systematicHR

I’ve been remiss in my lack of system and vendor updates.  Truth be told, not much has actually changed in the vendor landscape other than a few mergers.  The vendors I liked last year and early this year are the same ones.  Anyways, here’s my update of tier 1 talent acquisition system vendors (in alpha order):

• Authoria (Hire.com)  – Normally I would not have put Hire.com on this list.  But since Authoria was the buyer, they go on.  I actually have pretty good faith in Authoria’s ability to execute this acquisition, and part of that includes integrating the functionality and “shaping up” the hire.com product.  Don’t get me wrong, hire.com was a solid vendor with a solid application, but they may not have been up to the same standards of the other vendors.
• Brassring – Absent from any real public presence for a long time, Brassring seems to be slowly disappearing from the vendor landscape.  They are still a force to be reconed with, but they seem to have gone quite for a long time now.
• Kenexa (WebHire) – Kenexa is in the same situation as Authoria.  However, I’m less confident about Kenexa’s ability to execute the acquisition than I am about Authoria.  Again, WebHire is a legacy solution (ResTrak) that has a huge subscriber base, but was in the league of Hire.com – not necessarily competitive with the newest breed of recruiting systems.
• Kronos (Unicru) – I’ll be honest.  Unicru is a great system, but I’m not sure what Kronos is doing getting into this market.  Kronos is great at volume transactions, but not necessarily at volume processes that the recruiting market requires.  They have proven a slow entry to the HCM market with their Workforce suite (which they got from Best) and if that was any indication, I’m not hopeful they’ll get the Unicru acquisition right either.  The one thing Unicru has going is their status in the market and their excellent product.  We’ll see if Kronos can capitalize.
• Taleo – I can’t tell if I like what’s going on at Taleo or not.  Hurry up already and release (or buy) the rest of the talent management system.  While the rest of the talent vendors increasingly gain market share, Taleo is sitting on the sidelines being satisfied with recruiting.  It’s hard to get into talent management (performance, comp, succession…) when you’re two years late.  Then again, this is a recruiting update.  Latest version is fantastic if you can afford it.
• Virtual Edge – Kudos for the technology leader in this space.  Like Brassring and Taleo, another vendor who is currently satisfied being a recruiting vendor and not spreading the wings into other parts of talent.  This is ok for Virtual Edge as they are quickly gaining market share and should have enough market presence soon to start thinking about expanding the suite.
• Vurv – While I hate the name change and think it was the worst marketing decision this decade (even worse than “Taleo”) they are still one of my favorite recruiting systems (they occupied the number 1 spot several years ago, but lag slightly to vendors who concentrate solely on recruiting).  Where they have lagged in functionality (barely) and technology, they have made up with in integration with other talent modules.