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Brassring

Brassring
Formerly IBM Kenexa

Overview

What is Brassring?

Brassring, formerly from IBM and part of the Kenexa Talent Acquisition Suite, and now sold by Infinite Computer Solutions, is an enterprise grade ATS and onboarding solution. It allows companies to find the right talent, track and manage candidates, and…

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Recent Reviews

Hiring through Kenexa

8 out of 10
December 03, 2018
Incentivized
Kenexa is used across the organization globally for recruiting and recruiting operations. Its used for candidates applying to various …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 15 features
  • Job Requisition Management (11)
    7.7
    77%
  • Job Search Site Posting (11)
    7.7
    77%
  • Company Website Posting (10)
    7.4
    74%
  • Customized Application Form (11)
    7.1
    71%
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Pricing

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Unavailable

What is Brassring?

Brassring, formerly from IBM and part of the Kenexa Talent Acquisition Suite, and now sold by Infinite Computer Solutions, is an enterprise grade ATS and onboarding solution. It allows companies to find the right talent, track and manage candidates, and use candidate data to spot trends within the…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Features

Recruiting / ATS

Recruiting or Applicant Tracking Software is software used to manage the recruitment process electronically by handling job postings, applicant status, resume management, etc.

7.5
Avg 8.0
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Product Details

What is Brassring?

Brassring, formerly from IBM and part of the Kenexa Talent Acquisition Suite, and now sold by Infinite Computer Solutions, is an enterprise grade ATS and onboarding solution. It allows companies to find the right talent, track and manage candidates, and use candidate data to spot trends within the applicant pool.


Brassring offers candidate relationship management functionality for tracking candidate data and personalizing communication with each candidate. The suite also provides ATS capabilities via BrassRing, which enables automation for routine recruiting processes. It also includes cloud-based onboarding and candidate analytics intended to streamline candidate selection and hire-to-value timelines.

Brassring Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Brassring, formerly from IBM and part of the Kenexa Talent Acquisition Suite, and now sold by Infinite Computer Solutions, is an enterprise grade ATS and onboarding solution. It allows companies to find the right talent, track and manage candidates, and use candidate data to spot trends within the applicant pool.

Cornerstone OnDemand, Infor Human Resources, and PeopleFluent are common alternatives for Brassring.

Reviewers rate Candidate Search and Applicant Tracking highest, with a score of 8.3.

