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We spend all day researching the best HR software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on experts to refine our recommendations. We may earn a fee if you click on vendor links on this page. Learn more about SelectSoftware Reviews
In this Guide
- Top Candidate Sourcing Tools
- Intro and Our Criteria
- Our Reviews of the Top Vendors
- Why Talent Acquisition Teams Use Sourcing Tools
- Talent Sourcing Tool ROI Calculator
- Staying Organized
- Questions to ask Talent Sourcing Vendors on Demos
- Sourcing Tools vs Managed Services/Automated Talent Sourcing
- Candidate Sourcing FAQs
- Final Advice
Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
The best candidate sourcing tools allow your talent acquisition team to reach new talent pools, and quickly engage relevant people to close your hardest to fill reqs. To understand what the best sourcing platforms are, we’ve done dozens of demos and talked to some of the most successful recruiting teams out there.
For instance, from Joe Aburdene, a Director at Chicago-based Talent Acquisition Services firm Lucas James Talent Partners, we learned that the best sourcing tools have their own databases, as well as the tech to process thousands of applicants automatically; as opposed to a team doing it manually.
So below is our list of the best candidate sourcing SaaS tools, along with everything else we think you need to know when buying these types of tools from ROI to questions to ask on demos.
It’s important to note that sourcing software is great for teams that need to augment their existing sourcing capabilities, or to fully outsource the process. They also work for companies of any size or industry - the main criteria to get value of out these tools is that you must have a need for hard-to-find talent.
Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
Top Candidate Sourcing Tools
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best Sourcing tools and services per our research and expert council as of 2023.
Why we love it
:
Underdog.io is a job market place that connects candidates with hiring managers in top startups in NYC and San Francisco. A notable thing is that most applications take only 60 seconds.
Underdog.io
Review:
Underdog.io allows technology companies to source from their continuously-refreshed pool of vetted talent. Most of their candidates are experienced tech (eng/data science) talent, but they also have product, sales, etc. Recruiters can use booleans to search for the right talent in the right geography (including looking specifically for under represented groups), and then message either in the platform or via email.
Candidates can only stay on the platform for 30 days, which means they are looking for what's next and are responsive to recruiter outreach. They've also done a good job of integrating with the ATS ecosystem to track your activity.
Underdog.io
Customers:
Lattice, Airtable, Aircall, Teachers pay teachers, Foursquare
Lattice, Airtable, Aircall, Teachers pay teachers, Foursquare
Underdog.io
Stats:
- 95% of companies using the Underdog.io platform are privately-held venture-backed startups.
- To keep job quality high, Underdog.io turns away more than 50% of the startups that try to join their platform.
- 95% of companies using the Underdog.io platform are privately-held venture-backed startups.
- To keep job quality high, Underdog.io turns away more than 50% of the startups that try to join their platform.
Underdog.io
Pricing:
The pricing of Underdog.io’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team for a price quote.
The pricing of Underdog.io's plans and services isn't disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team for a price quote.
Best For
Companies looking for a curated marketplace for tech talent.
Why we love it
:
Not only does Manatal cover most of the features you’d expect from a budget-friendly ATS, the platform tops that off with AI-powered actions, such as candidate filtering and recommendations.
- 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.
- 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
Review:
Manatal helps HR teams attract and find candidates in a variety of ways. You can create a custom-branded career page, post jobs to multiple job boards, and receive referrals from employees and other contacts. You can also upload candidate profiles and automatically enrich them with data derived from their social media accounts.
To speed up the process of finding suitable candidates, Manatal offers an AI-powered recommendations engine that’s able to scan your job descriptions, extract key skills needed to perform the job, then search your talent pool and bring up candidates that possess those skills. It’s also offers a LinkedIn chrome extension, allowing you to quickly connect with and save the candidates who fit your job requirements.
Manatal
Customers:
Manatal is used in over 100 countries. Their customer list includes Unilever, Cocacola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.
Manatal is used in over 100 countries. Their customer list includes Unilever, Cocacola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.
Manatal
Stats:
Manatal
Pricing:
Manatal has two plans with fixed pricing. When Billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Professional: This plan costs $15 per user per month for up to 15 jobs per account and 10,000 candidates. Customers on this plan can add unlimited guests.
- Enterprise: This plan costs $35 per user per month for unlimited jobs per account, as well as unlimited candidates and guests.
