080515 Daily Links

• Do You Have The Ego For Self-Googling? Does “Go Google Yourself” mean what I think it does?
• Wub Wubs on What HP’s Acquisition of EDS HRO Means Will the emerging HPEDS change the face of the HRO Business?
• How Netfix Keeps Talent Anthony J Meany notes “Don’t give B performers a middling raise. Give them a decent chunk of cash and show them the door. And don’t surprise them. The laid-off leave with their dignity.”
• At The Churchill Club: The Top 10 Tech Trends Silicon Valley seems to be losing its imagination
• The Twitter Story I’ve Been Working On Chunky analysis: it’s about the community.

080514 Daily Links

• Friend Connect, Open Social, Ning, and the web Ning’s role remains the same — to be the easiest, most powerful, and most widely used way for anyone to create your own social network for anything.
• Too Many Choices, Too Much Content A good overview of the major competitive battles in social media
• More People Depend Solely on Cell Phones As sourcing gets easier, sourcing gets harder.
• Internet Recruiting 2.0- The Flow of Information Is a webinar by Ami an Aminar?
• A Recruiter’s Stress Reduction Program Peter Weddle says “What causes stress in a recruiting organization? Well today, of course, all you need to do is look out the window. There’s a large and growing number of people now on the pavement looking for work. Not only does that mean that many organizations are reducing their workforce, it suggests that recruiters have nothing to do.”

080513 Daily Links

• Friend Connect gets a warm reception at Google Campfire One The social software thing is in its infancy.
• RealMatch offers a more structured take on the job search You can fool some of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time and some are VCs
• CEO Reorganizes Job-Search Pioneer The WSJ on Sal Iannuzzi. Nice video
• Finding cracks in Facebook Growth continues, stickiness declines.
• Okay, this guy  is good. Thanks, Maureen

ATS.2 (Applicant Tracking Systems)

The response to the first couple of articles in this series is interesting. Significantly, a number of credible market leaders think that the game is locked. Companies (vendors) who enter the Recruiting Software market will end up having to deliver ATS functionality if they want to stay in the game. Companies (customers) know how to buy job ads, ATS products and screening and assessment tools. So, that’s what they buy.

The hundred or so ATS vendors are stuck within the limits of customer purchasing policies and protocols..

The rush to Talent Management Systems, aggressively championed by the analyst community, doesn’t seem to have caught fire just yet. Lots of buzz but few sales.

Another group suggests that buyers segregate along three lines: Value, Early Adopter and Functional. The Early Adopters and Functional buyers focus on performance while the Value buyer concentrates on cost savings. HR buyers are prototypically Value Buyers. Innovation and the political risk associated with embarrassment are not for them. For this group, innovation seems to enter the marketplace through its most entrepreneurial windows (the staffing industry)

Meanwhile, the candidates are changing their game. In the Western world, anyone looking for a job uses the internet as a part of their search. Companies get Googled and "background checked" as a matter of course. Word of mouth is more important in employment branding than any other factor. Branding, referral programs, social networks, avatar based VR, new sourcing and optimized utilization of the 50,000 job boards are simply not a part of the standard ATS configuration.

There are, therefore, two ways to think about the role of the Applicant Tracking System.

• It is the platform for all Human Capital Management systems because it is the first place that data about an employee hits the organization,
  or
• It is a buffer between the organization and the outside world where legal defensibility is established.

It is either a platform or a buffer.

080512 Daily Links

• HR’s struggle with Web 2.0 How did I miss this one? Thanks to Wubs for remembering it.
• eRecruitment Market Trends Gartner notices that Enterprise vendors in our space usually inflate their marketing rhetoric.
• China is Exploding watch this video (suggested by Frank Mulligan)
• The Twitter Job Search Experiment Grassroots experimentation from the Daily Machete
• Previewing Google Friend Connect: Website owners can make any site social

ATS.1 (Applicant Tracking Systems)

Picking up where we left off on Friday, the Taleo-Vurv merger is a yawner. The Applicant Tracking Systems industry, home to a hundred niche providers, is moribund. The closest thing to innovation in the game are the predominantly ridiculous attempts to jump on the Talent Management bandwagon.

