Introduction To Recruiting Software: Basic Functions And Features You Must Know

Dependable recruiting software is a must for every organization. In fact, the recruitment process can be a hectic, time-consuming task for any business. However, with the right recruitment and selection policies and processes, organizations can find it easier to choose the right candidates. As a result, they can significantly reduce employee turnover. A good process helps you find great employees and saves you time and money on replacing and training new people.

HR teams and hiring managers find it increasingly necessary to optimize their hiring processes by using recruitment software. HR recruitment software is a system that helps organizations efficiently hire qualified people. The best recruitment software should have smooth collaboration tools for key stakeholders (i.e., hiring departments, candidates, external and internal HR, and recruiters). This happens only by harnessing all the recruitment information in a centralized, easily-accessible location.

Various recruiting software solutions differ in features, outlook, and complexity. With so many options available, choosing the best recruiting system is a daunting task. In this guide, we'll share everything you need to know about recruitment software, from its functions, benefits, and important features to look for to how you can integrate it into your business. Our main goal is to help you transform your hiring process end-to-end!

Recruiting software is a human resource management (HRM) tool that helps hiring managers, HR teams, staffing firms, and recruiting agencies to digitize and optimize the hiring process. This recruitment management system is designed to manage core HR functions. For example, finding and attracting the right candidates, screening resumes, and sending out offer letters.

This entire digitization of the recruitment and hiring process eliminates paperwork to a great extent. It offers powerful search functionality and integration with social media. Thus, offering a truly out-of-the-box solution.

But there's more.

These recruitment software solutions help organizations gather and organize all the pre-hire information. Plus, they focus on selection, interview management, job posting, job requisition documents, and candidate feedback. The recruitment tools often do more than merely documenting tasks and posting jobs. They also provide critical recruitment metrics and productivity numbers to management. In the end, organizations can benefit in a couple of ways, including:

• Faster and better sourcing
• Optimization for the entire recruiting process
• Efficient use of resources in the hiring process
• Easier tracking of job applicants
• Streamlined web-based collaboration
• Better hiring, better retention
• Data-driven decision making
• Lower candidate accumulation cost
• Increasing organizational and individual value in both the short and long term

Applicant tracking software (ATS) is a recruitment and hiring tool that helps organizations collect and sort thousands of resumes. When candidates apply for a job, their resumes go through the ATS algorithms, which then assesses, shortlists, and ranks applicants with the most relevant workforce requirements.

These end-to-end recruitment solutions have robust Machine Learning algorithms that continue to use the data collected through their lifecycle to identify the employees' attributes that work for a particular business. This increases the quality of hires and reduces the time and cost of new hires.

ATS is similar to recruiting software in the following ways:

• Post job openings
  For example, like recruiting software, ATS lets you practice social recruiting by posting jobs on multiple job boards and social media platforms simultaneously. This allows recruiting managers to access a large pool of active and passive candidates, which massively cuts down the time to get qualified applicants.
• Import attachments
  Furthermore, like recruitment software, ATS allows applicants to upload different resume formats. Every resume can be imported directly into a standard format without needing strenuous uploads, downloads, or integrations.
• Tracking applicants
  What's more, the ATS helps HR teams and recruiting managers to track the interaction with applicants. This happens throughout the recruitment cycle in real time. As a result, it helps to accelerate the hiring process effectively.
• Generating reports
  Both ATS and recruitment software help auto-generate insight-rich reports that recruiters can use to measure every hiring cycle's performance and identify bottlenecks in time.

ATS only focuses on automating the recruitment process, which only deals with external candidates. In contrast, recruiting software is designed to connect the right candidates with the hiring organization while still providing back-office HR management functions. The recruitment software is typically more robust and more effective.

Here are some of the features of modern jobs recruitment software that make it a better choice over ATS for HR departments, recruiting agencies, and dedicated recruiters:

Applicant Tracking

This option gives you the ability to post job openings, import and parse resumes, and track candidates.

Advanced ATS Features

ATS alone is not enough to handle the entire hiring cycle. Recruiting systems have more robust features to track applicants on a larger scale.

Scheduling

Recruitment software has scheduling capabilities that allow for seamless communication between the applicants and recruiter for a truly painless and configurable workflow. Recruiting managers can schedule events such as emails, phone calls, interviews, and candidates' start dates.

