What Is the Best Lever Alternative for Hiring and Nurturing Top Talent?
When your company consists of just you and a few freelance developers, there’s not much concern about recruitment software. A few emails and a couple of messages on LinkedIn is all it takes to hire a new employee.
As a company grows and starts creating job openings, the question becomes more acute. What talent acquisition to choose to keep tabs on all processes and applicants and build effective communication?
That’s where numerous ATS systems come into play. And Lever is one of the known solutions on the market. Since 2012, it has established a reputation as a modern, reliable, and feature-rich solution for all kinds of business. So, is it really flawless? Let’s find out right away!
the best candidates faster
Table of contents:
- Why look for Lever alternatives?
- Why 100Hires is the best Lever alternative
Why look for Lever alternatives?
Lever is an all-in-one talent acquisition suite for sourcing and recruiting the most suitable candidates for your job openings. The dashboard offers a simple CRM with all applicants. You can reach out to any person in any convenient way and keep all leads in one elegant dashboard.
Over the years, Lever has accumulated 1,187 user reviews on G2 and 442 reports on Capterra. Its overall G2 score there is 4.1. On Capterra, the tool has scored distinctly better with 4.5 stars.
All in all, people praise the tool for its comprehensive set of features that cover the entire hiring process in full. Some also note that the UI is up to par, with all elements being exactly where they belong. However, not all users see eye to eye on this subject, which is why we decided to look into the most common complaints regarding Lever.
Quote:
If you do not have a full-time admin for Lever, I would say skip it. Unless you are hiring a ton and using several different external recruiters, I would say go with something simpler. It is hard to train managers on it.
Since we wanted to stay as objective as possible, what you’ll see below are excerpts for the real Lever’s reviews on G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius:
Poor UX/UI
There are some concerns regarding Lever’s UX and UI. Some have even said that it’s awful and far from being straightforward. Moreover, you don’t have full control over the tool. Each time you need to change or customize something, you’re forced to contact the support team and ask them to do it for you.
Recruiting is all about speed and reaction. If you haven’t been quick enough to reach out to the best professionals in the niche, someone else will hire them in the blink of an eye. And if your applicant tracking system lags all the time and slows the entire process down, you can’t help but wonder: what if doing it manually would be faster?
Quote 1:
The interface can be hard to navigate sometimes and trying to relocate information can be difficult sometimes.
Quote 2:
Any changes/customization should be done by their support team for which we need to submit a request through the portal (less freedom).
Quote 3:
I can't delete questions within the job postings section without contacting support and asking them to do it for me. Not user friendly.
Quote 4:
Sometimes I just want to power through a bunch of applicants, emailing and archiving or emailing and moving forward, and I'm able to move much faster than Lever is with these kinds of activities. It's just too slow sometimes. This is particularly frustrating when I want to close down the tab, but it's still working so I have to keep it open.
Moreover, the customer support team can take a while to resolve issues. Imagine having to wait for something crucial for days and wasting time you could’ve spent on finding the right candidates. And if sometimes issues are resolved incorrectly, nothing can make up for this loss of time.
General glitches
There’s a classic catch-22 situation with every piece of software. Newly founded startups aren’t stable and reliable enough because of the lack of resources. At the same time, mature and established solutions are just so huge and multifunctional that some glitches are inevitable.
Still, big corporations like Lever should have all the resources to fix any bug promptly. So, how come there are so many reviews mentioning Lever’s occasional bizarre behavior?
Quote 1:
The counters for how many people candidates applied to our job postings are always "0", but when checking in other ways we find this inaccurate. This can be a huge hassle in seeing how many people have applied to our jobs.
Quote 2:
There are also bugs when it comes to booking rooms. It will show available on your Google Calendar and on Lever, but once it's booked and you go back on the candidates profile to check again, it's marked as booked and in red.
Quote 3:
Adding job templates can be a pain in the neck especially since the font pack lever doesn't always match with everyone company fonts.
Roles and permissions
The bigger your team is, the more problems you may have managing and delegating responsibility. Proper roles and permissions solve this issue when set properly. Just specify who’s responsible for various processes and give the corresponding permissions in your recruiting software.
That’s where you can strike some problems with Lever. Reviewers complain that access levels may feel clunky. It’s not always clear how to set them up.
Quote 1:
It is not easy for managers to see who has access to what information, and the confidential notes features are difficult for managers and non experts to implement.
Moreover, some people won’t be able to receive timely notifications which leads to poor cooperation. Missing out on important updates can be fatal for your business, so it’s something worth some extra consideration.
