CareerBuilder Review: Is It the Right Recruitment Software for Your Business?
Charlette has over 10 years of experience in accounting and finance and 2 years of partnering with HR leaders on freelance projects. She uses this extensive experience to answer your questions about payroll.
Robie has more than five years of content writing experience and specializes in writing about payroll and human resources software for small businesses.
This article is part of a larger series on Hiring.
CareerBuilder is a job marketplace and recruitment platform that lets you post jobs, view resumes, track and screen applicants, and manage candidates. Its platform, which has a monthly fee starting at $219, uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology to help you post jobs and find qualified candidates faster. It’s optimal for businesses wanting intelligent job postings and applicant matching tools.
What We Recommend CareerBuilder For
CareerBuilder does more than just let you post jobs. It has a massive database of job seekers and smart tools to help you find qualified candidates faster. Given its mobile-optimized career sites, AI-powered candidate matching, and targeted recruiting emails, CareerBuilder even made our list of top job posting sites for employers.
Overall, CareerBuilder is best for:
- Scaling businesses that need help advertising their jobs: CareerBuilder has an AI job posting solution that helps you write job responsibilities, enabling you to quickly create and post listings. It also offers recommendations on how you can improve postings to increase their appeal. Meanwhile, its AI-powered candidate matching tool can deliver up to 25 profiles a day and for each job listing.
- Recruiters and staffing agencies posting jobs for multiple clients: CareerBuilder’s “Talent Network” solution lets you build career sites for clients and personalize job postings based on your clients’ branding requirements through its “job skin” tool.
- Companies looking to hire qualified candidates for niche jobs: If you need to hire employees from specific industries (such as oil and gas, healthcare, and information technology), CareerBuilder lets you run candidate searches from its niche resume databases.
- Federal contractor and subcontractor employers who require Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) compliance when posting jobs: With CareerBuilder’s OFCCP Compliance – Mandatory Job Listings and Reporting tool, all of your job listings are automatically distributed to the appropriate state workforce agencies. It also comes with on-demand reports that you can easily run and export into Excel files.
When CareerBuilder Would Not Be a Good Fit
- Employers who need a wide job posting reach: While CareerBuilder has a database of over 140 million candidate resumes and operates across nine countries, Indeed has a wider reach as it operates in more than 60 countries and has a resume bank of 175 million. Indeed also lets you post job ads to Glassdoor—an option that CareerBuilder doesn’t offer.
- Small businesses with limited hiring budgets: The lowest tier of CareerBuilder’s “Value” plans cost $219 monthly—and this can be pricey, especially for small businesses. Even its “Build Your Own” option—which follows a pay-per-job post scheme—can be expensive, costing $375 for a single job listing. If you want budget-friendly options, check out our list of free job posting sites.
Looking for something different? Read our guide to the best recruitment software to find a service or software that’s right for your business.
CareerBuilder Overview
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| AI-powered job posting and candidate matching tools | “Build Your Own” plan is pricey for businesses that require only one job posting |
| Wide range of recruiting tools with advanced search options | Resume views are limited (500 views monthly with a daily limit of 50) |
| Multiple plans, including a “Build Your Own” pay-per-job tier | Some features (like applicant tracking and career sites) cost extra |
CareerBuilder Pricing
CareerBuilder offers a “Build Your Own” option and three “Value” plans (Lite, Standard, and Pro). The main differences between these include the number of jobs that you can post and access to targeted recruitment emails.
Build Your Own
This option follows a pay-per-job post scheme, wherein you pay $375 for a single job posting and $250 for each additional job post. All job listings can be used for up to 12 months from the date that you purchased the plan. This is great for businesses that don’t hire often and would only need to fill up one or two job vacancies at a time.
Unlike CareerBuilder’s Value plans, this option doesn’t renew on a monthly basis. If you need to post a new job and have already consumed your job posting credits, then you have to purchase another “Build Your Plan” option.
Features | Build Your Own |
|---|---|
Pricing | $375 for a single job post |
Additional job postings* | $250 each |
Resumes and Social Profiles Search | 30 days |
Resume View Limit | 500 per month (with a daily limit of 50) |
AI Job Postings | ✔ |
Resume Match Notifications | ✔ |
Application Email Alerts | ✔ |
Custom Candidate Lists | ✔ |
*The maximum number of job posts that you can purchase online is 35. For those who require 36 and more, contact CareerBuilder to request a quote.
