IBM Kenexa Reviews

I used IBM Kenexa BrassRing for a number of years. It is a cloud-based system that helps manage the recruitment process. With BrassRing, we could easily keep track of job applicants, right from when they applied to when we hired them. One convenient feature is that it lets you integrate it with your other systems using single sign-on, making everything accessible in one place. We used it for all our international hiring needs outside of India and China. While BrassRing allowed us to customize our recruitment process to suit our needs, it has limited built-in connections to other systems, so if you need more advanced integrations, it often requires expensive custom development.

Using BrassRing was helpful because it made our processes more digital, which is important nowadays. IBM, in the beginning, provided great support and showed us how to connect with other tools, which was valuable. But recently, since the ownership changed, it hasn't been as innovative, causing some clients to look for better, more modern options.

The most valuable features of BrassRing are its ability to keep us compliant with local laws and its organized structure. It is great at making sure we follow all the rules in the places we hire, which is very important. The way it is set up, with requisitions and HR, just makes sense and works well, especially for big companies.

BrassRing needs improvement in a few areas. First, it should update how it tracks where candidates come from and avoid duplicate entries. Right now, it is not very flexible. Also, its way of making reports feels old-fashioned. It would be better if it could make reports with graphs and charts more easily from our questions. When it was with IBM, it had plans for innovation, but it seems that's not happening with the current company. So, it needs to update its reporting and analytics tools.

I have used IBM Kenexa BrassRing for eight years.

Despite its limitations, BrassRing is a reliable tool, especially for big organizations like ours. When we had problems, we found ways to make it work, even if it wasn't perfect. It is a system we can trust, and we rarely had downtime or issues during my eight to nine years using it. BrassRing's team always lets us know ahead of time if there is planned maintenance. In short, BrassRing has been dependable and useful.

Scalability with BrassRing is excellent. We began with just the US and expanded to over 32 countries. The ease of scaling is one of BrassRing's biggest strengths, making it a trusted choice for large companies. When I left the company, over 2,000 people were using BrassRing for different tasks. This included recruiters, hiring managers, approval teams, delivery staff, people from various countries and departments, HR, and onboarding teams. It was a widely used tool across the organization.

At first, when BrassRing was with IBM, their technical support was great, a four point five out of five. However, after the change of ownership, their support became less proactive. They started addressing problems only when they came up, rather than being ahead of the game. They still did their job, but the proactiveness dropped. I would rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Before switching to BrassRing, my previous company used SAP E-Recruiting.

The deployment of the solution took between six to eight months. When we introduced BrassRing at my company, we encountered several challenges. First, moving data from our old system to BrassRing was tough because it needed reformatting. Second, connecting BrassRing with our HR data was tricky due to manual processes for roles and departments. Third, setting up the workflow in BrassRing was complex. Fourth, configuring user access and approval levels was a detailed task. We also had to manage the change process, including running both old and new systems in parallel, communicating changes, and training users. Lastly, monitoring and reporting were needed to ensure data accuracy and proper system usage once everything was in place. We had a team of six to eight people managing the project from our side during the BrassRing deployment. I'm not sure about the size of the BrassRing team, and we also had our own technical team, which had three to four members. The solution required maintenance, particularly from my side as the administrator. Maintenance responsibilities were divided into two parts: some tasks we, as end-users, could control, while others were the responsibility of the BrassRing team. Payment-related tasks were a regular part of our responsibilities. I wasn't the only person maintaining the solution. There were three power users from Infosys, each responsible for a specific geography. My counterpart managed it in the US, and I, along with my colleague in India, managed it for other geographies.

We have seen a return on investment from using BrassRing, especially considering the scale of our operations. The number of hires made through BrassRing and the compliance requirements it helped us meet have contributed to a positive return on investment.

As a large company, we first bought the complete BrassRing package, which had various features. Later on, we paid extra for specific features like customer test management. When we integrated with third-party systems, it often came with additional costs. Simple integrations, like posting jobs on LinkedIn or Glassdoor, were free, but if we needed more complex integrations that shared candidate information between different systems, we had to pay extra charges. It is definitely a cost-effective solution. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of costliness.

After evaluating several options, including BrassRing and Taleo, BrassRing was chosen because it offered the best balance of cost-effectiveness and compliance. While the other system matched compliance requirements, it was deemed too expensive in comparison to BrassRing, which made it a cost-effective choice while still meeting compliance needs.

