Number one mission for internal recruiting teams and recruitment agencies:
Finding and hiring the best-qualified candidates fast and effectively while maintaining a five-star candidate experience.
The stakes are high. Finding and retaining top talent translates into companies’ bottom line. An experienced and skilled workforce means enhanced productivity and improved overall performance.
But the key to identifying the most suitable candidates and streamlining the recruitment process is employing the best recruitment software.
And this is where it gets tricky. With so many recruiting software platforms in the market, you can quickly lose your zen. Comparing takes time. And time is your most precious currency.
This guide we will walk you through our curated list of the best recruiting software options and help you pick the solution to help your hiring team attract the best candidates in the market.
Let’s dive in!
How to choose the right recruitment software
Back in the day, most recruiting software providers primarily focused on simplifying job postings and applicant tracking.
Now, the above use cases are the baseline. Over the last few years, those vendors stepped on the gas. With cutting-edge technologies powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced data analytics, you can do much more to streamline your hiring process.
Here’s what you need to consider when selecting your next web app:
Identify your goals
To discover a winning recruiting platform, you must get back to the drawing board with your hiring team. You obviously know what type and size of organization you work with, but what you might brainstorm are your challenges.
Write down your most common pain points. What gives you and your team a headache?
- high time-to-hire
- difficulties in candidate sourcing
- lack of diversity in your talent pipeline
- having a hard time analyzing and reporting your team’s performance
- slow communication with job seekers and hiring managers
- inefficient candidate relationship management
Once you recognize the “bad guys,” you will be closer to shortlisting the features that will make a difference in your following hiring process. With that “shopping list,” you can exclude applicant tracking systems that don’t have your desired capabilities.
Understand essential features and integrations
Recruitment tools often emphasize that they’re feature-rich. Great, but that’s marketing. There are plenty of features that look good as micro-elements on their pricing pages, but in reality, they’re more nice-to-have than must-have.
How to figure out what you actually need? Look at your board again, and check the pain points you and your hiring team members highlighted:
- Need to speed up time-to-fill? Look for an applicant tracking system that will help you analyze every time metric.
- Having trouble with sourcing qualified candidates? Then, your key features should include LinkedIn sourcing Chrome extension.
- Analyzing and reporting to your stakeholders or clients means waiting in a queue in your busy IT department? If that’s the case, your best recruiting software should come together with detailed and easy-to-digest data charts.
- Communication with job seekers and hiring managers is not as smooth as you’d like it to be? Each talent acquisition pro would love to have hiring team collaboration tools to streamline recruitment processes.
- Candidate management still has a lot to improve? Look for a candidate relationship management solution for nurturing talent pools, interview scheduling, and automating emails.
Check how many tasks you can automate to take the mundane work off your team’s shoulders.
And last but not least, you must ensure that your applicant tracking software can integrate with your existing tech stack — job boards, onboarding platforms, calendars, or HRIS. Seamless integrations (through API or Zapier) are the cornerstone of every recruitment workflow and bring consistency across different stages of the hiring process.
Compare pricing models and scalability
Recruiting software solutions come with various pricing models. Even though the most popular types are subscription-based plans, you can stumble upon pay-per-hire or pay-per-feature platforms.
Regardless of the pricing configuration, you need to know how much money you can allocate before you start checking how much does recruiting software cost.
After determining your budget, check the vendor’s resources pages — blogs, case studies, and ROI calculators — and determine the financial value vs. the cost. For instance, one TRAFFIT client saved as much as $60k on recalibrating their entire recruitment process thanks to advanced reporting available in the applicant tracking system.
And finally, make sure that your robust recruiting software can grow with your organization. Scalability is a must whether we are discussing small businesses or recruiting agencies. When you’re on the vendor’s pricing page, look for the custom plan that will allow you to adapt to fluctuations in hiring volume over time.
Ask customer support or a sales rep for advanced assistance if you expect non-standard situations in your company’s hiring process.
The top recruiting software solutions in 2023
Once you connect the dots between your goals, key features, and budget capabilities, you can assess the best recruiting software vendors in the market.
We’ve curated a list of recruitment tools that can be a game changer for hiring teams across the board.
