Category Archives: HR Technology

1st Timers Guide To Buying HR Technology and High Priced Handbags

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STOP! Calibrate and Listen…before you go, “Ugh! Tim’s doing another webinar!”, check this out – it’s different than other stuff we’ve done.  Negotiating job board contracts, annual ATS service agreements, knowing what new technology to buy, etc. It’s all way frustrating and confusing…for me, and I’m guessing you.  I want us all to get better at this stuff, and this webinar is going to put us all back in the power buyers position!

Buying HR Technology (System of Record/HRMS, Applicant Tracking Systems, Performance Management Systems, etc.) should be as easy as buying a high-priced handbag or the latest pair of Jordans!  You see it. You like it. You know it’s going to fit and work for your needs. GO! Make the purchase. But it’s not that simple. Buying HR Technology is hard, confusing and frustrating.  A miss can potentially stall your career and undermine your creditability.

Fistful of Talent is here to help.  In classic FOT style,Steve Boese, the Co-Chair of the HR Technology Conference, and I, will break down the issues surrounding buying HR Tech in our latest webinar on August 28 at 12pm ET (sponsored by BambooHR), entitled Buyer’s Remorse: The  FOT 1st Timer’s Guide to Buying HR Technology.

Join us on August 28 at 12pm ET for “Buyer’s Remorse: The FOT 1st Timer’s Guide to Buying HR Technology,” and we’ll hit you with the following:

  • The Difference between a Suite or a Best-of-Breed Product: Why you should care? Which one is right for you to buy? We’ll break it down based on your unique needs.
  • The Decision Tree/Process That Helps You Arrive at the Right Decision Regarding Which Solution to Buy. Yes, we can tell you exactly what to buy! But we won’t, because great HR Pros need to understand how to make these decisions. But don’t worry—we’ll show you how!
  • 6 Tips and Tricks the HR Vendor Community Uses to Get You To Buy Their Product—which might not be the product you actually need. Learn how to make sure you don’t succumb to these tactics when making your next buying decision.  This section alone will ensure you take control of your next buy like a pro!
  • The Secret for Getting Your Organization to Invest in HR tech and How to Build ROI for your Executive Team. Every buying decision comes down to the why and ROI, and your ability to persuasively and concisely get your organization to support your recommendation.  Sometimes the hardest part of an HR Tech buy is your ability to get approval to buy!

    Bonus Feature: CEO     Ben Peterson, from BambooHR (an HR solution specifically designed for small-to-medium-sized HR departments), will stop by and do a quick Q&A with Tim and Steve to discuss the biggest mistakes he sees HR buyers make when making HR Tech purchases… and how to avoid making those same mistakes yourself!

Things that are hard:  Riding a bike on a freeway. Getting your kids to eat peas. Buying HR Tech. Join us on August 28 at 12pm ET for “Buyer’s Remorse: The FOT 1st Timer’s Guide to Buying HR Technology,“ and we’ll make buying HR Tech easier. You’re on your own with the other two.

REGISTER TODAY!

I Hate Buying HR Software!

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I’m your typical HR buyer.  Each year I negotiate contracts on a number of products, from ATS, HRMS, Recruiting Tools, Selection Tools, etc.   I usually demo and look at 6-10 new products each year.  Okay, I’m not typical that way, I love new stuff and what it can do, so I like to check it out.  Beyond that, I’m very much your typical HR buyer.

Every single time I go through a buying decision I feel like I’m buying an expensive car or a house.  Hell, that’s usually the cost of the contract of whatever product I’m buying!  Therein lies the problem.  I hate buying cars and houses.  It’s stressful and I always have this deep feeling I’m getting taken!  You know the feeling.  The feeling like you paid too much, and someone else buying the same exact product as you paid less!

I hate that feeling!!!

