Shaker Consulting Group Joins Forces with Taleo to Expand Award-Winning Pre-Employment Assessment Solution

New pre-employment assessment deployment resource available via Taleo’s Assessment Solution provides customers with further capabilities to improve the quality of their hiring decisions.

Cleveland, OH and Huntington Beach, CA, April 5, 2005 – From the Fourth Annual Taleo WORLD Users’ Conference in Huntington Beach, CA, Shaker Consulting Group, Inc. a leading edge provider of multi-method pre-employment assessments announces a strategic partnership with Taleo, the world’s leading company focused solely on on-demand talent management solutions. Through this partnership, Taleo customers can deploy Shaker Consulting Group’s library of assessment content via Taleo’s award-winning Assessment Solution.

Shaker Consulting Group is a sponsor of Taleo WORLD 2005.

Pre-employment assessments developed by Shaker Consulting Group are now available on the award-winning Taleo pre-employment assessment Solution, named one of 2004’s Top 10 HR Products of the Year by HR Executive Magazine. Taleo’s Assessment solution introduces a new paradigm for talent assessment with a less expensive, enterprise-wide method for incorporating in-depth assessments for all hires, whether internal or external to the organization, helping companies further improve new-hire performance and reduce employee turnover by providing the ways to predict how well candidates will perform at specific jobs.

Shaker Consulting Group’s proprietary pre-employment assessment content

Developed by an in-house team of I/O Psychologists, Shaker Consulting Group pre-employment assessments are being used to improve the quality of the hiring decision, drive business results, and increase the internal equity of the human resource department. Specific business outcomes that Shaker’s assessments have helped companies improve include: Customer Service Representatives who are better at delivering the brand promise and sell more, Bank Managers who improve profits at their branch, Service Technicians that diagnose and repair equipment right, the first time, Retail managers who improve store profits and reduce associate turnover, and Trainees who are more likely to pass their licensing exams. Shaker pre-employment assessments, tailored specifically for each organization, help measure performance potential and predict critical on-the-job behaviors. With Shaker Consulting Group’s assessments, organizations will better identify candidates who are stable and dependable workers and enjoy immediate success on the job. These attributes significantly contribute to the organization through improved productivity, quicker time to proficiency, and improved retention.

Administering Shaker Consulting Group’s pre-employment assessments with Taleo’s Assessment Solution is easy and flexible because customers can build the process directly into their overall talent management program, and deliver it seamlessly to candidates over the Internet. Additionally, populating the assessment content on the Taleo Assessment platform requires no customized integrations, making it easy for Taleo customers to deploy assessments that meet their unique business needs.

“The significant growth that Taleo Assessment, and our partner program has undergone over the past year, is based on two contributing factors – our customers understand the substantial impact that highly qualified, best-fit hires can have on their brand, customer loyalty and therefore, revenues; and content providers recognize the paradigm-shifting delivery method and flexibility of our award-winning solution and platform,” said Jeff Carr, EVP, global sales and marketing, Taleo. “The level of flexibility, configurability and assessment selection provides our customers with unmatched options in utilizing assessments throughout their organizations.”

“Companies are placing greater demands on staffing functions to document the impact hiring decisions have on executing the business plan. Quality of hire can be measured,” said Joseph P. Murphy, Vice President and co-founder of Shaker Consulting Group. “Using methods such as objective pre-employment assessments, companies can document and report on how well their candidate evaluation predicts on-the-job performance. Many companies have yet to adopt what are known as “Best Practices” for measuring candidate-job fit. In our research conducted with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), we discovered that less than 1/3rd of companies enter candidate evaluation information into a database. This makes it difficult, if not impossible to analyze the effectiveness of hiring practices, and even more difficult to calculate a return on investment from a staffing process. Using a system like Taleo’s Assessment Solution provides companies the vehicle to capture data and engage in objective analysis and process improvement for their staffing and talent management practices.”

About Shaker Consulting Group, Inc. Shaker Consulting Group is a leading edge developer of multi-method pre-employment assessments that predict behaviors linked to driving business results. Using a content library approach, Shaker Consulting Group is able to quickly assemble an interactive assessment experience that captures critical information on competencies required for on-the-job performance. Their process combines robust methods such as: biodata, situational judgment, workstyle, critical reasoning, and high fidelity work samples. The process obtains a high degree of involvement from the candidate and arms recruiters and hiring managers with a broad range of objective information about the candidate. Shaker Consulting Group helps companies define how success is measured.

Contact: Cynthia Kirk—(888) 485-7633— This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it