Few people who follow the HR software industry were surprised by last week’s announcement by Oracle that they intend to acquire recruiting and talent management vendor Taleo.  In the wake of December’s acquisition of SuccessFactors by SAP and the preceding two years of increasingly frantic market consolidation, the news was greeted with little surprise.

There’s not much point in rehashing the analysis of some very smart HR practitioners and industry analysts here. The discussion taking place on Bill Kutik’s HR Tech Conference LinkedIn group is clearly a fine place to review the reaction.

From Cornerstone’s perspective, naturally, we have clear ideas about what the Taleo and SuccessFactors acquisitions mean for buyers of talent management software and services.

First, we believe that these shifts signal the beginning of talent management – not the end. Talent management is now more important than ever after $5.5 billion has been spent on acquisitions of TM applications in last 3 months.

Further, and more critically, we would suggest that buyers are at a serious crossroads today, facing very significant choices around where talent management software is going in the coming years, who will control it and what it will look like.

With Taleo and SuccessFactors giving up on providing independent talent management technologies, Cornerstone is really the only choice left if you favor an independent, best-of-breed solution. Why does this matter?

Choice #1 – ERP or Best-of-Breed:  Buyers looking for compelling answers to their vexing talent management problems have to choose between, on the one hand, an ERP vendor, offering a mixed bag of products (acquired, homegrown, SaaS, on-premise) with long innovation and upgrade cycles and, on the other hand, a best-of-breed provider focused completely on talent management, client success, business impact, and pure Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery. The choice is yours.

Choice #2: – Integration vs. Innovation: Do you want your partner continuously improving your solution to provide state-of-the-art talent management or do you prefer to have your vendor tied up in a quagmire of product integrations?

The talent management product integration and rationalization challenges now facing Oracle and SAP are daunting. “Sorting out the myriad HCM-related code bases at both SAP/SFSF and Oracle/PSFT/Fusion/EBS/Taleo/Etc. is not for the feint of heart,” opines Naomi Bloom in the HR Tech Conference LinkedIn discussion group. It’s not just an overwhelming task to sort out these talent management products and codebases, but it’s also going to take a long time.

Further, if you are interested in learning and development (and you should be, just ask Josh Bersin – see his blog on the subject), consider that Learn.com (previously acquired by Taleo) and Plateau (previously acquired by SuccessFactors) clients have both been acquired twice in less than a year and are now buried under two layers of bureaucracy.

The choice is yours.

Choice #3 – System of Record or System of Engagement:  Talent management should be about employee engagement and empowerment. ERP systems are about managing records and data. An independent, best-of-breed provider has the luxury of focusing innovation and the product roadmap on user centricity and helping clients to build an empowered workforce.  With all trends pointing to the need to engage a demographically shifting workforce, we believe buyers will prefer to side with a state-of-the-art, organically developed talent management solution rather than a bolted-on extension of a system of record. The choice is yours.

Choice #4 – Who Owns This Thing? IT or HR?  In large enterprises, ERP systems are almost always controlled by the IT department. Often, the HR department and line of business owners struggle to get attention for their specific needs. Cloud-based technologies have enabled HR to control their destiny and closely align people, process and technology with business priorities. With formerly independent talent management software now becoming system-of-record dependent, customers will likely be locked into a single ERP stack where IT will regain sole control over technology decisions.  This might be an acceptable paradigm for some HR organizations, but it seems less likely to lead to successful talent management outcomes.  The choice is yours.

Back in December, we posted some thoughts about what the SAP-Success Factors merger meant for clients and potential buyers of talent management software. The issues at hand today are much the same and focus on the ability of the independent, best-of-breed vendor to deliver things like a better product, better client experience, more innovation, and faster response to client feedback. Compared to the challenges and confusion facing the ERP vendors and their recent absorption of talent management companies, the choices seem quite stark.

If you want to read more, we found these resources to be noteworthy:

Findings from a new Cornerstone OnDemand survey show that employers too often drop the ball when it comes to recognizing real source of perceived skills shortages.

Many of us have recently endured a bruising U.S. presidential electoral cycle centered squarely on economic and labor market issues and chock full of speechmaking focused on the need to create new jobs at any cost. We also hear a message of doom and gloom from loads of CEOs who echo a lingering message that they simply can\’t find enough skilled workers.

