It’s important to maintain a relationship with candidates throughout the hiring process—not just when they’re actively being interviewed and considered. It’s virtually impossible to do this effectively without recruiting automation software. Candidate nurturing tools, also referred to as candidate relationship management (CRM) systems, allow companies to engage candidates through email automation.
Automated email flows nurture candidates throughout the process, ensuring they stay engaged and don’t lose interest in the position. You can also send automated reminders to keep candidates up-to-date on next steps like upcoming scheduled interviews and assessments due.
Whether you’re a small business owner who wants to build a talent pipeline or a recruiter looking for a better way to keep talent engaged, the candidate nurturing tools listed below are the top options available today.
The top 10 customer relationship management systems at a glance
- Recruit CRM – The best overall tool for managing candidate relationships
- Bullhorn – The best integrated ATS and CRM
- Avature – The best CRM for data-driven recruitment
- iCIMS Nurture – The best tool for building a talent pipeline
- Manatal – The best CRM for recruiting agencies with multiple clients
- Lever – The top CRM for candidate rediscovery and nurturing
- Recruiterflow – The best CRM with integrated time-saving workflow automations
- Trakstar Hire – The best software for end-to-end candidate lifecycle management
- Symphony Talent – The best software for automated outreach campaigns
- Ceipal – The best CRM to help meet your DEI goals
Full reviews: The best CRM software
Recruit CRM
With Recruit CRM, recruiters can do pretty much everything including sourcing candidates, sending emails, setting up interviews, collecting updated CVs, parsing resumes and collecting feedback from clients. It also has a built-in CRM, automatic job board posting and boolean search.
Pricing
- Pro: $85 per user per month
- Business: $125 per user per month
- Enterprise: $165 per user per month
Pros
- End-to-end system designed for executive search and recruitment firms
- Very reasonable pricing for the functions it offers
- Dedicated and responsive support team
- Dynamic and user-friendly layout is easy to tailor to your workflow
- Integrates seamlessly with a range of tools and sites, including LinkedIn, Slack, and Outlook
Cons
- Reports section could be improved
- No option for automated text engagement with candidates
Bullhorn
A staple of the ATS market, Bullhorn has many enterprise customers and large recruitment agencies as customers. It has many fans among those who use it on a daily basis but note that the price point is definitely geared towards larger customers.
Pricing: 4 plan levels (Team, Corporate, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus), pricing available upon request
Pros
- Streamline your workflow with an ATS and CRM all in one platform
- Strong candidate engagement automation options
- Robust candidate management features, including resume parsing and pipeline tracking
- Easy customization of jobs and candidate profiles
- Wide range of integrations
Cons
- Complexity of the program can give it a steep learning curve
- System can be prone to occasional lags or slow loading
Avature
https://www.avature.net/candidate-relationship-management/
Avature helps you nurture candidates with short, mid and long-term engagement strategies to grow your relationships with them. Avature workflows can include condition-based actions that keep automatic communications personalized and relevant. It also lets you build, share, reuse, and manage a library of fully branded and customizable email templates that can be combined with fine-tuned segmentation for relevant campaigns.
Pricing: Available upon request
Pros
- Top choice for data-driven recruiters and teams with complex hiring needs
- Flexible platform is easy to customize to your needs
- Seamless workflow automation
- Conversational candidate engagement with their chatbot
- Support team takes a collaborative approach to resolving questions and issues
- Excellent reporting features
Cons
- Extensive features can take a while to fully learn
- Connecting with support can sometimes be slow
iCIMS Nurture
https://www.icims.com/products/talent-cloud-applications/candidate-relationship-management/
With iCIMS Nurture, you can see who’s hot or cold with candidate activity that’s automatically tracked and logged. You’ll also know who’s most interested so recruiters can prioritize their outreach. You can engage new candidates – and re-engage passive ones – with targeted, automated messaging that builds relationships through frequency. This creates a pipeline of active leads that iCIMS promises will fill open positions faster.
Pricing: Available upon request
Pros
- User-friendly and straightforward interface once you get used to the program
- Customizable workflows let you tailor the interface to your needs
- Wide variety of useful integrations
- Add-on features like TextRecruit expand the ways you can engage with candidates
- Quick response from the customer service team
- Platform is mobile-friendly
Cons
- Can take some time and effort to learn how to use the program effectively
- Costs more than many similar programs
Manatal
Manatal aims to transform the way businesses recruit talent. This AI-driven recruitment software is made with recruiting firms and HR teams in mind, designed to help them source and hire the right people faster with features like automatic LinkedIn profile extraction, centralized sourcing from over 2,500 job boards, and no-code personalized career pages.
