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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Lever

    Score9.8 out of 10
    N/ALever 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…N/A

    SmartSearch ATS

    Score6.6 out of 10
    N/ASmartSearch is an enterprise-grade native recruitment platform that unifies applicant tracking, CRM, onboarding, and reporting. Purpose-built for staffing and talent acquisition teams, it automates workflows, improves visibility, and reduces reliance on disconnected recruiting tools.N/A
    Pricing
    LeverSmartSearch ATS
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    LeverSmartSearch ATS
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    LeverSmartSearch ATS
    Considered Both Products
    Employ Inc.
    No answer on this topic
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    23 Answers
    71%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    19 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    23 Answers
    71%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    13 Answers
    60%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    3 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    14 Answers
    83%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    Features
    LeverSmartSearch ATS
    Recruiting / ATS
    Comparison of Recruiting / ATS features of Lever and SmartSearch ATS
    Feature
    Lever
    9.7
    34 Ratings
    20% above category average
    SmartSearch ATS
    3.4
    17 Ratings
    80% below category average
    Job Requisition Management9.831 Ratings3.017 Ratings
    Company Website Posting9.831 Ratings3.017 Ratings
    Publish to Social Media9.821 Ratings1.013 Ratings
    Job Search Site Posting9.823 Ratings1.017 Ratings
    Customized Application Form9.829 Ratings9.016 Ratings
    Resume Management9.832 Ratings1.017 Ratings
    Duplicate Candidate Prevention9.830 Ratings10.016 Ratings
    Candidate Search9.833 Ratings3.017 Ratings
    Applicant Tracking9.832 Ratings3.017 Ratings
    Collaboration9.832 Ratings1.015 Ratings
    Task Creation and Delegation9.822 Ratings1.014 Ratings
    Email Templates8.928 Ratings1.016 Ratings
    User Permissions8.931 Ratings1.016 Ratings
    Notifications and Alerts9.832 Ratings5.513 Ratings
    Reporting9.830 Ratings8.016 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    LeverSmartSearch ATS
    Small Businesses
    Crelate
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Crelate
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    CareerSiteBuilder
    Score10 out of 10
    CareerSiteBuilder
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    JobDiva
    Score8 out of 10
    JobDiva
    Score8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    LeverSmartSearch ATS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.8
    (35 ratings)
    6.0
    (31 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    3.0
    (18 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.2
    (10 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    1.1
    (5 ratings)
    7.4
    (8 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.0
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    LeverSmartSearch ATS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Employ Inc.
    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
    Read full review
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    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.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Employ Inc.
    • 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
    Read full review
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    • 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.
    Read full review
    Cons
    Employ Inc.
    • [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.
    Read full review
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    • 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.
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Employ Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    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.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Employ Inc.
    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!
    Read full review
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Employ Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    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.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Employ Inc.
    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...
    Read full review
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    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
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Employ Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    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.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Employ Inc.
    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
    Read full review
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Employ Inc.
    • 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
    Read full review
    Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
    • 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.
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Lever Screenshots

    Screenshot of where to identify the top origin and sources of candidates in all stages, the Offer stage, and the Hired stage.