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Ultimate Infor Talent Science Review 2024

Devon Hennig
Last Reviewed:

Everything you need to know about Infor Talent Science, including features, benefits, use cases, user reviews, pricing, alternatives and more.
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Hi there, and welcome to SelectHub’s ultimate Infor Talent Science review.

We’re here to give you a detailed tour and our honest, unbiased opinions about Infor’s predictive talent analytics solution, Infor Talent Science.

If you’re more of a binge-watcher than a bookworm, good news! We’ve also recorded a 10-part video series. Check out the first video in the Infor Talent Science series below.

Part one of SelectHub’s video series on Infor Talent Science. Also available: Infor Talent Science pricing, Infor Talent Science alternatives and a playlist featuring the full series.

Since you’re already here, you probably know that Infor is a major player in several spaces, including ERP, HCM, workforce management, supply chain management and more. Now you’re doing your homework and trying to figure out if Infor’s Talent Science solution is right for your talent selection and development needs and how it stacks up against the competition.

This Infor Talent Science review is here to guide you like a bloodhound on a hot trail. Let’s go!

Table of Contents

What Does Infor Talent Science Do?

Infor Talent Science is a talent solution that uses predictive analytics to help companies make smarter decisions about hiring, developing, retaining and redeploying their people.

In a nutshell, it tells HR professionals who are ideal candidates for roles and which people are most likely to succeed based on a proprietary metric called “Behavioral DNA®” that it develops through a process of benchmarking an organization’s talent and pairing data with feedback from Ph.Ds in industrial and organizational psychology.

The process all starts with assessments. Companies have their employees take behavioral and cognitive surveys to create unique profiles per role, which will then be used in the hiring process. Then, job candidates take the same assessments and are analyzed and scored based on how they compare against the company’s unique Behavioral DNA®.

Employees take assessments to establish an organization’s Behavioral DNA® and then job candidates take the assessments to see how well they align to that DNA.

Once job candidates complete their assessments, a scorecard is generated for each person based on how well they match the desired behavioral characteristics of a particular role.

Hiring managers can view how well candidates scored across a variety of characteristics and sort by recommended profiles. Ultimately, the scores are summarized into an overall rating and recommendation that hiring managers can use during the selection process.

Example of candidate scorecard. Overall rating and recommendation shown in the top right based on how well the candidate scored vs. benchmarks of the organization’s employees.

Infor Talent Science does not make final hiring decisions, but it does help uncover insights about your talent populations to make more data-driven decisions.

At a high level, the benefits of using a tool like Infor’s are the following.

  • Reduce turnover costs. Infor claims clients see a minimum 10% and up to 45% uplift in retention of employees with positive recommendations when using Talent Science in hiring decisions (see charts later in article). Less turnover translates into material savings for organizations.
  • Improve performance. By hiring the right candidates, companies can better deliver on KPIs across all teams, from sales to customer support and elsewhere.
  • Fill roles faster. HR professionals can quickly prioritize best-fit candidates through automation in an objective and predictive way.
  • Better leverage current talent. Not only can Infor Talent Science be used to make hiring decisions, but it can also be used to improve internal talent mobility. Companies can identify high-potential talent and the right skill sets early and use talent mobility analytics to define career paths and benchmark team dynamics.
  • Future-proof the business. The sooner a company develops and benchmarks its talent, the more agile it can be when shifting strategies and making critical people decisions down the road.

Many software companies — some of which we’ll compare in the Alternatives section below — have developed talent assessment tools to achieve the outcomes listed above. However, there are differences between those offering simple talent assessments versus broader capabilities.

Here are the benefits that a holistic talent selection and development solution like Infor Talent Science offers over narrower assessment tools.

