TMS (Talent Management Solutions)

The Third Player:

A significant ìthird forceî tends to get lost in the ongoing debate over ERP (enterprise solutions like PeopleSoft, Oracle and SAP) and best of breed solutions for e-recruitment (specialty solutions like Recruitsoft, Peopleclick, and Hire.com). In the struggle for e-recruit market share, large job boards (Monster, HotJobs, Workopolis) have by far the most customers. These customers often complain about the massive volumes of resumes they receive when they post a job. They also lament the fact that so many of their applicants are unqualified for the positions they apply to.

Itís no surprise then, that Monster (Monster HQ), HotJobs (Resumix, Softshoe) and Canadaís leading job board, Workopolis (CorporateWorks) have all developed or purchased and integrated applicant tracking systems with their job boards. Each has seen fit to add a backend to their core product in order to satisfy their customersí demands for better candidate screening and resume management. Naturally, they would prefer to expand their revenues by providing the service themselves than referring their customers on to others.

The struggle to survive in the Talent Management Solutions (TMS) industry has been made more difficult with the current economy. Most industry observers agree that aside from superior customer service; financial stability and market share will win the day. After that, competitive pricing models and advanced technology will contribute most to the outcome. The ERPs seem to have the advantage in the first and third categories (finances and pricing options). To date, the best of breeds are clearly superior in features, functionality and creativity in developing cutting edge technology. As for market share, the best of breeds have more of the TMS-specific market, however, the premier ERPs have many more customers overall, and those are, at least theoretically, potential converts to their e-recruit solutions.

The job boards, as the rest of this article argues, stand up well against all four of the survivability components listed above.

Financial Stability:

If the battle is one of attrition, the job boards (despite TMPís troubles) have as much staying power as the premier ERPs. They all claim to be profitable components of stable organizations. Workopolis is part owned by Bell Media, which is in turn owned by one of the continentís largest conglomerates, BCE. HotJobs is part of the Yahoo! family and Monster, of course, is owned by TMP.

Financial stability among the major job board players is significantly better than that of most TMS point solutions vendors, especially if it is a matter of having the funds to stay in the business through tough times. Many point solution vendors are in debt, unable to raise more venture capital and struggling to break even. A small minority have reached profitability.

Marketshare:

The job boards may have fewer TMS-specific customers than their ERP or best-of-breed competition but in terms of overall number of customers, they have by far the most. Moreover, because their job board customers are using e-recruit methods already, and finding resume volume and quality challenging, they may be fairly easy converts to inexpensive talent management tools.

Features & Functionality:

The job boards are certainly weaker than best of breed in this category, however, they have the advantage of integrating their backend talent management offerings with their job boards on many levels beyond just passing job requisitions and resumes back and forth. Both MonsterHQ (MOHQ) and CorporateWorks integrate with extensive campus networks for college recruiting, as well as multiple, deep resume pools and their flagship job boards. Monster also offers integration with ChiefMonster for executive recruiting and JobMatch for hourly workers. Through VIPeR, MOHQ users can distribute their postings to many other boards also. CorporateWorks partners with eQuest to offer thousands of additional boards.

Some of the best instructional tools for hiring managers Iíve seen, reside on Monsterís integrated suite for employers, including excellent tutorials on creating compelling on-line job ads. Likewise, CorporateWorks offers three levels of pre-screening tools that test for competencies, psychometrics and general requirements. For reducing hundreds or thousands of applicants down to a short-list, itís as good as anything the competition offers.

If you believe that the job board talent management systems are lightweight versions of their more robust competitorsí solutions, you might be surprised. While they may not have all the bells and whistles of the best of breeds, they appear to be satisfying the needs of giant customers like Chrysler, GM Canada, Bell, H&R Block, Adecco and other large organizations.

Pricing:

Where pricing is concerned, weíve seen how the ERPs can be very flexible with their e-recruit prices when customers are purchasing multi-million dollar enterprise solutions. Likewise, the job boards can bundle their talent management backends into fees charged for postings as Monster does for high volume users. Or, like CorporateWorks, charge rock bottom prices knowing that they can make it up over their customerís entire lifecycle.

Best-of-breed vendors have far less flexibility because they rely on income from sales of their solutions to survive. Remember a few years back, everyone agreed that Netscape was the best web browser, nevertheless, over the course of two or three years, Microsoft was able to capture almost the entire market because they could afford to give their browser (Explorer) away even while spending hundreds of millions in development. Netscape could not.

Bottom Line:

There are some flaws in the job board offering. Clearly with seamless integration between the job board and TMS, the relationship favors use of one board and one source of applicants, however broad that may be. ERPs and best of breeds, not being in the job board business, can claim vendor neutrality in that respect and have no agenda when helping customers configure the sourcing end of their solutions.

On the whole, however, itís hard to dispute that the job board driven talent management solutions are serious players, despite their recent vintage. They have the deep pockets lacking in many of the point solution vendors, they offer advantages through integration with massive access to candidates through a variety of sources, in some cases their technologies are superior to ERPs or best of breed (though overall they lack the depth of features of the best of breeds) and they are priced extremely competitively, especially MOHQ and CorporateWorks.

If youíre intrigued, see last monthís spotlight on MonsterHQ. Look in future for spotlights on Yahoo! Resumix and Workopolis CorporateWorks.


Allan Schweyer
aschweyer@hr.com
www.hr.com

Allan Schweyer has been involved in Internet recruiting since 1994 when he pioneered e-recruitment solutions for Human Resources Development Canada. From 1995 to 1999, Allan directed the award-winning National Graduate Register, Campus WorkLink and SkillNet.ca programs with Industry Canada, which introduced the concepts of applicant tracking and advanced screening to job boards and ìcareer networksî to job seekers. In 1999, Allan formed the On-line Recruitersí Association of Canada. In 2000 and 2001, he worked with Cahners Business Information in Boston to build information portals for technical professionals and attended graduate school at Harvard University. Allan currently consults with large organizations on HR strategies and specializes in e-recruitment projects. He is a senior researcher and analyst with HR.com and the guest editor of the HR.com staffing vertical.