Snow Days and Employees!

Posted on November 26, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Look I get it. I have 3 sons and Snow Days are a big deal…if you’re 10! So, if you’re an HR Pro, right about this time tomorrow, you’re going to feel like you have an entire organization full of 10-year-olds, as we begin to see the first signs of Snowmageddon!

I understand people freaking out, that is, if you live in someplace south of the Mason-Dixon line, and you’ve never seen snow before. But, I live in Michigan and it snows here. The snow starts around Halloween and ends around Easter. What I don’t understand is anyone that lives north of, let’s say, Chicago is even blinking an eye at a snow storm coming. Let it snow, clear your driveway and get your butt to work.

It’s not a difficult concept! No, I don’t want you to drive to a client if the roads are dangerous, and, no, I don’t want you to drive to work if the roads are dangerous, and, no, I don’t want you to run around the office with scissors and your shoes untied! But I do expect, we’ll all be adults.

If it looks like there’s going to be a lot of snow tomorrow, you need to make a plan. How about packing some work to do from home, or just plan on watching Lifetime all day, because I completely understand you missing the 3 days’ of warning that the snow was coming! (he screamed to himself in a mocking voice…)

Snow Days are the kind of crap that drives HR and Leadership completely insane!

Why is it, the CEO finds his way into the office, driving his Lexus sedan, but Perry in IT just can’t seem to get his 4X4Chevy Tahoe out of the garage? If you want a day off that damn bad, take a day off, but don’t insult the intelligence of all those who found a way to come in.

Be sensible, give your local snow plows some time to clear roads, give yourself extra time to get to work, but at the very least give it a shot. Then, when you get stuck, take a picture with your phone and send it to your boss, they’ll appreciate the effort!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: HR Tech Vendor Fatigue is a Real Thing!

Posted on November 20, 2018 by Tim Sackett

You know how milk and employees have an expiration date? Come on! We all have that one employee who been with us way past their expiration date and we just can’t take them any longer. They might actually have great skills and knowledge, but they still need to go! They’ve gone past their employee expiration date!

I get to talk to a lot of HR and Talent executives about the technology they use. The majority are fine with what they have. They take the positive leadership stance of this is what we have right now and we’ll make the most of it. If we get to a point where our technology is working against us, we’ll push to upgrade or change. Some are in love with their tech. I find most of these are in the honeymoon phase and were the ones who choose the tech. Some hate their tech.

What I find with most executives who hate their tech is the tech isn’t the issue, it’s usually Vendor Fatigue.

What’s Vendor Fatigue?

HR Tech Vendor Fatigue is when you are probably having some problems with your tech stack, it’s not doing exactly what you need it to do. You’ve been going back and forth with your main vendor to try and make the changes you need, but it seems to be just more headache after another. You’ve been there, right? We all have!

So, instead of just going the last ten yards and getting it done, you decide it’s best to just move on and start over! You’re too fatigued to continue to work with this vendor, even though if you sat down and thought about it logically you would come to the conclusion staying with your current vendor is really the wisest solution and what’s best short and long-term for the organization and your resources.

But we don’t do that!

Instead, we go out and buy a new system that is basically 90% the same as the old system, and we start fresh. It’s like a marriage. Some people work to try and make it better. Hey, at one point I fell in love with you. We went through some hard times and we can now get divorced or we can go to counseling and rekindle that great thing we once had. We already know each other’s deep, dark secrets, so maybe it’s best if we just figure this thing out!

The biggest mistake most HR and Talent Executives make around HR Tech!

I constantly speak to executives who are using a really great system. Top 5 on the market and they tell me they’re moving to another Top 5 system because they just can’t take it anymore. The system they have isn’t working, “I mean, Tim, my team is only using 35% of the technology!” Then they look at me for approval…

I tell them you’re making a big mistake. The technology you have in place right now is being utilized by hundreds, thousands of organizations that are doing great things with it. You only using 35% is not a tech problem, that’s a ‘you’ problem. Guess what’s going to happen with your new system? Yep – 35% usage. Find out first how to use what you have 100% and then tell me why it’s not working.

