ATS Requirements Checklist: 75 Questions to Ask Before You Buy

How to use the 75-question ATS checklist

1. 1Map the current hiring workflow and the failures you are actually trying to remove.
2. 2Mark every question Must, Should, Nice-to-have or Not needed before you watch a demo.
3. 3Add an owner and business reason to every Must requirement.
4. 4Turn each Must into a live demo scenario: show us, do not tell us.
5. 5Use the same scenarios and scoring method across every serious vendor.
6. 6Keep unknowns visible. A promised capability is not the same as a verified workflow.

The ATS market is broader than any one vendor

A useful requirements page should not quietly become a sales page for one product. In 2026, buyers may encounter employer ATS platforms such as Greenhouse, Workable, Ashby, Lever, Recruitee, SmartRecruiters and iCIMS, while agencies may compare systems such as Bullhorn, JobAdder, Recruit CRM, Loxo and other agency-focused CRM/ATS products. Those names are examples of the breadth of the market, not a universal shortlist.

The point of the 75 questions below is to make the shortlist emerge from your hiring model. A ten-person employer, a scale-up talent team, a staffing agency and a multi-country enterprise should not end up with the same requirements simply because all four searched for an ATS.

1. Strategy and scope — questions 1–7

• 1. What specific hiring problems must the new system solve in the next 12–24 months?
• 2. Which teams, countries, brands or business units need to use it?
• 3. What annual hiring volume, recruiter count and hiring-manager population must it support?
• 4. Are we buying for in-house hiring, agency/staffing work, or both?
• 5. Which current tools or spreadsheets should the ATS replace, and which should remain specialist systems?
• 6. Which requirements are genuinely mandatory because of workflow, compliance or commercial risk?
• 7. What would make this implementation a failure even if the software technically works?

2. Requisitions and core hiring workflow — questions 8–16

• 8. Can we create different workflows by role, team, country, brand or hiring model?
• 9. Can stages be changed by authorized admins without vendor support?
• 10. Can mandatory fields, approvals or actions be enforced at specific stages?
• 11. Can requisition approval flows reflect our real budget and headcount process?
• 12. Can recruiters and hiring managers see clear ownership for every job and candidate?
• 13. Can candidates move between roles or pipelines without losing history?
• 14. Can duplicate candidate records be detected and merged safely?
• 15. Can rejected or silver-medalist candidates be reactivated without rebuilding their record?
• 16. If we are an agency, can the system support clients, contacts, submissions, placements and agency-specific ownership?

3. Candidate experience and application flow — questions 17–23

• 17. How many steps and fields does a typical application require on mobile?
• 18. Can application forms vary by role, country or candidate type without becoming difficult to maintain?
• 19. Can candidates save progress or apply without creating unnecessary account friction?
• 20. Are confirmation, rejection, interview and status communications configurable by workflow?
• 21. Can candidates update, access or request deletion of their data through an appropriate process?
• 22. Can accessibility, language and localization requirements be supported across our hiring markets?
• 23. Can we measure application drop-off and identify where the candidate experience is failing?

4. Sourcing, talent pools and candidate CRM — questions 24–31

• 24. Can recruiters search the existing database beyond active applicants?
• 25. Can we build talent pools, projects, saved searches or reusable segments?
• 26. Can sourced candidates enter the system without being falsely treated as job applicants?
• 27. Is candidate communication and activity history visible in one place?
• 28. Can recruiters record calls, notes and relationship context without excessive manual administration?
• 29. Can candidates belong to several relevant pipelines or communities without duplicate records?
• 30. Can source attribution survive from first touch through application and hire?
• 31. Can consent, legitimate-interest, retention and re-engagement rules be handled appropriately for our jurisdictions?

