Instahyre was started in 2014 as a talent auction platform but soon became a job portal to connect recruiters & job seekers. As of 2020, it claims to have 2000+ companies registered on the platform, most of which are looking for software development talent from its database. The website is popular among startups, but due to several reasons, many of its users still end up looking for alternatives to Instahyre.
Before we come to some good alternatives to Instahyre, let’s look at an important question:
Why look for alternatives to Instahyre?
We talk to thousands of high-quality professionals and recruiters every month. These are some of the common reasons that look for alternatives to Instahyre:
Limited size and variety
Instahyre started with a focus on software development jobs. As of 2020, it has tried to expand to other categories but they remain limited in value. For e.g., there are also fewer profiles if you want to target the senior positions such as CTO or VP of Engineering. For your marketing, PM, design, ops, HR and other roles too, you will likely not find much success there.
Apart from the numbers, many recruiters find the variety of the profiles available on Instahyre to be rather limited in terms or locations, nearby colleges and so on.
Limited feature set
For recruiters, Instahyre works mostly like a database.
- They find the matching options are limited and very keyword based.
- There also is no prevalidation of skills which makes it difficult for recruiters to find talent objectively. As a result the recruiters are either forced to focus only on proven talent or risk wasting too much time and cost on finding good candidates.
- There is no chat or conversation system in place. This forces recruiters to manage their conversations offline on email/spreadsheets or invest in another recruiting tool such as ATS.
No free plan
Instahyre is known to change pricing models fast. It used to have an “agency” like a model to pay-per-hire but then adopted a subscription model. It used to offer a free plan, which it discontinued only to bring it back recently.
The free plan is quite limited. It offers very few profiles and more importantly, doesn’t give recruiters access to the “premium” profiles – the very reason why recruiters come to Instahyre.
So what are the top alternatives to Instahyre?
For companies hiring in India, these are the top 4 alternatives to Instahyre (in alphabetical order)
AngelList
AngelList has rapidly become a popular startup recruiting platform. Thanks to its size (1M candidates profiles globally) and a free plan, it has seen fast adoption by startups and users alike. Its paid pricing plans are a bit expensive though (starting from $199/month).
There are more than 15,000+ companies actively hiring on AngelList in India which is way more than the 2000 hiring on Instahyre today.
Used by 10000+ companies, from smaller startups to big companies such as Google & Amazon, CutShort offers a larger pool of talent pool across tech, marketing, sales, design, operations, HR and so on. It is popular not only among young techies but also among seasoned professionals such as ex-founders, CTOs, sales heads and so on.
CutShort offers a far wider set of useful features. It has inbuilt assessment tests for 25+ technical skills, it is also able to discover new talent that may not come from known institutes and known companies. The responsiveness of the candidates is much better too – thanks to the noise-control and gamification techniques used by the platform.
Your experience is much better too, thanks to the blended Artificial Intelligence features (it offers a professional assistant that suggests next actions and helps in scheduling meetings etc.).
CutShort offers a 100% free plan and paid plans starting at around $100/month.
With more than 400M users worldwide, no one has more diverse professional database than LinkedIn. You can find tons of profiles with different skills, different industries & different work experience. It facilitates both, active and passive recruitment.
To job seekers, Linkedin offers a paid option “Jobseeker premium” which has some features such as competitive analytics and higher placement in search results. To recruiters, Linkedin offers two pricing models, Recruiter Lite & Recruiter Corporate.
iimjobs (acquired by Naukri)
Before it got acquired by Naukri.com, iimjobs was considered as the largest job board for mid to senior management jobs in India. iimjobs.com features some of the best jobs in Banking & Finance, Consulting, Research & Analytics, Sales & Marketing, HR, IT and Operations.
Although the name might suggest that it’s a platform purely for IIM graduates but these days anybody looking for a job anywhere in India can make a profile on the platform.
Conclusion
Instahyre is a good platform for recruiters hiring for proven technical talent. However, it has many limitations due to which they look for alternatives to Instahyre.
If you want more variety and want to directly connect with the real hiring teams and managers, do check out the other alternatives listed above. CutShort especially is used by many recruiters and users who were earlier using Instahyre.
Used any of these alternatives? Let us know your experience in comments!
