IBM Kenexa Reviews

For us, the most valuable feature is the ability to completely onboard our associates online, their electronic onboarding portal, as well as the automation that they have in their hiring system that allows us to automate a lot of our hiring process and eliminate those manual touchpoints.

It allows us to streamline our hiring process, and also standardize our hiring processes across the organization.

We're really looking forward to what Kenexa has in store for data analytics in the future with their Talent Insights tool. We're also really looking forward to some of their enhancements to their onboarding portal, specifically for recruiters and hiring managers.

We just recently upgraded to their Talent Suite, which is their latest version of the software. Their onboarding portal saw the most change, and I would say it's been really improved from a new-hire or a candidate experience. We are looking forward to some additional enhancements from a hiring manager perspective.

There's always more work to do. There's always improvements that can be made, but overall, we're very happy with the product.

The stability's very good. Overall, we typically don't have any unexpected downtimes during the month.

Scalability is great. We use the system for everything from a very low-volume, high-touch corporate recruiting model to our tax office, high-volume approach, which is 80-100,000 people each season.

Technical support is good, responsive and efficient. We always get same-day response on our tickets. We may not always get same-day resolution, but we always get same-day response. Their customer-service agents are always very friendly and knowledgeable about the system.

Prior to Kenexa, we were on a homegrown system for recruiting, but our corporate recruiting was on another system. We switched to Kenexa because it was important for us to have all of our recruiting, both for corporate and our tax offices, under one system. We wanted to make sure all of our candidates were together; we were looking at a holistic candidate pool, really, one database for an applicant-tracking system.

Also, just the functionality that Kenexa provides in comparison to the other vendor that we were using.

The decision to get Kenexa happened before I joined the team.

Functionality, I think, is the number one criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with, but a very close second would be the customer relationship – really, the relationships and partnerships that we have as a client, and knowing that if we have a problem or a question, we'll have somebody that's there to answer it for us and to help us on our journey.

We chose Kenexa for a number of reasons. One was because of the science that sits behind our survey approach. What we liked specifically was the high-performance engagement model and then, over the course of the relationship, in helping us to understand much more than we've ever done before, the relationship between emotional engagement and rational engagement. This is where behavioral science and business psychology is really starting to play a much more important role in Lloyd's in helping us to be able to ask the right questions in the right way through the right channels.

Using Kenexa and the conversations I think that we have now had, we have focused and worked really hard with the team in London. They've been great. I think what they've done as well is they've really challenged the thinking. What we've benefited from is having a partner who challenges us, who is not afraid to call out stuff.

Basically you want a partner who makes you think. We don't need a partner who delivers surveys. There are numerous companies out there, suppliers, that will run a survey for us. It's about the ability for a partner to make a bank as complex and large as ours to really take stock and think about what it is we want, where it is we're going, and the progress we're making. I think that's really what we get from the IBM team.

Looking at IBM, it's working really well at the moment and we're just about to embark on another kind of agreement or contract with them as well that will take us up until the time at which the workplace would have changed again. It's right that we've got in place that kind of short-term contract as well. I think it keeps us and IBM on our toes in terms of making sure that we've got the best possible partner for where we are in our journey, but also understanding where we want to get to. I think IBM has taken a lot of time to really understand Lloyd's in a way that other providers possibly wouldn't have. We really, really value that.

In terms of where it can improve, as of late summer 2016, we had two large surveys running at the moment. We've got a culture survey, which we introduced in 2014, which enables us to be able to assess and measure company culture to the extent to which an individual is connected to the purpose, vision and values of the group. It's a big survey. It's almost like what you compare with an annual company-wide survey. Later in the autumn, we were about to launch our engagement survey back in the UK. That's also another big event as well. I think the challenge for us as well is that we know that the external market is changing. If we think about what's happening from a consumer or customer experience, we see that they are getting feedback at the moment. There's constant feedback, constant dialogue, and there's more transparency around the data.

