Updated - May - 2020
The Best Talent Acquisition Tech: From ATS to Artificial Intelligence
The best recruiting software will supercharge your hiring process. From sourcing to screening, the right recruiting tools mean more of the best candidate in your pipeline, and more efficient recruiting cycles.
Of course, the landscape of top talent acquisition technology is fairly complex. There are many different categories of solutions, and sometimes hundreds of vendors to choose from within each landscape. That's why we put this page together.
Each month we talk to dozens of new HR Tech vendors to learn what tools our community should be using. We also spend a lot of time with forward thinking People/HR/TA leaders to understand how these tools can actually drive value to the end users.
So, here is our view on the best talent acquisition software out there.
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Pro Tip: We write up a ton of content about each of these landscapes and have linked to each so that you can get a sense for pricing, pitfalls, etc for each category. Good luck!
Best Applicant Tracking Systems
The ATS is one of the core pieces of talent acquisition software. In fact, many people view applicant tracking system as synonymous with recruiting software. Today’s modern ATS has robust analytics, open APIs, a great candidate experience, and capabilities that help source/engage talent. There are literally hundreds of ATS’s out there. Here are the vendors we view as the best in the industry.
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Read more about Applicant Tracking Systems including how to think about ROI, pricing models, questions to ask on demos, and more.
AI Recruiting Tools
Artificial intelligence is permeating all of the software we use today, from Google's search algorithm to self driving cars. AI is also playing a major role in recruiting software, specifically in helping to source, schedule and assess candidates. Here are some of our favorite AI recruiting tools.
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Video Interview Platforms
Video interview software was new about ten years ago. But, there are still companies out there who haven’t started to leverage video interview platforms in their initial screens. For some, it makes sense. You wouldn’t ask a c-level candidate to do a video interview. You may not ask a software engineer to do one either given the standard persona. However, for many different types of candidates, video interviews can save recruiting teams tons of time and effort.
We’ve looked at a number of these platforms, and have come up with a short list of the best vendors. We’ve also put together a lot of information (below) you can use to best leverage these platforms, and make sure you aren’t falling into the typical pitfalls that can hurt your candidate experience. Here are the vendors we believe to be the best video interview platforms:
Read more on the benefits of video interview software, and how these solutions can lead to more quality hires.
Best HR Chatbots
Recruiting chatbots are an exciting new category of HR Tech that allow recruiting teams to leverage the power of AI/NLP to take a lot of work off their plate. Specifically, these bots will: answer questions that applicants have when they are researching your company on your career site, direct potential applicants to the right jobs and therefore increase the conversion rate on your careers site, schedule interviews, conduct initial screens, re-discover talent in your ATS, and more.
Companies who are recruiting more than a few people per year should look into leveraging an HR chatbot for their recruiting efforts. And, companies who are hiring more than a few hundred people per year should almost certainly get a chatbot to streamline their recruiting process. Here are the top recruiting chatbots that we’ve uncovered after doing demos with the various solutions in this space, and talking to recruiting teams:
Read more about recruiting chatbot ROI, pitfalls, key metrics and more.
Best Tech Assessment Platforms
Assessment technology continues to evolve, and tech talent assessment is no different. There are now a handful of really great developer screening platforms that we’ve identified. These tools can be used by companies large and small, with the assumption that you’re hiring more than a few engineers per year.
The major benefits of these platforms is that they give your existing engineering team time back that they otherwise would have to spend screening candidates. Engineers are not typically trained to interview, usually don’t want to interview, and are almost always stretched thin to begin with (which is why you’re hiring for more of them). These platforms can expand your hiring funnel as you can screen more candidates in an automated fashion than through 1:1 interviews. They also allow you to create a less biased interview process.
Read how tech assessment platforms will help you hire more developers faster, increase your diversity hires, and save your engineering team time.
Best Employer Branding Solutions
Employer branding is a key part to any recruiting team’s efforts to build talent pipelines and convince the right job seekers to apply. While there is a broad range of employer branding solutions, we think about this world in terms of those that can help you expand your pipeline by getting more eyeballs on your employer brand, and those who can help you get more quality applicants through increased conversion rates at various stages of your recruiting funnel.
Here are the tools that we find to be the most interesting within the world of employer branding.
Read more about employer branding and how your talent acquisition team can leverage these platforms.
Best Candidate Sourcing Tools
Realistically, many of the best candidates are never in the market for a new job. Hence the rise of active sourcing via tools like LinkedIn Recruiter, and the hiring of dedicated sourcing teams. While the problem of getting in front of hard to find candidates has remained largely the same, the tools to do so have changed drastically. We now have tech enabled solutions that will do sourcing for us, along with high powered tools to drastically increase the efficiency of your sourcing team.
Here are the most interesting candidate sourcing tools according to our research.
Read more about how candidate sourcing tools will help you find and engage candidates faster, questions to ask vendors, and how to think about ROI.
Hopefully this page is a useful resource when it comes to discovering, vetting, and buying new talent acquisition technology. We update this page monthly with new categories, vendors and insights. Stay tuned, and good luck!
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