General overview 

According to CareerBuilder, the cost of a wrong hire is around $10,000 for an entry or mid-level position. Forbes estimates it to be as high as 30% of a candidate’s annual salary. Whatever the figure, leveraging a well-tuned Applicant Tracking System reduces the risk of making a poor hiring choice and improves the odds of a successful placement outcome.  

An Applicant Tracking System or ATS is a software tool that allows you to manage your hiring pipeline by maintaining a database talent pool and keeping track of your candidates’ applications, documents, and relevant job information. It is a candidate-data bank that allows recruiters to have all of the information about talent in one place, accessible in just a few clicks. 

Most importantly, an ATS allows you to optimize the recruitment process and automate tasks like resume filtering, screenings, and interview scheduling to boost overall efficiency.

TL;DR

- Lever The Apple of the applicant tracking world. Fantastic design and user or candidate experience. Users love it. Best value for what you get. But it doesn’t integrate with everything.

- SmartRecruiters Not as ubiquitous in tech as Lever and Greenhouse. Not quite as sleek a user experience as Lever, but the best fully featured ATS (with a free version).

- Greenhouse The Salesforce of the ATS world. Most expensive. As pervasive as lever, integrates with almost everything.

Standard features of applicant tracking systems

There are over 65+ different ATS on the market, so choosing the best one is not straightforward. Before making a purchasing decision, take a look at our list of the most promising ATS for the second half of 2020. Below are the most common features of the most popular ATS.

Core ATS features

Each ATS may have over 40+ features, we’ll dive deeper into the most frequently used ones below. 

• Ability to post positions to multiple job boards.
• Careers Page to list all of your open positions.
• Diversity and inclusion tactics built in.
• Easy process for a job seeker to apply online.
• Interview scheduling.
• Candidate scorecards.
• Feedback & collaboration management.
• Email templates and workflows.
• Reporting and analytics.
• Social media compatibility.
• Simplified onboarding process.
• Integrates with other services essential to recruitment, communicating internally, and talent management: Slack, LinkedIn, HR Software Platforms (Gusto, BambooHR, etc.), Checkr (background checks), and more.

Applicant tracking

A good quality applicant tracking system will eliminate the mess of data in your recruitment funnel. It filters out the process by stage, including screening, selecting, and interviewing, and enables you to seamlessly move the candidate along stages of the funnel. 

Applicant workflow

Automating basic tasks in the recruiting workflow is critical in a capable ATS for saving time. Scanning resumes for keywords, scheduling interviews, sending out emails, and any other low skilled, monotonous tasks are prime candidates for automation. 

Candidate communications tracking

It is impossible to keep track of all the information, insights, and feedback gathered in your interview, nor should you need to. Candidate communication tracking provides an organized and searchable record of all meaningful data and enables quick access. 

Interview management

This feature allows you to create lists of critical questions, schedule interviews, and take down notes. The interview management feature should provide you with an environment where nothing keeps you from evaluating the candidate. 

Important applicant tracking integrations

The quality of applicant tracking integrations can redefine your entire recruitment process. Integrations can increase the effectiveness of your ATS by allowing you to pull in tools and platforms you’re already working with into your ATS. 

Primary social media integrations to keep in mind when choosing your ATS tool of choice are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Posting your vacancies to these platforms with one click on is a time-saver.

Email integrations are also crucial. By syncing your inbox with your ATS, you can let more people know that your company is hiring or send out emails to multiple candidates by taking advantage of mass-mail campaigns. You can also track recruiter-candidate mailing to decrease the chances of losing valuable data. 

Applicant ranking allows you to systematically arrange your list of candidates based on your overall scoring and vacancy requirements. 

Automatic email scheduling frees your hands and allows you to invest time in things that can't be tech-delegated.

The Top 10 ATS For Technical Recruiters in 2020 

We’ve gathered a list of the top 10 ATS available to technical recruiters in 2020 and compared them across ease of use, capabilities, and price points. With the right ATS, you can automate your workflow, accelerate your hiring process, and optimize your that can be improved to find candidates faster and allow your company to stay much ahead of the competitors. Keep in mind that the size of your company, your budget, and the specifics of your recruiting process will affect how well the given ATS meets your needs. Always request a demo to get a real feel for the software before you commit to purchase. For more information on ATS pricing for over 65 different ATS, check out this list.