Email Marketing

Most recruitment software solutions have multiple email templates that can be sent out automatically based on custom triggers. Organizations can use the email marketing feature to automate invitations to company events, send personalized emails to candidates, and conduct candidate surveys. This helps organizations fill job positions faster and keep applicants fully engaged throughout the process.

Boolean Search

Many recruitment software programs have a Boolean search feature that allows recruiting managers to quickly search for qualified candidates already in the database.

Creating A Talent Pool

With increased competition in the market, HR teams have realized the need to maintain good relationships with candidates. So, if HR comes across a great candidate who is not fit for a particular position, they can keep them engaged and contact them whenever they become a better fit.

• Create a customized hiring pipeline
• EEOC compliance
• Robust external integrations

Typical recruitment software helps track applicants through the entire screening and interview process. Most of these software programs are a mishmash of various systems that help to hire teams and HR personnel to manage the various recruitment functions. The first step is initiated when a department needs to add capacity by hiring a new employee. The manager creates a report on the recruiting management system and sends it to the HR department.

A Simple And Intuitive Process

With just a click of a button, the HR team uses the recruitment tool to search for a candidate with the right skills in an internal pool of previous applications. The technology matches the job opening's needs and requirements with the already available candidates and skills on offer.

If there are no matches found, HR may choose to advertise the available position internally and externally. These adverts are placed automatically on a variety of eRecruitment platforms. If the recruitment software solution has social media integrations, the ads may be placed on platforms such as LinkedIn.

Interested candidates then use an eRecruitment form to apply and submit their CVs, which are then forwarded to the HR department. The applications are screened for skills matching, and those that cut the mark are selected for the interview process. If the recruiting system has an AI system for pre-screening candidates, the HR department or hiring manager can choose to solely depend on the candidates identified by the HR hiring software as an excellent match for the advertised position.

The hiring teams then use the recruitment CRM software to track the pre-qualified candidates throughout the entire interview process. The system even allows for a series of digital reports from the interviewers that make the process easier and faster. Updates can be made on the eRecruitment portals if an ideal candidate is identified.

Recruiting tools like these are then used to send out job offers through email, create reports relating to the hiring process, and handle necessary paperwork related to onboarding new hires. Of course, this frees up massive amounts of time for the HR department, allowing them to perform different business-critical functions while managing employees seamlessly.

Important Features

Most of these recruitment tools can do some or all of the following:

Sourcing

This helps HR teams and hiring managers to find and attract the right candidates. With more social media integrations, these recruitment management systems can help identify passive candidates who may not otherwise see your job ads.

Applicant Tracking

The entire applicant tracking process includes resume screening, assessing, interviewing, and background checks.

Engagement

Recruitment software helps streamline communication between candidates and the hiring team. This keeps the candidates informed and engaged, which helps improve an organization's hiring rate.

Pre-Hire Assessment And Background Checking

The hiring manager software may help with personality assessment, cognitive skills and testing, reference checking, and applicant background screening.

Selection

Today, some job recruitment software solutions come packed with high-end technologies. For example, you get Artificial Intelligence screening, central collaboration, recruiting assessment tools, evaluations, and much more. These improved features and capabilities help speed up the process of finding and hiring. Thus, giving you the opportunity to find the most qualified candidate among a pool of applicants.

Recruiting Analytics

Some recruiting systems have integrated analytics tools that help report KPIs and recruitment funnel metrics. For instance, time to fill, new hire source, and applicant-to-interview ratio.

Hiring

Some organizations use recruitment tools to manage the hiring and onboarding process through a multi-faceted recruitment CRM. Thus, this thins out the gap between candidate experience and employee experience. So, the entire recruitment-hiring funnel is as seamless as possible.

Small And Medium Businesses

Research shows that 20% of small businesses and 21% of midsize businesses struggle to find, train, and retain quality staff for the job. So, managers can use recruiting software for small and medium businesses to attract, review, and select the best candidates to fill vacant positions. Ideally, these recruiting platforms streamline the entire recruitment process. As a result, you save time and can retain a highly qualified talent pool. Plus, you can search through it when you need to fill vacant positions in the future.

