Best College Recruiting Software
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PRODUCTS
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BUYER'S GUIDE
Buyer's Guide
By Saniya Fraokhi, Technical Content Writer at SelectHub
Gen Z is graduating college and set to take the talent market by storm. By 2030, 30% of the workforce will comprise employees born between the late ’90s and 2010. The question is: are you prepared to shift your recruitment efforts to a young talent pool? Three words: college recruiting software — the ideal tool for finding young and brilliant minds.
Executive Summary
- College recruiting software helps businesses to streamline the campus recruiting process.
- The system provides tools to organize campus recruiting events, coordinate with universities and digitally collect applications via email campaigns or on-campus mobile devices.
- Asking key questions to vendors about the platform helps uncover the benefits and pitfalls of using their solution.
What Is College Recruiting Software?
College recruiting software is a recruiting tool used to manage campus relationships and conduct career events to find early talent. The software helps recruiters coordinate with educational institutions to find and hire students nearing or recently graduated as they enter the job market with new skills and values.
What Is Campus Recruiting?
Campus recruiting is a program organized by universities to provide job opportunities to students or recent graduates. For companies, the process involves coordinating with different universities to connect with new talent, collect resumes, screen applicants and hire students for internships or entry-level roles.
Who Are Early Career Candidates?
Early-career candidates are job seekers starting their professional journeys. Career starters have between zero to three years of corporate experience, typically composed of college students, recent graduates, and people who completed certifications and upskilling courses.
Why They Matter
Julie Godshall Brown, president of Godshall Recruiting, insists that while early-career talent might not have years of work experience, they make up the difference with other traits.
According to the NACE Job Outlook 2022 survey, 54% of employers are gearing to hire more graduates than they did in 2021. Here are what early career professionals bring to the table:
- Right Attitudes: The mindset “hire for attitude, train for skill” is more relevant than ever. Graduates are eager to start their careers and keen on proving themselves. A recent study by GWI found that success and learning new skills are the top values driving this young generation.
- Technological Adaptability: New graduates are digital natives. While growing up with technology doesn’t guarantee prodigious tech skills, a digital upbringing gives young talent the upper hand in adapting to the ongoing digital transformation at work.
- Powerhouse of Potential: With baby boomers retiring, who takes their place? Early career candidates will bring fresh perspectives and values to your team, and investing in upskilling early talent helps future-proof your company.
- Workplace Diversity: Gen Z is the most diverse and highly value-driven generation. Gen Z job seekers began a DEI reckoning in the workplace, influencing more and more businesses to pursue equitable workplace policies and hiring practices.
Primary Benefits
College recruitment events are costly, and assessing a fresh batch of job seekers with little prior experience is a unique task.
You’ll need the right tools to ensure every campus drive is successful and follow the right metrics to keep your efforts on track. Here’s how campus recruitment systems help rejuvenate your college recruitment strategy:
Streamlines College Recruitment
Multitasking between a myriad of campus recruiting activities gets overwhelming fast. When your team’s running on fumes, the door is left open for errors and unconscious bias to enter the scene.
Your team can rely on a solid framework that manages everything from planning events and engaging with placement cells to tracking candidate pipelines in one platform.
Improves Efficiency
College recruitment software provides tools designed to handle the complexities of recruiting graduates from universities, saving your team from dealing with spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of key information.
With less manual intervention and paperwork, your team can focus on making optimal hiring decisions.
Identifies Emerging Talent
Recruiters must be quick when spotting top talent. As the proverbial phrase goes, “The early bird catches the worm.”
When you hire early talent, you’re investing in the future workforce. With the right tech, you can identify emerging talent and take steps to build strong connections.
Conveys Employer Branding
The crucial first step to building high-impact candidate pools is making an excellent first impression. Candidates are likely to apply to companies they admire. Building a strong brand identity increases your company’s visibility and ability to attract new talent.
Enhances Candidate Experiences
A survey by CareerPlug revealed that 37% of candidates share negative experiences online. And in the age of social media, word travels fast. College recruiting systems allow you to keep candidates and universities in the loop at all times and use tools that enable a fair and flexible selection process.
