Using Notion For Recruiting - The Poor Man's ATS That Actually Works

Notion is a productivity tool designed for note-taking, project management, and knowledge management. It was never intended to be recruiting software.

But recruiters—being resourceful and tired of terrible ATS platforms—are using Notion to build entire hiring workflows. Candidate pipelines, interview scheduling, hiring manager collaboration, offer tracking, everything.

And according to user reviews on Reddit and Twitter, many prefer it to their actual ATS.

Is this genius improvisation or recruiters wasting time rebuilding functionality that already exists? Let's find out.

What Notion Actually Is

Notion is an all-in-one workspace that combines notes, databases, wikis, and project management. Think of it as Google Docs meets Airtable meets Trello, but more flexible and customizable.

Core features:

Notion costs $10/user/month for the Plus plan or $15/user/month for Business plan. Free tier available for individuals.

It's not recruiting software. But it's flexible enough that recruiters are turning it into recruiting software.

How Recruiters Are Using Notion

The creative recruiting use cases fall into several categories:

1. Candidate Pipeline Management

Recruiters build Notion databases with candidate information, current stage, interview notes, and status tracking.

What this looks like:

Candidate database with fields for: Name, Role, Source, Resume Link, LinkedIn, Email, Phone, Current Stage, Priority, Hiring Manager, Next Steps
Board view showing candidates organized by stage (Sourced, Contacted, Phone Screen, Interview, Offer, Hired, Rejected)
Calendar view showing scheduled interviews
Table view with filters for specific roles or hiring managers

One recruiter described their Notion pipeline: "I manage 12 open reqs and 200+ active candidates in Notion. I can see everything at a glance, move candidates between stages instantly, and actually find information when I need it. My company's ATS requires 6 clicks to update a candidate status."

2. Interview Coordination and Scheduling

Recruiters create interview scheduling databases that track availability, interviewer assignments, feedback collection, and decision timelines.

What this includes:

Interview schedule database linked to candidate database
Interviewer availability tracking
Interview guide templates for each role
Feedback forms embedded in candidate profiles
Automated reminders (via integrations with Zapier)
Decision tracking and offer timeline management

User reviews report this is particularly useful for small teams without dedicated recruiting coordinators. Everything interview-related lives in one place instead of scattered across email, calendars, and ATS systems.

3. Hiring Manager Collaboration

Notion workspaces shared with hiring managers for role intake, candidate review, and hiring decisions.

Common setup:

Role intake forms capturing job requirements, priorities, timeline, compensation range
Candidate presentation pages with resumes, interview summaries, and team feedback
Collaborative scorecards where interviewers add ratings and comments
Offer approval workflows with compensation details and approval status

Multiple recruiters have reported that hiring managers engage more with Notion than their ATS. "Our ATS is slow and ugly. Hiring managers never log in. With Notion, they actually review candidates because the interface doesn't make them want to die."

4. Sourcing Organization and Research

Recruiters use Notion to organize sourcing research, track companies and talent pools, and maintain candidate lists.

Typical structure:

Target company database with notes about teams, technologies, and key people
Prospect lists organized by skill set or role type
Sourcing notes and outreach templates
Response tracking and follow-up schedules
Links to LinkedIn profiles, portfolios, GitHub accounts

One technical recruiter explained: "I source constantly. Before Notion, I had notes scattered across spreadsheets, Evernote, and random Google Docs. Now everything is centralized, searchable, and actually usable when I need to revisit a candidate six months later."

5. Recruiting Metrics and Reporting

Notion's database rollup features let recruiters track recruiting metrics without building complex reports in their ATS.

Metrics tracked:

Time-to-fill by role
Source effectiveness (which channels produce the best candidates)
Interview-to-offer conversion rates
Offer acceptance rates
Candidate pipeline health (how many candidates at each stage)
Recruiter productivity metrics

The advantage according to users: ATS reporting is often terrible—clunky interfaces, limited customization, slow load times. Notion reports are fast, customizable, and actually comprehensible.

6. Onboarding and New Hire Tracking

Some recruiters extend Notion beyond hiring into onboarding.