Note:
- “Users” refers to the individuals with full unrestricted access to Manatal’s platform and its features such as recruiters and HR professionals who actively use the software.
- “Guests” refers to individuals who are invited to collaborate on the platform through a dedicated portal such as hiring managers and decision-makers. These guests can access the platform free of charge and do not count towards the billable number of users.
Manatal has two plans with fixed pricing. When Billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Professional: This plan costs $15 per user per month for up to 15 jobs per account and 10,000 candidates. Customers on this plan can add unlimited guests.
- Enterprise: This plan costs $35 per user per month for unlimited jobs per account, as well as unlimited candidates and guests.
Note:
- “Users” refers to the individuals with full unrestricted access to Manatal’s platform and its features such as recruiters and HR professionals who actively use the software.
- “Guests” refers to individuals who are invited to collaborate on the platform through a dedicated portal such as hiring managers and decision-makers. Thes
Best For
Manatal is used by organizations of all sizes across different industries, but it’s worth noting that the ball-park of their customers are SMEs.
Why we love it
:
hireEZ's focus lets you hire at scale and automate manual time-consuming tasks through a variety of sourcing, engagement, integrations, analytics, and collaboration features.
hireEZ
Review:
hireEZ, formerly known as Hiretual, have a massive database of candidates that is perfect for sourcers and recruiters who are looking for hard to find candidates. As a user, you can run searches to find people to reach out to, and then put them into an outreach campaign.
hireEZ
Customers:
Nike, Continental, Wayfair, Intel, Ceridian, Novo Nordisk
Nike, Continental, Wayfair, Intel, Ceridian, Novo Nordisk
hireEZ
Stats:
- hireEZ pulls candidate data from over 45 platforms.
- With hireEZ, clients can browse over 800M candidate profiles.
- hireEZ pulls candidate data from over 45 platforms.
- With hireEZ, clients can browse over 800M candidate profiles.
hireEZ
Pricing:
hireEZ's pricing varies depending on your needs and employee count. Since all their pricing is custom, it's best to contact them for an exact quote.
hireEZ's pricing varies depending on your needs and employee count. Since all their pricing is custom, it's best to contact them for an exact quote.
Best For
Companies of all sizes looking for scalable, AI-powered talent sourcing solution.
Why we love it
:
Fetcher is an AI-based recruitment automation software that uses a simple but effective 3-step methodology of ‘source, engage, and track’ to ensure that you have a continuous stream of qualified candidates and meet your hiring needs.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Fetcher
Review:
Fetcher's AI-based sourcing algorithm helps recruiters save time and effort that they would otherwise spend pouring over resumes and candidate databases. Using inputs from hiring teams on their preferences for a particular role and Artificial Intelligence, Fetcher curates batches of profiles for you to review. You can also help calibrate and refine the search by leaving specific feedback on individual candidate profiles, ensuring that the quality of profiles you receive is exactly what you're looking for.
Fetcher
Customers:
Fetcher is used by over 500 businesses worldwide, including Andela, Frame.io, Magnite, Foursquare and CarGurus.
Fetcher is used by over 500 businesses worldwide, including Andela, Frame.io, Magnite, Foursquare and CarGurus.
Fetcher
Stats:
- Fetcher is used by 500+ recruiting teams across the globe
- Emails sent to candidates from Fetcher have a 95% open rate
- Fetcher is used by 500+ recruiting teams across the globe
- Emails sent to candidates from Fetcher have a 95% open rate
Fetcher
Pricing:
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.
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 can be used by small, mid-sized, and large organizations looking to automate their sourcing and candidate outreach processes and increase hiring efficiencies.
Why we love it
:
Visage.jobs is used by some of the top Fortune 500 companies to source, track, and engage passive candidates on a global level.
- Visage.jobs walks the talk when it comes to diversity hiring. 46% of their inhouse team are certified diversity sourcers. The Visage platform also helps you eliminate bias, add diverse candidates to your platform and set DEI targets for your organization.
- In to their human sourcing experts, Visage.jobs’ leverages with AI to facilitate and speed up the search for and matching of suitable candidates.
- You can speed up the candidate communication process with the platform’s built-in email outreach templates with and automated follow-up feature.
- Visage.jobs integrates with a handful of applicant tracking systems, and that’s about it. There aren’t integration options with other software solutions for human resources management, team communication, or productivity.
- There currently isn’t a mobile app you can use on the go for faster candidate sourcing and vetting.