Smart Recruiters 

Smart Recruiters aims to simplify the day-to-day lives of recruiters. It is available in 21 languages and best for companies with 250+ employees. 

Pricing depends on the individual set of features you choose to use and how many employees you have. You can contact the SmartRecruiters team to get a free consultation.

Pros:

• The interface is intuitive and straightforward. The menu divides your tasks into slots that represent each type of asset you work with. These are separate decks for vacancies, working with candidates, reports, things related to administering the system itself, and working with other services that SmartRecruiters have integration with.
• SmartRecruiters integrates with job boards, calendars, and social media. 
• The system informs you about applicants interested in a position and notifies you about any activities occurring.

Cons:

• The system doesn’t allow you to save the part with interview questions. You do not have an opportunity to return to the document and have to complete it in one go.
• Batch processing of application forms is not available. 
• The cloud solution of the service can be slow. 
• No real way to filter candidates.

Choose SmartRecruiters to get the most robust features for FREE for 10 open roles at a time.

• #1 for early startups and businesses on a tight budget.
• FREE for 10 open jobs. Pricing starting at $100/month. Click here to get started.
• Enterprise tool for all industries. The easiest ATS to begin using right now, no demo request necessary.
• Less than 2% negative reviews across 3 sites that unbiasedly aggregate user reviews. Check it out:
• Reviews on G2
• Reviews on Capterra
• Reviews on GetApp

Lever

Lever offers recruitment software for everything you might need to architect talent connections and have complete pipeline coverage. 

The company offers three service packages, which are Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. There are no fixed prices as each of the packages can be tailored to your specific needs and organization size.

Pros:

• Lever has many high-quality integrations with other tools and services, such as Slack, Google Suite, LinkedIn, and others. 
• Easy to use, allows keeping all data about candidates organized and all notes from the interviews.  
• Lever can be customized to reflect the individual needs of your company’s recruiting process. 
• It allows you to go back and review the candidate’s feedback. 
• Allows importing profiles from the web. 
• Two-way email sync, both for hiring managers and recruiters, is available.
•  Lever checks resumes for specific keywords related to each role. But note that If a candidate uploads a resume that doesn’t include the needed keywords, the chances that his resume will show up as “compatible” or “matched” are slim. 

Cons:

• You cannot see the history of who has visited the profile. 
• No job post automation.

Choose Lever to get the most robust features and software support at an affordable price point:

• #1 in value.
• $3,500/yr (estimate based on reviews, talk to Lever to get the best deal for your company).
• Enterprise tool designed specifically for tech recruiting. Excellent UI and UX.
• Less than 1% negative reviews across 3 sites that unbiasedly aggregate user reviews. Check it out:
• Reviews on G2
• Reviews on Capterra
• Reviews on TrustPilot

iCIMS

Internet Collaborative Information Management Systems or iCIMS, has been on the market since 2000. The company has over 50 partnerships with other services to make the user experience as smooth as possible. 

You can get Standard package of services for $299 a month, or choose to go for additional recruitment users, which will be additional $89 per a recruitment user a month. You also have an option to have additional hiring manager option. This will cost you extra $10 per a user.

Pros:

• iCIMS is well-integrated with social media and allows candidates to apply for positions using their social media profiles. 
• It has mobile career portals that allow recruiters to upload the data, access candidates easily, and speed up the entire recruiting process from their phones. 
• Social media websites and all job boards integrated with iCIMS automatically send out talent’s postings and resumes to the system.

Cons:

• Many users claim that the interface is unintuitive, and the design isn’t appealing. 
• No option would allow reporting about why the candidate was not accepted and which manager made the decision. 
• Can be buggy
• Users often point out that getting in touch with technical support is tricky.

Breezy HR

Breezy HR is an ATS with more than 5000 clients and works well for small and large teams. 