The organizations are then having to respond back whether it be through social, through mobile or some other form of giving back, giving feedback or giving a response back as well. I think we've got these two main vehicles in our organization. I think they work really well. Where we need IBM's help is to understand. We don't need to identify. We understand the value of social, mobile and now cognitive. It's been really important for me to hear over the last few days what the era of cognitive will now look like; what are the opportunities that are now opening up for us.
I think the challenge for me is that we've got to use social more. We've got to use mobile more, but I need it to be connected. I think this is a challenge for IBM. These tools and products and solutions are great, but I think from a partner's perspective, we've got to make sure that we have that connected view because what we don't want to do is introduce, get more into the ecosystem. What I want to be able to do is look at what I've got so far, understand how I can move from data to insight, and I think I'm kind of getting there, but it's now from insight to answering the 'so what' questions that I get asked all the time. For me, it's about deriving even more value from what I've got already and then to be able to connect social, mobile and somewhere in there, build cognitive into it into creating a kind of connected environment which enables me to do data, analysis and insights in a more transformational way.

I argue that we're doing that already, but I think we've got loads more to do. Where I'm looking is, for example, retailers; how they work and the extent to which retailers know about their customers and their customer behaviors. It comes back to the science behind it as well. I'd argue that they are light years ahead. I get a real sense of frustration when you see the kind of customer insight teams and what they can do and then you look at the colleague insights teams, which I'm leading on as well, and seeing there's a gap and we need to close that gap. What I don't need are more solutions. What I need is more of a connected view and have an ecosystem that enables me to be able to measure the colleague experience at the key moments of truth, but to join those dots up to then answer the 'so what' stuff.

We took a decision in 2011 following the appointment of the new CEO, to take a step back from what we were always doing. At that point, we had a survey in place which was deemed to be more of an HR instrument. It was 13 questions and the feedback that we got from the business was that they bore very little resemblance to the strategy that we were trying to operate as a group. You had this kind of disconnect between a series of HR-related type questions and a business strategy. In 2011, following the CEO's appointment, we took a decision to stop doing that. We'd run it on a quarterly basis, so we were very good at running surveys and getting good response rates, but the challenge was how can we close the gap between the survey instrument that we had and the business strategy.

What we decided to do is - at the time the CEO was appointed, he undertook a group strategic review, and what that enabled us to do is - to identify the key questions that would help us to measure the progress that we're making in developing and embedding and delivering on the group strategy. That's where we saw our fundamental change. At that point, we went into the market. What we were also keen to do is to move the focus of the survey from being an HR instrument to being a business instrument and providing the business with real intelligence and helping it to drive up performance and deliver better outcomes for our customers.

As a result of that, we worked very closely with Kenexa.

When we first moved to Kenexa in 2011, at that point they were Kenexa and there was a certain type of culture and a way of working. I think since then, they're coming together with IBM. We've seen that at our own organization as well. You see the culture change, but for us I think it's going to change for the better. I think what we're now seeing is the ability to be able to look at IBM, who are a much bigger organization who are offering us the leadership and the insights that we never had before. It enables us to share that information with leaders, line managers, and HR professionals, all of whom are learning from a partner as well. That's a real benefit for us as well. That's where it's working very well.

From a survey perspective as well, obviously, learning the survey on day one, when we launch it, that's the moment of truth. Colleagues, leaders, line managers, even HR professionals would not be aware of the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes in order to be able to get to that day. I'm pleased to say that on every single occasion, we've been able to land the survey in the right way at the right time. It's been an increasingly positive experience for colleagues as well, and that's reflected in the huge amount of people, typically one out of five people in our organization of 80,000, are responding on day one. I think that's testament to the work that goes on behind the scenes.

For that to happen, you've got to have good project managers. I think what we've found over the last few years, since being with Kenexa, is a really strong project management team. They work with us very closely, we're having regular calls with them, regular meetings, specifically about the projects. I want to have an ongoing dialogue with IBM. For me, that's very different to the conversations we need to have with the project team. We have been working with the project managers, who have done a brilliant job in really getting to know us and to know how we work. The PM may have a project plan of 10 or 100 actions, but understanding the time it takes us to turn things around in our own organization as well has been really important. That's been very good. If there have been any issues, not with the downtime, but in terms of the project management, IBM have been willing to have an open conversation about what we can do to improve it.

For example, in my team, the number of people isn't increasing. The amount of work that we've got, however, is. We need to be much more efficient and much more effective in how we're delivering these. One of our ambitions is to run more research and to have more continuous-listening type dialogues with the business. If we spend that amount of time and use all our resources focusing on these huge surveys that we have in the organization, we're going to leave ourselves with little or no time to really focus on building that continuous listening program out into the wider business. We're constantly looking at how we can make the process, how we can make the project management, more efficient. IBM and the Kenexa team have done a brilliant job in helping us to do that.

