When it comes to sourcing tools for recruiters, we have three words for you: Underdog.io, Mantal, and HireEZ. Don't let this end your quest for candidate-sourcing tools! Explore those options after you read about the research methods we used to recommend them.
This guide is tailor-made for people like you: we know you need to make the right choice, and you need to make it fast. We also know it's tempting to click away to check out our top three recruiting sourcing tools, but take a few minutes to read this entire guide. Understanding the whole picture is better than knowing a few facts a la carte!
Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
The best candidate sourcing tools allow your talent acquisition team to reach new talent pools, and quickly engage relevant people to close your hardest to fill reqs. To understand what the best sourcing platforms are, we’ve done dozens of demos and talked to some of the most successful recruiting teams out there.
For instance, from Joe Aburdene, a Director at Chicago-based Talent Acquisition Services firm Lucas James Talent Partners, we learned that the best sourcing tools have their own databases, as well as the tech to process thousands of applicants automatically; as opposed to a team doing it manually.
So below is our list of the best candidate sourcing SaaS tools, along with everything else we think you need to know when buying these types of tools from ROI to questions to ask on demos.
It’s important to note that sourcing software is great for teams that need to augment their existing sourcing capabilities, or to fully outsource the process. They also work for companies of any size or industry - the main criteria to get value of out these tools is that you must have a need for hard-to-find talent.
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best Sourcing tools and services per our research and expert council as of 2023.
Why we love it
:
Underdog.io is a job market place that connects candidates with hiring managers in top startups in NYC and San Francisco. A notable thing is that most applications take only 60 seconds.
Underdog.io
Review:
Underdog.io allows technology companies to source from their continuously-refreshed pool of vetted talent. Most of their candidates are experienced tech (eng/data science) talent, but they also have product, sales, etc. Recruiters can use booleans to search for the right talent in the right geography (including looking specifically for under represented groups), and then message either in the platform or via email.
Candidates can only stay on the platform for 30 days, which means they are looking for what's next and are responsive to recruiter outreach. They've also done a good job of integrating with the ATS ecosystem to track your activity.
Underdog.io
Customers:
Lattice, Airtable, Aircall, Teachers pay teachers, Foursquare
Lattice, Airtable, Aircall, Teachers pay teachers, Foursquare
Underdog.io
Pricing:
The pricing of Underdog.io’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team for a price quote.
The pricing of Underdog.io's plans and services isn't disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team for a price quote.
Best For
Companies looking for a curated marketplace for tech talent.
Why we love it
:
hireEZ's focus lets you hire at scale and automate manual time-consuming tasks through a variety of sourcing, engagement, integrations, analytics, and collaboration features.
hireEZ
Review:
hireEZ, formerly known as Hiretual, have a massive database of candidates that is perfect for sourcers and recruiters who are looking for hard to find candidates. As a user, you can run searches to find people to reach out to, and then put them into an outreach campaign.
hireEZ
Customers:
Nike, Continental, Wayfair, Intel, Ceridian, Novo Nordisk
Nike, Continental, Wayfair, Intel, Ceridian, Novo Nordisk
hireEZ
Pricing:
hireEZ's pricing varies depending on your needs and employee count. Since all their pricing is custom, it's best to contact them for an exact quote.
hireEZ's pricing varies depending on your needs and employee count. Since all their pricing is custom, it's best to contact them for an exact quote.
Best For
Companies of all sizes looking for scalable, AI-powered talent sourcing solution.
Why we love it
:
Fetcher is an AI-based recruitment automation software that uses a simple but effective 3-step methodology of ‘source, engage, and track’ to ensure that you have a continuous stream of qualified candidates and meet your hiring needs.
Fetcher
Review:
Fetcher's AI-based sourcing algorithm helps recruiters save time and effort that they would otherwise spend pouring over resumes and candidate databases. Using inputs from hiring teams on their preferences for a particular role and Artificial Intelligence, Fetcher curates batches of profiles for you to review. You can also help calibrate and refine the search by leaving specific feedback on individual candidate profiles, ensuring that the quality of profiles you receive is exactly what you're looking for.