Pricing
- Professional: $15 per user per month (up to 15 jobs)
- Enterprise: $35 per user per month (unlimited jobs)
- Enterprise Plus: $55 per month (unlimited jobs plus advanced reports and user groups)
- Custom plans available on request
Pros
- Excellent value for the features and functions
- Easy setup requires minimal orientation to get started
- Useful integrations and Chrome extensions
- Strong internal collaboration features
- Helpful AI-driven recommendations feature
- 14-day free trial
Cons
- Social media AI tool can be glitchy and clunky to use
- Interface isn’t as intuitive for recruiters who work with multiple clients
Lever
Considered one of the top recruiting tools, Lever is an end-to-end recruitment platform with features such as one-click sourcing, two-way email sync, and @-mentions that you will not find in many of their competitors. Its talent nurturing capabilities include pre-set nurture campaign templates that can be easily modified and personalized, as well as tools to search your database of existing talent and reconnect with previous candidates who could be an ideal fit for your current or future open roles.
Pricing: Available upon request
Pros
- Automates several common recruiting tasks to streamline the hiring process
- Easy to use with comprehensive Lever University training and help features
- Integrated interview scheduling and planning tools
- Simple onboarding with little training needed to get started
- Over 350 third-party integrations
- 14-day free trial available
Cons
- Some users report difficulty getting in touch with customer support
- Limited customization of users and reports
Recruiterflow
Recruiterflow is an applicant tracking and CRM software for recruiting and staffing agencies. With Recruiterflow’s automation engine, you get a marketing automation software but built for recruiting. Users can create advanced rules to automate actions to deliver a better candidate experience, maintain pipelines and nurture their top candidates. Users can also track their candidate pipelines, post jobs and run email sequences on Recruiterflow.
Pricing
- Base: $99 per month per user
- Pro: $109 per month per user
- Advanced: $129 per month per user
Pros
- Designed specifically for staffing and recruiting agencies
- Both self-serve and live chat customer service and support options
- Recipes allow for easy automation of manual tasks
- Feature rich and highly customizable
- Excellent value for the price
- 14-day free trial available
Cons
- Some limitations with messaging integration
- No mobile app
Trakstar Hire
Formerly Recruiterbox and now part of the Trakstar platform, Trakstar Hire features a fully web-based platform that has an intuitive and simple interface. In addition, it has many features for sourcing (customizable career sites, one-click job posting, auto-creation of candidate profiles) and interviewing (calendar integrations, candidate email templates, auto-responders) that are not always found in even the most up-to-date applicant tracking systems.
Pricing: Starts at $250 per month
Pros
- Wide variety of options for candidate engagement and follow-up
- Top notch customer service
- Flexible and adaptable
- Strong data analytics features
- Intuitive tracking across all stages of the recruitment process
Cons
- Some users find the interface too busy
- Could be better at communicating updates and changes to the platform
Symphony Talent
https://www.symphonytalent.com/
Symphony Talent started as a CRM and has expanded its features since acquiring SmashFly in 2019. This has grown it into a powerful talent acquisition tool, integrating programmatic job advertising, career sites, and conversational AI all in one platform. With it, you can automate both initial candidate interactions and follow-up messages to nurture candidate relationships, which you can trigger to send based on the candidate’s behavior, skills, and engagement with your company. The chatbot can also answer candidate questions and recommend relevant jobs to keep qualified talent in your pipeline.
Pricing: Available upon request
Pros
- Seamlessly integrates into both career sites at CRMs
- Wide range of features to attract, screen, and hire the right talent
- Captures candidate contact information while answering their questions
- Improves and streamlines the candidate experience
- Search functionality makes it easy to find and track applicants
- Automatic resume parsing reduces manual work during hiring
Cons
- Interface isn’t as user-friendly as other options
- System can be slow to load and prone to lags when syncing information
Ceipal
Ceipal is an integrated CRM and ATS that strives to help software, IT, and healthcare organizations connect with better talent to fill their roles faster. Their main feature that stands out from the competition is their AI-driven diversity hiring tool, which helps organizations both assess and improve their DEI. Ceipal also integrates with over 50 job boards and has an easy-to-manage database so you can both source and nurture candidates with ease.
