The Top 12 Best Recruiting and HR Chatbots - March 2021
The best HR chatbots, key metrics, pitfalls, and ROI calculations
Are you looking to decrease the time your recruiting team spends sourcing and screening candidates? Then you’ll probably want to look at adding a chatbot to your talent acquisition tech stack. Several studies have proven that AI-powered technologies bring tangible ROI to organizations that implement them.
Let’s take a look at some statistics:
- Chatbots can help you save time by handling as many as 80% of standard questions within minutes. This especially helpful knowing that over half of all applicants give up on a company if they haven’t received a response from them within two weeks of applying. Moreover, 31% of those candidates expect a customized message, which chatbots are capable of curating as they leverage existing data, machine learning, and natural language processing to make interactions personalized.
- Chatbots are only getting better and smarter. In fact, as many as 73% of candidates couldn’t tell they were interacting with a chatbot when they reached out to companies to ask basic questions pertaining to their applications.
- More companies are adopting AI-powered technologies to streamline their recruiting efforts. A recent survey found that 23% of companies who are already using AI-powered technology, were doing so in their HR department.
Now that we’ve established that chatbot technology is worth the investment, let’s take a look at the best recruiting chatbots available in 2021.
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We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. However we may earn a fee if you click on vendor links on this page.
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Featured in
Top Recruiting and HR Chatbots
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best HR chatbots per our research and expert council as of March 2021
Why we love it
:
Used by some of the world's top brands, Paradox's HR chatbot can do all kinds of useful things – schedule interviews in seconds, answer questions in any language, send reminders.
Olivia
Review
Olivia, by Paradox, is one of the most robust Recruiting Chatbots out there. Their founding team has been in HRTech basically forever and have built everything from job boards in the 90s to recruitment marketing software in the 00s, and now chatbots.
Olivia
Customers
Mcdonald’s, Unilever, Disney, Nestle, Aramark, CVS Health.
Olivia
Stats
Olivia
Pricing:
The pricing of Paradox’s planning and services isn’t disclosed on their website.
Best For
Olivia was designed specifically for recruitment teams with the need for high-volume hiring.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
XOR has an all-encompassing HR chatbot that boasts a wide range of features: reach out to talent using their preferred channels of communication, automate tasks, manage conversations directly, and much more.
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XOR
Review
XOR’s chatbot can automate many complex recruiting and HR workflows through various modes of communication including SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook, web, email, etc.
Their chatbot supports candidates screening, interview scheduling, employee onboarding, HR FAQ’s, and many other use cases. ~99.3% of candidates and employees who engage with XOR’s AI say it’s a great experience.
XOR
Customers
Among the hiring teams that use XOR, you'll find brands like McDonald's, Mars, Manpower, Ikea, Sutter Health, and UC Davis.
XOR
Stats
Some of the wins that XOR has managed to achieve for clients include:
- 33% faster time-to-hire
- 50% lower hiring costs
- 90% net promoter score from candidates
XOR
Pricing:
XOR's pricing is based on how many recruitment and HR seats you'll need, but is not disclosed upfront.
Best For
XOR is best-suited for large organizations.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Humanly is a unified conversational AI platform that is simple, personalized, and quick to deploy. Using its chatbot, you can automate tasks like screening and scheduling, engagement, and reference checks.
Humanly
Review
Humanly has designed an AI powered chatbot that is specifically-built for mid market companies who need a tool that is simple and fast to implement. Their product will allow your recruiting team to screen and schedule candidates in a DEI friendly manner that also integrates directly with your ATS so that recruiters don't need to log into another system.
They are doing all sorts of interesting things including using the data from your performance management system to continually get better at screening candidates so you can make the right hires. If you're a mid market company looking to add a chatbot, text recruiting, or AI capabilities to your talent acquisition stack, check them out.
Humanly
Customers
Humanly is used by Swiss Monkey, Armoire, Tiny Pulse, Oakland Roots, and BPM, among others.
