Invenias by Bullhorn has eighteen years of executive-search process in it — assignments, off-limits, client-ready documents — and its full product is a Windows desktop application that lives in Outlook. Kepler is a browser app whose search reads CVs, notes, email threads and call transcripts together, and whose assistant is included in the price rather than run on an API key you supply.
Invenias by Bullhorn is the better product for the retained executive-search process itself. It models off-limits policies that a company passes down to everyone working there, a client portal where the sponsor reviews and scores a longlist, bulk GDPR consent requests, and merge-tag documents that produce a branded candidate report in Word. Kepler has none of those. What Kepler does better is the layer underneath the process: plain-English search that reads CVs, notes, emails and call transcripts together, an assistant that works across the whole workspace and is included in the seat price rather than running on your own OpenAI credentials, and one published price with the migration done for you. Bullhorn does not publish pricing for Invenias.
Last checked 6 Sep 2026 · Written from Invenias's own public documentation and pricing pages. Tell us if we have something wrong and we will correct it.
Invenias’ AI Assistant is documented as available on Person and Assignment records in the web application. Kepler’s assistant sits in a sidebar on every page, reads the whole workspace, and can create and update records once you approve the change.
Invenias’ AI Assistant is an optional feature you request from your Account Manager and then run on your own OpenAI or Azure OpenAI credentials. Kepler includes an AI allowance in the seat price, with additional capacity on request.
Bullhorn’s own FAQ says the Essentials web app “is not an alternative to the Professional Desktop Application”, which runs on Windows 11 inside Outlook. Kepler is one responsive web app, and every feature is in it.
Dimensions where Kepler is the stronger product. Invenias is ahead of us on the executive-search process itself — off-limits, the client portal, relationship mapping, consent records and branded assignment documents — and the blog post covers those in full.
| Kepler | Invenias | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the software runs | ||
| The full productWhat you install, and what it needs. | One responsive web app, in any modern browser | Professional Desktop application on Windows 11 inside Outlook; the Essentials web app is documented as “not an alternative” to it |
| Starting a new consultantThe first hour of the first day. | A browser login. There is nothing to install | Desktop installer, an Invenias Control Panel process in the system tray, and .NET runtimes |
| Working from two machinesA partner with a laptop and a desk. | Sign in from any device; the workspace is the same everywhere | Up to five registered devices per licence, and the Outlook application allows one PC at a time |
| The assistant and search | ||
| Where the assistant worksWhether it can see past the record in front of you. | A sidebar on every page that reads the whole workspace | AI Assistant on Person and Assignment records in the web application |
| What search readsThe corpus, not the ranking. | CVs, notes, email threads and call transcripts, semantic and keyword together | Boolean search over name, contact and position fields plus the default CV; AI document search covers CVs, proposals and assessments |
| Acting on the answerReading is only half the job. | Creates records, builds shortlists and saves a result as a list, behind an approval step | Conversational action execution is stage two of Bullhorn’s published Invenias AI roadmap, “coming next” |
| Matching | ||
| Evidence per requirementCan a consultant see the reasoning? | A pass or gap verdict per criterion with the supporting evidence under the row | AI-powered matching that “surfaces relevant ranked and contextualized profiles”; per-criterion evidence is not documented |
| Criteria you can changeWhose definition of a fit it is. | Criteria are set per job, editable, and re-run when you change them | Matching runs against the assignment; editable per-search criteria are not described in the documentation |
| Trusting what is on the record | ||
| Field-level historyWhat changed, who changed it, and from what. | Per-cell history with the source of every AI-suggested change, and undo | A journal of calls, emails, interviews, notes and documents per record; per-field history and undo are not described |
| Two people, one recordThe quiet data-loss bug in most CRMs. | Optimistic concurrency, so a stale edit is refused rather than silently applied | Not described in their documentation |
| Conversations into record updatesApplied, proposed, or not built yet? | Emails, calls and messages become proposed field updates you approve or reject | “AI analyzes call transcripts or notes and automatically updates records” is stage two of the roadmap, “coming next” |
| Bringing the archive in | ||
| Bulk CV parsingTwenty years of Word documents in a folder. | Drop a folder of CVs or an old system’s export; searchable structured profiles out | CSV bulk import, and a Chrome extension for parsing profiles |
| Who does the migrationThe unglamorous half of a switch. | Done for you on every plan, with fifty of your own records fully parsed to check first | Onboarding is delivered through the Bullhorn Launch learning platform; migration terms are not published |
| Getting your data out againWhat leaving costs. | Full workspace export at any time, with no exit fee | Not published |
| What it costs | ||
| Published priceWhether you can find out before a sales call. | USD 119 per user per month, billed annually, on the website | Bullhorn does not publish pricing for Invenias — the product page routes to a demo request |
| Editions and premium modulesHow many decisions before you can buy. | One edition. Every feature included, unlimited records and storage | An Essentials web app, a Professional desktop application, and an Executive Edition subscription that bundles premium products such as the client portal |
| Who pays for the AIWhere the model bill actually lands. | An allowance is included; additional capacity is available on request | AI Assistant is optional, requested from your Account Manager, and runs on your own OpenAI or Azure OpenAI credentials |
Bullhorn documents the Invenias AI Assistant as available on Person and Assignment records in the web application, running on OpenAI or Azure OpenAI credentials the customer supplies. Kepler’s assistant is a sidebar on every page: it searches everything you own — CVs, notes, email threads and call transcripts — shows the records it used, and can act on them once you approve.
