23 Best Recruitment CRM Software for Smart Hiring (2024 Top Picks)

Zoho Recruit is one product among a galaxy of Zoho apps that offers an array of automation, efficient candidate management, and integration capabilities to streamline the recruitment process.

Zoho Recruit's customization capabilities allow for a tailored approach to recruitment. The unique feature called “Blueprint” will enable you to set up custom recruitment workflows that work for your company and guide whoever is involved through each applicant's process, ensuring no step is overlooked.

Zoho users can enjoy a unified experience across various business functions, including CRM, email, and productivity applications, all under a single sign-on (SSO). Such integration enhances the efficiency of recruitment processes by ensuring seamless transitions between different stages of the candidate lifecycle.

With Zoho Recruit, you can build talent pipelines, prevent duplicate candidates, publish recruiting campaigns, track applicants, manage resumes efficiently, and engage with candidates during and after hiring.

Why I picked Zoho Recruit

Zoho is a well-recognized leader in the SaaS industry. Its reputation is built on delivering reliable, scalable, and integrated software solutions designed to meet businesses' evolving needs.

Zoho Recruit is very compelling as a scalable solution that grows alongside your organization because it now supports 27 languages, provides a high level of customization, offers versatile product plans and add-ons, and has strong security practices.

Plus, the software continuously evolves to introduce new features that cater to the modern workplace, including the latest “AI-powered recruitment for custom automation and hiring in bulk.” 

Key Features of Zoho Recruit

• Blueprint Custom Processes: Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can create your own hiring processes according to your company's requirements. 
• Automated Actions: Streamline candidate engagement with customizable alerts and triggers.
• Career Site Management: Create or optimize your career site for search optimization, localization in 27 languages, customizable application forms, and mobile friendliness to enhance the applicant experience and your recruitment goals.
• Zia AI Chatbot: Zoho Recruit's AI assistant helps you stay in touch with potential candidates and enhance their experience. Candidates can chat with Zia for updates on application status and job availability that match their experience and skills. 

• AI-Assisted JD Crafting: Start crafting well-structured JDs from scratch by entering a few key details or completing your drafts with prompts.
• Candidate Profiles: You can create detailed candidate profiles that capture essential information such as personal details, work experience, education, skills, and any additional custom fields you want to track. Candidate records can also be color-coded for better categorization and organization. 
• Smart Search and Tagging: A quick view tab further simplifies the screening process, enabling the filtration of candidate profiles based on various criteria​​.
• Robust Job Board and Social Media Integrations: Enable candidate sourcing and extend your reach through multiple platforms in clicks.

Pros and Cons of Zoho Recruit

Pros:

• Zoho Recruit offers a comprehensive set of tools for candidate sourcing, tracking, engagement, onboarding, and various integrations to improve recruitment efficiency.
• Its customization options allow tailored recruitment processes with customizable fields and workflows.
• Transparent and flexible pricing tiers, with free plans and free trials.
• Rich tutorial and training materials with a user community to address common concerns.

Cons:

• The extensive features and customization options may require a significant time investment or a dedicated IT team to support deployment.
• Users have reported the interface to be less visually appealing and more cumbersome to navigate compared to some alternatives.

Zoho Recruit Rating

• G2: 4.4/5 from 1,663 reviews
• Capterra: 4.5/5 from 884 reviews

Featured User Quote:

“We upgraded from a basic CRM, and Zoho has surpassed my expectations. The migration process was super easy, and the platform is very user-friendly. I have been able to customize and tailor to my business needs, and this has been a huge plus for our business. The CV parsing tool is very accurate, and it integrates easily with other tools via Zapier, making adding clients and contacts super easy. This was not a function with our previous CRM, so it has made a massive difference in efficiency.” - Nikki B. (form small business of 50 or fewer employees), 2024 G2 reviews.

Zoho Recruit Pricing

Pricing options for Zoho Recruit range across several tiers, from a free version suitable for individuals or small teams to more feature-rich plans priced at $30, $60, and $90 per user per month when billed annually. They offer 15-day free trials and a 45-day money-back guarantee policy for paid plans. 

Each tier offers escalating numbers of job openings, email management features, social posting capabilities, and advanced features like semantic and zip code search, as well as unlimited resume parsing at higher tiers.

Gem talent engagement platform emerges as a revolutionary force in the recruitment technology landscape, aiming directly at recruiting teams eager to leverage data and automation to enhance hiring speed, quality, and diversity. 

Gem excels at creating a centralized hub of potential candidates by integrating data from various recruiting sources, such as email, ATS, LinkedIn, and other social networks. 

Gem provides recruiters with a complete view of candidate interactions and up-to-date information, including their career developments and milestones.

