7 Best Recruitment Software Options for 2019

Recruitment software helps businesses find top talent by posting open positions to job boards and keeping track of candidates who’ve applied. Which software you choose depends on what your needs: manage interviewer feedback, run background checks, send offer letters? You may need more than one recruiting software tool to manage your end-to-end staffing.

Top 7 Recruiting Software Tools for 2019

Which Recruitment Software is Right for You?

How We Evaluated Recruitment Software

In our evaluation of recruitment software for small businesses, we looked at the easy-to-use job posting ad applicant tracking tools a small business might need. We excluded complex, high-priced ATS software designed specifically for recruitment firms, although we provide staffing companies with some alternatives towards the end of this article.

Based on the hiring needs of small businesses, the criteria we used to evaluate the best recruiting software include:

• Price: We evaluated free, and low-cost recruitment software.
• Cloud-based: We choose software that will interface with online job boards, calendars or HR/payroll software and that you can access from any internet-connected device.
• Job board posting: We prioritized tools that post open jobs on your career website or to external job boards and social media and that track of applicants by source.
• Applicant tracking: We evaluated software that monitors where applicants are in the recruiting process, such as applied, interviewed, or hired, as examples.
• Resume uploads & resume parsing: Preference was given to recruiting software that lets applicants upload resumes so that you can compare candidates side-by-side.
• Background screening: These tools prevent poor hiring decisions.
• Assessments: We found providers that can pretest job skills with online evaluations, ask prescreening questions, or offer personality assessment tools like DiSC profiles.
• Reporting & analytics: We found tools with reports that hu8man resources (HR) may find valuable, such as “time to hire.” Some provide EEO-compliance reporting as well.

Based on these factors, we recommend Indeed as the best overall recruiting software for small business. It does both job posting and keeps track of your job applicants in one place as well as provides prescreening options and pre-employment testing―all for free.

Indeed: Best Overall Recruitment Software for Small Business

We find Indeed to be the best overall recruitment software for small business because it serves as both a job board and as an applicant tracking system (ATS). In fact, it’s not a bad idea to use Indeed, along with your other recruiting software, to increase your reach. Indeed posts jobs for free and provides a company page for your business.

With Indeed, you can monitor applications, view resumes, and contact candidates. Using its interface tools, you can even make sure your new hires are moved directly into your HR or payroll system.

Indeed Pricing

Indeed provides most of its recruiting software features for free. However, it offers pay-per-click advertising that starts at $5 per day. Also, Indeed can provide recruiting services for a fee if you need help sourcing candidates. You can also pay $100 to $250 per month if you want to contact individuals whose resumes you’ve found posted on Indeed.

Indeed Add-ons & What They Cost

Indeed Features

Indeed has all the basic features to post jobs online, view candidates and schedule interviews. It also offers resume uploads and parses resumes. Indeed has a mobile app that you can use to post jobs and job seekers can use to apply.

If you’re advertising your online job in your storefront, Indeed even provides a customized “help wanted” sign with a quick response (QR) code you can print and post at your work locations for job seekers to scan and apply online.

Job Board

Indeed is more than a job board. It’s a job site aggregator similar to ZipRecruiter, scouring the internet looking for job postings. That means you can post a job directly to Indeed or you can upload the job to your own job board, and Indeed will pick it up and post it for you. We provide tips on how to do this in our article How to Maximize Your Indeed Job Posting. The best part about posting a job on Indeed is that it’s free.

Applicant Tracking

To save you from keeping track of active job seekers in file folders and spreadsheets Indeed provides built-in applicant tracking tools that show you who has applied, where they are in the interviewing process and any feedback that you or hiring managers have provided. Resumes are uploaded, parsed as Indeed uses artificial intelligence (AI) to pull out the relevant details from each resume like work history and education and searchable so that you no longer need to maintain paper copies.

Mobile App

Using Indeed, job seekers can apply online or via mobile phone. That increases your chances of getting quality applications quicker, since they can sign in using their email or Facebook account, instead of having to create a new account on a third party ATS software.

Customer Support

Indeed provides customer support directly from its website. The support team will help job seekers apply to your jobs as well as assist you with any job posing or advertising concerns. In addition, Indeed’s Employer Help Center provides hundreds of how to guides with step-by-step instructions and screenshots.

