11 Personio alternatives for efficient recruiting in 2026

Last updated: 17 December 2025
24 read
personio alternatives
Table of contents
Explore topics

Hiring with Personio can feel convenient as your job openings, candidates, and employee data all live in one place.

But for growing teams that need personalized hiring workflows, that convenience can quickly turn into a constraint, which is why many start looking for Personio alternatives to meet their recruiting needs. 

Essentially, Personio’s hiring features are available as a basic add-on called Personio Recruiting. But because this module lives within a larger HR system, it offers more basic hiring capabilities and limited customization compared to dedicated applicant tracking systems (ATS) designed for more mature recruiting processes.

If you’re looking for a Personio alternative that reduces manual work, scales with your hiring needs, and gives you deeper reporting and customization, you’re in the right place.

This guide reviews the top 11 Personio Recruiting alternatives — comparing their customization flexibility, automation depth, reporting capabilities, and scalability.

Whether you’re choosing your first hiring software or integrating Personio with a specialized ATS, you’ll leave with a clear understanding of which tools will best meet your needs.

What is Personio and who is it right for? (And when it isn’t.)

Personio is an all-in-one Human Resources Information System (HRIS) that centralizes and automates processes like employee onboarding, performance reviews, and employee development.

It also offers an applicant tracking module called Personio Recruiting (available as an add-on) to bring hiring into their unified HR platform.

Because Personio’s recruiting module is part of a broader HR platform, it naturally offers more basic capabilities than a dedicated, standalone applicant tracking system (ATS). Users echo this, often noting that “Personio is great for HR, but its ATS is an afterthought.”

Given this, Personio Recruiting is a good fit for small to medium-sized teams already using Personio as their HR system and needing simple, integrated applicant tracking for straightforward hiring needs.

But if looking to personalize your workflows based on your specific needs, you’ll find Personio Recruiting’s capabilities hold you back, as reporting, customization, and workflow automation are all quite basic.

The software can also be glitchy at times, with some users reporting slow loading times — though customer support is generally quick to help.

One thing to note, however, is that support is only available to admins. For larger teams, this often creates bottlenecks as admins become gatekeepers for basic support requests and recruiters can’t resolve simple issues themselves. 

Key features

Personio Recruiting’s core features include:

  • Applicant tracking: Manage applications in one inbox, set recruiting stages, assign roles, and track statuses.
  • Customizable automations: Automated screening, interview scheduling, and reminders to cut back on repeat tasks.
  • Candidate experience tool: Supports mobile-friendly applications, electronic signatures, and feedback sharing with candidates.
  • Integrations: Personio integrates with over 200 applications. WhatsApp integration isn’t native, but you can use third-party apps like Zapier to integrate the two.

Personio pros and cons

 

Pros

Cons

 

Easy to use.

 

The recruiting module is basic with limited customization. Users particularly note reporting “can be somewhat cumbersome for generating simple, ad-hoc reports without delving into custom configurations."

 

 

Fast implementation (6-8 weeks, depending on your company size and needs).

 

Basic mobile app. One user notes, “The mobile compatibility gives us all the mandatory functions, but does not give the rest.”

 

Strong customer support.

 

Support access is restricted to admins only, limiting recruiters from solving basic problems quickly.

 

Personio vs ATS alternatives: At a glance (2026)

Get a quick overview of how Personio compares to different applicant tracking systems. Click on the image below to access the entire document!

[EN] Personio alternatives | Tellent Recruitee

 

11 best Personio alternatives in 2026

You can either invest in a specialized, standalone ATS and integrate it with your HR tool, or get an HR tool’s basic recruiting module for your hiring needs. 

The alternatives list below explains when to choose what, the options available to you, and how they all stack up — all backed by user reviews: 

1. Tellent Recruitee

Tellent Recruitee is an all-in-one, highly customizable applicant tracking software that supports both simple and multi-country, mature hiring processes.

You can use Tellent Recruitee as a standalone ATS and connect it to most HR platforms including Personio. For fast-growing teams that want to unify advanced recruiting and HR workflows, Tellent also offers a modular HRIS, Tellent HR, to bring everything into one people decision platform.