The merger takes two lethargic bundles of functionality and prays that a single, more profitable process will emerge. Vurv supplies its customers with a hundred variations of the same thing. The company grew quickly by accommodating the whims of its customers. Sadly, that’s the single best recipe for losing your shirt in the software industry.

The hope at Taleo is that they will be able to jettison the bad customers. (Oh, you forgot that some customers are bad? They are really spoiled over at Vurv and used to getting vastly more than they pay for.) Once the cost sinkholes have been filled in, they will shepherd in a brand new day of a single software configuration.

It’s the best news the ATS marketplace has had in a decade.

As the result of the merger, lots of big customers will be looking for new providers. Some of them will be from the Vurv base, some of them will be from the Taleo base. You’ll see stepped up advertising and lots of attention to little slips in customer service.

Now, I am decidedly not saying that Taleo is a lethargic company. They have managed to build a near monopoly in the Fortune 500 enterprise software environment. Their idea is to cement that position. Their customer service is strong and disciplined. They’ve provided our industry with needed stability.

But, the raw functionality of their software is nearly unchanged since its first iterations. Lots of attention to managing the customer software configuration problem mentioned above took all of the energy away from meaningful improvement.

A strong focus on customer feedback and benchmarking as a method for building  new functionality has left them stranded. You simply can’t follow customers into a leadership position. You have to lead. Great customer service and mediocre product innovation equals vulnerability.

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to take a close look at the real requirements for Recruiting software.

080509 Daily Links

• Debating the Taleo Vurv Merger Does consolidation at the high end of the business matter?
• Tips For Dealing With Information Overload…I have several streams of data of varying signal:-noise and rates (twitter, FriendFeed, Google Reader, email, voicemail, etc.). My strategy is to make sure I see at least the title of everything, and then pluck the important stuff out of the stream, either replying to it immediately or marking it in some way so I can ’get back to it’.
• Employee Social Media Requires Internal Commmunication In a world of free agents, where does customer loyalty fall?
• What Software Speeds Up Your Day The Most? Anthony J. Meaney kicks off a good conversation.
• Generations 101

New Day (or Is That Nude Day?)

The signs are auspicious.

Monster, long the sole provider of industry leadership, turns away from the industry. HotJobs flounders in the midst of employee evacuations caused by merger talk. CareerBuilder, the best blue collar job board becomes the highest trafficked employment destination.

Talent Management, a broadly integrated approach to human capital acquisition and deployment, takes center stage. People, like other investments require maintenance and development after they are acquired. The HR Software Industry is taking note. Vendors and consultants are flocking to the new Mecca.

Yesterday, Taleo bought Vurv.

Read the rest of this entry »

080508 Daily Links

• The Collision of Marketing and Technology Mark Willaman meets Bill Vick
• The Uneven Evolution of Corporate Recruiting Lou Adler says, “One could contend that the Internet has been the reason we’ve lost the war for talent. Turnover has certainly increased, requiring companies to build large recruiting teams where only small ones existed before.”
• Agency: Massachusetts puts out welcome mat for criminals Fresh opinion from people who think “Guilty Until Proven Innocent” is a  good business model.
• Portland Recruiting Roadshow Registration (June 20th)
• Shally Steckerl - Talent Acquisition Consultant and Search Guru The Bill Vick Interview

Mayday. I’m Trapped In Mansfield, Ohio

Mayday, Mayday. I am writing at a small table in a Kroger’s in Mansfield, Ohio. My last day in the state (following the Cleveland Recruiting Roadshow). It’s an odd experience, different from anything I’ve seen on the coasts.

Kroger’s, an old line grocery chain, is clearly updating itself. More Walmart like than you could imagine, it’s a cluster of lawn furniture and produce. The Starbucks is in the middle of the beer aisle. The Starbuck’s tables are occupied by giggling elderly women.

I struck up a conversation with one of them. Read the rest of this entry »