ATS for recruiting agencies
The ATS + CRM built for recruiting agencies, not retrofitted from corporate hiring
Most recruiting agencies are stuck on ATS tools built for corporate HR. They were never meant to handle a portfolio of clients, an 18-month pipeline for a retained search, or a recruiter who works in LinkedIn Recruiter every day. Leonar brings an ATS, a CRM, an AI sourcing engine, and a workspace for organizing selected LinkedIn sourcing records together, at a published price, with no "contact sales" gates. Built for agencies of three to thirty recruiters, not for Fortune 500 HR.
Used by 300+ high-growth recruiting teams and agencies globally
Why most ATS fail agency workflows
Walk through any boutique agency that bought a corporate ATS and you will hear three versions of the same complaint. The product was designed for someone else. Here are the three mismatches that hurt the most, and how Leonar handles each one differently from the ground up.
Inbound versus outbound DNA
Corporate ATS were designed around inbound applications: a candidate finds the careers page, applies, lands in a queue. Agencies work the opposite way. You source first, you write the message, you book the call. Tools like Greenhouse or Lever bury the outreach side because it was never their reason to exist. Leonar leads with outreach because that is how an agency actually fills a role.
Single employer versus portfolio
A corporate recruiter has one client: their employer. An agency has fifteen clients, plus another twenty in the prospect pipeline. Without a CRM layer for companies and deals, you end up tracking that in a Notion or a Google Sheet that nobody updates. Leonar carries Companies, Deals, and the candidate pipeline in one workspace. After a placement, you move the candidate to hired in the Project pipeline and separately mark the linked Deal won in the Deals view.
Quick reqs versus 18-month searches
Executive search firms run multi-month nurture cycles. Most ATS auto-archive a candidate after thirty days of silence. That breaks every retained search workflow. Leonar pipelines are project-scoped, not requisition-timed, and a contact can sit warm in a sequence for two years without falling off the radar.
Everything an agency needs, in one platform
The seven blocks below cover the daily work of a recruiting consultant from sourcing through placement to client follow-up. Each one is a real surface in Leonar, not a roadmap promise. Where another tool would be required, you can see the link to the cluster pillar that goes deeper.
ATS + candidate pipelines per project
Every search becomes a project with its own Kanban pipeline. The default stages (not contacted, contacted, answered, interested, interviewing, hired, rejected) are editable per workspace, and drag-and-drop between stages updates the candidate timeline automatically. Custom fields cover everything a corporate ATS would lock behind an enterprise upgrade: text, number, date, currency, multiselect, team member. Filter and search hit every field, including geo-radius on candidate location. You can read the deeper write-up on this in the comparison guide on the best ATS for recruitment.
CRM for clients and prospects (Companies + Deals)
The CRM side of Leonar covers two objects: Companies (your clients, your prospects, the firms you cold-pitched last quarter) and Deals (open opportunities with amount, expected close date, probability, status). You can run multiple deal pipelines per workspace so the executive-search team and the contingency team do not share a stage definition. Funnel analytics show expected revenue by stage and by owner, which is the number an agency owner actually wants to track. The full breakdown lives on the client CRM for recruiting agencies page, and the candidate side sits in the recruiting CRM pillar.
Multichannel outreach, included from Professional
Sequences combine email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and phone steps in one automated flow. Conditional paths adapt the next step after a reply or another candidate event. A/B testing runs on step variants, while the unified inbox surfaces replies from connected channels in one screen, threaded by contact. Available from the Professional tier and up. The hub page is multichannel recruitment outreach, with the reply side covered on the centralized multichannel inbox.
LinkedIn Recruiter workflow support (Chrome extension)
Leonar works alongside LinkedIn Recruiter. Its Chrome extension saves time when users choose selected profiles, add them to a project and continue the work in the ATS without repetitive copy-paste. LinkedIn actions remain dependent on the account and the options it permits. See the deeper write-up on LinkedIn Recruiter workflows, sequence preparation, and the Chrome extension for sourcing.
AI sourcing on 800M+ profiles (verified emails + phones)
Leonar Source covers a database of 800M+ profiles with boolean filters on current and past titles, current and past companies, location, languages, schools, skills, and years of experience. The Sourcing Autopilot ranks results in batches and surfaces the top fits in your project pipeline. Email verification and mobile-phone lookup run through a waterfall of more than ten providers, only billed when a hit is found. The 800M figure is the size of the indexed profile graph, not a confused marketing number. More detail at Leonar Source and AI recruiting.
Hiring Manager Portal for client collaboration
The client portal lives at a separate route with its own authentication. You share a project pipeline view with the hiring manager, they review candidates, submit feedback, and you keep the conversation inside Leonar rather than in a Slack thread that gets lost. Audit logs track every access. See how view versus feedback access, share management, and the access audit log work on the dedicated hiring manager portal for agencies page, and the companion ATS feature page sits at ATS for headhunters for the executive-search side of this workflow.
Native MCP server: query your CRM with any AI agent
Your Leonar workspace exposes a native Model Context Protocol endpoint. Connect Claude Desktop, GitHub Copilot, or any MCP-compatible client and read or write your data: contacts, companies, deals, projects, sequences, notes, sourcing. This is AI at the infrastructure level, not a chatbot retrofit. The agent your team already uses now talks to your CRM directly, with API-key authentication.
See the platform on your own desks before the demo call
Sign up takes a minute, the trial is seven days, and 50 sourcing credits are pre-loaded so you can test the data quality on roles you actually run.
