13 Best Recruitment Automation Software Tools (Q4 2023)

As a rapidly scaling startup, affordability and scalability are non-negotiables to us in picking out recruiting software. So, when we discovered that Manatal starts at $15 per user per month and offers a free trial, we couldn’t help but be intrigued. This recruitment automation software covers everything from AI-driven recommendations to advanced filtering and candidate engagement—an extensive range of functionality rarely found at such a budget-friendly price point.

Similar to LinkedIn Recruiter, Manatal boasts various filters to refine searches and a convenient option to save filters for future use. Yet, what truly caught our attention was the ability to share these filters with other recruiters—a feature that sets Manatal apart from competitors. Having worked in staffing agencies where collaborative searching and filtering were run-of-the-mill tasks, it’s easy to imagine how much more streamlined our work could have been if we had adopted Manatal at that time.

For anyone spending their days navigating dozens of tabs to update candidates’ outdated contacts, Manatal’s Profile Enrichment feature could be a lifesaver. Right after we tapped on the Enrich profile button, the system used AI to identify and extract information from the candidate's publicly available social media accounts such as LinkedIn, GitHub, and StackOverflow, and their profiles were up-to-date in a matter of minutes.

While branded career pages and candidate matches are common in the recruiting software marketplace, Manatal impressed us with its built-in referral management system that lets users enable, disable, and track referral programs with a few clicks. The cherry on top is the post-referral and post-application candidate communication functionality. The system ticks all the boxes for email signatures, customization, and templates.

However, we found it a bit inconvenient that Manatal’s mass email campaigns do not offer options for scheduling beforehand or selecting recipients in bulk. While we have tried out (and loved) both Boolean search and advanced search the platform offered, it's disappointing we can't use them simultaneously. Regarding its candidate matching tool, we spotted a drop in accuracy when challenging the AI with non-English roles. While excelling with English resumes, it didn't perform as well when dealing with resumes in French.

10,000+ companies, including Unilever, Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.

Manatal has three plans, including two with fixed prices. The exact costs are as follows (billed annually):

• Professional plan: $15/user/month for up to 15 jobs and 10,000 candidates, with unlimited guests.
• Enterprise plan: $35/user/month for unlimited jobs, candidates, and guests.‍‍
• Custom plan: Includes all Enterprise features, plus custom features, integrations, and support.

It’s hard not to notice myInterview in the video interview software space, as it’s one of the fastest-growing players with 10,000 customers onboarded since its relatively late market entry in 2016. But the platform is even more than caught up with competitors in the recruiting automation tech space and for the past 2 years, has rolled out a high-quality set of AI tools: Smart Shortlisting, Personality Insights, and Phrase Search and Filtering.

Navigating myInterview requires little to no training. There was a Smart Shortlisting survey in which we filled out the most important aspects of the role, for example, creative and assertive, in ranked order. Crafting interview questions was also user-friendly, but what we truly appreciated were myInterview’s pre-built question templates. They made things as easy as pie. The final touch was branding: we added our logo and branding colors, and voila! We were free to do other work, knowing the system would store all candidates’ responses, score personality, and rank responses based on job-match criteria, enabling us to easily review and decide what happens next with the interviewees.

Equally, if not more, important when assessing an AI-based recruiting tech is whether all the automation work is accurate and ethical. What's the use of being fast when the results are just wrong? To remove any doubt, we decided to examine myInterview’s AI work and we couldn’t be happier with our findings.

myInterview trains their AI using a database of 30k real interviews. This means the algorithm is sophisticated in analyzing interview transcriptions and identifying personality behavior markers while taking into account elements like intonation and speaking speed. Seeing that machine learning also does not take into account candidates' physical appearance when doing personality evaluations is an important touch.

Have you ever found yourself buried in piles of responses while searching for particular responses? We’ve been there—relying on Google Drive to store all candidates’ video interviews. It was nearly impossible not to get frustrated and feel helpless each time we did such searches. Thus, it was a bittersweet moment when we found myInterview’s Phrase Search and Filtering. The fact that there’s a tool that could help us refine candidate searches using specific keywords from their interviews and even pinpoint moments where these keywords are spoken—why hadn’t we found it sooner?

