Streamline Your Hiring Process: A Guide to Selecting the Perfect Recruitment Software

53% of job seekers are more concerned about the hiring process experience now than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic. And rightly so, recruiters and talent acquisition personnel are realizing the need to improve candidate experience more than ever. 

On average, a job vacancy takes 36 days to fill. Earlier, recruiters were required to manually sift through hundreds of applications, schedule interviews, and reply to candidates one at a time. This loop continued until the candidate that fits the role was found.

Nowadays, recruiters rely on recruiting tools to source, screen, schedule, communicate, interview, and onboard candidates. 

These recruiting tools come as a suite of software tools and applications called recruiting software. Recruiting software realigns the recruiter’s efforts and automates manual tasks to increase productivity, widen the talent pool, and save valuable time and effort. 68% of recruiters today consider investing in new recruiting technology to improve the performance of their recruiting processes. 

But what is recruiting software, and how to choose the best recruiting software? Let’s find out. 

What is Recruiting Software? 

Recruiting software helps facilitate the hiring and onboarding new talent, including tasks such as creating and distributing job postings, attracting the right talent, screening, and hiring candidates, tracking applicants, organizing applicant data, and other recruiting tasks.

A recruiting software solution consists of tools that help to automate the entire hiring process at each stage – from applicant tracking, managing talent pools, screening and recruiting, and analytics. Recruiting software is a subset of the human resource information system (HRIS).

A good recruiting software solution must serve the comprehensive needs of the human resource personnel. It must be tailored per the HR strategy and customizable to suit the present and future hiring needs. 

What are the types of recruiting software?

Many options are available in the market for recruiters looking for recruiting tools. Recruiters can either deploy an ATS or CRM solution or opt for a suite of recruiting software tools that manage, automate, and streamline the phases in the entire recruitment pipeline. Let’s discuss the kinds of recruiting software available in the market today. 

#1 Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software or a set of tools that helps to manage and automate the recruiting and hiring process. The software tracks candidates through the hiring process by filtering, managing, and analyzing the profiles using its database functionality and other capabilities. It automates and increases efficiency and improves overall visibility in the recruitment process. 

99% of Fortune 500 companies use an ATS solution in their hiring process, and 78% of recruiters say that using ATS has improved their hiring process. Besides hiring, ATS solutions help to optimize the onboarding process and improve candidate engagement. Its vast data pool allows for quick hiring for future job openings. 

#2 Candidate Relationship Management Systems (CRM)

Recruiters and talent acquisition professionals use recruitment CRM or candidate relationship management software to manage the recruitment process while improving candidate experience and engagement. Companies that worked on improving the candidate experience reported a 70% improvement in the quality of hires. 

A good CRM solution should include email and text functionality, drip campaigns, talent pools, analytics and reporting tools, CTA functionality for landing pages, and search functionality, among others. CRM helps to proactively source talent, engage them on a deeper level, and collaborate with them more effectively to improve the quality of hires.   

#3 Recruitment Marketing Tools

Recruitment marketing tools help the organization promote its brand, efficiently use social media platforms to reach out to prospective candidates, and use analytics to track the performance of the recruiting efforts.

LinkedIn data shows that 70% of the candidate’s research and study the organization before applying for a job. 

These marketing tools include social recruiting tools, CRM, and job distribution features. These tools help to build talent pipelines by increasing the quality and volume of candidate applications. These tools strengthen employer branding on career sites, facilitate referrals, streamline applications, etc.   

#4 Skill Testing Tools

Skill testing tools help measure a candidate’s job-specific skills using several tests and assessments to select the right fit for the organization. These tools help match the candidate with the selection criteria and supplement interviews. 

These tools provide ready-to-use skill tests that can be customized and standardized to test specific skills for a particular job role. The tools help to enhance the quality of the recruitment process, are cost-effective and time-saving, and help to improve the candidate experience.  

#5 Onboarding platforms

Onboarding platforms offer solutions that help coordinate the post-selection efforts of recruiters to onboard new hires into their roles. These software solutions bring the onboarding process under one unified system, remove paperwork, and initiate communication between new hires and employers. 

Research shows that 68% of employees are likelier to remain with the same company for three years if they have had a great onboarding experience. Organizations use onboarding platforms to improve candidate experience, integrate them with the teams sooner, keep track of the training process, and provide additional onboarding tools like personalized workflows and welcome portals for new hires.    

Benefits of recruiting software for your business 

Today, recruiting software is essential for recruiters to manage the heavy volume of applications, nurture candidate relationships to secure the best-qualified candidates as new hires, and optimize the recruitment and selection process. 

Recruiting software tools come with many benefits and advantages. Some of them are as follows: 

  #1 Time-saving

A recruiter spends 1/3rd of their day sifting through job applications, and on average, each job offer attracts 250 applications. By automating manual administrative tasks, recruiters and talent acquisition professionals can save time and effort. 

