Objective CleverStaff Review—Top Recruitment Software for Ukrainian Companies

CleverStaff is a Ukrainian applicant tracking system (ATS) for businesses that want to optimize their hiring processes, developed by a Kiev-based team. The developers have recognized that modern recruitment is digital, online, and global—they want to help companies of all sizes get the most out of online hiring.

Unfortunately, many HR professionals still work in outdated and inefficient workflows without centralized candidate information, messaging, and automation. As a result, they spend a disproportionately large amount of time on manual tasks. CleverStaff aims to solve that through CV parsing, email templates, and other hiring automation features.

Throughout this review, we’ll check out CleverStaff’s essential features, see if they’re worth the platform’s price, and compare them to some potentially better hiring software.

CleverStaff—Key Features

Flexibility is one of main CleverStaff’s selling points—the platform was designed to be equally valuable to:

• Large IT companies
• Government and financial agencies
• Recruitment agencies

The developers have worked with recruiters and HR reps to find their most significant pain points from more traditional HR processes. This applicant tracking system (ATS) is the result of those efforts, and it tries to solve common hiring issues through features like:

1. One-click applicant additions
2. Candidate recommendations
3. Email templates
4. CV parsing
5. Database integration

Creating an applicant database in CleverStaff is quick and easy—you can create a candidate profile with a single click. You just upload their resume, and the system automatically extracts relevant information and populates a profile. 

Those profiles are the crux of the ATS. You can set specific criteria for each vacancy, and the platform will automatically find and recommend the best candidates based on their profiles. There’s no need to compare hundreds of candidate profiles manually—you only need to focus on the most important hiring decisions at the end of the funnel. 

CleverStaff provides email templates for candidate communication as well. These also save time because you don’t have to write everything from scratch. 

You can also import existing candidate databases from spreadsheets and other sources, making the switch to CleverStaff from another platform simple for your HR staff. 

Downsides of Hiring With CleverStaff

CleverStaff’s features can help your company or hiring agency structure its workflow and centralize its data. However, there are a few notable downsides reported by some users.

For starters, some clients were displeased with the orange-green UI, reportedly a less-than-ideal solution in terms of visibility. 

There’s also a noticeable lack of support for exporting data from the platform. You can’t transfer data sets into Excel or another piece of software quickly, which limits your options for using the platform with existing in-house reports. 

While the email templates save time on communication, you can’t send emails to applicants from the platform in bulk—you still have to send the emails manually or rely on a third-party solution. For an ATS that’s supposed to automate your hiring workflow, that’s a noticeable issue. 

CleverStaff Pricing

CleverStaff offers two pricing plans:

1. Standard—$38 per user per month
2. Premium—custom-priced for every user

The company does a few perks with its price scheme:

• You get a 7-day free trial for the Standard plan
• The Standard plan is free for charitable institutions and universities

This brings us to the less commendable aspects of CleverStaff’s pricing—like its lack of transparency.

For example, the Premium plan only differs from the Standard plan by letting you run the platform on your dedicated server instead of the regular cloud-based version. Apart from that, the developers vaguely cite “Unlimited possibilities” as the features of the Premium plan, which can mean anything and everything. 

The platform also considers database backups as an “advanced feature,” which costs a whopping $500 per year on top of the base costs. For a small company that only has a couple of HR reps, this is a significant additional cost for a relatively essential feature.

CleverStaff Integrations

This ATS doesn’t support many third-party API integrations, and all of them are with online job boards, social networks, and resume websites. Here’s a list of all supported integrations:

• LinkedIn
• HH (HeadHunter)
• rabota.ua
• work.ua
• VCV
• Facebook
• Outlook
• Gmail
• SuperJob

CleverStaff Customers

The platform’s UI supports English, Russian, and Ukrainian languages. As a large part of its supported integrations consists of Ukrainian job boards, it’s easy to see why most of CleverStaff’s clients are based in Eastern Europe. So far, the platform has worked with companies like:

• Ukrnafta
• CEX.io
• Transparency International Ukraine
• RubyGarage
• OWOX
• Yalantis
• Ajax Systems
• EvoTalents
• Staff Service
• Smart Solutions
• Professional Staff Recruitment (PSR)
• Union Group
• Metinvest

Alternatives to CleverStaff

CleverStaff streamlines some aspects of the hiring process, but it doesn’t provide all the core features you’d expect from a modern ATS—e.g., data exporting and automated emails. 

If you’re looking for an alternative platform that provides a more complete user experience, don’t worry—there are hundreds of other HR software suites to choose from. We’ve reviewed the most popular ones:

Workello vs. CleverStaff

If you want an easy-to-use HR platform for high-volume recruiting with transparent and approachable pricing, Workello is the CleverStaff alternative you’re looking for. 

Unlike CleverStaff, Workello provides a clean and simple interface without flashy color contrasts and tons of different UI sections. You can manage the entire recruitment process from one streamlined dashboard.

Workello also goes all-in on email automation. You don’t just get templates for candidate communication—the platform sends them out automatically as the applicants move through the hiring funnel. This puts Workello at a sizable advantage regarding automation in general, but with much fairer pricing.

CleverStaff bills you for each user, which may result in a hefty subscription. You also can’t choose a payment plan that’s monthly or quarterly—you’re always billed once a year. Workello lets you choose between quarterly and yearly payments while providing all of its features in each payment tier. The only difference is in the number of candidate assessments you get, and you don’t pay an additional subscription for every team member.

Speaking of assessments, that’s where Workello truly shines. The platform focuses on pre-written candidate assessments, like test articles for writers, editors, marketers, and other digital professionals. These pre-hire tests allow you to gauge your candidates’ job-related skills before you decide whether to offer them the role. When it comes to pre-hire assessments, CleverStaff only gives you a text box for a questionnaire. 

CleverStaff vs. Workello—Features and Pricing

Here’s a quick comparison of both platforms:

Bottom Line

CleverStaff is a useful automation tool, especially for Ukrainian and Russian employers who get integrations with regional job boards. Unfortunately, companies from the rest of the world might not find enough value in CleverStaff, especially considering its lack of email automation and comprehensive candidate assessments. 

Workello has more automation features, it’s easier to use, its pricing is more transparent, and it’s more affordable. It runs laps around CleverStaff when it comes to simplifying your hiring funnel—sign up for a free trial and skyrocket your company’s recruitment!