Category Archives: HR Technology

Is Your Company a Magnet for Talent? #Greatness19 @OCTanner

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I’m out at O.C. Tanner’s Influence Greatness conference this week and got a sneak peek at their 2020 Global Cultural Report by the O.C. Tanner Institute and it’s loaded with some exceptional findings! O.C. Tanner puts more money into their research than almost any other HR Tech company on the planet, so it’s well worth checking out. This report surveyed 20,000 people and over 12.8 million data points.

The research is based on O.C. Tanner’s model of “Talent Magnets” of which there are six:

  • Wellbeing
  • Leadership
  • Purpose
  • Opportunity
  • Success
  • Appreciation

While every single one of these is important in their own right, they also all work together. Lift one, and you will lift the rest. As you can imagine the highest-rated magnet is Purpose. Having a clear purpose to why you do the work you do has the highest impact on positive engagement.

So often I find people believing their job or their company has no purpose, but everyone does and every organization does. You might not believe in it, or agree with it, but the purpose is there. Part of the being a strong magnet is pulling in others who do believe in your purpose.

Wellbeing is another one that is interesting. On the outside, we see “wellbeing” and we think physical wellbeing, but in reality, in terms of being a talent magnet, it’s probably more social wellbeing that has a bigger impact. It’s something like belonging. Do I feel like I belong here, or that I’m wanted here? Do I feel valued by not only my leader but my peers and co-workers that I’m with every day?

I think we discount how important this is to the retention of all talent. We discount it because it’s really hard to help someone feel like they belong. Many times this comes out on the exit interview as “oh, yeah, Tim, he just didn’t ‘fit’ our culture”. The truth is no one ‘fits’ your culture the moment they walk in, we make them feel wanted, we make them feel like they belong, and then not so magically, they become a great ‘fit’.

One of the shocking findings in the report is the picture above. 59% of your employees would take another job with another company for basically the same job. Same title, same pay, same benefits, believing that it will magically be better. This really isn’t as surprising if you really go through your turnover. Most people leave us for basically the same job at another place, believing it’s something better, but it’s basically the same.

Another piece of data from the report I’m fascinated by is 79% of employees are feeling some level of burnout, from minor to extreme. Burnout is basically chronic workplace stress that isn’t mitigated. Do you know who never had “burnout”? Your grandparents! So, they either were way tougher than we are, or work has changed considerably! I think it’s a bit of both, actually!

It’s a giant report, I’m only scratching morsels from all the data – it’s like 180 pages – I’m not even sure my book was that long! If you’re in HR and leadership this is a must-read to help your organization nurture the culture you want to have.

McDonald’s Is Showing Us the Future of Recruiting!

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Mikey D’s announced this week that they purchased an Artificial Intelligence speech recognition company. Why? Well, quite simply the vast majority of interactions that happen between McDonald’s and it’s customers happen through the drive-thru speaker. So, if you want to save money. Become more efficient. Make fewer errors. etc. You need to find a way to add technology into that equation.

“Yeah, um, well, I’d like a #3 with a large fry and large diet, and an extra McChicken with no mayo, what? No, you can’t have an apple pie, I also need a kids meal with apple slices, the cheeseburger one, with no cheese, ketchup only, did you get my large drink on the first order? Oh, I need an extra ranch as well, and I’ve got a coupon for a free large sandwich.” 

So, welcome to the show A.I.!

Here’s the thing, if McDonald’s new AI software can figure out these orders and get them right, we recruiters are in trouble!

I wasn’t making fun of the order above, I think that’s my actual order! That is complex language to have to figure out and sort through and respond to. If they can have a chatbot take your order and answer your questions, they will be able to figure out how to eliminate a real human in having screening conversations and most low-level skilled interviews.

“Oh, AI will never replace recruiters, Tim!” 

Why?

Because AI can’t have complex conversations? Maybe at this moment, but that is changing quickly. Because AI can’t correctly judge and have bias like a real person? Well, turns out that’s a positive for inclusive hiring. Because AI can’t select the best talent out of many candidates? Yeah, it already does a better job at that than humans.

So, it basically comes down to AI can’t build relationships.

AI is super good, way better than humans, at doing transactional stuff really well. Candidate applies for a job. AI takes them through the process. The candidate gets hired. That can happen today.

Person, not yet a candidate, might be a good fit for your job, but they have a job and are happy with the job they have. They could probably, through a great marketing process, actually get interested in your job, but it’s going to take some real person to person interaction to get them truly interested and leave that job for a new job.