Efforts taken to provide a smooth candidate journey will have a lasting impact on your potential hires.
Key Features & Functionality
Resume Management | Parse, sort and store essential candidate information from resumes from selected universities. Reduce manual effort by allowing the system to automatically screen resumes and identify suitable matches. |
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Engagement Tools | Design the registration process and invite candidates to apply. Use collected email addresses to send branded email campaigns to check in with students before the event or share event details. Roll out post-event questionnaires to collect feedback and resumes. |
Pre-hire Assessment Tools | College recruiting platforms provide the option to conduct candidate assessments or integrate with evaluation tools to screen applicants and develop comparable scorecards. |
Offer Management | Send timely post-interview feedback, job offers and rejection emails in bulk to multiple candidates while keeping the colleges in the loop. Add functional links to e-signing portals, so selected candidates can submit relevant onboarding documents and bring the process to a close. |
Talent Source Tracking | Post job opportunities on university career sites and track them all in one place. Optimize early talent pools by identifying top talent-sourcing channels and assessing different sources for quality and performance. |
Campus Events Management | Integrate with video conferencing tools to organize and host interactive webinars to engage with students. Track pre-registrations and RSVPs ahead of the event. Gain insight into event performance with metrics like candidate engagement levels and attendance rates. |
Planning and Marketing | Plan on-campus and virtual campus events on the system and keep your team updated on a company-wide calendar. Create university profile pages to track ROI and campus relationships. Develop the registration process and invite candidates to apply. Leverage the collected applications for context during the selection process. |
Software Comparison Strategy
Narrowing down the ideal product can be overwhelming, especially for first-time buyers. Start by developing a strategy to uncover the subtle differences between different alternatives.
- Conduct an internal analysis. Consider your business needs. Ask relevant questions to determine who will use the software and whether they'll need training. Evaluate your existing recruitment strategy and consider how campus recruiting processes fall short.
- Prioritize your requirements. Next, create a list of your top recruiting goals and business requirements. Your ideal software choice should align with your company's needs. Save time and effort by using our customizable template.
- Research multiple vendors. Get to know your options by checking online reviews, reading industry guides and asking colleagues for recommendations. Test out free demos or trials to understand platform capabilities before purchasing.
Still want more information? Read our article on how to apply a nine-step lean methodology to select the ideal system.
Cost & Pricing Considerations
Most vendors typically provide services based on tiered pricing, where you pay an annual or monthly subscription fee. The subscription plans determine the breadth and depth of the services.
You can opt for the right pricing tier by aligning the required features with your available resources.
The following are the most popular pricing models:
- Pay-per-Recruiter: Pricing tiers depend on the platform’s number of users who will be using the platform to connect with schools and candidates.
- Pay-per-Invite: The number of applications determines the price. Most vendors provide a limit to the number of applications you can collect.
- Pay-per-Module: This pricing model is common with vendors that provide various recruiting services.
Despite the various pricing tiers, there are additional factors that affect pricing:
- Organization Size: The more extensive your company and user base, the higher the cost.
- Candidate Pools: Sorting large candidate groups require additional fees.
- Advanced Features: Expect costs to escalate if the software includes advanced tech like AI-enabled proctoring or AI-based candidate matching.
The Most Popular College Recruiting Software
To put things into perspective and jumpstart your search, we compiled some of the most popular vendors:
iCIMS
iCIMS is a scalable cloud-based recruitment suite. Its college recruiting module allows you to create and manage on-site and virtual career events. You can use the text engagement feature to connect with candidates at different stages. Incorporate your employer brand into personalized email campaigns, registration invites, offer letters and college-specific career pages.
The platform lets you develop diverse early-talent candidate pools and balanced talent pipelines to hire talent strategically.
iCIMS Offer Wizard (Caption: iCIMS’ Offer Wizard uses process automation and approvals at key stages to streamline offer letter deployment. Source
Jobvite
Jobvite is a cloud-based recruitment system. It streamlines the job marketing processes and promotes career events on high-traffic channels to maximize outreach. You can create pre-event and post-event email, text and web campaigns to collect applications and send timely follow-ups.
