Recruitment is the process by which a company finds, tests and selects a new employee, from the job advertisement to the offer letter. Recruitment software is the set of products that run each step of it. Its users are recruiters, the employees in the HR team whose job is hiring, and the hiring managers who will lead the new person.
A hire passes through the same stages almost everywhere. The job is advertised. Applications come in. Recruiters screen them and shortlist a few. The shortlisted candidates take a test and attend interviews. The company makes an offer, and checks the candidate's background before the start date.
The applicant tracking system (ATS) records every one of these stages. It is the system of record for hiring: every job, application, interview note and offer is kept there. Large employers add a candidate experience platform on top of it. This runs the career website, a chatbot that answers candidates' questions and automatic interview scheduling.
Two products bring candidates in. Programmatic job advertising places a job on hundreds of websites and bids automatically for each application, in the way that online display advertisements are bought. AI recruiting goes out and finds people who have not applied. It searches profiles, contacts suitable people and asks them the first screening questions. One kind of AI recruiting, blue-collar recruitment, hires delivery riders and warehouse workers over WhatsApp.
Three products test the candidates. A software engineer usually takes a timed test on a coding assessment platform, and then an interview on a technical interview platform. In that interview, the candidate and the interviewer write code in the same online editor. For roles outside engineering, such as sales and customer service, a pre-employment assessment measures ability and personality, and often records video answers.
The last step is background verification. It confirms the candidate's identity, degree, past jobs and criminal record before the start date.
Consider a hospital chain in Bhubaneswar that needs 40 nurses and 3 software engineers for its billing team. The nurses' job is advertised widely and their applications are screened by ability tests. The engineers take a coding test first. Every applicant, for both kinds of job, is tracked in the same ATS. When a candidate accepts the offer, the ATS sends their record to the HRIS and payroll system, and the person becomes an employee.
Students usually meet this software for the first time in campus placements, through a campus recruiting platform.