Vincere vs. SmartSearch ATS

The training videos are a great tool for someone new to the system, and lines up really well with the ease of use that the system demonstrates overall - my team all watched these over the course of a week and became fairly proficient in using the system before we had it rolled out. Previously systems i have used haven't allowed for the extraction of financials in enough detail from the system. Vincere allows us to break our data down by contingent and retained, then by stage in order to truly see our pipeline in detail.

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.

• Candidate search functions are brilliant
• Has multiple integrations
• Is constantly coming up with innovative solutions
• Being independent of major New Zealand job boards means increased security of information. It is more difficult for the duopoly job boards here to assess where our candidate applications originates from. This is relevant given the involvement one prominent job board has with a competing ATS system.

• 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.

• I would like to see the the recruitment process automated (e.g., when you move a candidate through the process that their status updates automatically and you don't need to do it manually yourself). When a candidate is going for an interview, the status at the top of their profile should automatically update. Then when they go for their first Interview, the status should automatically update and so on. Now you need to manually go and update all this, which is time consuming and can sometimes be forgotten.
• The copy and paste function should be updated so that it can be used on all screens no mater where in the system you are, as not everyone knows how to do CRV files, etc. Copy/paste saves time for someone like me.

• 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 just implemented Vincere and the chance of changing to a different soon is limited

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

Great candidate management. A UI that could do with further visual development. Easy to use functions and great support from the Vincere team. Slightly clunky process for making a placement. Great candidate pics and star ratings. Overall easy of use that drives good adoption from my team

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

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.

Our Implementation Consultant Alan is super helpful 10/10 recommend!! If I have a question he gets in contact super fast. If he does not have an answer right away he talks to other departments and gets back in thouch within 48 hours. He was definitely the most helpful person out of everyone we talked to

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

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.

I find vincere much easier to use, and I've found the support team infinitely faster and more knowledgable. On my previous platform I had a business restructure, and in changing my arrangement with the ATS provider, I had multiple, massive issues. I've not had any issues with Vincere thus far

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.

• Lots of time wasted trying to get support.
• Wasted time migrating data to and from the product.
• Slow refresh speeds with a simple candidate lookup taking so long we resort to using the mobile application.
• The terrible CV formatting capabilities require us to use 3rd party products.
• Lack of automation makes it a very time consuming product to manage work flows on.
• Slowed down the function of the office considerably when you look at the Bugs, the lack of support, the poor work flow for the CRM element.
• Misleading analytics resulted in the team simply not trusting the reporting which effected performance.
• Being tied to a product that wasn't fit for purpose has been hugely frustrating.

• 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