// Recruitment Technology

The Firefish Migration Playbook: How Recruiters Are Moving to Atlas with Confidence

If you’ve been using Firefish for a while, chances are it once felt like the right fit. It helped you manage candidates, keep track of jobs, and stay organised. But recruitment has changed fast, and for many agency teams, Firefish now feels more like a bottleneck than a competitive advantage.

The idea of switching ATS might sound disruptive, especially when you’ve spent years working around quirks and creating workarounds. But the truth is, recruitment is moving at a different pace, and Firefish isn’t keeping up.

What’s changed? Smart automation, beginning with AI that actually understands recruitment companies and their workflows. Tools with a built-in understanding of what you need, instead of getting in your way. Atlas is made for recruiters who want speed, structure, and serious results. And migrating to Atlas is far easier than you think.

This guide walks you through what it’s really like to move from Firefish to Atlas. We’ll cover why agencies are making the switch, how Atlas handles every part of the migration, and what you gain the moment your data lands in the new system. Spoiler: it’s not simply a cleaner CRM software. It’s AI-powered outreach, automatic note-taking, and smart business development tools from day one.

The Common Frustrations Driving Teams to Leave Firefish

Clunky, Click-Heavy Workflows

Recruiters move fast. Firefish doesn’t. Many agency teams report that even simple tasks, like updating candidate statuses or reviewing client notes, take too many clicks and tabs. The result? Less time on the phone and more time stuck in admin. For growing agencies, this friction adds up quickly.

Lack of Practical AI Automation

Firefish has added some automation features, but few of them are built on real AI. Recruiters want tools that work with them,  like automatic call note capture, enriched candidate profiles, and suggested outreach actions. If you’re still relying on manual data entry and task reminders, you’re falling behind what Atlas can now automate out of the box.

Basic Business Development Tools

New clients and new roles are the lifeblood of your desk. Firefish offers limited support when it comes to surfacing warm leads, tracking activity across markets, or suggesting new prospects based on your data. Atlas changes that. Its agentic AI proactively identifies business opportunities, giving your team smarter ways to fill the pipeline.

Rigid Reporting and Limited Visibility

Agency leaders need insights, not guesswork. But Firefish’s reporting tools often require heavy lifting to produce anything truly actionable. Whether you’re trying to track performance, monitor pipeline velocity, or assess client conversion rates, the system isn’t built for fast answers. Atlas offers recruiter-specific dashboards and real-time reporting you don’t need to build from scratch.

Difficulty Scaling with Your Business

As your agency grows, your systems should scale with you. Firefish can feel restrictive when you’re trying to introduce more automation, refine processes, or onboard new recruiters quickly. Teams often find themselves stuck with workflows that can’t adapt. Atlas, on the other hand, was designed for scale, both technically and operationally.

The Value of Migrating to Atlas

Migrating from Firefish to Atlas gives recruiters more than a modern interface. It unlocks AI-driven tools that streamline daily work and create new opportunities for growth. From day one, Atlas helps recruiters work faster, personalise more, and uncover business opportunities that legacy systems miss.

1. Built-In Agentic AI That Works Like a Teammate

Atlas’s agentic AI supports recruiters with intelligent, context-aware suggestions throughout the workflow. It can flag follow-ups, suggest outreach actions, and enrich candidate data in real time. This goes beyond background automation. Atlas actively collaborates with your team to drive smarter decisions and faster results.

2. Automatic Note Taking That Captures Everything

The AI note taker listens to your calls and turns every conversation into structured, searchable data. Notes are instantly logged against the right candidate or client, reducing admin and improving context for future interactions.

3. Personalised Outreach That Feels Human at Scale

Atlas enables tailored outreach campaigns using live CRM data. Whether reactivating passive candidates or re-engaging clients, you can create relevant, timely messages without building lists manually.

4. AI-Powered Business Development That Feeds the Pipeline

Atlas surfaces warm leads and business development signals based on recruiter activity and historical placements. It connects the dots across your database, helping consultants prioritise accounts with real potential.

5. Search That Delivers Results Instantly

Using Elasticsearch, Atlas provides lightning-fast access to candidates, jobs, clients and historical interactions. Filters and keyword search work together to ensure you always find what you’re looking for, no digging required. Advanced reporting and dashboards also ensure that a user-friendly search always translates to real results for your recruitment agency.

6. Recruitment Software That Scales With You

Whether you’re adding consultants, expanding markets, or refining processes, Atlas is built to support growth. The UI stays fast, the automations stay relevant, and onboarding new team members is simple and repeatable.

The Step-by-Step Process for Migrating from Firefish to Atlas

Migrating your data from Firefish doesn’t require a technical background or a break in operations. The Atlas migration process is designed to be transparent, secure, and recruiter-friendly from start to finish. Here’s how it works.