Pricing: starts at $24 per month
Pros
- Manage the entire candidate lifecycle in one platform
- Highly customizable
- Great tool for meeting DEI goals
- Search multiple platforms and sites with a single query
- Easy to use interface
Cons
- Some users report bugs and glitches
- Some pages can be slow to load
Gem
Gem has been rising in popularity with talent acquisition teams since its release, and with good reason. This AI recruiting platform combines the most useful features of an ATS and CRM together so teams can build hire-ready talent pipelines. Its search and re-engage features are especially helpful for nurturing candidates, with strong full-funnel analytics to help you make better hiring decisions and integrated scheduling and talent marketing features.
Pricing: 3 tiers (Starter, Standard, Advanced), pricing available upon request
Pros
- Wide array of features combined in one platform
- Excellent choice for candidate data and analytics
- Flexible system with lots of ways to customize projects and searches
- Strong sourcing and marketing features to attract talent
- Seamless integration with over 50 other recruitment tools
- Free trial available
Cons
- Scheduling feature can be clunky to use
- LinkedIn plug-ins can sometimes be glitchy
HireEZ
HireEZ’s AI engine will screen applicants based on your hiring project’s candidate persona with no manual effort or unconscious bias involved. HireEZ’s method for initial screening will rank all candidates/applicants inside a project. You can easily integrate your ATS or CRM with HireEZ, then import stale past applicant profiles through a file upload or direct API. HireEZ uses data fusion technology to refresh past applicant profiles with data from across the entire open web. Refreshed profiles are added to your talent pool, and its AI sourcing surfaces best-fit past applicants for your open roles.
Pricing: Available upon request
Pros
- Efficient workflow automation features and automatic candidate matching
- Strong analytics for making data-driven hiring decisions
- Automated multi-channel outreach
- Provides access to over 1 billion candidate profiles
- Integrates smoothly into your existing tech stack
Cons
- Price may be too high for smaller businesses
- Some users report issues with bounced emails to candidates sent through the system
Fetcher
If you want a way to source more candidates, and keep them engaged throughout the hiring process, then Fetcher is a great tool. It’s a flexible program with features designed for small businesses, staffing agencies, or in-house talent teams, helping employers of all sizes quickly discover top talent.
Pricing: $549 per user per month
Pros
- Automated outreach and follow-up campaigns
- Sources both passive and active candidates
- Intuitive interface
- Responsive customer support team is receptive to feedback
- Integrates with LinkedIn and many ATS platforms
Cons
- Can have bugs and outages, especially after updates
- Search results sometimes require manual review for accuracy
Clear Company
Clear Company is an end-to-end talent management platform that integrates data-driven and AI-enhanced tools. Their modular platform includes tools for every stage of the employee journey, from sourcing and screening candidates through onboarding and performance management. Their ATS allows recruiters to create structured blueprints for sourcing and evaluating candidates, prioritizing them based on their fitness for the role. In addition, the AI assistant streamlines the communication process, with automated outreach and job posting to save time in sourcing and sorting applicants.
Pricing: Available upon request
Pros
- Provides a seamless applicant experience
- Integrated text recruiting and video interviewing features
- Automated interview scheduling
- Good value for the features and capabilities
- Excellent customer service and support
Cons
- Limited features for bulk messaging
- Reports require more manual input than is ideal
Beamery
Beamery connects to all of your other recruiting systems and gives you one system to manage and engage every candidate that touches your brand – past, present or future. They help companies nurture passive talent and build a pipeline for future roles.
Pricing: Available upon request
Pros
- Advanced and customizable recruitment marketing tools
- Integrates well with LinkedIn and other recruiting software
- Built-in automated scheduling and follow-up
- Knowledgeable and helpful customer support team
- Strong candidate database
Cons
- Finding some features can be challenging
- Collaboration tools could be improved
Workable
Workable is noted for its full feature set, easy learning curve, top notch customer support and a new sourcing tool called People Search. Their suite of products uses proprietary AI to automate time-consuming tasks like sourcing, screening, and communicating with candidates, and offers seamless integration with all the major job boards. Pricing for Standard and Premier plans is based on the size of your team, with the lowest prices available for teams of 20 or fewer.
Pricing
- Starter: $189 per month (up to 20 employees, 2 active jobs)
- Standard: starts at $313 per month (unlimited active jobs)
- Premier: starts at $628 per month (unlimited active jobs plus hiring plan)
Pros
- Manage and view multiple jobs on a single dashboard
- Easy to move candidates through stages of the hiring pipeline
- Excellent team collaboration tools
- Good variety of email templates and communication automation features
- Proactive and responsive customer service team
- 14-day free trial available
Cons
- Can be tricky to connect to Outlook calendars
- Sometimes runs slowly after an update
JazzHR
JazzHR is a powerful recruiting tool that definitely performs above its price point. It’s a user-friendly platform to automate time-consuming hiring tasks and empower your team to find and hire better talent. Its features include automatic syndication of open roles to job boards, easy interview scheduling, and data-driven insights from its comprehensive reporting.
