What’s What in E-Recruitment Software

After an extended detour through posts on the best of 2009, the possibilities of 2010, and a couple of hot topics—it’s time for the next installment of the Gartner Magic Quadrant tour.  As promised!

Gartner notes several significant factors influencing the e-recruitment market space:

• Software as a Service (SaaS) dominates the space, with only 23% of study respondents using installed software—and that portion made up almost entirely of Oracle and SAP
• Vertical markets are getting increasing attention—good example, software with specific workflows that help schools avoid discrimination claims
• Holistic talent acquisition—i.e., mixing e-recruitment with “contingent workforce management”–is gaining ground, but less than Gartner expected
• Vendor consolidation is a noteworthy trend, especially among the leaders—but new vendors (and new ideas) continue to enter the e-recruitment space

BIG number: “At least 400 vendors offer some form of e-recruitment capability.”

The Gartner Report (have a look, compliments of Peopleclick)  includes a handy outline of major e-recruitment functionalities; a helpful overview of Magic Quadrant definitions and criteria; and an explanation of what’s changed in the Quadrant since 2008.  Most interesting note:  “In this edition of the Magic Quadrant, we have broadened coverage to include more vendors from outside the U.S., and we have also strengthened our weighting for global features and support.”

Following up on that point, I’m going through all the vendor evaluations to see which ones are strongest in global implementation, and what that tells us.  So it looks like there will be a Part 3 focusing on this important topic.  But in the meantime, I’ll focus on the Quadrant group that always interests me most:  the “Visionaries.”

For those new to Q-land, the vendors are organized in four groups:  Leaders, Challengers, Niche Players, and Visionaries.  Visionaries inhabit the quarter that does well on “Completeness of Vision” (the horizontal axis) and less well on “Ability to Execute.”  These vendors generally have something innovative to offer, and it’s not surprising that their one-fourth of the Quadrant is often sparsely populated.

Of the four Visionaries in this report, Kronos is so near being a Leader that I’m not counting it.  And that leaves Mr. Ted, Neogov, and Jobpartners.  Neogov turns out to do just one thing really well (it’s the “dominant player in the U.S. public sector market”) and both Jobpartners and MrTed are UK-based, with strength in the European markets.  Of these two, MrTed obviously wins my personal award for Most Whimsical Name, so let’s drill down:

According to Gartner, MrTed has “deep and broad functionality, with a strong and innovative product vision, especially in the area of social software.”  MrTed has actually just launched its latest product upgrade, which is called MrTedTalentLink v9 (aka, Cloud 9–yes, really).  The product apparently focuses on easy customization.  According to MrTed:  “It features a configurable candidate database that can easily integrate data from any source, an independent business logic layer exposed through web services, and an on-demand user interface so recruiters can customize their own workspaces. This open architecture makes it fast and easy to connect with other talent management and HR applications, so users get the full benefit of cloud computing on their desktop.”

That’s definitely getting close to a description of e-recruitment heaven.  But as for MrTed’s strength in social software, noted by Gartner—I can’t track down what they have in mind.  Part of the problem is that the search capability at MrTed’s website doesn’t exactly work.  (Results list appears, individual items listed mostly don’t.)  But it turns out that MrTed offers SmartRecruiters, a pretty cool and completely free SaaS product that seems to be very social-savvy.

Stay tuned for the Global installment.

Author

Cynthia Giles

Website

Cynthia Giles has followed a serpentine career path from academia to publishing to marketing and design to information technology and corporate communications. There’s plenty of detail about this journey at www.cynthiagiles.com, but briefly--the common theme has been ideas, and how to present them effectively. Along the way, she became an accidental expert on data warehousing and business intelligence, and for the past ten years she has combined corporate contracting with an independent consulting practice that focuses on marketing strategy for smaller businesses and non-profits.

Having spent quite a bit of time looking for work, and anywhere from two weeks to two years inside a wide variety of American companies—she has given much thought to what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to creating a great employment fit.