HR Tech vendor fatigue is just like a relationship gone bad. But we tend to think about it way differently. “No, Tim, they are a vendor and they should bow down to us and make it right!” Well, sometimes, yes, sometimes, no, you’re being unreasonable!

But, there are also times when it’s time to get divorced from each other. Expectations have become unreasonable. You both are making each other stressed out. While it’s true that one of you is a buyer and one of you is a vendor, pointing that fact out doesn’t help, but it is a reality. I’ve fired some clients and I’ve been fired by clients. Both of those firings cost me money, but one probably eliminated a lot of stress!

If you’re feeling fatigued by any of your HR or Talent vendors ask yourself some questions:

Did I do everything I can to make this solution work?
If we became a super user of our current tech would this tech work for us like we need?
Can we live without this solution? Short and Long-term?
Am I making the best resource decision for the organization or just making my life easier?
Will the state I’m in right now, happen again with my next vendor? Why or why not?

We love to believe our vendor is the issue, and many times they are, but also many times they aren’t!

Why are you scared to make HR simple?

Posted on November 19, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Have you ever wondered why HR Departments continue to make complex processes? In reality, all of us wants things simple. But, when you look at our organizations they are filled with complexity. It seems like the more we try to make things simple, the more complex they get. You know what? It’s you – it’s not everyone else. You are making things complex, and you’re doing this because it makes you feel good.

From Harvard Business Review:

“There are several deep psychological reasons why stopping activities are so hard to do in organizations. First, while people complain about being too busy, they also take a certain amount of satisfaction and pride in being needed at all hours of the day and night. In other words, being busy is a status symbol. In fact a few years ago we asked senior managers in a research organization — all of whom were complaining about being too busy — to voluntarily give up one or two of their committee assignments. Nobody took the bait because being on numerous committees was a source of prestige.

Managers also hesitate to stop things because they don’t want to admit that they are doing low-value or unnecessary work. Particularly at a time of layoffs, high unemployment, and a focus on cost reduction, managers want to believe (and convince others) that what they are doing is absolutely critical and can’t possibly be stopped. So while it’s somewhat easier to identify unnecessary activities that others are doing, it’s risky to volunteer that my own activities aren’t adding value. After all, if I stop doing them, then what would I do?”

That’s the bad news. You have deep psychological issues. Your spouse already knew that about you.

The good news is, you can stop it! How? Reward people for eliminating worthless work. Right now we reward people who are working 70 hours per week and always busy and we tell people “Wow! Look at Tim he’s a rock star – always here, always working!” Then someone in your group goes, “Yeah, but Tim is an idiot, I could do his job in 20 hours per week, if…” We don’t reward the 20-hour guy, we reward the guy working 70 hours, even if he doesn’t have to.

Somewhere in our society – the ‘working smarter’ analogy got lost or turned into ‘work smarter and longer’. The reality is most people don’t have the ability to work smarter, so they just work longer and make everything they do look ‘Really’ important! You just thought of someone in your organization, when you read that, didn’t you!? We all have them – you can now officially call them ‘psychos’ – since they do actually have a “deep psychological” reasons for doing what they’re doing – Harvard said so!

I love simple. I love simple HR. I love simple recruiting. I hate HR and Talent Pros that make things complex, because I know they have ‘deep psychological’ issues! Please go make things simple today!

Back to Human! @DanSchawbel

Posted on November 13, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Dan Schawbel‘s new book, “Back to Human” launches today and he was kind enough to send me a copy months ago since he rightly assumed I’m probably a slow reader! If you don’t know Dan, you should! Dan is a New York Times best-selling author and he’s one of those guys that cares about our industry in HR and Talent Acquisition.

