Dice TalentSearch (formerly Open Web) is a recruiting solution that works by consolidating data on potential employees from 130 different sites.
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SilkRoad Recruiting
Score 8.0 out of 10
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SilkRoad offers OpenHire, a recruiting and ATS system. It offers recruiting access through social media channels, data security, and EEO compliance for mid-sized to large businesses. It is a component of SilkRoad’s Lifesuite product line.
DICE Open Web works well when you want to find IT specific candidates that are available in your local area. What I particularly like is that if you post a job, Dice Open Web/Talent Search will return potential candidates that meet your requirements. It is a proactive way they provide candidates from what you could do manually using their IntelliSearch tool to find candidates. I find that DICE is overall much more effective when you have a job to post and the candidates apply rather than doing a blind search. There are too many factors that make candidates returned by DICE Open Web not necessarily interested in your position. When candidates apply they have shown interest and then you can apply the Screener tool to help narrow the pool.
I think OpenHire is best for a small company (max about 2500 employees). The more employees you have the more HR people you should have and this can get expensive. I know most larger companies are using more advanced systems as well (Workday). During the selection process be sure to determine how many OpenHire users you would need. Ask whether your managers will be willing to work in the system as well or whether HR would have to own the entire process. If you are EEOC compliant, make sure you ask about diversity posting, APP tracking of applicants, and reporting needs. If you require an onboarding tool, SilkRoad offers RedCarpet. I found it to be very complex and hiring managers refused to use it. If you require an onboarding tool, definitely look into it. The demo may look great but there were a lot of implementation steps done to make it work and it just didn't fit our company culture. So make sure it fits yours.
The ease of use when it comes to create requisitions from a hiring managers side of things is definitely a positive. It's very much user intuitive and the specifications can be completely customized as to what a company would like to appear within said requisition.
Candidate correspondence is an absolute breeze as you can custom load templates into the system that can be edited at any time through an administrator in your company instead of having to go through a technical support team on the other side of things.
Overall, it's a pretty no muss no fuss system to use as there's not a great layer of complication about it and like most things, spaced practice and consistent exposure to it tend to iron out those rough edges. From an administration standpoint, adding in locations and hiring managers is incredibly simplistic along with reporting functionality.
Candidate folders have come a long way in the system and are much more user friendly at this point than when I began using the system some four years ago. It's very easy to shift candidate profiles between folders and edit on the fly.
Dice Open Web seemed to not be able to keep up with other platforms and some features and functionality were either missing or quickly became obsolete.
It doesn't really seem to remain competitive on the landscape and feel behind in product release and feature updates.
Some information was outdated and didn't get regularly refreshed or updated it seemed. Just kind of churning the same information as before or the lack of reach was evident over time.
OpenHire's user roles can create issues depending on how your company's hiring process flows. For example, at one company, the hiring managers were extremely involved in screening candidates yet the system seems very geared towards use of centralized recruiters who distribute candidates. The lack of ability to customize roles and security to match our managers' needs created additional burden on HR as well as frustration from hiring managers.
I experienced several problems uploading documents to accompany a candidate's offer. There was a limit on the number, size and type of attachments that could be included, and there was no alternative (as vetted with OpenHire) besides sending a separate correspondence to the candidate. I found this to appear unprofessional to the candidate as well as creating an extra step in the process for HR/recruiting.
The requisition process had a few issues which created inefficiencies in the process. Firstly, for times when you need to post a role confidentially outside of your standard process, there was no way to designate the req as 'confidential'. Instead, you had to use the 'executive' status which created issues (ie: inaccurate data in reporting). Secondly, OpenHire was unable to upload the company directory of emails in the requisition approver fields so rather than being able to select from a drop-down or using a 'smart' field, you had to type each approver's email out manually thus increasing the potential for error and delay in the process.
I'm assuming we will keep using DICE, but Indeed and LinkedIn are starting to prove their value and strength in having candidates/consultants use their services to look for new opportunities.
It was a great solution for the company in all aspects, especially the cost. The company was not in a position to afford a solution such as Oracle PeopleSoft. The only reason we did not renew OpenHire was we got acquired by a much larger organization and started utilizing the tools that the parent company had available
It's not a bad system to use, there just seems to be so much click through to get one task achieved. Once you know all the little routes and pieces it gets easier.
Dice provides ease of sourcing candidates and is the most useful in staffing industry. However, we still recommend the team to provide older version access to the user which was much easier and flexible to use. Dice posting is the best feature in Dice. The Boolean Search feature in Dice is also very useful.
The support for Silkroad is awful. I know they are working on it and it seems to be slightly better but it's still not great. I have had multiple cases I have never heard from them on, others I have had to follow-up multiple times and one that took a year
I received multiple candidates only after hours of posting my jobs on other sites. And for a fraction of the cost! I not only received quality candidates but also candidates who actually matched my requirements. These sites also have the option for proactive outreach and pay-by-click options as well. Some also provide free trials, which Dice does not.
NeoGov is a more simple system but just being able to require specific documents has been a huge time saver for us. Other elements in NeoGov aren't as robust but still it saves me a lot of time compared to OpenHire.
