We performed a comparison between SmartRecruiters and UKG based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Talent Acquisition solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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."
"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."
"SmartRecruiters is a candidate management system or ATS system that we use for recruitment purposes."
"The all-encompassing ability to manage the process cohesively out of the SmartRecruiter system was valuable."
"I used the free version, which I found valuable."
"The features that were most important for us to have were that it is user friendly and functional, which is definitely the case with SmartRecruiters. Our organization is located in developing countries where the bandwidth and internet stability are not the strongest and SmartRecruiters accommodates this challenge. It was a very big plus that we are able to use the system even in these locations."
"It has a neat functionality built in where it rates candidates. So, before you even look at the resume, you see a rating, and it is based on keywords. For example, it will tell you that an applicant is a frontend engineer and has used React, Angular, etc. It gives you a heads up so that you don't have to go through a hundred resumes on Monday morning eliminating applicants. It will tell you that this applicant's skills match 87%, which is pretty neat. You can skip the ones that are rated 25% or something."
"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."
"I like UKG's integration."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be business intelligence and Cognos reporting."
"It enables us to manage the system ourselves. We don't need an additional team to do a lot of maintenance and add the things that we want."
"UKG allows us to customize our home screen so that we can easily monitor important items on a daily basis."
"The fact that I can see the whole HR information in a single point is valuable. There is a unified view of everything, which is good. Previously, we had many different systems for each part of the information. Now, it is all centralized. It is very good."
"It is much easier to use and the customer service is better than our previous solution."
"The employee self-service feature is most valuable. This is the restaurant industry, and they have a mobile app that allows employees to go in and manage their data. So, employees can manage direct deposit accounts, emergency contacts, and other things in the app. That's definitely the biggest benefit."
"The solution has improved our organization by helping us cut hours and lessen our labor force. It saved us probably over $100,000 in just the last couple of years."
"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."
"The solution's reporting feature could be improved because it is not very strong."
"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."
"The filters are not accurate. The results are inaccurate when filtering multiple criteria, such as country and hiring manager."
"The major improvement area is how it integrates with other systems. That's where we've had some sort of pain points. They've done a lot of work with their development team in setting up integrations with other types of software like SuccessFactors, which we use, but we have found some glitches there. This is probably where they need to do some work. Sometimes, when it refreshes or there is any sort of update in SmartRecruiters, it has a direct impact on the integrations that we have with other tools. We are not always notified when that takes place. We have had HR say to us, "We've just hired this guy. He is not there in our end board at all. What's going on?" That's when we realized that the integration is actually broken. When we have other solutions like SuccessFactors, it would be very helpful to have knowledge articles for such integrations. We have found some of the templates that we want to use and some of the customizations that we do around the offer letters and the contract letters to be a little bit more difficult, which hasn't made this process any more efficient than it was. We still have to do a bit of manual intervention there. I don't know if it is just our company, but we need to have different clauses and things in place. We have stopped using DocuSign as well, and we are trying to look at other ways of doing that. They are aware of this."
"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."
"I don't see the integration of SmartRecruiters with SAP happening quite seamlessly, making it an area where improvements are required."
"I would like the capability to use UKG as a single platform without the need to alternate between systems."
"UKG could be a little more flexible in some areas."
"The navigation on the screen could be better. Sometimes, I have to dig a little bit deep to find what I need. Everything is there. It just needs to be a little bit smoother."
"The solution could improve by simplifying it even more core reports, such as more sample reports, more generic reports that you can edit and improve on yourself."
"Reporting is always a hurdle for any user just because it is so extensive. They provide a lot of out-of-the-box reports, but it is something that you always need to work on because you need more advanced writing of reports."
"The solution could use better reporting with standard reports. We use the Cognos platform in BI for a lot of our reporting. However, they need to have more robust standard reporting available to their user base."
"I would like to see more functionality in the next release to be able to get hours and dollars per calendar month rather than just by payroll in the Business Intelligence reports."
"One area where UKG could improve is in its ability to understand its own competency and then work hard to improve it."
SmartRecruiters is ranked 8th in Talent Acquisition with 15 reviews while UKG is ranked 5th in Talent Acquisition with 117 reviews. SmartRecruiters is rated 8.2, while UKG is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of SmartRecruiters writes "Efficiently automates tasks but lacks certain features in terms of usability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of UKG writes "A solution with the capability to integrate seamlessly with other third-party applications". SmartRecruiters is most compared with Workday, Oracle HCM Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, Greenhouse and Zoho Recruit, whereas UKG is most compared with Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, PeopleSoft, SAP HCM and Dayforce HCM. See our SmartRecruiters vs. UKG report.
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