We do need jobs, of course – too many people are struggling with unemployment. And we need skilled people at every strata of the labor market. But a recent Cornerstone OnDemand survey shows that a single-minded focus on new job creation deflects attention from another critical area for improvement – focusing on the skills and engagement of existing internal employees. Further, the survey highlights that employers can no longer deny that they are partially to blame for the skills shortage.

The idea that there is a so-called “skills gap” is a contested one. CEOs often use it to explain the challenges they face in meeting their objectives and growing their businesses. It’s a pervasive belief one that seems to be growing – only 42% of employers believe new graduates in the workforce are adequately prepared by their colleges or other pre-employment training programs, according to a recent McKinsey study.

However, data from the recent Cornerstone survey, along with the loud voices of people like Peter Cappelli and Paul Krugman, bring the idea of a skills shortage into question. Cappelli argues that the perception of a shortage of skilled workers in the U.S. is mere illusion. It’s not the fault of the national education system, but instead of employers and their hiring practices and failure to invest properly in employee skills and alignment.

The bottom line is that employers are not making the right investments in building skills and nurturing employee performance.

Modern business seems to rely on a “plug-and-play” type of labor market, dependent on the immediate availability of deep pools of skilled labor. This stands in stark contrast to how employment functioned a few decades ago, where fresh faces could join a new company and feel content in the knowledge that they would be trained to be successful in their new jobs.

Cappelli has documented a decline in employer commitment to training, workforce development and apprenticeship programs over the past two decades, a finding that is reflected strongly in the most recent Cornerstone survey:

External job creation is undoubtedly critical for the healthy function of the economy as a whole. In the meantime, employers should beware of blaming performance shortcomings on a perceived (and often wage-based) skills shortage, when, in fact, they are doing precious little to develop and engage their current internal employees.

The goal should be to invest in narrowing the skills gap at home – to meet looming business challenges by better mobilizing the existing talent base. Not every one of our challenges will be met through net new hiring.

For more insight and detailed findings from the latest Cornerstone OnDemand survey, go to http://www.cornerstoneondemand.com/resources/research/survey-2013.

Cornerstone OnDemand recently hosted a lively panel discussion on “Predicting the Future of Work” with three of the brightest minds in the business. End of year is a natural time to think about the future, of course, and we look forward to reading some interesting prognostication on 2013 in the next couple of weeks (for starters, try this piece by IDC’s Lisa Rowan).

The panelists started off with some broad thoughts about the future of work and trends that are impacting HR practitioners today and into the new year. 

Josh Bersin noted that, increasing specialization of jobs (due largely to globalization and advances in technology) means we are seeing flatter/cross-functional teams and that the individual employee’s value today is driven more by skills than the definition of the job role. Josh also noted the increasing impact of diversity in the workplace – not just ethnic, but also generational and age diversity alongside different employee backgrounds and experiences. And it’s more than just a casual observation: Bersin & Associates research shows that diverse teams actually work better.

Yvette Cameron focused her 2013 themes on a single word: MORE. She believes that the future of work is already here and that in 2013 we should expect more, more, more of what’s already going on (especially around the impacts of technology in the workplace and Big Data). On the data point, Yvette went further to remind us that we are doubling the amount of data out there every two years. The ability of organizations to use this data for meaningful impact is both a challenge and an opportunity for decision-makers in the coming year.

Elaine Orler is an expert on recruiting, and she focused her 2013 themes on the challenges facing businesses in terms of not only attracting and hiring Millennials, but also in re-recruiting Baby Boomers. Elaine also noted the change in so-called resume currency: “The concept of a paper resume is gone. The concept of an online profile / upload your resume is moving away.” In its place, we should expect performance-based and assessment-driven applicant profiles.

Josh started off the discussion of employee development by reminding us that training actually works.  Simply put, the sophistication of an organization’s training initiatives is seen by Bersin & Associates as a huge differentiator between high-performing and low-performing companies. Further, organizations that do systematic development planning generate twice the revenue per employee, due principally to the continuous skills development focus that accompanies development planning.

Josh also noted that, according to recent Bersin research, the entire corporate learning and development market grew by 12% in 2012 (despite the recession). This is due to the fact that “companies have basically realized that they cannot hire themselves out of these problems, they have to train their people out of these skills gaps.”

