Thursday, June 19, 2008 . 10:54 AM by Brian De Groodt

As has been widely reported Taleo entered into an agreement to acquire one of their primary competitors in Vurv earlier this quarter.  While analysts have their different opinions about this acquisition (“It’s great!  It’s not going to work! etc) one metric stands out as a significant red flag in need of immediate attention.  In order for Taleo to book this transaction as accretive as soon as possible (something they will not be able to do under GAAAP standards for some time) they must find a way to make up the difference in revenue per employee (R/E) at the two companies.  To the best of my calculcations (and my numbers may be off slightly) there exists almost a 40% delta in R/E at Taleo over Vurv.

It appears Vurv has taken the first step in trying to boost the R/E by making some layoffs before the close of the deal.  This was an obvious need and, of course, straight out of the M&A playbook. This makes up for roughly half the difference between the R/Es, but still leaves a significant gap.  Certain employee assets of Vurv must stay aboard in the near term in order to mitigate the risk of an exodus from Vurv’s customer list.

This, of course, leaves Taleo with a noteworthy operational issue as a first order of business when it closes the transaction this month.  They can either accept a reduced R/E—something Wall Street surely won’t take kindly. Alternatively, they can continue to reduce headcount while quickly moving as many existing Vurv customers off the near-customized platform to which they subscribe today.  These are not necessarily mutually exclusive options and the options above hardly exhaustive, but directionally these seem to be the only real options available to Taleo.  How this manifests itself and over what period of time seem to be the only open questions.

I believe the Taleo sale was the best move available to Vurv and may produce significant benefits to Taleo in 18-36 months.  Vurv customers may be a separate kettle of fish all together.  The business of mergers tends to turn vendor attention internally to focus on operational and financial issues.  Just as Oracle pitched a “you won’t believe what we have up our sleeves for you—just wait” offering to PeopleSoft customers (nearly 5 years ago), Vurv customers will find themselves in an equally confusing courtship. 

More to come on this final thought, but it’s worth a quick mention here given the above. I fundamentally disagree with the analysts that would have customers and investors in the talent management marketplace believe this is the ultimate consolidation in the space.  For every merger we have seen over the last 10 years, 10 new “up and comers” have been started, funded and made a grab for the land of Customer Churn.  But that’s for another post, for now there’s no shortage of good options in the talent management space.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 . 08:41 AM by Brian De Groodt

While I work on longer entry on who’s really responsible for a short-term view of talent acquisition, I found John Sumser’s Thought for the Day to be one of the best I’ve seen in a long time.

All wars have their propagandists. Including the talent war.

I’ll leave it to the readership here to think about that a little and keep the rest of my comments to myself and my mind working away on the previously mentioned post.  Stay tuned.

Friday, June 13, 2008 . 12:01 PM by Brian De Groodt

The Chief Human Capital Officer Council celebrated 5 years of its existence earlier this week.  Is it another example of the government actually being more progressive than many in the private sector?  Or is it council in name and title only and still far behind the times?

I had the pleasure of speaking with a government contractor recently who shared with me his belief that the American government continues to be a laughing stock when it comes to policies and efficiency when compared to the private sector.  I shared some thoughts I had on some fairly progressive Web 2.0 type technology the government has embraced with great success—that the private sector has not—and that when compared to its recruiting practices of 5 years ago, maybe they are making good progress.  Progress to go, no doubt.  But progress still and in fact, leadership in others.

From CHCOC’s web site:

The Chief Human Capital Officers Act of 2002, enacted as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Pub. L. No. 107-296) on November 25, 2002, required the heads of 24 Executive Departments and agencies to appoint or designate Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs). Each CHCO serves as his or her agency’s chief policy advisor on all human resources management issues and is charged with selecting, developing, training, and managing a high-quality, productive workforce.

The CHCO Act also established a Chief Human Capital Officers Council to advise and coordinate the activities of members’ agencies on such matters as the modernization of human resources systems, improved quality of human resources information, and legislation affecting human resources operations and organizations.

I ask, because I’m truly not certain and don’t deal with government contracts that often, but five years on, has CHCOC made a difference?  Is there better coordination?  Has OPM made the right steps in being able to compete for and retain key talent in our government?  Is there visibility into what critical resources are necessary to maintain strong continuity in our government?  Fire away, I’m interested in knowing what the insiders would say.