This time can be used to engage candidates better and improve the speed of the hiring process. A well-unified platform for recruiting software can give additional visibility and help plan future job requirements.  

#2 Hire the right talent 

64% of the companies related recruiter performance to candidate experience figures. If a candidate hears feedback from the organization, they are 4x more likely to reapply for a job. 

Without automation and streamlined processes, recruiters cannot afford to give feedback to hundreds of applications each day. Instead, they can use recruitment software to optimize, streamline, and automate their hiring process. 78% of the recruiters say that using recruitment software has improved the quality of their hires.  

#3 Secure data 

Recruiting software handle vast amounts of data related to candidates and their personal and professional information. This software replaces paperwork with cloud and SaaS-based solutions that offer secure data storage. 

The software also manages a vast talent pool that can be accessed to meet future hiring needs or reach out to passive candidates with job openings.   

#4 Candidate engagement 

Candidate engagement is essential for procuring qualified candidates and transforming them into new hires. Data shows that 58% of the candidates turn down an offer because of bad candidate experience. 

Instead of measuring candidate experience after the hiring is complete, as 44% of employers do, recruiting software allows for enhancing and measuring candidate engagement via powerful communication tools, feedback, and analytics.  ATS and CRM solutions automate key responses and help a candidate to be up to date during the application process. 

#5 Coordination of recruiting efforts 

By integrating and coordinating recruiting efforts across the organization, a recruiting software platform helps to cut the time-to-hire by as much as 35%. The solution offers tools to coordinate messages to all candidates across all job openings. 

Not only messaging but recruiting software also offers a suite of solutions to manage and automate every phase of the recruiting funnel. They can be easily integrated with in-house tech stack or solutions, and the data can be easily migrated to the solution. 

#6 Branding consistency 

Branding is important in hiring talent across social media and other job search platforms. Using recruiting software helps to maintain branding consistency across candidates and platforms. 

Recruitment software can ensure that each candidate experiences and goes through the same unique process and receives equal attention per the standards. 

#7 Reporting and Analytics

Recruiting tools help improve the hiring process’s efficiency by providing important data points and analytics to illuminate the obstacles in the process and possible solutions. 

The recruiters can constantly work toward improving the process and keep track of key indicators and procure customized reports to check how well the recruiting strategy is materializing into results and outcomes.  

Pricing of recruiting software 

Recruiting software from brands comes in various packages and has different pricing models. However, most software is priced based on the following factors:

• Some software vendors charge per user. There is a monthly fee or a one-time payment that recruiters need to pay depending on the number of talent acquisition personnel that will be using it.  

• $50-$100 per user, or 
• $250-$1000 as a one-time fee for each user

• Many vendors also charge on the number of successful hires you make using the software. This type of cost structure works best for organizations that hire seasonally and want a plan that doesn’t burden their monthly expenses
• $200-$500 per hire 

• Some software vendors use the pay-per-employee model to charge buyer organizations. This plan is more suitable for big enterprises. Here, even employees outside the talent acquisition team may use the software. 
• $4-$8 per employee per month. The cost may eventually decrease as the number of employees increases

How to choose the best recruiting software 

Suppose you are a recruiter looking to deploy recruiting software or a suite of software tools for your business. In that case, you need to consider the choices based on several criteria and parameters before you select the perfect recruiting software. 

Effective recruiting software must help to streamline and improve the hiring process and bring in long-term sustaining growth via its integrated platform. Let’s look at a few criteria to narrow down the choice for the best recruiting software:

#1 Identify the challenges 

The first step in choosing the right fit for recruiting software is identifying the challenges recruiters face while hiring candidates. Some of these challenges may include

• More time spent on manual tasks like resume parsing and screening, messaging, etc. 
• Lack of automation 
• Difficulty in streamlining the hiring process across multiple stakeholders
• Poor candidate experience due to the lengthy and complex application process 
• Lack of analytics and data reports 

Based on the challenges, recruiters should look for possible solutions in a single suite of software tools or multiple tools that can be seamlessly integrated with each other. Another thing to note here would be to match the software’s capacity against the organization’s needs. 

#2 Shortlist the features 

Once the challenges are identified, it is pertinent to list the features you need in the software platform. A good recruiting software must be easy to use, flexible, scalable, and have high adoption rates. The software should be sufficiently enabled to be integrated with external job portals and websites.  

You could divide the required features into two parts – must-haves and nice-to-haves. Your recruitment software should have all the must-have features and the majority of the nice-to-have features for improving the core functionality of the recruitment process but not crucial to it.   