Dan was named to Inc.’s 30 under 30 and he might be the most influential voice of the Millennial generation. He wrote his first book, “Me 2.0” to help his generation land their first job. He wrote his second book, “Promote Yourself” to help lead them up the career ladder. Now, with his third book, “Back to Human”, Dan is helping them become great leaders of people.

I’ve known Dan for a number of years. He basically pisses me off, because he’s who I think I should be twenty years ago! He’s smart, motivated, and he gets it!

So, what’s “Back to Human” all about?

Dan, in conjunction with Virgin Pulse, did a huge research study of over 2,000 leaders and employees around a rather new concept of isolated workforces in the age of remote work. The research showed that remote work actually doesn’t help keep employees long term, in fact, remote workers are more likely to leave your employment because of the lack of connection with other workers.

Only 5% of remote workers could see themselves working in their employers for their entire career, compared to 33% of workers who work in non-remote work environments. That’s substantial! Especially when you think about how much we (HR, TA, Leaders) have pushed our organizations down this path of remote work environments because we felt everyone wanted to work remotely! Turns out people don’t want to work remotely! People just like being at home and getting paid! (that’s my assessment, not Dan’s!)

While remote work promotes flexibility and eliminates commuting costs, it has made employees more isolated, lonely and less committed to their teams and organizations. Technology has enabled us to work remotely, but at a huge cost!

I really like Dan’s new book because he gives practical advice for leaders to help foster human connections amongst employees and their leaders. What Dan’s research found out is that we as leaders can’t think about meeting the needs of our employees, especially remote employees, if we aren’t willing to get personal and really work to understand them in a one-on-one level. The problem is most leaders actually do the opposite with remote employees!

Another cool piece about the book is the amount of information around young leaders in how they think and how we can help them develop into better leaders faster.

If you’re looking for a great book to get your leaders and aspiring leaders for your organization, go check out Dan Schawbel’s Back to Human. Well worth the read!

The Most Used Business Expenses by Vendor! Let’s talk travel policies!

Posted on October 29, 2018 by Tim Sackett

The pic above is a fun exercise in tracking business expenses over the years to spot trends in employee behavior! Recode started doing this in 2013 and it makes you wonder what this might look like in 2023!

What do employees expense the most? And how it’s changed in such a short time is fascinating to me!

1. Ride Share came out of nowhere in 2015!

Uber is number one three years running, and while Lyft has risen super fast, no doubt to a lot of the #MeToo issues Uber faced in 2018, I would think we probably won’t see that change much in 2019. When the tracking first started in 2013, Taxis were in the Top 10. Taxis will never be in the Top 10 ever again!

2. Starbucks has become a business travel staple!

I’m not a coffee drinker and I still have the Starbucks App on my phone with like $38 in credit burning a hole in my pocket! McDonald’s has been in the top 10 each of the last 6 years, and I have to assume, like Starbucks, it’s a quick, available, and easy cup of coffee or quick meal in the hurry of business travel. As airport vendors and other options become more healthy and more readily available it’s easy to see how McDonald’s will fall off the list very soon.

3. Airlines and Hotels won’t go away, but brand loyalty can change quickly!

American Airlines has the most planes, Delta has the most assets, and in business travel, Delta consistently beats out American. I can only assume that’s because Delta treats frequent business travels better. Road Warriors are super brand loyalist! It pays to be loyal when you travel all the time, and this ranking shows me Delta treats road warriors better on average. It’s crazy to me that we don’t see more hotel chains rank higher? Hampton Inn made it a couple of times. Marriott a couple of times. What does that say? Hotel chains can probably do a lot better in pampering road warriors!

4. Amazon and Walmart as business expenses!

Where do we buy our stuff for business? Basically, two places and Amazon is trying to make it one place! Whether we are traveling or buying stuff at our desk, we basically buy from Walmart and Amazon, I’m guessing because of price and selection. This is the death of retail as we know it, where it’s basically two vendors selling us cheap crap, indistinguishable crap.

So, do these most used vendors speak to your Travel Policy?