Humanly
Stats
According to their website, Humanly has helped their customers with the following wins:
- 60 hours saved in scheduling and screening for each open job
- An average candidate experience score of 4.8 out of 5
- Increase in diversity of the candidates at the top of the funnel
- 95% of references complete background checks within 48 hours
Best For
Medium-sized companies that want to streamline their recruiting processes with a special eye towards reference checks. Humanly is especially tailored for businesses that already have sourcing sites and an ATS in place, but need a solution to connect the two and accelerate things.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
HireVue claims to cut down your hiring time by 90% with its conversational AI and workflow recruiting automation. It's mobile-first, inclusive, transparent, and comes with an end-to-end assistance.
HireVue
Review
AllyO’s chatbot has had over 10 million conversations with candidates, and boasts customers like FedEx and Cheesecake factory. The company’s founders left jobs at McKinsey and Google to start this business. While doing so, they went as far as to start a staffing company to understand their customer needs, and were the first “candidates” to apply through their bot to better understand the candidate experience.
HireVue
Customers
Intel, Honeywell, Randstad, Boston Red Sox, Unilever, and more.
HireVue
Stats
Back when HireVue's chat-based solution was still AllyO, they helped a 15,000-employee company achieve:
- 30% reduction in time-to-find
- 25% reduction in time-to-fill
- Average of 26 hours per person per week saved through automation.
Best For
HireVue mostly serves customers in the enterprise space.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Ideal lives up to its name. It's an exemplary recruitment chatbot that lets you send questionnaires, gauge a candidate's competency based on the replies, and help you screen qualified candidates.
Ideal
Review
Ideal’s chatbot saves recruiting time by screening and staging candidates throughout the hiring process, all done through their AI powered assistant. Also worth checking out is their ATS re-discovery product which will go into your ATS, see who is a good fit for your existing reqs, resurface/contact them, screen them, and put them in front of your recruiters.
Ideal
Customers
Bell, Dish, Staples, Novant Health, Purolator.
Ideal
Stats
- Automate 70% of your top-of-funnel interactions
- 90% engagement rate
- At S&P Data, they helped reduce time-to-hire by 25 days.
- They also increased their retention rates by 20%
Best For
Ideal is made for high-volume hiring in any industry.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Eightfold is an AI-powered talent intelligence platform that uses top-notch technology to solve HR problems. It's trusted by global enterprises like LG and Booking.com and helps companies build productive, automated workflows.
eightfold
Review
Eightfold’s recruiting chatbot is designed to engage job seekers on the career site to answer pressing questions, and direct them to the best fit jobs for their interests and background. Their bot can also screen candidates. This is just one module within a broader recruitment marketing platform that is centered around a dynamic career site designed to convert more applicants into the right jobs.
eightfold
Customers
Air Asia, Capital One, Mercado Libre, Tata Communications, Booking.com, Bayer
eightfold
Stats
- Eightfold is currently valued between $500M and $1B
- They raised $125M in Series D funding
- At Ui Path, their product was used to increase the no. of positions filled per recruiter every quarter by 50%.
Best For
Eightfold is mainly thought of as a product for enterprise clients and large organizations (2,000+ employees).
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Espressive's employee assistant chatbot aims to improve employee productivity by immediately resolving their issues, at any time of the day. But that's not all. It also walks employees through workflows, such as vacation requests and onboarding.
Espressive
Review
Espressive’s solution is specifically designed to help employees get answers to their most common questions (PTO, benefits, etc), without burdening the HR team. Employees can access Espressive's AI-based virtual support agent (VSA) Barista on any device or browser. Barista also has a unique omni-channel ability enabling employees to interact via Slack, Teams, and more.
Espressive
Customers
Dexcom, Guardant, First American, Survey Monkey
Espressive
Stats
- Nearly 85% employee adoption
- 40-60% reductions in calls to HR and IT
Best For
Enterprise level companies looking for a top HR chatbot should take a look at Espressive.
Worth Checking Out:
Customers can take advantage of their constantly evolving Employee Language Cloud which includes nearly 1 billion employee phrases across HR and other departments across the enterprise.
Why we love it
:
After acquiring Smashfly, Symphony Talent added an HR chatbot to their offering, covering CRM-functionality, career sites, programmatic advertising, and talent assessments on a single tool.
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Symphony Talent
Review
The team that pioneered the recruitment marketing software space is back with the first chatbot that is tightly integrated into a leading candidate relationship management (CRM) offering.
Please note, this solution is only for companies who’re using Symphony Talent and is not available as a standalone offering.
