Best Recruiting Software

When we post a new job listing, hundreds—if not thousands—of people all over the world apply. Out of all of them, only a handful are worth reaching out to. To say that recruiting software changed our lives is an understatement. Based on our experiences, Freshteam is the best option if you’re looking to source and hire the best talent… the first time. There’s a robust free plan, plus features for onboarding, new-hire welcome kits, and employee management.

The Best Recruiting Software for Most

Freshteam is our top recommendation for most users because it’s a full-scale HR software with excellent built-in recruiting functionality. You can try it free forever with up to 50 employees to see if it’s a good fit before spending a penny, and it comes with everything you need to seamlessly onboard new employees with ease.

It includes an applicant tracking system, a career site, mobile apps, onboarding features, PTO management, new-hire welcome kits, and more. But the best part? Many businesses can stay on the free for years before needing to upgrade.

The 7 Best Recruiting Software Options to Consider:

1. Freshteam – Best for most
2. Zoho Recruit – Best software for recruiters
3. JazzHR – Best for syncing recruiting with your software
4. Workable – Best for small business
5. Ascendify – Best recruiting software for enterprises
6. Recruiterflow – Best for staffing and recruitment agencies
7. Recooty – Best applicant tracking system (ATS)

When It Makes Sense to Invest Into Recruiting Software

Historically, recruiting software was only popular among staffing agencies and recruiting firms.

But with modern technology and cloud-based deployment, it’s growing in popularity as a standard business tool for companies of all shapes and sizes.

As such, any business looking to hire staff, whether it be one person per year or 100+ new hires every year, can benefit from investing in recruiting software. 

From startups to Fortune 500s, and everything in between, it’s the best way to find qualified candidates, onboard new employees, and manage them while keeping recruitment costs low.

#1 – Freshteam — The Best Recruiting Software for Most

Freshteam is more than just a recruiting, hiring, and onboarding solution—it’s a full-scale HR software with over 3,000 happy customers across the country.

The applicant tracking tool makes it easy for companies of all sizes to find, interview, and hire top-level candidates.

With Freshteam’s ATS, you can easily create job postings and descriptions plus decide when and where they’re posted in a few clicks. There are even more than 100 built-in descriptions you can use as a starting point so you don’t have to write listings from scratch.

From there, you can assign the correct hiring team to get notifications and see applicant information as it rolls in.

While this seems like a small feature, it helps limit notifications that no one cares about. We’ve all fallen victim to those tools that send so many notifications, you stop paying attention.

The system also lets you set up custom workflows for individual hiring processes based on the position, hiring team, or individual job listing.

If you don’t already have a website, FreshTeam offers a free and branded custom career site you can use to attract the right candidates.

Alternatively, you can embed job listings directly onto an existing website with a single line of code that anyone can install.

Freshteam’s ATS system comes complete with automatic resume parsing, applicant organization with keywords and tags, a built-in talent pool for future hires, private comments on individual applications, and a rating system so everyone can share their opinions.

But the features don’t stop after you find the right people.

After you hire someone, Freshteam has everything you need to onboard them into your business, including custom onboarding checklists, automatic reminders of key dates, complete welcome kits, e-signatures, and more.

Plus, you also get additional resources for paid time off management, a self-service employee portal, org charts, and policy creation. 

Freshteam is completely free for up to 50 employees, making it an excellent choice for small teams. If you need more features or have more employees, paid plans start at $71 + $1.20 per employee per month.

There are three paid plans to choose from as you grow, so you don’t have to worry about outgrowing Freshteam.

The free plan allows you to publish up to three job postings, which is fine for basic or infrequent users. But at its core, Freshteam is built to scale.

As your recruitment needs change and your team grows, you can upgrade to better plans with access to more advanced features.

With the Growth Plan, you’ll benefit from up to 20 job postings, a customizable career site, customizable applications, interview scorecards, hiring pipelines, automation, and more.

If you go with the Pro Plan, you can post up to 100 job postings, leverage social recruiting, manage your talent pool with ease, manage offers, and assign multiple recruiters to a single job. You get more flexibility and more room to grow your team.

One drawback of Freshteam is its pricing. It’s a bit on the high side for smaller organizations if you don’t qualify for the free plan. To lock in the rates shown above, you need to sign up for an annual subscription.

