Taleo Business Edition review by Inspector Jones

In a word, Oracle Talent Cloud (Taleo) is well-established. They started in 2004, and are now one of the biggest recruitment providers - used by 5,000 customers.

Oracle Talent Cloud / Taleo is primarily used for recruitment, but it does include full talent mangement modules - succession planning, onboarding, development planning, compensation, performance management, learning management, goals management.

Before you choose Taleo, here are the key things you need to know

First, Taleo has a really strong history in recruitment. We’ve found that most customers use the recruitment module, while other Taleo functions are less popular. If you are looking for purely recruitment functionality, I recommend you put Taleo on your shortlist.

Second, customer feedback is mixed. Project implementations for Taleo seem to go really well. Customers say getting up and running is easy, making for a successful project. Other people have said that the vendor is sometimes difficult to work with, or that the application can be difficult to use (particularly if you’re doing something out of the ordinary). I recommend you review the application from both a hiring manager’s perspective and an applicant’s perspective.

Third, Taleo’s service agreement is strong. The standard agreement is for 99.5% availability, which is good, and they’ll credit you if they don’t meet their target. They also have good targets for having a quick, responsive application. Phone support is 24 hours a day, on business days.

Fourth, be aware of where your data goes. If you’re concerned about information about your performance and your applicants being shared with others, make sure you talk to Taleo to understand which data is shared, and also which data is deleted when you use the service.

Finally, there is no specific mobile support in Taleo at the moment. Oracle’s mobile strategy is to integrate using Oracle Fusion Tap, which I think is going in the right direction.

Taleo was integrated into Oracle in 2012. I recommend that when you look for case studies, or speak to reference sites, make sure that they’re for recent implementations, who have worked with Oracle.