Your ATS should feel like a dev tool

Most applicant tracking systems were designed for large companies with dedicated recruiting teams. They have complex workflows, approval chains, and dashboards built for people whose full-time job is hiring. If you're a startup founder trying to make your first few hires while also shipping product, these tools feel like overkill.

You don't need a 12-stage pipeline with custom approval gates. You need to know: is this person worth talking to, and how do I get them on a call?

The spreadsheet phase

Every founder starts the same way. A Google Sheet with columns for name, email, role, status, and notes. A practical hiring pipeline template works fine for the first 10 applicants. By 50, you're scrolling past stale rows and forgetting who you already replied to. By 100, you've lost track entirely.

The instinct is to upgrade to "real" software. But the options are either enterprise tools that feel like SAP, or lightweight tools that are really just slightly better spreadsheets with a monthly fee.

What dev tools get right

Think about the tools that have become part of how modern teams work: Linear, Vercel, Cursor, GitHub. They do more than complete a checklist of features. They feel considered.

• A clear mental model. You can tell where you are, what matters, and what action comes next.
• Polished interaction design. The product feels calm, direct, and modern instead of buried under enterprise configuration.
• Context where you need it. The system brings the right details forward instead of forcing you to hunt through tabs.
• Composability. It fits into the rest of your workflow instead of pretending to be the only tool you use.
• Intelligence in the workflow. The product does useful work with the information it already has.

That is the bar now. Founders do not compare hiring software only to other hiring software. They compare it to the best tools they use every day.

Applying this to hiring

What would an ATS look like if it was designed with those principles?

A modern workspace for hiring. Candidate review should feel structured and focused, not like a database admin screen. The product should help you see the pipeline, understand each applicant, and move work forward without asking you to become a recruiting-ops expert.

AI built into the core workflow. Every applicant should come with a useful brief. You should be able to describe what matters in plain English — "has startup experience," "ex-founder," "worked at a YC company" — and have the system evaluate those signals automatically. Useful recruiting automation software should make that part of the product, not a bolted-on chatbot.

An agent that can do the work. Anything you can do in the ATS, your agent should be able to do too: source candidates, review applications, update stages, add notes, and answer questions about the pipeline. The interface is still there when you want it, but the work is no longer trapped behind it.

A careers page that feels native. Publish a job and your branded careers page is live. No separate site to maintain, no widget to embed, no awkward handoff between the candidate experience and the hiring workflow.

The bar is higher now

Founders building in 2026 have used Linear, Vercel, and Notion. They know what good software feels like. Hiring tools should meet that bar.

The old model of "here's a blank pipeline, configure it yourself" doesn't cut it anymore. The best tools are opinionated about workflow, fast by default, and designed for people who are building — not just administrating.

That's what we're building at Loam: an applicant tracking system for startups that feels like a dev tool, because that's what founders actually want to use.