52 HR Software Tools You Should Know [Updated 2023]

Eliza Neumann02/29/2024

Best HR software for your business

Human Resources is all about people.

HR software is there to support both employers and employees in making their lives easier in the professional environment. From searching for the best talents to managing their salaries and benefits, to building their personalized career paths, HR software simplifies each element of running a business.

Let’s look at some of the multitude of HR tools and apps that HR managers, high-level executives, and company owners have at their disposal today.

For the purposes of this post, I divided  HR tools into groups that roughly correspond to the different stages of the employee journey — from talent sourcing, recruitment, and job boards, to employee engagement and payroll.Here we go!

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Table of contents:

    1. Talent Acquisition and Candidate Sourcing
    2. Applicant Tracking Systems
    3. Applicant Testing and Assessment Software
    4. Video Interviewing
    5. Onboarding and Offboarding Software
    6. Employee Referral Software
    7. Productivity and Time Management
    8. Employee Engagement
    9. Talent Management Software
    10. Payroll
    11. Benefits
    12. Communication
    13. Holistic HR Tools

Talent Acquisition and Candidate Sourcing

These tools help recruiters find the right people for the jobs — from simple job boards to more intricate platforms that match candidates to open positions and help employers market their brands more efficiently.

#1 Upwork

A popular platform allowing companies and organizations to find freelance professionals in many different fields, and allowing freelancers to find jobs. It evolved from a simple job board to a powerful platform that matches candidates to job requirements, analyzing recruiters’ needs, and providing invoicing and payment options. 

It is used by giants such as Microsoft, GE, and Airbnb.

UpworkSource: Upwork. 

#2 Honeypot

A European tech-focused talent sourcing platform that helps hire Software Developers, DevOps Engineers and Engineering Leaders— and helps people find jobs in IT. All job candidates are pre-verified through a code challenge and a call with Honeypot’s Talent Management team, and are offered free career support and guidance through a talent rep.

Honeypot

Source: Honeypot. 

 

#3 Jobble

This platform connects 60 million gig and hourly workers with hiring businesses across the U.S. It lets businesses screen, interview, hire, and onboard temporary employees — all in one place. 

JobbleSource: Jobble 

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#4 Indeed

A top worldwide job offer platform is available in over 60 countries with 250M unique monthly visitors. Apart from job postings, it allows candidates to create resumes and apply for jobs. It also engages in career guidance and provides certification opportunities.

IndeedSource: Indeed 

#5 Yello

A candidate sourcing tool that help you find and source a more diverse talent pool, and engage with passive candidates.

It helps recruiters to run personalized nurture campaigns using advanced filters based on preferences such as technologies and years of experience, and combine a few different tools - including LinkedIn accessed via an extension - to automate your hiring efforts.

Screenshot 2022-07-05 at 14.10.11

Source: Yello

Applicant Tracking Systems

Known as ATS among HR professionals, they are essentially talent sourcing software used by HR, recruiters, and hiring managers to find job candidates and track them throughout the hiring process. 

They’re like CRM platforms (customer relationship management) but specifically for recruitment purposes. Here are some great examples.

#6 Workable

It uses built-in candidate sourcing capabilities, helping recruiters not only manage their applicants but also find the ones who match the skills and location of a job — from AI-powered search and advertising to job postings to 200+ job sites. It makes remote interviewing seamless and we use it at Monterail to recruit our awesome team members.

Workable

Source: Workable 

Workable is an absolutely essential tool for our People team. We use it as our applicant tracking system, our job offer management scheme, and for processing the applications we receive. The applications are grouped in pipelines where all of our team members know what’s been happening with this particular inquiry and what the next steps should be. We also check and create reports that help us track how fast we can recruit and hire new candidates - from the moment they apply to their first day at Monterail.

Wiktoria Krzyż Recruitment Team Lead
at Monterail

#7 JazzHR

It’s an intuitive and easy-to-use HR tool with a relatively low subscription cost. It’s a great fit for smaller businesses and startups as it scales along with the company. It connects with many other HR tools and includes employer branding capabilities, candidate sourcing and tracking, and collaborative tools for hiring managers.

#8 Manatal

With the vision of democratizing the use of recruitment software, Manatal’s cloud-based platform allows you to simplify your hiring process from sourcing to onboarding, and land you the best candidates by leveraging its advanced features such as AI-based candidate recommendations and social media recruitment. The software also allows you to efficiently track and manage clients through its complete set of recruitment CRM tools. Manatal is the all-in-one recruitment software solution for agencies and corporate HR.

manatal web app

#9 Lever

It’s an ATS focusing on building diverse teams, trusted by over 3000 companies. It’s known for metric-based recruiting, helping management predict hiring needs and deliver talent insights based on data.