This is where AI will struggle, but that is only about 20% of hiring. So, almost 80% of hiring, theoretically, today, isn’t too far away from having AI take it over and be more efficient and less costly.

Technology starts on the consumer side of the world. “How do we use AI to sell hamburgers to customers?” Once that gets figured out, it’s pretty a very easy transition to “How do we sell this job to a candidate?”

Are Employees Really Upset Over Being Replaced By Robots?

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I think we all want to believe that our employees are freaking out that one day their job, in the near future, will be replaced by a robot. It’s all you hear right now in our space! “A.I. will be taking over 97% of jobs by next week!”

The reality is our employees are not afraid of their job being taken by a robot. But they are afraid!

Turns out, our employees are more afraid of their job being taken by another employee, not a robot! A new study by the Technical University of Munich has shown that our employees are actually more afraid of other people taking their jobs, then by A.I.

The study shows: In principle, most people view it more favorably when workers are replaced by other people than by robots or intelligent software. This preference reverses, however, when it refers to people’s own jobs. When that is the case, the majority of workers find it less upsetting to see their own jobs go to robots than to other employees…

People tend to compare themselves less with machines than with other people. Consequently, being replaced by a robot or software poses less of a threat to their feeling of self-worth. This reduced self-threat could even be observed when participants assumed that they were being replaced by other employees who relied on technological abilities such as artificial intelligence in their work.

Turns out, it’s a huge punch to our gut to be replaced by another human since we compare ourselves to being equal, or better, to other humans, but we can comprehend that technology, like A.I., is actually better than ourselves at many tasks.

“The robot can definitely do parts of my job better than me, but g*d damn it, Mark can not!” 

It makes sense, for the most part, we all have fairly fragile egos. It’s hard for us to comprehend that our employer would replace us with another person because that means we probably suck at our job, or at least, our employer thinks we suck. If I’m replaced by a machine I can rationalize that away. If I’m replaced by another person, that’s a hard one to explain to family and friends.

It’s definitely something to keep in mind as we transition many tasks over to the robots. I think from an organizational behavior standpoint we are very concerned about what our employees will think, but the reality is they’ll probably have less issue with it than if we were shopping their jobs offshore to people who will do it cheaper but are real!

2019 HR Technology Conference Pitchfest Participants Announced!

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You guys know I’m a huge believer in doing demos of HR and TA Technology companies to build your knowledge around the technology that runs our professional life. I often get the question, “Tim, what companies should I demo?” Well, I will be looking at all 30 of these companies!

Hundreds of companies applied for this year’s Pitchfest, with 30 selected to compete. In alphabetical order, here are the 2019 Pitchfest participants:

“Last year’s inaugural competition drew outstanding participants and offered a lot of creative, exciting ideas about the future of our industry,” said conference co-chair Steve Boese. “Pitchfest provides a unique exposure opportunity for early-stage companies that are embracing innovation in the HR technology space, giving them a dedicated audience including many of the industry’s top leaders, analysts, and venture capitalists. This year promises to be another inspiring competition packed with great ideas, and we’re really looking forward to it.”

Participants are divided into three groups, each with five minutes to pitch and answer questions about their solution. Each round will consider input from the official judging panel, representing a broad range of backgrounds in HR technology, along with audience voting. The total score earned by each participant will determine which six companies advance to the final round.

One winner will receive a $25,000 prize provided in partnership with the Randstad Innovation Fund and secure exhibit space for the 2020 expo. A $5,000 “Gig Economy” prize from the Randstad Innovation Fund will be awarded to a second participant.

The HR Tech Conference also includes an exposition floor featuring more than 450 exhibitors with products that attendees can experience and demo first-hand, along with a stacked conference program that provides for almost a full week of sessions. Visit www.HRTechConference.com for registration and additional information.  Also, you can use the following link and get $300 off – The Sackett Deal! 

DisruptHR Detroit 3.0 – Limited Tickets On Sale Now!

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DisruptHR Detroit is coming back to Downtown Detroit on September 19th from 5:30-8: 30 pm. Once again we want to give a big shout out to Quicken Loans and the HR and TA teams of Quicken Loans for hosting this great event onsite at The Madison!