What Indeed Is Missing

Indeed isn’t a full-featured applicant tracking system. If you post hundreds of jobs or have dozens of recruiters, there’s no easy way to keep track of who is managing which jobs and candidates. Also, it doesn’t offer a live chat feature if you want a human to help you out with your job posting.

What Users Think about Indeed

Indeed earns solid feedback from business owners and hiring managers. They like that they can source candidates from a huge database of job seekers as well as post jobs for free. Some users complain they get too many unqualified candidates, but that can be overcome easily by adding screening questions to the job posting. Check out what users say on our Indeed review.

Freshteam: Best Recruitment Software for Firms With 50 or Fewer Employees

We recommend Freshteam for small business users that need more robust applicant tracking features. It’s free if you have fewer than 50 employees and don’t need to post more than three open positions at a time. In fact, even if you outgrow the free program, Freshteam’s pricing is significantly less than most of the other recruiting software we reviewed.

What makes Freshteam great―besides being free―is that it is part of a larger suite of applications, called Freshworks, that can manage all aspects of your business automation, including customer relationship management (CRM), sales, information technology (IT) support and call centers.

Freshteam Pricing

Freshteam pricing starts at free and goes to $250 per month if paid monthly for a company with 50 or fewer employees. For example, a startup or small business might choose the Sprout package for free. It provides up to five job postings at a time. You can even embed those job postings directly on your company website at that price.

Freshteam Monthly Pricing Plans

*Discounts available for annual pricing. Additional employees cost extra.

For small business recruiting, the packages priced between $75 and $150 a month are the best value. Prices go up as you add employees to your business. However, if you pay annually, you can save anywhere between 25 and 33%. However, if you want more than three jobs posted at once or want those jobs to be featured on job boards like ZipRecruiter or Indeed, you’ll need to upgrade.

The Garden features custom branding, recruiting via social media, and the ability to manage candidate job offers. If you want advanced features such as customized recruitment roles―helpful if you’re in the staffing industry―you can use its Estate package, starting at $250 a month.

Freshteam Features

Freshteam has a plethora of features in addition to managing your job postings. It provides templates for job descriptions and job posts so that you don’t have to create them from scratch. It can also help you find qualified applicants with its candidate sourcing feature.

As job seekers apply, Freshteam can screen their resumes, allowing you to evaluate candidates and schedule interviews. Once the interviewing begins, Freshteam can help you gather interviewer feedback on scorecards. Then, when you select the best candidate for the job, you can send your offer letter right from the system.

Below are some additional features that make Freshteam stand out.

Post to Free Job Boards

In addition to having your own career site for applicants to apply to your open jobs, Freshteam sends your jobs to job boards like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and ZipRecruiter. This saves you time from cross-posting jobs on these sites by hand and helps promote your jobs to encourage more applicants to apply. You can also use the “embed jobs” feature to put a link on your own social media account or website at no cost.

Mobile-friendly

Freshteam has a mobile-friendly site with email integration so that you can contact candidates directly from the system―that way, all your communication back and forth with applicants is kept in one place. Also, you can upgrade to obtain multiple email accounts. For instance, you may want entry-level applicants to send their forms to one person while management applicants send their resumes to another.

Collaborate With Hiring Team

Freshteam features tools such as email and scorecards that let your hiring team share feedback about the candidate. That saves you time from having to make follow-up phone calls or get notes back from interviewers. It’s all in one place, and the scorecards make it easy to see all the interviewers’ feedback or all candidates side-by-side.

Software Integrations

Freshteam, as part of the Freshworks family of business applications, has integrations into Calendars, like Calendly and Office 365. It also integrates with Google apps and Facebook. Freshteam also has native integrations into its other Freshworks modules such as Freshsales, Freshdesk, and Freshchat.

Customer Support

Freshteam provides 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and website tickets. In addition, it has an online chat that is very responsive.

What Freshteam Is Missing

Unlike many recruitment software providers, the data from Freshteam doesn’t integrate with common payroll applications. Therefore, if you use another HR/payroll system, you’ll have to make sure you move new hire data from Freshteam into your payroll system to process the candidate as a new hire and set up their payroll and tax forms manually.

