We performed a comparison between IBM Kenexa and SmartRecruiters based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable features are that we can upload documents and download them on demand."
"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."
"IBM Kenexa is fairly stable. We don't have any downtime."
"SmartRecruiters is a candidate management system or ATS system that we use for recruitment purposes."
"I found the core product quite useful. It is easy to use and quite user-friendly. They have also got other options, such as CRM and HRS. They have other versions such as smart distribute, which is an HRS type of system to analyze and get permissions needed from the applicants. In terms of pricing, SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors."
"The candidate experience was better because the whole process was there."
"It has a lot of good features. We post all of our jobs through the system, and they have a marketplace where you can share the job post with the job boards they're working with. It is integrated with all the records about from where the applications are coming. We have all of our candidates gathered there. We can set up our own hiring processes depending on the type of job and then move them through the process there. It is also possible to involve hiring managers and give them access so that they can also track the candidates and have a look at TBE and interact in the system, which is very useful. We also use SmartRecruiters for job approvals before posting the job as well as for offer approvals before sending an offer. We have everything in the system itself, and everything is being tracked, which is very good for us. It is a reliable system, and you can use it for the full cycle of recruitment. You can really adapt it to your processes. When it comes to the configuration, it is easy to configure. Something that is good with SmartRecruiters is that they are always working on improvements. Every quarter, they have different enhancements or product releases, which is something that we appreciate."
"What I really like about it is that it feels minimal, but is also dynamic. There aren't a lot of ways to get lost, which is good."
"With just a click of a button, we can manage the process. Even generating offer letters and obtaining electronic signatures through DocSign are integrated into this application."
"The most valuable feature is the way that they've set it up for collaboration."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that amongst all the other ATS platforms that I have used, SmartRecruiters is the most user-friendly tool."
"It needs to update its reporting and analytics tools."
"The reporting tool is helpful, but it is not the easiest to train on or is not as understandable for other HR pros. 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 that easy to manage because Workbench is not user friendly. It required more work from the admins. They have Workbench training, which actually was very unhelpful. It took eight hours to complete, and it was not very helpful. Their customer service when it comes specifically to their Workbench site is not helpful."
"I would like to have a better and more user-friendly interface."
"I would not recommend IBM Kenexa to others."
"SmartRecruiters' on-click application process could be better."
"One of the areas that we would like them to improve is the self-scheduling feature. They have a self-scheduling feature that can be made a little bit more automated when it comes to scheduling. We are trying to use it, but it doesn't feel very user-friendly. This is something that could be improved. They have launched WhatsApp connections in the system, where instead of sending emails, you can WhatsApp candidates directly from the system, but currently, it mainly works in a few countries. Spain, where I'm based, is not one of them. If we use the system, the phone number for the candidates would be from the UK, and we don't think that would be the best. This feature is good for some countries, but not for all at the moment. It was first launched in the USA and then in a couple of countries in Europe. It is not yet launched fully in Europe. Reporting is always something that can be improved. Even though it is working well for us, its reporting can be better. Currently, it is a little bit complicated when it comes to reporting. It has a few pre-made reports that are easy to access, but if you want more details, you need to build your own reports. In order to do that, it is a bit tricky to learn and understand how it works. Even though you have help agents and support for help, it takes some time to learn, but it is not impossible. We have very recently made some integrations with Tableau. We are building dashboards in Tableau where we can get daily updated reports, and they are definitely helpful. That's something we would recommend. SmartRecruiters has recently implemented an inbox. You can have an inbox where you can see all your conversations, but currently, it is not filtering between the recruiters, so you see everyone's emails in there. They have already announced that they are working on the filtering feature for a specific inbox to make it more personalized per recruiter. This way the recruiters can have an overview of their own work."
"There were problems with integrations around other systems and each one had to be custom-built, which took a little while to get set up and running."
"There were limitations with the system that we would have liked, not in the time, but the company in Germany really dictated that. So we couldn't do everything in the system we would have liked to it."
"Around 2015 and into '17, I worked at a federal contractor. I had to switch to a different applicant system as I didn't know if SmartRecruiters was OFCCP compliant, which is something that, as a US-based federal contractor, you have to ensure. They should work to appeal to the contractor industry and get the product OFCCP compliant."
"The solution needs to work on a single sign-on."
"Some features are not as straightforward or user friendly to implement."
"The filters are not accurate. The results are inaccurate when filtering multiple criteria, such as country and hiring manager."
IBM Kenexa is ranked 15th in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software with 30 reviews while SmartRecruiters is ranked 1st in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software with 15 reviews. IBM Kenexa is rated 7.6, while SmartRecruiters is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM Kenexa writes "Suitable for larger-scale companies aiming to streamline and automate their processes digitally". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SmartRecruiters writes "Efficiently automates tasks but lacks certain features in terms of usability". IBM Kenexa is most compared with HR Software Solutions, SAP SuccessFactors and Workday, whereas SmartRecruiters is most compared with Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle HCM Cloud, Greenhouse and Zoho Recruit. See our IBM Kenexa vs. SmartRecruiters report.
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