We changed things up a bit this year – still great speakers (see the list below) and still great food, drinks, and fun – but we are going smaller, more intimate, can we say a bit more Disruptive! On top of this great, cool venue (that is literally across the street from Tiger Stadium) we have the founder of DisruptHR, Jennifer McClure, making a celebrity speaking appearance!

Here’s the deal though, we can only fit 150 folks into the venue! We’ve already sold half those tickets! Last year we sold 300+! So, if you want to come this year, you better be quick and go buy your tickets! We will sell-out and I apologize in advance, but there’s no way for us to increase seating capacity for this event. The cost is $30 per ticket, which includes the speakers, food, drink & parking!

DisruptHR Detroit 3.0 Speakers:

– Becky Andree: SOS! I am Drowning in Complexity

– April Burton-Welch: HR Perspective: Let’s Be Fair, Firm & Consistent

– Adam Klug: Texting Candidates – You’re Not Doing It, but You Should!

– Jennifer Laidlaw: Your Training Did Nothing!

– Jill Melton: Words Can Kill – Words Can Heal! Choose Wisely

– Clarene Mitchell: Don’t be shy…Create Your Own Digital Footprint!

– Greg Mood: Jerry Springer-type HR Stories!

– Joan Morehead: What’s your brand of IPA, and it’s not about beer!

– James Reid: Employment Issues: Drugs Sex Money Rock’n Roll

– Michelle Snay: Show IT the love, HR!

– Jennifer McClure: (She’s surprising us with her title!)

We would also love to thank our sponsors for this event:

Headliner – 

Ultimate Software

Food and Drink Sponsor –

Marsh & McLennan Agency

Gold Sponsors –

Grace & Porta

Purpose Point

HireVue

SkillScout

Silver Sponsors- 

O.C. Tanner

Background Check Central

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Eightfoldai – AI Powered Talent Intelligence Platform

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Today on the Weekly Dose I take a look at Eightfold. Eightfold.ai is a recruiting technology that kind of is hard to define, like many of the new AI-driven technologies within the TA space right now. Eightfold does automated matching of candidates to your jobs with rankings, it can build personalized career sites, help eliminate hiring and screening biases, and even be used for internal mobility.

See what I what I mean? What do you call that? They call it a talent intelligent platform. It can integrate with your ATS and/or CRM and help you automate much of the front-side of your recruiting screening and matching process.

What I find in most organizations is we have recruiters, and they might be really good at the job of recruiting, but they don’t have the specialized knowledge to truly know what candidate will be better at a certain job than another because they lack the technical skill knowledge. Eightfold uses AI and deep learning to match candidates much more accurately and quickly than a human recruiter can do.

The process of Eightfold is fairly lightweight. They can pull in your jobs from your ATS or you can create a job in Eightfold and it will go to work ranking candidates who are the best fit and most likely to respond to the job you have open. This gives an instant target list for your recruiters to go after.

What do I like about Eightfold? 

– Eightfold can help organizations better leverage the resources and data they have invested in talent attraction that has previously not been available to most organizations. Technology like Eightfold will move organizations faster, but also with a higher quality of hire.

– Eightfold personalizes the career site experience for candidates who are coming to your site. Candidate has the ability to upload their resume/application and immediately get a personalized experience that is different from the next candidate who comes to your site.

– Eightfold will help organizations do a better job at hiring for diversity by masking certain information on profiles, but also delivery funnel diversity statistics so TA leaders can have a real-time view of diversity pipelines within the organizations and see where diverse candidates are falling through.

– Because Eightfold’s match technology is so robust, organizations are using it for internal mobility as well, but uploading all of their internal talent and giving a view to leaders of the organization of where you might already have someone internally who is the best fit for a position, and should go down that path first, before looking externally. Too often we see great talent turnover because a position was filled from the outside, and they were never even considered for it, and didn’t even realize it was a possibility.

This type of technology can be used across all kinds of industries, not just tech. From a cost standpoint, and a data standpoint, it works much better at larger volumes, so you’re probably looking for at least 500+ employee organizations to be most effective. It’s certainly dynamic and eye-opening when you demo and I encourage to take a look! While there is an investment to get technology like Eightfold, the ROI is huge in comparison to hiring another recruiter or sourcing pro.

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: @SparcStart launches Amplify Video Management System

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Today on the Weekly Dose I take a look at SparcStart‘s newest product, Amplify. Amplify is a video management system/platform where you can store all of your employment branding and recruiting-related content no matter where it was produced. So, you can bring videos in from professional third parties, YouTube, employee-generated videos from their phones, videos generated on other video-enabled apps, etc., and have all of that content in one place.

