Taleo Sucks
Published at 10:26 on 19 October 2016
Taleo is a software-as-a-service (SAAS) package that some business’s personal departments use. As the title of this post implies, it sucks. I’m hardly alone in having this opinion, either. Just type “Taleo sucks” into your search engine and see.
I used to put up with its suckiness (clunky menus, duplicated data, bad browser compatibility, excessive use of crap Javascript, inability to view job description and application form at the same time, etc.) in the name of doing a more diligent job search. No more; if a link (or redirection) to Taleo happens during an application process, it’s game over.
I’m hardly alone in having this policy, either; if you read some of the hits you got in your search engine exercise above, you’ll find that others act as I do.
What tipped the balance for me was the realization, at the start of this current job search, that I have never received as much as a preliminary phone screen from any of the dozens of firms I put up with Taleo to apply for jobs at. That’s right, never. Not once. It’s as if my data vanish into a black hole.
My theory is that Taleo sucks not only for the applicant, but also for the person on the other end. Why shouldn’t it? Bad design is generally not confined to just one or two places in a software system; if it exists, it tends to be pervasive. As such, personnel departments also generally avoid using it. Thus, the way to land a job at a Taleo-using company is via some other channel.
But why should I? By the virtue of choosing Taleo, they’ve demonstrated their organizational incompetence by choosing to waste money on a demonstrably bad product. And I have no interest in working for incompetent organizations.