The best recruitment software for agencies and employers

Recruiting has always been about outreach and connection. It’s about finding the best people and attracting them with enticing descriptions of your company, the type of work available, and compensation details. It very much remains a people-centric field in 2021, but recruitment software is making headway and changing the way those interactions happen this year.

What is recruitment software?

Unlike lead generation software or other sales and marketing tools, recruitment software is a particular subtype of human resource management (HRM) software. Using search technology, advanced communications, and AI, recruitment software expands and automates the full talent search process.

Why is recruitment software necessary?

With every year that passes, the hiring process becomes more in-depth and more competitive. Gone are the days of posting open positions in the local newspaper, collecting paper resumes by mail, and telephoning qualified candidates to schedule first interviews. 

Technology has played a significant role in driving this change. New tools and solutions are being developed every day, and companies have to consider how their team will perform within this shifting landscape. 

Renowned HR industry analyst Josh Bersin calls this process “attracting and accessing capabilities.” Recruiters and managers have to anticipate talent needs and actively seek out top candidates with the capacities to meet those needs. The process is much more in-depth and complex than the old system of hiring according to the job description.

Fortunately, even as technology makes the recruiting process more complex and faster-paced, recruitment apps and software are developing to help companies keep up. When used well, these tools can even help HR departments stay ahead of the game, reaching the best candidates ahead of competitors.

What can recruitment software do?

Recruitment software improves the candidate experience, which the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) identified as employers’ top recruitment goal for 2019. Meeting this goal means making the application process less stressful at all points of the process, including:

• Directing the right people to the right opportunities within your company

• Sending automated yet personalized updates throughout the process — informing candidates when they’ve been declined, moved up to the next stage of consideration, or selected for an offer

• Making it easy to schedule and conduct interviews — from the first phone screening to the final in-person interview

• Creating a dynamic hiring and onboarding process that actively welcomes new employees, setting them up for success

Automation — in the form of recruitment software — makes all of these goals easier to achieve. Candidates are happier and ultimately develop a better perception of your company, which improves your standing on sites like Glassdoor. 

Improved candidate experience also makes it easier for you to seek out and secure the type of talent accustomed to being "courted" by employers, rather than the other way around. In fact, according to CareerBuilder, 78% of employers who use applicant tracking technology say that recruitment software makes it easier than ever to attract great talent. 

17 best recruiting software for agencies and employers

Every company and employment agency needs different things when it comes to sourcing, tracking, and managing job applicants. Some need more in-depth options for publicizing job openings; others need more help managing candidate communications. No matter what your company requires, we’ve gathered recommendations on some of the most popular functionalities in recruitment software. Learn which products are leading the space, according to real users and verified reviewers on some of the top review sites.

Candidate screening and applicant tracking

Today’s best talent comes from so many different sources, from social media to professional recruiters. But with a multitude of applicants comes extensive data. Who has which qualifications? Where is Person X versus Person Y within the application process? Applicant tracking tools can help you keep tabs on everyone without losing that perfect candidate.

1. Bullhorn Staffing and Recruiting  

Bullhorn Staffing and Recruiting earned PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice award for dedicated applicant tracking systems. It features a user-friendly interface and dashboard, unlimited customization options, and compatibility with Salesforce Automation Software. Also, if you use any other Bullhorn software, the integration is intuitive and works well.

2. JobScore

JobScore is ideal for companies that need to get recruitment agency software free. The free option only lets you manage applicants for one position, but there are paid monthly options and an enterprise-level plan for those who need to do more. The software can automate candidate reviews while making manual processes like adding jobs and reviewing resumes easy to accomplish.

Assessments and evaluations

Like candidate screening software, assessment software can automate the process of evaluating job candidates so that hiring managers can focus on building relationships and evaluating fit.

3. Pymetrics

Pymetrics is one of Josh Bersin’s picks for AI-enabled recruitment software. Founded by a Harvard and MIT neuroscientist, Pymetrics has developed accurate and enjoyable trait assessment tests for roles like customer service, sales, and engineering. It is designed to be as bias-free as possible and is currently being used by companies like Tesla, Unilever, and Accenture.