Symphony Talent
Customers
Dick's Sporting Goods, FCA, RioTinto, Mars.
Symphony Talent
Stats
- Smashfly was used by more than 600 customers worldwide.
- They helped Dick's Sporting Goods achieve an 80% reduction in cost per applicant.
- At Ecolab, they assisted with a 25% increase in talent network leads.
- This solution was also instrumental to get an 86% reduction in hiring time at Regis Corporation.
Best For
This solution is designed to work with businesses of all sizes, but it's particularly good for recruitment teams that see digital advertising as a big component of their recruitment strategy.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Brazen's recruiting chatbot lets you save time by having live chats with qualified candidates anytime, anywhere. One of its standout features is that the chatbot provides candidates with replies in not only text but also video form.
Brazen
Review
Brazen’s bot is designed to convert more career site traffic into applications in your ATS by answering candidate's most pressing questions, or navigating them through the application.They’ve found their bot engages 40% more career site visitors than just asking candidates to apply, and that candidates who’ve engaged with the bot are 100-200% more likely to be hired.
Brazen
Customers
CVS Health, Amazon, KPMG, Deloitte, UPS, American Airlines, Google, and more.
Brazen
Stats
- Founded in 2007
- $13.4 million in funding
- Used by Fortune 500 companies
Best For
Large organizations with high-volume hiring needs.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Wade and Wendy focuses on automating recruitment processes. It's available to chat with talent 24/7 and will source, screen, and recommend qualified candidates to your team in an instant.
Wade and Wendy
Review
Wade & Wendy’s recruiting chatbot helps your team by sourcing passive candidates, and screening candidates that come in via your careers page or sourcing activities. Their solution learns over time which profiles are a good fit for a given role which results in better and better matches. Overall this is designed to save your TA team time, and allow them to focus on more strategic initiatives.
Wade and Wendy
Customers
Randtsad, Comcast, E-Trade Financial Corporation
Wade and Wendy
Stats
Wade and Wendy
Pricing
The pricing of Wade & Wendy’s plans isn’t disclosed on their website.
Best For
Wade & Wendy is a good bet for large recruiting teams within companies and recruitment agencies.
Worth Checking Out:
Wendy & Wade also puts much effort into the candidate experience, seeing a part of their offering as a personal career guide for job seekers.
Why we love it
:
Mya helps you recruit fast and reduce your hiring costs by automating candidate engagement in a very humanistic way. The fact that it seamlessly integrates with most applicant tracking systems is just the cherry on the cake.
Mya
Review
Mya has grown insanely fast with $32 mm of venture funding, and has apparently invested much of that capital into R&D as their offering boasts a 79% reduction in time to interview, a 93% applicant completion rate, and many more interesting stats.
Mya
Customers
L’Oréal, Adecco, Advantage Solutions, Sevenstep, Comfort Keepers.
Mya
Stats
- Used by hundred of enterprises
- 40 clients among the Fortune 500 company list
- 5x increase in funnel conversion
- At L'Oréal, they helped reduce the average time spent per applicant by 40 minutes.
Best For
Companies that want to leverage the power of AI and conversational screening in their recruitment efforts.
Worth Checking Out:
Leading chatbot for recruiting screens.
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Our Advice
Getting an HR Chatbot is a no brainer for talent acquisition teams. This concept has absolutely exploded in the marketing realm during the last few years - how many times a day do you see a chatbot pop up on your screen from a company’s site? They’re so popular because they work in driving leads down the funnel. In the world of talent attraction, it’s the same concept - get more leads down the funnel by engaging passive candidates.
Beyond conversion, there are so many use cases a recruiting chatbot can help with. What we have glossed over above are the non-recruiting jobs like onboarding, answering employee questions, new hire checkins, employee engagement, and internal mobility. The best hr chatbots are extremely powerful, and only getting better.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re serious about adding an HR Chatbot to your recruiting tech stack. Whether it’s to cut down on scheduling, and screening time, drive more applicants into the ATS, or one of the many other use cases, the next step will be to get a demo with one of our pre-vetted vendors to take a deep dive into their product. You can use this spreadsheet to stay organized as you do demos.
Best Recruiting and HR Chatbots
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