BambooHR® vs. SilkRoad Recruiting

I think if you're a small organization and you're trying to get out of paper, this is a really good first step to doing that. I've heard from other people that are in larger organizations where they have thousands of employees that there may be better platforms, but for smaller organization it's awesome.

Incentivized

I think OpenHire is best for a small company (max about 2500 employees). The more employees you have the more HR people you should have and this can get expensive. I know most larger companies are using more advanced systems as well (Workday). During the selection process be sure to determine how many OpenHire users you would need. Ask whether your managers will be willing to work in the system as well or whether HR would have to own the entire process. If you are EEOC compliant, make sure you ask about diversity posting, APP tracking of applicants, and reporting needs. If you require an onboarding tool, SilkRoad offers RedCarpet. I found it to be very complex and hiring managers refused to use it. If you require an onboarding tool, definitely look into it. The demo may look great but there were a lot of implementation steps done to make it work and it just didn't fit our company culture. So make sure it fits yours.

Incentivized

• BambooHR® allows you to preview as a user in a specific access level. This is VERY helpful for providing instructions to employees or double checking that information is secure.
• BambooHR® customer support is unmatched. Any time I have a question, I can quickly get an answer as well as additional resources.
• Employees are able to easily find their information without coming to HR for questions. This cuts down on the questions coming into HR departments, big and small.

Incentivized

• The ease of use when it comes to create requisitions from a hiring managers side of things is definitely a positive. It's very much user intuitive and the specifications can be completely customized as to what a company would like to appear within said requisition.
• Candidate correspondence is an absolute breeze as you can custom load templates into the system that can be edited at any time through an administrator in your company instead of having to go through a technical support team on the other side of things.
• Overall, it's a pretty no muss no fuss system to use as there's not a great layer of complication about it and like most things, spaced practice and consistent exposure to it tend to iron out those rough edges. From an administration standpoint, adding in locations and hiring managers is incredibly simplistic along with reporting functionality.
• Candidate folders have come a long way in the system and are much more user friendly at this point than when I began using the system some four years ago. It's very easy to shift candidate profiles between folders and edit on the fly.

Incentivized

• Notices for approving hours don't always coincide with pay periods well.
• Payroll reports are by pay period without the ability to combine hours, etc. into a monthly report.
• There is not an easy way to fix payroll errors. Must get it right the first time.

Incentivized

• We no longer use Silkroad largely because it caused me more work. There was no ability to make documents required in the application process. Although we said a resume, transcripts, a specific list of references and cover letter were required in the posting more than 90% of applications were missing something which forced me to correspond with thousands of applicants and wasted a lot of time.
• They lack integrity. We were promised customer support for applicants when we purchased Silkroad but it was yanked about a year later. It wasted even more of my time and showed a lack of integrity on the part of the company.
• It lacked some of the reporting we needed and every time we needed something special it was an extra cost.

Incentivized

There's nothing wrong with this platform. I would recommend it to any business starting with more than 10 employees. I will continue to use the program for as long as I need to, hoping they continue being tremendous and finding other ways to incorporate more technology.

Incentivized

It was a great solution for the company in all aspects, especially the cost. The company was not in a position to afford a solution such as Oracle PeopleSoft. The only reason we did not renew OpenHire was we got acquired by a much larger organization and started utilizing the tools that the parent company had available

Incentivized

BambooHR® is helpful, but I still handle some tasks manually due to missing features relevant to my needs. Certain processes require additional functionality, limiting full automation. While it streamlines HR operations, gaps in usability mean I must supplement workflows with manual efforts to ensure efficiency and meet specific business demands.

Incentivized

It's not a bad system to use, there just seems to be so much click through to get one task achieved. Once you know all the little routes and pieces it gets easier.

Incentivized

Yes, there is a huge team in the back of the online platform or it looks like it because I have never been left without an answer when I have a question or waiting from a response on my chat .... There must be a huge team, this is so great and I always seem to have someone that is very knowledgeable too. So many times in the past I had to leave with customer service that would connect you with someone else because of the expertise, here everyone seems to be some kind of an expert in the HR function.

Incentivized

I love BambooHR. Reports are easy to run and download and it usually covers any types of requests I get from the management team. You get excel or .csv downloads/reports and it is fast and simple, not too crowded so it is easy to read through. We don't integrate the tool yet but again, soon we will. we just did not had the time to utilize it yet but that's the plan.

Incentivized

The support can be slow as they are a US based company and therefore we often have to wait for them to be online before we can speak to somebody and they are not particularly responsive to emails. The service itself has always been helpful and in most cases, the issue was resolved.

Incentivized

The support for Silkroad is awful. I know they are working on it and it seems to be slightly better but it's still not great. I have had multiple cases I have never heard from them on, others I have had to follow-up multiple times and one that took a year

Incentivized

I didn't have in-person training besides teaching my managers how to use the program. However, I couldn't omit this question (maybe a system glitch).

Incentivized

As far as I can recall, everything went well with doing it online and got questions answered. Was thankful to work with a dummy file to get used to some practices prior to getting our own domain within bamboo to then place our personnel information in the system, this helped a lot!

Incentivized

We implemented bambooHR in Fall, 2023 then implemented Payroll 1/1/24. A vital piece of information was not known or missed in that we are exempt from State Unemployment Tax and have a Reimbursement Set-up, so bambooHR did not send Payroll Reports to the State. Those reports need to be sent regardless if we are exempt or not.

Incentivized

I needed a system that was easy to use from an admin level as well as employee level. We run a pretty simple operation as we do not have shift diffs or multiple approval levels. Some of the systems reviewed were too much for us and, as a result, too expensive. BambooHR® fit our needs and budget accordingly.

OpenHire is not nearly as advanced as Kenexa and is probably more on par with iCIMS. I did find iCIMS had some additional functionality and was easier to use than OpenHire. OpenHire's system seems much more fragmented, requiring work arounds than either of the others. I also found iCIMS to have better customer service when in need of help using the system or requesting any changes. OpenHire was the selection at my previous company based on its global platform as well as cost savings. At my current company, OpenHire was selected prior to my joining, however, for the level of recruiting we do, the lack of sophistication isn't really an issue.

Incentivized

There is so much you can do with this platform, it is incredible and so welcoming. We don't utilize it 100% yet just because we are growing and the HR team has not been able to concentrate on other areas offered to us but but we will soon. Which is also why we got the product, specifically because what BambooHR can do to help us meet our growing business needs.

Incentivized

• HR team members have been saved thousands of hours over the 3.5 years we've had BambooHR®. It saved me personally several hours a day once BambooHR® was set up. Specifically, onboarding, offboarding, and a formal Hiring system are the major time savers.
• Employee Information is much easier to access and is all centralized. Employees are empowered to update their information when applicable, and we have designed custom access levels for different positions and managers to ensure every individual is seeing the appropriate types of information about employees.
• We saved significant money by switching from Lattice to BambooHR®'s Performance Management solution. This solution is less advanced, but the simplicity meets our needs perfectly fine, and it even saves time for managers and employees by BambooHR®'s standard questions, carefully designed to get to the heart of performance and improvement.

Incentivized

• OpenHire has very positively impacted our organization. It has allowed us to streamline our process and keep record of all of our recruitment electronically instead of in paper.
• It has allowed us to have a consistent recruitment process in all of our countries
• It has greatly increased the efficiency of our recruitment team.
• Only negative is that our organization has an expectation for reports and we are not able to always give them what they would like out of the system.

Incentivized