Why is this a big deal? Video has increasingly become the go-to content for talent acquisition, and the growth of video being used is off the charts when it comes to employment branding and recruiting. The problem is we don’t have one place to catalog all of this content. We don’t have one place to share this content and measure the views. We don’t have one place to approve and ensure the right video content is being used by our teams.

Well, until Amplify.

What do I like about SparcStart’s Amplify VMS (Video Management System)? 

– Super simple and easy to use dashboard to upload all of your EB & recruiting videos so you have them all in one system. Plus, from the dashboard, you can share them on social, get a URL to share with candidates that will bring them to your company branded micro-site to view (less noise then sending them to YouTube).

– Create videos as well, without the need for your employees to download an app. Basically, through the dashboard, invite them, tell them what it’s about, they get an email to click through on their phone, record, and upload all in two clicks total! You then have the ability to view and approve to be added to the content library on the dashboard. (click the pic below to see me use Amplify in action)

– Having a video management system allows you to have one spot for quality control across your entire environment. The one problem with quick-video is that we lose control of our brand when all of this is being generated and no one seems to be in charge. Amplify is a great tool to have for any organization that potentially has many locations, divisions, regions, and countries using corporate branded video.

– Early users are already figuring out how to use this system in ways it wasn’t even designed for! Some early adopters are increasing their offer acceptance rate by having hiring managers send a quick offer video link, along with the offer letter, to make the offer super personalized for each candidate. Organizations can send out personal interview videos within seconds.

SparcStart was started as a video job description tool, which is how most of us will know them. The addition of Amplify, which is a stand-alone product, really is something that is needed in the industry and most people are just figuring out they need as video content has exploded. The pricing model is very affordable (like $1K/month for 50 vids!), especially when you figure out all the ways you can use it. The video below literally took me under thirty seconds to click on the email link, record, and upload, with the ability to use! The simplicity of Amplify is why I really think it will take off! 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.

Words matter! If you want more gender diversity in your applicants!

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New data study released by LinkedIn this week titled “Language Matters Gender Diversity Report” has some awesome insight to how the words we use in job descriptions and job postings have a dramatic impact to who actually applies to jobs. We’ve known some of this for a while, but the LinkedIn data is very robust and compelling at a new level.

Some highlights from the report:

– Women are 16% less likely to apply to a job after viewing it than men.

– Research shows that when words like “aggressive” are used in a job description to describe a company’s workplace, 44% of women (and 33% of men) would be discouraged from applying.

– 25% of women would be discouraged from working somewhere described as “demanding”.

– 61% of women associate the term “soft skills” as a female-gender preferred role vs. 52% for men.

– Women are 4 times more likely to want to be perceived as ‘collaborative’ in the workplace.

So, how do you put all of this into practice?

The reality is the words we choose, thinking these words are going to get us the dynamic talent we desire, might actually be hurting our ability to get the dynamic, gender-inclusive talent we desire. There are a number of technologies on the market currently that can help with the wording (Textio is probably the most known).

The data is very clear, the language you use on your job postings and job descriptions will attract or detract certain people from applying. Want to give yourself a chance to get more females to apply, use phrases like “soft skills” or “collaborative” as a desired skill set you’re looking for. Don’t use words like “aggressive” and “demanding” or you’re more likely to get fewer females to apply, and there are a whole host of these types of words.

If you can’t afford the technology that will help you catch this language, I would ask for help from females in your organization (not necessarily in HR) to give you feedback around language and suggestions for things that would get them to be more likely to apply. I find most employees welcome the chance to give TA and HR feedback about our work! 😉

What we know is cutting and pasting the same job description you’ve used since 2004 isn’t working or helping. Most job descriptions, even today, are written in a male-dominated voice that discourages females from applying. It’s very hard to read and see, but the data is screaming at us that it’s a problem that we aren’t paying attention to. We all (male, female, non-binary, etc.) all write in a male-dominated voice because that’s how we’ve been trained to write. That’s what we read. So, it’s natural for us. It’s unnatural for us to change it. Welcome to bias in hiring.

 

DisruptHR Detroit 3.0 Speaker Applications Now Being Accepted!

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For those who don’t know, I’m involved with DisruptHR Detroit with an amazing team of HR pros and leaders, and we are putting on our 3rd event on Thursday, September 19th at 6 pm.

