// Recruitment Technology, Atlas Technology, Recruitment Strategies

5 Struggles That Recruiters Are Facing and How an AI Applicant Tracking System Can Help

If you’re a recruiter, you’re likely facing a variety of challenges in your day-to-day work. Administrative tasks take up a significant amount of time, creating reports that clients may never read, taking detailed notes during interviews, and trying to remember every small but important detail, challenges that an AI applicant tracking system is designed to reduce.

These repetitive admin tasks can quickly become overwhelming, leaving you feeling bored, anxious, and stretched for time. As a result, you often end up working extra hours just to stay on top of everything in today’s competitive job market. On top of that, you still need to source more candidates, conduct more pre-screening calls, and schedule and run more interviews.

AI in ATS supports fair hiring practices by helping reduce unconscious biases that can impact candidate selection. I’ll break things down step by step, starting with the common challenges recruiters or hiring managers face, and then exploring how AI capabilities, especially when powered by an AI ATS, can help simplify your workload and make your working life easier and more efficient.

5 Challenges That Recruiters Are Dealing with

Many tasks take up a significant amount of your time, often leaving recruiting teams with entire days spent on administrative work rather than on activities that actually drive results. Instead of focusing on hiring and building relationships, HR teams get caught up in processes that slow them down, often due to the lack of a modern AI ATS. Below are some of the key tasks recruiters deal with on a daily basis:

Taking Notes During Every Interview and Client Call

When presenting candidates to clients, recruiters rely heavily on the notes taken during candidate interviews. It also needs to be ensured that the talent pool is evaluated consistently against clearly defined job criteria, which adds another layer of complexity to note-taking during interviews, something an AI ATS can significantly improve.

Regardless of the role you are hiring for, it’s essential to provide detailed and accurate information while fully understanding the candidate’s experience and perspective. This often means remembering specific projects, measurable results, and the technologies or tools the candidate has worked with.

Balancing all of this can be challenging, especially when you’re also trying to build rapport and establish a strong relationship during the conversation. When note-taking becomes the main focus, candidates may feel as though they’re speaking to someone who isn’t fully engaged, but rather just ticking boxes to move them forward in the process.

The real goal is to stay fully present and maintain a strong connection throughout the interview, while still walking away with clear, structured notes that add value for both you and your client. This is best supported by an AI ATS with built-in note-taking capabilities, AI workflows, and features that enhance the hiring process and the candidate experience.

Writing Candidate Reports 

One of the least favorite tasks for many recruiters is creating candidate summaries. Writing detailed bullet points, carefully choosing the right wording, and ensuring every report followed the same structure required constant attention and time, especially without the help of an AI ATS.

At the same time, you had to be mindful of what clients should focus on, while keeping each summary clear and consistent. Creating well-structured candidate reports without the support of dedicated tools is extremely time-consuming. It’s a task that demands precision and focus, yet often takes time away from higher-impact work like engaging with candidates and clients.

Creating Sourcing Campaigns Messages 

Crafting effective messages to reach out to candidates or contact job applicants, whether it’s the initial contact or follow-ups to keep them engaged, can be challenging. Messages need to be personalized, reflecting both the job description and the candidate’s experience, background, and skills. 

On top of that, recruiters must plan the structure of each outreach campaign, decide how many steps each campaign will have, choose the right channels (email or other platforms), and carefully schedule the timing of each message.

All of this takes a significant amount of time, and it can be frustrating when messages don’t get responses or when scheduling conflicts, like vacations, prevent timely outreach, tasks that become far more manageable with an AI ATS.

Organizing & Prioritizing Every Task

As a recruiter, you often juggle multiple tasks and projects at different stages simultaneously. One project may be in its early stages, requiring a kick-off meeting with the client, creating sourcing campaigns, and following up with candidates. Another project might be nearing completion, where candidates have received job offers and you need to manage negotiations and ongoing communications. Meanwhile, a third project may require scheduling interviews and presenting candidates to clients.

Staying organized and having a strong recruitment strategy is key to managing these responsibilities effectively. Good organization, especially when supported by AI powered ATS platforms, helps you meet deadlines, keep clients engaged, achieve better results, and even earn referrals from satisfied clients.

Setting Up Interviews and Calls 

Especially at the beginning of a project, after candidate sourcing, it’s important to schedule as many interviews and pre-screening calls as possible to have top candidates ready for client presentations. Coordinating each candidate’s availability, confirming contact details, and booking calls can be extremely time-consuming. 