However, myInterview disappointed us when it discontinued both its free-forever plan and free trial in early 2023. It now provides two subscription options, and only the most expensive one has access to the intelligence tools. The only consoling part left is that the system still maintains its starting price at $99 per month, which is a reasonable and accessible rate considering its offering.

As a trade-off for being exceptional in video interviewing by being hyper-focused on this niche, myInterview is not so effective when it comes to other aspects of recruiting such as candidate search or resume screening. Given this approach, we had expected to see great integration capabilities from the software. myInterview can pair with 15+ HR systems, which is not bad at all. The thing that makes us not so happy is that all these integrations come with an additional cost.

Over 10,000 companies, such as McDonalds, Billabong, and 7-Eleven have used myInterview.

myInterview offers two plans, with pricing starting at $99 per month for an annual subscription.

When we landed on Fetcher’s dashboard, the first thing that struck us was its straightforward and user-friendly interface. Fetcher requires little to no training and support to get you up and ready to navigate the platform. We logged into our account, headed to the sourcing tool, set out job requirements, and were all set to review potential candidates the system sent.

But what truly blew us away about this recruitment automation software was its sourcing tool. An AI that carefully picks out profiles that match our given requirements, followed by a team of experienced sourcers reviewing the AI’s work before sending us the final batch. Out of the numerous recruitment tools we have looked into, Fetcher and Rolebot stand alone in offering this approach. And Fetcher even outshines Rolebot for its flexibility: while Rolebot restricts you to a fixed 15 vetted candidates per day, Fetcher grants users the freedom to determine their desired volume. Speaking from my own experience working in recruitment agencies where dealing with time-sensitive roles is routine, this feature is a huge plus.

Fetcher's candidate outreach tools stand out as well. It’s got all the essentials—automation, email templates with a sprinkle of personalization, and reminders. The analytics aren’t the best, but powerful enough and easy on the eyes with real-time stats on unvetted profiles, news responses, gender and demographic estimates, and search performance.

The platform also offers several ways for users to reach out and get help. You can use email, built-in chat, and native note features. What truly impressed us, though, was that every user can request regular meetings with their sourcing team for additional assistance.

Nevertheless, there are times when Fetcher leaves us scratching our heads with its slow or, worse, freezing dashboard caused by system bugs and glitches. As you might have also noticed, Fetcher is more about sourcing passive candidates than offering a full-cycle recruitment tool, you won’t find native features for job posting, interviews, and onboarding here.

When it comes to pricing, Fetcher sure is not cheap. Our research suggests it could cost a minimum of $1,000 per month, and what a shame it only accepts annual subscriptions. But when compared to Rolebot which basically does the same thing, Fetcher costs three times less.

Fetcher is used by over 500 businesses worldwide, including Andela, Frame.io, Magnite, Foursquare, and CarGurus.

Fetcher has custom pricing based on the number of seats your team needs and the number of vetted candidate leads sourced. Based on our research, the subscription is on an annual basis and could start at $12,000 for 3,000 Fetcher-sourced candidates, but you can request to pay for a month to see how it goes.

Paradox isn’t the only player in the conversational AI market, but what truly sets it apart is Olivia's exceptional intelligence. While she can't replace human recruiters, having a tireless virtual assistant like her in the hiring process of large companies does bring substantial benefits.

We heard Olivia AI can answer candidate questions in over 100 languages. So, late one night at 10 pm, we decided to test this out by sending the AI two texts, one in Spanish and another in Vietnamese. She didn’t just pass the challenge, she aced it! Fast and helpful responses in both languages without breaking a sweat.

What also impressed us was how accessible this AI is. Whether job seekers are on job boards or social sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, a simple scan of a QR code or a click on a call-to-action button directly from their mobile screens will put them in contact with Olivia.

To see how the recruiting automation works in real life, we let it handle the initial tasks for filling our entry-level roles. And Olivia did prove her worth: The AI suggests fitting roles based on candidates’ queries, gathers crucial info (names, emails, resumes), and schedules interviews—all with a human-like touch.

Paradox didn’t disappoint us in terms of integration capabilities either. As expected from an enterprise-tailored recruiting tool, it can connect with dozens of popular ATSs, CRM systems, background check services, video interviewing platforms, email, calendar, and messaging tools. It also checks the box for custom integration support.

