5 Best Recruiting Apps for Small Businesses
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.
Juvy has over 10 years of content writing experience and was a licensed teacher. She has evaluated and written about dozens of payroll and HR software solutions for small business to provide the best answers to your software questions.
This article is part of a larger series on Hiring.
The best mobile recruiting apps make it easy for small business owners and hiring managers to find, interview, and hire employees without sitting at a desk or using a computer. Their features include applicant tracking, communication tools, and interview schedules.
To help you find the top recruitment apps for small businesses, we evaluated 19 recruiting solutions that have mobile apps, and then narrowed the list down to our top five recommendations.
- Breezy HR: Best overall recruiting app for small businesses
- Workable: Best for recruiters and staffing agencies
- LinkedIn Recruiter: Best for businesses needing exposure to a wide network of qualified professionals
- Recruitee: Best for businesses planning to scale
- Freshteam: Best free recruiting platform for businesses with 50 or fewer employees
Best Recruiting Apps Compared
Our Ratings (out of 5) | Monthly Pricing | Free Plan | Mobile Applicant Tracking/Mobile Alerts | Applicant Assessment | Offer Management | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.24 | $0–$479+ | ✓* | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
 | 4.19 | $129 per job–$670 | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
 | 3.98 | $139.99; custom | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
 | 3.97 | $109–$799+ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
 | 3.87 | $0–$4.80 per employee** | $0–$4.80 per employee** | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
*Free plan does not include mobile app usage.
** Paid plans have a platform fee, ranging from $71–$203, depending on the needed features.
If you need recruiting software options and are open to some that may not include a mobile app, check out our guide to the best recruiting software.
Need help determining the best recruiting app for your business? This three-question quiz will help you decide.
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Breezy HR: Best Overall Recruiting App for Small Businesses
Overall Score:
4.24 / 5
What We Like
- Easy team and candidate messaging with the mobile app
- Scalable and transparent pricing
- Multilanguage support for all plans
- Robust applicant tracking features
What's Missing
- Mobile app access is only for employers with paid plans; none for job seekers or those with a free plan
- Expensive paid plans
- Limited talent sourcing options
- No phone support
Breezy HR Monthly Pricing
- Bootstrap: Free; includes one active job post and basic applicant tracking tools, unlimited users and candidates, career website, distribution to 50+ job boards
- Startup: $171; includes everything in Bootstrap plus background screening integrations, and automations
- Growth: $299; includes everything in Startup plus employee referrals
- Business: $479; includes everything in Growth plus HRIS integrations
- Pro: Custom-priced
Add-ons
- SMS/Text Messaging: $149
- Talent Search: $249
Breezy HR has scalable plans and a broad set of features. Its mobile app is available on iOS and Android devices. To access it, you need a paid subscription to Breezy HR’s paid plans. The recruitment app allows you to receive real-time notifications for new applications, candidate messages, and team responses. You may also schedule candidate interviews, score candidates, and move candidates through the hiring stages. On top of that, it allows you to collaborate with other hiring members by discussing your scores with the team in-app.
This app earned an overall score of 4.24 out of 5 in our rubric. It got perfect marks for recruitment tools due to its robust recruiting features and a 3.88 rating for its mobile app-specific functions. Like all other providers in this list, it doesn’t have a job posting function on its mobile app, but it helps monitor jobs already posted. Its 4.13 score in popularity is due to its less-than-excellent customer service trends.
With a paid plan, Breezy HR has a mobile app that helps in hiring and collaborating with other team members.
(Source: Breezy HR)
Breezy HR Features
- Mobile app user reviews: The app has a 4.5-star rating on the App Store and a 3.4 rating on Google Play. Its mobile app, however, is only available for recruiters and not job seekers.
- Simple candidate pipeline management: With a paid plan, Breezy HR lets users see where candidates are in the pipeline, how many are in the different stages, and the next actions they can take. Like Freshteam, it uses a Kanban board-style candidate pipeline. Also, with paid plans, you can automate the next actions for your pipeline. For example, you can send automated SMSs or emails to new applicants. You can even create different pipelines with various automated actions for each open position. These pipelines are saved so that users can reuse them for similar job roles.
- Candidate scorecard: Starting with the Growth plan, users can customize their scorecard to help evaluate applicants based on predefined criteria for the position. This way, a hiring manager evaluates candidates using unbiased information, so they make decisions based on the job requirements instead of depending on gut feeling or personal preference.
- Talent Sourcing: Users can communicate with applicants, review new applications, and look for candidates using the search functionality based on location, job title, skills, or background.
