The 16 Best Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) in Q3 2023
The best ATS software - tried and tested by our HR experts. Get pricing details and pros & cons, plus perspectives from professionals who use these ATS systems every day.
ATS software is designed to help HR and recruiting teams organize recruitment data during the hiring process. Tasks that can be automated or streamlined by ATS systems include managing careers sites, posting jobs, collecting applications, communicating with candidates, collecting interview feedback, and sending offer letters.
Our experts have painstakingly researched the list of top applicant tracking systems below (and regularly updated it since it was first published in 2018). The featured vendors all have something that makes them the "best." For some, it's modern feature sets such as automation, best in class APIs, and customization. For others, it's price point, or ease of implementation. Whichever it is, you can be sure we've covered it.
Best Applicant Tracking Systems
To find the best ATS software, we participated in product demos, gathered user and expert feedback, and leveraged in-house knowledge to assess each product's performance on core functions including candidate screening, job posting, resume parsing, interview scheduling, and analytics/reporting. More broadly, we believe that the most essential components of a top-notch ATS are UX/UI, candidate experience, and integration:
UX/UI: Your TA team and talent pool will spend a lot of time using this tool, so our criteria include a stringent test for a good user interface. For example, posting a job should take less than 30 seconds, syndicating this job to job boards should be a simple push of a button, and viewing applicants should be as intuitive as using Trello.
Candidate Experience: We evaluate for features that enhance the candidate experience, like personalized communication, easy interview scheduling, and self-service portals for application status updates. Your TA team is your public relations team, so it is critical to equip them with tech to ensure your reputation among all candidates, regardless of your hire or no-hire decision, shows up on Glassdoor in a positive light.
Integration and Compatibility: Consider the platform’s ability to integrate with other tools in your HR ecosystem, like HRIS, CRM, background screening, and job boards. Limited integrations can be a massive drag on ROI: manually entering data or downloading CSVs from your candidate assessments tool to be uploaded to your ATS is suboptimal. Seamless data exchange and workflow is the goal.
For more information our methodology, read this article on how we evaluate HR tech vendors.
Greenhouse
BambooHR
Pinpoint
Recruitee
ClearCompany
Teamtailor
Manatal
VidCruiter
Ashby
Trakstar Hire
Lever
SmartRecruiters
Avature
JazzHR
Freshteam
Greenhouse
Greenhouse is one of the most comprehensive systems for applicant tracking and recruiting that works best for midsize and large companies that require advanced scheduling, customization, and a straightforward workflow.
PROS
- Greenhouse gets a straightforward UI that is highly customizable and easy to navigate.
- Greenhouse’s onboarding module is quite comprehensive, making it easy to transition the new hires.
- Greenhouse can integrate with over 360 third-party solutions for diverse categories.
- Greenhouse's onboarding feature is built and executed well. New hires transition smoothly from candidate to employee.
- iOS and Android apps work well for recruiters on the go. Users can review applications, schedule interviews, view candidates' profiles, and more.
- 450+ third-party integrations.
CONS
- Undisclosed prices, no free trial.
- The reporting feature can be challenging to navigate.
- The in-person support could take a while to respond, some users noted.
- Greenhouse’s pricing is undisclosed, and they do not offer a trial version.
- Some users note that reporting customization is quite limited and difficult to navigate.
- In-person/live support could be improved.
Greenhouse has always been highly rated by our editorial team. It’s also consistently praised for its ease of use and time-saving features by the several users we talk to when it’s time for an update on the tool.
The dashboard represents exactly the longstanding ATS’ name — a greenhouse. It is very easy on the eyes and lets us have an overview of the fresh candidates that need our attention. From there, you can look at upcoming interviews, applications to review, task status overviews, and links to guide you on each stage of the recruitment process.
Creating jobs on Greenhouse is a breeze, thanks to its user-friendly pre-built templates. The standout feature we loved during the software demo was the highly customizable hiring workflow. With simple drag-and-drop functionality, we could modify each step, rename stages, and specify interview focus areas. Collaborative hiring is also easy, as multiple team members can contribute with defined roles. This fosters transparency and minimizes communication hurdles among hiring managers, recruiters, and stakeholders. Standard qualification criteria for each stage ensure evaluators follow the guidelines, providing confidence in decision-making and valuable insights for process improvement.
We also love how the ATS takes care of its integrations. Greenhouse is by far one of the most powerful ATS regarding its integration capabilities. It has partnered with over 360 HR tools in various categories. Moreover, the integration process is simple and free of charge.
However, some users said the reporting feature is not very easy to navigate. While the platform doesn’t disclose its pricing, according to our research, the ATS can be a bit pricey to budget-conscious businesses and teams that don’t hire frequently.
HubSpot, DoorDash, Dropbox, Wayfair.
Greenhouse offers three plans, and the pricing is based on the company’s total headcount.
The standard contract is a one-year prepaid subscription, and discounts are available for two and three-year prepaid agreements.
- Essential: Core features and one event.
- Advanced: Everything from Essential, plus custom reporting, scalable workflows, and ten events.
- Expert: Everything from Advanced, plus upgraded CRM, enhanced security, developer sandbox, DEI feature set, and unlimited events.
Best For
Growing teams and midsize to large enterprises are likely to benefit the most from Greenhouse.
- Posting job openings: used it for posting jobs for the website and internally.
- Managing candidates: Once job postings are live, candidates can apply through Greenhouse. I manage candidates and track their progress through the hiring process, including resume screening, interview scheduling, and feedback collection.
- Collaborating with the hiring team: Greenhouse allows hiring teams to collaborate on candidates by sharing notes and feedback, scheduling interviews, and assigning tasks.
- Reporting and analytics: I use its analytics and reporting features to help track hiring metrics.
- The dashboard is simple and easy to understand.
- Adding new employees to Greenhouse is very easy.
- Keeping a track of candidates and sending out final offer letters can be all done from one platform.
My client has used Greenhouse for the past 5 years. Being a big multinational company, Greenhouse was the best choice because it was a one-stop for all talent acquisition needs. We managed applications, interviews, scorecards, reviews, feedback, notes, and a lot more so that everyone involved in the role would be in collaboration and up to date on where the interview processes were, seamlessly.
I have no complaints about Greenhouse whatsoever.
It is simple to use. Greenhouse offers customizable workflows that can be tailored to a company's hiring process. It allows us to set up unique hiring stages, interview scorecards, and hiring team permissions that align with their needs.
Greenhouse offers robust collaboration features that enable hiring teams to communicate easily, share feedback, and collaborate with candidates.
Focus on diversity and inclusion: Greenhouse strongly focuses on diversity and inclusion and offers features such as structured hiring, interview kits, and blind resume reviews to help reduce bias and promote diversity in the hiring process.
It is steep in cost compared to other systems but well suited for big corporations.
Greenhouse has constantly evolved and adapted to meet the changing needs of its users by introducing innovative features and capabilities that simplify the hiring process, foster diversity and inclusion, and enhance the user experience.
Large corporations with a lot of different hiring managers involved.
Small businesses and NGOs.
BambooHR
We love BambooHR's ATS because it's truly built to scale. The platform will support your team's HR needs, no matter the pace or direction of your growth.
PROS
- Offers tailored pricing with the option to scale up in features as needed
- Free 7-day trials are available.
- The mobile app works well and offers built-in application review, communication, and collaboration features.
- Relatively easy to navigate with a clean user interface.
- Flexible packaging and custom pricing is the way they roll. You can pick out one or two packages and pick other modules as add-ons based on your needs.
- Very simple and straightforward tool, easy to use.
CONS
- Payroll functionality is exclusively limited to U.S.-based employees, which may pose challenges for companies with a global workforce.
- Customer support availability is restricted to U.S. business hours, potentially causing delays in addressing urgent concerns for international users.
- Certain modules like time tracking, performance management, and surveys are only accessible as add-ons, requiring additional investment if you’re looking for more HR functionality.
- Payroll is only available for US-based employees
- Customer support is only offered during US business hours.
- Some modules like time tracking, performance management, and surveys are only available as add-ons.
BambooHR’s ATS lets you customize application forms and share job postings across popular job boards and social media sites. Candidate applications are organized for easy reference through every stage of your hiring process. From formal offers to final e-signatures, BambooHR covers it all.
Users can create new hire packets for a smooth onboarding process. With a custom packet, a person’s first day can include a heads-up on what to expect, who to meet, and which tasks to tackle.
One of the outstanding features of BambooHR is its designated mobile app for hiring. This app allows you to post jobs, check resumes, communicate with candidates, coordinate with other hiring team members, and more.
Among the 20,000+ companies who use BambooHR are names like Quora, Universal Group, Reddit, Asana, Change.org, University of Maryland, Grammarly, Stance, Postmates, Wistia, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and ZipRecruiter.
BambooHR pricing is custom, but they offer a free trial. Before coming up with a quote, they are also likely to extend your free trial upon request or give you a free demo of the advanced features.
Best For
BambooHR can be an excellent choice for organizations seeking a highly-customizable HR product that aligns with their unique requirements, with pricing options that are tailored to their specific needs. It’s also remarkably popular among distributed workforces.
Starting with talent acquisition, we use it to maintain our talent pool. Then recruiting the talent by incorporating an offer letter and contract. Once the employee is in our system, we use it for database management. We also use it for their performance evaluation and record the training. In the end, we also use its features of onboarding, offboarding, and employee survey as well.
I like it for its smooth performance evaluation process. It's one of my favorite features. Second is its onboarding feature and hires packet that let the new employee feel welcomed. Last but not least, is its ATS system which helps us keep a track of our talent pool.
My organization has been using it for 2 years. This is an amazing tool for employee database management. Along with that, it offers an employee satisfaction survey which can help improve things along the way. Its performance module has made life way easier with a simple few steps process for performance evaluation. Lastly, its hiring module is easy to use and generates results.
It does not provide integration with LinkedIn which adds to the cost of LinkedIn job wrapping. Its customization option is very limited and its API keys are also limited to very few options.
For a startup, It provides all the necessary options that will help the organization alleviate its HRIS system. It is not that costly compared to others and it is also very simple to use.
Apart from the very obvious, cost; another criterion could be the size of the organization. The needs of the organization are also very important in terms of what they want to achieve from an HRIS.
They have introduced new modules like performance, moreover, they are always doing webinars to make the best use of their tool. Their customer support is always very helpful.
Small and Medium Enterprises.
MNCs.
Pinpoint
Pinpoint is among the most sophisticated applicant tracking systems: it’s got a modern UI, extensive integrations, and a top-notch career site builder meant for in-house talent acquisition and HR teams at fast-growing companies.
PROS
- Pinpoint is an agile ATS that is highly customizable and values collaborative hiring.
- It’s got a simple and transparent pricing structure.
- Pinpoint offers unlimited jobs and team members in all of its plans.
- Their customer service team is highly praised by users.
- The career site builder is very robust, allowing teams to attract and convert the right talent.
- There are over 100 HR software integrations to choose from, and Pinpoint’s team is adding 3-5 every month.
- Pinpoint is an agile ATS that is highly customizable and values collaborative hiring.
- It’s got a simple and transparent pricing structure.
