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5 top ATS systems for healthcare recruiting

September 18, 2025
16 min read
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Whether you’re a small family medicine practice seeking top primary care physicians or a large hospital chain filling your locum tenens roster, you need a comprehensive recruiting platform purpose-built for healthcare.

As a busy healthcare recruiter, human resources (HR) specialist, or executive, you don’t have time to research platforms between emergencies. We’ve compiled our five top ATS systems for healthcare recruiting, focusing on features critical for finding staff who ensure stellar patient care.

 

Key factors for choosing a healthcare ATS

Compliance

Healthcare ATS platforms must facilitate license and background checks while complying with JCAHO, HIPAA, OSHA, and EEOC standards. They should also maintain top security certifications to prevent sensitive staff data breaches.

Integration with healthcare systems

Look for an ATS with turnkey integrations with your entire tech stack, including your electronic health or medical record (EHR/EMR), payroll, human capital management (HCM), scheduling, accounting, supply chain management, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

This prevents data silos for a more holistic and seamless experience for candidates, employees, and patients.

Workflow automation and speed to hire

Your healthcare ATS should help you source, hire, and onboard staff quickly, especially for urgent roles or meeting Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ratios.

Essential features for high-turnover industries include:

  • Automations for posting, screening, and onboarding, such as automatic stage progressions and disqualifications based on your criteria.
  • Talent pools for sourcing past candidates, like silver medalists, as necessary.
  • Contingent workforce tools for connecting with and managing contractors to fill staffing gaps, such as locum tenens or other specialties.
  • Predictive analytics to forecast time to fill and hiring spend for key positions.

Mobile optimization

Most medical staff work odd hours or have limited time to research, apply, or onboard for new roles between providing patient care.

The best healthcare ATSs support mobile recruiting, allowing candidates to apply through mobile-friendly interfaces and communicate with recruiters via text. In turn, on-the-go recruitment teams can respond, screen, and interview talent with the ATS’s mobile app.

Scalability and role-specific customization

The ATS should scale to your needs, managing high-volume hiring across multiple positions, entities, and locations. It should accommodate role diversity, allowing you to customize hiring stages and assessments for everyone from certified nursing assistants (CNAs) to surgeons.

User experience

The ATS interface should be intuitive enough for candidates to apply easily and robust enough to support advanced workflows for various recruitment stakeholders.

Dashboards and platform navigation must be user-friendly to ensure broad adoption by busy healthcare teams. Customer and technical support teams should be readily available for issues.

Internal mobility and referral support

Healthcare applicant tracking systems must come with features to support internal recruiting efforts to fill positions and skill gaps faster.

This includes features like employee referral programs to source talent from existing networks, opportunity marketplaces encouraging current talent to expand skills, and internal job board access.

DEI and community alignment

As a 2025 study in The Lancet explains, diversity and intersectionality in healthcare workforces provide lasting benefits for patient care, research innovation, and talent shortage solutions.

Leading healthcare ATS platforms include diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) tools meeting affirmative action regulations and supporting diverse hiring that reflects local communities. Example features include prebuilt DEI reports and blind hiring tools that reduce unconscious bias.

Reporting and analytics

Search for an ATS with prebuilt healthcare recruiting reports, such as credential lag times and recruitment costs for medical-specific job boards and hiring events.

Metrics like time to fill and source of hire should also come standard, alongside advanced capabilities like customizable data visualizations, trend analysis, and benchmarking for more granular insights.

Don’t currently use talent acquisition software? First, learn about applicant tracking systems (ATSs) and how they level up your recruiting efforts.

 

1. iCIMS – Best overall ATS for healthcare

iCIMS displays a list of candidate names and a side panel on the right with blank fields, like job information, filters, folders, and location, for searching the list by various criteria.

iCIMS allows you to engage at scale and rediscover past talent with dynamic talent pools that surface qualified candidates based on key criteria, including licenses and other credentials.

iCIMS is a comprehensive, enterprise-grade recruitment platform that includes a best-in-class ATS (iCIMS Hire), candidate relationship management (CRM) system (iCIMS Engage), and recruitment marketing solution (iCIMS Employer Branding).

