Recruitment Software: How to Choose the Best Recruiting Tool?

In this recruitment software buyers’ guide, you’ll learn how to compare, evaluate and choose the best recruiting tool that will perfectly fit your hiring needs and your budget. We’ll review common recruitment challenges and identify solutions offered by recruiting tools. That way, you’ll know exactly what to look for in your perfect recruitment software!

Need a recruitment tool?

Recruitment software has many benefits . It is a specialized tool for HR professionals and recruiters, designed to help them find and hire top candidates faster, easier and cheaper.

According to a recent GetApp survey:

• 86% of recruiters say that using a recruitment software has helped them hire faster
• 78% of recruiters say that using a recruitment software has improved the quality of candidates they hire.

Whether you are looking to buy your first recruitment tool, or you are an experienced recruitment software user looking for a better tool with more features, you’ve come to the right place.

This guide will help you compare, evaluate and choose the best recruitment software that perfectly fits your need and budget!

➡️ If you’re in a hurry, simply download the Checklist of Features Every Modern Recruiting Software Should Have and read it when you get the time.

The problem with choosing the best recruitment software

There are many different types of recruitment software on the market. Two most common types are the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Recruitment Marketing Software , but there are also specialized sourcing tools and candidate relationship management tools.

There are also many recruitment software that offer a combination of these types. As if this is not enough to create confusion within a buyer’s mind, there are also many vendors out there.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that many buyers are confused and not quite sure what to choose. They are struggling with questions such as:

“Which recruiting tool should I buy? Do I need a Recruitment Marketing Software or ATS?”

How to choose the best recruiting tool?

Luckily, there is a proven method for choosing the best recruitment software. First of all, you need to know that there is no perfect recruitment software per se. “Perfect” recruitment software is the one that perfectly fits your hiring needs.

Thus, there are 3 key steps in choosing your perfect recruitment software:

Step 1: Define your key recruitment challenges

The first step in choosing your perfect recruitment software is identifying your recruiting goals and challenges .

Step 2: Identify needed recruitment software’s features

The second step in choosing your perfect recruitment software is identifying features offered by recruitment software which can help you resolve your biggest recruiting challenges.

Step 3: Finding recruitment software which offers features you need

Third, and final step in choosing your perfect recruitment software is finding a recruitment software which offers the right combination of all the features you need. If you find a few vendors who fit your needs, you need to compare and evaluate them in order to make the right pick.

Common recruitment challenges and solutions offered by recruitment software

Here is the list of common recruitment challenges and solutions offered by recruitment software. Find your challenges and discover what are the must-have features of your perfect recruiting tool!

Challenge #1: “I spend too much time managing applications.”

Recruitment software features you need:

• One candidate database
  All candidates are in one place that can easily be filtered to find exactly who you need.
• Fast candidate and application screening
  Screen candidates faster by searching through your database by certain skills and candidate qualifications.
• Interview kits and candidate scorecards
  Make evaluation more productive by making templates for certain job openings. This makes candidate evaluation much easier, organized and efficient.
• Automated email responses
  Save time by sending automated, yet personalized email responses to candidates. Make your own email templates for certain situations, and don’t write every email from scratch.
• Automated interview scheduling
  Schedule interviews with the candidates directly from the software and automatically share the most important interview information such as structure and location.
• Hiring workflows and talent pipeline
  Track and manage candidates’ progress to make your hiring more streamlined. Use existing software’s hiring stages, or create your own to best match your hiring process.
• Bulk actions
  When you need to make a certain action on multiple candidates or jobs, you can do it with just one click. You can also send bulk emails.
• Auto merge duplicate profile
  Recruitment software will notice when you have duplicate profiles in your candidate 7890’database and offer to merge them.
• Full-text search
  Easily find candidates by any specific keyword such as skill, location, education, employer, etc.

Challenge #2: “I don’t get enough high-quality job applications.”

Recruitment software features you need:

• Customizable and easy to use career site
  Create a beautiful career site in just a few clicks – add photos, videos, employee testimonials and embed your Glassdoor reviews. No coding knowledge necessary!
• Job board integration
  Easily post your job openings on multiple job boards at once with just one click. Choose among multiple free and premium job boards.
• Social media recruiting
  Create a Facebook job tab and show your open positions on Facebook automatically. Make your new openings easily shareable on Social Media.
• SEO optimized job descriptions
  Make your job openings SEO friendly and enable job seekers to find you on search engines.
• Employee referrals
  Automatically ask the whole department, firm or just specific employees for a referral every time you have a new job opening.
• Current talent pool
  In your current talent pool, you often have very good job candidates that you previously couldn't hire. Find them and reach out to them in just a few clicks!
• Candidates from other sources
  Import candidates from other sources and inform them about your open position in just a few clicks.
• Sourcing extension
  Find your perfect candidates on the most famous professional networks. Import them to your candidate database with a single click.

Challenge #3: “I don’t have time to answers to candidates’ emails, much /less to send them engaging email campaigns.”

Recruitment software features you need:

• Engaging email templates
  Choose among many customizable, engaging email templates for various stages of your candidate’s journey.
• List segmentation
  Filter and segment your talent pools so that you can better personalize your communication with the selected candidates.
• Tracking engagement
  Get insights into all the candidates’ activities, communications, opened emails, email responses, website visits and more!
• Reminders and tasks
  This feature enables you to get an automated reminder when you haven't got in touch with someone for a certain period of time.

Challenge #4: “I want to be data-driven and excel in hiring analytics!”

Recruitment software features you need:

• Team productivity reports
  Find out which of your team members are most productive. Compare their performances and define bottlenecks.
• Sourcing analytics
  Find out where your best applicant and candidates are coming from and make further decisions on those insights.
• Hiring productivity
  Find out which of your recruitment stages are least productive, slow or most expensive. Get data such as time and cost per hire and improve them based on collected insights.
• Career site analytics
  Find out how many career site visitors do you get, where are they coming from and which parts of your career site do they love the most.
• Conversion analytics
  Find out how many visitors convert into applicants and improve your application form effectiveness.
• Engagement analytics
  Focus on the candidates that are the most engaged and most likely to become your next new hires.

How to compare and evaluate different recruitment software?

Once you have a list of features your perfect recruiting tool should have, it's’ time to find out which vendors can offer everything you need.

A great place to start are specliazied review sites such as Software World. Check out their list of the Top 10+ Recruitment Software In 2020 !

When you find at least three of recruitment software that seem like a good choice for your company, you need to compare and evaluate them in order to choose the one that best fit your needs and your budget. How to do it?

If you’re an experienced recruitment software user

If you already have experience in using recruitment software tools, your best option is to take advantage of a free trial. Try out your top 3 recruitment tools which offer all the features you need for a week or two in order to make an informed decision. That way, you’ll be able to compare and evaluate competing recruitment software from the first-hand experience.

If you’re looking for your first recruiting tool

If you’ve never used a recruitment tool before, it's better for you to opt for a free demo. Most vendors offer a free live demo session with their sales experts who will show you exactly how to use their recruitment software. Take this opportunity and ask everything you want to know! It will be easier for you to decide once you have a real experience of using a certain recruitment software.