Category Archives: Data Analytics

Live Streaming Today @Glassdoor’s Employer Branding Summit

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Today from 10am EST to 6:30pm EST – Glassdoor is Live Streaming their entire Employer Branding Summit from San Francisco!

Kris Dunn and I will be hosting the Live Stream with a Special Kick Off show starting at 10am EST, Halftime show at 3pm EST and special segments at breaks throughout the day!  We will be giving out special prizes to those watching the Live Stream and interacting with us throughout the day!

You can watch Live Stream for FREE by clicking on this Link.

The agenda is packed with some of the best Employment Branding minds in the business:

Glassdoor Speakers

 

 

Check it out! It’s like the next best thing besides actually being there with us, which is pretty cool. I mean you have Kris and I doing our best ESPN SportsCenter acting jobs!

 

The 19 Types of HR & Talent Software You Need

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I’m a virgin when it comes to HR Technology.  When I first got into really studying the industry I probably put HR technology into about three buckets: HR system of record, applicant tracking systems and payroll.  If you had those three types of software you had what you basically needed to run HR.

My friends, William and John, over at Key Interval Research recently released their latest study called “The Optimal Technical Stack”. The goal being let’s figure out what pieces of HR and Talent Technology you really need to run a ‘complete’ HR shop, and ideal HR shop.  If money was no object, what technology solutions should you have to be great?

Here’s the list. I’m going to put in order to what I think you should invest in first to last. The guys at Key Interval did not do this. They do real research, this ranking is just my opinion:

1. Human Resource Information System (HRIS)

2. Payroll

3. Recruiting/Talent Acquisition (Applicant Tracking Systems & Recruiting Automation)

4. Benefits Management

5. OnBoarding

6. Total Rewards (Recognition)

7. Performance Management

8.  Time & Attendance/Scheduling (Key broke T&A and Scheduling out separately, I think they go together)

9. Learning Management

10. HR Analytics

11. Succession Management

12. Engagement Tools

13. Recruiting Tools (Interviewing tools and Assessments – Key broke these out as two separate categories)

14. Wellness Management

15. Compensation Management

16. Employment Websites (CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, etc.)

17. Collaboration/Communication Tools (Tools that help your employees communicate with each other: Yammer, TINYPulse, Chatter, etc.)

18. Case Management (Employee hotlines, tracking calls and issues brought into HR, etc.)

19. Workforce Planning & Workforce Management (Key had these broken out, but I think they actually probably fall into one of the 18 categories I have listed above somewhere)

You might rank this list differently depending on the situation you find yourself in with your current organization.  If I had my HR shop locked in and running down the tracks smoothly, maybe I would move up Wellness. If I had a crunch on hiring, maybe I move up some of the recruiting, interviewing talent attraction types of technology.

I think most people would look at this list and believe that their HR ‘suite’ is providing them with most, if not all of this stuff.  The reality is, most suites are good with about three of these, touch another three, and try to make you believe they have another three. That makes nine pieces they might cover, which leaves a ton of technology you just don’t have.

If you were to listen to any HR or Talent technology vendor in 2015, you would be led to believe that the only piece of technology you really need is HR Analytics!  That’s all we hear in the marketplace right now.

Another fascinating piece from the Key Interval research was that Succession Technology is ranked as the most desired need of organizations. Yet, has one of the lowest market penetrations. Also, it was clear to me, that organizations don’t really see any leader in this space. Most respondents used one of three tools for Succession: Some in-house/home grown (like an Excel spreadsheet), relied on what their HRIS suite offered (which is probably very weak) or relied on what their Learning Management system offered (probably weaker yet!).

No real players in Succession Technology!  Sounds like an opportunity…

Fascinating research and data from Key Interval.  Check them out. I love receiving their reports!

 

T3- @HRCloud

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This week on T3 I’m reviewing the HRMS system of record technology HRCloud. HRCloud is a HR system of record technology designed for the SMB market.  They compete in the same space as BambooHR.  Companies that are probably looking at their first complete HR system, or updating from a home-grown solution to their integrated suite.

HRCloud has a super clean User Interface and a very modern look and feel.  It’s HR software like you expect HR software to be.  Easy to use. Adaptable to how you want to work, and thought out in a way that makes sense for everyday HR and Talent Acquisition processes.

HRCloud has three main modules: Core HR, Onboarding and Directory.  Core HR is what you think it is. Employee file information, employee position tracking, compensation basics, data analytics, etc.  Onboarding is what you should have in today modern age or giving new employees the forms and access to information they need, before they even show up on their first day.

