Category Archives: HR Technology

T3 – @Benevate

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This week on Talent Tech Tuesday (T3) I review a new and unique benefits solution called Benevate. Benevate is a solution that will help you attract and retain talent and improve employees’ financial wellness. “DRINK” – that’s the new HR drinking game for 2016! If anyone says “Financial Wellness” you have to drink. You might recall that “Candidate Experience” was the HR drinking game code word for 2015.

But, seriously, I really, really like what Benevate is doing!

Benevate is built on a really simple premise, which is how all the great products start. Your younger workforce faces two major hurdles, for the most part:

  1. Student Loans
  2. No Cash to buy a house.

Benevate gives you a simple to use Saas software platform that allows you to manage these two issues with a Student Loan forgiveness program and an Employer Assisted Living loan program.

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Why is this important? Either one of these programs will give you great ammunition to attract and retain a younger workforce.  I can tell you the first time I used ‘student loan forgiveness’ was about 12 years ago when we did this recruiting Pharmacists right out of school, and it worked like a charm! I also used this in healthcare to attract CRNAs when you could find them anywhere, we were fully staffed! I’ve seen companies recently do this with hard to find IT and Engineering talent.

The problem with doing this yourself is that it’s a major pain in your ass, for HR and for the organization in general. HR isn’t built to be a bank/loaning institution. The last thing in the world I want to do in HR is manage a bunch of loans and worry about some kid defaulting, then what do I do. That is why Benevate is so awesome! They take care of all of this, but at the same time allow you the flexibility and freedom to design the program you want for your organization.

So, right about now you’re asking yourself, well all this sounds great Tim, but how do we pay for it!

That’s where it’s important to understand what the true cost of your employees are cost you.  51% of young employees go to the doctor once or less per year! These young workers cost you a ton less to ensure.  They don’t even use their health benefits, for the most part! As an employer, you need to offer them benefit equability. Benefits they’ll actually want and use.

You pay for it by giving benefits to your younger workers that they actually want, which in turn comes with a loan guarantee from them that they’ll stick around. The cost of replacing great talent is crazy high, a heck of lot less, than what you’ll spend on a loan forgiveness program.

Love the program and concept. More companies should use this idea, but they don’t because it was always a pain in the butt. Now it’s not!  Take a look at Benevate, they make loan forgiveness super easy!

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 – send me a note.

Walking Dead: Reviving Your Talent Networks!

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You have a bunch of zombies surrounding your career website right now, and you don’t even know it.

They stumble around and look at your content, lurk at your jobs and then just stumble away when they don’t find anything to take a bite out of. Well, the folks at FOT and Smashfly are here to help you turn those zombies into real-life candidates by reviving the talent networks you probably don’t even know you have.

Who said zombies can’t turn back to real live viable candidates?! Not us, because the FOT crew knows how, and we’re going to show you, too. Join us on February 24 at 2pm EST and we’ll give you the following goods:

  • Show you the difference between a Talent Network and a Talent Community. We’ll give you ways to build your talent network into active pools of great candidates. By using and developing talent networks, you’re letting those zombies hanging out around your career site tell you “I’m next…” “Pick me…”, making it super easy to identify your next victim!
  • Help you develop a Talent Network Strategy that lasts, with little effort from your team to keep it going. The biggest problem we all face is we just don’t have enough capacity to do more. Talent networks give you the more— without the work. We’ll show you how.
  • Show you 5 ways the best companies are engaging their Talent Networks to make real placements.We won’t just tell you the ways, we’re going to hear about straight from a Talent Pro who is using these now to successfully hire and fill position within her company.  The good, the bad, the dead. You’re going to hear it all!
  • Give you 3 things you can do with candidate contact information before they even apply to your company. Talent pools aren’t about the apply, they’re about getting you to apply. Some zombies are ready to eat, some are just milling around being zombies. What do you do when potential candidates aren’t ready to eat? We’ve got the answer.
  • Provide insight to how you can measure the success of your talent networks. By now we know none of this matters if we can’t back it up with measurable data that proves it works. Talent networks, and the data you get from them, will give you a ton of insight to what is working in your Talent shop and what might need some tweaking.

Don’t let your time get “eaten” up by a bunch of zombie candidates who will never fill the needs your company has. Learn how to build great talent networks that will give you real live placements, with less effort than you ever thought imaginable. It’s time to fight back and win against your walking dead applicant pool!

Come join the FOT Zombie Hunting crew on February 24 at 2pm EST and learn how you can implement and take your talent networks to the next level!

