Recruiting Tech Stack: How to Audit Yours by Workflow Stage

A recruiting tech stack is the set of tools you pay for to source, engage, screen, submit, close, and report. To judge yours, map each tool to the stage it serves, find the one stage where roles stall, and make one add, cut, or consolidate decision there. The minimum stack differs for agency, independent, and in-house recruiters.

What is recruiting technology, and what makes it a stack?

Recruiting technology is the software recruiters use to find, engage, screen, submit, close, and report on candidates. Owning several isn't the same as running a stack.

From separate tools to a stack

Once your tools work together on one core system, separate tools become a recruiting tech stack. SHRM's tech stack coverage of an employer session at SHRM Talent 2022 puts the applicant tracking system (ATS) at the base. Sourcing, recruitment marketing, assessment, interview, and onboarding tools attach on top.

Tools bought one at a time leave gaps at one stage and duplicates at another. An agency recruiter might pay for an ATS, a sequencer, and a scheduling link, with nobody checking whether the ATS already sends sequences. List every tool you pay for, including ATS add-ons.

Map your recruiting tech stack to six workflow stages

Every recruiting tool serves one of six stages: source, engage, screen, submit or interview, close, and report. Sorting tools this way shows where you pay twice.

The six stages and what tools do at each

Each stage below has its own tools and its own tell when it's the bottleneck. At the source stage, sourcing tools and your own database do the work.

Map each tool to the stage your team uses it for, not every stage its sales page claims. If a sourcing tool offers scheduling but your team schedules in the ATS, map it to source and flag the unused feature.

How to audit a recruiting tech stack in four steps

The audit runs in four steps, each building on the last.

Step 1: List every tool and what it costs

List each tool with its annual cost, renewal date, and weekly users. Count ATS add-ons as separate lines, since that's where duplicate spend hides in a recruitment tech stack.

Step 2: Map each tool to the stage it serves

Place each tool in the stage table by how your team uses it. Two tools in one stage is overlap, such as ATS email and a sequencer both sitting in engage. An empty stage runs on manual work.

Step 3: Find the stage where roles stall

Pick the stage where candidates or roles sit longest, because it gets the next dollar. Pull time-in-stage data from your recruiting funnel, or track your next five roles by hand. A stall at submit won't be fixed by a sourcing tool.

If roles sit at interview because of no-shows, try reminder texts. Daily texts lifted the show rate from 30% to 90% at one client, a single-client result from Sackett's SHRM Talent session.

Step 4: Add, cut, or consolidate at that stage only

Add a tool if the stall stage has none, cut one if it has two, or consolidate into one you own. Sackett told SHRM's conference audience of employers that tool overlap is overwhelming, pointing to ATSs with CRM features and sourcing tools that handle scheduling as common examples.

Auto-renewing contracts can lock a cut in for a year, so cut at renewal, not mid-search. Before renewing the tool you're consolidating into, run the automated recruiting software checks.

Recruitment technology tools by recruiter type

Who owns the core system decides what you can change. In-house recruiters inherit one from HR or IT. Agency and independent recruiters choose their own.

Agency desk

Agency recruiters juggle clients and candidates, so the stack needs client tracking too. Check whether your ATS covers it before buying a separate CRM, and track recruitment analytics per client to show each one its own time-to-submit.

Independent recruiter

A solo budget can't carry overlap, so one tool covering two stages well beats two single-purpose tools. A sourcing database, a scheduling link, and a simple tracker cover source, submit, and report between them.

In-house team

When HR or IT owns the ATS, your decision is which layer to add, not which ATS to buy. A recruiter at a smaller company can't replace the ATS but can add a sourcing layer for hard-to-fill roles.

Adding AI to a talent acquisition tech stack

What AI is used for in recruiting

Treat an AI tool like any other: map it to a stage, and add it only if that stage is your stall. SHRM's AI-in-HR study found 27% of organizations apply AI in talent acquisition, most often for job postings, resume screening and matching, and interview scheduling. A team stalled at scheduling gets more from an AI scheduler than an AI sourcing tool.

Check NYC's AI hiring law before you add AI screening

New York City's Local Law 144 bars employers and employment agencies from using an automated employment decision tool (AEDT) without a bias audit within the past year. AEDT outputs include scores, resume tags, interview recommendations, and rankings. DCWP's adopted rules took effect July 5, 2023, and candidates who live in the city must get notice at least 10 business days before use. Outside New York City, check the AI hiring rules where your roles are based.

When the stall is at the sourcing stage

If the audit points to source, too few qualified candidates with reachable contact details are entering the pipeline for your roles.

Why won't another job board fix a sourcing gap?

More job ads or ATS modules won't put reachable people into a thin pipeline. Sackett said sourcing tech has made finding talent easier than ever, and the hard part is the relationship. Add a sourcing layer with reachable contact data beside the ATS you already run.