The pricing above reflects monthly plans. If you pay for a year in advance, you’ll get two months free. It helps ease the pricing sting, but it can still get pricey for smaller teams with smaller budgets.

Sign up for a 21-day free trial (or the free forever plan) to see if Freshteam is right for you today!

#2 – Zoho Recruit — Best Software For Recruiters

Zoho Recruit is built specifically for professional recruiters and staffing firms, with specialty solutions for staffing agencies, corporate HR recruiting, and temporary workforces.

This software delivers everything recruiters need to find the best talent for their clients with a complete hiring solution designed to make the hiring process easier and more straightforward. It also heavily focuses on automation to help you get more done in less time.

With it, you can easily make informed hiring decisions with data-driven reports based on employee referrals, direct feedback, LinkedIn, and Twitter information.

You can also run background checks and candidate screening directly through the platform to ensure your clients get the best of the best while avoiding candidates who may not be a great fit. This works through direct integration with Checkr, which gives you everything you need to know about a candidate before you ever speak with them.

With this integration, you can easily export your list of candidates into Checkr, run your scans, and automatically export the reports back into Zoho Recruit for a seamless experience.

It also helps simplify the process for applicants by automatically pulling information from their LinkedIn profiles.

And you can monitor candidates as they move through the hiring pipeline from the screening process to onboarding and beyond. You can even set up custom pipelines with color-coded phases around each client’s hiring processes to ensure everyone’s always on the same page.

There are also pre-built blueprints to help you fill in workflow gaps you may not even realize existed.

The workflow builder is 100% drag-and-drop with basic logic conditions to help you automate more of the hiring process without sacrificing quality.

One of Zoho’s newest features is a widget that lets you place the hiring pipeline right within your home screen dashboard so you get a bird’s-eye view of what matters most the second you log in.

Another new standout feature is a client portal where your clients can access a private area to create new job listings, review candidates, send feedback, and make interview decisions alongside you.

This functionality is an additional $6 per client per month. However, ten licenses are included for free on the Enterprise plan.

Here’s a quick look at the annual price points for Zoho Recruit:

Zoho Recruit For Staffing Agencies

• Standard — $25 per user per month
• Professional — $50 per user per month
• Enterprise — $75 per month

Zoho Recruit For Corporate HR

• Standard — $25 per recruiter per month
• Enterprise — $50 per recruiter per month

The rates above reflect an annual contract; month-to-month plans cost extra. You can try Zoho Recruit free for 15 days.

The software for temp recruiting is a separate product. Zoho Workerly starts at $59 per month for up to 50 temp workers, making it an affordable way to manage the hiring process for temporary workers. You can add more temporary workers for an additional $1.50 per temp per month.

Compared to other software on the market for recruiting agencies, Zoho Recruit is actually very affordable.

With that said, there are add-ons for features like client portals, hiring manager licenses, employee referrals, and more. 

All Zoho Recruit plans are backed by a 45-day money-back guarantee. 

#3 – JazzHR — The Best for Syncing Recruiting with Your Software

If you want to get up and running as fast as possible, JazzHR is our top pick since you can sign up and get started in just a few clicks. Whether you want to find more qualified candidates, organize your hiring process, track recruiting ROI, or a combination of all three, this software comes with everything you need. 

With unlimited users, JazzHR makes it easy and cost-effective to onboard your entire team, regardless of how many people are involved in your hiring processes.

Where JazzHR really shines is the number of pre-built integrations and how well it works with the other tools and services you’re already using for onboarding, paperwork, workforce management, and HR.

On top of those integrations, JazzHR syncs seamlessly with 24 of the best job boards on the web, including ZipRecruiter, Monster, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn. All of which… broadcast your job openings even further to ensure you’re getting the best candidates.

It also fits like a glove with HRIS, payroll, time and attendance tracking, and even POS system software, including recognizable names like ADP, Zenefits, Gusto, Rippling, and Tsheets.

