Enterprise resource planning vendor, Lawson Software said yesterday it plans to purchase ijob Inc, the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma-based vendor of automated on-line recruitment software. Under the agreement, ijob’s eleven employees will transfer to Lawson and the ERP vendor will set up a new business unit called ijob, to market and sell the software. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed although Lawson said it expected to close the deal within the next couple of weeks. Lawson said it will integrate the ijob software into its Insight human resources module as well as offering it as a standalone product to its existing customer base and to customers of other ERP vendors that don’t yet have a recruitment module on offer. Lawson will also sell the software as an outsourced solution, and pricing will be announced within the next couple of weeks, said Larry Dunivan, VP global HR product. ijob provides organizations with a web-based, customized recruitment page that is tied to its database for automated recruitment and screening of prospective employees. Candidates enter job preferences, resumes and first level interview information online. Using built-in workflow technology, the details are then automatically sent, via email, to the relevant human resources or business manager. Conversely, the software also allows employers to search the database for candidates matching qualifications based on current positions available. Dunivan said Lawson chose to buy ijob for two main reasons: first, to extend its ERP application suite with an offering that its rival giants, SAP AG and so on, have not yet incorporated into their applications; and second, to leverage the technology by selling it to companies that are still carrying out their recruitment procedures by hand. The desire to get the recruitment process integrated with the web metaphor is a powerful one, Dunivan said, other ERP vendors are either not doing it yet or are partnering with third parties to offer the service. He stressed that ijob wasn’t designed to replace the recruitment and selection process altogether, rather it will allow companies to identify, of the thirty applicants you have, the five that you want to interview without having to waste time fingering through each resume.
