Taleo Recruitment Solutions - Technology Meets Recruitment

We live in a truly fast paced environment, by fast paced I mean, each process of our organisations is strategically analysed to figure out which processes should be kept in house and which ones could be than either automated (by use of technology), outsourced (to third parties) or kept manual (by use of human capital). It is important for any organisation to analyse its processes and decide on the basis of its Strategic Importance and its Complexity how that process must be dealt with.

The processes could be anything ranging from manufacturing of certain products (example packaging stuff for company's core products), accounting services, payroll services, security, IT infrastructure management, Human Resources, Recruitment, etc.

Taleo Recruitment Solutions is a part of Oracle Corporation and offers various business solution tools one of which is a highly sophisticated multi purpose recruitment tool, a web based software that helps organisations not only manage database of applicants, but also source them, assess them, and ultimately hire the employees with its other business solutions tools further assisting with other staffing related concerns such as Higher Retention, Employee productivity, etc.

Besides Taleo's recruitment solutions for its clients, which can be small companies (less than 3000 employees) or large enterprises / organisations (having over 3000 employees), it also has certain services of help to its end users (example: Applicants putting in Job Applications). One such services is called Universal Profile (UP).

Universal Profile (UP) is Taleo's integrated Talent Exchange service that helps users input their general application information once in their (Taleo's) system and than those applicants, with the help of their Universal Profile Id and password could login straight away and directly apply for jobs to employees using Taleo's recruitment solutions. It certainly saves the applicants a great deal of time besides general annoyance of having to input data several times on various different websites (using Taleo's recruitment Solutions).

It could well be compared to professional social network LinkedIn.com that enables its users to link their LinkedIn account to employer's career portal and import all their application related information directly from LinkedIn, however, a competitive edge, enjoyed by Taleo and other recruitment solutions providers / talent management organisations is that they have their own recruitment web based software through which they could tailor the application process according to client (employers') demands and accordingly base the format of their Universal Profile (UP) feature.

However every company using Taleo's Recruitment Solutions package might not necessarily allow its applicants to use Universal Profile (UP) to upload all their data without having the need of entering data from the scratch and create a whole new profile, i.e. Companies retain their control on whether or not to enable Universal Profile feature on their careers website. Therefore, various small / large organisations having adopted Taleo recruitment platform might not have Universal Profile available depending on the complexity involved in enabling this feature and relative benefits of this feature assessed by the company itself.

It could also be merely due to the fact that companies are just not aware of this feature as a result of which they haven't yet enabled this feature, this then comes down to Oracle's Taleo and its marketing / after sales departments about how effectively have they marketed this feature to its existing clients base and are they using this as one of the USPs while selling their recruitment solutions packages to new clients.

In the FAQs section on Talent Exchange website, Taleo claims "There are currently over 5000 Taleo powered employers that use the Taleo career site software to publish job openings. You can search for millions of jobs on Talent Exchange. You can also use your UP on participating Taleo customer sites to quickly apply to these jobs.?

Apart from this, once you have your own Universal Profile (Talent Exchange) account, it itself acts as a fully function job portal site where by you can search for jobs and directly apply from Taleo's Talent Exchange website using your Universal Profile.

Here is a list of some of the Fortune 100 companies using Taleo's Recruitment solutions tool for their staffing related activities:

• Wegman Food Markets
• Chesapeake Energy
• Baptist Health South Florida
• Intel
• Marriott
• NORDSTROM
• American Express

According to a post on TechCrunch published in December 2011, Taleo’s Recruiting Solution Processed 15% of Last Year’s US Hires, certainly the figures are really attractive as it retains a considerable amount of market share when it comes to such solutions services and other similar SaaS provider.

Key Benefits for Applicants:

• Single Profile, allows easy share with recruiters through use of a personalised URL for Universal Profile.
• Applicants don't have to go through hassle of inputting same data several times on different careers website (provided they have enabled Universal Profile feature)
• Definitely a great time saver.
• Acts as a marketing tool for your profile if you are actively searching for a job, the URL of Universal Profile could be used as Email Signature, IM statuses, shared on Social Networks like Facebook, LinkedIn etc. and even on job forums.
• Saves from the hassle of having to email updated CVs, candidate profile, as the candidate has a unique URL, any updates on Universal Profile would reflect just as someone visits the Universal Profile URL.
• Besides all this, it helps users apply directly for jobs from talent exchange website and thus get more exposure to job market.
• Assists users download their profile in DOC, PDF formatted files (hence they have a fully made CV instantly) and also gives a QR Code for instant share on various mobile applications and online applications

Click on icon below to see my Universal Profile.

Certainly Taleo currently has a huge market share when it comes to recruitment and other staffing solutions and LinkedIn is the largest professional social network and many companies accept application information directly from LinkedIn, and one could even link their LinkedIn account to employer's career portal, hence the employer has your most updated profile through LinkedIn. This would enable job seekers as well as talent seekers (employers) to get to a win win situation.

Here is a small blog post about how Taleo and LinkedIn have partnered to make recruiting smarter and more Efficient

This proves the need for cloud based SaaS in today's fast era of moving things real quick and every related party needs to have updated information if one wants to stay in the market and not be thrown out of the race for success, wealth, etc.

More importantly, those who are looking forward to a lucrative corporate career or those who just want to start somewhere in junior or middle management, knowledge of how technology has changed our processes, whether in good or bad direction, is must and the same knowledge must be applied in real life to exploit opportunities as and when available and take their best advantage at early (development) stage.