IBM Kenexa Reviews

As a system administrator, the automation tools via RAM are probably the biggest bonuses for us to facilitate automation and to reduce the manual workload on our end user internal customers.

We rely heavily on RAMs to automate activity in Brassring, including:

• Autoupdating HR statuses based on form completion (e.g., update to HR status background passed when background check results post)
• Autodelivering notifications to recruiters and candidates when specified milestones have been released (e.g., when a candidate completes onboarding, the recruiter can be notified to start first day prep)
• Automoving candidates from evergreen folders to ‘real’ reqs as new jobs are opened

I think one of the biggest benefits that Kenexa brings is the scalability. As an organization, we are an extremely high-volume organization and what we found is Kenexa is one of the few platforms that can effectively manage the amount of concurrent sessions from both candidates and internal users and allow the flexibility to continue to scale up.

I think a lot of the things that are already on IBM's roadmap are what we're looking for: better candidate engagement tools, better social media tools, the responsive platforms, making the candidate experience that much better.

If there was one thing that I would love to see, it's improvement in the back-end tools, what the sys ads and the configuration leads engage with. Those seem to be trailing the front end development.

The reason I’m not rating it with five stars is because of its sheer size. Some of its time-to-market enhancements are slower than I would like, but that's the nature of the business I guess.

By and large, IBM has maintained a tremendous stability record over time, both in terms of end-user access as well as candidate access.

We have used technical support quite often. We have a dedicated support team that is part of our overall master service agreement. We have had the luxury of developing a long-term business partnership with them so that they understand our setups, our processes, our operational execution of work.

Candidly, getting support from our dedicated help desk team is highly efficient. They also take a tremendous burden off of a very small system admin team to allow us to focus on improving the database, and allow them to triage and solve for the day to day issues.

I do not have any experience with other solutions on the scale of Kenexa, but I've worked with probably eight different ATS platforms over my career.

The most important criteria when I’m selecting a vendor is the people because, regardless of how well a tool works, it's going to fail sooner or later or the users are going to fail in how they engage with it. Being able to work effectively with both your account management team but also your support team and your day-to-day interactions really makes or breaks the relationship, my commitment to how we interact with those people and what my long-term goal is with any particular vendor. People come first, absolutely.

Again, I think my company switched to Kenexa based on scalability. This is the third organization I've worked with that leverages Kenexa as its primary ATS. Each of those organizations had a unique need in terms of stability and scalability. I think that's why we continue to engage with Kenexa and keep them as our ongoing partner. We don't tend to scan the marketplace regularly looking for the next best thing. Kenexa seems to be doing a real nice job of keeping current and delivering the solutions its customers are looking for.

Listening to the customer is probably also another reason why I appreciate IBM's partnership; they not only take the feedback but they give you actionable road maps against that feedback and/or explain why they don't. Your feedback doesn't go in a black hole, which I truly appreciate.

Most of the other applications I've used are mid-tier, so SilkRoad provides a pretty robust tool. It's not, in my opinion, as mature as Kenexa's product. There are some limitations in how much configuration access you have to it. Probably, one of the best things and worst things about Kenexa is it gives clients a lot of flexibility regarding how they customize the system. In other platforms, it's more off the shelf; use it as it's configured and you're not able to build your own workloads into it as robustly as we would like.

The best piece of advice I could give is understand what your users truly need and what they don't need. Don't buy the entire kitchen sink because it's hard to leverage all those tools until you've actually been able to test them in a sandbox environment and be able to do proof of concept. I think the product leads and the support staff at Kenexa are great at leading you down a path, so listening to that guidance as opposed to coming forth with your own vision and not wavering off of that is probably another piece of advice I'd give.

We use BrassRing, the recruiting tool. The reporting feature is what I use, the data insight tool, to be able to pull the data and then provide some analytics on the data behind it.

That's the most valuable feature, for me personally, in my role.

It has definitely improved my organization by being able to help the recruiters move candidates through the interview process. We just recently started to use more of the capabilities with the different statuses such as the RAM triggers and so on; we’re starting to streamline more of the processes. They definitely save time and make sure things are happening at the right speed and when they need to happen. They're definitely a big help, I would say.

Improvements can be made from the back end, with the workbench.