 

 

Key features

  • Talent pools: Organize and store potential candidates for future roles — adding profiles manually or via job mailbox, CSV uploads, or the Chrome extension. Assign team members, follow updates, and tag or filter candidates by source, rating, or status.
  • Pre-built, customizable templates: Use ready-made templates for pipelines, evaluation forms, screening questions, and emails, or quickly create your own to fit your hiring process.
  • Advanced workflow automations: Automate stage changes, evaluations, scheduling, screening tasks, and candidate communications using workflows built on triggers, actions, and conditions — with the ability to trigger actions beyond the pipeline (e.g., publish jobs or sync to HRIS) and run omnichannel automations across emails, notes, tasks, tags, and notifications.
  • Collaboration tools: Create unlimited user profiles and streamline teamwork with shared candidate notes, assignable tasks linked to specific stages, and structured evaluation forms that support fast, collaborative decision-making.
  • In-depth reporting: Choose from 90+ customizable reporting modules or build your own dashboards to track real-time hiring metrics and share reliable, up-to-date insights across your team.
  • Integrations: Connect with over 200 tools, including a native WhatsApp integration and integrations with email, calendar, and leading HRIS tools.  
  • Local customer support: Regional support teams that respond within your working hours and speak your language — having a thorough understanding of local compliance requirements, labor laws, and market needs. 

Personio vs Tellent Recruitee

Personio is primarily an HRIS software with a basic recruiting module, whereas, Tellent Recruitee is an advanced, end-to-end hiring and applicant tracking software. This difference in product scope leads to meaningful differences in their customizability and feature depth:

  • Who they’re for

Personio’s recruiting module provides basic features to support small teams with simple hiring needs. Tellent Recruitee, on the other hand, offers advanced features and deeper customization, making it better suited for scaling SMBs that need personalization or are seeing increasing hiring needs.

  • Workflow automation

Personio supports simple rule-based automation across its HR system, such as task creation and employee updates. Tellent Recruitee, in contrast, offers advanced, recruiting-specific automations —letting you build flexible workflows across sourcing, screening, interviews, and communication, including omnichannel actions beyond the hiring pipeline.

  • Reporting

Users rate Tellent Recruitee’s reporting capabilities higher than Personio’s (8.1 vs. 7.0). Personio offers pre-built recruiting reports that lack depth and are customizable to a degree — one user also shares “reports are a bit difficult to prepare,” and another says “reporting issues and mistakes are frequent.” In comparison, Tellent Recruitee provides fully customizable reports with real-time metrics.

  • Scalability

Because Personio Recruiting offers basic features, scaling teams can easily outgrow the module as their hiring volume increases and they want to reduce manual work across their recruitment process. Comparatively, Tellent Recruitee is highly customizable, allowing you to adapt the ATS to meet more complex hiring needs. 

2. Teamtailor

Teamtailor is a standalone, end-to-end applicant tracking system that takes a template-first approach to help small teams quickly get their hiring workflows up and running.

 

 

Key features

  • Built-in templates: Choose from a wide range of prebuilt templates for job offers, job ads, career-site pages, messages, and reports. Templates support basic customization, though teams often outgrow them as their hiring processes mature and become more complex.
  • Simple workflow automations: Build stage-based automations that trigger emails, tasks, and integrations at the job or template level. Triggers can be scheduled or fired manually, support exclusions, and connect directly to partner tools (e.g., HRIS).
  • Employer branding: Use Teamtailor’s drag-and-drop career site builder to design a branded recruitment portal with an embedded candidate chat option that lets visitors message you directly from the page before applying.
  • Collaboration tools: Use internal chat, shared notes, task assignments, and pinned messages to collaborate with your team alongside bulk messaging, email campaigns, and WhatsApp outreach for external communication.  
  • Integrations: Integrate with 450+ apps. However, a handful of users note integration issues — including complaints around integrations with job boards, DocuSign, LinkedIn, and HR systems

Personio vs Teamtailor

Personio is an HR suite with a basic recruiting module, while Teamtailor is a dedicated ATS. They also differ in terms of the depth of workflow automation and the level of customer support they provide:

  • Who they’re for

Personio caters to its HR suite users — meeting their basic hiring needs in a unified HRIS. In contrast, Teamtailor is for small businesses looking for a simple ATS.

  • Customer support

Both Personio and Teamtailor provide proactive customer support, but Personio limits support access to admins only, which can easily create bottlenecks as recruiters end up relying on admins for basic troubleshooting.