Enterprises

Large enterprises have unique recruitment needs, unlike small and medium businesses. HR departments in these organizations have to send out multiple job openings and go through hundreds of resumes before getting the right talent for the job.

These heavy-duty needs for enterprise recruitment call for heavy-duty recruiting software systems with robust employee referrals. Also, these tools need to have detailed filtering features and resume parsing. That is why enterprise-level recruitment software can help these organizations fill even the hard-to-fill positions by actively re-engaging passive candidates across multiple platforms.

Academic

Academic careerism is the tendency of academics (professors specifically and intellectuals generally) to pursue their own enrichment and self-advancement at the expense of honest inquiry, unbiased research, and dissemination of truth to their students and society. Such careerism is very frowned upon. In order to be sure that potential academic candidates do not have this tendency, a thorough background check is needed.  Recruitment software for academic institutions can make this process much easier.

Freelancers

If you are a professional freelancer recruiter, there are several reasons why you should be using the right recruitment software. Not only will it streamline the processes that you are involved in, but it will also help you organize the projects for your clients more efficiently.

Non-Profit

When hiring for a non-profit, you are looking for a very particular kind of candidate. That is to say, a candidate that is characterized by both their expertise and their passion for the vision of the organization. In order to determine this, multiple interactions with the candidate should take place. Recruitment software for non-profit organizations can keep track of all the above.

Public Administration

When recruiting for public administration, you face several challenges that large enterprises face, plus one more. You need to always be able to prove the transparency in your procedures. The right software solution can help you keep everything on track and justify each and every one of your decisions along the way.

Finding the right person at the right time can create better ROI for an organization. Here is how various industry players can benefit from a best-fit executive recruiting software solution:

Staffing Firms

Today, many organizations rely on staffing firms and contract agencies to attract top talent for their vacant positions. These staffing firms and agencies then turn to technology to deal with emerging recruitment problems such as low candidate engagement and lack of quality candidates.

One way these recruiting firms are managing these bottlenecks is by leveraging end-to-end recruiting tools. These recruiting CRM tools are helping these organizations attract top candidates by:

• Eliminating the recruiting black hole where candidates would apply and never hear from you again.
• Creating an automated flow of data to streamline the tracking of open jobs for advertising.
• Creating an extensive pool of searchable records for talent that can be accessed from anywhere within the organization.
• Using intuitive analytics to get insights into the candidates' journey and remove any bottlenecks for a smooth and continuous flow in the future.

Finance And Banking

Institutions in the financial services (FinServ), such as banks, and FinTechs are continually looking for top-notch talent to hire. These institutions are now competing with other forward-looking industries for tech and data related talent, such as data scientists and quantitative analysts. But in such a competitive landscape compounded by the nationwide shortage of skills, these institutions sometimes struggle to attract and retain top talent.

To win this battle, these organizations have adopted new-age recruitment processes. Most of them have integrated powerful recruiting tools into their HR processes to ease these pains. So, by using these tools, the FinServ industry can create more competitiveness. Hence, offering a truly streamlined recruitment process. Moreover, they can use the recruitment management software to document and manage employee records, recruitment history, and activity associated with each candidate or staff member.

These recruitment software solutions can help organizations slash waste and redundancy and boost profitability. Besides, they can leverage these tools to:

• Manage the candidates' pipeline more effectively
• Hire faster, allowing HR teams to spend more time on other business-critical functions
• Use a CRM to re-activate candidates
• Use AI-integrated recruiting software to screen candidates faster
• Explore their active and passive talent pool to quickly lookup specialized talent

Real Estate

HR professionals in the real estate industry can leverage recruiting software tools to speed up their recruitment process. If correctly set up, real estate professionals can scan candidates, work samples, social media posts and analyze information using AI-powered recruitment CRM tools to get the ideal candidates. Similarly, they can further use the recruiting software to introduce new hires to the organization's culture, schedule their first-day agenda, and clarify their responsibilities, all through the touch of a button.

