10+ Best AI Recruiting Software Tools in 2024
The best AI recruiting software, reviewed and rated by HR tech experts. Find feature comparisons, pricing info, use cases and more below.
Top AI Recruiting Software
Rather than worrying about being replaced, the best recruiting teams now know that they can leverage the power of AI in myriad ways (if you’ve landed on this page, that’s likely you).
Indeed, many of the top AI recruiting tools can help source, screen, and hire top talent. Others are great at generating creative cold emails for job seekers, sprucing up job descriptions, screening thousands of resumes, and even scheduling interviews with the right candidates.
Of course, with so many new developments nearly every day, there is a lot of noise in this space, and it can be hard to tell what’s real and useful from what’s simply a marketing pitch or plain old hype.
So, at SSR, we’ve spent a lot of time understanding the AI recruiting software landscape to find and demo the best vendors, explore the use cases that make sense, and figure out what to expect when you implement artificial intelligence into your recruitment workflows.
We’ve arrived at this list of the best AI Recruiting tools through constant testing and demoing. As an editorial team, we keep in regular touch with many of these companies. We get demos when it’s time to see a new module or even just a few new features.
While these tools differ in their approach to AI recruiting, their capabilities can be bundled into three categories. The first two are candidate sourcing, and screening, where most of the heavy work gets done by AI magic, but some of these also go into a third one; hiring processes.
- Sourcing: AI is all about saving time by automating the more predictable and repetitive tasks of any practice. Most of these tools have remarkable sourcing capabilities. They can scour all kinds of corners of the internet for candidates, or provide few really specific profiles. Many also do smart matches and recommendations based on a few inputs.
- Screening: As you work that candidate pipeline, the same tools tend to have different ways of filtering people. Our software selection includes tools that incorporate AI into assessments, interview scheduling, and screening, whether it’s through chatbots or smart shortlisting.
- Hiring Processes: From AI-generated contracts and offer letters to AI assistants that help with onboarding, many of these tools put a cherry on top by also providing features for the very last step of the recruiting process.
Whether you are a small startup, a recruiting team of one, an agency, or someone tasked with transforming how talent gets found at a huge enterprise, at least one of these tools will be right for you vis-a-vis capabilities— and pricing. To learn more about our selection criteria in broader terms, here are more details on how we evaluate HR tech vendors.
Workable
Humanly
Paradox
Manatal
Wellfound
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Fetcher
AmazingHiring
Findem
hireEZ
HireVue
Eightfold
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Workable
Throughout our tech test, Workable impressed us with its expanded capabilities to track applicants, source, interview, and perform some core HR workflows. The platform’s AI job posting tool is also among the best we’ve seen due to how easy it is to incorporate GenAI into the mix and the quality of the results.
PROS
- Advanced AI-powered job description tool with customizable tone and version control.
- Salary Estimator provides competitive pay ranges for US and UK jobs.
- AI Screening Assistant scores and summarizes candidate-job fit.
- In-house AI video interview tool and AI-Recruiter for passive candidate sourcing.
- Over 290 integrations are available, plus API support.
- You can post jobs with one click to over 200 sites. You also get access to access to Workable’s talent pool with over 400 million profiles.
- Workable has built-in cognitive and personality candidate assessment. The platform also has features for offer management, which means you can create offer letters and collect e-signatures without needing to use third-party tools
- You can reduce unconscious hiring bias with Workable’s anonymized screening feature. It helps you hide identifying candidate information from the sourced and applied stages of the hiring process.
CONS
- Extra fees for texting, video interviews, transcription, and Salary Estimator.
- Sourcing capability is not as comprehensive as that of dedicated platforms.
- No recruitment chatbot functionality.
- Workable doesn’t provide automated reference checking and onboarding features.
- Useful features such as candidate texting, video interviews, and assessments are not offered in any of Workable’’s plans and instead, sold separately.
- Several users complained about the reporting feature not being detailed or customizable enough, and that the candidate search function could use more filters.
After nearly 2 years of closely watching Workable, we can confidently say that it’s a powerful platform that has evolved significantly over its decade in the recruitment tech market. With over 30,000 customers, Workable has solidified its reputation as one of the top AI-driven recruiting tools, thanks to its advanced automation workflows and a growing list of integrations.
Many offer AI-powered job description features, but none have surpassed what we’ve seen in Workable. It doesn’t just stop at crafting first drafts of job postings based on the role title and requirements. It also allows users to adjust the tone (formal, friendly, or engaging), revert to previous versions, or even regenerate specific sentences to suit particular needs.
Another feature that positions Workable a step ahead of platforms like Lever or JazzHR is the addition of a Salary Estimator. In our test, this provided us with a competitive pay range for attracting top talent.
Workable’s AI-Recruiter tool for passive candidate sourcing, while not as comprehensive as some dedicated sourcing platforms we know, like Gem or Fetcher, is sufficient for SMBs. During our Standard Plan trial, we received 75 profile views, which allowed us to preview candidates and see why the system matched them to our job postings— all without relying on external apps (read: additional fees).
We were equally impressed with the AI Screening Assistant. It provided both profile scores and a detailed summary of how well each candidate matched our job’s requirements, which made the whole screening process labor-saving.
It was also convenient to have everything under one roof with an AI video interview tool in-house. However, it’s worth noting that this feature, along with transcription capabilities (via third-party tools like Supernormal or BrightHire), comes at an additional cost.
On the pricing front, Workable starts at $149 per month for two jobs, which is steeper than competitors like Manatal ($15 per month) or Wellfound (free). This higher price point reflects its robust feature set. Still, we can see how budget-conscious teams might find this a bit much.
Workable is also geared towards in-house recruiting, so we wouldn’t recommend it if you're part of a staffing agency. And for those who focus heavily on chatbot-driven candidate screening and communication, you might want to look elsewhere, such as Humanly or Paradox, which excel in that area.
30,000+ companies, including Cytora, Karo Healthcare, and Frosch.
Workable has three plans: Starter ($149/month), Standard ($299/month), and Premier ($599/month). Premium add-ons, such as Texting, Video Interviews, and Assessments, start at $29/month. A free trial is available, and discounts apply when bundling Recruiting and HR products.
Best For
SMBs seeking a well-rounded, AI-enhanced applicant tracking system that can also handle sourcing, screening, and interviews in-house.
Humanly
Humanly.io's approach to AI recruiting optimizes recruiters' repetitive interactions inside the candidate screening, interview scheduling and conducting, reference checking, and re-engagement processes. It’s ideal for high volume, hourly, and early career hiring.
PROS
- Humanly offers a user-friendly experience for both applicants and employees.
- It lets you source candidates from LinkedIn, Indeed, Facebook, and the likes.
- When it comes to integrations, you can organize candidates in tools like Bullhorn, ADP, Greenhouse, Lever, and a few other ATSs.
- The platform automates the initial screening and interview scheduling processes, saving you a great deal of time.
- There's built-in functionality for taking notes and generating transcripts of interviews, as well as providing insights about each candidate based on the conversation.
- Users highly appreciate the helpfulness and responsiveness of Humanly's customer support team.
- Humanly leverages a huge database of candidates to present you with talent from all corners of the globe. You can also source new ones through their Chrome extension while browsing sites like LinkedIn and GitHub.