Thursday, June 12, 2008 . 09:14 AM by Brian De Groodt

Office of the Director of Intelligence (ODNI) is on the lookout for shady characters that like to surf the internet a little too much, trade music files, or just seem to be unwilling to follow the rules of the Net.

This is certainly a raising of the stakes in the Web-as-background-check-provider concept.  Wired Magazine reports the ODNI has sent out an RFP seeking opinions and proposals on how best to determine one’s unsavory proclivities by analyzing their online behaviors.  Check your email a little too often?  No need to apply.  Have a foreign friend on World of Warcraft?  Go ahead and apply.  A “recruitment officer” will be over in 15 minutes to discuss further.  Swapped some music with friends in college?  Can you even sleep at night?  Move along.  No position for you in the government—hoodlum!

I have a few problems with this beyond its concept.  Not the least of which is how does the ODNI intend to find out if you’re up to such things in the first place?  Is my email program going to send off a report detailing the number of times I hit “send/receive” or are they just going to have a look as they please?  Big Brother paranoia aside, this doesn’t seem like a great practice.

As a person that’s gone through both the NACLC and SSBI process for security clearance I can certainly say I understand and appreciate the need to waive certain rights to privacy as part of the process. But I can also confirm there’s far more to be learned about a person in face-to-face interviews with associates, family and community members than understanding how often I might check my email.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 . 02:28 PM by Brian De Groodt

Apparently an open door policy wasn’t working for the folks at Glassdoor.  Jack Stack would be proud—I think.

Glassdoor.com is a start up from the same folks behind Zillow and Expedia and is a sort of fishbowl view into an organization’s culture, management and compensation.  I like the concept as it puts on full display all dirty laundry (the only kind to ever really be cleaned) and could jumpstart the employee satisfaction process in a real way.  Much like Payscale (compensation data) before it, employers are invited to the conversation (assuming for a fee) and get access to realtime data on employee satisfaction.  Smart companies will gravitate towards this as a progressive venue for identifying and repairing areas of the company that make them less-than-ideal employers.  Others will defend the legacy and fail to make critical changes before it’s too late.

With Glassdoor.com, your employees — as well as prospective recruits, investors, media, analysts and even customers — can see real-time feedback on employee satisfaction, compensation, and leadership. Although this might feel a bit uncomfortable at first, we think offering more transparency will have far-reaching benefits for everyone involved.

Glassdoor’s challenge will clearly be in keeping an open enough forum to allow for good community and openness, while delicately balancing the need by all constituents for data beyond childish “so and so sucks” bombs (undoubtably there will be plenty) in order to uncover the real themes of employee satisfaction/dissatisfaction. 

COMPANY COORDINATES

Glassdoor.com
http://www.glassdoor.com

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 . 10:02 AM by Brian De Groodt

tweetVOLUME gives an interesting (but arguably near worthless) view into 4 applicant tracking vendors “tweets.”

Purely for pondering and nothing scientific or necessarily fair about it, but draw your own conclusions about what this chart tells you. 

I grabbed it from tweetVOLUME just to see who’s tied in and who is not.  No surprise Taleo has a good level of comparative volume given the number of installations they have and their recent embracing of some popular Web 2.0 services like Facebook and LinkedIn.  I do have to admit with the youth and progressive nature of Vurv in the past that they have a lower volume than Taleo. 

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 . 09:35 AM by Brian De Groodt

Workforce Management reports IHRIM is preparing the finishing touches on an HR information manger’s certification.

Workforce Management reports IHRIM is preparing the finishing touches on an HR information manger’s certification.  From the magazine:

The International Association for Human Resource Information Management will create the HR information management professional certification test and a study guide with the help of the Donath Group, a company that develops professional certification exams, IHRIM president and CEO Lynne Mealy says. Mealy announced the development of the new professional certification June 3 at the IHRIM Conference and Technology Exposition at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida.

This is great news as it finally adds a much needed level of professionalism to the IT-HR relationship.  While it still leaves the larger issue of friction between the two groups unsolved, it does lay down the foundation for a better set of standards for qualification as a professional in HRIT and from those standards, perhaps a service level agreement can be created—rendering the current and previous friction cleared up.  Finally. 

Two thumbs up to IHRIM for making this critical step towards delivering full value on the HRIT service.