SmartRecruiters vs. SmartSearch ATS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SmartRecruiters
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
SmartRecruiters’ Talent Acquisition Suite is a cloud-based recruitment marketing and collaborative hiring platform. It features an open marketplace for third party recruitment services. SmartRecruiters also offers talent sourcing and screening as add-on features.
$0
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.N/A
Pricing
SmartRecruitersSmartSearch ATS
Editions & Modules
Corporate
Varies, per FTE
Billed annually
Global
Varies, per FTE
Billed annually
SmartStart
Free
up to 10 active job postings
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SmartRecruitersSmartSearch ATS
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup Fee$1,000 No setup fee
Additional DetailsThe software subscription is determined by the number of full time employees in your company. A one time cost to set up software, including customizations, integrations, data migration and training.
More Pricing Information
Features
SmartRecruitersSmartSearch ATS
Recruiting / ATS
Comparison of Recruiting / ATS features of Product A and Product B
SmartRecruiters
8.3
127 Ratings
4% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
3.4
17 Ratings
80% below category average
Job Requisition Management9.2109 Ratings3.017 Ratings
Company Website Posting9.7114 Ratings3.017 Ratings
Publish to Social Media7.6112 Ratings1.013 Ratings
Job Search Site Posting8.1116 Ratings1.017 Ratings
Customized Application Form8.6104 Ratings9.016 Ratings
Resume Management7.8119 Ratings1.017 Ratings
Duplicate Candidate Prevention7.9114 Ratings10.016 Ratings
Candidate Search8.4122 Ratings3.017 Ratings
Applicant Tracking9.3126 Ratings3.017 Ratings
Collaboration8.2117 Ratings1.015 Ratings
Task Creation and Delegation9.197 Ratings1.014 Ratings
Email Templates8.5114 Ratings1.016 Ratings
User Permissions8.8109 Ratings1.016 Ratings
Notifications and Alerts9.3119 Ratings5.513 Ratings
Reporting4.6105 Ratings8.016 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SmartRecruitersSmartSearch ATS
Small Businesses
Recruit CRM
Recruit CRM
Score 9.5 out of 10
Recruit CRM
Recruit CRM
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Paypro Workforce Management
Paypro Workforce Management
Score 9.5 out of 10
Paypro Workforce Management
Paypro Workforce Management
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Vibe HCM
Vibe HCM
Score 4.4 out of 10
Vibe HCM
Vibe HCM
Score 4.4 out of 10
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User Ratings
SmartRecruitersSmartSearch ATS
Likelihood to Recommend
7.8
(129 ratings)
6.0
(31 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.0
(15 ratings)
3.0
(18 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(12 ratings)
8.2
(10 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(10 ratings)
7.4
(8 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
6.0
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.1
(12 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SmartRecruitersSmartSearch ATS
Likelihood to Recommend
SmartRecruiters
SmartRecruiters has allowed us to enable our hiring managers to self-service their requirements for recruitment, simplifying our internal processes. We have visibility of recruitment requirements and significantly improved our approvals process using the software. We have been able to configure our hiring processes relevant to different areas of the business. Collaboration for our hiring teams (managers and business partners) is simple and effective. Candidate experience is enhanced and engaging. The platform has brought many benefits to our Resourcing business partners and hiring managers. We have visibility and insightful data which has integrity, allowing us to make informed business decisions. Our offer process has seen significant improvements and provides an engaging candidate experience, previously this was a labour-intensive process that is now streamlined and automated. The recently launched Community for collaboration amongst customers is very helpful and insigtful for how other people are using the software and exploring ideas with each other
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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.
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Pros
SmartRecruiters
  • Job Referrals - can easily refer others to a job posting and view the status
  • Job Postings - can easily search for job openings and read job description and criteria
  • Application online - Can easily apply for the job directly and see who the hiring manager and hiring recruiter is
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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.
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Cons
SmartRecruiters
  • Settings page can be difficult to navigate & find what you're looking for
  • Job approval chains would be better with additional qualifying fields so that we can segregate different areas of the business better
  • The ability to edit an existing offer template in-system would improve the experience, rather than having to edit offline and upload a whole new version.
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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.
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Likelihood to Renew
SmartRecruiters
I thoroughly enjoy using SmartRecruiters and have shared this feedback with those responsible, however I am not a decision maker in the process. I understand that at the moment there are lots of factors affecting the economy and business outcomes, so I cannot comment with certainty on the renewal of SmartRecruiters at this time, not involved in the confirmation of renewal.
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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.
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Usability
SmartRecruiters
I would give this rating as overall it a great combo of all your problems. With just one click you can get away with all your problems such as recruitment, candidate update, Interview scheduling, updating candidates, reports of a job perspective, and recruiters perspective. Usability is worth of SmartRecruiters. The dashboard is also very attractive and once you open you will love working on this platform again and again. I would say it is the best platform to use once for smooth work in your organization.
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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.
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Reliability and Availability
SmartRecruiters
Rarely is there an issue and if the product is down, it typically is restored quickly.
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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.
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Performance
SmartRecruiters
I have no complaints about performance. The system works virtually flawless.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
SmartRecruiters
Response is normally very fast. There are times, however, when the response is not useful. It is difficult to work with the reporting and the offer letter templates, and the front line support agents usually are not very knowledgeable. Second, if there are any issues with integrations, the regular support agents will not be able to help you. You'll have to create that ticket and ask them to escalate it to an integration specialist.
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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
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In-Person Training
SmartRecruiters
Quick and easy to learn.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
SmartRecruiters
It really was a painless and easy process to switch to SmartRecruiters.
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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.
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Alternatives Considered
SmartRecruiters
I've really enjoyed using SmartRecruiters, but these other ATSs that we've checked out offer better reporting features and price points. Over time, we may be transitioning off of SmartRecruiters to one of these ATSs because the price is a set price where SmartRecruiters has employee-based pricing model. Also, these other software products offer better reporting features that would eliminate some of our manual tracking process that we're currently doing.
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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.
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Scalability
SmartRecruiters
No explanation really, just a great product.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
SmartRecruiters
  • In terms of ROI, SR helped our business greatly in returning precious time to my productivity in business management, as well as my team's, so that we could get back to the main work we were hired for. The SR process did most of the heavy lifting.
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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.
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ScreenShots

SmartRecruiters Screenshots

Screenshot of A candidate experience to  reach, engage, and connect with talent wherever they are.Screenshot of Engaged hiring managers empowered by collaboration tools and applicant tracking to drive better hiring decisions.Screenshot of Digital offer management, onboarding, and reporting deliver a seamless journey for new hires and recruiters.Screenshot of SmartRecruiters eases the burden of juggling multiple open roles and hiring large volumes.Screenshot of Frees up hiring teams to focus on making great hires and delivering a better candidate experience by automating routine tasks.Screenshot of Find and discover qualified talent while getting the most from the advertising budget.