Evaluation of Bullhorn Recruiting Software for Use by a Smaller Retained Executive Search Firm

I had a personal, on screen demonstration of this product by a rep on Mon Nov 21, 2016 starting at about 11:00 AM PST. Using Citrix I looked at a custom screen demonstration while Adam Cuomo and I spoke by phone. (My rep and I were the only 2 people involved in this presentation.) At the beginning I explained how a small partnership or “solo” retained executive recruiter operates. Although it should be noted that I started my search career working for a larger recruiting firm. And that I am generally familiar how large and small recruiting firms in California and the U.S. function internally. And later I remembered that I had actually evaluated at least two different recruiting software packages in the past. During the on-screen evaluation Mr. Cuomo gave me enough feedback and comments to indicate that he had a really competent understanding of this niche or the overall recruiting business. The Bullhorn software appears to function beautifully. The Bullhorn software or system catalogs candidate profiles, open search projects, communication with candidates and clients, interview schedules, status and feedback reports, etc. And it apparently can accomplish a “housekeeping” function that I didn’t expect. That is, one component of Bullhorn is that it can apparently import a “resume” submitted by email or scanned into a system. And then catalog that candidate profile into the recruiter’s database of contacts. Where there are multiple recruiting consultants working for the same firm --- it helps to insure that everyone “is on the same” as to contacts with all candidates and client organizations. The cost for a small one-user firm like mine was estimated at monthly. The user’s database is kept in Bullhorn’s cloud storage. For my method of executive search Bullhorn is not necessary. All of my recruiting history is in my head or “searchable” by a key word on my Mac’s hard drive. And that recall can be enhanced by a standard Google-search on the web or access to any private database that I might have access to. It would, however, be a consideration if I ever added a partner to the business. As it stands, however, it provides more structure that most small firms probably need. But there was one aspect or component of the Bullhorn offering that could be immediately useful to a small search practice like mine. And that is the ability to neatly and efficiently input resumes that come to me in differing formats into my own structured database of contacts and potential candidates. I don’t have time to personally do this. And it’s often difficult to find and schedule in a support person who can effectively do this with my personal email records and the file notes from my searches. And there is always a concern with confidentiality when outside staff is engaged.

Pros

It appears to really function beautifully. And it's a fit with a retained executive search organization's needs. And it appears to be reasonably priced.

Cons

It probably has a more limited utility for a one or two person retained executive search firm.

Bullhorn Review December 2016

I have used Bullhorn since 2007 in two different companies. In the first instance, I helped integrate Bullhorn into the company and found Bullhorn support extremely helpful in migrating our data from our old system into Bullhorn. The process went smoothly and our deadlines were met; I still remember this after all these years. I continue to use Bullhorn in my current company and find it an extremely effective tool.

Pros

Bullhorn Technical Support is simply amazing. I am in awe of their customer service and their knowledge of the system. Customer Service for me means that I'm not put on hold for an inordinate length of time nor am I forced to leave a message after negotiating with a voicemail system that requires me to struggle with too many options. I greatly appreciate Bullhorn Technical Support's sending me a follow up email to any issue I may have had; these emails help me to remember the issue and how it was resolved. Lastly, I realize that Bullhorn has many partners in its Marketplace but I do not receive solicitation calls from them; this is very important to me, as I receive many such calls from other vendors and it is a burden to say the least.

Cons

I do not remember which version of Bullhorn I used at my first job (from 2007 to 2013). I do know, however, that when I started to use Bullhorn in my second job one of the features that was available in the earlier version (ability to run ad hoc reports based on the various fields in Bullhorn records) was no longer available. I found this feature extremely useful as a Bullhorn administrator for my company and regret that it's no longer available; it provided a level of detail and a freedom of reporting that is not found in the canned reports. I understand that Bullhorn's maintaining such a feature can be a heavy one, but I miss this feature nonetheless. I think it was called Bullhorn 360. Lastly, I do have one other comment. I love the "Merge Record" feature but I find it very complicated to choose the secondary record from the list after I've chosen the primary record first. The primary record shows up as an option when choosing the secondary record for the merge. This is a small detail but one that would be wonderful to correct.