What Users Think About Freshteam

Users appear to like Freshteam and don’t complain about much except perhaps the fact that it doesn’t yet have a mobile app. For more information, read our complete review on Freshteam.

Recruitee: Best Recruitment Software for Employer Branding

Recruitee is best for small businesses that want to use recruitment software to promote their employer brand. It allows you to customize your career page and job application forms. It also provides you with a custom domain for your job postings, or you can sync with your existing website. That helps candidates get a feel for your business and your brand from the start.

Recruitee has also an intuitive interface that lets you view jobs and candidates on a dashboard. Communication with applicants and interview scheduling can all be done right in the system, with all your notes in one place. It has added mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Recruitee Pricing

Pricing for Recruitee is based on the number of jobs you post and the number of talent pools you maintain. It runs from $79 a month for four jobs posted up to $299 to manage 20 jobs at once. Pricing for the Professional plan at $79 a month is on par with Freshteam’s Blossom plan at $75 a month, but you get 10 job postings with Freshteam vs only four with Recruitee.

Recruitee Pricing Plans

Recruitee allows you to track the pools of talent separately as well. For example, if you want to keep your customer service job seekers separate from your management talent, you would use two talent pools. It also offers a free 18-day trial.

Recruitee Features

Recruitee has all the basic recruiting software features from posting jobs to tracking applicants. These features are available at all price points, including unlimited team members and candidates. In addition to posting on external job boards, it hosts and allows you to customize your careers website.

If you have a few jobs that you fill repeatedly, such as customer service reps or foodservice staff, you can describe your work environment to entice people to apply. Recruitee lets you give future employees a flavor of what it’s like to work at your company. Even so, you still only use one job posting per role.

Here are additional features that make Recruitee stand out.

Job Posting

Recruitee can post jobs to more than 800 additional job boards and post jobs via social media to help you promote your open positions. It provides tools for sourcing applicants, such as importing them from other job sites and tracking them through the recruitment process while analyzing your results.

Dashboard

With Recruitee, you can see a dashboard of potential hires or look for candidates based on ratings. It’s similar to choosing the best products from Amazon. You can also add tags and ask questions to help you keep track of candidates by skill, experience, or any other criteria you find important.

Applicant Tracking

Recruitee has an intuitive system for keeping track of applicants, such as which candidates have been screened, interviewed, or received job offers. You can see activity by candidate and notes on each person in the database. Because it’s got a built-in calendar, it can work as a reminder dashboard for your hiring managers so that they don’t forget key activities like having a candidate complete a background check.

Reports

Recruitee provides reports that help you do things like finding out how long it takes to fill a position or learning where your best candidates are coming from. It also has data export options, along with standardized reports. You can slice the data any way you like or upload it to another software system like payroll.

Customer Support

Recruitee’s help center provides advice and answers online in the form of searchable how-to articles. It also provides support via email. Its hours aren’t posted, but it promises a two-day turnaround when you email the support team.

What Recruitee Is Missing

Recruitee doesn’t have any native integration with HR/payroll systems like Gusto. However, using third-party integration tools like API or Zapier, you can share data from Recruitee with lots of other apps. It also has no online chat or call center to provide immediate assistance if you have issues.

What Users Think about Recruitee

Users are pretty impressed with Recruitee for the price and features, including its drag-and-drop interface and customization options. They also like the customer service provided. For more insight, read our review of Recruitee.

Zoho Recruit: Best Recruitment Tool for Business Software Integration

Zoho Recruit is a close runner-up to the first few recruiting software options based on features and price. What makes it different is its native integration with a whole suite of business apps, including Zoho People, which is an HR platform. That’s great if you are looking for integrated business apps like Zoho One.

Zoho Recruit offers too many features to mention, from your own careers website to premium job boards and resume parsing. Zoho Recruit also provides reports, dashboards, workflow, and a mobile app. It has a ton of integrations, such as Google Apps and Outlook, which Recruitee doesn’t yet offer.

Zoho Recruit Pricing

There’s a free version of Zoho Recruit with basic features that allow you to manage candidates, emails, and interviews for one open job at a time. Otherwise, Zoho Recruit is priced between $25 and $75 a month per user. This makes it very affordable for a small business where only one person is doing the hiring.

