Category Archives: T3

T3 – @Anthology;

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This week on T3 I’m reviewing the career/job site Anthology; (formerly Poachable). Anthology; (the Semicolon is part of the logo/name, for those who aren’t wondering what weird grammatical quirk I now have going on!) is a confidential career matchmaking tool for people who aren’t “looking” but open to learning about new, screened opportunities.

Anthology basically works as a partial replacement for traditional job postings and headhunter found candidates. I say partial, only because they are newer and their member network is limited, but growing. Primarily, about 80% of their members reside in the IT and/or Sales space, and in the geographic areas of San Fransico, NYC, Seattle, Chicago and Boston. They do have members in all fifty states, and will use recent investor funding to begin quickly building out across the country.

So, what does Anthology really do?

The idea behind Anthology is true passive candidates want complete anonymity when searching for a new position.  Companies want more passive candidates. Anthology is giving these two groups a platform to get together.

Anthology allows their members (mostly passive candidates) to answer a number of questions regarding what it would take to get them to move from their current position/company. Anthology’s system then matches this candidate against it’s the employer member positions they have open on the site (currently 500 companies, 1500+ registered recruiters).

Once this match is done, it will comes back to the candidate with a weighted score of how close they might match the opportunities available. The candidate then gets the first stab at letting the employer know they are interested. All of this is confidential to this point, neither sides knows of the other.  Once the candidate expresses interest, both sides are revealed to each other, and the traditional process moves forward from there.

Another great aspect about Anthology is, unlike traditional job sites, both parties can search for each other. It’s based on matching criteria. If the candidate matches what you have open, they’ll be presented your opening. If the candidate does not match, they’ll never see your opening, thus saving you from wasting time on candidates who are just blasting out to everything even close.

From the company side, Anthology does show you potential matches of candidates in their system and allows you to send out introductions to the candidates. It is still up to the candidate to decide if they have interest and want to know more. If the candidate doesn’t want to accept the introduction the company gets direct feedback on why! This is awesome because companies are getting instant feedback on why their organization or positions are not connecting with candidates.

So, what does Anthology cost? 

Anthology has two different pricing models. The first model is a thirty day $500 job posting.  It what you basically think of in regards to job site, job posting. You post and if candidates are ‘matched’ within the thirty days, you’ll get those folks.  The other option is designed for longer term success, and will cost you 12% of the first year salary of the candidate. This option posts your opening until it is filled, no matter how many candidates you plow through! You pay nothing if you never hire a candidate.

Anthologies own data shows that most of their filled job postings are filled by the fifth introduction of a candidate to the company. About 10% of the job posted on Anthology are filled by candidate members, and 80% of the final candidate selection have an Anthology candidate in the mix. Those are actually pretty decent numbers when you think about the passive candidate market!

Anthology has an interesting model and its one of a number of technologies that have been released in the past 24 months attempting to disrupt the traditional recruiting industry. Ultimately, they’re going to need to reach mass to be effective for most organizations, and it looks like they have strong funding to make that jump!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

T3 – @Phenom_People

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This week I get to review Talent Relationship Marketing (TRM) technology Phenom People (who apparently, like @Kris_Dunn, think it’s good to put an underscore in your Twitter name!). So, what’s TRM? TRM is a new entry into the Talent Acquisition/HR technology space. It’s basically, the technology that you use from visitor to applicant, whereas your ATS is applicant to hire.

Phenom People, formally iMonentous, has its roots in mobile recruiting. Back in 2010 when they started it was under this idea that ‘hey, looks like a lot of people might use these smartphones to search for jobs!’ Turns out, they were really right! Phenom People has grown into a technology that attempts to make the job search more like online shopping. Think Amazon, but for searching and applying for a job on your own career site.

Online shopping has evolved to a point where it seems like the site you’re visiting knows what you want before you do. Phenom People does the same thing for your candidates! It tracks everything about a job seeker who enters your career site. Where did they come from, what did they look at, where did they go, etc. Tracking over 400 data points in the process. Phenom can tell you an amazing amount of information about the people coming to your site, and give you the inside track to source and engage those people again, even if they don’t apply!