My advice to people who are considering implementing BrassRing is to assess your company's needs. If you are a larger-scale company aiming to streamline and automate your processes digitally, BrassRing can work well for you. However, if you are seeking innovation and more advanced features, there may be better products available on the market. Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten.

IBM Kenexa has a lot of room for improvement. The solution is not advancing anymore in terms of the user experience and in the workflows. It's pretty outdated right now.

We won't be expecting any further enhancements because we won't be investing in the solution anymore.

I have been using IBM Kenexa for more than 10 years. 

IBM Kenexa is fairly stable. We don't have any downtime.

I'm not sure whether or not IBM Kenexa is scalable. 

IBM Kenexa has poor tech support. 

I wasn't involved in the initial setup because it happened 10 years ago. However, I believe it is fairly straightforward.

The solution was deployed with the help of IBM. 

I'm not sure about the license cost. We have a yearly subscription.

I would not recommend IBM Kenexa to others. On a scale of one to 10, with one being the best and 10 being the worst, I would give IBM Kenexa a three. 

We are using IBM Kenexa for onboarding employees.

It reduces the amount of time it takes to share drives and search for a person. It is quicker joining documents when you can just put in a person's name and find the entire onboarding history and recruitment options. 

That makes it easy because it's all centralized, it's easy to download and navigate.

The most valuable features are that we can upload documents and download them on demand. This is very useful. It could be joining documents, or employment screening, or your employment history. 

It's easy enough to upload, find, and retrieve whatever you are looking for.

It does not synchronize well with other ERP tools, such as SuccessFactors or Workday.

I would like to have a better and more user-friendly interface. It needs to be a bit more intuitive. It's not as intuitive as SuccessFactors.

In the next release, I would like to see a better user interface, better speed, and a bit more customization without having to reach out to IBM.

It is quite stable. There have only been a few IT downtimes. 

Also, it is quite dependent upon how SAP functions. 

It is more or less stable most of the time and in general, I do not have any problems with stability.

It's pretty scalable. It's currently onboard deployment.

As long as you have the server capacity, it's scalable.

My current team supports approximately 20,000 employees. The data for approximately 20,000 employees is uploaded on it, year on year 20,000 to 25,000 a year. We also have 35 people who are active administrators on any given day.

At this moment, we do not have plans to increase our usage because our hiring has come down due to the COVID. There are no current expansion plans, at least until the middle of 2021 maybe 2022, given the current trend.

Technical support has been fantastic. Anything that we raise is generally resolved in 24 hours. 

Complicated issues might take a while, but we haven't had many or even any in the last year.

I have not used another solution prior to IBM Kenexa. I have been using Kenexa for a while.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The deployment was done in-house.

This solution requires maintenance. We have a team that is designated to maintain this it.

I would recommend this solution to others, but I would say make sure that you have the basic infrastructure and training for the people. It's essential.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We used Kenexa BrassRing as our recruitment database, where we received all applicants. We also used it to run compliance reporting based on our applicants. When you are a large employer, certain reports are required if you are federal contractor, such as, affirmative action plans. However, we did utilize it's onbaording capabilities. 

1. Very easy to use, flexible, customizable UI for recruiters.
2. eLinks feature allows recruiters to easily share candidate resumes and covers letter with Hiring Managers via email. Hiring Managers did not require a login, so doesn't cut into user costs

It is extremely user friendly. It is very flexible in managing recruitment, especially when you have thousands of applicants as we did. On average, we had over 20,000 applicants each year, and Kenexa Brassring made it easier to manage a large application pools. 

It was very easy to customize by recruiter preference. Each recruiter has the options to customize their own view, which personalizes the recruitment experience. We really liked that is was flexible in and each recruiter could set up their preferences. It didn't have to be set up so that everyone had to have the same landing platform, which was very helpful. As someone who trained other HR people on how to use the system, it was very easy to pick up and learn.

The reporting tool is helpful, but it is not as user friendly at the recruitment tool. 

Their Workbench site, which is the administrator site that you use to update your website, is not user-friendly. When updates are required, it is not easy to manage, mostly because Workbench is not user friendly. Their virtual Workbench training was lengthy (about 8 hours) and ultimately did not help end users become pros at using Workbench. 

The last time I used it was in 2019. It was the SaaS version.

It was very stable. We rarely had outages with Kenexa Brassring.

