What tech should you use to manage your graduate recruitment?

Good graduate recruiting takes serious time and energy. 

If you want to fill an open graduate position with a high-quality candidate, you’ll need to sort through dozens of applications, CVs, transcripts, testing, and more. And all of this happens before you even get to the interview stage.

Got more than one opening? Great — those dozens of applications should become hundreds. 

Using the right tech stack won’t eliminate all of that workload, but it will make the whole process simpler, smoother, and faster. 

This is important for employers of any size. If you’re large enough to be recruiting more than a small handful of graduates every year, though, it becomes essential. 

That’s why we’ve created a guide to using software when building your employer recruitment pipeline. This will help point you toward the most effective solutions on the market today. 

(Please note that Prosple did not receive any compensation for creating this list and we do not have affiliate relationships with any of the companies making products that we have discussed below.)

Instead of having to navigate through a maze of competing products and options on your own, we’ll give you a guided tour. We’ve surveyed over 150 employers to find out which recruiting software options have achieved the biggest following so you’ll know what other leading firms rely on.

Let’s get started!

As you can surmise from our rundown, there is no clear frontrunner for best ATS. However, we will note that SuccessFactors has both significantly more third-party reviews on G2 than either of the other platforms we reviewed and a higher overall average score (although not by much).

Given that nearly half the employers we surveyed use one of these three options, you probably won’t go too wrong choosing any of them. 

Do note that many of the complaints we saw for all three were centered around transition difficulties. As with most enterprise-level software, you should expect that your team will need a learning period to adjust to your new ATS before being able to fully deploy its capabilities.

So far we’ve been dealing with tracking platforms. While each of the ATS options above offers a ton of features that will help you build a solid recruiting platform, you’ll also want to dig deeper into each individual candidate once you receive an application. 

That’s where assessment and screening software will prove useful. So we asked the 150+ employers we surveyed which options they work with themselves.

We got a wider range of answers than we did for ATS platforms. 66 per cent of our survey takers reported using at least one digital assessment program and more than 20 different assessment providers were mentioned.

Here are the top five most popular:

1. HireVue
2. Sova Assessment Australia
3. SHL
4. Aon’s Assessment Solutions
5. Talegent

Let’s take them in order.

HireVue is the most popular option with employers we surveyed (although we want to be clear that there is no runaway favourite on our list). The company describes itself as offering “a talent experience platform designed to automate workflows and make scaling hiring easy.”

The HireVue platform offers several core features. While some of these overlap with those found in the ATS options we’ve listed above, the overall focus is on a different aspect of the recruiting process — less on building a high-capacity pipeline and more on candidate evaluation.

Per HireVue, the platform helps you with:

• Conducting video interviews
• Assessing candidates
• Using AI to interview more efficiently
• Creating an ideal interview structure
• Interviewing candidates over text

HireVue is meant for larger firms. Pricing starts at $35,000 a year for what the company calls an essentials package aimed at clients with 2500 to 7500 employees. HireVue also offers custom quotes for businesses with more than 7500 staff.

The third-party reviews that we’ve seen are largely positive. HireVue holds an average score of 4.49 out of 5 on Software Advice and a 4.1 out of 5 on G2. Commentators noted that the platform made their hiring processes more efficient, found it easier to “get to know candidates in depth,” and raved at a “great UI/UX.” 

Complaints were mostly focused on technical issues, although some reviewers shared that they thought that there was “a learning curve” before they could fully integrate HireVue into their recruiting. 

Sova Assessment is the second most popular option on our list. Describing itself as offering a “complete candidate assessment platform,” Sova differs from HireVue considerably in focus.

Unlike HireVue, Sova focuses less on video interviewing (although the platform still offers video interview options) and more on psychological and aptitude testing you can customize to identify candidates who are a good fit for your specific needs. Per Sova, you can use their platform to:

• Craft a custom set of assessment questions taken from their scientifically-backed library.
• Choose specific question types to evaluate things like judgment, skills, cognitive ability, personality, and more.
• Take candidates through a multistage assessment process that includes testing and interviews.

