How The Mason Group evaluated 16 recruitment ATS platforms and landed on Tracker

A 40-person Canadian staffing firm with 100 active contractors outgrew its platform, evaluated 16 alternatives, and found a partner in Tracker. From a thorough implementation to a contract team that was up and running from day one.

The Mason Group at a glance

When your ATS stops evolving with you

The Mason Group has been placing accounting, finance, admin, and IT professionals across Canada for more than 15 years. With offices in Vancouver, Ottawa, and two locations in Toronto, and a mix of contract and permanent placement business, the firm runs a varied high-volume, relationship-driven operation that puts real demands on its technology stack.

For most of that time, the firm ran on Mindscope. When Mindscope was acquired by a company with little investment in the staffing software space, progress stalled. The product stopped evolving. And the team that had been promised a capable, growing platform found themselves working around a system that had quietly hit its ceiling.

“The company that bought them is almost like a consolidator. They’re not overly focused on expanding their staffing software. It’s just been stagnant, and there’s not a lot of new stuff coming down the pipeline.”

— Rob Fletcher, Partner, Interim and Contract Division, The Mason Group

The frustrations were compounding. Recruiters avoided the system because it was too clunky to use efficiently. There was no reliable way to track contractor availability or flag consultants nearing the end of their placements. And with 100 active contractors in the field every week, the firm’s back-office and payroll processes were held together with manual workarounds.

Something had to change.

How to evaluate staffing ATS software: what The Mason Group looked for

Rob Fletcher and one of his managers took on the evaluation process themselves. Over several months, they reviewed more than 15 platforms, including overseas providers that were quickly ruled out due to time zone and partnership concerns.

The permanent placement team pushed hard for a solution based on its interface. But as Rob dug deeper, a critical limitation surfaced.

“The system our perm team wanted didn’t have an actual CRM. You can’t open up a client and see a full scope of it. And they had only an add-on for the back office, which was extremely expensive and didn’t really integrate with the software. So, we kept searching”

— Rob Fletcher

Tracker wasn’t in the first wave of results. Rob found it through a different kind of research — browsing job boards to see what firms were actually running on. When he finally landed on Tracker, it started checking boxes the other platforms couldn’t.

The non-negotiables were clear going in:

• A fully integrated back office capable of handling contractor timesheets, client approvals, and payroll
• Multi-entity support across separate contract and permanent lines of business
• Ease of use that would actually drive adoption, after years of a system the team avoided because it was too hard to navigate

Tracker met all three. But what ultimately separated it from the rest wasn’t just the product.

“Talking with the Tracker team wasn’t a cookie-cutter dog-and-pony show. It was: what are your challenges, and how can our system help solve them?”

— Rob Fletcher

That consultative approach carried through from the sales team to implementation to ongoing support, and it’s what gave Rob and his team the confidence to move forward.

What Tracker’s ATS implementation actually looks like

From data mapping to go-live, the Mason Group’s implementation ran over approximately six weeks, with clearly defined phases and a dedicated team supporting each step.

Phase one focused entirely on data migration. Jeremy from the Tracker implementation team ran several sessions over two weeks to map Mason Group’s existing data to Tracker’s structure. The team had done Mindscope migrations before, so they understood exactly where legacy data needed to land. After the initial mapping sessions, Tracker came back two to three weeks later with a complete data set for review. Issues were identified, corrected, and resolved before a single user went live.

Phase two was training. Travis and his team ran a week of structured sessions before go-live. Crucially, the contract team was also given access to a test environment beforehand — time to explore the system, get comfortable with the interface, and work through questions without any pressure.

“When we did go live, we knew probably 90% of what we were expecting. The transition was fairly easy.”

— Rob Fletcher

The back-office setup, historically the most complex piece, went better than expected. Tracker’s team customized the configuration to fit the firm’s specific payroll and invoicing workflow, ensuring that the finance team was satisfied with the output before launch.

The contract team went live over a single weekend. On Monday, they were running.

Getting recruiter buy-in on a new ATS

Change management in staffing is rarely clean. The Mason Group’s experience illustrates what works and where the real resistance tends to live.

The contract division adopted Tracker quickly. Rob attributes this to early hands-on access, a familiar toolbar layout, and a clear mandate: two weeks to be off the old system. He turned off Mindscope for his team and didn’t look back.

The permanent team moved more slowly. They had been using an older version of Mindscope’s interface and were heavier users of LinkedIn Recruiter, which meant both the tooling shift and the behavioral change were more significant. Rob’s observation is instructive for any firm managing a split between fast-moving contract and longer-cycle permanent business.

“The speed at which our business moves means we all have to be on the same page. I told my team: these tools make your life easier. That’s the standard.”

— Rob Fletcher

The perm team’s adoption accelerated after Tracker’s LinkedIn Recruiter integration launched. Lunch-and-learn sessions focused on that specific workflow gave the team a concrete reason to spend more time inside Tracker.

Measurable results from switching to Tracker: Four months in

The Mason Group went live in February 2026. Four months later, the efficiency gains are visible across the business.

• Back office and payroll: The biggest operational win. 100 contractors submit time every two weeks through Tracker. Clients receive automated approval emails and can confirm hours in a single click, replacing a cumbersome login-required process. Invoice generation follows automatically. The finance team no longer chases missing timesheets, and contractor payment issues have essentially disappeared.

“We haven’t had people complain that they haven’t got paid. Our clients have had barely any complaints or questions about the new system. It’s a lot easier for them to use because they just get an email and click a button. The whole system has been much better than anything we’ve seen.”

— Rob Fletcher

• Sales team efficiency: Tasks that previously required four or five clicks now take one. Email templates, marketing campaigns, and prospecting workflows are embedded in the system, meaning salespeople are reaching more contacts in less time.
• Candidate presentations: Recruiters were spending roughly 30 minutes building candidate presentations to pitch to clients before the switch. With Tracker’s AI tools scanning resumes and generating structured write-ups, that’s down to around 10 minutes. That time saved per presentation now goes directly to candidate outreach and engagement.
• Data quality and knowledge management: With the system being used, the firm’s candidate database is more complete and more current than it has ever been. Resumes are being added consistently. LinkedIn profile photos are pulled in with a single click. The team has more information and it’s more up to date.
• Reporting: Rob and Travis have built out custom reports that give leadership real visibility into team activity, pipeline, and contractor status — something the old system couldn’t reliably provide.

“Everyone on the team says the same thing: this is so much better than what we had. I don’t have people complaining that the system doesn’t do this or that. It just works.”

— Rob Fletcher

Tracker ATS support: what sets it apart

What Rob describes throughout the conversation isn’t just a product experience. It’s a relationship. The continuity between the sales team, implementation, and client success on training and ongoing support gave the Mason Group confidence at every stage. Four months in, that relationship is still active.

“For me, it’s the partnership with people like Travis and Jeremy. Just being able to ask a quick question or check in — that’s been invaluable.”

— Rob Fletcher

Rob has already recommended Tracker to peers in the industry. His guidance to other contract division leaders is direct: Tracker is the most complete platform he found across 16 evaluations, and the integrated back office is something most alternatives simply can’t match.

“From the customer service, the ease of use, and having a fully functional back office, in my mind, there’s probably nothing better. I looked at 16 different ATS and CRMs. Tracker is the one.”

— Rob Fletcher

Marketer in the Staffing and recruiting industry for over 6 years with a passion for building relationships and educating staffing professionals with industry best practices.

More from Stormie Haller