Category Archives: Applicant Tracking

iCIMS Inspire 2022 is Back – Virtual and Live! Nov. 17th! #iCIMSINSPIRE

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Hey Gang! I’ll be attending iCIMS Inspire Live on Nov. 17th in Santa Monica, CA! Join me!

INSPIRE is an annual conference hosted by iCIMS, the talent cloud company. This award-winning event unites global talent and tech innovators to connect, learn, and celebrate. INSPIRE returns as a hybrid event on Nov. 17 with a limited in-person audience in Santa Monica, CA.

There’s an amazing lineup of folks, including:

Sekou Andrews, CEO, SekouWorld, Inc

One of the most successful spoken word poets in the world! Two National Poetry Slam championships, two national poetry tours, two Independent Music Awards, three Helen Hayes Awards, the most “Just Plain Folks” music awards in history, the 2020 ABA “Entrepreneur of the Year” award, and the first “Best Spoken Word Album” Grammy nomination for a poet in 30 years. 

Sonia Jhas is an award-winning Mindset and Wellness Expert

One of the country’s most influential voices in mental and physical well-being. With 80+ million media impressions and a social media following of over half a million, Sonia has been imparting her honest and ground-breaking approach to mind and body as a speaker, educator, author, and advocate for over a decade and is consistently ranked a top health influencer. 

Dee C. Marshall, CEO, Diverse & Engaged

Dee C. Marshall is an award-winning business owner, influencer, international speaker, and thought leader on equity, diversity, and inclusion across industries, sectors, and globally. Dee was recently awarded WBENC WBE Star Award, named 2021 Entrepreneur Magazine Top 100 Women of Impact, 2021 NJ Most Influential D&I Leaders, Top 50 People of Color List by RIO, Top 25 Influential Black Women in Business by The Network Journal, and Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs.

As well as many talent acquisition industry insiders delivering content designed to elevate our talent acquisition practice.

If you can’t make it on November 17th, register anyway to get some of the content sent to you after the event.

Register Today for iCIMS Inspire 2022! (Virtual Registration is FREE!)

Registration is Free for Virtual! Register Here!

@SHRM CEO, @JohnnyCTaylorJr Accepts Board Seat with @iCIMS!

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For those who know me, you know I’ve been a fan of SHRM’s CEO Johnny Taylor since before he was SHRM’s CEO. The first time I ran into Johnny was on the speaking circuit when he was an HR Leader, in the corporate world, and we spoke at the same conference.

My initial impression of Johnny was, “Who the hell is this guy!? He’s an amazing speaker!”  Johnny is a smart, confident, dynamic speaker, and leader, so I thought it was a great hire when SHRM hired him as CEO. Plus, he was a “real” HR person! There have been some folks who have thrown him shade over his tenure, but I think the majority of the SHRM membership has actually liked how he has pushed to elevate the HR function during his tenure.

This week iCIMS, a leading applicant tracking system and talent acquisition platform for enterprise organizations, announced that Johnny Taylor was joining their board. Here’s a bit from Johnny in the press release:

“I’ve been closely following iCIMS for years and have been consistently impressed,” said Taylor. “I am proud to be joining the iCIMS team. No other company has demonstrated how well it understands what talent professionals and business leaders require to succeed, and iCIMS is leading the market and its customers to success in the new world of work.”

Taylor was selected as a board member through Vista Equity Partner’s independent board program, which leverages the firm’s network to source qualified board candidates for its portfolio companies.

Why should we care about this move? 

CEOs of large organizations frequently take board seats at other big organizations. So, this isn’t surprising. I think the one surprise SHRM members might ask themselves is, why would Johnny, the CEO of the world’s largest HR organization, take a board seat with an HR/TA Technology vendor? Couldn’t that be viewed as a conflict of interest? I mean companies like iCIMS, and their competitors, spend millions of dollars with SHRM each year in sponsorships at SHRM conferences and other virtual events.

What if he took a board position with Workday or Oracle, would that be considered a conflict? I don’t know. Like I said above, Johnny is a smart guy, I’m sure he could get a paid board seat at almost any F500 company. I do also think this move speaks to Johnny’s increased attention within SHRM of Talent Acquisition professionals overall. When I first became a SHRM member in 2001, Talent Acquisition pros were the red-headed stepchildren of HR and we didn’t feel very welcome in SHRM. That has changed drastically over recent years.