All of these integrations (and more) are housed in the JazzHR marketplace, where you’ll find both software integrations and partner service providers in categories including:

• Background checks
• Candidate assessment and testing
• Video interview platforms
• Calendars and scheduling
• Employer branding
• Training and onboarding
• Federal tax credits and Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC)

The pricing for Jazz HR is designed to fit small teams and large organizations alike, with three pricing tiers:

• Hero — $39 per month
• Plus — $229 per month
• Pro — $339 per month

At first glance, the rates seem high. But because JazzHR has unlimited users for all plans, it’s affordable in comparison to onboarding multiple users with other recruiting software. The Hero plan allows you to post up to three open jobs, but the other two both come with unlimited open job postings. When you take these factors into consideration, the price is justifiable. 

You can try any JazzHR plan free for 21 days; no credit card required. Get a free demo of JazzHR today.

#4 – Workable — The Best For Small Business

Workable is an excellent choice for small businesses that want to simplify and improve their recruiting processes. With this single tool, you will be able to find, attract, sign, and onboard the best possible candidates for your company.

We really liked how flexible Workable was for small business. Those who hire consistently can sign up for one of Workable’s traditional subscription services, and those who need to hire occasionally can make use of the Starter plan.

The ability to avoid locking in an annual subscription is really important for businesses that are trying to stretch every dollar. Workable allows you to have two active jobs with the Standard plan that costs $149 per month. This plan is monthly only, rather than paying year ’round.

Whether you plan on using Workable for the full year or just during recruiting seasons, you are going to like how simple and easy it is to use with your team.

With a single click, Workable posts your listings to more than 200 different job boards at the same time—no copy and pasting over and over (and over) again required. You can even collaborate virtually across hiring teams to gather feedback and evaluate candidates to truly find the best person for the job. 

Every plan includes interview kits and scorecards, interview question templates, job description templates, offer letter management with e-signatures, referral tracking, and GDPR compliance.

Workable can even automate basic tasks, such as interview scheduling and approvals to help you get more done in less time without hiring someone to hire others.

Despite the Starter plan price tag, it’s a no-brainer that’s packed full of valuable features for your occasional hiring needs.

More than 27,000 companies across the world use Workable’s recruiting software. The platform has screened more than 160 million candidates and facilitated 1.5+ million hires. 

In addition to the Starter plan for occasional hiring, Workable does offer annual plans for hiring at scale. All prices are available online, and you can start using any plan free for 15 days.

Get a started for free with Workable.

#5 – Ascendify — Best Recruiting Software For Enterprises

Ascendify is an enterprise-grade solution for talent acquisition and development. The applicant tracking system is built for larger organizations to use at scale.

In addition to basic recruiting, Ascendify also builds, designs, and hosts websites for career development. This intelligent app helps prospective candidates set up their own profiles with a custom dashboard during the application, hiring, and development process. 

Ascendify allows you to create talent pipelines, which organize people into predefined categories by role. Using smart technology, the software will tell you how long it takes to fill specific roles and requests. These advanced insights allow you to be more proactive and strategic in your workforce planning process.

Some of the top features and benefits of Ascendify include:

• Recruitment marketing
• Diversity programs
• Employee referrals
• Predictive assessments
• Employee onboarding
• Job requisitions
• Interview scheduling
• Offer letters

Overall, Ascendify is robust, reliable, flexible, and built to scale with large firms. Pricing is not available online, but you can request a free demo and quote to get started.

This software is not made for small teams. It’s designed for businesses with 100+ employees and advanced hiring needs. Get a free demo.

#6 – Recruiterflow — Best For Staffing and Recruitment Agencies

Recruiterflow is another option for recruiters, specifically, staffing and recruitment agencies. It’s a bit pricer than Zoho Recruit (reviewed earlier), but all Recruiterflow agency plans come with unlimited job openings.

This software is ideal for agencies that want to manage their recruiting pipeline, collaborate with clients, and nurture candidates from a single source. 

You’ll also benefit from detailed analytics and simple automation to optimize busy work. 

Pricing for Recruiterflow starts at $69 per user per month with an annual contract. The price jumps to $89 for month-to-month plans. 

For automation features, API access, and unlimited campaigns, you’ll need to upgrade to the Enterprise plan, which starts at $99 per user per month with an annual contract. The month-month rate for the top-level plan is $129 per user.

Again, this is definitely more expensive compared to other plans we’ve seen, especially when you’re comparing it side-by-side with Zoho Recruit. 

