Workable hiring service review

A sensible and well-balanced choice with good template and search abilities

Workable Review Hero
(Image: © Workable)

TechRadar Verdict

While Workable provides plenty of features for recruitment, many rivals go a bit further with their respective offerings.

Pros

  • +

    Good core features

  • +

    Impressive search abilities

  • +

    Suitable for small and medium-sized businesses

Cons

  • -

    Misses onboarding features

  • -

    More integration elsewhere

  • -

    Middling customizations choices

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Workable is a dedicated recruitment platform and Applicant Tracking System and it doesn’t tie into a wider suite of HR products, so it’s got a focused and well-designed range of features.

It’s not the cheapest recruitment solution around, though, so it’s going to have to impress if businesses are going to find room for Workable in their budgets.

Features

Workable allows you to find and attract candidates, evaluate them and hire the best talent for the job (Image credit: Workable)
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Features

Workable’s features are divided into three strands – the first sources and attracts candidates, the second handles evaluation and interviews, and the third tackles hiring.

Workable has one-click job posting to more than 200 job boards, and it integrates with your company’s social media channels so you can advertise your own vacancies. You can also use Workable’s own drag-and-drop system to build your corporate careers page, and job applications from various sources are collated into a single pipeline for easier management.

Lots of the processes can be automated, too. Workable’s AI systems supply a list of up to 50 potential candidates when you post a new job – you don’t even have to wait for the resumes to roll in. This service can automatically create social adverts for your positions, and Workable’s Chrome extension can deliver in-depth candidate information based on their social media profiles.

Boolean

Workable's Boolean contains plenty of search cheat sheets to boost online sourcing (Image credit: Workable)

Recruiters can also use Workable’s powerful Boolean search options to find suitable candidates. Workable has internal application options and an employee referral platform that can include unique sharing links and referral rewards.

Switch over to the evaluation and interview module, and you’ll find more helpful features. You can use more than 700 job description templates that are SEO-optimized, and you can customize your hiring pipeline for consistency and familiarity.

Video Interviews

You can even conduct video interviews using Workable (Image credit: Workable)

The service supports two-way syncing with Gmail and Outlook accounts to help recruiters and candidates stay on the same page, and Workable has an app to allow staff to manage recruitment on the move. Elsewhere, you’ll find collaborative tools that can be used by your whole HR team and in-built support for video interviews, and you can automate candidate communication.  

Anonymized candidate screening enables more inclusive hiring, and you can assess candidates using skillset, personality, and cognitive ability tests – and then see all the data so you can make informed hiring decisions.

Further automation streamlines the hiring process, and you can use a central workflow and timeline to keep staff abreast of hiring processes and budgets. Workable has built-in offer letters and electronic signatures, and Workable also supports national, international, and local regulations to help your company be fully compliant.

Integrations

Workable integrates with a number of popular software products from a wide variety of categories (Image credit: Workable)

Workable also integrates with software from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and can also be used with HR tools from Glassdoor, Bamboo, and Indeed. Ultimately, there are dozens of third-party integrations here for products that handle video interviews, assessments, referrals, sourcing, and every other part of the recruitment process, and that means that you can handle the entire hiring process without ever leading the Workable – which makes things easier and faster for you and your staff.

Workable also impresses with loads of thoughtful features. The site enables searching of 400 million candidate profiles, you can create customized career pages for your business, and the product's application forms are all mobile-friendly – so people can apply no matter what device they're using.

Elsewhere, Workable offers interview self-scheduling, and it's easy to define which members of your team should have access to different modules, so you can preserve your hierarchy even when using third-party tools. The feature set rounds out with consistent interview kits, built-in analytics, automatic EEO and GDPR compliance and built-in electronic signature abilities.

Workable does have a broad range of features, but large companies may want more customization and abilities from an HR product that handles more than just the recruitment process. Workable also misses out on automated reference checking, and it doesn't have any onboarding options beyond the ability to offer jobs to candidates and process their acceptance letters.

Pricing

You'll have to contact Workable for a quote for its higher tier plans (Image credit: Workable)

Plans and pricing

Workable divides its software into four products. The Paygo option costs $129 per job posted per month, and it has Workable's essential features but few of the advanced options – it's billed as a self-service choice for companies that only hire occasionally.

The Standard and Premier options add functionality. The Standard plan posts jobs to 200 boards, has a career page builder and AI-powered sourcing, adds software integrations, and deploys loads of helpful HR options, and it costs $279 per month if you pay annually. The Premier product adds more features, including a dedicated account manager and custom onboarding, but it costs $659 per month.

Final verdict

Workable is a straightforward recruitment tool with a good range of features that deliver a well-balanced approach across the entire recruitment process.

It’s particularly useful for small and medium-sized businesses who need recruitment software to integrate with other HR services they may use. Still, larger companies with their own HR staff or full-service third-party options may not find this dedicated product necessary.

We've also featured the best recruitment platforms, best HR software and best background check services

Mike has worked as a technology journalist for more than a decade and has written for most of the UK’s big technology titles alongside numerous global outlets. He loves PCs, laptops and any new hardware, and covers everything from the latest business trends to high-end gaming gear.