Best Recruiting Software (Reviewed by Experts for 2024)

Out of the 50+ different options we have tested in this domain, Fetcher is among the best recruiting software for finding passive candidates and kicking off conversations.

Fetcher offers exactly the kind of personal touch you'd want as a TA/sourcer: It doesn't just throw algorithms at you but gets real people behind the scenes finessing their AI to ensure every candidate they send your way is tailor-made to fit your job specs.

Our dive into Fetcher’s candidate sourcing started with filling in our criteria. (Alternatively, if you've got a job description handy, simply adding your job description would work too). Two days later, the first batch of candidates landed. Though the first round didn’t hit the bullseye, with some overqualified profiles in the mix, we couldn't help but notice the improvement in the subsequent round, and the fact that it happened over two nights.

Fetcher has made that happen by using our given feedback on candidates to train their AI and validate the AI’s search results before presenting them to us. Compared to traditional corporate interactions with staffing agencies that typically charge 15-30% per placement with a 1-2 week turnaround, Fetcher’s approach feels fresh and is an equally good, if not better, alternative.

We liked the generous feature suite that this recruiting software offers to all users. Regardless of the plan you choose, you get access to their dedicated support, Chrome extension (with the capability to discover up to 10,000 additional emails), personalized email templates, unlimited outbound emails, unlimited re-engagement campaigns, and both native and API integrations. Additionally, startups and SMBs will love Fetcher’s new pricing. The vendor now offers a free plan, a free trial, and options for monthly payments. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

However, Fetcher disappointed us when it comes to approaching active job seekers: no built-in job board postings, no career websites, no onboarding. And, truth be told, when stacked against hireEZ—a solid rival in talent sourcing software space—Fetch falls behind by lacking the capability to rediscover candidates within the user’s connected ATS.

Fetcher is used by over 500 companies, including CarGurus, Andela, and Magnite.

Fetcher provides four plans: Starter (free), Growth ($149/user/mo), Amplify ($549/user/mo), and a custom plan for large companies and staffing agencies.

What makes VidCruiter unique is its exceptional level of customization and sophistication. In addition to the standard ATS, custom career sites, interview scheduling, and onboarding—features we have seen in other robust recruiting solutions like Pinpoint and Trakstar Hire—VidCruiter just knocks our socks off with its powerful extras: Quick Apply (a lighter version of an ATS), native live interviewing, pre-recorded interviewing, automated reference checking, and virtual hiring events. The beauty is, you don't have to buy everything at once. You have the freedom to choose modules one by one and add more as your needs evolve.

Launched in 2012, VidCruiter has amassed a whopping 100,000 users to date. This could be considered a success for any budget-friendly tool already, yet VidCruiter achieved this milestone despite its enterprise-centric pricing, with no easy-to-get free trial or free plan on offer. It’s also telling that a bunch of brands that were using VidCruiter when we first reviewed it back in 2018 are using it.

We asked some of these brands about the reason for their loyalty, and two reasons stuck out: “VidCruiter provides everything we need for our recruitment”, and “The customer support has never failed to amaze us.” Whether you're using their entire recruitment suite or just the ATS, you'll receive the same level of support. VidCruiter offers a dedicated account manager to assist users with their software installation, workflow customization, and technical queries. They even provide training to help users get familiar with the recruiting software’s latest feature updates.

Fair warning, though, VidCruiter’s excellent level of customization comes with a significant time investment for implementation. Another caution for teams that have only a handful of hires or seek a plug-and-play solution: Investing in VidCruiter could mean biting off more than you can chew. VidCruiter’s customization, support, and feature sets are most beneficial for organizations hiring at least a hundred employees annually. In the hands of much simpler and smaller recruitment teams, the full suite of features will likely go underused.

Over 100,000 users, including Lionsgate, Samsung, and US Foods.

The pricing of VidCruiter’s solutions is not disclosed on their website. Contact VidCruiter’s sales team for a custom price quote.

It’s nearly impossible when searching for the best recruiting software and not coming across Greenhouse because the platform is among the most complete recruitment tools in the space. Greenhouse primarily debuted as an ATS in 2012 but now also offers more solutions for structured hiring and candidate experience. Many teams find it a versatile tool that effectively serves as both a robust ATS and a basic recruiting CRM.

We've seen why thousands of companies of all stripes have stayed put with the platform for years. Once you create your first job post with Greenhouse, you won’t want to go back to the old days of either settling for a dull job look or trading your entire afternoon (and that of your front-end developer) for a better career page UI. Greenhouse has dozens of pre-built templates that can make the whole process easy while creating everything from scratch is also comfortable enough without needing any coding knowledge, design skills, or support from Greenhouse’s team. With the native drag-and-drop workflow, users can tailor the number of stages, their names, purposes, evaluation criteria, PIC, and define roles and access levels. We think this high degree of customization truly sets Greenhouse apart from often-compared brands like Lever and Taleo.

