Applicant tracking systems for indie hackers
When I posted my last job opening on We Work Remotely, I got 221 job applicants. I was managing application by email, but it was a pain, so this time around, I decided to use an applicant tracking system platform to manage candidates better.
The problem is that most applicant tracking systems are not friendly to indie hackers. They have monthly billing with the assumption that you're hiring all the time, but most indie hackers hire infrequently, so paying for a hiring tool doesn't make sense.
This week, I evaluated nine different applicant tracking systems and ranked them best to worst in terms of serving small, indie founders:
- Homerun: All-around strong platform with bootstraper-friendly pricing
- Polymer: A respectable second-best that covers the basics at low pricing but could use some UX improvement
- Recruitee: Nice UX, but the collaboration features are too much if the hiring team is just one or two people
- Breezy: Covers the basics, but doesn't seem to have advantages over other ATS platforms
- JOIN: Slows down the hiring process with manual reviews and broken functionality
- Hireproof: Confusing UX, seems to be targeting rapidly growing companies rather than indie founders
- Eddy: No self-service signup - dealbreaker
- Greenhouse: No self-service signup - dealbreaker
- Lever: No self-service signup - dealbreaker
My full writeup is here:
