ERE.net

Thinking of heading to the cloud in 2012? Everyone seems to be, including some of the biggest HR vendors in the world.

Just a few weeks ago, when SAP snapped up SuccessFactors, the buzz was all about the cloud. A similar buzz ensued when Oracle bought RightNow Technologies.

Even though Wall Street reacted to the SAP/SuccessFactors deal as if the cloud had just been discovered, the reality is cloud computing has been around almost as long as the Internet itself. What the excitement is about is how HR software services are delivered, and the big deal is that increasingly, companies aren’t buying systems, they’re licensing seats.

For HR, that means SaaS. SaaS, the acronym for software-as-a-service, is the type of cloud computing with which HR professionals are most familiar. Yet, like the cloud itself, SaaS has about as many different flavors as there are vendors offering it.

Before discussing what you should know before going SaaS, let’s take a moment to talk about just what it is that distinguishes it — and the cloud — from other forms of computing. keep reading…

When we said VisualCV was shutting down at the end of the month, we hedged with a Hail Mary closer: “unless, we suppose, a buyer swoops in.”

So this morning we discover that Talent Technology did the swooping and scooped up the site for job seeker portfolios. Financial details weren’t in the announcement, but Talent Technology made clear the site would continue. “The service will continue to operate as a standalone offering,” said Talent Technology.

Just in case you don’t recognize the corporate name, Talent Technology is the Canadian firm that sells the HireDesk ATS, and a sourcing system it calls Talementry. A new version of the latter was just released.

Even if you’re not a job seeker, and don’t plan on being one, VisualCV is worth a look. It’s a great place to showcase work for anyone building or managing their personal brand. It supplements your LinkedIn profile.

As Amybeth Hale wrote on our sister site, SourceCon, the site enables professionals “to easily build and manage an online career portfolio that comes alive with informational keyword pop-ups, video, pictures, and professional networking.”

All good for VisualCV, but what’s in it for Talent Technology? The announcement doesn’t really say. There’s only this: “As part of Talent Technology, users can also look forward to new innovations to help them create even more engaging online resumes faster and easier in the future.”

For users of the site, VisualCV says everything will stay as is, except that it will now be free. The premium service is being discontinued. Subscribers should already have gotten a refund.

Ending what, for most, is a short week, we bring you the penultimate Friday roundup for 2011. Today’s collection includes mystery applicants, a police recruiting campaign gone bad, and Salesforce’s Rypple.

We start with a job seeker good deed from the Challenger people:

Free Job Hunting Advice By Phone

For two days next week, job seekers will be able to get career advice directly from professional counselors at no charge. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST on December 27 and 28, counselors will accept calls from job seekers nationwide, answering questions and offering advice about the job hunting process.

The number is 312-422-5010. Job hunters can get more information about the call-in at firm’s website and blog.

This is the 26th year that the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray  & Christmas will offer this free call-in service .

Salesforce Acquires Rypple

Rypple, the company that brought a social, collaborative networking approach to performance management, is being acquired by Salesforce.com. The CRM company announced last week that it was buying Toronto-based Rypple for an undisclosed amount. keep reading…

The pairing of Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett is talent acquisition’s Hewlett and Packard; its Ben and Jerry.

Sullivan’s name is on the firm, his wife is his partner, and there’s no doubt he’s the sensei. But over the years, Burnett came to be an alter ego, presenting at conferences, consulting with companies in the U.S. and globally, writing and co-authoring articles by the dozens, and, when Sullivan himself was unavailable, Burnett was the public face of the firm.

Now, after a decade with, Burnett is leaving for a global role as director of strategy for UK-based BraveNewTalent.  keep reading…

The emails in your inbox may be fewer in December and your phone less busy, but not all’s quiet. Here’s what’s turned up in our mailbox so far this month: keep reading…

This morning, three days after the news that SAP is acquiring SuccessFactors, comes the announcement that SuccessFactors is buying recruitment marketer Jobs2Web for $110 million.

SuccessFactors says it will combine its “social, mobile, and collaborative recruiting management solution with Jobs2web’s leading recruiting marketing platform, creating an end-to-end recruiting system.”

Saturday’s SAP SuccessFactors acquisition touched off a rally Monday among the publicly traded HR tech vendors, as well as speculation about further consolidation in the industry. However, no mention was made of Jobs2Web.

Based just outside Minneapolis, Jobs2Web specializes in enhancing employer job postings to boost their findability by job seekers. The company optimizes job listings to improve their position on search results pages by, among other things, building micro-sites for each listing. Listings are also redistributed to multiple job boards, aggregation sites, and other places, with codes inserted for each listing so recruiters can identify the most effective marketing channels. keep reading…

There’s nothing like a big-buzz acquisition to lift the boats in the HR SaaS harbor. Taleo, Kenexa, and even pricey Salesforce saw jumps in their stock today as investors reacted to the weekend news that ERP vendor SAP was buying SuccessFactors.

Taleo and Kenexa were both up by double-digits. Salesforce, trading well over $100, was up 4.5 percent. SuccessFactors, as to be expected, was the big winner, catapulting nearly 52 percent to close just below the $40-a-share SAP will pay.

The rally was to be expected, given the speculation about who might next be an acquisition target in the talent management/HR software sector. It was mere minutes after the conference call SAP held Saturday morning to discuss the sale that analysts began speculating about which company would be next to get bought up by whom. keep reading…

SAP announced this morning that it is buying SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion. The $40-a-share all cash deal is a 52 percent premium over SuccessFactors’  $26.25 closing price Friday.

The unusual Saturday announcement made much of the part the acquisition will play in “accelerating SAP’s momentum as a provider of cloud applications, platforms, and infrastructure.”

During a conference call Saturday with financial and industry analysts, SAP’s Co-CEO Bill McDermott enthusiastically declared that the acquisition of SuccessFactors will “create, yes, create a cloud powerhouse… This market, ladies and gentlemen, is just beginning.” keep reading…

Following the departure of master sourcer Shally Steckerl, the recruitment services company Arbita has closed its sourcing unit, laying off its employees, and may dispose of its job-posting business as well.

Don Ramer, CEO and founder of Arbita, said three employees were laid off Friday. One or two independent sourcers will close out the remaining projects, but by the end of the year Arbita will be out of the sourcing business.

The future of the OnePost job distribution service, is also “in flux,” Ramer said. The service distributes employer job postings to multiple job boards, tracking responses to provide source analytics. What exactly is to become of OnePost isn’t clear, though Ramer said he might “spin off” the posting business. However, he was adamant that its future will not include him in any kind of leadership role.

Ramer says the company has been “financially stressed and challenged since Q1 2010.” Responding to reports of delayed paychecks, missed reimbursements, and deferred payments to vendors, Ramer said, “Like many small businesses we have had to be open about cash flow with our employees and flexible in timing disbursements. During the last three years we have paid or earned out the bulk of the company’s debt to our job board partners.” keep reading…

This week brings a crop of new job sites, including an ambitious (should we say quixotic?) effort to change the very nature of third party recruiting. We also tell you about Kenexa’s latest acquisition, heralding another step into providing a full-service solution.

First up, is the story of Staffingbook and one man’s quest to alter the course of recruiting:

Steve Harari has ambitious hopes for the recruiting industry. Not content to simply help recruiters place candidates and employers find talent, Harari wants to convince recruiters to mentor their talent over the long term.

“I don’t think it’s too far-fetched that a recruiter might be mentoring a candidate,” says Harari, who has launched his culture-changing effort at Staffingbook.

Were he talking about boutique search firms working at the highest levels, it wouldn’t be far-fetched at all.  Even less-lofty placements involve some amount of coaching and mentoring to at least prepare a candidate for an interview. keep reading…

News about internships, employee referrals, resumes searches, social media recruiting, and a video-oriented job board — it’s all in our roundup, below. keep reading…

LinkedIn lost money, but still beat analyst estimates, blowing through the most optimistic projections by millions and ending the quarter with $139.5 million in revenue. The company also announced it would sell $100 million more of its shares to finance its aggressive expansion.

The company told investors and analysts during a conference call after the markets closed this afternoon that it would add some 500 to 600 more employees by the end of the year. CEO Jeff Weiner said the rapid expansion would give LinkedIn a jump on 2012. keep reading…

Who doesn’t love writing Boolean search strings?

There’s nothing like crafting a Boolean equation to find a software engineer with every single requirement and a few of the “nice-to-haves” only to discover that somewhere in those 193 characters you’ve got a tilde instead of a minus and now your list includes tons of coffee industry IT professionals, who may also know Java.

Even writing a perfect Boolean string the first time isn’t quite so satisfying when you consider the time it took.

Scavado (nee AutoSearch) shortcuts all that string writing to cut to the chase, which, (need it be pointed out?) is to find prospects who meet your hiring manager’s needs. keep reading…

Inside this modest, even nondescript brick building is the Conspiracy. I capitalize it because I’m playing along with the preposterous notion that it was selected because of grammatical significance to be part of the official name of the organization that inhabits suite 200 here on Fort Worth’s Magnolia Avenue.