However, it’s fair to say a platform is user-friendly only if it's loved by both employers and candidates. We’ve tested applying through literally every ATS we have featured: iCIMS, Recruitee, Lever, and Workday—they all must have at least one of our resume copies. But none have impressed us as much as Greenhouse. A gorgeous landing page, a process that is so easy to apply, and an application form that says no to asking candidates to fill in the same information twice.

Moreover, Greenhouse boasts extensive integration capabilities. With over 450 native integrations, it packs just about everything we could possibly think of to plug into a recruitment system. Candidate sourcing tools? Check. Video interviewing software? Check. Background check platforms? Check. We've tried some common integrations like Slack, Gmail, and Calendly, and they all worked seamlessly.

However, it's not all sunshine. Greenhouse’s pricing is not very friendly towards companies where budget is a strong concern. But what disappoints us most is that despite regularly rolling out new features, there seems to be no progress with the reporting. Hiccups happen here and there and customization options remain limited for certain reports—the pass-through report still allows only filtering by department, just like the last time we looked at it. Also bear in mind that Greenhouse doesn’t possess any sourcing capabilities, so to use such features you need to purchase third-party tools like Gem and SeekOut and plug them into the platform.

Nearly 4,000 companies, including Casana, Momentive, and Anaplan.

Greenhouse offers three pricing plans based on team size. A one-year prepaid subscription is the standard contract, but discounts are available for longer terms.

ClearCompany is a seasoned player in the recruiting and talent management tech space, having been in the business since 2004 and stands. Given its wealth of experience, we had some pretty high expectations when testing out its recruitment software.

Those demanding a one-stop-shop for managing the entire employee lifecycle should definitely give ClearCompany a try. The recruitment suite covers everything from applicant tracking and text recruiting to onboarding, employee engagement, and performance management. Not only can it serve you in your recruitment needs but managing and retaining your hires—you’re killing three, not two birds, with one stone here.

Another aspect we had to test out was ClearCompany’s customer support—low scores here are a potential deal-breaker for enterprises when considering recruitment software. The good news: the support knew what they were doing. They had been very responsive to our questions. When we asked: “Could we purchase just your ATS and text recruiting first?”, the vendor was happy to accommodate. No doubt this flexibility has helped them maintain a solid group of loyal customers.

Regarding ClearCompany’s user interface, although we don’t think it is terrible, when seeing it side by side with competing options like Greenhouse and Pinpoint, it is indeed less stylish, and slow at times.

The most disappointing part about ClearCompany was its searching and reporting capabilities. As the vendor has presented itself as an end-to-end recruiting software, we had high hopes for how it handles these aspects. However, we couldn’t use phone or email to search for candidates, and ClearCompany’s reporting really only covers the basics. It hardly meets the level of customization and detail enterprises would expect from their recruiting software, unfortunately.

2,000+ organizations, including Fujifilm, the Salvation Army, and the Supreme Court for the State of Arizona.

ClearCompany does not disclose pricing details. Contact their sales team for more information.

With Pinpoint, on any plan you choose, you receive unlimited job postings and team member capabilities. In other words, you get to post as many jobs as you want and have as many members access Pinpoint as you wish, but your bill won’t go up, not even one penny. However, this alone isn’t what makes this recruiting automation software so unique. In addition to that generous offering of user seats and active job postings, the platform wowed us with its ability to connect with over 100 HR tools.

Who doesn’t love flexibility when it comes to designing their hiring process? From custom workflows and email templates to fields and reports, Pinpoint gave us no reasons to criticize it on this point but appreciating how simple it was to make the system work in our way.

If top-notch customer support is a must-have when selecting recruitment software, you’ll be delighted to add Pinpoint to your list of potential purchases. When we dropped the support team a morning email, expecting a reply in the afternoon at the earliest, Pinpoint took us by surprise by replying in under two minutes. It’s even serious when saying it offers customers unlimited training.

In terms of design, we asked a friend who 1) has never used Pinpoint and 2) has no IT background to navigate the platform to estimate the user-friendliness of the platform. Their eyebrows didn’t wrinkle once, and a stunning career website was born in under ten minutes. Testing how job applicants would feel navigating this website, we opened it on both our Chrome browser and phone. Not only did it look great, but it also functioned smoothly. It even supported several languages!

Moreover, it’s just nice to see the platform roll out regular new product updates. Candidate surveys for feedback collection and notifications for employee users about new job openings for referrals signal how serious Pinpoint is when it comes to constantly improving its products.