From the iCIMS standpoint, this is a brilliant hire. Dynamic, smart people, with that kind of network and leverage, are hard to find, it’s a definite big win for them. Hire? Yes, it’s a hire. This is a paid position. People at that level don’t join boards to make themselves look cool on their LinkedIn profile! Johnny brings with him exceptional insight of hundreds of thousand SHRM members that will be super valuable to iCIMS.

This does beg the question, is Johnny getting ready to leave SHRM? It has been rumored over the past couple of years that he had bigger aspirations and plans than “just” being the CEO of SHRM. I say “just” because that job is a pretty great job, but he definitely has the resume and the intangibles to secure even bigger positions and make even more money. In my opinion, it would be a big loss for SHRM, as he’s by far the best CEO they have had in decades. Again, I know a bunch of folks who will disagree with that statement, but SHRM is in a far better position today than at any single point in the past twenty years as an association.

iCIMS and its CEO, Steve Lucas, have definitely been one of the most aggressive TA tech companies in the marketplace as of late. Product growth, tech acquisition, and increasing talent at a rapid pace over the past two years, it’s very interesting times for them. Make sure you keep an eye out, I hear they have some big things coming in April. If you haven’t demoed them lately, it might be time to get an update and see a different iCIMS than you’ve seen in the past.

What is the Top Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) in the U.S.?

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Okay, you guys know I love my guy, Rob Kelly over at OnGig and his team, for putting together data around the most used ATSs. OnGig recently released their latest report and I wanted to share some highlights and reactions.

First, let’s answer the biggest question – is this real? Yes, Rob and the team looked at over 1,000 companies and dug into which specific ATS they are using. Most were Enterprise level, but there were also a number of SMBs.

Here’s the breakdown: (click on the pic for a larger version)

 

Tim’s Reactions:

– In 2018, Workday had a 4.20% share in the enterprise ATS market. In 2020, that has grown to 21.92%, and they have thousands of customers going through and waiting on implementation. Workday has taken over the recruiting market at the enterprise level as of right now and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

– In 2017 Taleo’s market share was 25.51%, in 2018, 19.11%, and in 2020, 14.68%. Still a giant piece of the market, but it shows how Taleo didn’t react quickly enough to the changing marketplace to keep or grow their huge advantage. Keep an eye on Oracle Recruiting Cloud and the impact that will have for those Oracle customers looking to move to the cloud and away from Taleo.

– iCIMS share at 8.94% is extremely impressive, given they totally retooled their software over the past year or so, and basically pioneered the recruiting “App Store” marketplace concept which allows users to build an integrated stack with the features they want fairly easily. Also, this number doesn’t include many of the mid-market, SMB customers iCIMS have.

– Along with iCIMS, Greenhouse, SmartRecuriters, and Jobvite are all top best of breed ATS plays on the market and we are beginning to see this separation of organizations who are choosing the Best of Breed recruiting technologies, to those who are using the Giant HCM recruiting modules (Workday, Oracle, SAP).

What does any of this mean to Enterprise TA Leaders?

If I’m a current TA Leader working for an F1000 organization I better be ready to answer this question:

“Why can’t you, or can you, use the recruiting module for our large HCM stack?” 

Every single CFO, CIO, and CEO, if they haven’t already are going to be looking at their financial, operational, and supply chain stack and making a decision, most likely, between Workday, Oracle, and SAP (there are some others, but these 3 own 90%+ of the market).

These leaders are being sold on the power of one platform and the ability to leverage all of that data, and part of that decision will be HR and TA explaining the benefits and drawbacks of going enterprise module solution versus best of breed.

By the way, and this is very important, your input to this decision, as a TA and HR leader, will be weighted by the overall cost of the combined organizational solution and decision. Don’t be confused and think you are an equal player in this decision. The reality is, we (HR/TA) are not, as our portion of this contract is peanuts compared to the rest. The CFO and CIO are the big players, so if you want leverage around what you need, make friends fast!

Final Thoughts:

Many of you will not be given a decision on the TA tech stack you are given. I find that unfortunate, but that is a reality at the enterprise level. HCM Recruiting Module, best of breed ATS, an Excel spreadsheet, they all work, if we make them work.