- The pricing of Visage.jobs’ offering isn’t transparent and free trials aren’t available at this time.
Visage.jobs
Review:
Visage is a very interesting marketplace that talent acquisition teams can leverage to augment their sourcing capabilities. You post what types of candidates you are looking for, and then thousands of sourcers compete to find you suitable candidates. There is a level of screening done through AI, and then your recruiters can reach out to the applicants you want.
Visage.jobs
Customers:
Deloitte, Walmart, Siemens, Walgreens, Cognizant
Visage.jobs
Stats:
- Visage’s clients approve 80% of the candidates they get through the platform.
- Visage currently serves clients in 32 countries.
Visage.jobs
Pricing:
Visage has a subscription-based pricing model that’s based on your team's needs and size. Contact Visage’s sales team to learn more.
Best For:
Companies looking to source and qualify candidates fast.
Why we love it
:
Arya is developed by Leoforce, an AI recruiting company with a focus on talent sourcing. There are several editions of Arya, making it a good fit for all company sizes.
Arya by Leoforce
Review:
The Arya AI recruiting platform from Leoforce builds shortlists of quality candidates based on your job description. These shortlists come from the open web, as well as your own ATS/CRM. The platform also includes a multi-channel candidate engagement suite that allows you to quickly and easily reach out to these candidates, ask them screening questions, and schedule the relevant candidates with your recruiters. Needless to say, this decreases cost per hire and time to fill.
Arya by Leoforce
Customers:
Lenovo, American Century Investments, PeopleScout, Ecotalent, Polaris Alpha
Arya by Leoforce
Stats:
- 10,000+ clients
- 40 million candidates sourced
- Over 50 professional social channels for sourcing
- Championed by 6,000 recruiters globally
Arya by Leoforce
Pricing:
Arya's pricing starts with Arya Pulse, which is for low volume or infrequent hiring needs. You get to pay per job, with options ranging from $200 to $600. For larger recruitment needs, they offer subscription-based pricing that's customized.
Best For:
Arya is available in several editions (see Pricing), so it can easily meet the needs and budgets of enterprises and SMBs.
Why we love it
:
Combining source-to-hire automation, AI, and managed services, Entelo is a platform used to accelerate recruiting at enterprises like Goldman Sachs, PayPal, and Target.
Entelo
Review:
With Entelo, you can search for candidates that meet your criteria, and then automate your outreach all from one platform. Their new Envoy platform even promises to deliver qualified candidates directly to your inbox.
Entelo
Customers:
Aside from the ones mentioned above, Big name Entelo customers include Wayfair, Sony, Lyft, Asana, and Comerica Bank.
Entelo
Stats:
Entelo
Pricing:
The pricing of Entelo’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team for a quote.
Best For:
Recruiting teams and agencies looking for a recruitment automation platform.
Why we love it
:
HireSweet is does talent acquisition software for data-driven recruiting teams doing outbound. They have a lovely interface that can engage candidates through multichannel sequences. They currently focus on teams with 50-5000 employees.
- Outbound & candidate nurturing automation
- Create multichannel sequences (for example, Email + LinkedIn)
- Refined talent pool segmentation
- Outbound & candidate nurturing automation
- Create multichannel sequences (for example, Email + LinkedIn)
- Refined talent pool segmentation
- No careers page
- No candidate score cards
- No careers page
- No candidate score cards
HireSweet
Review:
HireSweet is a simple AI-powered sourcing tool that hiring managers, founders, and talent acquisition pros can all use to engage talent. Their offering helps recruiting teams source candidates, mostly from LinkedIn. The tool will then deploy automated sequences that come from your email, or a colleague (in the case where a recruiter wants the CTO to be reaching out). It'll learn how to find better candidates based on your feedback using AI and can either charge on a subscription or fee for hire basis. Their platform can also do candidate rediscovery and nurturing.
HireSweet
Customers:
Gorgias, Match Group, Inato, Shipup, Simundia, Accor
HireSweet
Stats:
Among the 1200+ companies that user HireSweet, several have reported the following results:
- 24 days time-to-hire reduction
- 26% increase in recruiters efficiency
- 45% reduction in sourcing time
HireSweet
Pricing:
The pricing of HireSweet.io’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team for a price quote.
Best For:
Companies looking to source and qualify candidates faster.