However, there are still a few things we don’t like about Paradox. While it’s not uncommon for recruitment software to undisclose its pricing structure, we wish that Paradox at least provided a free trial for users to evaluate the software before purchase. Additionally, its typical starting price of around $1,000 might be a hefty sum for SMBs. But, to be fair, competitors like HireVue start at much higher prices.

Lastly, while Paradox is proven to be incredibly helpful for complex, high-volume, and time-sensitive recruitment, we must warn you not to overuse it for critical candidate interactions like interviews. Above all, a dehumanized recruitment process is the road best left untraveled.

Unilever, McDonald’s, Amazon, 3M, CVS Health, Nestlé, Lowe’s

Pricing is not disclosed upfront. You will have to schedule a demo to get custom pricing based on your company size.

We love the current shape of VidCruiter's recruitment solution—it's easy to use, loaded with automation, and comes with strong support. The platform stands out with its comprehensive recruitment suite, covering everything from applicant tracking and quick apply to scheduling, video interviews, reference checking, and hosting virtual hiring events.

Our favorite part? Each tool is super easy to use, and it’s built to last. Whether you want to own the whole suite from the beginning or prefer marrying specific modules as starters, you can do so. Our only complaint is that it doesn’t offer a trial. But to be fair, this is a common practice among enterprise-centric recruitment tools.

We know how hard it can be to satisfy both worlds. But VidCruiter impressed us on both the employer and candidate sides. When we went undercover as applicants, we liked the ability to one-click apply directly from Indeed, full-control scheduling options where we could choose when to take the interview and in which format, and a full record of our application status—all without needing to download apps or anything else.

As we navigated the tool as an employer, from setting up career pages to arranging interviews, evaluating candidates’ responses, and onboarding new hires, VidCruiter presented a simple and clean UI that required little to no training to get familiar with.

While manual evaluations are required for video interview assessments, we liked how VidCruiter equipped hiring managers and TAs with standardized questionnaires, candidate assessment criteria, and automated reference checks to ease their workload. Fans of video interview tech will know how popular VidCruiter is. The vendor boasts one of the largest shares of this market with over 100,000 users to date.

VidCruiter is not the type of tool you can purchase and ta-da! It’s ready to use. Effective implementation could take days or even weeks. However, what we truly appreciate is the level of support and the customizable outcomes of the software, which make the wait worthwhile. You’ll get a dedicated customer success manager to ensure the software aligns with your recruitment workflows and not the other way around.

As much as we appreciate their approach to recruiting automation—they won’t use AI to "make" decisions on behalf of a person—VidCruiter’s AI features fall short. Unlike other enterprise-oriented solutions such as Paradox and HireVue, VidCruiter doesn’t offer conversational AI or a chatbot. We don’t see any tools for candidate recommendation and skills-matching, which are found in much cheaper solutions like Manatal either. VidCruiter is also not suitable for internal recruitment.

Lionsgate, Samsung, US Foods, Lowe's, Johns Hopkins University.

VidCruiter pricing is custom, so you need to contact the sales team for a price quote.

We were immediately drawn to hireEZ (formerly known as Hiretual) for multiple compelling reasons. Right off the bat, its vast candidate pool which boasts over 800 million candidates sourced from more than 45 web platforms truly captivated us. So it’s safe to say you likely won't run short of options; if anything, you’re spoilt for choice here.

Next, the platform hooked us with its flexibility to cater to diverse recruiting styles. We could navigate through Boolean strings or take advantage of the AI filters. Unlike Manatal, which won’t allow us to use both searches at the same time, hireEZ does. Not to mention, the filtering the platform offers is just as robust, with options to source candidates based on job titles, skills, locations, experience, and keywords.

We found the EZ Rediscovery another cool touch. The AI presented a good list of engaged candidate suggestions based on our preferences. It’s also nice seeing it even tidied up our ATS database: The system detected and eliminated data duplicates and enriched candidate profiles with its latest findings.

While we wouldn’t say the newly added tool EZGPT is amazing, it did bring convenience as we crafted emails to engage candidates. If we had to pick our favorite hireEZ engagement feature, it would be that the tool doesn’t put any limit on the number of follow-ups you can have. You’re allowed to send as many as you need.

hireEZ did let us down twice with its glitches during the platform’s two latest quarterly product updates. We were also quite shocked to figure out that a sourcing tool with a talent pool of over 800M candidates has no integration with popular job sites like Wellfound. When it comes to pricing, just like Paradox, hireEZ only offers annual billing, and according to our research, the pricing typically starts at around $10K, which is on the pricey side.