It seems like, over the years, Peggy in payroll has gotten a little less Nazi-like when it comes to expense reports. Are you feeling that? Maybe that’s just me, or maybe our accounting departments are eased up a bit.

Business travel is hard enough without getting yelled at by someone in the home office who never gets to travel and believes your business travel experience is like going on one non-stop vacation! I get we need rules and boundaries, but for the most part business travel sucks, and it’s taxing on your personal life. As HR leaders we should be developing travel policies that take this into account.

I find that HR leaders who have to travel a lot get this at a really high level and find great ways to develop travel policies that get what the organization needs without putting heavy burdens on those traveling. Those who don’t travel for business, develop policies that make employees hate HR and Accounting!

What is the one business expense your organization allows that we would find the most interesting or amazing?

Recruiting is not Marketing – Here’s why!

Posted on October 26, 2018 by Tim Sackett

We love, I love, to say Recruiting is Marketing! I love Recruitment Marketing and the technology behind it, I think it’s brilliant! Recruiting is also not sales!

Why is Recruiting neither Marketing or Sales?

What’s the core function of marketing and sales? To welcome as many people as possible into your funnel so that all of those people will buy your product or service, or give to your charity, etc.

In Recruitment we in the Rejection business!

Can you imagine you walk into a Cadillac dealership? You saw the commercial for the new SUV, you decide you want that SUV. You saw the billboard for that same car, heard the radio commercial, heck you even saw an Ad on Facebook, it’s almost like they’re listening to your brain! You’ve got a pocket full of hundred dollar bills and you walk into the dealership because today you’re driving away in that brand new, beautiful Cadillac SUV!

Dealer – No!

Me – Um, what?!

Dealer – No, we aren’t selling you that new Cadillac SUV, you’re not a Cadillac “Man”!

Me – A what!?

Dealer – Yeah, sorry, you don’t get a Cadillac today, we’re saving those for only certain people!

It’s funny because we know this would never happen! I could walk into the dealership holding a severed head and the first words out of the salesman’s mouth would be “the trunk on our new sedan could hold a hundred of those heads!”

Recruiting isn’t Marketing or Sales, because true Marketing and Sales is in the business of ‘All’, not one. No one really gets rejected in marketing and sales if you have the means. In Recruiting, you could fit every single thing the organization is requesting and you will still get rejected. Recruiting is in the Rejection business, not the sales and marketing business!

If we/recruiting are in the Sales and Marketing business, we are in a really sick and twisted business! Hey, “Everyone” come and apply to our jobs, because I get really excited when I get to turn you down and say “no”! So, let’s not kid ourselves. Our business is about Rejection. Hey, come on over here and let me tell you what’s wrong with you, and then I’ll make the decision if we want you to be a part of our team or not.

Marketing campaigns sometimes try to fake like they’re being exclusive. “Only ‘you’ are being invited to buy this new SUV! You’ll be the first to own it! No one else!” Until next week when everyone will own it and actually have a better color than you. That’s not true rejection for those who don’t get it first, it’s just a game we play to increase demand.

So, why does this manner?

If we know we are actually in the Rejection business, and we are, we/recruiters have to have an empathy level that is off the charts if we want to survive. Let me get this straight, you want me to talk as many people as possible into loving our company, then you want me to reject 99.9% of them? Yes!

To be able to do that and not drink yourself to sleep every night takes a really high ego or an endless supply of empathy towards all those great people who just wanted you to pick them, but your organization picked someone else, but they left it on your desk to share the bad news!

This is probably the main reason so many candidates never get dispositioned. We can all just crush only so many souls in a day! It’s easier to ghost candidates than to crush their dreams!

Rejection business is a hard, hard business to be in. Sales and Marketing are easy. Can you imagine how easy your life would be if you were able to give everyone the job!?

Turns out, Boring Speakers Talk Longer!