Zoho Recruit’s Pricing Tiers

*Discounts are available if you pay annually.

The $50 per month Professional version costs less than either Recruitee or Freshteam and provides features on par with professional applicant tracking systems, such as the ability to manage recruiting for more than one business. In fact, the $75 a month per user Enterprise version has advanced features that only recruitment firms might need to use, such as the ability to manage multiple recruiters or do recruitment for external clients. It also provides a free trial.

Zoho Recruit Features

In addition to its native software integration, Zoho Recruit has many features of a professional applicant tracking system, at a price point that allows a small business to benefit. Even in the free version, you can track candidates, interviews, and notes. You can also use email templates, store your data, and use Zapier to integrate to third-party apps.

Using the paid versions, you get everything you might ever need, including data backup, an events log, posting to premium job boards, prescreening, feedback forms, a custom inbox, mass emails, search tools, document attachments, dashboards, reports and even a custom logo to promote your employment brand. Here are a few other cool features.

Job Posting

You can publish jobs on your website, search for candidates on Indeed, create a custom job application form, and set up auto response rules, such as to say, “Thank you for applying.”

Workflow Management

Workflow management allows you to set up rules so that the software does much of the work for you. You can have five to 50 custom rules depending on which package you choose, and you can set up 100 to 300 alerts to tasks and assignments, including time-based actions and webhooks.

User Security

Some companies don’t like all team members to see the same data. In the free software, you get only one user profile, but you get four user profiles in the Standard package and up to 25 in the Enterprise package. You can set up groups, data sharing rules, and guest users, for example, if you want others to comment on a candidate, such as a freelance interviewer.

Social Recruiting

All except the free option provide integration to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. If you update to the Professional package, you can interact with candidates in social media directly from the system and capture their contact details from Twitter and Facebook. Social recruiting improves your reach as well as your employment brand by allowing you to interact with candidates in real time.

Customer Support

Zoho Recruit makes finding the information you need easy with ebooks, webinars, and videos to pair with online forums and its help center. You can also email the company for support 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday. There’s no support on weekends.

What Zoho Recruit Is Missing

Zoho Recruit is missing one-on-one personal support via phone or online chat. There’s no support on the weekend. It’s very customizable, which can make it complex, but the tool itself does everything that recruiting software needs to do.

What Users Think about Zoho Recruit

In general, users like Zoho Recruit and give it top ratings for all the features they get at a very affordable price. A few mention that they’d like to be able to talk to a person when they set it up or have a problem. Look at what users say on our Zoho Recruit reviews page.

ApplicantPro: Best Recruitment Software for Pre-hire Assessment & Background Checks

ApplicantPro is best for those who want to can screen candidates before hiring them without having to find background check vendors on their own. It’s an affordable recruitment software option that helps you avoid expensive hiring mistakes, especially important in key positions like management, drivers, healthcare workers, and roles that work with children or seniors.

It also offers some cool features such as video interviews and employee onboarding to give you a feel for the candidate and give future employees a good first experience with your company.

ApplicantPro Pricing

ApplicantPro has an entry-level price that’s only $49 per job posting. If you have the same job that you fill often, that may be the way to go. For example, you may be hiring sales staff, retail workers, foodservice employees, or housekeepers on a regular basis. Why pay for more job postings than you need?

However, if you want additional features, your pricing will be based on how many workers you have and what features you think you’ll use.

ApplicantPro Package Options

ApplicantPro has no contracts and no setup fees. The Standard package has most everything a small business might use, whereas the Premium package is more suitable to larger firms or recruiting companies. In either case, you’ll need to contact the company for a custom quote based on your company size.

ApplicantPro Features

ApplicantPro has all the basic features even with the pay-per job option. It gives you a site to post your jobs to get applications from job seekers and allows you to communicate with and track the applicant throughout the recruiting process. It’s the add-on tools we found helpful, especially for small businesses that don’t want to risk hiring the wrong person, or businesses who are hiring remote staff.

Here are some of those features on ApplicantPro.

Background Checks and Pre-employment Screening

With ApplicantPro, you can manage your employment verification all in one place, instead of having to find separate vendors to manage background checks or United States Department of Transportation (DOT) drug testing. An example of a background check is shown below.