Workday has a tremendous partner network with some of the most advanced recruiting technology on the planet. You can build a great Workday TA stack. You can build a very strong Oracle TA stack. The key is getting the decision-makers to understand, no matter what system you choose, the core ATS is only the foundational piece, and each of us will have other pieces that we’ll need to add to that stack to make it most effective for our organization.

Those pieces will cost money, on top of the money that is spent on the foundational ATS. Try not to allow yourself to be handcuffed with a new ATS (at any level) and be told this is all you get. Modern-day recruiting and talent attraction take way more than just an ATS.

One last shoutout to Rob and the OnGig team – keep up the great work!

Do you do Capacity Modeling in Recruiting? You should be! #ghOPEN

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Out at Greenhouse OPEN this week and I was completely captivated by one of the sessions and the topic of Capacity Modeling in recruiting. It was introduced at the conference by Shane Noe of Box, and he was cool enough to share a url so everyone can download the information to do it on your own.

I love that!

So, what is Capacity Modeling and why is important for TA and HR Leaders add this to their recruiting operations?

In simple terms, Capacity Modeling is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In recruiting then it’s the process of determining your recruiting capacity needed by the organization to meet the demands of your talent needs.

Here’s what happens in real life. Your talent acquisition team is working their butts off day in and day out. Little by little you keep getting a bit better, but most days you’re still just keeping your heads above water. But still, you’re making it happen!

Then the CEO comes into your office on an idle Thursday and says we’ve made some decisions and it’s going to have an impact on recruiting. We’ve decided to make an investment in “X” and as such we will need to hire an additional 300 employees in the next 12 months. Can you make this happen?

The savvy TA leader will say “No!” immediately! Most TA leaders will say “Of course! Just let us know what you need and we’ll make it happen!” That’s failure point number one.

You truly have no idea if you can make this happen. What you know is it feels like you’re at full capacity and hiring an additional 30 new people will kill you, 300? You might as well just quit now.

Capacity Modeling allows you to tell your CEO, “let me show you some data about where we are at, and how we can meet your needs”. We are currently at 87% capacity. The best practice is to be at 85% since we will always have stuff pop up and we need that extra cushion. If you would like us to hire an additional 300 that would put us at “X” over capacity, so we will need the following time and resources to meet that need.

That my friends is a powerful conversation that puts you at a completely different level in your career. Too often we just throw ourselves on the sword and say we can do something when we really have no idea if we can do it, and we mostly fail. We have to better than that. Take a look at Shane’s information. It’s a bit technical but very doable and worth it!

Greenhouse Open is a non-user user conference. GH has put a ton of time into producing some of the best recruiting content on the planet for its users, but I would say as a recruiting conference alone it’s one of the better ones I’ve attended. Kudos to them. If you’re looking for a top Hiring Platform that meets your end to end talent needs, you should be demoing Greenhouse.

Recruiter Roundtable with Loxo CEO Matt Chambers and I!

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In this discussion, Loxo CEO, Matt Chambers, and I discuss trends in recruiting that is here to stay, and how modern recruiters will need to evolve to address these changes.

 

Question 1: What do you see as the most impactful changes you’ve seen in the recruiting industry?

Tim’s Answer:

It continues to be the speed at which recruiting is expected to find talent for openings. We’ve gotten to a point where hiring managers have this expectation where you’ll start showing them candidates in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. All of this is driven by technology.

Matt’s Answer:  

Let’s start macro and work our way down to share why these changes are happening.

A generational transformation is underway.  Baby Boomers are retiring, millennials are taking over their leadership roles, and Generation Z is entering the workforce as the first digitally native generation.  This generational transformation is hitting at the same time that the web 3.0 is emerging and we are going to cross a tipping point to broader market adoption.

Unemployment is at an all-time low, and we are also on the longest bull run in history.  A tight labor market magnified lazy hiring practices which relied exclusively on job board postings. Ineffective hiring and subpar results created a robust demand for recruiting agencies and passive recruiting solutions.   Today talent acquisition is strategic; having top recruiters either in-house or as recruiting partners is a major competitive advantage.  We are starting to see a hybrid RPO boots on the ground model becoming very popular.

Executive search, staffing, RPO, and recruiting agencies are facing pressure to find ways to differentiate. Five years ago, the biggest changes were happening on the corporate side, but now executive search, RPO, and recruiting agencies are playing catch up.  It’s a lot of energy and effort for an organization to change software solutions and to consider new approaches to recruiting.  It also can take a year or more for an organization to switch out and upgrade their technology, so those who wait risk putting themselves out of business to modern recruiting practices that just have too significant an advantage.

