IBM Kenexa vs SmartRecruiters comparison

"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."

"We felt like Kenexa was robust enough and dynamic enough that it met our needs, so it didn't make sense for us to disrupt 700 locations and reteach them something."

"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."

"IBM Kenexa is fairly stable. We don't have any downtime."

"BrassRing, the applicant tracking system, has brought a high level of automation, specifically for our mass-volume hourly processes."

"Without this solution, we would have more administrative functions and would need to hire more HR employees."

"The most valuable features are that we can upload documents and download them on demand, whether it is joining documents, employment screening, or your employment history, and it's easy enough to upload, find, and retrieve whatever you are looking for."

"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."

"With this solution, I was able to add diversity to my recruiting. I was able to source from multiple locations, and I could show where applicants came from. The reporting tools that are on offer, allowed us to expand our reach. We were able to add meaningful diversity into recruiting."

"The all-encompassing ability to manage the process cohesively out of the SmartRecruiter system was valuable."

"It is a really user-friendly tool, and its implementation is quite wide. It is very easy to manage users and build your workflows. Overall, it works very well for the customization of the workflows for us. The recruitment team has generally found the whole platform useful. We were looking to kind of expand it by using the CRM functions that it has. However, with COVID and recruitment being on the freeze, we weren't really able to make the most of the tool. They are, however, finding it useful to actually build up their talent pools and client candidates to be able to contact them when we kind of have this freeze off."

"SmartRecruiters' ease of use, experience, and data compliance with GDPR were the main reasons for switching to this."

"It was very good to see how the platform works and how easy it became for us to see our data and to analyze the information received."

"The all-encompassing ability to manage the process cohesively out of the SmartRecruiter system was valuable."

"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."

"SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors, and considering the type of features and services it provides, it is probably one of the best solutions in the market."

"The price can always be better. Right now, we can only do part of that, but not as much as I want to."

"My rating is not higher because of the support, honestly; the global service center model."

"I would like to have a better and more user-friendly interface."

"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 team didn't find the reporting tool that easy to use, in terms of pulling their own data, slicing and dicing it, combining groups."

"In the past year, there has been a significant increase in the amount of internal errors that are displayed."

"If you happen to be an early adopter of enhancements, it can be a frustrating process, as it is hard to decipher together with their support whether an issue is a bug or working as intended (a change in the way something works)."

"SmartRecruiters' on-click application process could be better."

"One thing that has been a bit of a struggle is getting tech support. It is a little more difficult to get support from SmartRecruiters. They want you to have your own in-house person to help you with any issues, whereas with both Lever and Greenhouse, you can just click a button at the bottom of the screen and chat with someone almost instantly."

"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."

"Some features are not as straightforward or user friendly to implement."

"The solution's reporting feature could be improved because it is not very strong."

"There were limitations with the system that we would have liked, but the company in Germany really dictated that, so we couldn't do everything in the system we would have liked to."

"The first pain point for us is when we're scheduling interviews with candidates."

"Sometimes, there is this language or communication barrier in terms of what the applicants mentioned. SmartRecruiters sometimes has trouble understanding certain types of keywords or has certain types of language, translation, or grammar issues."

"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."

"They are pretty competitive. As the product matures, it has much more functionality and different pricing models. It can relatively cost a lot more if you want to use additional features, but, in general, it is competitive in the industry. We work on a yearly license agreement based on the company size. There are the support costs, which are a part of the additional cost based on the percentage of the licensing fee. So, it has a license plus support cost. Then, of course, there are other add-on options that we can purchase and procure whenever we want to based on certain negotiated arrangements."

"SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors. Considering the type of features and services it provides, it is probably one of the best solutions in the market. Others may offer a similar price, but their services won't be that good or the user-friendliness won't be that great. The licensing works based on how many users are there in a company. If you are using other functionalities, like CRM and HRS, the price increases."

"Back in 2018, when I engaged with their sales, they wanted to charge around $10,000 for an annual subscription. Depending on your organization, that either could or couldn't be expensive. I personally think it's a fair price. However, I engaged them and negotiated a lower price with them. I think I got closer to $6,000. It came with a commitment of three years."

"SmartRecruiters is an expensive solution."

"I haven't been so involved with pricing, so I don't have all details, but I know that we are paying per head when it comes to different countries. There is an additional fee for new features that they release. If it is something that we would like to use, we need to pay some extra for it."

"There were implementation costs in the first year to get everything set up and running, and then they have various modules on top, which are optional and available at an extra charge."

"I wasn't involved in its acquisition, but I would assume that SmartRecruiters is pretty pricey."