- The Humanly tool integrates with hundreds of ATSs, providing an upgrade to your sourcing that won’t require you to switch tools.
- Generative AI is cleverly implemented for messaging candidates, automating campaigns, and ranking candidates at various stages of the hiring funnel, yet a human can step in and take over at any time.
- Their reporting module is among the cleanest and most in-depth we’ve seen for this kind of tool.
CONS
- There isn’t a way for candidates to reschedule interviews if they need to.
- The platform doesn’t send interview reminders to either candidates or interviewers, a feature a few users said would be “nice to have”
- Pricing isn’t publicly available, and there are no free plans or trials either.
- The range of prebuilt third-party integrations is somewhat limited.
- Since it’s a tool that was relaunched after a company acquisition, there might be some changes in the near future that could impact your workflows.
- The price point might be a bit steep for smaller teams, but they do offer custom prices based on the functionality you need and the number of users.
Humanly has designed an AI-powered chatbot that is specifically built for mid-market companies in need of a tool that is simple and fast to implement. Recently, they started referring to this assistant-like bot as an “AI co-pilot”, which we think is an accurate term. The bot can automate screening, scheduling, and even join live interviews. From the latter, it can produce notes, entire transcripts, and insights based on the conversation.
Those insights are easy to share with the rest of your team, and come in handy to optimize future interviews, zone-in on particular aspects of candidates (like how they answered a particular question), and— in general— save time while vetting. One thing we’ve always liked about Humanly is that they integrate easily with most ATSs, saving you the manual work of inputting data into another system.
We keep in touch regularly with the team at Humanly and they are usually up to all sorts of interesting things. For instance, at a recent demo, we got to see how you can input data from your performance management system. The AI can be trained on this, to help it continually get better at screening candidates so you can make the right hires.
Their use of AI is also generative. For example, the bot can produce a draft of a follow up email after an interview or another hiring step. You can just tweak the email and hit send or automate it completely for other steps.
While there are some ‘nice-to-haves’ that the tool may be lacking (as explained in the cons section of this review), Humanly is worth looking into when it comes to AI recruiting tools. If you're a mid-market company looking to add a chatbot, text recruiting, or AI capabilities to your talent acquisition tech stack, do check them out.
World Flight Services, Mossadams, Microsoft, The Key, Fazoli’s
Humanly’s pricing is not disclosed upfront. You may contact their Sales team for a price quote.
Best For
Medium-sized companies that want to streamline their recruiting processes with a special eye toward reference checks. Humanly is especially tailored for businesses that already have sourcing sites and an ATS in place, but need a solution to connect the two and accelerate things.
Paradox
Paradox has a stellar implementation team, and its flagship product, Olivia, is an AI assistant that can interact with job candidates via chat. This makes the tool a good match for large enterprises with ongoing high-volume hiring needs.
PROS
- Cuts down on back-and-forth communication between job candidates and recruiters.
- We’ve found their implementation and customer service are very efficient and accessible.
- The conversational AI can answer candidate questions in over 100 languages.
- Paradox's back-end system can be translated into more than 30 languages for users.
- Their implementation and customer service is very efficient and accessible. You will not only get a Customer Success Manager to help you with every step during your implementation phase but your issues will also likely be resolved within the same day. Unlike many vendors, you can contact their support team via phone and explain your issue in real-time.
- It’s very time-saving and cuts down on back-and-forth communication between job candidates and recruiters. As Derek B, Head of Recruitment at a large-sized enterprise puts it, “Olivia helped us shave our response time from 7 days to under 24 hours. This time saving ensured that the applicants we chose to interview were the best of the bunch.”
- Olivia, their AI chatbot is programmed to respond to candidates in a way that feels personal, as if a real person is responding. What’s even better is that despite complete automation, you can see all chats and manually override them if need be.
CONS
- Custom requirements can take time to deliver.
- The AI assistant is intelligent and has a human touch, but at the end of the day, Olivia is still AI. At times when you want nuanced answers in conversations, a recruiter will have to operate the chat manually.
- Their support team has been responsive, but sometimes the resolution to an issue isn’t tested from Paradox's side before being passed over to customers.
- Undisclosed pricing, no free trials.
- Although you can get some data and feedback about your company and its processes, analytics is not very robust in Paradox. If you’re looking for advanced features that let you slice and dice your data in various ways, you’ll have to look for other applications.
- Their AI assistant is intelligent and has a human touch but at the end of the day, Olivia is still AI. At times when you want nuanced answers in conversations, you’ll have to manually operate the chat.
Paradox relies on a conversational AI engine called Olivia, which acts as a mediator between recruiters and candidates for passing relevant information, taking requests, and answering questions. While we don’t think it makes all the conversations feel just like humans talking to humans, it does a great job of making the interactions human-like enough.
Our first impression of Paradox's screening capabilities was impressive. The platform's ability to advertise job posts through physical billboards, flyers, and social media, coupled with Olivia's round-the-clock availability for welcoming and screening applicants, can be a game changer for quickly filling multiple positions.
As interacting with AI has become increasingly comfortable, especially when the conversation holds meaning in today’s world, Paradox's trained AI— Olivia, has done a great job engaging with candidates on behalf of recruiters. Olivia can text candidates, share relevant job descriptions, collect candidate information, schedule interviews, and operate outside recruiters' working hours.
However, like any other AI recruitment tool, it may not handle inquiries beyond its programmed knowledge. Tasks such as assessing qualifications or verifying email addresses are better suited for experienced recruiters.
Unilever, McDonald’s, Amazon, 3M, CVS Health, Nestlé, Lowe’s
Pricing is not disclosed upfront. You will have to schedule a demo to get custom pricing.
Best For
Paradox is a great bet for large enterprises that deal with high-volume continuous hiring.
We use Paradox to expedite the interview process. We were able to reduce the time from application to interview by 4 days. It also allows us to keep a steady pipeline of applicants moving through.
I like how customizable and user-friendly Paradox is. We have received positive feedback from applicants. Paradox has multiple features that allow your own brand voice, look, and feel to come through.
We implemented Paradox at my most recent employer to provide a higher-touch applicant experience. Paradox allowed us to provide on-demand answers to questions and immediate interview scheduling to prevent losing applicants to other employers.
Paradox initially required a heavy lift to add all the information on the back-end necessary before launch. It was very time-consuming for my lean HR team.
Paradox differentiates itself from competitors from the avatar function to the scheduling process. They made getting to know our company and applying seamless for applicants.
People should consider whether they want a fast, efficient, and high-touch experience for candidates. This tool may not be best suited for industries where more in-person connection is necessary to qualify candidates before moving to an interview.
Paradox has added API integrations, updated its tool look and feel, and improved its reporting capabilities.
There are several different ways Paradox can be used. All features do not need to be turned on at once. The platform is flexible to meet the specific needs of each organization. Companies with high applicant counts could benefit from this tool to expedite getting someone from the point of application to in-person interview by keeping applicants engaged through a speedy process. A great tool for high-growth and fast-paced environments needing to hire a large number of people quickly.
Paradox would not be a great tool for organizations with low applicant volume or very minimal open positions.