- Pinpoint offers unlimited jobs and team members in all of its plans.
- Their customer service team is highly praised by users.
- The career site builder is very robust, allowing teams to attract and convert the right talent.
- There are over 100 HR software integrations to choose from, and Pinpoint’s team is adding 3-5 every month.
CONS
- The employee onboarding module does cost extra.
- It isn’t the best fit if you’re looking for the cheapest ATS.
- There isn’t a free trial or free version at this time.
- The employee onboarding module does cost extra.
- It isn’t the best fit if you’re looking for the cheapest ATS.
- There isn’t a free trial or free version at this time.
Pinpoint has been the talk of the town in the applicant tracking system space for having one of the best feature-set an ATS could have built in. We tested the ATS to see that for ourselves, and here is what we found:
We agree with the majority of users that Pinpoint is friendly to both the recruitment team and candidates. The ATS is easy to set up and has a clean UI, with useful automation and a straightforward career site builder. Non-IT users can easily customize career pages. When there are any questions popping up in their heads, there’s a customer support team they can reach out to via live chat, phone, and email and get help quickly.
Another highlight of Pinpoint’s ATS is its employee referral tool. The platform has done a great job of making the referral process simple and transparent to all team members by notifying them of available referral roles, plus links they can share with their network by just copying and pasting. The tool will also keep track of how many candidates they referred and how much they’ve made from referrals in the platform for review.
Pinpoint’s integration capability is quite impressive. It has over 100 pre-built integrations and also offers open API. However, bespoke integration is available exclusively for Enterprise plan users. As for use cases, while ATSs, like Manatal, have lower pricing and are more favored by recruiting agencies, Pinpoint is a favorite for in-house recruitment at mid sized businesses and fast-growing teams.
CoinShares, Pathways Global, Grant Thornton, Icario, Pivot Energy.
- Pinpoint pricing starts at $600 monthly when billed annually.
- Teams wanting enterprise features, such as multi-page career sites, multi-lingual support, custom integrations, and help on data migrations, will start at $1,200 per month.
- Discounts are available for startups with fewer than 50 headcounts.
Best For
Pinpoint is a wonderful ATS for in-house recruitment for growing teams (at least 30 openings per year). It’s also a great choice for businesses looking to increase recruiting team productivity through a better career site, talent CRM, and integrations with their favorite HR Tech.
We use Pinpoint daily, it's an ATS, so it does the typical things an ATS does. This includes, creating career pages on our corporate website that explains some basics about Article, and allows a candidate to decide if they’d they feel they’d be aligned to working with us.
On the career site, all the open jobs are visible for potential candidates to see. They can then decide to apply, upload a resume and fill in some basic info. On our side of the ATS, we create the jobs that are posted - designing the interview flows, application questions, and scorecards, then advertising them to the selected job boards.
We use Pinpoint to evaluate the viability of applicants, referrals, and candidates we source, being a single point of truth. Once candidates are selected to proceed, we use Pinpoint to move through the interview process, giving the hiring manager visibility into the hiring process.
For candidates, we use Pinpoint to schedule and communicate with candidates, who are selected for this process, but also to reject those candidates who are not. There is a lot more of course but this is a basic walk-through, and I’d assume if you’re reading this, you have a good idea of what an ATS does.
They're an ATS that is ascending, and not coasting on reputation; they've continuing to evolve, with new useful features, and integrations quickly rolling out.
Overall, I’d argue that Pinpoint puts candidates first, with easy applications and great branded communication. Adding to this, candidate-centric design is the built-in self-scheduling for interviews, and including a candidate NPS score - this is key to letting my team and I understand the candidate experience.
The new automation feature they launched where you can create rejection emails based on application questions has saved my team a lot of time by not having to screen candidates who do not meet minimal requirements, currently, this is about 29% of applications. We have been creating custom rejection emails for each automation, this allows the candidate to know specifically why they were rejected, and if they answered the application incorrectly by mistake, allow them to reapply.
I’m also a fan of their pronoun feature, which allows candidates to share their preferred pronouns. Little touches can make a huge difference when building inclusive hiring practices.
They continue to have fantastic support and as a partner, they really care about my team and our success. Adding to this are the people they hire, who are really great and it makes interacting with them so much easier.
With less talk/hype and more substance, you can tell they focus on the product and customers, not on the hype marketing machine jumping on whatever the trendy topic is.
We have used Pinpoint for 2+ years now, with a TA team that was quickly growing (we’d have over 20 users at peak). As an organization, we had just started hyperscaling, and we end up growing over 3x in under 18 months.
As we started on this journey, I quickly found that the ATS we were using, couldn’t keep it up. It was, designed for SMBs and smaller recruitment teams. One of the biggest pain points was it lacked the ability to reject candidates through an anonymous email, instead, when candidates were rejected it came from each recruiter's email - given the volume of applicants, this solution was not feasible and would lead to a poor candidate experience.
Additionally, the previous ATS ecosystem was small and wasn’t growing quickly, and it lacked the ability to build a career site out of the box.
We also needed the ATS to be easy to use, not just for the recruiters, but also, for the number of new hiring managers who would quickly need to understand how to use the ATS. This made the case to look replace the old ATS clear, we made a scorecard and started to evaluate our ATS options, ultimately landing on Pinpoint.
- Some of the UI/UX could be improved, particularly when you're screening large volumes of candidates, minor but it would be helpful.
- Because it lacks a deep integration into LinkedIn, we need to use LinkedIn’s “job wrapping” feature.
- The newer automation feature is really powerful, however, setting them up requires too many clicks, it’s not a huge deal, but it could be made smoother.
Much easier application process than most ATSs, making it very candidate friendly. Overall, they nail the mid-market really well, with enough features, integrations, and reporting, but they’re not hard to use and overly cumbersome compared to big ‘enterprisey’ ATSs.
When selecting an ATS I’m a proponent of using the following ranking:
- Candidate experience, regardless of the market, the best talent will always have options, if the application experience and communication experience is poor, they’ll choose to work elsewhere
- Recruiter experience since they use the tool the most. If they don’t like it, or it’s overly complex they’re going to work around it, rather than through it
- Hiring manager experience, will they log in, and actually use it
- Support, if I have an issue will it get resolved?
- Ecosystem/ integrations, an ATS should not do everything, rather it’s the hub to connect point solutions with
- I'm a huge fan of how they rolled out candidate pronouns, allowing candidates to share their preferred pronouns when applying.
- Multiple new integrations have been launched.
- Much faster page loading response times from when we first rolled it out.
Mid-sized to enterprise organizations.
I'm not sure. Maybe small companies that don't have a dedicated HR team.
Recruitee
Recruitee is special for bringing features to leverage internal referrals and combat bias. Being a collaborative and user-friendly ATS that supports month-to-month pricing just makes the platform a perfect option for SMBs.
PROS
- Recruitee is highly rated for its ease of use and customizable recruiting pipeline.
- Recruitee provides features to combat bias: interviewers cannot see each other’s evaluations.
- Recruitee just launched an AI-powered tool to help businesses craft job descriptions for specific target candidates.
- In addition to LinkedIn, the platform can connect and post open positions across 1,500 job boards.
- Recruitee’s pricing is transparent. A free trial is available without card info required.
- No limits on the number of users applied to all Recruitee plans.
- Pro: Recruitee is highly rated by customers for its ease of use. The majority of them are able to implement and get on with the software without much hassle.
- Pro: Recruitee features a customizable, kanban-like recruiting pipeline. Companies can add as many stages as needed to the pipeline and move candidates easily as they progress through the stages.
- Pro: Recruitee incorporates some measures to reduce hiring bias. For example, you can adjust the permission level for your interviewers and prevent them from seeing the scores each of them are assigning to the same candidate. This way, they won’t be influenced by each other's evaluations.
CONS
- Recruitee relies on third-party integrations for some essential functions like skill assessments, onboarding, video interviewing, and e-signatures.
- Our user researchers had trouble with the reporting function, which occasionally did not retrieve data accurately.
- Some users noted Recruitee’s support team was hard to reach.
- Its pricing went up from our last review of the software.
- Con: Several functions that are advertised on Recruitee’s feature list, including skill assessments, onboarding, video interviewing, and e-signatures are not actually built into Recruitee and are only possible through integration with third-party tools, which can be misleading to potential users, especially if it’s their first ATS.
- Con: Several users noted that the Recruitee’s reporting function is limited and at times, doesn’t retrieve data accurately.
- Con: Several users have complained about Recruitee’s support team being slow in responding, and at times, not able to solve issues.
- Con: For a product that’s geared towards SMBs, it lacks a free plan that businesses who are just getting started with ATSs can use for as long as they need, without any time constraints. We list this as a con as several solutions in this space do offer free-forever plans and similar feature sets as Recruitee, which puts it slightly behind the competition to users.
Recruitee is best for small and medium-sized businesses looking for a collaborative and user-friendly ATS. The platform got it right with its interface and user experience, as several users and ourselves do find it super easy to navigate and facilitate collaboration among recruiters and hiring managers. What makes collaboration more efficient through Recruitee is that you can add as many users to the ATS as you’d like, regardless of the plan you purchase, without paying extra.
While we love how effortless it is to get familiar and comfortable with the platform, you won’t find built-in features for video interviews, skill assessments, offer management, and onboarding in Recruitee. Hence, this isn’t a one-stop shop where you can find everything for your recruitment needs. The ATS instead leans toward outsourcing some of the parts by offering Recruitee Marketplace; a collection of third-party tools they know to work great in tandem with their platform. However, not everyone is a big fan of having several vendors for what is arguably the same use case. So we recommend you bear this in mind when doing the software ROI comparison.
Semrush, Mark and Spencer, Transcom, Taco Bell, Toyota, Asus, Livestorm, Rakuten.
Recruitee offers custom plans based on the number of active jobs and other particular needs. The ATS has three pricing plans:
- Launch starts at $269 per month
- Scale starts at $479 per month
- Lead has custom pricing.
Best For
Though companies of different sizes (outside of large enterprises) can find value in Recruitee’s offering, we feel that it is capable of supporting medium-sized businesses best with its current feature set.
I use Recruitee every day. I know how to use most of its features, such as creating job postings, scheduling interviews, moving candidates through the hiring process, having technical and hiring meetings, rejecting or advancing candidates, making offer letters, and communicating with my team. I also use it to evaluate candidates after a phone screening and add resumes. I also connect Recruitee to other job websites.
I like Recruitee because it is very easy to use. It has a user-friendly interface that allows me to perform all workflows efficiently. I can quickly post jobs and move candidates to different stages, saving me much time. The platform is designed to make it simple and quick to use, which is a big plus. I also appreciate that it's very straightforward to use all the workflows, so I can spend little time figuring out how to do something. Overall, Recruitee has made my recruitment process much more efficient and streamlined, which is why I continue to use it.
My organization was searching for an applicant tracking system (ATS) that could connect to multiple job portals, especially in Europe. In addition, the ATS they wanted should have a user-friendly interface so that both hiring managers and other team members can easily use it and be easy to set up.
