Things I Learned at Greenhouse OPEN #ghOPEN

Hey gang!

I’m on the road this week at the Greenhouse OPEN. What’s Greenhouse? It’s one of the top ATSs on the planet – but you already know that if you read my blog!

The Greenhouse OPEN is basically their user conference, where Greenhouse users and those considering using Greenhouse come together as Talent Acquisition Pros and Leaders to experience great recruiting related content from a corporate TA point of view.

I love attending conferences with great TA content, and Greenhouse has done a really great job growing this conference to 1,000 participants. You know it’s good TA content when it doesn’t matter if you use Greenhouse or not, to get a ton out of the sessions.

Also, being that Greenhouse is designed for corporate TA, and not having third-party recruiters in the room, you really get a ton of great sharing and conversation taking place between attendees.

Here’s some cool stuff I learned:

Some organizations are using very specific, un-produced video, to source candidates! How? Instead of sending a candidate a blind email or text, the recruiter takes their iPhone and records a quick video to the specific person they want and sends them the link to watch. “Hey Tim, I found you and want to talk to you about…Here’s why you would be great…Etc.” The response rate from the organization using this is super high, as you can imagine.

Organizations are worried about Recruiter Experience! You know what, you do not want your hiring process to suck for candidates. We all get that 100%! But, what about your recruiters? Does it suck to work as a recruiter in your environment? If it does, that might be worse for your organization in attracting talent, then if your CX sucks. We tend not to even give this concept of Recruiter Experience any thought at all, but we should!

Across all industries, text response rates from candidates are running 70%-ish, in all kinds of roles from hourly to salaried, tech to healthcare. Texting candidates keep coming up as either something organizations can’t live without, or something they are not using, and don’t want to use. I find this really strange, as it seems like it’s a form of communication that everyone is using. Being able to have etiquette and rules of engagement are important.

Not all employee referrals are created equal. Great employees are more likely to refer great referrals. Bad employees are more likely to refer bad employees. You don’t want bad referrals, so it’s best to have a program that allows you to segment and know who is providing you with your best referrals. Manually, this is difficult, but with technology like Greenhouse and Teamable, you can start to get a real sense of who should be referring more in your environment.

I’m going to keep advocating that you find ways to spend more time with other TA pros and leaders. We learn from each other when we are in safe, and encouraging environments to share. Does that have to be at a conference in New York? Nope. It’s great if you get the chance, but you can also start or find local outlets for groups of peers to get together.

I love that Greenhouse and others are showing the industry the way, and I thank them for bringing so many great and giving TA pros together. Such a powerful way to learn and develop as a professional!

The Weekly Dose II: Google Hire’s New Gmail Add-on

So, this week I’m giving you two doses of HR Tech because so much is happening in the space I just couldn’t get away with one thing this week! Google Hire, the ATS for SMBs, just released a new feature for their system that is something recruiters will really like!

If you haven’t heard of Google Hire, you really need to check it out if your a business under 1,000 employees and your business uses the G-suite. The G-suite being you do your email in Gmail and you use Google Calendar.  That’s important because the only way you can use Google Hire is if you’re a G-suite shop.

If you don’t use the G-suite, don’t waste your time, you can’t use Hire, no matter how bad you might want to give it a look.

So, what’s new with Hire? 

Hire isn’t even that old. It’s really only been on the market for about a year. So, basically it’s all new, but Google released a new Gmail add-on to Hire that is really great.

Check out the video below, but basically, the Gmail Hire add-on allows recruiters to do most of the heavy lifting in Hire, in Gmail, where most recruiters spend most of their time anyway (within their email program communicating with candidates).

The Hire add-on allows recruiters to easily see if a candidate is already in their system or will be a new candidate, makes it seamless to add a new candidate into Hire, and also lets them move candidates along the recruiting process from within Gmail, so they aren’t moving back and forth between Hire and Gmail.

Hire already logged every single candidate interaction within Gmail into Hire, but this allows recruiters to work within the G-suite in a very normal way without bouncing around between programs to interact and moves candidates through the stages of hiring.