It is easily scalable, it is owned by IBM which is a global organization. I would guess they could scale anything. We had about 15 to 20 people in HR using Kenexa, and while hiring, managers did not have login access to Kenexa Brassring, we could easily share applicants and they could provide feedback without ever logging in. 

Technical support was not always great. They tend to push you towards workbench admins or paid support. 

It was already set-up prior to my arrival on the job. Kenexa launched the updated UI platform in 2019, which required me as the admin and Workbench user to go in and make decisions on what the website would look like while updating our applications. 

It does require maintenance on occasion, especially if you need to make updates to applications, which sometimes maybe required if there are changes in the law, for example. 

Kenexa Brassring was fairly priced. However, they recently increased their rates significantly. I believe the pricing was based on licensing and how large the database was. 

Overall, from a recruiter's perspective, it is an excellent product. It is probably one of the best recruitment products out there in terms of usability, ease of understanding, and management of large applicant pools. However, the person who is trained on the backend to manage the site should likely be maybe more of an IT person with an understanding of managing websites from a backend perspective. Although Kenexa  Brassring tries to make it easy by using an easy-to-understand language, it is still very complex if you are not experienced.

I would rate IBM Kenexa Brassring a seven out of ten overall.

We chose Kenexa for a number of reasons. One was because of the science that sits behind our survey approach. What we liked specifically was the high-performance engagement model and then, over the course of the relationship, in helping us to understand much more than we've ever done before, the relationship between emotional engagement and rational engagement. This is where behavioral science and business psychology is really starting to play a much more important role in Lloyd's in helping us to be able to ask the right questions in the right way through the right channels.

Using Kenexa and the conversations I think that we have now had, we have focused and worked really hard with the team in London. They've been great. I think what they've done as well is they've really challenged the thinking. What we've benefited from is having a partner who challenges us, who is not afraid to call out stuff.

Basically you want a partner who makes you think. We don't need a partner who delivers surveys. There are numerous companies out there, suppliers, that will run a survey for us. It's about the ability for a partner to make a bank as complex and large as ours to really take stock and think about what it is we want, where it is we're going, and the progress we're making. I think that's really what we get from the IBM team.

Looking at IBM, it's working really well at the moment and we're just about to embark on another kind of agreement or contract with them as well that will take us up until the time at which the workplace would have changed again. It's right that we've got in place that kind of short-term contract as well. I think it keeps us and IBM on our toes in terms of making sure that we've got the best possible partner for where we are in our journey, but also understanding where we want to get to. I think IBM has taken a lot of time to really understand Lloyd's in a way that other providers possibly wouldn't have. We really, really value that.

In terms of where it can improve, as of late summer 2016, we had two large surveys running at the moment. We've got a culture survey, which we introduced in 2014, which enables us to be able to assess and measure company culture to the extent to which an individual is connected to the purpose, vision and values of the group. It's a big survey. It's almost like what you compare with an annual company-wide survey. Later in the autumn, we were about to launch our engagement survey back in the UK. That's also another big event as well. I think the challenge for us as well is that we know that the external market is changing. If we think about what's happening from a consumer or customer experience, we see that they are getting feedback at the moment. There's constant feedback, constant dialogue, and there's more transparency around the data.

The organizations are then having to respond back whether it be through social, through mobile or some other form of giving back, giving feedback or giving a response back as well. I think we've got these two main vehicles in our organization. I think they work really well. Where we need IBM's help is to understand. We don't need to identify. We understand the value of social, mobile and now cognitive. It's been really important for me to hear over the last few days what the era of cognitive will now look like; what are the opportunities that are now opening up for us.
I think the challenge for me is that we've got to use social more. We've got to use mobile more, but I need it to be connected. I think this is a challenge for IBM. These tools and products and solutions are great, but I think from a partner's perspective, we've got to make sure that we have that connected view because what we don't want to do is introduce, get more into the ecosystem. What I want to be able to do is look at what I've got so far, understand how I can move from data to insight, and I think I'm kind of getting there, but it's now from insight to answering the 'so what' questions that I get asked all the time. For me, it's about deriving even more value from what I've got already and then to be able to connect social, mobile and somewhere in there, build cognitive into it into creating a kind of connected environment which enables me to do data, analysis and insights in a more transformational way.

