Greenhouse
Greenhouse
Greenhouse is a slick, modern, easy to use Applicant Tracking System (ATS). In it's essence, it's a platform for an employer's talent acquisition activities. By far, Greenhouse's competitive advantage is it's many varied third party partnerships. It had over 80 partnerships with various apps & software companies to generate a total talent acquisition ecosystem. Currently, Greenhouse works with over 1,500 companies across the globe. They pride themselves on being a very cool technology company, optimized for iOS and Android, and being able to deliver more top talent for their clients.
RATINGS: 4 OUT OF 5 STARS.
Strength: Greenhouse by far, receives the highest ratings for it's platform and app. It's simple, easy to use, easy to collaborate on and the schedule system consistently receives high marks. Greenhouse also provides transparency on it's three packages and what type of employer would suit each. Their basic reporting capabilities also impress users and it should, Greenhouse prides itself on helping customers make 'data driven hiring decisions'. The 80+ partnerships also provide tremendous value because an HR team can take a job requisition all the way through to an employee's on-boarding on the same platform, creating in one easy swoop a true compliance info depository. Judging from their chosen quality partners, Greenhouse demonstrates a keen focus on providing excellent user and candidate experiences throughout.
Weakness: Scalability and quality of talent are two issues that come up. Greenhouse is in our opinion the best ATS for a small and some mid sized companies but companies larger than 200-300 employees are going to run into system constraints and uncompetitive pricing for the 'large company' package offering. Added analytics and reporting customization is costly. Also, the system isn't able to customize user access causing security issues in larger orgs. Scalability creates a limitation with this service. Quality of talent is also a concern. Greenhouse states it's ROI is their ability to 'find better candidates' and 'hire more top talent'. The issue with this positioning is that Greenhouse is a system, a talent acquisition platform. Reviews rave about the scheduling module, the ease of interviewing, providing feedback easily etc, but not one review talks about quality of talent and that's because finding great talent is not just about having a good ATS, app or system. It's about understanding exactly what you're looking for in a candidate, what it means to win in the role, what goals are to be reached and having an interviewing team and leadership team aligned in these items. The system you use for talent acquisition will help you deliver on the vision of success in the role, it will not define it for you.
Best Use: Greenhouse is an excellent choice for small and some mid-sized companies. It will ease the process of talent acquisition and allow you to provide an excellent user and candidate experience. Their analytics and reporting functions should meet the needs of leadership teams and decision makers in their company profiles. A new company looking to outsource most administrative HR tasks (payroll, benefits, onboard, background checks etc) will gain from partnering with Greenhouse. To get top talent and build a team that will deliver results though, be sure to identify what success looks like in each key role, what capabilities you need and what measures you'll use to evaluate performance.