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.

I think our environment has stretched SmS and their capabilities (positively) but we have grown together and developed an enormously capable system together that is now very well integrated into our business. For doing applicant tracking, requisition management and offer management that has really been strong. I think we can partner together and build some better analytics and reporting capabilities that would be better suited for our business.

• Pipeline management: the system gives a $ value for every part of the recruiting pipeline so I can accurately forecast what revenue is coming in. I've never seen this in a recruitment CRM, I believe it's quite a unique feature.
• Price: although pricing was not the #1 criteria for me when I am choosing software, we are saving big with Vincere. I am paying $39/licence each month. This is a saving of 70% on our previous vendor yet the quality of the system is much better.
• Search: this is probably the feature that our consultants appreciate most. The advanced search allows you to search contextually across everything in the system and really refine and drill down into the nitty gritty.

• The search functions are outstanding. It is the reason we originally went with SmartSearch many years ago. The ability to do very simple or complex searches gives the recruiting staff great flexibility in how they look for and narrow down candidates.
• The hire and onboarding traks allow us to create very specific processes we want our staff to follow to insure a consistent and repeatable result. I can create traks that can be very general or traks that literally provide emails and reminders to all of the players (recruiters, managers, candidates, etc...) every step of the way. This is particularly helpful where we have customers who have extremely stringent contractual guidelines that must be followed.
• Support. Their customer support is second to none. We always joke that they are our favorite vendor to deal with.... Anytime we have an issue or question. They are there to walk us through it. The training is on target and the staff has always been friendly and more than eager to help make us successful with the tool.

• While Vincere has spell check correcting keyboard, spelling and grammatical errors is more difficult than it should be. This is somewhat mitigated by ongoing development in other areas.
• Vincere invoicing systems could be improved. This is not a huge problem if you don't have multiple accounts with parent company access group but we do and this can be confusing at times. Not a deal breaker by any standards so more a general comment than a complaint.

• SmartSearch has a steep learning curve if you want to extensively use the features like automated tasks and the report writer
• Technical support is spotty and sometimes very frustrating, they don't respond for weeks at a time.
• SmartSearch user interface is old and has far less ability to customize the interface than other tracking systems
• SmartSearch has virtually no ability to connect directly with other software and allows now other software to connect in - so no Microsoft Flow, no Zapier, no mail parser, etc. and since Smart Search capabilities are limited, not being able to integrate it with other platforms easily is unfortunate.

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

Incentivized

I believe over the past 30 or so pages (or so it seems), you have every reason for my business to continue as a SmartSearch ATS client and user. The support is off the charts great the few times I need them (generally not even once per year). My business has been a client since 2004. That should say it all.

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 selected Vincere as it offered everything (on paper and in the demo) that Bullhorn did for half the price (the market leader at the time). I should have realised not every deal is a deal. The product from month one displayed performance issues with the speed of the product they remain and have been constantly a point of complaint from my team, we had multiple bugs from day one, these bugs remain now or have been replaced with other bugs. The demo, the literature all claimed one thing and we received another. In comparison we have received excellent service from Zoho and their best in breed, rather one product for all approach offers a far more powerful offering for genuinely half the price without the need for us to spend further money on 3rd party products because those built into Vincere did not work as advertised.

Functionally, SmartSearch is not on the same page as ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter as a platform is much more geared toward helping applicants and is essentially a glorified resume database. SmartSearch offers so much more in terms of features and abilities, that would not really be appropriate to try and compare the two. Similarly, the overall use of SmartSearch is an apples and oranges comparison to LinkedIn Talent. LinkedIn is great for sourcing and attracting talent, but in terms of tracking candidates all the way through a hiring process and tracking a heavy volume of job orders across a variety of states and locations, the two just don't really compare.

Incentivized

• Accountability: Vincere has helped us shift the way we manage consultants. Everyone can see what they've done inside Vincere, the system is quite transparent so even your junior consultants can see where they need to pick things up.
• ROI was fast for us. You move from an old system to a modern platform like Vincere and it's like turning on the lights. Just having the mobile app was a revelation to us! Then you add on the dashboards, the LinkedIn integration, the constant upgrades.
• Analytics: we used to track everything on Excel and whiteboards. We've since shifted that to the automated reporting inside Vincere.

• That's easy - they have helped us grown and make more money. The core element of their technology (e.g. the ability to search for, identify and contact candidates is excellent).
• They are a business partner and do their very best to help us succeed.