Category Archives: HR Technology

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Trakstar_hr Employee Evaluation Software Simplified

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review the employee evaluation technology Trakstar. Trakstar is a dynamic end-to-end performance management software built for SMB employers who are looking to move their paper process to the cloud and modernize their performance practices across their organization.

The biggest mistake employers make in driving great performance is setting great goals for individual employees to achieve. The core of Trakstar is built around this understanding that great goal setting leads to the potential for great employee performance.  Trakstar is built around three core products: Performance management (evaluations), 360 reviews, and goal setting.

The difficulty we all face in HR around performance management is getting our leaders to follow the process and deliver great feedback to employees that drive higher performance and higher engagement. Trakstar has built an intuitive technology that makes this process easy for our leaders and allows us to hold them accountable to the process as well.

What I like about Trakstar: 

– Super clean UI and an easy to use UX, which actually makes it intuitive for our leaders to drive better performance through the process without even thinking about it. Within a very short period of time, your leaders won’t even realize they’re actually working in a platform as this will become a business tool they rely on to manage their teams.

– Super easy to use 360 feedback tool that allows you to request feedback from anyone within the organization, so get more robust feedback across the organization and the real impact an employee is having.

– Goal setting that is bi-directional between employee and leader and tracked continuously throughout the year. As well as easy to set automated reminders, so that both sides can stay on top of these goals and not let them slip to the side.

– A succession planning tool that is built around a 9-box grid that I love! Gives your leaders an instant view of high performers and up-and-comers across the organization in an instance.

Trakstar has built a performance management tool for SMB that rivals many of the enterprise level performance management technologies. Cloud-based with an open API that allows you to integrate it into any HRIS system you might be using now. Trakstar is designed for organizations where employee performance and increased performance of the organization is a priority.

Well worth some time to look at a demo, especially if performance management is a priority within your organization. Trakstar is the best end-to-end performance management technology for SMB that I’ve seen on the market.

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

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

Can we blow up Demos already? #HRERecruitTalent

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Sat in on a great opening session at the Recruiting Trends & Talent Tech Conference yesterday that was called Ideas and Innovations. Quick five-minute talks. Disrupt-style, where you have five minutes and some slides moving on their own.

Looking at the TA pros and leaders around me you could easily see the engagement and interest. People like being told about cool stuff in a very quick and efficient manner. Some of the stuff might spark them to want more, some stuff might spark them to know it’s not for them. Either way, they didn’t have to invest much to get there.

I constantly hear from recruiting tech companies that they want to do more demos, because they know demos lead to organizations buying their stuff. The problem is we all feel we don’t have the time to do demos, and we don’t want high pressured sales pitch. So, we disengage all together.

It’s a problem on both sides, the vendor and the buyer. Buyers actually need to do more demos and should be looking at more options then they do, and vendors need to get in front of more buyers. I’m not sure why conferences don’t do this, but I would love to see a session that is just 6, ten minute demos of technology I might want to take a deeper dive into.

Hundreds of people in the room, watching quick demos and deciding is this something I want to go and find out more about. Seems like it makes total sense for both sides! Yet, it doesn’t happen. Why?

I think there’s two issues (both of which are basically false):

  1. Vendors don’t feel comfortable doing a demo in front of potential competition, because they feel somehow they’re giving away their secret sauce.
  2. Conference providers believe attendees don’t want to view this type of content.

The truth is, there is no secret sauce with your demo. I’ve done a thousand demos and while some are better than others, that’s mostly do to the person doing the demo, not the actual demo.

Attendees want to learn stuff they don’t know and want to be able to take back knowledge to their organizations that makes them seem smart. No, they don’t want to hear for an hour how ACME Inc. implemented Oracle. But, they would be interested in seeing what the hell this new Oracle Recruit product is, especially if I’m not being sold to.

I think the modern demo should be really broken into two parts. One of those is just show me who you are and what you do in 5-10 minutes. The second one is your dog and pony show.

