The Key Trait of Great Hires

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Tim Sackett

For twenty years, I’ve been hiring and firing people. I’ve been lucky enough to have some great performers, a bunch of good performers and an also a few crappy performers. It seems like every time I turn; someone has an answer for me on how to hire better. For years I have given the advice if all else fails, hire smart people. It’s not a bad strategy. For the most part, if you hire the smartest ones of the bunch, you’ll have more good performers, than bad performers. I’m talking pure intelligence, not necessarily book smarts.

But, just hiring smart people still isn’t perfect. I want to hire good, or great, people every single time. How do you do that? That’s the million dollar question.

To me there is one trait we don’t focus enough on, across all industries. Optimism.

Your ability to look at the situation and come up with positive ways to handle it. Think about your best employees, almost always there is a level of optimism they have that your lower performers don’t.

I can’t think of one great employee I’ve ever worked with that didn’t have a level of optimism that was at least greater than the norm. They might be optimistic about their future, about the companies future, about life in general. The key was they had optimism.

Optimistic people find ways to succeed because they truly believe they will succeed. Pessimistic people find ways to fail, since they believe they are bound to fail. This hiring thing can be difficult. Don’t make it more difficult by hiring people who are not optimistic about your company and the opportunity you have for them. Ask questions in the interview that get to their core belief around optimism:

– Tell me about something you’re truly optimistic about in life? (Pessimistic people have a hard time answering this. Optimistic people will answer quickly and with passion.)

– Tell me about a time something you were responsible for went really bad. How did you deal with it?

– The company has you working on a very important project and then decides to cancel it. How would you respond?

Surrounding yourself with optimistic people drives a better culture, better teams, it’s uplifting to your leadership style. I want smart people, but I truly want smart people who are optimistic about life. Those people change the world for the better, and I think they’ll do the same for my business.

4 Reasons Corporate Recruiting Should Use Staffing Agencies

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Tim Sackett

I love those Dos Equis commercials “The Most Interesting Man in the World” where the most interesting man says, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis.” It’s great marketing that doesn’t seem to get old. It got me to thinking as well. I started my HR career in recruiting working for the company I’m now running, so in a sense I’ve come full circle. I started recruiting right out of college for a contingent staffing company, doing technical contract hiring, a tough recruiting gig, but it pays very well if you’re good.

When I left my first job, and the third party recruiting industry, to take my first corporate HR job. I left with a chip on my shoulder that armed me with such great recruiting skills I would NEVER, I mean NEVER, use a recruiting firm to do any of my recruiting. WHY WOULD I? I mean I had the skills, I had the know-how and I could save my company a ton of money by just doing it on our own.

So, I spent 10 years in corporate HR before returning to third party recruiting in 2009, and you know what? I was young and naïve in my thinking about never using recruiting agencies. It’s not just about having the skills and know-how; it’s much bigger than that. I worked for three different large companies, in three different industries in director of recruitment type roles, and in each case, I found situations where I was reaching out to some great third party recruiters for some assistance.

So, why did I change my philosophy on using recruiting agencies? A few of the reasons I ran into in corporate HR:

1. Having Skill and Know-How only works if you also have the time. Sometimes in corporate gigs, you just don’t have the capacity to get as deep into the search as you would like – with all the hats you have to wear as a corporate HR pro.

2. Corporate HR positions don’t give you the luxury of building a talent pipeline in specific skill sets, the same way that search pros can build over time. As a corporate HR pro, I was responsible for all skill sets in my organization. Niche search pros can outperform most corporate HR pros on most searches, most of the time. It’s a function of time and network.

3. Many corporate executive teams don’t believe their own HR staffs have the ability to outperform professional recruiters, primarily because we (corporate HR pros) have never given them a reason to think differently about this. Thus, we are “forced” to use search pros for searches where executives like to get involved.