Why we love it
:
SeekOut puts many variants of artificial intelligence within the context of a search engine for talent. Their tool sources from an ever-expanding list of candidates who are willing to be listed on the platform, showcasing over 780M profiles.
- Sources from tons of external databases; over 780M candidate profiles and growing
- Can find talent also among your existing team.
- Truly tech-powered and search engine-like platform.
- Presents very complete candidate profiles, sometimes going through their code contributions, participation in conferences, academic papers, and more, in order to present top experts for certain skills or topics.
- Sources from tons of external databases; over 780M candidate profiles and growing
- Can find talent also among your existing team.
- Truly tech-powered and search engine-like platform.
- Presents very complete candidate profiles, sometimes going through their code contributions, participation in conferences, academic papers, and more, in order to present top experts for certain skills or topics.
- While they're always expanding their candidate list, they have been mainly oriented towards the US and Canada for years. Hence, companies outside those geographies might find that their searches are still somewhat limited when it comes to local talent. Such is the case of some users writing from Europe, for instance.
- Several users have complained about lags or glitches between the candidate’s info from the source and how/when it appears within the platform.
- While they're always expanding their candidate list, they have been mainly oriented towards the US and Canada for years. Hence, companies outside those geographies might find that their searches are still somewhat limited when it comes to local talent. Such is the case of some users writing from Europe, for instance.
- Several users have complained about lags or glitches between the candidate’s info from the source and how/when it appears within the platform.
Seekout
Review:
Seekout’s database has over 780 million potential candidate profiles, with a strong focus towards the US and Canada. Recruiters looking to source top of the funnel outside of LinkedIn can use this solution to find and contact candidates. One really interesting feature is their use of GitHub data where they’re able to build a profile on engineers based on contributions to different code repositories. Customers include Fortune 500 firms like Raytheon and Rackspace down to one person staffing companies.
Seekout
Customers:
SeekOut is used by enterprise customers such as VMware, Salesforce, Merck, UiPath, and Anaplan.
Seekout
Stats:
- 300+ customers
- 780+ public profiles
- 40M+ GitHub profiles
- 70M+ expert profiles
Seekout
Pricing:
Seekout has a few different plans:
- Premium: Access to 441M+ candidates, diversity sourcing and hiring tools, people insights, contact info for 500 candidates per month and exporting of 5,000 profiles per month.
- Premium Tech: All of Premium, plus specific tools for sourcing tech talent. These include Coder Score rankings, GitHub search tool, direct access to candidate's code, and tailored insights.
- SeekOut Expert: Designed specifically for Engineering and Life Sciences hiring.
The actual pricing of SeekOut’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. You would have to contact their sales team for a custom price quote.
Seekout also provides a free Chrome extension for sourcing, SeekOut Sourcing Assistant. It’s free to use but with a limit of getting verified social links and emails for 10 candidates per month.
Best For:
Seekout has segmented pricing plans for different industries. While there is a general plan for most businesses, Tech, Engineering, and Life Sciences hiring managers get the most functionality from Seekout. The tool can be used by companies with large in-house recruiting teams as well as small agencies looking for a user-friendly tool to reach a diverse pool of talent.
Why we love it
:
Findem allows you to find candidates using technical and intangible attributes in ways that traditional keyword matching does not.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
Review:
Findem’s unconventional candidate sourcing makes it possible for 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 of criteria.
Findem
Customers:
RingCentral, Medallia, Intuitive, Adobe, Booster, Armorblox, Plume.
Findem
Stats:
- Findem’s bulk email campaigns reduced Adobe's outreach time from 6 days to 10 minutes.
- The software reduced the hiring time of an energy intelligence and on-demand fuel delivery service, Booster, by 50%.
- Path, an online therapy platform, reduced their time-to-fill by 80% and increased their pipeline diversity by 460%.
Findem
Pricing:
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 industries that are hiring for corporate roles— notably tech, CPG, life sciences. They also have a good track record with North American startups and hyper-growth companies.
Why we love it
:
Loxo provides the world's largest talent graph, with 530+ million people in their proprietary directory. Their people search engine combines hundreds of data sources to create a hiring machine tailored to your needs.
Loxo
Review:
Loxo's platform is built around making your recruiting team more efficient. What makes Loxo unique from other CRMs is that they have an up-to-date database of 530 million people with their personal contact information. Their technology helps recruiters to build lists of candidates, outreach through automated sequences of texts/emails/calls/Linkedln, and manage every part of the hiring process through their CRM. Companies like Bank of America, All-State, Trinity Health, Lockheed Martin, Amazon and Randstad are using Loxo to decrease time to fill, and cost per hire.
