Cornerstone OnDemand acquires French startup Clustree

Human capital management software provider Cornerstone OnDemand Inc. announced Jan. 16 that it acquired French job skills platform Clustree in an $18.5 million all-cash deal.

Over the next year, Clustree’s technology will be integrated with Cornerstone’s, including an artificial intelligence-powered skills platform and skills ontology that companies will be able to use to track and analyze employee skill data.

Following integration, Cornerstone clients can build a skills inventory, identify areas for growth and development and connect skills data to recruiting, according to a company news release.

Clustree’s skills engine processes billions of real data points sourced from employee resumes and job profiles, identifies the names and synonyms for skills and associates these skills with relevant job titles, said Deaira Irons, senior manager of public relations at Cornerstone. This skills engine then helps generate the skills ontology — a constantly evolving library of skills that are mapped to job titles.

Last year a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management revealed that 75 percent of HR professionals reported having difficulty with recruiting over the last 12 months due to skills gaps in their job candidates. Discussions about the skills gaps and skills-based hiring will undoubtedly continue into this next decade.

“We’ve dedicated the past five years to making skills the currency of work and helping organizations prepare for the future thanks to a very strong AI technology and product,” Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan, founder and CEO of Clustree, said in the news release. “By joining Cornerstone, we can now expand our footprint even larger and integrate our value proposition into a leading people development solution that is used by thousands of organizations around the world.”

Clustree, which was founded in 2014, developed its skills engine using machine learning and algorithms that match employees’ skills with specific job roles within an organization. According to a story on TechEU, its customers “use the technology to inform people operations decisions, such as whom to hire, how to develop their employees, how to structure long-term workforce planning, and ultimately, how to close the skills gap that companies are experiencing worldwide.”

Cornerstone is a cloud-based learning, talent management and talent experience software provider headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Founded in 1999, Cornerstone currently serves more than 3,500 clients, including government agencies, hospitals and universities, as well as companies such as Walgreens, Wendy’s and Fossil.

The acquisition, which is subject to typical closing conditions, is expected to close some time this quarter, according to the release.

Photo courtesy of Cornerstone OnDemand Inc.