Directory is a new module for HRCloud which is basically an App that all of your employees can access from any device.  Directory allows employees to find contact information on anyone in your company (company contact, not personal!).  Connect their social feeds, put a face to a name, share information about yourself, etc. This fosters a higher level of connectivity amongst your employees, and allows employees to find others with similar interests, raising engagement.

5 Things I really like about HRCloud:

1. I’m kind of a design snob when it comes to software, I’m finding. HRCloud kills it! I like simple and clean, and their inhouse design team flat out gets it, far more than most HR software design teams.

2. HRCloud doesn’t view themselves as an ‘entry level’ HRIS system, although their price point is in that range. They want to be your system for as big as you grow and they are building out their software to be that vendor.

3. They really have positioned themselves to be the Core HR system for technology companies. They built their processes around organizations that embrace technology and believe in technology, as can be seen in both their Onboarding and Directory products.

4. I really like how HRCloud tries to build in interaction and collaboration amongst your employees wherever possible within the system. I’m a big believer that if your employees are engaged with each other, they’ll be more engaged with their work.  Your organization ultimately benefits from this. This goes way beyond where most core HR systems are.

5. HRCloud recently added a bunch of new stuff including time off tracking, off-boarding (which most of don’t really think about!), benefit tracking and even asset management (what stuff your employees have – iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc. – all that stuff adds up!).

If you are in the market for a Core HR system, HRCloud is definitely one you need to take a look at.

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – 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 space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

T3- @Hirabl

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This week on T3 I take a look at the specialized staffing vendor software technology called Hirabl.  Hirabl is designed to help staffing companies catch revenue they missed because a client, or potential client, hired one of of the staffing vendors candidates, but never paid the fee. What!?!

Yep, it’s actually a fairly common occurrence in the staffing and talent acquisition game.  It can happen a number of ways. I don’t want my talent acquisition brother and sisters thinking I’m called them cheats.  99.9% of are completely above board, but .1% are sneaky!

Here’s how it all might go down:

An organization is contacted by a staffing company to help on an opening. A good staffing company will insist on a signed contract.  The get the signature and begin working.  The organization decides not to move forward with any of the staffing companies candidates. Both parties go on their way.  This happens a lot in the staffing world.

Fast forward six months down the road and the organization has the same opening.  They post the opening and a candidate comes into their ATS. The same candidate the staffing company presented six months prior.  By contract, that candidate is still ‘owned’ by the staffing firm. The organization hires the candidate, but never thinks about paying the staffing company. The staffing company has moved on and doesn’t even realize you hired their original candidate.  By contract the organization still owes the fee, but it’s rarely collected, because on one comes asking!

Hirabl has technology that goes out and through social profiles and your internal data, finds these circumstances.  You then get an alert, so you can go ‘remind’ the organization you presented the company to that they indeed owe you some money.  Depending on your volume, Hirabl, on average, is finding hundreds of thousands in lost fees.

You need a couple of things to make this successful: 1. Good, signed contracts; 2. Good data for them to search on. Most staffing companies, using a decent ATS, will have the data.  The contract question might be more difficult for some. In my organization we don’t do anything without signed contracts, so we would be good on that front as well.

I wanted to write about this for a couple of reasons. First, I know a lot of staffing folks who read my blog that can use this and get back some lost revenue. Second, I wanted those corporate talent acquisition folks to know that staffing vendors are getting more sophisticated, and some things that you might have gotten away with years ago, will soon be coming to an end.

Be careful signing a staffing contract. Usually, most staffing vendors are going to ‘own’ candidates they submit to you for at least twelve months.  That means if you hire one of those folks, even if that candidate came to you on their own, you contractually are liable for that fee. That’s why you should be signing a ton of contracts.  Find a few good firms. Work with them closely, and you won’t have any surprises.

You can better believe I’ll be trying Hirabl!  We do a ton of volume, and as much as I would like to think no client hired one of our folks, I know we’ll find some where it happened. Stay tuned!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – 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 space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

Hiring Is About To Get Really Difficult!

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One thing was abundantly clear from speakers and thought leaders at SHRM 2015, hiring is hard, and it’s about to get much harder!