That’s why having AI powered tools to help with interview scheduling and to track candidates in a database is essential. ATS systems with AI features save time, reduce errors, and keep your recruitment process organized and efficient. The sooner you achieve the desired results and successfully fill the position, the faster you can generate revenue and move on to new opportunities, making efficiency a direct contributor to your success.

How an AI ATS Can Simplify Your Hiring Process and Improve Candidate Experience?

To address the challenges mentioned earlier, I’ll provide a solution for each one. The first step is to use an AI-powered ATS, which offers AI powered features to support you throughout the entire recruiting process. With applicant tracking systems like Atlas, you gain access to a range of AI tools designed to make your day-to-day tasks more efficient and streamlined.

In a recent study, over 51% of agency recruiters reported that AI has had a strongly positive impact on their productivity, with more than 93% seeing overall positive effects on metrics like time-to-hire and candidate engagement, results that are increasingly driven by adopting a modern AI driven ATS solutions.

AI Notetaker

With the AI Notetaker, you can focus fully on your interviews without worrying about taking notes. It works for every type of meeting, from video calls to phone calls, allowing you to build stronger relationships and stay fully engaged with top talent. Within minutes after the call, you’ll have a complete transcript in your AI ATS, that you can use whenever and however you need. This natural language processing tool saves time, boosts efficiency, and helps you become an even better recruiter.

Report co-pilot & Writing Style 

The purpose of the report Co-Pilot is to let you ask the AI specific questions and receive a fully structured report within seconds based on accurate candidate data. You can request a particular format, include examples of candidates’ projects, technologies, or metrics, and even incorporate your personal writing style, making it feel like you wrote the report yourself. Of course, a quick review is still recommended, but this tool can save you a significant amount of time and effort. 

Many recruiters are gaining back 5 to 10 hours per week, showing that artificial intelligence, when embedded in an AI ATS, is helping remove real bottlenecks across creating candidate reports.

Automated Outreach Campaigns

You can create outreach campaigns with Atlas that are multi-step and multi-channel, allowing you to manage your outreach efficiently and boost response rates, turning hours of work into minutes. The Atlas Chrome extension integrates with all your platforms, letting you search and gather data driven insights on candidates and get answers in seconds using your company’s combined knowledge. 

Additionally, Atlas uses generative AI to draft personalized messages based on job information like notes and descriptions, helping you maintain a high-quality writing style while keeping candidates engaged. This way, you can keep your messages personalized while accomplishing more work at the same time.

Task Agent

As mentioned earlier, it would be ideal to have a tool that organizes everything and creates tasks for you based on your daily workflow. This is where task agent, powered by an Atlas AI ATS comes in. By accessing your calls, notes, and daily interview schedule, task agent can create a task list with specific dates and times, helping you stay on track and meet deadlines.

Once you complete a task, you can mark it off and move on to the next, allowing you to prioritize effectively and remain punctual and organized in front of your clients.

(Atlas) Calendar Link  

With a calendar link, you can create a meeting link for each project, including all the relevant details such as the job title, a brief meeting description, your availability, and even buffer times between calls for breaks. Once set up, you can share this link with candidates, allowing them to book meetings on their own while everything is automatically synced in your AI ATS.

This saves time, reduces back-and-forth communication, and keeps your schedule organized.

AI ATS Features and Human Insight: A Game Changer for Candidate Experience and Hiring Outcomes

In 2026, having an AI applicant tracking system (AI ATS) is no longer optional for recruiters, it’s essential. AI models can streamline repetitive tasks, organize workflows, and provide insights that save hours each week, allowing recruiters to focus on high-value interactions. Additionally, AI-driven ATS platforms can analyze historical hiring data to assess which candidates are most likely to succeed in a role.

However, AI alone isn’t enough. The true power comes from combining AI’s efficiency with a recruiter’s experience, judgment, and human touch. 

With over 75% of recruiters expecting AI to replace or significantly impact stressful parts of their role, it’s clear that utilizing AI tools, particularly AI ATS to make hiring decisions easier, while leveraging human expertise will be essential for staying competitive and driving strategic value in recruitment.

By reviewing AI-generated results, adding context, and applying professional expertise, recruiters and hiring teams can make smarter decisions, build stronger relationships, and achieve better hiring outcomes. This combination of technology and human insight is the key to success in modern recruitment.