I argue that we're doing that already, but I think we've got loads more to do. Where I'm looking is, for example, retailers; how they work and the extent to which retailers know about their customers and their customer behaviors. It comes back to the science behind it as well. I'd argue that they are light years ahead. I get a real sense of frustration when you see the kind of customer insight teams and what they can do and then you look at the colleague insights teams, which I'm leading on as well, and seeing there's a gap and we need to close that gap. What I don't need are more solutions. What I need is more of a connected view and have an ecosystem that enables me to be able to measure the colleague experience at the key moments of truth, but to join those dots up to then answer the 'so what' stuff.

We took a decision in 2011 following the appointment of the new CEO, to take a step back from what we were always doing. At that point, we had a survey in place which was deemed to be more of an HR instrument. It was 13 questions and the feedback that we got from the business was that they bore very little resemblance to the strategy that we were trying to operate as a group. You had this kind of disconnect between a series of HR-related type questions and a business strategy. In 2011, following the CEO's appointment, we took a decision to stop doing that. We'd run it on a quarterly basis, so we were very good at running surveys and getting good response rates, but the challenge was how can we close the gap between the survey instrument that we had and the business strategy.

What we decided to do is - at the time the CEO was appointed, he undertook a group strategic review, and what that enabled us to do is - to identify the key questions that would help us to measure the progress that we're making in developing and embedding and delivering on the group strategy. That's where we saw our fundamental change. At that point, we went into the market. What we were also keen to do is to move the focus of the survey from being an HR instrument to being a business instrument and providing the business with real intelligence and helping it to drive up performance and deliver better outcomes for our customers.

As a result of that, we worked very closely with Kenexa.

When we first moved to Kenexa in 2011, at that point they were Kenexa and there was a certain type of culture and a way of working. I think since then, they're coming together with IBM. We've seen that at our own organization as well. You see the culture change, but for us I think it's going to change for the better. I think what we're now seeing is the ability to be able to look at IBM, who are a much bigger organization who are offering us the leadership and the insights that we never had before. It enables us to share that information with leaders, line managers, and HR professionals, all of whom are learning from a partner as well. That's a real benefit for us as well. That's where it's working very well.

From a survey perspective as well, obviously, learning the survey on day one, when we launch it, that's the moment of truth. Colleagues, leaders, line managers, even HR professionals would not be aware of the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes in order to be able to get to that day. I'm pleased to say that on every single occasion, we've been able to land the survey in the right way at the right time. It's been an increasingly positive experience for colleagues as well, and that's reflected in the huge amount of people, typically one out of five people in our organization of 80,000, are responding on day one. I think that's testament to the work that goes on behind the scenes.

For that to happen, you've got to have good project managers. I think what we've found over the last few years, since being with Kenexa, is a really strong project management team. They work with us very closely, we're having regular calls with them, regular meetings, specifically about the projects. I want to have an ongoing dialogue with IBM. For me, that's very different to the conversations we need to have with the project team. We have been working with the project managers, who have done a brilliant job in really getting to know us and to know how we work. The PM may have a project plan of 10 or 100 actions, but understanding the time it takes us to turn things around in our own organization as well has been really important. That's been very good. If there have been any issues, not with the downtime, but in terms of the project management, IBM have been willing to have an open conversation about what we can do to improve it.

For example, in my team, the number of people isn't increasing. The amount of work that we've got, however, is. We need to be much more efficient and much more effective in how we're delivering these. One of our ambitions is to run more research and to have more continuous-listening type dialogues with the business. If we spend that amount of time and use all our resources focusing on these huge surveys that we have in the organization, we're going to leave ourselves with little or no time to really focus on building that continuous listening program out into the wider business. We're constantly looking at how we can make the process, how we can make the project management, more efficient. IBM and the Kenexa team have done a brilliant job in helping us to do that.

Since 2011, we've never had an issue with scalability. We have been able to survey. At the time we first used Kenexa to run the group survey in 2011, we had an audience of around 110,000 people. We ran it in 4 different languages. We did that across 32 different countries. Now, as the strategy has changed to become more UK-centric, the number of countries has reduced significantly from 32 down to 6. We've also seen the number of languages that we use reduce, as well, based on the information and insight that we get back from IBM, helping us to simplify the way that we do colleague research in Lloyd's. So, scalability has never been a problem.

