In today’s post I am going to set up the discussion on how the thinking is changing around the role of people in our economy and the investment in software to manage this asset.

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This graph represents where companies spent their capital over the past 100 years on tangible (e.g. computers, offices) and in-tangible assets (e.g. people, training).  People (your employees) are being viewed more and more as an asset, not as an expense.  If you think about it — your employees appreciate everyday.  Everyone’s heard the adage about your people are one of your best assets.  Did you realize they’re also one of the only assets that appreciate with age, not depreciate?

What is the most important factor in leading us out of the economic downturn in 2010?  It’s not machines or widgets but people, ideas and innovation.   If we agree our talent is our #1 asset we need to be aware of some alarming statistics.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that there will be a 10 million shortfall of qualified workers as we move through the next three to five years.  This gap is expected to widen to 30 million over the next 20 to 30 years.  Current statistics indicate that two  in five employees won’t stay at their current job for one year, two of three won’t stay five years and less than two of 10 are actively engaged. Finally, voluntary turnover is still expected to be in the 20% + range meaning that 1/5th of our workforce willingly walked out the door.  This is proof that good people can always find good jobs no matter what the economic climate.

For a more thorough perspective have a look at this white paper on Unified Talent Management.  What are you doing to attract,  engage and assess your employees?

To see more please visit our YouTube Channel or go directly to the playlist.

Thanks and let me know what you think.

Duncan

@TaleoDuncan

Often the first interaction a candidate has with your company is your website and your career web site. Having a career website that is intuitive and easy helps your company brand and instills a positive experience with your candidates.

Your career website should have some if not all of the follow attributes:

• Consistent branding from your corporate website to your career website
• Search functionality (location,  keyword, department, function, etc.)
• List of all open opportunities
• Number of open opportunities

Once the applicant has completed a search or has landed directly on the job page (remember that many people will arrive on the job description page from external job board links, email links forwarded from a friend, twitter links, blog past links) they should be see a job description, responsibilities, skills, qualifications (required and preferred) and an apply link.   There are, of course, other criteria for the job description page depending on the type of job and your company.  The above is a simple example of the minimum criteria.

Now we get to the application process and this is where you can really shine for your company.  Most companies have candidates fill in numerous fields to complete their job application (this shouldn’t be a surprise because you need to capture this information at some point), but in today’s web 2.0 age we can make this much easier for the applicant by:

• Applying with their LinkedIn profile
• Uploading their resume and having the data parsed directly into the application

Let me know if you have used any of these features.

Duncan
@TaleoDuncan

Also a great place to see job openings and have discussions.  If you haven’t checked us out on Facebook (or you don’t belong to Facebook yet) get going and have a look!

Best,

@TaleoDuncan

This week we are in Las Vegas for our Taleo user conference – Taleo World.  Day one was our customer forum where our customers heard from our leadership, product managers and partners about the latest from Taleo Business Edition.  Some of the highlights:

• Demo of onboarding and performance management
• Partner snapshots of Hireright, Boomi, Corvirtus, Intelius Screening Solutions, Thomas International and HireVue
• Lively discussion about Taleo Business Edition how-to’s

We launched the Talent Grid and the three exchanges: Knowledge Exchange (community), Solution Exchange (app store) and Talent Exchange (Universal Profile for candidates and talent pool for companies).
Take a look and let me know what you think.

Duncan

@TaleoDuncan

When asked what size organization they would prefer to work for given today’s economy, the majority (71%) of business leaders chose a medium or small organization, according to a worldwide survey of senior executives and managers conducted by NFI Research.

Forty percent say they would rather work in a medium organization while 31 percent chose a small organization. Only 14 percent prefer a large company.

The part that hit home for me was the very end where The Harvard Business blog gives four things every company should do to make their employees feel happier:

1. Help create a meaningful role
2. Give feedback
3. Offer professional development
4. Say Thank you

In this world of instant connectivity, gratification and technology it is good to remember that the face-to-face thank you is still the best way to go.

Happy Labor Day,
Duncan

Twitter @TaleoDuncan

First, the way most companies do background screening is to send all the applicants through the screening process, background, criminal, drug testing etc. to see if all the applicants pass and remove the ones that don’t.  In this model each screen averages about $75 dollars. 

Intelius Screening Solutions promotes progressive screening.  This will enable you to weed out applicants at certain steps of the screening process rather than having them run through the screening process.  Think about it as passing one test before moving on to the next.  If a candidate fails they are removed from the screening process saving companies money on extra tests.

If candidate “A” has a felony and that is the first screen completed then candidate A is removed from the next step of the screening process.  A simple felony check can be as little as $8 so you have saved your company approximately $67 by not sending this candidate all the way through the screening process.  Makes sense doesn’t it.  It’s amazing how many companies are not doing progressive screening.

Intelius Screening Solutions is a technology company that has applied a rebust search and UI to background screening.  Check them out if you are in the market for background screening www.intelius.com

Off to Philadelphia and Charlotte this week.

Duncan

Twitter: @The_hrguy

REC Solar was experiencing rapid growth due to increasing customer demand for alternative energy sources.

• The company needed to hire the best candidates throughout dozens of regional markets through the United States—often in locations where the company had no presence—quickly and responsibly.
• The hiring process was primarily paper-based, manual, and involved multiple, disparate systems for applicant tracking, employment screening, and drug testing.
• REC Solar’s HR department knew it needed to think differently and act quickly to meet the company’s growth challenges.

Solution:

REC Solar selected Taleo Business Edition and Intelius Screening Solution as one, integrated solution for managing its applicant sourcing, tracking, hiring, background screening, and drug testing processes. The combined solution provided the company with the easy-of-use and holistic functionality it needed to meet its hiring challenges without a huge IT investment.

Results:

• Freed up HR resources to focus on more strategic activities enabling the business to grow by 75% in 2008.
• Hired more than 350 employees—without adding HR headcount—to meet project deadlines.
• Consolidated multiple systems and eliminated paper and manual processes that made the hiring process time-consuming and cumbersome.
• Achieved increased efficiency by managing its recruiting process from a single automated and integrated system.
• Reduced hiring turnaround time by 36 hours.

You can read more about REC Solar  here.

If you are in Arlington or Tampa join us next week to learn how to Make Every Head Count.

Duncan

@the_hrguy

During our seminar series, we’re finding most people don’t have integrated recruiting and performance management systems.  Bringing these tools together gives a wholistic view of the workforce, with insights that can provide critical information to help shape decisions around reducing or redeploying resources.

It’s no news that we’re all being asked to do the same (or more) with less.  HR professionals are having to meet their goals with budgets for external recruiters being reduced or removed, postings on job boards being frozen and contract help simply going away.   At Taleo, we’re building our products to help make you more efficient, despite shrinking budgets.  Some of the ways we can help include:

• Integrating with Facebook for job postings.  (One customer recently told us  they saved over 20% last year in job board postings by using  Facebook functionality)
• Letting candidates subscribe to RSS feeds to automatically alert them to new positions at your company
• Integration with background screening, assessment and compensation partners
• The ability to embed video, chat and twitter right into your career web site to enhance the candidate experience and get a better idea of your company and the culture

Join us next week in Indianapolis to hear more about how we can help you do the same (or more) with less.

Duncan

@the_hrguy