The Best Recruiting Software for Small Businesses

• Recruiting software automates your recruiting process with features like candidate sourcing, interview scheduling, employee onboarding and engagement reporting.
• Look for a solution that is affordable and scalable.
• Workable is the best recruiting software program for small businesses, Breezy HR is the best free recruiting software application, and BambooHR has the best applicant tracking system.
• This article is for entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to enhance their recruiting process with the best recruiting software. 

When searching for recruiting software, consider the application's recruiting features, pricing and how usable the platform is. The best recruiting software is customizable, and with it, your team can automatically post job ads, source candidates, track applications, schedule interviews, and onboard new hires. We compared nearly 60 different software options to determine the best recruiting applications for small businesses.

The cost of a recruiting software suite can range from $25 per month to thousands of dollars per month depending on a variety of factors like what features you want, how many users need access to the software, how many job openings and new hires you need, and the number of employees you currently have. When you're shopping around for software, ask whether you'll be charged additional fees, and if so, for what. It's common that software providers charge extra for licensing costs, training fees, setup or installation, and tech support. 

Recruiting software is often charged monthly, with discounts given for those who opt for annual billing. Most platforms offer a free demo, with some offering a 15- to 30-day free trial. Some applications can be used for free indefinitely, but the software or the free plans are burdened with significant restrictions and are typically only ideal for occasional or short-term hiring needs.  

Key takeaway: Recruiting software costs vary. Pricing is influenced by the features you need and the number of job postings and users you have. Inquire about additional fees when talking with software providers.

You can continue recruiting and hiring the way your company has. For busy business owners and managers who juggle a lot of roles and responsibilities, recruiting software significantly simplifies the process of finding, hiring, and onboarding qualified candidates. 

The best recruiting software is going to help you automate your hiring process by sourcing and tracking qualified candidates, aiding with interviewing candidates and onboarding new hires, customizing your HR workflows, and providing insightful data and reports. 

If you're new to HR recruiting software, below is an explanation of the common features included in these solutions and how they can benefit your business. 

Candidate Sourcing

Recruiting software can automate the candidate sourcing process, allowing you to easily distribute detailed job postings to hundreds of job board platforms and recruit candidates through relevant social media networks. 

The best software parses resumes, creates customized career pages and employee referral campaigns, deploys customized candidate screening questions and assessments, and automates candidate matching, filtering, and scoring. 

Applicant Tracking

An applicant tracking system can be acquired on its own, but the best recruiting software incorporates applicant tracking as one of its core capabilities. It should easily integrate with your email and calendar programs, allowing you to communicate with candidates and schedule interviews on one succinct platform. It should also automate communications like bulk rejection and offer generation, and some platforms have features like background screening and SMS text messaging. 

Employee Onboarding

Most recruiting software has e-signature capabilities, allowing new employees to remotely accept an offer and complete onboarding paperwork. Comprehensive programs take it one step further, automating the entire onboarding process. If onboarding assistance is something you need, look for software that has a customizable onboarding portal with learning activities, automated workflows and integrated talent management.  

Workforce Planning

Your recruiting strategy is a reflection of your business. Recruiting software offers a simple solution to create a customizable workflow for your hiring process. The software often comes with the ability to build searchable talent pools; manage recruiter tasks; sort, group, and delete candidates; and customize data definitions and reporting. 

Reporting and Analytics

One of the biggest advantages of using recruiting software is its reporting and analytics. Instead of blasting out job postings in hopes that the right candidate sees it, recruiting software compiles your data into easy-to-read reports. You can track insights like employee engagement, new leads, whom you reached out to, which candidates responded and interviewed, and what job boards are most effective. These insights help you track your return on investment and streamline your hiring process. 

Key takeaway: Recruiting software helps your company source and track qualified candidates, interview applicants and onboard new hires, automate your hiring process, and view recruiting data and reports.

Recruiting software is designed to automate the tedious parts of recruiting, doing much more than you would be able to handle manually. It can easily blast out multiple customized job postings, send bulk rejection or welcome emails, and automatically transition candidates to the next phase of the recruiting process based preset configurations. When recruiting software tracks your candidates every step of the way, you reach the best candidates and dot every i and cross every t in the hiring process. 

Automation and tracking capabilities increase your hiring efficiency, allowing recruiters to focus on what matters – engaging with great candidates. This can reduce recruiting time and increase employee engagement and satisfaction. Some recruiting software can handle multiple aspects of the onboarding process for you. Recruiting software that provides analytics gives you insight as to how your hiring process is performing and where you can improve. 

Key takeaway: Recruiting software can improve your hiring process with candidate tracking, process automation, recruiting efficiency and reporting.

What should you look for in a recruiting software package?

Many small businesses benefit from features like candidate sourcing, applicant tracking, employee onboarding, workforce planning, and recruiting analytics and reporting. The best recruiting software for your business, though, depends on your specific recruiting needs. At the very least, look for a software package that is affordable, scalable and will enhance your current recruiting strategy. 

If you are a small business that doesn't have an onsite tech support team, look for recruitment software that is cloud-based, so you don't have to host it on your server. The software should have a dashboard that is intuitive and optimized for mobile devices. Consider a software package that has the basic recruiting features you need, but can scale as your company, and recruiting needs, grow. 

What steps in the hiring process does recruiting software manage?