  • Differentiate top performers vs. low performers. Infor Talent Science doesn’t only focus on replicating top performers, it also differentiates top performers from low performers. This approach measures human potential across a much broader spectrum than focusing only on the behaviors of top performers — and thanks to their patent (U.S. Patent #8,204,778) — they’re the only ones who can do it like this.
  • Get results backed by Ph.D. industrial & organizational psychologists. Companies typically have to pay significant consultation fees when working with Ph.D-level contacts, but Infor’s are included in the license. This ensures that Infor’s predictive models are performing as designed and that regulatory compliance with real-world applications of predictive models follow industry best practices. The goal is to provide a fair chance for everyone to highlight the behavioral potential they can bring to an organization.
  • Go beyond selection into onboarding. Armed with a successful candidate’s Behavioral DNA, companies can give managers personalized, step-by-step guidance for a new hire’s first 90 days. Managers are able to understand a person’s approach to work and use information on how their behavioral preferences will impact their day-to-day. Furthermore, new hires have access to the information about themselves, too.
  • Help hiring managers with personalized interview questions. Infor Talent Science identifies unique behaviors of an individual and compares them to a unique profile created by the company. This generates a personalized assessment report detailing where a person has alignment to a role and where opportunities exist. When opportunities are identified, Infor Talent Science provides personalized interview questions and other descriptors to help hiring managers make more informed decisions.
  • Focus on ROI. Infor Talent Science is able to run post-deployment analyses to show how well its profiles are predicting reductions in turnover and making improvements in performance across the organization. This is another feature included in the license to help clients convey the value of Infor to their company and prove the ROI.

You now understand the basics of how Infor Talent Science works and the differences between its solution and simpler talent assessment tools.

With that primer out of the way, let’s get into our analyst deep dive. ¡Avanza!

Get a Free Demo for Infor Talent Science

In-depth Infor Talent Science Review

As a product that’s been around 20+ years, Infor Talent Science (previously known as PeopleAnswers… yes, that PeopleAnswers!) is certainly popular — but popularity doesn’t always make for a perfect fit. Dig in next to see who Infor Talent Science is best suited for, who it’s not suited for, top features, pricing, alternatives, user feedback and our final analyst review.

Who Is Infor Talent Science Best Suited For?

Infor Talent Science is best suited for organizations with a minimum of 1,000 employees.

More important than employee count, however, is how many people are currently in the roles that companies are looking to build predictive models around. With predictive talent tools, the more data the better. Infor Talent Science is currently used most often in high-volume positions.

Here are some examples of those high-volume (typically hourly) roles where Infor Talent Science works best today.

  • Healthcare: Roles like nurses, housekeeping, janitorial services, medical assistants, surgical technicians and pharmacy technicians.
  • Public sector: Roles like teachers, municipality workers, public safety officials and corrections officers.
  • Financial services: Roles like bank tellers, branch managers, customer support center roles and telesales representatives.
  • Hospitality: Roles like front desk, housekeepers, sales reps, kitchen staff, servers, hosts/hostesses and bartenders.
  • Retail: Roles like hourly sales representatives, cashiers, store management and call center reps.

Infor has released research on the above industries showing how their recommendations impact retention rates across more than 1.6 million employees. Across every vertical there was a minimum 10% and up to 45% uplift in retention of employees with positive recommendations.

Study shows minimum 10-45% uplift in employee retention of candidates across verticals with positive recommendations in Infor Talent Science. Top industries include retail, healthcare, hospitality and finance.

Again, when it comes to predictive models, the more data the better. Infor Talent Science’s model requires a minimum of 40 people in a role, so if your largest-volume position doesn’t meet that threshold, it’s hard to build a strong predictive model and show timely success.

Glimpse into the future…

Infor has hinted at introducing leadership-level benchmarking. This would open up their end-user audience and make the product available to more than just high-volume hourly positions. Stay tuned.

Get a Free Demo for Infor Talent Science

Who Is Infor Talent Science NOT Suited For?

As explained in the previous section, Infor works well across most verticals for company sizes greater than 1,000 employees AND with high-volume roles.

Here are three scenarios in which Infor Talent Science may not be a perfect fit.

Smaller Companies (<1,000 Employees) or Low-volume Roles (<40 People)

Infor Talent Science isn’t a good fit with companies under 1,000 employees, as it’s difficult to show quantitative value from organizations that hire only a handful of people per year.

Infor says building a good profile requires a minimum of 40 people in a role, so if your largest-volume position doesn’t meet that threshold, it would be difficult to build a strong predictive model and show success in a timely fashion. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to use Infor Talent Science with lower-volume roles, but it would take longer to prove ROI than most companies are willing to wait.

Organizations Requiring Self-hosted Solutions

Infor Talent Science has always been a cloud-based solution, even before “cloud” was a household term. That means it doesn’t provide self-hosting options. If you require on-premise solutions, you won’t be able to use Infor Talent Science.

