Bearing Fruit Consulting

Taleo / Vurv Commentary From Martin Snyder

Recruiting technology leader Martin Snyder had some of the most intelligent observations I have read related to the Taleo acquisition of Vurv.  I am way late to post this as he wrote it back on May 8th (crazy that a post only a couple of weeks old seems dated to me) but it is incredibly insightful and well written. 

A couple of notes before you head over to read it. 

1)  Martin is a competitor to both Taleo and Vurv and;

2) I have deliberately stayed out of any conversation related to this acquisition as I have clients that are all twisted up in this thing. 

That said, my sentiments related to the acquisition are pretty much in alignment with Martin's. 

ATS Systems Don't Add Value

I generally dislike ATS systems.  This shouldn't surprise anyone who has ever had more than 15 minutes of interaction with me about recruiting.  Almost all of them are designed to track people, process, compliance and the bureaucratic mess that gets in the way of real recruiting. 

Recruiting is all about relationships and most ATS (Animal Tracking System to me - animals are tracked, you have relationships with people), as they are designed and come out of the box, are inherently flawed when it comes to actually adding value to great recruiting.

I recently posted on this topic at my other gig over on Fistful of Talent.  The comments were robust and fun but, as Alex Cantu of TalentFilter noted in his blog post, it was surprising that virtually no one disagreed with my premise that ATS systems are not designed to actually drive the art and craft of recruiting or get real recruiting results.  They are red tape and process tracking devices that really just automate already flawed paper based recruiting processes.

Talk about an industry that needs a serious wake up call!