Category Archives: T3

T3 – Are Enterprise HCM systems Killing Talent Acquisition?

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Last week I sat down with the folks at iCIMS to take a look at their system. iCIMS is the second largest ATS/ talent platform by market share for enterprise-level organizations, with only Taleo (Oracle) being larger. Workday, Ultimate Software, IBM/Kenexa, and SAP/SuccessFactors are also large players in this space that are growing quickly.

Do you see what all of them (except iCIMS) have in common?

That’s right, all of those other ATSs are apart of full suite focused HCM products.

Does that make a difference? Yes.

The people selling you full HCM (Oracles, SAP, Workday, IBM, etc.) will tell you all of the advantages of having all of your data under one umbrella in using one fully integrated system.

What they won’t tell you is that they really specialize in HCM and that their talent acquisition products/modules are probably 2-3 years behind where modern-day ATS systems are at. Also, with cloud-based, open API ATS systems, getting data to sync between your ATS and your HCM is no longer something that is difficult.

Enterprise level HCMs are built for large/giant level sized organizations. Those organizations with thousands, if not millions, of employees, do have some unique challenges, and all of these HCMs do a great job at addressing those needs. So far, they don’t do a great job at doing that on the talent side of the business.

This is where iCIMS comes into play. iCIMS is one of the few ATSs on the market built for enterprise and the specific ATS needs of large organizations. iCIMS has the background and experience of dealing with the compliance and volume of large hiring, coupled with a much more robust talent engine then you’ll find with the vanilla talent offerings that are currently being peddled by enterprise HCM vendors.

iCIMS also has a fully integrated marketplace that allows each organization to tailor what functionality they want and need. From background check providers, pre-hire assessments, video interviewing, texting, etc. These aren’t bolt-on technologies, but fully integrated, one-experience technologies you can choose from based on what functionality your organization needs, that isn’t already built into the main iCims products.

iCIMS has three main products: their ATS (Recruit) which is used by 100% of their clients, Connect (their CRM) used by about a quarter of their clients currently, but growing quickly, and Onboarding used by about half of their clients. iCIMS has also recently updated and improved their user-interface (UI) to make it look like many of the new ATSs on the market.

One major complaint I have with HCM ATS products right now (one of many) is the fact that almost all force candidates to register into the system to apply. This added friction into the apply process has been shown to be something candidates hate and causes massive candidate drop off. iCIMS gives organizations many options on how to handle this issue, and lets you decide how you want candidates to apply, allowing to eliminate as much of that friction as possible.

iCIMS also has an entire development team focused on Google for Jobs. Why is this important? Because you need your job postings to match as closely as possible to the GFJ schema to ensure your jobs are getting the highest candidate traffic possible.

Ultimately, if you are an enterprise organization you need to run an ATS that can handle enterprise-level demands. The big question is, do you want to run an ATS that helps you hire better and faster, or one that is just part of an overall larger system, not specifically designed to higher better and faster?

I think we are quickly approaching an HR Tech environment in our organizations where we need two major systems. You need a great HCM to handle your day-to-day employee HR related work. You need a great Talent Platform (Sourcing, CRM, ATS, etc.) to handle your talent attraction and hiring work. There is currently not one HCM on the market that does talent acquisition as well as stand-alone talent platforms can do it. And by the time they get to be equal to current stand-alone ATS platforms, they’ll still be behind, because those systems keep advancing at a very fast pace.

So, if you’re using an HCM platform to run your talent, what you’re basically saying is hiring the best talent really isn’t that important to us. You can tell yourself something different, but either you’re using great TA technology, or you’re not.

 

T3 – Google Hire ATS Could Dominate the SMB ATS Marketplace

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With all of the hype and craziness surrounding Google for Jobs, most people haven’t even been paying attention to what ultimately might be the bigger Google product to impact the talent acquisition technology market longterm, Google Hire.

Google Hire is Google’s entry into the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) marketplace that is built around an integration with their entire Google Suite of office products (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Drive, etc.). The integration is so tight that you can’t even demo Google Hire if you’re not already a Google office suite customer! Basically, it won’t work unless you use the Google suite.

Rob Kelly, at Ongig, did an exceptional write up of his demo of Google Hire, last week, click on the link to read his take.

One critical factor about Google Hire is that it is designed for the SMB market, for the most part under 500 employees. They might be able to move mid-market, but as of right now, their main focus will be employers who have less than 1,000 employees, who are using the Google suite of products.

