Category Archives: Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals

Could We Use Congestion Pricing Theory in Recruiting? #SourceCon

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Oh, lord, what the heck is Sackett talking about now!?

Congestion Pricing Theory (CPT) is basically paying more for convenience. We see it used on things like tollways, where if you want to ride on this road you pay a premium, or if you want to use this certain lane on a tollway you pay more for the access to a less congested lane of traffic.

You also see it at places like the movies. You pay $12 per ticket to go to a movie on a Saturday night at 8 pm, but if you go at 10 am on a Tuesday morning, you might get that same ticket for $8. It costs more to go during the busy time.

Airlines fully embrace CPT when you pay a little more to get on the plane first so you don’t have to deal with full overhead bins, etc. Theme parks now have tickets you can buy that lets you bypass the long lanes. Congestion Pricing Theory allows consumers to pay more for what they believe is important to them.

So, could we use this model in recruiting?

Let’s say you’re Google and you have thousands of people apply to your jobs that will never get seen. Could Google use CPT to allow applicants to pay an upcharge if they were certain to have their application examined and given feedback? Maybe it’s $25.

For $25 you can be assured your application will have a real human look at it. Would you pay to ensure that would happen? Depends on the company, the job, the competition, your income level, etc. But, the reality is, if someone turns CPT on in their hiring process, and their brand is very attractive, people would pay the fee!

Now, ethically, is this right?

Ethically is it right to have roads paid for by tax dollars, then to drive on those roads in a less congested way, you still have to pay more money? Is it right to charge one person a different, higher, price for the same service that another person paid less for?

One of the main complaints that candidates have about applying for jobs is the lack of information. The reason they don’t get the information they want is it costs too much money for organizations to properly staff TA shops in a way that would allow them to give this high level of feedback.

Congestion Pricing models would definitely give candidates and organizations an option to offer this service for those candidates who truly wanted the feedback they desired or at least more feedback then they’ve historically been given.

So, we don’t do this because we’ll say it impacts the poor and those out of work the most. They can’t afford the price to ensure they will be seen, so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I think it’s interesting that this is the main argument of doing something like this, but we don’t argue this type of pricing when it comes to other parts of our life where these things used to be free, and now they are not.

I’m not saying that we limit those who apply. All are still open to apply and all will have the same experience as they had before. Some, who choose to have an elevated candidate experience, will choose to pay for that experience.

I’m not saying this will ever happen, but if it does, I’m not going to be shocked because we’ve seen so many successes using CPT in other areas of our lives.

What do you think? Hit me in the comments.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @LinkedIn Talent Insights – LI’s newest product!

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Today on the Weekly Dose I take a look at LinkedIn’s newest product, LinkedIn Talent Insights, which is getting released today for public consumption. Talent Insights is LinkedIn’s first self-serve data and analytics product. Talent Insights provides companies with access to LinkedIn’s global database of 575M+ professionals, 20M+ companies and 15M+ active job listings, to help talent professionals and business leaders develop a winning workforce strategy and make smarter talent decisions more quickly.

What we know is if LinkedIn has anything, it has data! I first got to see this product at the 2017 LinkedIn Talent Connect conference when it was still in beta and they weren’t even quite sure what they had yet, and I was like, “Oh, boy! this is crazy cool!”

Here’s how it’s crazy cool. Talent Insights provides access to LinkedIn’s global, accurate and up-to-date data through two reports:

  • With the Talent Pool report, companies will be able to precisely define and understand specific populations of talent with global insights including skills the talent has, what industries and locations they’re in are, how in demand they are, what schools and degrees they have and what companies are hiring them.
  • Using the Company report, companies will be able to understand their own talent at the company level and see how well they are doing in attracting and retaining talent, and develop branding and recruiting strategies to get even better.

Here’s what companies can expect.

  • On-demand data: Talent Insights users will have the ability to access LinkedIn insights, in real-time, to quickly answer complex talent questions. As members update their profiles, the aggregated data within LTI also updates, providing real-time updates to help companies keep up with the market.
  • Actionable insights: The tool is simple and easy to use making it possible for recruiters, HR, and talent leaders to understand the most accurate view of labor market trends at any given moment, without relying on a team of data scientists.

So, why is this something HR, Talent Acquisition, Marketing/PR, Sales, and a lot of other functions in your company will want to get their hands on it? 

