The Top Recruiting Tools for Effective Employee Hiring

Employee recruitment has never been easy, but the Great Resignation has made it even harder. Companies must prove their commitment to their employees, and it can be difficult to get job descriptions in front of the right candidates. Recruiters therefore need the right tools to effectively recruit new employees.

Recruiting and applicant tracking go hand in hand. While recruiting software is an all-encompassing solution that supports all stages of the hiring process, an applicant tracking system (ATS) is a tool often nested within recruiting software. An ATS assists with managing applicants’ data and their progression through the hiring process.

Also read: When to Upgrade Your ATS

With so many recruiting vendors, we’ve compiled a list of hand-picked options. If none of these solutions meet your needs, explore our Recruiting Software Guide to browse other products that might be a better fit.

What is the best recruiting software?

Breezy HR: Best recruiting software for candidate evaluation

Breezy HR is a recruiting platform designed to help small businesses attract, qualify, and hire top talent. Companies have the option of creating a branded career site through the platform or embedding the Breezy Widget into an existing careers page to automatically publish job posts from Breezy to the page.

As applications roll in, Breezy HR offers a variety of features that optimize the candidate evaluation phase of the hiring process because all information about a candidate is gathered in one place. AI helps Breezy HR users determine which candidates are the best fit for an open role to expedite the hiring process. From there, a hiring manager can communicate and schedule an interview with the employee. For internal communication, hiring team members can access candidate profiles to complete scorecards or review an assessment. 

Assessment reviews are otherwise handled automatically. Breezy HR grades assessments and either advances or disqualifies the candidate automatically based on their results. For aspects that require the team’s deliberation, users can compare candidate notes all within the interface. And pre-established scorecard criteria ensure objective, equitable application reviews.

One-way video responses may interfere with objectivity, nevertheless, this and video interviewing in general are features available with Breezy HR. One-way video responses provide candidates another way to introduce themselves and answer screening questions. The remarkable feature of Breezy HR’s native video interview tool is that it displays all candidate info on the screen. This eliminates the need to find tabs and switch screens in the middle of an interview with a candidate. Also noteworthy are the real-time interview notes and interview recordings that automatically save to the candidate profile. Users can also opt to integrate with Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom instead if they prefer. 

Also read: Best Applicant Tracking Systems for Small Businesses

Breezy HR pros and cons 

Breezy HR key features

• Rich contextual data in candidate profiles
• AI-powered Candidate Match score
• Resume parsing

iCIMS: Best recruiting software for candidate communication

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iCIMS’ all-in-one hiring platform does everything from social recruiting and applicant tracking to talent pipelining and onboarding to support aggressive recruiting strategies.

iCIMS’ account-based marketing approach to its marketing automation tools nurtures candidates who are most likely to consider or take a job. iCIMS’ Candidate Relationship Management tool identifies applicants who have engaged with the job ad, career site, or another aspect of the company’s externally facing recruiting efforts. Based on engagement scores, the iCIMS platform sends personalized, automated messages to those candidates to encourage them to apply. The messages are tailored to their preferred mode of communication and the type of content they’ve been accessing. This helps companies better communicate with candidates throughout the recruitment process to keep them more engaged and hire for roles faster. 

Also read: 3 of the Most Important Applicant Tracking Automations

iCMS also helps hiring teams tap into often overlooked talent pools. Its platform leverages rediscovery recruiting, meaning it re-engages candidates who have previously applied, even silver-medal candidates who made the shortlist but ultimately didn’t get an offer previously. It even helps manage communication with previous employees to either re-employ them or to continue tapping into their network for referrals.

Customers don’t necessarily need to commit to iCIMS’ comprehensive solution from the start. Instead, they may opt for just iCIMS Recruit without also buying iCIMS Connect and iCIMS Onboard. iCIMS offers add-on services as well, like the Applicant Tracking System, which can be purchased as a part of the iCIMS Talent Cloud to improve onboarding efficiency. 

iCIMS tools integrate into a company’s existing tech stack. For instance, it integrates with other popular HR solutions like Namely, Peoplesoft, and ADP Workforce Now.

iCIMS pros and cons

iCIMS key features

• Candidate contact via AI chatbot, SMS, or email
• Video on career sites and in job descriptions
• Virtual career fairs

JazzHR: Best recruiting software for small, collaborative hiring teams

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JazzHR is a recruiting software solution that assists with candidate sourcing, tracking, and evaluation. It publishes job posts to free and paid job boards as well as popular social media channels, such as LinkedIn. It has just the right amount of functionality for small businesses, but its top tier delivers enhanced features as a company grows.

