New, transformative tools are constantly emerging, making it an incredibly exciting time for talent acquisition professionals. Moreover, using these technologies is critical to stay ahead of the competition.
But don’t just take our word for it: nearly 99% of Fortune 500 companies leverage hiring technology to streamline their processes.
In this guide, we’ll help you start the exciting (albeit slightly daunting) journey of selecting the best talent acquisition software to support your needs. We’ll cover:
- Talent acquisition software FAQs
- Best talent acquisition software
- Best talent acquisition tools
- How to choose talent acquisition software
As you read this guide, keep your organization’s size, growth goals, and capacity in mind. If you can’t adopt all of the strategies discussed right now, prioritize the most important and impactful ones.
Talent Acquisition Software FAQs
How do you acquire talent?
Talent acquisition is a large-scale, strategic process to improve your organization’s hiring efforts. While recruitment helps organizations fill immediate vacancies, talent acquisition is about supporting your growth in the long term.
Let’s take a look at key talent acquisition strategies:
- Refine candidate-sourcing quotas to properly regulate and set goals for the hiring process.
- Engage prospects with personalized messaging based on key traits, like the position they’re applying for
- Use informal outreach channels, such as SMS or direct messages on job platforms.
- Prioritize candidate experience so they remain invested in your hiring process.
- Prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion values (DEI) to encourage innovation and a positive company culture.
- Automate recruitment processes, like asynchronous video interviews, to keep procedures moving smoothly.
- Leverage data and analytics to scale hiring, such as offer acceptance rate and average cost of hire.
As you read through those strategies, you might have noticed a common thread—all of them require software to succeed. For example, the best talent acquisition software has bias-blocking technology to promote diverse hiring initiatives. Let’s explore more capabilities in the following section.
What are common pain points associated with talent acquisition?
Software exists to streamline your daily tasks and operations. You likely need to upgrade your talent acquisition software if you experience difficulty in:
- Managing multiple job openings
- Collaborating among hiring teams
- Lowering the cost of hiring
- Engaging candidates
- Providing a consistent candidate experience
- Matching qualified candidates
- Improving efficiency for manual screening and resume review processes
- Scheduling interviews and other meetings with candidates
- Streamlining the onboarding process
What does the best talent acquisition software do?
While each talent acquisition solution has unique offerings, it should help you achieve the following crucial tasks:
- Automate messaging. As previously mentioned, automation is needed to free your team’s bandwidth for more work-intensive tasks. The best talent acquisition software should automatically communicate with candidates based on certain triggers, such as when they submit an application or move to the next phase of the hiring process.
- Receive notifications. Talent acquisition teams often need to juggle many different tasks at once, which can get chaotic. Get notified immediately when certain events occur, such as candidates sending you messages.
- Move candidates through your recruitment funnel. Let’s say a candidate has provided great responses to the asynchronous interview portion of your hiring process. Let them know they’re invited to a live interview and send them a scheduling link by updating their status in your applicant tracking system (ATS).
- Make decisions quickly. If your legacy system was a maze of filing cabinets, you know that manually searching for data and compiling reports can be time-intensive. Talent acquisition software helps you make the right decisions faster by efficiently pulling actionable insights from data.
- Organize talent with tags. Depending on the size of your organization, you might be seeing hundreds of applicants per year—which is a lot of data to track. Talent tags keep your processes neat, straightforward, and optimized for future outreach to applicants when new roles open up.
- Identify the top fits for roles. Sometimes, objective facts and data can make your talent acquisition process more efficient. The best talent acquisition software will rank your applicants based on the skills and experience listed on their resume—all you need to do is provide a rubric so it has a scale to work off of.
Best talent acquisition software
1. Lever
Lever is an ATS and candidate relationship management (CRM) software solution for midsize organizations hoping to scale up their hiring sustainably.
Why is Lever the best talent acquisition software?
Lever’s future-forward features allow you to source new leads, nurture existing ones, and keep candidates engaged every step of the way. Here are some of our favorite Lever features and solutions:
| Solution | Capabilities |
| Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | Customizable candidate feedback surveys Reports filtered by race, ethnicity, gender, and other demographics |
| Reporting and Analytics | Visual Insights, a dynamic, configurable dashboard experience that allows you to visualize the metrics that matter most Track data like candidate pipeline stages, job-posting engagement, offer acceptance rate, and more |
| High-Volume Hiring | Candidate profiles that centralize important demographic information Lever’s Automation Hub, which boosts your capacity by automating activities like archiving, tagging, emailing, and advancing candidates |
| Recruitment Marketing | Lever’s Advanced Nurture, which empowers highly personalized, one-on-one communications with candidates Candidate Texting, which allows you to reach candidates whenever and wherever Career Site Builder, which allows you to launch a custom-branded job posting website |
Additionally, Lever also has extensive integrations that power your progress—more on that later.