Manatal
Manatal covers most of the features users would expect from a budget-friendly ATS. The platform tops that off with AI-powered actions, such as candidate filtering and recommendations. The AI recruiting tool’s pricing and free trial make it an outstanding option for SMBs.
PROS
- Manatal is quite affordable. Pricing starts at 15 USD/month.
- Offers a 14-day free trial for users to test before making commitments.
- Reasonably easy to use. It features drag-and-drop-enabled pipelines, making it simple to organize applicants.
- AI-based recommendations feature scans job descriptions then searches the user’s talent pool and brings up candidates most suited for the job.
- Offers 24/5 online support, email support, documentation and video explainers, and free onboarding and training.
- Manatal is quite affordable and offers a 15-day free trial for users to test it out before making commitments.
- Manatal is fairly easy to use. It features drag-and-drop enabled pipelines for candidate organization.
- Manatal’s AI-based recommendations feature can save hiring managers quite a bit of time. It’s able to scan job descriptions then search a users talent pool and bring up candidates most suited for the job.
CONS
- The AI recommendations feature works best with resumes in English and doesn’t work as accurately with other languages.
- Manatal doesn’t have a free plan.
- There are limited prebuilt integration modules.
- Only Custom plan users can access API and Zapier integrations.
- Can’t use Boolean Search or Advanced Search simultaneously.
- The AI recommendations feature works best with resumes that are in English, and doesn’t work as accurately with other languages according to several users’ feedback. Several users have also complained about Manatal’s interface only being available in English and that career pages cannot be published in languages other than English and Spanish.
- Manatal doesn’t offer a free plan. We mention this as a con as several SMB-geared ATSs do offer a free-forever verison, and that puts Manatal slightly behind competition.
- Manatal doesn’t offer prebuilt integration modules. They do have an open API that allows users to plug in third-party products and custom tools, but that required a bit more time and technical knowledge to accomplish. It’s also worth mentioning that only Custom plan customers can access Manatal’s API and Zapier integration. Customers on the Professional and Enterprise plan cannot.
- Users can search for candidates via Boolean Search or Advanced Search, but cannot combine the two search methods together. E.g users cannot use the Boolean search operators (AND, OR and NOT) within Manatal’s Advanced Search tab.
Manatal goes above and beyond the typical features expected from a budget-friendly ATS by incorporating AI-powered actions, such as candidate filtering and recommendations. This makes it a standout option, particularly for SMBs looking to streamline their hiring process.
One of the first advantages we noticed of Manatal is its affordability, with pricing plans starting at just 15 USD per month. The platform also checked the user-friendly UI box for featuring drag-and-drop-enabled pipelines.
As we tested the tool, we found the AI-based recommendations feature to be an excellent way to automate prescreening. This feature scans JDs and matches them with the most suitable candidates from the user’s talent pool.
Since coming across the tool and speaking to their team on several occasions, we’ve always appreciated their customer service focus. They offer 24/5 live chat, email support, documentation, and free onboarding and training.
Among Manatal’s client list, you’ll find names like Unilever, Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.
Manatal offers four plans with options for monthly and annual billing. When billed annually, they cost as below:
- Professional Plan: $15/user/month, includes up to 15 jobs per account and 10,000 candidates. Unlimited guests can be added.
- Enterprise Plan: $35/user/month, provides unlimited jobs, candidates, and guests.
- Enterprise Plus: $55/user/month and includes all Enterprise features, user groups, open API access, SSO log-in, priority support, and access to Beta features.
- Custom: Custom pricing. Tailored for larger businesses seeking advanced functionalities and support.
Best For
Manatal’s AI-enhanced ATS is used by organizations of all sizes across different industries, but it’s worth noting that the ballparks of its customers are SMBs.
Wellfound
Wellfound is one of the best resources for connecting with startup-minded job seekers we’ve encountered. Furthermore, its newly launched RecruiterCloud, which combines AI-powered sourcing with human calibration, is a powerful solution for tech startups to find top talent at scale.
PROS
- RecruiterCloud offers AI-powered candidate sourcing from an internal pool of 10M+ startup-minded candidates and an external network of 500M+.
- Users can delegate their sourcing tasks to Wellfound (Autopilot) or handle them independently (Self-Serve).
- AI tags streamline review by highlighting key strengths in a candidate's profile.
- Free ATS included unlimited job postings, native candidate communications, team scorecards, and interview scheduling.
- RecruiterCloud offers AI-powered candidate sourcing from an internal pool of 10M+ startup-minded candidates and an external network of 500M+.
- Users can delegate their sourcing tasks to Wellfound (Autopilot) or handle them independently (Self-Serve).
- AI tags streamline review by highlighting key strengths in a candidate's profile.
- Free ATS included unlimited job postings, native candidate communications, team scorecards, and interview scheduling.
CONS
- Doesn’t have a mobile app.
- Not suitable for non-tech roles at large enterprises.
- Built-in reporting and analytics are somewhat basic compared to some competitors.
- Doesn’t have a mobile app.
- Not suitable for non-tech roles at large enterprises.
- Built-in reporting and analytics are somewhat basic compared to some competitors.
Wellfound (formerly AngelList Talent) is not the only AI sourcing tool in the market, yet what this software does so well that makes it stand out from many others we’ve tested is the vibrant community of tech professionals it hosts. Over ten million job seekers have built resumes on the platform and shared not just their work experience but also what they are looking for in their next job—something you won’t find in even good brands like SeekOut or LinkedIn.
If you’ve used Wellfound’s free ATS like we have, you know it's great, but it does have limits, with the talent reach confined to just its talent community. However, the pool becomes much bigger as you switch to the RecruiterCloud Autopilot module. Besides the in-house community, Wellfound will tap into its partner network of 500M+ profiles to find you the right matches. What we love about this module is that it’s not all left to AI—there's a real human touch involved to ensure that the 5-10 top candidates you get every week are the best fit for your needs.
If you prefer keeping everything in-house, RecruiterCloud Self-service is the way to go. As its name suggests, this module provides search engines and outreach to manage your sourcing and screenings.
A word to the wise, though: Wellfound is super focused on tech-related roles in product, engineering, or growth, so if those aren't your main hiring needs, don’t go for this tool.
We’d offer the same advice to those seeking an all-in-one recruitment solution that can also handle some parts of HR: look for enterprise-centered vendors like VidCruiter or BambooHR instead. Despite being stellar for what it does—connecting you with top-notch tech talent—Wellfound has no features like native onboarding, employee experience enhancements, or performance tracking. Plus, its integration options are limited to a few major ATS.
25,000+ companies, including Monograph, Affinity, and Mayfair.
Wellfound’s ATS is free, while its paid plans start at $149 per month. Add-ons and custom packages are available upon request.
Best For
Tech talent sourcing at startups and SMBs.
Fetcher
As an AI-powered recruiting software solution, Fetcher excels in automating top-of-the-funnel hiring tasks such as candidate sourcing, outreach, and engagement, ensuring a steady supply of qualified candidates.
PROS
- Customers appreciate Fetcher's AI-driven approach, which delivers accurate and targeted candidate-sourcing results. Their sourcing tool is among the best in the market.
- The software's automated outreach feature is praised for its effectiveness in engaging highly specialized candidates through personalized messages and cold emails.
