Jobvite is a full recruiting platform. It provides features across the recruiting funnel - from sourcing and managing candidates via CRM and managing workflows to communicating with hiring managers and reporting through custom dashboards and reports.
$500
per month
SmartSearch ATS
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
SmartSearch is a web-based talent acquisition and staffing management software. Features include job posting to job boards and social media outlets, resume parsing, and automated workflow. SmartSearch advertises robust customer service and implementation assistance.
Jobvite was very useful when used to onboard our new hires. Being a Human capital management company, we hire many individuals on a weekly basis so it helps us keep all of the paperwork organized and prevent any accidents when managing all of the data. Sometimes it does pose a problem for those who are not technologically savvy.
I think our environment has stretched SmS and their capabilities (positively) but we have grown together and developed an enormously capable system together that is now very well integrated into our business. For doing applicant tracking, requisition management and offer management that has really been strong. I think we can partner together and build some better analytics and reporting capabilities that would be better suited for our business.
The search functions are outstanding. It is the reason we originally went with SmartSearch many years ago. The ability to do very simple or complex searches gives the recruiting staff great flexibility in how they look for and narrow down candidates.
The hire and onboarding traks allow us to create very specific processes we want our staff to follow to insure a consistent and repeatable result. I can create traks that can be very general or traks that literally provide emails and reminders to all of the players (recruiters, managers, candidates, etc...) every step of the way. This is particularly helpful where we have customers who have extremely stringent contractual guidelines that must be followed.
Support. Their customer support is second to none. We always joke that they are our favorite vendor to deal with.... Anytime we have an issue or question. They are there to walk us through it. The training is on target and the staff has always been friendly and more than eager to help make us successful with the tool.
Custom fields--custom fields do not follow the candidate from hire to onboarding. This is problematic because we then have to recreate on the onboarding side to then import into our HRIS.
Onboarding picklists are time-consuming to populate. We have to enter options one at a time, rather than being able to do an import. Also, field mapping on Hire is a lot easier than having to set up tags on option sets in onboarding.
SmartSearch has a steep learning curve if you want to extensively use the features like automated tasks and the report writer
Technical support is spotty and sometimes very frustrating, they don't respond for weeks at a time.
SmartSearch user interface is old and has far less ability to customize the interface than other tracking systems
SmartSearch has virtually no ability to connect directly with other software and allows now other software to connect in - so no Microsoft Flow, no Zapier, no mail parser, etc. and since Smart Search capabilities are limited, not being able to integrate it with other platforms easily is unfortunate.
If I were to become an internal recruiter again, I would almost definitely use Jobvite. I liked the fact that we could set up any job application link on our company web site to connect directly to Jobvite. I also liked that Jobvite made employee referral easy to submit, as employee referrals tend to be the highest quality candidates. Jobvite really has all the tools a recruiter needs to get a candidate through a recruiting process quickly without anything slipping through the cracks. Even though there are a lot of features I feel can be greatly improved, I don't think there is anything on the market today that is better than Jobvite
I believe over the past 30 or so pages (or so it seems), you have every reason for my business to continue as a SmartSearch ATS client and user. The support is off the charts great the few times I need them (generally not even once per year). My business has been a client since 2004. That should say it all.
After using varios ATS's in the past, I have found most comfort and ease using jobvite. This tool has made the hiring process so easy to manage and just the fact that it is not complicated to use, makes it even better
There are so many facets of SmartSearch, that to know everything about it is nearly impossible. While it is mainly straight forward, there is a lot. After using the program for a while, you become pretty comfortable with the basics and can start adding some of the other features.
My license for SmartSearch goes back to 2004. It has always been available for me - don't remember a single time it was not available in all of those years.
Support used to be better. In the last few years, though, I feel like there has been significantly less investment in customer service. We used to have account managers who were very visible and always checking in. Also, there used to be a phone number to get around-the-clock support. I am not sure that that exists at the quality it used to
Once you get the 1 person on the phone they are very knowledgeable and tend to solve the problem. The issue is there are not enough resources to handle all the clients. Their primary clients are "recruiting firms" and I think that is where most of the their support resources go
Using the basic functions of SmartSearch is an easy implementation. But consider carefully what your organization needs to really drive placements. Because we only did a basic implementation first, we were caught off guard when later trying to implement more functions and realizing that the capabilities were limited or were difficult to learn and implement and realizing that tech support was not going to be consistent.
Before implementing Jobvite, we had iCIMS and Kronos Workforce Ready. Neither of these products got us where we wanted to be with metrics, candidate experience, or technology. I'm sure since we left them they have updated, but we are much happier with Jobvite than others. In the process of searching for a new ATS, we attended demonstrations of 9 other applicant tracking systems and were most impressed with Jobvite.
Functionally, SmartSearch is not on the same page as ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter as a platform is much more geared toward helping applicants and is essentially a glorified resume database. SmartSearch offers so much more in terms of features and abilities, that would not really be appropriate to try and compare the two. Similarly, the overall use of SmartSearch is an apples and oranges comparison to LinkedIn Talent. LinkedIn is great for sourcing and attracting talent, but in terms of tracking candidates all the way through a hiring process and tracking a heavy volume of job orders across a variety of states and locations, the two just don't really compare.
Reporting - we had none before other than manually tracking things in excel documents, now we have a full suite of reports and dashboards we can customize.
Interview Scheduling - With the candidate self-scheduling feature, we can now schedule interviews in a matter of seconds while also automating the candidate confirmation email and the calendar invites.
More detailed source tracking than I have seen in any other product allowing full visibility on who we hire, where they came from and we can now analyze our sources.
That's easy - they have helped us grown and make more money. The core element of their technology (e.g. the ability to search for, identify and contact candidates is excellent).
They are a business partner and do their very best to help us succeed.
