ATS adoption: How to get your team to use your new platform

You did the work. You mapped out your requirements, participated in demos, compared pricing, looped in stakeholders, and finally signed the contract. Your new ATS went live, you trained your team, and then… nothing.

Absolutely nothing changed. The platform you spent months choosing sits largely untouched or is used inconsistently by only a handful of people who bother to log in now and then.

It’s frustrating, but you’re not alone. It’s normal for people to resist change, and that can seriously hold you back. Research shows that human factors matter six times more than technical factors in determining whether a software implementation succeeds, and ATS implementation is no exception.

Getting your team to use your ATS is a challenge, but solid change management can help. This guide covers why ATS adoption falls apart, what actually gets in the way, and how to encourage the kind of buy-in that makes your system work the way it was supposed to. 

Why ATS adoption fails (and what’s really getting in the way)

When your recruiting software adoption is lackluster at best, it’s tempting to point fingers at the system. In reality, the software is rarely the problem. Here are the most common reasons why ATS rollouts lose steam, even when the technology itself is solid.

Your system doesn’t fit how people actually work

If HR chose your ATS and then just handed it off to hiring managers, there’s a good chance it doesn’t fit cleanly into how they actually run their days. And, when tools feel like a detour rather than a shortcut, people find ways to avoid them.

That was the case at Lush. Before switching to Pinpoint, the company’s ATS was clunky and outdated. Hiring managers didn’t trust the system, so they repeatedly relied on Google Forms, paper applications, external emails, and other workarounds.

You hosted a single ATS training session (and that was it)

We know it’s hard to make the time, but a one-hour onboarding session doesn’t count as thorough or helpful ATS training. Most people learn by doing, and if they’re not using the system regularly from day one with ongoing support, the habits won’t stick.

Training helps people get into the groove and build confidence with the new system. That’s important, especially when 40% of software users say they’ve resisted using applications after just one negative experience. One confusing workflow or unanswered question could be enough to turn someone off permanently.

Additionally, consistent and in-depth training is a key piece of your overall ATS change management. Initiatives with excellent change management are seven times more likely to meet their objectives than those with poor change management. So, committing to the full adoption process — and not just the buzz of the initial rollout — is crucial for long-term success (and not just a promising start).

Your hiring managers see it as an HR tool

Hiring managers commonly view the ATS as something recruiters use to track candidates, rather than a tool that genuinely helps them make better hires. And, when they don’t see any personal benefit, there’s no incentive to engage. 

Your ATS becomes something they’ll log into occasionally and reluctantly (if they do so at all).

Your data quality makes the system untrustworthy

It’s simpler than it might seem: When a system is genuinely useful, people want to use it. But if candidate information is incomplete, stages aren’t updated, and notes live in someone’s inbox instead of the system, the ATS doesn’t offer anything of value.

People quickly start to see it as unreliable, so they trust it less, use it less, and put less data in. It’s a cycle that keeps feeding itself, and it’s one of the hardest patterns to break once it’s ingrained.

You haven’t built in any accountability

If skipping the ATS has no real consequence, why wouldn’t people go around it? Without any clear expectations or visible metrics, adoption is optional (even if you’ve made it “mandatory” on paper).

This is especially common when the push for adoption comes from HR or TA leadership, but doesn’t get reinforced by managers in day-to-day work. If a hiring manager’s direct supervisor doesn’t use the system, doesn’t reference it in meetings, and never asks why a candidate’s status hasn’t been updated, the message is clear: it doesn’t really matter.

How to drive adoption (without being the ATS police)

When you understand why ATS adoption is breaking down, you’re in a better position to fix it. Fortunately, you don’t need to mandate your way to better usage, send relentless reminders, or turn into the person everyone dreads hearing from. Here’s what to do instead.

Make the system genuinely easier than the alternative

Your goal isn’t just to have a system, but to have one that’s so straightforward that using it feels like the path of least resistance. Put another way, if your ATS is harder to use than email, people will still default to email.

For example, UK fashion retailer River Island knew that store managers couldn’t afford to spend hours learning a complex tool on top of their day jobs. So, Hannah Clarke, Talent Acquisition Manager, built streamlined workflows within Pinpoint tailored to how hiring managers actually work. That made the system fast and intuitive enough that adoption naturally followed.

