blank img

How Recruiters Buy HR Tech: New Workology Research

Adrian Dixon

September 18, 2018

post featured image

Workology recently conducted the HR and Recruiting Buyer Survey to capture who the HR and recruiting professionals who purchase HR tech are and their buying process.

How Recruiters Buy HR Tech

Here are the top 5 findings from the Workology HR tech buyers survey.

Company size

  • 23% fewer than 50 employees 
  • 15% 101-250 employees
  • 13% 1,000-5,000 employees
  • 13% 10,000 or more employees

With almost a quarter of surveyed buyers work at small organizations of (less than 50 employees) while a quarter work at enterprises (1000 or more employees), which explains the variation in HR tech products that the market is able to offer.

Interestingly, most HR tech companies seem to start by targeting SMBs and moving upstream to offer enterprise-level products and services.

Experience level

  • 9% 0-3 years 
  • 28% 3-7 years
  • 22% 16+ years
  • 10% C-suite level

The data reveals most buyers are mid- to senior-level professionals with fewer entry-level and C-level buyers. This suggests HR tech companies should be targeting both operational and strategic pain points in their marketing and sales processes.

Number of technologies considered 

  • 66% 1-3 products 
  • 31% 4-8 products

Number of decision makers

  • 56% fewer than 3
  • 31% 4 to 8 people

Unsurprisingly, buying is by committee these days. Considering the investment of time and money and the potential impact the right HR tool can have on your department, it makes sense to have multiple stakeholders involved in the decision.

Final decision to buy

  • 65% responsible for evaluation and recommendation
  • 20% the final decision-makers

The majority of recruiters and HR professionals have to get buy-in from someone else at their company such as a C-level executive.

This makes it important to help your champion get executive buy-in by providing a clear value proposition, hard numbers on your product’s ROI, and other educational collateral.