Handshake Talent Engagement Suite (TES) helps employers source, engage, manage, and build their brand with early talent at scale. Tell an impactful story and build a strong employer brand using rich media, candidate reviews, employee testimonials, and more.
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Lever
Score 9.5 out of 10
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Lever is a Talent Acquisition Suite designed to help talent teams to reach their hiring goals and to connect companies with top talent. Lever provides ATS and applicant CRM capabilities, in LeverTRM. The Lever Hire and Lever Nurture features allow leaders to grow their people pipeline, build long-lasting relationships, and source the right people. Lever Analytics provides customized reports with data visualization, see offers completed and interview feedback, and it informs strategic decisions…
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SmartRecruiters, now part of SAP SuccessFactors
Score 9.0 out of 10
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SmartRecruiters was acquired by SAP in late 2025, and its functionality will be integrated into SAP SuccessFactors HCM. Check out the Sap SuccessFactors HCM listing for the latest updates.
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Pricing
Handshake Talent Engagement Suite
Lever
SmartRecruiters, now part of SAP SuccessFactors
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Handshake Talent Engagement Suite
Lever
SmartRecruiters, now part of SAP SuccessFactors
Free Trial
No
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
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The software subscription is determined by the number of a company's full time employees. There is a one time cost to set up software, including customizations, integrations, data migration and training.
Lever is more of an ATS, while Handshake is a candidate database. It is also essential to be using good ATS when you have Handshake. You can organize your candidates and not forget about any of them. I do wish that Lever and Handshake worked together so that I can automatically …
Chose SmartRecruiters, now part of SAP SuccessFactors
I didn't select SmartRecruiters. Lever has better search, communication, and candidate management interfaces. Sonic has great customability. Jobscore workflow is intuitive and very easy to use. Jobvite's candidate experience is top notch. Taleo's metrics and reporting are very …
Chose SmartRecruiters, now part of SAP SuccessFactors
We were down to SR and Lever. SR lacked a couple of features Lever had (that they've since rolled out) but SR provided a smooth, transparent and collaborative sales process that ultimately tipped the scales in their favor.
Compared to bulk messaging students who are listed as 'matches' on the job listing page, the segments & campaigns I created were so helpful in identifying leads & helping to convert those leads to applicants without me having to continually follow-up with students (thank you- follow-up email feature!) For roles that require a lot of applicant flow, or for positions that require a large cohort of hires at one time, these features are perfect.
I think Lever is great for any sized company, but especially strong for smaller, growing teams. It's a very simple system, but clean, sleek, and very useful in any scenario. They have great support whenever you need it so those with smaller HR or People teams could easily benefit from their help. Can't think of too many scenarios where Lever wouldn't be well-suited, but maybe once you grow to International growth and hiring, it may be better to have a more Enterprise style business, set up for larger scaling.
SmartRecruiters has allowed us to enable our hiring managers to self-service their requirements for recruitment, simplifying our internal processes. We have visibility of recruitment requirements and significantly improved our approvals process using the software. We have been able to configure our hiring processes relevant to different areas of the business. Collaboration for our hiring teams (managers and business partners) is simple and effective. Candidate experience is enhanced and engaging. The platform has brought many benefits to our Resourcing business partners and hiring managers. We have visibility and insightful data which has integrity, allowing us to make informed business decisions. Our offer process has seen significant improvements and provides an engaging candidate experience, previously this was a labour-intensive process that is now streamlined and automated. The recently launched Community for collaboration amongst customers is very helpful and insigtful for how other people are using the software and exploring ideas with each other
Settings page can be difficult to navigate & find what you're looking for
Job approval chains would be better with additional qualifying fields so that we can segregate different areas of the business better
The ability to edit an existing offer template in-system would improve the experience, rather than having to edit offline and upload a whole new version.
I thoroughly enjoy using SmartRecruiters and have shared this feedback with those responsible, however I am not a decision maker in the process. I understand that at the moment there are lots of factors affecting the economy and business outcomes, so I cannot comment with certainty on the renewal of SmartRecruiters at this time, not involved in the confirmation of renewal.
I would give this rating as overall it a great combo of all your problems. With just one click you can get away with all your problems such as recruitment, candidate update, Interview scheduling, updating candidates, reports of a job perspective, and recruiters perspective. Usability is worth of SmartRecruiters. The dashboard is also very attractive and once you open you will love working on this platform again and again. I would say it is the best platform to use once for smooth work in your organization.
Becca always responds very quickly to my questions. We had an issue where I couldn't register for a fair because another division of my company had already registered and this problem was fixed the next day. I feel like the team at Handshake Talent Engagement Suite actually cares about my experience. Not all companies do once the contract is signed! They definitely treat their customers well. I literally feel like I am their only customer.
What support? - Add a ticket and get links to [I believe] their unhelpful user guide. Add a charge if you want better support - afterward just got those links faster...
Response is normally very fast. There are times, however, when the response is not useful. It is difficult to work with the reporting and the offer letter templates, and the front line support agents usually are not very knowledgeable. Second, if there are any issues with integrations, the regular support agents will not be able to help you. You'll have to create that ticket and ask them to escalate it to an integration specialist.
I think Handshake is similar to Linkedin Recruiter in a lot of ways. The main differentiator for me/our company is who we are trying to reach or target. LinkedIn is not an easy platform to find early careers talent on, so Handshake has been the best way for us to connect with schools, register for events easily, advertise to college students and reach them where they are!
Lever is comparable to Greenhouse in its basic recruiting functions. I have found it to be WAY better than Bullhorn (clunky and overly-complicated with a very dated and non-intuitive interface) and Jazz HR (slick and pretty, but limited in its functions). The best ATS I've used is the proprietary tool at Meta, but alas, that tool is for internal use only
I've really enjoyed using SmartRecruiters, but these other ATSs that we've checked out offer better reporting features and price points. Over time, we may be transitioning off of SmartRecruiters to one of these ATSs because the price is a set price where SmartRecruiters has employee-based pricing model. Also, these other software products offer better reporting features that would eliminate some of our manual tracking process that we're currently doing.
Summer internship recruiting for hard to fill roles has grown to be much easier. Without Handshake Talent Engagement Suite, we would be left scrambling to specific school job boards.
Hosting a simple one-hour informative event and reaching a large audience has helped with brand awareness. We don't necessarily see immediate obvious results but have been content with our ability to connect with underclassmen, getting them excited to apply for internships in a year or two.
Creating a talent segment and sending campaign messages is much more efficient and effective than reaching out to individual candidates with cold calls/emails.
In terms of ROI, SR helped our business greatly in returning precious time to my productivity in business management, as well as my team's, so that we could get back to the main work we were hired for. The SR process did most of the heavy lifting.