Blog29 Oct 202610 min read

Recruitment software (ATS) in Norway: how to choose in 2026

Which applicant tracking system fits depends first on whether you hire for yourselves or for clients. Here are the questions that separate the systems, and what the ones most used in Norway are best at.

Håkon HøgetveitFounder · Vouch

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is where your jobs and applicants come together, from the moment a job ad goes out until everyone has had an answer. Which one fits depends first on whether you hire for your own company or recruit for clients. Then come special requirements, such as a public applicant list or payroll for temps. And then there is the question more teams are asking now: how much of the work should AI help with?

The short answer

If you recruit for clients, you need a system where the client is part of the setup: jobs and a career page per client, and a candidate list the client can open and comment on themselves.
If you place temps, you need hours, payroll and invoicing in the same system. That is Recman's home ground.
If you are a public employer in Norway, you need a public applicant list (offentlig søkerliste). Webcruiter is the most used system in the public sector.
If you hire for your own company, the choice comes down to where you need the most help: showing yourselves to candidates, or reading and following up the people who apply.
If you want AI that helps through the whole process, the assistant should know the job and everything you know about the candidates, and work at every step. That is where Vouch stands out.
If procurement requires SSO and ISO 27001, the list gets short quickly.

What every system should do

The foundation is the same across serious vendors. If something here is missing, look elsewhere:

publishing to job boards, social media and a career page on your own domain
an application form that does not make candidates create an account
stages in the process, with comments and ratings from colleagues
interview booking against Google or Outlook calendars
email to candidates from the system, rejections included
retention periods and consent under data protection rules

The differences lie in what a system does beyond this.

Five questions that separate the systems

1. Do you hire for yourselves, or for clients?

Most applicant tracking systems are built for one employer with one career page. An agency recruits for many. Each client then needs jobs in the client's name, a career page of its own and a candidate list the client can open with a link. The privacy notice must also say that the agency runs the process on the client's behalf.

Ask the vendor to show you what a client is in their system. If the answer is a tag or a folder, you will be building workarounds.

2. Is the AI a button or an assistant?

Nearly every system has AI now, but it means very different things. Often it is single buttons: one writes the job ad, another gives applicants a score, and each starts from nothing. An assistant knows the context. It knows what the hiring manager said in the kickoff meeting and what colleagues wrote after the interview, and it uses that in everything it does.

With 40 applicants, the time goes to interviews. With 400, it goes to reading. So ask what the AI does with the applications. Does it read the whole application against the job's criteria and write down its reasons, or does it score keywords? And does it reject anyone on its own?

That last point matters. Under GDPR, a rejection of a job application cannot be fully automated. We have written more about it in AI in recruitment: what the EU AI Act means for employers in 2026.

Ask to see one assessment of a real candidate, and check whether you can follow the reasoning. Ask too what the AI does when nobody asks it anything, for example when a candidate replies to an email or a colleague writes what they thought.

3. What happens to candidates once the job is filled?

Last year's applicants can be next year's shortlist, but only if you can find them again and are allowed to keep them. Ask whether you can search all your candidates in plain words. Ask too whether the system deletes people when their time runs out, and whether it asks them first if they want to stay.

4. Do you have requirements only a few systems meet?

Some requirements narrow the field at once:

a public applicant list under the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (offentleglova)
hours, payroll and invoicing for temps
contracts signed with BankID inside the system
SSO sign-in, with users managed from Entra ID or Okta
job ads in many countries from one place

Knowing which of these you must have before you book demos saves a lot of time.

5. How is the price built up?

Few Norwegian vendors publish prices, so ask how the price is worked out. The most common models are per user, per employee in the company, per job or a fixed package. Per-user pricing gets expensive quickly when many managers need to log in and review candidates. Per-employee pricing grows with the company, however much you recruit. Ask too what happens if you hire more than planned.

The systems most used in Norway

We make one of the systems on this list, so read this as our view. What we say about the others comes from their own websites in October 2026.

Recman

A Norwegian system for recruitment and staffing agencies. Recman covers the running of a staffing agency, with sales and clients, time tracking, pay rules and invoicing, and more than 200 integrations. Best when temps are a large part of the business. Priced per user. Vouch and Recman compared

Teamtailor

A Swedish system for companies hiring for themselves, strongest on the career site and employer branding. It has a career site builder with room for stories from the team, and offers can be e-signed in the system. Best when the career site matters most. Teamtailor is built for one employer, so an agency recruiting for many clients has to keep the clients apart itself. Vouch and Teamtailor compared

Webcruiter, ReachMee and Jobbnorge

All three are owned by Talentech, which also owns Sweden's Varbi and has said its platform will become more unified over time. According to Talentech, Webcruiter is the most used recruitment system in Norway's public sector. Jobbnorge is both a job board and a system, and also offers reference checks and tools for performance reviews. Best for public employers, and for those who want recruitment and HR from the same vendor. Vouch and ReachMee compared

Workable

An international system you set up yourself, with HR features on the same platform and publishing to around 200 job boards. Prices are on its website. Best for those hiring in many countries. Vouch and Workable compared

Vouch

A recruitment system made in Oslo, built around one assistant that works through the whole process. The foundation is in place, from publishing and a career page on your own domain to interview booking and notifications in Slack and Teams, and for agencies the client is part of the system. Best for agencies and companies that want AI to take on more of the work while a person makes the decisions. More on what sets Vouch apart just below.

