Before comparing applicant tracking systems, work out what your process already does and what it does not. Mark 27 capabilities across six areas as have it, don't, or need it — and walk out with a requirements list you can take into any vendor demo.
Three answers per line: you have it, you do not, or you do not have it and you need it. The last one is the important one — it becomes your requirements list. Answer for how things work on a normal week, not how they work when everyone is paying attention. Everything runs in your browser.
Everything upstream of an application landing somewhere you can see it
Jobs post to your boards from one place
Rather than re-typing each posting per board
You have a careers page you can update yourself
Without waiting on a developer or a marketing ticket
Applications land in one system, not inboxes
No CVs sitting in a shared mailbox or a spreadsheet
Referrals are captured and tracked
You can tell which hires came from referral
Past applicants are searchable
Someone rejected last year can be found for this year's role
How a pile of applications becomes a shortlist
CVs are parsed into searchable fields
You can filter on skills or experience without opening every file
Screening criteria are written down before applications arrive
Agreed at intake, not improvised at review
Every applicant gets a decision, not just the shortlist
Nobody is silently left in the pile
Screening decisions are recorded with a reason
You can reconstruct why someone was rejected
The stage that consumes the most calendar time and the most goodwill
Candidates can self-schedule against real availability
No email chain to find a slot
Interviewers use a structured scorecard
Same questions, same criteria, written before the interview
Feedback is submitted before the next stage is booked
Rather than chased days later
You can run an async or recorded first-round
For high-volume or across time zones
Every interviewer sees the same candidate history
Nobody asks the same question twice
Whether hiring runs as a process or as a series of favours
Pipeline status is visible without asking anyone
A hiring manager can check for themselves
Requisitions have an approval flow
Roles cannot open without a sign-off
Permissions control who sees what
Salary and notes are not visible to everyone
Offer status is tracked to accepted or declined
Including the reason for declines
Handoff to onboarding is defined
Nothing is retyped after the offer is signed
Whether you can answer a question about hiring without a spreadsheet weekend
You can report time-to-hire without manual work
The dates are in the system already
You know which sources produce hires, not just applications
Source tracked through to offer
Funnel conversion by stage is available
You can see where candidates drop out
You can export your own data
Full export, not a vendor-shaped report
What you would need if someone asked you to account for a decision
Candidate data has a defined retention period
Records are not kept indefinitely by default
There is an audit trail of who changed what
Decisions can be reconstructed later
Consent and privacy notices are handled in the flow
Not a manual step someone remembers
Access is removed when someone leaves the team
Offboarding covers recruiting systems
Getting candidates in
0 / 5
Screening and shortlisting
0 / 4
Interviewing
0 / 5
Process and collaboration
0 / 5
Data and reporting
0 / 4
Records and compliance
0 / 4
Your requirements list
Nothing is marked "need it" yet. Go back and mark the gaps that genuinely cost you time or candidates — a shortlist built from every possible feature is how evaluations stall.
0 of 27 capabilities marked as in place. That is a count of your own answers and nothing more — there is deliberately no pass mark, no maturity tier and no comparison to an average, because the published ATS-maturity benchmarks are vendor marketing or untraceable secondary citations, and grading yourself against one would tell you nothing useful. A team with eight of these covered and the right eight is in better shape than a team with twenty of the wrong ones. Take the requirements list into vendor demos and make each of them show it on your workflow.
Send us the gaps you marked and we will walk through them on your actual workflow rather than a demo script — including the ones Pitch N Hire does not solve, so you know where you still need something else.
The usual way an ATS evaluation goes wrong is starting with vendor feature comparisons. Every product looks capable in its own material, the lists are written to be impressive rather than comparable, and you end up choosing on impression. Starting from your own gaps inverts that. When you already know that you need self-scheduling, structured scorecards and a careers page you can edit yourself, a demo becomes a test with a right answer rather than a presentation. It also stops the other common failure, which is buying for capabilities you will never configure. Most teams use a fraction of what they pay for, not because the software is bad but because nothing in the buying process forced them to say what they actually needed. Comparing ATS platforms is far more productive once that list exists.
Nearly every applicant tracking system posts jobs, stores CVs and moves candidates through stages, so those features tell you very little. What differs is less visible. Can you export your full data, or only vendor-shaped reports — this decides how hard it is to leave. Can you edit your careers page yourself, or does every change need a developer. How granular are permissions, given salary and interview notes should not be visible to everyone. What does the reporting show without manual work. And when a vendor describes AI features, ask specifically what the model does, what it was trained on and what a recruiter can override, because the same word covers everything from keyword matching to genuine screening. Then ask what the product is bad at. A vendor with a straight answer to that is usually the one telling you the truth about the rest. How ATS implementation actually goes covers the part of the decision that happens after you sign, which is where most of the regret lives. If you would rather test than evaluate, free ATS options — including the free 1-user Pitch N Hire plan — let you run a real role through a real system first.
Send us the gaps you marked and we will run through them on your workflow rather than a demo script — including the ones Pitch N Hire does not solve.
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