4. Most corporations are not willing to invest in a model – people, technology and process – that puts themselves on a higher playing field than professional recruiting organizations. I would estimate only 1% of corporations have made this investment currently – and more are not rushing out to follow suit. Again, this comes from corporate HR not having the ability to show the CFO the ROI on making this change – to have the best talent in the industry you compete in. So, the best talent gets sourced by recruiting pros and corporations pay for it.

I didn’t always use recruiting agencies, but when I did I made sure I got talent I couldn’t get on my own, in the time and space I was allotted in my given circumstances. When I talk to corporate HR pros now, and I hear in their voice that “failure” of having to use a recruiting agency. I get it. I get the fact of what they are facing in their own corporate environments. It’s not failure, it’s life in corporate America and it’s hard to change.

Stay thirsty my friends…

T3 – Workable

Posted on December 16, 2014 by Tim Sackett

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 on T3 – send me a note.

This week I took a look at the recruiting software Workable. It’s sold as the “simple recruiting software for fast growing businesses”. It’s part ATS, part social sourcing tool, part talent acquisition process enabler, but it’s 100% simple to use. That is by far what I walked away from after my demo, I actually bolded in my notes in capital letters:”SIMPLE!”

I’ve used a lot of recruiting solutions in my career, but this one might have been the most intuitive and easy to use right out of the box. It even let’s those proces crazy folks drop and drag the process and design it the way you want, and even change that process based on the position, hiring manager, etc. Workable gets recruiting and keeps it to what is is. Source candidates. Get them to apply. Phone screen them. Interview them. Make the offer. Hire them. Straightforward. Easy.

Just because it’s easy, though, it doesn’t take out all of today’s cool tools and technology. The solution automatically pulls in LinkedIn profiles of candidates who apply, under the same email address and puts their picture on their Workable profile. The systems tracks every single touch and creates a timeline that is transparent so everyone knows what is going on, who the hold ups are, and what the next step is.

If I had an older ATS that just wasn’t working, or wasn’t using an ATS at all and on the outlook for a ‘beginner’ recruiting solution, I would definitely take a look at Workable. Yeah, I said ‘beginner’, but that really isn’t fair, it probably fits more in the SMB space, where you just don’t’ have the resources for a full enterprise ATS solution, but you still want the tech the big boys have. Workable is designed specifically for a SMB recruiting solution!

5 Things I really like about Workable:

1. Simplicity in software is so hard to do. After about 30 minutes into the demo, I was pretty confident I could use the system all on my own, and be really good at it! It’s just one of those systems that is easy to use. That is exactly what is needed for companies growing quickly, who are usually understaffed and many areas in the business are utilizing the solution to help in hiring.

2. HR ladies will hate this, but I loved that it pulled in the candidates profile pic from LinkedIn. Hiring managers will love this as well. It’s a simple example of how Workable understands the user of this type of solution. (BTW – you can turn this function off, HR Ladies!)

3. Automatically posts jobs on a bunch of free sites, and easy integration to your paid sites. Plus, they can get you a big discount on the big boards, through leveraging their current clients buying power as one. Workable does all the regular stuff you expect as well, resume parsing, resume keyword searching, EEOC/OFCCP reports, source reports, candidate flow, etc.

4. Interview scheduling, email and calendar integration is very good. Plus, you don’t get charged by user, you get charged by job, so you can every single employee in your company use the system. This makes it easy to get adoption, when you’re not just trying to pick a small number of users to keep the cost down.

5. The ability to change and add to your process whenever you feel like it was really cool. Especially, if you’re just starting out on a big hiring project and you’re not quite sure, and you want to make some changes as you’re going. That’s reality! Fast growing companies need to be able to change quickly and move, Workable allows you to do that, simply.

I mentioned, briefly, but Workable doesn’t charge you by user, but by job posting by month. Need to hire 15 people one month, but none the next, Workable allows you to go up and down on pricing based on your use, and not lock you into one rate. You can even shut it down for a period, and come back when hiring picks up and all your data will still be there. Very inexpensive for what you get!

One last thing, this would #6, but I only do five. Workable will set up a mobile friendly careers page as part of your monthly fee. It’s a must have, they make it happen. You have no worries.

