Best Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) Recommended Most Times by HR Pros

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A suitable Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a must-have for optimizing the overall recruiting process. The benefits of using the most suitable Applicant Tracking System are extensive. Most good ATS’s reduce the time-to-hire process and have a positive effect on the candidate’s experiences. However, there are many types of HR Tools that can be used for different and specific goals. In general, HR Tools can be grouped into 3 main HR categories, being (i) Recruiting HR Tools, (ii) Administrative HR Tools, and (iii) Human Capital Management HR Tools. The Applicant Tracking System fits in the first category, Recruiting HR Tools.

The only problem is that there are a lot of HR Tools out there, and they are all screaming for your attention. There are more than 81 million sites that have something to say about Human Resource Information Systems. Luckily, not all of them are actual ATS or HR Application vendors, but you get the idea, right?

The features of an ATS can be highly diverse, yet the primary purpose of the tool is to make the recruitment process more efficient for both the recruiter as well as the candidate. So which ATS-systems are successful in providing the applications and features you need, and how can you find them? You can do a google search and search for the Best Applicant Tracking Systems, but then you get hundreds of “Best of Lists” in front of you, so that doesn’t help a lot either unless you want to spend a full day going through all those lists. Well, that is precisely what we did! We searched for 50 “Best of Lists” highlighting the most recommended ATS-systems, then we selected and combined the 18 most valuable “Best of Lists” and earmarked and ranked what ATS Systems keep up appearing on most of those recently published lists. From a total of 108 ATS Software Tools compared, reviewed and ranked, here is the Top 20 of Most Recommended Applicant Tracking Systems around that appear on most of the “Best of Lists”.

As we are a small business, we use/have used quite a number of the tools discussed on our Blog ourselves for optimizing our blog and our platform. On our Consultants 500 platform, you can compare and search for all kinds of Professional Services Providers, including Recruiting & HR Experts. If you are a Recruiting or HR Expert yourself, you can always create a free profile on our Platform if you want to. It only takes a few minutes, and no credit card is needed for opening doors to new opportunities. It’s all up to you. See here how it works.

Top 20 of Best Applicant Tracking Systems
Most Recommended

#1. Oracle Taleo Cloud Service / Twitter
Listed 9 out of 18 times. Oracle Taleo leverages recruitment, marketing, and employee referrals to source talent, provide end-to-end recruiting, and streamline employee onboarding. It helps recruiters assess talent, increase bench strength, and gives candidates the option to apply with their resume or their LinkedIn profile, with or without a cover letter.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Oracle Taleo
Guide: Oracle Taleo
Their Blog
User Reviews

#2. Zoho Recruit / Twitter
Listed 11 out of 18 times. Zoho Recruit is a web-based recruiting solution for small to mid-sized businesses. The software’s comprehensive applicant tracking system (ATS) includes resume parsing, automated job board posting, customized company career pages, resume storage, and interview scheduling.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Zoho Recruit
Guide: Zoho Recruit
Their Blog
Pricing: Free Trial & Monthly Membership (From EUR 22.5)
User Reviews

#3. Jobvite / Twitter

Listed 11 out of 18 times. Jobvite is a recruiting software company that helps emerging, mid-market, and enterprise companies hire top talent easily, efficiently, and effectively. Their comprehensive and analytics-driven recruiting platform accelerates recruiting with a Candidate Recruitment Marketing (CRM) tool, an easy-to-use Applicant Tracking System (ATS), social recruiting capabilities, instant text recruiting, mobile-optimized branded career sites, and recruiting branding solution

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Jobvite
Guide: Jobvite
Their Blog
User Reviews

#4. iCims Talent Acquisition / Twitter
Listed 10 out of 18 times. iCims empowers mid-sized and enterprise employers to win their wars for talent by delivering cloud-based recruiting software solutions within a unified platform and a customer experience that ranks second to none.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: iCims Talent Acquisition
Guide: iCims Talent Acquisition
Their Blog
User Reviews