Talent Insights provides some super cool competitor data you can’t get anywhere else!

Need to know what kinds of people your competition is hiring and where? Talent Insights can show you that! In fact, it can give you insight to stuff your competitors are working on that isn’t even public if you can just connect a few dots!

“Hey, why is ABC, Inc. hiring a ton of autonomous developers in Omaha!? Oh, no they aren’t, are they!? Yes, they are!”

Talent Insights also gives HR leaders insight to your current workforce, like who’s coming after your talent, where are your employees going, where are the best coming from, where should you be looking to build your next headquarters (I bet Amazon is looking at this!), etc.

This is definitely a product that TA Leaders will want to leverage, and I’m in love with it’s ability to pull competitor data. Just know, as you’re pulling your competition’s data, so might they be pulling yours, and there’s nothing you can do about it. LinkedIn Talent Insights is available to anyone who wants to pay for a subscription, and you don’t have to be a customer of other LI products to get it.

LinkedIn Talent Insights is definitely worth a demo. You might find it’s just not data that your organization needs, but I think the more competitive you are within your marketplace, executitves are always willing to listen to you a little longer when your wrap your needs and wants around competitive data, so take a look!

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.

“Overqualified” is Just another word for Age Discrimination

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Had a really talented lady reach out to me the other day. 49 years old, college grad, great portfolio of work. She has been interviewing and is being told she is “Overqualified”.

There is some truth about her being called this. She does have more qualifications than the position requires, but she fully understands what the job is and she wants to do that job, with no notion of wanting to do more than that job, unless her performance shows she’s capable of moving up and the company needs her to move up.

“Overqualified” is just another way to say “Hey, I think you’re too old to work for me!”

Tell me I’m wrong! Give me all the reasons someone is “Overqualified” for a job they want to work at and understand what the job specs are?

I’m a Heart Surgeon but it’s a stressful job, so I decided to take a step back and just do some Cardiac Rehab work. Still get to work with heart patients, but it’s a less stressful workload and pays a heck of lot less, you need less education to do that job.

Am I overqualified to do Cardiac Rehab if I have experience as a heart surgeon? Only if you tell me I am! It’s a job I want, and I have the skills and desire to do that job, so I would say I’m quite qualified to do that job, not overqualified.

TA pros and hiring managers say someone is overqualified when they’re too stupid to come up with another reason about why they don’t want to hire someone who has great experience and more years of experience.

“Oh, Tammy, yeah, she’s overqualified to work in that job. I mean she wouldn’t be happy long-term reporting to me, and I mean she has more experience than I have!” Oh, she told you that? “Um, no.”

I constantly run into retired people who aren’t ready to retire and want to keep doing valuable work. They have great skills and knowledge, but 32-year-old Steve won’t hire them because Steve believes they won’t take his direction. That’s a Steve-issue, not the candidate’s issue!

By the way, this isn’t a young-to-middle-aged guy problem, women are just as bad! Turns out we all love to discriminate against old people, equally!

Tech companies are the worse. Creative companies are the second worse.

Tech companies believe only young people know technology. Creative companies think the only people who buy products and services are 26-year-olds on Instagram and Snap.

“Tim, you just don’t get it. I don’t want to hire someone who is going to retire in 5 years!” What’s your average tenure at your company? “4.2 years” Yeah, having someone for 5 years would really suck for you!

I had a hiring manager tell me this once when he interviewed a person who was 52! “I need someone who is going to stay long term!” Um, 13-15 years isn’t long term?! You’re an idiot!

I find telling hiring managers “You’re an idiot!” is super effective in getting through to them, and cutting straight through to their bias. It has worked 100% of the time in my career. It really works across all biases.

So, now tell me, why don’t you hire someone who is ‘overqualified”?

Influencers or Analysts – Who has the most impact to your brand?

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The worlds of Influencers and Analysts have never collied more than they are right now in the HR industry. Most of this has to do with the popularity of Influencer Marketing that has taken off in the past decade, and like most things in HR, we are now just catching up with the marketing trend.

Traditionally, in the HR space, companies selling products, technology, and services only really cared about two things: 1. What do our clients think of us, and 2. What do the “Analysts” think of us?

What’s an Analyst? 