The most common users of Brassring are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(63)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-14 of 14)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This is one of the best tools for the employees in any company for their personal growth in terms of technology. This tool is used by the whole organization. When I joined this company my profile was technical support (L1-support) where I was just working on [a] few tools [that] don't [actually] require technical skills. But after some time I realized I should learn something technical and I moved into the Oracle DBA with the help of [the] IBM Kenexa Talent management tool.
  • Best tool to move from one profile/technology to another within the organization
  • Very user friendly
  • Easily interact with the managers or higher profile people through this tool
  • Tracker of the self growth
  • We get the path to move into any new and trending technology
  • We can find our interest in which we're suited well
  • Sometimes, the process of hiring or moving from one team to another team takes too much time.
  • Due to this huge time taking process sometimes rather [than] changing their role within the organization, [people] move to some other company.
This is the best tool for both the employees and the company. For employees, if they want to move from one role to another or want to move from one technology, they can move within the organization with the help of this tool and for companies, if they hire people from outside it there are so many things involved to get information about the employees related to the profile, then interview, onboarding, training, etc. If they hire people within the organization, it will be easy for them and cost-effective as well and existing employees will also not leave the company so easily.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use IBM Kenexa BrassRing as our ATS. It is used across the entire organization
  • Applicant tracking
  • Provides a number of ways to source for candidates
  • Some customizable features, but there could be more
  • The reporting features (data insight tool) need a massive upgrade. It is not user friendly, very slow, and clunky.
  • It would be great to have more options to customize & add different pages/views.
  • Having an integrated scheduling feature would be great, syncing up with an Outlook calendar.
IBM Kenexa is dated in my opinion, and could use an overhaul. There are many missing features and areas of functionality, such as having a mobile app. Being able to access candidate resumes, update statuses, etc. through a mobile app is something that other ATS systems offer, and IBM Kenexa does not.
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently Kenexa is being used enterprise wide by recruiters and hiring managers for recruiting and hiring.
  • Kenexa has been trying to do a better job of understanding the client and candidate needs in the last 12 months but they still have room to improve in this area.
  • With Kenexa's acquisition by IBM, the ticket and support process became more difficult.
  • With resources like IBM behind Kenexa, I was hoping to see things move faster but updates to functionality have come at a slower pace than expected. When new features are added, they are not fully functional at launch e.g. mobile job search and mobile apply - they are communicating that both functionalities are ready however when working through the projects to turn on both, we have discovered a lot of limitations and functionality that have made us hesitant to go live with a less than great experience for our users.
  • No one can clearly communicate the roadmaps for new features and enhancements - we often get conflicting information depending on who you talk to.
Kenexa is one of the big dogs in the ATS space so if you want a traditional enterprise wide ATS for recruiters, it will meet your expectations - no recruiter loves their ATS. If you are looking to be cutting edge and candidate experience focused, I think that there are more nimble systems out there that are trying to take it to the next level. Kenexa has a reputation as being difficult to work with and we have found that to be true - while we have liked several of the special project folks we have worked with, there is a lot of back and forth with engineering to get things done.
Brent Morffew | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Kenexa's 2x Brassring as ATS in a global organisation. It allows our Hiring Managers to provide the data required by them, and start/be part of the recruitment process without requiring access to the system.
  • We can build/configure as required, to respond to both planned and ad-hoc business requirements.
  • Global sparring and knowledge about global recruitment issues, which are not always ATS related.
  • Customizable automations are fantastic
  • A Client Services Consultant is pretty much required to navigate between bugs and the global support center. A Workbench trained administrator is invaluable.
  • Once languages have been added to a requisition, it is not possible to remove them without rebuilding the req and sending it for approval again. Many defaults point to the system having been originally designed to for system users to only work within a single req language.
  • Reported issues seem to too frequently end up in a loop between the 1st and 2nd level of support, or returned as being fixed, when it isn't.
  • Too many bugs, especially following a release of a new functionality.
  • The system is designed for all users to access the system, even though it may be sold as data can be accessed via emails. Out of system approvals and notifications are disappointing.
  • Too many functionalities which would help usibility are only available to standard fields, which for the most part are unusable.
  • Product releases are normally too far between and lacking functionalities which one would expect in 2014.
  • The Internet Explorer version supported is always behind, by at least one version, if not two.
Configurable automations are fantastic, but for the candidate and user, it is lacking what you would expect from a system in 2014.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We were using Kenexa as our applicant tracking system. HR and Hiring Managers was the user population that had involvement with using the system. The system is robust and had many good features from a recruiting perspective but did not integrate easily with out current HCM system so we ended up going away from it and using a different system. The mobile capabilities of the system were subpar at best which was another problem for us since we are a sales based organization.
  • The system is intutive and easy for the recruiters to manager through reqs and candidates.
  • The system has Gobal language capabilities.
  • The sytem has integration posibilites with many different background vendors such as HireRight, and Talentwise.
  • Kenexa does not integrate with other HCM's easily such as Workday.
  • The support for Kenexa is not very good at all. It takes a long time to get tickets resolved and their tier one staff is not very knowledgeable.
  • Their Social Source product was a waste of money. It is very time consuming for recruiters to manage.
It think as an overall applicant tracking system Kenexa is a good tool. If you need to integrate with another platform I would not recommend it. Also I would also do a deep dive with an implementation consultant before purchasing to see if it will actually work for your business. The sales people sometimes give a false sense of what the system can really do and are not upfront about all the add ons that cost extra money. In other words some people pay for a Pinto but expect a Mercedes Benz to be implemented because the sales team snowed them a little bit through the sales process.
July 22, 2016

Kenexa? You Betcha!

Juan Kuilan, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company currently uses Kenexa as our applicant tracking system and new hire onboarding solution. We have multiple entities and Kenexa lets us customize the different apply and onboarding experiences based on entity, job, etc. As far as problems, we had a horrible go live experience. When we went alive a few functions did not work as tested and there was a lot of rework that had to be done. That being said, our experience post go live has been great. We are currently undergoing the Talent Suite upgrade and the service provided so far has been amazing.
  • Customization of communications being sent to candidates
  • Onboarding experience for candidates
  • Implementation teams are very responsive
  • A desire to listen to what clients want/need next
  • The current mobile application process isn't very sleek or "pretty"
  • They tend to over promise on system capabilities
  • There has been past issues with resolving issues/help desk tickets. This has improved overall but the weekend support is lacking

Kenexa is best suited for job postings, applying, and onboarding candidates.

Less suited for talent management.

Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Kenexa was used as the primary application tracking system for the entire company to handle over 10,000 hires a year. We had a few hundred recruiters using the system along with various support staff and hiring managers across the company.
  • Data extraction - this is about the only area where Kenexa did fairly well. Although there weren't built-in tools to get very meaningful data within the system, you had many options to extract data in ways that would allow ingestion into other systems for processing and analysis.
  • Almost everything - the system is clearly a legacy system that has been patched together over time and never really received the updates it needed to be competitive in a modern web environment. The recruiter experience is very poor, requiring tedious processes for even the most basic tasks. The job applicant experience is also very poor, unless you very heavily tweak the poor interfaces (and even then it's not possible to get it looking and working particularly well). The back-end administration is also quite painful and non-intuitive. The system is capable of doing some powerful things, but you really have to "trick" it into doing what you want. It doesn't appear to be designed with useful functionality in mind. Most of the solutions we implemented for were hacks that worked around silly limitations within the system.
  • Support - really, really poor. We paid for a dedicated consultant, and would regularly go days without getting responses (much less resolutions) to our issues. We replaced the consultant after a few years of pain, and the new consultant wasn't much better. They are not responsive, not knowledgeable, and regularly dropped the ball. Even if the system was excellent, based on the quality of the support we paid to receive I could not recommend this company.
Stay away from Kenexa. I could not recommend using any of their products in any circumstance. Look at newer players in the ATS field, where you're likely to find a more innovative, well-designed system that will provide a better experience for recruiters, managers, applicants, and back-office support. It'll probably be a lot less expensive as well.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • It is easy to review the candidates within the requisition.
  • Ease of use between users.
  • When implemented the automatically generated offer letter is simple to use.
  • The system is very slow.
  • The reporting functions could be more clear.
  • There are a lot of screens to move through to complete simple tasks.
I would recommend the colleague ask about refresh rates. Our system was very slow and cumbersome.
December 20, 2013

