Google Hire is (almost) Dead. Which Recruitment Software Should You Migrate To?

It’s been half a year since it was announced that the recruitment software Hire would inevitably join Google’s long line of discontinued products. Though the platform remains active for the time being, it has six more months to go before it’s officially retired. Web dwellers shake their heads in exasperation as Google’s trend of pulling the plug seems to continue (almost 200 retired products so far), but examining Hire reveals it was somewhat problematic for users compared to other ATS.

There’s a reason Google products are greeted with such enthusiasm when released, and disappointment/controversy when discontinued. The web giant has been a model of excellence in almost every industry they entered, and their products inspire trust and professionalism in potential users.

However, Google Hire users expressed a lot of concerns regarding its limited functionality, the variety of bugs they encountered and the slow burn of feature updates. The fact that the ATS was designed strictly for internal HR use presented an aversion to recruitment agencies and 3rd party collaboration. This limited the platform’s potential user base and restricted its reach, marking the first of Google’s limiting design decisions. Compared to other recruitment software, there was a lack of flexibility in functions that many HR experts and recruitment agencies consider important. From dictating email-focused scheduling and communication, slow updates, and a lack of customizable fields, to the issue of how effective its job portal integration is compared to direct advertising, G-Hire was given a lot of grief for not being more accommodating. The platform’s high pricing model didn’t help its cause either.

1- The Right Recruitment Software for Your Needs

While on the hunt for the right ATS, it’s good to keep in mind that this is a niche industry. This means that there are a few options out there, and it’s easy to separate leading and innovative providers from the rest. Defining what you’re looking for in terms of features and specific functions is a good place to start. Detailing your business needs will come in handy later on when pricing, team collaboration, and such factors begin playing a major role in your decision-making process.

But at the end of the day, whether you’re representing a company’s HR department or a recruitment agency, the best option to go for is an affordable, versatile, and easy-to-use ATS that covers your recruitment basics, and goes well beyond. Basics - and we can’t stress this enough - include detailed reports. It’s important that your ATS of choice provides reporting and analysis functions. Without understanding your key recruitment metrics, you’ll end up repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different result. But even with all these matters defined and decided, it’s difficult to know if an ATS is going to be the right choice for your business. User reviews might provide insight, but there’s generally never enough information to go on if you don’t test the software yourself.

This was one of the few matters we settled early on. At Manatal, we provide a 14-day trial period that allows users to fully experience our recruitment software and test its functions, including the AI recommendation engine, enriching applicant profiles with social media, and much more. Trial users get the opportunity to test all of our exciting features (Career page creation, interactive onboarding, full 360 analytics) and decide for themselves whether Manatal goes above and beyond to improve their recruitment cycle. Our ATS was designed to fit different business models, whether users represent recruitment agencies or internal HR departments. In fact, Manatal provides two platform-wide account settings that cater to each model’s different needs.

Featuring full integration, users can receive applications from various job boards -as well as their career page- directly on Manatal’s platform. Applications are automatically parsed, and candidate profiles are extracted, enriched and indexed correctly.

2- What Data Migration Entails

It’s difficult to accurately assess an ATS without delving deep into what it can do for you. However, once a recruitment software provider meets your basic recruitment needs, other features they provide can only ease and improve your hiring cycle.

Which brings us to the next factor to consider: The possibility of data migration.

Evidently, with G-Hire’s retirement on the horizon, its users are considering options for their next platform. This means that whatever choice they make will lead to the same question: Can I move all my data to the new platform?

Some ATS providers will support you in regards to data migration, some will not. It’s becoming an increasingly common practice, but generally speaking, it largely depends on the amount of data you have, as well as different factors defined by the provider you’re considering. At Manatal, we put our customer service at the highest priority and support data migration to our platform from Google’s G Hire and other ATS, or even from simple types of documents stored on a laptop. We assess your needs to make your transition to our platform simple and hassle-free.

Click here to read more about Manatal’s features and AI recommendation engine.