LinkedIn Talent Hub vs. SmartSearch ATS

I really feel like [LinkedIn Talent Hub] has great potential to be used by many many companies. I think if it is made a little more user friendly with a little more development on the back end to remove some bugs, this could be a potential game changer. I have enjoyed working and getting to know this.

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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.

• Source of talent - LinkedIn has become the #1 place to engage talent.
• Targeting / advertising / sponsoring employment ads are very effective. They are costly, but effective.
• Connecting with talent via InMails and ability to send InMails to a pretty targeted audience with ease is great. This allows you to reach out/connect fast with people that "fit" what you are looking for. Other sites for recruiting, etc. are hit and miss. The quality of results is the strongest on LinkedIn and has been for many, many years.

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• 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.

• Reporting. Major lacking here. If a job is closed then reopened (which that feature was recently removed), all reporting is wiped clean and picked back up with the "reopen" date. So it doesn't give a full history of the job activity.
• Lacks adequate approvals in the system.
• If you're a company with a risk of audits, I would not recommend Talent Hub. They lack compliance: the system allows us to "hire" someone who never applied to the job. Req history could be incomplete with the way reporting functions are set up. The system puts passive "sourced" candidates and applicants in the same bucket for pipeline workflows. Disposition status is inadequate and greatly lacking, etc.
• Dashboard is not customizable.
• We do not have our own unique req IDs. The system generates project IDs but these numbers are shared with all their clients, they're not unique to Ora so they are somewhat random and not in order.
• They do not differentiate between a networking project and an approved requisition.
• There's more, too many to list.

• 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.

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.

The LinkedIn Talent Hub is a very easy to use and widely known by other users. If someone is hiring, its very visible and accessible. I have never had trouble posting exactly what I need. However, I have had trouble finding the candidate I am looking for. It tends to not bring in a lot of candidates

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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.

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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.

Although we never experienced any issues with the LinkedIn Talent platform or required any support, we always knew in the event that we did need assistance, it was readily available. LinkedIn as a whole is always very supportive and responsive whenever I've had any issues or even a simple question in the past. I'm sure anyone experiencing difficulties with the platform would have a resolution from the support team just about instantly.

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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.

It's definitely better than other competitors because of one a better pool of candidates, who are well categorised and filtered, and the database is well updated. Also, it has a better UI with end to end hiring requirement management, that helps to make hiring faster and smarter. The UX though is a bit laggy, which can be improved

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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.

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• Positive impact. The tool has helped us in finding quality candidates for our hard to fill positions!
• Helps in “pipelining” even after we fill a position, we make a folder of prospective candidates that we find through the platform. This list is then revisited once we have additional positions!
• Outreach to global candidates. We have an office in Spain and we have found so many qualified candidates on the platform to fill those positions!

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• 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.