“Conspiracy,” explains the man whose name is also part of the title, “is a collective noun. It represents the whole.” At another point he tells me, “The intellectual power of the organization comes from the whole.”

I do not question his explanation. It has the ring of HR about it.

Maintaining his own name as part of the title of what once was called Starr Tincup signals continuity; a heritage name, he adds. I do not question this either. It has the ring of marketing wisdom about it.

Thus was Starr Tincup rechristened The Starr Conspiracy, says the man. His name is Starr, Bret Starr. A year ago he bought out his partner Bill Tincup, then promptly made partners of four of his long-time associates.

Documents that have come into my possession (and which I share with the world here) more fully detail the name change. The word “conspiracy,” says a document bearing the cryptic seal of the organization — a be-tentacled octopus with an all seeing eye – ”denotes a group of persons working in secret to influence perceptions and outcomes.” keep reading…

LinkedIn said there would be surprises at its Talent Connect conference in Las Vegas this week. The company didn’t disappoint.

During a keynote session this morning that had more in common with a Hollywood spectacular than sober recruiting kickoff, CEO Jeff Weiner wowed the audience of 1,800 with Talent Pipeline. Now it might be that the biggest applause — and some actual cheering — came when he uttered the magic word Free, as in free for those licensing LinkedIn Recruiter. But, those cheers would have been equally appropriate for the product itself.

Weiner left the driving to his VP of product, David Hahn, who tour-guided Talent Pipeline on five massive screens, demonstrating its ease of use, its utility, and a little less obviously, its potential to replace the most basic of ATS programs in use.

Hahn said the development of Talent Pipeline was driven by the challenges talent specialists face in managing pipelined prospects over many months. And not just prospects sourced from LinkedIn. Talent Pipeline, declared Hahn, is the single place to manage all your talent prospects, whatever the source.

What’s particularly special about Talent Pipeline is how it connects prospects and information. Any old ATS will take applicant resumes and sort them into a searchable database. More sophisticated systems provide notes fields, calendaring and scheduling functions, automated messaging, and the like. What Talent Pipeline also does is to pull information from a prospect’s LinkedIn profile, match up their connections, essentially building a portfolio private to the recruiter and tracking all activity between the prospect and employer.When a prospect in Talent Pipeline updates their LinkedIn profile, the recruiter is alerted. In the rare event that a prospect isn’t on LinkedIn, a profile-like portfolio is built from the resume employment history. keep reading…

“We still have our work cut out for us in convincing companies how important it is to take a business intelligence mindset within HR.” That comment comes from Dr. Charles Handler, an I/O psychologist, who, contrary to the suggestion implicit in that comment, was actually encouraged by what he saw at HR Tech.

“After this year’s show I am smiling from ear-to-ear,” he wrote, in praise of how vendors are integrating and leveraging assessment data for “analytics and business intelligence.”

I saw what he saw, but from a different perspective; a perspective that encompassed the sweep of the showroom floor, and in-depth discussions with many of the largest vendors, and casual conversations with several others.  What I sensed, more than saw, was that HR analytics are being understood as more than a measure of recruiting productivity.

Wanted Technologies is an example of how vendors are providing tools to access data and show its cross-departmental value.

The other day, Wanted added salary ranges to its AnalyticsT platform. AnalyticsT is a data product designed specifically for recruiters. It can tell you on a very granular level what the market supply is like for specific jobs; how many of those jobs are being advertised at that moment; what the trends been; and who is doing the hiring and how many positions they have.

Now with the addition of the salary range, recruiters can compare the going rate in their locale — or elsewhere — to what they’re offering.

A valuable tool for recruiters? Certainly. But it would be a shame if that intelligence stayed with HR. As Wanted’s President and CEO Bruce Murray said, “Talk about a seat at the table… They (HR professionals) can provide competitive intelligence on a company and get very detailed about it.” keep reading…

Job search company StartWire recently got a $3.25 million investment from Baird Venture Partners. The VC firm, which has invested in other human capital businesses including SnagAJob and Pinstripe, said “Startwire stands out in the human capital sector by addressing a real problem facing job seekers.”

StartWire was founded by Chris Forman, former CEO of AIRS, and Tim McKegney, who was previously EVP at AIRS. It launched this year with the promise of helping job seekers avoid the black hole and connect with a network of trusted friends and business connections for advice and job referrals.

Forman said StarWire would use the funds to grow its development team and speed product enhancements, as well as for marketing.

Bullhorn on a roll

Recruiting software provider Bullhorn reported new bookings and paid user count were both up over 40 percent compared to the same period in 2010. Heavy demand pushed usage to over one billion transactions per month, the company said.