The organization needed help with its previous ATS system. Connecting to job portals, especially those targeting European markets, was a significant pain point. Hiring managers and other team members needed help connecting to their google calendar, adding to the frustrations. The user interface of the previous ATS could have been better, making the overall experience negative.
To overcome these issues, the organization decided to switch to Recruitee in August 2022. Recruitee has provided numerous benefits to the organization and effectively solved the pain points they faced with their previous ATS system. With the ability to connect to over 20+ job portals, including regional portals for specific countries, the organization can now reach a broader range of job seekers. The user-friendly interface of Recruitee has made it easier for hiring managers and team members to navigate and use the system, improving their overall experience. Additionally, connecting the google calendar to Recruitee was a breeze, making scheduling and organizing interviews much simpler.
Since August 2022, the organization has been using Recruitee and has found it to be a reliable and efficient solution to their recruitment needs. The ability to create a complete job workflow within the system has made the recruitment process smoother and more organized. The support team of Recruitee is also a plus, providing quick and helpful assistance when needed.
One thing I dislike about Recruitee is the lack of an option for directly promoting jobs on LinkedIn. Currently, Recruitee doesn't have this feature, which can be a drawback for those who rely on LinkedIn for their recruitment process. Not being able to promote jobs directly on LinkedIn adds an extra step to the process and can be time-consuming. I hope that Recruitee will add this feature to enhance the user experience and make the recruitment process more efficient.
Recruitee is different from other applicant tracking systems (ATS) because they have good after-sales service. They listen to customer feedback and make changes based on it. They also have a close relationship with their customers and understand their problems. Other ATS that I have used do not have these features.
When buying an applicant tracking system (ATS), people should consider the following criteria:
- Ability to connect to local job portals
- User-friendly interface
- Ease of creating workflows
- Capability to process offer letters
- Integration with calendars to schedule meetings.
As I have yet to study Recruitee's history in depth, I can only speak about my experience with the company over the past six months. In that time, I have found Recruitee to be highly responsive to their customers' needs. They have been able to integrate the solutions we requested and are in the process of adding new features, such as background check capabilities. They have also recently added more portals to better match the needs of their users. Overall, it is clear that Recruitee is dedicated to making their customers happy and understanding their real-time problems. They go above and beyond to ensure that their users are satisfied with their products and services.
Recruitee is a user-friendly tool suitable for organizations in various industries, including IT, healthcare, e-commerce, and startups. Its user-friendly interface makes it accessible to anyone with basic computer knowledge, while advanced features are ideal for HR professionals. This versatility makes Recruitee a good option for organizations of all sizes and types.
Recruitee is a user-friendly tool suitable for organizations in various industries, including IT, healthcare, e-commerce, and startups. Its user-friendly interface makes it accessible to anyone with basic computer knowledge, while advanced features are ideal for HR professionals. This versatility makes Recruitee a good option for organizations of all sizes and types.
ClearCompany
ClearCompany has been around since 2004, but its product has evolved to remain relevant. It is a solid platform that works well in today’s workplace.
PROS
- A comprehensive suite of HR solutions that can be purchased individually and work well together.
- According to several users, the UI is intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Some customers reported a smooth implementation experience.
- Speedy and helpful responses from the customer support team.
- ClearCompany offers a host of HR solutions that work well with another. You can choose the solution you need or combine them all to have a comprehensive talent management platform in your stack.
- The majority of users find ClearCompany’s interface to be quite intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Many users have highly rated ClearCompany’s support team for speed and quality of response. Several users have also reported a smooth implementation experience.
CONS
- Undisclosed pricing, no free trials.
- Some users noted that the reporting feature could be more extensive in terms of customizations.
- The candidate search function is reported to be somewhat unreliable.
- No mobile apps, though the platform is well-optimized for mobile web use both for hiring managers and candidates.
- ClearCompany’s pricing is not readily available on their website. You also can’t create a trial account on your own from the website and have to go through the sales team for more info.
- Some users felt that the reporting feature is limited in customizations.
- According to a few users, the candidate search function doesn’t always bring up the correct candidate(s) and could use some improvement.
- ClearCompany doesn’t currently have a mobile app, but the platform is well optimized for mobile use both for hiring managers and candidates.
ClearCompany is a one-stop shop when it comes to hiring. Users can purchase the ATS independently or with other features like onboarding, recruiting, and talent management.
The ATS’s UI is aesthetically pleasing, and its dashboard layout is easy to navigate. We’ve also seen positive user feedback on ClearCompany’s onboarding solution. It can send offer letters, collect electronic signatures, and bulk-onboarding candidates.
While they offer almost every core feature a user could ask for, some are less refined than one might hope. For example, users report issues with candidate search, automation, and reporting functions.
ClearCompany’s customer list includes known names such as Chick-fil-A, Goodwill, Axiom Bank, Bios, FlixBrewHouse, and Halco.
The software has custom pricing. Quotes are based on company size and customizations.
Best For
Non-profits, government agencies, and businesses across different industries can benefit from ClearCompany. Yet, medium and large-size organizations will likely make the most out of the ATS.
Teamtailor
Teamtailor is a great platform for startups and SMBs to build a career page that catches candidates' impressions, do anonymous hiring, run referrals, and nurture campaigns for current and future recruitment needs. Plus, the ATS has been known for its user-friendliness and top-notch customer service.
PROS
- Teamtailor is easy to use and is accessible via both browsers and mobile devices.
- Career site builders can be easily customized with a drag and drop mechanism.
- Features anonymous recruitment and equal employment opportunity (EEO) surveys to support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (DEI).
- Excellent customer service: useful help center and responsive customer support team.
- Unlimited job postings, candidates, and users for all plans.
- Offers a free trial.
- Teamtailor’s ATS comes with a robust career site builder that’s also easy to use. It works with drag and drop - no coding knowledge necessary.
- Teamtailor backs several features that support diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI), including anonymous hiring, equal employment opportunity (EEO) surveys, etc..
- Teamtailor is highly rated for their ease-of-use. It’s quite simple to post and promote jobs through their platform.
- There is really in-depth and intuitive help documentation for this solution
CONS
- The analytics function is not very customizable.
- Hyper-focused on ATS and has no offerings for other HR aspects.
- The customization and video interview features are limited.
- Undisclosed pricing.
- Teamtailor’s analytics are good, but enterprise clients need to use BI Connectors to build the reporting they need. Right now, you can’t sport data from the system. This is particularly important for companies with 500+ employees, or those who have many different locations or franchises.
- Analytics doesn’t allow recruiters to see their cost per hire, which is a really impactful metric
- While they offer integrations with HRIS, onboarding, etc - they have focused on just being a really good ATS now.
- There are predefined user access levels, but you cannot define your own user access levels which is important, especially for the largest companies.
Teamtailor is a solid option for its affordability and employer branding feature built-in. The cloud-based applicant tracking system has a knack for catering features to help startups and SMBs hire and nurture talent.
Teamtailor puts a heavy focus on helping its users market themselves to candidates. We like the drag-and-drop mechanism built within the career site builder, as it makes it easy for people without a tech background to build attractive career sites for specific talent demographics. There are no limits to the number of users you can add, which is a plus for teams doing collaborative hiring.
We also appreciate that the ATS lets users run referrals and nurture campaigns for current and future recruitment needs. And the fact that the tool has an intuitive UI, a free trial, and support is always easily available makes Teamtailor stand out even more in the ATS space.
However, there are a few aspects where the ATS needs to improve. While offering a range of integration options, some users shared that there were a few hick-ups when they connected Teamtailor with their HR tools. The ATS does allow bulk export, but there is no bulk import option to upload candidates' CVs.
Kry, Goodbye Kansas, Vitamin Well, Ponsse, Daniel Wellington.
- Teamtailor’s pricing is custom based on customer business size and requirements.
- For teams under 25 employees, the price typically starts at $3,300.
Best For
Teamtailor works best for startups and SMBs (50-400 employees) that require a powerful but straightforward ATS.
Manatal
Manatal made our top ATS list because it's budget-friendly, AI-equipped, and offers transparent pricing—no need to call a sales rep just for a ballpark figure.
PROS
- Among the most affordable ATS options in the market.
- Offers a 14-day free trial.
- Easy to use with drag-and-drop enabled pipelines.
- Native AI-based recommendations feature.
- Web-based, so it works on multiple devices.
- Free data migration from your existing hiring software.
- Transparent and flexible pricing.
- Manatal is quite affordable and offers a 15-day free trial for users to test it out before making commitments.
- Manatal is fairly easy to use. It features drag-and-drop enabled pipelines for candidate organization.
- Manatal’s AI-based recommendations feature can save hiring managers quite a bit of time. It’s able to scan job descriptions then search a users talent pool and bring up candidates most suited for the job.
CONS
- The AI recommendations feature only works well in languages other than English.
- No free plans.
- Integrations happen at the API level, making this a relatively technologically complex platform.
- API and Zapier integrations are restricted to top-tier plans.
- Boolean Search and Advanced Search cannot be used together.
- The AI recommendations feature works best with resumes that are in English, and doesn’t work as accurately with other languages according to several users’ feedback. Several users have also complained about Manatal’s interface only being available in English and that career pages cannot be published in languages other than English and Spanish.
- Manatal doesn’t offer a free plan. We mention this as a con as several SMB-geared ATSs do offer a free-forever verison, and that puts Manatal slightly behind competition.
- Manatal doesn’t offer prebuilt integration modules. They do have an open API that allows users to plug in third-party products and custom tools, but that required a bit more time and technical knowledge to accomplish. It’s also worth mentioning that only Custom plan customers can access Manatal’s API and Zapier integration. Customers on the Professional and Enterprise plan cannot.
- Users can search for candidates via Boolean Search or Advanced Search, but cannot combine the two search methods together. E.g users cannot use the Boolean search operators (AND, OR and NOT) within Manatal’s Advanced Search tab.
Manatal has earned a spot on our top ATS list. As HR professionals, we understand the importance of finding the right talent efficiently, and Manatal has proven to be a valuable tool in this regard.
The first on our thumbs-up list: it’s budget-friendly. We appreciate the transparency in pricing, as there is no need to go through the hassle of contacting a sales just to get a ballpark figure. The platform offers a 14-day free trial.
Using Manatal was straightforward, thanks to its user-friendly interface and the convenience of drag-and-drop-enabled pipelines. We found the AI-based recommendations feature to be a time-saver. By scanning job descriptions (JDs) and comparing them to the user's talent pool, it identifies the most suitable candidates.
Manatal is web-based so it can be compatible with multiple devices. The ability to migrate data from our existing hiring software was also a welcome feature that made for a smooth transition.
We encountered a few limitations during our evaluation. The AI recommendation feature does not operate well in languages other than English, and Manatal lacks a free version. Integration is pretty limited, and API and Zapier integrations are restricted to top-tier plans.
Unilever, Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, Toyota.
Manatal has three plans. When billed annually:
- Professional: This plan costs $15 per user per month for up to 15 jobs per account and 10,000 candidates. Customers on this plan can add unlimited guests.
- Enterprise: This plan costs $35 per user per month for unlimited jobs per account and unlimited candidates and guests.
- Custom: Everything in Enterprise plus custom features, integrations, and support.