I think vendors are afraid to do the short-range demo because they don’t feel buyers will truly see who they are. The reality is if you can’t tell your buyer in 5-10 minutes who you are and what you can do for them, you shouldn’t be in the space.

Recruiting Trends and Trends and Trends… #HRERecruitTalent

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I’m out this week at the Recruiting Trends and Talent Tech Conference and guess what I’m speaking on!?!?! Recruiting Trends!

It’s pretty insane when you look at the recruiting landscape. When I was doing research on what trends I should talk about at the conference my initial list had over 50!

That becomes the big question – what’s really a trend and what’s mostly B.S.?

We think we can spot the B.S., but it turns out we are all pretty dumb when it comes to spotting bad trends. Remember QR codes in Recruiting!? How many of you had, or still have, one of those on your recruiting materials!?

Video Interviews! That’s a fad, no one will do a video interview! Until it becomes fairly normal. You should be texting candidates! No, you don’t understand Tim, “OUR” candidates wouldn’t respond to text.

Um, yeah, how’s that working out for you!? Everyone responds to text! I can’t call my parents anymore, who are in their 70’s, but they’ll respond in seconds to a text! Hourly workers, executives, nurses, truck drivers, everyone responds to text.

So, it would seem like the big one is A.I., Machine Learning, chatbots, etc. All of ‘that’ stuff. That automation, the machines can do your job better and faster than you technology stuff. Yeah, that’s a current trend for sure, but in one way it’s not.

We’ve been automating in Recruiting since we have had recruiting. So a major part of the A.I. trend is just next generation, evolution of automating the recruiting process. It’s definitely something to be embraced and understood, the reality is most of the technology you are using probably is already leveraging it in some form.

When I take a look at the landscape from the point of view of someone who follows this stuff way too closely I think the biggest trend is confusion. The in the weeds TA team and leaders are overwhelmed by options, by decisions.

The vendor community is so focused on selling you their ‘one’ product, solution, that they miss helping their clients on the bigger picture of how it should all fit together. The ‘buyer’ of our trends, hasn’t changed. They need to fill jobs, faster, with better talent.

Most will already have some semblance of a tech stack they are being forced to use, and they aren’t sure how you fit in and make it all work better. At the very least they probably have a core ATS who is telling them they can do it all, when in reality they probably do 25% of what’s needed to be competitive.

The winners in the recruiting technology space will be those who can make it idiot-proof. If you’re a TA pro/leader don’t take that as a put down. The reality is every leader or practitioner just wants tech that works, without thinking about it.

I have a job I need to fill.

I turn on your switch and the tech makes it easy for me to fill this position.

We aren’t launching the Space Shuttle, we are filling roles. Ultimately, the TA Leader in me doesn’t give a hoot about your trends! Trends are for early adopters. Work through your issues. Find what works and what does’t. Then let’s talk.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world where the trend is selling stuff that just works…

Career Confessions of Gen Z: Culture Conundrum- Employee Engagement Platforms

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In 2019, we’re on the cusp of a frontier where an army of digital pioneers are laying claim to their stake in the exponentially advancing market of E-HRM. If you’ve sat in the HR department of any business, you’ll get what I’m talking about here. You’ll have found yourself answering a cold-call or ten from that salesperson who’s likely on their 67th attempt of the day, so you take pity and hear them out.

What they’re offering to you, is a miracle solution to the employee engagement woes that supposedly keep you up at night. An all singing, all dancing, cloud-based platform that will sky-rocket your employee engagement! But wait, its get’s better… All of this can be done at the flick of your finger, using cutting-edge algorithms and technologies that will automate the entire process!

From employee feedback to recognition, appraisals or organisational commitment, benchmarking & analytics, many engagement platforms really claim to automate it all, taking out the hard work for me and you. So why shouldn’t we cut a cheque and sign on the dotted line?

For baby-boomers and Generation Z alike, it’s easy to fall for the trappings of today’s technology that promises to streamline our lives both at work and at home. From Amazon’s Alexa to Musk’s self-driving car, it’s not hard to see how these gadgets are already permeating life faster than we know. However, some things, cannot be so easily automated just yet.