Teams Not Ready To Take It on Operationally

Some teams may not be operationally ready to introduce a tool into candidate selection if they’re already underwater working through a backlog of critical ATS changes, HCM migrations or other platform headaches.

Ultimately, if your company is stuck working on tactical projects and basic HR software solutions, that will hinder your ability to implement Infor Talent Science. If your organization is more strategic and ready to invest in finding and developing the right talent, then Infor Talent Science is for you.

Compare Infor Talent Science to the Top Competitors

Top 5 Infor Talent Science Features

Infor Talent Science has a lot of features packed into one product. Here are the top 5 differentiating capabilities that SelectHub found in its review.

Key Feature 1: Powerful Scoring and Recommendations

Infor’s patented profile creation approach is easy to understand and leads to clear recommendations for hiring managers that are prominently placed at the top of every profile.

The scoring gives clear guidance as to how to proceed. Only candidates with top ratings (85-100) are recommended, while those rated below 85 are marked as “Recommended with Qualifications”, “Recommended with Reservations” or “Not Recommended”, based on their alignment to the underlying profile.

Candidates are marked as “Recommended”, “Recommended with Qualifications”, “Recommended with Reservations” or “Not Recommended”. These scores are based on an even distribution between those 4 categories to ensure a profile is not too harsh or too lenient when predicting fit to role.

The percentage weights of each characteristic on a candidate’s scorecard are incredibly valuable, as those numbers are derived from the behavioral differences seen in top performers vs. low performers on the job. Bigger gaps between top and low performers mean bigger percentage weights, making it easier to identify the key behaviors for predicting success.

Candidate scorecard. The heavier the weighting of a particular characteristic, the more indicative it is of high performers in the role and more likely to predict success.

It’s not necessary for hiring managers to comb through every score in the scorecard — the system does a good job of summarizing the data in its recommendation. But the data is there to dig into during the selection process if needed.

Also worth noting is the fact that Infor can map their 26 Talent Science characteristics to a client’s custom competencies to better speak the client’s language and relate to important cultural indicators in the assessment reports.

Key Feature 2: Executive Summaries

One of the main tabs in the product is called Candidate Summary Report. Essentially, this translates behavioral data into a narrative format for those preferring an executive summary with a combination of text and visual descriptors about a candidate.

Summary tab. Provides the assessment report in an executive summary that’s easy to understand.

SelectHub found this was a helpful format for users to articulate findings and make hiring justifications in the selection process.

Get a Free Demo for Infor Talent Science

Key Feature 3: Interview Questions

One of the most-used features of Infor Talent Science is its ability to use the data from each candidate to generate four “Must Ask” questions for hiring managers.

Infor Talent Science dynamically generates four Must-Ask interview questions for every candidate, making the process more personalized.

Anecdotally, hiring managers love the Must Ask questions that Infor provides, which are generated dynamically depending on whether a candidate is low or high in certain target areas. The tool can tell them: “Here’s what you’re looking for, here’s how we see this person and here’s how you can dig deeper into those critical aspects.”

Companies typically incorporate these Must Ask questions into their general default interview questions, which enriches the process and makes it more personalized. When time is limited and there are unlimited questions hiring managers can ask, Infor Talent Science helps zero in on the most crucial areas.

Key Feature 4: Personalized Onboarding and Development

Infor Talent Science is not only good at assisting with candidate selection — it’s also valuable for onboarding. You’re able to give managers a personalized guide for someone’s first 90 days, and managers can use it to understand the new hire’s approach to work and how their behavioral preferences will impact their day-to-day.

Onboarding section provides a guide for supervisors and new hires to help identify key characteristics during onboarding.

With these insights, you can tailor a person’s onboarding based on their preferences to make their enablement exceptional. What is a person motivated by? What are they demotivated by? It’s all here and able to impact development in a positive way.

Key Feature 5: Industrial and Organizational Psychologists Have Your Back

While not a technical feature, the fact that Infor partners Ph.D-level industrial and organizational (I/O) psychologists with every customer tells you a lot about how seriously they take data quality and the reliability of their recommendations.

In our review, SelectHub found Infor’s support model was a key reason many customers rated the company positively, with I/O psychologists specifically called out as best-in-class.

