We’ve had two very successful beauty pageants so far and they have quickly become the buzz of the industry. On November 14, 2008, iCIMS was crowned the winner of the Talent Acquisition Systems pageant and on November 21, 2008, Cornerstone OnDemand was crowned the winner of the Talent Management Systems pageant.

This week’s beauty pageant will feature leading vendors from the Learning Management Systems world and as of this writing, Cornerstone OnDemand, GeoLearning, OutStart, Plateau Systems, and SumTotal Systems have agreed to participate. Several other invites are out as well but we know how hard it can be to get up in front of a live audience so some of them may be shy.

The 90-minute webinar agenda will look like this:

Intro by HRchitect
Overview of the marketplace by HRchitect
Short vendor presentations (vendor order will be determine at random)
Q&A of vendors from the audience
Crowning of Ms. Learning Management Systems 2008
Wrap-up

The session will be moderated by Matt Lafata, our VP of Sales & Marketing. HRchitect developed a format to help guide each vendor with an outline of what should be covered during each portion of the pageant. Since we have billed this as a beauty pageant, we tried to come up with pageant categories for vendors to loosely follow. Of course each vendor is free to follow their own format as this is simply a guideline:

Evening gown – To start off each portion, we are asking the vendor to come out in their best ‘outfit’ – corporate overview, history, specific identity, financial viability, marquee clients, leadership team, etc. This will be the grand entrance.

Swimsuit – Here the vendors will show some skin in this portion – usability, configurability, etc.

Talent – This portion will cover functionality, technology/integration, global ability, etc.

Interview – This will be the Q & A section from the audience.

These beauty pageants are designed to give the audience a quick overview of the leading vendors and we are looking for creativity in presentations.

Here is the schedule of upcoming beauty pageants along with instructions for registering. If the links don't work, visit www.hrchitect.com:

December 19 – 11am CST – LMS (Learning Management Systems)
January 9 – 11am CST – Mid-market ATS
January 23 - 11am CST - Onboarding
February 6 - 11am CST - EPM (Employee Performance Management)
February 20 - 11am CST - Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS)

Watch this blog and our web site for updates on all of our upcoming beauty pageants and register today so you won’t be left puzzled by HR Technology!

Matt Lafata, HRchitect