 

LeverSource: Lever 

Applicant Testing and Assessment Software

These platforms help choose the best candidates during the recruitment process, allowing recruiters to create assignments, cognitive ability tests, and job knowledge tests.

#10 HackerRank

This applicant testing platform works in two ways. First, it helps create coding and technical assessments for recruiters to help them test prospective developers and software engineers. On the other hand, it helps candidates practice and prepare for testing and interviews. It also offers a tool for conducting live or remote technical interviews.

HackerRank

Source: HackerRank 

 

#11 Devskiller

Another screening and online interview platform aimed at IT professionals. It features a test wizard, manual code test creation tools, tasks in SQL, DevOps, code review, and more.

#12 Adaface 

Adaface is a skill assessment platform that enables companies to identify qualified developers by automatically assessing code written by applicants via a built-in code editor.

Adaface

Source: Adaface 

 #13 pymetrics

It uses bias-free algorithms to create gamified neuroscience tests aimed at matching candidates to the right jobs. Existing employees play neuroscience games that help discover traits and trends. The data is then used to create bias-free algorithms and candidate tests. Rejected candidates can be automatically matched to other opportunities across other clients using the solution.

 
Video Interviewing 

With remote teamwork on the rise, video interviews are sometimes the only chance recruiters and candidates get to see each other. Apart from well-known apps like Skype, there are solutions strictly dedicated to recruiting new employees.

#14 Zoom

Zoom is a powerful all-around tool for video conferencing. It’s not only a great choice for interviewing candidates, but also for webinars, virtual conferences, and other types of meetings.

Zoom

Source: Zoom.us 

Zoom is our go-to tool when it comes to scheduling and hosting online meetings, and I use it every day for recruitment purposes. The IU is intuitive and easy to customize it the way you want to, with an option to pass hosting to someone else on the team and limits on the lengths of calls you organize so you and your team can focus on the most important tasks.

Aleksandra Iwan Former Junior Recruitment and Onboarding Specialist
at Monterail

#15 HireVue

HireVue allows companies to perform game-based and technical pre-hire assessments and interview analyses. Through incorporating organizational psychology and AI-driven predictive analysis, it aims to reduce bias in the hiring process. 

#16 VidCruiter

Apart from its video interviewing software, it also provides other standalone recruitment solutions like structured digital interviews, skill testing, or automated reference checking, along with a complete recruitment suite.


#17 Outmatch

It offers pre-recorded and live video interviews, candidate tracking, collaborative tools for hiring managers, and candidate performance analytics. It eliminates the hassle and time spent on scheduling interviews.

Screenshot 2023-06-12 at 13.51.37
 
Source: Outmatch
 
 

Onboarding and Offboarding Software

So you found the right candidate who went through the recruitment process and got hired. Now is the time to onboard them. There are more and more platforms that make this process easier and help automate it.

#18 Enboarder 

It’s an experience-driven onboarding platform focused on increasing engagement and excitement of new hires. It helps HR managers personalize the onboarding experience for employees. 

Enboarder

Source: Enboarder 

#19 BambooHR 

An onboarding platform focused on creating a great employee experience, simplifying paperwork, and letting HR managers prepare customizable pre-boarding packages.

BambooHR

Source: BambooHR 

At Monterail, we use Bamboo as a primary source of truth for all information regarding our team members. The People team and the team leaders are able to access it to see how they move through our organization and check their compensation chart. Bamboo is also useful for our company culture building activities, a NPS survey and an onboarding checklist being the prime examples.

Marta Dziergwa Head of People
at Monterail

#20 Talmundo

An employee onboarding platform combining human resources best practices with technology that enforces company culture to help new starters on their onboarding journey. They can engage with employees and get on-the-job training before they even start, while recruiters can collect feedback on the recruitment process.

Screenshot 2022-07-06 at 07.48.43
 Source: Talmundo

#21 Sapling

It integrates with multiple ATS platforms to sync new hires’ data and automatically start the onboarding process. The tool includes features like assigning legally binding documents and allows for creating workflows with triggered emails that eliminate manual checklists and data duplication.

 

Employee Referral Software

On the competitive candidate market, candidate referrals are priceless. Referral programs can improve employee retention and ensure high-quality candidates that are fit for the job. That’s why many companies create comprehensive programs to encourage and reward good referrals. No wonder there are platforms that can help automate the process.

#22 Talentlyft

This tool lets you leverage your employees’ social capital by inviting them to refer perfect candidates for your open positions. 

#23 Teamable

A dedicated referral platform that helps match talent with open positions based on your employees’ connections on social networks they connect to the platform, instantly refer them and track the results of the hiring process and reward the most engaged employees.

Teamable

Source: Teamable

Productivity and Time Management 

There are a number of platforms dedicated to managing attendance, time, and productivity tracking. Let’s look at some of them.