When starting with BreezyHR, you’ll have four tiers to choose from.

“Bootstrap” is a free option that includes one active position, one talent pool, and a few other features. 

The “Startup” model costs $143. It enables you to work with an unlimited number of positions and talent pools and has 23 additional features.

“Business” costs $399 and, in addition to an unlimited number of positions and talent pools, enables you to work with 40 other features. 

You can also reach out to the Breezy HR team and create a customized service package.

Pros:

• Lets you describe your vacancy and automatically broadcasts your job post to all integrated platforms, including LinkedIn, Glassdoor, StackOverflow, Google for jobs, WayUp, CareerBuilder, Dice, ZipRecruiter, and many more. 
• Easy to schedule interviews and move candidates along the hiring process.
• A built-in ranking and feedback system allow you to keep track of insights captured during the hiring process.
• Offers templates that automate your workflow.  
• The interface is intuitive and straightforward.

Cons:

• Initial set up is time-consuming and tedious.
• You have to be very cautious about where you are clicking, as an accidental click out of the open box you work in automatically closes the document.
• The calendar does not often function properly, which can sometimes lead to meetings being booked by different people at the same time.

5.

RecruiterBox

RecruiterBox is an ATS currently being used by more than 1500 growing businesses and corporations. To illustrate, some of their clients are the US Dept of Energy (ARPAE), Lonely Planet, Couchsurfing, and many more. 

RecruiterBox offers three different feature packages, which are “Starter,” “Pro,” and “Pro Plus.” To determine the price, you’ll have to reach out to the RecruiterBox team; it is not mentioned on their website.

Pros:

• It is easy to use and customize. 
• Customer service is impeccable. 
• It allows you to see whether the candidate applied for more than one position within your company.
• There’s an option that allows you to scrape social media profiles of candidates to gain a better social portrait of the candidate. 
• RecruiterBox constantly iterates and strives for improvement based on its users' reviews. 
• The layout is intuitive, and the design is appealing.

Cons:

• It doesn’t allow you to work with more than one page of candidates at a time. 
• It is impossible to transfer jobs from one account to another.

ClearCompany

ClearCompany is a complete Talent Management Software created to ease the processes of workforce planning, hiring, and engaging top professionals in the industry. 

ClearCompany does not publicly mention their pricing policy. To learn the details, you have to reach out to the team.

Pros:

• Clear Company provides real-time updates.
• All onboarding documents are in one place. 
• The system provides texting features to reach candidates on the go.  
• It has an organized and transparent applicant-tracking system.

Cons:

• The system is not easy to navigate and is quite unfriendly to users overall. 
• Lacks additional fields for adding needed info.
  

Pinpoint

Pinpoint is a newcomer in the applicant tracking system arena. The company claims to reduce recruitment costs by 27% while helping you attract three times more candidates when you switch over from your current ATS.   

Pinpoint’s pricing starts at $5000 a year. There is no free trial but you can request a free demo.

Pros:

• The interface is intuitive and straightforward. There are optional features that allow you to speed up the recruitment process and automate certain parts. 
• Members of a team can access, rate, comment on candidates, and even sort them so that by the time the hiring decision has to be made, all candidates are reviewed, and all ideas have been shared. 
• All of the data is in one place and allows a secure and effortless transfer of the candidates between the interview stages.
• They have employer branding tools to help build appealing career sites and social campaigns.

Cons:

• The platform is only web-based.
• Pinpoint is more suitable for in-house HR/hiring teams as it doesn’t possess much of the necessary functionality that recruiting agencies need.

Avature

Avature is an enterprise SaaS platform for candidate acquisition and talent management. Six hundred fifty companies use this system from all over the world, 110 of them are Fortune 500, and 28 are present on the Forbes Global list. 

Avature pricing depends on your level of customisation. The service offer comes in three packages: Minimal at $2500 Standard $10,000 and Full Customization $25,000 per year.

Pros:

• Available in 32 languages. 
• Highly customizable, making it stand out among similar services.
• Avature allows you to track employee referrals and engagement, manage onboarding, performance, and many other indexes. 
• Premium consulting and integration services are available.