Law Firms

Law firms deal with piles of paperwork every day. Therefore, it makes sense that HR teams in these firms are looking for more intuitive paperless recruiting processes. A recruitment system tailored for law firms helps streamline the recruitment process by managing repetitive tasks that would otherwise be strenuous and time-consuming. By using a best-fit recruitment system, law firms can:

• Ease the recruitment process for both applicants and the recruiting team
• Reduce the risk of losing resumes
• Create organized applicant data for future use
• Manage the complete recruitment lifecycle
• Reduce the application onboarding time tremendously

Reduces The Time It Takes To Hire The Right Candidate

Recruiting new staff takes a lot of time and requires you to do many repetitive tasks. Thus, using the right tool can help things flow easily and effortlessly. Recruiting tools like this software allow HR teams and recruiting managers to access resumes from a pool of applicants. The recruiting platforms also select the most qualified applicants for the position so recruitment teams can move faster with the interviews and final selection. Of course, this saves the HR department time and hassle.

Gives Connection To The Correct Market

Businesses need to tap into the right markets to get the ideal candidates for the job. Recruitment software lets HR departments reach out to active and passive candidates through social and job boards. This extensive dictionary of leads connects you to the right market and builds a systematic pool of talent that can be tapped into whenever there are new job openings.

Can Be Used Anywhere, Anytime

Most recruiting platforms are cloud-, SaaS-, or web-based; hence they can be easily accessed through smartphones, tablets, and other internet-connected devices. This gives recruiting teams massive advantages to reach, attract, and hire top-level talent from anywhere across the globe.

Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

Recruiting software allows HR departments, hiring managers, and staffing agencies to track each applicant's data in real time. From posting the job opening, sourcing the right talents, and scheduling their interviews, the recruiting teams can maintain a neat, fully-optimized recruitment funnel. These systems also ensure that the applicants are fully engaged to nurture them for future openings.

Software Backups Work As Your Data Safe House

Most recruiting software solutions have automatic database backups that ensure that your data is safe all the time. You, therefore, never have to worry about data corruption, misplacement, or any data loss. These systems have industry-grade encryption systems that ensure all the sensitive data is kept securely, and only people with entry credentials can import or export data. The crown jewel is that all authorized persons can access this data on the go since it is stored in a secure, easily accessible central location.

Recruitment Assessment Tools

Recruitment management software has best-in-class recruitment assessment tools that help take the guesswork out of the recruitment process. This allows HR teams and other recruiters to compete with other companies for the top talent by enabling quick and easy filtering through hundreds of unqualified applicants.

These assessment tools help to test everything from hard skills to behavioral qualities that make a candidate a fit or not. As a result, recruiting teams can focus their energies and resources on the best-fit candidates, which saves time and leads to qualified personnel hiring. Recruitment assessment tools can have a major impact on key performance indicators, employee retention, performance, and engagement.

Improves Recruiter's Productivity

The recruitment process can be tedious and time-consuming. Using hiring management systems can tremendously cut this time and effort so recruiters can focus on more critical functions. Even when a job listing has attracted hundreds of applicants, recruiters can still use skill matching tools to filter the database so that only the most qualified candidates remain.

Improves Communication Times, Efficiency, And Social Reach

Recruiting tools can help improve the hiring process and give a positive impression of your company. HR teams can create personalized emails using the tool's built-in email templates. Then, these can be sent out to applicants throughout the recruitment process. You can also improve communications management by creating customized social messages that will help you keep your talent pool entertained and informed.

Provides Automation To The Recruiting Process

This is one of the main benefits of recruitment management software. It automates the entire recruitment process, saving a copious amount of time that would have been used doing mundane tasks such as posting a job on a range of job boards. Similarly, you can use the automated scheduling features to simplify interview scheduling while keeping pre-qualified candidates informed using automatic emails.

Allows Recruiters To Find Better Candidates

One of the main reasons organizations invest in recruitment software is to find better-suited candidates without wasting time with non-starters. Hiring software solutions have a set of tools that make it easier to tailor candidate sourcing and tap into the right markets to get the ideal talent.

Improves Sourcing Strategies For Your Business

One of the reasons for bad hires is looking for talent in the wrong places. Over time, recruitment software collects and collates various applications and creates an organized database of talent where HR teams can look for talent in the future. This software also comes packed with extensive social and job-board posting capabilities that spread the sourcing net wide enough to get the most talented hires.