5 Things I really like about Phenom People: 

1. Look Ahead Search. You know when you start typing in Amazon and auto fills in what you think you’re searching for? Phenom does that for your job seekers. You might not think this is a big deal until you use it and see the difference as a job seeker. It’s awesome.

2. Careers Page turned Shopping experience.  Job seeker personalization is very 2016!  If you ever shopped online, especially at Amazon or similar sites, you can kind of picture what Phenom People will do your career site. Jobs, for sure. But, also, personalized curated content, designed specifically to the user, even when you don’t know that user. Reviews, through a great API integration with Glassdoor, where the job seeker never leaves your site, but can still do their research!

3. Analytics that will scare you! In a totally good way! It’s unbelievable what Phenom People can tell you about each and every person who visits your site, plus the information they can give you to re-engage those people who never even gave you one piece of information! It’s big brother for talent acquisition, and you’re going to be amazed!

4. A complete history of every job seeker who visits your site.  Sourcing and recruiting is tough. It gets much easier when you’re given a complete history of what, where and how the job seeker found you, how long they stayed on pages, what content they engaged with, etc. Stuff the job seeker use to believe was secret, you now know, and can use to build a great selling strategy to get them interested in your organization and jobs!

5. The upside is very impressive! Many of the technologies I review are great, but they lack capacity to grow into anything else than what they really are. That’s fine, if they’re good at what they do and ROI makes sense. Phenom People is just scratching the service of what they can do with the information and data they have on your job seekers! Imagine a day, soon, where you can go to your executives and show them exactly how many of your competitors workers came to your site, how many applied, how many you hired, how many you can still go after! That’s a game changer. That’s when Talent Acquisition becomes a competitive advantage. When TA can systematically weaken your competition!

Phenom People works in the mid to enterprise level market. 50 jobs/around 1,000 employees is probably the low end of where they’ll get enough data to make a difference for your organization. They won’t replace your ATS, this is pre-ATS stuff, but they work in conjunction with your ATS. Great technology. Take a look, well worth the demo!

 

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

T3 – @ElevatedCareers by eHarmony

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This week on T3 I take a look at new careers site being developed by dating site eHarmony, called Elevated Careers. Elevated Careers was one of the new companies this year at the HR Tech Conference in the startup pavilion. While their peers in the startup pavilion didn’t really like this, Elevated is actually being run like a startup, they just have one really big investor!

Elevated has taken the successful compatibility matching technology of eHarmony that is responsible for 438 marriages per day – that’s 4% of all marriages in the U.S. per day! – and applied the same scientific methods to match employees with jobs and companies. Just as eHarmony came about because Dr. Neil Clark Warren knew there had to be a better way to finding love than just luck, Elevated believes that if jobs and employees are matched based on compatibility, people will be much more satisfied and fulfilled in their jobs, and companies will have higher rates of employee retention, motivation, engagement, and productivity.

If you’re like me, the first time I heard of Elevated Careers, I chuckled a bit. I admit, I’m sophomoric and a twelve-year-old at heart! Once I got a chance to see the product, and smart minds behind it, I was chuckling for a different reason. These folks know what they’re doing, and they have a giant captured audience to leverage. Think what you want about dating sites, but they know how to build trust, get massive amounts of data on their members and at that point is just a matter of leveraging that data.

5 Things I really like about Elevated Careers:

1. Elevated Careers gets what most career sites don’t even focus on – Fit Matters!  Their backbone is a freaking dating website; they’re going to be better at matching and fit than almost anyone!

2. eHarmony has been public about making this work. This bodes well for ensuring they’ll get the investment needed to make a great product. The UI is already very tight and intuitive. They made a very easy to use product.

3. Elevated will have a unique talent pool to leverage, that is unlike any other product on the market. You won’t be able to contact dating website members, that would kill that brand, which they have to very protective over, but you will be able to market to those members through Elevated.