  • Workflow automation

Teamtailor provides simple stage-based triggers but no conditional logic. Personio goes further with workflows built on triggers, actions, and conditions.

3. BambooHR

BambooHR is a cloud-based HRIS with built-in applicant tracking capabilities. It helps teams manage employee data and automate HR and hiring processes in one platform. 

 

Key features:

  • Collaborative hiring: Supports internal team collaboration with in-system messaging, custom permissions, and automatic alerts.
  • Candidate communication: Offers customizable job posts and offer letter templates, electronic signatures, and facilitates sending personalized emails to candidates at different stages of the hiring journey from within the platform.
  • Analytics: Candidate Sources report helps you track where applicants come from to optimize your hiring channels, and the Candidate Funnel report lets you identify and improve bottlenecks in your hiring strategy.
  • Basic mobile app: Like Personio Recruiting, BambooHR ATS offers a basic mobile app for on-the-go access to the platform. One user, for example, shares, “The app is user-friendly, but adding more admin-level functionality (like approvals, reporting, or editing employee records) would make it more powerful for HR teams on the go.”
  • Integrations: Integrates with over 150 apps, including background check tools like Checkr and standalone ATS such as Tellent Recruitee and Greenhouse.

Personio vs BambooHR

Both Personio and BambooHR are primarily HR platforms, with Personio offering ATS functionality as an add-on and BambooHR having it built in. But they differ in the following ways:

  • Implementation timelines

Implementing BambooHR takes about two months per G2. In comparison, Personio’s implementation is faster — averaging 6-8 weeks, depending on your company size. What’s notable here, however, is that while Personio’s implementation is fast, it comes at an additional setup fee, one you wouldn’t have to budget for if you’re looking for an HRIS with integrated ATS like BambooHR.

  • Customer support

Personio offers stronger customer support than BambooHR. Users note that BambooHR’s support is neither accessible nor proactive. One user explains, “It is very difficult to get someone to speak to. When I need 1 to 1 support, I have to send lots of emails with follow-up questions to support before I can get help.”

  • Career pages feature

Bamboo HR’s ATS allows you to create branded career pages, but with limited customization. Personio’s career page feature, in comparison, offers more customization — allowing you to use CSS for detailed design customization.

4.  Workday Recruiting 

Workday Recruiting is the applicant tracking module within Workday’s Human Capital Management (HCM) suite. It’s a native, separately licensed add-on that connects recruiting with core HR data, approvals, and talent workflows inside the same Workday platform.

 

 

Key features

  • Data centralization: Unify data like job openings, candidate profiles, and recruiting data in one platform.
  • Customizable workflows and forms: Configure pre-screening questionnaires, hiring stages, dashboards, job requisitions, and reporting fields, and segment candidates into custom talent pools for targeted outreach.
  • AI features: AI-powered resume parsing, candidate grading, talent rediscovery, and diversity insights.
  • Internal referral tracking: Add a source category to your job applications to track which candidates are referred by employees. For advanced referral program features like bonus tracking, the module lets you integrate with specialized referral software.
  • Integrations: Integrate with over 600 apps, including calendars, email, and background check tools.

Personio vs Workday Recruiting

While both Personio Recruiting and Workday Recruiting are talent acquisition modules built inside broader HR platforms, they differ significantly in target market, implementation complexity, and usability:

  • Who they’re for

Personio Recruiting is for SMBs already using Personio as their HRIS. On the other hand, Workday Recruiting is for Workday HCM enterprise users with high-volume recruiting requirements.

  • Implementation timelines

Personio’s implementation is typically faster, often taking 6–8 weeks, while Workday Recruiting implementations can extend to 6–7 months, according to G2 reviews.

  • Platform intuitiveness

Users generally agree that Personio is more intuitive and easier to learn than Workday Recruiting. The only recent review that the Workday module has on G2 notes, “I need to complete the same fields many times when it comes to job application, and also be asked to do follow-up tasks or questionnaires in my inbox, not in the application form itself.” Broader Workday HCM reviews also frequently cite a complex UI and steep learning curve. 

5. Rippling Recruiting 

Rippling Recruiting is an add-on applicant tracking module within Rippling’s broader workforce platform that unifies HR, IT, and finance in one system.