Hence, you can gain valuable insights across the entire recruiting process, automate outreach on a significant scale, and foster genuine cross-functional collaboration to optimize your recruiting strategies.

A standout feature of Gem is its automated outreach capabilities, which enable recruitment teams to engage both active and passive talent through multi-stage email sequences, including interview reminders and follow-ups. 

Why I picked Gem

If you want to bring in the best people for the job and keep them around without breaking the bank, you should let the data call the shots.

Gem distinguishes itself in the market with a clear focus on centralized recruiting data for informed hiring decisions. 

Gem provides talent acquisition teams with all the context needed on a single platform by consolidating data across frequently used systems, maintaining a detailed history of talent relationships, providing full-funnel insights, and forecasting.

This approach allows hiring managers to proactively address potential bottlenecks, enhance operational efficiency, and plan effectively to meet hiring goals. That’s why Gem is a compelling recruitment CRM solution for those committed to innovative recruitment strategies and value data-driven recruiting practices.

Key Features of Gem

• Unified Talent Relationship Management: Gem tracks every interaction, activity, and milestone between you as a recruiter and candidates, providing a complete view of the relationship history.
• Strategic Insights and Forecasting: Gem's analytics provide detailed reporting on hiring processes, operational performance, and diversity recruiting strategies. With end-to-end visibility into the recruiting process, you can easily spot cost-saving opportunities, improve efficiency, and forecast hiring needs.
• Talent Sourcing: Gem connects seamlessly with popular ATS and sourcing sites. It facilitates easy and effective talent sourcing with features like one-click sourcing, AI-enabled prospect search queries, and automated follow-ups. 
• Automated Outreach and Engagement: Enables hiring teams to engage with talents at scale through automation and sequences. Gem AI can auto-generate sequence templates for mass outreach with just a few user inputs.
• AI Skills Suggestions and Applicant Review: Gem AI suggests relevant skills and keywords based on the job description in the ATS and additional inputs to filter for the most qualified candidates. The platform also simplifies applicant review processes with Trello-like dashboards, advanced filters, and action buttons to process the following steps or send promising candidates to nurturing groups.

• Talent Marketing: Gem facilitates the easy creation and management of career sites, recruitment landing pages, and career events. You can also trigger missing candidates and silver medalists into different communities (like departments) and keep them warm with automated tailored communications.

Pros and Cons of Gem

Pros:

• Gem's ability to integrate data from various recruiting tools into a single CRM hub is highly valued for creating seamless workflows.
• The platform's automated multi-stage email sequences enhance engagement with active and passive candidates, improving response rates.
• Intuitive interface with straightforward navigation bars
• Rich integrations with ATS software and job boards.

Cons:

• Does not have advanced features to prevent bounced emails or extract emails from LinkedIn profiles without email ID. 
• Does not have built-in features and integrations for in-between recruiting requirements like background checks, assessments, etc. You need to do it through an integrated ATS.

Gem Rating

• G2: 4.8/5 from 203 reviews 
• Capterra: 4.8/5 from 119 reviews

Featured User Quote

Most Gem users are mid-market or enterprises with around 1,000 employees. And the combination of Gem (CRM) + Greenhouse (ATS) is popular among them.

“I've found immense value with Gem's filtering features offered through the review option in the talent pipeline. Our company's ATS has many limitations in making better contact with current and previous candidates, and GEM offers a solution through the amount of information offered in the talent pipeline review function.” - Verified G2 user, 2024 review.

Gem Pricing 

Gem does not disclose pricing information. You need to contact their sales team to get a custom quote.

Phenom is a talent experience management platform with extensive customization and sophisticated functionalities to develop engaged talent pools and re-discover best-fit candidates.

Phenom leverages AI to offer hyper-personalized experiences, helping you to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the hiring process, employee development, and retention strategies. 

Besides, Phenom supports high-volume hiring, career site optimization, talent marketplace functionalities, chatbots for engagement, talent CRM, campaigns, and SMS & 1:1 messaging, among other features.

Why I picked Phenom

Phenom focuses on not just attracting and hiring talent but also on developing and retaining employees through intelligent career pathing and personalized growth opportunities. 

Phenom's key customers include Kuehne Nagel and Brother, who have experienced success in terms of faster time-to-fill, higher application completion rates, and time saved through recruiting chatbots.

The AI capabilities are central to its design, enabling features like dynamic candidate ranking (Fit Scores), personalized career site experiences, and intelligent automation of recruitment tasks.

Ranked #7 in the top 40 AI HR tools by statistics from real users, Phenom allows you to tap into AI to hire the right candidate, foster your employer brand for recruiting, and enhance the overall experience for both candidates and recruiters.

