Good Bye Bullhorn

Everyone and their brother thinks they can build the next great recruiting tool. What they all seem to miss is that if you don’t have experience working the recruiting process, you lack the knowledge of what we, as Recruiters, need. Once in a great while, though, I find a tool that just works. Those “ah ha” moments are so magnificent, that I can’t help but share them with everyone. Not only do I share those tools here on my blog, but I will go as far as making it a point to call clients and colleagues to share the information with them.

The first time I used Bullhorn I was hooked! Finally here was an ATS designed by Recruiters for Recruiters. Bullhorn is intuitive to use, and the ability to see how many times my hiring managers had viewed a candidate made me simply salivate with possibilities. During the past four years if someone said ATS, I jumped in and screamed “Bullhorn!”

I would blabber on about the features and benefits. I explained how the reporting could be coupled with a Bullhorn partner to give you detailed reports that would allow you to pinpoint exactly where a recruiter would be having trouble. Clients trusting my judgment would, of course, let me set up that initial call.

Now I understand I am not the biggest name in the Recruiting and Staffing industry, but I have been around. I have referred other people to Bullhorn in the past and I have been an advocate for them. On Thursday last week I think they finally broke my heart for the last time.

Each time I engaged Bullhorn’s sales team on my client’s behalf, I found myself apologizing to my client for their lack of response and coordination. In the past, I have smoothed it out and got the system implemented. When a particular client called last Thursday, I asked when he would be starting with Bullhorn. He informed me he couldn’t sign up until this week because the Bullhorn sales team was at off-site meeting for the second time this month. You can understand my embarrassment and sadness for this great ATS. When my client asked me if Bullhorn was serious about his business, I had no reply, and at that moment, I decided that I would not refer them to any more of my clients or colleagues.

The moral of this blog is if your sales team is not physically and mentally available to do the business, eventually even you biggest advocates will give up on you.

Good-Bye Bullhorn!

Comment by Ryan Leary on February 4, 2013 at 9:54am: This is an interesting and sad post all at the same time. I hear this story way to often in the industry. (Not with Bullhorn but with vendors in general). It's a shame. A lot of the vendors in this space have religiously preached about candidate experience....Maybe the focus should be customer experience.

Comment by Roni Zapin on February 4, 2013 at 11:29am: I agree. How about being ignored for months when I asked for an annual account review (and getting excuses like "away on business), and getting re-upped on my contract, since it was after their 90 cut-off when they finally got back to me.. this was no coincidence.. BTW, their new contract locks you in for a minimum of 2 years!! Anyone looking for an alternative, get in touch with me.. I did alot of research here...

Comment by Larry Engel on February 4, 2013 at 11:45am: Just goes to show that even if you offer a great product, without courteous and prompt support you're doomed in today's innovative and competitive marketplace!

Comment by Ionut Roghina on February 5, 2013 at 5:54am: I agree with Larry, in this case support is almost as important as the product itself.

Comment by Jimmy Roa on February 5, 2013 at 6:03am: oh...oh. This information is quite timely. A representative of Bullhorn will be doing a presentation at our company on Thursday. Will have to ask him about concerns on sales and after sales support. Thanks Rebecca.

Comment by Diane Gordon on February 5, 2013 at 8:41am: Rebecca, let me apologize for any embarrassment we caused you last week. In my new role as Chief Customer Officer it’s my job to make sure we are always responsive to customers and partners and it’s painful when we slip up. Like many firms we kick off the new year with fresh training for our sales teams, and unfortunately we didn’t account for travel schedules when we forwarded your call internally. We have tweaked our process to better account for training schedules in the future so we never create that sort of delay again. I hope we get the chance to win your back your confidence soon. Please feel free to reach out to me to discuss further.

Comment by Gerry Crispin on February 5, 2013 at 10:22am: Fewer than 50% of firms who claim to have a great candidate experience actually ask their candidates to give them feedback at ANY stage of the recruiting process. (And they are just one stakeholder)

Apparently the failure to take real-time temperature of customers is reflected similarly in a gap between how we think we're doing and what the customer or candidate is experiencing.

Rebecca, you raise a great question about how and when each of us get the feedback we need from each of the stakeholders to learn if what we are doing to and for them is on target. Waiting or assuming the answer in a real-time world has serious consequences. I'm going to take a wild guess that important stakeholders (customers who refer others) were not regularly called, listened to and thanked by anyone.

Comment by Ryan Leary on February 5, 2013 at 10:43am: Gerry - You make fantastic points here. I think the important thing to recognize is that this experience extends far beyond Bullhorn. It's really an epidemic for the majority of services and products we use daily.

Also I think that it's commendable that Diane is addressing the situation here as well. It's the Domino's effect. (Domino's pizza)

Comment by David Bargman on February 5, 2013 at 11:31am: I chose Encore from Cluen over Bullhorn and your post confirms that I made the right choice; Encore does have the drawback of not being intuitive but, with work and terrific support, I have become very comfortable with it.

David Bargman

Baum, Stevens

New York

Comment by Sandra McCartt on February 6, 2013 at 12:34am: Maybe it is my perverse sense of humor but the comment that the sales team was out for sales training so were not available to sell something hit me as sardonically funny. I may be old skool but the first line of my sales training to my recruiters is, "We sell for a living, if we are not available within a two hour time frame to return a client's or a candidate's call they will call somebody else because they will assume that their business is not important to us.

I cannot imagine sales reps being in sales training and not being in a position to check their voice mail, email and return a call to a customer. When sales training is taking sales people out of the field with nobody covering for them to be sure there is proactive response there is something wrong with the sales training to begin with..i think.

Sorry we are unable to sell you anything because we are in sales training. Hello. If one of my recruiters ever told a client they were in recruiting training and would call them next week they would not have to worry about anymore training.