Even though I know lots of people have mentioned issues with publishing from staging to production, and I know that's something that IBM said they're aware of and they might be working on already, that's one of the bigger things that would be helpful.

I've never had any stability issues. There’s been no downtime. Occasionally they'll let us know that there's an update happening, but usually that's during off hours; things like that, so no biggies. It's not affecting my business.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

So far, we've been expanding throughout the US and we'll be expanding to use it globally in the next year or two. We'll be seeing it scale more but so far, expanding throughout the US with Kenexa BrassRing has been helpful getting everybody on the same page.

I have used technical support a couple of times such as filing the tickets and getting them to work through the issues. They've always been helpful, whether it's helping on the call or with the email resolution, it's all been pretty good.

I did not previously use a different solution. I just wasn't part of the HR talent acquisition world yet.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

I think one the bigger advantages is that it is backed by IBM with the ability to bring in a bunch of tools to build an entire platform. It's not just one tool that does the ATS and another tool that does HRIS. Being able to have IBM that supplies all of those and create a platform is, I think, pretty useful.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is definitely brand recognition. If you see other companies that are in your industry using the same tool, it let’s you know that it can be applied to your business. Something with a proven track record.

There's obviously some room to improve and they're making updates all the time but I think right now, even with talking with some of my colleagues, they say it's better than some of the other solutions that they've used. Drawing from some of their feedback, it seems like it's a good tool. I don't have any previous experience with other tools.

Applicant tracking is the product’s most valuable feature. We're a federal contractor, so we can run reports to comply with all of the federal government regulations.

We are able to make decisions based on real data, reporting and metrics, and we're able to flow a large number of candidates through the process in a short amount of time.

We're about to launch the Talent Suite, so we're excited about that. Just the ease of use of setup for implementing new regions would be really helpful; if they would get that more templatized and make it easier to launch in new parts of the globe.

My rating is not higher because of the support, honestly; the global service center model. We have 20 hours per month and we're a big, giant company. It's a struggle, honestly. The ticketing system works great, but it's a struggle sometimes to get changes fixed with their model: You create the system and then hand it to the customer.

We've had really good luck with uptime and run time. Typically, it's very low time when things go down; maybe once a month or something, for a short period, and they're very quick to fix.

We are in currently three regions. We have US, Latin America, and Asia Pacific, so we have it all over the globe. We're a global company, obviously, and we're launching in one more region. It's a struggle sometimes to implement new regions. I will say that. If I were to be honest, it is a struggle, but I heard that they're working on some ways to fix that.

I have used technical support. My team owns the relationship with the global services center, so we use them frequently. Their ticket system is fairly straightforward. It's a little slow, but they do a good job.

I did not previously use a different solution; paper. Ridiculous, I know.

When selecting a vendor, the most important criteria is whether they can manage a company our size. It's really about, can they scale? Are they large enough to support a really complex organization?

Before choosing this product, we looked at the top five, including PeopleNet and Taleo.

In 2011, the company chose Kenexa because they could do both RPO and applicant tracking system. We've since separated the RPO, so we are 100% applicant tracking with them now, but originally that one-stop shop is why we went with them.

I would definitely and highly recommend the applicant tracking system. It's a very good system. I would not recommend RPO, honestly.

I think the feature that really stands out for us, at least lately is, the fully responsive experience for applicants. We have our end-to-end application experience fully mobile responsive. They also host our career site, so having that be mobile responsive, and really configurable for us has been awesome. I'd say the most valuable feature is being responsive, and then a close second for us is probably the automation capability.

They call it RAM, the Rules Automation Manager. The fact that basically any action in the system can trigger something else to happen automatically, allows us to really automate our different processes and accommodate our business needs. We have a lot of volume, so having things happen automatically is a good thing. Those are probably the big two.

First of all, it has improved the applicant experience. We went from, last winter, if an applicant went on through a mobile device, they would actually be told, "Stop, now you have to go to a computer to finish your application." If they did manage to get through, past that, it was a lot of pinching, and a lot of pages, and a lot of text.

I think having the responsive be something that's standard – we're not paying a third-party vendor to get that functionality, it's just something they do – is one of those game changers for us. There aren't many companies out there that can say, Our end-to-end applicant experience is responsive, but on top of that, we didn't have to engage another vendor to do it. We're able to just do it with our current tool, and do it pretty well.