#5. Greenhouse / Twitter
Listed 15 out of 18 times. Greenhouse helps companies craft a comprehensive plan for finding candidates. Their software makes it easy to create job campaigns that use multiple sources and to track where the most qualified candidates are coming from. They also help companies design an organized, focused interview process and to identify the specific skills and personality traits of an ideal candidate. Then we help them build tailored interview kits, so every interviewer is prepared with questions that focus on identifying those skills and traits.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Greenhouse
Guide: Greenhouse
Their Blog
Pricing: Quote-Based
User Reviews

#6. BambooHR / Twitter
Listed 9 out of 18 times. BambooHR applicant tracking software keeps applicant information organized through every phase of hiring so users can focus on finding the right talent for the job and creating a great candidate experience. BambooHR makes the application process easy on candidates and ensures timely communication at every step of evaluation.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: BambooHR
Guide: BambooHR
Their Blog
Pricing: Quote-Based
User Reviews

#7. Bullhorn / Twitter
Listed 10 out of 18 times. Bullhorn’s powerful, easy-to-use applicant tracking system lets users manage the entire recruitment process from a single interface – from desktop or mobile device, on any browser. From job submission to candidate placement, Bullhorn eliminates manual data entry, streamlines the end-to-end recruiting process, and enables teams to move faster and work smarter.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Bullhorn
Guide: Bullhorn
Their Blog
Pricing: Quote-Based
User Reviews

#8. Workable / Twitter
Listed 12 out of 18 times. Workable helps companies get more qualified candidates by sharing jobs with everyone who’s right for it. With one-click posting to 200+ job sites, AI-powered sourcing, employee referrals, and more, they’ll reach those best-fit candidates actively looking for work, those who may not be looking, and even those your other successful hires already know.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Workable
Guide: Workable
Their Blog
Pricing: Free Trial & Mothly Memberhip ($99 Per Job)
User Reviews

#9. JazzHR / Twitter
Listed 11 out of 18 times. JazzHR is a powerful, user-friendly, and affordable recruiting software that is purpose-built to help growing SMBs exceed their recruiting goals.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: JazzHR
Guide: JazzHR
Their Blog
Pricing: Free Trial & Monthly Membership (From USD 39)
User Reviews

#10. SAP SuccessFactors / Twitter
Listed 6 out of 18 times. SAP SuccessFactors human capital management suite delivers leading onboarding, social business and collaboration tools, a learning management system (LMS), performance management, recruiting software, applicant tracking software, succession planning, talent management, and HR analytics to fulfill our mission of helping organizations of all sizes run their businesses better.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: SAP SucessFactors
Guide: SAP SuccessFactors
Their Blog
User Reviews

#11. SmartRecruiters / Twitter
Listed 7 out of 18 times. SmartRecruiters platform enables global enterprises to fundamentally transform their recruiting into effective talent marketing and sales machines and hire the stars they need to thrive. It provides everything companies need to make this transformation, including Recruitment Marketing, Collaborative Hiring, and a Modern Platform that solves the unique customization, compliance, integration, and analytics needs.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: SmartRecruiters
Guide: SmartRecruiters
Their Blog
Pricing: Quote-Based
User Reviews

#12. IBM Kenexa Talent Acquisition Suite / Twitter
Listed 6 out of 18 times. IBM Kenexa is an innovative CRM tool that is powered by a world-class consumer marketing platform to help recruiters find, attract, engage, and nurture talent. Lead Manager enables you to source top talent, build strong relationships, and generate qualified applicants, as well as measure the effectiveness of recruitment campaigns.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: IBM Kenexa
Guide: IBM Kenexa
Their Blog
Pricing: Quote-Based
User Reviews

#13. UltiPro / Twitter
Listed 7 out of 18 times. Ultimate Software’s UltiPro cloud solution for HR, payroll, and talent management is designed to improve the employee experience. Built with an inherent focus on people, UltiPro helps organizations implement smart people-management strategies to develop highly productive and satisfied workforces.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: UltiPro
Their Blog
User Reviews

#14. Breezy HR / Twitter
Listed 8 out of 18 times. Breezy HR is a modern, visual applicant tracking system that simplifies every step of the recruiting and hiring process. Recruiters can advertise open positions on job boards, organize applicants in drag & drop pipeline, schedule & host video interviews, streamline their team & candidate communication, and save their team a ton of time!