Best For
Manatal is particularly well-suited for SMBs seeking an effective and affordable applicant tracking system.
VidCruiter
VidCruiter is known chiefly for video interviews, but the platform also offers a solid ATS solution and Quick Apply, a hit feature with both TA teams and candidates.
PROS
- VidCruiter can be fully customized for specific recruiting needs.
- Easy to use for both job seekers and recruiters.
- Works on all devices. No app installation is needed.
- Quick Apply feature lets candidates apply directly from Indeed and LinkedIn and auto-syncs the candidate's info to the user’s existing ATS.
- Dedicated client success manager, 24/7 applicant support, phone, email, and live chat.
- Scalable and customizable — users pay for what they need and can purchase more features as they grow.
- Robust pre-recorded and live video interviewing with advanced automation.
- Browser-based, so it works across devices without installing apps.
- Available for recruiters in eight languages and supports job seekers in dozens more.
- 24/7 live agent support, assigned account manager, and on-demand training.
CONS
- Some users reported that implementation was time-consuming
- Advanced search and technical skills testing features within the assessment module leave room for improvement.
- No trial version, and no price is listed on their site.
- Because the product is feature-rich and highly customizable, the implementation phase can be time-consuming.
- Advanced search and technical skills testing features within the assessment module leave room for improvement.
- No free or trial version.
- Undisclosed pricing.
VidCruiter has been a significant player in the video interviewing software market for years, but the platform is less well-known for its ATS. However, from our research, the ATS proves it is robust enough to be listed among other top vendors in the space.
In addition to standard features like job posting, pre-screening, interview scheduling, and real-time reports, VidCruiter ATS stands out with functional elements balancing TA teams’ needs and candidate-centered features through customization.
For a glimpse of team culture, vision, and values, users can build a custom career site that delivers a branded digital experience to candidates. The site editor is simple to use, and in our in-house testing, we managed to set everything up without help from IT or VidCruiter support team. One feature of note: when a candidate access a career page supported by VidCruiter, the platform automatically generates recommendations for jobs available near them.
Quick Apply benefits both employers and candidates. With this feature, TA teams can rev up the hiring process without implementing a new ATS, so it’s perfect for teams on a budget. It is also useful for those counting down the hours left on an ATS contract they don’t plan to renew. For job seekers, it’s easy to apply directly from portals like LinkedIn and Indeed.
VidCruiter is used by over 100,000 recruiters, including Lowe’s, Lionsgate, Samsung, Bears, US Foods, and the United Nations.
The price varies based on company specifications, so contacting the vendor directly for a quote is best.
Best For
VidCruiter is a perfect ATS for large companies (U.S. based and otherwise) hiring 100+ people annually, while the VidCruiter Quick Apply tool is an excellent pick for smaller companies that want to streamline their hiring process without going separate ways with their current ATS.
Our team uses the software for both live and pre-recorded interviews with candidates. For the most part, we use the pre-recorded function with candidates, allowing them to record themselves answering questions that we have predetermined for their interview. Following their interview, our team spends one day a week, going through all of the applicants that had recorded an interview to be able to quickly make decisions on who we would advance to the next round.
Additionally, within the system, we leveraged a custom rating scale to provide a consistent experience when reading candidates. This really helped our team when considering applicants and measuring them all against the same criteria.
1. Overall, the ability to offer both live and recorded interviews.
2. The cost of the offering was very reasonable compared to its competitors.
3. The customer service you are able to receive from them when needed on demand is wonderful. They’re very responsive usually within a matter of just a couple of minutes.
My organization was looking for a way to screen applicants for an initial interview in an effective and efficient manner. Knowing that, we started exploring options for video interviewing both pre-recorded and live.
Through our research, we identified VidCruiter as an option and ultimately was the one that we implemented. We added their software during the pandemic and have used it since. It’s been a great help, and really reduced our screening times through recorded interviews as we have been doing a large amount of hiring.
1. The company is based out of the country, which was not a preference of our organization for security and compliance reasons.
2. Overall, the functionality of the system, as a whole, was a bit more limited than some of its competitor's offerings.
3. The branding of the offering was a little outdated, and wasn’t as modern as some of the alternative options we considered.
Overall, their offering is reasonably priced software that can be used to accomplish the goal of conducting live or recorded interviews with candidates.
Many of the other offerings were much more expensive than what we were able to pay. It’s easy to use and the responsiveness of the customer service team is exactly what we needed. Some of the alternatives had much longer wait times in comparison, which we didn’t want to deal with.
It allows us to accomplish exactly what we need without paying a high price and without making our process super complicated for candidates, which we appreciate.
Overall, really determine at the start what you need a software for to help your process. If you are only needing it for basic functions, like conducting a live or recorded interview with candidates, you may find that there are some vendors that offer functionality way beyond that, which may be more than you need.
As a result, this means the price tag of those offerings could be significantly higher, more than you can justify, or are willing to pay. Once you’ve identified what you need and can pay, it really helps narrow down the list of vendors that you can move forward with.
One of the biggest improvements our organization has experienced in working with them is that they built integrations with other systems that now make our process really smooth.
For example, we utilize Workday for our HRIS and their software integrates smoothly. This wasn’t something we had at the beginning of our experience as a customer, but now have it and it’s really helped become a seamless transition from one software to the next.
Great for an organization that doesn’t need all the bells and whistles, but that needs an offering that can do basic functionality like live and recorded interviews with candidates. So ideally, the best fit would be for a small or medium size organization.
If you are a large organization, you likely want more personalized branding, a modern look and feel, and a more robust offering than what they can offer.
Very large organizations that want robust functionality, customization, and all the bells and whistles of a product offering. Their product has all the standard functionality that you may want out of an offering, but it is pretty foundational rather than an offering that goes over and above what you would normally need.
Ashby
Ashby offers the entire recruiting tech stack: ATS, CRM/Sourcing, Scheduling, and Analytics—great first ATS for SMBs or those needing to consolidate their HR and TA stacks.
PROS
- Analytics dashboard with crucial statistics on all aspects of your hiring process.
- Flexibility and ability to customize across almost all aspects of the platform.
- Consolidated ATS, CRM, Scheduling, and Analytics.
- Your TA team can have one system that truly has best-in-class options for ATS, CRM, Scheduling, and Analytics.
- Flexibility and ability to customize across almost all aspects of the platform
- Their analytics dashboard is great to understand weaknesses in your hiring process, conducting capacity planning, or determining which teams are running suboptimal hiring processes.
CONS
- This is a powerful product, and understanding all the different features can take some time.
- No multi-lingual support.
- Your company must use G Suite to make the most of Ashby.
- Your company must use G Suite in order to make the most of Ashby
- No multi-lingual support
- This is a powerful product, and it can take a bit of time to understand all the different features
Ashby makes it easy to re-engage with former applicants: a unique class of primed, familiar, and pre-vetted talent pool members. Some candidates may be silver medalists or applicants who made it to the offer stage, and others may possess a unique skill or trait. Ashby can create custom attributes to filter the talent pool, so you’ll never lose touch with “good fit, bad timing” candidates. Ashby is an outrider in their focus on this function.
Ashby has done a great job of signing on fast-growing technology companies as their first cohort of customers. This includes Notion, Deel, Figma, and many more.
If you’re considering buying different ATS, CRM, scheduling, and analytics solutions, your total ownership cost is likely much lower with Ashby than buying these individually.
- $3,600/year for up to 10 employees
- $8,600/year for up to 100 employees
- 100+ employees, as quoted
Best For
While not a fit for super-sized companies (3,000+ employees), this tool is excellent for small and mid-sized teams needing their first ATS or looking to consolidate their HR and TA tech stacks.
I use Ashby daily. I use it for candidate sourcing, using their Chrome extension. I also use it for outreach. Candidates can apply through our Ashby career site which we have embedded on our website. I use their pipelines for tracking applicants throughout the entire selection process. I use their interview guides to conduct interviews and submit feedback. Candidates can book their interviews using Ashby's direct booking links.
- Customizable email sequences.
- One-click sourcing using the Chrome extension.
- Unlimited users and job postings.
We were unhappy with our ATS. It was too slow and it was riddled with bugs. We were also using a few different services for our recruitment efforts and Ashby had the potential to centralize those services.
- The whole interface is not very user-friendly. It feels like it was created for IT users, not HR users.
- The customizations are hard to figure out and their navigation menus are counterintuitive.
- The kanban view for the pipelines feels like an afterthought and feels heavy and sluggish.
Ashby has a lot of potential and, when used to its max, it is a powerful tool that centralizes all the tools you will need in large-scale recruitment campaigns. It has the same issues that larger CRM-like platforms have. Just like Zoho and Odoo's recruitment modules, Ashby is not easy to set up and takes a long time to get used to.
Customization is sluggish and requires a lot of guidance from the support team. Platforms like Recruitee or Breezy have a much more user-oriented interface. That being said, if you are gearing up for a long and large recruitment effort, then it makes sense to invest a few days with the support team and set up every minor detail in Ashby, taking advantage of its highly customizable automation. It will allow you to manage large-scale efforts with a small team.
Primarily, the scope of your work. If you are the in-house team of a startup or small agency, Ashby might prove to be a challenge in itself to set up. It is better suited for large organizations or mid-level startups that need to conduct large recruitment efforts. I strongly recommend against it for a staffing agency or freelancing recruiters.
They have improved their platform's performance and its workflows.
Large companies.
Small agencies and early-stage startups.
Trakstar Hire
Trakstar Hire is highly customizable. The ATS provides a single plan that includes all its features without limits, making it an excellent choice for mid-sized businesses.
PROS
- Highly customizable workflows that make navigating the hiring process easy.
- Unlimited job posts.
- Management must-haves are built-in, letting users create offer letters and collect e-signatures without integrating with other tools.
- Trakstar Hire’s recruitment workflows are highly customizable. You can edit them as needed to reflect your company’s hiring process.
- You can post as many jobs as needed with Trakstar Hire without any limitation.
- Trakstar Hire has offer management tools built-in. Users can create offer letters and collect e-signatures within Trakstar Hire without needing to integrate it with third-party tools.
CONS
- Limited integration options with third-party HRIS and payroll solutions.
- Several users have noted the sort function did not perform well.
- All-or-none plan: customers may pay for features they don’t use.
- No free trials. Undisclosed pricing.
- Trakstar Hire has limited integration options with third-party HRIS and payroll solutions.
- Several users have complained about being unable to sort candidates and search results in an order other than displayed.
- Trakstar Hire isn’t a scalable platform; they have a single plan, all features included, which means customers may end up paying for features that they don’t need.
- Trakstar doesn’t publically list their pricing nor allows visitors to create trial accounts directly from the website, which is unusual for a software solution aimed at mid-market companies.
Trakstar Hire (formally RecruiterBox) is an online ATS for midsize companies. Our experience navigating the platform was quite positive. The platform let us post jobs (unlimited jobs!) on multiple job boards and social media sites, sponsor those listings for maximum visibility, and receive resumes through customizable application forms.
We especially liked that customizing the workflow takes just a few clicks. They’ve done a great job balancing ease of navigation with numerous features and configurations available.
