ICIMS Hire vs. SmartSearch ATS

When we partnered with ICIMS in 2018, it met our needs. 8 years later, I think ICIMS can offer more. AI needs to be incorporated into its system to better service its customers. The other recommendation is that they should offer training and communicate more often with their clients. Their dashboard should also be improved to make it easier on the eyes.

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.

• The opt-out message after the 1st text helps weed out the people who are not interested.
• Having the ability to have templates/answers to frequent questions saved and ready to use makes it easier/faster to talk to multiple people.
• Being able to schedule text campaigns is amazing. Every Saturday I set up my campaigns for the next week. This gives me more time to focus on other things.

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.

• It is a little difficult to track internal applicants that are already active with our company.
• Some of the fields when hiring an employee are a little difficult to change.
• Not a sure way of identifying "eligible for rehire" within iCIMS for those that re-apply.

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.

We would highly likely renew iCIMS Hire because it consistently delivers strong value across our recruiting process. It streamlines workflows, improves collaboration between teams, and provides reliable reporting and insights. The system is scalable, user-friendly, and continues to evolve with new features, making it a dependable long-term solution for our hiring needs.

Incentivized

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

We just love iCIMS. Our hiring managers love iCIMS. I give it a 9 because some hiring managers do not have to use it as regularly and need reminders on what to do. It really improved our experience with our ATS overall and I wouldn't want to work in any other system in my job.

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

We never experience outages that impact our usage. I also can't remember any recent time where there has been an error within the system that has prevented us from using the application as needed on a regular basis. If there are ever any issues, iCIMS has a customer service department that is very easy to reach.

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.

We can think of no dissatisfaction with our daily use of iCims, involving its response time to commands or incompatibility with any other software we presently use.

Incentivized

Before pandemic and iCIMS Talent Cloud acquisitions I would give 10 without a doubt. Unfortunately, I see a strong decrease in the support model, which seems to be mainly connected with the fact that acquired companies/tools/features need to be integrated with the platform, and knowledge of newly provided services and tools were not yet incorporated fully into the support.

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

I would say I believe iCims online training is very good. It's informative, visually appealing, and simple in explaining all the different aspects of iCims. I also really like the new candidate onboarding, and all the other training curricula you have up to be able to inform or send out to the candidate. I like you can attach a URL link for videos as well so you can really customize the training. I feel that overall, I would like to see more. Perhaps, more robust options with the training, if that's something iCims is expanding on in the future.

Things went smoothly

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.

ICIMS Hire stands out as the right choice for our needs. I used to prefer Greenhouse's focus on structured interview science and feedback abilities but I selected ICIMS Hire because its unmatched configurability and robust automation allow us to manage massive, high-volume hiring needs. As a hiring manager, I put a lot of effort and thought into every screening and interview as I always want to hire the best. We need a hiring tool that allows me to focus on my interviewing and goals, and less on the admin piece. Workday is a system I have used in the past and am very lucky to not have to touch it again, so ICIMS Hire seems to be the best option at the moment. Can't wait for its AI functionalities!

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.

iCims is currently pretty good and the best TAS for us at our stage of growth - but further improvement and enhancements will only help make it even better.

Incentivized

• Reduced a lot of overhead with our internal HRCs saving both time and hours
• Automated tools help interface and integrate candidate, employee data into our core HR system saving manual intervention, time, and labor.
• Ease of use website so anyone [can] do it with little to no training

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