Book Your Call
One call. Clear direction. Faster execution.
How a 220-person SaaS company chose the right ATS and cut time-to-hire by 21 days.
Before signing for new software, Skillfi ran six weeks of stakeholder research: a 42-person survey, 17 structured interviews and a weighted scorecard across 6 ATS vendors. The company bought the tool that fixed its real hiring problems, not the one with the longest feature list.
A big software decision, about to be made on the wrong criteria.
The company was hiring 15 to 25 people a month and spending around $750,000 a year on recruiting. It knew its applicant tracking system had to change, so the team started comparing vendors the usual way: feature lists, brand recognition and the lowest price. Agency fees were eating $240,000 a year, a cost a fractional recruiter can often cut.
Nobody had measured where hiring actually broke down. Average time-to-hire was 68 days, recruiters spent 12 hours a week on coordination, hiring managers weren't logging into the ATS at all, and 27% of candidates dropped out before an offer. A new tool picked on features alone would have carried every one of those problems over.
We thought we were buying software. It turned out we were making a revenue decision.
CFO, client
Research first. Software second.
Instead of starting with vendor demos, we started with the people who hire, using the same stakeholder research our fractional research team runs for strategic decisions. Their answers moved the selection criteria from feature lists, brand and price to time-to-hire, hiring manager adoption, agency cost and executive reporting.
A 42-person internal survey
HR, talent acquisition, hiring managers and department heads scored their pain: time-to-hire, admin hours per week, candidate drop-off and tool satisfaction.
17 structured deep-dive interviews
45-minute conversations with the Head of Talent, 3 senior recruiters, 6 hiring managers, the COO, the CFO and 5 department leads. 12.75 hours, transcribed and sorted into pain clusters.
6 ATS vendors, scored on what mattered
A weighted scorecard across ease of use, automation, reporting, integrations, implementation support and scalability, with weights set by the pain points we found.
Six weeks, week by week
From a feature-list shortlist to a decision backed by input from 42 people and 6 scored vendors. Here's how the engagement unfolded.
- Week 136-question script
Research design
We built a 3-phase research framework and a 36-question interview script tailored to each stakeholder group.
- Week 242 respondents
Internal survey
HR, talent acquisition, hiring managers and department heads put numbers on time-to-hire, admin hours, drop-off and tool satisfaction.
- Week 312.75 hours
Stakeholder interviews
17 structured interviews of 45 minutes each, from recruiters and hiring managers up to the COO and CFO.
- Week 4~$550K a year
Pain clusters & cost of inaction
Transcripts were coded into pain clusters, and we priced the problem: agency spend, lost productivity and the cost of every open role.
- Week 56 vendors scored
Vendor scorecard
Six ATS vendors scored on a weighted scorecard built around the company's own pain points, not the vendors' feature lists.
- Week 6ATS selected
Decision & roadmap
Leadership chose the ATS with a clear business case behind it, plus a 90-day implementation roadmap ready to go.
Five assets that turned opinions into a decision
Every asset was built from the research and handed over, so the team could defend the choice to leadership and run the rollout themselves.
Stakeholder interview script
- 36-question framework
- Same structure across 17 interviews
- Answers coded into pain clusters
Weighted ATS scorecard
- 6 vendors, 6 criteria
- Usability, automation & reporting
- Weights tied to internal pain points
Cost-of-inaction calculator
- $240K a year in agency spend
- ~$310K a year in lost productivity
- ~$18K a month per open engineering role
Executive hiring dashboard
- Time-to-hire by team
- Agency vs. direct hires
- Hiring manager adoption
Six months after go-live
Average time-to-hire
21 days faster from opening a role to an accepted offer.
The research changed the question. We stopped comparing feature lists and started comparing how fast each tool would get offers out the door.
Head of Talent, clientChoosing a new ATS this year?
Before you sign a multi-year contract for a new ATS, or connect it to your HRIS, we'll interview your team, put a number on what your current process costs and score vendors against what actually slows you down.
- Stakeholder survey & structured interviews
- A weighted vendor scorecard
- A cost-of-inaction model for your CFO
- A 90-day implementation roadmap
30 minutes. No obligation.
Related Case Studies