Matt’s Thoughts on Tim’s Answer:

Hiring managers are being sandwiched by both technology innovation on the vendor/supply side but also from their C-levels measuring progress via KPI metrics.  I think Tim and I would both agree that quality of hire is the most important metric, but as he said to be successful in today’s world you have to get the job done fast or someone else will be there to beat you to it. 

Tim’s Thoughts on Matt’s Answer

As much as we see recruiting evolving and changing, it’s still out on the edges for the most part. The most used recruiting strategy across all functions, markets, and industries is still “Post and Pray”. Post a job, pray someone will apply. While we see the leading edge of recruiting at an advanced stage, it’s still mostly in the minority. One issue, especially on the corporate side, is recruiting is still part of HR and HR hates to recruit. So, they’ll do almost anything else besides picking up a phone and reaching out to a potential hire.

The growth of RPO is a straight-line direct reflection of this failure. Organizational leadership is giving up on recruiting at a colossal level because CHROs can’t figure out how to fix recruiting and make it work, so let’s just shop it out to experts. The reality is, you’re not shopping it out to experts, you’re shopping it out to 25-year-olds working in call centers who are paid to call candidates. That is now your employment brand, a 25-year-old who probably have never been to one of your locations and knows nothing about you.

It’s not a hit on RPO, they are hired to find talent and fill a position, and they need to do that as efficiently as they can to produce a profit. Turns out, many do a great job at that, but many organizations give up too easily instead of just fixing the core issue. Talent Acquisition is not HR. It can’t be run like HR, or it will keep failing.  

 

Question 2: Process-wise, where do you see recruiters putting in the most effort into moving forward?

Tim’s Answer:

I would love to tell you it would be quality over speed, but I fear it’s still going to be speed. For me this isn’t either/or, it’s both. Yes, I want you to find me talent fast, and, yes, I want you to find me great talent. Far too often, in most shops, recruiters turn this into one or the other. It doesn’t have to be that way. But, that takes a really great process, supported by great tech, supported by high expectations and performance management. BTW – it also costs money!

Matt’s Answer:

At the very top of the funnel. 

Executive search firms and internal talent acquisition teams are focusing most of their effort at the very top of the funnel.   Relying exclusively on job boards for “sourcing” is lazy and results in the lowest quality, yet still remains the primary way most organizations (and even most staffing agencies) recruit.

We have crossed the tipping point, and it is no longer cost-effective to source manually, when there are superior sourcing options on the market that can programmatically deliver an extremely high-quality talent pipeline at a fraction of the cost. 

To give you a concrete example, Loxo AI™ helps our customers build extremely high-quality talent pools.  It removes 90% of the hours spent sourcing by recommending only the very best people for each open position.  This is automated.  Why would you have a dedicated sourcing team when you could have this? Solutions like Loxo AI™ are gaining popularity as more recruiting organizations learn about them and realize how big of a game changer it is to their productivity.

The largest recruiting organizations have started to invest in building their own in-house technology systems.  I think almost everyone except these organizations realizes this is a catastrophic mistake that will lead down a black-hole.  The pace of technological innovation in the open market is 100x faster, so the tens of millions of dollars of investment will cost these organizations a decade of lost opportunity cost.

Corporate recruiters are relentlessly testing and trying new solutions, but often have to figure out workarounds or even pay out of pocket due to the slow and bureaucratic nature of big enterprise. As a compromise, I think you are starting to see market forces demanding open API integrations so their recruiters can use best of breed solutions rather than being forced to use these monolithic systems that put the recruiter’s needs last.  Recruiters will select and choose solutions that they want to use and that solve their problem, even as big enterprise struggle to keep up with the pace of innovation and global regulatory environment.

Matt’s Thoughts on Tim’s Answer:

Spot on –it’s always about the time, quality, cost tradeoff!

The Project Management Triangle is one of the most important constraint models in business operations. Clients always want it faster, better, AND cheaper and service providers always have to remind them that we can do two at once, but you Mr. or Ms. client select the two you want and we’ll adjust accordingly.  Technology innovation in a fully optimized system is the only thing that can improve all three at the same time, but technology will only get you so far so if you don’t have exceptional leaders, process, and people.  If you do you can achieve better quality hires faster than ever before. 

