Have you bought the new iPhone yet? No matter how current you are, it seems like new tech keeps replacing old tech—especially in the last decade, we have seen tech multiply in our daily lives with ever-increasing speed and ever-increasing updates. For the HR industry, which has transformed over the last decade with a rapid shift toward technological innovation, the savviest HR teams might find it difficult to keep up, sift through the hype, and sort through the trends to find the tech they truly need. Perhaps it’s logical to be concerned that a sophisticated technology like programmatic, which uses AI-assisted processes, wouldn’t be compatible with your more basic applicant tracking system. Perhaps it sounds too good to be true? But because replacing tech every couple of years can get expensive, the demand for HR tech to integrate with a company’s pre-existing system has given rise to the concept of the “tech stack.”

The “tech stack” enables the HR department to pick and choose the various forms of tech they need most—so long as that tech integrates. And let’s be honest, programmatic is becoming increasingly popular and will be a “must-have” for companies who want to stay competitive because it can streamline the entire hiring process by targeting quality candidates quickly with your job ads. Tech companies that provide robust application programming interfaces (APIs) will naturally do best in the marketplace because it is these interfaces that allow the new tech to integrate with the old.

When it comes to programmatic technologies for HR, APIs can help facilitate the information exchange between your applicant tracking system (ATS) and your programmatic job advertising platform. Your ATS need not be the most sophisticated system; programmatic can give it that extra boost to streamline job ad campaigns and maximize ROI. This is because programmatic can leverage Big Data by using algorithmic processes to read data, react in real-time, and turn it into actionable insight for your organization. It’s an extremely sophisticated tech, but if it can’t be integrated into your current system you won’t see the full results of its ability to optimize your hiring process. This is why companies like Pandologic have developed programmatic job advertising platforms that can seamlessly integrate with a variety of ATS tech.

Outlined in the pictured infographic are the numerous ATS’ that can connect with Pandologic’s pandoIQ, a highly adaptable programmatic job ad platform. There are two forms of information exchange between pandoIQ and ATS programs: the API and the feed. The API is the more sophisticated of the two data-sharing capabilities outlined already, but both systems provide seamless integration of data from pandoIQ and your ATS. The feed will provide information to your system, updated on a regular basis, while the API system offers the advantage of getting real-time updates with the ability to send more diverse kinds of data. But again, both will streamline the processes of your HR team.

Let’s be clear, though. pandoIQ assesses “real-time data” regardless of whether your ATS system connects via API or a data feed. This is the beauty of having programmatic technologies in your tech stack—you will get the real-time data where you need it most. If, for example, you want your job ad placement to be the most efficient it can be and have it adjust to job ad performance, pandoIQ’s AI software will find the best candidates quickly by placing your job ads where they most need to be seen and where they perform well. If you use an ATS like Jobvite or Smartrecruiters, you will get up-to-date data at regular intervals, while pandoIQ will still be able to assess your job ad performance in real-time and optimize your budget allocation using its budgeting and prediction algorithms.

Your ATS is more than a way to organize job applicants—it can be your data powerhouse when you combine it with the right programmatic platform.