An Applicant Tracking System (commonly referred to as an ATS) is software used to manage the end-to-end recruitment process, including tracking candidates across roles and interview stages.

Most ATS’s support you in posting jobs to your careers page and other job boards, scheduling candidates, and storing candidate notes and feedback.

Recruiting at it’s core is operational — ATS’s provide structure to the chaos. But there are a few major issues:

1) Most Applicant Tracking Systems are hard to use.

The ATS is supposed to be the source of truth for hiring activities… but most companies don’t use them to their full potential. Many ATS’s require complex configuration at the start and in-depth knowledge of recruiting to operate. They require hours of manual overhead to ensure candidate and job data is up-to-date with each update in the hiring process. Team members outside of Talent Acquisition struggle to use their ATS, which exacerbates the issue.

We heard the same sentiment from hundreds of hiring teams — “My ATS sucks, but it is what it is.” Why settle when…

2) Most Applicant Tracking Systems are costly.

Applicant Tracking Systems can cost thousands per year.

Startups have always done what they can to defer buying an ATS altogether. They hack together tools like Notion, Google Sheets, Calendly, and Airtable to spin up a careers page, track candidates, schedule them, and store interview feedback. They’re okay with sacrificing time to get a process stood up, even if it takes some additional effort.

That’s nothing new. But in a time when hiring plans and recruitment budgets have been scaled back across the board, an expensive ATS expense is unjustified for most startups.

What is an Applicant Tracking System?

An Applicant Tracking System (commonly referred to as an ATS) is software used to manage the end-to-end recruitment process, including tracking candidates across roles and interview stages.

Most ATS’s support you in posting jobs to your careers page and other job boards, scheduling candidates, and storing candidate notes and feedback.

Recruiting at it’s core is operational — ATS’s provide structure to the chaos. But there are a few major issues:

1) Most Applicant Tracking Systems are hard to use.

We heard the same sentiment from hundreds of hiring teams — “My ATS sucks, but it is what it is.” Why settle when…

2) Most Applicant Tracking Systems are costly.

Applicant Tracking Systems can cost thousands per year.

That’s nothing new. But in a time when hiring plans and recruitment budgets have been scaled back across the board, an expensive ATS expense is unjustified for most startups.

We built Dover’s ATS for startups. It’s easy-to-use and free, forever

What are the highlights?

Much more friendly interface for hiring managers and interviewers (e.g. non-recruiters) — It makes the whole team more involved in hiring and actually enjoy it
All-in-one platform (built-in sourcing, scheduling, careers page, and application review) — no need to buy a ton of different tools and figure out how to integrate them
Sophisticated workflow automation (e.g. personalized email templates for every stage of the interview process) saves team a ton of time on recruiting operations

Why our ATS is free

Recruiting is broken for candidates and companies. Dover’s mission is to help every company run an incredible hiring process and every candidate have a great experience.

We built an easy-to-use ATS to help every company get the basics right. For companies between 1 and 250 employees, our Applicant Tracking System has everything needed to build a world-class recruiting process and candidate experience.

We don’t believe in charging for essential recruiting tools so it’s free for companies to use. We make money by selling Sourcing Autopilot and Embedded Recruiter to companies that need help with sourcing or full-cycle recruiting.

What’s different about Dover’s ATS

After working with 500+ companies of all sizes, across all types of roles — we know what good hiring looks like. We’ve codified our learnings into an ATS that sets you up for success.

Most ATSs are designed for recruiters who have time to configure every little detail and can spend 10+ hours a week keeping their ATS up to date.

Dover’s ATS is designed with founders and team members in mind — so you can get started quickly and spend <1 hour a week tracking candidates, even if you’re not a recruiting expert.

A few features that are unique to Dover:

AI-powered applicant sorting: Dover automatically sorts applicants from all sources based on your hiring criteria. Review matching resumes 10x faster and still ensure you never miss a good candidate.
Create a careers page and post to LinkedIn for free: Create a customized careers page. Post unlimited jobs on LinkedIn for free through our partnership.
Quick review page: See every candidate you need to act on in one place. Move candidates forward or send a polite rejection with just one click.
Slack integration: Get notified about top candidates and completed interviews in Slack. Use the Dover Assistant, our AI-powered Slackbot, to look up information and action candidates while on the go.

Why you shouldn’t use Dover’s ATS

If you need granular permissions for your team’s ATS access. We’re building permissions, but it isn’t live yet. Most early or small teams don’t have a need for this.
If you work for an agency. Dover’s ATS was built for in-house teams running recruiting for one company at a time.
If you’re accepting applications that aren’t in English. At this time, Dover only supports parsing of English resumes.
If you don’t use GSuite for Email/Calendar. You CAN still use the ATS, but won’t be able to connect your calendar and send emails through the platform. If that's important to you, it won't be a great fit.

What next?

Learn more at dover.com/ats. Click “Get Started” anywhere on the site to start set up. Early signups will get a free white-glove onboarding from our team.

Subscribe to our blog

Try out our new Free ATS for Startups! Join 500+ companies hiring with Dover.