Recruiting software can be very basic, only managing processes like job ad posting and candidate sourcing, or it can manage every step of the hiring process. Many recruiting software plans manage job posting, candidate sourcing, screening, applicant tracking, interview scheduling, employee onboarding, and workforce planning. 

The benefits of recruiting software extend to your hiring practices and your current workforce. Many software solutions provide data and analytic insights you can analyze to refine your hiring process, and some even come with employee management features that allow you to track employee engagement, view employee statistics, and more. 

How can hiring data optimize your recruitment budget?

Instead of aimlessly posting open jobs to random job boards and social media networks, data provided by many recruiting software programs shows you which platforms are the best at finding quality candidates, so you can focus your recruiting efforts on those sites. It can also show you which platforms and job descriptions are performing poorly for your business, allowing you to revise descriptions and your recruiting strategy. 

How does the size of your company affect the recruiting software package you need?

If you only make one hire a year, consider a software package that doesn't require an annual agreement. The comprehensiveness of recruiting features you need is also likely to be fewer, so look for a package that doesn't require you to pay for extra features you don't need. 

Some recruiting software packages are priced according to the number of candidates hired or how many people on your hiring team need access to the recruiting tool. These pricing options are ideal for small businesses. 

Large corporations and staffing firms need full-service recruiting software that supports high-volume hiring and multiple HR professionals. These companies are better suited to recruiting software that offers customized pricing.

Business News Daily strives to find the best products and services for your small business. We invest hours into identifying and researching the best products and services so you feel confident about our recommendations. 

We revisit our categories each year, evaluating new changes in the industry and new companies. Our process involves revisiting our previous best picks to determine if they are still the best in their category.

In addition to our current recommendations, here are the companies we previously selected as best picks: 

Best Executive Recruiting Software: FileFinder Anywhere

Best Free Recruiting Software: Osclass

As part of our research, we interviewed small business owners to gain insight as to what recruiting software they use, why, and what features they prize. We learned that automation, easy implementation, candidate management and scalability are the top features many small business owners look for in recruiting software. 

Will Ward, CEO of B2B startup Assistive Listening HQ, said his team uses Breezy HR to hire entry-level employees once a quarter and management employees once every six to 12 months. He loves the candidate management and automation features. "The most important features are automated background checks, simple drag-and-drop funnel, evaluation features (e.g., giving candidates scores), and automation in messaging (e.g., sending emails after each stage)," Ward told business.com.  

Jesse Silkoff, president and co-founder of MyRoofingPal, said his team uses Workable's recruiting software for its scalability. Since MyRoofingPal's growing team has roughly 50 employees spread across the country, they needed a system that could accommodate their varying hiring needs. 

"It was easy to set up and implement without the need for a specialist," said Silkoff. "We are a small business that's growing, so we wanted recruiting software that was scalable. At this point, we have mainly recruited entry-level and mid-level managers, but we expect to begin expanding our sales staff in the fourth quarter of this year."   

Dan Bailey, president of WikiLawn, said the most important recruiting software feature for his small team was the ability to use it across multiple disciplines. The WikiLawn team chose to use BambooHR's comprehensive HR management platform because it can be easily navigated by several employees throughout the hiring process. 

"It was important for us that managers be able to use certain features, too," said Bailey. "We also appreciated how comprehensive the software was. Part of why we chose BambooHR was for the employee and manager self-service. Employees can interact with the software, schedule their PTO, get reviews from managers, etc. Managers can be involved in the hiring process, which has really helped improve our onboarding."   

Although the best recruiting software features will depend on your business's unique needs, it is important to find a software that is easy for your team to implement and scale, and can help to automate and manage your hiring process. 

Key takeaway: Community experts found the most important recruiting software features to be process automation, easy implementation, candidate management and scalability.

To determine what recruiting software is the best for small businesses, we spent dozens of hours researching the top companies. Here is an explanation of our selection process.

Locating the Best Services

Our methodology involves putting ourselves in the mindset of a small business owner and compiling details about recruitment software that would be most relevant to them. To determine the best small business recruiting software, we started with an extensive list of 60 vendors. It included software solutions we were already familiar with plus those recommended or mentioned by small business owners, hiring managers, recruitment professionals, review sites and business websites.

Choosing the Best Services

To further inform our decisions, we asked small business owners, hiring managers and recruitment professionals what they look for in recruitment software, which products they recommend, and what they like or don't like about the software they currently use or have used in the past. Additionally, we sought insight from vendors to gain a better understanding of how different types of recruitment software work and what makes one product stand out over others. We further scrutinized recruitment software, analyzing what features were offered and how they applied to different use-case scenarios. We narrowed our initial list of 60 vendors down to roughly 30 companies.

Researching Each Service

As part of our research, we took a further dive into the customer support each company offered. We contacted recruitment software sales reps and customer service teams, posing as small business owners shopping for recruitment software. This helped us better evaluate each software option and the quality of customer support from a user's perspective. We also tested or participated in demos for the software when possible. This helped us evaluate ease of use and whether the features offered are fit for small business users.

Analyzing Each Service

We landed on three best picks for small businesses, applicant tracking and free plans. Workable, BambooHR and Breezy HR withstood each round of testing and earned best-pick status for 2020. We analyzed each company for the following features: workforce planning, candidate sourcing and acquisition, applicant tracking, employee onboarding, reporting and analytics, pricing, usability, scalability, dashboard interface, mobile optimization, customer reviews and customer support.