Makes Creating Engaging Recruiting Posts Easy

Most recruitment software programs have a white-glove approach to creating appealing job boards, location-based micro sites, customized emails, and engaging job posts that can convert both on social media and job boards. HR teams don't have to hire extra personnel to create interesting and eye-catching recruitment posts.

Wise Investment With Easy Return

Organizations with the best recruitment software don't have to worry about the costs associated with paying for applicants' accommodation and hiring extra people to handle tedious administrative tasks or even paying top dollar to outsource to recruitment agencies. Once installed, the recruitment software does most of the background work. So, the recruiting teams only worry about vetting the filtered results for skill matching. Of course, this is truly an investment worth every penny, especially for businesses experiencing rapid growth.

Applicant Sourcing And tracking

This is perhaps one of the main features to look for in recruiting software. Because you cannot hire great talents without having the right candidates in your pipeline, a robust talent sourcing tool should help you find and connect even with the hard-to-fill talents. Moreover, the recruiting program should filter through the candidates based on employer specifications. Plus, it should allow you to alert candidates with important updates and personalized messages.

Application Management

The application management software should have easy-to-use application forms that encourage candidates to apply. The entire application process should be seamless to avoid early drops. Some application management features to look out for include:

• Search engine optimization
• Social media recruiting
• Automated job ad distribution
• Customizable application forms
• Branded, multilingual, mobile-friendly career site

A Talent CRM

The recruiting software should enable you to create a rich talent pool so that you can nurture meaningful relationships with prospects and candidates. You should look for a software solution that allows you to tag, search, and filter your database and set reminders for future contact and action.

Custom Templates

HR teams already have a lot of business-critical functions to attend to every day. The recruiting software should make their work easier by providing built-in email custom templates. Also, it should allow electronic offer letters to be sent automatically to the desired candidates.

Customizable Branding

In today's candidate-centric environment, candidates want to feel persuaded to work with an employer. Therefore, the recruiting teams must make an effort to create a good first impression by building beautiful, well-branded, and auto-updated career pages that can be opened across multiple devices.

Customizable branding allows the candidate to form an excellent opinion about the employer by simply engaging with the career pages, application forms, and customized communications. The ability to create an identity throughout the recruitment process can make all the difference in the recruitment process.

Calendar And Interview Management

The recruitment software should have an intuitive calendar that allows for automated interview scheduling. Calendar management ensures that everyone from the employer to hiring teams and candidates is all on the same page. This structured interview process creates a really smooth transition throughout the recruitment funnel.

Automated Job Posting

The recruiting CRM software should let you post your job openings on multiple platforms, including websites, social media, LinkedIn, and job boards. This feature simplifies one of the processes that could otherwise be tedious and time-consuming. Moreover, this ability to post on various job sites helps recruiting teams get a more diverse candidate base so that they can get the perfect person for the job.

Onboarding And Employee Management

Once the vacant opening is filled, such recruiting tools should make it easy for HR teams to start the new employee orientation process. The recruitment software should manage all the documentation following a new hire. It should offer provisions for information verification, background checks, engagement monitoring, and reference checks.

Real-Time Reporting, Statistics, And Analytics

Real-time reporting and analytics features allow employers to evaluate the recruitment process. Plus, it helps you identify any existing bottlenecks that could slow down the process. This feature evaluates potential talent on a deeper level and generates data-rich recruitment reports.

Some of the most important hiring metrics that you should consider are time-to-hire, cost-to-hire, candidates' engagement metrics, offer acceptance rate, and applicants-per-source. Recruitment reporting and statistics capabilities, along with report sharing and data analysis features, will help decision-makers plan for future recruitments.

Resume Database And Resume Parsing

The recruiting CRM software should support resume parsing that allows multiple resume format uploads. This will help ensure that all information on a resume is formatted correctly and added in the proper software fields. All information should be searchable using an advanced search. What's more, the system should allow information to be stored systematically in a secure resume database. Without this feature, the entire recruitment process could be jeopardized.

Search Functionality

The recruiting tool should have search functionality that can parse all resumes and allow HR teams to use embedded search capabilities to pull out candidates' data from the talent pool whenever needed. This ensures that you find, organize, and contact passive candidates sourced internally from the local database. This reduces the time needed to look for prospective candidates whenever there is a job opening.

