It's a slick web application along the lines of the fanciness of Asana's interface.
What it isn't is a sane applicant tracking system. It doesn't reliably notify you when candidates apply. It supports virtually zero job board integrations. It very much wants you to adapt to it, with very little support for the other way around. The interface is over-complicated to the point of being unusable for anyone who isn't committed to spending hours a week in it.
I have never used an ATS that I actually liked, but the failings of Lever make it pretty special in terms of ATS hatred.
It isn't particularly expensive though, despite their opaque pricing. Most ATSes seem to price ~10 open reqs around $300/mo or so. Where the real expense comes in is usually the job board listing fees -- but since Lever barely supports any job boards, you don't have to worry about that!
And to be honest I have always been very turned off by their boastful "We only hire 50/50 Male/Female developer team." It's so in your face, it's like "why not hire the best person for the job?" Or when I see their internal job ads here, its like "Gee, I wonder if this is for a Male engineering role or a Female engineering role," or "Hope they didn't hire a bunch of dudes last week."
So for a variety of reasons I am an anti-advocate for Lever; I will never have business with them and I have successfully pointed several companies to better ATS.
I actually disagree with most of what you're writing and I've been on it nearly full-time for the past few months. Lever has been awesome, coming from Greenhouse. It's also a much newer product, so as another commenter pointed out, it sounds like you missed some of the features that might have been more recently added.
This has been a recurring, long term problem with Lever -- and my company has used it for 3+ years (and still does, although we are finally transitioning off). It's to the point where it's someone's job to log into Lever every 2-3 days and nag hiring managers to respond to applicants -- and the hiring managers almost never know that they have applicants based solely on Lever.
Lever's preferred use case is also to have full access to Google Apps e-mail accounts, to provide end-to-end e-mail capture for when you talk to candidates. In theory maybe I want that behavior, but I really don't want to grant that control.
I'm glad that Lever works for you, but it really doesn't work for me. Using it is honestly one of the biggest mistakes we made as a company, and it's irrational that we stuck with it for so long (out of a sense that all ATSes suck so what's the point). It's never worked well for us, and it is fundamentally not the right product fit for us. I'm surprised to hear that it is the right fit for anyone, but it sounds like you have had a very different experience with it.
For my company, I can say with certainty that we have missed out on candidates, had an overall harder time in the hiring process, and had a MUCH harder time sourcing candidates due to its poor job board integration. That said, if you like Lever, don't let me stop you from continuing to like and use it.
The web UI is a bit old fashioned, and there's less functionality in some respects, but I find it easier to accomplish the basic tasks in. Really the only thing that I miss from Lever is the ability to go directly from one candidate to the next.
I haven't heard any complaints from the recruiting team either, so it seems to work at least reasonably well for them too.
They might not have integrations with other job boards, but as someone interviewing, I prefer that since Lever had the best application interfaces of any job application site.
Here is the job board integration from Lever [1], taken directly from my Lever account.
Here is the job board integration from JobScore [2][3][4], taken directly from my JobScore account. I wouldn't say that JobScore is necessarily all that great either, but it does certain basic things that Lever has punted on.
And yes, that's right. It took me 3 screenshots to fit all of the JobScore integrations in.
Granted, Lever does have a lot more sourcing firm integrations, but that isn't my use case and it doesn't provide value to me.
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/cf8njn0v0m0hm7e/Screenshot%202017-...
[2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ad31qzmj5gxnp1/Screenshot%202017-...
[3] https://www.dropbox.com/s/tfk6kx18666pqzv/Screenshot%202017-...
[4] https://www.dropbox.com/s/f429p5r8c2z4uui/Screenshot%202017-...
Appreciate your feedback! As you've discovered, many B2B companies that primarily sell via inside or field sales do not post their pricing directly. Reserving the conversation around pricing until after you are in contact with a sales person is often helpful, because these products do have very different capabilities. We provide a consultative sales approach, listening carefully to what a prospect is looking to achieve with their talent acquisition strategy.
Lever's products are different. We believe that in order predictably master your hiring goals, you must go beyond applicants and get in front of the best candidates for your company. You must go outbound with referrals, sourcing, and more—speaking to the people that are the very best fit for your team's needs. Applicants are a vital piece of the puzzle, and Lever absolutely provides all of the features that applicant focused products provide. However, those features are seamlessly integrated into Lever Hire, which is a full CRM for job candidates + an applicant tracking system.
We recently posted a piece describing how the Shopify team has used Lever to grow from a a few hundred to over 1900 employees. Sourcing was a key part of their strategy. https://www.lever.co/blog/how-shopify-revolutionized-proacti...
It is helpful and advantageous for the vendor only, which is why customers are so turned off by it.
Which you can easily list, with the prices next to them.
Look, I have never, ever, ever found it more helpful to talk to a sales person than to see an actual price sheet. Never. If I don't like the price, but it's just outside my budget, I can call you and see what you can do. If it's so far outside of my budget, then talking to you is a waste of both your time and mine.
You know far more about your needs and are able to evaluate how well software would solve them, and the salespeople you've talked to haven't been worth the time....and that's not normal.
You'd be shocked how bad most people are at evaluating software, especially when it's highly technical. Most people don't even know what a reasonable budget is, what their biggest problems are, what would fix them, and what software is actually doing -- so they rely on cheap self-service products or just take marketing speak at face-value and hope for the best.
And a good salesperson is worth their weight in gold. If you're one of those buyers, salespeople should be much closer to an interviewer or consultant for them: approaching sales calls like research to uncover needs you didn't know you had, introducing you to best practices, and tailoring advice to your specific situation. Their goal is to find a mutual fit and stand by the quality of their solution (and should recommend competitors' products if you wouldn't be happy with it)
Yes, they absolutely are, for both the client and the company. But you have no way of knowing if $randomNewSaas you're looking at has good sales staff or not. A bad sales guy can screw both. Recently we've had an experience with one Name Brand Vendor where the sales guy is promising things that the company doesn't really deliver; for example, we purchased an old bundle at his suggestion and then get sent automated demands to reduce our capacity because we're in excess of what we pay for (even though it's within the capacity of the old bundle).
Good sales staff are excellent value-adders, but far from all sales staff are good.
I wouldn't say Greenhouse is great software, but it is certainly preferable to Lever, in my view.
Recruiterbox is good and has upfront pricing. Jazz is decent as well. We use Jobvite ourselves and like it.
Would love to hear experiences from someone who has for example tried both Workable and Lever.