One aspect I really liked within Hire is the ability for recruiters to reject a candidate right in Gmail, and choose if they wanted that message to go out immediately, or wait for a certain timeframe before sending. This lets recruiters immediately complete a candidate they absolutely know has no shot, and be more efficient with their time in touching candidates less.

If you’re using G-suite for email, calendar, etc., and you have less than 1,000 employees you should demo Hire, even if you’re happy with your current ATS. Why? Because it’s Google silly! Hire is inexpensive and Google will continue to innovate this product at a rapid rate.


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

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: The Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) in 2018!

This week on The Weekly Dose I’m taking a look at my #1 all-time favorite report that was released last week by Rob Kelly over at Ongig! The Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems in 2018 is an annual report that Rob and the Ongig team have been putting out now for four years.

The ATS market is really hard to get data. This report measures 118 ATS platforms out of more than 1,000 on the market, but the 118 in this report make up the vast majority of the marketplace. I love this report because of how robust the data is. The report pulls ATS information from 4200+ employers, which makes it more comprehensive than anything else you’ll find.

So, what have learned about the ATS market in 2018? 

Taleo is getting killed! In 2017 their market share was 25.51% on Ongig’s report, in 2018 their market share dropped to 19.11%. While this isn’t exact, you can bet the Oracle/Taleo people are freaking out and some folks are getting fired! My hope is this will spur the Taleo folks to finally see their solution has fallen behind the marketplace and we’ll see big innovation from them in the coming years.

Greenhouse is moving upmarket and taking market share in a big way! Greenhouse is getting most of this market share increase from Taleo, Kenexa/Brassring, and Jobvite (who all lost market share since the 2017 report).

Don’t look now but Google Hire just became a real threat to all SMB ATS providers! In 2017, Google Hire came in at .22% market share #44 on the list. In 2018, Google Hire is .78%, #23, but has increased their client growth by 312%! Almost triple anyone else. Don’t sleep on Hire!

While Greenhouse is killing everyone in overall growth, iCIMS and Workday are also growing at a very high rate. Suite HCM talent solutions (like Workday Talent, Ultipro, SAP, Oracle, etc.) have some built-in advantages to growth. If you’re using their HCM, you’ll feel pressure to use the rest of the suite. But with the growth of Greenhouse, iCIMS, Lever, SmartRecruiters, etc. (best of breed talent solutions) we see a clear indication that organizations that see talent as a priority are choosing the better tech over the suite solutions.

The ATS market is growing. Ongig measured 50 different ATSs in 2014, and 119 in 2018. One major reason is you can make money selling ATS solutions primarily because most companies don’t switch ATSs often. So once you get in, you’re usually there for a while. Plus, the options at the SMB level are now very robust with Google Hire (they want us to just call it “Hire”), Workable, BreezyHR, and Newton (now integrated with Paycor).

So, how should you use this report? 

I love this report because it truly gives every talent acquisition leader a true picture of how vast the ATS market is. The ATS is foundational to your TA Tech stack and the choice you make for your ATS will dictate many decisions you make in how you recruit talent.

Do I go right to the most used? No, but I also don’t ignore the most used. There’s a reason people are using Taleo and Greenhouse. They work. There’s a reason some systems are growing and some are not. Figure out what those might be, it’s very telling!

If you’re an SMB you have a bunch of low-cost ATS technology you should be looking at. So, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be using an ATS, even if you only hire one person a month. While “Homegrown” ATSs are still used widely, please don’t go develop your own ATS, it’s not worth your time or effort with so many great products already on the market.

Go check out the report – it’s one of the best reads you’ll have all year in TA Technology!


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

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Greenhouse Recruiting Software & ATS

The week on the Weekly Dose I review the popular applicant tracking system Greenhouse. I first learned about Greenhouse in 2015 and wrote about as a startup SMB ATS, but it was time to update that review and let you know how they’ve grown.