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Breezy HR
Guide: Breezy HR
Their Blog
Pricing: Free & Monthly Membership (From USD 143)
User Reviews

#15. Lever / Twitter
Listed 9 out of 18 times. Lever builds modern recruiting software for teams to source, interview, and hire top talent. Their team strives to set a new bar for enterprise software with modern, well-designed, real-time apps. It is the applicant tracking system of choice for Netflix, Eventbrite, Cirque Du SoleiI, Yelp, change.org, and thousands more leading companies.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Lever
Guide: Lever
Their Blog
Pricing: Quote-Based
User Reviews

#16. Newton / Twitter
Listed 5 out of 18 times. Newton is an applicant tracking system for small and medium-sized employers. It allows recruiters to broadcast jobs through free or premium posts, accept applications, and create the ultimate candidate experience. They can also command central for candidate communication, interview scheduling, feedback gathering, and more.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Newton
Guide: Newton
Their Blog
User Reviews

#17. Workday / Twitter
Listed 6 out of 18 times. Founded in 2005, Workday delivers financial management, human capital management, and analytics applications designed for the world’s largest companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. Their recruiting solution works with the rest of Workday, creating a seamless experience for candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers alike.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Workday
Guide: Workday
Their Blog
User Reviews

#18. ClearCompany / Twitter
Listed 5 out of 18 times. ClearCompany is a Talent Management Software provider that unifies Recruiting, Onboarding, Performance Management, and Goal Tracking. Their suite of software solutions include: – Applicant Tracking System – Paperless Onboarding – Performance Management – Talent Operating System

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: ClearCompany
Guide: ClearCompany
Their Blog
Pricing: Quote-Based
User Reviews

#19. ADP Workforce Now / Twitter
Listed 3 out of 18 times. ADP Workforce Now offers streamlined recruitment, screening, and selection. Users can spot trends and identify candidates for career growth, and reward high performers with a simplified merit and bonus process — complete with compensation guidelines to help enforce their policies.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: ADP Workforce Now
Guide: ADP Workforce Now
Their Blog
User Reviews

#20. Freshteam / Twitter
Listed 3 out of 18 times. Freshteam is an applicant tracking system for recruiters. Recruiters can use Freshteam to manage hiring, on-boarding, time-off, employee data, and HR workflows in one place.

Handy Resources:
Features Overview: Freshteam
Guide: Freshteam
Their Blog
Pricing: Free & Monthly Membership (From USD 50)
User Reviews

What is an Applicant Tracking System &
What Are the Benefits?

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software tool that automates certain parts of the overall recruitment process. The features of an ATS can be very diverse, but the main goal of the tool it to make (certain parts of) the recruitment process more efficient and effective for both the recruiter and the job seeker. The most common features & benefits offered by Applicant Tracking Systems include:

Career page hosting – Here, the open job positions are displayed with all further relevant details.
Job distribution – Via the job distribution feature, your jobs are posted to multiple job boards at once, which can be done for free or against a fee depending on the job boards involved.
Create talent pools Receiving and sorting applications – All applications are kept in one place and can be organized via keywords and labels in the database. This helps to keep things organized, and recruiters can develop talent pools and contact lists to create a structured overview of potential candidates.
Resume storage & background checks – All resumes of your applicants are stored and kept in place centrally at the ATS. Also, background checks and screening CVs can be automated. Some ATS also include a functionality via which you can search the full resume database to finds potential candidates.
Team collaboration – This includes various tools through which your team can work together in the hiring process.
Communication and interviews – Via this tool, you can communicate with your candidates, schedule, and manage interviews.
Onboarding – When you finally hired your candidate, the onboarding tool smoothens the last steps in the process by welcoming new hires, introducing them to your company, and deal with relevant paperwork to make sure they are ready for their first day.
Social sharing – Share your job opening via your social channels with just one click.

Applicant Tracking Systems
by Market Share

As said, there are many ATS-systems in the market. The company Ongig made a convenient overview covering most ATS-systems (109 systems in total), whereby they have been ranked basis market share.