Check them out if you’re in need of a recruiting solution. I was really impressed!

How to Hire a Hustler

Posted on December 12, 2014 by Tim Sackett

Hustle: (via Marriam-Webster) “to sell or promote energetically and aggressively”.

Hustle: (via Urban Dictionary) “Anything you need to do to make money”.

Hustle: (via Sackett) “Getting sh*t done with a smile”.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately on what really makes someone successful. I know folks who are completely brilliant, in a way most of us can’t even comprehend, both intellectually and creatively. I know why they’re successful. I also know of people who don’t seem to be the smartest, or the most creative, but they are also super successful. Those are the ones that make me wonder, what makes them successful?

They know how to hustle.

I say that will a love for what they do. Most people can’t hustle. It’s not in their makeup, their DNA. It’s not a skill you can learn, you are either born a hustler, or you’re not. Hustling gets a negative connotation. When in reality, it’s not always negative. I find those people who I’ve worked for that have a hustler’s mentality can be highly professional and highly successful.

The thing is, there is really no replacement for hustle.

Not every organization needs people with that skill, and I don’t think I would want an entire organization of hustlers! You need some, though, and you need them in the right positions. Hustlers know how to get things done in an organization. They know how to make people feel like both sides won. Some of the best hustlers I know in HR are on the labor relations side of the business. Contract negotiations are usually one big hustle!

I wish someone would come up with an assessment that measured someones hustle level! Hey, HR Tech, get on that! I’m buying.

Here’s the traits I think you need to find when assessing someone’s hustle level:

1. Are they willing to what it takes to be successful in whatever role it is you’ll be putting them in?

2. Do they have an entrepreneurial spirit?

3. Are they self-driven and ambitious?

4. Do they like competition?

5. Do they enjoy interacting with others?

6. Do they have a high tolerance to handle rejection?

7. Are they coachable and willing to adapt?

I don’t care what kind of department you are running in an organization, you can benefit from having a hustler on your team. I think you could take most street hustlers off the street, clean them up in a corporate professional way, teach them corporate language, and they would thrive in corporate America! No formal education. No skills. Just hustle. Let’s face it, most of what we do in corporate America is hustle!

How Fake Is Your Employment Brand?

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Tim Sackett

I think most employment brands are completely fake. The reason I feel this way is because HR and Executives approve the messaging. We, HR and Executives, are the last people who really know what our employment brand truly is. So, we end up with stuff like this:

Seems really cool! Makes us feel good about ourselves and our organization. But for the most part it’s one big white lie.

That’s marketing. It’s not marketings job to tell you the truth. It’s marketings job to get you to buy something. Sometimes its just some crappy product or service. Sometimes its the church down the street with the cool young pastor and rock band. Sometimes its working for your organization.

Many HR Pros and Executives get really pissed off when I say something like this. That’s because they drink their own Kool-aid. They truly believe the messages brought forth are the truth. Those messages are what they hope and dream the organization to become, so they’re all bought in on making it happen. I actually really like these people. I like people who are bought into making their organizations what their commercials are telling us they are, even when they aren’t.

Who wants to go work for an organization that puts up a commercial of some manager unable to communicate what needs to be done, and Bobby down in the accounting bitching he only got a 14 lb. turkey from the company, when last year he got a 15 lb. turkey? No one. But that’s truly your organization. Organizations are like families. You have some folks in your family you don’t want the rest of the world to see, but when you take the family photo it looks like everyone is fairly normal and well adjusted.

So, how fake is your employment brand? On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Goldman Sachs and 10 being Google, where does your organization fall?

Where Have All The Recruiters Gone?

Posted on November 26, 2014 by Tim Sackett

Originally posted on Fistful of Talent back in April 2011. Maureen Sharib reminded me of this on Twitter and I wanted to share. Enjoy.

I don’t get it – I don’t get why somehow over the past 5 years it’s not alright to be called a “Recruiter.”