Workable: Best for Recruiters & Staffing Agencies
Overall Score:
4.19 / 5
What We Like
- Mobile app is available for all plans
- Flexible pricing
- Advanced candidate sourcing
- Customizable tools
- Intuitive interface
What's Missing
- Pricing not transparent for all plans
- Custom plans are paid annually
- Limited HRIS integration
- No free plan
- No mobile app for job seekers
Workable Monthly Pricing*
- Paygo: $129 per job; includes interview kits and scorecards, offer letters with e-signatures, Zoom integration, AI recruiter
- Standard: $335; includes everything in Paygo, plus advanced career page builder and self-scheduling, automations, custom hiring pipelines, anonymized screening
- Premier: $670; includes everything in Standard, plus priority support
*All plans include more than 700 job descriptions and interview question templates, job distribution to 200+ boards, email and calendar sync, HRIS integration, GDPR compliance, and essential reports.
Workable helps streamline the recruiting process with its automation and collaboration tools and easy-to-use interface. Its most affordable plan has essential hiring tools and a mobile app that makes on-the-go hiring possible. Available for both iOS and Android, the Workable app lets you easily see which candidate profiles you haven’t rated or read. It also notifies you which applications are awaiting your response. Like Breezy HR, you can collaborate with other members of the hiring team. What’s great about it is that its candidate profile shows you everything, including resume, scorecards, and other application attachments.
Workable also boasts of an AI recruiting technology, which gives you a list of passive candidates for your job listing. This, along with the other features, make it ideal for recruiters or staffing agencies that never want to miss out on their hiring tasks.
Workable got an overall score of 4.19 out of 5. It earned perfect marks on recruitment tools, functionality, popularity, and reporting. In the mobile app-specific features criterion, it scored 3.5 out of 5—slightly lower than Breezy HR—due to its low number of reviews on the app stores. Also, it got a lower score of 3.88 for pricing due to its lack of transparency on its other plans.
Workable’s mobile app lets you stay on top of recruiting even when on the go.
(Source: GetApp)
Workable Features
- Mobile app user reviews: Workable’s mobile app scored 3.3 out of 5 stars from both iOS and Android users.
- Candidate screening: You can view applicant cover letters, social media profiles, resumes, and application forms. If you think they’re a good fit for the position, you can send a personalized email telling them about the next steps.
- Collaboration and assessment tools: When you visit a candidate profile, you can send them a video interview invitation, self-scheduling link, email, or text message. The hiring team can also fill-in interview scorecards, watch video interviews, and view assessment results. What makes Workable stand out is its ability to add an evaluation for each hiring stage, something that’s not offered by other providers on this list.
LinkedIn Recruiter: Best for Businesses Needing Exposure to a Large Network of Qualified Professionals
Overall Score:
3.98 / 5
What We Like
- Mobile apps for both recruiters and job seekers
- Wide candidate variety
- Easy to set up search lists by location or industry
- Easy to implement and use
What's Missing
- Plans are expensive for individual operators or companies with limited budgets
LinkedIn Recruiter Monthly Pricing*
- Recruiter Lite: $139.99; lets you post and manage jobs, send 30 InMails per month to any LinkedIn member and includes 20+ search filters
- Recruiter: Custom; lets you send up to 150 InMails to any LinkedIn member and includes 40+ search filters, candidate skills and assessments, ATS integrations, collaboration tools, custom reports
*A disclaimer on LinkedIn website states prices vary by region. You must sign up to see pricing in your area.
LinkedIn is a social media website where individuals can connect with colleagues, join industry groups, and search and apply for jobs with businesses on the platform. With a Recruiter account, LinkedIn’s mobile app allows users to message candidates, create alerts, perform basic searches, and view candidate information. You can manage your account on the go with its mobile app, where you will receive alerts and can respond quickly to candidates—then continue your operations from your desktop.
LinkedIn Recruiter earned a score of 3.98 out of 5 in our evaluation. It earned a perfect mark on reporting because it allows customizable reporting with one of its plans. It earned the highest mark for the mobile app-specific feature criterion (4.13) because it’s the only provider that has mobile apps for both job seekers and employers. However, it earned low scores on pricing due to the lack of a free plan. It does have a plan called LinkedIn Basic, which is free, but it doesn’t allow job posting or have applicant tracking features.
LinkedIn Recruiter’s mobile app easily lets you set up notifications to keep you on top of hiring.
(Source: Google Play)
LinkedIn Recruiter Features
- Mobile app user reviews: This is by far the most popular of all the providers in our list, rated 4.8 out of 5 from more than 5,000 reviews in the App Store and 4.1 out of 5 from over 4,000 reviews on Google Play.
