Applicant Tracking Systems

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software that helps organizations manage the recruitment process from opening a vacancy through candidate evaluation, interviews, communication and hiring.

Modern ATS platforms do much more than store applications. They provide the infrastructure for organizing candidates, defining recruitment processes, collaborating with hiring teams, communicating with applicants, evaluating candidates and measuring recruitment performance.

Talantula is a self-service Applicant Tracking System that combines configurable recruitment workflows, candidate management, talent pools, recruitment CRM, communication, career sites, application processes and recruitment analytics in one platform.

An Applicant Tracking System centralizes the information and activities involved in recruiting candidates.

Instead of managing candidates across spreadsheets, email conversations and disconnected tools, an ATS provides a structured system for managing vacancies, applications, candidates, recruitment stages, evaluations, interviews, documents and communication.

A typical Applicant Tracking System can help recruiting teams:

• Create and manage job vacancies

• Collect applications through online application processes

• Organize candidates into recruitment stages

• Search and filter candidate information

• Communicate with candidates by email

• Record comments, activities and recruitment history

• Evaluate candidates using structured criteria

• Coordinate interviews and other recruitment activities

• Build and maintain talent pools

• Collaborate with hiring teams

• Analyze recruitment activity and outcomes

The exact capabilities vary considerably between ATS platforms. Some focus primarily on applicant tracking, while others extend into recruitment CRM, talent relationship management, career sites, recruitment marketing and workflow automation.

An ATS is most useful when it reflects the organization's actual recruitment process rather than forcing recruiters to adapt their process to rigid software.

Modern recruitment teams often need more than a basic application database. They may need different recruitment stages for different types of vacancies, custom application questions, structured evaluations, candidate segmentation, automated communication, talent pools and different workflows for different hiring situations.

This makes configurability an important characteristic of a modern Applicant Tracking System.

A configurable ATS allows an organization to define how recruitment works inside the system, including its stages, forms, evaluations, workflows, communication and candidate management processes.

Rather than providing one fixed recruitment workflow, Talantula allows organizations to configure the way they manage candidates and vacancies.

Its ATS capabilities include:

Vacancy and applicant management

Create vacancies, manage their recruitment process and track applicants as they move through configured recruitment stages.

Recruiters can maintain candidate information, comments, activities and recruitment history in one place.

Configurable recruitment workflows

Recruitment processes can be configured to reflect different hiring requirements.

Workflows can include customized stages and interviewing steps, allowing organizations to define processes appropriate for different vacancies, departments or recruiting situations.

Custom application processes

Organizations can configure candidate application flows with custom fields, questions, validations, documents and other application requirements.

Application processes can therefore be adapted to the information and qualifications that matter for a particular type of vacancy.

Candidate evaluation

Recruitment teams can use structured evaluation forms to assess candidates consistently.

Customizable evaluations can contain questions, attributes, weights, answer options and formulas, allowing organizations to define their own evaluation methodology.

Advanced candidate filtering

An ATS becomes significantly more useful when recruiters can quickly find candidates matching specific requirements.

Talantula provides advanced filtering across recruitment data, with more than 60 recruitment criteria and filter operations that can combine conditions using union, intersection and difference logic.

Talent pools and recruitment CRM

Not every potentially valuable candidate applies to a current vacancy.

Talantula extends applicant tracking with talent pools and recruitment CRM capabilities, allowing organizations to organize, segment, search and maintain relationships with candidates beyond a single application.

This creates a connection between Applicant Tracking and Talent Relationship Management (TRM) rather than treating every candidate as an isolated application.

Recruitment communication

Candidate communication can be managed within the recruitment platform through a mailbox, reusable email templates and email campaigns.

This allows recruiters to keep communication connected to candidate and recruitment activity rather than relying entirely on separate email tools.

Career site and employer branding

A recruitment platform can also provide the candidate-facing experience through a career site.

Talantula includes a Career Site Builder that allows organizations to create branded career sites, publish vacancies and present employer content without building a separate website.

Recruitment events

Organizations can manage recruitment events, participants and event-related communication as part of the same recruitment environment.

Recruitment analytics

Recruitment activity can be analyzed to provide visibility into the organization's hiring process and recruitment pipeline.

Traditional Applicant Tracking Systems primarily focus on candidates who have already entered an application process.

Talent Relationship Management takes a broader view.

A TRM platform helps organizations build and maintain relationships with potential candidates before they apply, including candidates in talent pools, previous applicants, referrals and other sources of recruiting relationships.

Talantula combines ATS and TRM capabilities in one platform.

This means a candidate can move naturally through the recruiting lifecycle:

Discover → Engage → Join a Talent Pool → Apply → Evaluate → Interview → Hire

The relationship does not have to end when a vacancy is closed. Candidates can remain part of an organization's talent network and become relevant for future opportunities.

When evaluating Applicant Tracking Systems, it is useful to look beyond the basic ability to store applications.

Important areas to compare include:

Candidate management    
Can the system maintain complete candidate profiles, recruitment history, activities and documents?

Recruitment workflows    
Can different recruitment processes be configured for different hiring requirements?

Application processes    
Can application forms, questions, validations and required documents be customized?

Candidate evaluation    
Can recruiters and hiring teams use structured, configurable evaluation criteria?

Search and filtering    
Can recruiters find relevant candidates using multiple recruitment criteria and complex combinations of conditions?

Talent pools    
Can the organization maintain relationships with candidates who are not currently applying for a specific vacancy?

Communication    
Are candidate emails, templates and campaigns connected to the recruitment process?

Career site    
Can the organization create and maintain its own branded career site?

Recruitment analytics    
Can the organization understand what is happening across its recruitment pipeline?

Configurability    
Can the system adapt to the organization's recruitment process instead of imposing a fixed process?

Self-service access    
Can a company start using the platform without going through a mandatory sales process or implementation project?

Talantula combines Applicant Tracking System and Talent Relationship Management capabilities with configurable recruitment processes, career site creation, recruitment communication, talent pools and recruitment analytics.

Explore the Talantula ATS feature set to see how each part of the platform works.