Recruitment Software Features and Requirements Checklist

If you’re in the market for recruitment software, you likely know that it can be a game-changer for your hiring process. However, recruiting tech comes in all shapes and sizes. So, before you seal the deal and make a purchase, let’s talk about the key recruitment software features you’ll need.

This checklist covers the essential features to help you narrow down your top options. After all, the right software addresses your unique business needs instead of causing more headaches. Let’s get started!

Get our Recruiting Software Requirements Template

This Guide Covers:

• Top Requirements
  • Applicant Tracking
  • Candidate Assessment and Evaluation
  • Career Websites
  • Communications
  • Interview and Offer Management
  • Onboarding
  • Platform Features
  • Talent Sourcing
  • Integrations and Extensibility
• Factors To Consider When Selecting a Recruitment Solution
• Features To Consider Based on Company Size
• Next Steps

Top Requirements

Think about what your business needs and how recruitment tools can enhance your hiring process. But you don’t have to figure it all out alone! Below, we’ll cover the top recruitment software requirements and modules to consider:

Get our Recruiting Software Requirements Template

1. Applicant Tracking

Organizing resumes and CVs in one place is the core of recruiting software. A good system typically comes with Applicant tracking tools to help you screen hundreds of candidates in a flash.

The system you choose should make the following processes a breeze:

• Screening candidates based on relevant hiring criteria or filters.
• Keeping track of applicant status.
• Archiving or saving candidate details for future reference.
• Searching and pulling candidate profiles from databases.
• Sharing vital updates with team members and key stakeholders.

The applicant tracking module lets you tailor the hiring pipeline, create flowcharts, auto-send rejection emails and receive alerts. Monitor the pulse of your recruitment game by tracking recruiting KPIs like time-to-hire, time-to-fill, offer acceptance rate and more.

• AI-Based Candidate Hire Prediction
• Automated Task Assignment
• Custom Rejection Reasons
• Customizable Hiring Pipeline
• Hiring Flowchart
• Key Performance Indicators (KPI) Tracking
• Recruitment Stage Alerts

2. Candidate Assessment and Evaluation

As they say, time is money, and recruitment can be a lengthy process. According to a recent Jobvite report, the average time to fill is 47.5 days. The longer a position remains open, the higher recruiting costs can run.

However, here’s the silver lining: quality hires make this investment worth it.

So, before rolling out offer letters, check for potential red flags and test your applicant’s integrity to avoid bad hires. The assessment and screening module include:

• Background Checking: Automatically conduct background screening to hire people with a clean history.
• Pre-Screening: Conduct initial assessments to determine if candidates meet basic job requirements.
• Reference Checking: Contact references to verify a candidate’s work history, performance and qualifications.
• Take-Home Assessments: Assign tests to evaluate skills and abilities related to the open role.

Identify the best applicants via screening forms and relevant questions. Adding pre-hire assessment tools to your recruiting strategy helps speed up the interview process by filtering based on technical and soft skills.

Some vendors go beyond traditional pre-hire testing and offer cognitive and behavioral assessments. Built-in talent intelligence frameworks determine who has the potential to fit in and grow.

• Candidate Background Screening
• Candidate Behavioral and Cognitive Assessment
• Candidate Pre-Screening
• Candidate Reference Checking
• Take-Home Assessment

Compare Top Recruiting Software Leaders

3. Career Websites

Sometimes, top talent comes knocking on your door. So, how can you make it easy for them to find their way in? Showcase job opportunities on branded career pages with embedded submission forms.

Well-crafted career sites let applicants create profiles, apply for jobs and track their status via the candidate portal. Leverage customizable templates to create and reuse job descriptions. Let your company’s unique values and culture shine through by incorporating employee testimonial videos into your career sites.

Candidates can register on the portal, ask job-specific questions and track existing applications by interacting with AI chatbots.

• AI-Based Language Scan in Job Description
• AI-Based Chatbot
• Automated Alerts to Candidates
• Branded Career Page
• Candidate Application Form
• Candidate Portal
• Creating and Customizing Job Templates
• Employee-Generated Video Posting for Promotion Purposes

4. Communications

Candidates want to be in the loop. Glassdoor uncovered that mentions of employer ghosting more than doubled over the past few years.

Recruiting solutions offer built-in tools to communicate seamlessly through a single interface. Send career-related alerts, provide status updates and notify about delays to maintain transparency.

Configure rules to trigger emails for specific criteria. Integrate email accounts with popular clients such as Gmail, Office 365 and more. Use text messaging to connect with applicants on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis.