However, it’s a real shame to realize the tool, which doesn’t charge a single penny for adding more users and job posts, does charge for its employee onboarding module. Considering Pinpoint’s pricing, which typically starts around $7,200, we would find it difficult to recommend it to a budget-minded team. Lastly, if you require a recruiting solution with exhaustive sourcing capabilities or something built specifically for staffing agencies, there are better options than this software.

Jersey Electricity, JT Group, Coinshare, BDO Greenlight.

Pinpoint has two pricing plans:

• Growth is the starting plan, with up to 20 active jobs at one time.
• Enterprise adds more features along with unlimited active jobs.
• While Pinpoint pricing is only given via demos, our research indicates that it can cost around $7,200 annually.

One thing we love about Trakstar Hire is that this recruiting software doesn’t neglect the classic employee referral. In fact, it has done a great job of designing this simple referral tool. Toggling it on or off turns employee referrals live or inactive for specific openings. And, when it’s turned on, the system keeps track and informs users which sources bring in the best candidates—something one should never overlook when fine-tuning talent acquisition strategy.

Try not to yawn when you read this: You open each applicant’s email, download attached resumes and cover letters, copy their email text for context, and then upload them on your recruitment tech. Don't worry if you yawned, because we did too. This is what’s happening to many recruiters around us, even when they are armed with one of the best recruitment software vendors in the space. Thankfully, that’s not the case with Trakstar Hire.

Trakstar Hire has a killer feature for this particular job, and it’s called Email Forwarding. Each opening created on the platform is assigned a unique email address. So, as long as users forward an applicant’s email to this address, the feature automatically creates a profile in the system with the applicant’s resume, email content, and any remaining attachments included.

Unlike Greenhouse, Trackstar Hire provides an offer letter tool that covers pretty much every aspect of onboarding, from offer letter templates to approval workflows and e-signatures, at no extra cost.

However, it’s too bad we can’t buy Trakstar Hire’s offerings separately the way we can with VidCruiter and ClearCompany. Trakstar Hire is marketed as an all-inclusive package, so some may find themselves ending up paying for features they don’t use.

Undisclosed pricing, annual subscription policy, and the absence of a free trial and free plan are not unusual for products targeting mid-market and enterprise-level customers. However, the relative lack of support options is definitely not a good sign. Trakstar Hire’s customers can only receive assistance via email, live chat, and self-help. There isn’t even phone support, let alone a dedicated account manager. It is truly disappointing when comparing this to what other solutions listed on this page are offering.

Trakstar Hire has worked with 2,000+ companies, including Makita, Couchsurfing, Lonely Planet, and Untappd.

Trakstar Hire is priced on a per-employee-per-month basis, starting at an annual minimum of $3499.

Eightfold captivated us with its seamless integration of talent acquisition, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I), and onboarding processes, all within a consolidated platform.

The power of Eightfold becomes apparent when candidates land on its AI-driven career sites. Here, they can quickly upload their resume, and the AI responds with instant job recommendations tailored to their unique experience and potential. What struck us even more was the platform's next step—it doesn't just provide recommendations but also relevant content and introductions to current employees. For those who aren't quite ready to apply, there's an option to join a company's talent network to stay in the loop about future job opportunities.

Another thing about Eightfold that really excited us was how seamlessly one can source candidates directly from an ATS using the recruiting software’s artificial intelligence. The AI compiles candidate profile data from career sites, Eightfold's extension, and previous candidates’ information to recommend excellent fits for new roles. Anonymous screening and equal opportunity algorithms are also there to ensure recommendations are made based on candidate qualifications.

The native recruiting CRM is another valuable component of Eightfold. This tool lets you utilize Eightfold's AI to select the right audience for targeted campaigns and communicate with them via email and SMS. As expected from an enterprise-oriented HR tech, Eightfold’s reporting didn’t disappoint us. Head to the Insights tab and you’ll gain access to diversity analytics for detailed insights into your hiring processes. Plus, this data is updated daily so you can quickly spot any potential unequal outcomes.

However, we were left frustrated by loading times between different dashboards and reports. Unlike some other tools, such as SeekOut, there's no pre-built talent pool—the candidate database is drawn from your ATS, career sites, and applications from recruiting events and current employees.

While we can’t escape the fact that Eightfold is quite pricey, we’re really impressed with the overall quality of the platform. Trained on an extensive database—1.5 million skill sets and 1.5 billion worker profiles in 20 languages, Eightfold's AI surpasses mere keyword matching. It identifies the precise skills needed for a job in a specific industry and level—something you cannot find in cheaper yet less experienced AI recruiting software like HizeEZ and Manatal.

Eightfold serves notable enterprises such as Vodafone, TATA Bayer, and Morgan Stanley.

Reach out to Eightfold's Sales team for a personalized quote.

SeekOut earns our trust for being particularly helpful when it comes to multi-channel sourcing, and for constantly getting better each time we revisit it. The recruiting software’s talent pool now provides users with access to a vast database of over 800 million candidate profiles (and counting!). The search capabilities have also become more powerful, with filter options including work history, keywords, education, skills, and locations—not only by country but specific states in the U.S.

