Talent Grid could boost DIY recruiting

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 07:14

IT Industry - Market

Finally the solutions exchange is described as being similar to an Appstore where application plug-ins (for example systems that manage reference checks, security checks or assessment services) can be accessed. The solutions exchange element of the grid was developed for Taleo in Melbourne by Simon Raik-Allen. (see earlier story).

For some organisations the service may provide yet another incentive to squeeze out traditional recruitment agencies, as it provides them with online access to HR and recruitment tools to manage talent.

A report in the Australian Financial Review earlier this week explored software house Atlassian’s disenchantment with traditional recruiters. The report quoted co-founder Mike Cannon Brookes saying that; “The problem with recruitment companies is that 80 % of them are pathetic. Ten % are really good, but the others ruin the industry for everyone.”

The report went on to explain how Atlassian had set new rules of engagement with recruitment companies, and could, as Google has, eventually do away entirely with using recruiters.

Keeping a much tighter rein on talent makes sense according to Gauvin, especially for new economy industries where an increasing proportion of assets were based on intangible human capital.

“The market capitalisation of companies like Google is in talent. Probably only 2 % of their assets are tangible,” he said.

Yet to date he claimed that few employers invested much in the IT systems to manage that talent. Gauvin pointed to recent US research, which he suspected was also valid for Australia, which showed that while enterprises spent $12,000 per employee per year on their ERP systems, they spent just $10 per employee per year on talent management systems.

“There is a shift that needs to happen if companies need to improve the way that talent is being managed,” said Gauvin.

Naturally enough he’s hoping that organisations will look to Taleo’s business or enterprise scale solutions to plug the gap. Sold only on a Software as a Service basis small and medium enterprises could expect an entry level price of $3,000-4,000 a year for one user, he said, with enterprise level costing kicking in at around $30,000-40,000 a year.