Every industry has them. These are basically individuals who work for organizations like Deloitte, Gartner, Forrester Research, IDC, and hundreds of boutique firms specializing in specific parts of the HR ecosystem. The individuals spend a great deal of time understanding the landscape of a specific function in HR, the technology, the processes, what works and what doesn’t, etc. Then your organization pays their organization a great deal of money for this expert knowledge.

The hope is, using this expert Analyst knowledge will ultimately help you save time, money, and missteps because you’ve hired a firm of experts to help you make the right decisions. Many of these experts have never actually worked a day in HR, but hold MBAs and such. Some of these people are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and if you listened to them, they could truly help you. Some are idiots working for a big firm.

Examples of Analyst I admire: William Tincup, Madeline Laurano, Trish McFarlane, George LaRocque, Ben Eubanks, Kyle Lagunas, John Sumser, Holger Mueller, Jason Cerrato, Josh Bersin, etc.

This will then beg the question of well, then, what’s an Influencer? 

Influencer marketing has been around for a hundred years, but Kim Kardashian is the queen of modern day influencers. I’m famous! You see me talking about or using this product. You buy this product. That’s really the backbone of influencer marketing. I mean Kimmy D would never steer you wrong, would she?

An Influencer is anyone in an industry that a measurable amount of people are listening to, that will the influence their buying behavior. I write a blog post on some product that I’m using in my own shop. It’s super awesome! You go out, look at it, and decide to buy it and use it with your team. You’ve been influenced.

Most of the influencers in the HR industry are current or former practitioners, they’ve lived your life. Some are super smart and have the resume to back it up. Some are complete idiots. Any idiot can have a blog (I’m a great example!). Most influencers, like an analyst, have a specialty, something they’re better at than other stuff. Some influence full time, but most hold down ‘real’ jobs to pay the bills. So, they probably don’t have the time to deep dive into the industry, as you’ll see with analysts.

Examples of Influencers I admire: Kris Dunn, Dawn Burke, Carmen Hudson, Robin Schooling, Jason Lauritsen, Laurie Ruettimann, Jennifer McClure, Sharlyn Lauby, Steve Browne, Sabrina Baker, Joey Price, Mary Flaukner, Jessica Merrell, Janine Truitt, etc. (there’s really too many to name!)

Many of these people are HR Famous! They have worked hard to create an audience who for the most part listens to what they have to say.

You also have people that fall into this strange middle ground of Influencer-Analysts types that have no name. Maybe they started out as an influencer, then became an Analyst, or maybe they were an Analyst who became popular and started influencing. Examples in this camp are folks like: Josh Bersin, Jason Averbook, Sarah Brennen, Trish McFarlane, Ben Eubanks, etc.

(BTW – All of these people you should connect to! )

So, who has the most impact on your Brand? Influencers or Analysts? 

This is not an easy question to answer because like almost anything it depends on a lot! We all know of a certain product we love and regardless of the influence or what some expert is telling us, we will just buy it because we love it!

We also have an untold number of products and services we buy because someone we trust told us about it, and because we trust them, we go buy it.

If you’re a large enterprise level product or service, basically selling to companies that have more than 5,000 employees, you better make nice with the Analyst community! They tend to have the ear of more enterprise buyers then you’ll typically see from influencers. I doubt very highly the CHRO of Google is reading this blog! (but I know the CPO of GM is!)

What I see is companies selling to enterprise usually work with both Analyst and Influencers. They want to ensure their message is heard across the buying community, so they don’t miss out on a potential buyer, and they have the money to do both.

Companies selling to under 5,000 employees and it starts to get a little harder to determine the impact of Analysts. I mean how many HR and Talent shops in Small to Medium sized businesses have the money to pay for Analysts Research? Not many! If you run an HR shop of a 1500 person company, you do not have $50,000 to hear what the best ATS is! The ATS you buy won’t even cost $50K!

Behind the scenes, most analysts understand their biggest impact in on the enterprise buyer, and because that’s where the money is, that’s exactly where they want to be! If you have buyers across small, medium, large, and enterprise markets, it then becomes a more difficult decision on how you use Influencer marketing.

The real answer to the question above is you engage with the analyst and influencers that have the most positive impact to selling your product. Unfortunately, most organizations have little or no idea if either side is having an impact to selling their stuff.

Who has the juice? 