- Fetcher's user-friendly interface, ease of use, and responsive customer support contribute to its positive reputation.
- Fetcher is highly rated by customers for its clean interface, ease of use, and customer support.
- According to most users, Fetcher's sourcing tool is one of the best in the business, providing them access to the best candidates with specialized skills and backgrounds.
- Customers find Fetcher's automated outreach feature extremely useful for sending cold emails and personalized messages to potential candidates.
CONS
- Some users have reported encountering occasional bugs and glitches while using Fetcher, although the team promptly addresses and rectifies these issues.
- In rare instances, Fetcher's sourcing algorithm may present candidates who are either overqualified or underqualified for specific roles, but the software allows for quick adjustments and refinements to optimize search criteria.
- Some users report experiencing bugs and glitches while using the software.
- In rare cases, Fetcher may source either over-qualified or under-qualified candidates for a particular role. However, according to users, their team is quick to correct and refine the search criteria in such scenarios.
We’ve been familiar with Fetcher as a sourcing tool for well over half a decade. It’s always been one of the bellwethers when it comes to sourcing technology, but it’s been great to see them incorporate AI technology into their mix for a good while now.
As an AI recruiting software tool, Fetcher helps to efficiently manage the initial stages of the hiring process. Their powerful sourcing tool can provide curated profiles tailored to specific skill sets and requirements.
Further, the software's automated outreach capabilities can enable personalized email sequences, ensuring effective candidate engagement. Additionally, Fetcher offers a comprehensive reporting dashboard to track hiring metrics and evaluate the success of recruitment efforts.
Fetcher is used by over 500 businesses worldwide, including Andela, Frame.io, Magnite, Foursquare and CarGurus.
The pricing of Fetcher's plans is based on the number of seats your team needs and the number of vetted candidate leads sourced. You can contact their sales team for a custom quote based on your specific hiring requirements.
Best For
Fetcher caters well to small, mid-sized, and large organizations seeking to automate their sourcing and candidate outreach processes.
AmazingHiring
AmazingHiring is a great sourcing tool for recruiting teams that need to hire technical talent.
PROS
- Frequently rolls out new feature enhancements.
- Effective for technical recruitment.
- Two-way integration with SmartRecruiters.
- The data enrichment feature comes with 150 free credits.
- Offers a free and a paid Chrome extension.
CONS
- The UI looks rather outdated.
- No free trial. Pricing isn’t disclosed upfront.
- Can connect with only a few HR tools, most are one-way integration.
AmazingHiring aggregates professional backgrounds of technical candidates from data they collect across over 70 different sources. The AI will sort candidates by a consolidated rating across their Github, Stack, etc profiles and align this list with your candidate criteria. There is also the ability to do manual sourcing as well with boolean searches.
You can then filter candidates by years experience, gender, past job titles/companies, seniority levels, etc. You can also exclude different sources (like LinkedIn) to give you a better opportunity to find hidden talent that are talent acquisition teams may not know about.
Sourcers and recruiters organize candidates by folder, and then can execute multi stage email sequences that go out via your email client (gmail, outlook, etc).
Lastly, they have a data enrichment feature where you can add relevant information to email lists (name, title, geography, etc), and keep your candidate datasets up to date.
EPAM, Akamai Technologies, Alexander Mann Solutions,Dell, ABBYY
Pricing is based on the number of licenses that you buy, with volume discounts for larger companies. All contracts are annual and start at $4,800 per seat. There are also charges for enriching contacts if you want to take advantage of that feature.
Lastly, they do offer custom pricing for individual freelancers who want to use the platform.
Best For
Technical recruiters at growing technology companies, smaller companies that need to hire technical talent, and third party recruiters and staffing agencies who have a high volume of tech hiring.
It is good for daily use, for either of these reasons:
- When reviewing candidates’ resumes: AmazingHiring automatically connects many online social profiles of each person (Linkedin, Xing, Github, Stackoverflow…)
- Sourcing with advanced search filters: it provides a lot more information about an experience, as “search hints” that are highlighting the source for every criteria
- When there is a lack of candidate replies on Linkedin - AmazingHiring will discover their email address
Every few months can be useful to get market research insights about the companies and competition: how many employees are there, top 5 companies employees came from or leave for, how many years per role they stay there on average, etc.
AmazingHiring creates a candidate’s profile magnifying the best skills, based on 50+ connected profiles from different social networks.
- That is a tremendous relief when an IT recruiter wonders “what is the skill set of this almost empty LinkedIn profile with the title Software Engineer…"
- Also, its Talent Mapping is quite a rare feature, showing which programming languages are the most common among professionals in almost every country in the world.
- And not to forget the AI sourcing option, which suggests mostly suitable profiles, and changes results from every 4-6 weeks (re-indexing). Nice that it follows if somebody updates his/her profiles.
Technical sourcing was the main and constant challenge that my organization was facing. While looking for very specific skill sets, there were never enough suitable and interested candidates on Linkedin. In order to improve the sourcing results, I tested AmazingHiring. It provides many more software engineer profiles in the search - even when they don’t have a LinkedIn profile! I’m a passionate user for almost three years.
- Bear in mind that it shows more results than Linkedin only for IT professionals, for non-IT profiles it provides way fewer results.
- There are some filters on LinkedIn that are not available on AmazingHiring (language level, fields of study...)
- Though it helps by adding synonyms to your Boolean search, double check it because they are not completely suitable for every skill or role.
AmazingHiring is way better (both by quantity and quality of the search) to be used for technical sourcing than LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn is probably irreplaceable for all non-technical roles.
If your talent acquisition team is regularly looking for IT candidates, this tool could for sure bring some more than if you stick only to LinkedIn. To make it happen, of course, improving reaching out messages is another segment that should be worked on.
In order to help their customers to improve DEI, AmazingHiring offered an optional Diversity filter - that should be requested personally.
As well, the sourcing platform AmazingHiring became closer to ATS (creating folders and talent pipelines), and it can be integrated with Gmail for messaging.
It's great for IT companies that are often looking for unicorn top tech talent.
For organizations that are not regularly employing technical talent.
Findem
Findem’s approach to AI recruiting starts with the attribute-based talent sourcing capabilities they’ve always been known for. That said, they are also leveraging generative AI through automated emails, messaging, and conversational analytics.
PROS
- Dedicated customer service manager to guide you through the implementation and data migration process. Their team assured us that implementation takes one week.
- Particularly valuable for businesses with limited resources dedicated to recruiting.
- Offers the expertise of sourcing specialists in identifying talent globally.
- Tap into a potential talent pool of over 750 million candidates.
- They assign a dedicated customer service manager during the implementation process to get you settled and started. These account managers also help migrate your data onto the system during the onboarding process.
- It is time-saving for businesses that have less time/people to dedicate to recruiting. They provide a service where sourcing experts work together with you to find talent across the globe.
- The software allows you to run outbound recruiting campaigns, giving you a potential talent pool of over 750 million candidates.
CONS
- Minimum 3-month contractual commitment required.
- Not useful for hourly worker roles or positions with candidates having a limited online presence.
- For the main offering, Findem require a minimum contract time rather than being able to pay for the service monthly. However, they do have a sourcing solution that can start with a 3-month engagement.
