// Software Comparisons

Vincere – an in-depth review

Vincere was founded in 2012 by Bernie Schiemer, with a vision to create a more effective and integrated software solution for recruitment and staffing agencies. The goal was to offer a comprehensive platform that would streamline the entire recruitment process, from sourcing candidates to managing clients.

Vincere quickly gained traction in the recruitment industry, particularly among small to medium-sized agencies. The software was praised for its user-friendly interface and robust feature set.

It was acquired in 2021 by the Access Group and since then, the company’s direction has changed quite significantly. Recent reviews show a little turbulence but hopefully that will work out as the acquisition excitement settles

Some good Vincere feedback

We switched from Bullhorn to Vincere a couple of years ago and it was the best move we made. We found Bullhorn quite clunky and restrictive in a number of areas. Vincere came along and were able to tailor the functionality to align with our unique process brilliantly. As it continues to evolve, we continue to improve our usage of it. Wouldn’t hesitate in recommending Vincere to all recruitment owners.

Some not so Vincere feedback

Overall: Terrible. 2 years I can’t force myself to use it let alone my team. It would literally take and extra 4 hours per day. One of the main reasons we chose them was the LinkedIn integration. But LinkedIn quickly blocks importing candidate data if you do more than a few a day. Vincere just said its the problem of the 3rd party plugin company.

Pros: I like the master menu and dashboard. It looks so promising!

Cons: Kitchen Sink Syndrome: Just like Microsoft Office products, they just don’t stop adding features. In the end you get something you need a degree in order to use, let alone train your team on. And they make you pay for their training, which is recorded webinars in extra heavy British accent.

So is it a tool of choice for 2024? Let’s deep dive

Candidate Sourcing with Vincere

Sourcing from Linkedin

Vincere offers a Chrome Extension via a company called Seha Solutions. There is no evidence of this company beyond their website and no legal entity is provided, so it’s probably Vincere owned!

The extension is able to add and update candidates that you find on Linkedin and Xing to your Vincere system. You can choose to create as a contact or a candidate (or both) and provide coding information before syncing.

Helpfully, it can also be used to update the profiles of people that you already know.

When it comes to Linkedin sourcing, Vincere have the basics well covered.

PROS

• You can import a profile from Linkedin to Vincere with a button that appears on the LinkedIn page itself
• You can conduct a search in both your internal database and Linkedin at the same time
• You can tag and code your experts directly from the extension!

CONS

• The chrome extension is quite slow, taking c 10 seconds to sync one candidate
• You cannot sync Linkedin messages.
• Some users have reported that it can struggle to send the right data all the time

Alternatives?

As you spend a lot of time on Linkedin and similar sites, we’ve seriously invested on putting as much depth as possible into our Chrome Extension. You can

• sync candidates/prospects to your database
• Send campaigns
• Access ANY PIECE OF INFORMATION with a prompt
• Grab phone numbers and email address
• Schedule meetings

Searching your Vincere database

Mature recruitment professionals and staffing firms for executive search rely more on their existing database of talent than new candidates.

So the big question is how well you can search your existing database for the right candidates.

Vincere has a Linkedin style search menu bar with several ways you can search for your data. You can search via the hard coded tags as well as some of the data that the candidate had on the resume.

For those hardcore sourcing pros, you can also search via Boolean to further narrow down your requirements.

The good

• Multiple searching methods (Boolean and filter)
• Clean UX
• Some nice visual aspects (ie map search)

The bad

• Search relies on data and data can be patchy. This means that your filters may not capture the people you were hoping to find.
• Keyword search lacks context (why is this person showing up on a SQL search)
• The UX is a little busy and outdated

Alternatives?

We use generative AI very very extensively to fully automate all the tagging for you. Searching looks similar to both linkedin and Vincere, but it is the data quality which sets Atlas apart. We have opted to use generative AI to ensure that everything is totally and completely searchable.

To show you something quite cool, our search knows everything that you’ve said, heard, read, or wrote which means literally everything is one keyword away

Vincere outreach Cadences

Creating a cadence of Outreach messages is becoming increasingly popular as a way to manage a much larger pipeline of prospects.