I don’t mind paying what everyone else is paying for a product.  I feel like a failure, as a HR Pro, when I find out I paid more than someone else, and I check!  That’s the one cool thing about writing for talent and HR blogs, I have a Big network (that’s what she said)!  This allows me to connect with other HR and Talent Pros and ask them what they paid.  I have a deep urge to know whether or not I got a good deal and a bad deal.  And, I’ll be honest, if I got a bad deal, it really affects how I think about the company.

Because these decisions are so stressful for me, I decided to do something about it.  I called the one guy that knows more about HR Technology and industry more than anyone else I know, Steve Boese!  Steve is the co-chair of the annual HR Technology Conference (want $500 off? Use the code: SACKETT14 when you register), which is the 2nd largest HR conference to SHRM national, but arguably becoming the must-see HR conference of the year.  HR Tech has all the players in one spot and all the HR decision makers, it’s a very cool place to see the future of HR unfold in front of you!

I asked Steve to help me put on a webinar, that would not only educate me on how I should be buying HR Tech, but also uncover all those tips and tricks to make sure I don’t ever again have that bad feeling I have when I buy!  The webinar title: Buyer’s Remorse: A 1st Timers FOT Guide To Buying HR Technology and High Priced Handbags!  You see, I feel buying HR Tech, should be as easy as buying a handbag without the buyer’s remorse!

This one is personal to me!  I think all HR Pros can learn from all the mistakes I’ve made in buying HR technology and from Steve’s brilliance!

Come join us on August 28th at Noon EST for this FREE webinar:

3 Ways I Make HR Better

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If you’re sitting in your HR office right now reading this, about to create some new HR stuff – stop – your wasting our time (and by “our” I mean all of us employees in the organization).  “Wow, look who woke up on the wrong side of the week!”

It’s not that I don’t think being creative is important. It is, it’s Hugely important.  Being creative in HR just isn’t important.   I know you think it is, that’s because you want to be creative, so you make yourself believe that’s important.  But the reality is, anything you can do, I can do better.  No, not because I’m better than you.  I mean I probably am, but that isn’t the point.  I can do it better because all I’m going to do is take what you’ve already done, and make it better.

In fact I’ll do a few more things while working on improving your thing:

1. I’ll make it cheaper

2. I’ll make it more simple to use

3. I’ll make it fun to do

See! Stop being creative, and just start making things better.

From an article in Fast Company:

The line between becoming a pioneer and a “me-too” flop can be unclear when you’re in the weeds of development. Uncertainty is an easier destination to arrive at than confidence, especially when the truth is, there’s no such thing as making anything that’s really new. Everything is an evolution of something else. But you can make something better. When in doubt, ask yourself if you’d use your new product instead of the market leader’s. If the answer is yes, keep going. If it’s no, then stop and rethink.

This obviously talks about products, but services and what we offer in HR are very similar.  Is that program you’re developing in HR better than what your competition is developing in HR?  If yes, carry on. If no, make it better.  It isn’t hard. It will take some hard work, but it’s not mentally challenging.  When I see people unwilling to make their HR Shops better, I know one of two things are at play:

1. They’ve given up on the organization, and they need to go, or;

2. They are fundamentally lazy, and need to go.

It’s a painful truth most leaders just don’t want to realize.

Just make it better.

If Only They Could Hear What I Have To Say…

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It’s the age old resume problem.  We’ve all had it one time or another.  When I was early in my HR career I desperately wanted to work for Nike.  I had this vision in my head that it would be such a super cool place to work, I was a huge brand advocate, Nike couldn’t have selected a better HR Pro.

I applied.  I applied, again.  I applied, again.

Nothing. Well, nothing, besides the obligatory form email telling me thanks, no thanks. Just Don’t Do It.

If only they could hear what I have to say and see my passion, there is no way they wouldn’t select me.

That was years ago, then companies like HireVue came along and changed the game.  Now any company could ‘see’ me through the use of digital interviewing.  Life was good. Too late for Nike and I to have a long successful relationship, but such is life, I had to find out how to Do It with someone else.