Key features of Phenom

• Fit Score: Use AI to rank candidates based on how closely their skills, experience, and location match the job requirements to help you quickly identify the most suitable candidates.
• Chatbot: Engages candidates and employees with a conversational interface for immediate assistance and engagement. Chatbot can also give job opening recommendations for candidates after gathering enough information.
• SMS & 1:1 Messaging: Facilitates direct communication with candidates through text messages.
• Career Site Optimization: Attracts candidates with an AI-driven career site that offers personalized job recommendations.
• Recruiting Campaigns: Enables targeted communication with potential candidates to keep them engaged and informed.
• Talent Marketplace: Foster internal mobility and career growth by connecting employees with personalized job recommendations, projects, gigs, and learning opportunities within their current organization. 
• Interview Intelligence: Offers tools for more efficient and insightful interview processes.

Pros and Cons of Phenom

Pros:

• Effective for creating and utilizing talent pools
• Suitable for large enterprises with complex needs or high-volume hiring needs
• Integrations with ATS (Greenhouse and SAP), sourcing platforms (Indeed, HireEZ, Lever, etc.), and other HR-related tools

Cons:

• Reporting turnaround times could be improved
• Bulk status changes for candidates are not possible
• Some users have reported slow customer service responses

Phenom Rating

• G2: 4.3/5 from 258 reviews

Featured User Quote

“I really like the ease of use and the filters to create talent pipelines. Spotlights and filters make it easy for me to prioritize top talent and set up interviews quickly. Bulk emails and SMS to my candidates save me so much time, and I am able to create lists that help me organize my day-to-day activities. I love the campaigns and templates that I can set up with colorful Sevita branding logos and pictures, as well as videos to engage with Leads. Phenom training and certifications are really nice to learn and do more with this awesome CRM!” - Kristin H. (from enterprise of 1000+ employees), G2 reviews.

Phenom Pricing

Phenom does not disclose pricing details. You need to contact their sales team or leave an RFP request to have a custom quote based on your recruiting needs and requirements.

Beamery is another AI-powered talent management platform on the list with great candidate relationship management functions. Beamery assists organizations in identifying top employees, closing skill gaps, and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

With Beamery, you can start by analyzing your team, identifying skills gaps, and crafting job requirements with the help of AI for the missing skills.

Beambery allows recruiters to collect and organize candidate pools from various sources, run recruitment marketing activities, and get analysis and forecasting for the whole recruiting strategies afterward.

Beamery offers rich insights into each candidate in the database, recruiting campaign features, talent pool searches, and integrations with other recruiting software. 

Why I picked Beamery

Beamery differentiates itself by focusing on creating a customer-level experience for candidates and nurturing prospective candidates from discovery through conversion into applicants. 

The platform is centered around email functionality and prospect tracking, offering highly customizable database interfaces that make creating new fields and using them in email campaigns straightforward. 

Beamery's growing list of automation features, reminders, task assignments for teams, and a Chrome extension for indexing candidates from LinkedIn further enhance its utility. 

Key Features of Beamery

• Candidate Management: Maintains clean, enriched, and up-to-date talent data for accurate recruitment decisions.
• TalentGPT: Beamery’s AI helps generate job descriptions and email templates that are highly relevant to your needs. It also provides career recommendations to existing team members based on their current skills and future development paths. 

• AI Talent Match: Automatically align job titles and assess the relevancy of candidates' skills to job requirements and provide explanations for its recommendations.
• Candidate Sourcing: Integrate with sourcing platforms and have options to search for and engage with passive candidates to find candidates with the desired skills and experience.
• Chatbot: Automate processes like screening, interview scheduling, and more through personalized conversations, providing a more seamless experience for candidates.
• SMS Messaging: Reach candidates through text messaging to their local/mobile phone numbers or WhatsApp, and automatically log these touchpoints in the candidate database.
• Interview Scheduling: Simplify the scheduling of interviews and collection of candidate feedback within a single talent management platform.
• Targeted Recruitment Events: Facilitates organizing and managing campus recruiting events and other talent acquisition initiatives. Beamery allows recruiters to capture and track potential candidates' information during events, ensuring no opportunity is missed to add promising talent to their pipelines.
• Proactive Recruitment: Enables building and nurturing talent pipelines to fill skills gaps quickly.
• Customizable Analytics: Offers customizable analytics and pre-built dashboards to track ROI, manage recruiting efforts, and forecast pipeline results from outreach to offer.