That isn’t good news for any of us in HR and Talent Acquisition. There are two forces that are currently happening that are making hiring more difficult than it has been in over ten years:

  1. Solid economy and job growth.
  1. Baby Boomers leaving the workforce.

This isn’t earth shattering information, we all kind of new this was happening.  The issue is we are now all beginning to feel this in every part of the country and in almost every job category.  This means some things are going to happen, and the top HR and Talent Pros are already preparing for these:

  • Wage Growth: CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson spoke at SHRM on Tuesday and had some great data showing that organizations see wage growth of around 5% in 2015, and similar in years to come. Are you budgeting 5% increases? I’m guessing not!
  • Recruitment Process Challenges: How many steps does it take to apply for a job in your organization?  If it’s more than two, you’ve got problems!  Can someone apply for a job online with your organization without having a resume? Why not?  Matt also showed data from CareerBuilder showing 40% of HR and Talent Pros have never applied for one of their own jobs to better understand the true experience!
  • Technology Challenges: Do you have a way to reengage candidates in your system on a regular basis?  A system that allows you to let great talent know, that you already have in your system, when you have an opening that fits them? It’s called CRM, and only about 20% of companies have technology that can do this important recruitment marketing function!
  • Job Design Challenges: Too many of us are working and designing jobs like we are living in a society that was pre-internet, pre-ultra connected. We still think we need employees sitting in front of us from 8-5pm, Monday thru Friday. If they aren’t sitting in front of us, they must not be working! Indeed shared that 80% of job searches on their site include this single word: “Remote”!  Are you adjusting those jobs that can be flexible?

Those organizations that believe they can recruit and get talent like they have been doing for the last couple of decades are going to fail.  It’s really that simple.  Talent attraction will be a powerful strategic differentiator for organizations over the next decade, like almost no other time in our history.

The good news?  At no other point in our history do have access to the information on how to be successful!  Twenty years ago, doing great talent acquisition was mostly trying stuff and getting lucky.  In today’s world you can learn easily how the best organizations are attracting talent at conferences, on websites, in blogs, webinars, etc.  There are so many sources of this information, that we now have no excuse to improve what we are doing.  We just have to do it!

 

Live from #SHRM15 – S#*t HR Tech Salespeople Say!

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That’s right SHRMies today is the day!  2 pm West Coast time, because you know it’s the best coast, Kris Dunn, and I will be dropping knowledge at SHRM 2015. Our presentation will give you the ins and outs of selecting your next HR and/or Talent technology. We’ll also be talking HR vendor negotiating and give you keep insight to getting the best deal you can!

Check us out, if you’re here.  If you’re not, here’s a little taste of what you’ll be missing:

S#*t HR Tech Salespeople Say and How to Translate It!

“This software/tool pays for itself!”

Yeah, and so does that travel insurance you bought to protect your vacation last year!  This always goes well with another line they throw into the mix, “you’ll save so much money, you’ll be able to put money back to the bottomline of the business”.  If you believe this I’ve got some great land to sell in the Everglades!

“Buy now, before the price goes up in September!”

Every single time I hear this from an HR Tech salesperson I hang-up or end the conversation.  This is the cheesiest, of cheeseball lines that a salesperson can use when negotiating.  If you’re giving me a price in June, but I need a couple of months to get this decision through the proper channels, the price better be the same in sixty days.

“We don’t have that yet, but it’s in a future release!”

You know what else is in a future release?  Their ability to use 3D printers to make real rock star candidates!  Sure that future release might be 100 years down the road, but technically they didn’t lie to you!  If the product you’re looking at doesn’t have the functionality you need now, and it’s critical for you to have it, you need to walk away.  Too many things happen in the tech industry to plan on ‘a future release’ to make the product work for you.

Want some more?!?

We’ve got plenty, stop on down to the live show and check us out.  Kris and I are like the movie Twins, with Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwartzneggar.  He’s the big one. I’m the good looking one! I think that’s how that movie went…

Anyway, it’ll be fun.  If you couldn’t make it to SHRM, hit me with an email, and I’ll make sure you get a copy of the slide deck for the presentation.

The #1 Way to Communicate Success of a HR Change!

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Adobe recently changed their annual performance review process of the traditional once-per-year review to a more modern design of having frequent feedback throughout the year:

So, based in part on ideas crowdsourced from employees, Morris and her team scrapped annual evaluations and replaced them with a system called Check In. At the start of each fiscal year, employees and managers set specific goals. Then, at least every eight weeks but usually much more often, people “check in” with their bosses for a real-time discussion of how things are going. At an annual “rewards check-in,” managers give out raises and bonuses according to how well each employee has met or exceeded his or her targets. “Managers are empowered to make those decisions,” says Morris. “There is no ‘matrix.’ HR isn’t involved.”

