Best Talent Acquisition Software Shortlist
Here’s the shortlist of the best talent acquisition software that I’ll cover in this article, with detailed tool summaries below:
- 10. Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite (by Jobvite) — Best talent acquisition software for applicant tracking
Talent acquisition software helps you identify the right candidates for each position without wasting time.
Modern businesses, especially those that have hybrid or remote working environments, receive dozens if not hundreds of applications for each open position. Talent acquisition tools enable you to automate your hiring procedures so your HR team doesn’t have to spend hours sifting through the applications in order to find the right people.
Read my review to discover the best talent acquisition software you can use today. My review includes short descriptions and screenshots of the solutions that made the list, as well as a comparison chart so you can quickly identify the right tool for your organization.
Selection Criteria
Wondering what criteria I used to select the best talent acquisition software for this list? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
- User Interface (UI): Talent acquisition solutions can help your team perform a lot of tasks. I look for tools with clean layouts so your team members can quickly find the right functionality for anything they want to achieve.
- Usability: Hiring managers have a lot on their plates, so they shouldn’t have to waste time learning how to use a new tool. I selected software that’s easy to use so your team doesn’t have to go through a complex onboarding process.
- Integrations: Talent acquisition software works best when paired with other solutions, such as your HR software, human resources information system (HRIS), customer relationship management (CRM), or human capital management (HCM) apps. I chose tools that offer multiple native integrations or can connect to other apps via third-party integration providers.
- Value for $: The best talent management tools help you simplify and speed up your recruitment process. I selected solutions that enable your team members to achieve multiple tasks so you get a nice return on your investment.
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Overviews of the 10 Best Talent Acquisition Software
Here’s a brief description of each talent acquisition software to showcase each tool’s best use case, their noteworthy features, and some pros and cons. I’ve also included screenshots to give you a snapshot of their user interface too.
TalentReef
Best talent acquisition software for sourcing and hiring hourly workers
TalentReef is a talent acquisition platform that's designed to streamline the hiring process, from job posting to onboarding. It's a pretty comprehensive tool that covers everything you need to attract, hire, and onboard new employees, with a particular focus on helping teams manage high-volume hiring for location-based, hourly roles.
Their platform includes several features that provide a positive candidate experience, including their conversational AI chatbot, a text-to-apply feature, two-way texting abilities, and social recruiting tools. Recruiters can also save a lot of time thanks to their automated workflows for common tasks like scheduling interviews and sending follow-up communications to candidates.
TalentReef Standout Features and Integrations
One standout feature of TalentReef is its robust job posting feature. You can post jobs to multiple job boards with a single click, which saves a ton of time. Then there's the applicant tracking system, which shows you at a glance where each candidate is in the process, without needing to drill into candidate records extensively.
TalentReef also includes an onboarding feature for hired candidates, which automates a lot of the required paperwork for getting a new hire onboard.
Integrations are available with payroll systems, candidate assessment tools, background check providers, and learning management systems, though individual platforms are not specified.
Pros
- Includes mobile-friendly features
- Specifically designed for sourcing hourly workers
- Includes numerous time-saving automations
Cons
- Pricing details are not transparent
- May not be suitable for hiring salaried workers
ClearCompany
Best talent acquisition software for recruiting and onboarding
ClearCompany is a talent acquisition software that provides recruiters with an all-in-one solution for finding and managing the best talent available, while centralizing their entire recruitment process.
ClearCompany offers a full suite of products designed to make recruiting easier and more efficient. Its applicant tracking system (ATS) allows employers to post jobs on their website or other job boards and track applicants through the hiring process. You can create job descriptions and postings, manage incoming applications, conduct interviews, and onboard new hires.
Recruiters can easily search for candidates based on criteria such as experience level, skillset, or location. It also has automated workflow tools that allow them to quickly identify qualified candidates from the applicant pool, saving hours of manual work on their part.
ClearCompany provides recruiters with data-driven insights into their performance and how it compares to industry standards. This allows employers to get an objective view of how effective their recruiting efforts are and adjust accordingly, if necessary.
The software provides guidance on best practices when it comes to talent acquisition strategies. For instance, the platform offers advice on how to create more attractive job postings that will draw in more qualified applicants and tips on how to conduct better interviews that focus on assessing soft skills rather than just technical knowledge.
The software also includes an automated onboarding system that makes the process of bringing new employees into an organization simpler and faster. The system creates personalized onboarding plans for each employee based on their role in the company and provides tools such as checklists, reminders, documents, and approvals needed throughout the process. This helps reduce paperwork and administrative time while ensuring accurate data is collected from each new hire before they start work.
