2023 Zoho Recruit Review: Is It Right for Your Business?
This article is part of a larger series on Hiring.
Zoho Recruit is a cutting-edge cloud-based recruitment software designed for corporate HR departments and staffing agencies. With its comprehensive applicant tracking solution and wide range of customizable features, it simplifies the recruitment process. It goes beyond the basics by offering functionalities like video interviews, client and applicant portals, and employee referral portals. These extra features streamline the process of identifying and tracking the ideal candidate, ensuring a smooth and effective hiring experience.
With a rating of 4.78 out of 5 on our evaluation, Zoho Recruit claims the top spot on our list of the best recruitment software with high marks in all criteria. User reviews from various reputable sites average an impressive 4.4 out of 5 score. Due to its robust capabilities and extensive features, Zoho Recruit is better suited for companies with substantial recruitment needs and a significant volume of hiring.
Zoho Recruit Overview
Overall Score:
4.78 / 5
Pros
- Comprehensive feature set
- Customizable workflows
- User-friendly interface
- Responsive customer support
Cons
- Comes with a learning curve
- Integration options somewhat limited
Deciding Factors
Pricing
- HR Managers
- Free: $0
- Standard: $30 per user monthly
- Enterprise: $60 per user monthly
- Staffing Agencies
- Free: $0
- Standard: $30 per user monthly
Professional $60 per user monthly - Enterprise: $90 per user monthly
Standout Features
- Employee referral
- Robust applicant tracking tools
- Custom and standard reports
- AI-candidate screening
What We Recommend Zoho Recruit For
Zoho Recruit is an incredibly versatile recruitment software that offers extensive customization options, making it an excellent choice for staffing agencies or small businesses experiencing a surge in hiring. While the free plan is limited to managing a single active job and provides basic tools, the paid plans provide exceptional features, enabling effective collaboration and efficient management of multiple jobs and candidates.
In short, we found Zoho Recruit best for:
- Small businesses on a bare-bones budget needing a basic recruiting tool: Zoho Recruit’s free plan makes it an excellent choice for smaller organizations looking to streamline their recruitment process without breaking the bank. Without the bells and whistles, organizations can hire new employees without spending anything.
- Small to midsize businesses frequently hiring: Zoho Recruit’s paid plans are well suited for those who are always on the lookout for new employees. It can help users save time, make better hiring decisions, and improve their recruiting process. Its most affordable plan offers 10 active jobs and more advanced recruiting tools, like resume management, premium job boards, and assessments.
- Recruitment agencies looking for user-friendly tools: Zoho Recruit’s CRM features can help you build relationships with candidates, track their progress, and stay up-to-date on their needs. This can help you improve your candidate experience and increase your chances of making a successful hire.
Growing your company and looking for new employees? Read our guide on how to hire employees.
When Zoho Recruit Would Not Be a Good Fit
- Businesses that only hire a few employees per year: If your business only hires a few employees per year, you may not need the full functionality of an ATS like Zoho Recruit. A simpler solution, such as an applicant tracking spreadsheet, may be sufficient. You can also try Indeed, which we recommend for those with occasional hires. Read our Indeed review to learn more about its features.
- Businesses with highly specialized needs: If your organization has highly specific industry requirements beyond what Zoho Recruit provides, exploring specialized recruitment options tailored to your niche might be more beneficial. You may want to check our guide to the best applicant tracking systems for more options.
How Zoho Recruit Compares to Top Alternatives
Best for | Pricing | Ease of Use | Our Reviews | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Businesses with one physical location employing hourly workers | $0 to $90 per user monthly | 4.63 / 5 | |
 | Best for new or busy Recruiters | $149 to $599 monthly | 4.56 / 5 | |
 | Best for Startups | $19 to $39 monthly | 4.19 / 5 | |
 | Best for High-turnover Industries | $16 to 24 per job post per day or starts at $299 monthly | 4.63 / 5 | |
Zoho Recruit received top marks for pricing, thanks to its inclusion of a free plan, affordable monthly pricing, and transparent pricing information. The platform caters to two distinct user groups, providing separate packages for corporate HR departments and staffing agencies. To learn more about the features included in Zoho Recruit’s free and paid plans, please refer to the tabs below.