The platform provides college relationship profiles and key applicant details at all times.
Jobvite provides texting tools to engage potential hires directly from the platform. Source
Freshteam
Freshteam is a cloud-based recruiting platform that collects resumes and organizes key details into comparable candidate profiles. The built-in vendor management portal, similar to a candidate relationship management software, lets campus placement teams from different colleges add candidates and monitor progress. Complete bulk actions like sending job offers, rejection emails, assessment links and post-interview feedback.
You can also refer to the auto-generated 360-degree candidate profiles during the interview and add notes. Its offer management module lets you track offer completion and collect necessary documents and e-signatures.
Freshteam’s vendor management feature allows placement teams to create accounts and track the process. Source
Questions To Ask
Your company's ideal college recruiting system must assist your team in doing what they do best and achieving recruitment goals. Use the following questions to drive conversations and uncover essential system requirements:
- What is the industry and size of your company?
- Are you open to hiring interns? Do you have an internship program in place?
- What type of skills and qualifications are you looking for in entry-level roles?
- Do you prefer in-person or virtual campus selection programs? Or a combination of both?
- Who are the key people doing the recruiting? Which features will benefit them the most?
- Which are the required integration options and productivity apps?
Knowing the benefits and shortcomings of different vendors before committing to a purchase is essential to conduct an informed software search. Ask providers the following questions to determine how well various alternatives align with your business requirements:
- Does the system have a built-in ATS?
- Which integration options are available? Do they come with additional costs?
- What are the data protection and security protocols in place? Is the platform GDPR and ISO certified?
- Do the built-in talent screening and assessment tools follow EEOC guidelines?
- What are the technical support resources?
- Does this vendor provide a free demo or a free trial?
Next Steps
College recruiting software offers tools to improve both the quality and speed of your talent selection process. You can better manage engagement tactics to keep candidates and universities in the loop and gain better insights on your campus recruiting process from A to Gen Z.
Need more help starting a guided software search? We’ve got you covered! Check out our comparison report to gain insight into top software vendors.
Product Comparisons
Additional Resources
Products found for College Recruiting Software
Paylocity
Paylocity is an all-in-one cloud payroll solution that enables organizations of every size to execute administrative tasks such as talent acquisition, time and labor management, and other core processes. Its functionality includes multiple configuration options that allow companies to customize according to their needs.It contains robust security measures such as encryption, real-time backups and secure data centers. It also has a user-friendly mobile app that is compatible with both iOS and Android devices.
Jobvite
Jobvite is a SaaS designed to assist with finding and tracking talent. It provides assistance to recruiters, hiring teams and hiring managers for every step of the onboarding process. Options are available for businesses of all sizes, providing an excellent candidate experience regardless of industry. It allows users to build branded career sites, schedule interviews and help build candidate pools. It also guides candidates from each step to the next.
ZipRecruiter
ZipRecruiter is an AI-based hiring platform that immerses users into a vast network of job boards and career sites. It offers advanced candidate sourcing features like smart candidate matching technology, integrations and sponsored reach to enable fast hiring. Mobile capability and data-driven strategies assist hiring managers to find top talent for open jobs.
Zoho Recruit
Based in the cloud, Zoho Recruit offers hiring solutions for businesses of all sizes. Users can choose from three different versions based on the size and type of business. Options are available for temp agencies, staffing agencies and corporations of all sizes. It enables users to streamline the hiring process with features that assist with job posting, filtering applications and tailored templates. Integrations with other Zoho products provide users with a full suite of HR capabilities. It can manage recruitment from end to end.
Glassdoor
Glassdoor is a leading software platform that ranks 41 among all Recruitment Software according to our research analysts and 108 crowd-sourced reviews from 1 source. Starting from $0, Glassdoor is priced free of charge to start and is most suitable for businesses large and small. Glassdoor can be deployed in the cloud and is accessible from a fewer number of platforms including Apple devices.
