Setting up an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is one of the most impactful operational investments a growing company can make. Done right, it transforms recruiting from chaotic inbox management to a structured, data-driven process. This guide walks through implementation step by step.
Before You Start: Pre-Implementation Prep
Document Your Hiring Process
Map out your current hiring stages for each role type. A typical process might be:
- Application Received
- Resume Review
- Recruiter Phone Screen
- Hiring Manager Interview
- Technical/Skills Assessment
- Final Interview (Panel)
- Reference Check
- Offer Extended
- Offer Accepted/Declined
You may have different stage configurations for different role types (engineering vs. sales vs. operations). Plan these variations before setup.
Define Roles and Permissions
Identify who in your organization will use the ATS:
- Recruiters/TA team: Full access to all candidates and jobs
- Hiring managers: Access to candidates in their own reqs
- Interview panelists: View candidate profile and submit feedback only
- HR admin: Reporting access, compensation data
- Executives: High-level pipeline dashboards only
Step 1: Configure Your ATS Account
Set Up Company Profile
- Upload company logo and brand colors
- Set up departments, locations, and teams
- Configure your org hierarchy for approval workflows
- Set up email templates for candidate communications
Build Pipeline Stages
Create your pipeline stages in the ATS. Most platforms allow custom stages per job type. Create templates for your most common role families (engineering, GTM, operations) to speed up future job creation.
Create Rejection Reasons
Define a standard set of rejection reasons (e.g., “Not enough experience,” “Salary expectations out of range,” “Position cancelled,” “Better fit candidate selected”). Consistent rejection reasons enable pipeline analysis and DEI reporting.
Step 2: Set Up Integrations
Job Board Integrations
Connect your ATS to job boards to automatically post openings and receive applications. Priority integrations:
- LinkedIn Jobs (highest volume for most companies)
- Indeed (high volume, cost-per-click or organic)
- Glassdoor (mirrors Indeed for most platforms)
- ZipRecruiter (strong for hourly and SMB)
- Industry-specific boards (Dice for tech, Health eCareers for healthcare, etc.)
HRIS Integration
Connect your ATS to your HRIS (BambooHR, Workday, Rippling, etc.) so that when an offer is accepted, the new hire record automatically transfers to your HR system. This eliminates duplicate data entry and ensures onboarding starts immediately.
Calendar Integration
Connect Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook for interview scheduling. Set up interviewer availability blocks so candidates can self-schedule — this dramatically reduces scheduling coordination time.
LinkedIn Recruiter Integration
If your team sources on LinkedIn, the LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect integration lets you see ATS application status directly in LinkedIn and push InMail conversations into the ATS.
Step 3: Create Your Career Site
Most ATS platforms provide a hosted career site (your-company.greenhouse.io or jobs.lever.co/your-company). Configure:
- Company branding (logo, colors, banner images)
- Company description and values
- Searchable job listings with filtering by department and location
- Custom domain if possible (careers.yourcompany.com)
- EEO/EEOC voluntary self-identification forms
Step 4: Build Scorecards
Scorecards are the key to structured interviewing. For each interview stage, define:
- Attributes to evaluate: (e.g., Problem Solving, Communication, Technical Skills, Culture Add)
- Rating scale: Strong Yes / Yes / No / Strong No with definitions
- Specific questions for each attribute
- Must-have vs. nice-to-have designation for each attribute
Consistent scorecards reduce bias, improve decision-making, and create data for understanding what attributes predict success at your company.
Step 5: Train Your Team
Recruiter Training (2–4 hours)
- Creating and publishing job reqs
- Reviewing and advancing candidates
- Using email templates and scheduling interviews
- Running pipeline reports
Hiring Manager Training (30–60 minutes)
- Reviewing candidates assigned to them
- Submitting scorecard feedback
- Approving offers
- Reading their pipeline status report
Interviewer Training (15–20 minutes)
- Finding and reviewing their interview assignments
- Completing scorecards after interviews
- Structured interview best practices
Step 6: Post Your First Jobs
Before going live, check each job posting for:
- Accurate and inclusive job description language
- Correct compensation range (required by law in many states)
- Appropriate required vs. preferred qualifications
- Correct application form fields (don’t collect info you don’t need)
- Mobile-optimized application flow
See our Best ATS Software Guide 2026 for platform recommendations, and compare Greenhouse vs Lever for mid-market ATS options.
Setting Up an ATS: What Order to Do Things In
Quick Answer: Configure in this order: users and permissions, the minimum viable hiring stages, careers page connection, then calendar integration for scheduling. Add custom fields, approval chains and elaborate stage models only after a real role has run through end to end.
The temptation is to model every variation your organisation has ever used before anyone touches the system. That reliably produces a configuration nobody can navigate and a set of required fields that hiring managers work around. Start with the simplest structure that produces useful data.
Run one genuine role in week one, not a test requisition. Test roles never surface the awkward cases — the candidate who applies twice, the interviewer who is not in the system, the offer needing an unusual approval — and those are precisely what you want to find while the vendor is still engaged.
Permissions and Who Sees What
Permissions decided during setup are considerably easier than permissions retrofitted afterwards. Three roles cover most organisations: recruiters with full access, hiring managers who see their own roles and leave feedback, and interviewers who see only what they need for their part.
The mistake to avoid is giving hiring managers a recruiter-level view. More visibility sounds generous and in practice makes the interface harder to navigate for someone visiting it twice a month, which reduces the chance they use it at all.
