We performed a comparison between SmartRecruiters and UKG based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Talent Acquisition solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The all-encompassing ability to manage the process cohesively out of the SmartRecruiter system was valuable."
"I used the free version, which I found valuable."
"The candidate experience was better because the whole process was there."
"It has a neat functionality built in where it rates candidates. So, before you even look at the resume, you see a rating, and it is based on keywords. For example, it will tell you that an applicant is a frontend engineer and has used React, Angular, etc. It gives you a heads up so that you don't have to go through a hundred resumes on Monday morning eliminating applicants. It will tell you that this applicant's skills match 87%, which is pretty neat. You can skip the ones that are rated 25% or something."
"It is a really user-friendly tool, and its implementation is quite wide. It is very easy to manage users and build your workflows. Overall, it works very well for the customization of the workflows for us. The recruitment team has generally found the whole platform useful. We were looking to kind of expand it by using the CRM functions that it has. However, with COVID and recruitment being on the freeze, we weren't really able to make the most of the tool. They are, however, finding it useful to actually build up their talent pools and client candidates to be able to contact them when we kind of have this freeze off."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that amongst all the other ATS platforms that I have used, SmartRecruiters is the most user-friendly tool."
"Job publishing and application tracking are the most valuable features. You can keep the flow of a candidate's application into one system. The whole collaboration can also be done within the system, which means that you can schedule interviews and add your feedback and ratings there. You can also communicate with the candidates. The analytics part of it is also very valuable. It is a useful feature that we use quite a lot. We don't really use other features such as recruitment marketing or CRM candidate relationship management in SmartRecruiters."
"SmartRecruiters is a candidate management system or ATS system that we use for recruitment purposes."
"The fact that I can see the whole HR information in a single point is valuable. There is a unified view of everything, which is good. Previously, we had many different systems for each part of the information. Now, it is all centralized. It is very good."
"UKG allows us to customize our home screen so that we can easily monitor important items on a daily basis."
"The solution's UI is good. Also, it is very easy to use."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be business intelligence and Cognos reporting."
"The most valuable feature is being able to get time management reports which break out reclassified jobs and departments to separate areas of the company. This allows for better tracking of hours spent in certain jobs and where more hours may be needed."
"The employee self-service feature is most valuable. This is the restaurant industry, and they have a mobile app that allows employees to go in and manage their data. So, employees can manage direct deposit accounts, emergency contacts, and other things in the app. That's definitely the biggest benefit."
"It enables us to manage the system ourselves. We don't need an additional team to do a lot of maintenance and add the things that we want."
"The solution has improved our organization by helping us cut hours and lessen our labor force. It saved us probably over $100,000 in just the last couple of years."
"There were problems with integrations around other systems and each one had to be custom-built, which took a little while to get set up and running."
"I don't see the integration of SmartRecruiters with SAP happening quite seamlessly, making it an area where improvements are required."
"SmartRecruiters' on-click application process could be better."
"The solution needs to work on a single sign-on."
"There were limitations with the system that we would have liked, not in the time, but the company in Germany really dictated that. So we couldn't do everything in the system we would have liked to it."
"We require greater flexibility for customization with our employer branding. Currently, it is very much driven by the SmartRecruiters design. We are using a SaaS solution, so we are powered by what is in the core product itself. A disadvantage of being a SaaS solution is that there aren't many customization options because you are literally buying it out of the box. You use whatever is offered to you in a box as much as you can, and that might be a problem sometimes because customizations are not achievable. They should definitely improve and provide more flexibility for customizations. For a large organization like ours, they can provide more flexibility on the authorization side of things. They could create a much more flexible way of access and separate the IT or help desk access when they need to go into the system and do some fixes. Currently, it is set up in a way that that you have access for everything or nothing, which is not useful in terms of the separation of duty that we have. There are also other things like matrix, where we can have a better and deeper kind of analysis."
"One of the areas that we would like them to improve is the self-scheduling feature. They have a self-scheduling feature that can be made a little bit more automated when it comes to scheduling. We are trying to use it, but it doesn't feel very user-friendly. This is something that could be improved. They have launched WhatsApp connections in the system, where instead of sending emails, you can WhatsApp candidates directly from the system, but currently, it mainly works in a few countries. Spain, where I'm based, is not one of them. If we use the system, the phone number for the candidates would be from the UK, and we don't think that would be the best. This feature is good for some countries, but not for all at the moment. It was first launched in the USA and then in a couple of countries in Europe. It is not yet launched fully in Europe. Reporting is always something that can be improved. Even though it is working well for us, its reporting can be better. Currently, it is a little bit complicated when it comes to reporting. It has a few pre-made reports that are easy to access, but if you want more details, you need to build your own reports. In order to do that, it is a bit tricky to learn and understand how it works. Even though you have help agents and support for help, it takes some time to learn, but it is not impossible. We have very recently made some integrations with Tableau. We are building dashboards in Tableau where we can get daily updated reports, and they are definitely helpful. That's something we would recommend. SmartRecruiters has recently implemented an inbox. You can have an inbox where you can see all your conversations, but currently, it is not filtering between the recruiters, so you see everyone's emails in there. They have already announced that they are working on the filtering feature for a specific inbox to make it more personalized per recruiter. This way the recruiters can have an overview of their own work."
"Sometimes, there is this language or communication barrier in terms of what the applicants mentioned. SmartRecruiters sometimes has trouble understanding certain types of keywords or has certain types of language, translation, or grammar issues."
"I would like to see more functionality in the next release to be able to get hours and dollars per calendar month rather than just by payroll in the Business Intelligence reports."
"The solution could use better reporting with standard reports. We use the Cognos platform in BI for a lot of our reporting. However, they need to have more robust standard reporting available to their user base."
"One area where UKG could improve is in its ability to understand its own competency and then work hard to improve it."
"UKG could be a little more flexible in some areas."
"I would like the capability to use UKG as a single platform without the need to alternate between systems."
"Reporting is always a hurdle for any user just because it is so extensive. They provide a lot of out-of-the-box reports, but it is something that you always need to work on because you need more advanced writing of reports."
"Certainly, the time and attendance and the payroll integration need a lot of work. They are disjointed pieces, and they don't work smoothly together. That's the main drawback."
"The navigation on the screen could be better. Sometimes, I have to dig a little bit deep to find what I need. Everything is there. It just needs to be a little bit smoother."
SmartRecruiters is ranked 9th in Talent Acquisition with 15 reviews while UKG is ranked 6th in Talent Acquisition with 117 reviews. SmartRecruiters is rated 8.2, while UKG is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of SmartRecruiters writes "Efficiently automates tasks but lacks certain features in terms of usability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of UKG writes "A solution with the capability to integrate seamlessly with other third-party applications". SmartRecruiters is most compared with Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle HCM Cloud, Greenhouse and Zoho Recruit, whereas UKG is most compared with Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, PeopleSoft, Dayforce HCM and SAP HCM. See our SmartRecruiters vs. UKG report.
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