Truth be told, the automation of employee engagement sounds like the ultimate paradox to me; to the extent that it removes the integral element of authenticity. Any organisational culture worth its salt is value driven from the top down. Values that employees can align with, engage with and embody as they carry out their role. Online platforms & wired connections are nowhere near as powerful as the above, making the connection between real-life engagement and values, perhaps the most powerful disincentive for the excessive use of cure-all engagement platforms.

More importantly, an organisational culture of engagement and much of the meaning and satisfaction accrued from it, lies in our relationships with others. Indeed, there are elements of these online platforms that are social in nature, but I’d argue it limits the richness and authenticity of our interactions at work, keeping relationships at an all too comfortable distance.

Of course, I’d be ignorant to entirely discount the value of technological integration into employee engagement. For example, it certainly has its place in strategies and structures of organisational feedback and transparency. To a certain extent, even corporate social media platforms are now an undeniable force in shaping recognition and communication practices.

Nevertheless, to place the labyrinthine system of what makes a top-class engagement culture in the hands of automated algorithms, notifications and screens seems naïve and technologically premature. For platforms to claim they can automate it all whilst the everyday HR professional gets on with ‘the important stuff’ doesn’t do justice to the strategic importance nor the complexity of employee engagement in organisations today.

Josh Milton-Edwards is a fledgling HR professional mad about all things culture, engagement and wellbeing. I work for an award winning best-practice culture department based in the UK. Soaking up every last bit of the experience before completing my HRM degree in 2019/20. Aiming high and can’t wait to see what more opportunities arise for the taking!

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

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

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

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

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

What do I like about Pocket Recruiter:

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

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

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

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

3 Ways to Increase Employee Productivity that Doesn’t Entail Pain or Torture!

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The holy grail of great leadership is simply getting the most positive productivity for an extended period from your team. That. Is. It.

If I take your current team and I get them to do more work that is of the same or higher quality, I am a better leader than you are. “Yeah, well, they don’t like you as much as they like me!”

I wasn’t hired to be friends. That’s a different game that I can also win if you want to play!

Productivity is the ultimate measure. It leads to better business outcomes. Highly productive employees stay at their jobs longer and have higher rates of job satisfaction. While that end measure of productivity is a great measuring stick, actually getting increased productivity in a positive way is super hard!

I’ve found three ways to get increased productivity where both the leader and the employee feel good about the outcomes:

  1. Deliver career value to the employee. 

An employee that truly believes you have their best career interest at heart will run through walls for you, but they really have to believe you are helping their career. That means you have to be very transparent about how this increase in productivity will lead to what they want, not what you want and the organization wants.

Also, if you lie about this and don’t deliver, you’ll lose this employee forever. You need to put in the time and work to put yourself in the position to start acting like their career mentor, it just doesn’t happen overnight. Be clear of the path and process you’ll be taking them on.

  1. Acknowledge individual productivity increases in a public way, especially to the senior most leaders of the organization. 

Appreciation is paramount in getting and extending productivity increases in your employees. One way I love to support the leaders in the organization is to manage-up to those leaders by giving them information on specific individuals that I want to have them give appreciation to.

I will send the leader a message that states specifically the person, their email address or phone number, and what they did that was above and beyond. Then, I go one more step! I will tell the leader specifically what I expect them to do with this information!

It sounds like a bit of micro-managing but in reverse. What I’ve found is leaders are busy and they love that I give them all the information and what specifically I expect them to do with that information. They know that the employee will love getting the appreciation, and they love giving the appreciation, and in how I’ve delivered this to them makes it super easy for the leader to execute!

  1. Define, specifically what ‘extra’ is and what the employee will get in return. 

Too often, I find, employees believe they are going above and beyond when the leader only sees them doing the job they were hired to do. Great performance management is about defining what is expected in the role, and specifically what it takes to thrive in the role.

