Every year, HR teams send out dozens of pages of requirements and get back proposals that all somehow say "yes, we do that" - right up until implementation, when it turns out half of it was marketing spin. The problem usually isn't the vendors. It's the RFP.
A badly built RFP invites vague answers. A well-built one makes it almost impossible for a vendor to dodge the hard questions. Here's where most buyers go wrong, and how to get responses you can actually compare.
Mistake 1: Asking Yes/No Questions
"Does your platform support onboarding workflows?" will always get a yes. Every vendor says yes to everything when the question allows it. Instead, ask vendors to describe how - "Walk us through how a new hire's onboarding workflow is configured and what happens if a step is missed." Now you're comparing substance, not sales copy.
Mistake 2: Requirements Written in Isolation
RFPs are often drafted by one department without input from the people who'll actually use the system daily - recruiters, line managers, payroll. The result is a list of features that sounds thorough but misses the real workflow pain points. Before you write a single question, pull requirements from the actual users, not just the org chart.
Mistake 3: No Weighting on What Actually Matters
If every requirement is listed as equally important, vendors will optimise their answers for volume, not relevance. Rank your requirements - critical, important, nice-to-have - and tell vendors that ranking. It signals you're serious, and it stops a vendor burying a missing critical feature under ten optional ones they do well.
Mistake 4: Skipping Real-World Scenarios
Generic feature lists get generic answers. Scenario-based questions don't. Instead of "Does the system handle complex approval chains?", try:
"A manager is on leave and an approval is stuck. Who gets notified, and after how long does it escalate?"
That single question tells you more about the platform's actual logic than a page of tick-boxes ever will.
Mistake 5: No Deadline for Clarifying Questions
If vendors can ask questions right up until submission, you'll get proposals built on wildly different assumptions about your needs - making them impossible to compare fairly. Set a clarification window, publish the Q&A to every vendor, and close it before submissions are due.
Mistake 6: Ignoring Implementation and Support in the Ask
Buyers obsess over features and quietly forget to ask about the bit that actually determines whether the project succeeds: who's doing the implementation, how long it realistically takes, and what support looks like once you're live and the sales team has moved on. Ask for named account structures and real timelines, not brochure language.
Where Rectec Fits In
A lot of this comes down to knowing what "good" looks like before you start writing - which requirements are genuinely critical for HR software, which vendors have a track record of delivering on their proposals, and how comparable systems have performed for similar businesses. Rectec's market data and vendor comparison tools help buyers build sharper, better-weighted requirement lists from the outset, and connect with vendors who've already been vetted against real client outcomes - so the RFP process starts from a stronger, more informed position rather than a blank page.
FAQs
How long should an HR software RFP be?
Long enough to cover critical requirements and real scenarios, short enough that vendors can give considered answers rather than boilerplate. Depth beats page count.
Should we send the RFP to every vendor we're considering?
Narrow the field first through initial research or a shortlist process. Sending a detailed RFP to ten vendors dilutes the quality of responses and multiplies your evaluation workload.
What's the biggest red flag in a vendor's RFP response?
Answers that restate the question back to you as a "yes" with no explanation of how. Genuine capability comes with detail; marketing comes with confidence.
Should pricing be requested in the RFP or afterward?
Ask for indicative pricing structure in the RFP - full licence tiers, implementation fees, support costs - so cost isn't a surprise late in the process, even if final numbers are negotiated later.
How do we fairly compare very different vendor responses?
Score against your pre-weighted requirements list, not against each other's format or presentation. A structured scorecard applied consistently is the only way to keep the comparison objective.