Taleo, a publicly traded provider of cloud-based Talent Management solutions, may just be what is holding employers back from finding applicants who are perfect for their positions even if a database software doesn't agree as so.
The way Taleo works is simple. Taleo operates a website for Talent Exchange. The Talent Exchange is a portal for the online exchange of employment related information. Taleo uses a data called Talent Intelligence. This intelligence compares and contrast applications sent in by job seekers and attempts to help companies choose what the program believes to be the best suited candidate for the job.
According to Indeed.com, job seekers hate the program because it does not allow employers to actually see the resumes and cover letters first. The program is the gatekeeper between the applicant and the employer.
Major companies however feel that Taleo works well when providing them with the applicants who work the best. Companies that are customers of the talent management system include, Hewlett Packard, Dow Chemical, Agilent, Hasbro, American Airlines, United Airlines, Deloitte & Touché, Bombardier Aerospace and Transportation, MetLife, Cabletron Systems, and Sutter Health.
According to Taleo performance statistics, in 2010 Taleo powered 9 million hires. Nearly half of the top 30 career sites in the world are powered by Taleo.
Why This Is Harmful To Applicants
Although Taleo's services have found careers and jobs for those seeking, the method of just applying or submitting your resume and cover letter is obsolete with their system. Keywords and key phrases, is what will land an applicant the interview.
Even if your work ethic is better than average and your willing to go the extra mile or two to accomplish your daily task given by your employer, Taleo does not care as it is not an actual person with feelings, emotions and basic human understandings.
If your keywords and phrases do not match what the employer has customized Taleo to search for, you will more than likely never hear back from the job, even if another employer who actually got to read your resume first hand would consider you a respectable hire.
Job seekers who have had no success with Taleo despite being qualified for the job have lashed out against the database.
According to Tara Orchard, a Career Coach's comment on Quora.com, "t is very difficult if not impossible to stand out in a database search. You simply have to ensure you have the key words and phrases on your resume for the database to search and avoid things in the resume (such as underlines, fonts, boxes) that confuse a database search."
"Some of these systems will search for phrases and not only key words - so a key word section may not suffice. Make the effort to embed key words within phrases at different points in your resume or applications."
Getting Pass The Gate Keeper
According to Sarah Hightower Hill CEO of career management for Chandler Hill Partners, "If they say 13 years' experience washing blue dishes, then say experience with blue dish washing,"
Lastly and most important said Hill, don't forget that your resume needs to make sense to both the software and a human reader. it does not do you any good to get flagged by the software only to have a hiring manager think your resume looks like gibberish because you have overloaded it with key words.
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