Interesting to me as well is that they work very well with us in terms of producing the group outputs, which obviously is really important for our CEO and his team and the board. Equally important is the individual report that goes to the local line manager as well. I would say scalability works both ways. In terms of running a survey across a group as complex and large as ours made up of multi-brands, across several different locations, different businesses with different cultures of their own, it's worked really well. Equally, the local line manager who's interested in receiving his or her report absolutely get that on the day that we promise it to them.

Technical support is interesting. Like many organizations, we've found value in looking at structured and unstructured data. Over the past few years, we've been increasingly using open-ended questions to collect the base comments. We've been quite successful at it as well, to the point where we have received 67,000 or even 80,000 comments, as well. We get those comments, which is great. What we've been doing over the last few years, as we see an increasing number of comments coming through, we're having to think differently about how we're going to analyze all this information and remove the bias and the personal interpretation out of the process to really get to the insight.

Up until last year, we basically pulled together a group of willing HR graduates to work with us for a certain period. We got some fantastic insights. What that showed us is the power of really looking at this data in a different way, not just allowing 80,000 comments to kind of go out and dissolve into the business because you'll never really understand the collective value and insight that can provide.

What we've been doing over the last 2 or 3 cycles is to use the verbatim analysis tool. It's still a learning process for us as well. What we have found is the ability to be able to analyze the data in no time. If we're asked a specific question, and what we've found as well is that the more specific the question can be, the better the outputs from the survey tool. We are now at a point where we don't use any extra resource.

We don't use anything at all so we've been able to stand those HR graduates down from the process. We can stand leaders and line managers who are enabled to read all their comments. What we get is, what are the questions you want to answer out of the structured data? We'll go down the structured data and find out the answer. What we're doing increasingly is linking them together. How do people feel through the numbers they give us? What is it they think and say in terms of the words? Drawing that together has been incredibly powerful for us.

We had used another survey provider, a great survey provider, Willis Tales Watsons. We'd used them for several years and they provided an excellent service to us as well. In 2011, with the appointment of a new CEO, with a slightly different focus, with a very clear vision of becoming the best bank for customers, with a very clear strategy and a series of values, it just kind of opened up our minds to saying, "We need to think about science, so we need to think about engagement or research in a much more scientific way than we've done before." Therefore, and it was not a decision that we took very lightly, we really challenged ourselves to make sure that we got the right partner. That was a change as well.

For us, I think in the past, so many organizations you speak to today, have got a supplier relationship going with someone. This is what we want. I think with a partnership, it enables us to be able to develop a two-way dialogue. A survey partner, whether it's IBM today or another provider in the future, that really challenges the way we think about, the way we conduct research. However many surveys we run, whether we go out to new joiners, whether we go out to leavers or somewhere in between, we've just got to make sure we've got a survey, a really robust process, and we go out and ask the right questions to really get the truth.

What you want is for people to be open and honest. You want the truth and you want to be able to understand the reality of what it looks like and what it feels like to work in an organization.

I was involved in the setup. As part of that relationship as well, I was really keen for us not to agree to a long-term contract or a long-term relationship without really understanding what the benefit and value was to Lloyd's. What we decided to do is to put in place an agreement for a period of time. What that enabled me to do is to take stock again. I think what one thing that we've maybe struggled with in the past is the ability to challenge the provider or the partner to say what you're going to do for us now, because we got into a cycle with a previous provider where it was working well, but I think what we wanted to do with this relationship with Kenexa is to push it harder. We knew we had to go harder and faster than before and to be much more dynamic as well. We wanted that science element. There were lots of different facets, so we decided on a short-term arrangement which would be regularly reviewed. We've kept that kind of approach alive today, and it's working well.

I think what's working well for Lloyd's Banking Group is that we get the opportunity to regularly look around the external market to see what's out there. It's a changing marketplace and there are some great providers out there with some great tools. We're constantly speaking and talking to other providers to understand what the emerging trends are out there. At the same time, we want to be able to have good, honest conversations with Kenexa and IBM about where we want to take this in the future and really challenge them, but at the same time allowing them to challenge us and our thinking as well. It works as a partnership and hopefully it will continue for some time to come. At the same time, we've got in place now another agreement for several years, but again we'll be looking both now and also in the future to make sure that the partnership is still the right partnership for Lloyd's Banking Group. I think that's important.

The implementation or the transfer from one provider to another, I think the providers did a brilliant job. If we moved from one provider today to another tomorrow, I think they'd do an excellent job. I think they are getting better at being able to take on new clients and to help them make that transition. We're a large organization and a very complex organization as well. At the time of moving across to IBM, to Kenexa at the time, we were also going through a huge transformation program of bringing together two large banks, which added to the complexity as well.