Okay, let me back up a bit. I’m sick of hearing about “Sourcers”! You know what a Sourcer is? It’s someone who can’t close a candidate. In the beginning, recruiters had to do it all – put together the JD, come up with a marketing plan (oh, I’m sorry we call that “sourcing plan” now), go out and actually find the candidates (oh, my bad again “go out and source”) and then we had to actually call up the candidate and see if they were someone we had interest in moving forward into the process.

Look, I’ve seen the recruiting desk cut up more ways than a mom trying to be creative with a PB&J in May, after making 180 PB&J’s throughout the year (parents making their kids lunch each day get this reference, others won’t!). I get that it can be more “efficient” to separate out “Sourcing” and “Recruiting.” I read 7 Habits, you didn’t discover something new, companies have been cutting up the recruiting desk for decades. In 1993, I was hired into staffing to be a “Research Assistant”. Guess what that was? Yeah, some idiot who didn’t know how to close (yet) but could go out and find potential interested candidates (by any means necessary) to give to the “real” recruiter who could close them on a position.

So, here’s the rub, right? Who’s better, Sourcers or Recruiters? I’m guessing in most organizations using this model, they are selling it as if they are equal, which blows all of your efficiency right off the bat. They aren’t equal, one is collecting shells on a beach and one is polishing shells and telling sucker tourists how rare and valuable they are to make a buck and keep the lights on. If the shell picker-upper went away, would the shell polisher/seller go out of business? Hell no, they’d take their butt over to the beach, pick up some shells, take them back to the shop, polish them up and sell them. Would they be as successful? No, but it’s all relative since they also wouldn’t be paying the overhead of Mr. Picker-upper.

I actually like the Sourcing and Recruiting dual model in shops that have that kind of volume, it makes sense. Someone who is exceptional at sourcing combined with someone who is fantastic at recruiting will place more great talent than 3 people all doing it on their own. But let’s not start handing out trophies to the Sourcer. I can train anyone to source. I’ve failed many times at training someone to close. One of those skills is transactional. One is transformational.

There are a number of companies right now in India that for pennies on the dollar will source candidates for you, and they’ll do it better than Steve who is sitting on Facebook right now “building his Talent Community”. It’s transactional. It’s a process. it can be outsourced without a slightest blip to your recruiting function.

And okay, haters, before you go all crazy in the comments, let me say this, I think the sourcing technology, tools, etc. are all great. I love reading and trying out the techniques that are shared constantly by FOT’s own Kelly Dingee, or others like Glen Cathey, Amybeth Hale, Maureen Sharib, Jim Stroud, etc. (it’s amazing industry changing stuff). I don’t hate sourcing. In the right organization it makes perfect sense, but be careful. What I find is that many organizations want to move their best sourcers to recruiting and they fail because it’s two different skill sets. Don’t make that mistake.

So, where did all the recruiters go? The fakers – the ones who don’t want to pick up a phone – want to call themselves Sourcers. Why? Because the accountability of finding someone vs. closing someone – is on two different levels. I can find who is the top developer at a company, but it’s a different story in talking that developer into why they need to join my organization. The recruiters are still there – just look for the ones with the phone to their ear.

T3 – Entelo

Posted on November 25, 2014 by Tim Sackett

Talent Acquisition and Sourcing pros are always on the outlook for tools that will get them great talent fast. Entelo is a software that helps you find that talent. They are probably best lumped into the genre of “People Aggregators” within the recruiting and sourcing space, although all the people aggregators hate being called people aggregators. What Entelo, and other people aggregators like them (OpenWeb, TalentBin, HiringSolved,etc.) primarily do is to build profiles of potential candidates based on their social exhaust they leave all over the web.

Think of yourself for a moment. You probably have a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook profile, a twitter account. You might also get involved with industry specific groups who active boards. Software developers use sites like Github and StackOverflow, etc. All these places on the web you are leaving little pieces of who you are (social exhaust). Entelo’s software gathers all of this and puts together a profile similar to an online resume of sorts. Unlike many of the people aggregators on the market, Entelo found some really cool ways to differentiate themselves within the market.

