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Greenhouse 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

Greenhouse
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
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 Greenhouse is 2.2%, down from 9.2% 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 (%)
Greenhouse2.2%
IBM Kenexa2.2%
Other95.6%
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
 

Featured Reviews

CD
Recruiter at Emerge
An affordable and easy-to-use product that is really intuitive and is one of the most stable applicant tracking systems
The product is easy to use. It's really intuitive. The things are laid out well. The search function seems to be better than other products. When I search for a name, some of the applicant tracking systems struggle to find the name, and I have to keep spelling out the entire name. Greenhouse has a better search function than other products and finds candidates quicker. I haven’t had issues with bugs. I have noticed other products freezing up or acting weird for some reason. However, Greenhouse is a solid solution. It has a really nice layout that tells us about upcoming events.
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 solution is pretty solid and stable, and I have had more issues with other ATSs than I ever did with Greenhouse."
"I think the ease of use is one of the most valuable features."
"Greenhouse has a better search function than other products and finds candidates quicker."
"It provides very good flexibility to create filters. Therefore, I can look at candidates' progress across different stages. I can also follow candidates to get updates about where they are in the cycle."
"The ease of scaling is one of BrassRing's biggest strengths, making it a trusted choice for large companies."
"I think the advantage of Kenexa is the degree to which we can configure to meet our specific needs."
"Without this solution, we would have more administrative functions and would need to hire more HR employees."
"We acquired a pharmacy retailer three years ago, and Kenexa enabled us to actually standardize our employee engagement across both of those organizations, helping us understand at an enterprise level what was going on and, most importantly, how people were starting to feel about being acquired and joining the broader company space."
"Great value and flexibility in an ATS, mainly through the automation and the configuration through Workbench you can do to manipulate the candidate experience to really be something that candidates like and allows them to apply to your site easily and put them in a pipeline for recruiters to access and move through a process and get somebody hired."
"Overall, from a recruiter's perspective, it is an excellent product and is probably one of the best recruitment products out there in terms of usability, ease of understanding, and management of large applicant pools."
"The most important features are that the instrument can be customized, that we can get important and relevant data about our employees, and the responsiveness of our client team from IBM has been phenomenal."
"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."
 

Cons

"There are dashboards that I can see, but for pending things that I have to look at, it should provide alerts."
"The biggest thing for me was that Greenhouse sucked a lot of time when we were trying to schedule, whereas Lever made it very fast and easy."
"Probably the biggest issue with Greenhouse is that the scheduling portion isn't very strong or smart."
"There are dashboards that I can see, but for pending things that I have to look at, it should provide alerts. For example, if there are 10 new people who are added to the job that I'm involved with, it should provide me with a chart or notification so that I am prompted to look at it. Currently, I have to go and look at the dashboard. There should be a little bit of intelligence to prompt action."
"If we have to schedule multiple interviews in Greenhouse, we will have to schedule them individually."
"I think there is some administrative things that could be easier in terms of Workbench and streamlining that process; configuration of different things."
"In the past year, there has been a significant increase in the amount of internal errors that are displayed."
"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."
"The price can always be better. Right now, we can only do part of that, but not as much as I want to."
"The reason I’m not rating it with five stars is because of its sheer size."
"I'm just taking over the account, so I'm still pretty new to the whole system."
"The team didn't find the reporting tool that easy to use, in terms of pulling their own data, slicing and dicing it, combining groups."
"There are tools that actually are not there where clients need them, especially the survey analytics to analyze verbatim in different languages."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is pretty affordable for startups and medium-level companies."
"The one thing I didn't like, and what caused me to move from Greenhouse, was that they wanted to bump us up almost 20% over what the previous cost was."
"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
Performing Arts
17%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
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
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Smarter Workforce, Outstart
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Zenefits, Pinerest, Airbnb Inc., BrightRoll, Vimeo LLC, Evernote
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 Greenhouse vs. IBM Kenexa and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.