Paycor
Paycor is a full-service, cloud-based HR system designed to meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. It assists with various core HR tasks, including hiring, learning and development, time tracking, and payroll. While suitable for companies across all industries, it can be customized to benefit a variety of specific sectors, including food service and healthcare. Users can manage recruiting, talent acquisition, development, learning and more.
UKG Pro
UKG Pro provides a unified, cloud-deployed suite that allows companies to manage human capital at a global scale. It offers an array of core features including payroll, benefits, recruiting, onboarding and learning. Users can also leverage it to manage employee data and files, compensation, time and attendance, performance, and succession plans.In addition to HR-specific capabilities, it incorporates advanced technology such as machine learning and AI, predictive analytics and business intelligence. This helps optimize performance, streamline tasks, improve understanding of the workforce and drive retention.
JobAdder
JobAdder is a comprehensive, easy to use, web-based recruitment platform built in the cloud. It’s designed exclusively for recruiters and is used by over 10,000 recruiters every day in more than 20 countries. It’s perfect for small to medium-sized recruitment agencies, as well as in-house HR and recruitment teams. It provides application tracking, screening, interview scheduling, onboarding, time and attendance management and payroll processing.
Taleo
Founded in 1996 as Recruitsoft, Taleo adopted its current name five years after its inception.It was acquired in 2012 and now offers two versions. One version is designed to meet small and medium-sized businesses’ needs, while the other is designed specifically for large businesses. It can assist with a variety of tasks specific to finding and hiring new employees as well as helping with employee performance management. It helps with every step of the employee lifecycle, from interviewing potential applicants to developing succession plans.
Gusto
Gusto is a web-based payroll system for medium-sized organizations. It handles benefits, compliance, direct deposit, employee self-service, employee management, payment processing and taxes. Using automation, calculators and other administrative and HR modules, users can streamline the entire process of paying employees. It integrates with other technologies to offer expanded services such as accounting, bookkeeping, POS, time tracking and other business operations. In addition to filing taxes, it scans the laws of over 50 states to ensure accurate state and federal payments, helping organizations avoid penalties.
Workable
Workable is a recruiting solution that provides service to over 20,000 companies. Founded in Greece during a period of financial disarray, it has a database of over 70 million candidates and has facilitated over 1.2 million hires. Users have access to interview kits, one-click job posting, a referral rewards program and other automated hiring assistance.
Bullhorn
Bullhorn offers a variety of applicant tracking capabilities that address the recruiting needs of businesses of all sizes, and can scale with business growth. It helps to drive sales and streamline the recruitment process from start to finish. It manages workflows, allowing recruiters to move seamlessly from one stage of the recruiting process to the next. The customizable layout of the platform features a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy for users to update their preferences.
Trakstar Hire
Trakstar Hire (formerly Recruiterbox) is a cloud-based software designed to streamline the hiring process and attract the best applicants. It manages resumes, offers integration capabilities, creates candidate profiles, provides the opportunity for collaboration and more. It’s scalable and customizable.
Saba Recruiting
Saba Recruiting enables the business to find, attract, engage and hire the best talent that drives business success. It also helps to automate the recruitment process, coordinate communications between the candidates and the hiring managers, measure performance on a real-time basis on a unified platform. Keeping the recruitment experience in mind, it provides an intuitive, collaborative and expert solution for the recruiters, hiring managers and job-seekers.
Brazen
Brazen is a self-serve, virtual career fair and hiring event platform that hosts networking events, webinars, interviews and more, especially geared towards colleges and universities. The third-generation interface delivers an easy-to-use, reliable space for users to administer fun and accessible events for potential employees.
SuccessFactors Talent Management
SAP SuccessFactors Talent Management provides an integrated suite of talent management solutions, including recruiting and onboarding, performance and goals management and learning and development. Coupled with the Workforce Analytics and Planning, it enables the organization to better comprehend the workforce and gauge the effects of talent decisions on business performance. They can be used independently or together to support a comprehensive talent management strategy, depending on business needs.
iSmartRecruit
iSmartRecruit is a CRM tool that caters to small and medium-sized corporate HR and staffing agencies. It helps identify the best candidates, reduces hiring time, improves communication, strengthens the bond between the employer and the employee and solidifies employee relationships. It can manage evolving business needs. It stores the client and candidate information in one place, sets reminders for future events and sends automated emails in bulk. Real-time dashboards track the candidate’s progress throughout the recruitment process.