The conversation perked up when the panel got into less formal streams of learning and development. That’s not surprising, considering that there does seem to be a lot more uncertainty about how informal, social and video-based learning should play out in the workplace.

Yvette discussed the fact that learning can (and should) play out in all forms and modalities – not just from the typical “training department” and the CLO. Mentors count in this respect, and so do peers. All manner of informal learning that can happen here, there and everywhere.

Video-based learning through ubiquitous, consumer-side technologies like YouTube came up. Josh argued that, while YouTube can certainly be a good training tool, he fears that trainers too often don’t know how to properly use it, and training departments too often have limited resources, technical architecture and internal support.

Jason Corsello shifted the conversation to the recruiting problem – that is, why do we always hear that there are too many applicants for too many jobs, but we still struggle to find the right skills.  Elaine tackled this one and suggested that five years ago, a company might have 100 positions to fill, and they had the luxury to be creative in filling the positions.  Today, that same company might have only five jobs to fill, and there’s severely limited creativity in how to fill them.

She went further to argue that recruiting today is often about filling specific talent gaps. Companies are no longer looking for more general sets of attributes: for example, the team player that has long-term growth ability and who can be taught a specific craft or skill.

This discussion dovetails nicely into the results of the recent Cornerstone OnDemand survey, which highlighted, among other things, the lack of investment by employers in the area of filling skill gaps internally through better employee development, alignment and engagement. Learn more here.

Yvette kicked off a conversation of how technology will play a role in the workplace of 2013 by noting that we’ve already moved from systems of transaction to “systems of engagement” – accessible technology that fosters collaboration, just-in-time learning and daily engagement with work. These types of systems are essential in an age with the line between work and life has been considerably blurred.

When it comes to figuring out what interesting technology is around the corner, don’t even get our panel started about SnapChat. Elaine discussed the emergence of new tools for social collaboration: “The concept that video takes over the voice conversation, the concept that a picture says a thousand words…I think these are the kinds of tools that teens today and the next generation is going to look to have in the workforce.”

The panel got going on a few other related topics as well, all revolving around the core theme of what we can expect to see in the world of work in 2013.  For the full replay of the event, please click here.

And many thanks to Josh, Yvette, Elaine and Jason.

Every job candidate has practiced the tried-and-true interview questions aimed at drawing out weaknesses or negative qualities. Today’s job candidates know how to turn a negative into a positive: “I’m just too hard working, too motivated, too detail-oriented…” they may say. But what about throwing in a question from left field that catches the interviewee off guard entirely?

The CEO of a predominant design and building company Maravelas had worked with stuck out in her mind for a unique interviewing tactic. The CEO would interview candidates directly, starting off with warm, getting-to-know-you conversation. A bit into the interview, the CEO would then ask, “If we ever got into a bind with a client, would you be willing to tell a little white lie to help us out?”

“If the candidate said yes,” Maravelas explains, “the offer evaporated. You really have to have a lot of integrity to say no.”

“Ask candidates to talk about a time when they achieved something they were really proud of,” Maravelas says. “How much credit did they give others?”

Is the candidate constantly saying “I, I, I” or referring to collective achievements she accomplished as part of a team? Does she refer to a great mentor or a close relationship with her boss as a contributor to her success, or is she constantly patting herself on the back?

An alternative way to gauge this quality, Maravelas suggests, is to ask candidates about a time when they really tried their hardest, yet failed, and listen to how they assess their own responsibility in that failure.

Indeed, 64% of Midwest employers “occasionally find it hard to fill key positions,” according to a survey by Right Management. Yet the Midwest has no lack of great opportunities or Fortune 500 companies — Minnesota boasts 19 Fortune 500 brands, Ohio has 28, and Pennsylvania is home to 23. The Manpower 2012 Talent Shortage Survey found that the top reason for difficulty when filling jobs in the Americas is lack of available applicants or no applicants at all. Are they all really in New York or California?

The answer is no, and there are ways to attract great talent to less sough-after markets. Jeff Zisner, founder of Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based executive talent search firm Right Recruiting, says that although a lot of 20-something candidates he sees tend to head New York over Pennsylvania, he has had success attracting talent by taking a more personal approach.