Quote 2:
No notifications or emails sent for anyone except the owner and hiring manager (following doesn't seem to do anything but allow it to be visible in Lever) - very hard for teams of recruiters to coordinate
Emails
It seems that sending emails via Lever can cause an unnecessary headache, too. Some of them end up in the wrong place, while others don’t get sent at all.
With emails staying one of the most popular and effective recruiting channels, you must have every single email delivered to your candidates right on time. This is where Lever can come short.
Quote 1:
I also have had a lot of issues with my emails in Lever, I don't get them or candidates don't get them, sometimes they come to Outlook sometimes they don't.
Quote 2:
It also doesn’t let you pick which role to reach out for when sending an email using a template. It automatically picks the Oldest role they applied for which often times isn’t one you want to interview them for and so you have to manually enter the role into the subject line and into the content of the email.
Recruiting pipeline
Every job opening is unique and requires a special attitude, which is why your hiring tool should be as flexible as possible. Although Lever offers a great variety of features, there are some concerns regarding its adjustability.
Quote 1:
The interview stages have to be the same across every job opening, which makes no sense as different jobs have different interview processes.
Interview scheduling
Job interviews are arguably one of the most important stages of the entire recruiting process. It’s also the most stressful one for all sides. Candidates are worried sick trying to make the best impression on everyone. Recruiters invest a lot of mental resources in all this communication as well.
That’s why no one needs an additional drain with scheduling interviews in the first place. It should be a piece of cake. Lever may cause you some trouble in this department. Some users complain that interview scheduling is not always straightforward as one may expect.
Quote 1:
Scheduling interviews for video and in-person is a struggle, particularly when needing to reschedule it puts a huge burden on hiring managers time
Quote 2:
Scheduling candidates for interviews is difficult - Easybook links should have a limit on how many interviews any individual can have scheduled on their calendar in one day. Oftentimes I am having to block out my entire personal calendar after 4+ have been scheduled to prevent more additions.
Candidate search
Apparently, Lever doesn’t provide an extensive set of options to search for suitable candidates in your database. For instance, criteria like location or keywords don’t always function properly, especially for applicants who have applied some time ago. It is easier to use Lever as a tool for recent candidates.
Quote 1:
It is also really difficult to search the system for candidates with certain skills or experience as it's not driven that way - the amount of candidates we have would make a lot more sense to be able to search candidates effectively.
Quote 2:
Internal resume search function does not work well at all. Resumes are parsed, and search engines only search for a parsed profile and do not allow for a full resume search. If a resume has a different format, the search function will exclude the entire section and will not find your search criteria.
Integrations
It’s not that the tool doesn’t have enough third-party integrations (it does). It’s just that some integrations often fail to work properly.
Moreover, the most common complaints about Lever’s ecosystem are concerning some vital tools like Slack, Google Calendar, and LinkedIn Recruiter. These are extremely popular solutions for effective team communication and recruitment, so you definitely don’t want to see them fail.
Quote 1:
Incomplete integrations with other systems like Slack (interviewers can provide feedback at a high level but MUST enter Lever directly to provide complete feedback, making the integration generally unhelpful for feedback)
Quote 2:
I don't like that it doesn't fully connect with Google Calendar. For instance, if I need to reschedule, I can't just move the invite on Google calendar. It's frustrating to always go back into Lever to make changes.
Quote 3:
I don't like that it integrates horribly with Linkedin Recruiter
Pricing
It never seizes to surprise how expensive ATS solutions can get. Big corporations sometimes spend on them as much as $100,000+ each month. But, where does it leave smaller businesses that still want to build effective recruiting processes?
Since the team behind Lever doesn’t disclose the tool’s prices, one can only wonder and rely upon others’ research. It seems that it is not the most expensive tool on the market with its relatively affordable subscription packages for SMB. However, once your company starts growing, Lever becomes one of the most expensive options. From what we could discover, your average spendings might vary from $3,000 to $125,000 per year.
Quote 1:
Also, the pricing is crazy. Lever does not have anything WoW, unique or the first of its kind feature to command such a heavy price.
Why 100Hires is the best Lever alternative
100Hires is a modern applicant tracking system that can be a great Lever alternative for small and midsize businesses. It has all the necessary features you may need for an effective recruiting strategy:
- Modern design
- Affordable pricing
- Custom job boards
- Bulk emailing
- Customizable email templates
- Custom pipeline stages
- Evaluation forms
The tool offers integrations for all commonly used job boards, so posting your job openings will be a breeze. The 100Hires Chrome extension allows recruiters to source qualified candidates, reach out to them, and disqualify those who don’t match the required criteria on the go.
And the prices for all of these features start from only $129/mo for unlimited users. There’s also a free subscription plan available. Sign up for 100Hires today to hire the top talent without spending a fortune on software.
the best candidates faster