Tim’s Thoughts on Matt’s Answer

Totally agree with you, Matt. Although, I don’t see corporate recruiters “relentlessly testing and trying new solutions”, I would encourage them that they should. They should be demoing and looking at new tech at least once per month. It has to be a priority or the function just falls too far behind, too fast.

I do think as we see more and more of the top of the funnel be automated the real value of recruiters comes back to can you influence the decision of a candidate to believe that the position you have open is right for their career path? Can you get them to say, “Yes!”? That only happens when they trust you and believe that you have their best interest at heart. That takes expert-level relationship building at scale and speed.

 

Question 3: Where do you think the biggest opportunity is for recruiters to drive more value?

Tim’s Answer:

Click over here to finish reading this interview! Matt and I went back and forth for a few more questions!  (FYI – I get asked this A LOT – Loxo is our ATS and it’s awesome! Also, Individual Recruiters you can sign up use Loxo for FREE! Give it a try.) 

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Facebook Partners with ATSs to Bring Jobs to Your Company Page!

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Today on The Weekly Dose I let you know about some changes coming to Facebook and how Facebook is partnering with ATSs to make it easier for employers to get your jobs posted on your Facebook company page.

Facebook has long been that one person we’ve always wanted to dance with us, but they seemed uninterested in having anything to do with the recruiting community. The reality is, FB has more active users than any other social network and that means the potential for us to some serious hiring on FB has always been a dream of most TA pros.

Recently Facebook announced some partnerships with ATS providers SuccessFactors/SAP, JazzHR, Talentify, and Workable. While SuccessFactors, JazzHR, and Workable are all in the ATS space, Talentify is more of a CRM-like, programmatic job posting tool. Both Workable and JazzHR are strong SMB value ATS providers, while SuccessFactors wasn’t originally designed to be an ATS, but because of the acquisition by SAP has built out that functionality, although I think most using it probably feel that recruiting still isn’t its strongest point.

I’m not sure exactly why Facebook choose this group to start, but like most things, my guess it’s probably a combination of relationships being leveraged (hello, SAP), and just scrappiness by the smaller players mentioned to find a way to get this done.

So, what’s actually being done?

“Jackie Chang, head of Business Platform Partnerships at Facebook, said the social network will “continue to identify strategic companies” in order to help businesses hire and people find work. “We’re looking to grow these partnerships,” she said. “We know many businesses are already working with HR solutions providers to manage their hiring needs and we want to make it easier for businesses to tap into the tools they already use, and help more people find jobs.”

Also, from Chris Russell:

There are two ways that the new integrations will work – an onsite, “native apply” experience and an offsite “redirect” experience. In the native apply experience – the messenger popup will still occur.

Onsite, “native apply” experience:

    • We have a Jobs XML Feed, which enables partners to publish job posts on behalf of employers directly on Facebook.
    • Job seekers can apply to those roles directly on Facebook, and the application information is sent back to the partner.
    • This allows employers to reach qualified candidates while staying connected to the systems they already use.
    • Employers can also create jobs in their ATS, and publish that job to Facebook.

Offsite “redirect” experience:

    • We have a Jobs XML Feed, which enables partners to publish job posts on behalf of employers directly on Facebook.
    • Job seekers are redirected to the employer’s career site and can apply to the role on the employer’s career site.
    • Employers can also create jobs in their Applicant Tracking System, and automatically publish that job to Facebook.

Very cool stuff, as Facebook has been one of the hardest nuts to crack when it comes to recruiting, and these integrations should make it easier for employers to start getting their jobs in front of FB users more easily. Facebook won’t be the holy grail for everyone, just as LinkedIn isn’t the holy grail for every employer either, but the potential is there for it to be a very good source for so many that don’t see the pools of talent they need on sites like LinkedIn, or other job boards.

Does your ATS have this integration, or are they working to make it happen? The only way to find out is to actually give them a call and ask that question!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Pocket Recruiter (@pkrecruiter)

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review the recruiting technology, Pocket Recruiter. Pocket Recruiter drastically reduces the time it takes to screen, source and evaluate candidates, helping recruiters achieve a higher interview to placement ratio. 