How to Get Started
As a truly configurable and scalable product, the Lever team works with you to choose features and solutions that best complement your budget and goals. Get in touch with our team today to supercharge your talent acquisition efforts.
2. Jobvite
What is Jobvite?
Jobvite is an ATS and HR management software built for internal talent acquisition teams at high-growth enterprises.
Top Features
- Recruitment marketing channels (text, social media, email)
- Branded career site creation
- Integrated video screening and interview management
- Passive talent pool management and re-engagement
How to Get Started
Click the button below to get a tour from product experts.
3. JazzHR
What is JazzHR?
JazzHR is a talent acquisition software solution that’s ideal for small businesses that are looking to build up their hiring strategies.
Top Features
- Candidate email management
- Collaborative workflow with several seats per account
- Offers and eSignature creation
- Training resources for users new to talent acquisition
How to Get Started
If you’re building up your hiring capacity, JazzHR is a great tool to get you started on the right foot. Learn more about this talent acquisition software with a demo.
Best talent acquisition tools
Unlike talent acquisition software, talent acquisition tools are solutions best suited for streamlining parts of the process, like sourcing hires or conducting interviews.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is an employment-focused social networking platform for any size of organization.
Top Feature
- LinkedIn has an unmatched network of over 1 billion members you can reach out to via configurable job boards.
How to Get Started
LinkedIn has free and premium versions that offer different features. Get a free trial for the premium features made for full-time talent acquisition professionals here.
Wedge
What is Wedge?
Wedge facilitates virtual, asynchronous interviews that help you gauge organizational fit without scheduling an interview or phone screening.
Top Feature
- You can choose interview questions, the amount of time the candidate gets to answer, and the number of times the candidate can refilm their answers.
How to Get Started
Wedge is free to set up—you only need to pay the platform fee once you’re ready to start hiring. Sign up for free here.
Verified First
What is Verified First?
Verified First is a background check software that screens candidates before you extend them an offer. It checks criminal backgrounds, civil records, credit scores, and even driver records so you can hire with confidence.
Top Feature
- Verified First itself has no setup or license fees—you only pay for the background reports you order.
How to Get Started
Get a complimentary quote from the Verified First team here.
Criteria Corp
What is Criteria Corp?
Criteria Corp provides aptitude assessments so talent acquisition teams can understand a candidate’s skill level in relevant areas.
Top Feature
- Criteria Corp offers a variety of assessments in areas like cognitive aptitude, personality, emotional intelligence, risk, and logic.
How to Get Started
Visit Criteria Corp’s website to start a 14-day free trial today.
Career.Place
What is Career.Place?
Career.Place offers bias-blocking technology that makes the hiring process more fair for all candidates and applicants.
Top Capabilities
- Career.Place removes identifying information from resumes and other hiring materials so you hire based only on qualifications.
How to Get Started
Book a live demo with a Career.Place product expert or start a free trial.
Starred
What is Starred?
Starred is a candidate experience platform that provides actionable analytics for you to improve your application process.
Top Feature
- With Starred, collect detailed feedback from candidates and hiring managers with surveys so you can improve your hiring experience.
How to Get Started
Book a demo with the Starred team here.
How to choose talent acquisition software
After reading all of these best practices and software recommendations, you might be eager to get started—or you might feel overwhelmed. Let’s break down the next steps so you can choose the best talent acquisition software with confidence.
First, set goals and success metrics. Work with your talent acquisition team to pinpoint your must-have features (as well as nice-to-have features). This is also the time to establish key performance indicators, your budget, and an ideal rollout timeline (though this might change depending on the onboarding requirements of your chosen solution).
Next, you should conduct in-depth research on the available options. Leverage free demos, walkthroughs, and trials to get first-hand experience with the software. Also, consult reviews from third-party sources to take unbiased perspectives into account.
Check integration capabilities. While this is part of the research stage, this aspect is so important that it deserves its own callout. Integrations greatly reduce the time required to get your software up and running and prevent data silos.
Finally, make your buying decision. With your stakeholders, weigh your options based on findings from demos, pilots, and other trials. Put the finishing touches on your rollout plan and budget once you’ve narrowed your options.
You might not get your buying decision exactly right the first time. However, you can quickly recover by collecting performance data from the get-go and creating a contingency plan with a backup solution. That way, as soon as you notice any issues or discrepancies, you can pivot your strategy as smoothly as possible.
Whether you’re just getting started with an ATS or upgrading your legacy system, the key to success lies in evolving with the talent acquisition space. With new systems cropping up frequently, stay vigilant and leverage the best tools at your disposal.
Lever integrates with all of the aforementioned talent acquisition tools. Take a look at our easy integration process:
- Navigate to the Partners page.
- Use the collections and categories tabs to find ideal tools for your organization.
- Research the tool further by booking demos and reading third-party reviews.
- Read the activation instructions once you’ve made a decision.
It’s that simple! We have integrations that encompass many talent acquisition processes. Start exploring our partnerships network now to unlock your talent acquisition team’s full potential.
