HR tools overview: IBM Kenexa Talent Acquisition Suite

IBM Kenexa Talent Acquisition Suite is offered as both cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) and on-premises. Its features address various aspects of talent management in an organization, including recruitment, acquisition, onboarding of talent and intra-company learning systems that help to further develop internal company talent. Kenexa also provides social media collaboration and communication tools that enable employees to access expertise and talent across an organization to assist in their various projects.

IBM Kenexa has HR experts on staff who can advise clients on how to secure and onboard talent, develop talent once it's onboard, and ensure that employees stay happy and engaged.

IBM Kenexa's main markets are comprised of both midsize companies and large enterprises. Its SaaS product has five main components: IBM Kenexa BrassRing on Cloud, IBM Kenexa Talent Insights, IBM Kenexa Employee Voice, IBM Kenexa Employee Skills Assessment and IBM Kenexa Talent Acquisition Suite. 

IBM Kenexa BrassRing on Cloud features applicant tracking to help an organization source, assess and hire high-quality talent. BrassRing can tap into social media channels such as LinkedIn and enable an organization to identify passive candidates in the general workforce who have the skills the organization is seeking but aren't actively looking for employment.

IBM Kenexa Talent Insights uses Watson-powered analytics that enable HR to make more fact-based talent decisions and to predict the impact of those decisions. This module gives HR and other stakeholders expanded visibility and query capability into the talent management process.

IBM Kenexa Employee Voice uses online customizable satisfaction surveys to gauge employee insights and analyzes that data to improve business productivity.    

IBM Kenexa Employee Skills Assessment uses skills assessment tests to assist HR in the process of sifting through large employee pools to identify skillsets for particular jobs.

IBM Kenexa Talent Acquisition Suite streamlines employee recruitment and onboarding by using social engagement and collaboration platforms in the cloud.                

BrassRing's candidate relationship management function enables a company to place these potential candidates into a database and create dialogues connecting these individuals with the company and its job opportunities. If there's mutual interest, the system can even generate a job application. Collectively, these capabilities can give companies a competitive advantage in the talent marketplace.

IBM Kenexa Onboard on Cloud enables HR to design and automate work processes for onboarding new employees. It comes with more than 150 industry-compliant new-hire forms that cover a broad spectrum of state and federal requirements, including Electronic I-9 and E-Verify processing in the U.S.

HR can even customize these onboarding processes to meet the employment requirements of different locales. HR also has the ability to access a full set of standard and ad hoc reports it can customize to monitor and evaluate the onboarding process. And to stay in touch with new hires during onboarding, IBM Kenexa on Cloud has social engagement capabilities that help new hires to more easily assimilate into the cultures of their new companies and become productive faster.

IBM Connections is a collaborative social network platform designed to improve employee engagement and performance by providing real-time learning through networking, social collaboration and knowledge sharing. It facilitates employee access to experts throughout the company for problem solving, knowledge sharing and innovation and can be accessed from either mobile or desktop devices.

IBM Connections touts its rich content management system, which enables employees to collaborate on content development and can deliver training and informational materials to assist in employee development and productivity.

IBM Kenexa also offers IBM Kenexa LMS on Cloud, which is an enterprise-grade social learning management system (LMS) that integrates social networking, collaboration and knowledge-sharing capabilities. It enables users to rate learning content and share their experiences. There are currently two versions of IBM Kenexa learning solutions:

IBM Kenexa LMS V 5.0 delivers robust system performance monitoring, including health checks of the LMS system and enhanced sorting for student lists. It complements the V 4.2.2 framework, which integrated the software with virtually any payment system and issued additional audit trail notifications, reporting on tracking and status of emails for both internal needs and regulatory requirements. This framework also delivered and tailored courses to individual employees, with scalability improvements that optimized resource use, throughput, response time and application availability.

Kenexa Learning Content Management System (LCMS) V9.5. This software features enhancements to LCMS's collaborative development, dynamic delivery and learning management capabilities, with the goal of enabling rapid creation of interactive and adaptive content. The LCMS Premier platform in V9.5 also includes multiple components that provide increased productivity and efficiencies in the development, maintenance, management and delivery of reusable learning objects.

IBM Kenexa doesn't offer a free trial version. Its cloud-based offering is available on a per-subscription basis.

About the author

Mary E. Shacklett is president of Transworld Data, a technology analytics, market research and consulting firm. Previously, Mary was senior vice president of marketing and technology for TCCU, Inc., vice president of product research and software development at Summit Information Systems and vice president of strategic planning and technology at FSI International.

Mary holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master's degree from the University of Southern California. Email her at [email protected].

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