How to Choose the Right Recruitment Software for Your Business

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Recruitment software applications are a staple for human resource (HR) teams and businesses overall. They help control the entire hiring process from one platform, right from sourcing candidates to sending out offer letters.

The best HR software will also make life easier for your hiring team and candidates alike, while the wrong one will cause delays, frustration, and disappointing hires. They might even deter top talent from applying again, not to mention cost you precious dollars in lost productivity.

Luckily, modern hiring tools use the latest technologies like the cloud, mobile apps, configurable workflows, and automation to reduce the manual work and collaboration challenges involved in hiring. They can be a godsend for growing organizations looking to attract and acquire the best candidates.

In this article, we explain how to choose the right recruitment software for your company and avoid these issues. We discuss the 15 core features you must have, plus a few bonus ones, like generative AI.

You’ll also learn how to select the best recruitment software from today’s multi-billion-dollar HR tech space – checking for essentials like compliance, integrations, and scalability.

Understanding Your Recruitment Needs

Either slow, manual processes can’t keep up with business growth. Or, your software isn’t giving you the features you expected.

Luckily, the market has plenty of affordable and enterprise-grade options to help you hire top talent. The recruitment software market was worth $2.78 billion in 2023 and will quickly grow (at 10%) in the next few years.

That means there’s a solution out there that’s perfectly suited to your business – but you need to know what you’re looking for.

The first sign you need a new recruitment software is when your hiring metrics start dipping. Monitor your time to fill, quality of hire, time to productivity for new hires, and candidate satisfaction scores. If any of these numbers have been dipping in the last few months, then it’s probably time for a change.

Companies also explore how to choose the best recruitment software – or improve talent acquisition in general – when they undergo a change. For example, if you’re expanding, a tool that lets you hire globally might be a good idea. If you’re ramping up your tech team, then technical assessments and tests have to be part of the system.

Why Is Just As Important as What

Pinpoint the precise reason why you need new software and then document the constraints within which you’re operating. Any important business app decision will depend on a few fixed factors, like a budget, your HR team’s skills, how many people you can dedicate to recruitment, and the compliance rules you need to follow.

This preliminary evaluation gives you a basic overview of your recruitment needs. Hold on to the documentation you’ve created because not only will you need it to obtain buy-in from the senior leadership, but it’ll also help you write requests for proposals (RFPs) when selecting vendors.

By now, you have a rough idea of what you need from a recruitment tool. Let’s run through the core functionalities to look for, as well as some of the extra, value-adding features that top vendors like Teamtailor, ClearCompany, or Monday.com Recruitment have to offer.

Key Features to Look for In Recruitment Software

To achieve this, you need the following core features:

1. Job Publishing on Social Boards and Career Sites

The tool should integrate with top job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, and others. This allows you to publish job ads to multiple sites in bulk, giving them maximum visibility.

The recruitment software acts as a one-stop hub to manage all your active job boards and a centralized location from where you can edit or update ads.

Some software apps like Teamtailor take this feature a step further and provide deeper integrations. For instance, with Teamtailor, LinkedIn users can’t just apply for jobs, but they can also import their resume.

With just one click, they can fill out an application using LinkedIn profiles, which makes it much faster and easier. As a result, you’re likely to attract more candidates.

2. Pre-screening Questions and Scorecards

Sometimes, you need to ask a few simple questions that can check a candidate’s suitability for a job. With just two or three questions, you can narrow the candidate pool to a few hundred from a thousand or more.

Are you eligible to work in the US? Are you open to a 10 pm to 6 am shift? Asking these questions early on can reduce a lot of hassle for you as well as the candidate.

The recruitment software should let you configure such pre-screening questions into the job application flow. Also, it should automatically scan the candidate’s resume and social profiles to give them a score – indicating how likely they are to meet your job requirements. Upwork, LinkedIn, Teamtailor, and most popular hiring tools offer a candidate scoring feature.

3. Customizable Hiring Workflows

A common reason why organizations explore how to choose the right recruitment software is because they want to bring in automation. The tool will enable hiring automation in the form of workflows – i.e., a connected sequence of events and actions where one process leads into another when complete.

Recruitment software lets you design custom workflows for different job types. For example, an entry-level job may go through fewer approvals, a mid-level job may involve a written test, and a senior position may require multiple rounds of interviews. Using the tool, you can set up reusable workflow templates, assign tasks to different people, and set conditions (e.g., close an ad after seven days).

