What your hiring managers need from an ATS

Imagine a hiring manager on a typical Tuesday afternoon.

They have a team meeting in 20 minutes, three unread candidate profiles sitting in the applicant tracking system (ATS), and a recruiter nudging them for feedback they haven’t had time to give. They log in and spend two minutes trying to remember where the right form is, before they give up and opt for a quick Slack message instead.

It’s not ideal, but it’s exactly what happens when recruitment software is built only around the recruiter’s workflow while the hiring manager is treated as an afterthought or occasional guest user.

Your hiring managers are the people actually making hiring decisions. They’re reviewing shortlists, conducting interviews, and giving the final yes or no. You need their participation, but their time (not to mention their patience for clunky software) is limited. 

Getting them to engage with your ATS consistently isn’t about better training or stronger mandates. It’s about giving them software that actually works the way they do. In this guide, we’ll look at what an ATS for hiring managers actually needs, why their adoption has a direct impact on your hiring process, and what TA leaders should look for when evaluating their options.

Why ATS hiring manager adoption matters more than features

Your ATS is only as effective as the people using it. That might sound obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to lose sight of. During an ATS evaluation, many teams get so focused on features and integrations that they forget to consider what the experience looks like for a hiring manager who only logs in once or twice each month.

Unfortunately, when hiring managers are frustrated by the system, they don’t use it. Feedback gets shared over email or Slack instead of through structured scorecards. Candidate comparisons happen in someone’s head rather than on the platform. Decisions get made before they’re documented.

And while any one of those might seem innocent enough on its own, they add up to a hiring process that’s slower, less consistent, and harder to improve.

When hiring managers opt to work outside the system, teams typically see:

• Longer time-to-hire: Feedback that lives in inboxes and threads takes longer to collect and act on. According to a Robert Half survey of hiring managers, 93% say the hiring process already takes longer than it did two years ago. Snags in hiring manager engagement only make this worse.
  
  
• Weaker candidate experience: Top candidates are evaluating you as much as you’re evaluating them. A slow, disjointed process makes you look disorganized and might even be the reason why candidates accept other offers. According to research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), a process that’s too lengthy is one of the top three reasons for candidate dropoff.
  
  
• Inconsistent hiring decisions: Without a standardized hiring process in place, decisions rely more on hunches than hard facts or data. It’s a common problem, with 68% of HR executives admitting their company’s hiring managers aren’t consistent when evaluating candidates. This slapdash approach makes it harder to hire well, and even harder to defend decisions if they’re ever questioned.

Of course, you can’t overlook the impact on your team, too. Hiring managers are busy people who often have to add hiring responsibilities onto their already full plates.

When you give them tools that make their jobs harder, it creates friction, frustration, and even resentment toward the process itself.

What do hiring managers actually do in an ATS?

There’s a common misconception that hiring managers barely touch the ATS. In reality, they have plenty to do in the platform — it’s just not quite the same as the high-volume, daily activity recruiters are used to.

In general, they’ll use your hiring manager recruitment software for:

• Reviewing and shortlisting candidates: Hiring managers assess the candidates recruiters have selected by comparing profiles and deciding who’s worth moving forward.
  

• Submitting structured feedback: After interviews, they’re expected to log evaluations, scores, and notes so the team can make informed, consistent decisions.
  

• Coordinating and confirming interviews: Depending on the specific platform and process, they might be involved in scheduling, confirming availability, or reviewing interview guides ahead of time.
  

• Collaborating with recruiters: They communicate directly in the platform about candidate fit, concerns, and next steps.
  

• Making the final call: Ultimately, it’s the hiring manager who approves or rejects an offer, and that decision needs to be recorded in the system.

None of those are trivial tasks. They all need to happen quickly, clearly, and with as few hassles as possible. Remember, your ATS is just one of many things competing for a hiring manager’s attention on any given day. 

Why hiring managers resist (and even resent) the ATS

When hiring managers sidestep the ATS in favor of email and spreadsheets, it’s tempting to chalk it up to resistance to change or a lack of buy-in. 

But, more often than not, this avoidance makes complete sense. They’ve tried the system, found it harder than the alternative, and made a more sensible decision about how to spend their time. This frustration usually comes from a few familiar places:

• Too many clicks for simple tasks: Submitting feedback or updating a candidate’s status shouldn’t require navigating multiple screens. When it does, hiring managers quickly learn that it’s faster and easier to just send a message.
  
  
• Confusing navigation and terminology: Most ATS platforms are built around recruiting workflows and jargon. For someone who hires occasionally, terms like “requisition” and “pipeline stage” are unfamiliar, and they make finding what they need harder than it should be.
  
  
• A mobile experience that doesn’t work: Hiring managers often review candidates between meetings, during their commutes, or at the end of their days. If the platform isn’t easy to use on a phone, that review’s far more likely to happen outside of the system.
  
  
• No clear sense of what needs their attention: Without clear notifications or task summaries, hiring managers have to go looking for what they need to do. Most just won’t bother.
  
  
• Feedback forms that feel like admin: Long, open-ended evaluation forms are easy to put off. The more a scorecard feels like bureaucracy or paperwork, the less likely it is to get filled in.
  
  
• They’ve been burned by bad systems before: For hiring managers who have endured multiple ATS rollouts, skepticism is natural. If previous platforms promised simplicity and delivered the opposite, it only makes sense that they’re resistant to engage with a new one.

Fortunately, none of these sticking points are insurmountable. A better hiring manager ATS experience starts with software that removes these barriers (rather than just training people to work around them). 

What features really matter in an ATS for hiring managers?

