5 Best Recruiting Software for Small Businesses (Free & Paid)

49% of small businesses are struggling to find the right candidates. Thus, enhancing your hiring process by implementing advanced recruitment software is crucial to tackling talent acquisition challenges.

Most small businesses and startups use Excel and traditional spreadsheets for candidate management. But that’s a big mistake because these tools are not specifically designed for hiring purposes and come with various limitations.

As you know, the recruitment process is frustrating. Considering that 63% of job seekers will reject a job offer because of a bad candidate experience, it’s critical to enhance your hiring process.

That’s exactly why recruiting software was created. It can help to streamline the entire recruitment process, from sourcing and engagement to selection and hiring.

Recruiting software proves remarkably effective. According to Jobscan, about 98% of Fortune 500 companies use recruitment tools for their hiring process.

And so should you!

However, we understand that finding the best solution for your unique needs can be difficult. 

So, in this article, we will review the 5 best recruiting software for your small businesses to help you make the right choice.

How To Choose The Best Software for Recruiting

Finding the ideal HR software for your business involves carefully considering the following factors:

Features

Each software will provide a different list of features.

You should choose tools that align with your specific recruiting requirements, such as job posting, applicant tracking, and candidate communication. 

Affordable pricing

SMBs need to consider budget factors to ensure cost-effectiveness in their software choices.

Of course, it’s best if that recruitment software offers the freemium option. But having a free trial is good enough to test it out before purchasing. 

Also, some solutions offer various pricing packages with different sets of features. Then, setting out the priority of features for your business and aligning that with your budget will assist you in making decisions.

Integrations

Compatibility with other tools and platforms is crucial. 

Choose recruiting software that seamlessly integrates with your existing HR software, communication tools, and other relevant platforms.

Customization and scalability

Your business needs may evolve, so select software that is customizable and scalable.

It should adapt to your changing requirements, accommodating growth without compromising efficiency.

Ease of use

User-friendly interfaces are key. 

The software should be intuitive, easy to navigate, and suitable for all tech levels.

Customer support

Ensure the software provider offers reliable support channels, like live chat, email, or phone support. 

Quick and effective assistance can make a significant difference in resolving issues promptly.

5 Best Recruiting Software for Small & Medium Businesses

1. Grove HR

Grove HR is a comprehensive HR software with many features to automate HR tasks, such as onboarding, employee management, performance management, payroll, and recruitment.

This is one of the best choices for small businesses and startups to streamline your recruitment process and get the best talents faster and effortlessly.

Pricing: 

• FREE for up to 50 employees
• Paid plans start at $3 per employee

Highlight features:

• Career page: Establish your branded career site, easily publish your job openings, and automatically receive applicants into the recruitment funnel.
• Hiring pipelines: Customize your hiring stages, move candidates down your pipeline, and automatically send offer emails.
• AI CV Parsing: Automate extract and organize candidate information from resumes to save time, minimize manual data entry, and ensure accuracy in the recruitment process.
• Hiring notes: Input brief notes to keep track of the interviewing history and ensure all your team is in sync.
• Candidate evaluation: Mark candidates with skills and tags to make fast hiring decisions.
• Automate offering and onboarding: Accelerate your time-to-offer through automated job offer emails and trigger onboarding email sequences to engage with new hires effectively.
• Hiring reports: Monitor your hiring performance effortlessly, meet your hiring targets and export the data to Excel for in-depth analysis.

Pros: 

• Super easy to use
• All-in-one solution for HR tasks
• Can access via browser and mobile app
• Great customer support

Cons:

• No pre-screening features
• Doesn't integrate with popular job search sites

2. Zoho Recruit

Zoho Recruit is a cloud-based hiring platform that gives HR teams and recruitment agencies the digital tools needed to fill roles quickly and efficiently.

It offers a powerful ATS and CRM in a single recruitment platform. 