Since 2011, we've never had an issue with scalability. We have been able to survey. At the time we first used Kenexa to run the group survey in 2011, we had an audience of around 110,000 people. We ran it in 4 different languages. We did that across 32 different countries. Now, as the strategy has changed to become more UK-centric, the number of countries has reduced significantly from 32 down to 6. We've also seen the number of languages that we use reduce, as well, based on the information and insight that we get back from IBM, helping us to simplify the way that we do colleague research in Lloyd's. So, scalability has never been a problem.

Interesting to me as well is that they work very well with us in terms of producing the group outputs, which obviously is really important for our CEO and his team and the board. Equally important is the individual report that goes to the local line manager as well. I would say scalability works both ways. In terms of running a survey across a group as complex and large as ours made up of multi-brands, across several different locations, different businesses with different cultures of their own, it's worked really well. Equally, the local line manager who's interested in receiving his or her report absolutely get that on the day that we promise it to them.

Technical support is interesting. Like many organizations, we've found value in looking at structured and unstructured data. Over the past few years, we've been increasingly using open-ended questions to collect the base comments. We've been quite successful at it as well, to the point where we have received 67,000 or even 80,000 comments, as well. We get those comments, which is great. What we've been doing over the last few years, as we see an increasing number of comments coming through, we're having to think differently about how we're going to analyze all this information and remove the bias and the personal interpretation out of the process to really get to the insight.

Up until last year, we basically pulled together a group of willing HR graduates to work with us for a certain period. We got some fantastic insights. What that showed us is the power of really looking at this data in a different way, not just allowing 80,000 comments to kind of go out and dissolve into the business because you'll never really understand the collective value and insight that can provide.

What we've been doing over the last 2 or 3 cycles is to use the verbatim analysis tool. It's still a learning process for us as well. What we have found is the ability to be able to analyze the data in no time. If we're asked a specific question, and what we've found as well is that the more specific the question can be, the better the outputs from the survey tool. We are now at a point where we don't use any extra resource.

We don't use anything at all so we've been able to stand those HR graduates down from the process. We can stand leaders and line managers who are enabled to read all their comments. What we get is, what are the questions you want to answer out of the structured data? We'll go down the structured data and find out the answer. What we're doing increasingly is linking them together. How do people feel through the numbers they give us? What is it they think and say in terms of the words? Drawing that together has been incredibly powerful for us.

We had used another survey provider, a great survey provider, Willis Tales Watsons. We'd used them for several years and they provided an excellent service to us as well. In 2011, with the appointment of a new CEO, with a slightly different focus, with a very clear vision of becoming the best bank for customers, with a very clear strategy and a series of values, it just kind of opened up our minds to saying, "We need to think about science, so we need to think about engagement or research in a much more scientific way than we've done before." Therefore, and it was not a decision that we took very lightly, we really challenged ourselves to make sure that we got the right partner. That was a change as well.

For us, I think in the past, so many organizations you speak to today, have got a supplier relationship going with someone. This is what we want. I think with a partnership, it enables us to be able to develop a two-way dialogue. A survey partner, whether it's IBM today or another provider in the future, that really challenges the way we think about, the way we conduct research. However many surveys we run, whether we go out to new joiners, whether we go out to leavers or somewhere in between, we've just got to make sure we've got a survey, a really robust process, and we go out and ask the right questions to really get the truth.

What you want is for people to be open and honest. You want the truth and you want to be able to understand the reality of what it looks like and what it feels like to work in an organization.

I was involved in the setup. As part of that relationship as well, I was really keen for us not to agree to a long-term contract or a long-term relationship without really understanding what the benefit and value was to Lloyd's. What we decided to do is to put in place an agreement for a period of time. What that enabled me to do is to take stock again. I think what one thing that we've maybe struggled with in the past is the ability to challenge the provider or the partner to say what you're going to do for us now, because we got into a cycle with a previous provider where it was working well, but I think what we wanted to do with this relationship with Kenexa is to push it harder. We knew we had to go harder and faster than before and to be much more dynamic as well. We wanted that science element. There were lots of different facets, so we decided on a short-term arrangement which would be regularly reviewed. We've kept that kind of approach alive today, and it's working well.

