In case you missed it, Greenhouse — the company that despite its obvious midlife crisis still desperately wants to be seen as the cool ATS in a world of clunky legacy systems — has made some significant product announcements in the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately, not for fixing the things recruiters or candidates have actually been begging for.

Their latest disruption to an otherwise stagnant sector - a splashy partnership with CLEAR. You know, the company that allows travelers to trade their biometric data and a couple hundred bucks for the privilege of a little less time in line at US airports (despite being a Canadian company)?

The same Thompson Reuters subsidiary that just settled a $27M class action suit in California for collecting personal data without consent and then reselling access for a profit? Yeah, that one.

Well, guys - big news: Greenhouse will be relying on CLEAR to bring identity verification and facial recognition into the hiring process. According to the breathless press release, this is to combat an epidemic of “fake” job applicants:

"By 2028, 1 in 4 job applicants will be fake. AI-powered deepfakes, forged IDs, and voice clones are taking over hiring pipelines."

If that sounds a bit alarmist, well… that’s the point. The message is clear (boom): in an era of generative AI, the ATS is now your first line of defense against cyber-fraud and foreign infiltration. Because, you know, even the most advanced cell of state sponsored hackers has nothing on the technical capabilities of the average HR Technology vendor.

While no one’s denying that fake candidates exist — after all, there are reports of North Korean IT workers being hired by U.S. companies — the idea that snapping a selfie inside your ATS is going to meaningfully address that problem feels like a stretch, to put it mildly.

It also feels like a symptom of a much larger issue in this category: the applicant tracking system market, circa 2025, is having an identity crisis. Again. But now, with more AI.

Everyone Wants to Be More Than An ATS — But Maybe They Shouldn’t

The applicant tracking system should be one of the most valuable pieces of HR infrastructure. In reality, it’s often the most begrudgingly used. For years, Greenhouse attempted to differentiate itself by being the ATS that recruiters didn’t hate.

Based on nearly 5k customer reviews on G2 Crowd, it looks like it mostly succeeded, sitting at a solid 4.4 out of 5; Oracle's Talent Management Cloud, better known as Taleo, was rated 3.4 at the time of writing, and Workday Recruiting was at 3.7, so we can assume these scores are slightly inflated. But still.

Its early growth, and significant funding, were built on a pretty simple premise: solid workflows, decent UX, and a structured hiring philosophy that felt fresh compared to the slow-moving enterprise players.

It worked — Greenhouse quietly became one of the largest players in the space, processing 300 million applications for 40 million candidates last year, helping over 7,500 companies make 2 million hires, according to the company. In an ATS market where customer churn is notoriously high (one recent estimate pegged average contract turnover around 30% annually), that kind of sustained volume matters.

But now? Greenhouse seems more focused on launching things like “Real Talent” identity verification, or an internal “Tinder-for-hiring” swipe app for managers, than on continuing to invest in its core features and functionality that have positioned it as one of the most ubiquitous applicant tracking systems on the market.

Of course, they’re not alone. Every major ATS provider is desperately trying to convince customers that the category's well known product, er, limitations can be solved with agentic AI (presumably, they're capable of applying for a job without creating a username and password, but that's likely Phase 2). Vendors from Workday Recruiting to SmartRecruiters, from iCIMS to Jobvite, is now claiming that their pretty passe product sits at the cutting edge of AI (yawn).

The problem? None of these companies have actually solved the core issues of modern applicant tracking. They’re layering shiny AI features on top of brittle, bloated systems. And recruiters notice. More importantly, so do candidates.

A recent Aptitude Research report found that 58% of talent acquisition leaders still describe their ATS as “frustrating” to use. More than 70% say their reporting capabilities are inadequate. The number one complaint? “It doesn’t work the way our hiring managers work.”

That’s the gap in this market. It’s not “trust and verification.” It’s not “AI-powered everything.” It’s basic usability — at scale — for both recruiters and candidates.

Why Market Share Still Matters in HR Tech

And here’s the real kicker: despite all this innovation theater, the ATS still matters more than ever. For all the noise about CRM systems, recruitment marketing platforms, and “talent intelligence” layers, the ATS remains the system of record for hiring. It’s the first contract new TA leaders evaluate. It’s the anchor for compliance and EEO reporting. It’s the system that syncs with payroll and HCM.

And for Greenhouse, owning that core ATS share is worth more than any pivot toward “hiring security” or swipe-driven UX.

Why? Because once a company implements an ATS at scale, the switching costs are brutal. That’s why the top five ATS vendors in the U.S. have held their combined market share steady at around 75% for the last four years — despite hundreds of new platforms launching in the space.

Even Gartner’s most recent HCM report flagged ATS replacement as “one of the most expensive, high-friction projects a TA leader can undertake.” In other words: customers stick with what works. If it works. 

The Road Not Taken

This is why it’s baffling to see Greenhouse chasing new identity features, instead of doubling down on building the most usable, recruiter-friendly ATS on the market. Because no one — literally no one — has claimed that crown yet.

The opportunity is sitting there:

• The ATS that provides candidates with as seamless an experience as any other ecomm platform, such as true one click apply and device agnosticism

• The ATS that provides predictive talent/pipeline analytics in real time instead of basic dashboards or BI overlays

• The ATS that delivers quantifiable ROI to the bigger business or bottom line 

• The ATS whose workflows are easier than workarounds for end users

In short: the ATS that becomes a competitive advantage, rather than a necessary evil.

Because here’s the thing about adding selfie-based verification or swipeable candidate cards: it won’t solve the number one problem TA leaders face — which is getting their hiring teams to use the damn system in the first place.

System of (Broken) Records

So yes, the AI threat is real. Yes, fake candidates exist. But adding TSA-style checks into Greenhouse isn’t going to “fix” hiring fraud — and it certainly isn’t going to make hiring managers love your software more.

If Greenhouse, or any of its erstwile competitors, really wants to win, it should stop pretending to be something it’s not. It’s an ATS. That’s not a bad thing. It’s a necessary thing. And in 2025, an ATS that works as promised, scales with the business, and doesn’t make candidates rage-quit halfway through an application is still worth its weight in gold.

For a market that’s growing again (Gartner projects a 6.5% CAGR in the core talent acquisition systems category through 2028) and one where enterprise customers are desperately seeking stability after three years of churn, the biggest opportunity isn’t biometric verification. And it's sure as hell not whatever passes for AI in this overcrowded and overly commoditized category. 

It’s being the ATS that both clients and candidates don’t hate. That’s a bar no one has cleared yet.