IBM Kenexa is used by the HR and Leadership team members. It enables the recruiter in terms of tracking a potential candidate from the starting of the recruitment process. The most amazing feature is that we can customize the email to the candidates for every recruitment step. It is basically a user-friendly tool. It helps to source different candidate profiles from different sources.
Pros
Applicant tracking
Candidate profile sourcing
Better communication Between recruiter and applicant
Cons
I am really thankful to the team tor this amazing software.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Kenexa is a great software that will enable and empower the recruiter to track the best profiles from the very beginning of the recruitment process. Customized email templates allow better communication between both parties. It also helps proper reporting and documentation as well.
This is one of the best tools for the employees in any company for their personal growth in terms of technology. This tool is used by the whole organization. When I joined this company my profile was technical support (L1-support) where I was just working on [a] few tools [that] don't [actually] require technical skills. But after some time I realized I should learn something technical and I moved into the Oracle DBA with the help of [the] IBM Kenexa Talent management tool.
Pros
Best tool to move from one profile/technology to another within the organization
Very user friendly
Easily interact with the managers or higher profile people through this tool
Tracker of the self growth
We get the path to move into any new and trending technology
We can find our interest in which we're suited well
Cons
Sometimes, the process of hiring or moving from one team to another team takes too much time.
Due to this huge time taking process sometimes rather [than] changing their role within the organization, [people] move to some other company.
Likelihood to Recommend
This is the best tool for both the employees and the company. For employees, if they want to move from one role to another or want to move from one technology, they can move within the organization with the help of this tool and for companies, if they hire people from outside it there are so many things involved to get information about the employees related to the profile, then interview, onboarding, training, etc. If they hire people within the organization, it will be easy for them and cost-effective as well and existing employees will also not leave the company so easily.
We use IBM Kenexa BrassRing as our ATS. It is used across the entire organization
Pros
Applicant tracking
Provides a number of ways to source for candidates
Some customizable features, but there could be more
Cons
The reporting features (data insight tool) need a massive upgrade. It is not user friendly, very slow, and clunky.
It would be great to have more options to customize & add different pages/views.
Having an integrated scheduling feature would be great, syncing up with an Outlook calendar.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Kenexa is dated in my opinion, and could use an overhaul. There are many missing features and areas of functionality, such as having a mobile app. Being able to access candidate resumes, update statuses, etc. through a mobile app is something that other ATS systems offer, and IBM Kenexa does not.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Human Resources (10,001+ employees)
Kenexa is used across the organization globally for recruiting and recruiting operations. Its used for candidates applying to various roles, scheduling interviews, acts as a single database for feedback for interviews, making offers to candidates and storing important data like Visa, work permits, passport soft copy, compliance and any work / country specific regulations. It also acts as a triggering tool for sending mass communications, emails and information about the role and organization.
Pros
Applications on Kenexa - this I believe is the best strength of Kenexa. It is very easy to segregate candidates based on the skill set, role, country, level, etc., hence being the single source for all information.
Feedback Forms - As soon as the interviews are done, the tool allows us to send feedback forms with a detailed feedback (up to 4000 words). This allows a detailed documentation of every interview, enabling the organization to make the best possible hires.
CRM like features - like any CRM (customer relationship management) tool, Kenexa allows you to be very personalized with every person you are interacting with. The emails directly go to the inbox of the candidates and are personalized as well (with first names, role, and phone numbers).
Cons
API's - I believe this is one area where Kenexa lags, the ability to talk to other systems. This tool is impossible to integrate with lots of other tools, requring human involvement and manual intervention.
Search - Searching is not an easy task. It requires a lot of time and effort to search basic data. But due credit to IBM, they have improved on this a lot. But still the system requires more optimization.
Openness - Kenexa is a user defined system. It functions only in one described way. There is no way to reduce time, or have an alternate way. This is sometime irritating.
Likelihood to Recommend
Kenexa is is well suited for any organization that has more than 3000 employees globally. I would not recommend this to startups or a growing organization with less than 3000 employees. But once you cross this number, Kenexa becomes useful and is a brilliant tool for global operations - recruiting. I would recommend this tool to any organization that has offices in many countries/geographies as well.
It was used as an ATS and CRM for staffing. We housed all candidate and client details; used it to search for top profiles and reporting. It solves the problem of candidate documentation and back-office administrative needs. It has solid search tools and easy to navigate tools and also UI.
Pros
Candidate retrieval and documentation
Client documentation
Reporting
Cons
We would love to see a more comprehensive dashboard and having to not use as many clicks to get to where I need sometimes.
Perhaps more parsing options for even easier, more automated usage.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is great for the staffing industry or really any B2B sales organizations. It can be used as an ATS or CRM. It is not a HRMS just a solid ATS, so I don't think it should be overly leveraged just for human resourcing needs or functions other than those linked with staffing.
Kenexa is used globally for salaried hiring. It provides a single, integrated hiring solution.
Pros
Integration with HRIS and job boards
Contact management
Actual user interface is fairly intuitive
Cons
Setting up integrations is extremely tedious. For instance, setting up an address feed would have required sending over 5 different spreadsheets on a daily basis (one each for every facility name, street address, zip code, state, country) and a 6th sheet to make the connection between the other 5 elements. We opted not to set up that integration as a result.
Likelihood to Recommend
[It's] good for smaller organizations with a low level of complexity in terms of geographic scope and reporting structures.