We think you will agree that Trakstar Hire’s automation deserves mention. Once resumes are in, the platform’s resume parser automatically extracts candidates’ details and creates profiles.
The offer management feature is well-made. We especially liked the offer letter templates that were ready to send after just a few tweaks for personalization. The platform also lets us collect e-signatures without third-party integration.
However, when the need arises to connect to a third party, Trakstar Hire’s integration abilities leave much to be desired.
They have covered the basics with the following apps: Namely, BambooHR, Slack, Checkr, QuickBooks, PandaDoc, G Suite, and Outlook/Office 365 Calendar. We hope there are more integrations in the works!
Makita, Couchsurfing, Lonely Planet, Untappd, Quality Ironworks.
Trakstar Hire has one plan that includes all of its features without any limits. The pricing is custom depending on headcount.
Best For
Trakstar Hire’s current feature set and pricing structure make it best suited for medium-sized businesses who hire regularly.
We use Trakstar Hire for tracking applicants, compliance, job postings, record keeping of applicants, central database for info sharing internally with hiring managers and hiring teams. HR staff can also easily communicate with employees.
I like that it is intuitive and easy to use. The fact that it's an all-in-one database that houses compliance, record keeping, communication internally and externally, is a real winner and very helpful.
We were looking for a tool that solves recruiting related compliance. It also needed to include storage capability. Sharing internally was a factor. Another was intuitiveness and ease of use. Compatibility with our performance appraisals was a plus as well.
I dislike that you have to download documents when you only need to view them. It would be nice to be able to just have it open in a new window. There are a few other glitches like this that I wish the company would address.
For people that are trying to solve many things with an applicant tracking tool, an all-in-one system like Trakstar is a really nice perk to hav
They do facelifts to their interface pretty regularly.
HR people will love this tool, and organizations that hire in teams would find it very helpful
I don't think anyone would hate this tool but it probably would be less broadly used if only HR people use it and not anyone else in the company
Lever
Lever is a significant player with a distinction earned precisely how one would hope: it works well—a solid choice and a safe bet likely to inspire buy-in across departments.
PROS
- Lever's UI is very intuitive and easy to learn.
- With ATS and CRM in a single platform, users can use Lever to fill current positions and nurture prospective candidates.
- Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) surveys help users ensure equal opportunity recruitment.
- The role-based visual analytics have over 20 key TA metrics.
- According to most users, Lever's UI is very intuitive and easy to learn.
- Lever combines the capabilities of an ATS and a CRM into a single platform that not only supports your current hiring needs but allows you to actively engage and nurture prospective qualified candidates for future roles.
- Lever takes diversity hiring into consideration with Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) surveys that help you collect diversity data from applicants, sourced candidates, and referrals regardless of whether they applied to an open position or not.
- Lever provides role-based visual analytics with over 20 key TA metrics in its basic TRM package.
CONS
- Undisclosed pricing.
- No free plans or free trials.
- Users must contract with third-party vendors for features like background and reference checks.
- No mobile app, though their mobile web function works well.
- Lever doesn't disclose their pricing on their website. Interested users are also not able to create trial accounts on their own.
- The platform doesn’t have features for background or reference checking but they do integrate with third-party solutions that specialize in those checks.
- Lever currently lacks a mobile app, but the platform is optimized for mobile use.
Lever does an excellent job of tracking candidates and keeping the hiring process moving. Through the ATS, users can source candidates from multiple channels, including career sites, job posts, automated multi-touch email campaigns, and internally within the company. Lever's Zoom integration allows users to screen candidates through structured or live video interviews.
Lever creates a candidate database by keeping track of applicants throughout the pipeline. The database works like a CRM, enabling users to search for and nurture qualified candidates. However, we could have been more impressed with features like sourcing from the ATS database, parsing resumes and generating reports.
Lever offers a good product for the money. Other ATSs may have more and better features, but no other ATS can beat Lever's price.
Lever is used by over 5,000 companies, including Netflix, Spotify, KPMG, Atlassian, McGraw Hill, and FullStack Labs.
Lever offers custom pricing, so users must contact Lever for quotes.
Best For
Lever suits large companies, enterprises, and recruiting agencies with frequent or volume hiring needs.
Lever is the best Applicant tracking system which is very user-friendly and systematic. We use Lever to get the applications from candidates. According to the responses we get from candidates, Lever automatically scores the candidates and filters them using the search tool. We can post job descriptions universally, track candidates, and schedule interviews for candidates and panelists via the calendar feature on Lever. There are customizable templates and dashboards available for easy reference of analytics which can help track the entire funnel of the interview stages.
- The UI is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and very candidate-centric.
- The system is so systematic that we can track where the applicant is in which interview stage at one glance.
- The features help to make faster & better decisions with good quality hires.
My organization wanted to switch to another ATS from the current one for a better recruiting experience, hence, we bought the Lever tool. My organization wanted to bring out a structured way of interviewing candidates and get an easy overview to understand which stage the candidate is in and the progress of the interview process. We have used it for 4 years and we’re happy with how it helped both our org and the potential candidates with an elevated experience of hiring. The UI of the tool is also very good with easy navigation.
- Many times Lever cannot detect duplicate candidates, which is annoying.
- The initial setup on Lever is hard.
- The tool is a little pricey compared to its competitors in the market.
Yes I have used Zoho ATS in the past and Zoho is also a very good all-in-one tool. Lever can be integrated with other tools as well. It has great reporting & analytics features which sets it apart.
People should keep in mind that Lever is an effective tool for candidate experience while applying and also for recruiters to track candidates, capture feedback and create structured interviews and enhance the experiences of users.
Lever now has an additional CRM tool feature which adds another feather to the advantage cap. The candidate surveys and dashboards have also been improvised.
Lever is good to use for organizations with a large employee base where too many stages of interviews are there and a large pool of candidates need to be evaluated, filtered, and shortlisted.
Lever is not that good to use for organizations with less employees, they can opt for other simple ATS where hiring is less frequent.
SmartRecruiters
SmartRecruiters' enterprise-grade talent acquisition suite goes beyond applicant tracking. It's got solutions for candidate sourcing, assessment, and engagement, as well as native collaboration and AI tools.
PROS
- Candidate assessment, skill testing, and offer management are incorporated within the ATS. No add-ons or integrations are required.
- Pretty helpful in posting jobs on multiple job boards, integrating social media tools, and facilitating internal recruits.
- Pre-built integrations with over 500 HR solutions and job boards.
- Friendly with mobile devices.
- SmartRecruiters has a built-in candidate assessment and skill testing module that allows you to predict cultural fit, future performance and retention, without needing to integrate third-party solutions.
- SmartRecruiters provides features for offer management. You can create offer letter templates, share them with successful applicants, and collect their e-signatures from any device using SmartRecruiters’ DocuSign integration.
- Speaking of integrations, SmartRecruiters has pre-built integrations with over 500 HR solutions and job boards. You can also ask SmartRecruiters’ team to build additional integrations for you if it doesn’t integrate with products in your tech stack.
CONS
- Undisclosed pricing.
- No free trials.
- Users have reported a steep learning curve and that the UI takes time to get used to.
- The reporting feature doesn’t always retrieve data accurately.
- Features like candidate filtering, report customizations, and KPI tracking are limited.
- SmartRecruiters’ pricing isn’t transparent. Interested users have to go through the sales team to receive a quote. Users are also not able to create trial accounts on their own.
- Users have reported a steep learning curve and that the UI takes time to get used to. Some users have also reported that the system can be slow and glitches at times.
- The reporting feature doesn’t always retrieve data accurately. Some users have also complained that report customizations and KPI tracking capabilities are limited.
- Candidate filtering is quite limited. As it stands, only basic options such as degree, location, gender etc are provided.
SmartRecruiters ATS is built to serve mid-size and large businesses. The platform allows you to cast a wide net with customizable career pages, targeted ad campaigns, and job post distribution to multiple job boards. It also provides features for candidate assessment and offer management.
We've heard from several practitioners that SmartRecruiters are great at taking feedback from their customers and rapidly integrating that into the product.
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade solution that covers applicant tracking needs and then some (CRM, AI screening, recruitment marketing), SmartRecruiters is worth checking out.
Thousands of companies, including Ikea, Visa, LinkedIn, Equinox, and Skechers use SmartRecruiters.
SmartRecruiters ATS has custom pricing, and so do the other products of the system.
Best For
SmartRecruiters works best for medium and large-sized businesses.
SmartRecruiters is an essential tool in my recruitment process. It covers all aspects of the hiring process, from posting job openings to screening resumes, conducting phone interviews, and presenting job offers to candidates. SmartRecruiters also helps me keep track of all candidate data, including rejected applicants and past applications. This allows me to have a comprehensive view of all my recruitment efforts and ensures that no important information is lost.
I have a positive opinion of SmartRecruiters as I find it easy to use and its interface straightforward. I like its ability to store and manage candidate data, as well as its integration with tools for organizing interviews and generating reports for my manager. These features make SmartRecruiters an effective and convenient tool in the recruitment process.
My organization bought SmartRecruiters 2 years ago to help solve the issue of managing applicant data and to streamline the recruitment process. With SmartRecruiters, they can keep track of all past applications, allow hiring managers to screen, reject, and make job offers in one place, and easily schedule interviews through integration with Google Calendar.
Firstly, I find it challenging to integrate other applications like Checkr, etc. with SmartRecruiters. Secondly, there are a very limited number of job portals that can be linked with SmartRecruiters. There are many small to big job portals that are still not available on their platform.
SmartRecruiters distinguishes itself from other competitors by offering a user-friendly interface, constantly adding new features, and integrating well with daily tools like Zoom and Calendly. This makes it easier for users to manage candidate data and extend job offers, all within a single platform.
People should consider the following factors when buying a recruitment tool like SmartRecruiters: ease of use, the size of their organization, the desired job portals, and pricing. These are key elements that can impact the effectiveness and efficiency of the recruitment process, and it's important to consider these factors before making a decision.
SmartRecruiters has made significant improvements over time. They have expanded the number of job portals available every month, improved their support team's response time, and have shown a commitment to addressing user feedback. These advancements have helped make SmartRecruiters a more effective and efficient tool for managing recruitment efforts.
SmartRecruiters is well-suited for organizations that utilize technology in their hiring process, experience high volumes of monthly hiring, and are seeking a comprehensive HR information system rather than just an applicant tracking system. With its user-friendly interface, ability to integrate with other tools, and robust features for managing candidate data, SmartRecruiters can provide a seamless and streamlined recruitment experience for these types of organizations.
SmartRecruiters may not be the best option for industries like construction or labor-oriented fields where paper-based applications are still widely used. These industries may not have the infrastructure or technology in place to fully utilize the features and benefits of SmartRecruiters, making it a less suitable solution for their recruitment needs.
Avature
With customized workflows for their customer and the candidate, Avature blends the best of ATS and CRM. We love this level of attention to user experience.
PROS
- A full-fledged ATS with built-in video interviewing, management features, and onboarding solutions.
- It also has a CRM, allowing TA teams to increase candidate engagement and plan for future hiring.
- Avature leverages AI with talent matching and candidate ranking.