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T3 – HR Tech Conferences for Spring 2016

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The T3 series delivers you all things HR and Talent technology. This post won’t be highlighting an individual piece of HR tech, but instead introduce you to two brand new HR Technology conferences in the U.S. that will both be taking place this Spring, 2016 – PeopleTech and HR Tech Fest.

Of course, the granddaddy of all HR Tech Conferences is The HR Technology Conference that takes place in the fall, this year in Chicago, but traditionally in Las Vegas.  It’s one of my favorite conferences of the year, but I love that we are able to give HR and Talent Pros and Leaders a couple of other options that might be more cost effective and closer to home!

PeopleTech Conference – Dallas, TX April 13-14th

PeopleTech is a conference designed for HR and Talent Acquisition Leaders who are exploring and interested in all things related to the technology within the HR industry. The sessions are a combination of industry experts, HR Pros, and vendor driven content. Here’s a flavor of some of the sessions:

  • Current Trends in Human Capital Metrics/Analytics – Taking it to the Next Level
  • Getting to the Finish Line in New Software Implementation: An Exercise in Effective Change Management
  • Designing for the Workforce of Tomorrow
  • Building a Magnetic Culture: How to Attract & Retain Top Talent
  • And of course, my session! HR Pros Buyers Guide to HR Tech!

For those who are really looking to invest in new HR technology and upgrading your tech in the next year or so, you will get some great insight from others who are currently going through implementations and beyond. Many of the sessions are lead by HR leaders who have recently gone through this process.

These sessions are definitely more specific and directed to HR and Talent Acquisition specifically, unlike many HR conferences where they’re the sessions are heavily centered on soft-skills and management.  It’s great that PeopleTech decided to hold their conference in Dallas since HR Leaders have so few options for really good content down south!

HR Tech Fest – Washington D.C. April 20-22nd

HR Tech Fest is an organization that I first came into contact with when I spoke at their conference in Sydney, Australia late last year.  HR Tech Fest is unique in that they don’t “sell” any of their sessions to vendors.  It’s a fairly common practice in today’s conference scene where a vendor will pay to ‘sponsor’ a session, and get to put their own client into that slot. What it turns out to be normally is an hour commercial for their project, unwittingly being sold by their client who is paying for their software. Brilliant strategy really (to make money), but many times it makes for poor content.

So, all the sessions at HR Tech Fest are either delivered by actual HR and Talent Leaders, who were chosen regardless of the tech they use, and by industry thought leaders. What I found at HR Tech Fest in Sydney was that this dynamic really opened up the audience and the interaction between audience and presenters was very high, in and outside of the sessions.

Here’s a flavor of some of the sessions at HR Tech Fest:

  • HR of the Future: Where is Technology taking us?
  • Navigating Organizational Evolution with Talent Analytics (delivered by SVP of Hulu)
  • Digital Gondola: Career Development Ride (delivered by HR executive at Google)
  • Open Source Comes to HR (delivered by the VP of Talent at Hootsuite)
  • I’ll be hosting a session track and be a part of an HR Tech expert panel

While this is a new HR Tech conference in the U.S., the Eventful Group has put on these conferences in other countries for years, and they really know what they’re doing.  I also love that they decided to offer this on the East Coast, where so much HR Tech innovation comes out of, but rarely is a conference held in this area.

 I’ll be attending both conferences. What can I say, I’m an HR Tech geek. If you’ll be coming, please connect with me so we can meet in person!

If I was the National HR Czar…

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I think the next President should add a position to their cabinet. That position would be called HR Czar.  That person should be me, and here’s what I would do as the HR Czar.

As HR Czar I would:

– Establish a National Database of No Call, No Shows on interviews.  This database would be used by all public and private employers to let each other know what idiots set up an interview, then without any warning, just decided to ditch it and not show up.  That way we could all know who these awful people are by name, address, SSN and poor professional etiquette.

– Establish a National Database of No Call, No Shows on the first day of employment. Worse than not showing up for an interview, these people have serious problems and should be put on some double-secret probation.  If someone did this they would publicly have to stand out in front of this employer with a sandwich board sign stating “I’m a Loser! I Suck! Honk if you Agree!” for two straight days, before they could be hired by any other employer.

– Establish a National Background Check System. This system could be checked instantly, by all employers. No more waiting 48 hours or more for information that should be accessible instantly in a database a twelve-year-old could put together in about 15 minutes.  This includes educational verification, where all post high school institutions would have to input graduates, degrees, and grades.

– Establish a National Job Posting Site. All jobs, all employers, one place.  All public and private employers would be required to post their openings on this site, close them when their filled and post the name and photo of the person they hired for the position. A little transparency would help both the employers and all those people who applied and have no idea who got hired.