Fetcher
Customers:
Fetcher is used by over 500 businesses worldwide, including Andela, Frame.io, Magnite, Foursquare and CarGurus.
Fetcher is used by over 500 businesses worldwide, including Andela, Frame.io, Magnite, Foursquare and CarGurus.
Fetcher
Pricing:
The pricing of Fetcher's plans is based on the number of seats your team needs and the number of vetted candidate leads sourced. You can contact their sales team for a custom quote based on your specific hiring requirements.
The pricing of Fetcher's plans is based on the number of seats your team needs and the number of vetted candidate leads sourced. You can contact their sales team for a custom quote based on your specific hiring requirements.
Best For
Fetcher can be used by small, mid-sized, and large organizations looking to automate their sourcing and candidate outreach processes and increase hiring efficiencies.
Why we love it
:
Not only does Manatal cover most of the features you’d expect from a budget-friendly ATS, the platform tops that off with AI-powered actions, such as candidate filtering and recommendations.
Manatal
Review:
Manatal helps HR teams attract and find candidates in a variety of ways. You can create a custom-branded career page, post jobs to multiple job boards, and receive referrals from employees and other contacts. You can also upload candidate profiles and automatically enrich them with data derived from their social media accounts.
To speed up the process of finding suitable candidates, Manatal offers an AI-powered recommendations engine that’s able to scan your job descriptions, extract key skills needed to perform the job, then search your talent pool and bring up candidates that possess those skills. It’s also offers a LinkedIn chrome extension, allowing you to quickly connect with and save the candidates who fit your job requirements.
Manatal
Customers:
Manatal is used in over 100 countries. Their customer list includes Unilever, Cocacola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.
Manatal is used in over 100 countries. Their customer list includes Unilever, Cocacola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.
Manatal
Pricing:
Manatal has two plans with fixed pricing. When Billed annually, they cost as follows:
Note:
Manatal has two plans with fixed pricing. When Billed annually, they cost as follows:
Note:
Best For
Manatal is used by organizations of all sizes across different industries, but it’s worth noting that the ball-park of their customers are SMEs.
Why we love it
:
SeekOut puts many variants of artificial intelligence within the context of a search engine for talent. Their tool sources from an ever-expanding list of candidates who are willing to be listed on the platform, showcasing over 780M profiles.
Seekout
Review:
Seekout’s database has over 780 million potential candidate profiles, with a strong focus towards the US and Canada. Recruiters looking to source top of the funnel outside of LinkedIn can use this solution to find and contact candidates. One really interesting feature is their use of GitHub data where they’re able to build a profile on engineers based on contributions to different code repositories. Customers include Fortune 500 firms like Raytheon and Rackspace down to one person staffing companies.
Seekout
Customers:
SeekOut is used by enterprise customers such as VMware, Salesforce, Merck, UiPath, and Anaplan.
SeekOut is used by enterprise customers such as VMware, Salesforce, Merck, UiPath, and Anaplan.
Seekout
Pricing:
Seekout has a few different plans:
The actual pricing of SeekOut’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. You would have to contact their sales team for a custom price quote.
Seekout also provides a free Chrome extension for sourcing, SeekOut Sourcing Assistant. It’s free to use but with a limit of getting verified social links and emails for 10 candidates per month.
Seekout has a few different plans:
The actual pricing of SeekOut’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. You would have to contact their sales team for a custom price quote.
Seekout also provides a free Chrome extension for sourcing, SeekOut Sourcing Assistant. It’s free to use but with a limit of getting verified social links and emails for 10 candidates per month.
Best For
Seekout has segmented pricing plans for different industries. While there is a general plan for most businesses, Tech, Engineering, and Life Sciences hiring managers get the most functionality from Seekout. The tool can be used by companies with large in-house recruiting teams as well as small agencies looking for a user-friendly tool to reach a diverse pool of talent.
