The Top 16 Best Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) for 2023

Buying new applicant tracking software is a lot of work. This is especially true if you’re going to transition your old software to a new solution. So, it’s important to think about the benefits of new recruiting software in order to justify the time and cost. Here are the most important benefits of a modern ATS:‍

Employer Branding: A top ATS 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: Keep your potential future hires warm by building a talent pipeline. 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. A good ATS can save you time and money by maintaining already-sourced candidates.

Hiring Managers and Employees: Rather than relying exclusively on your HR/TA teams for recruiting, the best ATSs 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 a good ATS, 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. With some exceptions (government work, for example), it is uncommon to host your own software. 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. 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.

More than applicant tracking: Look for applicant tracking software that has as many features as you can use. Many ATSs 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 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 ATSs 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, Marie suggests we should look for a company’s “Continued efforts for improved resume parsing, integration capabilities, and enhanced video interviewing capabilities”. Most ATSs offer 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 ATSs 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.

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.

Here are 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 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 ATSs 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 ATSs 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.

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.

ATS Pricing: 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!

Here are some of the key features, from the basics to bells and whistles:

Open APIs: This may be the most important key feature of any modern 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 you’re feeling like you still don’t know your API from your ATS, you can refer back to the section on Partner Ecosystems in Advice for Buying the Best ATS above. Or you can keep reading for some HR hacking.  

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 this talent towards more strategic roles such as full-desk 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. Larson suggesgts 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.

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.

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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)?

For the next two weeks, you’ll get easy to digest emails related to:

• Staying organized when looking at applicant tracking systems
• Budgeting and ROI
• Key features of the best ATS’s
• Questions to ask on demos
• Security concerns
• Negotiating price

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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.

Which ATS is the most popular?

• Greenhouse
• Pinpoint
• JazzHR
• Lever
• WorkDay
• Recruitee
• BambooHR
• TeamTailor

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 do you need an applicant tracking system?‍

You need an applicant tracking system to streamline the recruitment process. An ATS can easily manage large volumes of applicants and candidates. Castro details these needs further in her article, Applicant Tracking Systems: Why Your Business Needs One.

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.

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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Check out our blogs on this topic!

What is an ATS? / Benefits of an ATS / How to Calculate ATS ROI / Guide on ATS Pricing / ATS Buyer Guide / Questions to Ask ATS Vendors on Demos