We Found the Best Candidate Screening Software for Your Hiring Needs
The current job market is tricky to navigate.
Candidates are getting more job offers thanks to an uptick in hiring activity. This means speed is a top priority for recruiters looking to hire the best talent. To keep up the pace, it's important to have an efficient and effective candidate screening process in place.
Interested to know more? We’ve got you covered.
In this guide, we’ll explore some of the best candidate screening tools we feel can offer great value in your hiring process. There's something for everyone–from async interview solutions like Willo to skills testing tools like Toggl Hire.
What Is Candidate Screening Software?
Candidate screening software is vital in streamlining and enhancing your hiring process. It’s designed to help recruiters efficiently filter, assess, and highlight candidates who are the best fit for job openings in the shortest time possible.
These tools are quite diverse in functionality, but they typically include features for automating the review of resumes and cover letters, facilitating video interviews, and conducting pre-employment assessments to uncover candidates’ authentic qualities and skills.
The assessments can help you better understand important aspects of your applicants, like:
- Cognitive ability
- Personality
- Role-specific skills
- Communication styles
- Language proficiency
- Cultural fit
Essentially, the goal is to help you save time, reduce your administrative burdens, and improve the quality of your hires by incorporating a more structured and data-driven candidate evaluation.
Why Is Candidate Screening Software Important?
Boost recruiter efficiency
This valuable software, especially when powered by AI, automates the tedious and time-consuming aspects of the recruitment process, like resume parsing, filtering applications based on specific criteria, and scheduling interviews. Ultimately, recruiters save considerable time and effort when screening applicants, allowing focus on more strategic tasks like building candidate engagement.
Reduce unconscious bias
Candidate screening software is quite valuable in reducing unconscious bias that comes up when evaluating candidates by ensuring that they're all evaluated on the same, fair criteria. This way, you won’t miss out on highly qualified candidates simply because of their background.
Such a data-based approach is beneficial for achieving diversity and inclusion in your recruitment process, allowing you to create a more dynamic workforce.
Elevate your candidate experience
Applicant screening software can enhance the candidate experience by providing a quick and convenient process for applicants. For example, an asynchronous video interview avoids the hassle of interview scheduling and reduces anxiety associated with live interviewing.
The recruitment process is often a candidate’s first true interaction with your organization, and a positive experience can significantly enhance your employer brand. As we learned from our 2024 Hiring Trends report, 42.5% of company leaders believe that a strong employer branding strategy is a top priority in attracting and retaining high-quality talent.
Source: 2024 Hiring Trends report
Make More Confident Hiring Decisions
By standardizing the screening process and using data-driven assessments, candidate screening software reduces the risk of subjective hiring decisions. This leads to a more objective evaluation of your candidates based on their skills, experience, and fit for the role. In the end, you’ll feel more confident about your decision because you’ve got data to back it up.
Criteria to Consider When Choosing Candidate Screening Software
- User experience: The screening tool should be accessible and easy to use for both recruiters and candidates. This allows your applicants to have a positive and fair experience, while also ensuring your recruiting team can carry out their tasks efficiently.
- Customization and flexibility: Prioritize software that lets you tailor your application forms, video interview questions, assessments, and communication templates to meet your specific hiring needs.
- Reliability and validity of assessments: A reliable candidate screening tool should provide consistent results over time that showcase a candidate’s true abilities. It should also accurately interpret the data you need to meet your hiring goals.
- Integration with other HR tools: By seamlessly integrating with your current HR systems, you can ensure a smooth workflow and data consistency across your whole tech stack.
- Compliance and data security: For candidate safety, the software should ensure compliance with relevant data protection regulations and privacy standards. This includes features for anonymizing candidate data to prevent unconscious bias and ensuring secure handling of personal information to comply with regulations like GDPR.
5 Best Candidate Screening Tools
- Willo: Best for asynchronous video interviewing.
- ThriveMap: Best for simulating job-specific assessments.
- Toggl Hire: Best for assessing specific skills.
- Vervoe: Best for assessing job-related tasks.
- Trakstar Hire: Best for filtering out qualified applicants.
1. Willo
Willo is a candidate screening platform that helps companies save time and make more confident hiring decisions.
Recruiters use Willo to create (or generate) interviews using various screening question types. Invite links are then sent out to candidates, who can record responses on their own time using any device with a browser. Collaboration features make it easy to review responses, assess candidates, and collect feedback from internal stakeholders.
Relevant features
- Asynchronous interviewing: Willo helps you easily set up asynchronous video interviews and screen up to thousands of candidates. You can collect video, audio, text, or file responses, set time limits and deadlines, and review responses at your own pace.
- Question generator: When you’re struggling to think of relevant interview questions to ask candidates for specific roles, Willo can automatically suggest them for you. This way, you can ensure better answers that are tailored to what you’re looking for.
- Scorecards: Willo’s new Scorecards feature lets you build customized Scorecards in your Willo dashboard. You’ll be able to assign a Scorecard to specific interviews or job openings, making it easier for your hiring team to rank candidates’ performance and compare performances across candidates (either as a group or 1:1), based on the appropriate criteria.
- Multiple choice questions: Easily assess candidate skills or collect data within the platform (meaning you don’t need to pay for an additional form subscription).
- Candidate shortlisting: Willo’s Showcase™ feature makes it easy to create shortlists and share promising interviews with any internal stakeholder. Use their feedback to add as much context as you need, and make sure every hiring decision is made with consensus.
- Identity verification: You can use Willo to make the tedious process of identity verification a lot more efficient, more secure, and more cost-effective than doing it manually.