- The recruiter mobile app supports offline use.
- Avature’s solution is quite comprehensive. They have a full-fledged ATS with built-in video interviewing, offer management and onboarding solutions. They also have a CRM, allowing TA teams to amp up candidate engagement and plan for future hiring.
- Avature leverages artificial intelligence with features of automatic talent matching and candidate ranking.
- Avature comes with a recruiter mobile app that allows key stakeholders to perform several recruiting tasks while on the go. The app also supports offline use, and syncs with the system the next time it’s connected to the Internet.
CONS
- Undisclosed pricing. No free trials.
- The UI can be confusing and takes some time to get used to.
- The assessment feature is quite elemental compared to other similar platforms.
- It lacks a built-in reference-checking feature, so users must pay for and integrate third-party solutions.
- Avature’s pricing is not readily available on their website. They also do not offer a free trial.
- Several users noted that the UI isn’t intuitive and takes some time to get used to.
- Avature’s assessment feature is quite basic and isn’t built out enough compared to point solutions in that space. So if you want to test the skills and cultural fitness of candidates, you’d need a third-party solution.
- Avature doesn’t have an automated reference checking feature built-in. The platform does integrate with third-party solutions that facilitate reference checking, but you’ll have to purchase those solutions too separately.
The Avature platform allows users to customize dashboards, set up automated workflows, and leverage the power of an all-in-one ATS + CRM.
It is fully customizable to your company’s processes and goals. It allows users to build unique recruiting workflows to suit hiring needs for individual roles or entire departments.
The platform operates through a no-code interface that allows non-technical users to modify the system (with lots of permissions in place). While this level of detail may be overkill for smaller organizations with simple needs, Avature is a solid applicant tracking system for mid-market and enterprises.
More than 6,500 companies use Avature. This includes Shell, Cisco, L'Oréal, Mondelez, Siemens, and KPMG.
Avature pricing is custom, so contact their team for a quote.
Best For
Avature serves enterprise-scale companies best.
I use Avature quite frequently. We use the recruiting data and connect it to Tableau to report our recruiting effectiveness. I also use it in preparation of our federal and statutory reporting requirements. As a hiring manager, my use is limited due to when I have an open position. I don't use it as a recruiter.
- It is user friendly, especially for the hiring manager and internal posting process.
- The standard reporting capabilities are pretty good.
- The option to keep all pre-boarding forms in one place.
My organization transitioned from Taleo to Avature about 4 years ago. The decision was made due to the reputation of the tool and the pipelining capabilities. I have used this tool for the last 2 years in my role. Taleo is user friendly and is full of options for recruiting. The tool also has some decent reporting functionality.
- Custom reporting is difficult to navigate.
- The workflow of a job req can be difficult to understand.
- The search capability is lacking. 4) The req-number is hard to find in the application.
I've used Taleo and iCIMS for talent acquisition and above all I preferred the ease of iCIMS. Avature's difficult custom reporting and navigation of job req folders is a turn off for me. iCIMS was highly customizable and worked great for my previous organization..
The size of your organization should be considered. I don't think that the cost would outweigh the benefits. Also, if you want to highly customize the tool, it's not worth it.
Somewhat, a recent release showed some improvement in reporting, but overall, it's remained the same over the time period I've used the tool.
I think if you are a full time recruiter for a large global company, it's a good fit.
I don't see Avature being that useful for a small market company.
JazzHR
JazzHR is great because it’s not trying to be what it’s not: a one-size-fits-all product. This platform is tailor-made for the needs of SMB customers.
PROS
- JazzHR offers affordable pricing without limitations on the number of users, and it provides free 21-day trials for anyone to try.
- The platform includes built-in features for offer management, allowing users to choose from existing offer letter templates or create custom ones to share with successful candidates.
- You can set up triggers for candidates to receive automatic email notifications as they progress through the hiring process.
- JazzHR is quite affordable and doesn’t place any limits on the number of users added. It also offers free, 21-day trials that anyone can sign up for.
- JazzHR has built-in features for offer management. You can choose from existing offer letter templates or create your own and share them with successful candidates
- You can automate triggers for candidates to be automatically notified via email when their application has moved a stage further in the hiring process. Several other email responses can be automated.
CONS
- Some users thought the UI wasn’t intuitive, requiring time to become used to it.
- Despite being aimed at SMBs, JazzHR lacks a free plan, unlike some competing SMB-focused recruiting products that offer free versions.
- A few users thought reports could be more customizable and easier to create.
- There currently isn’t a mobile app, and its browser version isn’t well-optimized for mobile use.
- Some users reported a learning curve with JazzHR's UI and that it took them some time to get used to it
- For a product geared towards SMBs, it lacks a free plan. We mention this as a con since other SMB-geared recruiting products do offer free-forever versions, which puts JazzHR slightly behind the competition.
- Several users have mentioned that the reporting feature is difficult to use with very little room for report customizations.
- JazzHR currently lacks a mobile app, and the browser version isn’t well-optimized for mobile use.
JazzHR is an SMB-geared ATS that offers unlimited users across plans, making things easier for businesses to deploy and streamline communicative hiring.
We like how simple it is to sync job posts across portals, and we love the upfront pricing on the website. Many customers start with JazzHR’s lowest-cost plan, and as their needs expand beyond basic features, they often upgrade incrementally. Being able to select features as needed keeps spending under control.
The least expensive plan (Hero) lets users post three jobs— making it suitable for small teams with a few dozen openings yearly. The other two plans (Plus and Pro) have more advanced features to automate, customize, and analyze the hiring process.
JazzHR is used by over 6,500 businesses, including the Seattle Seahawks, L'Occitane En Provence, TED Conferences LLC, and Chick-fil-A.
JazzHR has three plans. When paid annually:
- Hero costs $49 per month.
- Plus costs $239 per month.
- Pro costs $359 per month.
Best For
JazzHR is specifically built for organizations with 5 to 500 employees. Product users range from the HR expert to HR employees with little to no prior experience in the space.
- We use JazzHR in Job postings to create and publish job postings on multiple job boards and our own careers pages where necessary and consequently source for candidates
- Resume screening: JazzHR provides tools like customizable screening questionnaires, keyword searches, and evaluation forms to help you screen resumes and identify qualified candidates based on your job requirements.
- Interview scheduling: JazzHR allows you to schedule interviews with candidates and send automated reminders to keep everyone on track.
- These tools have helped us streamline our overseas resume screening process and identify qualified candidates more efficiently.
- JazzHR has a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate, making it simple for our team to manage the hiring process from start to finish.
- It also allows users to customize job postings, screening questionnaires, and evaluation forms, which allows us to get more suitable candidates.
- JazzHR also automates many tasks such as resume screening, interview scheduling, and candidate communication. This is an important time saver which helps us move faster.
JazzHR is a cloud-based applicant tracking system that streamlines and automates the hiring process.
Our organization was looking to engage highly specialized consultants from the US as well as Europe in IT Security, Cloud Computing, and Enterprise Solutions.
We found that JazzHR provided centralized hiring where the team could manage the entire hiring process, from job postings to candidate screening and interview scheduling which saved us a lot of time. It also provided impressive data-driven insights and analytics on hiring metrics which enabled us to identify our areas of improvement.
- There are limitations on candidate search, especially for local searches in Africa. The candidate search functionality could also be more robust, allowing for more targeted and advanced searches.
- Customer support response time can be slower at times which can be frustrating when trying to resolve issues quickly.
- The reporting features could also be improved on to provide more insight and more informative data analytics.
- Affordability: JazzHR is priced competitively, making it more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses that may not have the budget for enterprise-level solutions.
- It also allows reliable customization, from job postings and screening questionnaires to evaluation forms and workflows. It also integrates with a wide range of other HR tools, including HRIS and payroll systems like BambooHR, providing us with greater flexibility and automation.
- Indeed and LinkedIn have significantly larger candidate pools than JazzHR, making them a better option for organizations looking to cast a wider net in their candidate search. However, JazzHR integrates with a range of other HR tools, including payroll and HRIS systems, while Indeed and LinkedIn do not offer the same level of integration.
- This makes JazzHR more all-rounded than Indeed & LinkedIn which fills a niche and builds on the value it offers making it slightly preferable for overseas hires.
- Consider the HR tools that you currently use or plan to use and evaluate whether JazzHR can integrate them. JazzHR integrates with a variety of HR software for different purposes such as assessments, background checks, payroll, and onboarding. Some examples of HRIS systems that JazzHR can integrate with are BambooHR, Namely, TribeHR, and Workday. Do your research before engaging JazzHR.
- Pricing: Evaluate the pricing structure to ensure that it is affordable and that it aligns with your organization's budget. JazzHR has different payment plans like Hero, Plus, and Pro.
- You can evaluate the level of customer support that is available and ensure that it aligns with your organization's needs, particularly if you are a smaller organization without a dedicated HR team.
Over time it has Increased customization by introducing more customization features over time, including the ability to create custom screening questionnaires and evaluation forms.
It has also improved integrations by expanding its integration capabilities, allowing users to connect with a wide range of HR tools, including HRIS and payroll systems.
In my opinion, JazzHR would work best for teams looking for a recruitment and applicant tracking system that can be integrated with an existing HRIS system to streamline their recruitment, onboarding, and payroll operations among other HR functions.
JazzHR may not be the best fit for large organizations with complex hiring processes that require highly specialized workflows.
Freshteam
Freshteam (by Freshworks) is a full-size HR suite that works for teams of many sizes, and they offer a free trial, so you can check the fit before you buy.
PROS
- Fresh team’s fee plan is offered for any teams with up to 50 employees.
- Provides a transparent pricing structure.
- Drag-and-drop features make customizing the hiring process easy.
- Affordable for SMBs with a feature set comparable to more expensive solutions.
- Freshteam is very user-friendly, with an intuitive UI that’s easy to navigate. It features a customizable, Kanban-style view of the full hiring process from initial contact to offer sending. Drag and drop mechanism makes it easy to move candidates around as they progress through the different stages.
- Freshteam is affordable for SMBs to use while still having a comparable feature set to more expensive solutions.
- Freshteam is quite scalable. With four plans to choose from, customers can start out with the free plan, then upgrade to more features as their business grows.
CONS
- Only three published job listings are permitted under the free plan, which also offers few features.
- Not the greatest choice for businesses and teams that frequently need to hire new employees.
- Lacks advanced capabilities for candidate sourcing and relationship management.
- While Freshteam has a free-forever plan that small companies can use, the plan is limited in features and allows for only 3 published job postings. That said, Freshteam’s paid plans are quite affordable, and can be used by small businesses - should they need to - without breaking the bank.
- Freshteam might not be suitable for enterprises and agencies that do volume hiring and are in need of advanced applicant tracking, candidate sourcing, and relationship management capabilities, as we've confirmed via several user interviews.
Freshteam isn't just a typical applicant tracking system (ATS). Rather than that, it is an HR package with tools for interviewing, hiring, onboarding, offboarding, managing employee information, and more. We appreciate how the solution presents clear and affordable pricing, making it accessible to early-stage startups and SMBs.