Within the group, it is complex, and I think we needed a strong partner who really understood us, understood where we were in our own journey and then helping us with our stakeholders to make sure that we put in place the right building blocks to create a great experience for colleagues come the day the survey goes live, which, for us, is always the key moment of truth.

We are a large, complex organization. First and foremost, I think in terms of identifying the right vendor for us, it's a vendor that has the availability and the ability to be able to operate in that environment. It's not just one size fits all and so understanding how a large organization works is really important. Kenexa were able to do that in the discussions we had with them. That's number one.

Their ability to work with us and to develop an efficient and effective process, is also important. We don't have huge amounts of resources to be able to run this, so what we're looking for is an organization that understands us and is willing to work with us as well. We need an organization that's very structured, that's strong on project management, that's strong on stakeholder engagement, that understands the IT environment in which we operate as much as them and understanding and providing workarounds so that the colleague experience, the leader or line manager experience is the best it can possibly be. They're typically the kind of criteria that we're looking at. It's about understanding us not as a client but as a partner. That's what really came through in the conversations we've been having with the IBM team recently.

It's part of the formal tenure process. We would've considered several different providers and both the large players that all of us, the suppliers that you would typically expect a large bank such as Lloyd's Banking Group to consider, but also a number of players that were slightly new to the market as well because everyone comes with a different model. It was understanding at that point in time which is the right model for us and the high-performance engagement model and the kind of connection between emotional engagement and rational engagement made it a very difficult decision for us, but in the end it was the right decision for the group.

When I'm speaking to my peers and other organizations, what's interesting is that I get asked, "Can I see a copy of your survey questions?" As if that's the absolute answer that they kind of need. I always challenge them to say, "Well, not really. I don't really see that you're going to get much value from that. It's not about designing the perfect question. For us, you take a step back. It's, what do you want to know? The questions that I've got in my organization are aligned to my strategy, my objectives, my purpose, my vision and my values. They may or may not be right and relevant for your business."

What I would say first of all is, understand the framework in which you're going to operate, how are you going to construct and design research that's relevant for you? There's no perfect answer. I don't think there's another company out there that's got my perfect survey. I think I've got it within our team and my business to be able to develop that. What IBM bring is the framework, so that the high-performance engagement model is really important and the tools that help us to understand the relationship between emotional and rational engagement are really important, a portal that enables line managers to prepare for the conversations they're having with colleagues that provide sample action sets and focus existing questions.

On the one hand, they encourage the conversation. Secondly, they help drive the right actions in the right way. I think having a framework is about applying the science, but most importantly it's about developing an approach that absolutely supports your strategy and your business objectives. That would be my biggest advice. Talk to another person, another company tomorrow, it would be, "Where's your strategy? Where's your vision? Where are your values? What behaviors underpin them? Right, let's get to work. We've got a high-performance engagement model. We've got the relationship." Who's to say that Kenexa or IBM are right for them? I think whatever your strategy, you'll need to find the partner that best reflects where you are in your journey and can help you as well.

As I said, IBM are doing a great job with us at the moment, but we're always looking and speaking and open to having conversations with other people because the market's changing and IBM are aware of that. It's an increasingly competitive market, particularly as the solutions become more technology-focused.

I think in the past, the relationship organizations had with survey partners or research partners would be based more around the relationship you have with that particular team, but now it's much more in the solutions. It's the same as banking. The banking industry or the banking sector has got new and emerging players. People in our space now, with Apple Pay and PayPal, they're not typically what you would kind of call the traditional banks. I think the same is going to happen in the survey space as well. I think you're going to see new and emerging players who have got better, stronger technology solutions and that's what I'm really excited about as well because that's going to push IBM and Kenexa. It's going to push others as well. More importantly, it's going to open up spaces for me to play in. It's going to help me get from that analysis to insight to the so what much quicker.

I like how we can copy a req as we have many duplicates. That saved a lot of time when opening reqs.

I felt like we could have customized it better for our business.

I have used Kenexa for two years.

Here and there we did have stability issues.

There were functions we couldn't customize and needed to.

I would give technical support a rating of 7/10.

We used ATS and switched to Kenexa to update to a web interface. Our company then switched to Taleo. We are switching to Workday.