4. Imbellus

Imbellus, another Bersin selection, exists to power evaluation without dated and biased questioning methods. Imbellus aims to assess abilities rather than knowledge—a critical distinction in an age when automation has rendered rote learning nearly obsolete. By gauging how candidates think rather than what they’ve learned, Imbellus lets companies assess how an applicant will be able to adapt to the working environment.

Candidate relationship management

The candidate experience is getting a lot of attention in the world of human resources, and rightly so. As they progress through the consideration and hiring process, applicants and recruits learn what working for your company is like. It’s important to make a good impression.

Today’s candidates are also consumers. As such, they’re accustomed to being solicited for feedback and invited to evaluate their experiences. This is good news for hiring companies because the talent they seek is not shy about sharing their expectations. According to a 2017 CareerBuilder survey:

• 47% of candidates are satisfied with the way that employers set expectations for communication when the hiring process starts

• 86% of candidates believe that they should be treated with the same respect as hired employees

• 81% of job seekers feel that more communication would significantly improve the application experience

• 52% of job seekers rate lack of response from employers as the most stressful part of job seeking

Improve the client experience, and you improve the public perception of your company. 

5. Lever

Lever is the highest-rated client relationship management (CRM) tool on software review site G2. It blends CRM functionality with applicant tracking so that hiring managers don’t have to switch platforms.

Lever has added a number of features over the past several years, including automation for candidate rejection and job-offer notifications. With Lever, recruiters can easily identify which candidates need to be notified of their status. This enables companies to keep highly promising candidates from falling through the cracks.

6. Interseller

Interseller specifically focuses on identifying candidates and keeping them informed as they move through the hiring pipeline.

With Interseller, you can create recruitment campaigns and automate personalized email messages to applicants. It even lets you add candidates to campaigns directly from the candidates’ LinkedIn profiles, dramatically reducing the time you spend on outreach.

Video interviewing

Video interviewing can add a lot of value to the talent search process. It’s more convenient than an in-person interview and more personal than a traditional phone interview. You can invite candidates to record their responses, making it easier for them to provide thoughtful answers and more convenient for you to share their responses with your team.

Because video interviewing gives you a better idea of who you want to call in for face-to-face interviews, it’s a particular time-saver and money-saver for companies with long-distance candidates.

7. SparkHire

SparkHire is a video interviewing platform that has been adopted by companies of all sizes, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. It supports one-on-one and pre-recorded interviews and features interview archiving, feedback management, a candidate portal, and more. SparkHire is one of the industry’s fastest-growing video interview companies and has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra.

8. eSkill

eSkill combines voice and video interview hosting with the distribution and processing of behavioral, personality, and skills tests. eSkill lets you conduct comprehensive evaluations of each candidate, including how well they might fit with the company culture. By helping you and your team make better matches, eSkill makes the whole hiring process more efficient and effective. It has a Capterra rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars from 87 reviews.

Interview scheduling  

Scheduling interviews — whether they’re real-time video and phone interviews or in-person interviews — can be one of the most frustrating parts of the recruiting process. The more in-demand your candidates are, the harder they are to reach, to say nothing of your team’s busy timetables.

Interview scheduling software can automate this time-consuming process, leaving you free to focus on your candidates.  

9. Calendly

We may be the tiniest bit biased in this category, but we’ve worked hard to make Calendly the most accessible and relevant scheduling tool available. With our continued focus on solving problems and meeting the needs of recruitment professionals, we've developed a product that fits perfectly into the recruiting pipeline. Key features include:

• Support for all meeting types: individual, group, round-robin, and panel

• Confirmation and reminder emails for candidates

• Automatic buffering so you don’t over-schedule your team

• Customized profiles to emphasize your brand identity

• Invitee engagement reporting

We believe in doing one thing extremely well, so we’ve created the best possible calendar app and made it compatible with other popular tools. Calendly integrates with up to six calendars, including Google, Outlook, and Office 365, along with many other recruitment software and video interviewing tools like Salesforce and GoToMeeting. You can also create original integrations with our versatile API and app connections through Zapier.

We don’t expect you to take our word for it, though, so we’d like to invite you to try 14 days of our Pro service for free.  

10. VidCruiter

This review wouldn’t be comprehensive if it didn’t touch on the scheduling tools packaged in video interviewing software. One standout in that category is VidCruiter, a video interviewing service that offers automated scheduling as an additional feature. 