- Findem does not typically cover hourly worker roles or jobs where the candidates have none or very little online presence.
Findem’s unconventional candidate sourcing allows you to access a global talent pool of over 750 million prospects. Using artificial intelligence, the system crawls several data sources, such as LinkedIn, GitHub, Behance, Stack Overflow, Kaggle, and social media platforms, to consolidate all unique candidate information into profiles that list all their achievements, qualifications, core values, and so on. This makes it possible to quickly source a high volume of candidates using the most precise and stringent criteria.
This is what they call attribute-driven AI. It’s an effective way to generate talent pools specific to a certain job post. Attribute matching is a smart way to make sure you’re reaching out to relevant job seekers with more chances of converting and eventually becoming a hire. This is part of what makes Findem so different from other tools in the space since most of them start the recruiting process by posting to job boards.
Findem also stands out from other tools in the space for their customer support and service teams. For example, they are happy to provide weekly calls to ensure you’re making the best use of the tool. We agree with many user descriptions that portray them as warm and supportive. Further, they are well-known to be open to feedback, often creating new features based on client needs.
RingCentral, Medallia, Intuitive, Adobe, Booster, Armorblox, Plume.
Findem does not publicly disclose their pricing information. You will have to request a demo to see which plan best works for your company size and your operations.
Best For
Findem is a good fit for hiring managers and talent leads in companies with over 500 employees in any industry hiring for corporate roles— notably tech, CPG, and life sciences. They also have a good track record with North American startups and hyper-growth companies.
hireEZ
hireEZ, formerly known as Hiretual, uses AI for sourcing, engagement, integrations, analytics, and collaboration. It enables businesses to hire at scale by automating manual time-consuming tasks.
PROS
- hireEZ is an all-in-one AI recruiting tool that includes sourcing, engagement, and analytics features.
- The dashboard is simple and easy to navigate, and the features are easy to use.
- AI-powered candidate recommendations save time and effort in sourcing candidates.
- Automated emails to candidates.
- Allows users to filter by by factors like gender, race, and ethnicity to support diversity.
- Helpful email, help center, and dedicated customer support.
- Offers a browser extension that is easy to use.
- Intuitive, modern, and continuously evolving UX.
- Quick and unique sourcing capabilities. Many users indicate they get compelling candidates they hadn’t seen with other sourcing methods, some of which lead to good hires. Often, this happens in less time than the methods they were trying before.
- Unlimited follow-ups with each contact you pay for. This demonstrates how self-assured hireEZ is with the quality of their sourcing. They are confident about people not abusing this feature and stop contact when it’s clear a candidate is not interested— or simply because they found the right ones and stopped their search.
CONS
- Some of the contact information provided by hireEZ may be inaccurate or out of date.
- Doesn’t connect well with LinkedIn.
- Lacks transparent pricing. No free trial.
- Since it’s always changing, parts of the platform may be buggy at times, which tends to be a minor nuisance we hear often from the mouths of recruiters. However, these bugs tend to get fixed quickly.
- Some recruiters have also pointed out a small whole issue performing searches: the tags for job titles are often too narrow, and sometimes the search function won’t include specific titles that they consider essential in their practice.
- While it has a growing list of integrations, it does not integrate with popular job sites like Wellfound. Furthermore, the LinkedIn integration could be expanded, and it only connects with ATS/CRM, calendars, and video interview software.
hireEZ has received positive ratings from our editorial team for its no-nonsense automation features. Built for mid-sized and large businesses, the platform’s primary focus is outbound recruiting. It has leveraged AI to roll out some very good sourcing, engagement modules, and analytics features. We like the simple UI – the features are arranged logically, and the workflows are intuitive. hireEZ even offers a dedicated account manager for personal support, but we haven’t encountered much of an issue that needs their assistance.
Our favorite feature of hireEZ is its AI-powered candidate recommendation tool. It works just like a personal sourcing assistant who reports every day via email to share the best candidates they’ve identified.
Reports are mostly favorable from users who have deployed the automated email sequences. They often emphasize time-saving and increased efficiency when tracking a candidate’s performance and progress.
An up-and-coming feature to watch for is the GPT3-backed AI applied to the automated emails.
hireEZ does have some drawbacks you should watch out for. Some users we talked to said the candidate data was occasionally inaccurate. Multiple reports suggest the platform doesn’t work well with LinkedIn.
Wayfair, Intel, Continental, Nike, and Ceridian.
hireEZ's pricing varies depending on your needs and employee count. Since all their pricing is custom, contacting them for an exact quote is best.
Best For
hireEZ is great for mid-sized and large enterprises. It’s a particularly good fit for IT, staffing, health care, security, and defense industries.
HireVue
HireVue’s AI recruiting tool is thought out for enterprise-scale hiring needs. We love how they have blended virtual assistance/automation with responsive human support.
PROS
- HireVue AI can free up recruiters’ time by doing initial screens and messages.
- Recruiters can change the playback speed of the interview while watching to save time.
- Excellent implementation team and customer support.
- Transparent pricing structure.
- HireVue is very useful when it comes to screening a large number of job candidates in a short frame of time. Its virtual assistant can do an initial screen of applicants on its own, leave messages for them, and get responses in return. All of this frees up recruiters’ time.
- It has a great on-demand interviewing feature. Recruiters can sit and watch candidates’ interviews as per their convenience. The ability to change the speed of the interview while watching can also help recruiters save time.
- Their implementation team and customer support is extremely responsive or in the words of a Global Talent Attraction Director, “I love the support, tenacity and just constant desire to do the right thing. They take the time to understand our business and I never feel like it is a ‘catch and release’ relationship that is so common in this space”
CONS
- Not very affordable compared to competing vendors.
- No free trial.
- Integration partners are limited.
- HireVue is not very affordable compared to its alternatives, especially when you factor in the functionality. Their pricing plans are geared towards companies with at least 2500 employees and even then, you only get a small set of features.
- HireVue does not have a lot of integration partners and the range of software it integrates with is also very limited (mostly ATS).
- Too much automation can at times lead to unwanted candidates. For instance, the asynchronous interview feature can allow candidates to adjust their responses in order to fit the job criteria. However, HireVue wouldn’t screen such candidates out and your company may need human intervention to pick up on visual cues and body language.
HireVue is an AI-driven recruiting platform that automates workflows. They have video interviewing, assessments, scheduling, and text message recruiting solutions. Its technology is designed to reduce human bias and increase diversity.
Our favorite feature of HireVue is its Virtual Hiring Assistant. It efficiently screens candidates, guides them to relevant job openings, schedules interviews manages events, and coordinates with candidates on behalf of recruiters.
While we think the mix of AI and human contact balances well, it is possible that some candidates may feel discouraged from interacting with a machine. To account for this, the platform keeps recruiters looped into the process with constant updates, which speaks to a design philosophy that we’ve always found remarkable with this company.
In general, HireVue is a powerful tool that will likely be too expensive for smaller teams, but we appreciate their upfront pricing. They offer two plans, the less expensive of which starts at $35k/month, and according to users we’ve interviewed, the platform is a solid investment for teams of roughly 2,500 or more.