Franklin Electric had a similar experience. The previous ATS was so complex that, as Corporate HR Manager Amanda Hecht put it, “Figuring out how to hire someone was near impossible.” When the company switched to something easier, teams adopted it almost immediately, and Franklin Electric went on to shorten its time-to-hire by 55%. 

Show people what’s in it for them

People don’t resist change just to be difficult. They do it because they don’t see the benefit yet. Your job is to make that benefit obvious and personal. 

For hiring managers, that might mean showing them how the ATS saves them from chasing candidates over email, or how structured scorecards make their interview feedback faster to submit. For recruiters, it might be the visibility they gain into every open role at a glance. The pitch looks different depending on who you're talking to.

At Lush, the shift in attitude among hiring managers happened quickly once they could see the difference themselves. As Karen Blackburn, Head of Talent and Global Mobility, describes it, "Everyone instantly saw how much better Pinpoint was.”

Build usage directly into your workflows

When your ATS feels like an extra step rather than a natural part of the hiring process, adoption is a bigger struggle.

The fix is to make the ATS the place where work happens, not the place where work gets recorded after it’s already happened. This means building approval workflows, interview scheduling, and candidate feedback directly into the system so there’s no obvious workaround. 

When the ATS is so embedded into how decisions get made, skipping it means falling behind. And that’s something people tend to notice.

Celebrate wins and share success stories

There’s no better way to shift people’s attitudes about adoption than to show them real evidence that the system works. 

If a hiring manager fills a hard role faster than usual because the pipeline was clean and the data was good, share that story. If a team's time-to-hire drops after they start using the system consistently, make that known. Once hiring managers start seeing real results, momentum builds itself.

What “good” ATS adoption really looks like

It might seem odd, but the better your ATS adoption is working, the less you have to think about it. Here’s what this looks like in practice:

• You’re seeing consistent usage across teams and locations: Everyone is working from the same system, regardless of department, seniority, or location. There are no rogue spreadsheets, no candidate pipelines living in someone's inbox, and no guessing about where a role stands.
  
  
• You have data you can actually trust: Stages are updated in real time, feedback lives in the system, and your reporting reflects what's genuinely happening. You can make decisions based on what the data tells you rather than chasing people for updates.
  
  
• Your people are asking for more, not less: Instead of grumbling about having to log in, your hiring managers are asking about features they haven't tried yet. That's the clearest sign that the system has earned its place in the workflow.
  
  
• Your ATS becomes invisible: The best technology eventually fades into the background. When your ATS stops feeling like a tool people have to use and starts feeling like just how hiring works around here, that’s true adoption.

Here’s how to get started

Know your ATS adoption has a lot of room for improvement? Rest assured that you don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Start here:

• Identify where adoption is actually breaking down: Pull your usage data and look for patterns. Which teams aren't logging in? Which stages never get updated? The data will tell you where to focus first.
  

• Talk to the people who aren't using it: Resistance usually comes from somewhere real. A quick conversation with a disengaged hiring manager will tell you more than any adoption report.
  

• Fix the friction first: If the workflow is confusing, simplify it. If training was thin, run another session. Pushing for more usage on top of a broken experience will only make things worse.
  

• Get leadership visibly involved: Adoption follows behavior from the top. If senior people reference the ATS in meetings, ask for updates from inside the system, and use it themselves, others will follow.
  

• Set realistic expectations and track progress: Meaningful adoption takes months, not weeks. Define what success looks like, check in on it regularly, and treat it as an ongoing priority instead of a one-time push.

Adoption is earned (not enforced)

ATS adoption tends to be more of a people problem than a platform one. And while your gut instinct might be to send more reminders or write the strictest usage policies, those probably won’t yield the results you want to see. 

Your better move is to take the time to understand why people aren’t engaging, remove the sticking points that are getting in the way, and make a genuine case for why the system makes everyone’s job easier.

Yes, that takes ongoing effort — but it’s not any more work than maintaining the workarounds, inbox threads, and spreadsheets that got you here. 

Ready to dig in even further? Our detailed ATS implementation guide has everything you need to know.

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