Robust Reporting

The reporting available with ApplicantPro does more than report on your hiring pipeline. It also reports on visitors and traffic to your website. In addition, it can help you find out where your best applicants are coming from. You can print out notes and compliance reports for equal employment opportunity (EEO) and Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) compliance, including Affirmative Action logs (showing reason codes).

Video Interviews

ApplicantPro offers video interviews to help you meet and identify the best candidates even when you’re not in the same location. You can set up a branded interview portal and ask custom questions for your candidate to respond to. You can then share the recorded interview with others in your organization, such as the hiring manager or their boss. Without this feature, you’d have to invest in third-party video conferencing software.

Interfaces & Reports

With ApplicantPro, you can create custom reports and export new hires to your HR or payroll system for onboarding. ApplicantPro also interfaces with Indeed and other job boards so that you can keep all your job postings and candidates in one system.

Customer Support

ApplicantPro provides support by phone, email and online chat, Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mountain time. It also posts its business address directly on its website.

What ApplicantPro Is Missing

ApplicantPro has no free option, and its pricing, based on the number of employees, isn’t transparent. You have to upgrade to its Standard package before you get to customize your Careers page or access their background checks feature. Then you need to upgrade to Premium before you’ll get a feature that can push data to your HR/payroll system.

What Users Think about ApplicantPro

ApplicantPro had consistently high reviews on software review sites. Users liked that it posts to so many job boards. Some users had trouble figuring it out at first, and others didn’t like that job seekers have to create an account before applying for a job. Read our review of ApplicantPro.

Recruiterbox: Best Recruitment Software for Reports, Analytics & Compliance

You’ll find Recruiterbox has all the basic features of any good recruitment software, such as online job posting and applicant tracking. However, it’s best for businesses with more than 100 employees―subject to EEOC reporting requirements―or federal contractors that need to abide by Affirmative Action guidelines, for example.

Recruiterbox provides EEOC reporting in addition to other helpful HR reports and data analytics that help you understand how your company is doing. If your business is risk-averse and numbers driven, Recruiterbox can support all the metrics you need.

Recruiterbox Pricing

Recruiterbox is priced based on the number of employees you have. For example, if you have between one and 50 employees, your price will be around $2,499 to $2,999 per year. That’s more costly than the other recruitment software we’ve reviewed, but it may be worth it if EEOC compliance is required for your business.

It provides unlimited job posts and candidates, so there’s no concern that you’ll outgrow the software as your business scales up.

Recruiterbox Features

Recruiterbox allows you to post to popular online job boards like Indeed and Glassdoor. You can also post jobs to your business website with their Careers Page Widget. Once candidates apply, you can get feedback from an unlimited number of reviewers, schedule interviews with the calendar interface, and keep all your hiring notes in one place.

It also has a workflow feature like Zoho Recruit, that can help streamline your work. For example, you can schedule an interview with managers, and then request feedback from them. Recruiterbox integrates with third-party tools like Namely, BambooHR and QuickBooks payroll, helping save you data entry steps once a candidate accepts an offer and is hired.

Here are a few additional features that make Recruiterbox stand out:

Job Postings

Unlike other recruitment software that charges for each job that’s job posted, or that limits you to a fixed number of job postings, Recruiterbox allows you to post as many open positions as you want. That way you don’t have to worry about surprise upcharges if you go over your limit. In addition, it’s easy for job seekers to apply as they don’t have to sign up or register on the site to apply for a job like they would have to do using ApplicantPro.

Workflow

Recruiterbox’s workflow allows you to automate aspects of your recruitment process, such as asking a hiring manager to screen a resume or requesting an applicant to fill out an EEOC form after they apply. For example, let’s say you have a multistep process that requires screened applicants to have a phone interview by HR before being passed to the hiring manager. You can build that step into your workflow to be managed automatically.

EEOC Compliance Surveys & Reporting

With Recruiterbox, you can ensure that you’re complying with labor laws, such as the EEOC as well as look at reports that help you continuously improve your recruiting function. For example, you can run reports to find out where your best job candidates are coming from or to prove that you’re complying with affirmative action requirements.

Due to its high price, Recruiterbox is better for larger firms doing lots of hiring or federal contractors who need to confirm that their hiring practices are EEOC-compliant. Using Recruiterbox’ workflow, you can ensure forms are completed and then use its reports to provide data to requesting agencies.