We have about 50 requests for enhancements in the system right now. We're a little anal. To be honest, it's smaller things. It's making sure that the responsive recruiter experience includes all the functionality that the non-responsive recruiter experience has today, before we transition to it. It's just simply continuing to see that evolution, without loss of functionality.

I also do want to see more robust reporting capabilities. Not getting into talent insights necessarily, but the embedded tools offering a little bit more dashboarding capability, tables, that type of thing, is something that I'm chomping at the bit for, because if I have to do another pivot table in Excel, I'll go mad. I would love it if you could set them up in the reporting tool to happen automatically and deliver. I know from the feedback I've gotten from the Kenexa development team that they're working on it.

I've been with Best Buy since 2013, but prior to that I was with another client. What I will say is, I feel like it's more stable now than it was a few years ago. I think what I noticed was when IBM purchased them, there was that time where they were trying to identify where Kenexa fit. What I've really seen over the last two years is a commitment and a doubling down by IBM to do that talent component right. It's really made the product feel, not only stable, but they're investing in it. It's evolving much faster than it was a couple of years ago.

We're huge. It's plenty scalable. We have multi-million applicants a year, and we hire almost a 100,000 people a year. It does it great; we don't have issues during our highest volume time of year, when we're getting 30,000 applicants a day. It processes them just fine. The size and volume have not been an issue.

Part of why I think we're actually expanding our relationship with IBM is their Global Support Center is fairly standard, compared to other support centers from other companies. Where I think that they're different is we have our clients success manager, as a contact. They're our personal person, for helping us become expert; for helping us better understand the product. They can help us solve problems in the system. They're a technical expert. There's a really big benefit to having not just the tech support from a point of view of, "I have a ticket, I'm going to enter it", and having that be done well, which it is. The real benefit is, "I don't have a problem; I'm just trying to solve a business problem, but I don't know how to do it.". They are experts who can help me find that answer.

We previously used Kronos for our retail operation, we previously used Taleo for our corporate operation, and we used SuccessFactors for our career site.

For us, IBM evolving to be able to provide that end-to-end responsive experience was a lot of what drove our decision to go away from SuccessFactors, because we really utilized SuccessFactors or Jobs2Web to provide a responsive careers site and search engine optimization. The world's changed, and you don't need to be quite as intentional about that as you used to be, and then our real priority was a great mobile experience. That's something IBM could provide, and have it more naturally integrated with the ATS, which was why we went there.

The reason we went away from Taleo was we had implemented Kenexa for our entire retail organization successfully. After having two years of success with that in retail, it didn't make any sense to have multiple platforms. We like IBM. IBM has been great partners for us. They're really invested in our success, and they see us as a valuable client. I think when your vendor treats you like you're important, listens and responds, that's a differentiator, and that's something IBM does very well. We weren't getting that with the others.

I was not involved in the initial setup. I was brought in five months after the initial setup to help with some challenges.

I wasn't with the company when they decided to go with Kenexa for retail, so I'm not entirely clear on all of the vendors they looked at. The only ones I know of are: of course they looked at expanding the relationship with Kronos; I know they looked at Taleo; and then I know they looked at IBM. I feel like there were likely more involved, but I was not part of that decision.

If you're going to purchase this, it's awesome, and it can do pretty much anything you could imagine. Don't over-engineer it. Start simple. Start clean. If you want to add more later, you can. I'd say that the ability to dramatically customize this tool is a blessing and a curse. If the people involved don't understand how to do it, you're going to do it wrong. Get the right talent on board to be able to do it right.

During a presentation at a conference, somebody said, First optimize your process, then systematize it; don't systematize a process, that isn't ideal. Take that time, before you implement the system, to get it as clean as possible, and then make sure you've got experts involved in your implementation, and you're not over complicating it.

As far as selecting a vendor, I think there are two pieces to consider. Number one is we want them to care as much about our success as we do; it's not just a matter of, they get the contract paid, and then we're on our own.

Number two is seeing that they're evolving the product. We don't want to invest a ton into implementing them, and then have them stagnate. We need them to continue to evolve with the industry. Beyond that, we also need them to really prioritize our success, and if we're not successful, they view that as a failure by them and they will help us resolve that.