Tools like Entelo can be very powerful in your sourcing efforts. But make no mistake, it’s a tool that you still have work and mine, do get the most of out of them. I’ve seen way too many corporate talent acquisition pros invest into this technology, only to let it sit there and do nothing. That isn’t a failure of the tool, it’s a failure of the person using the tool. Sourcing and mining candidates can be a arduous task, there is nothing easy about it. The tool will give you almost unlimited potential candidates at your finger tips, now you have the real work in front of you to find who’s right for your organization and openings.

Entelo separates themselves with their predictive analytics. When you go to source, the last thing you want to do is spend time and resources on candidates that are highly unlikely to want to move into a new position. This is a huge issue in sourcing. Entelo solves this using a predictive analytics model within their software ‘creatively’ called “More Likely To Move”. Which can predict individuals who are more willing to move into a new position based on their history and social makeup. Does it work? Yes. 30% of the folks Entelo flags as “more likely to move”, actually move within 90 days! That is crazy awesome.

5 Things I like about Entelo:

1. “More Likely To Move” is easily the best thing I liked. When you use a people aggregator you get a ton of data to shift through. Being able to screen based on those individuals who are probably at a point to be ready to move, just makes my job way easier as a Talent Acquisition Pro!

2. Diversity Filters. Entelo actually lets you search by various diversity filters (female, African American, Hispanic, veteran, etc.). This is almost a 1A in likeability in my book! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve either been asked directly, or ‘hinted’ at heavily on the ‘type’ of candidate a hiring manager or organization was really looking for. Great HR and Talent Acquisition Pros know they need to balance diversity and inclusion within their organization, and sometimes that means having to find a certain demographic.

3. Entelo Button. Entelo has a Chrome plugin which is a nice feature to have as you are mining sites like LinkedIn. The plugin allows you to view the Entelo profile of an candidate you are viewing in Linkedin with one click, to see what else might be out there on this person.

4. Entelo profile emails. Like most folks, I’m inherently lazy. If I don’t have to do extra searches to come up with contact information, that just made my life easier. Entelo profiles have a very high percentage of contact emails attached to each potential candidate, many times more than one.

5. ATS Integration already built out. This is a must if you use a people aggregator because you want a ‘one click’ easy way to get those potential candidates into your ATS.

Entelo has a very familiar feeling UI. If you use LinkedIn, you can use Entelo. Like most sourcing tools, the entry level price point is around $10K, that is pretty typical, and goes up with increased users, etc. From an ROI standpoint, that’s pretty easy to justify. One saved headhunter placement, and Entelo paid for itself. If you actually use this tool, you’ll make more than one placement from it! If you have to do diversity recruiting and sourcing, this is really a no brainer of a purchase.

Will ‘Facebook at Work’ be a LinkedIn Killer?

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Tim Sackett

At this point you’ve seen the announcement, Facebook has decided to go after some of that ‘professional’ networking money, with a product called Facebook at Work. A space currently owned by the LinkedIn empire. Who does social networking better than anyone? Most would argue Facebook. The kids might say Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. But the numbers don’t lie.

LinkedIn owns the ‘professional’ networking space, as they’ve decided to title it. The job board crowd now sees LinkedIn as Job Board 2.0, and have been working to see how they can get some of the billions flowing LinkedIn’s way.

Facebook is like that big giant kid in high school who was super friendly, and everyone called him a “big teddy bear’, until one day the wrong kid pushed the ‘teddy bear’ too much and everyone got to find out how strong the ‘teddy bear’ actually was. LinkedIn is about to get ‘bear’ hugged!

The reality is Facebook had the capability all along to put LinkedIn out of business if they wanted, but they were raking in their own piles of cash, and didn’t see the LinkedIn money as a priority. It was just a matter of time. LinkedIn’s core weakness is two-fold:

1. They don’t go deep enough with the position you actually need to hire for. Great you have technology candidates (who are running away from LinkedIn in droves), you have sales candidates and you have recruiters. That’s really about it. Have you searched on LinkedIn lately?