Integrations Worth Setting Up First
The careers page and calendar come first, because they affect candidates and interviewers immediately. Your HRIS comes next, so a hired candidate becomes an employee record without re-entry. Job-board syndication and background checks can follow once the core loop works. Our guide to the first 30 days with a new ATS covers the rollout sequence in more detail.
Careers Page Setup Deserves Its Own Attention
For most candidates the careers page is the only part of your ATS they will ever see, and it is the piece most often left on default settings during setup. Platforms differ sharply in how much branding they permit, and a generic page undermines the impression every other part of your hiring process is trying to create.
Three things to check before launch: whether the page carries your branding, not the vendor’s, whether it works properly on a phone, and how many steps an application takes. Application length is the single largest controllable factor in completion rate, and every additional required field costs you candidates who were qualified.
After Setup: What to Review at 30 Days
Look at three things a month in. What did people work around — roles managed outside the system, feedback given verbally, candidates tracked in a spreadsheet. Where did anyone have to ask how to do something. And whether the reporting you agreed at the start is actually being produced.
Fix those specific things rather than adding features. The requests people make after four weeks of genuine use are markedly different from the ones they made during configuration, and considerably more likely to reflect real needs.
Common Setup Questions Teams Get Wrong
Two configuration choices cause most of the regret. The first is making too many fields mandatory, usually with good intentions about data quality. Every required field is a place a hiring manager can stall, and incomplete records caused by abandonment are worse than optional fields left blank.
The second is building approval chains that mirror the org chart, not the decision. If three people must approve an offer because three people outrank the recruiter, offers will sit waiting while candidates accept elsewhere. Approvals should reflect who genuinely needs to decide, which is usually fewer people than the hierarchy suggests.
Setting Up Job Templates and Interview Kits
Templates are the single highest-return configuration step after the basics, because they remove the blank page from every future role. A job template carrying the standard structure, required fields and default interview stages means opening a new requisition takes minutes, not an afternoon of decisions already made once.
Interview kits do the same for interviewers — the questions to ask, what each attribute means, and how to score it. They are also what makes feedback comparable across interviewers, which is the difference between structured hiring and a collection of opinions. Build two or three for your most common role types, not attempting one per role.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you set up an applicant tracking system?
Configure users and permissions, define the minimum viable hiring stages, connect your careers page, then integrate the calendar for interview scheduling. Run one real role end to end before adding custom fields or approval chains.
How long does ATS setup take?
Small business platforms are usually live within one to two weeks. Mid-market takes four to eight weeks, most of it spent defining hiring stages and integrating with an HRIS rather than on technical configuration.
What should you configure first in an ATS?
Users and permissions, basic hiring stages and the careers page connection. Everything else is better added after a real role has run through, because requests made after four weeks of use differ markedly from those made on day one.
What hiring stages should an ATS have?
Most organisations need five or six: applied, screening, interview, final interview, offer and hired, with a rejected state at each. More granular stages add reporting detail and administrative burden — add them only when a reporting question requires it.
Who should have access to an ATS?
Recruiters with full access, hiring managers limited to their own roles with the ability to leave feedback, and interviewers seeing only their assigned candidates. Over-granting access makes the system harder to use for occasional visitors.
Should you import old candidate data?
Import active candidates and recent history; archive the rest. Bulk-loading years of stale records degrades search and slows the rollout without adding value most teams ever use.
What integrations does an ATS need?
Careers page and calendar first, then your HRIS so hired candidates become employee records without re-entry. Job boards and background-check providers can follow once the core hiring loop is working reliably.
How do you test an ATS before going live?
Run one genuine open role through the complete process — post, receive applications, schedule, capture feedback, record a decision. Test requisitions never surface the exceptions that cause real problems.
What is the most common ATS setup mistake?
Over-configuring before anyone has used it. Required fields and approval chains added upfront encode assumptions, not needs, and they are the main reason hiring managers route around the system.
Do you need training to set up an ATS?
Vendors provide implementation support at most price points, and small business platforms are designed for self-setup. The work that genuinely needs thought is defining your hiring stages, which no vendor can do for you.
How do you migrate from one ATS to another?
Export candidate records, stage history and interview feedback, confirm the format maps to the new system, and finish active candidates in the old platform without moving them mid-process.
When should a company set up an ATS?
When you hire more than one role at a time or involve more than one interviewer. Below that a shared document works. Concurrency, not headcount is the trigger.
Should offer approvals be built into the ATS?
Only where an approval genuinely changes a decision. Chains mirroring the org chart, not real decision rights slow offers while candidates accept elsewhere, which costs more than the control is worth.
How many required fields should an ATS have?
As few as produce usable data. Every mandatory field is somewhere a hiring manager can stall, and abandoned records are worse for data quality than optional fields left blank.
Can you change ATS configuration after go-live?
Yes, and you should expect to. Requests made after four weeks of real use are more accurate than those made during setup, which is the argument for configuring lightly at first.
Who administers an ATS day to day?
Usually a recruiter or recruiting coordinator rather than IT, since most ongoing changes are process rather than technical. Naming that person during setup avoids the system drifting unowned.
What is a job template in an ATS?
A saved structure for a role type carrying the standard description format, required fields and default hiring stages, so opening a new requisition does not mean re-deciding choices already made.
What is an interview kit?
A defined set of questions and scoring attributes for a stage, given to interviewers in advance. Kits make feedback comparable across interviewers, which is what turns collected opinions into a defensible decision.