I think what's working well for Lloyd's Banking Group is that we get the opportunity to regularly look around the external market to see what's out there. It's a changing marketplace and there are some great providers out there with some great tools. We're constantly speaking and talking to other providers to understand what the emerging trends are out there. At the same time, we want to be able to have good, honest conversations with Kenexa and IBM about where we want to take this in the future and really challenge them, but at the same time allowing them to challenge us and our thinking as well. It works as a partnership and hopefully it will continue for some time to come. At the same time, we've got in place now another agreement for several years, but again we'll be looking both now and also in the future to make sure that the partnership is still the right partnership for Lloyd's Banking Group. I think that's important.

The implementation or the transfer from one provider to another, I think the providers did a brilliant job. If we moved from one provider today to another tomorrow, I think they'd do an excellent job. I think they are getting better at being able to take on new clients and to help them make that transition. We're a large organization and a very complex organization as well. At the time of moving across to IBM, to Kenexa at the time, we were also going through a huge transformation program of bringing together two large banks, which added to the complexity as well.

Within the group, it is complex, and I think we needed a strong partner who really understood us, understood where we were in our own journey and then helping us with our stakeholders to make sure that we put in place the right building blocks to create a great experience for colleagues come the day the survey goes live, which, for us, is always the key moment of truth.

We are a large, complex organization. First and foremost, I think in terms of identifying the right vendor for us, it's a vendor that has the availability and the ability to be able to operate in that environment. It's not just one size fits all and so understanding how a large organization works is really important. Kenexa were able to do that in the discussions we had with them. That's number one.

Their ability to work with us and to develop an efficient and effective process, is also important. We don't have huge amounts of resources to be able to run this, so what we're looking for is an organization that understands us and is willing to work with us as well. We need an organization that's very structured, that's strong on project management, that's strong on stakeholder engagement, that understands the IT environment in which we operate as much as them and understanding and providing workarounds so that the colleague experience, the leader or line manager experience is the best it can possibly be. They're typically the kind of criteria that we're looking at. It's about understanding us not as a client but as a partner. That's what really came through in the conversations we've been having with the IBM team recently.

It's part of the formal tenure process. We would've considered several different providers and both the large players that all of us, the suppliers that you would typically expect a large bank such as Lloyd's Banking Group to consider, but also a number of players that were slightly new to the market as well because everyone comes with a different model. It was understanding at that point in time which is the right model for us and the high-performance engagement model and the kind of connection between emotional engagement and rational engagement made it a very difficult decision for us, but in the end it was the right decision for the group.

When I'm speaking to my peers and other organizations, what's interesting is that I get asked, "Can I see a copy of your survey questions?" As if that's the absolute answer that they kind of need. I always challenge them to say, "Well, not really. I don't really see that you're going to get much value from that. It's not about designing the perfect question. For us, you take a step back. It's, what do you want to know? The questions that I've got in my organization are aligned to my strategy, my objectives, my purpose, my vision and my values. They may or may not be right and relevant for your business."

What I would say first of all is, understand the framework in which you're going to operate, how are you going to construct and design research that's relevant for you? There's no perfect answer. I don't think there's another company out there that's got my perfect survey. I think I've got it within our team and my business to be able to develop that. What IBM bring is the framework, so that the high-performance engagement model is really important and the tools that help us to understand the relationship between emotional and rational engagement are really important, a portal that enables line managers to prepare for the conversations they're having with colleagues that provide sample action sets and focus existing questions.

On the one hand, they encourage the conversation. Secondly, they help drive the right actions in the right way. I think having a framework is about applying the science, but most importantly it's about developing an approach that absolutely supports your strategy and your business objectives. That would be my biggest advice. Talk to another person, another company tomorrow, it would be, "Where's your strategy? Where's your vision? Where are your values? What behaviors underpin them? Right, let's get to work. We've got a high-performance engagement model. We've got the relationship." Who's to say that Kenexa or IBM are right for them? I think whatever your strategy, you'll need to find the partner that best reflects where you are in your journey and can help you as well.

As I said, IBM are doing a great job with us at the moment, but we're always looking and speaking and open to having conversations with other people because the market's changing and IBM are aware of that. It's an increasingly competitive market, particularly as the solutions become more technology-focused.

