What to look for in an applicant tracking system: Complete buyer’s guide

June 10, 2026

 

Gazmend Kalicovic

11 min read

Key takeaways

• The right applicant tracking system for you depends on your hiring complexity, volume, and long-term growth plans.
• Beyond compliance, candidate data management, and application tracking, the best ATSs come with AI and customizable automations for high-growth companies.
• When evaluating ATSs, understand your hiring priorities and come prepared with questions on how the product will work in real-world scenarios.
• Enterprise-grade ATS platforms with advanced customization and governance protocols, like iCIMS, are key to handling complex hiring needs at scale.

Remember when your recruiting features inside your human resources information system (HRIS) stopped cutting it? Or, when screening applications for a single requisition took days? Maybe the constant manual dragging of candidates into talent pools tipped you off.

A basic hiring module isn’t enough. And with your hiring needs exploding for new locations and upcoming seasonal work demands, a basic standalone applicant tracking system (ATS) won’t work either. You need one with clear reporting, configurable workflows, and automations that can handle the application influx.

Let’s explore what to look for in an applicant tracking system, from essential to advanced features, plus how to evaluate your hiring needs and the recruitment vendors available today.

What is an applicant tracking system, and what does it do?

An applicant tracking system is a software platform that collects, organizes, and manages candidate applications for open roles.

ATSs used to be glorified spreadsheets — just candidate data and résumé repositories connected to open requisitions. They kept records centralized and introduced faster candidate search, tagging, and filtering.

Today’s ATSs are far more sophisticated. Instead of just a candidate database, they help recruiting teams progress candidates through the recruitment funnel, track hiring metrics like time-to-fill, and comply with data privacy and security regulations.

Many offer automations that speed up candidate sourcing, evaluation, and communication. Others provide native integrations with more advanced recruitment tech, including candidate relationship management (CRM) systems or marketing automation platforms.

This makes ATSs essential for recruitment teams. The American Heart Association, for example, saved over 1,000 hours annually by automating recruitment processes using iCIMS’ ATS. It allowed recruiters to focus on building candidate relationships.

What core features should your team expect in a modern ATS?

Key features of applicant tracking systems include:

Miss any one of these core features and you create operational risk. You’ll lag behind competitors that leverage applicant tracking systems to discover top talent first.

Advanced ATS capabilities that separate basic tools from long-term solutions

All ATS solutions should include the above features, but only a few offer capabilities designed to improve efficiency, scalability, and long-term strategy. Depending on your hiring goals, you may need these advanced applicant tracking system features:

• Support for 20+ open requisitions: Manage job requisitions simultaneously across entities and locations, keeping them active for evergreen hiring.
• Configurable workflows: Customize workflows to control hiring processes by different roles, regions, and hiring types.
• Automation: Use conditional logic to automate candidate communication, recruiter task assignments, reminders, approvals, and initial prescreening for high-volume hiring.
• Advanced search: Use natural language to find best-fit talent across pipelines and past applicants.
• AI-powered tools: Increase efficiency with AI to screen and match candidates to roles and generate job descriptions, interview questions, and screening criteria.
• Candidate experience tools: Improve candidate experience with portals for applying to multiple positions, tracking status, and providing feedback.
• Advanced reporting and analytics: Access data visualizations and predictive analytics to strategize recruitment plans tied to business goals like employee retention.
• Integration networks and open APIs: Connect your ATS to your entire business tech stack for seamless data transfer across people systems, including HR, onboarding, and payroll.
• Global hiring: Multiple language support, GDPR compliance, syndication to local job boards, and time zone management to facilitate international growth.

How do ATS needs differ by company size and hiring complexity?

The best ATS platform varies by company. What works for your competitor won’t necessarily work for you.

It largely depends on your company’s size and hiring goals. For example, larger companies typically hire more often just to maintain the current headcount. A company aiming to expand into a new market will want to hire local employees.

Generally, startups only need basic ATSs to handle infrequent hiring. Midsize companies look for ATSs with stronger permissions and role management for growing departments. And, enterprises want ATSs with AI and automation to support diverse global hiring, process consistency, and positive candidate experiences.

However, this isn’t universal. A startup with aggressive growth may want an advanced ATS to quickly fill talent needs.

As a result, think long-term when evaluating ATS. A basic system will fall short once you hire for many locations and manage massive application volumes.

An advanced ATS with AI candidate screening and automation efficiently filters top candidates and organizes them into talent pools, even if your hiring team headcount doesn’t change.

For more complex recruitment processes, like sourcing talent for hard-to-fill roles, learn how to combine an ATS with a CRM system.

How to choose the right applicant tracking system

Determine the right ATS for you by following these steps.

1. Assess hiring pain points, goals, and budget

Connect with recruitment stakeholders to identify what’s working and what isn’t in your hiring process. Are teams collaborating well? How easily do candidates move through the pipeline? Where are the bottlenecks?