Pricing
- Hero: $75 per month
- Plus: $269 per month
- Pro: $420 per month
Pros
- Great choice for small or mid-sized businesses
- One-click candidate sourcing
- Dynamic job post creation and automated messaging templates
- Responsive and helpful customer support team
- Good value for the price
Cons
- Can take a long time to set up customizations
- Some features can be slow to load
Zoho Recruit
It’s rare to find a fully-featured free option in the CRM market, which is the first reason that Zoho Recruit stands out. Its built-in AI assistant, Zia, is also a helpful tool for automatically comparing candidates and matching them to open jobs. It also includes a range of time saving features, including career sites, customized job listings, and automated candidate messaging.
Pricing
- Forever Free: 1 active job
- Standard: $25 per user per month (100 active jobs)
- Professional: $50 per user per month (250 active jobs)
- Enterprise: $75 per user per month (750 active jobs)
Pros
- Easy and automated candidate communication
- Lots of customization options
- Google Chrome extension extracts resumes from any website
- Excellent value, especially for smaller businesses
- Seamless integration with other software in the Zoho ecosystem
- Paid versions have 15-day free trial and money back guarantee
Cons
- Interface feels outdated
- Some features require add-on cost, such as the video interviews and client portal
PCRecruiter
https://www.pcrecruiter.net/site
This is another platform that combines the features of an ATS and CRM into one interface for more streamlined recruitment. It can be used for both permanent hiring and temporary staffing, helping you track and engage all types of candidates from initial sourcing through placement. Features like automatic resume parsing and job board management are great time-savers, while its deep recruitment analytics are useful for improving your hiring processes over time.
Pricing: starts at $85 per user per month
Pros
- PCR capture gathers candidate data to cut down on manual work
- Ideal for recruiting firms with multiple job openings and clients
- Suitable for international hiring (can configure to 70+ countries)
- Easy to customize to your specific needs
- Good variety of workflow templates
Cons
- Candidate matching and evaluation tools are limited
- Can take some time and effort to learn all the features
Yello
Yello turns your time-consuming manual follow-up into automated, mobile-friendly communications that allow you to reach candidates anywhere, develop an informed pipeline and eliminate manual work. The interactive texting tool also helps candidates to submit mobile applications or learn about available opportunities automatically.
Pricing: Starts at $5,000
Pros
- Great option for large and enterprise organizations
- Quickly collect and organize candidate data
- Good array of communication templates
- Dedicated account managers are responsive to customer needs
- User-friendly mobile app
Cons
- Lacking in API integrations
- Reporting tools aren’t automated
Jobvite
Jobvite is an all-in-one software solution for your recruiting needs. Serving a range of customer sizes from startups to enterprise customers, Jobvite offers tools that go beyond your typical CRM including Jobvite Refer (tool for sharing job openings in your employees’ networks) and Jobvite Video (on-demand video interviewing). It also offers automatic interview scheduling, robust data insights, smart job recommendations, and a fully functional mobile app so you can review candidates on the go.
Pricing: starts at $400 per month
Pros
- Excellent mobile app
- Wide range of integrations with social networks and other recruitment software
- Manage all your job posts and candidates in one place
- AI learns from your recruiting to improve as you use it
- Easily captures candidate feedback
- Intuitive and user-friendly interface
Cons
- Some features can have a steep learning curve
- Higher level administrative and configuration options can be tricky to find
SmartRecruiters
https://www.smartrecruiters.com/
Like most modern recruiting software, SmartRecruiters has features such as multi-channel recruitment marketing, collaboration tools and built-in automated processes. However, what sets it apart are its integrations, 250+ services ranging from job boards to sourcing tools to background checks, all of which are available in its marketplace.
Pricing: starts at $39 per month per user
Pros
- Great tool for sourcing and identifying talent
- Interface is seamless and visually appealing
- Calendar integration supports self-scheduling interviews
- Posts on all job boards, including niche job boards
- Functional mobile app
- Strong customer support
Cons
- Navigating between jobs and candidates can be tedious
- Finding the right features in settings menus can be a challenge
Phenom
Offering many features similar to its competitors, the Phenom Talent Experience Management platform’s main differentiator is its unique ability to turn visitors to your career site into potential applicants even if they don’t fill out your job application.
