Category Archives: HR Technology

The Talent Acquisition Trends You Need to Focus on for 2018!

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Hey gang!

My buddy, Kris Dunn, and I will be leading a free webinar tomorrow talking about the talent acquisition trends you should be focusing on in 2018 that will have the fastest and most lasting impact to your talent strategy success.

Artificial intelligence, Google for Jobs and other hot topics are dominating conversations across the recruitment industry. But at the end of the day, do they really impact your business?

With new recruitment trends popping up all the time, you need to know which ones are worth getting behind — and which fleeting ones you can afford to ignore. Most importantly, you need to be able to cut through the noise and align your business around strategies that will position you firmly ahead of your competition in 2018 and beyond.

Talent acquisition experts Tim Sackett and Kris Dunn will join CareerBuilder’s Scott Helmes to address these issues and more in a new CareerBuilder webinar, “AI, Google for Jobs & More: Talent Acquisition Trends You Need to Focus on in 2018 (And Buzzwords to Ignore)” at 1 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Dec. 5th. (That’s tomorrow!) 

You will walk away with:

  • Tips on how to position your business to have the best staffing and recruiting year ever in 2018
  • Insights on key talent acquisition and staffing trends — and how they will impact your business
  • Strategies to be more efficient and productive so you can show 2018 who’s boss

Register Now

Come join the conversation and start off 2018 on a great path of recruiting success! 

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

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

The question comes in a number of variations:

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some highlights from the report:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go check out the full report over at Ongig.

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

T3 – Google for Jobs Doesn’t Care if Employers Like Them or Not!

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Okay, first let me say, I love Google for Jobs, mostly. Please, Google, don’t end my online life or anything! Remember, Don’t Be Evil! Okay, I know it’s now “Do the Right Thing!”

So, Google for Jobs (GFJ) was started with the best intentions to help candidates find jobs easier. Simple. Candidates want to know where the job is located. Cool! GFJ says to put the ‘exact’ address in your job posting. Okay. Candidates want to know how much a job pays. Cool! GFJ says to put the salary range of your job into your job posting. Got it.

Candidates want to apply for a job with one click. Okay, I’m not sure how I’m going to make that happen with this dinosaur of an ATS I’m running, but gosh darn it, we’ll find a way GFJ! Done!

Candidates want to work for companies with excellent reputations. Oh, okay. So, now we have to worry about and manage our online reputation on sites like Glassdoor, etc. Ugh, okay. But what about people who are lying on these sites? GFJ doesn’t care, candidates want this, so it’s going into the algorithm.

Okay Google, I’ll do it. I’ll do it because I want your candidate traffic. I’ll jump through your hoops, just like we used to make candidates jump through our hoops. You win almighty and powerful Google!

Wait, what? You, GFJ, want to allow Candidates to now choose how they apply for a job via a drop-down list of places that are all showing the same job? Now, wait just a god damn minute Google! So, a candidate finds my job on Google for Jobs that was listed there by CareerBuilder, but you will let that candidate apply to the job by just selecting “Monster” or “Career Page” or some other site which they didn’t find the job from?

Yeah, that’s happening, folks. Google for Jobs just discovered a major way to screw up your “Source of Hire” metrics! You might be investing major dollars in a certain site(s) to post your jobs. Google will scrap and find those jobs. If they’re duplicate, it will list the job that most highly fits its algorithm, but then it gives the choice of how to apply back to the candidate.

That sounds nice and everything, but it majorly screws up actual Source of Hire metrics for employers. If your job postings on CareerBuilder are working great, you want to see that candidate come through CareerBuilder, or whatever site the candidate actually found the job from. Here’s why. Candidates always think that applying for a job on the company’s career site somehow gives them a magical leg up on getting hired.

It’s not true, but we love to think it actually works. Google thinks this gives candidates choice to apply on the site that’s easiest for them to apply, but in reality, all that will happen is we’ll all see “Source of Hire – Company Career Page” shoot through the roof and think somehow we’ve really gotten a better at our career site hires!

You haven’t. It’s just Google screwing with your metrics, and not in a good way for any one – candidate or employer.

If ‘perceived’ applicants go up via company career page, you will invest less in other sources, but those are fake metrics! If you invest less in posting in other places, the chances a candidate will find your job will lessen. By Google making this change, they are actually hurting candidates in their ability to easily find your job. Not to mention hurting other vendors in the space for no real reason.

