ATS Selection

Cheatsheet
Introduction
Building the best workforce for your company is no longer
the purview of talent professionals alone. Hiring is now
a team sport, relying on input from across the C-suite,
hiring managers, and recruiters, all working together to
drive business success.

Attracting and retaining top talent ranks as

the number-one internal stressor for CEOs and
other C-Suite executives globally in 2020.1

In this new paradigm, seamless collaboration is a must.

But you can’t support your key players to participate and
contribute with a traditional applicant tracking system.
You need modern recruiting software that connects your
end-to-end processes and all people involved.

To help you navigate today’s crowded ATS marketplace

and confidently choose the best one for your company,
we’ve put together this collection of worksheets and
checklists. Use them individually or together to guide your
decision-making as you evolve your strategy for the 2020s.

1. T
 he Conference Board, Survey: Business Leaders Start 2020 with Lingering
Concerns about Talent Shortages & Recession Risk
2
IN THIS EBOOK

01 ATS Requirements Checklist 04

02 Vendor Evaluation Worksheets 05

Candidate Engagement 06

Candidate Management 07

Task Automation 08

Reporting and Security 09

Implementation 10

03 CFO Discussion Checklist 11

04 Why Lever 13

3
ATS Selection Cheatsheet

01 The Requirements
of a Modern ATS

It used to be you could rely on applicants to fill your open roles. Not so
today. The majority of candidates (70%) aren’t actively searching for jobs,
even though they’d be interested if the right one came along. In fact,
87% of passive and active job seekers are open to new opportunities.2

To capture people’s interest, you need a solution that allows you to go

outbound to source and nurture talent over time. Here’s what else your
recruiting software should be able to do.

Modern ATS Checklist

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM)

Organization of all hiring information in one system

Intuitive sourcing tools

A/B testing for outbound campaigns

Full talent lifecycle management

Talent database for rediscovery

Integrations with key talent tools

Simplified reporting

Automated scheduling

2. LinkedIn, The Ultimate List of Hiring Statistics for Hiring Managers,

HR Professionals, and Recruiters
4
ATS Selection Cheatsheet

02 How to Evaluate
an ATS for Fit

There are over 20 applicant tracking systems on the market today. So how
do you know if a potential partner is the best fit for your organization?
After qualifying whether an ATS is modern or not, the next step is to dive
deeper into whether they deliver on key requirements.

The following worksheets can help you evaluate an ATS across the five
most important areas of consideration and narrow down your selection
of potential vendors.

Candidate Engagement

Candidate Management

Task Automation

Reporting and Security

Implementation

5
02. How to Evaluate an ATS for Fit

Worksheet 1: Candidate Engagement

Is the system built for easy sourcing? Yes No

Can you nurture passive candidates with Yes No

personalized email drip campaigns?

Does the system sync with tools your team

Yes No
frequently uses, like LinkedIn Recruiter?

What options are there to recommend which candidates

are best for specific roles?

What is the candidate application process like?

(Easy, intuitive, clunky, lengthy, etc.?)

What are the options to easily post jobs on outside

networks, like job boards?

6
02. How to Evaluate an ATS for Fit

Worksheet 2: Candidate Management

Is it easy to advance sourced candidates

Yes No
through the pipeline?

How is it to manage tasks within the system? Easy Hard

Is there a focus around diversity hiring? Yes No

What are the options to sync your email with the system?

How are the requisition and offer management features?

7
02. How to Evaluate an ATS for Fit

Worksheet 3: Task Automation

Can you easily customize the interview

Yes No
process by job listing?

Is there a way to ensure all calendar Yes No

invites and rooms are booked?

Can the system sync with other tools like Yes No

Slack to ensure no interviews get missed?

Do you have interview kits and

Yes No
scorecards ready?

How easy is it to enter feedback, especially confidential

comments?

8
02. How to Evaluate an ATS for Fit

Worksheet 4: Reporting and Security

Are there nurture and sourcing reports to

Yes No
easily monitor your time to hire?

Is there robust, out-of-the box reporting,

Yes No
with options to customize further?

Is the system secure for: EEOC/OFCCP,

Yes No
GDPR & SOC 2 compliance?

Is the data encrypted for protection? Yes No

Are there custom access controls? Yes No

9
02. How to Evaluate an ATS for Fit

Worksheet 5: Implementation

When you switch your ATS, will this vendor

Yes No
clean up your data for you?

Is implementation easy and is there Yes No

ongoing support?

Are there guided sessions for recruiting and

Yes No
hiring managers when rolling out?

Easy
How easy is it to integrate with the tools you
Difficult
rely on?
Not Available

After launch, what type of support will be provided?

