A lot of online platforms offer a free trial period for you to evaluate the software's performance.
However, many recruiting software options, especially those that offer both Sourcing, Social Media Management and Outreach solutions, do not include all features in their free trials due to the interaction to third parties.

For example, the quality of Sourcing cannot be easily evaluated, and the same goes for systems that interact with external internet resources, such as Google searches or social media exploitation for sourcing, including LinkedIn.

When choosing a software to try, make sure that you can test all the features promised.

Seeing nice images on the home page gives impressions but not an objective evaluation of the real practical capabilities of the tool. Then, sales-reps are able to sell dreams. And when it comes to recruiting tools, features are in strong relation with actual data

, so you need proper environment to test software functions on real data such as a bunch of profiles, recruiting pipelines, job requisitions etc.
This is particularly valid for software with several combined solutions.

Recruiters work on results, so when the technology delivers real results that is a positive one. That is critical, a software must fit to the real activities that need to be done by its user. What a recruiter must do nowadays to be successful?

All recruitment software vendors promise excellent results and is not easy to scratch under the real meaning of so many features performance

especially when we speak about AI, process automation and fancy technology.

It seems that most of all ATS's promise the same, so the technologies are the same, right? Not so. Dig a little deeper and you'll discover that there are critical differences between each recruiting solution that can make or break your recruiting efforts. This is even more true when it comes to software for Sourcing people and Lead Generation. In fact, the wrong decision can put your job at risk.

A critical aspect is the integrability of several functions that you regularly perform to operate your business.
Your perfect software will cover most of them or at least will provide a smooth transition from one activity to another. For example from a Sourcing new candidates, analyze their profiles and outreach them with proper control of your overall messaging campaign at scale.

Benefits of buying a single software that offers multiple solutions are significant

and this is the way to go nowadays, but in this case the testing is even more articulated.
In any case, this is a way better than the situation of using simple single-purpose little tools, that may appear simple, but due to the fact that in real working conditions you need to jump from one to another, it will be impossible to test that bunch of different tools from different vendors because several compatibility and integration issues will be added to the equation. So, to keep adding and integrating tools from different providers is possible. However, witnessing the difference in performance, we strongly recommend choosing a single tool with all the solutions.

Something that is really rare to find on the market, but highly useful to facilitate your evaluation of functionalities and develop a properly informed decision for a purchase, is the availability of a testing environments filled with auto-generated data for training purpose

, where is it possible to play around with functions and test the look and feel of the graphical user interface. All this is better when there is no commitment as forms to fill, credit card to add and even any email requested.

Free trial of some pay plan is a very engaging time and could be intense, it is a time that should be used wisely and with some organized and analytical approach because in this case the commitment is a bit more. However, there is an important difference between products where the only option is to buy or drop, and other products where the option is between buy or continue with the existing account with an unlimited free access and some reduced functionalities but still ‘usable’ and eventually upgradable later.