I thought that was it.  HR technology at its best, really no room for ‘real’ improvement, just window dressing changes from here on out.  That was until HireVue decided to hire some really, freaking, smart people that know a bunch of scientific stuff, and talk about stuff you and I wouldn’t understand.  HireVue’s scientist found out there is a level above digital interviewing.

Language and behavior analytics is the science behind what people say and how they say it.  The words they use, their expressions, their vocal infliction, etc.  Basically, you can learn 100,000 times more from this analysis, then just using a resume. HireVue launched HireVue Insights with this in mind. As I understand it the more data you collect through digital interviews, the better HireVue Insights is able to compare to top performers and make recommendations. This is really freaking cool!

HireVue beta tested Insights with one of their client partners Chipotle, which by the way just locked down Consumer Reports best burrito place! Chipotle is growing like a weed.  They’ll make 40,000 or so hires this year.  Using HireVue currently for digital interviewing, their normal digital interview to hire ratio is 10 to 1.  Since they began using HireVue Insights, that has gone to 4 to 1!  It doesn’t matter if you’re hiring 40,000 or 40, those kinds of increases will make any Talent Acquisition Pro’s Day!

I still can’t get past this idea that now candidates can actually be ‘heard’.  It’s really another game changer, when I thought the game was over being changed.  It’s the one major complaint every trench HR pro hears throughout their entire career.  I don’t get the science, it’s way over my head, and I’m fine with that.  As an HR Pro I just want the best hires, as fast as I can.  Insights just changed my world!

Just imagine if Nike would have used HireVue Insights 15 years ago to hire that mid-level HR Manager in Portland?  Right now, I would probably be having lunch with Phil Knight and Mike Jordan (I would call him Mike if I was running Nike HR, because we would be close friends!), as his right hand man, running HR for Nike.  But, No!  Nike missed out.  It’s a shame for them, I’m really good, Phil and Mike would have loved me!

 

HR’s Guide To Big Data For Dummies

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You’ve heard the hype: Big Data is taking over the business world, and HR’s going to be expected to make decisions—not through feelings, relationships or gut instinct—but via numbers. The problem is… your HRIS, ATS and Performance Solutions are all different systems and weren’t built with the big-data revolution in mind. In short, you feel less than ready for workforce analytics—you’re just trying to get the basic reports generated.

We feel your pain, people. That’s why our June installment of the FOT webinar is entitled, HR Moneyball: The FOT Bootstrapper Guide To Getting Started With Big Data. Join Steve Boese and Kris Dunn of FOT for this webinar (sponsored by ThoughtSpot, a cool business intelligence startup), and we’ll share the following goodies with you:

– A brief review of where HR stands with Business Intelligence (BI)/Big Data. We’ll cover some of the trends, what the bleeding edge is doing, the 3 types of data sources available to HR shops and what the CEOs and business leaders you support are asking for related to data and BI out of the HR Function. We’ll also talk about what your options are when HR is the last priority for an over-burdened IT function.

– Why HR pros need to shift/lean forward. It’s not what happened, it’s what going to happen. Getting your head around business intelligence and data means you have to shift your focus from reporting the past and move to predictive analytics. We’ll give you examples of great reporting decks from the HR Hall of Fame and tell you how they have to change to meet the call from predictive analytics out of your HR shop.

– The Five Best HR Plays for Business Intelligence (BI) and Big Data. Since we’re all about helping you win, we wouldn’t do this webinar without giving you some great ideas for where to start with a data play out of your shop. You’re going to stop reporting turnover and start predicting it. You’re going to stop reporting time to fill and start showing which hiring managers are great at—you guessed it—hiring. We’ll give you five great ideas and show you how to get started piecing the story together.

– A primer on what’s next once you start channeling Nostradamus. Since you specialize in people, you naturally understand the move to using Business Intelligence (BI)/Big Data 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 business-intelligence 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 June 26 at 2pm EST for HR Moneyball: The FOT Bootstrapper Guide To Getting Started With Big Data and we’ll help you understand how to deploy Moneyball principles in HR that allow you to use predictive Big Data to position yourself as the expert you are.