I think in the past, the relationship organizations had with survey partners or research partners would be based more around the relationship you have with that particular team, but now it's much more in the solutions. It's the same as banking. The banking industry or the banking sector has got new and emerging players. People in our space now, with Apple Pay and PayPal, they're not typically what you would kind of call the traditional banks. I think the same is going to happen in the survey space as well. I think you're going to see new and emerging players who have got better, stronger technology solutions and that's what I'm really excited about as well because that's going to push IBM and Kenexa. It's going to push others as well. More importantly, it's going to open up spaces for me to play in. It's going to help me get from that analysis to insight to the so what much quicker.

BrassRing, the applicant tracking system, has brought a high level of automation, specifically for our mass-volume hourly processes. It has allowed tremendous labor savings and efficiency across our recruitment processes.

Kenexa is highly configurable in a way that has allowed us to bring all of our varied businesses into a single applicant tracking system platform. That's allowed us a level of consistency and centralization that's brought efficiencies.

The lead manager tool is still very new. We are excited to see where that goes. Right now, it's not advanced enough to meet our needs, but we would hope that at some point in the future, it can advance to the point where we could have one platform of systems in that area.

The upside of Kenexa is that they're constantly reinventing, so they have constant releases with new features and upgrades. The downside of that is that they do experience fairly regular issues with stability that they're not always as quick to respond to as we'd like them to.

We're currently using the system in 44 countries from everything from frontline to executive recruitment. The tool works very well across all of our groups. It’s very scalable.

Our other tool was purchased by another vendor and was planned for retirement, so we had no choice.

Initial setup was definitely a major project for us. We're a multinational, global corporation, so it was a phased journey. Once we got a few of our clients into the system, it became much easier. Now, as we're continuing to bring on smaller areas, we're getting very fast at being able to bring people on.

We evaluated other options, but it was a while ago. I don't even think the other ones are still around.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor is whether the functionality can actually support the needs of the diverse client groups that we have within our business.

Try to keep it simple. Don't over engineer things. Kenexa comes with a lot of customization ability, so it's easy to configure something that is highly complex and more complex than you need. It's difficult to undo some of that later.

Make sure you spend plenty of time testing, because the tool is always evolving. There is always going to be room for changes or issues that you want to make sure you catch before you launch.

With IBM Kenexa BrassRing, we can search for past requisitions, we well as edit and open candidates’ talent profiles. The DIT reporting tool is extremely crucial in creating our own reports. The “my candidates” overview that shows the statuses is very helpful. I like the "Admin tool" with regards to communication templates and forms, and the ability to change them.

BrassRing integrates into our internal employee platform (workday) as well as our background check vendor (TalentWise). Without this solution, we would have more administrative functions and would need to hire more HR employees. This solution also allows for easier external communication with potential employees.

In regards to the requisition search function there is a ton of filter options, of which need exact matches. The other thing that is missing here is the Business Title option. For example a position will have the HR Job Title “environmental scientist 1” but the real business title field is “Biologist.” If I want to search for a biologist requisition, I have a tough time doing that because nothing comes up if I put it in the job description which really is my only other option of a field to use.

In regards to the errors - sometimes the HR Status will freeze, or the communication option.
The tool functions inconsistently. In the past year, there has been a significant increase in the amount of “internal errors” that are displayed.
Other errors include when you click to add a form for example it will come up with an error and you have to exit and try it again. What I was trying to capture here is that a lot of our recruiters have had problems with errors and having to do the same command/clicking the same thing multiple times before it works. In addition, the search function is a bit complicated in terms of requisition searches.

I have used this solution for three years.

We encountered IT stability issues in our attempts to get the pages to load. This occurred almost daily.

The technical support with IBM is very responsive. I don’t usually open tickets anymore, but in the past I was pleased with the technical support.

I would advise other customers to link this solution to your other systems for a streamlined ATS.

I think, for us, the most valuable feature is obviously beginning to understand the various components of our employees – how they're feeling, how engaged they are – in addition to obviously being able to attract the right talent to our organization based on who we're looking for. Obviously, talent continues to be a highly competitive space that all organizations are playing in. The retail side or the retail industry is highly competitive. It also faces unique challenges in terms of our proportionally high number of part-time workers.