JazzHR approaches hiring in a highly collaborative manner. JazzHR’s platform also allows HR to customize individual hiring teams based on the job opening. For example, a sales role would include mostly or entirely sales employees. Team members collaborate directly within the platform to give feedback on candidates and record notes in real time during the interview. Interview notes get stored in the candidate’s profile for later review. 

While Breezy HR and iCIMS deploy AI to score candidates, JazzHR requires hiring team members to cast votes to advance qualified candidates and reject unqualified candidates. Since JazzHR’s candidate evaluation process is collaborative, it won’t be a good fit for high-volume hiring situations. Plus, this collaborative decision-making about who advances could undermine efforts to avoid unconscious bias.

JazzHR pros and cons

JazzHR key features

• Collaborative candidate evaluation
• Document management and storage

Jobvite: Best recruiting software for balancing digital and in-person recruiting

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Jobvite is a feature-rich talent acquisition suite that includes an ATS, built-in video capabilities, and more. Jobvite’s platform enables companies to create branded career sites, manage applicants, and re-engage passive candidates for hard-to-fill positions. Given its AI-powered recruitment marketing tools, Jobvite is comparable to iCIMS. However, Jobvite stands out for its tools that support a hybrid approach to recruiting online as well as in person. 

Jobvite enables recruiters to collect contact information and resumes digitally or in person. Jobvite is not transparent in terms of how it’s able to automate the digital collection of contact information and resumes during an in-person event in particular; its tools therefore still lean heavily on the digital side of recruiting. It also helps recruiters stay proactive and organized via immediate follow-up contact with attendees.

Jobvite dedicates particular attention to recent college graduates and how its tools can help companies attract and engage Gen Z applicants. However, the features to support this approach are rolled into its main recruiting tools explained above. Jobvite is attuned to the needs of Gen Z applicants by emphasizing the timely, targeted, and digital aspects of recruiting. For instance, in advance of an event, Jobvite allows recruiters to reach out to registered attendees and gather more contextual information about them and inform interactions at the upcoming event.

Candidate evaluation and feedback in Jobvite goes through its app, which can be accessed via web browser or a mobile device. Here, hiring team members can submit candidate feedback and evaluation forms and message other team members. As such, Jobvite accommodates hiring teams working on the go or in the office.

Jobvite pros and cons

Jobvite key features

• On-the-go recruiting, digital file tracking for in-person and remote events
• Social recruiting
• Candidate evaluation via web browser or mobile app

Manatal: Best recruiting software for social recruiting

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Manatal is a recruiting software that meets the needs of a company’s HR and recruiting teams but also external hiring partners it may work with.

Manatal’s Vendor Management System facilitates collaboration among a company’s internal recruiters or with a company’s recruiting agency. As such, not only does it target company’s HR teams, but it also addresses recruiting agencies that use Manatal to share recruiting information with their clients.

Manatal helps companies expand their reach and boost visibility to job seekers. Users can share job postings directly from the Manatal-hosted career page to popular social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn. 

Manatal’s integration with social recruiting automatically enriches candidates’ profiles within its system. It scans for publicly available information on social media networks and inserts it into the profile. Manatal even imports a candidate’s LinkedIn profile into the candidate’s profile in Manatal’s database. Both candidate enrichment and the LinkedIn Sourcing Extension are available in all plans. 

Overall Manatal’s recruiting software offers the most value for the money, as many basic and advanced features are included in all plans.

Manatal pros and cons

Manatal key features

• Collaborative hiring portal for companies and their recruiters whether internal or external
• Social recruiting
• Candidate profile enrichment via social media networks

Workable: Best recruiting software for sourcing talent 

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Sourcing talent can be especially difficult for startups and small businesses. These organizations have neither the manpower to put a dedicated recruiter on the job, nor the budgets to hire agencies or purchase expensive recruiting software. Workable helps companies attract, source, evaluate, and hire talent. 

