Competition among e-recruitment suppliers is warming up, with a major State-wide e-recruitment tender in the wings, and the Northern Territory Government this week confirming it had selected NGA.NET to provide whole of government e-recruitment services.
While recruitment demand slowed during the GFC, there are now clear signals that the jobs market is again on the move, and organisations are keen to streamline their recruitment processes and reduce hiring costs where possible. For many that means e-recruitment, where much of the workflow associated with recruitment such as new hire approvals, advertisement, assessment, onboarding – and in some cases probation and exit management - is conducted online.
NGA.NET this week announced that it had signed an eight year contract with the NT Government for e-recruitment across all Territory Government agencies. As part of the programme NGA.NET will also set up “worker candidate pools” filled with candidate details and resumes, which can then be accessed by authorised organisations looking to hire in the NT.
Karen Evans, chief sales officer for NGA.NET explained that the e-recruitment applications will be provided on a Software as a Service basis to the shared services operation in the NT Government which provides recruitment support to its 20 agencies.
Although the NT Government is the largest employer in the region, with over 18,000 employees, it is a fraction of the size of the NSW Government which employs 300,000 people and which late last year selected Taleo to provide e-recruitment services.
Taleo, which currently holds the sweet spot in the Gartner magic quadrant for e-recruitment solutions, also last year announced in Australia that it was offering a service called Talent Grid which allows Taleo customers to share candidate information.
Lynne Salmon, senior marketing manager for the company in Asia Pacific said that most of its existing customers had signed up for the Knowledge Exchange part of the Talent Grid, which allows them to share information among themselves. She also claimed Taleo products and services were used by 14 per cent of the BRW Top 250 companies list.While corporate clients are important – the big hirers in Australia are Governments, as Taleo now knows with the biggest State government contract under its belt.
Perth based Big Red Sky meanwhile currently has a whole of government contract with the WA Government to provide e-recruitment, while HRX recently re-won the Victorian public service e-recruitment business, and also services Queensland.
According to Evans there are still more e-recruitment plums to be plucked. She expects South Australia for example to “follow the NT closely” and issue a request for tender for an e-recruitment system.
While the State government market remains fairly fragmented with a number of suppliers, NGA.NET claims to have the Federal market largely sewn up, claiming to supply e-recruitment solutions to 95 per cent of Federal government agencies.
To date most of the company’s business has come from Australia, although it is now planning a US foray.
In December last year it was awarded clearance by the US General Services Administration which essentially gives the company the green light to sell into the US Government and allows 70 US Government agencies to buy NGA.NET’s products and services. On the back of that the company plans to open an office in Washington shortly.
By Beverley Head
ITWire