Pricing: Available upon request
Pros
- Automated candidate sourcing and resume parsing
- AI-driven candidate matching and filtering
- Integrated interview scheduling
- In-depth analytics and insights into your hiring process
- Good integrations for common job boards, such as Glassdoor and Google Jobs
Cons
- May not be suitable for larger enterprises or global companies
- Some features require an additional add-on cost and separate implementation
TalentReef
For companies and recruiting firms engaged in high-volume or hourly hiring, TalentReef is an excellent tool for connecting with candidates and streamlining your hiring process. Its range of features include branded career pages, applicant tracking, automatic interview scheduling, and text recruiting, along with easy posting to job boards.
Pricing: starts at $55 per month
Pros
- All-in-one solution for talent attraction and management
- Create personalized hiring websites
- Easy to set up and learn
- Built-in talent network
- Attentive and available customer support
Cons
- Can be prone to glitches and errors
- No free trial available
Eightfold
Eightfold’s AI finds the people most likely to succeed in a job based on their skills and potential, identifying great people often missed by legacy keyword-based screening. You can use it to screen candidates automatically and receive instant ranked pipelines of talent. Its chatbot can also answer candidates’ questions, schedule interviews, and send candidates alerts as they move through stages of the hiring process.
Pricing: Available upon request
Pros
- Screened candidates can be filtered to help pinpoint the best talent
- Anonymous screening feature reduces unconscious bias
- Integrates well with Outlook calendars for easy interview scheduling
- Streamlines candidate communications throughout the process
- Great tool for candidate rediscovery
Cons
- Sometimes lags in its communication with ATS programs
- Limited options for sorting candidates or adding notes onto their profiles
Crelate
This combination CRM and ATS is designed for staffing agencies and high-growth teams. It brings you all the tools you need to find, select, hire, and onboard new talent, automating administrative tasks across the candidate lifecycle. The searchable database and automatic outreach are combined with in-depth analytics to show you what works and what doesn’t, letting you refine your recruitment over time.
Pricing
- Business: $99 per user per month
- Business Plus: $144 per user per month
Pros
- Drag-and-drop operation makes it easy to set up and use overall
- Intuitive navigation on both the administrative and user side
- Full array of customization features
- Great mobile app
- Open API for easy integrations
Cons
- Reporting feature can take some time to learn
- No pre-built workflow automation templates
Recruiter Insider
https://www.recruiterinsider.com/
Recruiter Insider automates the collection of candidate and client feedback throughout the hiring process, differentiated by work-type and aligned to each individual consultant. This allows you to identify which consultants might need help at a particular stage of the process and what specifically they need help with and how much help they require. With 95 specific recruitment related questions, automated collection of testimonials from candidates and clients, as well as referrals and unique insights into the experience your candidates receive once in front of your clients, Recruiter Insider’s purpose-built platform provides real-time information to your service levels allowing you to take relevant action.
Pricing: Starts at $40 per user per month (plus $750 one-time implementation fee)
Pros
- Automatically collect feedback and testimonials
- Excellent choice to expand your analytics and data capabilities
- Customizable competency frameworks
- Results are automatically collated and measured
- Supports peer-to-peer feedback and 360° reviews
Cons
- Implementation cost is somewhat steep for the functionality
- Doesn’t have all the features of a typical CRM
Act!
As a dual-purpose CRM and marketing automation platform, Act! simplifies the process of attracting and engaging with candidates. While it’s designed primarily for sales, its pipeline management and automation tools are just as useful for recruitment, with actionable insights on key metrics to help your team make more informed decisions.
Pricing
- Cloud-based: $30 per user per month
- Desktop: $37.50 per user per month
Pros
- Great choice for small and medium-sized businesses
- Wide range of features to manage candidate relationships
- Enables real-time collaboration
- Easy to use and customize
- Strong reporting features
Cons
- AI automation features are limited
- Can take some time to connect with customer support
Talentify
Talentify uses programmatic job advertising to enhance job distribution, generating more candidates for your jobs with the same budget you would have spent otherwise. It can help you automatically sync your jobs with Google for Jobs and provide a faster mobile-first application experience to convert more candidates. Talentify claims to give your candidates a better Facebook experience with Easy Apply, which syncs your current ATS to Facebook, and distributes an automatic candidate engagement sequence.
Pricing: starts at $500 per feature per month
Pros
- Top choice for manual labor and hourly hiring
- Automates posting jobs on popular sites like ZipRecruiter and Indeed
- Full service job advertising management
- Indeed optimization with custom dashboards and automation rules
- 2-month free trial available
Cons
- Very industry specific
- Can be a challenge to connect with customer support
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