Have you ever been confused by a job board like Indeed, Monster and the page on a company website where you apply?
This article goes into detail about the difference amongst them!
Job Boards
A lot of job seekers get frustrated by all the acronyms, tools, apps and websites out there when it comes
to their job search. Both the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) and Job Boards (ie Indeed, Dice, LinkedIn,
Monster, etc.) are databases. But they serve different – and complementary – functions.
A Job Board is just what it sounds like: a place where jobs get posted.
Employers pay money to use job boards. There are usually monthly/quarterly/annual subscriptions as well as single job postings. Cost can range from under $100 for a single posting for 30 days to tens of thousands for a subscription.
Job postings (regardless if one time or subscription) generally have a one-month life span. After that they close unless the employer manually closes them.
Some job board that off subscriptions can also “scrape” the employer’s website or have an automatic “pull” from the job board/ATS. Recruiting staff may also be able to manually update or post jobs as well.
Subscriptions may also only offer a limited number of “active” jobs at a time, so recruiters need to update/change out roles manually.
Most job boards also offer some sort of resume/profile database that recruiters or hiring managers can access for an additional fee. This may include instant messaging capabilities.
Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
An Applicant Tracking System is a workflow tool employers use to manage the recruiting/hiring process. There are hundreds of vendors on the market, and no two have exactly the same UI, capabilities, cost point and functionality. However, most have fairly similar workflows that manage the recruiting process.
There are generally two “views” available: jobs and candidates. On the jobs side, people with access permissions can see specific jobs, and on each job all the applicants on each job. On the candidate view, they can see all the activity (including all the jobs, statuses, and notes/comments) on an individual applicant. Most recruiters tend to spend their time in the “job” view, unless they are monitoring a workflow for a specific person (ie interviews, phone calls, scheduling).
A lot of people think of an ATS as similar to a job board, in that it is a large repository of information that individuals can access – which is erroneous. It is more like the mobile apps on your phone; people can access the same app, but only on their specific phone with their unique credentials. Even a shared app requires each user to create a separate login account for security. So employers A, C, and E are all Workday or iCIMs customers, but they each only have access to their own corporate records. This is why you may be required to create multiple accounts for the same ATS. It’s for your security.
Each employer can configure their specific ATS and choose to enable or disable individual features, which is why even the same ATS for different employers can have a slightly different process for applying.
The ATS connects to the corporate webpage and jobs get published to the careers page, which is always the “source of truth” when it comes to whether a job is open or not and why you may see a role on a job board but when you go to apply, the role is “gone”. It has been closed (filled, put on hold, shut down.)
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