Why we love it
:
AmazingHiring's platform is focused on technical hires and so they have advanced screening technology and a large database of engineering talent.
AmazingHiring
Review:
AmazingHiring aggregates professional backgrounds of technical candidates from data they collect across over 70 different sources. The AI will sort candidates by a consolidated rating across their Github, Stack, etc profiles and align this list with your candidate criteria. There is also the ability to do manual sourcing as well with boolean searches.
You can then filter candidates by years experience, gender, past job titles/companies, seniority levels, etc. You can also exclude different sources (like LinkedIn) to give you a better opportunity to find hidden talent that are talent acquisition teams may not know about.
Sourcers and recruiters organize candidates by folder, and then can execute multi stage email sequences that go out via your email client (gmail, outlook, etc).
Lastly, they have a data enrichment feature where you can add relevant information to email lists (name, title, geography, etc), and keep your candidate datasets up to date.
AmazingHiring
Customers:
EPAM, Akamai Technologies, Alexander Mann Solutions,Dell, ABBYY
EPAM, Akamai Technologies, Alexander Mann Solutions,Dell, ABBYY
AmazingHiring
Pricing:
Pricing is based on the number of licenses that you buy, with volume discounts for larger companies. All contracts are annual and start at $4,800 per seat. There are also charges for enriching contacts if you want to take advantage of that feature.
Lastly, they do offer custom pricing for individual freelancers who want to use the platform.
Pricing is based on the number of licenses that you buy, with volume discounts for larger companies. All contracts are annual and start at $4,800 per seat. There are also charges for enriching contacts if you want to take advantage of that feature.
Lastly, they do offer custom pricing for individual freelancers who want to use the platform.
Best For
Technical recruiters at growing technology companies, smaller companies that need to hire technical talent, and third party recruiters and staffing agencies who have a high volume of tech hiring.
Why we love it
:
Arya is developed by Leoforce, an AI recruiting company with a focus on talent sourcing. There are several editions of Arya, making it a good fit for all company sizes.
Arya by Leoforce
Review:
The Arya AI recruiting platform from Leoforce builds shortlists of quality candidates based on your job description. These shortlists come from the open web, as well as your own ATS/CRM. The platform also includes a multi-channel candidate engagement suite that allows you to quickly and easily reach out to these candidates, ask them screening questions, and schedule the relevant candidates with your recruiters. Needless to say, this decreases cost per hire and time to fill.
Arya by Leoforce
Customers:
Lenovo, American Century Investments, PeopleScout, Ecotalent, Polaris Alpha
Lenovo, American Century Investments, PeopleScout, Ecotalent, Polaris Alpha
Arya by Leoforce
Pricing:
Arya's pricing starts with Arya Pulse, which is for low volume or infrequent hiring needs. You get to pay per job, with options ranging from $200 to $600. For larger recruitment needs, they offer subscription-based pricing that's customized.
Arya's pricing starts with Arya Pulse, which is for low volume or infrequent hiring needs. You get to pay per job, with options ranging from $200 to $600. For larger recruitment needs, they offer subscription-based pricing that's customized.
Best For
Arya is available in several editions (see Pricing), so it can easily meet the needs and budgets of enterprises and SMBs.
Why we love it
:
Combining source-to-hire automation, AI, and managed services, Entelo is a platform used to accelerate recruiting at enterprises like Goldman Sachs, PayPal, and Target.
Entelo
Review:
With Entelo, you can search for candidates that meet your criteria, and then automate your outreach all from one platform. Their new Envoy platform even promises to deliver qualified candidates directly to your inbox.
Entelo
Customers:
Aside from the ones mentioned above, Big name Entelo customers include Wayfair, Sony, Lyft, Asana, and Comerica Bank.
Aside from the ones mentioned above, Big name Entelo customers include Wayfair, Sony, Lyft, Asana, and Comerica Bank.
Entelo
Pricing:
The pricing of Entelo’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team for a quote.