TRAFFIT
And the selection opens up with our own recruitment software! Our applicant tracking system has traveled for several years to become the ultimate solution for internal hiring teams, hiring managers, and recruitment agencies.
Overview
Our applicant tracking software is specifically engineered to link capable candidates with job openings from small and midsize businesses and recruitment agencies. This is our primary objective.
Let the numbers do the talking:
- Our platform received over 6.5 million job applications, showing tremendous interest from job seekers. We are honored to connect them with their dream job opportunities.
- TRAFFIT has been a platform of choice for over 14,000 recruiters from 60+ countries, who actively use it to recruit candidates and build their talent pool.
- Our solution has proven to be highly effective in bringing more than 314,000 new hires on board.
Key Features
The TRAFFIT toolkit enables you to recruit candidates from your existing talent pool, streamline the hiring process through automation, and facilitate team collaboration for your hiring managers.
But it doesn’t end there! Our HR software is a place to orchestrate the entire recruiting process.
- Find those qualified candidates. The hunt begins. To cover multiple job openings, you need a system with features like:
- Career site generator — if you don’t have one, you can build your branded career site with our drag-and-drop creator in a few clicks.
- Job posting on multiple job boards. With our job board integration, you can spread the word about your employment opportunities across premium job boards.
- Job description templates. Writing job descriptions from scratch will smother your hiring team members and drag each recruiting process. Instead of flexing your creative muscles every time, you can use our library of templates.
- LinkedIn candidate sourcing Chrome extension. LinkedIn is a goldmine for finding hidden gems and passive job seekers. With our extension, you can fill your talent pool directly from LinkedIn.
- Resume parsing. Digging through stacks of sent CVs is a definition of recruiting hell. With TRAFFIT, you can easily mass-upload applications in different formats.
- Manage your talent pipeline. Have you received tons of job applications? Great! Now it’s time to take off your entire hiring process with recruiting tools like:
- Tag Filtering
- Interview scheduling
- Boolean Search
- Advanced filters
- and notes and reminders — to keep your hiring managers in the loop
- Automation tools. You can save dozens of working hours by:
- implementing automated messages,
- synchronizing your calendar and inbox,
- connecting your recruitment management software with the rest of your HR software platforms through Zapier and API
- advanced reporting dashboard with hiring data breakdown
- Employee referrals. According to our data, recommendation programs are one of the most effective sources of filled positions. With Huntoo, TRAFFIT’s sub-brand, you can reinforce your subsequent recruitment process with trustworthy recommendations.
Pricing
There are three different pricing plans available for TRAFFIT: Pro, Elite, and Custom.
Pro: €40 per user/month (if you pay annually) / €50 per user/month (if you pay monthly)
- Free job board integration
- Unlimited Linkedin Jobs posting
- Free accounts for Hiring Managers
- Career Page integration & creator
- Unlimited & customizable workflows
- E-mail automation
- SMS communication
- Data import wizard
- Linkedin sourcing extension
- Referral platform
Elite: €60 per user/month (if you pay annually) / €75 per user/month (if you pay monthly)
If you are looking to recruit a large number of people, this plan is perfect for you. It includes all the features of the Pro plan and more:
- Advanced security options
- API Access
- CRM module
- Custom migrations
- Custom reports
- Tailored onboarding & training
- Bulk edit mode
- Key account management
- TRAFFIT Campus courses access
Custom: tailored pricing
If you are part of a hiring team with 10 or more recruiters, this plan is ideal for you. It includes all the features of the Elite plan and offers additional benefits:
- Custom contracts
- Regular team consultations
- API support
- Career site modifications
- Custom scripts assistance
- Tailored reports and analysis
Check out TRAFFIT today!
Are you looking for a reliable applicant tracking software to manage your recruiting process from start to finish? Try it out for free for 14 days!
Another option is booking a demo with us to see how it works in action. We’d be happy to give you a live tour.
Join brands like Toyota, Randstad, Volkswagen, or Livespace today!