Once you do this as a leader, getting more is just a function of seeing which employees want to reach that next step and rewarding that effort. No yelling. No kicking and screaming. Just acknowledgment of great work done by employees who want to be successful in their chosen job.

To learn more about Increasing Productivity in your Workforce check out the great resources at Trakstar!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Jobvite goes shopping!

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Big news out of the world of the Talent Acquisition technology. Jobvite, with a major investment from K1 Investment Management, went out and bought three best of breed recruiting technologies:

  • Talemetry – CRM, Recruitment Marketing technology
  • RolePoint – Employee referral and internal mobility technology
  • Canvas – Text-based screening and interview technology

All four of these technologies, separately, I’ve recommended that TA pros and leaders should demo. They are all top rated recruiting technologies on their own.

I think these acquisitions are just one more signal in what we see is a growth of the Talent Acquisition Suite, away from core HRIS suites. The TA Suite of the future is a stand alone tech stack that can become a competitive edge for organizations.

The one part of this acquisition that confuses me, a little, is Role Point. While I love them as a point solution, Jobvite already has Jobvite Refer, so this acquisition seems a bit redundant. I mean Jobvite invented Employee Referral technology. While I’ll agree RolePoint is better than Jobvite Refer, I’m not sure they are that much better tha I would spend millions of dollars to acquire.

I will say that that Internal Mobility is a hot topic in almost every organization, so I’m assuming this is the main reason for the acquisition.

Regardless, I believe this positions Jobvite uniquely in the space to be able to offer an advanced Talent Acquisition suite that no one else in the space can put forth, at this point.

One thing to consider is how other ATSs like iCIMS and Greenhouse (we also see Ultimate Software/UltiPro doing this on the HR suite side) are building out their stacks for their customers. Both have taken the App/Marketplace concept. Think of this like your Smartphone. You buy your base iPhone, and then add the apps you want.

That’s the big question! Will the market want a suite or will they want a marketplace of pre-built integrations that you can select and plug and play?

Both buyers are in the market. We already see the suite buyers who want one enclosed technology that does almost everything they need under one umbrella – what it looks like Jobvite is building with these acquisitions. We also know some buyers love to select specific technologies and somewhat build their own stack, based on their own unique needs. It’s really just positioning, I’m not sure we’ll see one strategy win out ultimately.

Definitely an aggressive move by Jobvite. They were falling behind the market a bit and this will definitely thrust them back into the lead pack. I think we all felt like 2019 would be a great year for acquisitions and Jobvite has come out of the gate making a giant swing!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @PowerToFly

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This week on The Weekly Dose I review the D&I technology platform Power to Fly. Power to Fly is a recruiting platform used for connecting people with companies committed to building more diverse and inclusive environments. 

Founded in 2015 by two females who were named one of Fast Companies most creative people in business. The original concept was to connect women with remote jobs (which it still does). From that PTW learned many organizations also wanted and needed gender diversity in their in-house teams as well. Today it’s not only women but all underrepresented talent in the marketplace. 

The original concept of being a marketplace to connect one type of candidate with companies isn’t new, but Power to Fly definitely come at this from a different angle than most. While you can post your jobs on their site, which has over a million profiles of female candidates, Power to Fly focuses more on community events and interactions, both in-person and virtual. 

Power to Fly hosts in-person networking events hosted by client(s) companies to bring women in a specific marketplace together. These interactions help females and underrepresented candidates build a network of their own to leverage as they grow their careers. 

These live events bring together upwards of 200 women and are sponsored by some of the largest brands in the world, but can also be leveraged by a handful of employers in a market coming together to co-sponsor together. Power to Fly has found females are much more likely to apply to your jobs after attending these events (and the research into gender-specific applies echoes this as well).  The likelihood of apply from those attending these events rose 60% after attending. 

Power to Fly also holds virtual events with top Female executives and thought-leaders allowing women to ask live Q&A to help them in their career. Giving anyone a chance, in an ultra-safe environment, to ask questions they probably wouldn’t or don’t even have access to a mentee to ask. 