I call someone who has ‘real’ influence as having the “juice”. If you have the ‘juice’ you have the ability to influence real buying decisions on a regular basis. Laurie Ruettimann tells you to go out and buy this new great HR product, and that organization will see a measurable sales increase directly tied to the links in her posts. She’s got juice!

I wrote about an HR Tech company a few months ago after a demo and a month later they sent me a bottle of gin because they landed a six-figure deal directly from my mentioning them in a post. That’s gin and juice! 😉

Most people who call themselves influencers in the HR space have little or no juice. Usually, because they just don’t have a large enough, sustained audience who is listening. They might be 100% correct in their recommendations and insight, but not enough people are listening to move the buying needle.

I love what the folks are doing over at HRMarketer because they are actually showing organizations who have the juice and who doesn’t. I can tell you I have the juice and say I’m the #1 Influencer in the HR marketplace, but the reality is, anyone can say that! HRMarketer is actually giving data behind those words to let people know where the real juice is.

The truth around all of the analyst vs. influencer chatter is that you’ll find people in both groups who can help you, and people in both groups who are complete idiots and have no value. The best thing to do is build a relationship with both, find out who moves your needle and aligns with the messaging you’re trying to get out, and then measure. Eventually, you’ll find the right mix that will work for your organization.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: My Review of The HR Technology Conference #HRTechConf

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Last week was my HR Nerd Christmas as I was attending the annual, and world’s largest, HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas. It’s one of my favorite conferences to attend, the expo is beyond words, the content has increasingly gotten really good, and they keep pushing the envelope and trying new ways to engage the audience. Hat tip to conference chair Steve Boese and the LRP crew!

What did I like this year at HR Tech? 

– The inaugural Pitchfest was a freaking homerun! 30 companies pitched their product to judges in the middle of the expo hall with giant crowds surrounding the stage. The energy was awesome. People who watched it got to find out about 30 new companies and determine which ones they might want to deep dive later.  6 Finalist emerged, with one winner! (To be fair, all 30 were winners as just making the round of 30 gives each company some great publicity) The finalists were:

Blendoor – (The overall Winner) – is a hiring technology that reduces unconscious bias by hiding data that’s not relevant and highlighting data that is. Their CEO, Stephanie Lampkin, blew everyone away!

ComplianceHR – is the first ever and only, a suite of intelligent employment applications, delivering expert legal guidance at internet speed and scale. Like your own employment attorney without the $500 per hour fees.

Jane.ai – Jane is an artificial intelligence platform that makes all of your company’s information accessible through chat. Like having your own HR robot that can answer almost everything!  (This was one of my finalists during my judging – very impressive!)

RelishCareers – a job board platform that helps grad school students and alumni get discovered by employers looking for top talent.

SwarmVision – A globally-validated Profiler to assess your innovation skills. Need to increase the amount of innovation in your company? This was really cool.

Talvista – (The overall diversity winner) -provides a view beyond the noise of unconscious bias, ensuring a skilled talent pool and workforce that is more diverse and inclusive. While Blendoor’s CEO was the best presenter, Talvista had the better technology in this space.

Many of the 30 that presented that didn’t make the final six just weren’t able to articulate what they did and why you should buy them in the 3-minute pitch and 2 minute Q&A allotted. That is super tough! Put yourself in front of anyone right now, start the clock, and tell them why they should use you, over everyone else, in three minutes!  Oh, and surround yourself with hundreds of onlookers!

– iCIMS CMO, Susan Vitale, on her panel said that out of their thousands of clients, millions of candidates, they’ve seen a 90% increase, year over year, in candidate traffic coming from Google For Jobs (GFJ). It was just one example at the conference of the impact GFJ is making across the industry that everyone is watching. For decades we’ve conditioned candidates to look for jobs, first via job boards, then via sites like Indeed, and now it will be through Google for Jobs.

– Monster.com came out of hibernation to announce a new leadership team, and some new technology, including Monster Studios, which lets you record, edit and publish video job ads from a smartphone in minutes. Loved the tech! And all the data shows video job ads get a higher response rate. Beyond that, Monster, like CareerBuilder and ZipRecruiter, has done a great job helping their clients navigate the job schema around Google for Jobs and they are seeing huge traffic increases. JobBoards didn’t die, they just re-tooled, and are still relevant in the talent attraction game. If you haven’t checked them out in the past 24 months, it’s worth some testing if you’re struggling with your traffic and Indeed is asking you to spend the double amount you did last year.