4. Their fit technology will give candidates a Compatibility Score. This will help candidates know how well they will potentially fit with a potential company, but also show them where and why they fall short.

5. The job function is more than just an aggregator, as organizations will have to validate themselves before their jobs will show up in search. This way candidates know the jobs they’re applying for are current and up-to-date.

Elevated Careers is in Beta and hopes to be completely live end of first quarter of 2016, but it shouldn’t stop you from jumping on the Beta is you can get in.  One thing I wasn’t excited about is there is a piece of their product that will have candidates “buy” for certain functionality. Before you go down The Ladders path, you have to understand where they’re coming from – Dating Site.

Their data shows that people don’t value free sites.  If you offer a dating site membership for free, no one shows up. If you make them pay, add some exclusivity to it, people will pay for it.  While that works on dating sites, I don’t know if it will work on a career site, but we’ll see. I didn’t get from them that they’re married to this idea, and it might change out of beta.

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

T3 – @HalogenSoftware #HRTechConf

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This week on T3 I’m taking a look at Halogen Software. Halogen is a market leading provider of cloud-based software solutions for performance management, succession planning, learning, compensation, and recruiting and onboarding.  Years ago when I first ran into Halogen I knew them as ‘the’ company for performance management, but they’ve grown so far beyond that!

As a Talent Management vendor, they built all their own stuff to make implementation seamless. This is unlike many HR Tech vendors who buy up smaller technologies, then cobble it all together. At Halogen every module relates back to improving and supporting employee performance – from job descriptions and applicant tracking through to succession, learning and compensation, all parts of the suite are linked to supporting performance.

They are deeply focused on improving the areas that matter most to employees and managers when it comes to performance. They give them tools and training to simplify the process, and focus on the things that make performance management ongoing – for real. Feedback, goals, development and coaching convos are at the heart of their performance management solution – including 1:1 Exchange – to really make the process ongoing, forward-focused and effective.

5 Things I really like about Halogen:

1. Halogen’s 1:1 Exchange.  Look at this point we all already know that performance feedback should not be a once a year deal. Halogen not makes it easy for your managers to provide ongoing feedback, but the software actually teaches them and helps them with wording on how to do this most effectively!

2. Halogen’s 360 Multirater. I’m a big fan of providing 360 feedback to all of your employees, executives to mailroom. It has been some of the greatest performance and development feedback I’ve ever gotten in my career. Again, Halogen, makes it easy and inexpensive to do in-house on your own. I love this!

3. Halogen’s Job Description Builder. I like this module because it’s something 99% of us need right now!  Let’s face it, your JD’s suck! But, guess what? So do 99% of JD’s in the industry, and that is why this part of Halogen’s software is so useful.

4. Halogen Succession.  This is another thing that almost all companies are doing an awful job at, and something most need help with right now based on your workforce’s demographics.  The research shows that HR departments biggest need right now in HR Tech is Succession solutions.  Halogen embedded theirs right into Performance Management. Hey! Wow, that makes sense!

5. Customer Service. One thing I’ve learned jumping in with both feet into the HR Tech pool, is that there is some really, really cool technology available on the market.  I’ve also learned that many of these companies bomb when it comes to implementation and ongoing support. Halogen is the exact opposite of this!  I’ve talked with Halogen users on my own, and 100% of the time, they rave about Halogen’s customer service. This matters.

Halogen will be out at the HR Tech Conference next week at booth #2335. Make sure you check them out if you’re going to be in Vegas.  If you do, stop by around Monday at 2:45pm, I’ll be interviewing some of their customers in the booth, and finding out what real problems they solved after implementing Halogen.

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.

T3 – Microsoft Excel

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Wait a minute, this isn’t April Fool’s Day is it?

On a daily basis I’m reminded at how much of HR and TA (Talent Acquisition – but I’m now just going with TA for the rest of time) Technology is really just Excel spreadsheets and Word docs.  That isn’t a knock on HR and TA pros. That is just a reality of resource limited universe most HR and TA shops live in every single day!