Customer Support

Unlike Recruitee and Zoho Recruit, you will get unlimited support from a person, as well as a guided implementation, to help you set up your software. They’re available 24/7 via email and claim that its people respond in minutes or will set up a call with you.

What Recruiterbox Is Missing

Recruiterbox doesn’t have a scheduling tool, so you have to use a third-party calendar to schedule your interviews. It also doesn’t interface with G Suite or Outlook like most of the other recruiting software does. While its software is mobile-friendly, it doesn’t have a mobile app.

What Users Think about Recruiterbox

Users who don’t have an HR background find Recruiterbox is easy to use and they like the customer support. They find the templates, website integration, and the ability to add candidates via email helpful. Read our Recruiterbox review to learn more about what users think.

Vultus Recruit: Best Recruitment Software for Recruiting & Staffing Firms

We included Vultus in our listing of best recruiting software because of its robust features and low price. It’s a full-blown ATS, which is perfect if you’re in the staffing industry or do executive recruiting. However, it’s so inexpensive to use that it can work for small businesses as well.

Because Vultus is designed for all sizes of businesses, including corporate recruiting departments and recruiting firms, it has some nifty features that you don’t typically find at this price point. You can attach documentation to a candidate’s name, group candidates by skills and set filters, keywords, flags, and tags to organize your jobs and your candidates any way you like.

Vultus Pricing

The pricing with Vultus Recruit is based on the number of users you have. Since small businesses may want to give themselves, managers, and recruiter access, they’re likely to use the package that costs $18.99 a month per user. If you want to have more resumes parsed than what’s shown in the pricing tiers below, you need to contact Vultus so it can give you a quote on that.

Vultus Volume Discount Pricing

In fact, if only one person uses the recruiting software in your business, then you’ll get all the features for just $18.99 per month, including 10,000 emails and free parsing for up to 50 resumes. You also get unlimited storage, free setup and configuration, and free initial training.

The pricing table above shows the additional volume discounts you get when you pay for more users but, frankly, most small businesses can get by with the first tier shown.

Vultus Features

All three pricing tiers above provide the same features; that includes job postings, document attachments, workflows, a dashboard, custom forms and fields, collaborative hiring, and a hotlist to keep track of your top candidates.

Like the other recruiting software we reviewed, Vultus provides reports and analytics. You can export your candidate data using a comma-separated values (CSV) file to make it easy to bring new hire data into your HR/payroll system.

Here are some additional features Vultus offers.

Customization

The customization options are amazing with Vultus. You can customize jobs, data fields, workflows, and reports so that you see exactly the job and candidate information you want to see.

Open Posting

Vultus posts jobs to all the major job boards, like CareerBuilder, Monster, and Glassdoor, as well as industry-specific job boards like Techfetch. In addition, you can share your job openings on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can mass email your job openings or even post them via mobile.

Resume Parsing

Like most of the other recruiting software we reviewed, Vultus does resume parsing. However, unlike Freshteam or Recruiterbox, you don’t have to pay a fortune or upgrade to a higher tier to get this feature.

Integrations

Vultus’ integration with Outlook lets you contact candidates, send emails, and even allows them to apply directly through Outlook. And, Vultus has a workforce management and payroll tool called Vultus Connect, so there are integration opportunities if you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for recruiting and HR. Like most of the other recruiting software reviewed, it has a mobile app.

What Vultus Is Missing

Vultus doesn’t have a very exciting user interface. Nonetheless, the functionality is there, and the price is terrific for what you get.

What Users Think about Vultus

Vultus has pretty good user reviews on all the major online review sites with customers expressing appreciation for all the features that are available at a low per-user price. Here’s what we found on our Vultus review.

Alternative Recruiting Software

Bottom Line

Recruitment software helps you get a handle on your job openings and applicant pipeline so that you can fill jobs faster with better candidates. It also provides you the chance to promote your employment brand with a careers website while monitoring your HR team’s performance through reports.

We recommend Indeed as the best recruitment software for small business because it has all the job posting and candidate management features you need for free. First-time users get $50 in sponsorship credit as well as a company page and careers page, all at no charge. Get your $50 credit.

Visit Indeed