Vincere has opted not to build sourcing cadence technology into their platform which means you need to purchase this functionality via another provider.

There are some great outreach platforms (such as Sourcewhale) that you can use in tandem with Vincere but as they are as expensive as Vincere, you will see increase your software expenditure by 100%

One alternative is to use a platform like Atlas which has candidate and client Outreach cadences integrated directly into the platform

Managing your candidates on Vincere

Vincere’s candidate pull out

Like Atlas, Vincere operate a similar calendar pull-out with chevrons that indicate what stage the candidate is in any process that you’re running

Parsing candidate resumes

If you receive an email with a resume, you can go to the Vincere inbox, find the relevant email, and create candidate which will then use Daxtra (last time we checked) to parse the resume

Communicating with existing candidates on Vincere

Recruitment is all about communication. A vital feature for any recruitment platform is the ability to communicate with candidates and build client relationships. So let’s dive in to Vincere’s email functionality

Vincere has opted to compete against your native email client by offering a fully fledge inbox directly inside the platform.

Email is extremely important in recruitment and the fewer systems the better. However, when it comes to email clients, you are competing directly against Google and Microsoft, which have infinitely more capital!

While there are some benefits, such as the ability to add candidates and contacts without leaving Vincere, feedback from users tell us that they haven’t given up the use of their primary inbox in favour of Vincere.

The big functionality gap is the fact that your inbox isn’t live synced. Instead, it reads your inbox at 6pm every day unless you manually refresh. This means that you won’t know if you have email unless you actively go and ask it.

Running projects on Vincere

The centrepiece of Vincere’s job pipeline is the left to right stages where you can see which candidates are at what stage in the pipeline. They also have the ability to share candidates with clients through email and through a client portal which they call the Vincere LiveList.

From here, you can collaborate with clients who are able to:

1. Initiate Interviews: Clients can schedule interviews directly from the Vincere LiveList™ page.
2. Rate Candidates: Clients can provide ratings for your candidates.
3. Message Your Recruiter: Clients can communicate with your recruiter through the Vincere LiveList™ page.
4. Identify and Reference Candidates by Candidate ID: The Candidate ID helps clients reference candidates easily.
5. Check CV or Related Documents: Clients can view candidate CVs and any related documents.
6. Forward the List Internally: Clients can share the list with others in their team.
7. Reject Candidate: Clients can reject candidates they feel are not a good fit.

The functionality is certainly thorough but clients require a full account set up to access. In our many conversation with recruiters, we’ve learned that online portals (not limited to Vincere but every portal) has a lot less usage than a simple email with candidates.

At Atlas, it is the house view that you shouldn’t make people jump through hoops to log into software they don’t use often. To keep security as well as streamline your client’s experience, we don’t give them accounts. Instead, we create a ‘magic link’ which allows them access to the job via a one-click button from an email.

Automating low-value work with Vincere

Vincere recently acquired elay.io to automate components of the recruitment workflow. This would include automating your LinkedIn outbound campaigns.

There’s a growing number of LinkedIn automation services out there but Vincere is the first recruitment ATS/CRM to acquire one of them.

For solutions like this one, Atlas integrates with some of the major vendors (Expandi etc)

Data reports from Vincere

Vincere has an inbuilt data suite called vincere Intelligence – here, you’ll find a suite of dashboards to manage your business at a macro level

Here, Vincere allows you to dive in on numerous facets of your business from job stats to company stats and even data integrity (who isn’t tagging, eh!)

Concluding

Vincere enjoyed a good period of time as the ‘new kid on the block’, built after Bullhorn it attempted to reframe recruitment software for the modern professional.

It has a full end-to-end suite of products and with new owners, the Access Group, they have additional capital to build further. On the other hand, a few people have told us that the acquisition has had a negative effect on the business, particularly from a service-level perspective. We do stress that this may be transient and that service levels can be improved when they are focused on.

One important thing to be mindful of is the number of features vs the quality of features. Vincere can be set up for almost any recruitment type but the user experience suffers as a result. Loading times can be a little longer than expect and there is often too many clicks to complete a single task.

Still – in some cases its better to have a minimum viable product than no product at all!