Since my last review Greenhouse has grown considerably (3,000+ customers) and has a number of companies using them with over 25,000 employees, so we can easily place them in the mid to enterprise market in the ATS space. Definitely, if you’re in that 1,000 to 25,000+ world, this is one of the stand-alone recruiting platforms that you must consider.

The “enterprise” HCM suites (from vendors like Oracle, Workday, etc) are generally able to support the complex IT requirements of big companies, but the Talent Acquisition module has been an afterthought and not really designed to support world-class TA functions. Greenhouse does both – handle the global complexities but with a focus on delivering the tools needed for a strategic, high-performing TA function.

What I like about Greenhouse: 

– The only ATS I’ve seen that has a built-in candidate experience survey.  If Candidate Satisfaction is important to your organization Greenhouse customers have a significantly higher rate than others based on Talent Board results.

– Built-in CRM tech allows you to keep pipelines engaged and nurture candidates in your database. Sourcing Quality Report which not only tells you where you hire the most candidates from but how far into the process do candidates get via each source.

– Blinded ‘take home’ assessments that help reduce hiring bias within the organization, combined with interview kits for hiring managers to ensure you improve diversity and inclusion within your organization.

– Predictive analytics that can help show you if you’ll be able to fill the positions you have open at the time needed, allowing you to adjust sourcing as needed to reach goals.

– Recruiter/hiring manager auto-alerts when candidates have been in process for too long, which kills candidate experience.

Greenhouse is the real deal when it comes to ATS technology. I can’t really do justice how much you can do with them, especially on the collaboration side of working through the interview process with everyone involved from approval through hire. If you’re looking to upgrade your talent acquisition technology Greenhouse is a great foundational piece to start with.

Greenhouse is definitely one to add to your demo list if you’re in the process of selecting a new ATS. I’ve yet to speak to a TA Leader who was using Greenhouse and left them because they wanted to find something better. I’ve spoken to many who have left others to go to Greenhouse and seem really satisfied.

You can also check out Greenhouse at their annual conference in New York – OPEN 2018 April 2-4where Patty McCord (one of my favs!) will be keynoting.  


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

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @CrowdedWork mine the gold in your ATS!

This week on the Weekly Dose I review the TA technology Crowded. Crowded is a platform that fixes what’s wrong with most ATSs! What’s wrong with most ATSs? Let me explain.

A typical ATS does one thing really well. It posts jobs to your career site and collects applicants from those jobs posted. From there it basically allows you to digitally move applicants through your hiring process. That’s a normal ATS. Heck, that’s about 90% of the ATSs on the market.

What big issue then becomes what do you do with that huge database of applicants that you have? This is why Crowded was built. You spend a ton of money and resources filling your ATS with talent. If you are like most organizations in the world, that talent then sits in your ATS and dies (figuratively). Once most applicants apply for a job and enter your ATS they are never heard from again. This is a major problem!

Just because you didn’t hire this talent the first time they applied, doesn’t mean they might not be your next great hire, or a great hire a year or two down the road. Crowded is a technology that integrates with your ATS, pulls out your jobs and your applicant database and re-matches them on a constant basis. Crowded then allows you to reach out to these ‘newly’ found candidates and engage them with your current jobs.

Not only does Crowded do this matching, but Crowded also updates each candidate in your database. So, that entry-level engineer who applied two years ago, but you didn’t have anything, now becomes that Engineer with two years of experience working at your competition that is no super valuable and someone you desperately want to hire! That is why this technology is so powerful and needed by most organizations!

What I like about Crowded: 

– Can be used by both staffing, RPO, and Corporate. We all use ATSs, and we all face the same issue using ATSs.

– Bi-directional data exchange, which basically means all the cool stuff Crowded is doing, ends up back in your ATS (system of record) for compliance sake.

– Crowded allows your recruiters to communicate via email and text through their platform with each exchange being captured and uploaded back into the candidate ATS profile.

