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A few weeks ago I had a chance to visit the 11th annual HR Technology Show in Chicago. While the show includes all types of HR-related technology, there is a definite focus on recruitment and hiring. Below are some of my observations about technology and trends as they relate to the areas of interest to ERE readers and my specialty area of focus: technology based screening and assessment tools.

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HR software provider Authoria (profile; site) won the first talent management “shootout” at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago today, trumping three other competitors by a landslide.

No one was even close in the voting by some 800 or so recruiters, HR professionals, and others who cast electronic ballots at the end of three separate presentations by each company. The presentations addressed three typical corporate scenarios scripted by shootout organizer and HR Executive magazine writer Bill Kutik and Leighanne Levensaler, director of talent management research, at Bersin and Associates. It was the third win for Authoria in four years.

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Decision-making can be a daunting challenge, especially when faced with pressure to cut costs and reorganize in a challenging economy. As recruiters, you are presented with a myriad of tools, services, and processes to choose from and the list keeps growing and growing! I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your toughest decisions with us every day on the ERE discussion boards. I learn such valuable information from you!

Twittering for Sourcing
We see it used at conferences. We read about it on our discussion boards. We might even be active “Tweeters” ourselves … but how effective is Twitter for sourcing and recruiting? Erika Hanson Brown recently joined the Twitter community and wants to know how it works in the recruiting world. John Kennedy is skeptical about Twitter. Although it can help save time when learning about a potential candidate, John relies on some advice he received years ago, “there are only three true productive tools in recruiting — the pen, the pad of paper, and the telephone.”

After reading several more responses to Erika, it is clear that John is in the minority. Twitter can be an effective tool if you follow the advice of Kelly Dingee and Mark Tortorici including search strings, and tying together SMS and social networking sites. If anyone is interested, you can check out Dennis Smith’s presentation on the Recruiting Road Show and tune in to ERE’s webinar series on November 5 for some tips and advice from Geoff Peterson.

ATS Wish List
Erica McNally wants to know what are your “must-haves” and your “nice-to-haves” when selecting your ATS. What’s on your “wish list”? Jake Stupak lists the following: scheduling for multi-users, resume parsing, email tracking, and candidate and position matching. Sylvia Dahlby astutely advises to identify your unique business requirements first. “The leading apps all have the basics” — think about what your company needs before creating your list. She recommends CareerXroads and HRchitect for additional information. (HRchitect, by the way, is doing a workshop in San Diego at ERE’s conference on “How to Save Your Current ATS and Get a Return on Your Investment.”)

I have to add The Newman Group (who will also be doing a session on HR systems at the Spring Expo) to that list since it has a wealth of knowledge in this arena. Dorothy Beach, unhappy with Vurv, has been very impressed with Avature’s Recruiting CRM tool as an ATS option. (I also sat on a demo last week with Michael Johnson and agree that it is worth checking out.) This makes me wonder…will CRM tools replace traditional ATS tools? What do you think? Would you take the leap?

Onboarding New Hires and The Buddy System
There are several programs that if implemented correctly can make onboarding strategies successful. Based on research and discussions, many companies would include the “buddy system” on that list. Laura Arnold is very interested in a program that would pair an internal employee with a new hire but wants a new name for “the buddy system.” Apparently, Laura is not alone. Several respondents use a variety of different names, including “Mentor Program.” Bryan Chaney also recommends “Internal Career Counselor” and “Coworker Coach” while Joann Robinson has used “New Hire Partner,” “Orientation Partner” and “Orientation Coach.”

I’m interested in knowing if any companies have been able to measure the success of their onboarding programs, more specifically the concept of a “mentor program.” Todd Raphael has an in-depth look at onboarding in the next Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

JobFox or Net-Temps?

Kathleen Coughlin wants to add a new job board to her list. Can anyone recommend JobFox or Net-Temps? Although Kathleen did not receive feedback on Net-Temps, JobFox (often considered the eHarmony of recruiting) has some work to do. Taryn Pfalzgraf has been satisfied with the customer service but feels that the process is too time-consuming. She recommends a “conditional trial membership” or “waiting a few months to see if they’ve ironed out their problems.” Kimberley Joyce would have to agree. As an Oracle-centric company, she was reassured that JobFox could meet her companies’ needs. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Among other complaints, they are unable to add different tools, languages, and functionality. Given this negative feedback, Eden Shaffer encourages Kathleen to consider Search Engine Marketing instead. What do you think?