Sova does not provide pricing information outside of inviting interested businesses to obtain a custom quote. Third-party reviews on G2 give the platform a 4.5 out of 5-star rating, with reviewers describing Sova as “easy to use,” “an excellent platform to utilize for our graduate recruiting,” and praising its support team as “incredibly responsive.” 

Most critiques focused on technical issues, including a lack of integration with any ATS platform and a dearth of language options.

Like Sova, SHL offers a heavy focus on helping you assess candidates during your recruiting process. The platform is tied for third place on our list.

SHL says that its software takes “the guesswork out of creating a talented workforce.” With both talent acquisition and talent management capabilities, you can use SHL to do things like:

• Assess personality, behaviour, skills, job-specific talents, and overall cognitive ability.
• Conduct video interviews.
• Collaborate with stakeholders in your organization to make decisions.

SHL also notes that its assessments are especially useful for graduate hiring since you won’t have the ability to evaluate a candidate based on a long work history. The company states that its platform can integrate with over 80 applicant tracking systems.

Like many of the other platforms on this list, SHL does not provide clear information about pricing. Third-party reviews are also limited. SHL boasts 4.5 out of 5 stars on G2, but with only two ratings, you should probably take this with a grain of salt. 

One reviewer called SHL “top-notch” and praised the “variety of screening assessments for candidates across the spectrum of jobs.” However, another who had participated in screening through SHL as a job candidate shared that “the user experience for the candidate is very bad.”

Also tied for third place, Aon is an assessment option offered by the professional services firm of the same name. Per Aon, their assessment packages “take the objective measurement of candidate information to the next level.”

The company shares that every year, they provide 30 million assessments in 40 languages across 90 countries. Aon heavily emphasizes their extensive experience, noting that when you use their product, you’ll benefit from a:

• Strong record of proven results
• Integration with ATS platforms supported by a dedicated team
• Security and data protection features
• Expertise in technical standards

Despite Aon’s stated popularity, there is little in the way of third-party reviews available. Likewise, we could find no publicly shared data on Aon’s pricing.

The final option among our three-way tie for the third most popular assessment platform (say that three times fast) is Talegent. The company states that they offer a suite of products that include “a comprehensive range of assessments that can be used individually within your candidate journey to help you to screen, identify and select those with the highest potential.”

Like most of the other choices we’ve explored, Talegent combines testing capabilities with interview features to help you screen candidates and then connect with them for a video interview. Per Talegent, they offer products that will let you:

• Assess values, skills, personality, and cognitive ability.
• Use gamified assessments to increase engagement.
• Conduct video interviews.
• Create branded employer videos.

Talegent does not offer any information on pricing upfront. However, the company does invite interested businesses to participate in a free trial option that gives you the ability to conduct 10 candidate assessments and up to 50 video interviews over a two-week period.

We were unable to find any credible third-party reviews of Talegent's product. 

Given that each assessment platform we reviewed is already in use by some of the companies we surveyed, we feel confident that they all provide some degree of value. 

We also want to mention that enterprise software is a different breed than consumer apps. The lack of third-party reviews for some of the products above doesn't necessarily mean much and we recommend that you schedule demos for several options and see what feels like the right fit.

However, if you are looking to base part of your decision on the opinions of others, we should note that HireVue and Sova both have solid online reviews and positive comments that are publicly available.

Reference checks typically happen later in the recruiting process. 

You’re starting to narrow down your final field of candidates and you want to dot your “I’s”. Time to resolve the great matter of whether your top choice is lying about the summer they spent volunteering at a refugee camp in Bangladesh, right?

Well, maybe. 23.1 per cent of our survey respondents said that they don’t bother with reference checks at all. 