Value Plans
CareerBuilder’s “Value” plans are ideal for businesses that are growing their workforce and recruiters who need to fill up their clients’ open jobs. Its features are similar to the “Build Your Own” option but with monthly job posting credits (up to five) and access to targeted recruitment emails (only for higher tiers).
Features | Lite | Standard | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
Monthly Pricing ($/Month) | $219 | $299 | $599 |
Annual Pricing* ($/Month) | $197 | $269 | $539 |
Numbers of Job Postings** | 1 per month | 3 per month | 5 per month |
Resume View Limits | 500 per month (with a daily limit of 50 views) | 500 per month (with a daily limit of 50 views) | 500 per month (with a daily limit of 50 views) |
Targeted Recruitment Emails** | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Resumes and Social Profiles Search | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
AI Job Postings | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Resume Match Notifications | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Application Email Alerts | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Custom Candidate Lists | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
*Annual plans are billed in a lump sum.
**Unused job posting and targeted recruitment email credits at the end of the month will not roll over to the next month.
Paid Add-Ons
While many of its job posting and candidate search tools are included in its “Build Your Own” and “Value” plans, you have to pay extra if you need applicant tracking, mobile-optimized career sites, and international job postings. It even offers a “Talent Gather” solution that you can use to take snapshots of applicant resumes at recruiting events in which the software converts the information into searchable keyword text.
However, CareerBuilder’s pricing for these products isn’t readily available on its website. You have to contact the provider to request pricing details.
CareerBuilder Features
CareerBuilder’s suite of talent acquisition solutions is designed to streamline and manage recruitment processes, enabling you to efficiently find and hire qualified candidates. Let’s look at some of CareerBuilder’s features to help you determine if it fits your requirements.
Career Sites
With CareerBuilder’s “Talent Network” solution, you can create a mobile-optimized career site to improve employer branding and candidate engagement. Aside from promoting job posts, it can help you create an online community of candidates who are interested to join your company and apply to an open position that fits their qualifications. However, you have to pay extra (custom priced) for this product.
Job Postings
Posting jobs on CareerBuilder is a straightforward process. You can create a single job post from your CareerBuilder dashboard and even save templates of commonly used job listings.
This AI-powered tool can help you create job responsibilities for your postings, providing real-time recommendations on how to improve listings. This saves you time when writing job descriptions for your postings. It even shows the salaries your local competitors are offering for similar jobs in the same area. You can also opt to add auto-response letters that will be sent to applicants.
All job ads will be posted on CareerBuilder’s site and mobile apps (for iOS and Android devices) and will remain live for 30 days. It will also be sent via email to its candidate network and shared across partner job boards and sites (like Google and Facebook).
If you’re a recruiter handling the career sites of customers, CareerBuilder’s “job skin” helps you easily add branded job postings to each site. When creating job posts, you can select the “job skin” for a specific client and the branding elements associated with that customer will be automatically applied to the job listing.
With CareerBuilder’s “job skins,” you can easily add your company’s branding elements to job posts.
A sample job description on CareerBuilder with AI-recommended suggestions on how to improve the job post.
Screening Questions
CareerBuilder offers several question types that you can add to your job postings. These include free form text, free form numeric, multiple-choice, multiple-choice with scoring, and questions that require date format answers (i.e., entering a minimum and maximum year).
Resume Search
CareerBuilder has a centralized database with over 140 million candidate resumes and social profiles. It also comes with more than 15 filter options (such as industry, years of experience, salary, education, location, and resume freshness) to help narrow search results down.
You can also search CareerBuilder’s niche resume databases to find qualified candidates for your open jobs. Setting up resume alerts will even automate candidate searches since its system will send you emails containing a list of candidates who meet your resume search requirements.
With CareerBuilder, you can search for candidate resumes from its partner niche job boards (such as Sologig and MiracleWorker).
CareerBuilder lets you choose how often you want to receive resume alerts via email.
Candidate Matching
With its automatic candidate matching, you can get up to 25 applicant profiles for each of your job posts per day. Aside from that, you’ll receive email notifications that include a list of applicants.