Bonus Feature: Integrations Galore

Infor Talent Science has pre-built integrations with all major applicant tracking systems, including iCIMS, Workday, Oracle, SAP and their own Infor Talent Acquisition. It also integrates with the Infor Global HR System, which feeds information into other platforms like Infor’s Talent Management and Learning & Development systems.

Get a Free Demo for Infor Talent Science

Features Not Supported by Infor Talent Science

The following are features that SelectHub found to be missing or still in development with Infor Talent Science. Context about whether these are planned or not is mentioned where possible.

  • Skill testing. Infor doesn’t do skill testing, nor have they expressed interest in doing it.
  • Gamification. Unlike some competitors, Infor Talent Science doesn’t focus a lot on gamification. They want the application to be more about job related-ness than being “fun” and they believe most candidates are mature enough to know they are applying to a job and aren’t looking for a fun application experience.
  • Little focus on promoting AI. While a lot of HR platforms are promoting their AI functionality more and more, Infor tends to avoid promoting AI as the centerpiece of their tool. While they do use AI in the initial profile creation process, all their profiles are validated by humans before they’re reviewed with clients. That human interaction from the Ph.D. I/O psychologists ensures compliance and reliability of the prescriptive recommendations.
  • No employee-facing functionality to help people navigate their career journeys long term — yet. While candidates do get copies of assessment results, Infor doesn’t currently have employee-facing functionality to deliver ongoing insights about their behaviors at work or incorporate employee-facing material to help employees navigate their career journeys and know how to develop themselves for future opportunities.

Glimpse into the future…

Infor has said they’ll be introducing employee-facing material to deliver ongoing insights to employees about their behaviors at work to help people better navigate their career journeys and develop themselves for future opportunities. This will be incredibly impactful for HR teams in terms of providing value beyond just selection and onboarding.

Compare Infor Talent Science to the Top Competitors

Infor Talent Science Pricing: How Much Does It Cost?

Infor Talent Science pricing is based on two components:

  1. The size of an organization
  2. How many profiles an organization needs to purchase

The size of the client organization gives an estimate as to how many people will be going through the assessment on an annual basis, as employee scope is generally more consistent than how many people apply in a given year, which varies by seasonality, job postings, promotions and other external factors.

How many profiles an organization needs to purchase can be “Custom” (Infor’s patented approach) or “Best Practice” (industry standard/off-the-shelf). As a reminder, profiles are essentially specific roles — e.g., nurse, bank teller, teacher, sales rep. These profiles are what a candidate/employee population will be compared with.

Examples: How Many Profiles Do You Need?

How many profiles you need to purchase depends on how many roles you plan on using Talent Science to benchmark and evaluate.

Example 1: A retailer is only interested in using the assessment for their in-store positions. Infor would need to know how many unique job families are in the stores. If there are five roles (cashiers, hourly associates, key holders, assistant managers and store managers), that would be five separate profiles.

Example 2: A healthcare provider wants to use Infor Talent Science across three of their nursing modalities — ICU, pediatrics and hospice workers — as well as another role where they are experiencing high turnover. That would be four separate profiles.

*Note: Organizations can always add more profiles as needed.

Pricing for Talent Science is best discussed with the vendor directly, as situations vary by roles, organizations and even industries. Like any software product, the more you buy, the more of the discount you’ll get.

In addition to base pricing, clients may also purchase additional functionality.

  • Integrations. Integrations to applicant tracking systems (ATSs) have a standard maintenance charge for pre-built integrations. Infor can also develop new custom integrations at a client’s request.
  • Team Dynamics reports. Team Dynamics reports can be generated to help understand the behaviors of team members and how to support one another.
  • Leadership Aptitude Reports (coming soon). Planned for release this year, Leadership Aptitude Reports will be an add-on to the profiles available today. While current profiles are geared toward high-volume, hourly hiring, the Leadership Aptitude Reports are designed for senior management and above.

The best way to get accurate pricing for your organization is to get a demo. Infor will be able to make recommendations based on your specific situation and create custom quotes from there.

Infor Talent Science Hot Pricing Tip

Infor recently released an ROI calculator that applies industry turnover rates, estimates the cost of turnover based on your current population sizes and quantifies the value of reducing turnover by using Infor Talent Science. The calculator will show you upfront how much money you can save and help you prove value internally.