VU
Verified User
Project Manager in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
Currently Kenexa is being used enterprise wide by recruiters and hiring managers for recruiting and hiring.
Pros
Kenexa has been trying to do a better job of understanding the client and candidate needs in the last 12 months but they still have room to improve in this area.
Cons
With Kenexa's acquisition by IBM, the ticket and support process became more difficult.
With resources like IBM behind Kenexa, I was hoping to see things move faster but updates to functionality have come at a slower pace than expected. When new features are added, they are not fully functional at launch e.g. mobile job search and mobile apply - they are communicating that both functionalities are ready however when working through the projects to turn on both, we have discovered a lot of limitations and functionality that have made us hesitant to go live with a less than great experience for our users.
No one can clearly communicate the roadmaps for new features and enhancements - we often get conflicting information depending on who you talk to.
Likelihood to Recommend
Kenexa is one of the big dogs in the ATS space so if you want a traditional enterprise wide ATS for recruiters, it will meet your expectations - no recruiter loves their ATS. If you are looking to be cutting edge and candidate experience focused, I think that there are more nimble systems out there that are trying to take it to the next level. Kenexa has a reputation as being difficult to work with and we have found that to be true - while we have liked several of the special project folks we have worked with, there is a lot of back and forth with engineering to get things done.
My company currently uses Kenexa as our applicant tracking system and new hire onboarding solution. We have multiple entities and Kenexa lets us customize the different apply and onboarding experiences based on entity, job, etc. As far as problems, we had a horrible go live experience. When we went alive a few functions did not work as tested and there was a lot of rework that had to be done. That being said, our experience post go live has been great. We are currently undergoing the Talent Suite upgrade and the service provided so far has been amazing.
Pros
Customization of communications being sent to candidates
Onboarding experience for candidates
Implementation teams are very responsive
A desire to listen to what clients want/need next
Cons
The current mobile application process isn't very sleek or "pretty"
They tend to over promise on system capabilities
There has been past issues with resolving issues/help desk tickets. This has improved overall but the weekend support is lacking
Likelihood to Recommend
Kenexa is best suited for job postings, applying, and onboarding candidates.
My company currently uses the behavioral MDP (Management Development Program) assessment to identify candidates for our training programs, which take place three times a year. This test is one of the determining factors as to whether or not a candidate gains entrance into our MDP cycle. Typically the candidate goes through three phases in the interview. First a phone screen or face-to-face meeting with the Human Resources Field Recruiter, then the invitation to take the Kenexa assessment. Based on the score, the panel interview is scheduled.
We also use the test for current Assistant Store Managers that are seeking a promotion in the near future. In between recruitment cycles, I test the top performers in each zone and give them feedback on areas of opportunity and highlight their strengths with the feedback from their testing.
The assessment breaks the scores down into three categories. 0-20= Fail; 21-49= Pass with Caution; 50-100= Pass. Currently, any candidate, whether internal or external, that fails cannot proceed in the interview process. Candidates are allowed to retest 6 months later.
The Kenexa assessment gives situational examples of real life scenarios and assessing whether or not a candidate can deal with the stresses of retail management.
Pros
Identifies how a candidate will deal with stressful situations within Retail Management.
Weeds out potential risk factors with overall performance through detailed, behavioral questions.
Assesses key behavioral categories that a manager needs to be successful.
Cons
Some of the questions under situational judgment are subjective and don't take into account different scenarios.
The test is a little lengthy.
Some people do not test well and I am not sure if there is a contingency built in for that margin of error.
Likelihood to Recommend
Kenexa asked a lot of questions that pertained to real life scenarios for retail managers. It is very helpful to see how people react under pressure. It measures the years of experience in comparison to how an individual would react thoroughly.
Some of the more complex math and theory questions may or may not apply to the type of manager we need for this specific industry given all you need is a high school diploma and 2-3 years of management experience to be considered for the role.
Kenexa was used as the primary application tracking system for the entire company to handle over 10,000 hires a year. We had a few hundred recruiters using the system along with various support staff and hiring managers across the company.
Pros
Data extraction - this is about the only area where Kenexa did fairly well. Although there weren't built-in tools to get very meaningful data within the system, you had many options to extract data in ways that would allow ingestion into other systems for processing and analysis.
Cons
Almost everything - the system is clearly a legacy system that has been patched together over time and never really received the updates it needed to be competitive in a modern web environment. The recruiter experience is very poor, requiring tedious processes for even the most basic tasks. The job applicant experience is also very poor, unless you very heavily tweak the poor interfaces (and even then it's not possible to get it looking and working particularly well). The back-end administration is also quite painful and non-intuitive. The system is capable of doing some powerful things, but you really have to "trick" it into doing what you want. It doesn't appear to be designed with useful functionality in mind. Most of the solutions we implemented for were hacks that worked around silly limitations within the system.
Support - really, really poor. We paid for a dedicated consultant, and would regularly go days without getting responses (much less resolutions) to our issues. We replaced the consultant after a few years of pain, and the new consultant wasn't much better. They are not responsive, not knowledgeable, and regularly dropped the ball. Even if the system was excellent, based on the quality of the support we paid to receive I could not recommend this company.
Likelihood to Recommend
Stay away from Kenexa. I could not recommend using any of their products in any circumstance. Look at newer players in the ATS field, where you're likely to find a more innovative, well-designed system that will provide a better experience for recruiters, managers, applicants, and back-office support. It'll probably be a lot less expensive as well.