Active data engineers in London who have used Kafka in production, available within a month
Found 4 candidates. Three mention Kafka on their CV; one said it on a recorded call last week.
| Candidate | Current employer | Notice | Why it matched |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sophia Bennett | Monarch Analytics | 1 month | Kafka streaming for card transactions at Halcyon CV |
| Amir Hassan | Northwind Capital | 2 weeks | Kafka feed for the risk platform CV |
| James Okafor | Juniper Systems | 3 months | Rebuilt the Kafka clickstream pipeline CV |
| Oliver Chen | Northwind Capital | Immediate | Mentioned running Kafka on the 2 Sep call Call note · 2 Sep |
Bullhorn’s Invenias AI roadmap, published 16 June 2026, places “AI analyzes call transcripts or notes and automatically updates records” in stage two, coming next. Kepler does this today, and routes every derived change through a proposal you accept or reject, with the email, message or recording it came from attached to it.
Three candidates · this week
Re: Senior Data Engineer at Northwind
Thanks for sending the details over. The role sounds great, and I can start on 3 October if the timing works for them.
Are you still keeping half an eye out?
I handed my notice in this morning, so I am actively looking now.
James · 11:26For my next move I am looking for £105,000. I would want a step up for a move.
| Candidate | Available from | Status | Expected salary | Notice period | Company | Owner | Skills | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sophia Bennett | Not set | Passive | £90,000 | 1 month | Monarch Analytics | Priya Nair | ||
| Amir Hassan | 14 Oct 2026 | Passive | £85,000 | 2 weeks | Northwind Capital | Priya Nair | ||
| James Okafor | Immediate | New | £100,000 | 3 months | Juniper Systems | Tom Reilly | ||
| Mei Tan | Not set | Passive | S$160,000 | 2 months | Atlas Cloud | Tom Reilly | ||
| Elena Rossi | Not set | Active | €78,000 | 1 month | Forma | Tom Reilly | ||
| Oliver Chen | Immediate | New | £88,000 | None | Northwind Capital | Priya Nair | ||
| Rahul Menon | 2 Nov 2026 | Active | £92,000 | 1 month | Juniper Systems | Priya Nair | ||
| Yuki Tanaka | Not set | Passive | ¥14,000,000 | 3 months | Atlas Cloud | Tom Reilly | ||
| Hafiz Rahman | 20 Oct 2026 | Active | S$145,000 | 2 weeks | Meridian Partners | Priya Nair | ||
| Clara Nowak | Not set | New | €84,000 | 1 month | Forma | Tom Reilly | ||
| Daniel Okonkwo | Immediate | Active | £78,000 | None | Northwind Capital | Priya Nair | ||
| Ana Ferreira | 8 Dec 2026 | Passive | €96,000 | 3 months | Juniper Systems | Tom Reilly | ||
| Tomas Novak | Not set | Active | €71,000 | 1 month | Monarch Analytics | Priya Nair | ||
| Grace Adeyemi | 27 Oct 2026 | Active | £105,000 | 2 weeks | Atlas Cloud | Tom Reilly | ||
| Ivan Petrov | Not set | Passive | €88,000 | 2 months | Forma | Priya Nair | ||
| Leila Haddad | Immediate | New | £82,000 | None | Meridian Partners | Tom Reilly | ||
| Marcus Reid | 16 Nov 2026 | Active | £98,000 | 1 month | Monarch Analytics | Priya Nair | ||
| Nadia Kaur | Not set | Passive | S$172,000 | 3 months | Northwind Capital | Tom Reilly |
500 CVs ready to import
412 PDF · 74 DOCX · 14 scanned
312 of 500 parsed
A search firm’s memory is usually a shared drive: candidate reports in Word, scanned references, spreadsheets of a market map done in 2019. Kepler parses a bulk drop of CVs or an old system’s export into structured, searchable profiles, using the engine from RemakeCV — our own product — and formats a candidate back out onto your own branded template as DOCX or PDF.
Kepler's CV parsing and formatting are ported from RemakeCV, our own product, which 300+ recruitment agencies use. The migration that fills your database on day one runs on an engine that has been reading real agency CVs for years, not on something written for this launch.
