ADP Recruiting

ADP Recruiting Management is a hiring system that reads each application and scores it against your job description. Recruiters see a score from 1 to 100 and decide who moves forward. It connects to ADP’s own HR systems.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 14 Oct 2026 Last updated 14 Oct 2026

ADP Recruiting scores every applicant and a recruiter decides

In one line

ADP Recruiting Management is an applicant tracking system with a feature called Candidate Comparisons. It reads each resume, scores it against the job and puts candidates side by side. Recruiters make every decision.

Buy it if

You pay your people through ADP Workforce Now and want applicants sorted by fit in the same family of systems. You want new hires to move straight into your ADP records. You want a recruiter to make every decision.

Do not buy it if

You will not accept terms that make the client responsible for monitoring bias in the ranking. You will not ask every user to accept ADP’s extra terms before they use it. You have no ADP services agreement and do not want one.

Price

Through the ADP Marketplace, billing follows how many people you pay in ADP Workforce Now. Ask ADP for the rate.

How ADP Recruiting scores, sorts and contacts your applicants

Candidate Comparisons reads resumes and applications. It then shows a side-by-side comparison of how relevant each candidate is to the position. ADP calls the score Candidate Relevancy. It compares the skills, education and experience on a resume with the job description. It also learns from past hiring decisions on millions of resumes and job descriptions.

The model makes three sub-scores for education, skills and experience. It weights them into one score. Recruiters see that score from 1 to 100. ADP Workforce Now Recruitment is a sister product. It shows the same result as High, Medium or Low and calls it Profile Relevance. A recruiter sees one or the other, depending on which ADP recruiting product the company uses.

ADP Recruiting Management also has tools to post jobs and reach candidates. The Recruiting Control Center is one place to watch recruiting activity, talk to candidates and create open roles. The product sends jobs to career sites, social networks, agencies and more than 1,000 job boards. It also offers background screening services.

It connects to ADP’s main HR systems and sends new hires to them. Data also flows back from those systems into ADP Recruiting Management. ADP keeps client data secure in a non-public environment. Resume data from ADP’s recruiting products is kept for three years.

Applicants can opt out, one job at a time. An applicant who comes through ADP’s platforms can choose not to have the tools review their application. The choice covers one job posting only. Check how your careers pages show it for every role.

Our guide to AI sourcing and screening shows how the rest of this market handles ranking and who decides.

What works in your favour

Recruiters keep every application in view

Employers have access to all applications and make the decisions. No cut-off score hides an applicant from you. The score ranks people and removes nobody. ADP also provides ongoing human oversight of its AI systems for security, validity and bias.

An outside firm audited the scoring for bias

ADP obtained an independent bias audit from an outside firm, BLDS, in April 2024. The auditors found no valid statistical evidence of bias in the scoring. The model does not use a name, address, race, ethnicity, gender or other protected details.

Candidates can text and book their own interview

Recruiters can text candidates and get replies. Candidates can book their own interview times. A chatbot on text message also helps candidates find and apply for jobs. It adds them to the applicant pool for a recruiter to review.

Two ADP customers that chose it

Genpak has 1,500 employees. It put in ADP’s applicant tracking software alongside ADP RPO. RPO stands for recruitment process outsourcing. Boyd Corporation has 4,500 employees. It chose ADP RPO and ADP Recruiting Management. Both companies also run ADP Workforce Now.

Both customers bought it with ADP RPO, so ask for a customer that uses it on its own.

What the terms and the law leave with you

You monitor the bias in how candidates are ranked

The ADP Marketplace is ADP’s app store. Its terms for this product make the client responsible for hiring practices. That includes monitoring adverse impact of the criteria used to rank candidates. Adverse impact means one group is chosen at a much lower rate than another. US federal agencies generally treat a group chosen at under four-fifths of the top group’s rate as evidence of it. ADP’s analysis is not a guarantee against adverse impact or bias in how you use it.