Add-ons
- Client Portal ($6 per license monthly): This add-on helps users to
- Create job openings
- Review candidates
- Give feedback
- Make interview decisions
- Video Interviews ($12 per license monthly): This add-on helps users to conduct one-way or live video interviews.
Zoho Recruit’s features empower organizations to streamline the hiring process, attract a diverse pool of candidates, and leverage the power of AI and employee referrals to identify the best-fit individuals for open positions. It got 4.63 out of 5, a few points shy from the perfect mark because it doesn’t have its own job board.
Zoho Recruit offers a wide range of features to enhance your recruitment efforts. With it, you can effortlessly post job openings to numerous mainstream and niche job boards, giving your vacancies maximum exposure. Additionally, you have the option to boost job listings on social networks, further expanding your reach to potential candidates.
Recognizing the value of employee referrals, Zoho Recruit enables you to establish an employee referral portal. This portal empowers your existing staff to make recommendations and refer candidates from their professional networks, tapping into the power of internal connections to source potential talent.
Furthermore, you can invite recruiters to submit potential candidates through a branded portal. This portal reflects your organization’s branding and provides a seamless experience for recruiters, facilitating the submission of qualified candidates directly into the system.
Zoho Recruit received a perfect score in functionality, meeting all the necessary criteria with flying colors. It offers a comprehensive set of features that cater to various aspects of the recruitment process. It offers job ad templates, screening questions, and robust applicant tracking features. Additionally, it allows for storing feedback from different managers involved in the hiring process.
Zoho Recruit leverages AI-powered modules to provide intelligent resume-searching capabilities. This functionality enables the system to automatically find suitable candidates based on your requirements, saving you time and effort in the candidate sourcing process.
To streamline the candidate management process, Zoho Recruit allows you to set up a dedicated resume inbox. This feature serves as a centralized hub for all received resumes, making it easier to review and assess candidate profiles.
Zoho Recruit can also help users save time by parsing resumes. It is AI-powered to make sure that you get fast and accurate data.
Zoho Recruit’s Resume Parser Mapping feature helps standardize received resumes.
Zoho Recruit offers dedicated portals for HR staff and candidates, providing them with convenient access to track the status of applications. This feature enhances transparency and keeps all stakeholders informed throughout the recruitment journey.
Furthermore, Zoho Recruit equips you with the tools to track recruitment statistics and analyze data. By leveraging these capabilities, you can gain valuable insights into your hiring process, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your recruitment strategies.
Zoho Recruit also lets users create customizable alerts, rules, and actions. Recruiters can automate various aspects of the recruitment process. This automation streamlines workflows, saves time, and ensures consistent adherence to predefined rules and processes.
Zoho Recruit offers a comprehensive employee referral feature that enables organizations to leverage the power of their existing employees’ networks in the recruitment process. With this feature, you can establish an employee referral portal where your current staff members can recommend and refer potential candidates from their professional connections.
The employee referral portal provides a dedicated platform for employees to submit referrals, allowing them to share information about potential candidates, such as resumes, contact details, and relevant qualifications. This streamlines the referral process, making it easy for employees to contribute to the talent acquisition efforts of the organization.
By tapping into the networks and insights of your employees, Zoho Recruit’s employee referral feature helps identify potential candidates who may be a good fit for your organization. Furthermore, the employee referral feature promotes engagement and participation from your existing staff, as they become actively involved in the recruitment process.
Learn more about creating an employee referral program.
Zoho Recruit’s CRM can help users build better relationships with candidates by storing all candidate data in one place and tracking communication with candidates. You can build better relationships with them and keep them updated on their progress throughout the hiring process.