\”We have had great success bringing people back home to our region once they’ve had kids and want to buy a home,\” says Zisner. \”We get reverse transplants who want to come back all of the time for family and household reasons.\”

Beyond attracting talent by simply pulling at hometown heart-strings, Zisner says it is also important to find the right match for the area and job. A recruiter in Ohio shouldn\’t waste time on a candidate who is dead set on California or hates the snow. On the other hand, a recruiter may find someone who is more open to new opportunities and experiences, and should then highlight how that city and position would appeal to the candidate\’s personality and life goals.

\”An employer needs a patience approach until the right person appears and they then must pounce once the target has become visible,\” Zisner says. \”It is all about hard work. You need a lot of candidate pools and need to make the calls. Timing is the key.\”

Zisner offers dos and don’ts for recruiting big talent in smaller markets:

· Generate excitement in the initial phone screen. For the hiring company, the phone screen is critical. The candidate, who is often remote, needs to get a real sense of the job and company and have enough interest after the phone screen to want to schedule an on-site trip. Employers who don’t add pizzazz to the initial phone screen can find candidates turned-off early in the process rather than wanting to invest valuable time on a multiple-day interview trip.

· Highlight the cost of living. A $100,000 salary in California is less money than a $70,000 salary in Pennsylvania, after taxes and housing costs.

· Appeal to a candidate\’s personal interest and lifestyle choices. A 23-year-old wants entertainment and a social life. A 40-year-old with kids wants a home and good schools. Highlight how your city can fit different candidates\’ needs.

· Try to schedule an onsite during good weather. Oddly enough, weather is very important in relocations. A candidate only has a few days to get an impression of a region. A dreary day in March can have a negative impression, while a 70-degree day with daffodils blooming may be a selling point. You obviously can\’t control the weather, but good timing and luck can be a factor.

· Conduct a stellar interview. While this may seem rather obvious, it\’s essential. A horrible interview and recruitment experience can offset a lot of location and job positives, while a good interview experience can overcome location issues.

· Steer clear of disappointing offers. A candidate who expects \”x\” dollars and is offered much less is left feeling deflated, even if the job is appealing. Expectation management is important.

· Don\’t skimp on relocation offers. This can be a killer because a bad relocation package may actually mean it will cost your candidate money to move. Money out of pocket is a meaningful thing to a candidate.

· Don\’t drag things out. A long interview and decision-making process can be a turn-off to a potential employee. Bringing people back multiple times for interviews is a killer — at some point, they throw their hands up at sloppy interview logistics.

Learn about how the Cornerstone Recruiting Cloud can be an integral part of your big or small market talent acquisition strategy.

An array of well-known retention strategies can hedge against those risks, of course. Offering competitive benefits and perks, for instance, conducting \”stay\” interviews,\” and training and promoting from within are great examples. At the same time, the boom in social and mobile technologies in the workplace is pushing managers — and not just HR managers — to use new approaches and tactics to reduce churn and boost retention.

Introducing social business. Vala Afshar, social business expert and co-author of “The Pursuit of Social Business,” says it’s built on the premise that open and transparent social communication between people and organizations at all levels improves attitudes, performance and company culture. And today’s nascent cloud services and social collaboration tools make that opportunity easier and cheaper than ever to explore in the workplace. 

“A social business is not just about social media or social tech — it’s about a mindset of inclusiveness and shared compatibility,” explains Afshar. Communication and transparency in a company culture can lead to a lower need to hire additional staff and efficiency gains within the workforce, he says. Afshar offers three insights for creating a social business that works.

Afshar believes that \”not one of us is as smart as all of us.\” This means a great idea can come from the office assistant or an SVP — and when people are talking and collaborating together, even greater ideas emerge. Valuing every employee and making them feel integral to the organization brings more engagement and is critical for establishing a fulfilling company culture that doesn’t lead to turnover. “Trust the people you hire and trust them to do the work,” Afshar says. 

The formation of a culture starts at the top — executives must exhibit transparency, equality and trust to establish a companywide social mindset. Employees feel a stronger connection to the company when they are included in communications. And the more communication, the better.