Workable utilities AI to identify, collect, and organize applicants in the pipeline. As with iCIMS, Workable also taps into previous applicants who almost got hired in the past. However, as with JazzHR, it’s on the hiring team to review candidates, assess their fit for the role, and move them forward in the process when using Workable. 

Like Manatal, Workable also pulls information from social media to enrich candidate profiles, but it works through a Chrome extension which still requires the user to find the information in the first place. After sourcing and evaluating candidates, Workable facilitates ongoing communication with candidates via two-way email. With this feature, email correspondence with the candidate are all tracked in Workday and saved to the candidate’s profile. Text communication is available as a premium add-on for an additional way to keep candidates engaged.

Workable’s call-out feature is its user-friendly employee referral portal. Referred candidates cost the company less money, they also speed up the process because they’ve been vetted by current employees, and they’re more likely to stay on board with the company for a longer period than those hired from a job board. 

The employee referral tool is user-friendly for both hiring managers and current employees. The hiring manager just has to send employees the link to the organization’s referrals platform, and Workable takes care of the rest. Employees don’t need special access or to take additional steps. Workable actively includes current employees in the recruiting process by supplying them with easy-to-share, ready-made posts for their professional networks. 

The ability to customize performance rewards in Workable’s referral system gamifies the referral process and incentivizes employee participation in the recruiting process. Employees can track not only their referrals but also monitor and redeem the rewards they accumulate over time, such as money, gift cards, or company swag.

All other solutions enable some kind of employee referral system with varying degrees of analytical oversight. However, they lack the rewards and gamification aspects of Workable’s referral system. 

Workable pros and cons

Workable key features

• Referral management
• AI-powered candidate matching and sourcing
• Talent rediscovery
• Social recruiting
• Internal mobility

Also read: 7 Workable Competitors To Help With Your Hiring Efforts

Zoho Recruit: Best recruiting software for analytics

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Zoho Recruit is a recruitment software solution and all-in-one applicant tracking system (ATS) for reaching, assessing, and hiring qualified applicants. Like Manatal, Zoho Recruiting also addresses the participation of outside vendors like staffing agencies in a company’s hiring process. 

Whether hiring with an internal team or with third-party recruiters, hiring managers using Zoho Recruit connect with qualified applicants. Zoho Recruit’s resume parsing and other AI-powered features helps recruiters identify good-fit applicants and assign them a score.  

Like all other solutions, Zoho Recruit also features reporting and analytics capabilities. However, it stands out with its recruitment forecasts that generate predictive insights based on factors like:

• Past forecast data
• Recruitment ROI
• Competitive analysis
• Economic climate
• Industry trends
• Team performance

Using this information, organizations can plan ahead for their workforce needs against the backdrop of broader economic and industry trends.

Across all compared features, Zoho Recruit is the only one that checks all the boxes. Beside Breezy HR, Zoho Recruit is the only other vendor to offer a free version with basic features like interview scheduling and candidate management. However, if you want employee referrals, social recruiting, and AI candidate matching, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. Zoho Recruit works best when paired with other Zoho products, but it can sync with third-party software.

Zoho Recruit pros and cons

Zoho Recruit key features

• Recruitment forecasts
• Advanced analytics

How to choose the right recruiting software

All of these vendors offer standard features, such as branded career sites, syndicated job posting, AI functionality, and employee referral tools. 

However, for the best value for the money, we recommend Manatal or Zoho Recruit. In terms of breadth of features, Zoho Recruit offers all the compared features, while Workable offers all the compared features except document management.

If streamlining the hiring process is a priority, look into JazzHR, Jobvite, or Zoho Recruit, as these platforms offer both document management and digital signing. If your company is focused on mitigating bias in the recruitment process, JazzHR, Jobvite, Workable, and Zoho Recruit include anonymized screening.

If sourcing talent is a high-ranking criterion, iCIMS, Jobvite, Workable, and Zoho Recruit all offer ways to hire from within. iCIMS and Workable are a cut above the rest in terms of rediscovering silver-medal candidates that narrowly missed a job offer in the past. 

If none of these vendors meet your needs, check out our Recruiting Software Guide to browse other solutions.