As you know, Bitrix24 comes with a mighty powerful free HRIS (Human Resources Information System) inside. In fact, we have an entire webinar covering free HR tools provided by Bitrix24. As some of you may be wondering how to use Bitrix24 CRM for resume management or as one of the applicant tracking systems free, here is a handy guide you can check out.

What Is an Applicant Tracking System?

An applicant tracking system (often abbreviated ATS) is a special type of software that provides electronic handling of the recruitment and hiring processes. Depending on the needs of your organization, an applicant tracking system can be implemented and/or accessed online, which is really convenient for both huge enterprises and small businesses.

How Does the Applicant Tracking System Work in Bitrix24?

Bitrix24 can be used as applicant tracking systems free. In fact, this is actually one of the most common scenarios for Beatrix 24 because any CRM is basically a database and an applicant tracking system is a database so our CRM really doesn't care if you're working with clients or prospects or job seekers.

You can set it up for a number of purposes and we have a number of headhunting agencies that use Bitrix24 CRM as an applicant tracking system. What you need to do first is set up a resume funnel, which is very easy to do.

Just add a new stage (you can change the color if you want or delete any stage that you do not need) - this is the basic setup.

You are going to have incoming resumes and then you are going to screen them just to get rid of the applications that are obviously not going to work. Then, you create the first interview, the final interview, offer accepted and that’s the most typical way.

It might be different in your case as some companies like to keep a resume pool of eligible people who they were not able to offer a job but who might potentially be great candidates in the future. You can create as many stages as you want in your applicant tracking system.

So how do new resumes come in? Obviously, you can add new leads manually if you want to but this is probably not what you want to do. On the free plan, a lead is automatically created when an email is sent to a specific email address - in your case, it could be jobs@mycompany.com or hr@mycompany.com or any other address you prefer.

There are two most common scenarios in Bitrix24 as an applicant tracking system:

• An email sent to that address including any attachments will automatically create a new record. Then, you will receive a notification about a new application - you can pre-screen it and start moving it down the line.

• A form is submitted via Bitrix24 (you can easily create an applicant tracking form using our form builder). A potential candidate fills in the form, attaches a resume, and submits the application for the desired position. The form is fully customizable. After that, a submission is automatically created and added to your CRM.

So, you can do it manually when you receive an email to a specific email address or you can automatically add a resume to your applicant database via web forms and those web forms are entirely embeddable. You can embed them on any of your website pages.

From the CRM, you can send this person an email and the system will collect all emails in one place. You will have the entire history of email communications with that person stored right in your CRM, which is extraordinarily convenient if you have a large HR department or several recruiters using our product as an applicant tracking system.

In a single glance, you will be able to study the history of previous communications, you can send text messages, make phone or video calls and even record them. The recordings of those calls are stored in your CRM as well as in the form of an mp3 file.

When you do a job interview (the first interview or the second), it’s usually one person. Other people from your hiring committee come later - and if they have the proper rights for CRM access, they will be able to go inside that candidate’s profile and they will be able to listen to the audio recordings.