Do the right thing, Google!

Google for Jobs is designed to help candidates. This one change doesn’t help candidates or employers, it hurts both. I’m not sure how that’s good for anyone involved in the industry of job search. Companies actually need to know where candidates are really finding their jobs. Great, they found it on Google, but where did Google find it? That’s actually really important to how we fund our job marketing!

Also, Google please don’t hurt me. This is just one man’s opinion. I’m not even a big man. I have really small hands, and no one even reads this blog. I’ll take it down if you want!

T3 – @Uber is jumping into HR!

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This week on T3 I take a look at the ‘uber’ popular ride-sharing company Uber. Uber for Business made its debut at the HR Technology Conference this year selling itself as a legitimate HR technology company for HR and TA pros. So, how does the Uber we all know, make that jump over to the HR and TA side of technology?

Uber figured that all of us in HR and TA have to get our candidates and employees from point A to point B. One part of the Uber HR platform is a simple interface to help you and your employees manage the expense part of your employees using Uber and getting reimbursed or work-related rides. This side of the platform also allows you to award employees with rides as well.

The other part of the software allows HR and TA to manage candidate rides. You have a candidate coming in from their airport at 9am, it’s easy to schedule an Uber to pick them up and bring them to your office, and well as take them back to the airport when they’re done. Traditionally, this most likely done through a car or taxi service where you called and set this up manually. Now it can be done through the platform.

The industry analysts have panned Uber’s entry into the HR space as basically a non-technology play. I love the analysts, but most haven’t worked a real HR job in years, if ever, so how practitioners would use Uber’s platform is probably very different than what analysts believe HR really needs.

I can imagine most recruiting coordinators will love the Uber for Business platform. It’s a pain in the butt constantly calling and setting up transportation for candidates each and every week. To be able to do this through a dashboard is a significant time saver and it has the added benefit of being charged to one place.

On the HR expense side of the function, Uber of Business might be helpful to some, but probably a little less so, since it’s not just managing your ‘ride’ expenses, it’s about managing all business travel expenses. But, there are other functions for the HR pros like Uber’s ability to help you offer and manage employee commute perks. That would allow you to offer new employees or awards to current employees to pay a certain number of rides per week, month, etc.

Uber also allows HR to set up specific ride rules to match your internal travel policies, so you can be assured those are automatically followed by technology. No, Jimmy won’t be able to tell you he had to take Uber Black when in reality Uber X was available! Also, it allows employees to let you know when a normally non-approved ride is with a client, so it should be approved.

The reality is Uber is branching into many areas outside of just its normal ride-sharing service. Will Uber be a big player in the HR and TA tech space? Probably not, with its current offering, but it’s more intriguing that they are looking at the HR Tech marketplace, to begin with. Uber has the money and resources to do just about anything they want, so they will be someone to keep an eye on.

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 tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net Also, I advise HR and TA tech companies. Interested? Let’s talk. 

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

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

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

 REGISTER FOR THE HANGOUT BY CLICKING THIS LINK!!!

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

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

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

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

 REGISTER FOR THE HANGOUT BY CLICKING THIS LINK!!!

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

T3 – Do you speak A.I.? If you’re in TA or HR you better learn!

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I’ve said this publicly before but John Sumser is one of the smartest people in our space when it comes to understanding HR and TA technology, or really any part of HR and TA that starts to get beyond the normal reach of HR and TA leaders. Pick a topic that is difficult to comprehend or understand, and Sumser is usually the first one breaking it down for the rest of us!

John recently sent me his latest research on A.I., or what he thought would be his latest report on Artificial Intelligence when he started doing the research. John goes deep in this report, over 90 pages filled with information on the latest and greatest A.I. related technology in HR and TA. I say related because what John found was that ‘true’ A.I. isn’t really present yet in the HR and TA tech stack.

We have a ton of companies telling us they have A.I. to sell us, but what they are really selling us is a form of ‘Intelligent Software’, advanced intelligent automation, and a whole lot of machine learning. Don’t understand any of that? Most of don’t. John breaks it down in detail and tells you the difference in all of it.

