HR Technology Expo in Chicago

There's still another day for the HR Technology Expo, held at the Navy Pier in Chicago. From all appearances, it looked like it was better attended than last year and the exhibit floor was buzzing with demonstrations and activities geared to leveraging technologies for both HR and recruiting functions.

In the short time I got to visit, I spent the most time with the folks from Taleo and SonicRecruit. Jennifer Jacob, one of Taleo's smart and helpful regional sales managers, patiently endured my many questions about the Taleo Business Edition Applicant Tracking System. Several of my colleagues have been telling me that they really like Taleo, and this was my first real opportunity to see it in action.

I'll have to write a more in-depth review of the package once I have arranged a more thorough run-through of the package, but suffice to say that it has straightforward design and does what I'd expect of any ATS. Where Taleo Business Edition really shines though is with its strong personalization attributes. For example, as an administrator, you can turn fields on and off, but you can also move them around so that the working screen reflects the information your business needs most often. It looked like it was pretty easy to do and was probably accomplished using some JavaScript, though probably not anything executed with Ajax.

In fact, that was one of the main things I was looking for this year. I have gotten pretty spoiled by rich application experiences with Google and 37signals over the past year or two and I am looking forward to the day when HR and recruiting apps catch up. I'd like to know if there are any companies I've missed out there who are using these technologies in the ATS space.