The ATS Your Team Works Around: How MBR Partners Grew Placements 75%

# The problem that looks like resistance Many recruiting firms think a slow rollout means recruiters dislike the ATS. MBR Partners discovered a different phenomenon: the team stopped using the database because day-to-day shortcuts were faster. Conversations, candidate reasoning, and context moved into private notes, spreadsheets, and browser tabs. The database remained, but it stopped accumulating the information that makes it searchable and reusable.

# What that costs a firm Most people point to licence fees. The larger cost is lost institutional memory. The story gives three concrete consequences:

• Records develop holes. Names and titles get entered because they're easily checked, but the why—why a candidate said no, what they actually wanted—lives elsewhere.
• Reporting becomes a mirror of data-entry habits, not of real activity. Decisions get made on incomplete numbers.
• Handovers fail. A desk kept in someone's private files cannot be covered, split, or transferred reliably when it matters.

# Why recruiters route around the ATS The shortcuts are practical. Recruiters choose them because they reduce friction on routine tasks. The article names three reasons this happens:

• The workflow belongs to the vendor. When a platform forces its own sequence rather than matching how a desk operates, every action carries a translation cost.
• The shortcut is cheaper per action. If adding a profile to the ATS takes multiple clicks and a tab change, while copying into a personal file is a single step, the latter wins during a busy afternoon.
• Helpful features are sold separately. Discovering that a needed integration requires another vendor and another invoice convinces teams the system doesn't do what they need.

# What MBR Partners changed first Neil Martin, Partner and MD of Talent Acquisition, did not start with a formal rollout. He tested the platform himself: he used the Chrome extension, sourced a few candidates, and worked them before inviting the team. That sequence is important because it tested the practical question that decides adoption—does it make an ordinary day faster?

Three product behaviors made the difference in practice:

• Compliance runs on its own. GDPR obligations are handled by the platform rather than relying on individual memory, removing overhead that otherwise gets skipped.

# Results and takeaways

If your ATS is being avoided, the concrete tests to run are simple: can a recruiter add a profile and write a note in the same flow they use LinkedIn or email? Can qualification be automated so calls start with useful context? Does the platform remove compliance work rather than shifting it onto users? Addressing those items changes the day-to-day comparison that determines adoption.