Yesterday, Workday announced the acquisition of HiredScore. It’s the biggest news since Oracle announced its acquisition of Taleo, and marks a new era of talent acquisition innovation.
Long has Workday toiled to rise above the noise regarding gaps in their Recruiting product–meanwhile, growing to over 4000 customers worldwide despite being the subject of recruiter and candidate consternation (and the target of industry influencers paid to fan the flames). While some of the frustration has been merited, Workday has steadily grown to become one of the leading talent acquisition systems for small to large enterprise companies.
One needs only look at the pitch decks of any other player in talent acquisition tech to know just how much market leadership Workday has established. Everyone is clamoring for a piece of that pie–by enhancing candidate and recruiter experience like Paradox, expanding capabilities for talent pipelining and lifecycle management like Beamery, or providing deeper recruiting performance insight and actionability like Crosschq.
It feels like only yesterday I was in a room with core members of Workday’s Recruiting product team making the case to grow market leadership and change the narrative by engaging the incredibly dynamic ecosystem of players in talent acquisition tech–breaking away from the “Power of One” narrative. Even then, I never dreamt of something like this.
Meanwhile, HiredScore has spent the last eleven years slowly-but-surely leading the way in advanced AI solutions for some of the world’s most expert talent acquisition teams.
Earning trust and building partnership with clients like Accenture, Johnson & Johnson, General Motors, and Takeda, HiredScore has set the industry standard time and again for new core capabilities. Unmatched matching and scoring AI, unparalleled AI compliance and ethical standards, and (as yet) peerless AI orchestration capabilities have made HiredScore a major player.
Their technological leadership combined with their reputation for being a strong (and market neutral) GTM partner has also made HiredScore a strong (albeit quiet) counterpoint to the rapid rise of VC darlings like Eightfold and Phenom. What HiredScore may lack in market share, they make up for with a nearly 100% referable client base–the most legit success factor in the business.
Likewise, it feels like only yesterday I had my very first briefing with Athena Karp, founder and CEO of HiredScore–where I got completely and utterly schooled on what is actually possible when AI and automation are deployed effectively in talent acquisition.
While I don’t think the gods care much about HR tech, I do think it is incredibly kismet that these two are coming together nearly 12 years to the day since the Oracle/SAP/IBM wave reshaped the HR tech landscape. It’s also just over 12 years since I started my career in this whacky space. Weird!
Looking ahead, I expect this will serve as a lightning rod for vendors to rethink everything–their products, their partnerships, and their competition. Exciting times!