Great DisruptHR events start with Great content and we are now Accepting Speaker Applications for DisruptHR Detroit 3.0!

Due Date is August 2nd!

Tickets for this event will go on sale on August 5th and we’ll announce the full slate of speakers and the agenda on August 9th.

The location of DisruptHR 3.0 will be downtown Detroit at The Madison. Click through to the DisruptHR Detroit site for more information.

Who makes a Great DisruptHR Speaker? 

Anyone with a passion for HR, Recruiting, People and pushing the envelope around what, why and how we do what we do every day in the world of work!

We especially love practitioners of all experience levels. You don’t know have to be a twenty-year vet to be great at DisruptHR! You can be an HR pro in your first year on the job. It’s all about passion and ideas!

So, what makes a great DisruptHR Talk?

  1. It’s 5 minutes – so you better be tight around what your topic and idea is!
  2. 20 slides that move every 15 seconds – you don’t control this, we do. So you better practice!
  3. No selling products or services – Yes to selling ideas and passions!
  4. Make us feel something – laugh, cry, anger – have a take and be proud of that take!
  5. We see and feel your passion.

We’ve built DisruptHR Detroit to be a supportive hub of HR and Recruiting. We want people to come and challenge us, but know you’ll be rewarded with an audience that will support you and cheer you on. These talks aren’t easy, and we get that! The audience gets that!

How can you speak at DisruptHR Detroit 3.0?

APPLY to Speak it’s easy! It’s a great development opportunity for those looking to get on stage and have some professional experience speaking. You actually get a professionally produced video of your talk that you can use as evidence of your ability. It’s also a great networking opportunity with the Detroit metro HR and Talent community!

Every HR and TA Tech Vendor Should Go To @SHRM National for this One Reason! #SHRM

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I absolutely love going to the SHRM National Conference.  I’ve been 8 out of the last 9 years. I’ve spoken at many. I’ve been a part of the blogger team at many. I’ve had real conversations with real HR and Talent pros at every single one.

If I was advising HR and TA Technology vendor teams (oh wait, I do) I would tell them to take their product teams to SHRM National and make them go to sessions, meet real HR people, walk the expo and observe and listen, and invite a group of customers to dinner or drinks.

Why?

You (HR and TA tech vendors) are not listening to the masses.

For the most part, most teams building HR and TA technology are not and have never been HR or TA practitioners. They are technologist by trade and are looking to solve problems. The problem is, this leads to solving problems for the 1% not the 99%.

When you sit in sessions at the SHRM conference you get to hear real-life HR and Talent. What you quickly realize is that the problems in the field, are much lower than you’re trying to solve for, and much more common. We (the HR and Talent community) want easy-buttons, not higher levels of technology. We want simplicity and shit that works.

You make us believe this is a single point solution, a suite. It’s not and we get pissed off because your promises end up making us look like idiots. We want great payroll, great HRIS, great recruiting, great performance management, etc. You give us great of one or two things, and then average for the rest, leaving most of the organization upset and believing we have no idea what we are doing, and then IT and Finance picks our technology and screws up everything.

When you have real conversations with real HR pros you learn what our real pain is, and then you can learn how to solve that. SHRM National gives you the best opportunity to actually see this in a giant way. Once you go, you can’t stop thinking about what you just learned, what you just experienced.

I go to SHRM National every year because it grounds me in reality. The reality that each day, if I truly want to help, my people are SHRM people. I need that reminder because it’s too easy to walk away from those doing the actual work and think it’s the 1%ers who I should really be focusing on. It’s not.

What’s the one reason you should attend SHRM if you’re building technology for this space? 

Because the attendees at SHRM National is who you are really building technology for. This is the cross section of your user community, all together in one place, with a desire to improve themselves and their organizations. They made a commitment to show up and develop themselves. They care.

I hear from way too many HR and TA tech vendors that SHRM is a waste of time. “There are no buyers there, Tim!”

Yeah, probably not a ton of enterprise buyers, or folks who will ultimately sign the contract. But, it’s loaded with HR and TA pros and leaders who have the budget authority of $5K, $10K, $25K. But I guess those amounts aren’t interesting to you.

20,000+ HR and Recruiting pros were in Vegas this week, all of whom are using HR and TA technology. All of whom were looking to make themselves and their organizations successful.

I’m not saying you need to go drop big money in the expo, but you should at least send some folks from the product team out to do some due diligence around what reality is, every once in a while.