10
ATS Selection Cheatsheet

03 Making the Case for New

Recruiting Software

The search for a new ATS should be exhaustive because it is a serious

investment. After you’ve done your due diligence and chosen a partner,
it’s time to talk money with your CFO. The best place to start? By collecting
the numbers they’ll need to see on business impact and ROI.

To help you prepare, here’s a list of three calculations you need to have
answered for your CFO.

CFO Discussion Checklist

Calculation #1: Time-to-Fill

Use this example to calculate the value to your own business
of speeding up hiring by one week.
• 1 employee’s annual salary = $110,000

• Expected value to the business is 3X salary = $330,000

• Weekly expected value (total value ÷ 52 weeks) = $6,346

Multiply over 20 hires of similar salary for the year = $126,923 value
added to the business in one year by speeding up hiring by one
week across 20 hires.

11
03. Making the Case for New Recruiting Software

Calculation #2: Timing, Costs, and Technical Considerations

• The annual cost is [$]

• The impact to IT will be [X]

• New recruiting software will take us [time] to get up

and running

• Our new system will provide [X] for implementation and

training support

Calculation #3: Agency Cost Per Hire

• Equation: Total annual agency spend ÷ # agency hires =
Cost Per Agency Hire

• Example: Reduce agency spend by 30% of hires

Example:
• Cost Per Agency Hire = $22,000 over 20 hires

• Goal: 6 fewer agency hires

• 6 x $22,000 = $132,000 total agency savings from sourcing

12
ATS Selection Cheatsheet

04 Why Lever

“Lever allows us to create a more human candidate experience,

which is very aligned with 15Five’s core values. We use a lot of
recruiting tools, but we can’t live without Lever.”
– Heidi Collins, VP of People Operations, 15Five

“Our biggest problems were reporting, scheduling and

pipeline management. Check, check, check. Lever was the
obvious answer to all of those.”
– Ashleigh Jaffe, Head of People Ops, Hopper

“In order to take the business to the next level in today’s

talent-driven environment, technology is so important. It has
to be the central piece to scaling in the business. We’re so
happy with our choice in Lever.”
– Christina Schmit, Director of Talent Acquisition, Renewal by Andersen

“The referral bonus program is huge at Centro and the process

has gone really well. Referrals are easily entered by hiring
managers, and it triggers the bonus right there in Workday
when a hire gets made to compensate the employee.”
– Michelle Michael, Recruiting Operations Manager, Centro

13
ATS Resume

155 5th St 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103 | info@lever.co

SUMMARY
Powerful recruiting software for strategic organizations. Going beyond the
traditional ATS, our complete hiring solution connects the end-to-end recruiting
process and all people involved, to make hiring both more efficient and
more human.

EXPERIENCE CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Modern Recruiting Software
2012 - Present
Lever was founded in 2012 to tackle the 100% hiring manager adoption
most strategic challenge that companies
face: How to grow their teams. We inject
the values we respect — collaboration,
transparency, and humanity — into our 2x faster interview scheduling
software and are re-imagining how
organizations can think about growth,
with talent and teamwork at the center.
100% follow up with applicants for
high volume roles
ABOUT US
• 200+ employees
• 50:50 gender balance on our team
90% adoption across hiring
• 3,000+ company customers managers, HR team, and interviewers
• $73M total funding
• >20M candidates in Lever
• 40 countries where we have customers 2x increase to cold outreach response

Features:
• Full suite of sourcing tools Time to book went from 2 days
to seconds
• Intuitive applicant tracking
• Complete CRM
• Nurture campaigns
Saved $1M in agency fees
• Powerful reporting
• Rediscovery engine

57 day reduction in time-to-fill

14
Recruiting Software for the Next Decade of Talent
It’s a changing world for employers and workers alike. With candidates
having more of a say than ever in where and how they work, it’s important
that companies are ready to pivot as emerging talent acquisition trends
become the new norm.
Whether you’re choosing an ATS for the first time, or making a switch after
a frustrating experience, you need technology that can help you transform
and grow your business. To learn how Lever can help make your hiring more
efficient and more human, schedule a demo today.

Lever’s mission is to help the

world hire with conviction.
Our Talent Acquisition Suite draws the entire team together to efficiently
source, nurture, interview, and hire top talent through effortless
collaboration. Incorporating best-of-breed automation, intelligence and
design, Lever helps employers develop stronger candidate relationships
in fewer clicks, by combining powerful ATS and CRM functionality in
one modern platform—and measure the results with confidence.

Lever was founded in 2012 and supports the hiring needs of over 3,000
leading companies around the globe, including the teams at Netflix,
KPMG NZ, Hot Topic, and Cirque du Soleil. With an overall gender ratio
of 50:50, Lever is also fiercely committed to building a team culture that
celebrates diversity and inclusion.

For more information, visit lever.co LeverApp Lever @lever

15