My rating reflects the technology; there are always opportunities. I think their commitment to doing something special and their commitment to taking a care of their customers supports the four-star rating.

I would be concerned. IBM has a different legacy than Kenexa has, and I hope that Kenexa keeps its identity, because if it does, it will maintain that really customer-focused mentality, and stay at four stars. I would be concerned that it would get a little too big business, if it gets more IBMified – if you get what I mean by that.

The most valuable feature of Kenexa, I believe, is the flexibility to configure the tool the way that you need it to work; with the various tools, offer letters, forms, and the way that the system's structured. Being that it's an off-the-shelf system, the flexibility makes it easier for companies to configure the system, to suit their needs.

It's benefited our organization, because we don't have to worry about all of the background configuration, and coding, and development. They provide the tools, and Kenexa behind the scenes does the work of all the coding and developing the product. They give us the flexibility to do what we need to do in our business.

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. We have certain features and functions that we cannot move away from due to government regulations and compliance needs, and some of those are not available yet in the newer UI.

Overall, the stability is very good. Very few blips here and there, but overall it's excellent.

Scalability seems to be there; falls in line with the flexibility to configure the system. You bring in new business areas, you have the flexibility to configure it and set it up to where you can roll those portions or new companies right into your existing system, seamlessly.

I have occasionally used the help desk. Their help desk support works. They are responsive. They do their job.

We were previously using a home-grown system; one that was developed by Lockheed Martin. It didn't have the scalability or flexibility that we needed to modify and adjust to the growing needs of the staffing world.

For our company, initial setup was pretty complex, because we were trying to combine multiple systems into one. There were a lot of differences between our internal business areas. However, all that was overcome and we were able to implement it, on time, with the solution that worked for everybody.

I do not know the other vendors that were considered, now and why the company eventually chose Kenexa. I was not involved in the RFP process.

When selecting a vendor to work with, the most important criteria for me is that the vendor has a proven track record, and good referrals from other customers. Somebody that's going to stand behind their product, and be there to help you out when you need the help.

It's a great company to work with. I've been using the Kenexa BrassRing since 2007, so I've been using the product for quite a long time, and seen how far it's come. I just think it's a good tool, with great flexibility.

I’m giving it a high rating because, whenever we do run across critical issues or things that we need to get addressed right away, they always seem to rise to the occasion, have our back, chip in, and do their part to help us get the task accomplished on time.

There are a lot of valuable features in Kenexa: being able to bring a lot of data together quickly; to be able to join the data; and then to be able to get insights in a time-frame that's a lot shorter than the regular SAS or process like that.

The biggest improvement for us is it's made us think; the outcomes coming out are something that we possibly wouldn't have thought about. The idea is to be neutral going into it, understand the types of insights that come out and to be able to pursue them as hypotheses; see if they make sense for us to continue with.

We're still putting our notes together on where we’d like to see improvements. We haven't got a detailed list yet, but the cool thing is we've got a process to document what we want changed, to promote that and show it to IBM. Most cases when we did that in the past, they've been able to say it was on the roadmap already. There are no examples right now, but we do have a list that we're gathering right now.

The price can always be better. I'm not saying the price is high, but of course I work with a budget. Bottom line is it's basically fine.

We're looking at ways to, for instance, to be able to get outputs, and drop it into Excel, if we want to. Right now, we can only do part of that, but not as much as I want to.

Stability has been fine. We've had some timeouts but they've been quickly fixed. Stability has been fine. There have been no issues at all.

It’s scalability is changing. At first, we had a problem getting a number of the transactions in there; now, that's changed. Every time we've had issues or problems, they've been addressed and have been fixed. We've got no problems with scalability or outages or anything.

We’ve used technical support, and it’s been great, fantastic. We have ways of submitting tickets if we need to. We've been updated on potential upgrades, etc. The support has been fantastic for us.

We were tired of thinking of what we wanted solved a year and a half in advance, because it took that long to get a project set up and get the budget approved and processed. 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. It just made business sense in so many ways: time, money, etc.

I was involved in the initial setup. I've got a person by the name of Kevin Rush. He's been more on the technical side but as far as the setup, I was involved since day one. Initial setup took some time. Once the tool was set up for us to be able to use, it took a bit of hand-holding from IBM, but now we're at a place where we can load and link, and do a lot of things with it ourselves.