5. Hiring-manager collaboration and interviews — questions 32–39

• 32. Can hiring managers review candidates without learning the entire ATS?
• 33. Can access be restricted so managers only see relevant jobs and candidates?
• 34. Can scorecards and evaluation criteria be role-specific?
• 35. Can structured feedback be required before a candidate moves forward?
• 36. Can interview feedback be hidden until all interviewers submit it when needed?
• 37. Does scheduling work with our actual calendar and conferencing stack?
• 38. Can interview panels, debriefs and approvals be coordinated without parallel spreadsheets or chat threads?
• 39. Can offer approvals and offer documentation follow our real authority levels and exceptions?

6. Automation and communication — questions 40–46

• 40. Which repetitive actions can be automated without custom development?
• 41. Can automations be triggered by stage changes, dates, fields, inactivity or external events?
• 42. Can email or messaging sequences stop automatically when a candidate replies or changes status?
• 43. Can templates be centrally governed while allowing sensible local variation?
• 44. Can recruiters see prior outreach before contacting a candidate again?
• 45. Are automation failures, retries and exceptions visible to an operational owner?
• 46. Can we control sending permissions, domains, message limits and compliance rules by team or geography?

7. Integrations and architecture — questions 47–54

• 47. Which integrations we need are native, vendor-supported and maintained?
• 48. Which integrations depend on middleware, marketplace partners or custom services?
• 49. Is there a documented API, and is API access included in the commercial plan we are evaluating?
• 50. Are webhooks or event triggers available for the workflows we need to automate?
• 51. What happens when an integration fails: logging, retries, alerts and support ownership?
• 52. Can SSO, identity management and user provisioning integrate with our security stack?
• 53. Are important data mappings bi-directional where needed, or only one-way?
• 54. Can we connect job boards, HRIS/HCM, assessments, background checks, e-signature, sourcing, BI and communication tools without creating fragile manual work?

8. Reporting, AI, data and security — questions 55–63

• 55. Can recruiters and leaders build useful reports without vendor professional services?
• 56. Can we report on funnel conversion, source quality, time in stage, hiring speed and workload using definitions we trust?
• 57. Can raw or sufficiently detailed data be exported to BI when built-in reporting is not enough?
• 58. Which AI features use candidate, employee or client data, and for what purpose?
• 59. Can AI features be disabled or governed by feature, role, team or geography?
• 60. How are AI-assisted recommendations, summaries or screening outputs reviewed and corrected by humans?
• 61. Does the vendor disclose hosting locations, subprocessors, retention rules and relevant security documentation?
• 62. Are role-based permissions and audit logs strong enough for our least-privilege and investigation requirements?
• 63. Can the vendor support our privacy, data-residency, deletion, retention and regulatory obligations in every operating country?

9. Implementation, migration and adoption — questions 64–69

• 64. What implementation work is included, what is optional and what must our own team deliver?
• 65. Who owns data cleaning, field mapping, deduplication and validation during migration?
• 66. Which historical objects can be migrated: candidates, jobs, notes, emails, activities, attachments, custom fields and consent records?
• 67. How long will old and new systems need to run in parallel, and what is the cutover plan?
• 68. What training, admin enablement and post-go-live support are included?
• 69. How will we measure adoption and detect recruiters or managers rebuilding the process in spreadsheets, inboxes or chat?

10. Pricing, contract and exit — questions 70–75

The last six questions are deliberately commercial. A system that fits beautifully in a demo can still be the wrong decision if implementation costs are unclear, critical modules sit outside the quote, or your operational history becomes difficult to recover when you leave.

• 70. What is the complete year-one and year-two cost including licence, implementation, migration, integrations and required add-ons?
• 71. What is charged by seat, employee, job, contact, message, usage, module or another variable?
• 72. Which features shown in the demo are not included in the quoted package?
• 73. What renewal, notice, minimum-term and price-change clauses apply?
• 74. If we leave, can we export candidates, jobs, notes, emails, activities, attachments, custom fields, consent records and relevant audit history in usable formats?
• 75. Will the vendor provide a sample or test export before contract signature so reversibility is verified rather than promised?