The platform is user-friendly, especially with the Kanban board feature that provides a clear view of each candidate's progress in the pipeline. Freshteam allows sourcing candidates from popular job boards and employee referrals, with built-in job descriptions for added convenience.
Candidate screening is easier with resume parsing, while candidate profiles store all relevant information, including communication history and notes. Scheduling interviews and managing offers can be done within the platform. The recruitment automation feature automates repetitive tasks like emailing and follow-ups, streamlining the hiring process.
Freshteam also covers pre-onboarding activities, facilitating form-filling and document signing with e-signatures, ensuring an efficient and paperless experience. We should also mention its free-forever plan, though it may not be comprehensive, it is useful enough for small teams and startups in early development stages. While not built-in, additional tools for learning and development, application assessment, and job boards can be integrated via connectors.
However, Freshteam customer support lacks phone support or dedicated specialists for direct communication. Some users have experienced occasional delays in receiving support responses. The time-off tool can only notify one manager per employee request, which may be restrictive for teams with multiple supervisors. Additionally, there is no automation feature for following up with candidates.
Monster, PharmEasy, Ocado, Reaktor, Nissan, SAP, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Freshteam has four pricing plans:
- Free: it is limited to 3 published job postings and available for businesses with 50 employees or fewer.
- Growth: $1 per employee per month plus a $59 platform fee per month.
- Pro: $2 per employee per month plus a $99 platform fee per month.
- Enterprise: $4 per employee per month plus a $169 platform fee.
Best For
For small and mid-sized businesses seeking a cost-effective solution with a number of built-in capabilities, Freshteam is a great choice.
iCIMS
Unsurprisingly, iCIMS, a massive, global presence serving large companies with high-volume talent management needs, is available in 70+ languages. We're still super-impressed.
PROS
- A powerful recruiting solution that can handle high-volume hiring of up to 50,000 candidates.
- Constantly evolving through developments and acquisitions, giving users more features.
- The reporting feature is robust and retrieves data accurately.
- iCIMS is constantly expanding its roster of integrations with third-party products. Currently, 300+ and rising.
- Integrations with most HCM or payroll providers, including Workday, SAP, SuccessFactors, ADP, Oracle, and UKG.
- iCIMS is a powerful recruiting solution that can handle high volume hiring of up to 50,000 candidates.
- The platform is constantly evolving through developments and acquisitions, giving users more features.
- The reporting feature is robust and retrieves data accurately.
- iCIMS has a growing marketplace of over 300 integrations with third-party products.
CONS
- The UI is complex and dated compared to other cloud-based recruiting products.
- Customer support is sometimes slow and only available by phone or ticket—no live chat support.
- Though packing many features, it lacks automated reference checking.
- No transparent pricing and no free trial.
- The cost of implementation and integration is relatively high compared to other recruiting solutions.
- A significant number of users complained about the UI’s complexity and that it looks dated compared to other cloud-based recruiting products.
- Customer support is slow at times and only available through phone and by creating a support ticket online - no live chat support yet
- The platform packs an overwhelming amount of features yet still lacks some useful capabilities such as automated reference checking.
- No transparent pricing or free trials, and according to several users, the cost of implementation as well as integrations is high compared to other recruiting solutions.
iCIMS ATS is feature-rich and well-suited for large, multilingual organizations and high-volume agencies. Users can create custom-branded career sites, employee-generated testimonial videos, and personalized email or text campaigns through the platform.
iCIMS also enables users to promote existing employees through internal mobility programs.
iCIMS has over 4,000 customers, including Ulta, Target, Microsoft, PwC, Uber, and UPS.
Pricing is undisclosed – custom quotes only.
Best For
iCIMS is especially helpful for global enterprises and recruiting agencies with frequent hiring needs.
Our HR team uses iCIMS daily. Hiring managers regularly use iCIMS within our organization as well when they have an open role they are recruiting and screening applicants for. We use iCIMS for posting our roles, screening applicants, processing pre-employment checks, offers, onboarding and more. We also heavily use the functionality to create recruitment campaigns right from iCIMS. Reporting another feature we use frequently and there is a lot of customization in that area.
- Moving from a 100% paper process, iCIMS allowed my team to collect applicant information and respond to them (advancing/declining) efficiently and fully electronically.
- The user experience for our HR team and other staff has been great. It’s very easy to navigate.
- The continuous improvements done to their offering.
Our organization bought iCIMS to move from a paper-based process to one that is electronic and all online. We did not have an ATS until iCIMS. When looking at vendors, we were seeking a robust offering that could help us elevate our recruiting efforts. We loved the ability to customize the business processes to our company’s needs and that we can do outreach campaigns right from the software.
- It can be difficult to create custom reports and find them easily when trying to quickly pull information. You have to know very specific prompts and is not very intuitive.
- The cost of the iCIMS offering.
- When creating targeted recruitment campaigns, we wish we could incorporate more of our own branding and formatting.
Overall, it’s an offering that will easily support most organizations recruiting efforts from start to finish. iCIMS focuses on recruiting and onboarding as its primary focus rather than trying to support all areas of HR like many of its competitors. They specialize instead and do it very well!
First, evaluate when your organization needs are for a vendor. If you need a vendor to support your recruitment efforts, iCIMS is a wonderful offering! If your company needs a more complex system that provides a full HRIS offering, you may then want to consider alternatives.
One of the biggest benefits of iCIMS is that they are always looking for ways to innovate and be better. For example, after we partnered with iCIMS they launched a feature to be able to text candidates, which really elevated our experience working with candidates.
Medium and large organizations needing a solution to support recruitment and onboarding efforts.
Smaller organizations or those looking for a more complete solution for a full HRIS.
What are the Benefits of an Applicant Tracking system?
The key benefits of an applicant tracking system are the ability to create and manage a bespoke career site, build a talent pipeline, bring hiring managers and employees into the recruiting process, streamline onboarding, and track everything with data. We dive into these points (plus a couple more) in detail below:
Employer Branding: A top ATS system will help your organization create and manage a career site. Whether using templates or custom pages, working with your ATS provider to create a career site will help your company stand out. You highlight company culture, job perks, mission and value statements – pretty much anything under the sun to attract top talent. Your ATS should also easily integrate with social networks like LinkedIn to distribute content as well as open jobs.
Talent Pools: The best ATS software can save you time and money by maintaining already-sourced candidates. Maintaining occasional contact with a pool of qualified candidates will allow your recruiting team to decrease the time and cost it takes to hire. Your recruiting process shouldn’t start from zero each time you open a new role.
Hiring Managers and Employees: Rather than relying exclusively on your HR/TA teams for recruiting, the best ATS software will also include your hiring managers and employees to be part of the process. Referrals, feedback on job candidates, and social media can all be leveraged to fill open positions.
Hiring and Onboarding: A new ATS isn’t just about recruiting, it can also work wonders for onboarding. Timely and effective onboarding makes a good first impression, and this impression sets the stage for employee engagement and, ultimately, retention.
Analytics: An effective hiring process is data-driven. Your ATS dashboard should be able to pull out the data that makes the team more effective, and the process more efficient. With good ATS software, recruiter productivity, cost per hire, cost for job boards, cost for paid media, time to hire, and numerous other points of interest will be available at your fingertips.
Cloud-Based Solution: It seems strange to even write this today, but many human resources teams are not taking advantage of cloud-based architecture. Generally speaking, the cost and product benefits of a cloud-based platform outweigh the edge case uses for on-site hosting.
Customized Workflows: A modern applicant tracking system will allow your talent acquisition team to build a recruiting process that is custom fit to your firm's needs. Unique workflows can lead to more efficient and effective hiring, so look for an ATS that can customize and automate tasks like application processing, screening, and collecting feedback. Customized workflows are especially helpful to firms who hire from very different candidate pools. If, for example, your team is hiring both truck drivers and software engineers, you can bet these workflows won’t be interchangeable.
If you’ve come this far, it’s clear you're serious about buying a new ATS system. Take a look at our organizer spreadsheet which includes sample demo questions and lots of key resources for anyone buying a new applicant tracking system. You can simply download it or use it in Google Sheets. We hope it’s helpful!
If you're a small business looking to streamline your hiring process, our guide on the best ATS for small businesses is an essential read.
Advice for Buying the Best ATS Systems
More than applicant tracking: Look for applicant tracking software that has as many features as you can use. Many ATS systems can schedule interviews, manage employee referrals, and parse resumes. If you chose a system that does more than applicant tracking, you’ll help your human resources team increase efficiency and grow your business across the board. According to Zach Larson, “the ATS should make it simple for the HR team to identify trends and be a strategic partner for the business”.
Partner ecosystem: Take a look at the ATS software's ecosystem of partners to get a feel for how easy integrations will be. You want a system that has an open API that gets along well with other HR Tech solutions. For example: if down the road, you want to add a video interview product made by another vendor, your open API will come in handy for ease of integration.
Inside Scoop on Your Hiring Process: Talk to your hiring managers, employees, and recruiters to understand what weaknesses they see in your hiring process. Buying a new ATS should involve all of the stakeholders across a given employer.
Think Long Term: This is a solution you’re going to have for the next several years, minimum. Your organization will change, and you need a solution that will be adequate now and in the future. In addition to ability to scale, Tracie Marie suggests we should look for a company’s “continued efforts for improved resume parsing, integration capabilities, and enhanced video interviewing capabilities”. Most ATS software offers some version, but commitment to further development of these elements is essential.
Understand the Roadmap: It’s important to understand a company’s product roadmap, how impactful those features will be, and the company’s track record of delivering on that roadmap. Ask the sales rep specific questions relevant to your business needs.
Feature Focus: Many ATS systems have an astonishing number of features. Understanding the features of one ATS can be daunting, but when you try to compare and contrast 30 features that are all offered by your top five ATS picks, you may find yourself overwhelmed. Our advice is to take a step back and focus on what you truly need. Then, pick three to five must-haves to guide your choice of which system is right for you. Chances are there is no perfect ATS for you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get close.
Look at ROI: Historically, ATS software was thought of as a tool that performed two functions: workflow management and legal compliance. But modern applicant tracking systems do much more. They can drive ROI through sourcing and recruitment marketing capabilities, they often integrate seamlessly with other HR Tech, and they lighten the load for your HR/TA teams. Simply put, a good ATS comes with good ROI and the ability to drive value from the entire employee lifecycle. This is an especially critical point (and investment opportunity!) for companies that want a competitive edge in tight labor markets.
What is the ROI of a Top ATS system?
Build a case for your new purchase. Our ROI guide will help you you to build a robust business case to get the budget you need.
It covers:
- Subscription fees and one-off costs
- Increases in recruiter productivity
- Changes in the hiring funnel
- Decreases in time to fill
We highly recommend you watch the video to best understand how to use this spreadsheet! It's a bit complex and the video will help you understand it.
ATS Pricing Models
We have a full guide to ATS pricing, but here's an overview of the pricing models you can expect to see for Applicant Tracking Systems:
Hires/Job Postings/Applicants: We like this “use more, pay more” model because it’s straightforward with a 1:1 ratio between use and cost. The value you get from an ATS system is clearly greater when you hire more, so a company that hires 200 people each year should pay less than one that hires 2,000.