VidCruiter supports live video interviewing with recording and pre-recorded video interviewing, both with easy-to-use interfaces that are welcoming to your team and your candidates. VidCruiter offers great scheduling software for staffing agencies and companies that need all their interview processes in one place.

Onboarding

It’s easy for companies to think that the hiring process ends when an offer letter goes out. If you fall into this trap, you end up neglecting one of the most important parts of the candidate experience: onboarding.

Onboarding is the final step in the hiring process, making it someone’s most recent memory of the job search. That someone is going to be a representative of your company for years to come, assuming that things work out, so it’s worth your while to make sure their onboarding experience is excellent. High-quality HR software can help you make this happen. 

11. UltiPro

UltiPro from Ultimate Software is a G2 pick for best onboarding software for medium-sized and enterprise businesses. It’s also one of the winners of G2’s Top 50 Products for Enterprise and “Users Love Us” awards. It’s a comprehensive HR, payroll, and talent management tool with onboarding as one of its highest-rated functionalities. It’s easy to use and cloud-based so you know new employees’ information is safe.

12. SilkRoad Technology

SilkRoad Technology focuses on creating onboarding solutions for the global workforce. SilkRoad personalizes the onboarding process and offers consulting services to help companies optimize the experience for candidates. New employees feel more engaged from day one, and the result for employers is better productivity, agility, and professional growth across teams.

All-inclusive and multifunctional solutions

Many hiring professionals prefer to have all of their recruitment software in one place. This lets them connect elements of the hiring process more easily and better manage everyone involved, including members of the decision-making team. Here’s some of the best multifunctional recruitment software for agencies and employers alike.

13. Bamboo HR

Bamboo HR is the “Editor’s Choice” pick for all-inclusive HR management tools in PC Magazine’s Best Applicant Tracking Systems for 2019. It offers not only applicant tracking, but also onboarding, benefits administration, HR reporting, performance management, and time-off monitoring as well. This comprehensive functionality is packaged into a highly approachable interface that aligns well with other vendors. The only major downside is its price — $4.95 per employee per month.

14. SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors comes from one of the top makers of enterprise resource planning tools or planner apps. SuccessFactors is an HR solution set aimed at small and midsize businesses. It received PCMagazine’s Editor’s Choice award for performance management solutions. As a recruitment tool, it stands out for its ability to integrate applicant tracking and hiring with other HR functionalities for a seamless applicant-to-hire transition.

15. iCIMS Talent Acquisition Platform

Designed for midsize to enterprise companies, the iCIMS Talent Acquisition Platform is another G2 Leader pick. Employers can adopt the entire platform or choose between its Recruitment Marketing Suite, Advanced Communication Suite, and Hiring Suite. Each suite includes several different products that can also be purchased separately. This service will help turn your hiring process into one that impresses the candidates you want to attract.

16. Workable

Yet another G2 Leader selection, Workable focuses on streamlining and fast-tracking the recruitment process. Users rate Workable well above average for performance, reliability, and tracking ability. Workable makes it easy for teams to collaborate at every stage, from sharing comments after interviewing to providing a clear view of where candidates are in the pipeline.

17. Breezy HR

Breezy HR has been rated by 800 reviewers on Capterra, where it has earned an aggregated rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. It is a full-featured recruitment software solution that includes video interviewing, applicant tracking, job board management, and candidate screenings. Users have praised its ease of use and the quality of the company’s customer service, but they also appreciate the effectiveness with which it generates candidate suggestions and tracks applicants. 

Choose the best recruitment software

As recruitment software and automation become more widespread, candidates expect a higher level of convenience and communication. To be viewed favorably by top talent, you have to deliver. You have to keep candidates updated on their progress within the hiring pipeline, and you have to involve relevant members of your team.

Today’s top recruitment software choices endeavor to address these needs, delivering functionalities that benefit both candidates and hiring professionals. Take some time and see what works best for you — the investment will pay off in the talent you’ll be able to attract.

If the recruitment software we've recommended doesn't fit within your current budget, there are plenty of free business apps and consulting software out there.

Ready to make your recruiting process more efficient with Calendly? Sign up for free today.