Note: Infor Talent Science only works if you’ve properly implemented the tool, meaning you’ve enabled your company and trained end-users to drive adoption. Thankfully, Infor provides training material so you don’t have to figure it out yourself.

Get a Free Infor Talent Science Price Quote For Your Specific Needs

Infor Talent Science Alternatives: How Do They Stack Up?

Googling “Infor Talent Science alternatives” will lead you down a rabbit hole of talent assessment tools and broad HCM solutions. For example…

So who’s right? Or are they all confused?

[Spoiler: they’re pretty confused.]

If you’re looking only at talent assessment, you might think that Infor Talent Science alternatives include a lot of the logos listed by the software selection sites above. More accurate, however, are the likes of Criteria, Harver, Pymetrics, HireVue, Prevue Assessment, The Predictive Index, TalentQuest and Traitify.

But here’s the thing: Infor Talent Science is more than just assessments. As previously established, it offers holistic selection and development capabilities that not many others compete with head-to-head. In that respect, Infor is defining a new category.

That doesn’t mean Infor never loses deals or customers. In reviewing the reasons why organizations chose not to use Infor Talent Science, the main reason was because they have opted to no longer use assessments at all.

What contributes most to that shift? The macroeconomic environment is perhaps the greatest factor. In times of low unemployment, fewer people are applying for jobs and there’s a perception that less focus on talent selection tools will save the company money. Conversely, in times of high unemployment, there are influxes of applicants and talent assessment is badly needed to help “sort through the slush piles”.

Companies that invest in Infor Talent Science aren’t short-sighted and see value in predicting talent success beyond just selection.

These companies realize that in good times and bad there’s always a need to develop their people. To improve their onboarding. To turn up the heat on hiring or turn it down as the business requires it. And that full-scale flexibility is what Infor aims to offer.

Does that mean Infor is perfect? No. In some areas, they haven’t innovated as fast as competitors due to changing organizational focus (these changes, by the way, have recently led to new leadership over the Talent Science group, which should ideally improve their rate of innovation).

While others have added functionality like interview scheduling or quick-apply, Infor has been slow to respond and had to play catch-up. Their time-to-implement custom profiles can take longer — up to 15 weeks — and is often perceived as complex compared to other providers offering more cookie-cutter, off-the-shelf profiles.

But here’s what matters: Infor is focused on solving the right problems.

They’re focused on predictive data backed by real science. On top-notch customer support. On behaviors over skills. On a holistic experience over fragmented point solutions.

Unlike some others in the space, they don’t use shaky data. They don’t use opinions from subject matter experts as the sole basis for profile building. And unlike the Workdays of the world that focus mainly on skills, Infor focuses on behaviors — the argument being that you can teach someone skills like typing or giving presentations but teaching someone to become more people-oriented or more disciplined is much more foundational to someone and harder to change.

Infor believes finding the right behaviors should be a priority and that skills can be taught later. And while that doesn’t mean skills aren’t important, it’s a necessary balancing act and a refreshing perspective.

Compare Infor Talent Science to the Top Competitors

Infor Talent Science Reviews: Themes From Users

There are many customer stories and reviews saying how Infor Talent Science has helped businesses reduce turnover, improve performance, promote more diverse hires and create consistency across large organizations.

The following are five themes commonly mentioned in Infor Talent Science reviews.

  • Gold-standard customer service: Many customers say Infor’s customer service is the gold standard. They have several tenured clients beyond 10+ years, and some go as far as to joke that they wish Infor was managing their other implementations, too. They even have clients who still call them “PeopleAnswers” even though that brand hasn’t existed in years because they’ve been around long before the Infor acquisition.
  • Trusted Ph.D. industrial & organizational psychologists. Infor’s I/O psychologists, which are included with every license and don’t require additional costs, are trusted by customers to ensure their predictive models are performing as designed. Having expert input ensures the predictive models also follow industry standards.
  • Legal defensibility. Customers say they’re confident Infor helps them trust their hiring decisions because they meet extensive compliance standards and they don’t have issues with running afoul of regulations thanks to following all the best practices.
  • Ability to go beyond selection into onboarding. Many of Infor’s customers like the ability to go beyond candidate selection and give managers personalized step-by-step guides for new hires in their first 90 days. Managers can understand a candidate’s approach to work and how their behavioral preferences will impact their day-to-day. In fact, while some organizations use Infor Talent Science to focus exclusively on candidate selection, others use it exclusively with their existing internal talent.
  • Must Ask interview questions. Perhaps the most-used feature in Infor Talent Science is the Must Ask interview questions section. Customers love the fact that Infor provides personalized questions specific to each candidate to help hiring managers laser in on the most important areas and make more informed decisions.

