I wanted to write this post for a while - and as summer vacations are coming up for me and family as well as fellow readers - I wanted to start a summer series... keeping it with Mark Twain's famous - sorry I wrote you a long letter - I did not have time to write a short one - this could well backfire - but it's worth a try. Shouldn't take more than 2 minutes to read.
There seems to be a lot of interest around recruiting functionality in the HR enterprise software space these days... So let's understand why that is...
Recruiting is... old
Well, relatively speaking. Apart from payroll and core HR systems - recruiting functionality for most vendors has seen many moons by now. One of the first functionalities to be build for the internet - because it had to run outside of the firewall - it is now showing its age. Time for vendors and new entrants to renovate or relaunch. Anyone still using an ATS?
Recruiting is ... competitive
With Oracle buying Taleo, the recruiting leader is no longer available as a partner for the talent management vendors, who preferred to build other talent management functionality and partner with Taleo. Biggest evidence - with a remediation plan - is Workday.
Recruiting is... where it all starts
Many of the HR enterprise system installations are in a state of challenging status quo. They are aging, they have their quirks, but somehow the workarounds have grown on enterprises. But for those enterprises that want to start new - they can start where all new HR starts - with a new recruit. And with that the promise (of the vendors) and the hope (of the users) - that by starting right - all will end right.
Recruiting is ... socially affected
Everybody knows that somehow social could travolge recruiting. It's kind of intuitively clear - as most hiring happens through someone knowing someone - so something that social networks could help with. See the LinkedIn growth - a de facto HR software company. But no one has really figure this one out.
Recruiting could be... different
One interesting approach to recruiting is the former Mr. Ted's Jerome Ternynck's Smartrecuiters. Make the software free - and pay in case of positive business outcome - a successful hire. Could change the whole market from license based pricing to outcome based pricing.
MyPOV
It willl be interesting to see who will take the crown for best in class recruiting functionality. Plenty of conventional approaches to it out there (think e.g. Oracle and SAP), plenty of fresh starts (think e.g.Workday and Ceridian), plenty of promising starts (think e.g. Cornerstone), plenty of re-thinking (see e.g. Lumesse), plenty of change game potential (think e.g. Smartrecruiters) and plenty of wildcards (e.g. LinkedIn or even with a little bit of fantasy... Facebook anyone?).
Exciting times ahead!
P.S. 2 minutes? Hope not much more - but hope for some more think time. Feel free to comment.
