PeopleFluent vs. SmartSearch ATS

PeopleFluent has eliminated the use of paper reviews. It is also eliminated the use of scanning, emailing or interoffice mail. It is a great tool for communication and I highly recommend it. However, in some ways, the product can be improved. Some processes are tied to each other and could function in tandem. For example, while completing the self-review, the employee has to capture multi-raters. If self-review is submitted without listing multi-rater names then multi-rater review has to be captured separately on paper. In my opinion, these two processes can be different. Multi-raters should be added/removed/modified after submitting self-review.

Incentivized

If you have a recruiting organization that needs flexibility and a wide range of options to address an ever changing landscape than this is your system. It does not try to pigeon-hole recruiters into a single recruiting model. It allows you to customize how your organization does things but also allows you to control where you need to control. We have been using SmartSearch for more than 24 years. We started out on one of the first versions because we liked the company and the direction they were taking. SmartSearch has not always been the tool with the flashiest features.... but it has always had some of the best features. They have always been of the cutting edge of the next technology and have the tools and features that make SmartSearch a complete solution. We have not seen anything else out in the marketplace that has encouraged us to change.

• Self-service tool to add/change configurations without the need for additional professional services
• Amazing implementation team that makes sure your tool is up and running
• Reporting such as compensation statements, budget and total rewards statements available for all cycles
• Configurable feed to our HRIS to make sure data is up to date
• Opportunity to leverage the current tool capabilities within the comp module for other comp processes (e.g. Total Rewards Statements)
• Customer support team is great!

Incentivized

• Customization - the team at SmartSearch always tries to find a solution that works for our company specifically.
• Customer Care - the team actually cares and is concerned about the well-being of our business. They help us solve issues as if they worked for us and this feeling is felt at every level of the organization beginning with their President.
• Technology - I have used multiple ATSs and demoed many, many more. SmartSearch has superior technology for staffing firm; the technology that helps us recruit and fill jobs faster.
• Listening - the team at SmartSearch actually listens to us and our concerns whether it's regarding a feature for an upgrade or simply solving an issue we are facing.
• Common Sense - there have been many times in our relationship when we have asked about a feature and we hear "that makes sense, we will make that change for all of our customers"...listening is rare and they do it well.

• I would advise better filtering options when pulling up candidate profiles, we should have multiple functions when requesting candidates profile.
• Sometimes I get huge projects and need to move more than 20 people, it's a headache moving groups in parts.
• A faster way to verify if a candidate has been double submitted, maybe with a unique ID or email that identifies said candidate prior to going through the whole submission process.
• Stronger cache cookies when session is timed out get kicked out and the process reboots. Sometimes recruiters are pulled in different directions while multitasking.

Incentivized

• There's some room for improvement with candidate status. If you change a status, you have to refresh your screen for that to appear. It's a minor thing.
• It would be nice to hide certain bits of information on the web posting, but keep that information in the requisition for our records, ie, salary range, etc.

PeopleFluent continues to develop an already high quality product and works to continually improve the user experience. The different modules integrate well, and the administrative functions are easy to understand and perform resulting in less time spent with KTLO functions. They provide world class customer service and work hard to keep you engaged as a customer.

While I do not have experience with SmartSearch's competitors, I would renew my use of SmartSearch simply based on the up-front costs of implementing the program. It would be better to continue with a program that is sufficiently meeting my needs than it would be to incur the same up-front costs to implement something else.

Incentivized

PeopleFluent seems to have all the functionality one would need, but it can be a bit overwhelming. Depending on the client implementation, it can be downright confusing and not intuitive. My 6 rating comes from the fact that it seems like the system can be configured to actually be confusing and not make sense. I think a VMS should be set up not to allow a customer to configure it in such a way as to not really work, or to allow users to circumvent steps. I also really don't like the "organization key" that needs to be entered every time you log in. Why is a login and password good enough for 99% of the systems out there, but PeopleFluent requires an extra field?

Incentivized

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.

In my experience, the support team was very prompt and helpful. They had good subject matter expertise and were able to troubleshoot immediately. At times we wanted some enhancements but it was not possible due to product limitations. But, the support team was helpful in suggesting alternatives for our requirements. The customer support staff was also very polite and friendly.

Incentivized

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.

Out of the VMS's listed, I'd say PeopleFluent is solidly in the middle. Fieldglass and IQN are probably easier to navigate and more modern looking, and I definitely don't run into the login problems with them. Beeline and PRO Wand are probably on par with PeopleFluent. They have their plusses and minuses in terms of navigation and ease of use. Covendis is definitely worse than PeopleFluent. Covendis is a mess - very difficult to navigate, not intuitive at all with terrible workflow. Again, I didn't select PeopleFluent; my client did, and I have chosen to work with them, therefore I work with PeopleFluent.

Incentivized

We have looked at multiple alternatives over the years at both Gates and our collective experiences prior to joining Gates. In our opinion, SmartSearch is the right choice for our business today. We have been able to scale it globally and conduct all of our major requirements for our applicant tracking system and that works for Gates. We also feel like we are an important partner to SmartSearch and they work with us and we feel like our feedback is important to them. I have worked with a number of ATS vendors prior to SmartSearch and pre-Gates. That is not a universal approach in this space and is a unique value prop from SmartSearch.

• I do believe that goal setting and the workflow of following up, going through the process yearly is as good as you make it. If you set good goals, or help your team make good goals then the experience can go well. Otherwise it's just another thing that an employee is doing to make their manager happy.
• I am not sure the cost of the product, but if it is really expensive I am not sure that we are getting fully what we should be for what the product offers. Make sure you are using what is offered.

Incentivized

• I am not involved in the budgeting or finance for recruiting software, so cannot speak directly to any numbers for ROI. However, SmartSearch personally saves me several hours a day in organizing candidates, thus saving my company substantial amounts in productivity.
• The lacking ability to tag additional recruiters throughout the hire track process means whoever onboards the hire has to ensure that a "split" is marked when completing the NHS. Failure to do so can result in quite a lot of lost time from HR to get the mistake fixed.

Incentivized