A big change for any organization, for sure, but that’s not what this post is really about.  You see, Donna Morris, Adobe’s Sr. Global VP of People and Places could have easily just said it’s been a great success and shared stories from employees and hiring managers about how much they loved it. She could have shared retention metrics and employee engagement scores to show its success, but she didn’t. What shared did was absolutely brilliant! She shared this:

Getting feedback in real time, so everyone stays on track and is pulling in the same direction, has helped make Adobe’s 13,000 employees far more productive, Morris says. Adobe’s stock price has increased from about $30 to over $80 since Check In began.

Drops mic, walks off stage.

You want to really communicate the success of HR change, tie it to direct financial outcomes!  Yes, it’s a major leap to say “Check In” created $50 per share of shareholder value.  Let me say that again, MAJOR LEAP!  In fact, I don’t even think you could scientifically correlate this one HR change to the raise in shareholder value, but she did!  What she did would be similar to saying global temperatures have risen 3 degrees on average since they started making Krispy Kreme donuts, so Krispy Kreme is responsible for global warming!

You see, success of a major program has little to do with fact, and ton to do with perception.  Here is a senior HR executive who gets it.   She wants to do other cool and innovative stuff at Adobe, and now she has her big-win to go back to when someone pushes back that it won’t work, or it’s not needed.   In the minds of Adobe employees, this program has increased shareholder value, and we need to listen to her other ideas!

Take note HR Pros!  If you get this opportunity, you take it 100% of the time! Because you won’t get it often.  How do you communicate your success of a HR program?  Wait until you have favorable financial data in your organization, then connect the dots for people!

My Big Fat Recruiting Dilemma!

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Have you had an employee who had to stop working because they became too fat? Just wait, you will, it’s just a matter of time.

I remember when my biggest nightmare as an HR pro was going to tell an employee they need to bath and wear deordorant. I can’t even imagine having to go tell an employee, “Hey Bro, you have to go home, you’re too fat.”

The U.S. Army recently came out and shared some statistics about how the U.S. obesity epidemic is hurting their recruitment efforts:

“Just under three in 10 young people [ages] 17 to 24 can join the Army today – and the other armed services for that matter – and the single biggest disqualifier is obesity,” Major General Allen Batschelet of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command told CNN. “Ten percent of them are obese and unfit to the point that they can’t join the service. It’s really very worrisome.”

“The obesity issue is one of the most troubling because the trend is going in the wrong direction,” says Batschelet. “Ten percent are disqualified today, and we think by 2020, it could be as high as 50 percent, which would mean only two in ten would qualify to join the Army.”

Our national security is at risk because our citizens can’t put down a Big Mac. Our enemies don’t need to attack us with bombs and troops; they just need to keep sending us cheap junk food to consume!  Then one day they just come ashore and roll us over to the POW camps.  I sure hope they serve good food at the camps…

Big fat Americans just aren’t a national security issue; this is a major issue facing all employers.  The reality is, no one wants to hire unhealthy people. If given a choice between people with similar skills and abilities, one in shape and one obese, employers will always hire the person who is in shape.

You want to see hiring discrimination at its finest?  Put a minority in good shape, a woman in good shape and an obese candidate, all with similar skills, in front of a hiring manager and have them rank them on most likely to hire.

The obese person will always rank last. Why?  Your hiring managers fear hiring someone who might die on their watch, more than hiring a minority or woman.  Was that too real for you? Check your analytics, you know where your problems are.

How do we fix this?

Companies have failed at wellness across the board.  I think it’s just a matter of time until you begin seeing organizations tie performance and compensation into their wellness plans.  It seems extreme, but so is this problem.  When a company reaches the point where they’ll tie your job performance to your health ‘performance’, that’s when you have an organization that truly cares about you.

The Path to Becoming a Highly Selective Employer

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We all think it, don’t we?  We all want to believe in this notion that we only hire the best and brightest. We only hire quality.  We are ‘highly’ selective.

We’ll show our executives really cool data that shows how ‘highly’ selective we are.  Stats like number of applicants per hire. 25,000 people applied for this position, and we only took the best one!