Source: Ongig Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems

What Do the Software Review Sites
Say About the Top 5 ATS Systems

The massive number of different Software Applications in the market has created a whole new industry, which is the industry of the Software Review Sites. These sites are dedicated to grouping software into categories that you can search to identify the application for your business needs and see then see what customers have to say about these applications. In the Applicant Tracking Systems category, for instance, more than 378 totally different ATS-systems exist, and each of them offers different features.

We have identified the most trustful, and therefore not surprisingly the market leaders in the software comparison industry, which provide unbiased information and reviews. These sites have also been used as a source for our research. This is what the top review sites have to say about the Top 5 of Best Applicant Tracking Systems.

As can be seen, among the leading Software Review Sites, there is no clear favorite for the Applicant Tracking Systems. However, Zoho Recruit, our number 2 on the list, scores the best when looked at it in an aggregated way.

Choosing the Best
Applicant Tracking System

Making a choice between different ATS systems can be difficult, but the one you choose can have a significant impact on your recruiting process. Ranking lists and reviews can be misleading, and they only should be used to give some guidance, especially when the results are scattered. What makes things extra complex is that all the Applicant Tracking Systems come with their own set of features. The following elements can help you further in making the right choice:

What is your recruiting objective;
What are the minimum functionalities you want an ATS to have;
Should the ATS be able to connect with other systems;
How user-friendly is the ATS-system and can it be customized;
How difficult is it to implement, and what are the costs involved.

Best Recruiting Books
for Further Learning

Books about Recruiting offer a great way of learning more in-depth aspects of Recruitment and at a much lower price than taking, for example, a specialist Recruiting Course. By reading a book, you consume a huge amount of research in a relatively short amount of time, and it is one of the best ways to improve your Recruiting knowledge and skills. These Books on Recruitment keep up appearing on all the “Best of Lists” resulting in “Top 20 of Best Books on Recruitment Recommended most Times by Recruiting Pros,” and here are the top 5:

Who: The A Method for Hiring | by Geoff Smart and Randy Street
“Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead | by Laszlo Bock
Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams | by Lou Adler
Hiring for Attitude: A Revolutionary Approach to Recruiting and Selecting People with Both Tremendous Skills and Superb Attitude | by Mark Murphy
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t | by James C. Collins

Best HR / Recruiting Blogs &
Resources to Follow

Blogs about Recruiting & Human Resources are another ideal source for staying up to date on the latest developments and learn new insights into all sorts of HR topics. Therefore, these HR/Recruiting Blogs might also interest you as we did another research for Blogs about Recruiting / Human Resources Management in the same way as we did for Best Application Tracking Systems. These Top 20 of Best HR/Recruiting Blogs keep appearing on all lists of Best HR/Recruiting Blogs to follow, and here are the top 5:

Best HR Tools
Most Recommended

Human Resources Management and Recruiting is a time-consuming and complex process. Human Resource Software Tools automate, streamline, and improve human resources operations and processes of an organization. The benefits of using the most suitable HR Tool are extensive. These Top 20 of Best HR Tools keep appearing on all lists of Best HR Tools, and here are the top 5:

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How we Established the Final
Top 20 of Best Applicant Tracking Systems

We made a list of 50 posts that were recently published about “Best Applicant Tracking Systems” to use.
From this list of 50 posts, we selected the top 18 that seem most valuable to our readers and users.
We combined the 18 lists of “Best Applicant Tracking Systems” and earmarked all individual tools that were on those lists.
When a tool was ranked as number 1, it got 1 point, and when it was ranked 2nd, it got 2 points, etc.
When no particular ranking was applied to a specific list, then each listed tool got the same points.
To be included in the final list, a tool should be listed for a minimal number of times.
More weight was assigned to tools that were explicitly listed more times than other tools.
All lists were summed up, and the Applicant Tracking System with the lowest number was ranked 1, 2, 3, etc.
This resulted in the final “Top 20 of Best Applicant Tracking Systems” that have been recommended most times by all types of Recruitment & HR Experts.

Sources Used for
Best Applicant Tracking Systems

The 18 “Best of Lists” used for researching what the Best Applicant Tracking Systems are: