Category Archives: HR Technology

SHRMLab’s Better Workplace Challenge Cup HR Tech Winner! #SHRM22

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This is the second annual Better Workplace Challenge Cup competition that SHRM has put on. The BWCC is an HR Technology Startup Competition that goes through three rounds of vetting over one hundred new HR Technology startups. The final four make it on stage at the SHRM Annual Conference and they get to pitch who they are and what they do, then an expert panel of judges decides a winner.

The winner receives a bunch of stuff including a $50,000 first-place prize! But honestly, the recognition and promotion alone of being the winner at SHRM is probably worth more than the $50,000! That means really, all of the final four are winners because they all get great exposure.

The 2022 Final Four are also unique in that all four were led by female founders! This seems appropriate given that 80% of HR professionals are female, we need more females developing the technology we use every day to help make our workplaces and our workforces better!

Let’s take a look at the Final Four:

Vinco (Your 2022 Winner!) – Lissy Giacomán, Founder and CEO based in Monterrey, Mexico.  

Vinco is an ed-tech company whose primary mission is to serve as a bridge between employers who wish to upskill, individuals who want to earn credentials, and institutions who want to drive their enrollment online. Vinco works to assist HR teams in upskilling their employees through connections at over 2,000 top educational programs.

Automation Workz – Ida Byrd-Hill, founder and CEO based in Detroit, MI (so you know I was rooting for Ida!)

The Automation Workz Life Culture Audit is a mobile app assisting HR professionals and corporate leaders to motivate front-line workers to digital career and training success. The Life Culture Audit reduces turnover and absenteeism by coaching front-liners through coding games and creation of their life vision so they realize they have the skills and potential success for new digital careers. 

Included – Laura Close, co-founder and chief business development officer

Included helps companies hire and retain a diverse workforce and drive measurable progress on diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) goals. The platform provides step-by-step guidance based on your own people data trends. Included makes sure you never miss an opportunity to hire the most qualified diverse talent. 

Inclusivv – Jenn Graham, founder and CEO

Inclusivv is a technology platform that brings people together for courageous conversations. Our conversation design process combines thorough research, psychology and the power of storytelling and follows a simple but powerful framework for hosting small group conversations: three big questions, one voice at a time, and equal time to share. 

Shoutout to the SHRMLabs team, led by Guillermo Corea, they have done an amazing job with this competition, but beyond that, they are truly bringing an in-depth focus to HR Technology that has never been at SHRM and it’s impressive.

Last year at SHRM Annual 2021, SHRM CEO Johnny Taylor, said he wants the entire HR profession to think of SHRM when they think about HR Technology and the SHRMLabs team is truly taking purposeful steps to make this happen.

Are there HR Tech buyers at #SHRM22 #CauseTheEffect

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Sunday afternoon in New Orleans, the location for the SHRM Annual Conference 2022 and the Expo is open. If you haven’t come to a SHRM Annual Conference the expo hall can be a bit overwhelming. There are 800 or so vendors with booths, most are in the HR Tech space, and some are services, but it’s a lot!

Today in 2022, 99% of those attending SHRM are coming from companies that are struggling to hire more workers. Hourly and salary alike, the funny thing is there are a relatively small number of recruiting technology companies in the expo!

Why?

Well, the recruiting technology vendor community will tell you there are no buyers at the SHRM Annual Conference, so I wanted to see if that was true. I set out to speak with ten expo attendees that were Director title and above and ask them why there were attending the expo, did they have the budget to buy, and if they did, how much was that budget.

Here are the findings:

I was able to easily find ten folks to talk to at those titles. The company size ran from 100 to 100,000. Most were under 1000. 90% were in the expo looking at “what was new in the tech space”, visiting current vendors, looking to replace a current vendor, and one was looking for swag!

The big question was did they have a budget they controlled to buy and if so, how much? Here are some of the people I found at the expo –

Mary, HR Director from Illinois, of a 250-person marketing firm. She had $15,000 to spend and was looking for some technology to help with engagement and connection for remote and hybrid workers. Also, anything that could help in recruiting.

Mark, VP of HR from Denver, 2500 person medical manufacturing company. $50,000 of budget he had discretion over to buy technology. Needed help with getting more hourly workers and retaining hourly workers.

Yolanda, Director level from California, 500-person warehouse and trucking. She had $5000 she could spend and was looking for something to help with retention.

Barb, CHRO out of Atlanta, Law firm, 300 total employees, $25,000, but maybe more depending on what she found. She needed some compensation help and sourcing help for her recruiter.

Robert, Director out of Dallas, 5,000 person electronics manufacturing company. $10-25,000 and he was looking for something like internal mobility but sounded more like just internal job board help.

The one enterprise buyer I spoke with wouldn’t give me a number and realistically, she told me, anything major would have to go to RFP, but she was here looking at everything, especially things that she could add onto their SAP stack.

Across the board, everyone I spoke to was in the market at different levels and many mentioned while they might be able to make this decision on their own, this was the “just shopping” phase to see what is out there. They would take back ideas and findings to their team and decide who to demo.

So, I followed up with many with the question, “What about all those that aren’t here?” The resounding answer was, “Everyone is here, or if they’re not, we probably wouldn’t be interested” assuming those were only small players. There was an assumption all the major players in the HR Tech space were there, which we know is far from true, but it was an interesting finding!

The HR and Recruiting Tech space assumes SHRM only has SMB buyers so why come, and if I’m honest, there are a lot of those types at SHRM, probably 65% or so are in the SMB space. But, it doesn’t mean SMBs don’t have money to spend.

So many of the best-of-breed recruiting technology companies are not in attendance and I know for a fact their average deal size is under $20,000. Seems like a massive missed opportunity as these buyers were looking at a lot of lower-end techs and believing it is the next greatest thing!

It seems like with most HR Technology buys, outside of enterprise system buys, the add-on market is about being seen, being found, and delivering to an audience that needs you, but they don’t know they need you until they see you. With thousands of HR pros and leaders all in one location, it leaves me scratching my head on why these vendors don’t make the investment to come.

Are there buyers of HR Technology at the SHRM Annual Conference? The simple answer is, Yes!

Greenhouse Adds Sourcing Automation to ATS #Open22

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I’m out at Greenhouse Open this week, and Greenhouse made a major product announcement adding Sourcing Automation to their core ATS solution. What the heck does that even mean?

From the press release:

Introducing Sourcing Automation: a new outbound sourcing solution that helps users find, reach and engage top talent quickly and effectively – all with Greenhouse. Sourcing Automation improves email deliverability, scales outreach through personalized and automated campaigns and gives hiring teams the insights they need to become sourcing experts – and turn more candidates into hires.

What does it all mean?

So, isn’t this just Interstellar, the CRM they purchased, finally just launching? A little bit, but to call this “CRM” is a misnomer. CRM in the recruiting space is really designed for large enterprise TA teams that have a team that can run the CRM and gets the value out of it. Greenhouse’s Sourcing Automation is more marketing automation designed for individual recruiters to use daily.

Does this replace HireEZ and Seekout?

No, this is more of a complementary product. How so? Sourcing Automation isn’t a sourcing engine like HireEZ and Seekout are. You use those tools to find the talent you can’t find anywhere else. Sourcing Automation makes it way easier for you to actually connect with those people, plus easily add in candidates from your own database to connect with as well. The reality is one of the biggest challenges we face as recruiters is connecting with candidates as fast as we can, at scale, and this type of automation allows individual recruiters to do that effectively and efficiently.

Do your recruiters need this?

The short answer, in today’s world, yes.

Long answer, it depends on how you want to recruit. If I’m totally honest, way too much of the recruiting we do is a simple post and pray, inbound candidate processing. If that’s what your recruiting is, and that’s what you want to continue to do, save your money. This product is not for you. If you want to give your team a tool to do more outbound recruiting and add capacity to your ability to recruit more candidates quickly, then this product is worth a look and a demo.

I don’t say that in jest. The reality is some of us aren’t in a position to do outbound recruiting for a number of reasons. We are all on various levels of our recruiting maturity, so it really depends on where you are at and where you want to take talent strategy. Sourcing Automation is an amazing tech, but like any tech, you must use it to get the value out of it.

It’s well worth your time to dig into Greenhouse’s sourcing automation product and compare it to full-blown CRM recruiting tech and understand what sourcing automation is and isn’t. I think you’ll find that Sourcing Automation is a tool your recruiters can use every day in their day-to-day outreach and connection.

The Human Resource Executive 2022 Top HR Tech Influencers! Do Lists Matter?

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A big list got released yesterday and I wouldn’t be writing about it unless I’m on it, right?! Well, I might write about it if I wasn’t on it. I mean, it feels great to be recognized for something you have passion for and enjoy. Recognition at any level tends to feel good, which is why it’s so powerful.

There are so many people on the 2022 Top HR Tech Influencers that I admire and call friends including my two HR Famous podcast partners – Jessica Lee and Madeline Laurano! They both made the list. Also friends like: Steve Boese, Sarah White, Laurie Ruettimann, Jeanne Achille, Stacy Zapar, Jackye Clayton, Torin Ellis, Kyle Lagunas, George LaRocque, Trish McFarlane, Erin Spencer, Joey Price, Jason Averbook, and so many others.

What the heck is an HR Tech Influencer?

I know, personally, probably 65% of the Top 100 list. So, I can only speak about those individuals, but I’m guessing the rest of the list is fairly similar. First, they are super passionate about HR technology. We are all super nerds for this stuff and when we get together the talk gets deep into nerdy. Second, they all care about making technology and the function of HR, and all the sub-functions of HR, better.

Some do this through working as an actual practitioner in the weeds of day-to-day HR. Some do it by working on the vendor side to improve and create the next generation of technology we will come to rely on. And others work in the analyst space building a bridge between the vendor and practitioner improving the knowledge base about what we buy and why.

Every single one of these folks is a 1%er when it comes to HR Tech knowledge. Meaning, on average, they would know more about HR Tech than 99% of the other folks working in HR. They are the definition of Gladwell’s 10,000 hours. They made themselves into experts and that by itself is a pretty amazing accomplishment. Not many folks in the world could call themselves an expert at anything!

Who has the “real” juice?

Damn! That’s the million-dollar question! And I literally mean, a million dollars! Because vendors and conferences are trying to figure out who has the juice! What’s the juice? It’s that something special that a person has, through a combination of a lot of factors, where they command a large audience of potential buyers. It’s a combination of expertise, personality, access, charisma, honesty, giving back, etc. No two folks have the same factors or create the same juice.

In the HR Tech World, there is one person who has more juice than anyone at the moment. That guy is Josh Bersin. Josh is like the gallon-size bottle of juice and most of the rest of us are like the 6 oz glass of juice in comparison! That’s just a fact. I’m lucky that Josh invited me to be a faculty member in his academy, but I’m not saying this because of that. The reality is he moves the market like no one else in our space.

Vendors are always trying to figure out who has the juice. Who is going to bring buyers into the tent? Honestly, if you can’t afford Josh, it’s probably a combination of a lot of folks on that list, as well as a bunch of folks who aren’t on the list but still have juice (William Tincup, Matt Charney, Kris Dunn, Deb McGrath, Rob Kelly, Hung Lee, Guillermo Gorea, Chris Hoyt, Gerry Crispin, Erica Young, Chris Harvilla, etc.).

Juice has little to do with the social footprint, but you can’t ignore a large audience. Some folks might have a ton of juice on Twitter, but nothing on LinkedIn, or IG. No presence on Twitter, but a great following on Facebook. The key is interaction on whatever platform they are on. Like, are you really on Twitter if you tweet and no one engages?

TL;DR – There’s Josh Bersin, then there is a cliff, and then there are the rest of us at the bottom of that cliff. Also, no one wants to see their real “juice” number, it’s humbling.

Do these lists matter?

So many people will say, No. I get that. But, for the millions of HR pros out in the world, this is a great start if you are trying to educate yourself about technology within HR. So, in that vein, these lists do matter. I got into HR Tech because of a conversation I had with William Tincup seven years ago! I met him through my interactions with other influencers on the list. I became an expert in this space because of that interaction.

Because of lists, like the Top 100 HR Tech Influencers, I have people reach out to me daily with questions they have about the technology in our space. A list like this gives people an avenue to pursue and access expert opinions.

Are these lists inclusive of every voice that should be heard? Of course not, that would be impossible. It’s also super hard to get minority and young voices on these lists, based on the demographic of HR Tech nerds in general. But this list does an exceptional job at adding these voices, especially around female voices (which make up the majority of HR pros!). It’s a snapshot of a moment, and the list is ever-evolving. Also, vendors rarely make it on because of conflict of interest with selling, but some of the best minds in HR Tech are working at vendors. But they do matter to a great number of people who are trying to better their HR Tech knowledge.

Shout out to the HR Exec team, including, Elizabeth Clarke and Rebecca McKenna for putting in the work to create and edit this list. It’s a thankless task usually that only comes with criticism.

You can check out the full list right here.

Digital Transformation of Work & Wellbeing – @SHRMLabs Report

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I got invited recently to be a part of a think tank of sorts on a project with SHRM Labs and Techstars Workforce Development Accelerator discussing what technologies are needed to help navigate the new digital world of work. What the heck does that mean? Good question!

If you haven’t checked out SHRM Labs they are doing some amazing work around innovation, technology, and work. Led by Guillermo Corea, SHRM is working to take a leading stance on the technology that is built for HR. This isn’t your grandmother’s SHRM! Shout out to Hadeel El-Tashi, she has been amazing as well on the SHRM Labs team.

Basically, we have three types of worker environments right now:

  • Full On-Premise work
  • Hybrid
  • Full Remote

Full on-premise work we’ve been trying to build tech and processes around wellbeing for a long time. To limited success, for sure, but still, it’s been a long focus for technologists and HR for decades. Hybrid and Full Remote, while not new, were limited in use, so the focus was not there, then the pandemic thing happened and this had to ramp up really fast.

What we found is there are limited options for organizations to truly and robustly support their team’s well-being when they work remotely and in hybrid scenarios. Here’s the basis of the report:

This report highlights participants’ voices on each of these points. It proposes ways to foster work/life integration in remote- and hybrid work environments, followed by an exploration of elements that constitute a great employee experience and effective employee culture, closing with a discussion of how companies can attract (and retain) the best talent in the face of a tight labor market and the Great Resignation.

You can download the report here

What were our main findings:

  1. All organizations need to find ways to embrace flexibility in the workplace. Not just white-collar workers, but all workers. Flexibility and “All” is a difficult undertaking.
  2. Give employees agency and develop accountability. I call this one, treating employees like adults, but smarter people in the think tank had better words than me!
  3. Drive efficiency and asynchronous communication tools. Stop the non-stop stream of zoom meetings thinking that’s how you’ll communicate effectively with hybrid and remote workers.
  4. Personalize benefits and improve the employee experience. We still deliver benefits mostly like it’s 1970. Everyone gets a 401K match, even if that’s not your priority and you have student loans or want to buy your first house. Or we offer student loan repayment, but you graduated thirty years ago and paid off your loans, twenty-five years ago. One size fits most, is a crappy experience.

We also had findings around building digital culture and attracting more workers – you can download the report to check those out.

Overall, we’ve got work to do in HR as a total function, including TA, Talent Management, Learning, Benefits and Compensation, etc. This is invigorating for the field and there are so many passionate technologists in our space trying to help us develop great solutions for our issues.

I’ve been studying the technology in our space for the past decade and I’m always amazed that the process of what we need and what’s available is ever-evolving. The pandemic while awful, has opened up the world of work in ways we’ve been pushing to make happen for decades with little movement, then this tipping point happened and it’s like HR is being reinvented all over again.

It’s an amazing time to be in our profession!

Oracle Launches Employee Experience Platform and It’s All About “ME”!

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Okay, tongue in cheek title for sure, but the new Oracle EX Platform is actually called “ME” (pronounced “Mee” by stands for “My Experience”) and I wrote an eBook around Employee Experience that Oracle and I co-branded for the launch! So, in a way, it is still all about “me” as well! 😉

The eBook is titled “2022 Could Be The Year of the Great Retention!” (click to download). The book focuses on 3 core areas that organizations need to improve on to increase their employee experience, which will, in turn, increase your retention!

What is Oracle’s new EX Platform?

Oracle ME, is a complete employee experience platform to help organizations increase employee engagement and ensure employee success. Part of Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), Oracle ME enables HR and business leaders to streamline communications across the organization, increase productivity by guiding employees through complex tasks, and improve talent retention by developing a more supportive and trusted environment at work.

Oracle ME includes:

  • Oracle Touchpoints is a new employee listening solution that helps managers strengthen relationships with their employees and better support workforce wellbeing and success. Natively developed within Oracle Cloud HCM, Oracle Touchpoints allows managers to regularly capture, track, and act on employee sentiment to build trust with their teams and promote an inclusive work environment. Managers get continuous employee insights through pulse surveys and receive recommended next actions to take, such as scheduling check-ins, providing feedback, or celebrating moments that matter. The employee engagement center within Oracle Touchpoints allows employees to take an active role in their success and satisfaction by providing a single place to define and organize topics for check-ins, review meeting history, provide ongoing feedback, and access suggested actions.
  • Oracle HCM Communicate is a new employee outreach solution that allows HR teams to design, send, monitor, and measure the impact of communications. Built directly into Oracle Cloud HCM, HCM Communicate is connected to an organization’s workforce data, making it easy for HR teams to create and target personalized communications to groups with highly specific characteristics. For example, HR teams can send a message to workers in a specific city or country who are within two years of employment and enrolled in a particular training course. With HCM Communicate, HR teams can also measure engagement with the content through open rate analysis and seamlessly send follow-ups or set up ongoing campaigns to drive more effective and engaging communications.
  • Oracle Journeys is a workflow solution that simplifies complex tasks with step-by-step processes and personalized guidance that helps employees navigate personal, professional, administrative, and operational activities, including onboarding, returning to work safely, growing career opportunities, managing team compensation, or opening a new facility. New enhancements help employees make informed decisions by surfacing personally relevant instructions, training, and analytics along their guided digital journey. Oracle Journeys can be extended to include workflow actions and resources from other Oracle and third-party applications to deliver guidance for different business needs across the organization.
  • Oracle Connections is an interactive workforce directory and organization chart that fosters collaboration and increases opportunities for inclusion and internal mobility by making it easier for employees to search for and connect with others across the organization. Employees can import their LinkedIn profiles, record video introductions, highlight their unique skills and accomplishments, and share feedback on each other’s walls to better learn about one another and grow their professional network.
  • Oracle HR Help Desk is a service request management solution that makes it easy for all workers to get the answers they need and for HR to effortlessly track cases without the risk of sensitive data getting into the wrong hands. Employees can search for content, securely submit inquiries, and open help tickets through multiple channels including Oracle Digital Assistant, SMS, email, and social platforms.
  • Oracle Digital Assistant is an HR chatbot that provides a conversational interface for employees to get immediate answers to questions and easily complete transactions directly through voice or text. HR teams can deploy Oracle Digital Assistant quickly to support over 90 prebuilt transactions and can extend the solution to support new processes or requirements.

What do I really like about Oracle ME?

Simply? It’s the personalization aspect of the platform. Each employee can make it their own. It allows each employee to connect, grow, and thrive in their own way and on their own timeline. This isn’t an experience that is force-fed to them by their manager or HR, but it’s also not a traditional self-service HR tech that is unhelpful.

Touchpoints are just something that once you have them you will wonder why you always didn’t have them, for both leaders and employees. It just makes sense! It’s a great way for both leaders and employees to work together to make the work experience more satisfying and engaging.

Also, the HR Comms aspect of ME is something HR professionals and leaders will fall in love with. The ability to track and nurture your HR communications and have a dashboard to easily get updates on is really powerful, but ME also allows you to easily target your communications as well. It’s a tool most of us wish we have in HR.

Oracle ME is a big launch for Oracle Cloud HCM and you can see a lot of time and effort went into making it right. It’s something I think Oracle HCM customers and their employees will fall in love with.

HireVue launches the HR Industry’s First AI Explainability Statement!

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AI Explainability What?!

First, this is a big deal and I’ll explain what it all means and why you as an HR pro or Recruiting Pro should care.

AI is being built into almost every part of the HR and TA tech stack. Algorithms and Machine learning are having a massive impact on how we find, offer, develop, and promote talent in our workforces, so having an understanding of how this is happening is very important to the risk side of HR.

What is an AI Explainability Statement?

Basically, it’s the behind-the-scenes stuff you don’t think you want to know. It’s how the sausage is made, and it matters a great deal. You want to know that the tech you are using is reducing bias and not putting your company at risk of a lawsuit. You also want to know how and why your tech is doing what it’s doing.

HireVue didn’t have to do this. No one else has to this point. But, it’s important they lead with this as they probably have caught more flack than anyone else in our industry over how their technology was selecting one candidate over another based on some early testing they did with facial analysis technology, that they no longer use and haven’t in years.

What is HireVue’s AI Explainability Statement?

Okay, first, let me give you the overview because the actual statement is more like a white paper that is 29 pages long! Here’s the overview:

HireVue considers the ethical development of AI, candidate transparency and, privacy to be core values of the business. HireVue’s AI Explainability statement is the latest proactive step to ensure that its technology is at the forefront of emerging best practices in the use of HR hiring technologies. The Explainability Statement, together with previously commissioned independent audits, provides customers with meaningful information about the logic involved in HireVue’s technology. Together they are the latest tools to help companies understand the processing of personal data.

You can click here to read the full statement (and Yes, it’s worth a read if you’re using AI-based tools in your HR & TA Tech Stack!)

Why does this matter?

I’ll let the chief data scientist at HireVue explain:

Lindsey Zuloaga, Chief Data Scientist at HireVue: “Being at the forefront of defining the transparent and ethical use of AI and software is at the heart of what we do. Our mission is to create a level playing field for anyone seeking employment, reducing bias and providing organizations with a more diverse pool of talent. Deploying AI correctly and ethically, powers a significantly more consistent, less biased, more engaging screening process for recruiters and candidates alike. We believe there needs to be more transparency around its use in HR, this is why we’ve published our own AI Explainability statement, to best support our customers and educate the industry.”

Here’s what we know after using AI-based hiring tools for a few years now:

  1. AI does what it’s trained to do. So, if you train it inappropriately, it will act inappropriately.
  2. AI has the ability to significantly reduce bias and increase fairness in hiring as compared to manual processes where we just leave hiring to humans and our guts.
  3. We can constantly monitor and correct AI. We are less likely to constantly monitor and correct our human hiring managers.

Big Kudos to HireVue for being the first out of the gate to do something like this. They’ve taken a lot of criticism for some things they’ve built and tried in an attempt to make hiring better that didn’t go as they planned, but they’ve corrected and taken a lead within the industry from this learning. This is exactly what you want from a vendor you rely on to help you make consistently better hiring decisions.

Tracking Remote Employees is an Amateur Move!

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I continue to see more and more technology being released by tech companies targeting c-suite executives who are paranoid their employees who are working remotely aren’t working! Mouse tracking software, keystroke tracking software, login/logout tracking, etc. It’s become a billion-dollar industry to track you while you work at home, just in case you’re not working at home and just screwing around!

The most ingenious employee is the one who is trying to get paid without doing any work! Check out this TikTok:

@leahova

It’s called mental health, Janice. Look it up. #wfh #workfromhome #corporatetiktok #worklifebalance

♬ original sound – Leah

Now, I don’t think Lea is trying to get away with not working. She’s a good one, she’s paranoid in the other direction. If I try and go to the bathroom may be the A.I. will tell my boss I’m not working and I’ll get fired! None of this software really works like this, but it’s all a slippery slope!

A better idea for tracking employees!

How about building measurable performance goals and just managing those!? OMG! How f’ing brilliant am I!?! I just gave you an idea from 1979 that actually works perfectly and you don’t have to make your employees feel like they are being micromanaged and tracked by Big Brother!

Seriously! How lame are you that you think you need to track an employee at home by how often they move their mouse!? If you’re an executive and you believe this is the cure to your corporate ills, it’s time to hang it up, Hank!

It’s the 21st century, we can now treat employees like adults and place goals and expectations on them, that we’ve sat down and worked with them on coming up with so that we all feel like we are getting a fair deal on this little employment contract we’ve put together. We give “X”, You give us “Y”, and we are all happy with “Z”! If you don’t give us “Y”, let’s dig in and find out why that is, and if you continue to not give us “Y”, we’ll stop giving you “X”.

Okay, for those bad at Algebra, I’m talking about you do your damn job and we pay you. If you decide to sit at home and watch Netflix and not do your job, we stop paying you.

A better idea than buying a “mouse mover”!

Quite that stupid job who thinks measuring your mouse movements is equal to work. Seriously, there are more jobs open than people alive right now. Leave! There are great companies that are waiting to hire you that will let you go to the bathroom as much as you want.

If you bought a mouse mover to sit at home and watch Netflix and get paid, but not work. Congratulations, you’ll eventually be fired and/or your company will go out of business. You win, I guess, for the time being. Just know the world hates people like you.

I broke down hundreds of HR Tech Pitches into one winning formula!

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Over the past seven years, I estimate that I’ve listened to roughly 1,000 different HR and TA Technology pitches. As you can imagine, some of these have been super successful and many have failed and were never heard from again. I remember meeting Eightfold’s President, Kamal Ahluwalia, in a bar in Vegas when they probably had eight employees and angel funding and he was telling what this new company was all about and I’m like, yeah, that’s going to do well! Unfortunately, he didn’t offer me founder’s stock!

I’ve got a bunch of those stories, it’s amazing to see technology being born, and down the road thousands of companies using it!

Here’s how about 90%+ of new HR and TA technology startups pitch:

  1. Act like they are the next unicorn and have something no one else does.
  2. Listen to way too many people
  3. Build something they believe their potential buyer wants because they had a potential buyer tell them this is what I want.
  4. Keep building.
  5. Keep building.
  6. Try to sell a little.
  7. Blow it up and build something else, but mostly the same with a new user interface.
  8. Add on, build some more.
  9. Run out of money.

Here’s the winning formula:

  1. Don’t act like a unicorn, but get very curious about real problems organizations are having.
  2. Don’t listen to what HR or Talent pros want.
  3. Listen to what HR and Talent pros can’t get done and if they could get it done what impact would that have to the organization.
  4. Build a working product.
  5. Sell the sh*t out of that product. Get users using it. Sell more of it! No, more!
  6. Go back and make the product better and add on stuff users aren’t asking for because they don’t even know what is possible, but you do.

The single biggest fail of technology startups in the HR ecosystem is they don’t sell and market their product. They just keep hiring engineers and they keep building, mostly without a proof of concept. Or, even worse, they have one proof of concept with one company, and everything they are building is based on what one company wants.

The second biggest mistake startups make is believing they don’t need to be profitable. That’s what VC money is for. We just keep building and gaining users and one day this thing will magically be profitable. You can’t give your tech away for free because “real” users won’t value it. You see, we are willing to pay for stuff we’ll actually use. If I’m not willing to pay you, I probably don’t find very much value in what you built.

The final mistake is HR technology startups underfund sales and marketing by a factor of a hundred! Almost any technology you can build, someone probably has something similar in this space that is around 80-90% of what you do. In fact, there are probably at least ten companies selling something similar to what you’re building. So, you aren’t as unique as you feel you are, but those who market and sell their stuff the best, almost always win.

I see great technology every year that doesn’t make it to the next year, not because the technology doesn’t work, because the founder and the team they’ve assembled, well-meaning, smart, caring folks who want to be successful, don’t know how to sell or market their product. Yes, it’s that simple, and that hard!