– Crowded has some built-in intelligent automation that will actually allow the system to automatically reach out to candidates that match your jobs at a certain level, so your recruiters don’t have to. Funny thing – almost no corporate TA shops use this, but staffing and RPO do! Why? You tell me! This is a brilliant use of technology and efficiency, everyone should use it.

– Data analysis from Crowded will help you make more strategic talent decisions. Crowded’s technology will show you data on what schools, companies, etc. you’re hiring from, and which ones are getting interviews, etc. This way you can be more strategic about where your team is spending its time and resources. The system will also show you apply vs. hired skills gaps.

You are sitting on a gold mine of talent in your ATS database, but you don’t ever mine it! Why? Because most ATSs suck at search, and most TA shops suck at searching our ATSs and then believing anyone in there has talent! The Crowded platform automates this process and bubbles up great talent that your team has been ignoring forever! Every single company has great hires in their ATS database waiting to be hired, but most of us never will. With Crowded, you’ll start to see these hires happen almost instantly.

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

T3 – Are Enterprise HCM systems Killing Talent Acquisition?

Last week I sat down with the folks at iCIMS to take a look at their system. iCIMS is the second largest ATS/ talent platform by market share for enterprise-level organizations, with only Taleo (Oracle) being larger. Workday, Ultimate Software, IBM/Kenexa, and SAP/SuccessFactors are also large players in this space that are growing quickly.

Do you see what all of them (except iCIMS) have in common?

That’s right, all of those other ATSs are apart of full suite focused HCM products.

Does that make a difference? Yes.

The people selling you full HCM (Oracles, SAP, Workday, IBM, etc.) will tell you all of the advantages of having all of your data under one umbrella in using one fully integrated system.

What they won’t tell you is that they really specialize in HCM and that their talent acquisition products/modules are probably 2-3 years behind where modern-day ATS systems are at. Also, with cloud-based, open API ATS systems, getting data to sync between your ATS and your HCM is no longer something that is difficult.

Enterprise level HCMs are built for large/giant level sized organizations. Those organizations with thousands, if not millions, of employees, do have some unique challenges, and all of these HCMs do a great job at addressing those needs. So far, they don’t do a great job at doing that on the talent side of the business.

This is where iCIMS comes into play. iCIMS is one of the few ATSs on the market built for enterprise and the specific ATS needs of large organizations. iCIMS has the background and experience of dealing with the compliance and volume of large hiring, coupled with a much more robust talent engine then you’ll find with the vanilla talent offerings that are currently being peddled by enterprise HCM vendors.

iCIMS also has a fully integrated marketplace that allows each organization to tailor what functionality they want and need. From background check providers, pre-hire assessments, video interviewing, texting, etc. These aren’t bolt-on technologies, but fully integrated, one-experience technologies you can choose from based on what functionality your organization needs, that isn’t already built into the main iCims products.

iCIMS has three main products: their ATS (Recruit) which is used by 100% of their clients, Connect (their CRM) used by about a quarter of their clients currently, but growing quickly, and Onboarding used by about half of their clients. iCIMS has also recently updated and improved their user-interface (UI) to make it look like many of the new ATSs on the market.

One major complaint I have with HCM ATS products right now (one of many) is the fact that almost all force candidates to register into the system to apply. This added friction into the apply process has been shown to be something candidates hate and causes massive candidate drop off. iCIMS gives organizations many options on how to handle this issue, and lets you decide how you want candidates to apply, allowing to eliminate as much of that friction as possible.

iCIMS also has an entire development team focused on Google for Jobs. Why is this important? Because you need your job postings to match as closely as possible to the GFJ schema to ensure your jobs are getting the highest candidate traffic possible.

Ultimately, if you are an enterprise organization you need to run an ATS that can handle enterprise-level demands. The big question is, do you want to run an ATS that helps you hire better and faster, or one that is just part of an overall larger system, not specifically designed to higher better and faster?