Hiring a Virtual Recruiter/Sourcer and Unethical Competitors
These topics continue to dominate the discussion boards. We’d love to hear what you think about these critical and timely recruiting issues…

Talent management vendor Authoria (profile; site) has been acquired by private investment firm Bedford Funding for $63.1 million.

The deal leaves intact Authoria’s management team including founder and CEO Tod Loofbourrow, who said that the acquisition “brings us an investor well matched to the size of the market opportunity before us.” Bedford will inject an additional $8 million in working capital to accelerate Authoria’s expansion.

The price is half the $128 million that Taleo (profile; site)  paid for Vurv (profile; site) just six months ago. Both companies had similar staffing levels, but Vurv’s 2007 revenues were around $40 million, while Hoover’s, the business reporting service, estimated Authoria saw about $17 million that year.

Vurv was probably also in better financial shape. Since being founded in 1997 Authoria raised some $100 million in venture capital, including $58 million raised by Hire.com, a company Authoria acquired in 2005. It evidently also had some debt, since Loofbourrow pointedly notes in the announcement that “Bedford Funding will provide us with a debt-free capital structure.”

Jason Corsello, writing in his blog, The Human Capitalist, called the deal a recapitalization observing that existing investors shareholders, which include senior management, as well as the VC firms, would probably only receive “only a fraction of the investment and value.”

Even so, he is encouraged about the company’s prospects for the long term saying it “creates a much cleaner structure for the company to really attack the market as the first vendor that can truly bring together talent acquisition/recruiting with the rest of the talent management suite.”

Nate Swanson didn’t have a whole lot of good to say today about Kenexa, believing that “the company continues to move further down a failing software strategy.”

Swanson says Kenexa blames, among other things, the strengthening U.S. dollar for its lowered projections, but he says that “we believe Kenexa’s real issue is that it’s trying to do too much. We believe this is creating confusion with customers and field sales reps, negatively impacting customer support, stifling innovation, and in general, making it very difficult to execute consistently in a more difficult competitive environment.”

He adds: “BrassRing will continue to run as a standalone product. We believe this decision will diminish innovation, placing Kenexa further behind best-of-breed vendor Taleo, and ultimately result in a product portfolio that is increasingly expensive to service and support.”

Meanwhile, Swanson issued a positive report on StepStone, saying, “We believe StepStone is uniquely positioned within the emerging human capital management market. In many ways, the company, in our view, has done what Monster should have done several years ago — combine a low-cost customer acquisition tool in its job board properties with a suite of high-value human capital management applications. While cross-selling between the company’s two businesses has only just begun, we believe there is a significant potential opportunity to do so, especially selling high-value, recurring revenue human capital management applications that tend to be stickier.”

Kenexa is taking a beating on Wall Street today, losing 27 percent of its value as of 2 p.m. Eastern time, following an announcement Wednesday by the talent management software vendor that economic conditions are slowing corporate HR buying.

The company’s stock was off $5.89 as of 2 p.m. EDT, selling for $16.14 as buyers reacted to the company cutting its earnings estimate by 9 cents a share. Previously, Kenexa said it expected to earn $1.52 to $1.55 per share for the year. Wednesday, it told analysts and investors it would be in the range of $1.43 to $1.46.

“The macroeconomic environment continues to be challenging, and as a result we have seen an increased number of project implementations that have slowed or been delayed,” said Rudy Karsan, Kenexa’s CEO, in a prepared statement, released prior to a conference call with analysts that was held after the market closed Wednesday.

He also attributed part of the reduction to the changing exchange rate. “The strengthening of the U.S. dollar since the end of the second quarter has created an additional headwind considering the fact that international operations are the fastest growing segment of Kenexa’s overall business,” Karsan added. The company opened an office in India this year and has an office in London. It is headquartered in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

For the third quarter of the year, which ends Sept. 30, Kenexa expects revenue of $54 to $56 million, operating income of $10.3 to $10.6 million, and per share income of 35 to 36 cents. This is a reduction from the previous revenue estimate of $57 million to $59 million, operating income of $11.4 million to $11.8 million, and per share earnings of 38 to 39 cents.