Pocket Recruiter is one of these new recruiting technologies built around the concepts of Machine Learning and A.I. Basically, it integrates with your ATS and will automatically scrap every new job (or you can manually put in jobs as well) and then it will go out and source candidates for each job you have from both your internal database and external data as well.

Where Pocket Recruiter stands out is it’s ability to match candidates to your job, and it’s ability to learn and get better. The recruiter gets a list of matching candidates that are scored out and ranked based on, pattern recognition, the internal algorithm, etc.

Your recruiter gets a shortlist within minutes to go out and start connecting. Organizations are seeing savings of up to 60% in time to source and screen, because most of the heavily lifting of sourcing is done, and the matches are of higher quality, so you’ll need less screens. They are also seeing improvements of 90% from resume submitted to the hiring manager to request for interview. So, the quality is definitely improving.

What do I like about Pocket Recruiter:

  • Your recruiters can override the algorithm within Pocket Recruiter to bring back different results almost immediately, if something isn’t coming through like it should. This might seem small, but it’s huge as we that recruit usually quite a bit more than the algorithm in terms of what we are looking for.
  • You can add your internal employees into the mix, making Pocket Recruiter a great tool for internal mobility.
  • The Performance Metrics might be one of the best I’ve seen in any recruiting tool, as it basically replicates your recruiting funnel for you on each individual recruiter. So, not only are you finding talent faster, but you also now have this great performance management tool for your team. I also loved the ROI tool built into Pocket Recruiter.

For me, technologies like Pocket Recruiter are the future of recruitment and how I see A.I. having the biggest early impact to how recruiting evolves in the near future. Pocket Recruiter ensures you are utilizing all of your candidates to the fullest, and it speeds up the entire process to get to hires quicker. Well worth a demo!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Oleeo_ – Talent Intelligence to Unleash Your Recruiting Potential

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review the newly rebranded Applicant Tracking System, Oleeo. Oleeo is the former WCN ATS product and they have a long and successful history mostly working with European customers.

Oleeo is a global ATS designed for high volume hiring and has built-in event management which makes it an incredible ATS choice for those organizations that do a ton of campus hiring, or other types of high volume-type hiring events.

Oleeo has some great relationships within the banking and finance industry, and that speaks to how well the software works when it comes to working in industries where it’s critical to do well when competitively hiring on campus. I would foresee health systems and tech companies that do a bunch of hiring on campus would also have a high interest in looking at this ATS. Oleeo also has high-volume retail users as well that are finding success with the system.

Organizations that need to process a lot of potential candidates quickly, now have a system that helps filter the best to the top, and makes it a personal candidate experience. Oleeo delivers really well on all those factors.

What I like about Oleeo:

  • Oleeo is built for hiring events first and foremost. While most ATSs are weak at this, thus most organizations have to have a separate college hiring system, Oleeo delivers a top-notch experience for both candidates and recruiters in planning and executing career fairs.
  • Candidate self-service is a big piece of Oleeo allowing candidates to pre-register for events, schedule their interview time, etc.
  • Oleeo has a built-in CRM tool that allows recruiting teams to build out candidate campaigns by a number of criteria, track key information around these groups, and built automated actions based on the response.
  • Predictive screening technology is also built into Oleeo based on 120 different attributes Oleeo allows you to put an unlimited number of candidates through pre-hire screening, delivering the highest rated candidates immediately to your recruiters to continue on in the workflow.
  • Interview management is also another strength of Oleeo that allows you to customize an interview workflow based on if/then to automate much of the process and again allow candidates to manage some of this process on their own.

Oleeo is basically a new ATS to the U.S. market, but not new when it comes to its ability to know and understand all the complexities of global high-volume hiring, as WCN has been doing this since the mid-90’s outside the U.S.

I like Oleeo brings an enterprise level ATS feel to a marketplace that has been long dominated by an under-powered Taleo, primarily. While the CRM is still light on functionality, and SMS is only push at this time, the Oleeo team has shown it has the experience and knowledge to build out an end-to-end recruitment platform for the global market.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

Does This Sweater Make Me Look Fat?

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I’ve got a bit of a problem.

I love buying new clothes, jackets, and shoes. You see, I’m kind of built like a fire hydrant. Picture a fire hydrant in your mind right now. Not very sexy is it!