- InMail: Within Recruiter, you can reach out to any LinkedIn member using InMail, as well as send bulk messages and save templates for future use. Unlike other providers in this guide that allows users to connect with candidates anytime without limits, Recruiter Lite will only let you message any member (no matter if they are a connection) up to 30 times per month. With LinkedIn Recruiter, you can search and contact candidates using InMail (up to 150 per month). You can also save your searches and templates of the InMails you send most often.
- Candidate Recommendations: LinkedIn will offer recommendations of possible candidates based on your search criteria and keywords for your open positions. Like all providers on this list, it offers simple tools like screening questions and candidate ratings to help you find your next employees.
- Search Filters: You will have access to 20+ search filters with smart suggestions with the Recruiter Lite and 40+ search filters for Recruiter. This will allow you to narrow down your searches to qualified candidates for your positions.
- Strategic Collaboration: You can share candidate profiles easily with other team members within your organization to gain feedback. Additionally, you can see communications between candidates and team members.
Recruitee: Best for Businesses Planning to Scale
Overall Score:
3.97 / 5
What We Like
- Mobile app uses Kanban board style candidate pipeline; allows users to add candidate evaluations
- Very intuitive interface even for inexperienced users
- 1,250+ job board posting
- Smart job promotion and talent sourcing
What's Missing
- No free plan
- No immediate support
- No mobile app for job seekers
Recruitee Monthly Pricing*
- Launch: $109 for five job slots; $222 for 10 job slots; $334 for 15 job slots; $447 for 20 job slots; includes candidate pipelines, smart campaigns, candidate video chat, jobs widget, unlimited users and data, team notes, tasks, mentions
- Scale: $399 for 10 job slots; $599 for 15 job slots, $799 for 20 job slots; includes everything in Launch, plus automations, email scheduling, knockout questions, workflow templates, role-based access and notifications, multi-language career site and jobs, questionnaires and evaluation forms
*Annual pricing is also available at 16% discount.
Recruitee has all the features you need, from job posting to employee hiring, to source the best talent for your job vacancies. Its smart recruiting technology and access to more than 1,200 job boards help you hire your next employees. With Recruitee’s app, you can manage the candidate pipeline, add evaluations, and communicate with team members and applicants. Like others in this list, it alerts users of hiring-related activities, such as overdue tasks and movements in the candidate pipeline.
This software earned an overall score of 3.97 out of 5 in our evaluation. Its lack of a free plan lowered its ranking, but it got perfect scores on reporting and recruitment tools. It’s also a well-loved software among its users, earning a mark of at least 4.4 out of 5 on popular review websites. Like other providers in this list (except Breezy HR), Recruitee earned a perfect mark on reporting due to the ability to customize fields and create different reports.
Recruitee’s mobile app allows users to manage the candidate pipeline, assign evaluations, and communicate with team members and candidates.
(Source: Recruitee)
Recruitee Features
- Mobile App: Recruitee’s mobile app scored 3.4 out of 5 stars from Android users and 5 out of 5 stars (although from only 2 reviews) on the Apple Store.
- Move candidates in the pipeline: Recruitee uses a Kanban board like Breezy HR and Freshteam, which gives a visually pleasing and easy-to-understand candidate management experience. You can drag and drop the candidate’s name card to move it from one step of the workflow to the next.
- Communicate with applicants and team members: With the mobile app, you can send candidates an email, rate them, or leave notes for the hiring team.
- Manage hiring to-do list: You can stay on track of your events, tasks, and evaluations straight from the mobile app’s home screen.
Read Our Full Recruitee Review
Freshteam: Best for Businesses With 50 or Fewer Employees
Overall Score:
3.87 / 5
What We Like
- Feature-rich mobile app
- Customizable career site
- Job posting on multiple channels
- Fully automated parsing and candidate profile populating
What's Missing
- Overwhelming features can be hard to navigate
- Limited editing features
- Limited third-party integrations
Freshteam Monthly Pricing*
- Free: up to 3 job postings, career site, team collaboration, and employee referral
- Growth: $1.20 per employee + $71 platform fee; includes everything on Free plus customizable applicant forms and hiring pipelines, automations, phone, email, and chat support
- Pro: $2.40 per employee + $119 platform fee; includes multiple recruiters per job posting, new hire onboarding
- Enterprise: $4.80 per employee + $203 platform fee; includes everything in Pro plus unlimited onboarding
*Annual pricing comes with two months free.