From a hiring manager’s perspective, not every ATS feature is created equal. Your recruiters might care a lot about sourcing integrations and pipeline analytics. But your hiring managers need something different: a focused, intuitive experience that makes their tasks as quick and painless as possible. Here are the key features that make that happen.

Simple candidate review and comparison

Hiring managers need to be able to open a candidate profile, get a clear picture quickly, and make a decision. If that process requires clicking through multiple tabs, it slows everything down. Good hiring manager software offers all of the necessary information in one clean view (without unnecessary noise). 

“Our hiring managers were really excited to have something central and very easy to use that covers all their needs.”

Samy Hamsa, HRIS Technical Lead at Kempinski Hotels

Scorecards that actually work

Structured feedback is one of the most valuable things a hiring manager can contribute to a hiring process. But if the candidate scorecard is long, confusing, or feels detached from the actual interview, it’s sure to sit empty. The best ATS platforms make it fast and easy to submit feedback with focused questions, clear rating scales, and the ability to complete an evaluation from any device. 

“The scorecards have completely transformed our evaluation process. Everything is in one place, and it’s easy for hiring managers to see feedback and compare candidates without switching between systems.”

Emma Bishop, Resourcing Manager at Blue Cross.

Calendar integration and interview scheduling

Interview scheduling is often one of the biggest sources of snags and slowdowns in any hiring process. When a hiring manager’s calendar is connected directly to the ATS, this coordination is a lot more seamless. This is especially valuable for non-recruiters who don’t have the time or inclination to manage scheduling manually.

For Grant Thornton, scheduling interviews took hours every week, but switching to automated interview scheduling gave everybody that time back. “We have saved so much time on admin since we started using it,” said Katie De Carteret, People & Culture Senior Administrator.

Mobile access that’s usable

Hiring managers aren’t sitting at their desks waiting for candidates to review. They do it whenever they get a spare moment — and that might mean doing it on their phones. A mobile experience that’s clunky or stripped down defeats the purpose. The ATS platforms that see strong hiring manager adoption are the ones with a thoughtful and intentional mobile experience.

Clear notifications and task management

If a hiring manager has to log in and go digging for what needs their attention, they probably won’t bother putting the work in. An ATS for non-recruiters should bring up those tasks proactively with something like a notification that feedback is due, a reminder that an interview is tomorrow, or a flag that a candidate is waiting on a decision.

Without that visibility, even the best-intentioned hiring managers lose track of where things stand. That was the common experience at Lush before the organization had any sort of centralized hiring process. "It would take 10 conversations back and forth on chat to find out what's going on,” said Karen Blackburn, Head of Talent and Global Mobility. Clear notifications and task management keep this runaround to a minimum. 

What good ATS design actually looks like for hiring managers

The features matter, but they're symptoms of something deeper. The ATS platforms that hiring managers actually use tend to share a common design philosophy: they're built around the assumption that hiring managers are capable, busy people who need more clarity (and less complexity).

That means a minimal learning curve. A hiring manager shouldn't need a training session to figure out how to submit feedback or check on a candidate's status. If the interface requires explanation, it's already asking too much. The best systems are intuitive enough that someone who logs in twice a month can orient themselves within seconds.

It also means integrating with the tools hiring managers already use, rather than asking them to adopt new ones. Calendar connections, email notifications, and mobile access aren't just nice-to-haves. They're what make the difference between a system that fits into someone's working day and one that collects dust.

Put simply, the goal isn't to change how your hiring managers work. It's to meet them where they already are.

What TA leaders should look for when evaluating ATS options

Most ATS evaluations follow the same pattern: a sales demo, a feature comparison, and then a conversation about pricing. However, those demos are designed to impress the people watching them — and those people aren’t your hiring managers.

Before you commit to a platform, get your hiring managers in the room. Ask them to complete a few typical tasks, like reviewing a shortlist, submitting candidate feedback, or checking what’s waiting for their attention. Watch where they hesitate, where they ask questions, and where they give up. That experience will tell you way more about long-term adoption than any sales sheet.

Here are a few other things worth testing before making your decision:

• Mobile experience: Don’t just check that a mobile version exists. Actually use it. Try submitting a scorecard or responding to a notification entirely from your phone. If it takes more than a couple of minutes to complete a basic task, your hiring managers are sure to have a problem.
  
  
• Onboarding flow: How much does a hiring manager need to learn before they can use the system independently? If the answer involves a training session, an in-depth user guide, or more than a few minutes of guidance, consider it a red flag.
  
  
• Task notifications: Try logging in as a hiring manager who hasn’t used the system in two weeks. Is it easy to tell what needs your attention? Can you act on it without clicking away? Figuring out what to focus on shouldn’t be harder than the actual work.
  
  
• Feedback: Open up a scorecard and fill it in as if you just finished an interview. How long does it take? How many fields are there? Does it feel like a genuinely useful tool or nothing more than red tape? The easier it is to provide feedback, the less likely hiring managers are to put it off. 

You’re probably noticing a common theme: friction. Every extra click, confusing label, or hard-to-find task offers another justification for hiring managers to disengage. The right platform will go beyond being something your hiring managers have to use to something they actually want to use.

Less hassle, more hires

Hiring manager adoption isn't a nice-to-have. It's one of the clearest signs that your ATS is doing what it’s supposed to. When hiring managers engage consistently with the platform, you get faster feedback, more consistent decisions, and an all-around smoother hiring process.

Fortunately, engagement doesn't have to be something you mandate or chase. The right ATS for hiring managers makes participation the path of least resistance. It’s intuitive enough to pick up quickly, connected enough to fit into an already busy day, and focused enough that every interaction feels beneficial (rather than burdensome). 

If you're evaluating your options, take a look at what Pinpoint can do.