Sackett’s 2014 Guide To Whom To See At SHRM!

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The big annual SHRM National Conference happens in a week or so in Orlando.  I’ll be there.  SHRM is letting me speak again this year, which is cool, I’m as subversive as SHRM gets which makes it fun for me.  I always get a lot of SHRM dignitaries that show up to make sure I don’t say anything inappropriate, which makes me get very creative with my words, and if you read my blog you know that list of words is roughly around 350.

To combat the possibility I might slip up they put me at times they hope no one will show up.  This year I’m on at 7am on Monday!  Yeah, 7 freaking am!   Good thing for me I’m a morning person and I drink giant amounts of Diet Mt. Dew – I will have one on stage with me! If you bring me one, I’ll line them up and try to knock them all down in my hour and fifteen minutes!

Bobbi Wilson from Huntsville, AL SHRM (she’s good people, connect with her!) asked me who I would like to see speak at SHRM, besides myself, and I thought it would make a good post, so here’s my Top 10 don’t miss presentations at SHRM!  First we have to lay down some rules of why and who I will choose:

A. I’ll always choose entertaining speakers over non-entertaining speakers.  It’s an HR conference, we’ll have our share of boring ones!

B. I like practitioners, but don’t get too caught up in that.  Most of the best speakers used to be practitioners who found out they’re pretty damn good speakers, so they went the consultant route and doing very well.  Many practitioners are knowledgeable but can’t speak a lick!

C. Titles mean a lot.  If you can’t come up with a creative title, my guess is you can’t come up with a creative presentation.

So, here’s who I will see if I have time in between networking with all the great HR Pros who come to SHRM (I usually get more out of the networking than the presentations!):

1. Tim Sackett, SPHR – Monday 7am – “What Your CEO Wishes HR Would Do!”  – I hear he gives out hugs after his presentation! Plus, he’ll be all jacked up on Mt. Dew!

2. Jonah Berger – Tuesday 2:15pm – “Crafting Contagious Ideas“ – this might be the only session I will actually attend. This dude is brilliant and a great speaker. He’s my #2 behind Malcolm Gladwell.  You should not miss this.  #Fanboy

3. Jennifer McClure – Wednesday 10am – (friend alert! At some point Jen and I will share a Sprinkles Cupcake during SHRM – you’re not invited!) – “The Business Case for Building Effective Business Leaders“ This is actually the worst title in the history of SHRM that doesn’t include “FMLA” or “EEOC”, but Jen is a pro’s, pro who understands how to get a session accepted at SHRM.  The title has to be vanilla!  Don’t hold that against her.  She’s really good and has a cult following of HR ladies who love her!

4. Gregg Tate, GPHR – Tuesday 10:45am – “Adidas: How They Created Their nWow (New Way of Working) Company Culture” – I’ve seen the Adidas guys speak before and they’re usually good with a good story.  Insider tip – see how they pronounce “Adidas” – many insiders from Germany do it differently than we say in the states – you can’t get it out of your head!

5.  Mike Reardon – Monday 10:45am – “Sustaining the Disney Culture Through Selection, Training, and Engagement”

6. Brad Karsh – Monday 2:00pm – “Once Upon a Time…Four steps to Using Storytelling to Deliver Unforgettable Presentations” – This is the most underutilized skill in HR, period. You’ll be a better HR Pro if you have this skill. Not just for presentations but increasing your influence throughout your organization.

7. Chester Elton – Monday 4:00pm – “All In: How Great Leaders Develop a Culture of Belief and Deliver Big Results” – Chester is a good speaker. Doesn’t matter what he’s presenting, he’s probably better than most at that time slot. He’s polished and will deliver a good show.