ClearCompany Standout Features and Integrations
Features include an applicant tracking system, branded career sites, job postings & job board management tools, video interviewing, text recruiting tools, background-checking workflows, interview scheduling automation, rich candidate profiles, and detailed reports & analytics covering all aspects of your recruiting funnel, including time-to-hire metrics.
Integrations are available natively with 100+ popular HR software solutions, including payroll providers, time-tracking apps, and performance management solutions. Key integrations include Absorb LMS, ADP, BambooHR, eSkill, Glassdoor, Gmail, Indeed, LinkedIn, Microsoft Office 365, Okta, OneLogin, ScreeningOne, SimpliVerified, Sterling, and many others.
ClearCompany Plans and Pricing
Pricing details for ClearCompany are available upon request. You can also request a free demo through their website.
Pros
- Well-rounded talent management features cover the whole employee lifecycle
- User-friendly virtual onboarding process works well for remote staff
- Integrated e-signature capability saves time and removes hassles
Cons
- Pricing details are not transparent
- No free trial available
Zoho Recruit
Best talent acquisition software for candidate sourcing
Zoho Recruit is a recruitment management solution that helps in-house talent acquisition specialists and staffing agencies source great candidates.
The solution integrates with dozens of free and premium job boards and with your social media channels, so you can maximize your reach and increase your chances of finding top talent. Hiring specialists can map skill sets to job descriptions, allowing the software’s artificial intelligence to match candidates automatically.
Zoho Recruit makes candidate sourcing easy, so it’s ideal for freelance recruiters, staffing agencies, and the HR departments of medium to large organizations.
Zoho Recruit Standout Features and Integrations
Features include social recruiting, reference checking, onboarding tools, AI matching, and career site creation.
Integrations are natively available with dozens of solutions, including all Zoho products, Checkr, DocuSign, LinkedIn, Mailchimp, Microsoft Outlook, and Slack.
Zoho Recruit Plans and Pricing
Plans begin at $30 per user, per month. They also offer a 15-day free trial and a free-forever version for one active job.
Pros
- Customizable career page
- Free plan available
- Customizable workflows
Cons
- Career page can sometimes look bad on mobile devices
- Tool may seem overwhelming at first
Freshteam
Best talent acquisition software for career site creation
Freshteam is a HR software that enables businesses to create customizable career sites without writing code.
Thanks to its drag-and-drop website editor and the variety of templates it offers, Freshteam makes it easy to create a branded career site to attract job seekers. The software also integrates with free and premium job boards, so organizations can attract leads from multiple channels.
Freshteam is an ideal recruiting tool for startups and small businesses because it offers a free-forever plan for organizations with up to 50 employees. Businesses can use the software to find the right candidates as they scale and upgrade their plans whenever necessary.
Freshteam Standout Features and Integrations
Features include applicant tracking system, talent pool management, interview scorecards, offer management, onboarding and offboarding, and recruitment reporting.
Integrations are available natively with multiple tools, including Indeed, Jooble, LinkedIn, Instahyre, Microsoft Office 365, and ZipRecruiter.
Freshteam Plans and Pricing
Plans begin at $71 per month plus $1.20 per employee, per month. They also offer a 21-day free trial and a free-forever plan for up to 50 employees.
Pros
- Comprehensive learning guides and tutorials
- Good automation features
- Free plan for startups and small businesses
Cons
- User interface could be improved
- Automatic triggers can be difficult to set up
Workable
Best talent acquisition software for AI matching
Workable is a recruitment and applicant tracking software that uses AI to connect acquisition teams with qualified candidates.
The solution maintains a database of over 160 million job seekers and automatically provides you with a list of 50 candidates every time you post a job. This helps you speed up your hiring process and enables you to build a contact list of qualified people.
Workable’s passive candidate search functionality crawls social media platforms and creates detailed candidate profiles that include email addresses and social links, so you can contact highly skilled individuals directly. The platform also enables you to share your job on 200+ job sites, so you can increase your reach. Workable’s automation features make it ideal for businesses that are looking for candidates with specific skill sets, such as those operating in tech or SaaS.
Workable Standout Features and Integrations
Features include job advertising, onboarding, candidate assessments, AI-powered matching, video interviews, background checks, offer letters, and e-signatures.
Integrations are natively available with dozens of apps, including BambooHR, Factorial, Gmail, HR Cloud, Microsoft Outlook, Namely, Sapling, ZipRecruiter and Zoom.
