Best Recruiter Software in the UK 2026

Hiring is the lifeblood of your business. Finding the right people is how you grow, innovate and build something amazing. But let’s be honest, the process can be a nightmare. You’re swamped with applications, struggling to coordinate interviews and battling to keep track of who’s who. For small and medium-sized business owners, the time and admin involved in recruitment can feel like a full-time job in itself.

Choosing the right tools can be the difference between finding your next superstar and losing them to a competitor. But the market for recruiting software is crowded and it’s hard to know which platform genuinely understands the needs of a growing UK business. 

We’re here to help you cut through the jargon. This guide will review some of the top recruiting platforms, highlighting their pros and cons. While many tools have their merits, you’ll see why a truly integrated solution like Employment Hero is a powerful ally for any business wanting to hire smarter, not harder.

What is Recruiter Software?

Recruiter software is a tool designed to bring order to the chaos of hiring. It’s for any business owner who is tired of managing recruitment through their email inbox and a tangled web of spreadsheets. It centralises and automates the entire hiring process, from posting a job ad to sending out the final offer letter.

The core purpose of this software is to solve the most painful parts of recruitment. It helps you manage a pipeline of candidates, collaborate with your hiring team and communicate with applicants efficiently. 

The best recruiting software helps you post to multiple job boards at once, screen applicants faster and build a talent pool for future roles. How recruiting software helps is by turning a messy, time-consuming process into a streamlined and professional operation, giving you the power to build your dream team.

Benefits of using Recruiter Software

Adopting dedicated recruiter software is more than just a convenience; it’s a strategic move that delivers a serious return. It empowers you to compete for top talent and builds a stronger employer brand from the very first interaction.

• Hire faster: Automate the manual tasks that slow you down. Post jobs to multiple boards with one click, screen CVs more efficiently and schedule interviews with ease. This speed is crucial when top candidates are in high demand.
• Improve candidate experience: A clunky, slow application process puts great candidates off. Recruiter software creates a smooth, professional experience that shows you value their time, even if they don’t get the job.
• Make better decisions: A centralised system gives you and your hiring team a complete overview of every candidate. Say goodbye to lost notes and confusing email threads. Make collaborative, data-driven decisions with confidence.
• Build a talent pool: Don’t lose great candidates just because you don’t have a role for them right now. Recruitment software helps you build and nurture a talent pool of “silver medallists” that you can tap into for future vacancies, saving you time and money.

Best Recruiting Software platforms compared

We’ve assessed the top platforms to find the best recruiting software for small business needs in the UK. Our evaluation focused on ease of use, automation capabilities, candidate experience, and overall value.

Feature	Employment Hero	Workable	Pinpoint	Teamtailor	Greenhouse	Lever	Breezy HR
Millions of free candidates, included	✓	✓	✘	✘	✓	✓	✓
Recruitment Agent: AI Interviews	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Applicant Ranking & Instant Shortlisting	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Integrated Onboarding & Contracts	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Integrated Payroll	✓	✓	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘
Employer of Record for Overseas Hiring	✓	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘
Integrated Salary Benchmarking	✓	✓	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘
Collaboration Tools	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Job Ad Generator	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Post to Multiple Job Boards	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Employment Hero

Employment Hero brings recruitment, HR and payroll together into a single, powerful platform. It’s designed to help ambitious businesses find, hire, and onboard the right people without the usual administrative headaches. By embedding an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) directly into your HR platform, you can manage the entire employee journey from one place.

This all-in-one design means no more juggling different systems or losing track of great candidates. For UK SMEs, it’s a way to build a winning team by ditching the spreadsheets and focusing on what really matters: finding people who will help your business thrive.

Pros of Employment Hero for Recruitment

• Integrated Applicant Tracking System (ATS): Manage job postings, track candidates and collaborate with your hiring team without leaving the platform. This creates a seamless flow from applicant to employee.
• AI candidate matching: Looking for the future of hiring? Our SmartMatch platform allows businesses to screen and source candidates by leveraging the latest AI. Never manually input a job description or screen a CV again. 
• Streamlined onboarding: Once you’ve made a hire, turn candidates into new team members in a few clicks. Automate employment contracts, policy sign-offs and onboarding tasks to deliver a great first impression.
• Employer of Record: Looking to hire international talent? Or scaling to a global market? Employment Hero can scale with you, with an Employer of Record service to keep up with your business goals, no matter the country.
• Build a strong employer brand: Create professional, branded careers pages to attract top talent and showcase your company culture.

Cons of Employment Hero for Recruitment

• Designed for a complete journey: If you only need a standalone tool for posting jobs occasionally, the platform’s comprehensive features for the full employee lifecycle might be more than you need.

Workable

Workable is a well-known standalone Applicant Tracking System. It’s popular with businesses of all sizes for its ease of use and its ability to distribute job postings widely.