Take a look at how Florence Streamlined Identity Verification for 1,400 Candidates per Month with Willo.
Pricing
Willo has a free-forever plan that supports one job and up to ten responses monthly.
All our paid plans—Launch ($68/month), Growth ($187/month), Scale ($299/month), and Enterprise (custom)—support unlimited responses.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Simple process of writing and organizing interviews
- Consolidate your tech stack by using Willo’s multiple features instead of multiple single-feature tools
- Easily accessible to your candidates
- Over 5,000 integrations including ATS like Greenhouse and Teamtailor
- Fully browser-based and works on any device
- Customizable to your brand
- Designed to be scalable enough to handle growth
- Fully GDPR-compliant
Cons
- Free forever plan is limited to 10 responses
- No live interviews available through the platform
2. ThriveMap
ThriveMap is a candidate assessment tool that aims to help organizations attract, engage, and retain top candidates when high-volume hiring. The platform’s assessments focus on job-relevant practical skills, over basic credentials.
Relevant features
- Simulation experience: Offers a “day in the office” simulation in their assessment toolkit, where candidates can discover if they’re a good fit for your company through real job scenarios.
- Feedback scores: Analytics are added to your team dashboard as candidates navigate through your job role simulation.
- Interview reports: Generate interview reports for each candidate for your team to review.
Pricing
ThriveMap’s pricing is customized to your specific needs and is calculated based on the number of hires, seniority of the role, and volume of candidates you want to evaluate.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Simulation offers enhanced candidate experience
- Candidate assessments are tailored to your specific job roles
- Assessment design process is simple
- Seamlessly integrates with multiple ATS solutions
- Easy to use and intuitive
Cons (based on Capterra reviews)
- Reporting features could be more consolidated
- As it’s a relatively new tool, users are anticipating more assessment additions
3. Toggl Hire
Toggl Hire is a candidate screening platform that uses smart skill tests to help organizations identify top talent.
Relevant features
- Smart skills tests: Provides skills tests that are focused on the most relevant skills for the most relevant job roles in the market, covering areas like software, marketing, human resources, and data science.
- Build your own assessment: Offers pre-made templates and a library of over 15,000 questions that you can choose from to create a tailored assessment for your job roles.
- Video intros: Record interview intros, select questions, and invite candidates to answer when convenient.
Pricing
Toggl Hire offers a free plan limited to screening 3 candidates per month, as well as three paid pricing plans.
- The Basic plan is billed at $299 (annually) and allows you to screen 20 candidates/month.
- The popular Premium plan is billed at $1,200 (annually) for screening 60 candidates/month or $4,500 (annually) for screening 300 candidates/month.
- The Business plan is billed at $5,628 (annually) for screening unlimited candidates.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Offers assessments for over 180 different skills in over 100 job roles
- Easy to use and share with candidates
- Attractive interface
- Integrates with popular ATS solutions like Workable
- Reliable evaluation of candidates
Cons (based on G2 reviews)
- Can be slow to respond on certain browsers
- Some users would prefer more assessments for the tech industry
4. Vervoe
Vervoe is a comprehensive candidate screening tool that helps you assess applicants based on job-related tasks, instead of their skills on paper.
Relevant features
- Customizable assessments: Offers AI-powered customization tools to tailor assessments to your requirements. You can create your questions from scratch, or simply customize the pre-made assessments.
- Automatic grading and ranking: Uses machine learning algorithms to rank applicants reliably. You can also opt to filter out unqualified candidates automatically at the top of your hiring funnel.
- Personalized candidate communication: Provides in-app messaging to easily communicate with candidates and update them about their progression.
Pricing
Vervoe offers a free 7-day trial and a one-time payment plan based on the number of candidates you want to assess:
- 10 candidates — $300
- 30 candidates — $450
- 50 candidates — $600
- 100 candidates — $1,100
- 500 candidates — $5,000
Pros & cons
Pros
- Library of over 300 validated assessments
- Anti-cheating features
- Data-driven insights
- Tools to foster efficient recruitment team collaboration
- Integrates with an extensive range of recruitment tools
Cons (based on GetApp reviews)
- AI learns as you go, so the initial grades aren’t extremely accurate
- It can be a little cumbersome when re-ordering interview questions
5. Trakstar Hire
Trakstar Hire is a screening solution that emphasizes the time savings for companies receiving a high volume of applicants, by allowing you to filter out qualified candidates quickly.
Relevant features
- Built-in ATS: Offers a comprehensive applicant tracking system to help you filter, search, tag, and organize your candidates during your entire hiring process.
- Interview workflows: Provides customization options for your interviewing workflows, so your team can stay on track.
- Evaluation templates: Offers comprehensive interview evaluation templates and allows you to collect notes to optimize hiring team collaboration.
Pricing
Trakstar Hire offers custom pricing tailored to your specific hiring needs, so you’ll need to request a quote.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Easy to manage your pipeline of candidates
- Detailed reports to optimize decision-making
- Automates resume screening
- Interview scheduling features help to make coordination more efficient
- Supportive customer service
Cons (based on GetApp reviews)
- Some users say they would benefit from a mobile app
- The review process can take some time to get used to
Elevate Your Candidate Assessment With Willo
Candidate assessment software is extremely helpful in ensuring you select more high-quality hires and significantly reduces your hiring time. It’s best to select software that allows you to assess for a multitude of job roles so you get the best return on your investment.
At Willo, we specialize in providing hiring teams with robust async screening and identity verification tools to streamline your hiring process. Ready to start screening amazing talent at scale? Sign up today and experience Willo for yourself!