The awesome thing about HR and TA is that you really don’t need that much technology to be great.  This proven out by Men and mostly Women that run HR and TA in SMB shops everyday around the world, who use mostly email, Microsoft Office, a copy machine and a phone. I don’t have exact numbers, but if you take away a payroll system, over 50% of HR shops run on the technology listed above.

Microsoft Excel can be used to provide your organization with front-line HR and TA metrics, like turnover, sourcing information, days to fill, benefit enrollment information, employee relations log, etc. You can track time and attendance. Performance management records. Total compensation statements. Succession planning. Interview guides. And on and on.

What Microsoft did with the launch of office in 1988 is tell HR and TA that you no longer have an excuse in not providing great service to your organization, because we just gave you the backbone of every process, procedure and product you’ll ever want or need to do great work.  We look at Microsoft Excel now like we look at the internet.  We can’t imagine not having access to it to get our jobs done, and if you took it away we would lose our minds in a short period of time!

5 Things I really like about Microsoft Excel: 

1. It makes you look way smarter than you really are.

2. It makes your data look official even when it’s kind of made up to present a case to get you something you want.

3. It gives you something to blame when executives don’t buy your bullshit numbers. (Must be an Excel error, I’ll go back and check that!)

4. The learning barrier to begin using is very low, but ceiling to what you can potentially do with it is very high.

5. Almost everyone running HR or TA has access to use it, and learn how to use it for free.

In a few weeks I’ll be at the annual HR Technology Conference and I’ll be on the front-line of the best and newest HR and TA technology the world has to offer.  Every single product is designed to solve specific pain points we have in HR and TA. None of these products will have the ability to match the scope and breadth of what Excel can do, and almost all will be more expensive. I’m still super geeked to see the new stuff, and can’t wait to share what I find with you!

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.

T3 – @Paysavvy

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This week on T3 I take a look at the ‘modern day alternative to ADP’, Paysavvy. Paysavvy is a Canadian company that is a fully integrated payroll, HR, and time management for mid-sized companies.  I usually wouldn’t right about a payroll company on T3 but Paysavvy is a little different.

Only five years old, they really came at payroll from a different direction than those who were already entrenched in the industry. Currently, they only provide services for Canadian payrolls and since I’ve got a gigantic audience in Canada for reasons I don’t understand, I thought what the hell! They will support companies outside of Canada who have operations and a need to run payrolls in Canada.

I also love the fact they just come right out and call out  the industry giant ADP.  Who does that?! Someone who is very confident that what they are offering is good, really good.

5 Things I really like about Paysavvy: 

1. One of the few companies vetted by the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA), so you know they are reputable and can be trusted with the one thing HR departments get more bad publicity with than anything else, payroll administration.

2. Build for the SMB organization. Integrated with Quickbooks, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, Netsuite, etc. But, also build for modern day organizations whose employees want to do automated charitable giving (through sites like Chimp) and retirement & investing (through Wealthbar). Enterprise level functionality and tools, but not enterprise pricing.

3. Customer service support is personal and provided in ways fast moving SMB clients need. Direct access to personal support with the same person each time, dedicated customer support reps. Live chat feature for the times you don’t have time to jump on the phone. All customer support folks housed onsite at the corporate office, close to those developing and selling the product.

4. Built specifically for Canadian payrolls. Includes all Canadian holidays automated, year-end closing documents you can email directly to employees, ability to go seven years back on all payroll data within the system.

5. The system is super easy to customize and they actually have the step-by-step instructions on the dashboard you can pull up when you want to make a change, instead of having to wait for someone else to do it.  Fully integrated online or clock entry system with manager approval processes.

I know. I know. It’s a Canadian Payroll system. Yep, but it’s a pretty damn good Canadian Payroll System.

