Bullhorn ATS & CRM vs. Sterling Check

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

SterlingOne has had my background check in progress for nearly a month. I spoke with them 5 days ago about the issue and discovered there was a criminal record flag in Connecticut. I have never been to Connecticut. They said this can often happen if an individual has the same name, birthday, or last four digits of SSN. This is clearly a flaw in their system if someone with the same name or birthday can appear on the same background check. I feel bad for any John Smith who applies for a job with a company that uses SterlingOne, they'll never get past the screening. Not only is this a flawed system, but when I spoke with customer service about this, they guaranteed they would expedite this within 24-48 hours. It has now been 5 days and when I called back, they said they would expedite this as if I had never called in the first place. I have been through numerous background checks for work in my life, I have done live scans and had my fingerprints taken, and have been approved to work with children with special needs (which requires a very rigorous screening) and I have never experienced such a disjointed and unprofessional process.

• 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

• The initiation of a background check is very simple by only needing the name and email of the new candidate and submitting that as the new ticket.
• Sterling communicates with the new candidate to keep the background check moving which saves us time by not needing to keep a close eye on the process of the background check.
• Sterling communicates with the employer to let them know if additional charges are needed to run the background check and we can either approve or deny the charge.

Incentivized

• 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

• In my opinion, Horrible new platform "Sterling check"
• No designated account representative
• In my experience, Poor troubleshooting support
• Customer service often doesn't answer questions
• Many back and forth needed to resolve issues
• Recently changed platform and not offering the same services

Incentivized

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

I found Bullhorn ATS & CRM to be extremely user friendly and quick to learn how to navigate it. The integration to Xero is extremely beneficial and really helps us to manage and monitor our recruitment activities and what stage of recruitment we are up to and to ensure we are invoicing our clients accordingly which we do in three stages.

Incentivized

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

• Sterling Talent is an excellent company for performing the background checks for our new hires. However, the delay in processing times can be improved.
• Also, there should be automation from legacy systems to pick up the candidate details as much as possible instead of asking for more details from the candidate via email.

Incentivized

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 had no issues with HireRight. The system worked well and we had excellent service. The only reason we selected Sterling is we changed our ATS to Compas and wanted to be integrated with a background check company. Sterling was only one of two options and offered onboarding capabilities. The other did not

Incentivized

• 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.

• Quick results allow us to hire people in short time frames and get them onboarded quickly.
• The product, and the customer service team, doesn't require much management from a vendor relations perspective.

Incentivized