 

 

Key features

  • Automated recruiting workflows: Build workflows that trigger actions across your hiring process, such as paying out referral bonuses, assigning substitute interviewers, and sending stage-based communications to candidates. 
  • Candidate experience tools: Send text messages directly from Rippling, personalize outreach with customizable email templates at every stage, and let candidates self-schedule interviews based on real-time interviewer availability.
  • AI tools: Use AI to summarize recorded interviews, merge insights from multiple scorecards, and surface the key takeaways recruiters need to compare candidates quickly.
  • Advanced permissions and role-based access: Build permission profiles based on team, level, or role so recruiters, hiring managers, and interviewers only see the candidates, stages, and data relevant to them.
  • Integrations: Connect with over 600 tools across your tech stack.

Personio vs Rippling Recruiting

Like Personio, Rippling Recruiting is an add-on module that extends Rippling’s core HRIS with basic applicant tracking and hiring workflows. One Reddit user summarizes the trade-off well: “It’s a solid choice for streamlining hiring, but not the best if you need super-advanced recruiting features.”

The key differences between Personio and Rippling ATS come down to their target market, ease of use, and the depth of their recruiting feature sets:

  • Who they’re for

Personio caters to small and medium-sized businesses, whereas, Rippling caters to businesses of all sizes, including enterprises. Because Rippling is a broader workforce platform, it also includes modules Personio doesn’t such as learning management, which further widens the functional gap between the two.

  • Ease of use

Rippling receives more ease-of-use praise overall, largely because it has a higher volume of user reviews highlighting its clean interface and simple workflows. Personio is also viewed as easy to use, but its smaller review base on G2 includes more mentions of occasional navigation issues.

  • Recruiting features

Both Personio and Rippling are HR-first platforms, and users often note that when an HRIS includes an ATS, “one is usually an afterthought.” So while both offer basic recruiting capabilities, Rippling’s recruiting features are more often viewed as limited in comparison. As one user puts it: “Rippling ATS is very poor, often limited in its capabilities.”

6. Greenhouse

Like Tellent Recruitee, Greenhouse is a standalone ATS with advanced recruiting features. Both integrate with leading HRIS platforms — but unlike Tellent Recruitee, Greenhouse doesn’t offer a separate HR suite you can move into if you want a unified, all-in-one solution from the same vendor.

 

 

Key features

  • Tailored workflows: Create custom workflows and set role-based user permissions to make sure teams see candidates and steps relevant to them.
  • Interview kits: Equip interviewers with preparation kits, role-aligned interview questions, and standardized scorecards to ensure consistent and structured interviews.
  • Analytics and reports: Choose from 40+ pre-built, customizable report templates covering pipeline health, time-to-hire, diversity tracking, and more. You can also build reports from scratch to support your hiring goals.
  • Candidate experience tools: Offer candidates an easy application portal, automated real-time status updates and reminders, job alerts, and self-scheduling options to keep them engaged throughout the hiring process.
  • Integrations: Connect with over 500 apps. Greenhouse’s HRIS Link also lets you sync candidate and employee data between Greenhouse and your HR system. 

Personio vs Greenhouse

Although both Greenhouse and Personio Recruiting help teams manage hiring, they sit in different categories: Greenhouse is an end-to-end ATS, while Personio Recruiting is a recruiting add-on designed for simpler, in-suite hiring. 

This difference in product scope influences ideal users, hiring complexity, and integration breadth:

  • Who they’re for

Personio Recruiting is designed for SMBs that already use Personio as their HRIS and want to manage their simple, lower-volume hiring needs within the same unified HR platform. Greenhouse is for mid-sized and enterprise teams that need a dedicated, feature-rich ATS for high-volume or structured hiring.

  • Recruiting analytics and AI depth

Personio’s analytics and AI are designed for broader HR and recruiting visibility, focusing more on simplifying admin work than powering complex recruiting processes. 

Greenhouse, in comparison, provides deeper recruiting-specific analytics and AI features, including structured-hiring insights, advanced reporting, and AI support for interviews, scorecards, and bias reduction. 

  • Integrations

As a specialized ATS, Greenhouse offers a much broader ecosystem of integrations — over 500 compared to Personio’s 180 integrations. 