There’s no doubt that intelligent software has made its way into every segment of the tech stack in HR and TA. It’s important that as HR and TA leaders we actually understand what that means, where it’s all going, and how you will position your organization to take advantage.

One of the piece’s I loved from the report were questions John gives for HR and TA leaders to ask “A.I.” vendors they’re considering:

1. How long does it take the machine to learn something new? Can you define that both in calendar time and the number of transactions?

2. What are the feedback loops we should use to monitor the tool’s alignment with our culture, processes, and procedures?

3. What is the process by which we inform the device that it is missing something or needs to learn something new?

4. If the machine makes a recommendation and we think it is out of date, what do we do?

5. What sort of staff do we need to ensure the performance of our intelligent software?

Those questions are brilliant! All of us fail in asking potential vendors enough of the right questions, and John truly nails this.

If you want the full report you can download it at HRExaminer – The Emergence of Intelligent Software. The full report costs $249, but if you tell John that “Tim sent me!” he’ll give it to you for $249! It’s a cheap education of a really complex issue that we are all facing right now in HR and Talent Acquisition.

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 tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net Also, I advise HR and TA tech companies. Interested? Let’s talk. 

T3 – The Reputation of Your Company As An Employer Actually Might Matter!

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Okay, I know Glassdoor has worked for a decade to make you believe that your employer reputation matters. Their own data says that 70% of candidates will check a companies reputation before making a career decision, and they have 40+ million candidates going to their site on a monthly basis.

The problem is, I don’t think most employers really thought that much about it, honestly.

Quick question: Have you gone out and claimed your company’s Glassdoor profile? 

I always like to ask that question when speaking to HR and TA leaders and it’s not too surprising to find most of the leaders in the room, over 50%, have not, or did, but have no real interaction with the site. If your employer reputation was that critical of a decision point for candidates, 99% of leaders would be on top of this and active in protecting their employer reputation online.

Glassdoor, like most great HR and TA technology platforms, does some things really well. The first thing they had to do was create a problem we didn’t know we had! Welcome to your employer reputation! OMG! I didn’t even know that was a thing until someone made it my thing! It’s actually great marketing!

Want to sell more airline flight insurance? Share a ton of stories about people dying in plane crashes! Sure you have a better chance of dying from a shark attack while simultaneously being hit by lightning, but hey, you never know when it’s going to your turn!

I think that is until recently. With the launch of Google for Jobs, your employer reputation might actually begin to matter for real this time! 73% of all job searches in the world, start on Google. The majority of the other searches probably go directly to Indeed or directly to your corporate career site, because we’ve trained people that “Indeed” is where they’ll find all jobs.

Google for Jobs is changing how job seekers are searching for jobs by basically keeping them on Google and not sending them to other sites. The other piece that Google for Jobs is doing is looking at the job search behavior, not from an employer perspective, which was done by every other company before it (because as it turns out employers pay money for this kind of stuff), but from the candidate perspective.

Google doesn’t really care how you want to make candidates jump through hoops and give them half-information about your jobs and company. Google is on the candidate side of the equation trying to disrupt. One way Google will disrupt the job search is by placing importance on your company’s reputation when it comes to job search results.

If your company’s reputation sucks, your jobs will show up lower in the Google for Jobs search results. This will be a killer to many organizations who haven’t managed their company’s reputation at sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, Google itself has tons of employer reviews (and will be getting a lot more!), plus at least a dozen other sites that track employee and past employee reviews as well.

So, what should you do?

  1. At a minimum claim your Glassdoor profile (the free version) and respond to every single review that’s given in a position way. You might have a poor reputation, but candidates will see that you’re working on making it better.
  2. Glassdoor is just one site, there are over a dozen you probably should be tracking. No one has time for that, but there is a technology already created to help do this on one platform called Ratedly. I actually wrote about this a while back on T3.  Created by Joel Cheesman who is a really smart thought leader in the HR and TA space, and the idea is so simple and effective, and inexpensive, you should really take a look.
  3. Get your executives to understand why this is important. Of course, you don’t want a bad reputation, but also you have this extra issue of having it affect your applicant traffic which just made this reputation thing begin to have real pain!

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 tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net Also, I advise HR and TA tech companies. Interested? Let’s talk. 

T3 – @Breezy_HR, err ATS!