I think we are quickly approaching an HR Tech environment in our organizations where we need two major systems. You need a great HCM to handle your day-to-day employee HR related work. You need a great Talent Platform (Sourcing, CRM, ATS, etc.) to handle your talent attraction and hiring work. There is currently not one HCM on the market that does talent acquisition as well as stand-alone talent platforms can do it. And by the time they get to be equal to current stand-alone ATS platforms, they’ll still be behind, because those systems keep advancing at a very fast pace.

So, if you’re using an HCM platform to run your talent, what you’re basically saying is hiring the best talent really isn’t that important to us. You can tell yourself something different, but either you’re using great TA technology, or you’re not.

 

Corporate TA is Doing Contract Hiring All Wrong!

In every university on the planet in every Economics 101 class, professors teach a very simple concept of FIFO (First In, First Out). It’s basically meant to describe the way products/material move through a system. There are two basic types, FIFO and LIFO (Last In).

FIFO is you get some supplies shipped to your warehouse, but you first use the supplies you already have in your inventory.  LIFO is you get those same supplies shipped to you, but instead of using the inventory you already have, you first use this new inventory to fill orders.

Unfortunately, in Talent Acquisition we really haven’t figured out the basic economic theory when it comes to Contract labor.

We’ve built Vendor Management Systems (VMS) and Managed Service Provider (MSP) which we thought were the answers to our prayers, but I find most corporate TA leaders and most vendors being pushed through these systems, are unsatisfied with the results on both sides.

So, How Do We Fix It? 

The pain point in bad contract hiring is caused by speed!

Yes, that same speed we desperately want is causing us to hire poorly!

Stick with me. VMSs work as a middle person between vendors and corporate TA. They’re basically a wall so your hiring managers and TA pros aren’t taking a million calls a day from bloodsucking recruiters.

VMSs have tried to fix quality issues, but the reality is in their veal to deliver talent quickly, that get caught in this LIFO dilemma. Almost every VMS on the planet runs their submission process in the same way:

  1. Job requisition goes out to suppliers
  2. Suppliers have some sort of limit of candidates they can put in (like 3 each), and the requisition has a limit of submissions it will accept as in total from all suppliers (like 25)
  3. Suppliers are on the clock to put candidates in before the competition puts them in.
  4. Riot mentality ensues and suppliers put the first garbage they can find into the system for fear of missing out.
  5. The “first-in” candidates are interviewed and a candidate is hired on contract.

The hiring manager is told this the best talent available, sorry, you’ll have to do.

This is a lie. 

One small change by VMSs and corporate TA could easily fix this problem. Do everything exactly the same way you’re doing it now, but don’t allow any vendors to submit talent for 48 or 72 hours. With this ‘window’ of time, your vendors would actually contact more talent, better talent, and not have the fear of missing out in shoving talent into your system as fast as possible. They would still be limited to three, but now they could actually select their three best – NOT – the first three they get in touch with.

Simple. Easy. Effective.

The two or three days of waiting, is nothing, compared to the increase in candidate quality you would get.

The contract hiring world has actually gotten to the point where it moves too fast. Too fast to give recruiters a chance to find the best talent that is interested in your openings. Indian call center recruiting shops are killing VMSs because of how they are set up. It’s all about meeting a number, it has nothing to do with actually finding great talent for your organization.

Contract hiring is increasing in all markets. This isn’t going away, so we need to find better ways of doing this. As you look into 2018 and beyond, and start to analyze your total workforce (ftes, contractors, temps, consultants) the portion of the total that will be contingent is growing. The more it grows, the better quality you need to have. Moving fast is great until it isn’t.

Company aren’t hiring the best contract employees they can right now, they’re hiring the fastest. There’s a big difference between those things.

T3 – Google Hire ATS Could Dominate the SMB ATS Marketplace

With all of the hype and craziness surrounding Google for Jobs, most people haven’t even been paying attention to what ultimately might be the bigger Google product to impact the talent acquisition technology market longterm, Google Hire.

Google Hire is Google’s entry into the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) marketplace that is built around an integration with their entire Google Suite of office products (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Drive, etc.). The integration is so tight that you can’t even demo Google Hire if you’re not already a Google office suite customer! Basically, it won’t work unless you use the Google suite.

