"Kenexa 2x BrassRing" comes up short when reaching for the proverbial brass ring.
December 15, 2013

"Kenexa 2x BrassRing" comes up short when reaching for the proverbial brass ring.

Aaron Binkley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

2x BrassRing

Overall Satisfaction

  • 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.
  • The critical problems of a faulty application system, that likely deters many candidates from completing the application, and the difficulty of allowing new users to search old (or even current) positions, thus hindering any attempt at pipelining in particular and the recruitment process in general, without a doubt has a negative impact on our business of providing the best possible candidates to our client to meet their hiring needs. Whether that impact is larger enough to justify investing in an entirely different ATS would likely be determined by pricing/cost information that I am unfortunately not privy to.
Not only does BrassRing have critical issues with its regular use, but there were several occasions in which the ATS was down for almost the entire business day. This was especially problematic early in the roll out of the ATS showing that there were clearly problems with the initial implementation of the system. Overall, I would prefer not to use Kenexa 2x BrassRing in the future and I would recommend someone searching for an ATS to at least consider other options before taking the leap on Kenexa, but I would be willing to use it again if necessary.
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.