SilkRoad Recruiting
SilkRoad Recruiting is a cloud-based Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that delivers an engaging candidate experience and makes it easy for users to attract, screen and hire the best talent across various job boards and social media platforms. It serves organizations of different sizes and complexities to engage, retain and grow talent. It delivers a seamless candidate experience throughout the hiring process with a streamlined and innovative UI.
talentReef
Talentreef provides SaaS-based social recruiting and talent management solutions, catering to the needs of the hourly workforce in the service industry. It helps organizations streamline their employee hiring, training and talent management operations. Its mobile-first focus helps streamline recruitment processes. It covers numerous processes, including recruitment marketing, ATS and assessments, onboarding and compliance, performance and engagement, training and development, employee self-service, reports and analytics, and integrations. With it, users can improve applicant flow, simplify employee onboarding, ensure compliance and boost employee performance.
CEIPAL
Cloud Enterprise Information Portal, or CEIPAL, is an AI-powered talent attraction platform ideal for recruiting and staffing agencies. It streamlines talent placement and workforce management with built-in VMS, ATS, HRIS and CRM to support end-to-end staffing. Notable features include API integrations, plug-ins, a recruitment chatbot and a native mobile app. For CEIPAL reviews and pricing information, see below.
Arcoro
Arcoro, formerly known as BirdDogHR, is a cloud-based HRIS solution that helps companies of all sizes manage employees throughout every stage of their employment. Users can leverage it to attract and hire top talent, align employee goals with company goals, create succession plans and ensure compliance with government regulations.Capabilities include core HR, payroll, benefits administration, recruiting, onboarding, learning management, performance management and compliance. Availability on mobile devices grants users 24/7 access from anywhere.
Hired
Hired is an up-and-coming application that ranks 47 among all Recruitment Software according to our research analysts and 269 crowd-sourced reviews from 1 source. Starting from $0, Hired is priced free of charge to start, has offered a free trial in the past and is most applicable for all company sizes. Hired can be deployed in the cloud.
Cornerstone Recruiting
Cornerstone Recruiting is a cloud-based suite that provides recruiting, learning management, performance management and HR administration. Founded with the purpose of improving access to education through online learning, it now helps organizations of all sizes to recruit, train and manage their employees. It has mobile capability that allows productivity and connectivity in real time, from any location.
TalentSpace
Saba’s talent management system provides capabilities to manage every aspect of the workforce, including recruiting and onboarding, learning and development, performance management and HR Analytics to identify bottlenecks in the recruitment process and improve the existing processes.
Infor Talent Management
Infor Talent Management is an HCM solution that also handles payroll, time and attendance and other HR functions. It’s designed to improve productivity, employee learning, staff diversity and inclusion, team collaboration and more. Users can conduct performance reviews, analyze data, onboard new hires and coordinate across recruiting teams. Through behavioral science and predictive analytics, it breaks down various elements of performance and team dynamics to optimize the workforce. It serves over 14,000 customers and 67,000 organizations in 178 different countries.
SumTotal
SumTotal is a configurable, unified platform that enables businesses to attract, build and retain talent. Its modules deliver capabilities for talent acquisition, talent development, learning management, talent management and workforce management. It assists organizations with recruiting, mentoring, career path planning, onboarding, continuous feedback, succession planning and more It also provides an ATS that enables employee tracking, from receiving résumés to onboarding. Cloud-based and on-premise deployment is available, and it can be used on smartphones or tablets.