LinkedIn Talent Solutions
It’s hard to imagine the talent acquisition world job posting strategies
without this business and career-oriented social media mammoth. Owned by Microsoft and loved by HR professionals, LinkedIn capitalizes on its massive network and brings a suite of recruitment tools to the hiring table.
Overview
We’re all on LinkedIn. It’s a primary go-to for all pros and businesses of all shapes and sizes — from recruiting agencies, hiring team members, HR managers, and CEOs to all working professionals.
Because the career-change is the fundamental value of this platform, LinkedIn Talent Solutions equips businesses with recruiting software features to reach potential candidates.
Key Features
Since active job seekers and passive candidates hang around one platform, LinkedIn’s recruiting software delivers options to engage with both cohorts. Plus, it helps to calibrate recruitment strategies with robust analytical tools.
Let’s have an overview of their inventory:
- LinkedIn Recruiter is your answer for candidate sourcing. With this tool, you can reach out to any LinkedIn member.
- LinkedIn Jobs will cover your job posting and help to get your open job opportunities in front of more eyeballs.
- InMail helps skip the invitation part and land your offering directly in your candidates’ inboxes. InMail messages have an average 18-25% response rate, which makes it an efficient tool for hiring teams.
- Talent Insights are a source of data-driven insights and analytics about your hiring performance and competitive comparison.
- Career Pages allow you to build personalized sites highlighting your company’s culture, values, and the latest job openings.
- Pipeline Builder that works for managing talent pipelines and candidate nurturing management centers.
Pricing
LinkedIn Talent Solutions provides a range of pricing plans that cater to diverse business requirements.
- For small businesses or individual recruiters, Recruiter Lite is the perfect option, including essential sourcing tools.
- For larger recruiting teams, Recruiter Professional Services is a more advanced option that offers full-featured sourcing tools and collaborative features.
- The pricing for Job Slots is flexible and varies depending on the number of open job slots a business requires.
- Career Pages can be customized and purchased separately as part of your package.
Workable
Another popular recruiting software on our list is Workable. This versatile platform promises to cover the entire hiring process from candidate sourcing to onboarding and employee management.
Overview
This applicant tracking system seems to cover the whole lot. Their brand messaging orients recruiting pros onto four primary hiring stages. And their features categorization aligns with that logic.
Key Features
That said, their recruiting software breaks down their product into four categories of features: “source and attract,” “evaluate and collaborate,” “automate and hire,” and “onboard and manage.”
- Integration with multiple job boards helps you to cover job postings at scale
- Candidate sourcing tools and referral programs open a way to attract more candidates
- Interview scheduling, candidate management, evaluation and hiring team collaboration help to streamline the evaluation stage
- Automation, reporting tools, and compliance are another pillar of their offering
- Onboarding new employees and organizing documents as the final touch in the recruiting and hiring process
Pricing
As most recruitment software solutions, Workable offers a free trial. Their pricing tiers include:
- Starter for occasional hiring at $149/month
- Standard for consistent hiring at $299/month (for up to 20 employees. The price goes up significantly if you increase the employee number)
- Premier for strategic hiring at $599/month (for up to 20 employees. The price dynamics apply as above)
Greenhouse
Structuring hiring, process optimization, reducing bias, and improving diversity — those claims shine through the messaging of the next recruitment software. Greenhouse positions itself as a solution for businesses of all sizes — from small and mid sized companies to enterprises.
Overview
Similarly to Workable, Greenhouse combines recruiting tools with onboarding capabilities, making it a comprehensive solution for recruitment ops. What stands out is their emphasis on fairness and equity in the hiring world.
Key Features
Greenhouse comes with a set of solutions such as talent sourcing or candidate experience, but they add that macro layer of their features: for recruiting and onboarding.
Here’s what options you can find under the recruiting umbrella:
- Garnering legions of candidates with advanced job postings and automated personalized outreach
- Involving stakeholders in the process with alerts, tasks, notifications, and share application reviews
- Automating surveys and flexible self-schedule interviews
- Advanced reporting system and integrations
And with the onboarding features, HR teams can:
- Organize welcoming new employees and create valuable resources hubs
- Set up and automate onboarding tasks and administration
- Track and measure the goals of new hires
- Evaluate newcomers’ performance
Pricing
Unfortunately, their pricing plans are not transparent, available on demand, and rely on the scope of features.