How can an HR Tech startup win?

If you get $10 Million in funding, spend $1 million on engineering and $9 million on selling your product. You can shop your engineering out to the Ukraine or India or where ever in the world development is cheaper. You can not shop out sales when selling to the US market.

“Well, if we make great tech, people will find it!” Nope! No, they won’t! Because someone making a good product will be sitting in the office of your buyer and your buyer won’t know who the hell you are.

Tech folks hate this concept. They just want to build great tech. These are the same folks who hate iPhones but love the Google phone. “The iPhone sucks, the Google phones have better technology by a factor of a thousand!” Yeah, but Apple is a genius at marketing and sales. So, we all have iPhones and you have the best phone, congratulations, I hate that I have to text you with a green bubble.

Careerbuilder survived way longer than Monster in the job board wars not because they were better. They were virtually the same! Monster had a bigger brand! CB sold the crap out of their clients! Take a look on LinkedIn and see where most of Indeed’s sales force came from!

The average HR buyer couldn’t name more than a handful of HR Technology companies. There are over 10,000 worldwide. No. One. Knows. Who. You. Are! So, it doesn’t matter what your tech does or doesn’t do if no one knows you!

This isn’t just an HR functional issue. Finance, operations, sales, marketing, IT, etc., we all buy what is sold to us. There might be twenty potential technologies to solve the thing I need solving, but if I only know of three, guess what? I’m buying one of those three! And, all three of those I know, might suck! Why do you think we constantly complain about our technology!?

I sat with an ATS out of Australia that no one has ever heard of. They are awful. Literally, ATS technology from the early 2000s. They found out how to sell to the US government and now have over $500M in US gov’t contracts to provide ATS technology to a number of US agencies. They are still awful, but they figured out how to sell and they are making stupid money delivering an inferior product.

I’m not telling you to make bad technology. Make good technology and be proud of it, and then sell it like it’s the antidote for Covid!

Don’t know how to do that? Let’s talk.

CareerBuilder’s New Look!

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Okay, I’m just going to come right out and say it, this is probably a mean post. I mean marketing is freaking hard! Logos are impossible. Everyone is a critic.

If you didn’t see it recently, CareerBuilder (the job board – I feel like I have to tell the younger crowd what CareerBuilder is for some reason) came out with a new logo. Now, this is the 4th logo I know about since I started following the industry, there might be more.

At one point, probably like 8 years ago, CB was a client of mine. I did a bunch of work and they had a really great marketing team. They were also a cash cow and printing money, then came along this little startup called Indeed, that at the time they probably could have bought for next to nothing, but when you’re the biggest, baddest job board in town you just laugh at the young, little startups.

When I first started using CareerBuilder as a rookie recruiter this was their logo:

Original OG Logo when they were on top of the world

At some point, when your sales start to decline the first rule of marketing is to rebrand and seem new again, and more relevant. This was the first attempt:

The CB Trivial Pursuit Pie Logo

I can’t even tell you the amount of money and time that went into producing this “new” brand. Shortly after this, almost everyone who was anyone left CB for greener pastures.

As the private equity folks begin to start sniffing around some consultants came into put some lipstick on the pig and this was the next iteration of the CB logo:

But wait, what color of pie pieces do I have?

I actually don’t hate #3 – it’s clean and I like the color navy. But #1 is still my favorite.

And now to our most recent CB Logo change:

This is a joke, right?

Okay, have you guys seen @EmilyZugay on TikTok? She’s the logo girl. She actually takes famous logos and does a redo on them, and she is hilarious! The only thing I can hope for the marketing team at CB is that they are working with Emily! Please tell me you’re working with Emily!

I can’t even with this logo. The best part is they trademarked it like someone was actually going to steal it!

As I said, mean, petty post. Sorry, CB marketing team. I hope this is a joke because it would be amazing if it was. If it’s not, I get it, marketing is super hard! I hate my own logo, sorry for poking fun. Also, call Emily and pay her a few thousand and this becomes an amazing story!