Workable Plans and Pricing
Plans begin at $129 per job posting, per month. They also offer a 15-day free trial.
Pros
- Good onboarding
- Workflows are easy to set up
- Offers a variety of templates
Cons
- Some email templates need more customization options
- Search filters could be better
SmartRecruiters
Best talent acquisition software for conversational recruiting
SmartRecruiters is a talent acquisition suite that enables businesses to attract top talent and build candidate relationships through efficient communication.
The solution enables acquisition specialists to engage candidates via email, text, social media, or chatbots, so they can expand their talent pool. HR professionals can sort job seekers using tags and resume data, so they can identify the right candidate profiles for each job opening.
SmartRecruiters helps businesses of all sizes attract and retrain candidates without difficulty. The software allows HR teams to review, rate, and share candidate profiles so they can create collaborative talent sourcing processes.
SmartRecruiters Standout Features and Integrations
Features include job advertising, applicant tracking, CRM, AI recruiting, chatbot recruiting, and text recruiting.
Integrations are available natively with dozens of tools, including ConveyIQ, Gem, HackerRank, Honeit, SourceWhale, and Trustcruit.
SmartRecruiters Plans and Pricing
SmartRecruiters offers custom pricing upon request, as well as a free demo.
Pros
- Multiple internal and external communication options
- Great mobile app
- Automated screening assessments
Cons
- Can be challenging to integrate it with some solutions
- Resume parsing can be buggy at times
SeekOut
Best talent acquisition software for AI-driven candidate matching
SeekOut is a talent intelligence platform that helps recruiters attract and retain job seekers with AI.
SeekOut allows you to expand your talent pool with AI-driven candidate matching. The tool can automatically identify candidates based on your job description, and you can trim your results using software’s advanced search capabilities with a combination of keywords and filters.
SeekOut is a talent sourcing tool that helps businesses connect with the right candidates. Thanks to the software’s ability to access platforms like GitHub to source candidates, it’s ideal for organizations that are looking for tech talent.
SeekOut Standout Features and Integrations
Features include AI matching, ATS rediscovery, candidate engagement, diversity hiring, and talent analytics.
Integrations are available natively with multiple apps, including Ascendify, Greenhouse, iCIMS, Lever, SAP SuccessFactors, and Workday.
SeekOut Plans and Pricing
SeekOut offers custom pricing upon request, as well as a free demo.
Pros
- Sources talent from rarely used social platforms
- No outreach limits
- Great for advanced, niched searches
Cons
- The large number of features can seem overwhelming at first
- Candidate social profiles could be updated more frequently
Yello
Best talent acquisition software for diversity recruiting
Yello is a talent acquisition software that enables recruiters to connect with top diverse talent from 7,000+ campuses across the US.
The software allows businesses to access a database of over 6 million candidates in WayUp and use their self-reported data to create engaging job opportunities. The data is Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) compliant, and recruiters can segment candidates based on their major, gender, location, ethnicity, and more.
Yello allows recruiting teams to speed up their hiring process. The software can automatically identify qualified candidates with its built-in screening feature and can knock out unqualified individuals based on custom criteria. The tool sends an automatic response to all candidates within 24 hours, improving their application experience.
Yello Standout Features and Integrations
Features include campus recruiting, events management, built-in screening, and automated messages.
Integrations are available natively with several tools, including iCIMS, Lever, Pymetrics, SAP SuccessFactors, Taleo, WayUp, and Workday.
Yello Plans and Pricing
Yello offers custom pricing upon request, as well as a free demo.
Pros
- Branded job boards
- Mobile-friendly career site
- Event management tools
Cons
- Pipeline progression reports could be more detailed
- Not many native integrations
Workday
Best talent acquisition software for collaborative hiring workflows
Workday is an HCM that allows hiring specialists to work together in order to attract and retain top talent.
The solution enables hiring teams to exchange interview feedback and collaborate to create job requisitions, so they can accelerate their candidate pipeline and fill their open positions faster. Workday’s built-in team collaboration features and its third-party integrations help recruiting teams go through a lot of applications in a short amount of time, so they can identify potential new hires based on candidate experience.
Workday’s dashboards and real-time analytics help recruiters keep an eye on their key metrics and make data-driven decisions to reach their business goals. Talent acquisition specialists can use a combination of custom notifications and checklists to resolve outstanding action items in good time, which makes the tool great for staffing agencies or large organizations.
Workday Standout Features and Integrations
Features include an HCM database, hiring team collaboration, interview management, onboarding for new hires, candidate experience assessments, and custom notifications.