Eventually, Paysavvy is looking to quickly build out full HCM capabilities in the attempt to be a fully integrated end-to-end HR suite, all on the same platform, but still built for their core SMB audience. I’ll update you when this comes on line.  In the meantime, if you’re in need of a Canadian based payroll system, check them out!

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.

T3 – EmployUs (@EmployUsApp)

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This week on T3 I take a look at the free mobile hiring App EmployUs.  EmployUs has developed a platform (currently still in Beta) that offers cash rewards for connecting companies with successful job applicants. If you recommend an acquaintance for a job, you’ll cash in on the referral bonus if your candidate makes the cut.

EmployUs is being called the “Uber of Recruitment” for what many are considering a disruption to the normal recruitment industry standard practices.  EmployUs is trying to put the power of agency recruitment directly in the hands of those hiring, and cutting the middle man, by leveraging the social networks of not only your employees, but anyone who might have an interest in referring talent your way.

It’s simple. It’s clean. It might be a little naive, but I think they could really grab some traction from some employers who are willing to be on the cutting edge of talent attraction.  Right now the platform is completely open.  I tend to believe that will scare away some corporate talent acquisition shops, but already Citrix and Redhat are investing and using the platform!

How does it work?

Company signs up for the App and posts jobs.  Referrers, sign up for the App, and refer people.  It’s a closed loop private App, so only those signed up can see the jobs and refer.  Companies using the are obviously encouraged to invite their employees to join.  This also could be problematic, because when an employee joins EmployUs, it’s not just joining as part of your company, they now can see all jobs for all employers on the App.  So, you’re inviting your own employees to the App in hopes of them referring their friends, family and contacts to your jobs, but they’ll also see jobs they could apply themselves to other employers.

Their early numbers show that about 20% of those being referred are being hired.  That’s a big number.  The average referral bonuses being offered are anywhere from $500-$10,000, a far cry from contingent headhunting fees, and a nice way to run your internal referral program for your own organization.  EmployUs does get  paid a portion of the referral bonus. We’re all capitalist. So, it’s free to use the App, but they’re going to get paid somehow.

I like the idea.  I would like to see EmployUs add a little functionality that would allow employers to keep it 100% inhouse to begin with, before opening it up to anyone, in terms of accepting candidates.  I do think this platform could launch an entire industry of “Mommy Recruiters” (Stay at Home parents who want to recruit and use this platform to ‘refer’ candidates and collect the referral bonuses).  Which is another interesting idea that might come out of this.

Check them out. EmployUs has a unique idea, that I think can be a valuable tool to your talent attraction strategy.

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.

T3 – CareerBuilder’s Talentstream Technologies

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This week on T3 I take a look at the Pre-hire technology suite by CareerBuilder called Talentstream Technologies.  Last week at CareerBuilder’s Empower conference, they launched a fully integrated suite of pre-hire recruitment services which you probably knew separately as CB1, Broadbean, Talent Network, RecruitmentEdge, EMSI, etc.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with CareerBuilder, they made a very conscience pivot a few years ago to move in a big way into the Talent Acquisition software business, a natural progression that aligns well with their job board business.  Wise decision, and quite frankly, they are killing it on the software side! The launch of TalentStream just solidifies that CareerBuilder will be a major player in the TA technology race for years to come.

So, what is Talentstream? Talentstream Technologies bring together high-powered sourcing tools, massive job distribution, automatic CRM, easy candidate workflow and powerful recruitment analytics, all under one integrated platform. For those customers who still only need some aspects of TalentStream, you can still get the individual technologies you need without buying the full package.

Talentsteam has three main aspects: Recruitment Software, Sourcing Technology and Recruitment Analytics.  It’s your ATS, Recruitment Automation and Business Intelligent tools all built into one.  It can replace your current ATS, or work with your ATS.  I think most companies who want to use TalentStream will eventually drop their current ATS and use the full product suite of TalentStream, they integration is to nice not to take advantage of it.

5 Things I really like about Talentstream Technologies:

  1. Talentstream Engage is an awesome re-engagement technology that does what we all say we want in Talent Acquisition which is how do we connect with all those great candidates who wanted us six or twelve months ago, but we didn’t need them at the time. Being able to seamlessly re-engage with this talent is paramount for a great TA shop’s effectiveness.
  2. Broadbean Job Distribution and Resume Search let’s you coral all of your job boards into one place. Yep, CareerBuilder has technology that allows you to use Monster, Dice, LI ,etc. all in one place, along side of CB.  One platform. No need to jump around and search three or four different databases! This is life changing for recruiters working in multi-database environments.
  3. The full Recruitment Analytics suite in Talentstream. EMSI college analyst allows you to give deep into your college recruitment and really focus your efforts on those schools giving you the most return, but also tells you which schools you really should be going to based on the talent you need. Broadbean analytics suite pulls in all of your data and gives you great workflow funnels to show your hiring managers exactly what is happening on their search, with great graphics.
  4. The Candidate Sourcing Platform is not only gives you the access to CB’s database of 90 million profiles, but RecruiterEdge has another 400 million passive profiles, and it’s not just IT profiles. CB has profiles on roughly 80% of the licensed Physicians in America! They have profiles on skilled trades, truck drivers, etc.
  5. Ability of hiring managers to give feedback on candidates without having to get into the system.  This is critical for recruitment process success. You need to get quick feedback, and we know managers aren’t going to take the time to live in ‘our’ system and tools. TalentStream gives you the ability to gather feedback from your hiring managers without having them have to log into the system.

CareerBuilder claims to have invested $1 Billion dollars into developing Talentsteam Technologies and I don’t doubt that amount after seeing the product live. This fully moves CB out of the job board play, and into the talent acquisition enterprise technology play. The benefit TalentStream will have over their competition is CB’s strength in job advertising that the other recruitment automation and ATS folks just don’t have.

Check out Talentstream Technologies, it’s well worth a demo.

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

T3 – @Betterific

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This week on T3 I’m taking a look at the innovation management platform, Betterific!  Betterific is a crowdsourcing, communication platform that allows employees to present and share ideas, and those within the company to communicate on each others ideas.  It can also be used as an idea generation tool for those in your organization looking for new ideas and innovation to what you already do.

Let me give you an example of how this could be giant!

I worked at Applebee’s (which is true, but the rest is for example purposes!).  We had thousands of restaurants world-wide.  In a franchise environment, the more consistency and continuity you can get from location to location, the more profitable your company will be. When you go into an Applebee’s in Time Square, you expect the same great burger, hot fries and cold beer, as you would get in Albuquerque. If it’s not, it hurts the whole brand, because people don’t know what to expect.

Applebee’s isn’t selling mastery cuisine.  They’re selling great burgers, hot fries and cold beer. They’re selling safe, middle of the road, we know what to expect, it’s going to be a good meal at a decent price.  What you find when you have two thousand restaurants is that some locations find better ways of doing things that the corporate office didn’t know.  The problem is their is no good way to share these ideas and innovations in a franchise environment, or even over so many locations.

Then comes a technology like Betterific.  Betterific’s platform allows locations, employees, the corporate office, etc. to share ideas amongst each other, and it also allows a manager, a certain location, the corporate headquarters to go out in search of the best way to do current stuff, or even new ideas they’re thinking about doing.  Now, instead of leveraging some data from a handful of ‘test’ locations, you get to leverage the knowledge of your entire company!

To me, this is what Betterific is all about, Best Practice sharing at it’s finest, in real time!  When I was at Applebee’s we encouraged best practice sharing, but many times it would take months or years before we could spread this across two thousand locations. What if we could have done it in a week or hours!?

Betterific also employees some gamification aspects which rewards the users for being active in the platform, the quality of ideas, etc. Let’s encourage everyone to use it, but also let’s encourage quality usage as well.  Many times in communication platforms like this, you’ll see a few people hog the conversation. The gamification component rewards those super-users, but also encourages them to share quality information, not just everything.