Grab the Bull by the horn with Bullhorn

How to sum up our use of Bullhorn in a nutshell? It is the transparent foundation for our Agency's book of business. Think organization, data visualization, accessibility and the added capability to search our candidate database right at our fingertips. Explorers of yore depended on the North Star when no other landmarks were in sight; when the recruiting world has me turned upside down and inside out, I look to Bullhorn as my guiding light. Bullhorn’s streamlined workflow and added functionality from The Bullhorn Marketplace has us covered from front-office to back. Over the past 3 years we've transitioned with ease from a relatively paper based process to a software based solution; we've been able to simplify our time and expense process through the web, broadcast opportunity via Bullhorn Reach and quickly view our open opportunity at the click of a button. Bullhorn truly is our Heads-Up Display as we manage the agency side of full-life cycle recruiting.

Pros

Bullhorn provides seamless integration with MS Exchange that allows for tracking of in/outbound communication with clients and candidates. Emails are clearly tracked replacing the need to document activity or cross-reference multiple systems in preparation for your next call.
Through customization; You can configure Bullhorn to fit your organizations workflow, naming conventions or custom fields et al. As an Administrator for our organization; I've found that most functionality can be achieved with no additional cost or custom development.
Resume Parsing and Document Management; Adding new Candidate records is as simple as drag and drop, the parsing engine updates standard fields and documents (references, work samples, background checks, offer letters, etc.) can be managed and saved within a contact's record.

Cons

Integration with Bullhorn Marketplace: the solutions offered in Bullhorn's Marketplace are extremely relevant; however the integration and go-live process lacks the support and guidance that we've come to expect through our experience with the core ATS product.
New API unveiled with Bullhorn S release offered cross-browser accessibility; however some solid features were left behind and modular layout took a step back which added a few more clicks per page.
System up-time: Extremely reliable, but back-end performance and data indexing has, and continues, to be an issue from time to time.

Good but not perfect

We have been using Bullhorn since the start of Bullhorn. The software does what we need it to - most of the time. There are many options to partner with different companies that work seamlessly with Bullhorn. We are always looking for the latest and greatest to make our jobs easier so we always hope for more options where this is concerned so we can tie as much as possible right into our Bullhorn processes. They have made a lot of improvements and additions to Bullhorn in the past year, but not all things work the way a regular user may think. The way to pull lists now, is not the same as it used to be. For example. If you are trying to generate a list of client contacts based on recent placements, there is no real easy way to do this now (like you used to be able to do). You either have to go in each placement one by one and add the client contact to a distribution list or do a million steps which sometimes does not work. Pulling this list used to be very easy and now you can no longer do this the way you used to be able to. Some processes are not as user friendly to figure out so we always hope Bullhorn is making adjustments - getting into the mind of the users and how they might think to do things, rather than a multi step process that takes calling Bullhorn directly to figure out. We recently started using the NPS to survey our clients. We have used other products in the past to generate this same gauge for customer satisfaction, and there definitely can be more improvements to this to make it better. We would love to see a better way to add clients to the survey based on placements without having to open each placement one by one and going into the client contact to add them to the survey. Same as most issues. We want to pull client lists quite often based on the placements we make and there seems to be no quick, clear and direct way to do this. We have had some issues with seamless functions with more advanced things - i.e. In building out an on boarding/application portal WITH the Bullhorn developers, we have experienced a lot of issues when people are trying to apply to our jobs. trying to get things worked on can take a VERY long time for these more advanced fixes. If it is just a general fix in the system, the response time is usually very good.

Pros

It does what any staffing firms needs. good selection of programs that can be integrated (but you can never have too many options!)

Cons

down times/issues do come up
could use better process for doing certain searches (noted in review)

Bullhorn for your Daily Use- Staffing Recruiters Best Friend

Bullhorn is both our ATS and CRM. We utilize the tool on a daily basis for Activity Tracking, Reporting, Job Order Management and Candidate Search. The tool has helped bring everyone to a common platform with a common process. This has helped us maintain better performance metrics, overall reporting and candidate engagement.

Pros

Bullhorn is a great tool that is very user friendly and easy to navigate. The time to get a recruiter or an account manager up to speed on the basics of Bullhorn is relatively simple. Getting people to use all the power of Bullhorn is where consistent reminders and training is needed. The tool is great for tracking anything and allows you to forget because you can set reminders to follow up on items, track past emails, etc. The tool really will change how you recruit.

