BambooHR for Recruiting: Great HRIS, Mediocre ATS—Here's Why

If you're shopping for an ATS and someone recommends BambooHR, they're either confused or they're selling you the wrong tool. Let me be clear: BambooHR is an excellent HRIS that happens to include recruiting features. That's not the same as being an excellent ATS.

Here's what you need to know before you buy.

What BambooHR Actually Is

BambooHR is an all-in-one HR software solution that's wildly popular among small to mid-sized businesses. It handles payroll, benefits administration, time tracking, employee records—basically everything HR-related.

Oh, and it also has recruiting features. As an afterthought. Built into the HRIS. The ATS is only available as part of their "Advantage" plan—at no extra cost to users, which sounds great until you realize why it's free.

According to 2025 reviews, BambooHR is best suited for businesses with very low hiring volume (like 1 open position at a time) who want a simple integrated solution and can overlook the inability to customize the interview pipeline per position.

Translation: It's free because it's basic. Really basic.

What Works Well

Let's start with the positives, because BambooHR does get some things right:

Job Posting to Multiple Platforms

You can post jobs to multiple platforms from one dashboard. This is table stakes for any ATS in 2025, but BambooHR handles it competently. Indeed, LinkedIn, your career site—all manageable from one place.

Resume Collection and Organization

BambooHR collects resumes and organizes them in a reasonably intuitive interface. You're not drowning in email attachments or frantically searching Dropbox folders for that one candidate's resume.

Collaborative Hiring Tools

Recruiters can ask hiring managers to rate candidates on a five-star system and leave comments. It's simple, but it works. Everyone can see feedback in one place instead of scattered across email threads.

Onboarding Integration

This is where BambooHR actually shines. The employee self-onboarding module is legitimately good. New hires can complete HR forms, e-signatures, and paperwork before day one. They get welcome emails from their manager and team automatically.

If you're hiring someone, BambooHR makes the transition from "candidate" to "employee" seamless because it's all in the same system. No data migration between platforms. No duplicate entries. That's the core benefit of an integrated HRIS+ATS.

What Doesn't Work (And Why It Matters)

Now let's talk about where BambooHR's recruiting functionality completely falls apart:

The ATS Is Worryingly Basic

Critical recruiting features are just missing. Interview scheduling? Not there. Pre-screening questions? Nope. Interview kits? Absent. These aren't nice-to-haves. These are standard ATS features that every dedicated recruiting platform has.

If you want interview scheduling, you're bolting on Calendly or Goodtime. If you want pre-screening, you're building it in a different tool. Suddenly your "all-in-one" solution requires four integrations.

One Pipeline for All Roles (Seriously)

This is the killer limitation: You're forced to use one single pipeline across all job openings. One pipeline for engineers. One pipeline for sales reps. One pipeline for executives. Same stages. Same process.

You can't tailor your hiring process for different roles or departments. So if engineering needs four technical rounds and sales needs two role-plays, tough luck. Pick one process and make everyone suffer through it.

No Real AI Features

In 2025, when competitors are shipping AI resume screening, automated candidate matching, and intelligent interview scheduling, BambooHR is still running a manual process. There's no AI-powered anything.

That's fine if you're hiring 3 people a year. It's a nightmare if you're scaling.

Who Should Actually Use BambooHR for Recruiting

Let's be honest about the ideal use case:

BambooHR recruiting makes sense if:

You're hiring fewer than 20 people per year
You already use BambooHR for HRIS and want basic recruiting in the same place
Your hiring process is identical across all roles
You don't need advanced features like automated screening or AI matching
You're willing to use third-party tools for interview scheduling and assessments
Seamless onboarding integration matters more than sophisticated recruitment features

BambooHR recruiting is a bad fit if:

You're scaling rapidly and hiring across multiple departments
You need different interview processes for different role types
You want AI-powered candidate screening or matching
Interview scheduling and coordination is a major pain point
You need robust analytics beyond basic time-to-hire metrics
You're shopping for a best-in-class ATS (this isn't it)

The Integration Ecosystem

BambooHR plays reasonably well with other tools, which is good because you'll need them. Popular integrations include:

Background checks: Checkr, Sterling
Assessments: Criteria, Wonderlic
Interview scheduling: You'll need to add this yourself
Job boards: Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor (native)

The philosophy is clearly "we'll handle the basics, you bolt on whatever else you need." For small teams, that's fine. For growing companies, it gets messy fast.

Pricing: The Only Real Advantage

BambooHR doesn't publish pricing, but industry estimates put it at $6-12 per employee per month for the full HRIS, with recruiting included at no additional cost in the Advantage plan.

Compare that to dedicated ATS platforms:

Greenhouse: $$$$$ (enterprise pricing, not public)
Lever: $$$$ (starts around $500/month)
Workable: $$$ (starts around $200/month)

If you're already paying for BambooHR as your HRIS and you need basic recruiting, using the built-in ATS makes financial sense. You're not adding a separate subscription.

But if you're shopping for an ATS specifically? Don't let "free with HRIS" trick you into accepting a mediocre recruiting platform.

The Verdict

BambooHR is a fantastic HRIS with recruiting features bolted on. It's not a recruiting platform with HRIS features. Know the difference.

If you're a small company (under 100 employees) making 10-15 hires a year and you already love BambooHR for HR management, the recruiting module is fine. It'll get the job done without requiring a separate platform.

But if recruiting is a core function of your business—if you're making dozens of hires across multiple departments with different processes—BambooHR's ATS will frustrate you within three months. You'll end up bolting on so many third-party tools that you might as well have bought a dedicated ATS from the start.

Rating: 6/10 as a recruiting platform (8/10 as an overall HRIS)

Best for: Small businesses with low hiring volume who already use BambooHR for HR management and want basic recruiting in the same system

Skip if: You're scaling rapidly, need advanced ATS features, or recruiting is a strategic priority (not just an administrative task)

Sources:

The Daily Hire