Companies seeking talent in niche sectors like tech and healthcare will find SeekOut super handy. Besides the advanced filtering, they're equipped with a robust AI trained to source talent directly from sites like GitHub. However, speaking as someone who's worked to hunt talent worldwide, it's quite a letdown to see that the talent pool is limited to within the United States.

Not every recruiting software pays as much attention to internal talent as SeekOut does. SeekOut Grow provides insights into existing employee profiles and identifies internal candidates suitable for open roles or new projects. If I was still working in recruitment, I wouldn’t miss the chance to onboard this product and pair it with an ATS. It’d be a powerhouse for talent mobilization for sure!

SeekOut’s custom support didn’t let us down either. There’s live chat support during the week (we tested it, they were fast!), plus email and a dedicated customer success manager for certain plans, so it’s rare to be left frustrated with their support team.

However, despite the undeniable time-saving benefits its newly introduced ChatGPT-powered SeekOut Assist offers to recruiters—the AI can generate targeted searches, suggest matches, and craft personalized messages based on job descriptions and candidate profiles—we expected a more sophisticated built-in AI, like what we’ve seen on PhenomPeople and EightFold.

SeekOut’s integrations also left something to be desired. While SeekOut worked well when we connected it with Greenhouse, it wasn’t as smooth with Phenom and Gem. And heads up, there's a cap of 500 candidate contacts per month, but you can bump it up for a fee.

1000+ organizations, including VMware, Salesforce, and Merck have used SeekOut for managing and recruiting talent.

SeekOut has three different plans with pricing undisclosed:

• Premium: Access 441M+ candidates, diversity sourcing, people insights, contact info for 500 candidates/month, export 5,000 profiles/month.
• Premium Tech: All Premium features + specialized tools for sourcing tech talent.‍‍
• SeekOut Expert: For engineering and life sciences hiring.

Turing has honed in on developer hiring and truly excels in this niche. The platform stands out with its database of 2 million software engineers worldwide, at various levels of expertise, and available to work immediately. But this vendor’s real hook is their promise of taking only five days to link their clients with a matched skilled software engineer. Having a bit of history in this space, we can’t help but doubt this claim, as the commonly acknowledged time to fill such in-demand roles is two weeks, if not longer.

However, after Sherlocking the platform further, we discovered the reason behind Turing's confidence. Turing makes its claimed delivery speed possible thanks to its rigorous pre-vetting process: All candidates aspiring to be software engineers listed on Turing have to go through 5+ hours of tests and interviews, and only the qualified ones are connected with clients. So, technically speaking, it’s not that the whole recruitment process just got shorter. Rather, it’s just that Turing takes on the first pre-screening rounds so users can save over five hours of DIY during these rounds with each candidate.

But do Turing’s pre-vetted developers truly meet clients’ requirements? We asked the system to find us a senior front-end developer to see how this goes. To our surprise, not only did the platform get back with really good candidates in a matter of minutes, but it also provided proficiency stats for each suggested profile to explain why it thought they were suitable. Turing claims on its website that its talent pool is the top 1% of remote developers. Although we couldn’t verify this, the quality of candidates received and the swift delivery shown in our testing earned it a spot in this guide for developer hiring.

The way Turing takes into account timezone compatibility also deserves kudos. While some, like us, love having as wide a coverage of timezones as possible from their employees, others find it more beneficial when all their teammates have good overlaps in work time. We love that whatever your case might be, Turing is open to tailoring its suggested profiles based on your needs. Say, if you’re after the wide timezone overlaps, the platform will ensure all the developers it matches you with are in your timezone with at least 4 hours of overlap in your workday.

We found Turing’s project dashboard to be very well-organized. It provided access to all our code and data, enabling tracking of hired developers’ productivity, worked hours, and project deadlines—tidy and clear.

However, since developers hired through Turing aren’t your employees, you lack control over aspects like their time off, rates, or compliance. We can totally relate to those feeling uneasy about this and demanding responsive support for quick turnaround when potential problems with the hires arise. Sadly, our experience with the support team was quite grinchy—it took Turing an entire day to respond. Teams dealing with time-sensitive projects may find this to be too big a drawback.

All in all, if you're looking for long-term or full-time developers and don't mind waiting a bit for responses, Turing could be your endgame. But if you need short-term hires and require super speedy support from the recruiting tech, you might want to explore other options.

Turing has helped 3,000 companies to hire developers worldwide. A few of their customers include Coinbase, Reddit, and Dell.

Turing doesn't charge upfront for talent search or hiring remote software engineers. After a two-week trial, payment begins based on the developer's rate, which the developer, not Turing, determines.