Taleo Announces Sourcing Deal With LinkedIn

The biggest Taleo World ever opens this morning in San Francisco with news the company has forged a partnership with LinkedIn that will streamline candidate sourcing and help keep candidate resumes up-to-date.

The collaboration, one of several developments Taleo Chairman and CEO Michael Gregoire will outline during his keynote to some 1,600 conference-goers this morning, uses LinkedIn’s “Apply Now” capabilities to let candidates apply for Taleo-client positions using their LinkedIn profile.

Beyond that, recruiters will be able to source LinkedIn directly from their Taleo dashboard and be able to know whether candidates there are already in the company database. If they are, recruiters will be able to instantly update the on-file resume with new information the candidate may have on their LinkedIn profile page.

Besides just the ease of use, says Jason Blessing, Taleo’s EVP of Products and Technology, the integration will instantly alert the recruiter if other recruiters have sourced or contacted the same candidate. It will also allow the recruiter to use the company’s Taleo tools for communication, as opposed to initiating contacted through InMail, LinkedIn’s proprietary mail system.

Integrating LinkedIn sourcing with Taleo’s talent management system, Blessing told me last week when we discussed today’s announcement, “is huge from a recruiter productivity” perspective.

He’s certainly right about that. Switching back and forth from one system to another is, frankly, a pain. It’s probably not a big deal for small firms, but for employers in Taleo’s sweet spot — those with thousands of workers, or even hundreds of workers and many reqs  — removing the friction in sourcing saves time.

The other product developments Gregoire is expected to mention include an overhaul of Taleo’s visualization tools, that takes into account the kind of information managers and supervisors want and use. Talent Browser, said Blessing, organizes things as an org chart would, making it easier for leaders to see talent gaps and workforce capabilities.

These elements are part of the new edition of Taleo Enterprise Gregoire will officially unveil during his keynote. Later, conference-goers can see demos and hear more about the LinkedIn collaboration during a special afternoon workshop.

The three-day conference includes addresses by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and author and speaker Daniel Pink, whose book Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us has been on nearly every bestseller list in the U.S.