Must-Haves	Nice-to-Haves
Sourcing Extension	Texting
Integration with external sources	Click-to-call feature
Email campaigns	Resume Formatting
Advanced search capabilities	Email templates
Automation	Career page design
Customer support
Talent pools
Analytics

#3 Allocate a budget 

The cost of recruiting software may vary across brands and categories of offerings. The recruiters should fix a budget considering the organization’s size, the average number of hires required, how many people would use the tool and other hiring needs.

Allocating a budget would help to narrow down choices based on the pricing. For more details on pricing, check the detailed subhead on the same.   

#4 Ensure dedicated customer support 

Recruiting software tools often come with a learning curve and may require professionals to undergo training before using the software to the best of their capabilities.

And since most of the recruiting software vendors offer customized versions to suit the specific needs of organizations, dedicated customer support is necessary to sort queries and fix bugs and other issues for minimum downtime. 

#5 Check for compatibility and integrations

Most recruiters seek a tool that integrates well with existing processes.

And rightly so; recruitment software should be capable of seamlessly integrating with other third-party software and have cloud computing capabilities, social networking and messaging, and a unified communication interface. 

Besides integration, the recruiting software must be compatible with mobile devices to help recruiters manage the hiring process from anywhere. 

Free checklist for choosing the right recruiting software 

Here are a few key comparison points based on the features you can use to choose the right recruiting software for your organization:

#1 Sourcing

• Centralized candidate database
• Advanced search
• Sourcing extension 
• 1-click job posting
• Customizable careers page design 
• Job board integration
• Social media recruiting 

#2 Candidate and client management 

• Resume screening
• Automated interview scheduling
• Client portal 
• Hiring workflows and talent pipeline 
• Bulk actions
• Candidate scorecards 

#3 Collaboration and communication

• Engaging email templates
• Automated email sequences 
• Automated triggers
• Reminders and tasks 
• Tagging

#4 Integrations 

• Integrates with popular apps 

#5 Reporting 

• Recruiting and sales reports 
• Sourcing analytics
• Hiring productivity 
• Sales forecasting
• Custom data exports 

Top 7 Recruiting Tools 

Almost 3/4th recruiter populace employs some kind of recruiting software and a majority of them confirm the improvements in the hiring process. The market is flooded with various recruiting software tools having a unique set of capabilities. Some of the top recruiting tools available in the market include: 

#1 Zoho Recruit

It is an all-in-one recruiting software that handles and streamlines the entire recruitment pipeline, from job requisition and interview scheduling to candidate selection and onboarding. Zho Recruit provides additional tools such as a self-help portal for employees, email automation, background screening, resume parsing, multi-channel communications, advanced analytics, and seamless integrations. 

• Pricing: Available at $25 per user per month. 

#2 BambooHR

It is a widespread recruitment and performance management tool that helps in ATS recruitment, organizes applicant information, and collaborates with HR teams for candidates that fit your organization. It is suitable for small and medium-scale businesses. It offers customizable letter templates, automated mailing, and other pre-boarding/onboarding features. 

• Pricing: Available on request 

#3 Recruiterflow

 It is an all-in-one ATS cum CRM solution that is easy to use, offers powerful automation, and has great customer support. It is one of the highly-ranked recruiting software. It offers features like resume parsing, chrome extension, real-time alerts, analytics, reports, automated emails, etc. 

• Pricing: plans start at $75 per user per month. 

#4 Workday HCM

It offers a unified platform to centralize efforts, act as a single data source, and provide a single security model. It offers features like new job acquisition openings, calendar sync, automation tools, and mobile application capability. 

• Pricing: Price available on request 

#5 Freshteam

Freshteam is an award-winning recruiting software for small to medium-scale organizations. It has built-in ATS and recruiting tools for hiring, tracking, onboarding, and management. It provides a dashboard and an organizational chart for your business. 

• Pricing: Available on request. 

#6 Lever

Another popular recruiting software cum CRM tool, Lever, is used by 2,500 firms, including Netflix, KPMG New Zealand, etc., across the globe. It offers a talent acquisition platform of which the recruiting software is a part. It employs applicant tracking and CRM functionalities to help source and hire the best candidates. 

• Pricing: Available on request. 

#7 Greenhouse

It is a well-known recruiting software solution serving big brands like Slack, ClassPass, and Betterment. It offers job posting, process tracking, candidate evaluations, task automation, and easy integration with the in-house tech stack. 

• Pricing: Available on request. 

Wrap-Up

Today, recruitment software solutions are necessary for managing HR functions and enhancing the candidate experience.

As businesses grow in complexity and HR functions evolve, recruiters rely more on candidate experience improvement to retain the best talent and reduce turnover via these recruiting tools. 

The right recruiting software for any organization isn’t the one that offers every feature but the one that provides an ecosystem of integrated solutions helping to accelerate the workflow and align HR motives. 

FAQs on Best Recruitment Software