2. Users of LinkedIn rarely go to their LinkedIn profile and rarely respond to LinkedIn messages.

The two weaknesses of LinkedIn are actually strengths of Facebook. Facebook has everyone, from skilled trades folks, to truck drivers, to teachers, to doctors, and lawyers, and bakers, and candlestick makers, mall Santas, you name it, they’re on Facebook. Secondly, people use Facebook a lot, all day, every day. Exponentially, more than they ever use LinkedIn.

Facebook has made it very clear they’ll keep professional and personal profiles separated, but make it easy to go between and share stuff in between. This takes away the one major fear many have at integrating their Facebook life and their LinkedIn life (although I argue this fear is also going away quickly).

For those of us who have found ways to recruit talent off Facebook, we understand the potential of the sleeping giant, err, teddy bear. I like LinkedIn and use it daily. I wish LinkedIn met my needs for a greater number of positions. I believe Facebook has the user base, and data, to be all things professional if it’s done in the right way.

It’s going to be interesting to see these two fight it out.

T3 – The Resumator

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Tim Sackett

This week I looked at The Resumator! The Resumator is a fairly new company that started in 2009, and is growing like a weed. They are an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) play, based out of Pittsburgh, PA, with an office in San Francisco.

Yep, I did it. I started off with an ATS. Stop! Don’t go, hear me out, this isn’t your momma’s ATS!

I decided to look into The Resumator for a couple of reasons:

1. They specialize in servicing the SMB (small medium business) market – 100-1000 employee companies. I love this space, because I think the HR and Talent Pros in these shops work harder than anyone else!

2. They’re hugely successful. Which tells me, unlike the other 1,739 ATS vendors, they know something everyone else doesn’t. 3,000 plus paid clients, tens of thousands of users, that’s not easy in the SMB ATS space.

I don’t need to go into a ton about what they do. They’re an ATS, I get it, you get it. Most everyone uses an ATS and most people hate their ATS. Why? Well, in one simple word it’s customization. You want it, because you think your shop is special. It’s not, but you force your ATS vendor to customize to you, which causes all kinds of issues with the system. You shouldn’t have done that. That’s why you’re unsatisfied.

The Resumator has one of the more ‘clean’ user interfaces (UI) and user experiences (UX) I’ve seen. The UI is what you might think of as the ‘design’ of the system. You’ll hear techie types use “UI” and “UX” a ton, don’t get intimidated. Think Pottery Barn versus Walmart. You want Pottery Barn design in your home, but you have a Walmart budget. The Resumator gives you a Pottery Barn ATS UI, for your Walmart budget.

This comes back to their size. Most ATS have poor UI, thus giving you a poor experience, because they don’t have enough users to justify doing really cool stuff that you see in systems for enterprise buyers. They have scale. They use that scale to give you features you don’t usually see in SMB ATS products. One of the cool ones I loved was what they call “Jobnosis“. It basically rates your Job Descriptions and Titles, automatically, versus all the other data from everyone that uses their systems. It then gives you the likelihood you’ll actually find the talent you want, and gives you suggestions to make it better. That is really cool.

5 things that impressed me about The Resumator:

1. They leverage the data from 30,000 daily applicants to educate their SMB clients on what is working in real time. Not giving you ‘best practices’ from three years ago. 2 Million+ hires since launching the product.

2. Their email integration is tight and seamless. This isn’t the case for so many of the ATS products for the SMB space.

3. They’re focused on how your hires perform, after the fact, to help you hire more of the better ones. Again, goes back to their ability to leverage ‘big’ data.

4. Super customer focus. Over 30+ new releases in 2014 alone to improve the UX/UI based on customer feedback on making the product better and faster.

5. Very solid recruiting tools are encompassed into the main product, no extra price, for both passive and active candidate sourcing.

I’ve purchased 7 different ATS’s in my 20 years of HR and Talent Acquisition. I have to say that The Resumator also has one of the less painful pricing models I’ve ever seen, that doesn’t penalize for growth! You pay one monthly fee, as many users as you want, no matter how big your organization.