600+ companies, including Diversant, FI Consulting, and Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

HireEZ pricing is customized and billed annually. It typically starts at $10,000, according to our research. They also require a minimum of 2 seats.

At first glance, GrabJobs appears much like any ordinary job board, and for the most part, that holds true. However, the subtle and significant automation tweaks, tailor-made for recruiters, turned our experience testing the software into something delightfully smooth.

Like most standard job boards, GrabJobs lets users post jobs on its website. However, unlike ZipRecruiter, which charges $12 to $16 per post daily, GrabJobs offers this perk along with a handful of other features for free. One noteworthy feature is its auto-distribution of job ads to over 20 other job boards across 50 countries—so, one click for 20x more visibility. It also grants us free access to design a company career page our way. The page sure is not the most visually appealing, but it does suffice for those seeking simplicity and a basic branding touch.

If you’ve used ZipRecruiter or Indeed, you know job posting, CV search, and native candidate communication are common features. But have you ever thought of having these features bundled with an interview chatbot and scheduling in a centralized dashboard—all at a pretty wallet-friendly price of $125 per month? That’s precisely what GrabJobs offers.

The interview chatbot truly lives up to our expectations: it engages with interested job seekers and, based on our set screening criteria, identifies the best matches. Compared to our traditional way of gluing our eyes for hours to screen dozens if not hundreds of profiles, the chatbot made us truly enjoy its company.

GrabJobs’ interview scheduling tool is quite modest compared to top vendors like VidCruiter or Paradox, but that’s more than enough for most small teams, and it shouldn’t be as manual and tedious as using free scheduling apps like Google Calendar when it comes to bulk and automated scheduling.

GrabJobs doesn’t challenge its prospects with a mysterious pricing scheme. It’s upfront about how much it’ll charge you per plan and even offers a freebie and a 14-day free trial that only starts after your first job post goes live.

But while we loved the recruiting automation software’s generous offerings, the customer support let us down: GrabJobs offers no immediate assistance. Yes, no phone support or dedicated CSM even if you pay for its priciest plan. All the help users get is from live chat and email support.

The lack of integration options is an even bigger problem, as it could disrupt the full capabilities of your recruitment suite. GrabJobs can only integrate with job boards for job distribution, and Gmail and Outlook for calendar sync. We get that expecting an extensive integration list from an SMB-centric tool is unreasonable, but manual data transfer to our ATS? Definitely not a pleasant task.

20,000+ companies, including 7-Eleven, DHL, and Delta.

GrabJobs is a freemium recruitment platform. You can register, post jobs, and receive applicant profiles for free. You only pay once you want to contact applicants. The pricing varies per country, but a monthly subscription in the US starts at $125.

Findem is really doing something unique in the world of recruiting automation software: attribute-based sourcing. And we’re glad to have discovered this product.

Unlike other recruiting automation platforms, Findem's machine learning is trained to provide relevant results based on user intent. Our experience using this tool reminded us of classic Google search: It nailed our challenge by providing sufficient talent even when we gave it attributes “have startup experience” instead of direct keywords. Utilizing these attributes in its bulk outreach, the system even made it ridiculously straightforward to personalize emails at scale.

Apart from attribute-based sourcing, we loved how Findem didn’t get rid of the traditional keyword and Boolean searches. Users have the freedom to choose how they source their candidates, whether it’s using machine learning, or sticking with time-honored filters such as location (country and city/state), company, and must-have and nice-to-have skills.

Findem has recently introduced an AI Assistant—it functions similarly to ChatGPT but thankfully, after sending it a handful of prompts, we’re relieved the AI doesn’t seem to produce “hallucinated” outputs. When we ask specific questions about a candidate's profile, it provides relevant answers based on the available information. We haven’t run into any made-up responses, and the fact the AI delivers results within seconds just shows how helpful it could be to streamline users’ sourcing process.

We also loved that, whatever the plan, Findem gets you a dedicated account manager. And if your team’s time zones are crazily diverse like ours, you get to love the availability of designated support in several continents this vendor offers. They got back to us in a matter of minutes.

