Just like comparing a Swiss Army Knife to a single purpose blade, comparing point solutions to suite solutions is a sort of silly thing. The question that’s missing is, ‘how do you tell when it’s important to use best of breed solutions and what are the tradeoffs?’
Recruiting cannot be solved with a single set of functionality. Recruiting is different by industry, company, region, and state of the economy. There is no single recruiting use case. There are many.
The question in the point solution – suite solution decision involves having a clear understanding of priorities. Harsh user feedback from a subset of recruiting customers plagues Oracle, SAP, inform, Ultimate Software, Ceridian, and a host of others.
If the only reason you are buying software is to excel at Recruiting, point solutions are exactly for you. But, if you want to increase the chances that your entire HR system will work optimally, you have to use a suite. Suites will not have the latest and greatest innovations. They are not designed for early adopters seeking a competitive edge. They adequately satisfy the vast majority of customers who want solid performance across all of the covered HR Silos.
Just like comparing a Swiss Army Knife to a single purpose blade, comparing point solutions to suite solutions is a sort of silly thing. Yes, you can cut a lot of stuff swiftly with a good single purpose knife. But you don’t get a corkscrew, toothpick, tweezers, can opener, and awl. They are two different things for two different purposes
The question that’s missing is ‘how do you tell when it’s important to use best of breed solutions and what are the tradeoffs?’ The biggest issues have to do with data integration and HR Department level questions largely irrelevant to the function of the recruiting group. Super competitive recruiting matters when either labor supply or hypergrowth are the core issues. Good enough recruiting involves using proven techniques that can seem old-fashioned or non-responsive when compared to the new shiny tools.
But, suites with solid performing functions are much, much better for the overall employee experience.
The desire to have the brightest and shiniest recruiting toys is driven by the abhorrent lack of training for recruiting professionals. In many cases, an adequate solution that is integrated with the rest of the information about an employee is preferable to high-risk innovative approaches.
We know that 40% to 50% of hiring decisions are judged to be mistakes a year after the hire (HBR). Improving that dreadful result should be the primary metric in recruiting. But, unless the solution is tightly coupled with the rest of HR data, you can’t address the problem.
