So many emails with resumes attached? Lost track of candidates you thought would be good for a different position, other than the one they applied to? Still using excel and email for hiring? I’m sorry about that. Welcome to the future of recruiting! Like many things: socializing, news, finding jobs, the hiring process is now digital-completely web-based-if you use the right application. Calming down the chaos of your hiring, and centralizing all your information, is very important to maintaining your sanity and making sure you and your company can focus on what’s important like attracting qualified applicants and hiring the right candidates.

Here are the potential benefits to organizing your hiring process using a web-based application:

1. Let your inbox breathe. Often whether you are a recruiter, an HR department, or just in charge of hiring for a position, your inbox gets flooded with hundreds of emails with resumes attached. This is a nightmare. It makes it hard to go through and download resumes, it makes it hard to check other emails, and it makes your email inbox look like an overwhelming place to be. Using a recruiting ATS or web-based application will give your inbox a break and have the tons of resumes you recieve going through a web-based system rather than your inbox.

2. Make collaboration easy. Ever try to collaborate on hiring with your colleagues or fellow recruiters? Having extremely long email streams with several people cc’ed and having a major breakdown in communication when one person forgets to Reply All. This is sheer madness and it’s not an efficient or organized way to keep track of candidates. Use an applicant tracking system that allows you to write notes internally on the candidate profile and share those with your collaborators without having to create endless email streams.

3. It’s okay to say no and say you may have a job for them later. One of the worst things for a job candidate is hearing that they were not chosen for a particular job and there may be another position better suited for them, however they never seem to hear back about these other positions. Why is this? Because the hiring team forgets where they put the email with that candidate’s resume or they can’t remember why they liked that candidate and what job they’d be better suited for. When you have a web-based system that organizes your candidates you can always easily search to find them when you are thinking of a position they might be good for.

4. Know what part of the process each candidate is currently in. Another difficult part of hiring is remembering what part of the process each candidate is in, especially if you have a robust process with multiple stages. How do you remember if you need to set up an in-person interview with one candidate, or let another candidate know they’ve been selected for a 2nd round phone interview? Using an ATS will help you organize what stage each candidate is in and update it as you move them, or don’t move them, through certain stages. This makes your life less crazy and allows you to keep track of the other more important things like what questions you are going to ask them at the in-person interview.

There are many more benefits to organizing your hiring process, like: maybe finally having some time to take a vacation or leave early to spend time with your family. Another big benefit is having peace of mind and not drowning in resumes and emails. Before you can really hunker down and focus on the important aspects of hiring like attracting top talent and make sure valuable team players are being hired, you have to get organized and give yourself a break.