We're looking very forward to getting the BrassRing application in, so that we can really create a unique offering and a unique relationship, in particular with that part-time workforce, as well as how do we create almost a one-on-one recruiting relationship and then building on that relationship as people move forward with some key talent areas, in terms of ecommerce, the whole digital space, as well as analytics and finance folks. Those are pretty hot competitive spaces for talent.

First of all, for Kenexa in particular, the tell-it-as-it-is survey has improved our organization. We acquired a pharmacy retailer three years ago. Kenexa enabled us to actually standardize our employee engagement across both of those organizations. We knew at an enterprise level what was going on but, most importantly, how were people starting to feel about being acquired and joining the broader company space. It's really helped us focus and target activities around communication, leadership, and synergies in terms of bringing people closer and more into the fold of the broader organization.

I think for us it's still really early days. We're getting the survey settled in. At a recent conference, I was looking forward to the employee voice regional user group because I really wanted to understand the employee voice piece. Once-a-year engagement kind of seems to be a little bit lagging in terms of how we can actually shape and improve organizations, so I was looking forward to understanding a bit more where IBM Kenexa's thinking is going in terms of pulsing with the employee voice and how that kind of integrates and works with tell-it-as-it-is, and the other two applications we have; it's just too early to know.

I think the only opportunity maybe we have is to be more intuitive on the tell-it-as-it-is survey side for end users; for leaders to be able to kind of run the data and cut it the way they want to. Right now, we still run it out of our C of E for engagement, who actually does training with the HR business partners. It would be nice if that could be simplified into a way whereby it's really intuitive for our leaders and make it really super easy for them just to go in and pull what they want. That's an additional piece of administrative work that we still do. It's important work that we do, but if there was a way to simplify that, so that leaders can just directly go in and manipulate that, that would be great.

We have not had any issues to date in terms of stability. With Kenexa, we have just implemented Workday, so we are hoping that we'll have a pretty seamless integration with the talent acquisition module, so our fingers are crossed on that front. We'll see. We're going though that work right now.

Right now, from everything I've seen, obviously based on actual experience with Kenexa, scalability is not an issue on the tell-it-as-it-is survey side. We're in the process right now of figuring out how we should scale that to our franchisee businesses. We've had a very positive experience to date on scalability. In terms of the Watson, again, it's early days. I think there's lots of potential application for us to leverage that, but I think the starting point for us is to figure out what are the insights that we're actually looking for in order to leverage that technology. Based on a conference session I recently participated in, in terms of talent acquisition, I'm looking really forward to actually getting the BrassRing piece installed in our organization in the new year.

I personally haven't used tech support. I know that my folks particularly on the tell-it-as-it-is side have used it, and they have an absolutely fabulous relationship with IBM Kenexa. We've always found them very supportive, very responsive, and very open as far as finding solutions, even if it's not kind of necessarily already in a cookie-cutter solution.

The acquired pharmacy retailer was previously using Aon Hewitt. We were using another solution through a third party, and it was somewhat customized. Again, we're happy to really have that baseline from which we can compare across the entire enterprise, so that we know that we're comparing apples to apples.

I was not involved in the initial setup at my organization. It was just before I joined. It was about a year before I joined, so I wasn't involved, but I have not heard of any issues other than the normal understanding what needs to happen and IT being clear on how we're going to integrate it into the broader network. We haven't had any issues.

When selecting a vendor to work with, I think the most important criteria, first and foremost, is that the technology has been well thought through. It's been tested. It's ready to launch. What's really important to me is the relationship side. Do we understand each other? Do we trust each other and are we on the same side, in terms of the values of both organizations and what it is we're looking to achieve?

We used Kenexa BrassRing as our recruitment database, where we received all applicants. We also used it to run compliance reporting based on our applicants. When you are a large employer, certain reports are required if you are federal contractor, such as, affirmative action plans. However, we did utilize it's onbaording capabilities. 

1. Very easy to use, flexible, customizable UI for recruiters.
2. eLinks feature allows recruiters to easily share candidate resumes and covers letter with Hiring Managers via email. Hiring Managers did not require a login, so doesn't cut into user costs

It is extremely user friendly. It is very flexible in managing recruitment, especially when you have thousands of applicants as we did. On average, we had over 20,000 applicants each year, and Kenexa Brassring made it easier to manage a large application pools. 