The setup was straightforward. I liked how we had teams and everyone could help build out product.

Customize as much as you can upfront, as it would be worth it in the long run to have what you need now, instead of waiting or trying to get that later.

We looked at PeopleSoft.

Customize it and then it is a good product.

I'm just taking over the account, so I'm still pretty new to the whole system. I would say the support that we get from the CSMs is the most valuable for me right now, because I'm still leaning on them pretty heavily to understand everything that I'm doing within the system.

I haven't dealt with it that long, but the obvious improvement is that the Applicant Tracking System has provided us a system to provide a better candidate experience as opposed to other systems. However, I'm not really sure regarding long-term impact, because I haven't been working with it for very long.

We're still on a pretty old version of it. I'm looking forward to using the mobile - the Responsive Apply – and upgrading to the Talent Suite. I think that's what I'm looking forward to mostly. I’m unable to really comment further without actually trying that out first, because that's mostly what we're aiming towards: getting that Responsive Apply, some of those more mobile friendly options.

It seems stable. I don't have any concerns about it.

I think it definitely has the potential to scale to more offerings and a larger scale within our business.

Technical support has been pretty responsive. It's been helpful.

Definitely get onboard with the newest released versions, to stay current with all the different offerings.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are data security and ease of contracting. Those are our two big pain points.

My rating reflects the fact that I am still learning about the system and what it's capable of doing.

It has the ability to manage international postings. You can also move the candidate through the selection process. Kenexa does an extremely adequate job with this.

It allowed for truly global listing for all open positions. That is about it.

There are tremendous opportunities for improvement. Unfortunately, it would require a total scrapping of the existing system and completely building a new system from the ground up. Kenexa BrassRing (2xB) is a completely mediocre system that does an outstanding job of being completely average at doing all the basic applicant tracking activities. If you want cutting edge 1997 technology, then 2xB is definitely the tool you're looking for.

Configuring 2xB is painfully difficult. Changing the initial setup is even more difficult after you go live. Customer support is some of the worst I've ever encountered. In some ways, it is like a case study in how to provide world-class terrible, awful, slow customer and technical support.

I have been using it for three years.

The product was so fussy to make any changes that we tried not to do anything different. Clearly this isn't a great way to support a business. I was not around for the implementation, but I had to deal with the outcome. Unfortunately, the system was slammed in without much thought to, well, anything. Cleaning up this mess was so difficult, it took weeks to get anything changed or modified, even for the simplest stuff. It was easier to live with what we had and work around it than it was to change it.

Terrible, but not just terrible. World-class terrible. Truly the worst I've ever had to work with. It felt like someone knew exactly how to provide world-class customer service and purposely did the opposite. It felt like this was an experiment to see how much abuse and frustration their customers could take. My poor contact was stuck with way too many clients to support. He was put in a position where he had to rely on other Kenexa team members to do anything... and they were awful about responding to him. (I don't know why he didn't quit; it was such an awful job and position to be in.) This meant that it took WEEKS and MONTHS to get anything done. It is the WORST customer service I have ever dealt with in any vendor, either in my personal or professional life. Kenexa is the primary factor for leaving my previous employer and working for another company that does not use Kenexa.

2xB is extremely complex and convoluted to set up. I joined the company after the implementation of 2xB. I had to live with the consequence of that implementation. From that perspective, 2xB was an admin nightmare. Their Benchmark tool required specialized training at significant cost. Documentation is spotty and filled with gaps. The Benchmark tool was not designed for customers. It was for developers, so there are fields and functionality in locations in the tool that don't make any sense as an Admin user. I would have to jump to three or four screens to do something simple. Even after the training, I only had 80% access to the configuration. The 20% required working with the account management / tech support contact (which was difficult, at best). Simple changes became month-long projects. Glitches happened where it would take weeks to sort out. It was generally one hot mess after another.

I did have the misfortune of trying to implement a garbage piece of software called BrassRing Onboarding or 2xO. 2xO was created by brain-damaged monkeys in front of keyboards. It was so buggy, so inflexible, so difficult to configure and so unfriendly to the candidate that it was literally faster to have the candidate fill out a piece of paper (not a PDF...paper) and mail it back to us than it was to use 2xO. IBM did virtually no development around this tool. It was an orphaned product that no one wanted... including any customer who tried to work with the product. Truly atrocious customer support did not help either. 2xO wins the award for WORST applicant tracking software of all time. 2xO should be and is an embarrassment for IBM. IBM should refund every dime and profusely apologize to any customer every laid eyes on this piece of... well, I'll keep this professional.