You can view your candidate matches and applications through CareerBuilder’s “My Jobs” dashboard.
Targeted Email Campaigns
Designed to help you attract and engage active and passive candidates, this feature lets you advertise job postings via targeted recruitment emails. Aside from creating campaign templates and tracking the performance of each email campaign, you can message candidates (up to 10 at a time) directly from CareerBuilder.
Candidate Management
Aside from sorting and ranking candidates, you can add notes to capture comments about the applicants. You can also create custom lists of qualified candidates that you can share with the hiring team for their assessment or for pipelining purposes.
OFCCP Compliance
For companies that employ federal contractors and subcontractors, CareerBuilder can help ensure that you meet all the job posting regulations in case there’s an OFCCP audit. Its services include automatic job post distribution to appropriate state workforce agencies, comprehensive record-keeping, compliance alerts, and on-demand reports.
Third-Party Software Integrations
CareerBuilder can integrate with 40 applicant tracking systems (ATSes). Here are some of its partner solutions:
- ApplicantStack
- ApplicantPro
- Avature
- Bullhorn
- CEIPAL
- Erecruit
- Greenhouse
- iCIMS
- JazzHR
- JobDiva
- IBM Kenexa
- PeopleSoft
- SilkRoad
- SmartRecruiters
- Taleo
- Ultimate Software
- Vultus
- Workday
CareerBuilder Ease of Use
- Intuitive interface
- Online chatbot and live phone support
- FAQs, video tutorials, and help articles
- User groups connecting you with fellow users and CareerBuilder experts
With a user-friendly and intuitive interface, CareerBuilder makes posting jobs and searching candidate resumes easy for users. While it lacks a library of job description templates that similar recruiting solutions like Monster and ZipRecruiter offer, its AI job posting tools are helpful—providing recommendations on how to improve job ads to make them more appealing to candidates.
In case you need assistance on how to use its features, you can either contact CareerBuilder’s live phone support, access its online chatbot, or click the “submit a case” link on its website. You can also post your questions on its “User Groups,” an online community of CareerBuilder users and experts who can provide answers to your queries.
In addition to FAQs and video tutorials, CareerBuilder has a knowledge base with extensive help articles. However, the knowledge base is glitchy, and searching for specific articles can be difficult. As of this writing, it doesn’t display all of the article topics, and running a “post a job” search shows zero results.
Top CareerBuilder Alternatives
Best for: Businesses looking for free job posting and applicant tracking tools | Best for: Small businesses that have an average of four open positions at any time | Best for: Companies with fewer than 50 employees that need to streamline complex hiring processes |
Base monthly fee from: $0 to post jobs; $100 for contacting passive candidates | Base monthly fee from: $299 | Base monthly fee from: $71 + $1.20 per employee |
If you’re unsure if CareerBuilder is right for you, see how it compares with our top job posting sites.
What Users Think About CareerBuilder
There are very few up-to-date CareerBuilder reviews online as of this writing. Those who left positive feedback like how easy it is to create post jobs. Some users appreciate its efficient applicant tracking and candidate management tools.
On the other hand, several reviewers said that while its resume search filter options are robust, its search results can show inaccurate data at times. For example, a resume search for IT candidates sometimes includes non-IT applicants. A few users also complained about having received resumes with incomplete details (such as missing contact information).
At the time of publication, CareerBuilder earned the following scores on popular user review sites:
- Capterra: 4.1 out of 5 based on around 10 reviews
- G2: 3.5 out of 5 based on about 35 reviews
When reading through user reviews, here are some of the trends that I noticed:
Users Like | Users Don’t Like |
|---|---|
Ease of posting jobs | Candidate resumes sometimes have missing contact information |
Efficient search filter options and applicant tracking tools | Resume searches occasionally show inaccurate results |
Bottom Line
If you’re looking for a recruiting solution that lets you post jobs, track applicants, and comply with OFCCP job listing regulations, then CareerBuilder is a great choice. It has a database of 140 million candidate resumes and comes with targeted email campaigns to help boost your job ads. Creating job posts and looking for candidates who match your hiring requirements are also made easy given its machine-learning platform and AI-powered tools.
Sign up for a CareerBuilder free demo today to learn more about its functionalities and how it can help streamline your recruitment processes.