If you hire in New York City, Local Law 144 may apply

New York City Local Law 144 covers software that gives a score, a category or a recommendation. It applies when that output substantially helps or replaces a hiring decision. ADP does not believe Candidate Relevancy is covered if you use it as intended. The city treats a tool as substantially helping a decision in three cases. The first is when recruiters rely on the score alone. The second is when the score counts for more than any other criterion. The third is when the score overrules other factors, including a person’s decision. Take legal advice on how your recruiters will use the score. If the law applies, you need a bias audit from the past year and a public summary of it. You must also tell candidates who live in the city at least ten business days before use.

Your recruiters still check each candidate in person

ADP intends the score as one factor among many. Employers are expected to check education, skills and experience in person.

Through the ADP Marketplace, billing follows the people you pay

These terms apply when you buy Recruiting Management through the ADP Marketplace for ADP Workforce Now. ADP bills by the number of unique people paid in the Workforce Now database in the previous calendar month. Billing starts when the service goes live. Ask ADP for the rate and for a written start date.

The client’s ADP services agreement governs the application and its services. The client must also make every user accept additional terms before the service is switched on. Read those terms before you roll the tool out to recruiters and hiring managers.

You could also find and screen people with agents built on your own systems. We have mapped what that looks like. The HR Agent Map

Eight questions to put to ADP

What is the monthly rate for our headcount, and how do you count the people paid? Good answer: A rate in writing, with the way ADP counts the people paid set out.
What must we sign before we turn it on, and what if we have no ADP services agreement yet? Good answer: A named list of agreements and a date by which each one is due.
Can we read the April 2024 bias audit by BLDS in full? Good answer: The full report, with figures by group and a date for the next audit.
If our recruiters sort by the score, does ADP still say Local Law 144 does not cover it? Good answer: A written answer for our own process, not for the product in general.
What reports by group does ADP give us to monitor adverse impact on the criteria we rank by? Good answer: A regular report we could hand to a regulator.
How do applicants see the opt-out, and where is each choice recorded? Good answer: A visible choice on every posting and a log we can export.
What happens to resume data after the three-year retention period, and when we leave? Good answer: Deletion on a stated date and an export in a named file format.
Can we call a customer that uses it without ADP RPO? Good answer: A named reference customer who agrees to a call.

Alternatives to ADP Recruiting

Workable, SmartRecruiters, iCIMS, Workday Recruiting and Oracle Recruiting also score applicants, and buying nothing is another route.

Workable scores each candidate from 0 to 100 against up to 14 criteria for the job. The Workable Agent, its AI assistant, can be added to any plan. It is paid for in prepaid usage units called AI credits. Workable offers plans from 1 to 20 employees up to 1,000 or more. SmartRecruiters shows a match score on a four-star scale with an explanation. AI screening comes in its High Volume plan. SmartRecruiters is best suited to organisations with at least 50 employees and many open roles.

iCIMS gives recruiters a ranked list of applicants against the role. iCIMS High Volume Hiring went on sale in July 2026. Workday compares applicants with the job requirements and gives the reason for each grade. It sells its AI assistants by usage, paid in a prepaid unit called credits. Oracle lets recruiters sort applications by AI ratings, including the overall rating, education, experience and skills.

Buying nothing means your recruiters read every application without a score. The bias-monitoring duty in ADP’s terms and the Local Law 144 questions about the score then do not come up. Our market guide covers the other options.

More in this guide

The AI sourcing and screening guide
Compare the 41 with their own page what each of the 41 products with its own page here does, what it costs, what it can decide alone and which have an outside bias audit.
Mid-market companies which AI sourcing and screening tools suit a company of 200 to 2,000 people, the prices you can see, how the bill grows and what to ask before signing.
Enterprise companies which platforms replace an applicant tracking system and which add to one, what they cost, how the contracts end and the hiring rules by place.
Hiring in India what Indeed charges for search in India and how Naukri sells Resdex, which products host data or launched in India, what India’s data protection law asks of employers and ten questions to ask sellers.
High-volume hiring which AI screening products can reject applicants with no person involved, how they text and call, and what they cost at volume.