Transparent pricing, all-inclusive at the Professional tier
The pricing page lists every plan in full, in EUR and USD, monthly and annual. Here is the short version. Starter covers the core ATS, CRM, Chrome extension, and one-to-one send. Professional adds multichannel sequences, the unified inbox, AI sourcing, Leonar Source reveals within plan limits, and WhatsApp send, all-inclusive at the Professional tier and up. The public REST API ships on the Professional and Enterprise tiers. Credits handle data lookups (verified pro email at one credit per hit, mobile phone at five credits per hit, only billed when found) and AI features such as sourcing and application reviews. No "contact sales" wall.
The seven-day trial runs at the Professional equivalent, with 50 credits included. Detailed breakdown on the pricing page. The contrast with Bullhorn and Loxo, both of which gate quotes behind a sales call, is part of why agencies switch. See the receipt-style breakdown in our ATS + CRM comparison for recruiting agencies.
How a boutique agency reaches first-month placement with Leonar
This is the realistic timeline for a five-consultant boutique agency picking up Leonar on a Monday morning and trying to place its first candidate by month-end. No magic, no padded numbers, just the day-by-day work pattern we see across our existing customer base.
Day 1, sourcing
Open LinkedIn Recruiter or Sales Navigator and review your first sourcing search on the open req. Leonar helps organize the selected records and rank them against the brief while the team finishes onboarding the rest of the workspace.
Day 5, outreach
The first workflow is ready. Email and WhatsApp steps can run according to their supported settings, while Leonar keeps the next LinkedIn task and its context visible for the recruiter. Replies in connected channels appear in the unified inbox and verified-email enrichment runs in the background.
Day 12, candidate shortlist
Around fifteen warm replies, eight first calls booked, a shortlist of three serious candidates moves into the "interviewing" stage. The hiring manager portal goes live for the client, who reviews and gives feedback inside Leonar. No back-and-forth Slack thread to chase.
Day 25, placement
Offer goes out, signed, the candidate moves to "hired" on the project pipeline and you mark the deal "won" on the company side. Funnel analytics then roll that deal's fee into the monthly revenue forecast. The team starts the second search on day 26.
Every agency is different, retained executive search runs on a four-month cycle, contingency tech can place in two weeks, but the pattern holds: data quality plus a working pipeline plus a working CRM gets you to placement faster than chasing receipts across five tools. The persona-led companion to this page lives at recruiting agency software.
How Leonar compares to Loxo, Bullhorn, Recruiterflow, Recruit CRM
The full per-product breakdown lives on the dedicated compare pages, but here is the short scoreboard on the points that matter for an agency owner choosing today.
| Capability | Leonar | Bullhorn | Loxo | Recruiterflow | Recruit CRM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI sourcing included | Yes, from Professional | Paid add-on | Yes, separate cost | Limited | Limited |
| LinkedIn sourcing workflow | Selected records and task preparation | No | No | No | No |
| Published price, no sales gate | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Native MCP server | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Full breakdowns: Leonar vs Bullhorn, Loxo vs Leonar, Recruiterflow vs Leonar, Recruit CRM vs Leonar. Tactical reads if you are weighing a switch: Bullhorn alternatives, Loxo alternatives, and Recruiterflow alternatives.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an ATS and a CRM for a recruiting agency?
An applicant tracking system manages candidates moving through hiring pipelines: stages, notes, interviews, offers, hires. A recruiting CRM manages the relationship side: the companies you place candidates with, the deals you close, prospects you nurture for months before they sign. Corporate HR teams only need an ATS because they have one client (their employer). Recruiting agencies need both, because they manage a portfolio of clients alongside the candidate side. Leonar ships both in one workspace. After a placement, you move the candidate to hired in the Project pipeline and separately mark the linked Deal won in the Deals view.
How does Leonar help with LinkedIn Recruiter work?
Leonar helps organize selected candidate records and sourcing context available through your account. The Chrome extension speeds up adding selected profiles to a Leonar project without repetitive copy-paste. You choose the profiles and keep the final LinkedIn action in your hands or within an option explicitly allowed by the connected account.
Does Leonar integrate with Bullhorn, Greenhouse, or Lever?
Leonar pushes candidates to Greenhouse and Lever for agencies whose end clients run those ATS internally. There is no Bullhorn integration on purpose: Leonar positions itself as a Bullhorn replacement, not a connector. If you are leaving Bullhorn, CSV export plus a guided workspace setup cover the migration for most boutique agencies.
What is included in the price?
The ATS, the CRM (Companies + Deals), pipelines, the Chrome extension, and one-to-one email workflows ship at the Starter tier. Multichannel sequences, the unified inbox, AI sourcing on the Leonar database, and WhatsApp send come included from the Professional tier and up. One-to-one email and LinkedIn send is included from Starter. The public REST API ships on the Professional and Enterprise tiers. Credits cover data lookups and AI features such as sourcing and application reviews.
How long does it take to migrate from another ATS?
For a boutique agency of three to fifteen consultants, two to three working days is realistic. Day one: CSV export from your current ATS, then CSV import into Leonar (contacts, companies, deals). Day two: organize selected sourcing records and prepare the workspace for the team. Day three: rebuild your sequence templates and onboard the team. You do not need a paid migration partner for a sub-30-seat agency. Larger teams or messy data sets can engage a Leonar onboarding session.
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