7. Deel Talent

Deel Talent is Deel’s new recruiting layer on top of its global payroll, compliance, and Employer of Record (EOR) platform, built to help its users streamline sourcing and hiring while managing international compliance and payments in one place.

 

 

Key features

  • Global talent network: Access Deel’s network of recruitment partners who specialize in sourcing talent across multiple industries and geographies.
  • Hiring visibility: Track recruiting-partner performance through agency intelligence dashboards that show applicant volume, time-to-hire, spend, and time saved.
  • Background checks: Use Deel’s Background Checks add-on to screen candidates in 190+ countries.
  • Payroll and payments: Process international payroll in multiple currencies, automate contractor and employee payments, and ensure taxes and statutory benefits are handled compliantly in each country.
  • Compliance support: Manage worker classification, contracts, and new-hire compliance across countries through Deel’s global payroll and EOR infrastructure.

Personio vs Deel Talent

Personio is an HRIS, while Deel is a global payroll platform. Both include basic recruiting features, but their different core purposes create distinct differences in who they suit, how they’re priced, and how deep their HR and recruiting features go:

  • Who they’re for

Personio is for SMBs that want an HR suite to manage employee engagement and development, with basic recruiting built into the same platform. Deel is for companies hiring globally that need to simplify international payroll and compliance, and only require relatively basic recruiting features on top. 

  • Pricing

Personio’s Essential plan starts at $2.96 per employee per month, with additional costs for its recruiting module — generally offering stronger value for teams that only need basic HRIS plus recruiting features. 

In comparison, pricing for Deel Talent is not publicly listed. However, the broader Deel HRIS starts at $5 per employee per month (at the time of writing this), with additional fees for add-ons such as workforce planning and employee engagement.

  • Depth of HR and recruiting features

Deel’s HR and recruiting features are relatively more basic than Personio’s. Personio shines as an HRIS, but its integrated ATS capabilities remain limited. In comparison, standalone ATS tools like Tellent Recruitee offer far more advanced recruiting features while still integrating with HR platforms.

8. TalentHR

TalentHR is a small-business–focused HR platform that includes a basic ATS for simple, low-volume hiring needs.

 

 

Key features

  • Centralized applicant tracking: Manage open and archived roles, monitor candidate progress across stages, and identify fast-moving versus hard-to-fill roles.
  • Talent pool: Store resumes of promising candidates in a centralized talent pool so you can re-engage them when suitable roles open up. 
  • AI tools: Generate job descriptions with AI and use AI-driven candidate scoring to support initial screening.
  • Branded career pages: Build custom career pages or sync an existing one using TalentHR’s WordPress plugin.

Personio vs TalentHR

Where Personio is a full-suite HRIS, TalentHR is a simple HR tool. This creates clear differences in who the tools cater to, the depth of their feature sets, and their pricing:

  • Who they’re for

While Personio is for SMBs with complex HR processes and moderate hiring needs, TalentHR supports small teams with simple HR and hiring workflows.

  • Depth of recruiting features

Personio offers a broader recruiting feature set compared to TalentHR, which focuses on basic applicant tracking, AI-generated job descriptions, and simple candidate management. As one user explains, “[TalentHR offers] limited advanced ATS features and fewer integrations compared to larger platforms, making it not ideal for complex recruiting processes.”

  • Pricing

TalentHR is budget-friendly since it’s designed for small teams, but most growing companies outgrow it quickly. Personio is better suited to scaling teams’ HR needs but falls short in meeting their expanding hiring needs — so as hiring volume increases, many teams pair Personio with a specialized ATS like Tellent Recruitee or Greenhouse. 

9. Recruit CRM and ATS

Recruit CRM is a platform that combines applicant tracking and candidate relationship management to support agencies running complex hiring workflows at scale.

 

 

Key features

  • Kanban-style, customizable hiring pipeline: Track candidates visually across stages, move them through your pipeline, assign tasks, and manage your entire hiring process from one central board.
  • Built-in calling and call records: Make, record, and automatically transcribe calls directly within the platform. All conversations are logged and linked to the relevant candidate or client profile for easy follow-ups and full visibility.
  • Chrome sourcing extension (add-on): Import and sync candidate profiles directly into Recruit CRM from LinkedIn, job boards, and websites. 
  • Advanced workflow automation (add-on): Use pre-built templates or build custom workflows with triggers and actions to automate processes across Recruit CRM and other tools.
  • Job distribution and integrations: Connect with 1,000+ apps and publish roles across 5,000+ job boards from within Recruit CRM. 