There is also a follow up mechanism which shows all those using the system what is happening with the knowledge and advice being share. Is the thread closed? Is it something we are considering in the future? Is it something we are going to act on now?  This feedback loop is critical to keep your employees involved and sharing on an ongoing basis.

It’s quick and simple to get started.  You don’t have get IT involved. This is something HR can roll out and test pretty easily with your operations team, or start a leadership exchange, etc. You could even test it within your own department to see how it works. Take a look and give it a quick demo, might be something to really help you energize your employees into sharing great ideas and feedback with each other.

T3 – @Glassdoor Employer Center

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Okay, I get it you know who Glassdoor is.  They’re that site where employees go to complain about how crappy a company is, right!?  Well, maybe Glassdoor of about 5 years ago.  In the past five years Glassdoor has built itself into one of the best Employer Branding tools on the market!

How so?

Glassdoor did what LinkedIn did in a way, but opposite. LinkedIn tricked employers into thinking it was great to have your employees all get this one site and upload their resume profile and call it “professional networking”. Oh! You got us, LinkedIn. That’s really going to hurt when all of our employees get recruited! I give LI full credit. They did something no other HR/Talent vendor has ever been able to do. Monster, CareerBuilder and Dice all wish they could have did what LI did.

Glassdoor opened up their site and let everyone and anyone comment on your work environment, and we thought ‘how evil!’. Why would a company let our disgruntled employees tell their story? Ugh! But, low and behold, the longtail prevails and we find out that Glassdoor actually gave us a way to respond to those few who are disgruntled and show people what your true brand is all about, in a way that is transparent and fresh – aka the Tripadvisor of Employers!

LinkedIn? They became a job board.  Funny how tables get turned.

Glassdoor just launched its newly designed Employer Center, which is basically a dashboard for Employers to manage and monitor their Glassdoor presence (i.e., your Employment Brand).  Most of what is in the Employer Center is actually free and any employer can claim theirs by just signing up. Interesting that Glassdoor has over 400,000 companies indexed, but only about 10% have actually claimed their brand! 90% of Employers have no idea and/or control of their Brand on Glassdoor and it’s free!

In the Employer Center Glassdoor gives you the tools to post jobs, run your own companies content stream, look a ton of various analytics and review and manage your Glassdoor user responses, all in one place. The new Employer Center also allows you to grant additional access to others in your organization. Let Marketing upload new content and look at analytics, allow operations to respond to a user response, etc.

5 Things I Really Like About Glassdoor for Employers: 

1. There’s a ton of just free stuff Glassdoor gives you to use and monitor that you’re silly for not taking advantage of, but one paid thing that I LOVE is your ability to post your jobs on your competitors page (if they are not a paid Glassdoor client -which most aren’t). People going to look at their page, many of them candidates, will see your jobs instead!

2. Candidate Activity stats. Glassdoor’s analytics show you which competitor jobs candidates are clicking. This allows you to do some very specific sourcing, and also see some possible candidates pools you weren’t aware of.

3. User Review Management. From the employer center you can now in one place read user reviews and respond, but you can also ‘feature’ one review that will be shown at the top of all reviews on your page. Basically, you can pick which of your reviews you want to feature. This is a paid service, but one I think is worth the ROI as it’s the first impression all candidates will read.

4. Running your own content stream on your Glassdoor page (free service). Glassdoor allows you place employment branding updates on your page and set up a live stream so that anytime something new is posted, it automatically shows up on your Glassdoor employer page.

5. Analytics. Some paid, some free.  Total activity and compare to competitors, candidate demographics, Rating and Interview trends, ratings by locations, competitor analysis, etc.  I can’t even tell you how robust the analytics are!  This alone is worth the demo.

I’m a big fan of what Glassdoor is doing and how they’ve evolved over the years.  If you haven’t checked them out lately, you need to. If  you haven’t claimed your free employer page, you’re an idiot. If you think you don’t have a brand, you’re wrong, you’re just not controlling it!

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.