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Cornerstone Recruiting vs IBM Kenexa comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cornerstone Recruiting
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Kenexa
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (13th), Talent Management (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of Cornerstone Recruiting is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Kenexa2.2%
Cornerstone Recruiting1.1%
Other96.7%
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
 

Featured Reviews

Vladimir Vasilev - PeerSpot reviewer
Digital Lead at Baker Tilly
Easy to use with great support and good reliability
We use the solution for recruiting personnel.  The application of new employees is very helpful. We're able to get all the data is easy. We can manage the whole process of recruiting very easily. The ease of use is great. Its usability is excellent.  The solution can scale well. It is stable and…
Karan Grover - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Suitable for larger-scale companies aiming to streamline and automate their processes digitally
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The configuration is flexible and offers a lot of options."
"The technical support is perfect and they're very responsive."
"Technical support has been good overall."
"Without this solution, we would have more administrative functions and would need to hire more HR employees."
"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."
"Of all the current talent analytics offerings on the market today, IBM Kenexa Talent Insights is the most comprehensive end-to-end, data-agnostic analytics tool."
"The ease of scaling is one of BrassRing's biggest strengths, making it a trusted choice for large companies."
"It is extremely user friendly. It is very flexible in managing recruitment, especially when you have thousands of applicants as we did. We easily had over 20,000 applicants within a year for some of our positions, so it made it very easy to manage a large application pool. It was very easy to customize by recruiter preference. When you open up someone's profile to see their experience, education, or other things, you can customize that for yourself. It was flexible in that, 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."
"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."
"It has definitely improved my organization by being able to help the recruiters move candidates through the interview process."
"This tool is very powerful and the ability to tweak it in order to meet desired processes and controls is valuable."
 

Cons

"For recruiting managers and administrators using the platform, the UI is not very user-friendly."
"The interface and design could be improved."
"The UI is not overly user-friendly."
"The price can always be better. Right now, we can only do part of that, but not as much as I want to."
"Improved integrations: There are all kinds of issues with integrations, hires failing."
"It was a little rocky, as they always are, but we went live on time and that's all that matters."
"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."
"Being in a silo of my own world, my wish would be that everything that's available in their legacy views would be moved into their new Talent Suite products, so we could move over to that."
"The user interface could do with an overhaul."
"I would like to have a better and more user-friendly interface."
"In the past year, there has been a significant increase in the amount of internal errors that are displayed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Kenexa was fairly priced. However, in 2019, before I left my previous organization, they significantly increased their pricing. It can be affordable, but their pricing is going up. It is not just licensing; it is how many applicants you have in your system on the database side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
17%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise28
 

Also Known As

Cornerstone Recruiting Suite
IBM Smarter Workforce, Outstart
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

New Belgium Brewing, Grote, PGL, RSM, Lookers
Sweet Spot International (SSI), Leo Burnett Worldwide (LBW), Sika AG, Legacy Health, Apollo Group Inc., Regeneron, Transurban Group, National Health Service, New Zealand Police, Overland Footwear, Yealands, Johnson Controls, Allscripts, Kerry Foods, Masterpet, AMD, Balfour Beatty
Find out what your peers are saying about Cornerstone Recruiting vs. IBM Kenexa and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.