The one billion monthly transactions include about 150,000 new and filled job orders as well more than a million job seeker views. Between the company’s recruitment CRM and social recruiting product lines, over 45,000 users across more than 5,000 companies rely on Bullhorn.

The company also announced this week the release of  Bullhorn Time and Expense. The new module for its ATS and CRM software platform provides online time and expense management and integration with accounting and payroll systems.

iCIMS partners with Payscale

iCIMS, a provider of talent acquisition and management technology, has partnered with PayScale. Now, iCIMS 1,000+ customers will have access to detailed compensation information for 13,000 job titles in all cities in the U.S., Canada, and seven other English-speaking countries. PayScale solutions allow companies to design and implement a compensation strategy tied to business results and ensure competitiveness in what has been a volatile talent market.

New twist on resume search

Urecuitme.com is a new jobs site that skips the posting part of job boarding, instead selling access to its resume database. Recruiters pay a flat fee to search for candidates, then pay up to $300 to contact those on the shortlist.

The business model is pretty much the same as LinkedIn Recruiter or buying only the Monster or CareerBuilder resume database, though all three sites likely have millions more resumes and profiles than does the Atlanta startup. The other differentiator appears to be that candidates also must take an assessment test as part of the registration process.

Google+ stalling?

Could be that Google+ has hit a wall. Or it could just be the plateau effect at work (as in loads of publicity generates lots of traffic, that then drops off, but at a higher level where it was prior to the publicity.)

Whatever the cause, Chitka says that Google+ traffic soared 1,200 percent in the days after its public launch on Sept. 20, then fell by 60 percent. The data analytics company is evidently in the “failure to launch” camp, suggesting in prior posts that the site peaked late in July and has been sliding ever since, public launch and publicity notwithstanding.

LinkedIn will pay somewhere around $13.4 million in stock for two companies it acquired this month, according to a filing with the SEC.

The exact price it’s paying for search provider IndexTank and contact management software maker Connected wasn’t announced. However, the filing with the Securities Exchange Commission said LinkedIn would issue up to 162,928 shares as at least partial payment. At LinkedIn’s closing price today of $82.36, the stock portion of the deal is potentially worth $13.4 million. The actual number of shares to be issued could be less based on certain provisions in the sale agreements.

The acquisitions are LinkedIn’s fifth and sixth in just over a year, and the first since the company went public in May.

Buying a CRM firm like Connected isn’t hard to understand, considering building, managing, and maintaining — and locating — contacts is LinkedIn’s business. keep reading…

ADP, best known by the adjective “payroll processor,” will need to launch a rebranding campaign. Something like, “ADP, the full-service human capital company.”

The $10 billion company announced today it is acquiring The RightThing, a leading recruitment process outsourcer, which three years ago acquired AIRS. Terms of the deal weren’t announced.

It’s the second acquisition for ADP in as many months. In September it bought Asparity Decision Solutions, a supplier of  employee health benefits decision support tools.

Besides giving ADP a strong and immediate presence in the burgeoning RPO business, The RightThing’s AIRS unit brings a sophisticated recruitment technology and a well-regarded recruiter Internet training component.

However, the announcement strongly suggests that it was the RPO side of the house that ADP was after in the acquisition. keep reading…

There are some clever and innovative products on display at the HR Tech show here in Las Vegas this week, and 11 of them were recognized today as among the best.

At the annual awards luncheon, HR Executive magazine, sponsor of the show now in its 14th year, honored products as diverse as an online management simulation tool from DDI to a mobile time-and-attendance and scheduling app from Kronos. Perhaps the most unusual among them products is the Keas Health Challenge, a game-based health improvement tool that encourages employees to live healthier through contests, team challenges, and the promise of rewards.

In the social media area, the HR Executive judges picked BranchOut and its competitor, Monster’s BeKnown, as top products, saying they “represent innovative ways to leverage the popularity of Facebook for recruiting.” Coincidentally, BranchOut and CareerBuilder announced a partnership today, which TLNT’s Lance Haun wrote about in detail.

Another announcement came from ADP, which released Vantage, an HCM system that integrates its famed payroll processing, and benefits handling, with compensation (which it got when it bought Workscape), recruitment (from VirtualEdge), succession, and performance. ADP’s SVP of Product Management Don Weinstein said the company’s acquisitions over the last couple years gave it “a pretty strong foundation to build on.”

It’s SaaS-based, as are most HR technology services these days. But one thing ADP rightfully pointed out in the announcement is that it can rightfully claim to be a leader in cloud-based delivery. Tens of thousands of companies have been delivering their payroll data to ADP to handle for years.

Not every announcement or exhibitor, of course, is of the size of an ADP. keep reading…