Do you need an applicant tracking system? Options for small teams

An applicant tracking system for small business hiring, or ATS, is software that holds your job openings, the people who apply, where each one stands, and the notes from interviews. If you hire a few people a year, you often do not need one. A good sheet plus a fixed process does the job. This guide shows when to stay on a sheet, what the free plans of two well known tools really give you, and the hiring steps that matter more than any tool.

When a spreadsheet is enough

A sheet works well when:

• You have one or two openings at a time.
• One or two people read applications and interview.
• You get tens of applications, not hundreds.
• You do not need a public careers page that posts to job boards for you.

Set it up with one row per applicant and these columns: name, opening, source (where they heard of the job), date applied, current step, interviewer, score, decision, reason, and a link to the resume in a folder. Give the sheet to the few people who hire, because it holds personal data.

Signs you have outgrown it

• Two people contact the same applicant, or nobody does.
• You cannot say how many people are at the interview step without counting.
• Interviewers keep their notes in their own notebooks, and you cannot compare them.
• You want one place to post the job, receive applications and send standard emails.
• You need to prove you treated applicants the same way.

What the free plans give you

Free plans are real, but they are built to be outgrown. Checked on each vendor's own pricing page on 1 November 2026:

Look hard at the limits. One active job is fine if you hire one role at a time, and a trap if you open three. Visibility limited to the last 30 days means older candidates are hidden on the free plan. Ask each vendor where your data is stored, whether you can export every applicant as a file, and what happens to the data if you leave.

The hiring process that matters more than the tool

A tool only holds the steps. These are the steps to write down first.

1. Write the job down. A short job description with the real tasks, the hours, the place and the pay range if you can share it. Pay transparency is now required in some countries, so check yours.
2. Decide the steps before you advertise. For example: applied, screening, interview, offer, hired, not taken forward. Use the same steps for everyone.
3. Agree what good looks like. Pick four to six things the job needs and score every person against them with an interview scorecard, not against each other.
4. Ask every applicant the same core questions. It is fairer and makes notes comparable.
5. Write notes the day of the interview, while you remember. Stick to what the person said and did, not guesses about age, family plans or background.
6. Reply to everyone. A short, kind no is far better than silence, and it protects your name.
7. Put the offer in writing, with the start date, pay and conditions, using a job offer letter. Then keep the steps from there in line with our guide to onboarding a new hire in 30 days.

Fairness and the law

Hiring is one of the areas where the law looks closest. In most places you cannot treat applicants differently because of things such as sex, age, religion, disability or ethnic origin, and you should not ask about them in interviews. Some countries add rules on criminal record checks, work permits and what a job advert may say. In the EU, the AI Act treats AI systems used to filter or rank applicants as high risk. That is one reason to keep a person in charge of decisions. Ask an adviser what applies in the country where you hire, since this guide cannot do that for you.

Hiring in nerix

If you want hiring next to your people records, nerix has a Hiring place on Business workspaces. You create an opening with the job title, team, place and status, add applicants with their resume and where they heard of the job, and move them across the board: Applied, Screening, Interview, Offer, Hired or Not taken forward. For an interview you note the kind, time and interviewers, and each interviewer fills a scorecard with a rating from 1 to 5, a recommendation and comments that only the hiring side sees. An offer can be sent, accepted, declined or withdrawn, and when someone accepts, a manager can turn the applicant into an employee record in one step.

Some limits, so that you can decide with open eyes. The AI in nerix never ranks, scores, shortlists or rejects an applicant, and never recommends who to hire. It can show a short summary of a resume that is labelled as a reading aid. Applicant pages are visible only to the people who have hiring access. It is not a job board, so you still post the advert where candidates look. See the People page and Pricing for the plans that include it.

Questions to ask before you pay for any ATS

• How many open jobs and users does my plan allow, and what is the price at twice that?
• Can I export every applicant and every note as a file?
• Where is the data stored, and can I set how long it is kept?
• Does it post to the job boards I use, or only to its own page?
• Can interviewers score on a form, and see only their own scores before they finish?
• What happens to my data if I cancel?

A worked example: hiring one person on a sheet

Say you hire a customer support person. You write the job description on Monday and post it on one job board and your own site. Over two weeks, 40 people apply. You read each application against the same five points from the scorecard, mark each row in the sheet as Screening or Not taken forward, and send a short reply to everyone who is not continuing. Eight get a 20 minute call, three come to a longer interview with two interviewers, and each interviewer fills in their own scorecard before they talk to each other. That last rule matters, because the first person to speak tends to steer the rest. You then compare the written scores, decide, and write the offer. The whole thing ran on one sheet and a folder, and the record shows why each person was chosen or not.

The short version

You do not need an applicant tracking system until several people hire at once or applications outgrow a sheet. Free plans exist, with limits such as one active job, so read them before moving data. Fix the steps, the scorecard and the deletion period first, because they make hiring fair whatever tool you use. Keep a person in charge of every decision.