2XBrassRing Review

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Implementation of a new product.
  • Listening to current users design requests and suggestions.
  • Willingness to set up meetings with multiple groups within the organization to find solutions to known issues.
  • Roll out of new functionality.
  • Testing new functionality prior to roll out.
  • Communicating functionality changes to all clients, and providing complete documentation showing how to implement those changes without help from consultant.
My advice would be that the level of service received from the consultants is not what it once was. I believe their service model changed two years ago, and as a result the consultants are responsible for more clients. As a result the consultants have less time to really learn the system, as they are constantly on calls from one client to the next with no real down time to troubleshoot.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • It is an easy transition from the Recruiting team to the HR team when it comes to onboarding new employees.
  • Great for keeping track of candidates and organizing information by requisition numbers.
  • Easy process for sending out offer letters.
  • Can be very tedious when offer letters are filled out incorrectly, or need to be updated. There should be an easier tool to edit offer letters that need to be revised instead of plugging in all of the info again.
  • I experienced a lot of glitches with the format of the offer letter. At times the formatting and fonts would be skewed when copy/pasting into Kenexa.
  • "Moving a candidate through Kenexa" could be confusing for people who do not use all of the points (1st interview, 2nd interview, Manager review, etc). There should be a smoother process where you can jump from one status to the next easily.
I would advise to go over the functions step by step a few times a day with the trainer in order to get comfortable with it. You need to click on a lot of things to navigate through the product so be prepared to take a significant amount of time a day to review.
Aaron Binkley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • BrassRing did make it easy to create and post new jobs as well as unpost and close filled jobs.
  • Kenexa 2x BrassRing is capable of running many useful reports for keeping track of candidate flow and overall recruitment progress.
  • BrassRing's application system for candidates is prone to freezing and crashing in the middle of the application causing potential candidates to lose all progress. I filled out the application myself and witnessed these issues first hand, on top of several complaints I received via phone and email from candidates attempting to apply via the BrassRing service. Also, the Parsing system within the application is not capable of pulling any meaningful information out of text documents.
  • Each user must be added to each job in order for that job, and the candidates in it, to show up in relevant searches. This becomes a problem when a new team member joins the account and needs access to all of the previous openings just so that they can find candidates already in the system. The account I was working on involved literally hundreds of new openings a month, meaning that any movement of personnel on or off the account would mean having to update potentially thousands of old positions just to allow them to be able to mine the ATS for candidates. I don't see any particular reason why someone with access to the system should have to be given access to each individual job. If a particular position needs to be kept confidential for whatever reason then that individual position should be able to be set to only show to authorized recruiters. The rest of the positions should automatically be searchable by anyone with appropriate access to the ATS to allow for basic level candidate mining and movement.
Other products in the same category as Kenexa 2x BrassRing would be Taleo and PeopleFluent. I would also look into Avature as an ATS option. I am currently on the sourcing side of the recruitment process and use Avature for tracking and candidate mining purposes. I would recommend getting any kind of demo possible since the user interfaces vary quite a bit between them. Ease of use and overall stability should be kept in mind when comparing ATS prices.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Kenexa allows Boolean key word search within a particular requisition so it makes sifting through a high number of applicants manageable and effective
  • Kenexa can be tailored to meet individual business needs. During the time we’ve had Kenexa here I’ve used it in support of a few different business segments and for each the way the system was used to “position” candidate statuses have varied based on the individual need of the business. One example is when interviewing a high volume of applicants internationally, we were able to send qualified applicants through to the “event manager” and it would enable the candidate to select his/her interview date/time based on previously submitted options inputted by our Kenexa users.
  • Kenexa allows one to customize and score questions for each open requisition that applicants complete as they apply. The system then sorts applicants according to the score of candidate answers allowing for easy sorting of top qualified candidates.
  • When onboarding a new hire, Kenexa sends our new hire documents via a portal link to be submitted online by the candidate. The system is not easily compatible with Mac users and so it can complicate the candidate experience for many of our creative hires.
  • I’ve experienced a high volume of system outages where I was not able access Kenexa. These outages have been resolved in some cases by a system restart, clearing my “cookies” and in the majority of cases, the Kenexa tech team had to make the fix on their end as more often the not the issue tended to be user wide. They are usually great about fixing bugs in a timely fashion but there have been instances where I’ve been blocked out for a few hours.
  • In my ideal ATS, a system should be able to compose and edit offer letters with the click of a button. Unfortunately there is much manual entry needed to generate offer letters in Kenexa, and once completed, it is no possible to edit. For example, if a new hire’s start date changed we have to create an completely new offer letter, we cannot go in and just make the minor adjustment.
1. Is the system compatable with both Mac and PC platforms?
2. Can the system be customized to unique individual business needs?
Simon Meth | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • 2XB is SaaS and it is up and running most of the time. Performance is usually good and there is only very minimal downtime.
  • 2XB allows corporate recruiters to work the way they want to work. It provides a clear snapshot of everything on the recruiter's "desk": what there is to do now, what there is to do later, and what can be ignored.
  • 2XB can handle companies/organizations of various sizes including the very largest and handles multi-site, multi-countries well.
  • The GUI has undergone several major revisions since I first used it in '03. It is far from Windows compliant. As the market transitions away from pure Windows compliance, now is the time to redesign and bring the UI up-to-date.
  • Reporting is very poor. A redesign of the reporting engine to use modern technologies is needed.
  • There is little that the user can do to customize their experience other than moving columns around, adding and deleting columns, and rearranging the landing page. This should be addressed when architecting the new UI.
  • The implementation of 2XB that I use has no social media integration that I'm aware of. However, Kenexa has announced Release 13: Social media integration and mobile functionality are at the top of the holiday wish list of recruiters this year. Just in time for the holidays, we’re excited to roll out Release 13 of Kenexa 2x BrassRing. Highlights of the release include expanded functionality for social, mobile, on-demand video interviewing, SMS/Text Messaging, user interface advances and candidate relationship management. No idea if that's vaporware or not but at least they are headed in the right direction.
Kenexa 2XB is certainly worth consideration. It's important to determine if the UI is going to be acceptable. Whether or not that is true will depend on the rest of the software suite in use. Reporting is also important. While you can report on most of the data, doing so is cumbersome and not readily available and intuitive for most users. That may be an issue in environments where users are expected to generate their own reports. Modern software should work the way that users expect. Given that most users are now used to using Web applications, tablet applications, and smartphone applications, shouldn't their ATS be available and work consistently on each of those platforms? 2XB does not!
Angela Cartwright | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Candidate View includes the resume which allows for quick decision making on suitability of candidate.
  • The reports generated from Kenexa worked well and easy enough to configure.
  • The flow to the careers page was simple.
  • Posting to external sites was easy to do.
  • The version we had did not include social network sharing and that would have been nice.
  • The version we used didn't support .docx or .pdf but I'm sure that has changed now.
  • Some functionality, like template creation, needed engineering customization and would have been nice to do ourselves.
  • Workflow jump to the next step would have been a nice feature.
Depends on size of company, if a bigger company Kenexa worked well but for a smaller one it was too pricey.
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