From the online-recruiting grapevine:

–(You heard it here first): NewmediaHire is going live with a redesign of its site today. If it looks familiar, it’s because it’s based on a platform called “Ning,” popular for building websites. The video-blog-discussion-heavy site is aimed at creating a sense of community — more than just job-hunting — and is aimed at an international audience (the site has a corresponding LinkedIn group and perhaps half of that group is based in the UK, Australia, Canada, Africa, South America, and elsewhere outside of the U.S.) An Indian company helped NewmediaHire build the new site.

–A new site, moneybackjobs.com, is offering employees a “5% to 7.5% bonus for accepting a new job that’s posted on our website.” Employers pay $50 to post, and 10-12% for each candidate they hire. There are incentives for employees to be exclusive, and to take their resumes off of other sites (”trust us, we have ways of finding out,” the company says) as well as big incentives for employers to only post on moneybackjobs. Smart.

–From ThinkPanmure’s Nate Swanson: “We are hearing that several large BrassRing customers are unlikely to renew their contracts when they expire late this year or early next year, but have yet to make a decision as to whether to use their existing ERP vendor or that of a best-of-breed vendor.”

Kenexa (profile; site) earned $9 million or 39 cents a share for the quarter ended June 30, beating Wall Street’s estimate of 35 cents and joining Taleo and Monster in reporting better than expected results.

The company’s $56.4 million in revenue was an increase of 25% over the $45.2 million for the same period in 2007. The company provides full life-cycle talent management software and multiple additional products including assessments and RPO services.

Kenexa’s CEO Rudy Karsan did a little crowing in the financial announcement, which was released after the market closed Monday. “The combination of solid sequential growth and integration of Quorum International enabled Kenexa to become the first independent talent management vendor to pass the $200 million in annualized revenue level during the second quarter,” he said in the typical, curbed enthusiasm of the financial announcements of publicly-held companies.

Quorum International was a London-based RPO provider to Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The company was purchased for an undisclosed sum in April.

Kenexa told investors and analysts that it expected its current third quarter to come in at between $57 million and $59 million, which is about $10 to $12 million more than during the third quarter of 2007. After expenses, that translates to 38 to 39 cents in earnings, the company said. Analysts were expecting 40 cents a share earnings on $61.7 million in revenue.

Taleo (profile; site) reported its second quarter results today, saying revenues climbed to almost $39 million, a 25 percent year-over-year increase. It also picked up 225 new customers and bought Vurv (profile; site).

The big news in its financial report is that the company turned a profit and beat analysts’ estimates. The company earned and adjusted 15 cents a share, which is 2 cents more than the consensus estimate. In terms of dollars, the company reported earning $1.1 million for the quarter vs. losing $1.8 million for the same quarter in 2007. (Numbers here include both GAAP and non-GAAP reports. See here for an explanation of what these mean.)

It got a boost from an 83 percent growth in international sales, which now represent 13 percent of company revenue. New customers from outside North America include Cargotec, Veolia, AirFrance, Baloise, Eiffage, Manpower, and Vic Roads.

“Taleo achieved record performance across the organization, posted record revenues, and set a record for the number of new customers. Our results highlight both the growing demand for talent management solutions in large and small companies regardless of the economic environment,” said Michael Gregoire, Chairman and CEO of Taleo.

Below:

• Monday’s Question of the Day
• Building an ATS From Scratch
• Search Engine Marketing
• Sendouts vs. PCRecruiter
• Candidates Going Out of Their State for an Interview

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Back by popular demand, Ed Newman from The Newman Group explores today’s talent acquisition systems industry landscape and the trends that will affect your choices tomorrow.

Sponsored by Taleo, a leading provider of on-demand talent management for small businesses and corporations, this session explored key findings from ERE’s annual Talent Acquisition System 2007 Industry Analysis and Buyer’s Guide. From customer satisfaction to integration, vendor viability, candidate sourcing, configurability, pricing, compliance and overall system lifecycle, check out this footage to hear all about the demands and drivers shaping the industry and how they may affect you.

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