Applicant Tracking (ATS)
Post hiring roles, build a step-by-step pipeline for each, and move applicants through it — with the confusing "option" settings explained in full.
ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is your hiring pipeline. You create the roles you’re hiring for, define the stages each applicant goes through, add applicants, and move them stage by stage — texting them along the way.
Before the steps, it helps to get the vocabulary straight, because that’s where most of the confusion comes from:
- A Role is a job you’re hiring for (for example, Driver or Dispatcher).
- Each role has Steps — the stages of your hiring process (for example, Phone Screen → Interview → Background Check).
- Each step has Options — the possible results you can record at that stage (for example, Passed, Failed, No-show).
- Every option is tagged with an outcome — Success, Rejected, or In Progress — and that outcome is what actually tells the system what the option means. This is the part people find confusing, and it’s explained in full in Step 2.
You’ll find ATS in the top header menu. Its sub-tabs are Applicants, Pipeline, Roles, Configure, and Settings.
How ATS works (the flow)
- Create a role (the job).
- Configure the role’s steps and each step’s options.
- Add applicants to the role.
- Move each applicant through the steps by choosing an option at each stage.
Step 1 — Add a role
Go to ATS → Roles and click Add Role. A role is just a name — enter something like Driver or Dispatcher and save. (There’s no salary, station, or description field; you build the actual hiring process in the next step.)
Each role in the list shows how many steps and applicants it has, and you can rename or delete it later.
Step 2 — Configure the steps and options (the important part)
Go to ATS → Configure (the page is titled Configure Steps) and pick your role from the Role dropdown at the top. You configure one role at a time.
Add your steps
Steps are the ordered stages of your hiring process. Click Add Step, give it a name (Phone Screen, Interview, Background Check, …), and add its options. Use the up/down arrows to reorder them — applicants go through steps in order.
Add each step’s options
For every step you add Options — the possible results you can record at that stage. Each option has just two things:
- Option label — the wording you’ll see and click (e.g. Passed, Failed, Rescheduled, No-show).
- Icon type — the option’s outcome. This is the one setting that matters, and the one that confuses people.
The three outcomes, explained
| Outcome (icon type) | Looks like | What it means | What it does to the applicant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Success | Green check (✓) | The applicant passed this step | Marks the step Approved and unlocks the next step — the applicant moves forward. |
| Rejected | Red cross (✗) | The applicant is not moving forward | Marks the step Rejected. This is the “knockout” — the applicant is out at this stage. |
| In Progress | Amber clock | Still in process / waiting | A holding state. The result is recorded, but the applicant neither advances nor is rejected yet. |
A few things that clear up the confusion:
- Only Success advances an applicant. Because steps are strictly in order, an applicant can’t reach a later step until every earlier step is marked Success.
- You can have several options with the same outcome. For a Background Check step you might set up: Passed (Success), Failed — criminal record (Rejected), Failed — driving record (Rejected), and Awaiting results (In Progress). Different labels, but two of them are the same “Rejected” outcome — that just gives you a specific reason to record.
- New options default to In Progress. When you add an option, remember to switch it to Success or Rejected if that’s what it should mean — otherwise it won’t advance or reject anyone.
- Nothing is automatic. There’s no scoring and no auto-rejection based on anything the applicant submits — you choose the option for each applicant. The outcome only decides the resulting status and whether the next step unlocks.
Step 3 — Add applicants
Applicants are added by you (there’s no public application form). Go to ATS → Applicants, click Add Applicant, and enter their First name, Last name, Email, Phone (with country code), and the Role they’re applying for.
Each new applicant automatically starts at the first step, marked Pending, ready for you to work through.
Step 4 — Move applicants through the pipeline
Open an applicant — from the Applicants list or by clicking their card on the Pipeline board.
- Their Steps Pipeline shows every stage and where they are. At their current step, click the option that matches what happened (e.g. Passed). Success unlocks the next step, Rejected ends their run, In Progress parks them.
- Steps that aren’t reachable yet show a lock — you can’t action a step until all the steps before it are marked Success.
- You can add notes to any step to record details.
The Pipeline tab gives you a board view: one column per step, with each applicant sitting in the column of their current stage. Applicants who’ve passed every step drop off as completed.
Messaging applicants by SMS
On an applicant’s detail page, the Messages panel lets you text the applicant and see their replies — the thread updates on its own as they respond. Use it to schedule interviews, request documents, or follow up. (Messages are sent when you type and send them from this panel.)
Need a hand?
Questions about setting up your hiring pipeline? Email support@dspaura.com.