Posted on October 25, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I just had a discussion with Elaine Orler, the new incoming Chair for the Recruiting Trends and Talent Tech Conference, taking place in February in Las Vegas. I’m pretty excited about it because Elaine, the team at LRP who produces the conference, are really pushing the envelope when it comes to conference content.

Elaine isn’t the only one, but she’s really pushing it to the next level, Recruiting Trends is going to be amazing this year! I can’t wait to speak at that conference!

I’ve also had similar conversations with Steve Boese, who chairs The HR Technology Conference, who this past year did an HR tech startup Pitchfest in the middle of the expo hall that was amazing! SHRM’s, Letty Kluttz, is pushing a very traditional conference team out of their comfort zone, and you’ll see some new amazing content streams at SHRM Talent and SHRM National this next year, as well!

The LinkedIn Talent Connect team tested “Silent Disco” talks at this year’s event, and it was fascinating to watch and do one! As a speaker, the Silent Disco talk might have been one of the biggest challenges I’ve had in recent years! Shannon Pritchett over at SourceCon also has shorter keynotes and sessions, really trying to get to the meat of the content and less fluff.

So, why all of a sudden are conferences breaking up the traditional conference content flow?

For decades I think we all had a hard time imagining conferences in a new way. Most followed, and still follow, a basic format of: full group morning keynote, followed by hour-long sessions throughout the day, followed by afternoon day-closing keynote. Most of the design was directed by the continuing education community, which is why most conferences started.

You need one credit per session and those sessions need to be at least one hour of ‘training’ or education.

Then TEDx came around and people had 18 minutes to produce some of the most amazing content any of us had ever seen! DisruptHR-like events sprung up and we got to see great content happen in 5 minutes! Many people started wondering, why the heck are we sitting here for one hour listening to people drone on endlessly when they could tell us all of this in half the time!?

There was a recent small study done around this concept. A researcher went to a conference an sat in 50 sessions. Within four minutes he made the decision was this content boring or not. Based on that he also looked at the time the speaker went over or under their time, and his data showed him that boring speakers were more likely to go over their allotted time!

“For every 70 seconds that a speaker droned on (over their allotted time), the odds that their talk had been boring doubled.”

So, if you ever sat in a boring session and thought, “Oh my, this is so boring and it’s taking forever!” You’re right! The boring stuff does take longer!

As a speaker, all of these changes that conferences are making and testing are really exciting. Here’s what I’ve learned over the past 12 months with some of these new content configurations that are being tested:

– The shorter amount of time you have to speak, the more time it takes to prepare really great content! Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Should be harder the longer you have, but it’s not. If you have a short amount of time, your talk has to be really tight and practiced. If you have a long time, as a speaker, you can wander around and come back to things.

– Shorter segments of live content that are good, are much deeper and less wide. The best short range content goes really deep on one item, not surface level on many items.

– The audience pays closer attention to shorter content. If you have an audience for an hour or more, they tend to come in and out. If you have them for 20 minutes, you are more likely to have them the full time, which means, they’re more likely to call you out if you try and slide some B.S. by them!

– Most non-speaker, speakers, really struggle with short content. Most speakers at a conference aren’t professional speakers, they’re practitioners. They need more time, not less, because they aren’t on stage enough to practice short, tight sets of content. So, they’re more likely to fail doing short sessions.

Get ready for some exciting conferences in 2019! Conference producers are really working to change things up and keep modern attendees engaged with the content at conferences, and I personally love the challenge and the changes! If you’re building our budget for 2019 make sure you try and hit one of the conferences listed above in 2019, you’ll definitely get some amazing takeaways!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Technology: @ZipRecruiter – Connecting the Right People with the Right Jobs!

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Today on the Weekly Dose I take an updated look at ZipRecruiter. Often I’m writing about technology on my site that none of you have ever heard of. I’m 100% sure almost every single person who reads my blog has heard of ZipRecruiter! At the very least you’ve heard their commercials on TV, Radio, Podcasts, etc. They are everywhere!