• Automated Email Response
• Built-In Email Communication
• Creating and Customizing Email Templates
• Email Client Integration
• Email Scheduling
• Microsoft Outlook Plug-In
• Text Messaging Communication

5. Interview and Offer Management

Schedule live or on-demand video interviews with the interview management module. It eliminates scheduling confusion or double-booked appointments and empowers interviewers to select interview dates and times based on availability.

Rely on interview guides to conduct structured interviews. Use templates to customize offer letters and monitor offer acceptance to ensure candidates are on board.

Use built-in e-signing tools to accept signatures from candidates digitally. Generate scorecards to compare skills, traits, qualifications and experience. Facilitate conversations with hiring managers with chat functionality.

6. Onboarding

Even though your HR team breathes a sigh of relief once a candidate accepts an offer, the hiring process isn’t over. It’s time to welcome your new hires into their roles, finish forms and introduce them to their teams.

Your chosen system must include onboarding tools to integrate new employees.

• Send automated reminders to fill out online forms, including compliance, benefits enrollment, confidentiality agreement and more.
• Leverage an onboarding portal to complete documentation and other tasks while delivering a seamless experience.
• Create new hire processes with step-by-step wizards, intuitive dashboards and built-in forms.

Create customized workflows such as learning goals or task completion for employees with step-by-step guidance, contextual help and notifications to ensure completion within the deadline.

• Automatic Reminders
• Creating Onboarding Tasks
• New Hire Checklist
• New Hire Onboarding Portal
• Onboarding Forms

7. Platform Features

Platform capabilities are how you’ll get to use all features and functions. Conduct video interviews using mobile devices to cut travel expenses, avoid delays and mitigate scheduling conflicts.

Track key recruiting metrics, gauge performance and get valuable insights into the hiring process with hiring dashboards. Create robust reports depicting hiring trends, recruiting KPIs and diversity levels with a custom report builder. Use workflow templates and set custom rules for targeted actions.

Think of platform capabilities as how user-friendly the system is. An intuitive platform benefits both your recruiting team and your candidates. It helps your hiring teams stay organized and ensures smooth candidate experiences.

• Develop customizable candidate experience surveys to gather authentic feedback.
• Ensure ethical data management practices by adhering to global compliance standards like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
• Boost inclusion by following EEOC guidelines to generate balanced talent pipelines.
• Create custom fields with dropdowns, dates, text, numbers and more to accumulate employee data.
• Apply customer filters to facilitate advanced searches. Use a document repository to upload and store files in the system.

Platform features include the following key requirements:

8. Talent Sourcing

Next, consider your system’s talent-sourcing capabilities. Your chosen system must provide tools to identify, research and network with talented individuals. Use AI-based candidate-matching algorithms to find suitable candidates for an open position.

Parse resumes for job titles, skill sets and experience levels to streamline the candidate shortlisting process. Automate job postings to multiple job boards in a click to save time and effort.

Powerful talent-sourcing capabilities engage prospects throughout the talent pipeline with personalized email campaigns, detect duplicate profiles and accept resumes in all formats. Create web forms to drive candidate action and accelerate the recruitment process. Monitor campaign performance and track engagement metrics.

Recommend jobs based on searches and resume information. Use social prospecting to display job ads in the social media feed of passive candidates. Facilitate contingent hiring that includes part-time, temporary or contract workers.

9. Integrations and Extensibility

Last but not least, consider how well the chosen system connects with pre-existing hiring technologies and productivity apps. Identify the talent management and hiring stages that rely on specific software and check platform compatibility with these tools.

Leverage API integrations to create a high-functioning software network that seamlessly connects and shares resources across platforms.

Export candidate information to other systems like enterprise resource planning software (ERP), business intelligence (BI) tools and HR software.

Get our Recruiting Software Requirements Template

Factors To Consider When Selecting a Recruitment Solution

Recruitment is all about spreading the word about job opportunities across the talent market and streamlining the hiring process. Finding ideal matches depends on how well you can convey the following elements in your job ads and communication campaigns:

• Expertise and experience
• Educational qualifications
• Professional certifications
• Job location
• Company values

Your chosen system must efficiently convey job expectations and company-specific requirements. Keeping the following factors in mind will help you select a system that hits the mark with each hire:

1. Key Features

Selecting a system is similar to hiring talent: both depend on how well they align with your industry and workforce.

Focus on features and functions that’ll improve your internal processes and assist your recruiting team in doing what they do best. So, vendors that offer solutions that address your talent requirements should automatically top your list.

Use the following questions as a starting point to determine essential features:

• What’s your hiring frequency?
• Who are the key people that’ll benefit from a recruiting system?
• Which specific talent needs can software address?
• Where do weaknesses lie in your recruiting strategy? How will software address them?