I love the concept. Traditionally, men clearly have had so many built-in networking advantages to aid their career path. Building out these networks for females and underrepresented candidates is a must and long overdue. 

If you are looking to add diversity into your talent pipelines Power to Fly is definitely something to check out. Job postings, live events, and virtual events, the power of their community is their real strength.  It’s women helping women in the most positive ways! 

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

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

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @EmployUsApp – Referral Automation

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Today on The Weekly Dose I take a look at the candidate referral automation platform EmployUs. I actually first told you about EmployUs about four years ago when they just launched, but since then they’ve improved their tech and added a bunch of stuff, so I wanted to give you a second look! 

You guys already know I’m in love with candidate referral automation. In my experience of looking at every kind of HR and TA Technology I believe it has the single highest ROI of any tech on the market, and let still relatively few organizations actually use it as part of their TA Tech stack.

EmployUS took candidate referral technology one more step and actually allows you to use it both internally and externally with your organization. Clearly we love using this tech with our employees to get more of their referrals, but what if we could also use it outside our organization to gain more referrals as well? EmployUs allows you to do that, if you choose.

What I like about EmployUs:

  • They jumped into the chatbot/AI world to help those referring candidates make it much easier and faster, and through the use of SMS they’ve actually made is super simple for hourly workers to now refer candidates in seconds! Always a draw back to traditional referral software.
  • The automation aspect truly helps make the referral process simple for your internal employees who might not be thinking of this all day, every day, but once they do decide, you need it to self-sufficient and fast.
  • Tailored email and texting campaigns so you can target parts of your organization for specific referrals.
  • A dashboard that tracks and automates payouts based on the rules you build, that also gives you the gamification aspect of internal scoreboards to keep your referral program top of mind all the time.

Here’s what we know. Most of our top hires come from referrals. Our most inexpensive hires come from referrals. Almost all of us would say we need more referrals in our hiring process.

Then we watch our old, tired, analog referral program deliver the exact same results year in and year out, and we do nothing to change it. Go demo EmployUs and take a look at what your candidate referral program should look like.

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

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

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Xref automated reference checking

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This week on the Weekly Dose I review the automated reference checking platform Xref. Xref is a fully automated solution that turns a slow and inconsistent task into an efficient and valuable stage of the recruitment journey.

Answer the following question: Does your organization check references?

SHRM’s recent survey showed that 89% of organizations still check references of candidates before offer of employment. The majority of those are still manually doing reference checks.

Xref is a technology platform that gets 98% of your candidate’s references with just a fraction of the current work you’re doing in your hire process. The Xref process is a simple message sent directly to your candidates and it puts the candidate in control of obtaining those references by inputting the references and having a message come directly from the candidate to their professional references.

Answer me one more question: When was the last time you didn’t hire a candidate based on a bad reference?

What I find is most organizations struggle to answer that question because it happens so infrequently. What I love about automated references is the normal rate of false offers is 8-14%. This happens because when a reference gets the chance to answer questions on the platform they are more open to give information than during a live conversation.

What I like about Xref:

  • Tailored questions based on role that are easy to change and customize, at the same time can be used right out of the box.
  • A dashboard shows you every candidate and exactly where they are in the process in great detail from where the candidate is in gaining these references, but also where the references are in responding.
  • Mobile optimized. 55-60% of references are actually completed on a mobile device. This is how all of us would probably do this in our busy lives.
  • Candidates also have a view to see where their own references are in the process, so they can nudge the folks who are dragging their feet.
  • Nurturing effect of sending polite reminders to move the process along quickly. Most references are completed within 24 hours!
  • Shows how a reference assessed based on others in the same level of position within your own environment.

I’m a giant fan of this technology as I see so much capacity being lost in organizations that are still manually checking references and getting really nothing to show for it in terms of hiring better talent. Well worth a demo, automated reference checking technology is one of the highest ROIs you’ll get in the TA technology space.

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.