The pricing of Entelo's plans and services isn't disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team for a quote.
Best For
Recruiting teams and agencies looking for a recruitment automation platform.
Why we love it
:
Gem gathers data from tools that recruitment teams use on a day-to-day basis, such as LinkedIn InMail, ATS, and email, and combines it into a single talent management hub that automates candidate sourcing and engagement while providing detailed insights to support and optimize your recruiting strategy.
Gem
Review:
Gem is primarily a talent engagement platform with features to support talent sourcing, candidate outreach, and recruitment pipeline management. It gathers data from tools like LinkedIn InMail and Indeed to build a central candidate database with up-to-date information, including career updates and milestones. You can also visualize your entire recruitment pipeline, track which stage a particular candidate is at, and communicate with them on a frequent basis.
Gem
Customers:
Coinbase, Slack, Asana, Dropbox, Lyft, Indeed, Pinterest, and Doordash
Coinbase, Slack, Asana, Dropbox, Lyft, Indeed, Pinterest, and Doordash
Gem
Pricing:
The cost of Gem's services is based on the size of your recruitment team, the number of hires, and other factors like custom ATS integrations. You can reach out to their sales team for a quote.
The cost of Gem's services is based on the size of your recruitment team, the number of hires, and other factors like custom ATS integrations. You can reach out to their sales team for a quote.
Best For
Gem is best suited for large enterprises and staffing agencies that need to hire more employees in a short time period.
Why we love it
:
Intersteller focuses on email marketing for supercharged recruitment. You can synchronize all your candidates and source emails from their databases, then set up automated drips for prospects. The tool was recently acquired by Greenhouse.
Interseller
Review:
Interseller’s platform allows sourcing and full desk recruiting teams to leverage the same powerful technology that sales teams are using to engage prospective customers. Specifically, their tool lets users source talent from the open web via chrome extension, and then put them into email sequences with automated follow up and a layer of intelligence designed to protect your deliverability rates.
The startup was acquired by Greenhouse, one of the top ATS companies, in October 2021. This speaks lengths to the reliability of the tool, and means that, as per a Greenhouse press release, Interseller customers get Greenhouse-level integrations and support.
Interseller
Customers:
Foursquare, Squarespace, Compass, Honey, Mogul
Foursquare, Squarespace, Compass, Honey, Mogul
Interseller
Pricing:
Best For
Companies looking for an easy to use candidate sourcing and outreach platform.
Why we love it
:
Loxo provides the world's largest talent graph, with 530+ million people in their proprietary directory. Their people search engine combines hundreds of data sources to create a hiring machine tailored to your needs.
Loxo
Review:
Loxo's platform is built around making your recruiting team more efficient. What makes Loxo unique from other CRMs is that they have an up-to-date database of 530 million people with their personal contact information. Their technology helps recruiters to build lists of candidates, outreach through automated sequences of texts/emails/calls/Linkedln, and manage every part of the hiring process through their CRM. Companies like Bank of America, All-State, Trinity Health, Lockheed Martin, Amazon and Randstad are using Loxo to decrease time to fill, and cost per hire.
Loxo
Customers:
Amazon, Randstad, Cigna, Lockton, Onpartners, CT Assist
Amazon, Randstad, Cigna, Lockton, Onpartners, CT Assist
Loxo
Pricing:
Best For
Companies of all sizes looking for a user-friendly talent sourcing and outreach platform.
It's still incredibly difficult to find the best talent in many demographics: engineers, diversity candidates, experienced sales reps, etc.
Over the past decade, many companies have developed internal recruiting and sourcing functions to find the right talent. As the market got tight, companies could either rely on expensive third party recruiters or start to do the work themselves.
However, even these internal teams can be stretched thin as the demands of a growing organization take their toll on your recruiting team. This is where sourcing tools come in, and recruiting software in general. This software/services category is all about building the top of your recruiting funnel with quality passive applicants.