Onboarding workflows include:

New hire checklists (equipment, accounts, training, paperwork)
First week/month schedules
New hire resource wikis with company info, processes, contacts
Manager onboarding guides
Progress tracking for probationary periods

This bridges the gap between recruiting and HR, keeping everything in one system instead of handing off to separate onboarding tools.

The Advantages Over Traditional ATS

It's fast: Notion loads instantly and updating information takes seconds, not minutes. Traditional ATS platforms are notoriously slow. Every recruiter has experienced the frustration of waiting 30 seconds for a page to load just to update a candidate status.

It's flexible: You can customize Notion to match your exact workflow. ATS platforms force you into their predefined processes. Want a custom field? In an ATS that might require IT involvement and weeks of configuration. In Notion you add it in 10 seconds.

It's affordable: $10-15/month per user vs. $500-5,000/month for ATS platforms. Small recruiting teams or solo recruiters can't afford enterprise ATS software. Notion gives them professional-level recruiting organization at consumer software prices.

Hiring managers actually use it: Notion's clean interface and familiarity (many companies already use Notion for other purposes) means hiring managers engage with the system. ATS platforms have notoriously poor user experience for hiring managers.

It's visual and intuitive: Board views, calendar views, gallery views—information is presented in ways that make sense. Most ATS platforms are dense tables of data that require training to navigate.

Everything's connected: Because Notion handles multiple functions (not just recruiting), you can connect recruiting data to other business information. Link candidates to team roadmaps, company wikis, project plans. Traditional ATS platforms are isolated systems.

The Limitations (They're Real)

It's not actually an ATS: Notion lacks core ATS functionality like resume parsing, automated job board posting, compliance tracking, and candidate communication automation. If you need those features, Notion won't replace a real ATS.

Manual data entry is required: Unlike ATS platforms that can automatically import resumes and applications, Notion requires manual input. Fine for small-scale recruiting, painful for high-volume hiring.

No native email integration: Candidate communication happens outside Notion. Traditional ATS platforms track all candidate emails within the system. With Notion you're manually copying information or using integrations.

Compliance and record-keeping limitations: EEOC reporting, OFCCP compliance, audit trails—Notion wasn't built for these requirements. Companies with federal contracts or strict compliance needs can't use Notion as their primary recruiting system.

No candidate portal: Candidates can't log in to check application status or update information like they can with traditional ATS. Everything is recruiter-side only.

Limited automation: Notion has basic automation through integrations but nothing like the workflow automation in dedicated recruiting software. Automatically moving candidates through stages based on actions, sending scheduled emails, triggering background checks—that requires complex Zapier workflows or isn't possible.

Doesn't scale to enterprise recruiting: One recruiter managing 10-12 roles? Notion works great. Recruiting team of 20+ managing hundreds of open reqs across multiple locations? Notion will break down. At that scale you need enterprise ATS functionality.

Best Use Cases For Notion

What Notion is perfect for:

Small recruiting teams (1-5 recruiters) who need better organization than spreadsheets but can't justify enterprise ATS costs. Perfect for startups and small companies.

Internal recruiters managing 8-15 open reqs who want better workflow than their company's terrible ATS but can't get budget for better software. Use Notion as personal recruiting organization layer on top of required ATS.

Recruiting coordinators managing interview logistics across multiple recruiters and hiring managers. Notion's collaboration features shine here.

Executive search and boutique recruiting firms handling small volumes of high-touch candidate relationships. Notion allows customization that generic ATS platforms don't support.

Project-based or contract recruiting work where setting up full ATS infrastructure isn't practical. Spin up a Notion workspace in an hour and start recruiting.

What Notion Is Not Good For

High-volume recruiting: If you're hiring hundreds of people per month, manual data entry and lack of automation will kill you.

Companies with compliance requirements: Federal contractors, healthcare, financial services—if you need audit trails and regulatory compliance, you need a real ATS.

Teams that need candidate communication tracking: If documenting every interaction with candidates is important (legally or operationally), Notion's lack of integrated communication is a dealbreaker.

Multi-location enterprise recruiting: Complex approval workflows, headcount management, budget tracking across departments—Notion isn't built for this.

