InterviewStream Hire vs. Lever

I always recommend this product to companies of all sizes who are looking for a reliable way to add virtual interviewing to their assessment strategy. There are 50+ vendors in this space right now but none of them have been around as long as InterviewStream. Their product is especially good for high volume scenarios but we've used it for all levels from executives down to hourly employees. We even used it internally for succession planning interviews and internal mobility

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Simple interface. It's not a flashy product with claims of artificial intelligence or machine learning, etc. It just gets the job done for a fair price.
• Reliable. While we have had some minor issues from time-to-time with live interviews, the recorded interviews have worked fine in several countries around the world.
• Support. Our customer success person was always available and helpful.

Incentivized

• Great integration: Keeps a list of Outlook email communication along with LinkedIn and other data sources
• Is fairly lively, not too much lag between screens even though it is looking through a lot of data.
• Has excellent reporting on how well each email message is working.

Incentivized

• Reporting could be better. Would love to see more stats around where our users are dropping off, invited vs. completed metrics and ROI numbers as well.
• A better database of technical interview questions.

Incentivized

• [In my experience,] terrible customer support - pay more to get less...
• Integrations are spotty and can break without reason
• Lever has so much potential, but their Roadmap is lacking in ways that will really help customers succeed
• Focuses on the number of candidates and not the company's need to build talent in a cost effective, data driven and collaborative way
• Overpromised and underdelivered in [the] capability of the tool. [I believe that you should] not trust your sales team.

It isn't difficult to use for the applicant processing, but [I feel] if you want to pull reports or use their tools, good luck!

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...

We looked at several video interview companies when we made a purchase decision. With the exception of HireVue, they're all about the same. We just went with InterviewStream because they had the most experience in the industry and their pricing was fair. HireVue is a premium product who tries to distance themselves from the video interview space by claiming that they are a collaboration/training tool or an AI assessment tool. They're wayyyy overpriced for what they offer if you just want video interviewing. And their sales process is high pressure and a little bit slimy to be honest. If you need a proven tool that has been around, InterviewStream is good.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• We took a 7 step interview process in one of our high volume areas down to 3 steps. This saved 2 weeks in time to hire and increased our conversion rate with top candidates by 20% (presumably because we moved faster).
• We saved $100,000 minimum in travel expenses in the first year. We don't know the exact amount because much of these costs are hidden in the business, but we could track at least $100k in hard costs.
• Negatively, I'd say we lost a little bit of street credibility on sites like glassdoor where people would vent that they didn't like recorded video interviews. Over time that feedback dwindled as this strategy has been adopted by more companies.

Incentivized

• Lever provides an enormous ROI by getting us in front of the right candidates that are going to make us more money and more successful as an org.
• I think that both the quality and quantity of new hires has gone up ever since we started using lever and involving the entire org in the process.
• It also saves us a lot of time because we don't need to send referrals via email, while saving/attaching resumes and such.

Incentivized