Cons

Bullhorn has lots of great tools out of the box so it is best to explore this before completing too much customization and automations. You may find better out of the box ways to do things versus spending money on customizations that you don't need or use after going live.

A powerful CRM with great resources for future development

The fact that Bullhorn never stops on the achieved results make us believe that their functionality can bring even more benefits in the future. This vendor can surprise their customers with a lot of new features, each of which is equally qualitative to the previous standard package of abilities.

Pros

This is a tool where everything is ready at hand. Bullhorn offers opportunities for lead generation, as well as for requirement delivery. The management process is seamless and does not require creating API linkages between multiple programs. All the information about each user/employee is organized in a logical and visually convenient form. Besides, the program offers easy and fast abilities to contact each other inside the system and share some important files. It is incredibly important for our company to be ahead of the competition and to make as many people of our target audience as possible aware of our services. We do believe that Bullhorn is really what we need for this aim to come true. With its help, our company can easily gather like-minded fellows in one team to create really unique and thoughtful ideas and run successful projects.

Cons

To tell the truth, it was hard to find anything we do dislike about Bullhorn. There are just some small shortcomings we would like to see improved in the future releases. For instance, our company would appreciate greatly if Bullhorn paid more attention to their ATS functionality. Very rarely, but still, there might be some problems with the e-mails arrival (personally, we faced this error just once or twice). In general, Bullhorn is a satisfactory platform.

Bullhorn for Staffing Agencies

I generally like using Bullhorn and its functionality. Once you figured out how to use it, it's practical and quick. We are a staffing agency with 20 producers and it's fairly easy to customize for Recruiting and Sales. Staying on top of data accuracy and documentation is an issue because a lot of functions have to be done manually. An automation of some kind would be helpful and I can't imagine using Bullhorn efficiently for a larger organization.

Pros

- Easy to use for a small operation such as ours
- Great customer service
- Regular updates to the software

Cons

- New features are rarely communicated and it's difficult to find out what products were added and are available to me (We have Bullhorn S release and lots of functionality is available but I wouldn't know about)
- Some type of automation would be needed to make daily processes easier, for example, buttons to track calls vs. having to add a note
- Currently no data mining tool available for no cost that would allow to clean up data.

Why we chose Bullhorn over the company choice

Pros

We were encouraged to use a different ATS and chose to pay a little MORE for Bullhorn S for a few reasons:
1. Email is the primary form of communication for many conversations and the ability to be in the database while in Outlook was the number one reason for choosing Bullhorn S
2. Having the ability to create a workflow that matched our needs was a must. We do both direct hire and high volume contracting. We a process that works for both income streams
3. Customer Service - we almost didn't go with Bullhorn because of "rumors" about customer service support. We took the chance and are thrilled that we did. The customer service team usually picks up in a few rings. Even if the first level tech doesn't have the solution, they will get the issue resolved almost always on the first call
4. Set up went very well. The implementation team helped us to configure Outlook and Microsoft Office 365

Cons

Unfortunately the program setup forces you to select creation of emails using either Outlook or within the ATS. We create our emails using Outlook as normal and the emails are logged in the database. BUT if you are doing a mass email or want to use a stored template, it is a little bit of a process to bring up the email editor and to email via the database. That is manageable. The real issue is that often emails sent within the database wind up in SPAM. I have been told that there is NO solution. It means that I must follow up with the email recipient to guarantee receipt.

Bullhorn helps to bring standardization and simplicity to the recruitment process

Bullhorn becomes part of the fabric of your organization and definitely not something that you could live without.

Pros

Bullhorn helps to streamline the recruitment process by allowing your jobs, candidates and placements to all be in one place at your fingertips. You can create a simplified workflow on each entity so you can see what has been done, what stage the record is at and helps to keep your process on track. The reporting is easy to use and allows for follow up with your team members.

The list views are very easy to train and once you understand one, you can navigate easily through the system. Training becomes easy because the tool has a standardized look and feel.

Cons

There are a few areas within the application that you do not have the ability to configure. If these area had configuration ability it would be great. The overall application has tons of customization and configuration ability but those few small areas that don't really should be inline with all the other areas.