So, I compensate, not by eating a great diet and working out constantly! Hell, no! That’s really hard work. I compensate by buying more clothes that I think will make me look skinnier than I really am!

Do you do this?

We do this in HR and Talent Acquisition all the time!

Just replace ‘clothes’ with ‘technology’. Yeah, we suck at HR, so instead of going out and fixing our foundational issues, let’s go buy a new pretty technology to cover up all of this fat, err incompetence!

Yeah, baby, with this new shiny technology no one will ever suspect we really suck as bad as we do!

The new stuff we buy screws with our heads. Every new shirt and sports coat I buy, I look at myself, and go “oh yeah! you’re going to look so awesome when you wear this!” Then I get on stage and someone tags me in a picture and I want to starve myself for a year!

Buying new stuff to make us look better than we are is the biggest lie we tell ourselves, ever.

So, before you go buy that new technology to fix all of your problems of why you suck at HR or TA, you have to know one truth. That truth is technology doesn’t fix why you suck. If you suck, great technology will make you suck faster. Bad technology will still make you suck, you just won’t be as fast as sucking!

Just like clothes won’t make me skinnier, new technology won’t make your function perform better.

 

The Talent Fix – My new book is now available to purchase! If your organization is having trouble hiring, this is a must buy! 

Talent Fix Review: My mom says it’s her favorite book that I’ve written!!! (I’ve only written one book!)

Purchase The Talent Fix now! 

How Hard is it for Candidates to Find Your Jobs on your Career Site?

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The other day I got contacted by a large enterprise level TA leader. She had a major problem about to hit them. They had to hire thousands of people and she was hoping I could tell her which chatbot to use to help them.

Sweet! I love TA Tech, let’s talk about some of my favorites!

I pulled up their corporate site because I wanted to see what ATS they used and just check out the career site.

This is where I found her first problem! The first problem was I had to search to find out how to find their jobs! Like four clicks deep into the corporate website before I could even begin a job search, let alone apply.

There is only one right place for candidates to find jobs on your corporate website. It’s at the top of the page, the same exact place where you find things like: Home, Company, Products, Search, etc. If you’re making candidates scroll down to the bottom of your site, you don’t care about talent. If you’re making candidates search to find “Careers” on your site, you don’t care about talent.

You know who you are. “Well, Tim, we put “careers” under the “About” tab because we want our products front and center!” Nice! So, those candidates you desperately need now have to go on a snipe hunt to find out how to apply for your jobs!? How’s that working out for you? Or you make the scroll down fourteen feet to the bottom where you put things like “investor relations”, “contact information”, “press inquiries”, “Legal Notices”, etc.

The most innovative companies in talent acquisition have ‘finding’ their jobs down to one click. You pull up their page and it says something like “Jobs!” or “Apply Now” or “Careers” in the top right corner of the website. Sometimes there is even a button along in the corner to make it even easier for candidates to spot.

When a candidate clicks on that top of the page, right corner link they are instantly taken to a page that allows them to search. No more clicking around, no more searching for how the hell they can find which jobs you have open. It’s right there. One click.

It’s pretty common for me to visit a large brand corporate homepage and it will take me 4-7 clicks before I can actually search their jobs. If you ever want to know where TA falls in the order of importance in your organization, just count the clicks. The more you click, the less influence TA has in your organization. It’s fairly unscientific, but I find this little measure almost always works out.

So, my new TA friend was looking for a chatbot but didn’t really need a chatbot. Well, at least not yet. Foundational blocking and tackling of TA can do wonders for helping you hire. If it takes me four or five clicks to find your jobs, you’re in trouble. If you make me search around your site on how the hell I apply, I leave and go someplace else.

I know that 90% of know this,  but almost 50% of organizations can’t figure this out. Why? Because we as TA leaders aren’t going to our executive team and telling them, “Hey, idiots! We are losing 67% of our candidate traffic because some moron in marketing doesn’t like how “Jobs” looks on our corporate website in the righthand upper corner! Can we stop being stupid and do the right thing?”

I know selling our stuff is important, but if we can’t fill jobs, we won’t have stuff to sell. I know putting our employment brand out front is important, but why are we creating a search game for candidates to solve to just apply for our jobs?

Simple Tip to Share with Your Executive Team: Hiding how a candidate can apply for our jobs, doesn’t actually help us fill jobs! 

So, where do candidates find your jobs on your corporate homepage?