ZipRecruiter started in 2011 primarily as the job board for hourly, blue-collar types, to help SMBs hire better and faster. They didn’t try to hide who they were, they set out to build a job board, and they did it through advertising everywhere and anywhere. Come hire people fast and cheap. Bam, that’s who we are.

Fast forward to 2018 and a fresh round of over $150M in new capital and ZipRecruiter is now one of the most trafficked sites on the internet! Over 1.5 million businesses have used Zip, and they have received over 430 million applications for jobs listed on the site. And still, the Recruiting Community loves to dump on ZipRecruiter!

On Facebook last month someone posted a comment about ZipRecruiter and some of the biggest recruiting brains on the planet immediately started talking “ish” about Zip. I had one simple question, “Hey, have you used them in the past year, two, three?” Not one of them!

I hesitated writing this post because I actually didn’t want to give Zip publicity! Why? Because it works, and if it works and I’m using it, and you’re not using it, I win!

Privately, I’ve been having this conversation with TA leaders for a year or so:

Tim – “Hey, are you guys using Zip?”

TA Leader – No, we tried them three years ago and they sucked!

Tim – “Okay, you might want to test them again!”

TA Leader – “Oh, you mean for hourly openings?

Tim – “No, for everything!”

Zip doesn’t get industry love from folks like me because Zip has never played “the game”! Meaning, Zip has never wined and dined the industry thought leaders or analyst. The belief is “hey, our customers are SMB and the vast majority of folks hiring for SMB will never read anything from an industry pundit”. Okay, that’s correct, but come one play the game with us, I love free steak! Instead of playing the game, they run more commercials and have built industry-leading technology behind the scenes!

As their leaders are proud of saying “We do things. We don’t talk about doing things.”

Zip has put a tremendous amount of resources and focus on engaging job seekers to make the experience sticky. That comes from ensuring Zip is matching jobs to candidates that actually match their skills and desires, not keywords. I can’t tell you how often I get sent emails from other sites for Nursing jobs! Why? I used to run TA at a health system and recruited Nurses! That’s bad tech. Zip doesn’t do that!

Zip’s recommendation matching technology is second to none. Netflix-like in the way it continues to improve based on the jobs you engage in and apply to, the more an applicant uses the technology the better the matching algorithm gets in returning great jobs to them the second one comes up on the site.

Google for Jobs (GFJ) also has had a tremendous positive impact on Zip’s candidate traffic. GFJ leveled the playing field for sites like Zip, and SEO is one other thing they are good at and prepared for when the opportunity came around. And Zip plans on using a bunch of that new cash to hammer home some machine learning SEO technology to continue to stay out in front and take advantage of the GFJ changes.

Is ZipRecruiter a silver bullet? No. Nothing in the industry is a silver bullet right now. Can ZipRecruiter be one of those bullets you have to finish the job? 100%. Will ZipRecruiter fill your Java Developer opening in BFE Wisconsin? Probably not, but nothing else will either! Will they drive additional traffic to most of your jobs, for a fairly inexpensive cost? Yes, they will, and that’s what they set out to do all along.

I’m a huge fan of testing annually. You’ll rarely hear me say, “Yeah, that didn’t work three years ago, so we don’t use it!” Really, three years ago? Okay, well, good for you! In TA we need to be a function of constantly testing and trying. You will be amazed at what doesn’t work in January, amazingly will work in July, etc. So, if you haven’t tried ZipRecruiter recently, it might be worth a test!

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.

Teens Feel Speaking In Class is Unreasonable & Discriminatory. What do you think?

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Tim Sackett

A recent article in The Atlantic brought up is seemingly troubling subject. Teens are voicing their opinion that being forced to speak up in classes is discriminatory:

“in the past few years, students have started calling out in-class presentations as discriminatory to those with anxiety, demanding that teachers offer alternative options. This week, a tweet posted by a 15-year-old high-school student declaring “Stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to” garnered more than 130,000 retweets and nearly half a million likes. A similar sentiment tweeted in January also racked up thousands of likes and retweets. And teachers are listening.”

