Standalone applicant tracking systems (ATS) have never really solved for talent acquisition teams’ biggest pain points or addressed their critical needs.
Old-school ATS help recruiters review applications and resumes and move job seekers through the interview process. They also enable recruiters and other hiring stakeholders to hire for key roles. Once this process is over, though, all that data disappears into a black hole (i.e., becomes inaccessible and unusable for talent teams).
Essentially, legacy ATS solutions act as de facto candidate databases for TA organizations and merely help recruiters execute some (certainly not all or even most) of their day-to-day duties (e.g., posting to multiple job boards, storing prospects’ resumes and contact information).
They’re transactional systems by nature, and that’s just not how talent teams operate today.