Share
Email
Print
Innovation Wanted!
For the third consecutive year, Apple tops the list of most innovative companies.
Human Resources 3.0 is Big Business
With more applicants per job than ever before, human resources startups and established companies seek to help companies manage the load.
With 118 applicants per job opening in the fourth quarter of 2011, the post-recession economy has seen an increasing amount of time and money spent on finding the perfect candidate for an open position. Beyond CV-surfing on LinkedIn, recruiters can optimize their hiring processes by using a wide range of services and software that intend to make their lives easier by finding better matches with less effort.
One software provider in this space is a Canadian startup, Cream.hr, that is "hell bent on revolutionizing the traditional HR space," according to its co-founder, Christine Bird.
To date, more than 10,000 applicants have been processed by Cream's systems, creating more than 60,000 entirely unique data points from more than 810,000 answered questions. "We are self-funded, bootstrapped and proud of it," says Bird.
However, Cream is far from alone in this space: Traditional testing mechanisms like the Myers Briggs and DISC personality assessment and testing tools have long helped recruiters find suitable candidates. The former, a test that delves into how people view the world and make decisions, has been in use since 1962, and is based on the theories of famed Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.
Other applicant matching software has been developed and patented by ClearFit, founded in 1999, which has since been used by more than 4,000 companies because of its patented behavioral/personality fit tools.
Fans of the NFL are sure to know another company, Wonderlic, which administers a Cognitive Ability Test, not only all prospective professional football players, but on behalf of many employers too.
Additionally, there is technological growth from in the video interview space from companies like HireVue, VidCruiter and enRecruit.
Despite the many approaches presented by these companies, one thing's for sure, great ideas in the human resources sector have high monetary values: Taleo, a resume management software firm, was acquired for $1.9 billion by Oracle earlier this year, and there have been other substantial exits in the industry as well.