To set it up was tough, and when I say tough, it was more about learning for us, but we're laughing now with it, for sure.

Basically, we didn't consider any other solutions, because we've had such a long relationship with them and we did some work with them before this process. Our working agreement and their commitment to service didn't take us long to pick them.

Don't be afraid to start. The longer you wait, the more money you probably spend on new people leaving. The biggest thing is, if you're looking for faster ways of getting information about your people, about your customers, I would say start with what you have and to grow it. A lot of people are scared to start because they don't think they have enough information. Their information isn't big enough for this to use but the fact of the matter is you can use this on any kind of scale.

My rating is partly because I need to know more and learn more, and also I know there's some things on the roadmap they're looking to develop and once those come in, I think it's going to be even better. I love the idea that they have roadmap ideas. I love their support, but like all of us, we have a little bit of room to grow.

The two most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor are: 1) obviously, the product has to have some kind of nuts and bolts behind it; and 2) also the support. We've seen a lot of sales people come through, but after the deal is signed is when you see the true signs of how they're going to support us. For me, I'll look at the support people before I look at the sales people.

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.

We've really used Kenexa to, at this point, look at the application process, make sure that it is as clean as possible and be able to get that time down, so candidates don't walk away from the experience, as well as automate a lot of things for recruiters, administrators, all those types of folks, so they aren't having to do manual tasks. The system is really doing that for them.

I think IBM is working with a lot of analytical tools and with Watson and analytics, diagnosing system pain points, problems, queues, those types of issues to enhance the system. I really like the roadmap where they’re going. Also, the enhancements they are doing to gateway questionnaires, those types of things, to improve the mobile process is really good, things that we're trying to implement at T-Mobile.

I think there is some administrative things that could be easier in terms of Workbench and streamlining that process; configuration of different things. I think the overall experience is great. Branding is something that I think can always be worked on. It seems to be really hard on the marketing side to keep up, to be honest with you, but I think overall in terms of an ATS, it's a great tool. There's a few things there that could always be improved with anybody. It's really hard to give a perfect rating.

We have great up-time with Kenexa. I've used some of the competitors before. I hadn't had that experience. We've had really great up-time with that. A lot of our questions are answered within a reasonable time.

Scalability with Kenexa is very easily done. For us, we have three administrators that serve over 100 recruiters, 30 recruiting co-coordinators, multiple managers on top of that; talent acquisition staff of about 150 people. We've actually taken some implementation. We have an email box where we get system issue questions, problems, troubleshooting, learning all those types of questions from folks. We originally started with implementation of over 1,000 emails a month. Now we're down to 200 or 300 emails a month, and that's I think contributed to the scalability of Kenexa because we can put everything in place and allow just a few folks with an email box doing enhancements, those types of things, to make the system work and run for everybody.

I think technical support is really good. You definitely have to give them the right information to go ahead and get the problem solved, to get the questions answered, those types of things. I think people are very willing to help and once you learn what they need, it's not a problem.

It wasn't really my choice to choose Kenexa, but I was very happy when we did because of the experience I had with those competitors.

I was not involved in the initial setup. I was hired post-implementation to go ahead and help with some of that.

Think about what your business needs, talk to your customers. What do your customers want? Do process mapping, do some Lean Six Sigma sessions with those customers and really find out what the core needs are. Then provide those to the customer. Kenexa may not be the option you want based on those needs, but I think it's very likely that it could be.

I think stability is an important criteria when selecting a vendor to work with. How long have they been around? Who do they work with? You don't want to get somebody on their first shop or their first job. You really would like to have somebody else be the guinea pig. The vendor should have that experience, so you need something there for that.

I think Kenexa's history, along with IBM, is a great point for them on that. Then you need somebody that does the work. You need them in the presentation to be able to really look at your business requirements that you give in the RFP, be able to answer those questions thoughtfully and correctly, and provide some information for you to make a decision on that product based on what they can do for you.

For us, the most valuable feature is the ability to completely onboard our associates online, their electronic onboarding portal, as well as the automation that they have in their hiring system that allows us to automate a lot of our hiring process and eliminate those manual touchpoints.

It allows us to streamline our hiring process, and also standardize our hiring processes across the organization.

