools or ATS testers to evaluate compatibility.
3. Can ATS read scanned documents?
ATS cannot typically read scanned documents or images. Since the system processes text-based data, it is important to submit resumes in formats such as .docx or .pdf (instead of scanned images or handwritten files) to ensure the system can properly parse the information.
4. How much does an ATS usually cost?
The pricing for an ATS can vary based on the provider, features, and the size of the company. Generally, an ATS may cost anywhere from $50 to $500 per month, with enterprise-level solutions potentially costing more. Some providers offer flexible pricing plans based on usage or the number of job postings.
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