Does ACTIVATE Work With Your ATS?

Does ACTIVATE® Work With Your ATS? Here's What TA Leaders Need to Know

One question comes up in almost every conversation NAS has with talent acquisition leaders about ACTIVATE, our recruitment marketing platform, and it usually comes up before pricing, before strategy, and before anything else. “Will ACTIVATE® work with our ATS?”

It is a fair question, and a smart one. Your applicant tracking system is the system of record for your entire recruiting operation. It stores candidate data, drives workflows, and connects to compliance and reporting. Adding ACTIVATE® to that stack should integrate seamlessly with your ATS and should never require your team to manage two disconnected systems.

Here’s the good news. ACTIVATE® was not built to replace your ATS or compete with it. It was built to work with it, and   connecting with nearly every ATS in use across TA teams today. According to the 2025 Employ Recruiter Nation Report, recruiting teams already juggle a patchwork of systems, and recruitment marketing platforms show up on 58% of those tech stacks, right alongside the ATS. Even more telling, recruitment marketing platforms are now cited as the primary recruiting system by 29% of organizations, compared to just 9% who lead with a standalone ATS.

ACTIVATE® is not replacing your ATS. It is working with it.  Here is how ACTIVATE® holds up against the questions any TA leader should be asking before adding a recruitment marketing platform to their stack.

Why This Is the First Question TA Leaders Ask About ACTIVATE®

The ATS earns its central role for good reason. It owns candidate data, tracks every stage of the pipeline, and connects to the systems your organization relies on for compliance and reporting. Whatever a TA team adds to its stack has to work around that system, not against it, and that is exactly the standard we built ACTIVATE® to meet.

Older recruitment marketing tools often required manual data syncs, one-off custom integrations, or workarounds that fell squarely on the internal IT team to build and maintain. If your organization has been burned by an integration before, asking us the compatibility question upfront makes complete sense, and it is the first thing we walk prospective clients through.

It also reflects how crowded the recruiting tech stack has become. The same 2025 Recruiter Nation Report found that TA teams are managing a patchwork of systems: background check tools (67%), recruitment marketing platforms (58%), video interviewing tools (51%), scheduling software (49%), and CRM systems (47%), all of which need to connect to the ATS in some way. Every additional system is one more potential point of failure if it does not integrate cleanly.

That is true no matter which ATS sits at the center of your stack, whether it’s that is Workday, Greenhouse, iCIMS, UKG, SAP SuccessFactors, Cornerstone, Taleo, Jobvite, or SmartRecruiters. ACTIVATE® was specifically built to be ATS-agnostic from the ground up so that question has a simple, consistent answer regardless of what your organization runs.

What Makes ACTIVATE ATS-Agnostic

ATS-agnostic means ACTIVATE® connects to whatever ATS you already run, without asking you to switch systems, migrate historical data, or rebuild the workflows your recruiters already know. That flexibility is built into ACTIVATE® from the start.

In practice, that means open jobs flow automatically from your ATS into ACTIVATE® syncing multiple times daily. Candidates still apply directly through your ATS, keeping applications and candidate data in the system you already use. Nothing requires a manual export, an email attachment, or a recruiter copying information between two screens.

Not every recruitment marketing platform delivers on that promise equally, and this is where ACTIVATE® stands apart. Some vendors offer a surface-level connection that simply posts jobs out to job boards on a schedule. ACTIVATE® keeps job status current so you never advertise a role that already closed, and supports the kind of attribution reporting that shows which channel actually produced a hire.

That last point is also what addresses the IT concern directly. ACTIVATE® uses vendor-maintained API connections when available, with NAS’s proprietary job scraping technology providing a reliable alternative when an API is not available.

When your ATS pushes an update, NAS, not your internal IT team, is responsible for keeping the connection working. ACTIVATE® connects with all major ATS platforms this way, with no custom code and no ongoing maintenance on your side.

How ACTIVATE® and Your ATS Work Together

In a properly connected stack, the flow of information is simple. A job opens in your ATS. It syncs automatically into ACTIVATE®, where campaigns activate across job boards, programmatic advertising, and your career site. A candidate applies, and their source data, meaning exactly which channel or campaign brought them in, is captured. That applicant record, along with its source attribution, passes back into the ATS, where your recruiters pick up the process exactly as they always have.

1. A job opens in your ATS (Workday, Greenhouse, iCIMS, or whichever system you run).
2. The role syncs into ACTIVATE® automatically and campaigns activate across job boards, programmatic advertising, and your career site.
3. Applicant data and source attribution flow back into the ATS automatically, with no manual entry required.

What does not change matters just as much as what does. Hiring managers still work in the ATS. Recruiters still track candidates through the pipeline in the ATS. ACTIVATE® sits upstream, driving qualified candidate flow into that pipeline. It does not replace the workflow your team already relies on.

Without a solid integrated foundation, the cracks show up fast. Jobs have to be toggled on and off manually across two systems. There is no way to trace which channel actually produced an applicant, let alone a hire. Reporting on cost per hire and campaign ROI becomes guesswork instead of data. This is the gap ACTIVATE® is built to close.

5 Questions TA Leaders Ask Us About ACTIVATE®'s ATS Integration

These are the five questions that come up most often once a TA leader is seriously evaluating ACTIVATE®. Here is how we answer each one.

1. Does ACTIVATE® connect directly with our ATS, or does it rely on third-party middleware?

Directly. ACTIVATE® uses  vendor-maintained API connections or its own technology rather than a middleware layer, which is more reliable and easier to troubleshoot if something ever breaks.

2. Is the integration bidirectional?

Yes. Candidate data and source attribution flow back into your ATS, not just job data flowing out. That is what closes the loop on ROI, and it is not optional in how ACTIVATE® is built.

3. Who maintains the integration when our ATS releases an update?

NAS does. When your ATS changes its API, we update the connection on our side. Your internal IT team never has to touch it.

4. How long does setup typically take?

Timelines vary by ATS and by how your instance is configured, but most ACTIVATE integrations are live well before a typical custom build would even be scoped. Your NAS team will give you a specific timeline for your system during onboarding.

5. Can you show us the integration working live with our specific ATS?

Yes. We will walk through the ACTIVATE® integration with your exact ATS as part of the evaluation process, not just describe it.

NAS has configured direct, vendor-maintained ACTIVATE integrations across the full range of ATS platforms our clients run, including:

If your ATS is not on that list, ask us anyway. Chances are we have already built the connection.

‍The Question Is Worth Asking. ACTIVATE®'s Answer Is Simple.

ATS compatibility is not a minor detail to sort out after the contract is signed. It deserves a direct answer before you ever get there, and it is one of the first things we address with every prospective client. ACTIVATE® connects to the system you already run, keeps job data current, and gets out of the way of the workflows your team relies on every day. Your ATS stays your system of record. ACTIVATE® simply handles what happens upstream of it.