4. Sourcing and Nurturing Passive Candidates

Passive candidates are professionals who aren’t looking for a job right now – but they are interested in your company and find it an appealing place to work. These candidates are often experienced, ambitious professionals who want to take their time to make the right career decision.

A good way to attract passive candidates is through future job subscriptions. This feature lets them sign up for future vacancies, and you can use their email contact for nurturing campaigns.

For instance, you can automatically email passive candidates with new perks and benefits that further increase their interest in your company.

5. Internal Recruitment System

An internal recruitment system works just like a regular one, but the difference is that only employees can see your ads. Internal mobility, and the ability to move up or laterally to a new position, are essential for a company.

It helps employees grow, keeps them loyal to the organization for a longer time, and is often more cost-effective than outside hiring.

The recruitment software you choose should support internal hiring through configurable visibility on posts and a dedicated section on the career site.

It should also allow you to add candidates to the pipeline manually (without going through the application process) in case someone you’ve already vetted sends in their resume.

6. Support for Referrals

Referrals are a highly effective way to match job seekers with a company. Its employees already know about its culture and work practices, so they’ll only recommend people who’d be a good fit.

The candidate also aligns their expectations according to what they’ve seen and heard from their peers who recommended them.

The best recruitment software will help you track referrals across the organization. It’ll also aggregate referrals in one place so these recommendations aren’t lost or overlooked.

By tracking a referral from end to end, you can ensure employees receive a referral bonus for successful hires, encouraging more recommendations in the future.

7. Job Management and Deadlines Tracking

This is one of the key features you need in a recruitment tool: the ability to manage all your active, past, and upcoming vacancies and the timelines for filling each. A mid-sized to large business will have multiple jobs active at any given time – across geographies, departments, and types (full-time/freelance and remote/hybrid/on-site).

The software’s primary dashboard should give you full visibility into all of these jobs and the boards where they are posted. It needs to have filters and tags to help you find specific jobs.

Also, look for a sorting option that lets you arrange jobs from old to new. That way, you can make the appropriate changes so you don’t keep receiving applications for old vacancies.

8. Candidate Communication

This is part of the candidate relationship management (CRM) features of the software. Research shows that 58% of applicants expect to hear back from your side within a week of applying. A powerful candidate communication feature helps you connect with candidates – through automation as well as manually – every step of the way.

Teamtailor, for instance, offers a chat feature that’s embedded on your career site. That way, you can chat with potential candidates and answer their queries even before they apply for a job. It also supports bulk messaging, so you can notify many candidates in one go.

Message templates are also a handy feature, as they make it easier to stay consistent and follow your organization’s HR guidelines when interacting with applicants.

9. Collaboration with Hiring Team Members

The recruitment process often involves multiple stakeholders, especially for bulk recruitment drives and senior leadership positions. The software should help keep the entire team on the same page. One way to achieve this is by tagging people on jobs. Once you tag someone on a job post (just like social media), they’re notified about the task.

You should also be able to add users from outside the organization, such as an expert from a third-party recruitment agency. Hiring team members, including external collaborators, can monitor the job’s progress from their dashboards and add their opinions, notes, and scores when assessing candidates.

10. Built-in Video Interviews

While some companies may consider this feature a “nice to have,” we recommend that you definitely keep built-in video in mind when researching how to choose the right recruitment software.

Without it, you’ll be switching between apps to conduct interviews. You’ll also have to record interview notes and candidate scores manually and, later on, enter them into the recruitment software.

Instead, built-in video capabilities will weave the interview process right into the hiring workflow. Once a candidate is shortlisted, the hiring team receives the notification.

Then, one or more interviewers can evaluate the candidate using the software. They can score candidates during the interview, and after it’s over, everyone is aware of the results.

11. Job and Offer Letter Templates

Recruitment involves writing smart, effective content that resonates with candidates while complying with your company’s and regulatory guidelines. That’s why templates can save you a lot of time and effort when hiring. These are reusable outlines of important content types, like job posts, passive candidate emails, rejection emails, and offer letters.

Teamtailor even offers to-do list templates so you can quickly assign tasks to your hiring team members.