Combined, this allows you to attract, source, nurture, and onboard candidates in the same system.

In particular, it offers powerful healthcare-focused features to find and hire clinical, administrative, and support staff quickly with customizable automations, a generative AI-powered assistant, and omnichannel marketing campaigns.

Need to meet minimum staffing levels ASAP? Leverage iCIMS’ talent pools, which you can customize based on location, department, roles, skills, and credentials for qualified talent at a moment’s notice.

Want to attract specialized clinical talent to apply? Have your RNs film day-in-the-life videos with iCIMS Video Studio to highlight your employer value proposition (EVP), from your employee benefits to your mission to serve the broader community with free clinic hours.

iCIMS’ flexible system also means it adapts to your healthcare recruiting needs, whether you’re a local clinic or a multilocation health system. It scales with you as you grow, allowing you to adjust workflows when and where you need them.

Pros

  • Integrations: Integrates natively with popular human resources information systems (HRISs) and third-party credentialing and assessment, sourcing, and screening tools.
  • Configurability: Supports multi-brand, multi-geo, and highly-regulated healthcare hiring needs.
  • DEI tools: Offers DEI reports and candidate experience analytics to align with healthcare equity goals.
  • Scalability: Built for enterprise, iCIMS supports complex organizations with diverse hiring needs. 
  • Flexibility: Purchase just the ATS, its entire talent acquisition platform, or select the right combination of sourcing, hiring, and talent pool tools that fit your organization’s needs.

Cons

  • High learning curve: Customizable and powerful user interface (UI) makes it harder for users new to recruitment software.
  • Expensive for small teams: Advanced and customizable features make iCIMS costly compared to plug-and-play ATS options.

Top Benefit: Streamlines credentialing and compliance across large-scale healthcare networks.

 

2. symplr (HealthcareSource)

symplr displays its Recruiting module with empty fields for candidate contact information in a right-side panel and advanced search fields on the left.

Caption: symplr Recruiting interface. (Source: symplr).

symplr Talent Management Solutions, previously HealthcareSource, is the only purpose-built healthcare recruitment software in this roundup.

It offers solutions to manage the entire healthcare employee life cycle, from recruitment marketing to staff scheduling and contract management. For hospitals or long-term care providers, you can even manage your provider network and supply chain spending.

Like the rest of its software ecosystem, its ATS, symplr Recruiting, provides tools particularly suited for healthcare. You can leverage short-form applications — collecting only applicant contact information and résumés — to reduce high drop-off rates from busy clinicians.

It also handles onboarding with the ability to gather necessary documentation and even create custom forms and templates.

What’s more, symplr offers additional modules to round out your talent acquisition (TA) efforts, including Talent Sourcing, Assessments, and a Credential Verification Organization (CVO) for providers approved by the Joint Commission.

It enables you to operate all these functions from the same unified platform, from nurturing passive candidates with automated, targeted messaging to verifying practitioners’ skills with science-backed behavioral surveys.

Pros

  • All-in-one system: Designed for healthcare from the ground up, with recruiting, workforce planning, position control, spend management, safety, and scheduling modules.
  • Healthcare-focused GRC: Complies and aligns with EEOC, JCAHO, OSHA, and EEOC standards.
  • Healthcare integrations: Provides turnkey integrations with popular healthcare operations tech, like EMR/EHR systems.
  • Security: Maintains top IT security certifications, including HITRUST and SOC 1 Type II and SOC 2 Type II, to protect sensitive medical information.

Cons

  • Legacy system: Platform comprises multiple acquisitions over the years, resulting in an outdated, unintuitive UI compared to others in this list.
  • Limited API: Does not offer the same level of API connections as more flexible, newer systems.
  • Limited AI functionality: symplr’s “Authentic Intelligence” lacks GenAI capabilities for efficient recruiting template creation and candidate communication.

Top Benefit: An entirely healthcare-focused tech ecosystem and customer service staff that reduces compliance risks.

