SilkRoad HRMS

One reason we selected this product several years ago is because Silkroad offered direct applicant support. This service was soon discontinued.

NOTE: Our organization uses only the Recruitment and Onboarding Silkroad modules.

Pros

I like that multiple users across our organization can have access to candidate resumes/CV's at the same time.

Cons

Hiring managers cannot disposition candidates.

Multiple applicants complain of technical issues during the application process. Recruiting product is not optimized for mobile devices, sessions timeout, etc.

SilkRoad Recruiting has made posting job openings more efficient by 100%. Not only can I post job openings to multiple sites, but SilkRoad Recruiting also allows me to review all applicant resumes in one simple step. This product makes it easier to find top talent for my company and simplifies the onboarding process for new hires. SilkRoad Community also offers webinars, links, and additional information to support their customers. I encourage other companies to look into purchasing this SilkRoad and taking advantage of their support.

Likes Best

It has a very fresh look to it. bright, bold, colorful, clean.

Likes Least

I haven't had many disappointments in my experiences.

Recommendations

Cutting edge look. i like the presentation it has to offer.

Likes Best

Its simple. nothing fancy but gets the job done. Its very very affordable

Likes Least

It could use improvement in reporting. The standard reports were lacking. We found we had to create some reports on our own

Recommendations

For companies under a thousand people, this is a great solution. It is affordable, you can implement it lightening fast and its simple

Likes Best

The ease of use is my favorite thing about this product. The vendor has been responsive to questions.

Likes Least

The product has limitations and is not as flexible as we would like it to be. Not as customizable as we first thought. But the vendor takes product limitation feedback and passes it onto the programmers for a possible upgrade in the future.

Recommendations

Be thorough and make sure you are clear what you need the product to do.

Management made simpler

Likes Best

Easy to track and review potential recruit. Easy to deal with without a lot of paper work. Finding the correct qualifications is easy.

Likes Least

Some of the features are difficult to understand and use. Does not always display all recruit details on page.

Recommendations

Software is easy to learn and start using right away. Online help is good and has plenty of resources.

Likes Best

This applicant tracking software has really changed the way we do our hiring; we were doing paper applications and now, 3 years later, I don't know how we would ever go back. Our company is 500 FT employees and 1,200 total employees. The requisition and job offer approvals helped us to remove several hard copy forms that would often get lost, and the history tab lets you know who and what has been happening on each persons profile. Correspond with candidate is also an awesome feature.

Likes Least

SilkRoad's technical support has dwindled significantly over the last years. There used to be a candidate support line; then they took that away. Now, they will only let 2 of our super-users even call technical support or put in a support ticket. I would think they would at least give our 7 full-permission users ability to call technical support. This can be frustrating when candidates call in and we have no one else to refer them to. The application itself seems to have never-ending quirky issues like timing out and browser compatibility problems for our non-technical users. Since we hire many academics (and not computer users). we get a lot of complaints about the ease of applying (note - we have a custom eApp. most complaints include the eApp which we choose to implement).

Recommendations

Carefully consider making a custom eApp vs. just using resume/profile for applicants. We went for a custom eApp that gets many complaints and would make everyone's life easier if we would have went with the KISS method. Also, we did not properly map out what data would be going from our ATS, to onboarding, to our non-Silkroad HRIS through integration; we built TONS of custom fields into onboarding in an effort to capture everything but ended up building a lot of unnecessary fields that now bog down the process. This is a good tool that can be used in great ways or a good tool that can be used in very convoluted ways. Start out KISS and then build up.

Likes Best

We decided to purchase this product, because it had every feature we were looking for, from candidate management to screening questions. It's extremely user-friendly as well, which is important when you have several users and hiring managers using a new software system. Another great aspect is they are able to easily integrate with other vendors such as HireRight for background checks.

Likes Least

We have no complaints about SilkRoad so far. The implementation process to being live in the system has been seamless.

Recommendations

If you are looking for a user-friendly system with all the bells and whistles as well as a great customer service team, this is the product for your company.

Likes Best

It's user-friendly.

Likes Least

We do not have access to the hiring manager's view. It's really helpful to be able to troubleshoot without having to call the support center, which causes unnecessary delays. Wingspan has this feature, which is really helpful.

Recommendations

Understand the implementation of the product and the number of man-hours it takes to implement. Also, ask what your role is and how that will impact the timing of the implementation.

Likes Best

It is a great on-boarding tool that you can tailor to your individual needs. You can create electronic documents that are stored online and easily accessible when needed in hard copy format. It's also a great way to deliver organizational messaging from all levels in a time sensitive and personally addressed format. I like that it integrates well with the Open hire ATS as well, so that you get a seamless conversion from hire to on-boarding!

Likes Least

I would like more flexibility in using the tool to do group tasking for annual signs and such.

Recommendations

Is your organization decentralized? If so, look closely at this product!

Likes Best

It is very easy to use and integrates well with our website. It helped us upgrade from an entirely manual, email-based system and cut the time I have to spend on recruitment by at least 50%.

Likes Least

The reporting function is not great. It's not intuitive or as robust as I would like. The support center also has a lot of room for improvement.

Recommendations

Find out how much manpower it's going to take on your end to implement. While their implantation team was great, it took more work than we were expecting. Ask to build some custom reports in the demo so you know how it works and what the limitations are. Lastly, make sure you have enough roles available for your staff.