You may know that Salesforce, the wildly successful and widely used system businesses use to keep track of their customers, has also been used on occasion to keep track of job applicants. A new partnership will result in a more formal recruiting and human resources system built on the Salesforce platform.
The company behind this is Lumesse. We’ve mentioned Lumesse and its prior name, StepStone, before (see worker-attitudes survey; mobile app introduction; purchase of MrTed) but if you’re a U.S. reader in particular, it’s possible you haven’t heard of it. Even with 2,300 customers in 70 countries, it’s less known in the U.S. as it is in Europe.
Anyhow, Lumesse will create a new organization, TalentObjects by Lumesse, based in Boston, that will in the first quarter of 2015 launch a talent acquisition system sold in the Salesforce AppExchange, followed later by other human resources applications.
As I mentioned at the outset, Salesforce has been used by recruiters before. You may have read about the U.S. Army, for one. You may also know Sean Rehder — a familiar face at recruiting-industry events, currently working on an assignment with Apple — who has for years helped companies use Salesforce for recruiting. And Jobscience uses Salesforce in some, though not all, of its offerings.
A bit different from Rehder, who helps companies modify/adapt Salesforce, Lumesse has been working with people from Salesforce on building a native application that managers and recruiters will use.
And different from Jobscience — which is mainly focused on recruiting and related areas like managing contingent workforces — Lumesse is starting with TalentObjects:Recruit but is planning, over time, a larger talent management offering. It wants to quickly move toward performance, rewards, succession, and learning modules.
Lumesse plans to focus on high-volume and hourly hiring at first, as well as on a social referral application.