– Chatbots are everywhere, even if you’re not seeing them, yet. Some of the coolest A.I. I saw was Jane.Ai and AllyO. When A.I. first hit hte market they were extremely careful to say this tech wouldn’t eliminate the need for real humans, that marketing didn’t work, so they are now willing, to tell the truth! It does! That’s what the ROI is based on! Hello! Also, this tech, while not perfect, has exceptional potential and it keeps getting better.

– The future of the HR Tech and TA Tech stack are not a big umbrella, we do everything, enterprise systems (Workday, Oracle, SAP, etc.). The future of the tech stack is something akin to the Apple App Store. You have your base HR Tech platform, let’s say Ultimate Software, and then you go into their App store and pick the best of breed tech you want it to work with! Same with the TA Tech space. You pick an ATS like Greenhouse, then pick all of the TA tech you want it to work with, sourcing, interview, assessments, etc. But, not as it is right now with integrations and separate contracts, etc. Pick your core, foundation tech, then surround it with the best tech on the market that fits your business needs. There were a number of new startups positioning themselves in this space. We want all the advantages of using “one” system, but one system can’t give you all the best tech. For those who want the best tech, in all aspects, your world is coming!

If you’re an HR or Talent Acquisition leader today, one of your core competencies has to be around technology. It used to be that we would just allow IT or the CFO to pick what we used, but we’ve quickly moved into a world where your HR and Recruiting tech stack has a unique competitive and strategic advantage. Future HR and TA Leaders will not be sitting on the sidelines when ‘their’ tech stack is chosen.

If you haven’t been to The HR Technology Conference, or haven’t been for a few years, it’s something as a leader you must put back into your plan for next year! Way too much to learn here about how modern HR and TA practics are running!

The Real Problem In Talent Attraction #HRTechConf

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Well, clearly, Tim, it’s our process sucks! We need to fix our process! Once we fix our process everything will be fine!

Well, clearly, Tim, it’s our technology! Our ATS sucks! SUCKS, I say! Once we get our new ATS everything will be fine!

Well, clearly, Tim, it’s our career site! Have you seen our site, it sucks!? Once we get our new career site everything will be fine!

It’s our recruiters. It’s our brand. It’s our…

It actually might be all of this but the real problem you have with attracting talent is friction.

Friction is every step we put in place between a candidate and that candidate getting hired. Fill out an application – friction point. Answer these screening questions – friction point. Go through five in-person interviews – friction points.

The only thing a TA Leader should be doing is working to eliminate candidate friction. How can I get a candidate to connect with a hiring manager with the least amount of friction?

The best talent will come to work for you, but the better talent the less open they are to adding friction into their life. “Well, if you just let me talk to Mary the manager of that group, I’ll take that call. But if you make me click 8 times to find your job, then make me register to apply, then make me take three calls from your TA team, then make me take a pre-employment assessment, etc. I have no interest in going through that amount of friction!”

I’m out at The HR Technology Conference this week and I’m doing a presentation today with a great friend and super smart lady, Shaunda Zilich. Our talk will be about Real-Life Recruitment Marketing, and one of the big topics we talk about is the concept of friction elimination. How do I connect a candidate with the hiring manager in as few steps as possible?

Shaunda and I share a belief that getting candidates and hiring managers to have conversations is a big key to being great at hiring! See, real high-level stuff, right!? I joke, but think about your own process and how many steps does it take to get a candidate and a hiring manager together?

I put this tweet up a while back:

In a nutshell, this is all bad talent acquisition. We add friction. We make candidates search to find our jobs. Jump through hoops to apply to our jobs. Then jump through more hoops to ‘show’ us they want to come work for us.

Then we tell our CEO we need to spend a million dollars a year on third-party search because “there’s just not any talent available”.

The real problem with talent attraction has everything to do with the amount of friction you add to your recruiting process. In the end, are you making it difficult for candidates to tell you they love you or are you making it really easy?

Talent acquisition is super hard if you don’t make it easy.

Recruiters – How are you celebrating #GlobalTADay?

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Today is a big day in Talent Acquisition! The Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP) is launching Global TA Day to celebrate all the talent acquisition professionals that are working hard every day to ensure their organizations have the talent they need to thrive!