 

3. Workday Recruiting

Workday displays its recruiting dashboard with a doughnut graph at the top, displaying the number of candidates in different recruitment stages, above task lists for assessments, screening, and new referred candidates.

Workday Recruiting dashboard. (Source: Workday).

Workday is a popular HCM and ERP platform with modules for payroll, finance, learning, workforce planning, and employee engagement.

Although not purpose-built like symplr, it boasts a clientele of over 850 healthcare organizations, a testament to its strong functionality and configurability for the industry.

Workday Recruiting is its TA module that includes its ATS alongside candidate sourcing and engagement features. It also comes with its platform-wide AI, Illuminate, to offer insights that improve your efficiency within the flow of work.

This is key for healthcare recruitment, where high turnover and constant competition require meaningful strategies to reduce hiring bottlenecks and improve time to fill.

Another noteworthy feature of Workday is its internal recruiting capabilities to support career development and reduce reliance on external job requisitions. For example, Workday’s Talent Marketplace allows you to advertise gigs, projects, and other opportunities to staff to level up their skills.

It also recommends opportunities for workers to support their career growth based on their competencies and interests.

These features are essential for healthcare organizations, as they help fill necessary positions and decrease recruitment costs while fostering transferable staff skills that promote a more agile workforce.

For example, you can create opportunity pathways for CNAs to get real-world training toward RN certification.

Pros

  • AI-enabled: Supports AI recruiting through candidate matching, assessment grading, and talent discovery.
  • Blind hiring: Reduces hiring biases through masked candidate screening for equitable hiring.
  • Reporting and analytics: Surfaces deep insights by uniting data across finance, payroll, and recruiting.
  • Contingent workforce management: Offers a dedicated module to facilitate contracts, onboarding, and communication with your extended workforce, including locums and per-diem labor.

Cons

  • High cost: Most sources indicate it’s one of the most expensive workforce management platforms on the market.
  • Complexity: Not suitable for smaller organizations and requires configuration for healthcare compliance.
  • Recruiting is not a standalone product: You must purchase its core HCM product to access its Recruiting module, which adds to the cost.

Top Benefit: Unites HR and recruiting in one place to quickly source top talent internally and externally.

 

4. Jobvite

Jobvite displays a profile for a candidate named Bertrand Blanc, including their headshot, job title, contact information, history, and hiring statistics.

Jobvite’s candidate profile interface. (Source: Jobvite).

Jobvite is Employ’s medium-to-large business recruitment solution. It’s not purpose-built for healthcare, requiring you to configure assessment and screening workflows to fit credentialing requirements.

But, it makes up for this with robust marketing features for sourcing passive candidates and building out talent pools by various criteria. This is particularly useful when scaling hiring for frontline staff, like EMTs, medical assistants, nurses, and pharmacists.

Jobvite allows you to engage candidates through targeted messaging distributed across multiple channels, including email, text, web, and social media, so your content surfaces where your talent gathers.

Advanced features, like Jobvite’s search engine optimization (SEO) tools, maximize content visibility to ensure messaging reaches the right audience, driving conversions and enhancing your employer brand.

You can automate campaigns to take actions based on various candidate factors, like location, skills, and interests, adding personalization without burning out your recruitment team.

Jobvite also provides top data analysis capabilities, including out-of-the-box reporting for basic recruitment metrics like time to hire.

One standout feature is benchmarking, allowing you to compare quarterly recruitment performance with peers. This helps pinpoint inefficiencies so you can implement new strategies faster.

Pros

  • Advanced career sites: Supports dynamic content for different audiences and comes with a content management system, RSS feeds, and a chatbot.
  • Native eSignature: Receive offer letter and contract signatures without the need for a third-party integration.
  • Powerful data visualizations: Uncover insights on hiring efficiency with benchmarks and applicant heat maps.

Cons

  • Requires multiple modules for full functionality: Career site branding, DEI tools, candidate communication, and onboarding are separate modules rather than included in its ATS.
  • Basic credential tracking: Must manually configure rules for healthcare credential tracking or integrate with a third-party platform.

Top Benefit: Accelerates hiring with automated outreach across various mediums.