This tool integrates well with many ATSs, but the same cannot be said for HRIS tools. This can be a drawback for businesses looking to sync their data across their HR tools.
Amazon, Unilever, Vodafone, Beacon Health System, SmartLynx Airlines.
HireVue provides two pricing plans:
- Essential plan starts at $35,000 per month for teams with 2,500-7,500 employees. It includes live and on-demand interviewing features, custom branding, and single language configuration.
- Enterprise plan has custom pricing for teams with more than 7,500 employees. It has all the features of the Essentials plan, plus scheduling, a chatbot, pre-built ATS integrations, and analytics, among others. Custom quotes can be arranged by their sales team.
Best For
HireVue is designed for large enterprises frequently engaged in high-volume hiring. Hence, the AI features are all about saving time and processing large amounts of applicants.
I have used Hirevue for candidates to self-schedule their interviews. I have used Hirevue for roles that have a large number of vacancies (i.e. entry-level roles). It gives the candidate the flexibility to schedule self-paced interviews. It allows me to vet candidates to see how prepared they are for the interview. (i.e. good lighting, well dressed for interview).
It is a time saver as if presenting the candidate to hiring managers. In essence, it's a smart screening tool. In the workflow cycle, it cuts down time in the initial step. There are some candidates who don't take the step to do the video interview. This is perfectly fine in our workflow because only seriously interested candidates are going through the process.
Hirevue has a clean interface. It has a great user experience. It serves as many functions as part of a platform which is essential for Talent Acquisition professionals.
Hirevue was purchased to give the talent pool the ability to self-schedule interviews. There was too much time in having recruiters coordinating to schedule interviews. This platform also allowed the ability to interview candidates on the platform as well. They have conversational AI capabilities to interact with prospective applicants. Hirevue can integrate with Workday which is part of the whole HRMS system.
Everything is great about Hirevue. The only con I would have is the cost.
It is not only a smart interview platform where it provides video conferencing capabilities it is also an applicant tracking system. There are other offerings in the marketplace that don't offer video conference capabilities.
Amount of internal employees that will use this. Are hiring managers going to have access to this or are they just in-house recruiters. If access is going to be provided to hiring managers then they should be trained so bias can be eliminated potentially.
They have added more offerings to be competitive.
Large organizations with volume - food services, hospitality, healthcare.
Small companies
Eightfold
Eightfold's AI-powered platform automatically matches relevant candidates to your available jobs. It’s also one of the few recruiting platforms with features for employee coaching and skills development.
PROS
- Eightfold employs AI for precise candidate matching based on skills, experience, and potential.
- Streamlined filtering options ensure you see candidates meeting your criteria in terms of experience and salary.
- Encourages diversity hiring and mitigates bias through anonymous screening.
- Enhances employee experience with personalized training and development opportunities.
- Features a built-in CRM to efficiently manage HR data for candidates and employees.
- Eightfold uses AI technology to analyze your job postings and find the best fitting candidates. It can also rank those candidates based on their skills, experience and potential.
- You can filter candidate searches by experience level or salary range so that you only see candidates that fit your hiring criteria.
- The platform encourages diversity hiring and enables you to eliminate hiring bias through anonymous screening, aka profile masking
- It improves overall employee experience by providing tailored training and development opportunities based on their skill sets and interests.
- It has a built-in CRM to store and manage HR data about potential candidates, current employees, and previous employees.
CONS
- Lacks a note-taking feature within candidate profiles, which could be inconvenient for recruiters.
- While there's a mobile app for skills development, there's currently no dedicated app for hiring managers and recruiters.
- Some users report limitations in searching for candidates beyond the existing database.
- Pricing transparency is lacking, and there's no provision for a free trial presently.
- There isn’t a way for hiring managers and recruiters to leave notes on candidates profiles within the system which is rather inconvenient.
- Eightfold has a mobile app that employees can access for skills development but doesn’t currently have one for hiring managers and recruiters to manage their pipeline and perform other actions relating to the hiring process.
- Several users reported that the tool does not search for candidates outside its database.
- The platform’s pricing isn’t transparent and there is no free trial at this time.
Eightfold’s AI technology automates several chunks of the hiring process and ensures that only the most suitable candidates get through to the interview stage. Recruiters get every piece of information they need at their fingertips about previous candidates, employees, and contingent workers – helping them streamline workflows and processes across the entire talent ecosystem.
Eightfold’s deep learning capability also identifies the skills of job applicants with a detailed mapping of competencies. It takes the guesswork out of evaluating a candidate's skills by identifying Validated Skills, Likely Skills, Skills to be Validated, and Missing Skills.
The platform also includes a neat scheduler that integrates with corporate calendars to automate interview scheduling. Moreover, it helps you manage interviews with multiple people and reschedule or cancel them as needed.
Eightfold’s client list includes prominent enterprises like TATA Communications, LG, Vodafone, Bayer, Chevron, Morgan Stanley, and more.
Eightfold's pricing plans are not disclosed on its website. Contact their Sales team for a custom quote.
Best For
Eightfold’s AI matches and other features are best used by organizations hiring more than 100 candidates per year.
Textio
Textio is an AI-powered recruitment marketing content optimization tool popular among hiring teams, marketing managers, and copywriters. The helps users steer clear of biases around age, ability, and gender in their employer brand content.
PROS
- Textio Flow tool creates content based on your language stack, letting you write a job ad from scratch in minutes and create custom templates.
- Offers a free brand report on the website, so you can see what the tool can do for your hiring team's writing.
- Has web browser extensions.
- Straightforward to get up and running.
- Provides industry reports, free guidebooks, help center, phone, email, and live chat.
- Textio Flow tool creates content based on your language stack, letting you write a job ad from scratch in minutes and create custom templates.
- Offers a free brand report on the website, so you can see what the tool can do for your hiring team's writing.
- Has web browser extensions.
- Straightforward to get up and running.
- Provides industry reports, free guidebooks, help center, phone, email, and live chat.
CONS
- Lacks transparent pricing. No free trial.
- Supports English only.
- No mobile app.
- Limited integration capabilities. No API support.
- Lacks transparent pricing. No free trial.
- Supports English only.
- No mobile app.
- Limited integration capabilities. No API support.
Textio is hyper-focused on the employer brand content optimization niche which allows the platform to offer fine-tuned, specialized, and in-depth features.
We loved the look and feel of the UI. It reminded us of Grammarly and Hemingway Editor — simple to use and effective.
When we were experimenting with the tool, we were happy with the results. It took only seconds to score the text sample we’d entered, helping us best target our intended audience and find any bias blind spots. It also provided a sidebar with color-coded analytics to help our writer visualize the mechanics.
Textio’s document library lets users reuse the shared content made by other team members instead of starting from scratch. We imagine this could be a big help for large enterprises that have hundreds of job listings produced per year since chances are good that someone has already written something very close to what’s needed. Similar to a library, Textio allows users to categorize their documents by groups, so they know where to go when searching for a specific type of copy.
We appreciate how Textio has evolved its product over the years, especially regarding AI recruiting. Rather than expanding its range, it has doubled down on its mission support teams in using inclusive language and supporting managers with guidance for bias-free, actionable, and equitable performance feedback.
Some elements we’d like to see improved are integration and language support. As it is, the platform does not integrate with many standard HR tools, and their analytics and suggestions only work for the English language.