However, we've had our fair share of “meeting” bugs while using Findem sourcing. For instance, its candidate demographic graph really tested our patience—it kept loading for several minutes until we grew weary and gave up.

While Findem’s search results were pretty impressive, we couldn’t escape the fact that some profiles we received haven’t been updated for a while. Though the software provides options for users to manually “remind” it to update specific profiles, we had hoped it would proactively take care of this matter by itself on a regular basis.

If you’re after hourly workers, it’s best to look elsewhere. We wouldn’t recommend Findem to SMBs and startups either, as alongside the absence of a free trial, the recruiting automation software demands a 1-year upfront payment. This could make it too pricey for such teams to afford.

Findem's customer base is predominantly made up of enterprises, yet they also have a strong track record of serving growing startups, SMBs, and even solopreneurs. Some of their notable customers include RingCentral, Medallia, Intuitive, Adobe, Booster, Armorblox, and Plume.

Findem pricing is not publicly disclosed and can only be obtained by requesting a demo. However, based on our research, Findem pricing starts at $8,000 for staffing agencies and $10,000 for in-house recruitment teams, billed annually upfront.

We're actually surprised by just how much HireVue has to offer. Tailored to organizations with at least a thousand staff, the recruitment suite has a knack for simplifying the entire recruitment process, from sourcing to screening, scheduling, and interviewing candidates on a large scale.

HireVue’s on-demand interviewing tool is a real deal. Branding, a behavior-based question library, practice sessions and instructions for candidates, evaluation guides, and the option to collect feedback after interviews—all are housed in one mobile-friendly place.

The conversational AI is another plus. It checks all the boxes of a robust recruiting chatbot we could ask for. When we interacted with the AI as candidates, leaving a message resulted in the AI providing some great suggestions on matching job opportunities. Similar to what we’ve seen in Paradox’s chatbot Olivia, this AI also eases the burden on recruiters by automating SMS or WhatsApp invites, reminders, and updates.

If your hiring needs frequently involve graduates, developers, or engineering personnel, HireVue might be worth a try. Thanks to a wide selection of recruitment automation tools, the platform is versatile enough to cater to such needs. If you’re based in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, we’ve got some good news: HireVue just acquired Modern Hire—an interviewing technology vendor that has served 700+ big organizations and has offices in Paris, London, Singapore, and Australia in May 2023. So now, not only can you expect more features to come but also better support for attracting talent globally, not just within the U.S.

When it comes to pricing, though, HireVue took us by surprise with its unexpectedly high cost. There sure is nothing wrong with an enterprise-focused solution lacking a free trial. But, considering its monthly pricing starts at $35,000, we can totally relate to those feeling reluctant and considering “safer” alternatives like VidCruiters or Paradox ($1,000/month). In addition to that, we believe HireVue could have done better with its integration options. The recruitment automation software currently can talk with a very humble list of apps and, its ATS integrations are only available for the enterprise plan.

HireVue has customers in a variety of industries ranging from aviation to retail. Some popular names include Amazon, Unilever, Vodafone, Beacon Health System, SmartLynx Airlines, The Co-operative Bank, and National Safety Apparel.

HireVue has two pricing plans:

• Essentials: This plan starts at $35,000 per month for a company with 2500-7500 employees. It includes live and on-demand interviewing features, custom branding, and single language configuration.‍
• ‍Enterprise: This plan is suitable for companies with over 7500 employees. Pricing is custom and you would have to request a demo to receive a quote. In addition to all the features of the Essentials plan, this plan comes with scheduling, a chatbot, pre-built ATS integrations, and analytics, among others.

SeekOut stands tall among talent search platforms and is often compared to LinkedIn for its robust—if not superior—sourcing capabilities, and at a much more attractive pricing point.

SeekOut provides access to over 780 million candidate profiles, and what we really admire is that this number keeps growing each time we swing by the platform. This is impressive, but still not as impressive as SeekOut's search tool which comes with three built-in filtering options: PowerFilters, custom Boolean searches, and AI Robot. This gives you the freedom to choose your preferred method for seeking candidates, whether it’s with AI or the classic search approach.

It’s also really cool to discover that while lots of vendors neglect internal recruitment when developing their tech, SeekOut reminds us of Eightfold for being one of the rare few offering solid features for talent rediscovery.