Being clear about the goals you want to achieve with software implementations sets the foundation for what to look for in specific vendors.

Compare Top Recruiting Software Leaders

2. Integrations

Most organizations and recruitment agencies leverage internal and external communication platforms. The solution should integrate with job boards, social media sites, mobile applications and the company’s career page.

This process should happen seamlessly with existing systems for a smooth transition while facilitating ease of use and flexibility.

Select a vendor with an open API or built-in integrations if you want to avoid using a fragmented, complexity-prone system.

3. User-Friendliness

You don’t want to waste time figuring out the different features and functionalities to complete tasks. The right recruitment solution shouldn’t require extensive training or technical know-how.

You’ll want to invest in a solution that’s intuitive and straightforward. Many tools offer a free trial for a specific duration to try out and learn its features before you purchase.

4. Automation

There will be times when you need to manage multiple applicants across various hiring stages for more than one open role. Look for vendors that let you configure workflows and create hiring pathways to streamline everything from pre-screening to interviewing and interviewing to shortlisting.

Set criteria to trigger actions like periodically sending status updates to candidates or reminders to hiring managers to provide feedback or complete evaluations.

5. Reporting and Analytics

Real-time dashboards, customized reports and predictive analytics will help you keep those recruiting KPIs at the required level. Your chosen system must support strategic decisions to optimize your talent selection process.

Keep in mind that different vendors offer varying depths of analytics, so it’s vital to assess your specific analytical needs and how granular you want the insights to be before making your purchase decision.

6. Support

You’ll inevitably encounter obstacles and need a support team to answer questions quickly. Any delays to your hiring process increase time-to-hire and become roadblocks to fulfilling objectives within specific time constraints. The vendor’s ability to resolve problems quickly and efficiently makes all the difference.

7. Deployment

With on-premise deployment, you need servers, software licenses, integration and IT support to manage the system. While you’ll have more control over on-premise systems, cloud-based recruiting systems help save money on infrastructure maintenance and support, making the latter the preferred option for many businesses.

Access cloud-based solutions via phone, tablet or laptop on the go. Consider the benefits of each deployment strategy and choose one that fits your requirements.

8. Price

Different vendors offer different pricing models. Various factors determine its cost, including system features, open positions and the number of employees accessing the solution.

Get our Recruiting Software Requirements Template

Features To Consider Based on Company Size

Whether you’re a small startup, a growing medium-sized business or a large corporation, finding the perfect fit is daunting. Below, we’ll spotlight what to look for based on your business size:

Small Businesses

For small businesses, simplicity and affordability are key. You need a solution that won’t break the bank and is easy to navigate. Look for features designed to streamline your hiring process without overwhelming your budget:

• Affordable Pricing: Check whether vendors offer free or basic pricing plans.
• User-Friendly Dashboard: Consider how easy the platform is to navigate. An intuitive interface must be easy to use so even the least tech-savvy team members can navigate it with ease.
• Basic Job Posting and Management: Your software choice must help you easily post job opportunities across job boards and help you track sources. This essential feature defines recruitment software.

Medium-Sized Businesses

As a mid-sized business, you’re likely experiencing growth and expansion. The following features are suitable for evolving business needs:

• Reports and Analytics: Track recruitment metrics and gain valuable insights to optimize recruitment strategies as your business scales.
• Custom Workflows: Tailor hiring paths and workflows to suit hiring requirements. This flexibility is vital as business needs evolve.
• Recruitment CRM: Invest in software with a built-in recruitment customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage candidate relationships and communication effectively.
• Collaboration and Communication Tools: Prioritize vendors offering tools to enhance internal team productivity and improve candidate engagement.

Large Businesses

Enterprise businesses have a lot on their plate — larger teams, operations and tech ecosystems. Their primary focus is on efficiently and securely managing data and freeing up recruiting teams to focus on key decision-making instead of humdrum administrative tasks.

• AI and Automation: Leverage technology to automatically screen resumes, manage large candidate volumes and streamline repetitive tasks.
• Advanced Security and Compliance: Protect sensitive candidate data and make the right information accessible to the right people. Maintain regulatory compliance to reduce data breach risks and legal repercussions.
• API Integrations: Ensure seamless connectivity and data exchange between recruitment systems and other tools to improve efficiency.

Get our Recruiting Software Requirements Template

Next Steps

The right talent is critical to any organization’s success, and having the right recruitment software can help you achieve that goal. All you need to do next is use this checklist as a resource and start your software selection process. To kick things up a notch, refer to our free requirements template to determine how different features stack up against your software needs.

What recruitment software features are vital for your organization? Let us know in the comments section below.