– Establish a National Database for Candidates to Search pending, current and past employee-related litigation of an employer. You like to allow your managers to harass employees? Fine, but understand, everyone is going to know about it. Kind of like Glassdoor, but actual verifiable stuff. Each employer would have a rating, like the ratings we give restaurants – A, B, C, etc. We can make them post their rating in the window of their lobby where candidates come to interview.

– Establish a CEO pay scale whereas a CEO couldn’t make more than ten times the average pay of the top 10% of earners within their company. That’s fair. That’s still a giant amount of money. I support CEOs and their right to earn a lot of money. I don’t support them making four million times more than the actual people busting their butt each day. (JFC – it sounds like I’m voting for Bernie! I’m not!)

That’s a good start! What would you do if you were HR Czar?

Recruiters – Have You Figured Out Snapchat? You better…

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I’ll be the first to say, I don’t currently use Snapchat.  My sons do. In fact, they use it constantly. So, do their friends. Teens and College students are using Snapchat to communicate with each other in a major way, and you are starting to see major stars and athletes join as well. Unless you have kids from the ages of 12-22, you probably have no idea what Snapchat even is.

Why should you care? Check out this chart:

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Two years ago the use of Snapchat didn’t even register. In the spring of 2015, it was 13%. What do you think it’s right now? My guess is over 25%, maybe even more!

This isn’t necessarily about recruiting on Snapchat. Although, I know some folks will do this and find a way to be successful in some certain areas. Most of won’t.

Understanding and using Snapchat is about knowing how the talent you want to recruit likes to communicate. It’s about building your brand on a communication channel of your target audience.  You can dismiss it, but your competition probably won’t.

Another interesting thing about the chart is the dramatic shift from teens out of Facebook.  We’ve seen this in the industry for a while. As Mom and Grandma jumped on Facebook, the kids jumped off in a major way!  I suspect, and we’ll eventually see the data to support this, is that when they stop being kids, those kids will come back! Either way, Facebook is still an important tool to understand as well, because we recruit more than young adults!

Check out this tutorial on Snapchat to see what it’s all about:

Also, check out this great piece by SocialTalent on How to Use Snapchat to Recruit.

T3 – Beamery @BeameryHQ

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This week on T3 I’m reviewing the recruitment marketing platform Beamery. Beamery is fairly new to the market being launched in 2014, and jumping into the hottest sector in HR and Talent technology: CRM, recruitment marketing, recruitment automation. They are carving out space by billing themselves as candidate engagement software, knowing almost every company in the world is concerned with candidate experience.

Beamery records and helps you track every single candidate that engages with you and your career site, whether they apply or not. That is important because a solid 70% of those people coming to your site will never apply, but if continue to engage them, you’ll get many to eventually apply.  Beamery’s strength is creating an inbound marketing machine for your recruiting department.

You can develop unlimited talent pools by whatever criteria you select, and engage each pool of candidates differently based on how you decide. The talent pool management, built on machine learning, is definitely a powerful piece of what Beamery delivers.  Beamery integrates with your ATS and is already partnered with Greenhouse.io, one of the hottest new ATS products on the market.

5 Things I really like about Beamery:

1. Beamery has integrated Candidate Experience surveys into their platform, that you can automate to be sent at a certain point within your process, manually push, change by position, etc. All the analytics are then put together on the backend within Beamery analytics engine. This is something not all recruitment marketing plays have right now.

2. Beamery uses predictive analytics for automated followups based on algorithms they have developed.  This truly helps recruiters stay onto of what’s important, and helps them not to forget. It’s a classic recruiting weakness because so many of us end up putting out fires, and we forget about a possible great candidate from a few days ago. Beamery automatically reminds you to follow up.

3. Their email sync with outlook and google is very powerful. One problem every recruiting shop has is getting information from email strings to where it needs to be within a system of record. Beamery uses machine learning to pull any email communication between recruiters and candidates in automatically, without the recruiter having to do anything.

4. Like many of the Recruitment CRM software, Beamery also does unlimited landing pages for jobs, events, etc. Allows to push simple calls to action to build talent pools and easily moves these pools back into your ATS. They also allow one-click action by candidates to engage with you by sharing any kind of social profile – Facebook, LinkedIn, Github, Google profile, etc.

5. Beamery is the first platform I’ve seen that truly has separated the function of Sourcer and Recruiter – working to define that Sourcers use Beamery, Recruiters use the ATS, and they’ve built a workflow to help organizations really build out this practice. For large organizations that have both functions, this will really help define the roles for your team.