Loxo
Customers:
Amazon, Randstad, Cigna, Lockton, Onpartners, CT Assist
Loxo
Stats:
- Loxo cuts recruiters’ work by up to 80%.
- Loxo’s directory contains 530+ million people across 95 data sources.
- Loxo is used by 125,000+ recruiters across the globe.
Loxo
Pricing:
- Free: This plan can only be used by a single user and provides access to a fair amount of Loxo’s baseline features.
- Premium: This plan has custom pricing, no user limit and provides its users with access to all features the platform has to offer.
Best For:
Companies of all sizes looking for a user-friendly talent sourcing and outreach platform.
Why we love it
:
AmazingHiring's platform is focused on technical hires and so they have advanced screening technology and a large database of engineering talent.
AmazingHiring
Review:
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.
AmazingHiring
Customers:
EPAM, Akamai Technologies, Alexander Mann Solutions,Dell, ABBYY
AmazingHiring
Stats:
- 2,000 customers across 400+ companies
- Built 8 years ago
- 70 different data sources including LinkedIn, Stackoverflow, Github, etc
AmazingHiring
Pricing:
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.
Why we love it
:
Gem gathers data from tools that recruitment teams use on a day-to-day basis, such as LinkedIn InMail, ATS, and email, and combines it into a single talent management hub that automates candidate sourcing and engagement while providing detailed insights to support and optimize your recruiting strategy.
- Gem helps you discover qualified candidates across multiple channels, send personalized messages, visualize your recruitment pipeline, and stay on top of crucial hiring metrics
- Gem's integration with LinkedIn and various ATS means that all candidate data is stored in a centralized location. Users find this feature extremely useful.
- According to users, one of Gem's finest features is the ability to create automated drip campaigns to engage with both active and passive candidates
- Gem helps you discover qualified candidates across multiple channels, send personalized messages, visualize your recruitment pipeline, and stay on top of crucial hiring metrics
- Gem's integration with LinkedIn and various ATS means that all candidate data is stored in a centralized location. Users find this feature extremely useful.
- According to users, one of Gem's finest features is the ability to create automated drip campaigns to engage with both active and passive candidates
- Some users have experienced slow load times and lags while using the application
- In rare cases, the contact information, such as the email address or phone number of a sourced candidate, might be wrong
- While Gem currently integrates with LinkedIn, it does not provide the option to automate messages via LinkedIn InMail
- Some users have experienced slow load times and lags while using the application
- In rare cases, the contact information, such as the email address or phone number of a sourced candidate, might be wrong
- While Gem currently integrates with LinkedIn, it does not provide the option to automate messages via LinkedIn InMail
Gem
Review:
Gem is primarily a talent engagement platform with features to support talent sourcing, candidate outreach, and recruitment pipeline management. It gathers data from tools like LinkedIn InMail and Indeed to build a central candidate database with up-to-date information, including career updates and milestones. You can also visualize your entire recruitment pipeline, track which stage a particular candidate is at, and communicate with them on a frequent basis.
Gem
Customers:
Coinbase, Slack, Asana, Dropbox, Lyft, Indeed, Pinterest, and Doordash
Gem
Stats:
- Gem is used by over 1,200 recruitment teams worldwide
- Clients that use Gem experience a 2x increase in response rates and 5x faster talent sourcing
Gem
Pricing:
The cost of Gem's services is based on the size of your recruitment team, the number of hires, and other factors like custom ATS integrations. You can reach out to their sales team for a quote.
Best For:
Gem is best suited for large enterprises and staffing agencies that need to hire more employees in a short time period.
Why we love it
:
Intersteller focuses on email marketing for supercharged recruitment. You can synchronize all your candidates and source emails from their databases, then set up automated drips for prospects.
Interseller
Review:
Interseller’s platform allows sourcing and full desk recruiting teams to leverage the same powerful technology that sales teams are using to engage prospective customers. Specifically, their tool lets users source talent from the open web via chrome extension, and then put them into email sequences with automated follow up and a layer of intelligence designed to protect your deliverability rates.
Interseller
Customers:
Foursquare, Squarespace, Compass, Honey, Mogul
Interseller
Stats:
Interseller
Pricing:
- Standard: This plan costs $100 per user per month and is ideal for individuals or teams to reach out to new and existing contacts.
