Invite the recruiter who will use the system daily, one hiring manager who will review candidates in it, the budget holder, and someone from IT or security if integrations and single sign-on matter. Four to six people is enough. Give each attendee a defined question to answer, otherwise the loudest opinion decides the purchase.
Four perspectives cover almost every ATS decision. The daily user judges whether the workflow is faster than what you do now. The hiring manager judges whether reviewing candidates takes two minutes or twenty, which is the single biggest predictor of whether the tool gets adopted. The budget holder judges commercial terms and needs to hear the same claims the team hears, not a filtered summary. IT or security judges authentication, data handling and integration effort. Add a coordinator if scheduling is a large part of your process, and a compliance or legal contact if you hire across borders. Beyond that, extra attendees dilute attention. If someone must be informed but not consulted, send them the recording instead of a calendar invite.
Assign questions before the call so nobody sits passively. Give the recruiter the task of counting clicks on the three actions they repeat most: screening an application, moving a candidate, and scheduling. Give the hiring manager the job of trying the review flow themselves during the session rather than watching it. Ask IT to probe authentication, permissions and how data leaves the system. Ask the budget holder to press on what makes the bill change over time. Then collect written notes within a day, while the impressions are still sharp and before the follow-up email from the vendor reframes them. Structured attention is the difference between a demo that produces a decision and one that produces a vague good feeling. Pair it with a short list of [the capabilities you actually require](/ats-features).
Yes, and skipping them is a common and expensive mistake. Recruiters buy the system, but managers decide whether it succeeds, because a manager who finds candidate review awkward will start asking for resumes by email and the pipeline data goes stale within a month. Invite one manager who hires often and is honest, not the most senior person available. Ask them to complete a review live during the demo on a real-looking candidate. If they hesitate or need instruction, you have learned more than any feature checklist will tell you. Their feedback also builds a sponsor for rollout, which pays off later when you need people to change habits. Manager buy-in has more effect on [candidate experience](/talent-acquisition) than most product features do.
Sixty to ninety minutes, run against your scenario, with a fixed agenda you send in advance. Open with five minutes of context on your hiring so the vendor stops guessing. Spend the bulk of the time on live product against your test cases. Reserve the last fifteen minutes for questions from each attendee in turn, and hold commercial discussion for a separate call so it does not crowd out the product. Ban slide decks past the first few minutes. If the vendor needs slides to explain how something works, ask to see it in the product instead. End by agreeing the next step explicitly, whether that is a technical session, a trial, or a decline. Vague endings are how evaluations drift for months.
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