Personio vs Recruit CRM

Personio is an HRIS-first, ATS-second, while Recruit CRM is built primarily for recruiting. That difference in product focus shows up in both their feature depth and the types of teams they’re built for:

  • Who they’re for

Personio is for SMBs that want an all-in-one HR suite to manage employees and handle basic recruiting in one system. 

Recruit CRM, by contrast, is built for recruiting agencies — with features like LinkedIn outreach and cross-platform automation to support outbound sourcing and high-volume hiring.

  • Pricing

Personio uses custom pricing, whereas Recruit CRM publishes its pricing publicly. However, with Recruit CRM, costs can quickly add up in the long run, as several key ATS features, including workflow automation, are sold as add-ons.

  • Recruiting features

Personio’s recruiting module is relatively basic, while Recruit CRM offers more advanced, recruiter-focused functionality. 

For example, Recruit CRM includes a built-in automation builder for cross-tool workflows, while Personio relies on APIs and webhooks for building similar automated workflows. User ratings reflect this difference too, with Recruit CRM scoring higher than Personio for applicant tracking and process automation.

10. SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting is an enterprise-grade recruiting module within the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite, designed to support multi-region, complex hiring workflows at scale.

 

 

Key features

  • Advanced analytics: Get a holistic view of your hiring funnel, with drill-downs by source, job, and time frame for deeper performance insights.
  • Global multichannel sourcing: Access over 4,000 job sites across 80+ countries and connect with more than 100 pre-built partner integrations to expand and diversify your candidate pipeline.
  • Candidate engagement tools: Run automated email campaigns and manage two-way conversations through the in-platform message center to support personalized communication with candidates.
  • Candidate relationship management tools: Keep candidates engaged with personalized notifications, feedback touchpoints, and communication throughout the hiring journey from application to offer.
  • Embedded talent pools: Build and nurture talent pools of active and passive candidates who are already familiar with or interested in your brand.

Personio vs SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting 

Where Personio offers basic recruiting features for SMBs, SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting provides enterprise-grade talent acquisition functionality. This births differences in not just who each is for but also their recruiting feature set and ease of use:

  • Who they’re for

Personio works best for teams that want a straightforward HRIS with simple, in-suite recruiting. SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting is for global companies that need multi-region workflows and tighter integration with a broader enterprise HCM system.

  • Ease of use and implementation

Personio is easier to use, has a shorter learning curve, and faster implementation (typically 6–8 weeks). 

In contrast, users commonly describe SAP SuccessFactors as “too manual and highly inefficient” with a steeper learning curve and longer implementation timelines (around 7 months). One G2 reviewer explains, “The user interface is not intuitive for regular employees, which can make simple tasks frustrating and requires a lot of training.”

  • Recruiting features 

SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting offers far more advanced recruiting features, such as candidate progressive profiling and AI-assisted applicant screening — neither of which Personio provides. However, despite being more feature-rich, users still report that SAP’s ATS is “lacking” and not built for true high-volume recruiting in the way a dedicated, standalone ATS would be.

11. HiBob

HiBob is a Human Capital Management (HCM) platform that has recently introduced its integrated applicant tracking module, Bob Hiring, in 2024.  

 

 

Key features

  • Pipeline management: Move candidates through custom hiring stages, schedule interviews, evaluate them using scorecards, and send offer letters directly from the platform.
  • Collaborative hiring tools: Use shared scorecards, real-time updates, and comment threads to keep hiring teams aligned.
  • Candidate experience tools: Create a branded careers page, automate status updates and reminders, and give candidates a self-service portal to keep them informed.
  • Basic reporting: Track source effectiveness, time-to-hire, offer acceptance rates, and hiring quality.
  • Unified people data: Keep all candidate information in one place and link it with broader HR data to identify hiring trends and the sources that bring in your best talent.
  • Job distribution and referrals: Publish open roles to 2,300+ global job boards connected to Bob’s hiring software and run internal referral programs to incentivize employee recommendations.