8.  Cy Wakeman – Tuesday 7am – (Cy has the session of death – no one wants to get up after partying Monday night for a 7am session!) “Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: New HR Foundation to Boost Employee Value and Drive Results” – Cy knows her stuff!  I like going to presentations where I’m going to hear from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about, and she does!

9.  Michelle Smith – Tuesday 4pm – “Next Practices Leadership: Driving Growth & Innovation in a People-Led Economy” Michelle is from O.C. Tanner and they’ve got some great research on engagement, what works, what doesn’t – well worth the time to see her speak to get that data!

10. Vendor Show – Every day, all day – Pick out three kinds of technology you might bring into your HR shop in the next 3 years (digital interviewing, automated reference checking, assessments, recruiting tools, metrics, etc.) and good spend some real time demoing those products.  It will be some of the most valuable time you spend at SHRM!  Part of our job in HR is to know what we’ll be using in the future, this is where you’ll find that stuff!  Scout out the small booths in the back aisles.  There will be companies there that you haven’t heard about, that in three years everyone will be using – that’s really, really cool!

Connect with me.  One of my favorite things to do at SHRM National is to meet HR pros around the world who read my blog.  I get in Sunday, leave Wednesday.  Tweet me, email me, call my cell, stalk my session – but let’s connect in a real way (okay I mean hugging!).

You’re Business Can Change In A Blink!

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So, there’s this lady, Mary Meeker,  who does this annual Internet trends report.  It’s super cool! Packed with odds and ends. I’m a data geek, so I love it!  Go read it, I could do a hundred posts on it! One of the things that caught me right away, actually blew me away, was this slide:

Global Smartphones

 

What does this all mean?  Basically, Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s operating system now run 97% of all smartphones.  8 years ago, it was 5%.

What happened?!

Remember your cool flip phone, the one your Dad still has?  Yeah, that was a Nokia.  What about that fat Blackberry IT made you have because it was safe for email?  Yeah, almost dead!

Think your business is really strong right now? Market leader?  Don’t blink!  It can all go away that freaking fast!

This isn’t a public service announcement, this is just a wake up call.  Know your customer. Take care of them better than anyone else ever  thought of taking care of them.  Listen to them. Hear them. They’ll tell you what they want to buy next.

Be your customers next buy.

Job Seekers! Still believe college degree not important?

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From University of Michigan Econ Professor Justin Wolfers and the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes the following chart on why it’s important to get your college degree:

Unemployment by educationUnemployment rate for College Graduates = 3% ish

Unemployment rate for some college = 5.7% ish

Unemployment rate for High School diploma = 6.2% ish

Unemployment rate for No High School diploma = 9% ish

The one thing I found most interesting from this chart is the closeness between high school diploma and some college/Associate degree.  There is virtually no difference.  I think this would change considerably if you pulled out those Associate degree folks who got a two year degree in some sort of skilled trade.

Otherwise just going to college, and not graduating, is virtually the same as just going to high school and graduating.  I wonder how this might all change with companies like Google claiming they will hire people without a degree?

With organizations like the Kahn Academy, you can virtually get an Ivy League education from the comfort of your parents basement.  How long does it take for those statistics to catch up with our current reality?  When does the ease of access of education online change the numbers above?

Maybe a better question is, do you ever see a time when Fortune 1000 type of organizations will not use ‘college degrees’ as a main criteria for screening out potential candidates?  That’s a huge shift in perspective, but with pre-employment screening tools continuing to advance, we aren’t too far away from having the ability to accurately measure two individuals: one with a degree, one without, to see which one would really be the better ‘job’ fit.

In the mean time – go to school kids!

 

What is your Favorite Job Board?

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Funny thing happened last week.  Glassdoor sent me one of those email surveys that companies send out. You know the ones – please fill this out, it only takes 5 minutes and if you do we’ll send $5 to cure dyslexia of Whales in the Eastern Arctic.   Of course I support Whale dyslexia so I did it.  Here is the first screen shot that came up:

Glassdoor surveyNotice anything interesting about the list of ‘Job Boards’?