We're really looking forward to what Kenexa has in store for data analytics in the future with their Talent Insights tool. We're also really looking forward to some of their enhancements to their onboarding portal, specifically for recruiters and hiring managers.

We just recently upgraded to their Talent Suite, which is their latest version of the software. Their onboarding portal saw the most change, and I would say it's been really improved from a new-hire or a candidate experience. We are looking forward to some additional enhancements from a hiring manager perspective.

There's always more work to do. There's always improvements that can be made, but overall, we're very happy with the product.

The stability's very good. Overall, we typically don't have any unexpected downtimes during the month.

Scalability is great. We use the system for everything from a very low-volume, high-touch corporate recruiting model to our tax office, high-volume approach, which is 80-100,000 people each season.

Technical support is good, responsive and efficient. We always get same-day response on our tickets. We may not always get same-day resolution, but we always get same-day response. Their customer-service agents are always very friendly and knowledgeable about the system.

Prior to Kenexa, we were on a homegrown system for recruiting, but our corporate recruiting was on another system. We switched to Kenexa because it was important for us to have all of our recruiting, both for corporate and our tax offices, under one system. We wanted to make sure all of our candidates were together; we were looking at a holistic candidate pool, really, one database for an applicant-tracking system.

Also, just the functionality that Kenexa provides in comparison to the other vendor that we were using.

The decision to get Kenexa happened before I joined the team.

Functionality, I think, is the number one criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with, but a very close second would be the customer relationship – really, the relationships and partnerships that we have as a client, and knowing that if we have a problem or a question, we'll have somebody that's there to answer it for us and to help us on our journey.

The streamlined, simplicity approach of Kenexa makes it simple for me to navigate.

It makes us, I think, more efficient when it comes to candidates and making sure that, with the candidates that we have, we are able to resource and search candidates in an efficient manner.

As with pretty much anything, it could be more efficient.

No solution's perfect but in the same token, that's not for me to decide. I'm just looking at it being user friendly for what I'm doing, and that's providing great talent to our company. As far as being a user of it, I don't see any problems as of right now.

I think it's very stable, I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon. I have not encountered any stability issues at all.

No scalability issues either. On a broader scale, I think it's a great program that we could use. I think a lot of companies are using them now; using Kenexa a lot more now.

I have not recently used technical support; I haven't had any opportunities there at all.
We do have technical support available to us. We have a person who's in charge of tech support. That person, if she has any kind of problems that we have in the field, we send it to her and she gets us an answer back. She does it in house, and then if she needs to take it outside of corporate headquarters, she'll go there as well.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor are transparency, reliability, and also reputation.

Basically, for what I use Kenexa, it's good for me for right now. It's perfect for me right now, if I have any opportunities as far as from a technical standpoint, I know I'm going to answer within a day or so.

One of the best, possibly worst things if not controlled, is the configuration and permission control possibilities within the system. These possibilities provide the opportunity to automate and control processes that would otherwise be manual and/or not locked down. If you are not in control of your system, it can become a nightmare.

Prior to implementing Kenexa, our basic data quality was poor. We were unable to provide the required transparency to the business about recruitments in process, or empower them to take control of their approval processes. Now, having provided this, amongst many other things, we have a much closer relationship to the business.

Enhancement releases can't come fast enough, and you only know what is being released a week at most in advance. The documentation of the changes and configuration requirements are often following months after the initial release.

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).

I have been using it for four years.

There was a two-year period after IBM bought Kenexa during which things were rough. But for the last two years, the system is quite stable - as long as you are in control of your own system.

Technical support is 7/10. Sometimes it is hard to make the first level of support understand basic issues, even if it is clearly documented.

Yes, we previously used a different solution. We switched because we placed as much weight on the vendor being a sparring partner, as much as providing a powerful system.

Initial setup was complex, but the system is! I wish that I had spent more time understanding what we were saying yes or no to.

We implemented it in-house. Take the time to understand what you are saying yes or no to. If a functionality is not available to you, and you are requested to log it as a RFE (Request for Enhancement) - there is little chance of it happening in the near future.

Two years after IBM bought Kenexa, we are really starting to see the system evolve for the better. It is the best ATS on the market, and IBM are one of the better vendors to work with.