Some of these tools are trying to be better and/or cheaper than a LinkedIn Recruiter license. Some are trying to be your outsourced sourcing team. And some are doing both. All of them are what we’d consider to be part of an elite group of the best candidate sourcing software.
Regardless, these tools are all looking to increase your ability to build relationships with and hire the right people for your hardest to fill roles through AI sourcing, social media, .recruitment marketing, and various other talent sourcing methods.
If you’re looking to buy a tool or service to augment your sourcing capability, here are our thoughts on how to calculate the return on investment. Some key points in this calculator:
We highly suggest your use the video to the right in order to best understand how to use our calculator!
You can make your own copy of this google sheet here, or download in excel here.
Beyond the dollars and cents, there are also some non-economic benefits of using talent sourcing tools. For example, the vast majority of recruiters we talk to do not like sourcing. The idea of sending cold emails, and then playing phone tag with the people who are interested is very unappealing. Optimizing or outsourcing these tasks means more time for your team to do the things they like, as well as think strategically.
If you’re looking at buying a new sourcing tool, or using one of the managed services we have listed, you need to stay organized. Chances are, you’re going to do at least 3-5 demos. Unless you have a perfect memory, it’ll be tough to remember which tools have which features.
Taking notes is great, but we recommend you do it in a structured way that objectively captures which vendors have which features that matter to you. So, we’ve put together the below spreadsheet that comes with some sample questions, along with an easy to modify structure that will allow you to pick the right candidate sourcing tool for your business.
You can download the spreadsheet here.
There are two main ways that vendors in this space help with your top of funnel recruiting. Some of these companies offer tools that your recruiters and sourcers can use to find and engage with potential hires. These tools are very similar to LinkedIn Recruiter, but rely on emails vs inmails.
The second way companies in this category can help is by providing a managed service to drive more quality applicants into your pipeline. You tell them the profile you’re looking for, and they do most of the work until the candidate is ready to interview. The candidate either shows up in your inbox, or on your calendar.
While I think most of us would want to simply have calendar invites appear with the right candidates, there are some tradeoffs to the managed service approach. The first is price. The second is a potential loss of control in your process and how your employer brand is being portrayed. However, we don’t believe this is a major concern as every vendor we talked to wants to work closely with their customers to ensure the right messages are being sent to the right people in order to preserve employer branding.
Here are some of the points that we found (some) practitioners don’t understand when they first hear about sourcing tools:
Candidate sourcing is the act of proactively looking for potential candidates to fill open positions, oftentimes using recruiters or software platforms.
Yes, there are multiple different solutions for sourcing candidates. You can outsource sourcing to a recruiting firm, hire full-time recruiters to source for your company, or purchase a candidate sourcing software solution.
A candidate sourcing platform is a software solution designed to make your sourcing process more efficient by automating or outsourcing the parsing of job boards, databases, employee networks and social media websites.
Candidate sourcing tools make the hiring process much more efficient. By automating or outsourcing the busywork of scouring networks and databases for the best talent, your HR team will save lots of time. In addition, your team will see a decrease in time to fill thanks to a wider talent pool from sourcing efforts.
Recruiting software can supercharge your talent acquisition efforts. However, it’s one piece of your recruiting process, and doesn’t take the place of a strong human resources team when hiring and onboarding new employees. From the beginning of recruitment through employee onboarding, it’s important to have a human touch that takes into consideration the needs of the humans involved.
That said, leveraging machine learning and AI for your candidate sourcing is a great way to drastically scale your ability to get in front of the right applicants. If your team’s sourcing process lacks technology, you are at a huge disadvantage relative to your talent competition. Moreover, relying solely on job boards or employee referral programs is a surefire way to miss your recruitment goals.
Our advice is to make a list of your priorities, and figure out the 2-3 within your existing recruitment process that need the most help. Maybe it’s adding a recruiting crm, video interview software, or another type of recruiting tool. Whatever the case, we hope this page, and our site generally, is helpful for you to make the right decisions for your business. Enjoy!
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