Personio vs HiBob

Both Personio and HiBob are strong HRIS platforms with basic recruiting modules, with the main difference coming down to usability:

  • Basic recruiting modules

While both Personio and HiBob seamlessly integrate their recruiting module with employee data, their ATS capabilities and integrations can feel limiting. 

One Personio user shared its “integrations with other software solutions [are] sometimes not yet fully developed.” HiBob users echo similar concerns, rating its background check integrations a 5.4, with one explaining that “integrations can be shallow, often needing manual steps or tech support.”

  • Ease of use

Personio is generally easier to use, whereas HiBob tends to have a steeper learning curve. As one user explains, “The admin interface has a steep learning curve, specifically during setup. Reporting is powerful but not always user-friendly or export flexible.”

  • Customer support

Users often describe Personio’s customer support as more proactive compared to HiBob.  A HiBob user shares, “Support can be slow and documentation may lag behind UI changes.”  

So is the Personio Recruiting module your best choice?

If you’re a small team with simple hiring needs, Personio’s recruiting module, integrated within its broader HR suite, will meet your needs just fine.

But if you’re a fast-growing team hiring across multiple countries with several stakeholders involved, a basic applicant tracking module can start to slow you down with limited automation and manual workarounds.

For distributed teams with high-volume hiring, especially across Europe, an end-to-end ATS like Tellent Recruittee is a strong Personio alternative. It gives you an intuitive, highly customizable ATS that supports complex workflows, better automation, and GDPR-first hiring at scale.

EN - ATS CTA Banner_1116x341

FAQs 


Which recruiting software is best? 

The best recruiting software depends on your team size, hiring volume, and HR priorities. For small to mid-sized businesses with simple hiring needs, HRIS-integrated recruiting modules in tools like Personio or BambooHR work well. For scaling teams, a dedicated or standalone recruiting software like Tellent Recruitee or Greenhouse offers greater flexibility and advanced features to support their mature hiring processes. 

Does Personio have an ATS?

Yes, Personio offers an ATS (applicant tracking system) as part of its HR suite. Its recruiting module gives you basic features like posting jobs, collecting applications, managing pipelines, and scheduling interviews. It’s best suited for small- to mid-sized businesses already using Personio and have simple, low-volume hiring needs. 

How well does an ATS integrate with an HRIS?

Integration quality depends on the connectors that both platforms support. Robust ATS tools like Tellent Recruitee and Greenhouse integrate with leading HRIS platforms such as Personio, BambooHR, and HiBob, enabling seamless two-way syncing for new hires, job data, and onboarding. Some end-to-end ATSs, like Tellent Recruitee, also offer a modular HRIS to unify hiring and HR in one system.

What are Personio Recruiting’s biggest limitations?  

Personio Recruiting’s biggest limitations come from being an add-on inside a broader HR suite. Its ATS features are basic with limited customization, shallow integrations, and simpler workflow automation than what dedicated ATS tools offer. Reporting is also less advanced, and fast-growing teams often outgrow its capabilities as hiring processes become more complex or global. 

Why do companies look for alternatives to Personio?

Companies look for alternatives to Personio because the platform offers limited customization and a basic mobile app. Customer support, while proactive, is only available to admins, which creates bottlenecks when teams need quick fixes. Users also note that some integrations are shallow, the platform can be glitchy at times, and Personio’s recruiting module is fairly basic. 

What ATS can integrate with Personio?  

End-to-end ATS software like Tellent Recruitee, Greenhouse, and Ashby all integrate with Personio to sync jobs, candidates, and new-hire data — helping teams align recruiting and HR workflows without manual data entry. 

Why integrate an ATS with Personio instead of using the built-in recruiting module

Integrating a standalone ATS with Personio gives you far more advanced recruiting features than Personio’s built-in recruiting add-on offers. Tools like Tellent Recruitee, Greenhouse, or Ashby offer deeper customization, stronger automation, and in-depth analytics — helping fast-growing, global teams keep Personio as their HRIS while upgrading to a more powerful ATS for scaling, multi-stakeholder hiring.

Written by
Martina is the Global Content Strategist at Tellent. Her focus is to educate recruiters and HR managers on the latest trends in talent acquisition, employer branding, and other HR topics.

Join 7,000+ companies

Create a free account in just 2 minutes.
Get a demo
30 minutes to explore the software
Try for free
No credit card required