Rob Kelly, at Ongig, did an exceptional write up of his demo of Google Hire, last week, click on the link to read his take.

One critical factor about Google Hire is that it is designed for the SMB market, for the most part under 500 employees. They might be able to move mid-market, but as of right now, their main focus will be employers who have less than 1,000 employees, who are using the Google suite of products.

Ongig also looked at some pricing around Google Hire:

  • $2,400 per year  for 50 employees
  • $4,800 per year for 100 employees
  • $12,000 per year  for 250 employees
  • $24,000 per year for 500 employees*
  • $48,000 per year for 1,000 employees*

While it’s not ‘free’, Google Hire isn’t expensive for what you get, especially in the SMB ATS market.

One main attraction for using Google Hire as your ATS (and it’s a HUGE attraction) is having direction integration with Google for Jobs, and the potential ability to more than likely have your jobs show up higher in Google’s search results.

In the past, you got great free traffic from Indeed, in the future that free traffic will most likely be coming from Google for Jobs. The assumption is if you’re using Google Hire, you’ll be getting more free traffic than those not using Google Hire.

Another pretty big advantage Google Hire has over most SMB ATSs on the market is its search capability using Artificial Intelligence/Natural Language technology that its Google Cloud Jobs Discovery career site search technology uses. ATSs, especially within the SMB market, are notoriously bad at search, Google Hire will not be.

There are really so many awesome features Google built into their ATS, click over to Rob’s article to read more details.

So, how big can Google Hire really get? 

We know there are millions of corporate G-suite users and most of these users fall in that under 1,000 employee position. This means Google Hire has a giant potential to grow, and grow very quickly, especially if Google decided to just give Hire away for free! Even as a paid technology, Google Hire looks to be a must-demo ATS for those looking to make a move to a new ATS.

The SMB ATS market is tricky. Most SMBs don’t have a ton of money to spend on TA tech, so even though Google Hire is relatively inexpensive for what you get, most still don’t have thousands of dollars budgeted to make this switch. For those SMBs that are fairly tech savvy, I suspect those will be the first to make the jump because of the G-suite integration.

Google Hire has the ability to be the dominant leader in the SMB ATS market, but only for those organizations using the G-suite at this moment. Lack of Microsoft Office/Outlook integration will keep it down market, as most larger organizations are too far down the path of using Microsoft, and ultimately that’s where most ATSs are making their money.

If you’re an SMB shop, and you use the G-Suite products, and you are looking for a new ATS, you would be crazy not to have Google Hire on your demo list. But, Google Hire isn’t the best ATS on the market, even at the SMB level, as Lever, Greenhouse, and SmartRecuriters all offer a better product as of right now.

T3 – Which Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is the best?

I’ve said this a number of times, but it’s the question that never goes away. It’s the single most asked question I get in person, online, through email and messaging. There hasn’t been a week go by in the past two years where I’m not asked in some form this question!

The question comes in a number of variations:

  • Which ATS do you use?
  • Which ATS should we use?
  • Which ATS is the best?

I get it! Talent Acquisition is finally moving from awkward teen to young adult. It’s time we stop driving the hand-me-down beater and buy our first new car! We don’t want to make a bad choice and buy a lemon, and unfortunately, Consumer’s Report has yet to give us a list of the ATS “Best Buys”.

This is one reason I love Ongig’s, and Rob Kelly’s continued research and analysis of the Applicant Tracking market. This past week Ongig released their 2017 version of The Top Applicant Tracking Systems Annual Report. I love this report because there’s nothing else like it on the planet! I also like it because the ATS vendors try and tear it apart, which tells me it’s probably fairly accurate!

If it wasn’t good, they would make fun it and laugh it off. We see that frequently with these types of reports that are built on bad data, but this report hits them differently, and most find some value out of what it’s saying. I’ll say, that the 2017 report is far in away the best one that Rob and Ongig have put out!

