IBM acquires Kenexa to integrate HR into Social #socbiz #socialHR

Image via CrunchBase

Another huge development in the HR Technology space. Constellation Research Group analyst Alan Lepofsky reports that IBM is acquiring RPO and Hiring solution product maker Kenexa. This is a huge deal in taking "social HR" further!

As Alan writes:

It will be interesting to see how IBM combines (or at least integrates) Kenexa into the IBM Connections portfolio. By augmenting some of the core HR processes with social functions such as commenting, liking and tagging (in theory) employees should be able to discover the colleagues and content that can help them get their work done more effectively. They key here is that IBM will be focusing on use cases that help find the right people with the right skills at the right time, and then inserting them into a process to positively affect the outcome. I hope this goes beyond just creating static events in the activity stream, and instead IBM delivers integrated experiences where HR information can be directly embedded into places like Connections profiles and communities, and vice versa. On the Connections side, the development team has been working for more than two years on technologies such as OpenSocial to help with integration. Does/will Kenexa support OpenSocial or will integration be done at the API level? I expect the integration will be difficult, both from a technology standpoint and the internal IBM resources (people) needed to make it happen. Perhaps there are some good opportunities here for Business Partners to help create tools and fill in the gaps. 

Unlike Salesforce acquisition of Rypple and SAP acquisition of Successfactors, both IBM and Kenexa also have a substantial services offering. I see a huge opportunity for IBM's BPO business (IBM Daksh in India) leveraging Kenexa's RPO business.

Related articles

• IBM Buys Kenexa for $1.3 Billion
• IBM To Get Social Solutions With Kenexa Acquisition

Indian MP @ShashiTharoor asks for an intern via Twitter

This is going to be an interesting development. Early this morning, Member of Parliament, who was earlier India's Minister of State for External Affairs, but was more commonly known as Minister of Twitter, (and who subsequently lost his ministerial berth thanks to tweet-war with IPL Commissioner LK Modi) has taken to Twitter to advertise an internship opening in his office in Delhi.

The tweet says:

Looking for an intern,Delhi-based, with computer skills&writing ability to assist busy MP from end August. Please email office[at]tharoor.in

With more than 1.45 million followers it would be interesting to find out how many internship applications he receives. The tweet has been ReTweeted 118 times

The other celebrity who had taken to Twitter to advertise for an intern was someone who shares very little with Tharoor - Charlie Sheen!

And before you ask - no, I don't think if your company starts a Twitter account and starts tweeting out jobs you would be able to reach out to a million followers and through them to a million more. Shashi Tharoor has 1.45 million followers because of his engaging content and insights. This (as far as I know) is his only "recruiting" related tweet so far. As you can expect students who are looking for an internship and who look up to someone like Tharoor would surely apply.

So that's the "social recruiting" lesson from this - publish engaging content, create a community of people interested in what you do and once in a while you can publish a "job vacancy" tweet :)

How to guard yourself against Recruitment fraud

There have been two news items recently in India Today and in the Hindu that exposes the ugly underbelly of IT campus recruitment in India.

The starting point is students who do not know what they want to do in their career. Their parents usually pay for a seat in an Engineering college that showcases "100% placements". When the time comes to graduate they find out that the claims were too good to be true. So in come the middleman or corrupt Recruiters who ask them to pay fees (essentially bribes) for a job in a big name company. More often than not these "job offers" are fake and candidates find out about them later. The other case could be a small unknown company that promises to hire people, takes money and after a few months shuts down shop and vanishes with their money.

So how can a fresh graduate guard against such fraudsters? Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. Never agree to pay any person or company any amount of money for the promise of finding you a job.
2. When any middle man approaches you claiming to "represent" one or more companies - do a due diligence. Google him, and find out about his antecedents. It's possible that the person changed his name. Try to do a reverse image search too.
3. While some IT companies have signing bonds - in no case do they take the money upfront as far as I know.
4. If it's a new company promising a large number of jobs - remember the old adage "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" - Search for the company name on search engines, and also for the executives of the company.

Finding a job in a slow economy is a tough ask, don't make things tougher by wasting money on scamsters.

Talent Community Innovation on @BraveNewTalent

I have often shared my thoughts often on what a Talent Community is.

Now at BraveNewTalent we're inviting anyone interested to join the conversation on how to leverage online communities to attract, engage and develop the current and future workplace.

So click here to join the Talent Community Innovation topic on BraveNewTalent. As we say in the introduction:

This online community is dedicated to promoting the growth of and dialogue around the organizational use of talent communities to attract, influence, develop and engage the current and next generation workforce.
Our goal in launching this community is to provide a place where thought leaders and best practices experts from within the human capital management and marketing professions could unite the fragmented conversations about talent communities across our industry and amass a knowledge library unrivaled about this topic.