It was very easy to customize by recruiter preference. Each recruiter has the options to customize their own view, which personalizes the recruitment experience. We really liked that is was flexible in and each recruiter could set up their preferences. It didn't have to be set up so that everyone had to have the same landing platform, which was very helpful. As someone who trained other HR people on how to use the system, it was very easy to pick up and learn.

The reporting tool is helpful, but it is not as user friendly at the recruitment tool. 

Their Workbench site, which is the administrator site that you use to update your website, is not user-friendly. When updates are required, it is not easy to manage, mostly because Workbench is not user friendly. Their virtual Workbench training was lengthy (about 8 hours) and ultimately did not help end users become pros at using Workbench. 

The last time I used it was in 2019. It was the SaaS version.

It was very stable. We rarely had outages with Kenexa Brassring.

It is easily scalable, it is owned by IBM which is a global organization. I would guess they could scale anything. We had about 15 to 20 people in HR using Kenexa, and while hiring, managers did not have login access to Kenexa Brassring, we could easily share applicants and they could provide feedback without ever logging in. 

Technical support was not always great. They tend to push you towards workbench admins or paid support. 

It was already set-up prior to my arrival on the job. Kenexa launched the updated UI platform in 2019, which required me as the admin and Workbench user to go in and make decisions on what the website would look like while updating our applications. 

It does require maintenance on occasion, especially if you need to make updates to applications, which sometimes maybe required if there are changes in the law, for example. 

Kenexa Brassring was fairly priced. However, they recently increased their rates significantly. I believe the pricing was based on licensing and how large the database was. 

Overall, from a recruiter's perspective, it is an excellent product. It is probably one of the best recruitment products out there in terms of usability, ease of understanding, and management of large applicant pools. However, the person who is trained on the backend to manage the site should likely be maybe more of an IT person with an understanding of managing websites from a backend perspective. Although Kenexa  Brassring tries to make it easy by using an easy-to-understand language, it is still very complex if you are not experienced.

I would rate IBM Kenexa Brassring a seven out of ten overall.

I'm just taking over the account, so I'm still pretty new to the whole system. I would say the support that we get from the CSMs is the most valuable for me right now, because I'm still leaning on them pretty heavily to understand everything that I'm doing within the system.

I haven't dealt with it that long, but the obvious improvement is that the Applicant Tracking System has provided us a system to provide a better candidate experience as opposed to other systems. However, I'm not really sure regarding long-term impact, because I haven't been working with it for very long.

We're still on a pretty old version of it. I'm looking forward to using the mobile - the Responsive Apply – and upgrading to the Talent Suite. I think that's what I'm looking forward to mostly. I’m unable to really comment further without actually trying that out first, because that's mostly what we're aiming towards: getting that Responsive Apply, some of those more mobile friendly options.

It seems stable. I don't have any concerns about it.

I think it definitely has the potential to scale to more offerings and a larger scale within our business.

Technical support has been pretty responsive. It's been helpful.

Definitely get onboard with the newest released versions, to stay current with all the different offerings.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are data security and ease of contracting. Those are our two big pain points.

My rating reflects the fact that I am still learning about the system and what it's capable of doing.

From an ATS perspective, I think the most valuable features are the ability to get candidates through the process quickly and cleanly, and to maintain OFCCP-compliant documentation.

We're able to adequately screen all of our candidates across the board through all different business units, and maintain accurate reporting and analytics as a result of that.

I would like to see them continue to make things easy and quick for the recruiting partners internally, or any recruiters who use the system. Faster load times would be great, instead of waiting for the little load window to close out.

It's been really stable the last couple of years. I've seen a huge improvement on the BrassRing Kenexa side to improve their network connectivity and systems overall.

Kenexa’s scalability has been great. We can grow and expand our use no matter what. Right now, we're doing a launch in Hillerod for a new manufacturing plant and we'll be able to seamlessly incorporate our business process for that launch.

I have used technical support sometimes. It's good. It's very responsive. I have a CSM, so I have personalized service, which is always great.

The decision to invest in Kenexa was made before I arrived at the previous company.

I was not involved in the initial setup of Kenexa at my current company. In a previous life, I was. It was a little rocky, as they always are, but we went live on time and that's all that matters.

I have not directly used any of Kenexa’s competitors.

Make sure it can fit your needs. Do a mapping and an outline of your end-to-end process, and make sure that BrassRing or Kenexa can meet those needs.
The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor is compatibility with other systems; to be able to integrate seamlessly.