Other Key Features And Capabilities Of Good Recruiting Software

Besides the essential features, the best recruitment CRM software should come packed with a bunch of other features and capabilities to create the most value for investment. Some of these features include:

• Compliance management with hiring laws such as the EEOC
• Automatic notifications
• Seamless integrations with other third-party tools such as payroll and HR management solutions
• Email integration
• Alternative contact methods, such as the ability to test candidates
• Mobile-friendly interface for both recruiters and candidates
• Flexible pricing
• Scalability to grow with your business needs
• Jobs board integration
• Social media integration

Desktop Application

Recruiting software as a desktop application is a computer program that has to be purchased and installed on a computer before being deployed for the recruiting process. This software is sometimes limited by the hardware capabilities on which it runs. These deployments allow organizations to maintain their own systems to increase productivity and access data stored in their on-premise computers.

Mobile Application

Today, some recruiting software vendors are providing fully functional, end-to-end recruitment solutions that are accessible through a mobile app. This allows recruiting teams to hire top talent through a small mobile recruiting app, creating a truly versatile workflow. These apps provide a convenient way to screen, evaluate, and leave comments about candidates from anywhere and at any time. They are built to be functional, compact, and easy to use.

Self-Hosted Cloud-Based System

Cloud-based recruitment solutions offer unlimited possibilities to recruit top talent. The candidate's information is stored in a modern and secure cloud platform. Above all, this lets HR teams and recruiting agencies access, evaluate, track, and interview. Additionally, they can schedule interviews from an on-demand cloud-based architecture.

Self-hosted, cloud-based recruitment deployment is highly-scalable and delivers high-end security, performance, and global hosting capabilities. This means that recruiting teams can access data in seconds from wherever or whenever. Also, you get super fast system performance while still staying compliant with local data storage and hosting regulations.

Self-Hosted System

This option offers greater control but is also more demanding in terms of set up and maintenance. Creating your own self-hosted system means that you can make it to your specifications, but it can also be significantly more time-consuming than other options.

Software as a Service/Cloud

This is the exact opposite of the previous option. If you lack the time and/or the expertise to set up your own system, you can contact one of the many cloud recruiting software providers. These online recruitment tools are the go-to choice for many.

Free Licensing

Recruitment software with free licenses allows users to use and share the software as they wish. Most of the free license recruitment software is also open source and comes packed with basic features that may require programming expertise in order to customize for an organization's needs.

Open Source Licenses

The programming code for open source recruitment programs relies on a community that pushes further development. This type of open-source recruiting software is free, and organizations can add tweaks, customizations, modifications, and key integrations to suit their needs. Since these software programs are free, they don't have active customer support. So, you must have an IT expert to aid in the deployment, integrations, and day-to-day running of the software.

Paid Licensing

Paid recruitment software programs have proprietary licenses that organizations must pay for in order to access the features and capabilities. The license owners set the price of the software. Most vendors will offer at least one or a combination of the following license models:

• Outright purchase model
• Rental model
• Rent-to-purchase model

Paid license models offer comprehensive features and capabilities so your HR teams don't have to worry about functionality. Of course, vendors that use this option offer after-sales support that is essential for recruiting teams to manage the entire hiring funnel seamlessly and with minimal disruption.

Free

This is open source recruiting software that is freely available for use and sharing. The software has no cost. However, in some cases, an organization needs to have an in-house IT team to install and manage integrations for smooth operation.

Free Trial

Some recruitment software companies usually provide organizations with a limited-time trial. During this, you can try out the software before paying a subscription fee. These recruiting software free trials are meant to show the organization the value they'll be getting before purchasing the system. The typical time frame for free trials is 7, 14, 21, or 30 days. This is enough time to set it up, try it out, and evaluate whether the product solves the organization's problem.

Freemium

Freemium recruitment programs are a free version of paid software that allows organizations to use the software "as is." However, some of the important features and capabilities have a limit. Once you pay for the full version, you can fully unlock them.

One-Time Purchased License

One-time purchased recruiting software allows users to only pay one time to get the full lifetime licensed software. Many organizations may prefer this pricing model because they only have to pay once. Organizations with perpetual licenses still enjoy the same level of support and upgrades throughout their lifetime.