See you there :)

PwC acquires Social Media Strategy firm @antseyeview

This is big news. PricewaterhouseCoopers has acquired Ants Eye View a specialist social media strategy consulting firm in the US.

According to the news:

Combining Ant’s Eye View's social media strategy and digital marketing skills with PwC's Advisory business builds upon the firm’s growing Management Consulting customer impact and customer engagement capabilities. The deal is expected to close in September. “The team at Ant’s Eye View are seasoned social media practitioners with experience at large organizations across multiple industries," said Joe Duffy, PwC partner and leader of the firm's U.S. Consulting practice. "They understand how to transform companies into 'social enterprises' that are truly engaged with customers as well as employees while delivering on the brand promise . Adding this powerful team to PwC's Advisory business strengthens our ability to serve our clients from strategy through execution, and to help them apply the best uses of social media to support their customer engagement and brand management strategies." 

The next round of social media consolidation would be in services after the current round of product consolidation. This deal is one of the first I expect. Who would be next?

Related articles

• Ant's Eye View joins PwC: The Journey Continues

The search for India's emerging HR leaders - Are You In The List?

I have been invited to be part of the Jury for the search for India's emerging HR Leaders. 

People Matters in partnership with NHRDN, DDI and Harvard Business Publishing has launched "Are you in the List?", a platform for emerging HR managers in the age group of 26 to 35 years.

Participants will undergo a 5 stage process over a period of six months, wherein they will be judged on various competencies by industry veterans to identify the ‘Future 25’ potential HR Leaders.

My fellow jury members are luminaries from the HR fraternity like P. Dwarakanath, N.S Rajan, Elango R, S.Y. Siddiqui, Dr. Aquil Busrai, Sonali Roy Chowdhury, Rajesh Rai, Gautam Chainani and others. Richard Wellins of DDI brings the global perspective to the jury.

Currently at Stage 1 in the competition, more than 300 HR have applied by sending answers to a small online questionnaire which asks them to share their experience and achievements in the field of HR.You can nominate deserving HR professionals until the 18th of August. And if you are an HR leader in the age group, then you can self-nominate yourself too.

This will be followed by screening 100 applicants in Stage 2 who will undergo the Leadership Insight Inventory test which will be a quick test to assess the candidates' leadership orientation.

Stage 3 will see further screening to arrive at 50 participants who then undergo Leadership Assessment, which is a situational test, asking candidates to solve case studies.

35 candidates move to Stage 4 which is a video round where the panel will judge the videos made by participants to answer a common question presented.

Finally these candidates will be interviewed personally by the jury across three cities - Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore to arrive at the final 25 who make it to the list.

These 25 will then be recognized in an awards ceremony and personal interviews will be featured in People Matters.

The winners also get access to free HBR webinars and management courses. NHRD as the community partner also will provide a platform to connect with veterans and develop skills to be a leader.

BraveNewTalent hires @KevinWGrossman #HRTech

Exciting times at BraveNewTalent, as we hire HR marketer and influencer Kevin Grossman as our Director of Product Marketing to be based out of the US. Here's his blog post about why he's joining BraveNewTalent

From the news:

BraveNewTalent, the leading social learning career platform that hosts professional communities where people and organizations share knowledge around professional topics and helps them discover employment and career development opportunities, has hired the well-known HR and talent industry marketing professional Kevin W. Grossman

Kevin will be joining BraveNewTalent this month as Director of Product Marketing and will be the company's second hire in its new Silicon Valley Office. BraveNewTalent is based in London with a 25-person strong team but also has an office in Bangalore, India led by Dheeraj Prasad (former Head of Education for Microsoft). Kevin will be heading up global messaging, product marketing and go-to-market strategy for the technology company that aims to change the face of the talent industry via online Talent Communities.

Kevin will work closely with Director of Strategy, Master Burnett, in growing the US operations and developing the business offering for the US market. Kevin has over 12 years of direct HR technology marketing experience, working with hundreds of technology companies on their marketing strategy and helping them grow their businesses. BraveNewTalent aims to address major problems in the talent employment market by increasing the efficiency of the global human capital market. Users create their own professional profile on BraveNewTalent then follow organizations, people and topics. An enterprise product offering, which has been in development since the company raised venture capital investment, is now beginning to be rolled out to the global marketplace.

BraveNewTalent Founder and CEO, Lucian Tarnowski, said, "Kevin is one of HR Tech's most talented marketers and social influencers. His writing and thought leadership completely align with our vision of Talent Communities and the convergence of career development, learning and social technology. It is a great pleasure to welcome him into the BraveNewTalent family. The next five years will witness a revolution rather than an evolution in the role technology will play in the engagement, development and recruitment of talent in the global market. Kevin will work with the team in developing our marketing strategy and expanding our US operations so we can take the lead in the Talent Community space and encourage talent engagement and learning globally."