Understand your current and future hiring needs and budget. Hiring managers and leadership can provide insights on business objectives and budget constraints. HR specialists can offer input on headcount, succession, and internal mobility plans.

2. Identify must-have vs. nice-to-have features

With hiring goals in mind, create a checklist of must-have versus nice-to-have features. Some features, like AI candidate screening and matching, may be necessary depending on your size and goals, even if you don’t currently have them.

Listen to your recruitment team when making these lists since they’ll interact with the system daily. If a new ATS doesn’t meet their needs, they’re less likely to use it fully.

3. Demo products with recruitment stakeholders

Prioritize ATS product demos with all recruitment stakeholders: recruiters, leadership, hiring managers, HR, compliance, and IT teams. Each has different priorities and wants to see how the ATS handles their needs in action.

Demoing products and aligning with stakeholders are critical for adoption. Together, you’ll evaluate the product interface across use cases, assess training and support options, and understand implementation timelines.

4. Shortlist vendors based on fit

Use your feature checklist, hiring goals, product demos, and budget to shortlist top vendors. Remember that the best vendor for you may not be the most popular or brand recognizable.

Always choose the one with the best support or willingness to adapt to your processes. This improves your chances of hiring success with the new platform.

Key questions to ask when evaluating ATS vendors

Come prepared with questions as you evaluate vendors and ATS features with your recruitment stakeholders. Here are some to get started:

• How many job requisitions can you have active simultaneously across different entities and locations?
• How configurable are workflows without custom development?
• What in-app collaboration features connect recruiters, hiring managers, and other stakeholders?
• What AI tools do you offer for résumé parsing, candidate matching, and content generation?
• Does the platform support self-scheduling for interviews and automatic candidate messaging and reminders?
• What reporting and analytics are available out of the box?
• What support do you have for global hiring?
• How does the ATS integrate with my existing HR and recruiting tools?
• How does the platform support compliance, security, and data privacy?
• What implementation, training, and ongoing support do you include?
• What’s your approach to product innovation and updates?

Want more questions? Check out 17 questions to ask your applicant tracking system vendor.

What to look for in an ATS demo

Product demos are your chance to validate vendor claims. Be an active participant in the demo, not a passive viewer.

First, ensure key stakeholders attend, particularly recruiters, IT, and one or two hiring managers. This helps them understand the platform’s usability and how it supports their recruitment tasks.

Second, bring your preparation materials and be ready to ask about them:

• Hiring goals.
• Must-have versus nice-to-have ATS features.
• Vendor questions.

Finally, determine which workflows you want to see live. This gives you a chance to see whether the ATS will complement, enhance, and streamline existing processes or force you to implement new ones.

Common workflows you’ll want ATS vendors to show live include:

• An ideal end-to-end recruitment workflow.
• Workflows that address specific pain points.
• Unique case scenarios, like duplicate candidates and the same requisition for multiple locations.
• Actual data sync between key integrations.

Pro tip: Let ATS vendors know ahead of time what workflows, hiring scenarios, integrations, or dealbreakers you want them to address during the demo. This ensures vendors tailor demos to how you actually hope to use the system rather than present generic feature showcases.

Common mistakes teams make when choosing an ATS

Don’t get caught up in these pitfalls during ATS evaluation:

• Prioritizing cost over value: Settling for an ATS within tight budget constraints could lead to higher long-term costs through upgrades, support, or replacement.
• Hyperfocusing on the user interface: A nice interface doesn’t necessarily mean the ATS includes the configurability needed to support high-volume hiring.
• Neglecting change management and adoption: Without stakeholder buy-in, proper training, and support, you’ll face poor adoption rates.
• Ignoring reporting and analytics: Overlooking recruitment metrics and goal-tracking means you can’t accurately measure hiring quality or efficiency gains and adjust your strategy accordingly.
• Poor growth planning: Focusing only on current needs means you’ll outgrow the system quickly.
• Underestimating implementation timelines: Rushing data migration, workflow creation, integrations, and rollout leads to messy data and patchwork processes.

How iCIMS supports TA teams with a state-of-the-art enterprise ATS

You know now what to look for in an applicant tracking system. But with such a saturated market, which vendors should you start with?

Most vendors will lure you in with the newest, flashiest features or a fun interface that looks like a social media feed. But, few have the years of credibility, testing, and system refining to actually support enterprise needs rather than break under a constant stream of candidate applications.

iCIMS ATS does more than manage applicant tracking. It transforms your recruiter team into strategists with:

• Reporting and analytics that connect hiring to business outcomes.
• Recruitment process automation and responsible AI that speed up efficiency and improve candidate experience.
• Compliance and data governance for complex recruitment processes and business structures.
• Customizable workflows that adapt to diverse hiring processes.

See how iCIMS helps teams choose an ATS that scales with their hiring needs. Book a free iCIMS demo.