• Description: Workable provides tools to post jobs, manage applicants in a pipeline and collaborate with team members on hiring decisions. It has a clean, user-friendly interface.
• Pros: It’s quick to set up and good at getting your job ad in front of a large audience through its extensive job board network.
• Cons: The “pay-per-job” pricing model can become extremely expensive for businesses that are hiring for multiple roles. As a standalone tool, it creates a data silo, requiring manual work to transfer new hire information into your HR system.

Pinpoint

Pinpoint is a recruitment software that places a strong emphasis on candidate attraction and employer branding, aiming to help companies win talent before they even apply.

• Description: The platform gives you tools to build content-rich career pages and provides features to improve the candidate experience.
• Pros: It’s great for businesses that want to invest heavily in their employer brand and create a highly polished “shop window” for talent.
• Cons: This focus on attraction can mean the core workflow and automation features are less of a priority. It’s also one of the more expensive options for small businesses.

Teamtailor

Teamtailor is a Swedish company that combines an ATS with modern employer branding and marketing tools, encouraging a more social and collaborative approach to hiring.

• Description: It helps companies create stylish career sites and leverage social media and employee referrals to find candidates.
• Pros: It excels at making recruitment feel more like marketing, which can be effective for certain company cultures.
• Cons: The pricing can be prohibitive for SMEs. For a business owner who just needs to efficiently manage applications and fill a role, the extra marketing features can feel unnecessary and complicated.

Greenhouse

Greenhouse offers a robust platform designed to help businesses optimise their hiring processes from start to finish. It’s a potential choice for companies looking to adopt a more structured approach to talent acquisition.

• Description: Greenhouse provides a suite of tools for sourcing, interviewing and hiring. Its platform focuses on creating a structured hiring process, helping teams make more informed decisions.
• Pros: It offers powerful features for collaboration and helps standardise the interview process across the organisation.
• Cons: The platform can feel complex and may require significant time to set up and master. For smaller businesses with simpler needs, the extensive feature set and higher price point can be more than what’s required.

Lever

Lever positions itself as a modern talent acquisition suite, blending the functionality of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) features.

• Description: Lever’s platform combines traditional applicant tracking with tools for nurturing candidate relationships. 
• Pros: Its combined ATS and CRM functionality is great for proactive sourcing and building talent pipelines. The user interface is generally considered clean and intuitive.
• Cons: While strong on the relationship management side, some users find its reporting and analytics less comprehensive than competitors. The cost can also be a barrier for smaller companies.

Breezy HR

Breezy HR aims to simplify the hiring process with a visually-oriented and user-friendly platform. It is designed to be easy to use for teams of all sizes.

• Description: Breezy HR offers a drag-and-drop pipeline interface to manage candidates, along with tools for sourcing, scheduling and team collaboration.
• Pros: The platform is known for its ease of use and intuitive design, allowing teams to get up and running quickly. It provides a good balance of features at a competitive price point.
• Cons: For large enterprises with highly complex hiring workflows, it may lack some of the advanced customisation and in-depth analytics found in more enterprise-focused systems.

How Employment Hero supports businesses with recruitment

We know you’re not a full-time recruiter. You’re a business builder, a leader, a visionary. That’s why we built our recruiting software to handle the admin and logistics, so you can focus on finding the right people to move your business forward.

Employment Hero makes it easy to cast a wide net for talent and keep the whole process under control. The real magic? Seamless integration. From initial application to onboarding and payroll, everything flows in a few clicks, saving you hours and leaving new hires with a stellar first impression.

Support is another crucial aspect covered under our solution. You get genuine help, real people, not just automated replies or endless ticket queues. Fast response times, a dedicated account manager who knows your business and comprehensive onboarding and training mean you’re always covered. 

How to choose the right recruitment software

Finding the right recruiting software means looking beyond a long list of features and focusing on the impact it will have on your business.

First, prioritise a seamless candidate experience. A slow, confusing application process will cost you top talent. Next, look for smart automation that genuinely saves you time. Think one-click job posting and interview scheduling. Consider how it helps you collaborate with your team to make better hiring decisions. Finally and most importantly, think integrated. Standalone recruitment software creates more work and disconnects hiring from the rest of the employee journey.

Final thoughts

The right tools can transform recruitment from a source of frustration into a competitive advantage. By streamlining your process, you can both hire faster while also building a stronger employer brand that attracts the best talent.

Don’t let outdated methods hold you back. Investing in a modern, integrated platform gives you the power to find, hire and onboard brilliant people with confidence. You’re not just filling a vacancy; you’re building the team that will help you achieve your vision. We’re on a mission to make employment easier and more valuable for everyone.

Ready to see how? Learn more about our all-in-one HR and payroll platform today.