Paradox Conversational ATS vs. SmartSearch ATS

While my company is not in the high volume hiring space, it appears to be built very effectively to support high volume hiring positions and companies, reducing recruiting efforts around the initial stages of the screening process. The paradox is good at quickly integrating into your Mail Server System (like Outlook) to get their scheduling product up quickly as a baseline.

Incentivized

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.

• UI - Their UI is very mobile-focused; we are not a mobile-first company when it comes to our candidate's experience. It would be great if the experience was just as seamless and welcoming for the desktop as it was for mobile.
• Adding interviewers is not intuitive; it usually is a pain point for new users.

Incentivized

• 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.

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

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.

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.

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

• 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.