Time magazine  took a look at college admissions at highly selective colleges. Schools like Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc.  Schools that are super hard to get into because of how selective they are.  You know kind of like the hiring process of your organization. From the Time’s article:

“What many parents and students don’t realize is that increasing numbers of applications isn’t necessarily a sign that it’s harder to get into a selective school; rather, it’s a sign of changes in behavior among high school seniors. More and more people who aren’t necessarily qualified are applying to top schools, inflating the application numbers while not seriously impacting admissions. In fact, it has arguably become easier to get into a selective school, though it may be harder to get into a particular selective school…

The most recent study available from the National Association for College Admission Counseling shows that between 2010 and 2011 (the most recent years available), the percentage of students applying to at least three colleges rose from 77% to 79% and the percentage of students applying to at least seven colleges rose from 25% to 29%. In 2000,  only 67% of students applied to three or more colleges while 12% applied to seven or more.”

The net effect of this behavior is to create an illusion of increased selectivity. Especially at the most selective schools, an increase in applications leads to the acceptance of a smaller percentage of the students who apply. However, students who meet the academic and extracurricular thresholds to qualify for competitive schools will still get into a selective college; it’s just less likely that they’ll get into a specific competitive college. These schools work hard to not admit students who won’t attend;  the acceptance rate and the matriculation rate (the percentage of accepted students who attend) are key measures in many college ranking methodologies, so both admitting too many students and admitting students who don’t attend can hurt a college’s ranking.”

An illusion of increased selectivity…

You see, just because you turn down a high number of candidates doesn’t make you more selective. It makes you popular.  Too many organizations, and HR departments, are marketing that they are highly selective based on some simple numbers that give an illusion of being highly selective, when in reality, they’re just good at processing a high number of applicants. That’s different from being ‘more’ selective.  Just because you turn down 24,999 candidates doesn’t make you selective. It just means you have a high number of applicants.

So what does make you selective?

I would say Quality of Hire, but that measure is totally subjective in most organizations. Can you demonstrate with real measurable items that the applicants you’re hiring are better or getting better than those previously hired?  Most organizations can’t.

You need to being some sort of pre-hire selection science model that you and your hiring managers believe in. This science gives you measures that you can compare over long period of times and every applicant has the same measure.  This creates a real evidence that you’re becoming ‘more’ selective and on your way to becoming ‘highly’ selective.

 

The New HR Math

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It all started with a great premise: Let’s teach kids an easier way to understand math so they won’t end up hating it. We can all buy into that, right!?

What came out was a classic organizational nightmare of project-gone-wrong, in a way only HR can truly understand—the Common Core was born. Now, there you sit at the kitchen table trying to show your kid how to do basic multiplication, but you really have no clue on how to do it the “new-math” way.

In a similar way, it used to be HR and Talent Acquisition could just run some spreadsheets, make a three-color pie graph, drop it in the middle of the conference table and—BAM—our job was done.

But, not anymore! Now you’re expected to take your people analytics and make evidence-based decisions, and prove we actually know what we’re talking about, eliminating the art and “feel” of classic HR and Talent practices.

We feel your pain, and we can’t multiply the new way either. That’s why our May installment of the FOT webinar is entitled, The New HR Math: Dumbing Down HR Analytics for Everyday HR and Talent Pros. Join FOT’s Tim Sackett and Kris Dunn for this webinar (sponsored by HireVue, a company that gets predictive analytics at a whole other level), and we’ll share the following goodies with you:

– 5 HR and Talent Analytics you should stop measuring immediately! You know what looks really bad to your leadership? When HR is using the old math, and everyone else is using the new math!

– 5 HR and Talent Analytics you should start measuring immediately! Don’t be that parent fighting the good fight, ostracizing your kid from society by not allowing them to use the new math skills! We have the new cool measures you really need to be using in HR and recruiting today.

– 3 Best Practices every HR and Talent Acquisition shop can do right now with their analytics. You now know what the numbers are, but what the heck are you supposed to do with them? Fear not, Tim and Kris watched every YouTube video possible on the new math, they can show you the way!

– A primer on what’s next once you start using these Predictive Analytics. Since you specialize in people, you naturally understand the move to using analytics that helps you predict the future is only half the battle—you have to have a plan once the predictions are made. We’ll help you understand the natural applications for using your predictive analytical data as both a hammer and a hug—to get people who need to change moving, and to embrace those that truly want your help as a partner.

You’re a quality HR pro who knows how to get things done. Join us May 27th at 2pm EST for The New HR Math: Dumbing Down HR Analytics for Everyday HR and Talent Pros, and we’ll help you understand how to deploy the “new-math” principles in HR that allow you to use predictive analytics to position yourself as the expert you are.