Employees: Some ATS software will charge based on the number of employees you have. We like this pricing model as much as we like this hiring model. Employee engagement in the recruiting and hiring process is easier than ever and as effective as it’s always been. Candidates hired from referrals (often via social shares) tend to close quickly and have low rates of attrition.
Seats: Some ATS platforms charge based on the number of people who use the software, which can make the choice a bit tricky because admin access needs tend to change over time. This model is often chosen by small teams who are hiring slowly.
Features: When an ATS offers features that exceed the typical functionality of an ATS, they often base the cost on those features. Products like these straddle the line between ATS and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). CRM software (not to be confused with a CEM) is built to handle much more than hiring. Far more robust than a typical ATS, a CRM includes features like a large-scale analytics package.
You can find more information about ATS pricing here.
Pro Tip: Be aware that some ATSs charge for integrations with software you already use. Unexpected spending on things like your HRIS can drastically increase your annual spending.
Here’s another pro tip:
All of the prices you are originally quoted from a vendor are negotiable, especially if you are looking to sign a multi-year contract. Learn more about how to navigate this space from a legal perspective from a guide by upcouncel.
How Much Do Applicant Tracking Systems Cost?
Here are some guidelines on pricing based on company headcount. This information is indented to help you get a general sense of ATS pricing. Keep in mind that ATSs come in all shapes and budget sizes. Here we provide mid-range samples for reference.
Are you wondering where we got this data? It was (partially) from people like you! To help HR teams better understand their options, we crowdsource data on ATS pricing.
Our short, anonymous survey only takes about two minutes to complete, and anyone who participates will be given access to the entire data set. Click here to help out the community!
What Are the Key Features of a Top ATS?
- Open APIs: This may be the most important key feature of any top ATS. Almost without exception, the top ATSs all come with robust APIs that allow other tools to build sturdy integrations for flawless functionality. What does this look like for your HR team? With an open API, hiring processes managed by third-party vendors can become part of your ATS platform. If, like most HR pros, you’re not a die-hard techie, you can still vet a vendor for this information. If they have an open API, you can bet it’ll say so on their site. You can also check out their partner ecosystem (note: in this context “partners” are two companies who are connected via open APIs). Finally, from one HR pro to another: if the vendor doesn’t have time to help you understand their tech, they are probably the wrong vendor.
- Video interviews have become a powerful way for recruiters to save time and connect with a large pool of job seekers. Look for solutions that either have a video interview module built-in or are affiliated with one of the top video interview platforms.
- Sourcing: Many top ATSs realize that their solution needs to be much more than a database full of job applicants – it needs to help you actually get those applicants on your payroll! Some things to look out for when it comes to ATS sourcing features are Google Chrome extensions that allow you to source candidates, databases of talent that you can query, and outreach tools that will enable you to build sequences to engage the right candidates through email and texting.
- CRM: In addition to being a type of stand-alone system, Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) is also an ATS feature and an essential element of talent management. Nurturing the relationship with your entire job-seeker ecosystem is critical. This includes the silver medalists, the talent pools of passive candidates, and all the “backburner” folks who you want to keep warm. A CRM will let you set reminders to ping candidates in the future, keep in contact via email with candidate pools, and provide a means for your recruiters and sourcers to re-discover old candidates.
- Blind Screening: It’s hard to get most D&I initiatives off the ground without the ability to blind screen applicants. Look for an ATS that will obscure the names, photos, and addresses of candidates to allow recruiters to screen with as little bias as possible. Some ATSs include features that evaluate the word choices of your job descriptions and website copy.
- Employer Branding and Career Site: Modern applicant tracking systems are built with the candidate's experience in mind. To this end, they can help you build and maintain a bespoke career site that showcases your employer brand while weaving branded messaging and media into all candidate communication. Leveraging your ATS and your marketing team together, you can create a distinctive career site that will stand as the foundation for your employer brand.
- Data and Analytics: It is critical to align the reporting you need for internal and external stakeholders with the analytics offered by your ATS. Any ATS worth its salt will have a basic analytics dashboard. In an ideal world, any ATS would contain a massive analytics engine that would make light work of your heaviest statistical loads and render multi-vector complexities with sublime simplicity. But this is the real world, and not all ATSs can meet complex analytics needs. Before you buy, be sure to measure what they offer against what you need.
- Interview Scheduling: ATS software that is focused on recruitment automation will include scheduling for everything from phone screens to final-round interviews. This can save your HR coordinators a ton of time (and endless scheduling errors!), and may even mean you can redeploy talent towards more strategic roles such as full cycle recruiting.
- Offer Letters: Most ATS solutions automate the distribution of offer letters to potential new hires so that your hiring team can focus on more important tasks.
- Onboarding: While a few ATSs contain a full-on suite of HR software (HRIS, performance management, engagement, payroll, benefits, bells, and whistles), most have employee onboarding capabilities. This basic pairing makes sense: when someone is hired, the handoff from TA to HR should be as smooth as possible.
Information overload? Use this organizer to keep track of your notes during your process.
The features listed above are highly specific and intended to help buyers and decision makers make swift, categorical decisions. However, some critical aspects of ATS performance and functionality are not given to categorization like this. Our guest expert Zach Larson suggests buyers keep in mind the following: how well the product will respond to market challenges, and the quality of external candidate and internal employee experience.
Pro tip: this free tool from MIT’s Career Advising & Professional Development Department can also evaluate language to help your team move toward an equitable future. Here are some of the key features, from the basics to bells and whistles:
ATS System Vendor Demo Questions
We have compiled more than 300 questions to ask vendors while shopping for an ATS. This array covers questions recruiters should ask, questions for hiring managers, questions for accounting, and more.
Click here for 300+ questions for ATS vendors.
If you are saving this gigantic list for later or you already have your own criteria in mind, we still recommend you bring along this bakers's dozen to your first few demos.
Essential questions for vendors:
- Is there a bi-directional API to share information between this system and my HRIS?
- How does this ATS help my recruiting efforts beyond capturing candidate information? For example, will it allow me to pipeline candidates, source, boost referrals, etc?
- How does this system improve the candidate experience?
- What is your partner strategy, and do I have to pay to integrate my other recruiting tools?
- What metrics do you focus on to prove the effectiveness of this solution, and where can I see these in my analytics dashboard?
- Can I speak to my future customer service rep about implementation, and how exactly your organization will be involved?
- Walk me through the candidate experience.
- Can I store candidate profiles in this system in a way that is searchable for future candidate sourcing?
- Walk me through how recruiters post jobs, vet applicants, and leave feedback.
- How do employees outside of HR interact with this ATS?
- Do you have social recruiting capabilities?
- We use {{XYZ indispensable recruiting tool}}, how do you integrate with it?
- What is the onboarding process after we buy this solution (ask for specific steps and who in your org needs to be involved)?
Checkout our Free ATS Buying Course - All Done Via Email
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- Staying organized when looking at applicant tracking systems
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About ATSs
Which ATS software is the most popular?
- Greenhouse
- Pinpoint
- JazzHR
- Lever
- WorkDay
- Recruitee
- BambooHR
- TeamTailor
How do I buy the best applicant tracking system?
- Understand your business: Each organization needs to contemplate which ATS is the best for them. If you work at a Global Fortune 500 company, you'll need an enterprise solution that supports multiple languages, juris dictions, and has many features that an SMB focused tool won't have. However, if you are at a startup, you may be looking for the cheapest option for your company. It all depends!
- Create a shortlist: You can use our reviews, or other sites like G2 or Capterra to figure out which ATS vendors you want to take a look at. You may also want to ask peers at similar companies what solutions they're using.
- Conduct demos: Once you have 3-5 vendors that are the most likely best fit, you'll want to see each live. Our advice is to ask lots of questions, and take good notes. Specifically, you'll want to understand the integrations this solution has with your other HR Tech tools, how it's setup, how it's priced, and the key workflows that your team will need it for (posting jobs, candidate feedback, etc)
- Get internal stakeholder buy in: One key aspect of buying an ATS that many teams fail at is getting internal stakeholder buy in from colleagues. You'll want this from people who will eventually give you budget, as well as those who will use the tool. We recommended a short presentation that has 1) why this is an important purchase 2) how it will impact their lives 3) how it will impact your organization.
- Finalize your vendor: Once you've done your demo's, you'll want to narrow down your list to one vendor that you want to move forward with. A pro tip here is to consider the product, but also how you were treated throughout the process. If you feel you can trust the person on the other side of this transaction, it has much higher odds of success!
- Negotiate the best price: We recommend you buy software the end of the month or quarter as you can get good deals at this time. Just remember that any price can be negotiated, and that you should always get compensated for giving something up (longer contracts, upfront payments, etc).
- Implement like a pro: Now comes the fun part, implementation. Our advice here is to make sure you follow your account managers advice. They are economically incentivized to make sure you succeed (their bonus depends on it!).
- Reflect: After a big project like this, you need to take a look at your process and outcomes. What surprised you? What went well? What were the pitfalls you fell into? Take it all in and try to get better next time.
What is the difference between an ATS and an HRIS?
An ATS (applicant tracking system) is the core operating software for your recruiting team that deals with hiring records, whereas your HRIS (Human Resource Information System) is the core operating system of your human resources team and deals with employee records.
Why is an ATS used in recruitment?
An ATS is used in recruitment to make the end-to-end process of hiring easier. ATSs were originally designed for large corporations managing thousands of job applications every week. The use of software dedicated to specific purposes has become part of our everyday lives, and so has the ubiquity of the ATS in small and medium businesses. Teams of all sizes, with any variety of hiring needs, can benefit from a tool that increases efficiency by streamlining tasks.
How do applicant tracking systems work?
Applicant tracking systems work by acting as a liaison between an employer and an applicant. Once an application is submitted, the ATS extracts and stores the candidate’s work experience, education, and contact information in a database. HR teams use the database to review applications, communicate with applicants, schedule interviews, and sometimes administer skills tests.
Final Advice for Buying a New ATS
Implementing a top-rate ATS allows employers to supercharge their recruiting efforts. Year after year, ATSs gain new capabilities like sourcing, CRM, talent re-discovery, and sophisticated analytics capabilities. It’s a very complicated landscape with literally hundreds of vendors and thousands of feature options.
Dedicate time to evaluating the specific goals you are trying to accomplish with a new ATS. Start prepared, and proceed with focus as you start to talk to vendors and watch demos. It’s critical not to settle for anything less (or more) than exactly what you need and want. Given the high switching costs inherent in long-term contracts, data migration problems, and training, this is a recruiting tool that will stick with you for a long time.
Hidden assets in your ROI analysis
Anyone who’s ever fallen flat in the CFO’s office knows this type of analysis is crucial for getting buy-in from internal stakeholders. But the process of being CFO-ready with an ROI report offers some additional assets you may not have considered. First, the process will refine your thoughts on why and how an ATS is an important purchase for your team, which will lead to more clarity on which features to prioritize. Second, your model can become something of a a journal. If you revisit your analysis periodically, it can serve as a record of where you were right and wrong, and this reflection will help refine how you think about allocating a budget for future decisions.
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