At the end of the day, effectively working together is what makes a social business, and there are now many tools to help facilitate that. Internal social networks can connect employees and get departments and units talking and collaborating. The result will be not only make for more efficient work processes, but more engaged employees. Use new technology to help create community.

Like every business department these days, HR is awash in Big Data. But, as Carol Anderson, a leading human resources expert, writes on Human Capitalist, the analytics HR teams are using aren\’t all that useful.

\”Time and again,\” she writes, \”I have watched HR professionals spend an inordinate amount of time defending their data to leaders and employees who don\’t believe that the data is credible.\”

Anderson\’s advice? Stop obsessing about Big Data, and start focusing on Good Data. Here\’s how:

“An excellent place to start is, as usual, at the end. Key questions to consider: What data do leaders and executives need to understand organizational performance and leadership strength? How useful is the current data being provided? How accurate?”

“Now, armed with the knowledge of what is important, it’s time for a candid review of the current state of data. Who inputs the data and how is the integrity of the data ensured? Where are there inconsistencies in the data? Why do they exist (you may need to push beyond the \’because we need it\’)? Can we provide the data that the leaders need in a timely and accurate manner? If we find gaps, what data is the priority to address?”

“Pull together small cross-functional teams to complete the analysis and revise the data processes. Break the work into small chunks, and give the teams the challenge to eliminate inconsistencies, and recommend a process to ensure data quality.”

It\’s back to business at colleges across the country — but not for the nation\’s most recent graduates. More than 40 percent of them are unemployed and many are loaded with student debt. Small wonder, then, that some question whether a college education is really worth the time and money.

The answer is: Yes, depending on which major a student chooses. PayScale, an online provider of compensation data, recently tracked the academic disciplines that offer the greatest salary potential both in the short and long term. Here\’s a closer look at the most lucrative job titles and salaries, based on annual pay of bachelor\’s degree holders without higher degrees and grads who typically have two years\’ experience when they start.

Given the planet’s growing need for energy, the expanding population of global travelers and the speed at which information technology is spreading in the industrial and developing worlds, engineers with highly specialized skills are in high demand. Engineering makes up six of the 10 top-earning degrees (and 12 of the top 20).

Applied mathematics, on the other hand, is more concerned with mathematical methods, which can lead to careers in science, engineering and general business. Statisticians typically work for federal, state or local governments or private companies.

Another hot commodity: computer science majors. They\’ve been in demand since the dawn of the personal computer era, but their value has skyrocketed as the number of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices worldwide has exploded. Future advances in industrial, medical and research methods depend on the know-how of computer scientists. Ranked No. 9 on the PayScale list, computer science majors can expect to start at $58,400 and reach a mid-career salary of $100,000.

The left-brained crowd clearly has the lead when it comes to earning potential, but that doesn\’t mean right-brained folks are destined to pinch pennies. International relations, advertising and film production, for example, appear in the top 50 majors on the PayScale list, with international relations leading the group at a starting salary of $40,600 and median salary of $93,000 (although, to be fair, liberal arts and other more creative-oriented majors dominate the list\’s bottom 50).

The use of social media at the office is a tricky one. Some employers draw clear lines around postings to corporate accounts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. But what about the Likes, photos and miscellaneous commentary employees regularly post on their personal accounts? It\’s a tricky issue.

For starters, the law on whether employers have the right to monitor activity on personal social media accounts is unclear. Can employers discipline an employee for a late-night Facebook rant against a boss? Or is the employee protected by free speech? Some 12 states have enacted laws that expressly bar employers from gaining access to the social media accounts of either workers or prospective employees. Courts, too, are grappling with the issue.

For now, there are six basic steps that companies can safely take to regulate their employees\’ social media use — and avoid a full-blown PR crisis:

1. Encourage employees to maintain separate accounts for personal and professional use. Mixing accounts is risky. Warns Tom Petrocelli, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group: “It’s even okay if you maintain an account for business messaging that is under your control to further your personal brand and include some corporate messages with it, especially as they relate to you. Just keep business in one place and personal in another and don’t blend them together.”

2. Remind employees that disclosing insider information is a no-no — under any circumstance. Companies should make clear that divulging company secrets is against company policy and they should routinely refer to the diktat as a reminder.