 #24 SageHR

A comprehensive HR platform that allows for time tracking, but also includes features like expense and recruitment management tools. Its timesheet interface is simple and intuitive, with approval flows and reporting capabilities.

#25 Harvest 

A simple yet powerful time tracking and reporting tool that enables you to keep an eye on time spent on different tasks and projects. Moreover, it makes tracking expenses, invoicing, and reporting really quick and easy.

Harvest

Source: Harvest

Recruiting new team members and onboarding them in a way that’s the most supportive are crucial for our People team at Monterail. By using Harvest, they can track the time spent on both of these tasks in real time. They can also create detailed reports that help them adjust their processes and optimize their time and expenses to become even more efficient at what they do. This - in turn - keeps our employee retention rate high at Monterail with the People team able to focus on what’s genuinely needed and what brings the most value to other teams.

Krzysztof Maruszczak Head of Finance
at Monterail

#26 Jibble

A cloud-based attendance and time-tracking software for teams. It includes a Slack bot to record time spent in the app and power-ups like activity tracking, permissions, and roles for team members or facial recognition to verify employee attendance.

#27 Focusmate

A distraction-free productivity tool for employees that helps you work remotely with a work partner at selected times through video sessions – and eliminates procrastination.

#28 Float 

This tool lets you keep track of everyone's workload, task status, and time off. It also enables team members to assign tasks to one another and track their progress.

FloatSource: Float

#29 Tallyfy

This tool is meant for designing and improving processes, tasks, and procedures, helping companies turn chaos into a structured workflow. It’s a great tool if you need to improve processes and operations in your organization and make everything run smoothly. It’s trusted by companies such as Nestle and Oracle.

TallyfySource: Tallyfy

Employee Engagement

Luckily, there are apps for that that help not only see how your employees perform, but also help you motivate them to perform better.

#30 Cooleaf

An employee talent recognition and rewards platform that helps drive business growth and performance management. A platform rewards and recognizes employee behaviors that are aligned to their actual business goals. Actions such as achieving a milestone metric by the Sales Manager, is recognized by Cooleaf app due to integration with Salesforce and SalesLoft. This results in greater motivation of employees.

See the Cooleaf case study to find out how we built this app.

Cooleaf

Source: Cooleaf

At Monterail, we use Cooleaf as our employee recognition scheme, because we strongly believe that showing gratitude and appreciating even the smallest things someone does for you or your team is a great way to practice compassion and build a mindful company culture.

Paulina Jakubowicz Former Junior Recruitment and Onboarding Specialist
at Monterail

#31 Workday Peakon

They boast to be the world’s leading platform for measuring and improving employee engagement. It focuses on turning employee data into insights for managers, offers advanced talent segmentation capabilities and real-time dashboards, and includes tools that foster conversations in teams helping include employees in the engagement process.

PeakonSource: Workday Peakon

#32 Humanoo

It’s an employee wellness tool that promotes health and fitness among employees by facilitating rewards for physical activity and educating about mental and emotional health. 

It’s a great tool for promoting work-life balance and increasing your employees’ well-being.

 
Humanoo
 
Source: Humanoo

#33 Bonfyre

An employee experience platform including mobile-first, two-way communication tools like targeted broadcasts and direct messaging, feedback polls and surveys, chat, recognition badges, and more.

#34 Trakstar 

This tool lets you engage your team with surveys, goal tracking, performance reviews, and team feedback tools, among other features. If you’re looking to improve performance management, check if Trackstar is the right tool for you. 

 #35 PukkaTeam

A platform designed to create virtual co-working spaces with integrated video conferencing, Slack chat integration, and one-click video calling. It’s used by companies like Uber, Tesco, and Shopify, bringing their remote teams together. A bonus it now facilitates Slack integration.

PukkaTeam

Source: PukkaTeam

 

Talent management software

Talent management systems (also known as TMS platforms) are integrated HR tools covering the four pillars of talent management recruitment, performance management, learning and development, and compensation management, providing companies with strategic help when it comes to human capital.

#36 Calamari 

It's Monterail’s tool of choice. It provides clock-in/clock-out solutions including iBeacons, QR codes, mobile apps, Slack integration, and leave management system with absence calendars and approval flows, with multinational day-off support.

CalamariSource: Calamari

 

Calamari has been useful for us at Monterail when it comes to managing employee holidays and absences with the option to assign substitutes, let everyone on a team know when someone will be off and customize the type of time off within the tool. It’s been especially helpful for us since our switch to a distributed company model with team members working from different parts of the world and in multiple time zones. Now they can schedule their time off with just a few clicks.

Magda Skwarnik-Świątkowska HR and Payroll Specialist
at Monterail

#37 Namely

An HR, payroll, and benefits platform that promises to help build a better workplace. The features include day-to-day HR management tools, time tracking, onboarding and performance review, customizable reports, and more.