McDonald's, Slack, Atlassian, P&G, Spotify.
The pricing details for Textio are not disclosed. For info about pricing, contact them directly.
Best For
Textio is used by a wide variety of companies. Within them, it's mainly used by hiring teams, marketing managers, and copywriters.
For my role in Human Resources, using a tool like Textio frequently is critical in today's corporate America. Our populations are more diverse than ever, with unique lenses into how we interpret the world. Probably twice a week, I will pop some phrasing into the tool. From an email flowing out a policy change to a specific employee population or for a job description, we are going to post. It is so versatile, and it feels like I have someone to "bounce" the wording off of to ensure it is more well-received by the intended audience.
There are several aspects of Textio that make it a valuable solution in a corporate setting. First, it's easy to use. I don't have time to fill out long forms. All it takes is copying the text for whatever written communication I plan on using and pasting it into the tool. Secondly, I appreciate the color highlighting tool to show me suggestions. Whether that be my language, which is too male-focused, I could make it more neutral or simply refine my correspondence. Lastly, I feel that as an agent of the company, it protects me a bit by having a well-researched program checking my work before it becomes a record.
Language and its nuance is constantly evolving. Businesses need to as well. My employer purchased Textio to support inclusive language, improve intended meaning, and remove unintended bias in business communication. We had trouble filling certain roles and used several avenues to try to solve that gap. After implementing Textio, we realized that language was one blind spot we had that was preventing the right candidates from applying due to the wording used in job postings. Textio can make any business communication better by providing suggestions on grammar, phrasing, and more positively received synonyms with a simple copy and paste.
Depending on how your company has implemented Textio, it can feel like another tool in your large toolbox. It takes some muscle memory to remember you have it in your kit to help you with a task. I'd love to see it embedded on our HR home page- not something that is at fault per se with text, but offering as a perspective! It also may require another signing and password- I'm all about single sign-on and reducing the number of clicks I have to do! Again, this is another consideration but not necessarily something Textio can do. I'd also love to see Textio be offered outside of the company for a nominal fee. I'm thinking if I decide to pursue further education, this could be helpful for improving self-awareness when writing essays, for example.
I haven't used comparable tools to Textio to be able to provide an honest comparison.
My advice to those considering buying this type of tool would be to ask yourself what is the cost to you of not having a tool like this. Do you know the insights into the language used at your company and how that is perceived? I would also recommend asking for a trial to see how the tool works for some live examples and how implementing it would change existing business processes.
I believe Textio has changed over time by offering more metrics- insights and features like "badges" showing how using the tool can improve your outcomes- whether that be in time to hire, number of applicants, or the positivity level of responses to business communications.
Textio is very good for any manager, HR professional, or communications professional who may write to a broad employee base, complete performance reviews, or post job openings. I see so many benefits to helping us as humans learn and just be a bit more thoughtful about our language.
I can't think of an organization that wouldn't benefit from Textio’s product offerings. Humans are the most valuable company resource, and humans need communication to keep the company running. How we communicate impacts how others will respond, which, there is no question, impacts the bottom line.
Benefits and Use Cases of AI Recruiting Software
The best AI recruiting tools allow HR and talent acquisition teams to supercharge their efforts through smart and automated workflows that eliminate tedious tasks, and let recruiting teams focus on the most strategic parts of their recruitment process.
Here at SSR, we like to think of AI as an exoskeleton that allows humans to be smarter, and more efficient. To go with an easy metaphor we heard from Trent Cotton, Vice President of Talent and Culture at Hatchworks, think of Tony Stark and his Iron Man suit. The suit is actually powered by an AI he calls J.A.R.V.I.S., but the suit is not replacing the man. Rather, it’s adding to the remarkable character that Tony Stark already is.
Similar to Trent during his recent participation at The Elite Recruiter Podcast, we strongly believe that AI actually replacing human beings is a far-flung dystopia, and that it’s simply the menial tasks that are going to be taken over, which will still need human tweaking and inputs. So, there’s really no need to be afraid of this new technology, it’s basically just slightly smarter software that can automate more of the tasks you most likely don’t want to do.
Please also read the pitfalls below this section as there are several important caveats to these use cases and dangers that HR and recruiting teams need to be aware of!
Here are a few of the use cases that AI recruiting tools can help with:
- Screening: The best AI recruiting tools help with screening candidates. However, they do this in different ways depending on the vendor (see below bullets). Typically when we think of AI interviews, we think of chatbots that will ask a series of questions to the candidate. True AI recruiting companies have taken this a step further, leveraging AI to interpret the candidate’s answers (and questions they may have), in order to properly vet the potential employee. Some tools can give the conversation a sentiment analysis and process the candidate accordingly.
- Video Interviews: AI can also help with understanding the key characteristics of a candidate. First, these platforms can understand the responses job seekers give to a given question, and analyze how that fits with your hiring criteria. There are also technologies that will determine how extroverted, confident, etc. a job seeker is.
- Sourcing: AI is great for talent sourcing and has been employed in this use case for a while now. The basic idea is that artificial intelligence can interpret a job req, find relevant folks through different databases (your ATS/CRM, or the open web), and then return a qualified list of potential applicants. If the candidate matching is good enough, such tools can even automate the initial outreach through AI-generated text and email.
- Messaging and copywriting: Speaking of texts and email, another recent use case for AI in recruiting is using it to superpower the generation of recruitment marketing materials. Think of anything from a cold email about a position, to a job advertisement or even an offer letter. Tools like ChatGPT and Bard can help with writing and improving all kinds of text and they are completely free. If you’re new to AI in recruiting, we’d recommend trying these out before settling on any particular tech vendor.
- Scheduling: Scheduling candidates can be a pain, especially when juggling multiple internal calendars for an on-site. The right interview scheduling software gives candidates a better experience (no dropped balls, female candidates don’t interview with all men, etc.), and saves your recruiting team a lot of headaches.
- ATS Re-Engagement: Your ATS is full of high-quality applicants who were silver medalists, applied too late, or weren’t a fit for a specific role at a given point in time but would be great for a new req. A human would take a very long time to wade through thousands or millions of records, and most applicant tracking systems aren’t great at re-discovering old records. AI can look at your open req, and search your database for relevant past applicants to re-engage.
- Referrals: AI recruiting tools are also great for supercharging referrals. This use case is similar to the ATS re-engagement one, but the database is your employees’ networks vs. the ATS. The AI looks at your req, looks at your employees’ networks, and then makes suggestions on who your employees should refer to your recruiting team. This can all happen without a recruiter lifting a finger.
- Career Site Conversion: Most of the people who go to your career site don’t apply for a job. A chatbot on your career site allows job seekers to ask questions about benefits, open roles, etc. This leads to higher conversions into your ATS of quality candidates.
Pitfalls You Need To Be Aware Of
Like any new technology, AI recruiting tools also have their downsides and dangers. It’s important to remember AI is like an exoskeleton for human beings, not a replacement. So, we don’t have to be worried about losing our jobs, but we also have to be mindful that we are still in the people business, and human-to-human interaction is still very important.
