Enterprise application developers should target the underserved recruitment arena.
Recruitment is one area where all too often, individuals labor over documents and spreadsheets keeping track of applications, CVs, job adverts, and the like, but the whole process is largely held together with string and sticking plaster (and a lot of hard work). Yet this is often a highly collaborative process that needs coordination and management to work efficiently.
Although the recruitment solutions market is somewhat under-developed at the moment, web-based software-as-a-service applications exist that can handle much of the recruitment nightmare very smoothly, but can also hand over to the HR application once a recruit comes on board.
For example, PeopleClick offers what it calls Total Workforce Acquisition solutions, which essentially covers the area of recruitment, including permanent staff and agency relationships, as well as (for the US market specifically) affirmative action program management and monitoring. To distill the essence of the demo for this product is not easy, but essentially what the company has done is to think hard about how generic processes should work and then made templates that can be deployed (and customized) as needed. Although the product is aimed at larger organizations that can potentially spend an inordinate amount of time managing complex recruitment processes, this application could actually benefit many smaller ones as well, if priced at the right point.
Perhaps as the market for this type of application (at the edge of the enterprise applications market) starts to mature, we may reach a Salesforce.com level, with relatively cheap software as a service. For niche software areas such as recruitment, this may be a good answer to a complex problem, if it can still integrate with other existing processes.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