Pricing: 

• FREE for 1 active job and basic features
• Paid plan starts at $25/user/month with more advanced features

Highlight features:

• Job recruiting: Allow posts to open roles to over 300 job boards and lets you create your recruiting campaigns by emailing past applicants about new jobs they may qualify for. 
• Assessment assistance: Provide an AI-powered resume parser and background checks to help you find the best candidate.
• Temp job searches: The only tool that can search your database of temps based on your criteria, then handles the assignment, timesheet tracking, and invoices. 
• Candidate portal: Paid plans include a candidate portal where applicants can see what jobs they’ve applied to and the status of their applications.
• Customizable reports: Allow you to create a custom report based on your needs.

Pros:

• Forever-free plan
• Unlimited users for all packages
• Automation workflow 

Cons:

• Most popular job boards cost extra
• Limited support
• Steeper learning curve than others on the list
• Weak mobile app

3. Breezy HR

Breezy HR stands out as one of the leading recruiting software solutions to streamline the hiring process.

It offers rapid job posting on various boards, resume analysis, automated interviews, and comprehensive analytics.

Pricing: 

• FREE for 1 open position and basic features
• Paid plan starts at $157/user/month with more advanced features

Highlight features:

• Job advertising: Easily post on over 100 of first-class job sites (such as Indeed, Ziprecruiter, LinkedIn, etc.) with one click.
• Career sites: Launch and customize your branded career site without any coding knowledge.
• Employee referrals: Allow running employee referral program to bring in more quality candidates.
• Drag & drop pipelines: Enable custom your pipeline stages to match your hiring process and organize candidates in stages with a simple drag and drop.
• Automated workflows: Automate everything in the hiring process, from sending messages, capturing team feedback and scheduling interviews.

Pros:

• Forever-free plan
• Quickly post jobs to multiple boards
• Strong team collaboration tools
• Easy to use

Cons:

• Premium plans are pricey
• Limited and sometimes slow support
• Reporting capabilities

4. Manatal

Manatal is an all-in-one recruitment platform built to accommodate the needs of both hiring managers and recruiters.

It offers several essential features, such as candidate sourcing, an applicant tracking system, a recruitment CRM system, and an extensive reporting and analytics suite to track recruiting results.

Pricing: 

• FREE trial for 14 days
• Paid plan starts at $15/month

Highlight features:

• Integrate with 2,500 job sites: Offer one of the widest ranges of job posting sites, including popular sites like Indeed.
• Modern ATS: Use a Kanban board to track applicants through their process, with each board holding all the candidate’s information.
• Advanced AI: Use AI tools to filter and score candidates, parse resumes, and suggest candidates based on your job requirements.
• Social media recruitment: The only recruitment software for small businesses that can search for candidate data on social media platforms.
• Multiple users: Allow multiple users so your hiring teams can collaborate in-app. 

Pros:

• Post on multiple job boards quickly
• AI-based candidate recommendations
• Candidate referral program tools

Cons:

• No free plan
• No mobile apps
• Poor search functionality

5. Vultus Recruit

Vultus Recruit is another popular cloud-based applicant tracking system for small and medium businesses.

It offers pre-screening questions, automated email, applicant comparison and tracking, and more. 

Pricing: 

• Starts at $15/user/month for 3-5 users

Highlight features:

• Job posting: Offer its own job board and allow post on popular job sites such as CareerBuilder, TechFetch and Dice. 
• Candidate sourcing: Enable parses resumes into searchable data and keeps all the candidate information in one place.
• Resume bot: Use AI and smart bots to automate your resume search on job boards.
• Mass mailing: Offer automated email sequencing to ensure timely follow-ups and responses, keeping your hiring process on track.
• Reporting and analytics: Gain insights about job statistics and deals to monitor the hiring process.

Pros:

• Customizable screening questions
• Resume search
• Candidate tracking

Cons:

• Minimum of 3 users
• No job description templates
• No free plan

Wrapping Up

In this article, we have shown 5 best recruiting software for small businesses with their unique features and price points. 

We hope this review and comparison help you find the most suitable HR tool for your business.