It also helps HR managers make better hiring decisions by rating candidates on a variety of criteria and tracking their progress through the hiring process. You can also automate tasks such as sending emails and scheduling interviews, you can improve your hiring efficiency and save time. Zoho Recruit’s recruitment CRM even includes features that can help you comply with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
- Intuitive interface
- Well-organized dashboard
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- Customizable settings
- Detailed help documentation
- Responsive customer support
Overall, Zoho Recruit is considered to be an easy-to-use ATS. Many reviewers praised the software’s intuitive interface and user-friendly design. Some reviewers specifically mentioned that Zoho Recruit was easy to use for users with no prior experience with ATS software. They said that the software was well-organized and easy to navigate, even for those who were not familiar with the terminology or processes involved in recruiting.
Other reviewers appreciated the fact that Zoho Recruit offered a variety of customization options, allowing users to tailor the software to their specific needs. This made the software more user-friendly for some reviewers, as they were able to create a system that worked best for them. However, a few reviewers did mention that they found Zoho Recruit to be slightly complex at first. They said that it took some time to learn how to use all of the features and functions of the software.
Zoho Recruit got an excellent score for this criterion because of its excellent reviews on popular websites. Many Zoho Recruit reviews praised its user-friendly interface, saying that it is easy to use and navigate. The provider is also known for its affordable pricing, which makes it a good option for small businesses and startups. It also has a reputation for excellent customer support. Reviewers said that they were able to get help quickly and easily when they needed it.
However, some reviewers said that it lacks integrations with other popular software programs. The mobile app was also criticized for being buggy and lacking features. With the desktop version, a few reviewers reported experiencing bugs and glitches.
| Users Like | Users Don’t Like |
|---|---|
| User-friendly interface | Limited integrations |
| Affordable pricing | Occasional bugs and glitches on mobile app |
| Robust recruitment features | |
At the time of publication, Zoho Recruit reviews earned the following scores on popular user review sites:
- Capterra: 4.4 out of 5 based on 800+ reviews
- G2: 4.5 out of 5 based on 1,500+ reviews
Zoho Recruit offers a variety of reporting features that can help you track and analyze your recruiting data. Because it offers both standard and custom reporting, it got perfect scores for this criterion. Zoho Recruit comes with a number of standard reports that you can use to get started. These reports cover a wide range of topics, such as candidate activity, hiring pipeline, and cost per hire.
With Zoho Recruit, you can choose the data that you want to include in the report, as well as the layout and formatting. Custom reports give you the flexibility to track specific data that is important to your business.
How We Evaluated
We evaluated Zoho Recruit across nearly 30 individual categories related to pricing, features, functionality and ease of use, and popularity.
Click through the tabs below for our full evaluation criteria:
15%
Pricing
20%
Recruitment Tools
20%
Functionality
15%
Popularity
10%
Reporting
20%
Ease of Use
15% of Overall Score
When looking at pricing, we considered a wide range of businesses, from those needing an occasional job post to staffing companies and businesses in a growth surge. Thus, we rated for free plans, affordable monthly plans, and occasional plans for small businesses.
20% of Overall Score
This score covered job boards, basic applicant tracking, background and pre-employment tests, resumes, and communication.
20% of Overall Score
These are the tools that make posting jobs and evaluating candidates easier: templates, feedback and collaboration, and extra features like social posting or video interviewing.
15% of Overall Score
Even the most thorough research cannot replace the experiences of real-world users. We turned to popular review sites like Capterra and G2 for user feedback on the application and customer support.
10% of Overall Score
All the software provided basic reports, so the make-or-break was customizability.
20% of Overall Score
We considered interface, customer support, online guides, and mobile apps.
*Percentages of overall score
Bottom Line
Zoho Recruit offers a robust suite of features, a user-friendly interface, and integration capabilities that streamline the recruitment process for organizations of various sizes. Its customizable workflows and affordable pricing plans make it a strong contender in the ATS market. However, businesses with highly specialized requirements might need to explore alternative solutions.
