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IBM Kenexa vs iCIMS Recruit comparison

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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
6th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (12th), Talent Management (16th)
iCIMS Recruit
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 2.3%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of iCIMS Recruit is 1.5%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
iCIMS Recruit1.5%
IBM Kenexa2.3%
Other96.2%
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.
ManishGupta9 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director & CEO at Talenton Global
Centralized hiring workflows have cut time to fill and now need better automation and AI features
Implementation can be a bit lengthy and complicated, which is an area where iCIMS Recruit needs improvement. Customer support and automation are areas where iCIMS Recruit is less impressive, and they need to improve more on automation processes. Configurability could be a bit higher because some competitors might have an edge in terms of UX, recruiting workflow, modern recruiter experiences, and sourcing or CRM-oriented experiences. A native HCM is important because many times I have to integrate with different HCMs like Workday or SAP. Pricing is not very transparent, as sometimes I have to keep adding things and they keep adding more prices in terms of lower cost and faster implementation. Some user functionality can require too many steps. Customer support can be inconsistent sometimes, and I have seen some delays. The iCIMS Recruit support team does not always provide very proactive support. Implementations are usually very lengthy and they really need to improve their implementation strategy to cut down a substantial amount of time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability now to be able to take data, load it yourself, ask the business questions and get the answers on your own process with the business just made it a lot faster, and the cognitive solution gives us some insights for us to think about."
"I just think it's a good tool, with great flexibility."
"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."
"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."
"The streamlined, simplicity approach of Kenexa makes it simple for me to navigate."
"For us in particular, I love how configurable the system is; I can use the same technology for different parts of my business."
"It has definitely improved my organization by being able to help the recruiters move candidates through the interview process."
"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."
"Within a very short period, we had many job opportunities to fill with a distributed HR team, switching from emails and a fixed job board to iCIMS Recruit, which was a vastly improved and user-friendly experience."
"I would describe iCIMS Recruit as a strong enterprise ATS where the biggest value comes from scalability, configurability, and its broader integration ecosystem."
"The best feature that iCIMS Recruit offers is its customization."
"The good features of iCIMS Recruit were that it was very easy to use."
"iCIMS Recruit has impacted the organization positively because it has provided us with additional support and consistency with every recruiting process that we handle in the company, and this provides great transparency and great candidate experience in order for us to hire the best talent for the business."
"I would advise others looking into using iCIMS Recruit that it is dependable software, reliable, and does the job perfectly."
"iCIMS Recruit has positively impacted my organization as it is the main form of background processing."
"iCIMS Recruit's best features include the dashboard, the metrics, the graphs, and the link to our career portal and job postings."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would not recommend IBM Kenexa to others."
"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."
"There are tools that actually are not there where clients need them, especially the survey analytics to analyze verbatim in different languages."
"My rating is not higher because of the support, honestly; the global service center model."
"The user interface could do with an overhaul."
"It was a little rocky, as they always are, but we went live on time and that's all that matters."
"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."
"However, it is straightforward, and I guess it saves a little more time, but most of the tools out there do the same thing."
"ICIMS Recruit could be improved with better functionality, the visualization of the data functionality, the data program, the ability to see additional insights, and the interface of the data configurations could be more updated."
"One element that would have been more helpful was filtering candidates more efficiently."
"iCIMS Recruit could be improved by adding a block to explain certain things."
"In today's market, comparable to other competitors such as Ashby and Greenhouse, I would say Ashby is a 10, and if I were to compare that to iCIMS Recruit, I would say iCIMS Recruit is probably a one."
"If reporting could be more robust, that would be phenomenal."
"Recruiters have to spend too much time updating some of the information there."
"iCIMS Recruit can be improved by having easier setup, more customizable options, and easier templates that are able to be updated within the same workday instead of waiting to get confirmation for those updates to be implemented."
 

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
Outsourcing Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Construction Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
13%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iCIMS Recruit?
iCIMS is very expensive. As a smaller company, we are a small fish in a big pond to them, and all of our inquiries seem to be ignored.
What needs improvement with iCIMS Recruit?
iCIMS Recruit can be improved by adding more features in the UI. The UI is going to be very important, such as more large toggle switches. The main thing would be navigation, the UI, and how to nav...
What is your primary use case for iCIMS Recruit?
My main use case for iCIMS Recruit includes conducting background checks and eligibility checks. I do not have anything else to add about my main use case with iCIMS Recruit; it is basically just f...
 

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 IBM Kenexa vs. iCIMS Recruit and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.