SmartSearch ATS vs. Workable

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.

Workable is great at creating job posts and posting them to multiple job boards with a single click and also running paid campaigns on social media platforms to reach passive candidates as well. Workable has a friendly UI and has a very gentle learning curve. It is more appropriate for larger organizations where you need to hire thousands of people a year and need to always have a pipeline of great talent.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Workable was extremely user friendly and aesthetically pleasing to use. I had no trouble training or setting up new users, they always caught on quickly.
• You are able to quickly review candidates at a glance with all notes, texts or emails sent at the top of their profile. This made jumping into a job order easy for those who may be out of the loop.
• Workable's customer support is stellar, they offer free training and very timely responses for any questions or concerns you may have.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Candidate timeline history - you could say it's a double-edged sword. I love that I can follow how a candidate has progressed through the process and see all the notes, correspondence, and stage updates on one page, but it's also too much information sometimes. I wish there was a way that I could just filter it to see email history, for example.
• Workable going to spam - if you or your client select the option that "hides" your email address in Workable email correspondence, sometimes candidate emails go straight to candidate's spam folders. I try to warn clients and candidates ahead of time about this, but it would be great if it didn't happen at all!
• People Search - it's a great tool when it works, but oftentimes it brings up candidate search details that are no longer valid or true (out of date resumes, closed email accounts).

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

It's become a part of the fabric of our hiring process and we are growing like crazy! Once we have a working platform in place the cost of the change management typically far out weighs the benefits derived from the change! It's especially hard to change a process with employees who are not key stake holders, they are alway hesitant to invest time in a new product they are only going to use once in a while. With that said if something else came along with benefits far and above workable that we would gain a clear lift in productivity and capabilities we would make the change, we've done it with other parts of our tech stack

Incentivized

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

One thing, it just works as advertised. AI integration makes the work more easier, and we will be able to process the applications more faster with the help of AI.

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.

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

I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this. I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this. I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this.I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this. I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this.

Incentivized

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.

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.

Workable was an excellent tool for our start-up. It was cost effective but very user-friendly. It wasn't a difficult sell to ensure our hiring managers would utilize the tool, and I particularly liked the inbox feature to stay organized. I rated Workable very highly, though as our company grew exponentially, we did go in a different direction.

Incentivized

• 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

• There is a relatively large improvement in our ROI impact collected in the last few months of using Workable relative to the first few months that the platform was being used to manage the recruitment process.
• Such improvement is possibly due to the fact that the results of hiring processes from months ago are being shown directly in the job performance of new employees.

Incentivized