Subscription

Subscription recruitment software tools are designed to be paid for monthly or annually. Getting a subscription offers unlimited support and the latest updates. Plus, you may also have the opportunity to watch instructor-led basic training sessions. Organizations looking for reduced initial capital investment will find the subscription option a good fit.

Organizations must first define the problems they are trying to solve. Thus, they must come up with a set of software features and capabilities that will help them solve these problems. If you have a number of problems, it is important to identify the most pressing one. Then, you must choose a software solution that helps ease those pain points.

Pick a recruiting software solution that doesn't make your job more complicated. Software that has the needs of the end user in mind can simplify, streamline, and make your job easier. An organization's leaders should first try out freemium or free trial programs of the software instead of relying on a demo.

It makes economic sense to have a recruitment tool that you can integrate with other third-party software. A good integrated recruiting stack should allow all software solutions to morph into one seamless system. As a result, you can easily integrate it with minimal IT support.

What is the ROI of the software based on business-related outcomes? Organizations should only invest in specific recruiting tools. For example, solutions that are strategically placed to deliver a decent ROI. Let's assume that you are looking for a solution to cut down the time-to-hire. You can link that time-to-hire with a business-related outcome, such as increased revenue. Therefore, the expected ROI is worth the buy-in.

Company size is another important criterion for choosing a recruiting platform. You don't want to go for a heavy-duty enterprise-level software whose features you'll never use. Small- and medium-sized businesses require different recruiting capabilities than large organizations.

Most recruitment software platforms' price depends on their features. However, different vendors have different pricing models. This way, you can get a recruitment software solution that best fits your budget.

It is important to look for the most qualified recruiting software vendor that will offer reliable services. Of course, picking just any name that pops up in a Google search can cost you time and money. Additionally, it can cause unnecessary frustration. There are several questions to ask when looking for the right vendor. These include:

• What services, features, and tools do they offer? Do they provide email automation, ad publishing, video communication, in-app messaging, candidate relationship management, skill testing, customizable reporting, and analytics?
• How much does it cost? Does the pricing model fit your budgetary needs?
• What is their recruitment software comparison like? How does it compare to other software in its range?
• What are other people saying about their services? Do they have good-standing social proof that is evident in their reviews?
• What is their licensing model? Do they offer free trials and demos to demonstrate their value offering?
• Does the service vendor offer guarantees, policies, or assurances regarding the placement of personnel?
• What is their market differentiation? How do they fair against other competing vendors?
• How transparent are they about their product and customer support?
• Do they have provisions in place to scale activity to match your business needs?

Best of breed recruiting tools should communicate with other business software. When looking for the top recruiting software, ask vendors what type of integrations they offer. Are they using file-based batch integration or a public application programming interface (API)? For organizations that don't need to update data regularly, API integration is an excellent recruitment software option.

The mapping capabilities for API integrations make it easy for different systems to integrate seamlessly with each other. Let's assume that your company has an existing HR system, such as payroll software or a Learning Management System (LMS). Of course, it's crucial that any solution you choose integrates with them. Your ideal recruiting tool should also integrate with a full HR suite like an HRIS or HCM system to further streamline the workflow and reduce possible data handling frustrations.

Organizations looking to create a more extensive candidate sourcing platform should consider going for a social media integrations system. LinkedIn integration could be especially important when looking to tap into industry-specific talent pools.

Neatly integrated recruiting software solutions offer a bunch of benefits. These include:

• Preventing you from losing great candidates
• Improved security
• Higher productivity levels
• Smarter data analysis and reporting
• Higher productivity levels among recruiters
• More consistent hiring, owing to the well-structured recruitment process

The best recruiting software platform should help you stay organized throughout the hiring pipeline. Good recruiting tools should offer a robust set of features and capabilities to help you get the most qualified candidates. These should include onboarding tools, employer branding, third-party integrations, and ATS features, among others.

Large enterprises, staffing and recruitment agencies, and other SMBs have unique hiring needs. Their leaders must, therefore, take enough time to go through multiple recruiting software reviews, guides, and recruiting software comparisons. That way, they can get the best value for their investment. Where possible, HR teams should request a recruiting software free trial to understand a particular system's true potential.

Be sure to click on the following link for a list of the best recruitment software systems for 2021, which features both reviews and comparisons.