Bullhorn ATS & CRM vs. CATS Applicant Tracking System

Bullhorn served as a very reliable and thorough tracking system for contacts, discovering prospects, and maintaining track of all relevant data. There are many customization options, strong search results, and sensible workflows. Excellent reporting tool. When we needed to find new resumes but all we could find were talents who had previously been discovered, it was less appropriate. Job Boards outperformed Bull Horn in terms of speed and quality.

Incentivized

It has a great parsing feature and the extension is very helpful. Many ATS systems do not support parsing within LinkedIn...this one does. I was sad to see this option go when we finally transitioned. I would almost keep CATS just for the LinkedIn parsing if I knew I could easily get the information OUT of the system once it was there. A good API/webhook would be great, but sadly the API connections don't work well. Our firm also works with companies with multiple sites all across the US. There was never a way to "nest" a location with a parent company. Because of this, being able to research or report on a true client relationship was not possible. It was a very manual process.

Incentivized

• It provides the contact details of a candidate relevant to the job. All details are with a user-friendly interface that anyone can use the application.
• The specific details given by Bullhorn ATS & CRM are unbelievable. One place and you can make a decision about hiring or not hiring.
• The messaging automation feature again helps to save our time.

Incentivized

• Simple to implement, SaaS based tool that needs no in-house IT support or resources
• Customizable reports, labels, fields, applications
• Affordable
• No long term contract, month-to-month with ability to cancel anytime
• Data backups are simple
• Email directly from the candidate record with response coming into Outlook is easy to configure and creates record and updates status automatically

• Reporting: out of the box reporting is not very detailed or easy to navigate. In order to get better detailed and specific reports, you either need their Canvas product or pay for a 3rd party vendor.
• Customization: will get better with NOVO Experience update, but many users still don't have it. Right now many fields and order are not customizable
• Many features Bullhorn can do are not apparent to the user, often times you have to call in the figure things out.

Incentivized

• I would like to see either an integration with a robust reporting tool that would allow me to design my own custom reports with a data export or more built-in reporting options.
• Mobile app is currently mostly just a look-up tool. I would like it to have the ability to do more - add tasks, update pipelines, etc.

We have about 2 years left on our current contract; It would take a major change in the ATS marketplace for us to strongly consider opting out of renewal given the time and effort we have dedicated to building our our Bullhorn system. I will take the time to revisit with some of the competition down the road, but Bullhorn acquired our runner up, MaxHire, about a year back and continues to offer a solid product suite for our current and future needs.

Incentivized

Our company has been using it and enjoying the benefits for a few years now. Its a perfect system for our end goal of finding the best candidate effectively and being able to track and write reports on our progress.

It isn't the best ATS out there. It lacks on both the recruitment and sales side. There is no way to differentiate between prospects, candidates, and clients. There isn't a way to merge accounts and names, so there are many duplicates. Too may paid add ons. I had a much longer review written up and the page just deleted it, but I wouldn't recommend Bullhorn first or even third. It feels like it hasn't been fully realized yet. There are certainly some good things about the product, but more areas where they can improve.

Incentivized

not recruiter friendly. workflow is not good

It's been a nightmare experience. The initial sales team were brilliant, and the customer service is great from the tech team - they get in touch with you quickly. However; I was often finding workarounds myself, or being advised workarounds instead of having issues resolved (example - The DPA/Non DPA issue - an Excel spreadsheet can do this, yet a CRM cannot?). I was debited on the incorrect date & then when I requested they refund until the due date, I was re-debited again on the correct date. The communication was poor - their billing team are based in the US and there was no acknowledgement of the mistake. My initial consultant chased them down for me, and advised me of their error. Lucky. The product was oversold. For example; I was advised their 'merge docs' feature would allow me to pull data directly from the 'Overview,' 'Work Histories' which later proved to be false. Finally, when I requested to end my contract & transfer my data (I advised a specific date I needed it, when my CRM would be ready) they advised it would take 15 business days & I was to put no further data in my system during that 15 days, and then gave me my data after 3. I now have no CRM for 4 weeks

I've had mixed results with asking for support. Sometimes they gave a quick answer and sometimes my emails were never responded to. Some responses were a single word.

This is an incredibly easy system to implement. There is no hardware or software required, it's entirely SaaS based. Compared to other systems I've implemented, it's breathtaking. Customization can all be done directly in the tool, there is no need for any involvement of consultants and most of the information you cannot figure out intuitively is covered in the knowledge base

Breathe is a great tool for smaller internal recruitment teams and I have previously used an in-house built system similar however Bullhorn is something you can use across larger businesses and growing SME's it works well for international businesses as everything is updated in real-time. The support function is excellent and the training tools for new starters are super helpful for our L&D team. Your account manager is also great for assisting in personalising sections to make them more business specific.

Incentivized

We used to use Sendouts (prior to it being acquired by Bullhorn) - and it wasn't browser based like CATS so instead of being able to access it from a home computer, laptop, mobile phone, etc. you could only use it on the computer with the software uploaded - which is a hindrance. It also wasn't as customizable as CATS. We picked CATS because it the price was right, it was browser-based, had email-integration, and integrates with social media and job posting services to share your jobs
with the public.

• Bullhorn has helped with the standardization of data which allows us to track our high, low and in between individuals. It allows for corporate bench marks to be tracked. It also allows for a closer look at all of the data points to make decisions versus making decisions based on perceptions. The data has definitely helped us make better business decisions because of the reporting capabilities.
• Bullhorn has some great marketplace partners and additional products like VMS Access that help with your VMS clients. This is a real time saver.

• We went from Excel spreadsheets to using CATS so honestly anything would be an improvement. But CATS has saved tremendous time on an on-going basis in terms of managing the career portal automatically.
• Being able to log email conversations with the click of a button from Outlook right into CATS has been a time-saver and also has helped numerous times in providing better follow-through to candidates and providing better tracking of candidate interactions and what they have previously said (or not).