You’ll also be able to create your own templates and save them for later use. The best recruitment software will bring a large library of templates – for different roles, remote work, job offers in different countries, and much more.

12. Recruitment Outcome Reports

Data analytics and reports help you monitor how efficiently your hiring pipeline is working.

Are you filling vacancies fast enough? Are your job ad costs bringing enough returns? Which teams are finding it easier to hire, and which ones are struggling? Where in the pipeline are applicants having to wait the most? All of this data should be available on a visual, interactive dashboard for convenient viewing and analysis.

Look for three reporting features – a real-time dashboard, scheduled reports, and ad-hoc reports.

The dashboard gives you bird’s eye visibility into your hiring processes. Scheduled reports are vital for compliance and sharing with organizational leaders, say at the end of each quarter or fiscal year. Ad-hoc reports are great for deep-diving into a specific metric or event and finding its cause.

13. Candidate Satisfaction Analysis

A seamless hiring experience ensures that the candidate forms a positive impression of your business. This means they’ll be motivated to work hard and stay engaged when they join.

Even if they aren’t hired, they might apply for future jobs or recommend others because of their satisfaction with your hiring process.

Therefore, the best recruitment software will send out a survey as soon as a candidate’s hiring journey ends.

Based on the responses, the software will calculate your Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a hiring organization. If your NPS is lower than expected, then you can analyze your hiring pipeline to find out where the problem lies.

14. Candidate Data Privacy and Security

Since recruitment apps collect large amounts of sensitive data, this feature is a must-have. First, to protect applicants’ privacy, you should set role-based access controls. That way, only authorized users will be able to view the data. Candidates should also be able to control what happens to their data and delete it if they want.

Second, the recruitment software should be securely hosted. Most hiring apps today are cloud-based, so you can implement them on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

However, make sure you know where it’s hosted. Ideally, you should be able to choose Europe as your hosting decision to stay compliant with GDPR.

Other security features to look for include strong password enforcement, multi-factor authentication, and data encryption.

15. Integration with HR and Business Apps

The next core feature you need in your recruitment software is the ability to integrate it with your other apps. This includes both HR apps (like payroll systems, time and attendance tools, and benefits software) and other business tools (like document storage and collaboration apps).

Integrations will cut down the work of moving data between systems and speed up processes. Most tools support four integration models:

While your preferred integration type will vary – based on which app you want to integrate with and the level of technical skills available – we’d recommend you look for a marketplace. This model gives you the widest variety of connectors and doesn’t need any technical skills to set up.

When you’re choosing the right recruitment software for your business, these 15 functionalities are essential. Besides these, you can consider a few value-adding features that are available on top platforms today:

16. Artificial Intelligence

With tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney becoming so popular, it makes sense to use AI to reduce hiring efforts. Predictive candidate matching uses AI to calculate a candidate’s potential success in a job role. AI is also used in the chatbots you embed on the career site.

Generative AI, in particular, can be extremely beneficial for busy hiring managers. It can write content from scratch, saving you the time and effort of writing job descriptions, rejection and offer letters, career site content, and more. It can also provide you with handy summaries of resumes and video interviews.

17. Recruitment Data Import and Export

The next key feature to look for is data import/export. Companies that have conducted multiple hiring campaigns in the past and have built a solid talent pool should prioritize this feature. It lets you import existing candidate details and contact information into the recruitment software without any hassle.

Easy data export is also a useful feature as it prevents vendor lock-in. If, for any reason, you’re no longer happy with the app, it will allow you to “lift and shift” your recruitment data.

18. Job and Career Site SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is what ensures your hiring content has the right keywords and it’s easy for candidates to find. For instance, if a job seeker is looking for “DevOps jobs in Delaware” on Google, then your career site with a suitable vacancy should pop up among the first few search results.

Several new-age recruitment tools, like Teamtailor, will perform SEO analysis and optimize your job ads and career site content. When you’re writing the job description, these tools will prompt you to include certain words and phrases that candidates are likely to look up.

19. Job Tracking for Candidates

Hiring managers can use their dashboards and task management tools to track a job’s progress, but what about the candidate? Typically, they’ll have to wait – with zero visibility – until the HR team responds to their application. They may not be aware of a company’s complex approval process and assume they were “ghosted” by HR.