PDS Vista
PDS Vista is an integrated human capital management (HCM) system for streamlining HR functions, including hiring, onboarding, human resources, benefits, payroll and time and attendance tracking. It automates core processes, empowering organizations to minimize the time allocated to routine HCM and payroll tasks. Highly customizable, it lets users tailor it to their needs. It also records crucial business strategy and decision-making data, giving employees and managers self-service access to payroll and workforce management features. Companies can opt for on-site or cloud deployment, ensuring flexibility during implementation.
Lumesse
Originally called Lumesse, the recruiting system was acquired by Saba in 2018 and is now Saba Talent Acquisition. Designed for businesses of all sizes, it helps organizations find and retain the best candidates for open job positions. From onboarding to future planning, it helps to streamline the hiring process from beginning to end. By finding the most qualified candidates, integrating them into the team and ensuring future employee goals align with company employee life cycles, organizations can find and retain top employees.
HireVue
HireVue is recruitment software that helps organizations identify, assess and hire the best candidates for the job. It uses video-based interviews and AI to help organizations save time and money while making the hiring process more efficient. HireVue is an end-to-end hiring experience platform to screen, assess, engage, interview and hire the best candidates for a particular position. It streamlines time-consuming and tedious recruiting activities with conversational AI, video interviewing, assessments and automated scheduling. Pre-hire assessments help identify high-quality candidates and minimize bias in the selection process. Conversational AI facilitates candidate engagement and automated workflows to speed up hiring and create a seamless candidate experience.
Big Biller
Big Biller by Top Echelon helps recruiters find and manage candidates through a single solution with both ATS and CRM support. It allows recruiters to quickly access their databases and find the information they need to manage the hiring process.
Avature
Avature is a talent management system and part of a more comprehensive HR suite. It helps with the entire hiring process by enabling departments to find, attract, hire, keep and develop the right staff. As an organization that serves over 650 companies, its capabilities include sourcing, recruitment marketing and candidate engagement. In terms of recruiting, it can manage candidates, post to career sites, manage recruiting events, host video interviews and track potential hires through the entire process. It’s useful as an ATS, or users can take advantage of other HR functions and integrate with legacy programs. Other uses include performance management, employee referrals, employee engagement, succession management and more.
HealthcareSource
HealthcareSource is a cloud-based talent acquisition and employee retention program. It allows HR administrators and hiring managers to search for qualified candidates and integrate new hires into analytics-driven existing systems. Designed with organizations in the health care field in mind, it provides comprehensive employee retention and success.
myStaffingPro
MyStaffingPro is a web-based recruiting, talent acquisition and employee management software. It supports HR and recruiting departments with every step of the acquisition and employee integration process, from job postings to ATS operation to social media integration.
Greenhouse Recruiting
Greenhouse Recruiting is a software suite for systematically recruiting and hiring the best talent. It takes a structured approach to ensure your recruiting efforts are powerful and bias-free. It’s customizable, scalable and integrations are available. It emphasizes providing a positive candidate experience and tracking those efforts with reporting and surveys. It caters to businesses of every size and hiring requirements from fast-growing startups to large corporations.
Wonderlic
Wonderlic is a renowned cognitive testing and assessment company, primarily recognized for its Cognitive Ability Test. This assessment tool aids employers in evaluating a candidate's cognitive skills, problem-solving ability, and critical thinking. With an adaptive and computerized format, the test efficiently gauges an individual's aptitude, enabling businesses to make informed hiring decisions. Its adaptive nature tailors questions to the test-taker's level, ensuring precision in the evaluation. Wonderlic's assessments provide a standardized means of comparing candidates, enhancing the efficiency of the hiring process and ultimately leading to more effective workforce selection. This data-driven approach fosters an environment where organizations can match candidates' abilities to job requirements with confidence.
WebHR
WebHR is a full-service, cloud-based HRIS system with payroll capabilities. It standardizes, manages and automates recruitment, hiring, payment and more. Through it, administrators and employees alike can complete enrollment, onboarding, benefits, background checks, attendance and more.Serving over 25,000 companies and around 200 countries, there’s a free version with limited functions that serve five or fewer users. For regular, paid subscriptions, it can support up to 1000 workers. It uses AI to streamline the entire process.
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