 

5. SmartRecruiters

Three screenshots display different SmartRecruiter dashboards, including an interview template, a calendar for determining scheduling preferences, and a button to activate auto self-schedule.

SmartRecruiters’ dynamic scheduling dashboards. (Source: SmartRecruiters).

SmartRecruiters is another recruitment-focused platform similar to iCIMS and Jobvite. It offers similar capabilities too, including ATS, CRM, onboarding, job distribution, text recruiting, and analytics modules, plus its AI-powered assistant, Winston, for candidate matching.

Perhaps one of SmartRecruiters’ biggest selling points is its simplicity, which is great for large-scale adoption, especially among hiring managers.

Your HR and recruitment teams don’t have to spend countless hours training staff on platform functionality, allowing stakeholders to start screening talent without interrupting duties that sacrifice patient care.

This ease of use extends to the candidate experience as well by simplifying application submission and interview scheduling to reduce the chance of dropouts.

And with mobile-friendly capabilities, such as SMS and WhatsApp texting, you can reach healthcare candidates at their convenience.

SmartRecruiters also offers features facilitating global hiring, allowing you to hire expert talent regardless of location.

This includes automatic interface localization and candidate experience support for 37 languages, perfect for finding and filling gaps in critical roles like nurses, allied health professionals, and residential care workers.

In the news: SAP, a global ERP software company, announced its acquisition of SmartRecruiters on August 1, 2025. It plans to incorporate SmartRecruiters’ user-friendly capabilities into its HCM product, SAP SuccessFactors. While this doesn’t affect SmartRecruiters’ offerings now, expect changes on the horizon.

Pros

  • Intuitive UI: User-friendly interface mirrors small and medium-sized business (SMB) platforms for quick implementation, accessibility, and collaboration among care teams.
  • Open API: Allows for custom integrations with your healthcare tech with little to no code required.
  • Transparent subscription tiers: Offers four plans — Essential, Professional, High Volume, and Complete — starting at $14,995, for better cost comparison and budgeting.

Cons

  • Lacks healthcare customization: Standard plug-and-play features require additional customization to meet healthcare compliance and workflow needs.
  • New AI functionality: AI functions, including Winston AI chat, are newer compared to others in this roundup, so monitor GenAI responses for accuracy and expect occasional bugs.

Top Benefit: Enables fast, collaborative hiring across distributed care teams.

 

Choose the right ATS for healthier hiring outcomes

When you’re spending all of your time simply finding talent to meet minimum CMS levels, patient care suffers as worker credentialing and screening lag behind.

Building candidate rapport also becomes impossible since you can’t demonstrate an employer value proposition (EVP) that inspires long-term organizational commitment. This leads to early attrition, restarting the costly recruitment process all over again.

Basic ATS platforms that function as little more than candidate databases aren’t enough to meet the challenges of healthcare recruiting. At minimum, you need:

  • Credential tracking capabilities to keep on top of licenses and certifications for staff.
  • Compliance with healthcare standards, including JCAHO, HIPAA, and OSHA.
  • Automations, including candidate communications, to move healthcare talent through hiring stages faster.
  • Advanced talent search, including filters, résumé parsing, tags, and boolean capabilities for surfacing talent based on multiple criteria.

As a bonus, your ATS should offer add-on recruitment marketing to build talent pools you can quickly source for critical roles, including those with specific skillsets like Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS).

iCIMS balances healthcare recruitment team needs by offering advanced, AI-powered automations, native credential tracking, and robust analytics with candidate experience features that increase applications from qualified talent.

If you’re ready to upgrade your recruiting efficiency and avoid vacancies, check out iCIMS Healthcare and hospital recruiting software.

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About the author

Alex Oliver

Alex is well-versed in content and digital marketing. He blends a passion for sharp, persuasive copy with creating intuitive user experiences on the web. A natural storyteller, Alex highlights customer successes and amplifies their best practices.

Alex earned his bachelor’s degree at Fairleigh Dickinson University before pursuing his master’s at Montclair State University. When not at work, Alex enjoys hiking, studying history and homebrewing beer.

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