Seven Life-Saving Chrome Extensions for Recruiters

Chrome extensions are an often overlooked tool in a recruiter’s toolbox. These small but mighty software programs are designed to modify and enhance the functionality of the Chrome browser. Most importantly, Chrome extensions can make your job a whole lot easier.

Written using programs like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, extensions bundle all their files into a single file that the user downloads and installs. Once downloaded, a tiny icon appears on screen in the top right corner of your browser window. Extensions can be turned on and off as needed. or deleted with a right click if you download, and then decide it isn’t useful to you after all.

There is a bevy of Chrome extensions that can help recruiters and hiring managers do their jobs more efficiently. Here are seven of our favorites:

MightySourcer: Just released on the Chrome Web Store, MightySourcer enables recruiters and hiring leaders to connect with hard-to-reach passive candidates. The extension provides information about hundreds of millions of users across a variety of channels, including email address, phone number, and social profiles. Once downloaded, users simply identify a candidate on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or GitHub, and MightySourcer will provide their appended data such as contact info, skills, work experience, education – all without a time-consuming search.

Rapportive: This extension is ideal for recruiters who use Gmail to contact candidates. Once downloaded, when you receive an email in Gmail from an applicant, the person’s social media accounts (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+) that are connected to their email address appear in the Rapportive screen, showing you more about who they are and how they spend their time online. The same holds true if you reach out to a passive candidate.

Limitless: Time – or lack thereof – is the biggest challenge recruiters and hiring managers typically face. Limitless is a time-tracking and productivity tool that helps you understand how you are spending your time. What's more, it reduces distractions and helps you stay focused on your tasks. It creates a dashboard personalized for your needs to show you how much time you’ve spend on social media, in a web browser, and on email. It has also recently launched a tool that will allow you to seamlessly switch between devices. So, if you start a project or search on your desktop at work, you can easily pick up where you left off on your phone later.

Buffer: If you recruit on social media, Buffer might be a fantastic tool for you. This extension helps you drive traffic to your website and increase engagement on social media by scheduling your social media posts at the most productive times. It does this by examining the success rates of your past social shares. Buffer will publish your updates on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and other sites. It then tracks results and analyzes everything you share so that you can see where and when your social posts are performing best.

RiteTag: Also for hiring managers who engage in social recruiting, this tool integrates with many social media websites to help you pick the right hashtags for your post in order to have the best reach. RiteTag will generate recommendations for hashtags along with data on what hashtags are trending. This is a helpful tool for those who are just learning to recruit using social media and who my not be familiar with hashtags.

AdRemover: A tool for recruiters, sure, but this extension is handy for anyone who uses Chrome. Advertisements and pop-ups are not only annoying, but they can slow down your work significantly. Also, some ads can pose a security risk to your computer. This extension keeps pop-ups and ads at bay while adding security to your web browser by protecting you from malware.

Heather O’Neill is the Senior Content Writer at MightyRecruiter. With a background in journalism and marketing, Heather has written for a variety of clients, including Parenting, Workforce, the Connecticut Post, Marin Magazine, the Stamford Advocate, Greenwich Magazine, the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Amazon, Nerve.com, and SPLIT Quarterly.