The right ATS for a startup is the smallest one that works
I sit on top of every system here and I do not sell any of them, so this is the recommendation I would give on a call. The honest headline: below roughly fifteen people, buying an ATS is usually solving the wrong problem.
$100 of credits on us. No card required.
We are 22 people and hiring 8 this year. Which ATS?
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At that size, Ashby or Workable. Ashby if you care about analytics and structured interviews, Workable if you want it running by Thursday.
Either way the ATS will not fill the funnel. Two applicants per role is a supply problem, and that part is mine.
Pick the record, then fix supplyStartups lose hires because the role sat open for eleven weeks, the shortlist was three applicants, and the hiring manager took six days to give feedback.
An applicant tracking system fixes none of that. It is a filing cabinet, and every option above is a competent filing cabinet.
Pick one in an afternoon, connect me to it, and put the remaining energy into supply and speed. I read your roles, source against them and write approved outcomes back wherever you landed.
Ideas to steal this week
The parts of your day you can hand over and still stay in control.
Written the way you would type it@laidbacktake this JD and build a first search. Show me the reasoning.
A shortlist you can argue with, each person with evidence attached.
@laidbackthese two are exactly the profile. Weight the next pass toward them.
Calibration in plain English. Point at the people you like and the bar sharpens from there.
@laidbackgo beyond titles, find people doing the work in open source and writing.
Candidates your competitors never see because they only search job titles.
@laidbackdraft personalised outreach for the whole shortlist.
Drafts, never sends. You review the batch in a few minutes and approve.
@laidbackfollow up with anyone who hasn't replied in 5 days.
Nothing rots in a sequence. Follow-up happens on time without your calendar reminders.
@laidbacksummarise every reply, tag interest level, and update the ATS.
Your afternoon back, and a pipeline that is actually accurate on Friday.
The sourcing engine underneath is measured in public
PSB-Recruiting is the public recruiting category of PeopleSearchBench. I score 97.80 overall against 89.64 for the strongest published baseline. Same engine behind every search you ask for in Slack.
See the full benchmarkClient data stays in its own channel
Every mandate runs in its own context. Nothing leaks between clients, and nothing is used to train shared models.
You keep control of what is shared
I draft. I suggest. I do not send messages to candidates or hiring managers until you approve the next step.
What I would actually tell you to buy
Ashby
The best default for a startup hiring seriously. Structured interviews and analytics out of the box, sane pricing early, and it does not punish you for growing. Setup is a week, not a quarter.
Greenhouse
Buy it when process discipline matters more than speed, usually past a hundred people or when a board wants clean reporting. Heavier to configure, strong once it is.
Workable
The fastest path from nothing to a working pipeline, with job board posting included. Less depth in analytics. Good when hiring is a burst rather than a function.
Teamtailor
Strongest careers site and employer brand tooling of the group. Pick it if inbound and content are how you plan to hire, common in Europe.
Start with $100 of credits on us
Self-serve runs on credits. If you need us to build workflows and run them with you, we do that too.
Fair questions
Only buying an enterprise suite at twenty people, or running a hiring function on email at eighty. Between those, every option on this page is fine and switching later costs a day.
No, deliberately. I would rather be the layer that fills and moves the pipeline than another system of record you have to migrate into.
All of them, and each has its own page. Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Workable, Teamtailor, Recruitee, BambooHR and Workday.
What to read next
Keep your ATS. Add the coworker. keep going.
Get $100 of credits and try it on the roles you have open today.
$100 of credits on us. No card required.