There is a strange parallel between successful sporting teams and businesses, in that decline is almost inevitable if the best people leave.

Maintaining the quality of those staff that drive a business forward is critical to the momentum of a company, and that simultaneously relates to both recruitment and retention of the most talented people.

If you dont believe us, then consider how many times youve read a business story about someone unknown who left a successful company to start their own, and ultimately eclipse the business they started at.

For smaller businesses, this is less of an issue, but in Enterprises knowing who the sharpest knives in the drawer are, and how inclined they are to stay is worth time and money to manage.

Here are some of the best talent management tools, for those that dont want to find that theyre now competing with previously ignored ex-staff.

(Image credit: Oracle)

A comprehensive offering with built-in metrics dashboards

Cloud-based solution

Finding, hiring and onboarding in one tool

Easy to use

Expensive

Steep learning curve

Any talent management tool needs to help recruiters find the best people while also helping retain the ones that already work for you. And, Oracle Taleo Cloud Service was designed precisely to deliver those two requirements.

Taleo is a cloud-based solution, allowing HR people to access applicants and exist staff profiles from any computer, at any time.

To enhance the quality of the information available, Oracle Taleo Cloud Service includes a mechanism to track Twitter and Facebook, allowing a better understanding of what employees are like when theyre not working.

But the key product strength of this tool is how it streamlines the process of filling posts. You can find the applicants, recruit them, bring them into the company and then develop them to make the best of their abilities.

Oracles pitch here is all about being efficient, getting the right people and keeping them from heading to a competitor.

The caveat to having such a powerful Cloud-based tool with the ability to manage hundreds or more employees comes at a high price when it has Oracle in its name.

And, it also comes with a steep learning curve for those wanting to get the most out of it.

(Image credit: Saba)

A suite of HR supporting tools

Cloud-based

Great Saba community support

Innovative social media use

Mobile apps need improving

Pre-built reports dont offer detail

Instead of putting all its abilities in one tool, Saba has a suite of service that handles the finding, recruitment, onboarding, personal development, coaching and workforce planning.

This segmentation allows companies to cherry-pick those services that they need, and not bother with other functions already provided through another mechanism.

In its marketing material, the phrase Candidate Relationship Management is used, even if that has an already accepted acronym.

What theyre refereeing to is the ability to make the best impression with a candidate from the outset, build a brand identity that would interest them, and then make an offer that seals the deal.

Once talented staff are on board, a whole new process can take over and enhance the employee with a tailored development plan.

Much of what Saba offers is a classic HR platform that utilises analytics to identify those talented people that might be overlooked or underdeveloped and allows them to achieve more strategic goals and deliver better performance.

And, product the right learning experience for each person to succeed.

Many companies are using Saba solely to produce and distribute learning content and find that it provides them with an effective closed-loop of education and involvement for staff.

Part of this process encourages staff to create social media groups, hold webinars, events and meetings all initiated within Saba.

The only complaints weve seen about Saba is that the mobile applications lack the refinements of the web interface and platform.

(Image credit: Bamboo HR)

Neat design and bags of functionality

Open API provides extensibility

Lacks benefits administration

Expensive

Where the likes of Saba break up their features into bite-sized chunks, Bamboo HR bundles all its features into a single platform that does a huge number of tasks.

Despite the functionality overload that comes with this choice, Bamboo HR is considered one, if not the best online HR software service for providing a complete pathway from recruitment to retention.

At the heart of this offering is the HR Bamboo ATS or Applicant Tracking System, a tool that organises candidate information from first contact, through to an offer and ultimately recruitment.

Its designed to enable recruiters to capture the right data to determine the perfect recruit for a role and deliver the right type of experience for the candidate.

As HR tools should be, this one is unashamedly people-centric.

Where other solutions are purely for enterprise-class operations, this is made with small and medium scale businesses in mind. HR staff can easily collect and maintain staff data, and then analyse it to improve hiring processes, onboarding and manage cost-effective compensation.

Getting talented people onboard is only part of the story, and Bamboo HR also has the tools to measure employee performance, how they feel about their job, and how they fit into the company culture. And, should staff need support or development, you can use this tool to create a plan of action and manage the execution of that.

(Image credit: Recruitee)

A fresh approach to talent sourcing

Easy to use

Simple pricing model

Less scope for customisation than rivals

Recruitee has a very modern website, and its product also has a very clean and elegant look.

The software breaks down the recruitment process into three phases that are called Attract, Automate and Predict.

The Attract phase is a multi-pronged approach to locating candidates that includes creating a careers site, seeding LinkedIn, using social media and free job boards. And, then effectively filtering candidates and acquiring data about them without implicitly entering it all by hand.

Automate then further processes this data to remove duplicates and process the applications to distil the top contenders for a position.

And finally Predict helps a company refine its hiring process, determine the best methods for sourcing talented people, avoid employing the wrong people and predict the likelihood that the prime candidate will accept an offer.

All this activity takes place on secure cloud servers, where candidate data is protected by a GDPR compliant system. The software can handle multiple companies, a range of languages that includes Dutch, English, French and German.

And, this system includes mobile apps for Apple iOS and Android.

Features aside, what it is attracting many to Recruitee is the flat pricing model. There are only three tiers; Professional, Expert and Corporate. These are priced $79, $149 and $299 per month, all with unlimited users.

And, these options differ only in the number of job openings and talent pools that are supported.

(Image credit: Zoho Recruit)

Zoho integrations

Affordable

Made for agencies

Lacks out-of-office hours support

If Zoho hasnt cornered enough markets already, it also has a recruitment solution that works alongside its other platforms, like CRM and Motivator.

Zoho Recruit has three faces designed to support staffing agencies, corporate HR and those agencies that supply temporary workforces.

Each of these areas is tailored to the needs of these customer types, and how those come into contact with potential candidates and manage them on the system.

Therefore, the staffing agency solution has a complete pipeline for finding and hiring, where temporary workforce management is more about scheduling, timesheets and flexibility.

What it doesnt do is provide much in the way of retention tools, once candidates have converted to employees, if thats applicable.

Where it is strong, especially in the corporate HR space, is in enabling companies to define a decision and reporting hierarchy where the managers that need staff, accounts and HR can all have a stratified contribution in hiring.

If this solution has weaknesses, they are that its not blessed with the best interface design and support is generally handled via email and not telephone.

But you do get lots of features for the very approachable cost.

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Best talent software of 2019 - TechRadar