- Candidate Experience: At the end of the day, we all want to be treated with respect. This desire is magnified during the stress of the hiring process. Do not replace every candidate's touch point with automation. Job seekers are smart enough to realize they aren’t getting any TLC, and will be turned off. Spend time with potential candidates to understand how they’re experiencing the various stages of your hiring process and when you’ve gone too far.
- Set Expectations: We are all used to dealing with machines and AI whether that’s through Google searches or an automated response to a simple question from a service rep bot. And, for the most part, we’re fine with this experience. But, we need to know we can access a human when needed, and we need to know how a process will evolve. I’m ok entering my information to see if I pre-qualify for a credit card. But, if things get more complicated and there’s no human, I’m officially having a bad experience.
- Training the AI: AI is trained on data sets and past inputs and interactions to determine outcomes. This is what they call Machine Learning. When selecting a vendor, you need to make sure that whatever AI engine they are running under the hood is trained on data that is relevant to your company. For example, if the tool uses a Natural Language Processing engine to power a recruiting chatbot, a good question to ask on a demo would be what’s the NLP engine, and how it’s trained.
- AI Bias: If you give the AI a dataset that discriminates against women, you’re going to have a recruitment process that now discriminates against women. Always have humans sanity check the outcomes of AI-based decisions, especially as you start to roll out new tech.
- Humans Needed: Treat the outputs of AI recruiting tools as suggestions. If your sourcing tool gives you five candidates, it’s likely that at least one of them will not be a great fit. Humans need to be the final decision-makers when it comes to talent acquisition teams leveraging AI.
Return on Investment From AI Recruiting Platforms
Here at SSR, we always think that an ROI analysis is necessary for every type of new HR software purchase, and AI recruiting is no different. That said, the ROI from AI recruiting tools can be calculated in several different ways depending on the use case you’re using this software for.
So, we’d recommend checking out our HRTech ROI calculators (all are free to download) and picking the one that relates to what you’re trying to accomplish – decrease time to fill, cost per hire, time spent sourcing, etc.
Pricing of AI Recruiting Tools - What's the Best Pricing Structure?
Like most HR and SaaS software, AI recruiting tools are priced per user or per number of actions; in this case, job requisitions or postings. To find out more about structures and how to optimize for this, we teamed up with Bob Pulver, who's been an HR tech consultant for a number of years. On the question of pricing, Bob mentioned that companies should feel free to suggest an alternative pricing structure to vendors, one better suited to their needs.
"With recruiting software, the value is created the minute you have a candidate that you can reach out to, why not have them charge for that instead?" According to Bob, some people in tech are willing to do that. In such a pricing structure, your entire team has access to the tool, but could be limited by a pool of candidate contact credits. This can save HR teams a lot of money, while still being fair and mindful of the software vendor's costs. As Bob explained, "If you have a team of recruiters and they charge you hundred per seat, you're very quickly into six-figure territory."
Problems To Solve with AI Recruiting Software
As put to us by one of the experts we consulted for this buyer guide, " The diversity of companies listed under AI Recruiting makes it very hard for the buyer to understand what pain points each solution is solving for and at what stage of the hiring funnel". Those are the words and wisdom of Bennett Sung, a marketing consultant for several early-stage HR software companies. What Bennett is referring to is the wide variety of use cases that happen with AI recruitment software. While, let’s say, SeekOut and Paradox don’t share the same use cases, they are frequently lumped together under the same umbrella of AI recruiting.
Hence, it can become confusing to vet companies. As with any software purchase, the best thing for you to do is to be aware of the greatest challenges you need to solve, give them an order of priorities if they’re several, and let that guide every request for a demo and the actual conversations.
To give you some examples, here are some of the typical challenges you can solve with AI recruiting tools:
- Filling open positions takes too long: Certain features of AI software like chatbots can help with automating the pre-screening process, resume parsing, and in some cases, even scheduling interviews. Apart from saving thousands of dollars in man hours, this can also result in a faster and more efficient hiring process, where positions get filled quicker.
- The quality of hire is still subpar: Through intelligent screening of thousands of candidates, you can start your search right by setting up the appropriate tags and requirements. Then, you can focus on a pool of candidates who already seem like a great fit for the job.
There might be an unconscious bias problem in our recruiting process: Some AI recruiting tools can eliminate human bias by only showing certain information about candidates before key hiring decisions are made.
Questions For Demos
HR and recruiting teams need to go into demos prepared to get the information they need. Part of that preparation is making sure you have the right questions lined up for any AI vendor. As in other parts of this buyer guide, we teamed with Bob Pulver, HR Tech consultant at Cognitive Path, to put together some of these questions. Here are a few specific questions you should ask on demos with vendors that relate to AI recruiting tools:
- How is your AI trained? Where does the data come from? How long does this take? How often does it happen?
- How do candidates interact with this tool?
- How do recruiters interact with this tool?
- How accurate is your AI? What metrics do you look at to measure this accuracy?
- What unique insights has your AI discovered?
- What is your sweet spot in terms of company size?
- Do you have outside funding? Where is this funding going?
- Are you investing in Customer Success? What does the implementation process look like for a company like mine?
AI Recruiting Tools FAQs
What is AI recruiting software?
AI recruiting software are platforms or tools that use artificial intelligence to automate and enhance certain parts of the talent acquisition process.
How is AI used in recruitment?
AI is used in every aspect of the recruitment pipeline, including the following:
- Screening: Using chatbots to automatically answer candidate questions
- Video Interviews: Analyzing video interview responses to see how they fit into hiring criteria
- Tech Screening: Using AI to figure out the quality of a given candidate’s answers
- Sourcing: Scanning talent databases for candidates relevant to job reqs
- Scheduling: Automatically aligning candidate and hiring team schedules for available connection
- ATS Re-Engagement: Checking your ATS for former candidates who would be a good fit for a new role
- Referrals: Combing through employee networks for relevant candidates
How is AI changing talent sourcing and recruiting?
AI is changing talent sourcing and recruiting by automating the processes, saving hiring teams lots of time while also engaging a wider pool of talent. It acts as an exoskeleton that allows human resources teams to be smarter and more efficient.
Why use AI recruiting platforms?
You can use AI recruiting platforms to save your organization time and money. As AI becomes more integrated with HR tech, it will be increasingly difficult to operate without it as well.
Final Advice
The best AI recruiting software allows your talent acquisition team to become way more efficient. This is especially important given the war for talent, and the high cost of adding full-time employees to your recruiting team.
Without a doubt, AI will become a larger and larger part of your company’s business as a whole, and the recruiting function in particular. So, it makes sense to start utilizing artificial intelligence now in the use cases that matter to you the most.
Our suggestion is to pick one use case that is most pressing (scheduling, sourcing, screening, etc.), and then to talk with a few vendors that you can partner with. To help in your search, be sure to try out our HR and recruitment software buyer organizer to keep track of demos, questions, prices, and more.
Be sure to also check out related articles on ATS's, recruitment automation, and the best recruiting tools:
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About Us
- Our goal at SSR is to help HR and recruiting teams to find and buy the right software for their needs.
- Our site is free to use as some vendors will pay us for web traffic.
- SSR lists all companies we feel are top vendors - not just those who pay us - in our comprehensive directories full of the advice needed to make the right purchase decision for your HR team.
