What an applicant tracking system does, and how to pick one.

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is software that keeps applications, candidate records, hiring stages, messages, interviews, evaluations, and offers together. It gives authorised reviewers one current record for each candidate and job instead of splitting the process across job boards, email, calendars, and spreadsheets.

Mostly. Recruiting software is the wider label and can include sourcing tools, careers pages, and onboarding. The applicant tracking system is the core of it: the pipeline where the team follows each application to a decision. Join puts job advertising, the careers page, and the ATS in one product.

An ATS manages the work before a person is hired: advertising the job, receiving applications, assessing candidates, arranging interviews, and recording the offer. A human resources information system (HRIS) primarily manages employee data and post-hire processes such as payroll, absence, time, and performance. Some suites combine both. Join concentrates on recruitment and can sit alongside an existing HRIS.

An ATS becomes useful when applications arrive from several sources, another person joins the decision, follow-ups depend on memory, or candidate information is copied between email and a spreadsheet. A business making one occasional hire with a single reviewer may not need a large system. Start with the smallest workflow that gives the team one reliable record.

Yes. Join combines job advertising and candidate tracking, charges per active job rather than per user, and supports unlimited users and candidates. That model suits an in-house team whose hiring volume changes during the year. More than 20,000 teams use Join.

Join does not offer a permanently free ATS plan. The Advanced trial lasts 14 days, includes up to five active jobs, requires no credit card, and ends automatically. You pay only if you choose a paid plan after the trial.

Standard starts at €20 per active job each month after the trial. Users and candidates are unlimited. Organic distribution is included, and paid job-board placements are an optional extra. The pricing page sets Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise side by side.

Yes. Join connects its job advertising software with the ATS. A published job, its board status, application sources, and candidate pipeline remain linked. Organic distribution uses the compatible boards available for the job from a network of more than 10; more than 250 paid boards are available separately.

It should not. The time an ATS saves comes from removing waiting between steps: posting, a CV backlog, interview scheduling, a forgotten reply. Requirements, interviews, and the decision stay as rigorous as your team makes them, and shared scorecards keep the evaluation consistent from one candidate to the next.

No system makes an employer compliant on its own. The organisation remains responsible for its lawful basis, notices, access policy, retention schedule, and candidate requests. The UK Information Commissioner's Office explains that recruitment data protection runs from advertising through deletion in its recruitment and selection guidance. A spreadsheet is not unlawful by itself either: what matters is how access, retention, and deletion are controlled. Join provides permissions, consent status, export, redaction, and erasure tools. Its ISO 27001:2022 certification and subprocessors are published at trust.join.com.

Yes. Add candidates who are still in a live process to their job with "Add application", with name, email, source, and CV; Join then sends each of them a GDPR consent request. Delete duplicates and records you no longer need under your retention policy. The spreadsheet migration steps above cover stages and a one-job test before a wider move.