- Recruiter: At $200 per user per month, this plan is ideal for recruiters with complex needs.
Best For:
Companies looking for an easy to use candidate sourcing and outreach platform.
Why we love it
:
TopFunnel is quite a complete sourcing platform. Their products include scheduling, diversity hiring, referrals, a CRM tool, data, and expert assistance.
TopFunnel
Review:
TopFunnel offers an automated sourcing solution designed to augment your recruiters’ outreach so that they can focus on talking to candidates. It’s offered both as a tool or managed service and boasts customers like ZeroCater and Coinbase.
TopFunnel
Customers:
Whirlpool, Noom, Invision, Rubrik, Plaid
TopFunnel
Stats:
TopFunnel
Pricing:
The pricing of TopFunnel’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. Contact their sales team for a price quote.
Best For:
Companies looking for an integrated platform that does candidate sourcing, relationship management, engagement and scheduling.
Why Talent Acquisition Teams Use Sourcing Tools
It's still incredibly difficult to find the best talent in many demographics: engineers, diversity candidates, experienced sales reps, etc.
Over the past decade, many companies have developed internal recruiting and sourcing functions to find the right talent. As the market got tight, companies could either rely on expensive third party recruiters or start to do the work themselves.
However, even these internal teams can be stretched thin as the demands of a growing organization take their toll on your recruiting team. This is where sourcing tools come in, and recruiting software in general. This software/services category is all about building the top of your recruiting funnel with quality passive applicants.
Some of these tools are trying to be better and/or cheaper than a LinkedIn Recruiter license. Some are trying to be your outsourced sourcing team. And some are doing both. All of them are what we’d consider to be part of an elite group of the best candidate sourcing software.
Regardless, these tools are all looking to increase your ability to build relationships with and hire the right people for your hardest to fill roles through AI sourcing, social media, .recruitment marketing, and various other talent sourcing methods.
Talent Sourcing Tool ROI Calculator
If you’re looking to buy a tool or service to augment your sourcing capability, here are our thoughts on how to calculate the return on investment. Some key points in this calculator:
- How to capture increases in recruiter productivity
- How decreases in time to fill affects the organization
- How sourcing tools can decrease agency fees
We highly suggest your use the video to the right in order to best understand how to use our calculator!
You can make your own copy of this google sheet here, or download in excel here.
Beyond the dollars and cents, there are also some non-economic benefits of using talent sourcing tools. For example, the vast majority of recruiters we talk to do not like sourcing. The idea of sending cold emails, and then playing phone tag with the people who are interested is very unappealing. Optimizing or outsourcing these tasks means more time for your team to do the things they like, as well as think strategically.
Download Talent Sourcing Tool ROI Calculator
Click Here to DownloadStaying Organized
If you’re looking at buying a new sourcing tool, or using one of the managed services we have listed, you need to stay organized. Chances are, you’re going to do at least 3-5 demos. Unless you have a perfect memory, it’ll be tough to remember which tools have which features.
Taking notes is great, but we recommend you do it in a structured way that objectively captures which vendors have which features that matter to you. So, we’ve put together the below spreadsheet that comes with some sample questions, along with an easy to modify structure that will allow you to pick the right candidate sourcing tool for your business.
You can download the spreadsheet here.
Questions to ask Talent Sourcing Vendors on Demos
- Where do you get your data? Is your service GDPR and CAN SPAM compliant?
- Is this a tool or a managed service or both? What is the pricing difference between the two?
- What automation features do you offer once candidates have been identified?
- How do candidates/applications get into my ATS?
- What are your response rates, and interview rates from candidates? Put another way, what percent of candidates that we’ll be reaching out to respond positively, and what percent want to interview?
- How will applicants interact with this software during the hiring and onboarding processes?
- How does the tool know about open positions and prioritize which ones should be actively sourced?
- Does this solution help with interview scheduling, or integrate with an interview scheduling platform?
- How will this tool integrate with the rest of my tech stack?
- Can I use semantic search to query the database to find relevant candidates?
- What analytics are reported to human resources/talent acquisition and on what frequency?
- How does machine learning and/or AI sourcing play a role in this product?
- Is your product able to use the analytics from our talent management platform to understand what types of candidates do well in our company?
- Does this platform leverage social recruiting as one of the sourcing strategies?