3. Create an open — and safe — environment for employees to admit online mishaps. Encouraging employees to confess when they\’ve posted an inappropriate comment on social media can help minimize any fallout. Acknowledging a mistake is better for both the employee and employer because it creates a culture of honesty and trust, writes Heather Huhman, founder and president of consulting firm Come Recommended, on BBC.

4. Don’t ask employees to promote the company on their personal accounts. Some companies are asking employees to change their cover photos on their personal Facebook profiles to promote the company. Yet, employers don’t have to look much farther than the Facebook terms of service to find out that using personal timelines for commercial gain is prohibited. If employees want to promote the company by posting pictures of them at the annual summer picnic, more power to them, notes lawyer Ruth Carter of Carter Law Firm. The key takeaway: let them make the choice.

5. Clearly set out when personal social media accounts are accessible by employers. There\’s only one scenario in which employers have a fairly clear right to access employees\’ social media accounts: workplace investigations. Although an employee claiming discrimination or sexual harassment is likely to volunteer supporting evidence, employers in most states are allowed to request account credentials in cases of alleged wrongdoing, says employment lawyer Eric Meyer.

6. Establish guidelines for those who own the company\’s social media accounts from the beginning of employment. \”The line between a personal and professional social media account can be blurry,\” writes employment lawyer Renee Jackson on Forbes, \”so if this ownership issue is not hashed out at the beginning of employment, the employer and the employee may both believe the account is theirs.\” Management should create the accounts under the company’s name, manage the logins, and oversee the content posted, recommends Jackson. Specify account ownership and acceptable content in formal job descriptions or offer letters.

The use of social media at the office is a tricky one. Some employers draw clear lines around postings to corporate accounts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. But what about the Likes, photos and miscellaneous commentary employees regularly post on their personal accounts? It\’s a tricky issue.

For starters, the law on whether employers have the right to monitor activity on personal social media accounts is unclear. Can employers discipline an employee for a late-night Facebook rant against a boss? Or is the employee protected by free speech? Some 12 states have enacted laws that expressly bar employers from gaining access to the social media accounts of either workers or prospective employees. Courts, too, are grappling with the issue.

For now, there are six basic steps that companies can safely take to regulate their employees\’ social media use — and avoid a full-blown PR crisis:

1. Encourage employees to maintain separate accounts for personal and professional use. Mixing accounts is risky. Warns Tom Petrocelli, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group: “It’s even okay if you maintain an account for business messaging that is under your control to further your personal brand and include some corporate messages with it, especially as they relate to you. Just keep business in one place and personal in another and don’t blend them together.”

2. Remind employees that disclosing insider information is a no-no — under any circumstance. Companies should make clear that divulging company secrets is against company policy and they should routinely refer to the diktat as a reminder.

3. Create an open — and safe — environment for employees to admit online mishaps. Encouraging employees to confess when they\’ve posted an inappropriate comment on social media can help minimize any fallout. Acknowledging a mistake is better for both the employee and employer because it creates a culture of honesty and trust, writes Heather Huhman, founder and president of consulting firm Come Recommended, on BBC.

4. Don’t ask employees to promote the company on their personal accounts. Some companies are asking employees to change their cover photos on their personal Facebook profiles to promote the company. Yet, employers don’t have to look much farther than the Facebook terms of service to find out that using personal timelines for commercial gain is prohibited. If employees want to promote the company by posting pictures of them at the annual summer picnic, more power to them, notes lawyer Ruth Carter of Carter Law Firm. The key takeaway: let them make the choice.

5. Clearly set out when personal social media accounts are accessible by employers. There\’s only one scenario in which employers have a fairly clear right to access employees\’ social media accounts: workplace investigations. Although an employee claiming discrimination or sexual harassment is likely to volunteer supporting evidence, employers in most states are allowed to request account credentials in cases of alleged wrongdoing, says employment lawyer Eric Meyer.

6. Establish guidelines for those who own the company\’s social media accounts from the beginning of employment. \”The line between a personal and professional social media account can be blurry,\” writes employment lawyer Renee Jackson on Forbes, \”so if this ownership issue is not hashed out at the beginning of employment, the employer and the employee may both believe the account is theirs.\” Management should create the accounts under the company’s name, manage the logins, and oversee the content posted, recommends Jackson. Specify account ownership and acceptable content in formal job descriptions or offer letters.