Anyone who needs job board integration: If posting to Indeed, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, etc. is important, you need ATS software with native integrations.

How To Actually Set Up Notion For Recruiting

If you want to try Notion for recruiting, here's the basic setup:

1. Create a Candidate Database

Start with Notion's recruiting template or build custom database.

Key fields:

Name (text)
Role (select from list of open positions)
Stage (select: Sourced, Contacted, Phone Screen, Interview, Offer, Hired, Rejected)
Resume/Portfolio (file or URL)
LinkedIn (URL)
Email (email)
Phone (text)
Source (select: LinkedIn, Referral, Job Board, etc.)
Priority (select: High, Medium, Low)
Hiring Manager (person)
Interview Date (date)
Next Steps (text)
Notes (text)

2. Create Multiple Views

Board view: Organize by Stage (Kanban-style pipeline)
Calendar view: Show interview dates
Table view: Full data for searching and filtering
Gallery view: Visual cards with candidate photos/info

3. Build Interview Scheduling System

Create second database for interviews, linked to candidate database.

Fields:

Candidate (relation to Candidate Database)
Interview Date/Time (date)
Interviewer(s) (person)
Interview Type (select: Phone Screen, Technical, Culture Fit, Final, etc.)
Location/Link (text/URL)
Interview Guide (file or page link)
Feedback (text or linked feedback form)
Decision (select: Advance, Reject, Undecided)

4. Create Role Intake System

Database for open positions with requirements, hiring manager info, timeline.

5. Connect with Integrations

Use Zapier or Make to connect Notion with email, calendars, and other tools.

Examples:

Email to Notion: Forward candidate emails to automatically create Notion entries
Google Calendar to Notion: Sync interview schedules
Gmail to Notion: Log candidate communications

6. Share with Hiring Managers

Set up guest access for hiring managers so they can review candidates without needing full Notion accounts.

Real User Experiences

From Reddit, G2, and Capterra:

Positive:

"Switched from Greenhouse to Notion for my side recruiting projects. 10x faster and I actually understand my pipeline."
"Built a recruiting workspace in Notion in 3 hours. Hiring managers love it because it's visual and they can actually see candidate progress."
"I work at a startup with no budget for ATS software. Notion + LinkedIn + email is our entire recruiting stack and it works fine."
"Our company ATS is mandatory but unusable. I manage everything in Notion and copy key info to ATS for compliance."

Negative:

"Notion works until you hit about 300 candidates. Then searching and filtering gets slow and you realize you need real database software."
"Manual data entry is brutal. Spent 2 hours copying resume information into Notion. An ATS would have parsed that automatically."
"We got audited and realized Notion doesn't have the compliance tracking we needed. Had to migrate everything to a proper ATS."
"Candidate communication is the killer. Having emails in Gmail, scheduling in Google Calendar, and candidate info in Notion means everything's scattered."

How It Compares To Actual ATS

Greenhouse / Lever / Workable: Full-featured ATS platforms with every recruiting function built in. Cost $500-5,000+/month. Overkill and overpriced for small teams. But necessary at scale.

Recruitee / Breezy / JazzHR: Mid-tier ATS platforms designed for small-to-midsize companies. Cost $200-800/month. Better than Notion for recruiting-specific features but less flexible and more expensive.

Spreadsheets: Google Sheets or Excel. Free, ultimate flexibility, but zero structure or collaboration features. Notion is basically "spreadsheets but better organized".

The Bottom Line

Notion isn't recruiting software, but recruiters are making it work like recruiting software.

It fills a gap between terrible ATS platforms and just winging it with spreadsheets and email.

If you're a solo recruiter, small team, or stuck with a terrible ATS, try Notion. The free tier is enough to test whether it works for your workflow. Build a candidate pipeline database and track one role for a month. If it makes your life easier, upgrade to the Plus plan for $10/month.

If you need compliance, automation, or you're hiring at scale, you need a real ATS. Notion is a productivity tool, not recruiting software. Don't try to force it into use cases it can't handle.

Rating: 7/10 for small-scale recruiting. It's clever, affordable, and flexible. But it's not a replacement for purpose-built recruiting software when you actually need recruiting software.

Sources:

The Daily Hire