What sets Vouch apart

Vouch has been built around an assistant from day one. The same assistant writes the brief, reads the applications, prepares the interview and drafts the rejection. And before it does any of that, it reads everything you know.

It knows the whole context

The same person can be a good choice for one job and a poor one for another. That is why the assistant reads more than the CV: the brief and the scorecard, the application answers and the LinkedIn profile, your colleagues' comments, emails both ways, interview notes and earlier processes with you. Your notes outweigh what candidates say about themselves.

A lot happens without you asking

The biggest help happens in the background. A few examples:

When a candidate replies that she is on leave until March, the assistant sets the date for the next contact itself.
When an attachment arrives, a diploma for instance, the assistant reads it and updates the assessment.
When the CV does not match LinkedIn, the assessment says so.
When a colleague writes what they thought after the interview, or the client comments through the shared link, the assessment is updated with it.
The home page shows what is waiting for you today, such as applicants who have waited more than a week and offers that have had no answer.
When the job is filled, a personal reply is ready for everyone still waiting.

Ask Vouch anything

You can also talk to the assistant. Ask Vouch is open on every page of the app and knows which job and candidate you have in front of you. You write as you would to a colleague:

"Sum up where we are with Nora."
"Compare Nora and Jonas for this job."
"Who has not replied to us yet?"
"Make a table of the candidates with stage and assessment."
"Find people we have met who have worked in recruitment."

Ask Vouch compares two candidates on the job’s own scorecard, and says what it read to get there.

It answers from what it has read, and says plainly when something is missing. Ask it to change the job ad, the scorecard or the interview stages, and the change arrives as a suggestion in the form you have open. You see what changed and decide whether to use it, and it can be undone afterwards. The assistant sees only what you yourself have access to, and a candidate who has declined AI review is not assessed here either.

At every step of the process

Kickoff: Record the kickoff meeting with the meeting assistant, and the assistant writes the brief, scorecard and job ad from what was said. The scorecard is rated before the first applicant is read, so you can see where the criteria are too vague.
Applications: Each application is read in full against the criteria, with a reason for each criterion and what to ask in the interview.
Your candidates: Search everyone you have met in plain words, ranked for the job you are working on. Lookout searches outside your pool, among more than 915 million profiles, and screens the best against the same criteria.
The interview: The meeting assistant joins Google Meet, Teams or Zoom and writes the summary. The scorecard draft is made only from what was said.
The client: The agency shares candidates with one link. The client rates and comments, and the comments go straight into the assessment.
Candidates: Every message is written as a draft in your tone. Only confirmations, such as "application received", go out on their own.

What Vouch does not do

The assistant never rejects applicants, and every decision is made by a person. Vouch also does not have hours and payroll for temps, e-signing, a public applicant list or SSO. If you need any of those, one of the systems above will suit you better.

Vouch does not charge per user, and you can try it free without a card. Read more for agencies or for companies hiring for themselves, or see how the assistant works.

Switching systems without losing your candidates

Most of the work in a switch is the candidates. Ask who does the move, and whether each candidate's retention date comes along. Lose the dates and you end up keeping people too long or deleting them too early. Notes and earlier processes should come along too.

At Vouch we do the move with you, and you can start with one job while the rest stays where it is.

Questions and answers

What is an ATS?

ATS stands for applicant tracking system. It brings the jobs and applications together in one place and keeps track of where each candidate is in the process.

What is the difference between an ATS and a CRM in recruitment?

An ATS follows applicants through a job. A CRM keeps in touch with candidates and clients over time, also when no job is open. Agencies need both, and many agency systems have them in one. So does Vouch.

What is an AI assistant in a recruitment system?

It is AI that knows the job and the candidates, and that both works in the background and can be asked things. The difference from single features is that it uses the same ground everywhere: what it learned in the kickoff meeting, it uses when it reads the applications and when it writes to candidates.

Does a small company need an ATS?

For one or two hires a year, email and a spreadsheet are often enough. The need shows up at the next job: who applied last time, and what did you think of them? In a system it is all in one place, and you are in control of retention and consent.