ATAP launched the site ilovetalentacquisition.com, in conjunction with our founding sponsor KRT Marketing and you can follow the action that is happening across the country as events are taking place in major cities throughout the day. On the site, you’ll find some great downloads to help you and your team celebrate!

I’ll be in downtown Detroit today and on Facebook live around 1pm EST, as I’ll be celebrating #GlobalTADay with the over 100 TA Pros on the team at Quicken Loans as they are using today as their annual TA Summit where the team will have development and strategy sessions throughout the day, and some fun and celebration as well!

To check out the Facebook Live feed today just go to the Global TA Day Facebook Page!

So, I’m guessing most of you were caught off guard by this! Like, what is Global, what!?! I get it, but it’s not too late to find ways to celebrate today. Here’s how I would celebrate if I was in the office today:

  1. I would follow along on the Twitter hashtag #GlobalTADay and connect with other TA Pros from around the world!
  2. I would ask another TA Pro on my team to get lunch or go get a drink after work, or I might go buy some sweet treats to share around the office!
  3. I would watch some of the celebrations taking place around the world today on the Facebook Live feed.
  4. I would take some time to reflect on while our profession is extremely difficult, especially right now, I’m so grateful for having found a job and industry that I love working in!
  5. I would go signup to be a member of the only professional association the supports my interests ATAP Global! Today only you get an annual membership for $85! (a $10 discount). TODAY ONLY! By the way, I’m the next President of ATAP, so come help me build something great!
  6. I would go on Amazon and buy the best TA Book on the Planet and #1 Best Seller and 5 Star rated – The Talent Fix! (just kidding, no really I would!)!

So, have fun with Global TA Day! You deserve it!

DisruptHR Detroit 2.0 – September 20th! Tickets Available Now! #Detroit #DisruptHR #HRParty

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Detroit Metro HR and Talent Peeps!

We’re back!!!

On September 20th in Midtown Detroit, DisruptHR Detroit 2.0 will be taking place onsite at our host Quicken Loans! The cost to attend this event is $30 which includes some great food and drinks, an exceptional list of speakers, and great prizes!

Here are our 2.0 speakers for this event:

Speakers for the 2018 DisruptHR Detroit 2.0:

Tina Marie Wholfied

Don’t Fear The Peacocks! Embracing Organizational Change through Diversity

Melissa Fairman

Make Work Suck Less! 

Melanie Stern

Hiring for Culture Fit Not Add
Becky Andree

CODE RED!  Leadership Development has flatlined!
But I have a Defibrillator!

Kimika Garrett

Planning with a Twist
Danielle Crane

Nobody Smokes in Church
Kat Hoyer

Stop trying to make your employees Happy
Josh Schneider

The Tingly Feeling Compass
Michelle Clark

The Power of Purpose – Stop Sucking the Life Out

of Your People!
Chris Groscurth

Hustle Smarter: Future-Ready Human Resource

Leaders
Iris Ware

They said we couldn’t do it, but we did!

Cody Grant

The Dynamic Art of Job Descriptions

Not only will this event be awesome, but this year we added an “After Party” to take place onsite for continued networking with peers and friends!

DisruptHR Detriot 1.0 had over 200+ participants and it was a sellout. This event is almost half sold already, so get your tickets today!

Register for DisruptHR Detroit! 

 

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Talentegy – it’s Google Analytics for your Talent data!

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Today on The Weekly Dose I take a look at the talent experience management (TXM) technology Talentegy. Did you catch the new marketing phrase they created!? TXM? I love it. It’s just like the made-up marketing phrase Candidate Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) that have swept the world!

So, what the heck is Talentegy?

In simple terms, Talentegy is a technology that is constantly tracking and measuring the experience of those candidates, and employees, who are applying to your jobs, working within your talent and HR systems, etc. This is important because we tend to always have little things going on and we want to know about them as soon as possible.

Maybe it’s a broken link in a job description, or some part of your application process or pre-hire assessment is causing candidates to not finish, etc. Talentegy can show you where this is happening and instantly alert your team of what’s going on. It can also show you how to improve the entire experience so you get more people through the process.

The best piece is, like Google Analytics, there isn’t any integration needed and it can work with all of the major ATSs, CRMs, and talent management systems. It’s a pretty simple process of placing some tags in the pages being visited and you instantly start collecting data of what’s going on in your process in real-time (FYI – the dumbest person on your IT team can handle this, or your ATS/CRM provider can walk you through this!).

