Lever

Our verdict on Lever

Lever is the applicant tracking system Jordan named in August 2025 as the one Ryz Labs uses. We never reviewed it against other ATS products on the show. What we did was build AI tools around it and send their results back into it, so recruiters keep working in one place.

The evidence here is thin. Lever is named once, in Episode 6. Other episodes talk about "our ATS" without naming it, so read those parts as how we use an ATS, not as a verdict on Lever's features.

What we built with Lever

• NTRVSTA (August 2025): our AI avatar interviewer. Most of our team uses it through a direct integration with Lever, where it works as a secondary view. Its assessment builder can pull job descriptions from the ATS. Recruiting capacity grew 25% in the 30 days before the episode.
• Ryz Score (July 2025): AI resume scoring with ChatGPT and Supabase. The score and a written rationale are posted back into our ATS. Most recruiters never open the Ryz Score app itself.
• Sam's ATS (August 2025): Sam built a prototype ATS front end with Claude Code in about an hour. His second PRD listed the features of our current ATS he liked, so the new one would match how recruiters already work.

So, you know, at Ryz Labs, we use Lever as our applicant tracking system, but Ntrvsta actually integrates with a bunch of different ATS and CRM tools.

— Jordan Metzner, Episode 6

How we use Lever

1. Keep the ATS as the system of record. Recruiters keep moving candidates through the funnel in Lever. Jordan said that is what "has worked best for us internally" (Episode 6, at 14:47).
2. Write AI results back into it. Ryz Score posts each score and its reasoning into the ATS, and NTRVSTA's interview results show up there as well.
3. Add a link out for the detail. From the ATS, a recruiter can click through to the full Ryz Score page when they want more than the number (Episode 4, at 08:16).
4. Reuse the job description. NTRVSTA can pull job descriptions straight from the ATS to build an interview assessment, instead of someone re-entering them.
5. Check scores before you trust them. Sam's team tested whether "a 92 or a 90 feel like a 92 and a 90" before relying on Ryz Score.
6. Prototype outside the ATS first. Sam's ATS let us try an AI-first version without moving any real recruiting work.

And that's really important because it's, like, kind of an elegant solution for our recruiters, not having to leave and go look at another tool to see who were the who which candidates have the the best resumes.

— Sam Nadler, Episode 4

Where Lever falls short

• No AI scoring when we needed it. In July 2025 Jordan said he was surprised AI resume scoring hadn't shown up "inside the applicant tracking system that we use or others yet." That gap is why we built Ryz Score. He didn't name the ATS in that episode.
• Search. In January 2026, demoing ScreenEval, Sam said "our ATS isn't that great" for finding candidates by background. ScreenEval now lets recruiters search screen transcripts as well. He didn't name the ATS here either, so we can't say whether he meant Lever.
• What we didn't test. We never covered Lever's pricing or its own AI features, and we never compared it with Greenhouse or Ashby.

Jordan's broader view in Episode 9: before replacing the current ATS, ask how AI and a custom app can take it further. Replacing it only gets more attractive once every view is better for recruiters and leadership.

Episodes featuring Lever

• Episode 6: the NTRVSTA launch, and Jordan on running it inside Lever.
• Episode 4: Ryz Score writes AI resume scores back into our ATS.
• Episode 9: Sam's ATS, and whether to replace an ATS at all.
• Episode 29: ScreenEval adds transcript search the ATS lacked.

FAQ

What ATS does Ryz Labs use?

In Episode 6 (August 2025) Jordan said Ryz Labs uses Lever as its applicant tracking system. Our AI interview tool, NTRVSTA, plugs directly into it.

Does NTRVSTA integrate with Lever?

Yes. Most of our recruiters use NTRVSTA through its direct integration with Lever, so NTRVSTA becomes a secondary view. Jordan said it also connects to Greenhouse, Ashby, Workday and Salesforce.

Can you add AI resume scoring to an ATS?

We did it ourselves with Ryz Score. Supabase edge functions send each new application to ChatGPT with a scoring matrix, and the score and rationale are posted back into our ATS, where recruiters filter and act on them.

Should you replace your ATS with a custom one built with AI?

Sam built an ATS front end with Claude Code in about an hour, but Jordan's view was to first use AI to add value around the current ATS. Replacing it only makes sense once a custom version clearly does more.