Did you know Infor Talent Science is vertically focused?

All Infor software applications are built on decades of experience in key industry verticals. Their industry experts are best equipped to understand the unique challenges facing an organization. Talent Science has even aligned their Customer Success Organization to industry verticals to best support their clients.

Conversely, here are some of the cons of Infor Talent Science.

  • Not suitable for small or even some mid-size businesses. Infor Talent Science is not a good fit with companies under 1,000 employees, as it’s difficult to show quantitative value from organizations that hire only a handful of people per year.
  • Cloud deployment only. Infor Talent Science doesn’t provide self-hosting options. It offers cloud deployment only, so if you require on-premise solutions, you won’t be able to use Infor Talent Science.
  • Potentially long implementation process. While other tools use subject matter experts to offer off-the-shelf profiles that can get you live in a few days, Infor Talent Science builds custom profiles that can take up to 15 weeks to complete. While these custom profiles are more thorough and accurate, the hard part is getting existing employees to complete their assessments during normal work hours. Employee testing alone typically takes 2-4 weeks. To help combat this, the implementation process is templated. Infor guides clients to ensure they go live as fast as possible, but it can still take a while.
  • Doesn’t work well with low-volume roles. Building a good profile requires a minimum of 40 people in a role to benchmark, so if your largest-volume position doesn’t meet that threshold, it’s difficult to build a strong predictive model and show success in a timely fashion. Their Leadership Aptitude Reports, which aims to solve this for leadership roles, are not yet available.

Get a Free Demo for Infor Talent Science

Final Infor Talent Science Review

Ten years ago, a popular solution called PeopleAnswers was THE provider in the talent assessment market. Then it was acquired by Infor and rebranded as Infor Talent Science.

The reasons folks loved PeopleAnswers are all still there today, and now with more to boot.

From a selection perspective, Infor is best-in-class. It measures all candidates against critical behavioral benchmarks so you can be confident you’re bringing on people who closely match your top performers. It incorporates human checks and feedback from trusted Ph.D. industrial & organizational psychologists so you can be sure the recommendations are based on actual science and compliant with regulations. It also arms hiring managers with must-ask questions and insights to help them do their jobs faster and more effectively.

Going beyond selection, however, is where Infor Talent Science shines. Armed with a successful candidate’s behavioral DNA, companies can give managers a personalized, step-by-step guide for their first 90 days. Managers are also able to understand a candidate’s approach to work and use information on how their behavioral preferences will impact their day-to-day.

With new capabilities on the horizon for accessibility to the tool post-hire, it will only get better at providing more information to employees to help them navigate their career journey and know how to develop themselves for future opportunities.

Ultimately, if a friend said, “Hey, I’m thinking about using Infor Talent Science” here’s what I would say…

Infor Talent Science isn’t a silver bullet to fix all your hiring problems, but it will help you uncover crucial insights about your top vs. bottom talent to make more data-driven decisions.

Infor Talent Science is THE category creator and market leader when it comes to responsibly predicting talent success. And predictive analytics are about more than just assessments and figuring out who to hire for high-volume roles. They’re also about creating exceptional onboarding experiences, leveraging current talent better, filling roles faster, future-proofing the business and improving ROI across an organization. Who can’t get behind that?

Get an Infor Talent Science Price Quote For Your Specific Needs

What’s Next?

Still haven’t decided on the right solution? Behold these resources.

Get Infor Talent Science demo

Get Infor Talent Science pricing quote

Get a Talent Management price guide

About the Author

About Devon Hennig: Devon is SelectHub’s sultan of software selection. He most recently served as VP of Marketing for Docebo (Nasdaq: DCBO) and, prior to that, he was VP of Demand Generation at Vendasta, the leading provider of white-label products and services for global resellers. His passion is helping companies find the right solutions for their tech stack.

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