Yep!  You caught it – LinkedIN everyone’s favorite job board 2.0 made the list.  I can honestly say, this is the first time I’ve ever seen LinkedIN (LI) described by another vendor as a Job Board.  I think that is telling to how LI’s competition are positioning themselves to go after some of that LI cash!

Beyond LI, CareerBuilder and Monster both have been working hard to shed the old Job Board tag as well.  No one wants to be known as a Job Board any longer.  Although, job boards still have a very valuable spot within the industry.

John Sumser, wrote a piece over at HR Examiner last week that describes this evolution brilliantly:

“The future of job boards is in competition with its customers some of the time. This isn’t really new, but we’ve forgotten that the core business model is a market of competing self-interests. While it is delightful to imagine a world where all candidates know about all jobs and vice versa, the reality is more mundane.

If you are a big brand (and there are 3,000 or 4,000 of those), the existing value of the company’s market awareness covers the cost of candidate acquisition. If, on the other hand, you are one of the several million brands no one has ever heard of, you have a different problem.

That’s where job boards come in. Companies that are expert in acquiring and aggregating audiences (not data) can help employers find workers. It turns out that this is an extremely valuable communications channel.

Where big brands are becoming their own distribution channels, little brands need help reaching the people they need. Job boards are less useful in the big enterprise game and way more useful everywhere else.”

One telling miss from the list?  What about Indeed?  Aren’t they the biggest job board of them all?  Also, is The Ladders still in business?  I haven’t heard form them in 2-3 years!

You Can’t Fake Passion

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Just flying back from HireVue’s Digital Disruption conference this week.  This won’t be a post about HireVue’s products.  It’s pretty clear they are the industry leader in video digital interviewing technology (I think it’s funny we can’t call it video any longer, it’s now digital interviewing). This is about their 29 year old, Founder and CEO Mark Newman.

The cool thing about Digital Disruption is that it was a pretty intimate event.  HireVue’s executive team, hell most of their entire company, seemingly was at this event and interacting with everyone.  The event also allowed for a lot of up close and personal time with Mark.  Twice during the conference he got up to speak to the group of customers, prospects, analyst, etc.  Twice he showed why HireVue has been a fast growing success.

You know those times when you’re so proud, so upset, so frustrated, so happy, when you’re on the brink of showing some ‘real’ emotion? Parents I know will know these moments, when your kid does something so incredible you get choked up even telling others about it.  Twice, Mark did this while talking about his company and team.  About his vision for his company, about his vision for his team.  He is a proud parent of HireVue.

For the past three years or so when talking about HireVue with my HR Pro friends, we’ve all wondered aloud what HireVue’s play was going to be.  Do they build out a full platform ATS, HCM, etc.? Do they get bought up by one of the big enterprise plays (Oracle, SAP, etc.)? In my mind it was just a matter of time.  A ‘video’ interviewing company was not going to just make it on it’s own.

I was wrong.  It doesn’t mean that one day HireVue won’t go down one of these paths, but after spending some time with them it is very apparent that Mark and his team (Chip Luman, Kevin Marasco, Ben Martinez, Loren Larsen and Jared Wilks) have much bigger plans in growing and sustaining HireVue as a player by themselves in the Talent Acquisition space.

I’ve got to spend time with a bunch of different CEOs and leadership teams in our HR space, and across a number of industries in my career.  It’s pretty rare that I’ve been around a leader as passionate about his business as Mark, and as engaged in the development of the product moving forward.  It was refreshing, it was cool, it was motivating.  It made me feel less of a leader in for my own company!  And the bastard is only 29! It’s not fair!  What I found out about HireVue at Digital Disruption is that this is a company that is far from being done in ‘disrupting’ our industry.

This is something that is very unique in the HR Tech space, where most companies are just trying to build something fast and sell.  I found a company and leadership team in HireVue that is trying to build something not for today, but for generations.  It’s big goals and big aspirations, and I think they can do it.