To prevent this, some tools now offer transparent recruitment features. Job seekers can track their application as it passes through the pipeline.in addition to the relief and peace of mind this offers, candidates can start preparing for the next step of recruitment even before they receive an official notification.

20. Employer Branding

Employer branding is a type of marketing initiative you undertake to establish your company as an attractive employer and keep the organization relevant to new generations of job seekers. To support this, recruitment platforms may offer email automation tools, blogging tools, and, as we mentioned, SEO.

Teamtailor, for instance, allows a company’s employees and teams to create their own content sharing what it’s like to work for the company. Website visitors get an authentic representation of your workplace and its culture, so they’re more likely to apply for a job.

How to Compare Recruitment Software — Types, Pricing, and Comparison

Recruitment apps today offer a wide variety of features, and it can be confusing to determine which one best meets your needs. To narrow down your choices, consider these factors when evaluating hiring tools.

1. Types of Recruitment Systems

Recruitment apps can be of several types, including applicant tracking software, hiring assessment tools, candidate relationship management apps, and job board aggregators. Most recruitment platforms will have two or more of these functionalities, while others, like Teamtailor, cover the whole spectrum.

After you’ve assessed your needs, ask yourself (and other stakeholders) which type of software you need. Is a simple job board aggregator sufficient, so you can just post ads and reach candidates more easily? Or, do you plan to hire a lot over the next few years, and a coordinated, end-to-end system is what you need?

Once this decision is clear, the rest of the software selection process becomes simpler.

2. Pricing

Pricing for hiring software can be tricky as most companies won’t disclose pricing upfront. This is because nearly every organization has a unique list of hiring needs, and the software has to be customized accordingly.

Submit an RFP with your team size, HR pain points, and hiring goals, and vendors will get back to you with a quote. On average, you can expect full-suite recruitment platforms to cost around $200-600/month/user.

There are cheaper ones available – however, be prepared for a major tradeoff in terms of functionality. For instance, Zoho Recruit starts at $25/month/user but doesn’t have candidate matching, built-in video interviews, workflows, candidate surveys, and so much more. That’s why it isn’t ideal to settle for the cheapest recruitment software.

3. Data and Analytics

Recruitment processes generate a lot of data, and analyzing it correctly can substantially improve how you hire. As we explained, look for both hiring outcome reports as well as candidate experience reports.

Make sure the software integrates with data analysis apps like Power BI and Tableau. This lets you take the power of hiring data outside of the recruitment space and use it to improve your business in general – for example, analyzing hiring numbers vs. profit/loss analysis in a new geography.

4. Security and Compliance

The software needs to comply with data privacy and security rules such as the GDPR, PCI DSS, and HIPPA. This means the vendor has taken proactive steps to enforce consent mechanisms and can protect sensitive information like financial and healthcare data.

Also, check if the vendor is SOC 2 certified. The SOC certification, developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), is a cybersecurity rule that says vendors must manage customer data based on five principles – privacy, security, availability, confidentiality, and integrity.

5. Comparing Software Options

Once you have all of this information in place, you can narrow it down to two or three vendors and start scheduling demos.

During the demo, check for ease of use, the availability of mobile apps, and the ease of obtaining support. Given how feature-rich (and complex) most recruitment platforms are, this will make it easier for the HR team to use it without getting overwhelmed.

Best Recruitment Software: Our Recommendations

Hiring someone to replace an employee or to fill a new role can take 41 days on average, according to recent recruitment statistics. You need the best recruitment platform to minimize this delay as much as possible and reduce effort and friction for your hiring team.

To help your search, here are some of the leading tools in 2024 and their key highlights:

Overall, Teamtailor is among the best recruitment software options for companies, especially if you want to leverage the power of gen AI and combine video meetings with a hiring tool.

Choosing the Best Recruitment Software Takeaways

The answer to the question “how to choose the right recruitment software” depends less on how powerful the technology is and more on your unique needs. Identify your hiring goals and pain points and align the feature set accordingly.

Don’t hesitat to involve other teams like IT and finance in the selection process, as they can bring a larger business perspective.

If you’re new to recruitment platforms, a good rule of thumb is to choose a vendor that offers hand-holding and implementation services during the first few months. Instead of being swayed by marketing hype, conduct your own research and identify a platform that fits your budget, skillset, needs, and integration environment.

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