Another 57.7 per cent shared that they do all their reference checks the old-fashioned — by hand. But since this is a tech-focused piece, we’re going to share a couple of options you can use if you’d like to automate your process a bit.

Among those we surveyed who a) do reference checks and b) don’t do them by hand, one name dominated our results: Australia-based Xref. Well over 60 per cent of that category of employers used Xref to gain a little more peace of mind when making final hiring decisions.

However, we also found an alternative called RefApp that is becoming popular. We’ll do a quick rundown on both.

The heavyweight in our survey results, Xref offers worldwide background check services. The company describes itself as “reference checking on autopilot” and aims to simplify a process that, as we’ve noted above, is still largely conducted by hand.

Xref does more than just check out a candidate’s CV. You can also build custom reference check questions based on the Xref database of best practices, including checks tailored for specific industries or roles. 

Per Xref, you’ll be able to:

• Perform bulk automated reference checks with a 24-hour turnaround.
• Make smarter decisions when creating reference questionnaires.
• Uncover unique insights with robust data tracking features.

Hopefully, by now you won’t be shocked to read that Xref officially offers only custom price quotes and does not make any pricing details publicly available. However, we were able to connect with the company and confirm that they typically charge between $40 and $60 per candidate.

We also uncovered a significant number of (very positive) third-party reviews. Per G2, Xref has earned a 4.7 out of 5 star rating based on over 250 responses (far more than for most of the other products we’ve discussed so far in this article). 

Individual commenters praised Xref as “a simple tool to use” and “a quick and easy process.” Complaints mostly centered around minor issues with functionality, as well as a concern that some candidates were penalized for brevity when answering Xref questionnaires.

RefApp is a newer player in the reference check game. Based in Sweden, the company describes itself as “a digital and automated reference checking platform for efficient, structured and in-depth reference checks.”

With RefApp, you can complete a simple four-step process to evaluate candidate references. You'll build and share a custom questionnaire, collect responses from referees, and then receive all of those responses in an organized report.

RefApp says that you’ll be able to:

• Hire more quickly.
• See improved accuracy.
• Automate your reference process.
• Make references simpler for candidates.

Like Xref, RefApp does not post their pricing publicly and encourages you to contact them for a custom quote. However, they were willing to share with us that they generally charge between $15 and $30 per candidate. 

If you’re looking for third-party reviews, RefApp does have far fewer than Xref. However, those reviews are almost universally positive. RefApp is currently rated at 5 out of 5 stars on G2, with raters especially excited that the app is “very user friendly” and has “good integrations.” 

We found no notable complaints.

If you want proven reliability, go with Xref. They’ve got a ton of good reviews and a long-term track record of success.

If you prefer to get on board with an up-and-comer, we feel confident that RefApp is a strong choice thanks to their consistently excellent reviews. Based on what we were able to learn about pricing for both options, they are also roughly 50 per cent cheaper per candidate while providing similar features.

If we’ve done our jobs right, you should have a clear sense of the essential pieces that make up a good recruiting tech stack. 

You’ll need an ATS to promote openings, receive applications, and track candidates through your hiring process. You’ll also want to create a system for assessing and evaluating candidates at scale using testing. And while this last part isn’t universal, you may want to conduct background and reference checks as well.

We don’t feel comfortable proclaiming that there is one best software choice for each category (although we don’t think you’ll go too wrong with any of the platforms we’ve discussed, as all are currently used by major employers today). Instead, use our assessments above plus your own review of a company’s website, industry reputation, and gut instinct to come up with a shortlist of options. 

Schedule demos for each and see which one feels like the best fit for your organization’s needs.

Prosple makes it simple to connect with outstanding fresh grads.

• Share your job listing with millions of students
• Give prospects an inside look at what makes your firm special
• Optimize your marketing by tracking results from start to finish
• Engage candidates directly at our virtual events

To learn more, schedule a chat with one of our friendly consultants today!