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IBM Kenexa vs iCIMS Recruit 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

IBM Kenexa
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (16th), Talent Management (17th)
iCIMS Recruit
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 2.2%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of iCIMS Recruit is 1.4%, down from 2.5% 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%
iCIMS Recruit1.4%
Other96.4%
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
CC
Sr. Benefits and HRIS Analyst at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Good documentation and customization with fairly straightforward setup
If reporting could be more robust, that would be phenomenal. Any time you're obviously dumping into Excel and having to manually manipulate data it takes time. It would be great if we could do everything in the platform. They do offer some great products. I wish it was all bundled together. They have an Offer Suite you have to pay additional for, which would be great if it was included with their initial product. There are items as a system admin we should have access to change. I do believe iCIMS is working on a certificate solution, where we would be allowed to make some of those changes ourselves.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I just think it's a good tool, with great flexibility."
"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."
"Kenexa’s scalability has been great, as we can grow and expand our use no matter what and seamlessly incorporate our business process for new launches."
"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."
"BrassRing, the applicant tracking system, has brought a high level of automation, specifically for our mass-volume hourly processes."
"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."
"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."
"I think the advantage of Kenexa is the degree to which we can configure to meet our specific needs."
"Over time, I've seen them build on their platform, make improvements, enhance the user experience, and continue to gather feedback for improvement from end users."
"The solution offers good customization and good dashboards."
 

Cons

"The reporting feature currently is our biggest struggle point; getting the data we need and in the fashion that we need it is a current struggle point for us."
"The downside is it's a system that was created many, many years ago and so it just evolves."
"In the past year, there has been a significant increase in the amount of internal errors that are displayed."
"It was a little rocky, as they always are, but we went live on time and that's all that matters."
"I'm just taking over the account, so I'm still pretty new to the whole system."
"I think there is some administrative things that could be easier in terms of Workbench and streamlining that process; configuration of different things."
"The downside of Kenexa is that they're constantly reinventing, so they have constant releases with new features and upgrades. The downside of that is that they do experience fairly regular issues with stability that they're not always as quick to respond to as we'd like them to."
"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."
"If reporting could be more robust, that would be phenomenal."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

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

Also Known As

IBM Smarter Workforce, Outstart
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
NorthStar Anesthesia, Southeastern Grocers, AmTrust Financial, RPM Pizza, Hackensack Meridian Health, Esurance, Peet’s Coffee, Regis Corporation, Cedar Fair
Find out what your peers are saying about Zoho, SmartRecruiters, Bullhorn and others in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software. Updated: May 2026.
897,297 professionals have used our research since 2012.