Lever
Time to glance over another operating system on our best recruitment software selection. Lever describes itself as a combination of an ATS and CRM, emphasizing its customer support as their invaluable asset.
Overview
Lever entices talent acquisition teams with a solution designed to build and nurture relationships with candidates. Like Greenhouse, they emphasize the importance of diversity, following regulations, and using data to inform hiring decisions.
Key Features
This recruitment software highlights four solutions: DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), reporting and analytics, high-volume hiring, and recruitment marketing. As for the product itself they have a custom name for it – LeverTRM (Talent Relationships Management platform) which brings together ATS and CRM functions:
- Screening and evaluating candidates with the Fast Resume Review
- Automating manual activities such as emailing and tagging candidates
- Building a robust talent pool for future opportunities
- and more.
Pricing
Unlike recruitment software solutions such as TRAFFIT or Workable, Lever doesn’t have free trial options and transparent pricing plans. To know the cost of their system, you need to ask for a quote.
SmartRecruiters
This platform may have thresholds that are too high for small businesses. The fact that this recruiting software is enterprise-grade seems obvious from the get-go. And talent acquisition pros from large companies will have several reasons to gravitate to this solution.
Overview
Oh dear, is there anything that this recruitment software doesn’t have? Applicant tracking system, candidate sourcing, recruitment marketing, collaborative hiring, compliance, reporting, candidate assessment, onboarding, job posting distribution — and the list goes on.
Key Features
With that multitude of product capabilities, let’s outline some of the fundamental ones:
- From the ATS perspective, you can expect such options as detecting bottlenecks in the process, optimizing budgets, managing employee referrals, pre-assessment tools, or advanced search options in talent pools.
- For recruitment marketing, you can handle job postings on multiple job boards and social media.
- And with an assessment toolkit, you can simplify scheduling interviews and the assessment process.
- Plus, the number of other activities: managing the offer process, onboarding new hires, or increasing the team’s efficiency with hiring project management tools.
Pricing
As we mentioned, this recruitment software doesn’t play open cards with their pricing plans. There’s also no free trial to test their features. To get the details, you need to leave your credentials and request a demo, which might be difficult for small businesses who want to quickly check whether or not they can afford that technology.
Jobvite
OK, time to look at the last recruitment software in our guide! Jobvite is all about accelerating acquisition with predictable results. This vendor claims to deliver an end-to-end hiring technology but without complexity.
Overview
By establishing a custom-branded name for their technology — the Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite — Jobvite’s promise is to cover all the ins and outs of recruitment operations, covering all the stages: enable, attract & qualify, engage, nurture, capture & onboard.
Key Features
Our final recruitment software offers an array of tools for sourcing, team collaboration, and workflow configuration. Let’s take a look at some of them:
- Custom-branded and conversion-optimized career sites builder
- Job Broadcast — a job posting toolkit allowing you to take care of job postings on a network of job boards, social media, and agency partners.
- CRM and ATS components to build and manage talent pools and optimize the processes.
- Using text messages and AI-powered assistants can facilitate communication with candidates.
- Maximizing your team’s efficiency with on-demand video screening.
- And other aspects include referral programs, analytics dashboards, and integrations.
Pricing
As with Lever or SmartRecruiters, we can’t count on an available price list or trial period here. To find out more, you need to contact this recruitment software provider. This can be a handicap for small businesses or recruiting agencies that want to quickly see if a solution is within their budget range.
Time for your Best Recruitment Software
Great! Together, we walked through seven talent acquisition platforms and their features. And, what’s crucial, you know how to build a process of selecting the right recruiting software:
- identifying your goals
- matching them with desired features and integrations
- checking the pricing and scalability
Job posting on multiple job sites, resume parsing, or collaboration tools are the new floor. A robust hiring technology will need to have much more, including recruitment automation, advanced analytics, and five-star customer support.
The choice can be difficult, so we can make it easier! Before committing, you can try TRAFFIT out completely for free, for 14 days! No strings attached. And if you want to talk with our experts first — excellent! Book your call here!