I really liked Beamery’s technology and ease of use. Clearly, recruitment CRM software is for more sophisticated recruitment shops, who work in competitive marketplaces. That doesn’t mean just technology jobs. Finding Truck Drivers, Machinist and Retail Managers are super competitive! But you have to want to embrace the technology to help you reach your goals.

Beamery has a great introductory price point for 1-5 seats, and will work with you on enterprise pricing. I was shocked at how low of a cost a SMB shop could get into this software! Check them out, Beamery is well worth a demo.

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 – send me a note.

Hands-Free HR – HR Self Service for the Next Generation!

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Remember the first time you got to use Hands-Free with your smartphone? For those of us who live on our phone, it was life changing! Wait, you mean I can drive, I can cook, I can workout and still get this call done? Yes, I want that. No, wait, I need that!

Now, imagine you could do that with your employees. No, not talk to them more. But be able to give them all they need, without being able to talk to them, or at least, eliminate the day-to-day mundane HR needs that all of our employees have.

HR Self Service has been around now for two decades. The difference today is Hands-Free HR at the most dynamic companies is being delivered in a way that does what we all hoped for when it was first launched. The problem with traditional HR self-service models is that HR still does most of the heavy lifting. Hands-Free HR puts the knowledge and the skill in the hands of the employees and allows HR to focus on strategies that make your business successful.

FREE Webinar Alert!

Marjorie Borsiquot (Assistant Vice President of Business Process Integration for Georgetown University) and I will discuss how the best organizations today are delivering a hands-free HR experience to their employees. The tools and processes they use to make this successful, and feedback from those on the front line making it work today.

Click here to register for this SHRM Webinar, sponsored by the great folks at PeopleDoc!

I’m really excited to dig into the details of Georgetown University’s transformation of their HR service delivery. For those of you that work in complex organizations like public education, healthcare, and multi-unit delivery, this will be very insightful!

Look forward to you all joining me on Wednesday, February 10th at Noon EST!

T3 – SwitchApp @GetSwitch

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This week on T3 I review the new “Tinder” for job search app called SwitchApp.  SwitchApp is a completely mobile job search app for candidates and companies to help match them together.  It’s basically a marketplace for passive job seekers, where they can ‘swipe’ right if they are interested in a job, and a notification will go to the company of the interest.

Swipe left, and the company doesn’t get notified. For you Tinder users, you’ll get this. Obviously, to make all of this happen a job seeker first must download SwitchApp to their Apple or Android device and set up a profile. They can create a profile easily by linking their LinkedIn or Facebook profile, or filling it out manually. The profile is automatically set to anonymous, and any company on your profile will not be able to view your profile.

Swipe’s job matching algorithm then goes to work showing the jobs that the job seeker is eligible to see based on Switch’s matching criteria. If a job seeker is matched to the job, the organization can ‘like’ it to show their interest.  Then it’s up to the job seeker to decide if they’re interested. Right now, 47% of candidates matched by Switch and shown to companies are ‘liked’ by the company.

SwitchApp allows companies to post position with a structured data job posting. Basically, a company will input all of the skills they need for the position, title, location, salary range, etc. The matching technology does the rest. SwitchApp does not allow companies to ‘search’ the database of job seekers and contact anyone they want, there must be a match to make the magic happen!

Current users of the app actually love the fact that there is no searching taking place. Just post the job and see if matches come back. It eliminates much of the traditional noise you get from postings and having so many people apply that aren’t close to what you’re looking for. With SwitchApp you only get pinged when a candidate matches the criteria you put into your posting.

SwitchApp is currently free for employers to try out and use.  Primarily, it’s only going to work in New York and San Francisco (the Bay Area), because that’s where it’s being tested and launched first.  It’s not only for tech hires, the app also has finance, advertising and other business-related professions they are targeting.

It’s free. Give it a try if you’re out in those areas and looking for talent, many companies have already made hires. Eventually, Switch is going to be charging employers for usage, so it’s best to try it out now before that kicks in sometime this year.

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 – send me a note.

T3 – SmashFly

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SmashFly.  Wierd name, really great technology for ‘Pre-Applicant’ engagement.  Basically, SmashFly is a company that will make your recruitment marketing really work. No, not that flyer you made yourself with clipart. Real honest to goodness big boy and big girl marketing, for talent acquisition.

When most people think about recruiting, sourcing, etc. There is really little thought put into talent attraction.  Wait, you mean we just don’t post jobs and candidates magically appear!?! Nope, they don’t. That’s why your hiring managers hate you!