An in-house team implemented it; however, it would not have mattered what was done. There is no way to fundamentally be successful implementing technology that is this fundamentally flawed. It is not designed for today's recruiting world. My advice: Don't buy or implement Kenexa. If you have bought this product, you have made a horrific choice and you should cut your losses now and start over. BrassRing 2xB is the equivalent of the rotary-dial telephone in the age of smartphones.

Don't buy Kenexa, even if it is offered to you for free. There is no return that will ever justify the cost of purchasing, implementing and the ongoing support required to use Kenexa.

I was not part of the selection committee that picked Kenexa; I used Kenexa after it was selected and implemented. However, I have selected and/or used iCIMS, Taleo Enterprise, Taleo Business Edition and Deltek Talent Management. iCIMS by far was the best ATS I've used and should be the one to seriously consider. iCIMS is reasonably priced, provides great customer support and stays up with technology (especially the social media tool). There are many, many, many other applicant tracking/talent management tools that are better priced, have more functionality, cutting-edge technology, provided better customer service and really streamline and positively transform recruiting. Kenexa fails on all these areas.

DON'T BUY KENEXA. Literally any other applicant tracking solution is better. Well, one exception. I would encourage my competitors to use Kenexa. Diverting my competitor to burn up time, money and resources with no return on all this effort would give my company a competitive advantage. That would be the only scenario I would encourage to use Kenexa.

We're using a couple of programs from IBM Kenexa. We are running the annual survey with IBM Kenexa. We use the Viewpoint Platform. For the Viewpoint Platform, we have the OrgMapper, which is extremely helpful to actually be able to copy our internal HR data on OrgMapper to reflect the same setup.

The most valuable feature of the survey is that it's a link we can use. We can share the link with all of our managers. Managers can use the link 24/7, so we don't have to support the managers and it actually frees up the time for HR and the support to be able to do other more useful things for the managers, instead of just copying reports and sending reports.

We are much faster delivering the reports. We are able to do different analysis on the verbatims with the survey analytics tool. We use the Viewpoint and that is an absolutely powerful tool; it is extremely helpful to get more insights, and to start a conversation with our employees to grow and improve.

There are tools that actually are not there where clients need them, especially the survey analytics to analyze verbatim in different languages. We survey in 14 different languages and analyzing the verbatim other than English is not possible and that is a downside for us, absolutely. I would like them to offer that in more languages. Especially those at the global companies need that.

The stability of the tool is okay. We didn't have major issues.

I have not used technical support.

We had regional and local surveys, but there was a decision made to get global surveys and then we were looking for vendor.

At the beginning, initial setup was complex. We had to learn. We are in contact with Kenexa since 2008 and working with them since then.

There were other vendors, but I don't want to provide details. The main reason we choose Kenexa in the past was the big benchmark data they had.

In general, when selecting a vendor to work with, the most important criteria for me is for them to understand what I want, the strategy, to actually deliver what they promise, and to be a partner – not vendor/client but partner.

Be open about what you want; be straightforward and challenge.

In my opinion, the reporting tool and configuration features provide a better customized solution in regards to applicant tracking.

This tool is very powerful and the ability to tweak it in order to meet desired processes and controls is valuable. We could get data on recruiting and effectively utilize it to make business decisions. Furthermore, we could comply with regulations owing to the right controls within this tool.

The user interface could do with an overhaul. Also, some screens that are not configurable should be opened to clients for customization.

I have used it for almost two years.

Rarely any stability issues were encountered. There were a few minor issues from time to time but overall this product is fairly reliable.

We did not encounter any scalability issues.

Technical support is required for configurations but integrations with other tools would need a technical resource. Most tasks can be accomplished within the user interface with a little training. IBM provides a lot of support for this as well.

We had used KRE, the other ATS offering from Kenexa before BrassRing and switched to this tool for better functionality.

Initial setup was complex because BrassRIng is quite flexible. Essentially, it required a lot of decision making such as drawing on a blank slate.

We went through a RFP process. However, I do not have details on which vendors were evaluated.

There is a need to have a dedicated resource for maintenance and training. The tool is configurable but can also get complex to understand, depending on how the recruiting process is designed.