RemakeCV is a Kepler product. It is the same team and the same code, which is why we are willing to point at it — and it is the only outside evidence on this page, because Kepler itself is new and has no customer stories yet.
Whatever your current system gives you, plus any loose CVs and spreadsheets sitting in folders. If you are not sure how to get the export out, we will walk you through it.
Extraction, mapping, de-duplication and validation — the unglamorous half most vendors leave on your desk. Your custom fields are recreated rather than flattened into notes.
Fifty of your own records, fully parsed — your people, not a demo set. Tell us what we got wrong and we fix it and re-run, as many times as it takes.
The full database goes in, mailboxes and calendars connect, and history backfills onto the right records. We stay on it until your team is working in Kepler.
£89 per user / month, billed annually
Does not publish pricing
Bullhorn publishes no price for Invenias. The Invenias product page and the executive-search page both route to a demo request, and the knowledge base describes editions rather than costs: an Essentials web application, a Professional desktop application, and an Executive Edition subscription that bundles premium products — the Invenias Client portal is documented as one of them. The AI Assistant is a further optional feature, requested from an Account Manager and run on OpenAI or Azure OpenAI credentials the customer provides, so part of the AI bill lands outside the software invoice altogether.
Bullhorn does publish per-seat pricing for a different product — its small-agency staffing plans, at USD 99 and USD 165 per user per month with two higher tiers quoted — but Invenias is not one of those plans and does not appear on that page. Anyone comparing totals needs a quote. Kepler’s number is on the website, there is one edition, and every feature is in it.
Invenias by Bullhorn is purpose-built for retained executive search and Kepler is not. Invenias models off-limits policies that a company passes down to the people working there, a client portal where the sponsor reviews and scores a longlist, bulk GDPR consent requests, relationship mapping across the firm’s network, and merge-tag documents that produce a branded candidate report in Word. Kepler has none of those. Kepler is the stronger product for the database underneath the process: search that reads CVs, notes, email threads and call transcripts together, an assistant that works across the whole workspace, per-field history with undo, and one published price with migration included. A firm buying for assignment workflow should buy Invenias; a firm whose problem is that nobody can find anything in twenty years of records should look at Kepler.
Yes. Bullhorn acquired Invenias in July 2018 and sells it today as “Invenias by Bullhorn”. As of September 2026, invenias.com redirects to Bullhorn’s Invenias product page, and Bullhorn’s executive-search page positions two products side by side: Invenias by Bullhorn for boutique firms, and Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud for enterprise firms. Support and documentation live at kb.bullhorn.com under the Invenias section. If you are being sold “Bullhorn for executive search”, it is worth establishing which of the two you are being quoted for, because they are different products.
Bullhorn does not publish pricing for Invenias; the product page routes to a demo request. Its knowledge base describes an Essentials web application, a Professional desktop application, and an Executive Edition subscription that bundles premium products such as the client portal, and the AI Assistant is a separate optional feature that runs on your own OpenAI or Azure OpenAI credentials. Kepler publishes USD 119 per user per month billed annually, which is USD 1,428 per seat per year, with one edition, every feature included, unlimited records and storage, free migration, and additional AI capacity on request.
Yes, and it is worth being precise about what is live. Bullhorn published an Invenias AI roadmap on 16 June 2026 in three stages. Stage one is available now: natural language search, AI-powered candidate matching, document search and relationship intelligence. Stage two — AI that analyses call transcripts or notes and automatically updates records, plus a conversational action execution engine — is listed as coming next. Stage three, proactive agents, is later. Separately, the Invenias AI Assistant is documented as an optional feature on Person and Assignment records in the web application, enabled by an Account Manager and run on the customer’s own OpenAI or Azure OpenAI credentials.
No, and this is the honest gap. Kepler has no off-limits policy object, no client-facing portal where a sponsor comments on and rates a shortlist, no company parent-child hierarchy, no consent records with a purpose and a lawful basis, and no interview scorecards. Invenias has all of them. Kepler publishes a branded job board on your own domain, which is a different thing, and it can format a candidate onto your own template for a report you send yourself. If a client portal or off-limits enforcement is a requirement rather than a preference, Invenias is the right product and we would rather say so here.
Kepler runs the migration for you on every plan. You send an export from Invenias plus any loose CVs, candidate reports and spreadsheets that never made it into the system; Kepler handles extraction, mapping, de-duplication and validation, and rebuilds your custom fields as real fields rather than flattening them into notes. Before the full load you review fifty of your own records fully parsed — your people, not a demo set — and anything wrong is corrected and re-run. Activity, stages and history come across alongside the records. Kepler also exports the whole workspace on request at any time, with no exit fee.
Bring your hardest search to a 15-minute call. We will run it live, on real records, and talk through what a migration would look like.