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.
Have specific questions on HR tools? Join our free HR Tech community.
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 small fee if you click on vendor links on this page. Learn more
We put in the effort to make this guide awesome
53
Hours Researched
.svg)
9
Experts Consulted
.svg)
23
Vendors Reviewed
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
:
Paradox, the company behind Olivia the chatbot, is a long-lasting vendor in HR tech with a great reputation, a remarkable customer list, and a knack for always staying in the forefront of innovation.
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's AI chatbots can handle inbound and outbound candidates. You can screen talent using customizable questions and let the tool score and sort applicants on autopilot.
-1-1.png)
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
:
Brazen's chatbot is designed to be a gateway to your recruiters and overall company. Candidates are pre-qualified so your recruiters can follow up with those that stand out.
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
:
Espressive is a company specialized in consumer-like employee self-help for enterprises. Their chatbot can handle most questions around HR and IT for large teams.
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
:
Wade & Wendy's mission is to support companies in their talent acquisition and recruitment efforts through the use of technology, freeing up their time from the more menial and tasks.
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
:
As a talent intelligence platform powered by AI, Eightfold can review millions of candidate profiles in seconds, create a pipeline, and engage them through their HR chatbot.
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
:
Arya is developed by Leoforce, an AI recruiting company with a focus on select sourcing. There are several editions of Arya, making it a good fit for all company sizes.
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
Customers
Lenovo, American Century Investments, PeopleScout, Ecotalent, Polaris Alpha
Arya
Stats
- 10,000+ clients
- 40 million candidates sourced
- Over 50 professional social channels for sourcing
- Championed by 6,000 recruiters globally
Arya
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.
Best For
Arya is available in several editions (see Pricing), so it can easily meet the needs and budgets of enterprises and SMBs.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
This AI recruiting tool integrates with the main ATS vendors and has a remarkable focus on diversity hiring.
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
:
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.
%2022.29.36.png)
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
:
HireVue is one of the pioneers of the video interview software space. They entered the AI & Recruitment Automation game after acquiring AllyO in the fall of 2020.
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
:
Mya is one of the fastest-growing vendors in the recruiting chatbot space. They put a lot of time & effort into assets like Natural Language Processing, among other things.
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.
Why we love it
:
Ideal is a talent intelligence systems that empowers recruitment and HR teams with AI technology for every stage of the employee lifecycle.
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:
Looking for HR Tech Advice? Join our community
Ask questions, share knowledge, find new job opportunities, network and more in our closed HR Tech Buyers Community
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
If you want to be the smartest in the room when it comes to People, sign up for our weekly newsletter
The latest from our Blog
What Is HR Technology and Why Should You Care?
HR technology helps you manage better, fairer, and more efficiently. Here's how to streamline HR.
What is compensation management? – Everything your human resources team needs to know
In this article, we break down compensation management, from packages to strategy to software.
ADP Workforce Now vs. Namely — Which is your next all-in-one HR software?
Trying to decide between ADP and Namely for your new HR suite? Read this.