ZipRecruiter Review: Is ZipRecruiter Worth It for Hiring?
Jason Quey
Updated:
October 15, 2020
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ZipRecruiter.com is one of the largest job boards on the planet, making it a compelling choice for many entrepreneurs to hire freelancers because of its sheer size. While there are many freelance platforms to choose from, few are even close to as well-known or as popular as ZipRecruiter.
Hiring freelancers is more than an easy way to distribute your workload because nearly a quarter (23%) of businesses fail because they have the wrong team. For context, more than 600,000 businesses are started every year. This means more than 138,000 businesses connect part of their failure because they picked the wrong people on their team.
This ZipRecruiter review will help you determine whether or not this hiring platform will help you with your hiring process.
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ZipRecruiter mainly works as a traditional job search board. This means you can post jobs and applicants can apply by sending a cover letter through the site. It also sends job listings to other websites to help you find more qualified candidates.
What sets ZipRecruiter apart from the competition is its focus on the candidate screening process. ZipRecruiter’s application process uses screening questions to reduce the amount of time you spend looking at people you’re not going to hire. ZipRecruiter also provides customizable templates to help you create compelling job posts that encourage responses from qualified applicants.
ZipRecruiter also actively matches your job posts with likely candidates. Once it knows what sort of employees you like, its algorithm can help you find similar candidates. This is particularly useful when you want to fill several similar positions at your company.
Outside of its other features, ZipRecruiter offers more distinction in job types than most of its competitors. With many thousands of specific categories, ZipRecruiter can distinguish specific jobs better than most of its competition. This means fewer applications from people who aren’t quite qualified for the job.
The final primary benefit of ZipRecruiter is its flexibility. Rather than limiting you to 30 days for each job post, ZipRecruiter allows you to close jobs whenever you want and post up new job positions. This flexibility works out much better for real-world hiring needs.
Several factors help ZipRecruiter stand out in the crowded field of hiring websites.
Despite the prevalence of smartphones and tablets these days, many hiring websites aren’t mobile-friendly. This makes the ease-of-use a problem when you are sourcing applicants while you’re on the go. Or when the applicant wants to check your job openings on their Android phone. ZipRecruiter is completely mobile-and-user-friendly for employers.
Don’t underestimate the value of convenience on job boards. Job seekers naturally gravitate towards job boards that fit their needs. ZipRecruiter is particularly popular because it makes it easy for job seekers to find relevant applications through relevant sorting systems.
For example, job seekers can look for jobs by location or by specific titles. This might include looking for open positions as a:
This makes it easy for them to find open positions and for you to find the right candidate.
ZipRecruiter also offers several uncommon ways to interact with job seekers, including sending personal messages that you can write beforehand and deliver with one click. This can help you come across as more interested in each applicant.
This is a rarer quality than many people realize. Most freelancing and hiring sites cater exclusively to small and mid-sized businesses, which are those with less than 250 employees. In contrast, ZipRecruiter offers additional options and support for large companies.
By dividing labor and support between enterprise and non-enterprise companies, ZipRecruiter is more effective at helping employers of all sizes.
One of ZipRecruiter’s most notable qualities is how it can reach other job boards and post a job on them. Rather than merely posting them, ZipRecruiter’s algorithm focuses on the most suitable jobs for each partner site.
This gives it one of the broadest reaches of any job site. This matters for employers because you can’t attract a candidate unless they see your job posting. In other words, it doesn’t matter how good your offer is if nobody hears about it. ZipRecruiter is better at this than many other sites and continuously adds new partners to help ensure the best possible reach.
ZipRecruiter has some negatives despite the positive qualities described above.
As an entrepreneur, you may need to hire for several positions at the same time, possibly even dozens of posts. ZipRecruiter is excellent for hiring one or two jobs at a time, but if you need to hire more than that, you could get flooded with applications and alerts.
The main problem here is the challenge of sorting applicants by the job they’re applying for and managing responses to each of them. If you’re tracking as many as thousands of applicants, ZipRecruiter may not be able to integrate all of that information with any existing applicant tracking system (ATS) you want to use.
This is particularly problematic because ZipRecruiter offers the best value when you need to fill a lot of positions. You can mitigate this drawback by creating or purchasing a tracking system suitable for your needs.
ZipRecruiter does not have transparent pricing information before you sign up and start using their service.
There are several reasons for this, but the most important one is that they frequently change their costs. You’ll learn more about this in the pricing section below.
The easy one-click application system is appealing to entry-level employees and those who don’t have networks and connections they can leverage while searching for jobs.
This can be a problem if you’re looking to hire more senior-level employees with a specialized skill set. For example, many startups need experienced advertising managers to help get noticed. If you can’t find anyone with experience, you may never be able to get seen enough to sustain your business model.
In many ways, this is the biggest drawback of ZipRecruiter. A handful of experienced professionals can take you much further than a larger group of entry-level employees. As such, you may be better off at other recruitment systems during the early stages of growth, then turning to ZipRecruiter when you’re ready to fill out the lower ranks at your company.
The main difference between ZipRecruiter’s hiring plans is the number of active job alerts you can have at any given time. Simple plans are limited to one active job slot, the team's plan can have up to four slots, and enterprise customers can pay for as many as they need.
According to ZipRecruiter, job slots are the maximum number of job ads you can have posted simultaneously. There is no limit on job postings per month and no limit on the number of candidates you get.
The other major difference between the pricing plans is how easily you can attract potential recruits. The enterprise plan allows you to use their TrafficBoost. With each Boost, ZipRecuiter states you’ll get up to 100 visitors to your job posting.
The primary drawback of these pricing plans is how hard it is to find accurate information about what you’re actually going to pay. While they don’t like posting information on the main site, ZipRecruiter’s support page notes that their plans start at $249/month for the simple options.
They also say that they will customize the price you pay based on various factors, such as how many other slots you need, how many resumes you want to download to their resume database, and even where you are. This means that you cannot determine the pricing up-front, and that’s a significant negative.
By this point in the ZipRecruiter review, you know much more about how the company works and what you can expect. Overall, ZipRecruiter is a good choice for hiring when you need a steady stream of new employees. They say that most employers get a good match on the first day, so ZipRecruiter can help you fill many positions quickly.
However, ZipRecruiter is not as effective for filling senior-level positions, which may be the focus of small businesses aiming to get off the ground. Companies have different needs, so be sure to check out other freelancing site reviews to determine which site is the best fit for your organization.