Cons:

• There are a lot of steps you can’t automate
• There is no free trial available. 
• No free entry-level setup. 
• Though the abundance of features is a huge benefit, it is sometimes confusing to navigate features and choices available.

Greenhouse

Greenhouse software covers all stages of the recruitment process. The Greenhouse team advocates for data-driven recruiting and built their system with seamless access to analytics and quality performance in mind.

Pricing ranges from $6,000 for companies with less than a hundred employees to $25,000 per year for larger enterprises. The Greenhouse ATS offers a free demo.

Pros:

• This ATS is easy to use yet very customizable. 
• It easily integrates with external links (LinkedIn, job board websites, and electronic signing).
• It is easy to transfer candidates from one stage to another, and workflow is well-managed at every step of the process. 
• Offers customizable email templates.

Cons:

• It doesn’t allow you to message candidates via text. 
• The calendar system does not always work smoothly. 
• Reports can only be slightly customized. 

Choose Greenhouse if you're looking for software at an enterprise level and need the most robust ATS to optimize and save costs in your recruitment process.

• $6,600/yr (estimate based on user reviews, talk to Greenhouse to get the best deal for your company).
• #1 for integrations.
• Enterprise tool designed for tech recruiting. Most robust analytics, integrates with everything.
• Less than 1% negative reviews across 3 sites that unbiasedly aggregate user reviews. Check it out:
• Reviews on G2
• Reviews on Capterra
• Reviews on GetApp

‍

Workable

Workable is an ATS that offers scalable features, accelerates the hiring process, and allows all interviewers to collaborate closely. 

Workable pricing starts at $99 a month. You can also go with an annual payment plan; the price will vary according to your chosen features.  However, it is possible to start a free trial and request a demo version of the ATS.

Pros:

• The interface is user friendly both on web and mobile versions.
• Always releasing new useful features. 
• Allows you to easily share your ideas after interviewing a candidate and see what other input your colleagues have.
• The platform is customizable yet simple to navigate.

Cons:

• Cant scan base using keyword-based search. 
• tricky to import certain documents

11. 

Zoho Recruit

It's a popular and useful tool for analyzing and tracking CVs, candidate activity, scheduling interviews, and assessments, publishing job posts and making key updates to your HR databases.

The monthly payment starts at $20.

Pros

• Great features for email automation depending on the status of the candidates
• Lots of helpful templates for various HR processes
• Convenient CV parsing in doc, docx, and pdf formats
• The service allows you not only to publish current vacancies but also to create a simple website with your openings
• There are many useful add-ons for the service that further expand its functionality

Cons

• Sometimes there is not enough flexibility for individual roles or departments
• Some processes can be slightly simplified (for example, initial setup)

12.

JazzHR

This service also has everything that is required of a strong ATS. You can automate both the processes of working with candidates, vacancies, and with clients (CRM functions). This solution is best suited for internal recruiting, especially in small businesses. It can also work for recruiting agencies.

Prices range from $39 per month for small teams to $339 per month (unlimited Pro plan).

Pros

• Flexible and intuitive UX design
• It makes the candidate sourcing process much easier
• Flexible for recruiting teamwork
• Convenient system of creating and signing job offers

Cons

• There is room for improvement with the reporting function
• Not enough support for the mobile app

For more information on ATS costs check on this comprehensive list from ongig.com

Choosing the ATS that fits your business's specific hiring objectives is an essential part of the hiring process. The number of Jobs in the IT sector are outgrowing the available talent qualified to fill them. In this talent short market It is becoming increasingly harder and harder to find the candidates we need in the time frames allotted.

Choosing the right ATS can help you overcome that issue by optimizing your  recruitment process with operational efficiency, making it easier and faster to find and follow up with potential hires in an organized manner. In addition to that, you will be able to implement a more data driven hiring process, reduce candidate drop off rates and improve your time to hire.

If you don’t have anything to fill your ATS with, we are here to help. Book a free 15 minutes call with our team, and we’ll find you the best candidates out there.‍