What I like about Talentegy: 

– The system will record video of the actual problem so you can see exactly what a candidate or an employee is experiencing. This is important because so often the explanation we get is difficult to decipher what is really happening. With Talentegy you get to see exactly what is happening.

– Talentegy built a ‘Slack’ like communication platform with the dashboard so you can instantly communicate both internally and externally with those who need to know. IT, HRIS, your vendors, are all on the same message flow so you can quickly diagnose the issue, decide who’s responsible, and follow up, all on one platform so nothing falls through the cracks.

– Talentegy also gives you the power to survey through popups at any point in your process. Find a friction point? Drop in a survey and find out how candidates or employees would make it better.

– Simplicity. While almost any technology you would use takes weeks, months to get up and running, Talentegy can be done almost immediately, and they’ll get you up and running for free so you can check it out! They do that because they know once you see what it can do, you’ll buy it!

Most of the technology I review is what I would call ‘Big Decision’ technology. It’s not something you’re going to demo and then just go “yeah, let’s do this!” You have to bring in other people, departments, etc. If you’re an HR or Talent Leader, Talentegy is one of those technologies that you demo and just make the immediate decision to start using, without consulting anyone!

Like most data driven technologies there is one thing you really need to make this valuable and that’s data! That means you probably have an organization of 1,000 ee’s or more, or you could be smaller but hiring a ton. Basically, you just need enough data to gain better insights. The cost isn’t really the issue, because I found Talentegy to be very cost effective for what you get.

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.

How Can You Become a Great HR/Talent Professional?

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I met an aspiring HR college student recently. The question was asked, “Tim, how can I be great at HR?” I told them to buy my book and read my blog and that’s really all there is to it! Just kidding, I said something after that as well! 😉

It’s a great question that ultimately has very little to do with HR or Talent Acquisition. To be great at HR, or anything, rarely do you have to be great at that certain skill set. For some things, it’s important: doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. But most professions you can learn the skills, so it’s about these other things that I told this young Padawan:

– Go deep on a few things. The world needs experts, not a generalist. Don’t kid yourself to think being a generalist is really what your organization wants. People say this when they are an expert in nothing. Be an expert in something and a generalist in a bunch of stuff.

– Don’t be super concerned with what you’re going deep on, just make sure it interests you. While it might not seem valuable now, at some point it probably will be. I’m not in love with employee benefits, but someone is and when I need help with that I’m searching for that person.

– Consume content inside and outside of your industry. Those with a never-ending appetite to learn are always more successful.

– Connect with people in your field outside of your company. We are in a time in the world where your network can be Pitbull Worldwide! Use that to your advantage. There is someone smarter than you a thousand miles away just waiting to help you.

– Just because someone older and more experienced than you might think something is unimportant, don’t give up on it. We all get used to what we are used to. Older people think Snapchat is stupid and it might be, but it also might unlock something awesome in our employment brand. Experience and age are super valuable until they aren’t.

– Constantly make stuff and test it. Some it will fail, most of it will be average, some of it will be awesome. Give yourself more chances for awesome! Don’t let someone tell you, “we tried that three years ago and it didn’t work”. Cool, let’s do it again, but this time change the name!

– Take a big chance early in your career. Find a company that you absolutely love and just find a way to work there in any position, then be awesome for a couple of years and see what happens. Working for a brand you love is beyond the best career feeling you’ll have.

– Don’t expect to be “HR famous” overnight, but the work you do right now will make you HR famous ten years from now. Do the work, fall in love with it, the fame will come down the road. “I want to blog and speak just like you, Tim!” Awesome, I started doing this a decade ago. Let’s get started right now!

– Don’t discount social skills in the real world. You can be the smartest most skilled person in the room, but the one with a personality is the one people will pay attention to. This is a skill that can be learned and constantly improved upon if you work at it.

– Spend time with Great HR and Talen pros. No one is really hiding their secret sauce, you just aren’t asking them questions. The key in spending time with others is not asking them to invest more in helping you than you’re willing to invest in making it happen. I get asked weekly for time from people who rarely are willing to help me in return.

Okay, as internships are concluding for the summer let’s help these aspiring professionals out! Give me your best advice in the comments!