Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

Joel didn’t think too highly of Zapoint the first time he reviewed their site, but a member of their team has asked for a second chance.

“A few months back (before I got here) you gave a not so glowing review of our product,” Josh Greenfield, VP of Member Acquisition, wrote. “Fair enough…our product wasn’t quite shining at that point. This is my personal plea for a second shot. We relaunched our website and our SkillsMapper product, and launched our newest product PreSourced on the 1st.”

I appreciate this kind of feedback. Number one, it shows that they really believe in this product and want to get the word out, even if it’s bad press. Number two, despite the first review, they still value an opinion.

So let’s take a look at the SkillsMapper. The LifeChart is still there, and this product seems to be a new tool that integrates with the LifeChart (which Zapoint calls ‘a graphical representation that will show progress across professional, educational and personal achievements’ – your second resume).

Here’s how Zapoint defines SkillsMapper:

Zapoint™ SkillsMapper enables organizational skills mapping and career management designed to increase employee engagement, improve workforce alignment and identify potential skill gaps. Today’s HR systems fail, largely due to poor user adoption. Empower employees with easy to use tools helping accelerate user adoption and data capture. At the same time, provide decision makers with comprehensive insights into enterprise competencies.

They kind of lost me after ‘empower.’ But I think I understand – so the SkillsMapper enables employees to manage their careers by inputting their own skills and career goals to use as benchmarks to see how they stack up against high-performing talent within the organization. HR managers can use the SkillsMapper to close gaps in an individual’s skillset timeline to help under-performers or to pinpoint where an employee might need additional training or focus.

I think a problem with this may be that it’s so difficult to quantify skills. A person can have years of experience as a manager, but that doesn’t necessarily make them a good manager. In other words, experience isn’t always a plus. So you can say someone has several years’ experience in strategy, but what if several of their projects failed? Can the chart map out an employee’s weak points or is it all based on length of time?

Finally, I don’t know if I’d want my employees benchmarking with other high performers in an organization unless it’s within sales. Everyone has their strengths and their weak spots, but what works for someone else may not be a surefire solution for another. However, I can see how this would be a great addition to a mentoring program or a succession plan to enable employees to see their mentor’s road map to success and possibly look into those avenues for their own advancement.

I think the SkillsMapper would be a solid management tool for HR reps embedded in a large organization that may require specific education, training, and skills before an employee advances into another position. The Mapper would be able to show which employee is lacking in what area and how much more training is needed, thereby saving the HR reps a lot of paperwork and time.

Thoughts?

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