1. Exporting Your Firefish Data from the Old Account

Your Firefish data is typically delivered as CSV files or a full database backup. Once you request the export from your Firefish instance, the vendor will either provide a download link or give you access credentials via FTP. Atlas will guide you through the request if needed and ensure nothing gets left behind.

2. Securing and Mounting the Data

Once your files are received, the Atlas team uploads them into Amazon Redshift, a secure and high-performance environment. This makes the data live and queryable, which allows engineers to inspect, filter and prepare it for transformation.

3. Previewing and Mapping in the Migration Dashboard

You’ll get access to Atlas’s purpose-built Migration Dashboard, where you can review your data in real time. You’ll map your legacy fields from Firefish (such as candidate status or job titles) to Atlas’s structure with guidance from the migration team. Any unknown fields or edge cases are flagged for review, so nothing important gets missed during transfer to the new instance.

4. Data Transformation and Cleanup

Atlas uses DBT (Data Build Tool) to transform your data. This involves reformatting fields, fixing inconsistencies, applying defaults, and standardising formats to match Atlas’s model. AI is used to clean duplicates, identify gaps and prepare your data for production in a repeatable, testable process.

5. Automated Testing and Quality Checks

Every table goes through 30 to 40 automated tests, covering field presence, formatting, duplicates and potential errors. These checks help catch issues early, and the results are shared with you for transparency. The Atlas team also reviews anomalies that pass technical checks but may still need your input.

6. Reviewing your New Account in a Staging Environment

Your fully transformed data is deployed into a private staging version of Atlas. You’ll walk through a guided checklist to verify key items like candidate profiles, company histories and contact details. You don’t need to be technical — the checklist uses simple examples to confirm accuracy.

7. Final Migration to the Live Environment

Once you approve the staging environment, Atlas moves your data into production. If your team is already active in Atlas, the new records are safely merged with existing data. If you’re starting fresh, the staging data becomes your new live system.

8. Search Indexing and File Linking

After the production load, Atlas runs a full search index so your data is instantly searchable. CVs, contracts, notes and attachments are linked to the right records and stored securely for fast retrieval.

9. Post-Migration Review and Support

The Atlas team stays engaged after go-live to ensure everything runs smoothly. You’ll continue to get updates, support and guidance while your team adjusts to the new platform. Any final tweaks or data questions are handled quickly.

How Atlas Makes the Migration Process Stress-Free

Recruitment agencies need more than a clean data transfer. They need confidence, continuity and clarity. Atlas is designed to make migration feel structured and low risk, even for busy teams with complex setups.

1. You Stay Operational Throughout the Data Migration

There’s no need to pause your recruitment activity during the migration. Atlas supports parallel operations, meaning you can continue using Firefish while we prepare your data behind the scenes. When everything is ready, we time the final cutover so your team comes in on Monday with the new system live and working.

2. Clear Timelines and Full Visibility for Recruitment Agencies

Every step of the migration is tracked and shared. You’ll receive weekly progress summaries, access to the Migration Dashboard, and a clear checklist of actions. Any questions or decisions are flagged, documented and reviewed together so there are no surprises.

3. Hands-On Recruitment CRM Support From Real Humans

Atlas migrations are managed by a dedicated team who work closely with your business. They walk you through each phase, help resolve legacy data challenges and answer questions quickly. You are never left to figure it out on your own.

4. Built-In Testing and QA That Catch Issues Early

The QA process in Atlas is rigorous. Before your data reaches production, it passes hundreds of automated tests to validate field structures, detect duplicates and check for errors. This reduces manual rework and builds trust in the final output.

5. Fast Turnaround Without Rushed Decisions

Most migrations are completed within 5 to 10 business days, depending on complexity. We move quickly, but not at the expense of quality. Each step includes built-in checkpoints, so you can review and approve confidently.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Migrating from Firefish to Atlas

Your Recruitment Journey Starts Here, with Atlas

Recruitment has evolved, and your platform should reflect that. Atlas is not a system for storing candidates or tracking jobs. It’s a core operating system for agency recruiters who want to scale faster, personalise outreach, and uncover business opportunities with less effort.

Unlike traditional tools, Atlas combines the structure of an ATS with the relationship tracking of a CRM. Add to that built-in AI note-taking, smart automation, and business development support, and you have a single platform that adapts to how modern recruiters actually work.

If Firefish is starting to hold your team back, the path forward is clear. Atlas offers a fast, secure, and fully supported migration process. You bring your data. We help you turn it into momentum.

Ready to take the next step?

Speak with the Atlas team today to see how your agency can migrate from Firefish without disruption. The future of recruitment starts with a stronger platform, and Atlas is ready when you are. Let’s talk >>