Oracle To Buy SelectMinds For Social Recruiting

Oracle vs. Salesforce: Social Acquisition Face-off (click image for larger view and for slideshow)

Oracle announced Monday that it has reached an agreement to acquire SelectMinds, a cloud-based provider of social talent sourcing and corporate alumni management applications. Terms were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter and will give Oracle yet more human capital management (HCM) capabilities in the cloud.

Oracle stepped up its cloud-based HCM capabilities significantly in April when it acquired Taleo for $1.92 billion. Other elements of what Oracle now calls its Talent Management Cloud include Oracle Fusion applications for HCM.

Where Oracle Taleo apps cover everything from attracting employees and setting goals to measuring performance and incenting performance and retention through pay plans and career development, SelectMinds is focused solely on social recruiting. Referrals are the top source for external hires, according to staffing strategy firm CareerXroads, and SelectMinds helps organizations find talent by tapping into employee and alumni social connections.

"By adding SelectMinds to Oracle's Talent Management Cloud, Oracle can help customers with a complete talent management solution, enabling streamlined recruiting practices, more quality referrals, faster employee on-boarding, and better performance," said Thomas Kurian, executive VP, Oracle Development, in a statement.

[ Want more on Oracle's big strategy for talent management? Read Oracle Touts Taleo As HCM Heats Up. ]

SelectMinds applications include Social Employee Referral, for automating the development of social referral programs; Social Job Distribution, for marketing open positions through email, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter; Social Career Site, for promoting open positions from career sites; Facebook Job Page, for creating branded job pages on that social network; and Mobile, for optimizing position listings for mobile search and sharing.

SelectMinds announced integrations with Taleo's cloud apps last December, before the Oracle acquisition, so the social talent sourcing and corporate alumni-management app works with the Taleo Recruiting service.

Oracle's push into HCM followed SAP's blockbuster $3.4 billion purchase of SuccessFactors, announced in December. Salesforce.com subsequently purchased Ryyple, a small startup that delivered a cloud-based social goal-setting and performance review system. Saleforce.com is reintroducing an enhanced version of Ryyple, rebranded as Work.com, at this week's Dreamforce event in San Francisco. IBM is another player in HCM, having recently acquired Kenexa.

SelectMinds customers include eBay, JP Morgan Chase, Swiss Re, McGraw Hill, Novartis, and Qualcom. Another group of customers listed by SelectMinds that might not hang around after the planned acquisition includes Oracle competitors IBM, Sage, and Teradata. Oracle and SelectMinds will continue to operate separately until the deal is completed.