ATS With Passive Recruitment—Workable Review

Workable is an applicant tracking system (ATS) aimed at small- and mid-sized companies of up to 1,000 employees. It’s one of the most popular ATS solutions out there, with some highly reputable companies using it, such as the Los Angeles Clippers, Sephora, Ryanair, Eurobank, and Moodle.

The platform integrates with 200+ job boards and uses their resume databases for sourcing passive candidates. It also allows you to create custom pipelines and remove bias from applicant assessment.

Source: Workable

In this review, we’ll go over Workable’s essential features, downsides, pricing model, and integrations. We’ll also introduce Workello, the #1 alternative that combines applicant tracking with pre-hire candidate assessments.

Workable: Key Features

Workable features are split into three categories:

• Source and attract—Helps you create a careers page, set up a referral program, and distribute your job ad
• Evaluate and collaborate—Use it to add structure to your hiring process by setting up interviews and assessments and using fair evaluation methods
• Automate and hire—Create offer letters and reports, manage compliance, develop a hiring plan, and make use of automated actions

With Workable, the first step is to create a careers page on your company website. You can use Workable’s page builder to create a responsive page that will fit in with your brand and make you stand out.

Create job posts within Workable and automatically distribute them to over 200 premium and free job boards. If you don’t have a job description prepared, you can use one of Workable’s 1,000+ templates. 

The platform has partnered with various job platforms and uses their CV databases to allow you to source passive candidates. When you post a job ad, Workable uses AI-powered mechanics to recommend the top 50 matching profiles from the talent pool.

As your candidate database grows, Workable measures the performance of each candidate source. You can use boolean search filters to find the best-skilled candidates.

For every job position, you can create a custom pipeline by adding assessment or interview stages and defining automated actions when a candidate reaches the next stage of the funnel. Workable supports automated emails, bulk emailing, and interview self-scheduling.

Candidate Assessment and Hiring

If you want to remove unconscious bias from your assessment process, you can anonymize candidates, hiding their names, photos, and contact info from recruiting officers. When it comes to assessment, use Workable’s interview question templates to prepare for the interview faster. Interviews can be one-way (candidates record their answers) or in-person via Zoom.

As for other assessment methods, Workable supports tests on the following subjects:

• Attention and focus
• Abstract reasoning
• Workplace personality
• Numerical comprehension
• Verbal comprehension

Once you find your perfect employee(s), it’s time to hire them. You can store your offer letters on Workable (or use the platform’s letter template library) to speed up the final stage of the hiring process. When you send a formal offer, it will come with the ability to e-sign it—all the candidates need to do is click the Accept button.

Workable: Downsides

Workable’s candidate tracking doesn’t work perfectly when a candidate applies for multiple positions or the same position multiple times. It doesn’t remove identical profiles automatically or store previous interactions with a candidate.

Another issue is that one candidate has a scorecard for each funnel stage. When they move through several stages, you need to compare scorecards manually instead of having a cumulative card that does that for you.

Some users have reported issues with Indeed integration. The platform also lacks an external page for candidates to check their application status.

Due to the platform’s pricing model, the price quickly stacks up if you want to unlock some features (e.g., video interviews or tests) or have a larger company. This puts it on the higher end of the pricing scale.

Workable: Pricing

Workable offers a 15-day trial to its new users, and you can choose which plan you want to use during the trial period. There are three subscription models:

1. Paygo
2. Standard
3. Premier

Source: Workable

The most affordable plan—Paygo—comes with a fixed price of $129 per month per job position. If you want to manage multiple vacancies, you need to unlock them with an extra fee.

When it comes to Standard and Premier plans, their prices depend on your company size and whether you pay monthly or upfront. However you decide to pay, you have to commit for the whole year. 

If you have a business with over 1,000 employees, you can contact Workable’s sales team for a custom quote. 

Check out how the pricing works for these two plans:

Features per Plan

Note that some features are labeled as optional and are not included in any plan. To get them, you need to pay extra, regardless of your pricing plan without them. Those features are:

1. Video interviews—$159+ per month
2. Texting—$99+ per month
3. Assessments—$119+ per month

Check out the table below to learn what you get with each pricing plan:

Workable: Integrations

Workable supports 120+ integrations for various aspects of its software, such as payroll, interviews, background checking, onboarding, single sign-on, and reporting. They also integrate with over 200 job boards and job ad aggregators to help you distribute your job post easily. Some of them include:

• Adzuna
• CareerCast
• CareerBuilder
• Careerjet
• Caterer
• Coroflot
• CV-Library
• Dice
• Glassdoor
• Indeed
• Jobsite
• Monster
• LinkedIn
• Nexxt
• Reed
• SEEK
• Totaljobs
• Skywalker
• ZipRecruiter
• WeWorkRemotely
• TopUSAJobs
• Hackajob
• BountyJobs
• Jobbio
• Kandidate

Workable: Customers

While the platform is available in English only, you can use it to translate your careers page and job posts automatically from English into German, Portuguese, Greek, French, and Spanish. 

Workable has over 27,000 customers using its software to hire new employees, some of which are reputable names from various industries, which attests to the platform’s quality. Some of the most notable ones include:

• Los Angeles Clippers
• Lyst
• Sephora
• Ryanair
• Square Enix
• Dribbble
• Eurostar
• Eurobank
• Valiant Finance
• JOEY Restaurant Group
• Moodle
• ImagR
• IrisVision
• Starling Bank
• Zinger Property
• ei3
• GCC Services
• Cytora
• Frosch Travel
• Alexander Dennis
• Navarro
• Tuff Growth
• Bevi
• FP1 Strategies
• InnoWell
• IQPC

Alternatives to Workable

If you’re looking for a more affordable ATS that doesn’t lock out advanced features behind higher-paid pricing tiers, you can take a look at our other reviews. We’ve reviewed hundreds of ATS solutions—check them out:

Workello vs. Workable

Workello is a two-in-one platform that combines an ATS pre-hire assessment software that allows SMBs to quickly prepare a hiring funnel made for high-volume recruiting. 

Like Workable, Workello enables you to create job posts and distribute them automatically on all major job boards. It has a template library containing emails, job descriptions, and tests to speed up the entire hiring process.

Workello is easy to use, with UI made for employers without prior experience with ATS platforms. You can control your whole process from start to finish within your single-page dashboard and won’t have to worry about duplicate profiles in your database.

Unlike Workable, Workello supports written tests where candidates need to show their job-related skills and quality of work. With this, you can easily gauge someone’s quality before hiring them.

Another difference is in the pricing model. The introductory plan contains all of Workello’s features and is available for every company, regardless of its size. You won’t have to pay extra to get any additional capabilities. The only difference between the pricing plans is the billing period and the number of assessments you can carry out:

1. Growth—$299, billed quarterly (up to 30 assessments)
2. Scale—$597, billed annually (up to 300 assessments)

Workable vs. Workello: Features and Pricing

Check out the table below to see how the two solutions compare:

Final Thoughts

Workable is an ATS that supports sourcing active jobseekers and passive candidates from hundreds of job boards. You can use it to create a custom careers page and post job ads in multiple languages. The platform supports interview self-scheduling, various assessment options, and e-signatures.

One option Workable lacks is job-related assessment and a pricing model that doesn’t charge you extra depending on your company size. If you want to know what quality of work a candidate can deliver before hiring them, you can try out Workello for free. Get all the features unlocked with a fixed price and launch your hiring funnel in under 3 minutes.