SeekOut’s attention to detail is another thing that stands out when using it for tech candidate sourcing. Instead of typical LinkedIn-like profiles, the system introduced us to candidates’ related work experience, code contributions, conference participation, academic papers, and more. If we could go back to our days as technical headhunters, we’d bring SeekOut and this level of detail to our sourcing, at all costs.

Frankly speaking, there’s nothing special about SeekOut's Chrome extension. You can source, organize, enrich, and export candidate profiles. SeekOut used to offer it for free for anyone but now it’s only available for active SeekOut users, with a maximum monthly quota of 10 verified candidates’ social links and emails.

The main drawback for SeekOut is the significant drop in search quality when searching for candidates outside the U.S. and Canada. Compared to its long-time rival LinkedIn, SeekOut still has a long way to go with its global search capabilities.

SeekOut’s sourcing screen also crashed on us when testing. Thankfully, it happened only once and the vendor was also quick to address the issue. Lastly, to the SeekOut development team: if you haven’t started working on releasing new features for candidate relationship management, you should do so now. Otherwise, you risk being left behind by competitors like hireEZ and Findem.

1,000+ companies, most in the U.S., and are enterprise-sized.

SeekOut has three plans with pricing undisclosed.

• Premium: Access to 441M+ candidates, diversity sourcing, hiring tools, people insights, contact info for 500 candidates/month, and profile exporting for 5,000 profiles/month.
• Premium Tech: Includes all Premium features, plus tech talent tools like Coder Score rankings, GitHub search, direct access to candidate's code, and tailored insights.‍‍
• SeekOut Expert: Tailored for Engineering and Life Sciences hiring.

Loxo has been the first-choice recruiting automation software of many companies for over a decade, and we can see why. Its machine learning is seriously smart.

Our experience using the sourcing tech was very positive. We fed the system our job description (JD), and the AI took center stage: analyzing the JD, initiating searches, and ranking matching candidates. Given how speedy things moved along, we didn't hold high expectations for the AI’s sourcing results. However, reviewing candidate profiles left us pleasantly surprised: How could they be this good?

If you’re a fan of free recruitment tech (really, who isn’t?), you'll likely find Loxo a solid choice. The platform offers a generous free plan with access to ATS and recruiting CRM, unlimited seats, unlimited jobs/projects, and a Chrome extension to help you kickstart your recruitment efforts.

Speaking of Loxo’s Chrome extension: while profile imports from platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Github are typical, we were drawn to its ability to tag candidates with keywords and leave notes as you find them. This hits home to any TA! Say you come across a super potential candidate and find information on their social media that could personalize your outreach email. Tagging them as "high potential" with a note on how to approach them can be a game-changer.

As a free user, we were very satisfied with Loxo’s customer support. We emailed them twice, and both times the team responded within 3 hours. The help center content is also always clear and up-to-date. Seriously, the platform leaves no room for complaints on support, not even one bit.

However, while other vendors are moving forward with mobile-responsive, browser-based designs, Loxo is still stuck with its mobile app offerings. They announced plans for an Android app, but it has seemed like a broken promise. Regarding its iOS app, while functional, we couldn’t help but get frustrated with its frequent crashes and loading issues.

Loxo's pricing is by far the most detailed we’ve seen. However, in comparison, it is quite expensive, with many features locked as add-ons. Our biggest complaint is the lack of blind screening features. Loxo has no tool for auto-anonymizing resumes, meaning you might need to manually mask personal data or risk having candidate assessments influenced by hiring biases. Yikes!

Loxo is used by over 13,000 recruiting organizations, including Amazon, Randstad, Cigna, Lancor, Bank of America, and Maxar.

Loxo offers a free plan and two paid plans, starting at $299 per seat per month when billed annually.

Gem is among the few unbeatable solutions that both in-house enterprise recruitment teams and staffing agencies can utilize to handle talent sourcing at scale. The recruiting automation software helps users effectively discover qualified candidates from various channels, create personalized messaging, visualize recruitment pipelines, and monitor essential hiring metrics.

The first feature that earns Gem a spot in our list is its "Likely to Move" filter. Not all talent wants to explicitly indicate they are open to new job opportunities, so when compared with the popular candidate search platform LinkedIn, Gem truly shines with its ability to analyze candidates' profiles and identify those more likely to change jobs. Being one of the first to approach candidates at the right time—you know how powerful timing is when it comes to recruiting passive talent.

