The Smartest Way to Hire at a Startup (their name says it all)
Updated March 12, 2018

The Smartest Way to Hire at a Startup (their name says it all)

Josh Krakauer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Personal

Overall Satisfaction with SmartRecruiters

SmartRecruiters is our go-to hiring platform at Sculpt. We're a small shop, so lots of people have their hands in HR. I need administrative control of our software, but want others to collaborate. SR made that easy. We also needed a product that would streamline the chaotic process of recruiting, vetting and evaluating potential candidates, and nothing has come close to SmartRecruiters. We don't hire frequently, but when we do, it has to be smart.
  • Creating and seamlessly syndicating job postings across the right places on the web
  • Managing a database of job candidates in an easy-to-navigate interface
  • Collaborating with our team throughout the entire selection process
  • Communicating with candidates through the hiring process
  • Sorting candidates by various attributes and ratings
  • We never nail a job description the first time. A more clear and seamless edit function would ensure we can make changes on the fly without walking through the entire publishing process again
  • Making blind hiring easier would be helpful
  • Candidates often miss our request to upload additional documents because the only place to add it is buried in the main description
  • Would be nice to upload or embed better media from more sources
  • Integration with other job networks means the formatting looks a little funky when uploaded
Several candidates have had trouble uploading the documents we requested, or seem to miss it outright. We never had issues with internal testing of the tool but it's frequently come up. They also often email to confirm we have received it because they were not sure it had published correctly.
Easy to collaborate and get a view of where people are in the process.
  • It's made the recruiting and hiring process more enjoyable, collaborative and efficient. That's valuable.
  • Significant time savings in manually exporting lists or hopping across various platforms
We don't use any major ATS platforms but have found SR stacks up extremely well against individual job networks or distribution tools.
Some recruiters may require additional form fields, SR leaves things pretty open. I was perfectly happy with that. SR's SmartStart product is perfect for a small company hiring a few people a year.

SmartRecruiters Feature Ratings

Job Requisition Management
8
Company Website Posting
8
Publish to Social Media
7
Job Search Site Posting
9
Customized Application Form
7
Duplicate Candidate Prevention
9
Candidate Search
5
Applicant Tracking
9
Collaboration
9
Task Creation and Delegation
8
Email Templates
7
User Permissions
9
Notifications and Alerts
Not Rated
Reporting
Not Rated

Using SmartRecruiters

2 - Our hiring committee and Operations team primarily uses Smart Recruiters. As a small company, we keep the number of people with access to our inbound candidate pool low. It's limited to the main person/people communicating with the candidates.
1 - SR is easy enough for one person to manage, and no outside technical experience is necessary.
  • Providing a single point of entry to route candidates across all job recruiting networks
  • A central dashboard of humans that have applied to our company and individual positions
  • Evaluate and communicate with candidates in the application process
  • Old job descriptions are archived and indexed in search results , so we have a reference for how we positioned our company or jobs over time. We go back to those results from time-to-time.
  • For creative positions, we ask candidates to submit a link or attachment that shows (not tells) why they would be a perfect fit for our team and culture. SR makes it easy for people to attach media outside of the standard cover letter and resume.
  • We do blind hiring and as a 'hacky' workaround, we'll take screenshots of their applications without their names to send to the hiring team. There's no clean way of accomplishing this as far as I know today.
  • Having a select committee of people with limited access review candidates inside of the portal
Our team is currently on a free tier as we only hire a handful of people per year. With that said, I would not switch if the low usage tier was paid. We have several years of data and candidates in the system and they have continued to make the product better. I discovered SR years ago from their community management and customer services efforts, which were outstanding. They care about their users, and they're passionate about making them successful. They've definitely evolved to become more enterprise focused, but the free SmartStart versions still blows away competitors. Plus, they've got some kickass t-shirts.