Pros and Cons of Beamery

Pros:

• Offers a consolidated platform for all stages of recruiting and retention with reporting tools for monitoring pipeline progress and identifying key performance indicators.
• Users appreciate its automation capabilities, which streamline communication with candidates and make the recruitment process more uniform.
• User-friendly interface

Cons:

• Some users have experienced issues with the Chrome Extension, describing it as buggy and noting problems with candidate duplication in the system.

Beamery Rating

• G2: 4.1/5 from 149 reviews
• Capterra: 4.6/5 from 10 reviews

Featured User Quote

“The best thing about Beamery is the team! They are true partners who go above and beyond to support us. The system itself is very user-friendly and highly configurable. It has powerful search tools and a smooth integration with Workday.”—Verified G2 user.

Beamery Pricing

Beamery does not disclose its pricing details. You need to contact their sales team for a custom quote for your specific requirements and scale.

Workable is a comprehensive recruiting software that combines smart sourcing and intuitive candidate database management.

Workable offers various tools for sourcing candidates, including posting on popular job boards, running social campaigns, searching for passive candidates, and referral programs. 

Even if promising candidates aren't an ideal fit for the current role, you can add them to the Workable database to nurture for future opportunities.

Furthermore, Workable AI helps streamline sourcing candidates by automatically identifying the best matches from a vast pool of profiles.

Workable also extends into HR functionalities, helping hiring managers onboard new hires to the team and manage related paperwork. 

Workable is set to introduce expanded employee management capabilities, including attendance tracking and performance management. This will transform Workable into a holistic solution that addresses the broader HR management needs—from hiring to employee development and retention—facilitating a seamless experience across the entire employee lifecycle.

Why I picked Workable

In every list of recommended software, I always try to include at least one "all-in-one" option for those looking to streamline their processes without juggling multiple tools or for teams who don't have abundant budgets and resources to invest in separate dedicated ATS, CRM, and HRIS solutions. And Workable steals the spot in this guide!

Workable stands out for its combination of ease of use, scalability, and comprehensive feature set. 

Its AI-driven capabilities for automating and streamlining the recruitment process are superior, offering quick access to a vast candidate database and efficient candidate sourcing methods. 

Key Features of Workable

• Automated Job Posting: Simplifies creating and distributing job listings across over 200 job boards.
• AI Recruiter: Quickly identifies the most suitable candidates for a job by analyzing various data points, including skills, experience, and job fit.
• People Search: Expand the search beyond the applicant pool with specific skill sets or experience to include passive candidates who may not be actively seeking a new job but are open to opportunities.
• Communication Template: Create different email templates and set up automated communication for consistent employer brand voice and better candidate engagement throughout various stages of the hiring process.

• Streamlined Scheduling: Simplify the process of scheduling interviews with candidates by integrating with email and calendar systems, reducing the back-and-forth communication typically required.
• Talent Pool: Categorize and save profiles of candidates who have either applied for jobs in the past or have been sourced but not currently placed in a role. You can tag these profiles with relevant skills, previous job titles, or other criteria to build a ready-to-go repository of potential hires.
• Career Page Builder: Allow hiring managers to easily create a custom careers page on your website using drag-and-drop functionality, with options for adding the company logo, colors, and fonts to reflect the brand.
• Mobile Application Form: Offers the ability to create application forms that are mobile-friendly, ensuring a seamless application process for candidates using smartphones or tablets.
• Referral and Rewards Program: Allows companies to implement a referral program, encouraging current employees to recommend candidates for open positions, often with rewards for successful hires.
• Onboarding and HR Management: Beyond recruitment, the platform includes features for onboarding new hires and managing employee documents in the centralized software.

Pros and Cons of Workable

Pros:

• Automated processes and AI integration significantly reduce the time spent on hiring tasks.
• Easy to use and deploy with prompt and knowledgeable customer support.
• Offers a mobile-friendly application process for iOS and Android users.
• Workable API for custom data extraction and other integrations with recruiting software.

Cons:

• Users reported difficulties in attaching and organizing non-resume documents.

Workable Rating

• G2: 4.6/5 from 415 reviews
• Capterra: 4.4/5 from 444 reviews

Featured User Quote

“I like being able to manage multiple jobs and seeing them on one dashboard. I also like how easy it is to move candidates through the stages of the hiring pipeline efficiently and also customizing pipelines according to specific hiring needs. Email templates are also a great tool, and I'm able to organize them according to departments. We can streamline the hiring process through Workable.” - Charlotte D - Verified G2 User, 2024 review.

Workable Pricing

Workable offers 15-day free trials with no credit card required. Workable’s pricing structure is based on your team size with add-on tools for video interviewing, texting, and assessments. It starts at $149/month for teams of up to 50 employees.