Hmmm. I’ve got some thoughts…

I was out at LinkedIn’s Talent Connect recruiting conference this past week. Great content, engaged recruiting pros and leaders, and a lot of great data being shared. One of those data points shared by CEO Jeff Weiner was the largest skills gap currently in need by employers. Can you guess which skill was most needed?

Tech/IT/coding-type of skills? No, but not a bad guess!
Healthcare/Nursing skills? No, but another great guess!

The #1 most sought after skill by employers is Oral Communication!

Turns out that we have a ton of kids coming into the workforce that have a hard time communicating orally! Hmmm…

Yeah, so we should probably not make kids who have anxiety over public speaking not speak in the safe environment of a classroom in front of a trained educator!

You know what, most people have anxiety about public speaking. The answer isn’t let’s try and find ways for these kids not to speak, its let’s find ways to get these kids to begin speaking in small ways where they start to gain confidence and little by little start ramping up how and where they speak.

Education isn’t about making some comfortable. It’s about making you uncomfortable in a safe way. If we know kids need oral communication skills to be successful in the work world, we must demand that our educators help make this happen.

I get we are in a time where kids have a great platform to voice their opinions and desires. Good for them! It’s awesome time to be alive. Also, these are kids. Kids can be super smart, and super short sited. It’s our job as adults to say, “I hear you! Public speaking in front of your peers is hard. That’s why you actually need to do it more, not less.”

So, knowing this is a skill that most adults also struggle with, what do you think? Should we be finding alternatives for kids who don’t want to speak in front of their class, or should we make them stand up and speak?

I’m all for making them uncomfortable and teaching them a skill that will help them the rest of their life. I don’t need them to get on stage and speak in front of an audience, but I do need them to be in a meeting with ten co-workers and be willing and active in that conversation!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Technology: @Dice4Employers – New IntelliSearch Helps Uncover More IT Talent!

Posted on October 9, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Today on The Weekly Dose I review Dice’s new product offering IntelliSearch. IntelliSearch is a proprietary recommendation engine simplifies the complexity of candidate search by allowing recruiters to input a job description, the ideal resume, or a list of skills to return relevant matches. Boolean expertise is no longer required.

IntelliSearch is super easy to use. Just cut and paste a job description or even a resume of a hire or candidate your hiring manager loves and IntelliSearch will go out and find others that fit the criteria you need.

Dice’s IntelliSearch uses machine learning and A.I. to quickly match candidates to your requirements without you as the recruiter having to have deep technical knowledge about the type of candidates you’re looking for.

One of the issues I hear about constantly from corporate TA Pros around new sourcing technology is that they now have way too many candidates to search through and while they can find more ‘potential’ candidates than ever before, the tech has actually made their job harder!

Dice attempts to solve this problem with the IntelliSearch matching technology. The Dice funnel starts with hundreds of millions of potential profiles that can be found around the web, and quickly gets that number down to a few millions of actual candidates in the hiring pool in the U.S.

From there they return the best possible fits with contact information and a new feature to Dice which is “Likely to Switch” signal based on a number of factors in their algorithm. Based on these factors Dice will give you a Green, Yellow, or Red signal in terms of the potential that a candidate is ready to switch to a new job.

IntelliSearch is also driven by Semantic Search, not Boolean Search. Why does this matter? Semantic search describes a search engine’s attempt to generate the most accurate results possible by understanding:

Searcher intent.
Query context.
The relationships between words.

In layman’s terms, semantic search seeks to understand natural language the way a human would. Whereas Boolean is basically searching on keywords. Semantic search will produce a higher quality of search results.

The Bottomline?

If you haven’t taken a look at Dice recently, it’s worth a new look, especially if you’re struggling to find IT talent, and you don’t consider yourself a full time IT recruiter. I find those who are less ‘techy’ will really be helped by Dice’s new IntelliSearch!