I keep coming back to the word ‘clean’. The ATS market is junked up with ‘clunky’ products and systems. The Resumator wasn’t one of these. They were ‘clean’ in UI, UX and pricing. Full integration with one of my favorite SMB HR System’s of Record in BambooHR as well! Like Bamboo, these guys really get the SMB space at a different level than most companies.

Next week’s T3 Company will be BlackbookHR’s newest award winning product RNA that was just launched this month at the HR Technology Conference.

Top HR Products for 2014!

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Tim Sackett

I like new technology, which is why I’m headed out to the HR Technology Conference this week. HR tech has continues to transform how we deliver HR and Talent solutions to our organizations. I’m always amazed at the new stuff that comes out each year. Human Resource Executive named their 2014 award winners for Top HR Products last week, and the awards are given out at the HR Technology Conference. I’ll be checking all of these out for sure, but here is a preview of the award winners:

Appcast.io – www.appcast.io

A recruiting marketing platform that helps organizations fill their hard-to-fill requisitions by marketing it to 6,000 career and consumer sites on a pay-per-applicant basis.

Entelo Diversity – www.entelo.com

Entelo claims to have a program that will help you hire black people! Or women, veterans, Hispanics, etc. Basically, you can stop trying to search job boards using words like “Black” and “Spanish”.

Halogen 1:1 Exchange – www.halogensoftware.com

Halogen takes performance management to the next level with Halogen 1:1 Exchange. This is a one-on-one meeting-management tool that works with other Halogen TalentSpace modules and is designed to spur greater communication, collaboration and coaching. The module tracks the frequency of these one-on-one meetings to provide employers with evidence these discussions are occurring. It also correlates the impact they are having on performance ratings, engagement scores and turnover.

Health E(fx) – www.healthefx.us

Health E(fx) is a stand-alone solution designed to help employers avoid penalties while optimizing their benefits strategies, decisions and costs within the Affordable Care Act environment.

HireVue Insights – www.hirevue.com

I’ve seen this one live and it’s awesome, can’t say enough about it! Basically, it analyzes your digital interviews to automatically give you the best candidates based on 15,000+ attributes. All your candidates. Have 1000 apply, and you know you’ll only really look at the first 25 you applied, even though number 999 might be your best? Insights solves this! Plus, tells you which hiring managers are your best at selection!

IBM Social Learning – www.ibm.com

IBM Social Learning, powered by IBM Kenexa learning solutions and IBM social-collaboration and analytics tools, is designed to help people engage with one another, contribute expertise and learn from others using interactive media in near real-time.

Match-Click – www.match-click.com

Match-Click is a video-driven recruiting platform designed to let employers give job candidates a preview of their new corporate environment and potential supervisor and co-workers, through short, 20-second video clips featuring hiring managers and would-be colleagues describing the position and the organization.

QUEsocial – www.quesocial.com

Another one I’m really interested in seeing live! QUEsocial blends employer branding and social recruiting into a social talent-acquisition Software-as-a-Service technology platform. The idea is to enable recruiters and — by extension, employers — to “amplify and extend” the employer brand through individual recruiter and sourcing networks.

RecruitiFi – www.recruitifi.com

RecruitiFi is intended to offer organizations a new way to source talent by letting them select and post jobs to 250 expert recruiters from its membership pool of approximately 2,000.

Skillrater.com – www.skillrater.com

Skillrater.com is a cloud-based performance-feedback tool that incorporates social networking and collaboration.

There will be hundreds of other companies as well. I’ll make sure to give you a run down on some companies and technology that you haven’t ever heard of, yet, when I return. The coolest part of HR Tech is finding a company that is nothing today, but will be industry leading in 3 to 5 years. Last year I saw Blackbook HR and their Sense product and they are blowing up – such a great piece of technology to help us with one of HR’s biggest issues – Turnover!

Who will it be this year? I can’t wait to find out.