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This week on T3 we get back to the business to talking technology with the recruiting software platform Breezy HR. First off, Breezy HR has nothing to do with HR, and everything to do with Recruiting.

About 2 1/2 years ago, a lifetime in the technology world, I highlighted Breezy right here on T3! I liked them then, and I like them even more now. Back then I called them recruiting technology ‘light’, kind of like BambooHR for HRIS. And, that was probably fairly accurate. At that time they were an entry-level ATS for SMB.

In the last 2 1/2 years (or 30 months if it’s your baby) Breezy has built a full-blown, full functioning end-to-end recruitment platform for the SMB to Mid-size ATS market, that still has a great price point for those just wanting to start out.

Things I like about Breezy HR:

– Breezy just launched a built-in A.I.-assisted messenger, called “Hello” for recruiters. The bot will engage candidates right away on your site, and let recruiters take over at any point to have real-life conversations with candidates. Great functionality for an ATS at any level.

– Intuitive U.I. that uses a very familiar drag and drop functionality to allow recruiters to easy move candidates through the pipeline.

– The candidate ‘profile’ is one of the better-designed profiles among ATS vendors incorporating social profiles, resume, notes, etc. With the ability to one-click action almost anything you would ever do with a candidate from the profile.

– Built-in video assessments and on-demand interview guides let hiring managers easily become a part of the process in a way that makes sense to them.

– Automated reference checking. What!? Again, another function you just don’t see built into most ATSs.

The Recruiting Platform/ATS market has really picked up its game over the past couple of years. You can find so many good options, but if you’re an SMB or Mid-sized organizations the choices are still fairly slim. Breezy is definitely a platform you need to check out, I was surprised at everything it had embedded into it, and it’s super easy to use!

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 tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Trends and Changes in HR and TA Technology: Notes from #HRTechConf @IBMWatsonTalent

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Still unpacking so much great information from the HR Technology Conference. I had a chance to sit down with the IBM Watson Team and ‘talk shop’ at HR Tech on video. There are some really good nuggets of information in here! Check it out:

So, I’ll tell you I wasn’t the only one who sat down with IBM, they got a bunch of really smart folks to sit down and talk:

  • Sara Brennan – the most underrated HR Tech mind on the planet
  • Jason Averbook – another just brilliant HR Tech brain
  • John Sumser – a dude I could sit next to and listen for hours, so smart
  • Kevin Grossman, Shane Gray, Jessica Miller Merrell, etc.

You check them all out on IBM Watson Talent’s YouTube channel.

Recruiters Make a Difference! @Paycor

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So, it’s pretty rare that we ever see anything good said about Recruiters, let alone a national ad campaign by a major HR technology company, but low and behold that’s exactly what was recently launched by Paycor – check it out:

(hat tip to Ben Gotkin, ATAP Executive Director, for finding this video.)

So, before the haters come out and rip on a payroll provider having good talent acquisition software, you should probably know that Paycor actually bought Newton Software. Newton is an ATS that is a best of breed top 10 ATS (in my opinion), which is now integrated across the Paycor suite of products.

So, they can back up a commercial that talks about a talent solution in a big way!

What I love about the ad is the choice of Carrie as the recruiter for this company. I would say “Carrie” matches what most people probably think of when they think of your prototypical HR lady at a company. Middle-aged, white woman. I think if you were to ask Recruiters to draw up a model demographic of an actual recruiter, they would not have cast “Carrie” in this roll.

This is why I actually love this commercial because we’re all idiots. “Carrie” actually is the average recruiter in the world. It’s not some twenty-something out of silicon valley carrying a MacBook Pro and Venti half calf mocha with a twist, wearing skinny jeans and an ironic t-shirt. “Carrie” is recruiting in the real world. “Carrie” is the 90%.

The TA Tech industry, for the most part, forgets about “Carrie”. The HR and TA Tech community combined forget about “Carrie”. They focus on “Jackson’s” and “Olivia’s”, and forget about the “Karen’s” and “Judy’s” and “Steve’s” of the world. The reality is HR and Talent aren’t done by twenty-somethings, it’s mostly done by forty-somethings and fifty-somethings.

So, bravo to Paycor’s marketing team to understanding their real user. In a world that always goes for younger and sexier, I love the realness of this ad, and that a recruiter is getting recognized!