Freshteam is an applicant tracking system that’s free for businesses with fewer than 50 employees on staff. With its mobile app, you can email candidates, submit feedback, get complete context on a candidate or the interview process, and advance candidates through the recruitment stages with just a few taps. You can also collaborate with your hiring team, submit candidate feedback, and see candidate and job posting details. Aside from its hiring functionalities, the app also has an employee directory plus time off management features.
The app scored 3.87 out of 5 in our rubric. Like the other providers barring Breezy HR, Freshteam had a perfect score on reporting due to its ability to allow customization. It also got 5 on pricing and functionality. However, it got lower scores on popularity and mobile app features due to a lack of in-app support.
Freshteam’s mobile app lets hiring managers view tasks, communicate, and evaluate candidates.
(Source: Google Play)
Freshteam Features
- Mobile app user reviews: Freshteam’s app scored 4.4 out of 5 stars from Android users and 4.1 from iOS users.
- Candidate interview: With the Freshteam mobile app, you can create, maintain, and view interview schedules for applicants.
- Team collaboration: You can easily leave and gather interview feedback from other hiring members. Freshteam allows you to collect feedback from the hiring team using scorecards.
- Candidate information: From the candidate profile page, you can see all candidate information to easily get in touch with them.
Read Our Full Freshteam Review
How We Chose the Best Recruiting Apps
We compared each software on price, ease of use, recruiting tools, functionality, popularity, and reporting. Also, we looked for mobile app-specific features, which included viewing hiring tasks, providing alerts, viewing candidate pipelines, responding to candidates, mobile reviews, and responsiveness of in-app tech support.
Based on our evaluation, Breezy HR is the best recruiting app for small businesses with low hiring needs. It earned an overall score of 4.24 out of 5, with a perfect mark for recruitment tools. It also earned the highest score on ease of use, together with Workable and Freshteam.
To see our full evaluation criteria for the top applicant tracking software, click through the tabs in the box below.
45%
Mobile app-specific features
10%
Pricing
10%
Recruitment tools
10%
Functionality
10%
Ease of use
10%
Popularity
5%
Reporting
45% of Overall Score
We checked the mobile apps’ recruiting-related features, such as the ability to post or view jobs, view and communicate with candidates, send alerts, and see workflow or task list. We also checked if the app allows access to both job seekers and recruiters, and upon evaluation, LinkedIn Recruiter is the only provider that has this feature, giving it the highest mark of 4.13 out of 5 for this criterion.
10% of Overall Score
We selected providers that offer free plans, free trials, and transparent pricing for paid tiers. Additional points were also given if the software’s paid plan is less than $99 monthly, making it more affordable for small and mid-size businesses. Among the shortlisted providers, only Freshteam got a perfect score in this criterion. Breezy HR earned slightly less points due to its more expensive paid plans.
10% of Overall Score
We awarded more points to providers that allow you to post to job boards or have their own job board. Plus points are given if the provider allows resume uploading, applicant tracking, and has communication tools for both team members and applicants. Out of the five apps in this guide, Recruitee, Workable, and Breezy HR have the most robust recruiting functionalities that many can utilize to their advantage.
10% of Overall Score
For this criterion, we gave higher points for providers that allowed adding screening questions to applications, offered job ad templates, and those that have unique features and functionalities. Only Freshteam and Workable got perfect scores in this criterion.
10% of Overall Score
We gave high scores to providers that real users find intuitive and easy to learn and navigate. We also considered solutions with quick response turnaround via live phone support, how-to guides, and multiple third-party integration options. Additional points were given if they have a user-friendly mobile interface. In our list, Freshteam, Workable, and Breezy got the highest scores for this criterion.
10% of Overall Score
Here, solutions with an average score of 4+ stars from online user reviews on sites like Capterra and G2 get high scores. Plus points were also given if the software has 100 or more reviews on third-party sites. Out of the providers in this list, only Workable got a perfect score in this criterion.
5% of Overall Score
Aside from having access to standard reports, users should be able to create their own reports and view information within their recruitment system. For this criterion, only Breezy HR didn’t get a perfect mark due to a lack of customizing reports.
*Percentages of overall score
Bottom Line
Recruiting apps should make your life easier when searching for and hiring job candidates. The best mobile recruiting apps for small businesses are those that are low cost, easy to set up and use, and efficient.
Breezy HR is one of the best recruiting apps, as it includes many features of an ATS along with a built-in video interview feature. You get a careers page, free job postings, and the ability to communicate with candidates. With its intuitive mobile app, users can easily manage and communicate with candidates and teammates, see hiring-related tasks, and be notified of any updates. Plus, it has a free forever plan and allows a 14-day full-featured free trial.