Sourcing Tools vs Managed Services/Automated Talent Sourcing
There are two main ways that vendors in this space help with your top of funnel recruiting. Some of these companies offer tools that your recruiters and sourcers can use to find and engage with potential hires. These tools are very similar to LinkedIn Recruiter, but rely on emails vs inmails.
The second way companies in this category can help is by providing a managed service to drive more quality applicants into your pipeline. You tell them the profile you’re looking for, and they do most of the work until the candidate is ready to interview. The candidate either shows up in your inbox, or on your calendar.
While I think most of us would want to simply have calendar invites appear with the right candidates, there are some tradeoffs to the managed service approach. The first is price. The second is a potential loss of control in your process and how your employer brand is being portrayed. However, we don’t believe this is a major concern as every vendor we talked to wants to work closely with their customers to ensure the right messages are being sent to the right people in order to preserve employer branding.
Here’s What HR Needs to Know About Sourcing Tools
Here are some of the points that we found (some) practitioners don’t understand when they first hear about sourcing tools:
- These solutions can help you build relationships with D&I candidates by searching specifically for people that meet various criteria.
- Hiring managers can also use these tools to streamline their own recruiting process, assuming they are taking an active role in top of funnel recruiting.
- Companies that hire 10-100,000 people per year use recruiters. Similarly, sourcing tools can help companies of almost any size.
- No, candidates haven’t opted into this outreach. Just like sales people can email you out of the blue as long as they follow various regulations, you can (and probably are) reaching out to candidates that haven’t “opted in” to your communication. This tactic is the best way to get in touch with passive candidates and is very common across internal and external recruiting teams.
- Utilizing a candidate sourcing tool in concert with other recruiting technology such as video interviewing or employee referrals can greatly magnify the effectiveness of your overall recruiting process, and therefore you should be thinking holistically about how you want your talent acquisition tech stack to look.
- Many applications will not convert down the funnel into hires. Employers that use a recruiting CRM can re-engage and nurture these applicants until they are a good fit for an open role.
- These solutions can be a replacement for agencies and LinkedIn recruiter licenses. But, it’s more likely they’ll augment your other efforts than totally replace them.
- A well run sourcing mechanism is great for getting people into your funnel. But, if you have a poor candidate experience, onboarding, or culture generally, you will constantly be trying to fill a leaky bucket.
Candidate Sourcing FAQs
What is candidate sourcing?
Candidate sourcing is the act of proactively looking for potential candidates to fill open positions, oftentimes using recruiters or software platforms.
Are there different solutions for sourcing candidates?
Yes, there are multiple different solutions for sourcing candidates. You can outsource sourcing to a recruiting firm, hire full-time recruiters to source for your company, or purchase a candidate sourcing software solution.
What is a candidate sourcing platform?
A candidate sourcing platform is a software solution designed to make your sourcing process more efficient by automating or outsourcing the parsing of job boards, databases, employee networks and social media websites.
How can candidate sourcing tools enhance the recruiting process?
Candidate sourcing tools make the hiring process much more efficient. By automating or outsourcing the busywork of scouring networks and databases for the best talent, your HR team will save lots of time. In addition, your team will see a decrease in time to fill thanks to a wider talent pool from sourcing efforts.
Final Advice
Recruiting software can supercharge your talent acquisition efforts. However, it’s one piece of your recruiting process, and doesn’t take the place of a strong human resources team when hiring and onboarding new employees. From the beginning of recruitment through employee onboarding, it’s important to have a human touch that takes into consideration the needs of the humans involved.
That said, leveraging machine learning and AI for your candidate sourcing is a great way to drastically scale your ability to get in front of the right applicants. If your team’s sourcing process lacks technology, you are at a huge disadvantage relative to your talent competition. Moreover, relying solely on job boards or employee referral programs is a surefire way to miss your recruitment goals.
Our advice is to make a list of your priorities, and figure out the 2-3 within your existing recruitment process that need the most help. Maybe it’s adding a recruiting crm, video interview software, or another type of recruiting tool. Whatever the case, we hope this page, and our site generally, is helpful for you to make the right decisions for your business. Enjoy!
Top Candidate Sourcing Tools
- Underdog.io:Talent marketplace for technical, product, and business talentTalent marketplace for technical, product, and business talent
- Fetcher:An automated candidate sourcing and outreach toolAn automated candidate sourcing and outreach tool
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