But even Zoho Recruit’s best plan caps the number of active jobs you post. Recruiterflow is unlimited. If you’re a smaller staffing agency, Zoho Recruit will be fine. But for everyone else, Recruiterflow will be a better option. 

Staffing and recruiting agencies can get a free demo of Recruiterflow. 

#7 – Recooty — The Best Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

Recooty is an applicant tracking system (ATS) trusted by more than 4,000 businesses across the globe, including well-known names like Uber and Trello.

The platform is simple, straightforward, and easy for anyone to use. 

You’ll be able to post new jobs, review applications, schedule interviews, and hire new employees from a single source. 

Another top feature of Recooty is the ability for you to create a branded career page with your company’s name and open positions. 

When you list a job on Recooty, it gets posted on more than 20 of the world’s most popular job boards and social sites, including ZipRecruiter, Facebook, Careerjet, Adzuna, and Google Jobs.

Here’s a quick overview of the plans and pricing for Recooty:

Basic — Free

• 3 active job listings
• Applicant tracking system
• Branded careers page
• List jobs on social networks 

Pro — $29 per month

• 10 active job listings
• Multiple job boards
• Unlimited applications
• Schedule interviews

Ultra — $49 per month

• 25 active job listings
• Multiple locations
• Up to 25 users
• Bulk import and data export

While the free plan is fine for basic use, your job listings will only be posted on social media and your branded career page, which isn’t ideal. You’ll need to upgrade to the Pro plan, at a minimum, to get the most out of Recooty.

It’s also worth noting that businesses with more than 25 active job listings will find Recooty a bit limiting. The platform is definitely geared toward organizations that aren’t hiring at scale. 

But the simplicity, ease of use, and affordable pricing are all enough to keep Recooty at the top of our list. Try Recooty free for 15 days with access to all of its features, and save 20% with an annual subscription.

Methodology For Choosing The Best Recruiting Software

There are dozens of different recruiting software solutions on the market today. Finding the best one for your business can be challenging if you don’t know what to look for.

This is the methodology that we used to create this guide. I’ll explain these factors in greater detail below, so you can determine what matters most according to your personal needs. 

Business vs. Agency Software

First, you need to identify whether the software in question is made for staffing agencies or businesses. Recruiting agencies will obviously have different needs than business users and HR departments. 

Agencies need features to manage multiple clients and talent pools across a wide range of industries. 

Some software might have two versions—one for businesses and one for agencies. But it should be pretty obvious which one is their specialty. If you’re unsure, just refer to the reviews in this guide. 

Hiring Frequency

How often do you hire a new employee? How many job openings do you post simultaneously? 

The vast majority of recruiting software has some type of limit on how many active job postings you can list at once. In most cases, the entry-level plans start at three active listings. Some free solutions might give you one free job posting. 

Larger businesses or staffing agencies hiring at scale need software with higher limits or potentially unlimited job posting capabilities. 

Features

There are dozens of different features offered by different types of recruiting software. Depending on your hiring needs, some of these will be more important to you than others. 

Examples of features to look for include:

• Applicant tracking software (ATS)
• Interview scheduling
• Video interviews
• Offer letters and e-sign
• Onboarding tools
• Employee referrals
• Branded career pages

You can also find recruiting software that’s compatible with third-party apps and integrations, for things like background checks.

Price

The price for recruiting software is largely based on the number of open job listings you need to post simultaneously. Generally speaking, the more job posts you need, the higher the price. These rates can range anywhere from $29 to $300+ per month. 

With that said, features tend to get better as you go up in price as well. So if you want every feature the software has to offer, you probably won’t get it if you’re choosing a plan that only allows for three or ten simultaneous listings. 

For those of you who don’t hire that often, there’s no reason to spring for the extra features. But for staffing agencies and larger businesses, those top-tier plans will definitely be worth it. 

Summary

From startups and small businesses to enterprises and national staffing agencies, recruiting software can make your life easier when it comes to the hiring process.

Freshteam and Zoho Recruit are our top recommendations for most situations. However, they’re not the perfect solution for everyone.

So, don’t forget to use the methodology we talked about as you go through the process of choosing the best recruitment software for you and your business.