We think any sourcer and talent acquisition specialist would also appreciate the auto-suggestion feature Gem offers. There’s no need to tweak the search filter to find more matching candidates. The auto-suggestion—true to its name—based on searched profiles users have liked, will auto-add matching talent to relevant projects for them to review.

The level of personalization and automation options Gem provides in its engagement tool sets it apart from competitors. We were worried it was going to sound robotic or be too bothersome with manual email sending. Thankfully, it’s anything but that. Every email campaign we set up is elegantly carried out with Gem’s auto-sequences and vast options for email customizations.

However, we can’t ignore Gem’s lack of automated sequences for LinkedIn InMail and its strict annual-only payment policy. For those planning to use both Gem and LinkedIn Recruiter for sourcing, these could be a fair reason to rethink your investment. And, while we’re at it, Gem says its AI features are still in the development process (in other words: the software lacks AI capabilities).

Gem falls short in supporting internal hiring or referrals. This isn’t a deal breaker, though, as this is not uncommon in the candidate sourcing software marketplace (SeekOut and HireEZ also lack such tools). But seriously, no bulk edit feature to remove work emails from Gem’s engagement campaigns? This could either result in a handful of manual clicks to get rid of those emails or create a really awkward situation for the passive candidates when your email pitching new job opportunities to them lands in their employer's inbox.

400+ companies, including Coinbase, Slack, Asana, Dropbox, Lyft, Indeed, Pinterest, Doordash

The cost of Gem's modules is undisclosed. You can reach out to their sales team for a quote.

If you happen to be in industries like retail and food service where dealing with time-sensitive and hourly roles is part of your daily life, Workstream can lend an extremely helpful hand.

It’s hard not to be impressed by Workstream’s text-based sourcing. The tool didn’t disappoint as we navigated the application process as job seekers. Instead of the commonly seen “submit resume” button, we could scan a QR code or simply send the system a text to apply.

Workstream’s mobile app is smooth and user friendly.. But is it perfect? No: Though it only happened briefly, the app did crash once when we were testing it on our phone. When testing it from the employer’s point of view, the search functionality sometimes took quite a while to respond. Still, we should emphasize how nice it is to customize career pages and then publish them on 2,500 partner job boards in one shot. So, overall, while the whole experience wasn’t the best, we found Workstream more than good enough for most recruiters and TAs to work with daily.

We also have to give credit to Workstream’s Smart Screening. We could imagine how thankful teams hiring hourly workers would feel using this feature. The level of efficiency in filtering out candidates who don't meet specific criteria is truly amazing. It handles things like submitting a video introduction and answering targeted questions. While looking pretty simple, those actually having to vet part-timers would agree with us: this feature is so underrated. You can’t find a feature of similar quality oriented towards hourly staff in other leading recruitment tools like VidCruiter or Greenhouse.

Sometimes all you want is a solution that is simple enough for people interacting with it to find their time is valued, and Workstream provides that. The platform is built with a focus on mobile-friendliness, with automation trimming down redundant and repetitive tasks from sourcing to screening, scheduling, and onboarding without hurting the candidate experience.

This approach got our thumbs up as it freed us up from some low-value tasks such as posting jobs, collecting applications, and managing paperwork. Our experience as job seekers applying for jobs via Workstream was that it is an efficient process. We could read job descriptions in our preferred language, apply via SMS, and self-schedule interviews. As for its multilingual capability—honestly, we didn’t expect Workstream to be this good when it comes to Spanish. But the platform just nailed it as it does with English.

Our main issue here is all about the pricing structure. While you do get a pretty decent set of features with Workstream’s base plan, certain features require separate purchases. It’s understandable that e-signature services, background checks, and the custom text-to-apply tool may cost extra, but charging for HR and payroll integrations sounds quite unreasonable, considering plenty of other vendors offer such capability for free.

2,000+ companies, including Subway, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Dairy Queen.

Workstream provides two customizable plans with the opportunity to add extra features.

• Workstream Basic with essential recruiting features like text-to-apply, QR code generator, and branded careers page.
• Workstream Plus includes features of Workstream Basic and W-4, I-9, and Form 8850 collection, onboarding training and quizzes, eSignature, and offer letter template.