Integrations are natively available with hundreds of tools, including all Workday solutions, BetterUp, First Advantage, Humanity, LinkedIn, Salesforce, SeekOut, Slack, and Workhuman.
Workday Plans and Pricing
Workday offers custom pricing upon request, as well as a free demo.
Pros
- Helps you create a transparent hiring process
- Helpful ready-made dashboards
- Creates a central location for candidate data
Cons
- Candidate UI could be improved
- Platform has a learning curve
Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite (by Jobvite)
Best talent acquisition software for applicant tracking
Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite is a one-stop-shop solution for hiring teams. The software helps with every step of the recruiting process, including job posting, applicant tracking, employee referral reviews, and onboarding.
The Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite gives you the right tool for every step of the recruiting journey. The software breaks down your data and helps you interpret it with pre-configured reports, so you can track the activity of your best candidates across multiple channels with a single recruiting solution.
Jobvite’s Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite is ideal for medium and large organizations or staffing agencies that handle multiple clients. Thanks to the software’s automation and tracking features, HR specialists can process hundreds of applicants and select the right ones for each position.
Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite Standout Features and Integrations
Features include applicant tracking, recruitment marketing, employer branding, internal mobility, and automation.
Integrations are available natively for dozens of solutions, including Indeed, Glassdoor, GoodHire, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, LinkedIn, and TextRecruit.
Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite Plans and Pricing
Jobvite offers custom pricing upon request, as well as a free demo.
Pros
- Supports multiple clients at the same time
- Good internal and external communication features
- Great at tracking applicant activity
Cons
- The reporting dashboards can be complicated to set up
- Some integrations can be buggy at times
10 Best Talent Acquisition Software Comparison Chart
Here’s a comparison chart that summarizes basic details about each of my top talent acquisition software selections. You can view pricing details and the availability of free trials or demos side-by-side to help you find the best software that works for your budget.
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | TalentReef Best talent acquisition software for sourcing and hiring hourly workers | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
2 | ClearCompany Best talent acquisition software for recruiting and onboarding | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
3 | Zoho Recruit Best talent acquisition software for candidate sourcing | 15-day free trial + free plan available | From $30/user/month (100 active job postings) | Visit Website |
4 | Freshteam Best talent acquisition software for career site creation | 21-day free trial | From $1.20/user/month + $71/month base fee | Visit Website |
5 | Workable Best talent acquisition software for AI matching | 15-day free trial + free demo | From $149/month | Visit Website |
6 | SmartRecruiters Best talent acquisition software for conversational recruiting | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
7 | SeekOut Best talent acquisition software for AI-driven candidate matching | 14-day free trial + free demo | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
8 | Yello Best talent acquisition software for diversity recruiting | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
9 | Workday Best talent acquisition software for collaborative hiring workflows | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
10 | Evolve Talent Acquisition Suite (by Jobvite) Best talent acquisition software for applicant tracking | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
Other Options
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best talent acquisition software list:
- LeverTRM
Best talent acquisition software for referral tracking
- iCIMS Talent Cloud
Best talent acquisition software for customizable workflows
- Eightfold.ai
Best talent acquisition software for unbiased candidate selection
- Fetcher
Best talent acquisition software for automated outreach sequences
- JazzHR
Best talent acquisition software for data-driven hiring processes
- Recruiterflow
Best talent acquisition software for automated job posting
- hireEZ
Best talent acquisition software for technical hires
- Ideal
Best talent acquisition software for objective candidate selection
- Brazen
Best talent acquisition software for virtual hiring events
- Ascendify
Best talent acquisition software for reduced job advertising spending
Talent Acquisition Software: Frequently Asked Questions
What is talent acquisition software and what does it do?
What are the main features you should look for when evaluating talent acquisition software?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using talent acquisition software?
What’s the difference between talent acquisition and recruitment?
Other Resources
Talent acquisition strategies can help your business scale. As Marc Benioff, co-CEO of Salesforce, said:
"Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was — and still is — the most important thing we do."
Read our article on Why And How To Create A Proper Talent Management Strategy if you want to discover how to build a long-term strategy that makes your business attractive to top performers.
Our article on How To Attract And Retain Top Talent Through The Employee Life Cycle explains how to improve the way you’re perceived as an employer. And our article – Talent Management Versus Learning And Development – helps you understand how to promote a culture of self-development in your organization.
If you want to receive actionable advice on how to improve your talent acquisition efforts in order to increase your organization’s performance directly in your inbox, subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter.