Zoho Recruit's Free Applicant Tracking Solution (Review) - 2023

As it’s usual with all of Zoho's product, Zoho Recruit is quite robust and feature-rich. It also has a free plan, which includes the ATS, and supports 26 different languages, allowing recruiters to cast a wide net.

Can a platform pack an Applicant Tracking System and a Candidate Relationship Management tool into a single hub? This is what the guys at Zoho set out to do with their recruiting product. Notably, this is only one of Zoho’s products that has become popular with many HR teams, along with Zoho People and Zoho Shifts. Zoho Recruit is only one of Zoho’s 50+ products helping businesses not only in recruitment but also in finances, sales, marketing, support, and collaboration.

That being said, Zoho Recruit is notable for being tailored to the needs of staffing agencies, internal HR teams (at big and small companies), and even freelance headhunters alike. At each of those use cases, and the many iterations therein, Zoho can source candidates from over 75 job boards and keep track of every touchpoint; from application to hire. 

Typical talent acquisition tasks like email management, interview scheduling, and updating candidate’s status, can be automated. Although used by bigger companies, this is part of what has made Zoho Recruit popular with small companies and startups, where time is of the essence and maybe recruitment is a shared responsibility across roles. 

Although we cover this in more detail on our pricing section, Zoho Recruit has always been a popular bet for its value too. Their free plan is good enough for small recruiting firms or freelancers focusing on one job opening, and it just keeps getting bigger after that. 

To give you an idea, the Standard plan includes 250 active jobs, AI candidate matching, advanced analytics, automatic screenings and assessments, background checks, and assignment rules you can set up. A nice thing about their pricing is that popular modules like video interviews (one-way or live) are available as separately-priced add-ons. This ability to mix and match is something that has always made Zoho stand out. You can switch as you go, according to your needs. This is especially worth considering as their plans have evolved over the years to include the features that start making waves in the market.

Those wanting a simpler tool sharply focused on certain parts of the recruitment process— for instance, video interviews or career site design— may find Zoho’s Recruits offering too general. Since they cover such a broad spectrum of needs, it can take them time to get the design up to modern standards, in some cases.

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• Automated candidate relationship workflows: Create custom workflows that send alerts and triggers at specific candidate touch points, ensuring you never miss an opportunity to connect with job seekers. 
• Background screening: You won’t need an additional software for background checks, as Zoho Recruit has this as a built-in feature.
• Resume extractor: Use a Chrome plug-in to parse resumes from most websites.
• Resume parser mapping: Standardize parsed resumes to a structure preferred by your company.
• Parsing review: Review the parsed resume for inconsistencies.
• Client Portal: Your staffing agency can provide a portal for your clients to input their open roles, provide feedback on candidates up for review, and even make interview decisions.

Zoho Recruit also has capabilities for:

• Resume inboxes (get resumes from emails)
• Candidate import from documents
• Duplication checker
• Assessments and feedback
• Candidate management
• Interview scheduling
• Note taking tool
• Career site

Zoho Recruit integrates with the top products on several categories, for instance:

• Job boards: Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder and over 70 more
• Recruiting: DaXtra, LinkMatch, Hiretual, SignalHire
• Background checks: Checkr, Verified First, HireRight
• Collaboration: Slack, Zoho Cliq, Zapier
• Social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter

Also, Zoho Recruit has open API capabilities and the Zapier integration; so you can integrate seamlessly with your tech stack.

Zoho Recruit has three paid plans on top of the free plan.

• Standard is $30 per user per month, with many more features compared to the Free version.
• Professional is $60 per user per month, with key features like assessments and social recruiting.
• Enterprise is $90 per user per month, and rounds out Zoho's entire feature set, except for the add-ons. 

The client portal and video interview modules are what’s available as add-ons. Zoho Recruit also has a 15-day free trial, as well as a free-forever version. The free version has limited features and only 1 active job at a time.

Zoho Recruit is perfect for large and small companies of various industries that use premium and niche job boards to give them an edge over competitors. It is also worth considering for smaller recruiting firms, but also has tons of functionality that enterprise companies would value. Of course, any company wanting a free ATS that can integrate with the rest of their tech stack would be wise to consider them.

With the Zoho Recruit platform, you only need to set up a Zoho Recruit account to get started. After that, you can now post a job and start sourcing candidates. 

For bigger teams, based on complexity of customer requirements and the amount of requested features, Zoho Recruit’s implementation time can vary widely, from a couple of weeks or even up to several months.

Customer support caters to new and existing customers who have questions about pricing, licenses, and other services. In addition, Zoho has offices worldwide, so you won’t have to worry about your concerns getting lost in an email inbox. Their support is typically handled on a 24/5 basis.

The Zoho story goes back to 1996, with the founding of AdventNet Inc. Back then, the company made a network management tool that was popular internationally, but mainly in the Japanese market. Then, in 2001, they launched Zoho CRM, which quickly became one of their best-selling apps. 

Then, in 2005, the company caught up with the times and started offering cloud-based applications. They began with the Writer app, then Show (a presentation tool), Creator (custom application builder), and Zoho Sheets. It wasn’t long until they realized that there could be a Zoho tool for just about every kind of business app. If you’re curious, the Zoho ‘about page’ actually has an interactive timeline where you can see the evolution of the company year to year. Nowadays, Zoho has over 75 million users worldwide, several offices across the globe, and more than 50 products for marketing, finance, customer and tech support, team collaboration, and of course, HR and recruitment.