We love to talk about ‘Talent Communities’ and ‘Talent Pools’ but few of us really know how to actively engage these, and even if you do know how, you don’t have the tool. This is where SmashFly comes in.  Most companies now probably have something like a CRM (Customer Candidate Relationship Management) tool.  It might be baked into your ATS, or it’s something like Avature. You might use tools like Jobs2Web, Work4 or TweetMyJobs.  These are all great ‘bolt-on’ type of tools that will do some of what Smashfly does.  The difference being Smashfly isn’t disjointed, it’s end-to-end recruitment marketing in one box. Job Distribution, SEO, Career Site, Talent Networks, CRM, Mobile, Employee Referral Programs and Social.

Don’t underestimate the value in bringing all these disparate solutions into one platform, the data is unbelievable!  SmashFly has the coolest analytics in sourcing that I’ve seen. You get real-time looks into candidate pipelines, their status and sourcing performance.  Recruitment funnels by source, and where your internal roadblocks are! A full dashboard that will show you exactly which recruitment marketing initiatives are providing the most applicants, most qualified candidates and the most hires.  It was really cool to see how many times the program bringing in the most applicants, isn’t your best for quality of hire, but we keep funneling money to these programs!

Companies that use someone like SmashFly are usually large mid-market to enterprise type employers.  You’ll be hiring hundreds, if not, thousands of hires per year. You are already use to spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in recruitment marketing annually already.  Smashfly will make this money work a lot better for you. A system like this pays for itself, year one, easily.

5 Things I like about SmashFly:

1. Unlimited landing pages.  Guess what?  Candidates like to feel special. Creating a website landing page just for a certain job or candidate makes them feel special. With Smashfly you can have a separate landing page for every job!  You could create a landing page for a specific candidate you want “Tim’s Job Page”. Go crazy!  They literally made one for me, in about 30 seconds.  Your entire sourcing and recruiting team will be able to do these easily and all will match your branding and be connected to all systems. Seamless. No extra cost.

2. Ability to Engage and Disengage automatically. Getting ready to make an offer to a great candidate and all of sudden your CRM sends them an email about another position!? Ugh! That’s embarrassing. SmashFly’s system knows where a candidate is in your workflow and will disengage them automatically without you doing anything, and re-engage if that status changes and you need to again!

3. Full Control over Brand, Messaging across all channels (job ads, career sites, social, email campaigns, etc.). Want to change some messaging for a program on your career site, it will go across the platform everywhere else as well, or not, depending on how you want it. You create it when and where you want.

4. Complete Visibility through Analytics.  It fully integrates with your ATS, so you get end-to-end analytics like nothing you have seen prior. It’s an agnostic platform so it will give you the real scoop and evaluate all channels and media to show you what is really working, and what is not!

5. Marketing automation for recruiting.  Talent acquisition shops hate working with their internal marketing departments, because you’re never the priority. A system like Smashfly puts you back in control in to focus on the technologies and tools that can help you consistently and predictably attract qualified candidates.

It’s a really great tool, so powerful.  Check them out, it will not be a waste of your time (Demo)!

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 T3 – send me a note.

Oddly Enough, People Like It When You Want Them!

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If I hear one more person tell me that candidates don’t like phone calls, I’m going to shove a phone up your…

I’m not the smartest cat, but I know a couple of things.  Here are a few things I know:

1. You can’t taste the difference of well Gin and high-end Gin after 4 Gin and Tonics.

2. French Fries, Onion rings and Tator Tots taste great fried and taste awful baked.

3. Great tasting chocolate is the reason women can be single. (okay, I stole that one from my wife!)

4. Candidates with car trouble are lying.

5. People like to be told that you want them for the a job! It’s flattering. It makes them feel important. It makes them feel valued. They love to listen to what you have to say, regardless of how satisfied they are in their job.

If I called you right now with a job that was something you have always wanted, guess what would happen?  You would call me back. You would call me back almost instantly. You would run out to your car, telling the receptionist on the way out you have an urgent personal call, to hear what I have to say.

Those people. Those thought leaders. Those idiots, who are telling you candidates don’t like phone calls are LIARS!

Why are they lying to you? Here is why I think they are probably lying to you:

1. They are lazy and hope the internet will solve all of their problems.

2. They are hoping to talk the world into believing you never have to make a phone call to get a job.

3. They are scared.

I did a survey where I asked 100 people, mostly millennials, (all potential candidates, since all people are potential candidates) if I called you with your “Dream Job”, would you either pick up my call or call me back?  Would you like to know the results?

100 out of 100 said they would pick up my call or call me back! 100%!

Recruiters who say candidates don’t like phone calls are not recruiters, they’re administrative professionals. Pay them accordingly.