The data comes from over 3,000 employers from SMB to Enterprise, so a great sample size.

Here are some highlights from the report:

– There are hundreds of ATSs on the market, but Ongig found about 99 ATSs make up almost 100% of the market.

“Homegrown” is not the name of an ATS (although you could now get some great SEO if you changed your ATS name to “Homegrown”!) it means a company built their own, or they’re using MS Excel, etc.

– Depending on how many job open at one time, there’s a popular ATS for your size:

  • 1000+ job openings (Enterprise) – Taleo, IBM Kenexa and iCims are the top three (TalentStream by CareerBuilder is one that pops up here with a good chunk of market share that I would think would surprise people – built in the last two years, TalentStream is more advanced from a technology perspective than most of the big boys)
  • 999 to 250 (Large) – Taleo, IBM Kenexa, and iCims
  • 249 to 100 (Mid to Large) – Taleo, iCims, and Kenexa are the top three, but #4 you begin to see Jobvite.
  • 99 – 25 (Mid)  – Taleo, Jobvite, and Greenhouse. I’ll say if you have under 100 job openings at any one time there is no reason you should be using Taleo!
  • 24-10 (SMB) – Greenhouse, Taleo, Lever and SmartRecruiters.
  • 0-9 (Small) – SmartRecruiters, Greenhouse, Lever.

– Fastest Growing ATSs might be a better gauge at what ATSs you should be demoing! Those are (in order): Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, WorkDay, and Lever. I’ll say WorkDay gets in under ‘fastest’ growing, but only because they convert their HRIS clients over to the recruiting product.

– The top ATS market for staffing agencies is: Bullhorn, PC Recruiter, BrightMove, CATS ATS, Crelate, and Compas. The problem here is most are built for direct-hire staffing and not contingent staffing which is growing fast and will continue. The contingent market is different in that they need an ATS that also flows into a pay-bill backend which no one has figured out well how to have great ATS technology and solid backend pay-bill.

– Tons of organizations every year which from one ATS to another. You see companies going from Taleo to Workday, iCims to Taleo, Taleo to iCims, Jobvite to Greenhouse, etc. What I find in most of these situations is the leader who implemented the original system has left and the new leader wants something they’re familiar with or just something ‘new’. Rarely are they actually upgrading to an ATS that is noticeably better?

Go check out the full report over at Ongig.

So, which ATS is the best? That is completely dependent on you and your needs. If you really want to know what I think, send me a note and I’ll give you an opinion based on a few things like the size of your organization and what your needs are.

The Recruiter Nation Live Hangout Series – With Jobvite and Fistful of Talent!

Our first hangout is at 1 pm ET on Tuesday, November 14th 

Google for Jobs/ROI of Recruitment Marketing Spend! What You Need to Know to Look Smart!!

 REGISTER FOR THE HANGOUT BY CLICKING THIS LINK!!!

If you’re a client or follower of Jobvite, you know the Recruiter Nation Live series.  It started with the Recruiter Nation Live Conference in San Francisco last June and continued with the Recruiter Nation Live Roadshow that brought real recruiter talk to 9 cities in North America over the last three months. 

The feedback was great – you loved it, so they are back with the latest in the series – the Recruiter Nation Live Hangout Series.  Once a month, they’ll be hosting a Google Hangout designed to keep the conversation among recruiters going – focused on things you can use, like the best-kept secrets of today’s smartest and most efficient recruiters, Jedi-mind tricks proven to make you more persuasive/ get great candidate response and strategies to hold your hiring managers accountable for their choices–so everyone wins.

I’ll be on the first hangout and it is at 1 pm ET on Tuesday, November 14th and will be hosted by Kris Dunn and me, focused on the following juicy topic:

 Google for Jobs/ROI of Recruitment Marketing Spend! What You Need to Know to Look Smart!!

 REGISTER FOR THE HANGOUT BY CLICKING THIS LINK!!!

Let’s have some fun and learn from each other at the same time.  See you at 1 pm ET on November 14th!!!