Namely

#38 Neudesic

A self-service, AI-based solution for HR personnel, managers, recruiters, and employees providing them with real-time mobile access to information wherever they are. The platform is scalable and helps to optimize the onboarding process, talent management, and HR processes like benefits administration, and learning and development.

 Payroll

#39 Xero

An online accounting software for small businesses and organizations. It works across many devices and includes invoicing tools, expenses, inventories, purchase orders, and hundreds of third-party app integrations.

#40 Enova365 

Enova365 is a comprehensive ERP platform that’s compliant with the latest legislation. 

It’s used by over 14,500 organizations who entrusted it with their payroll, accounting, and documentation.

Enova 365

Source: Enova 365 

One of the biggest benefits of Enova is giving the team members at Monterail the ability to store their tax documentation in one place. They can access and download it any time they need it, so they can easily stay on track when it comes to paperwork related to their taxes and social security premiums, as well as check their salary and its components.

Magda Skwarnik-Świątkowska HR and Payroll Specialist
at Monterail

#41 BrightPay

A payroll software package supporting weekly, fortnightly, and monthly payroll. The interface was designed to keep straightforward payroll simple, and simplify it when it gets more complicated. It features automatic enrolment, real-time information, and employee self-service. All the data is stored in the cloud. It’s also GDPR compliant.

Benefits

#42 Gusto

Gusto allows companies to create perk and reward programs for their employees and helps them to manage essential benefits including 401(k), health insurance, and commuter benefits.

Screenshot 2022-07-05 at 14.30.58Source: Gusto

#43 Bonusly

A fun and intuitive recognition program which provides employees with a monthly allowance to give small bonuses to their colleagues to recognize their contributions. Its’ user-friendly interface makes all bonuses transparent and gives you prompts of the most popular reasons for recognition.

BonuslySource: Bonusly 

#44 Benify 

This award-winning platform is centered around employee recognition and incentives. It motivates team members to stay engaged and makes it easier for the management to notice their efforts.

Communication

#45 Slack

An amazing communication tool that enables your employees to chat, organize video meetings, and create various topic channels. It’s used by 750 000 companies worldwide proving that it is one of the best communication tools out there. 

It’s Monterail’s communication tool of choice and it helps us stay connected while working remotely. 

Slack Source: Slack 

#46 Guild 

Guild is an invitation-only, secure communication tool for professional groups, communities, and networks. It is a multi-platform, safe, encrypted space to collaborate with colleagues on professional projects. 

Guild

Source: Guild 

Read the whole story about how we built this app.


Holistic HR Tools

#47 Personio

This tool helps reduce time spent on administrative tasks. Its mission is to “battle paperwork and never ending, complicated Excel charts” - sounds amazing, right? 

With one tool you can easily manage areas such as: applicant sourcing, attendance tracking, payroll, employee document management and team feedback. 

Personio helps you digitize all of the major HR processes and save a lot of time and money.

Personio

Source: Personio 

#48 Leapsome 

Leapsome is a holistic, time-saving people enablement software that helps you build a feedback and learning culture, improve employee performance and engagement. Its features such as: employee surveys, goal setting/OKRs, real-time feedback, 360° performance reviews and personalized learning, make it a really helpful and people-oriented tool. 

Leapsome
Source: Leapsome 
 
Leapsome is used and praised by companies such as Mercedez-Benz and FlixBus. 
 

#49 Zenefits 

Holistic HR software for small and mid-sized businesses including features such as: talent and performance management, payroll, benefits, engagement and employee wellbeing. 

It also includes time tracking, new hire onboarding sync, reporting, and benefits management. If you're looking for a great all-round HR tool, definitely check out Zenefits.  

Zenefits

Source: Zenefits

#50 HR Cloud

HR Cloud improves employee experience and gives HR teams a new advantage over past approaches by automating manual processes. Onboarding new hires is now much quicker. It also helps drive communication, collaboration, and engagement to new levels.
 
Screenshot 2021-04-09 at 15.24.50
 

#51 HeavenHR

It's a complex tool that gives you the opportunity to manage employee on- and offboarding, time-tracking, absence and shift management, payroll, recruiting and more! It's definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for an all-round tool to manage many HR processes in one place.

#52 Rippling 

A platform that enables you to manage all your employee data and operations: onboarding, offboarding, benefits, payroll -- all in one place.  

Rippling

Source: Rippling 

Over to You

There are tons of other HR tools and platforms – from simple ones to complex HR processes and talent management machines. Many companies also decide to build their own HR tech software for their specific needs – or outsource their development to experienced IT teams.

Interested in developing your own HR app? Send us a message and we will get back to you.  

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Eliza Neumann