Ongig also looked at some pricing around Google Hire:

  • $2,400 per year  for 50 employees
  • $4,800 per year for 100 employees
  • $12,000 per year  for 250 employees
  • $24,000 per year for 500 employees*
  • $48,000 per year for 1,000 employees*

While it’s not ‘free’, Google Hire isn’t expensive for what you get, especially in the SMB ATS market.

One main attraction for using Google Hire as your ATS (and it’s a HUGE attraction) is having direction integration with Google for Jobs, and the potential ability to more than likely have your jobs show up higher in Google’s search results.

In the past, you got great free traffic from Indeed, in the future that free traffic will most likely be coming from Google for Jobs. The assumption is if you’re using Google Hire, you’ll be getting more free traffic than those not using Google Hire.

Another pretty big advantage Google Hire has over most SMB ATSs on the market is its search capability using Artificial Intelligence/Natural Language technology that its Google Cloud Jobs Discovery career site search technology uses. ATSs, especially within the SMB market, are notoriously bad at search, Google Hire will not be.

There are really so many awesome features Google built into their ATS, click over to Rob’s article to read more details.

So, how big can Google Hire really get? 

We know there are millions of corporate G-suite users and most of these users fall in that under 1,000 employee position. This means Google Hire has a giant potential to grow, and grow very quickly, especially if Google decided to just give Hire away for free! Even as a paid technology, Google Hire looks to be a must-demo ATS for those looking to make a move to a new ATS.

The SMB ATS market is tricky. Most SMBs don’t have a ton of money to spend on TA tech, so even though Google Hire is relatively inexpensive for what you get, most still don’t have thousands of dollars budgeted to make this switch. For those SMBs that are fairly tech savvy, I suspect those will be the first to make the jump because of the G-suite integration.

Google Hire has the ability to be the dominant leader in the SMB ATS market, but only for those organizations using the G-suite at this moment. Lack of Microsoft Office/Outlook integration will keep it down market, as most larger organizations are too far down the path of using Microsoft, and ultimately that’s where most ATSs are making their money.

If you’re an SMB shop, and you use the G-Suite products, and you are looking for a new ATS, you would be crazy not to have Google Hire on your demo list. But, Google Hire isn’t the best ATS on the market, even at the SMB level, as Lever, Greenhouse, and SmartRecuriters all offer a better product as of right now.

T3 – Which Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is the best?

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I’ve said this a number of times, but it’s the question that never goes away. It’s the single most asked question I get in person, online, through email and messaging. There hasn’t been a week go by in the past two years where I’m not asked in some form this question!

The question comes in a number of variations:

  • Which ATS do you use?
  • Which ATS should we use?
  • Which ATS is the best?

I get it! Talent Acquisition is finally moving from awkward teen to young adult. It’s time we stop driving the hand-me-down beater and buy our first new car! We don’t want to make a bad choice and buy a lemon, and unfortunately, Consumer’s Report has yet to give us a list of the ATS “Best Buys”.

This is one reason I love Ongig’s, and Rob Kelly’s continued research and analysis of the Applicant Tracking market. This past week Ongig released their 2017 version of The Top Applicant Tracking Systems Annual Report. I love this report because there’s nothing else like it on the planet! I also like it because the ATS vendors try and tear it apart, which tells me it’s probably fairly accurate!

If it wasn’t good, they would make fun it and laugh it off. We see that frequently with these types of reports that are built on bad data, but this report hits them differently, and most find some value out of what it’s saying. I’ll say, that the 2017 report is far in away the best one that Rob and Ongig have put out!

The data comes from over 3,000 employers from SMB to Enterprise, so a great sample size.

Here are some highlights from the report:

– There are hundreds of ATSs on the market, but Ongig found about 99 ATSs make up almost 100% of the market.

“Homegrown” is not the name of an ATS (although you could now get some great SEO if you changed your ATS name to “Homegrown”!) it means a company built their own, or they’re using MS Excel, etc.

– Depending on how many job open at one time, there’s a popular ATS for your size:

  • 1000+ job openings (Enterprise) – Taleo, IBM Kenexa and iCims are the top three (TalentStream by CareerBuilder is one that pops up here with a good chunk of market share that I would think would surprise people – built in the last two years, TalentStream is more advanced from a technology perspective than most of the big boys)
  • 999 to 250 (Large) – Taleo, IBM Kenexa, and iCims
  • 249 to 100 (Mid to Large) – Taleo, iCims, and Kenexa are the top three, but #4 you begin to see Jobvite.
  • 99 – 25 (Mid)  – Taleo, Jobvite, and Greenhouse. I’ll say if you have under 100 job openings at any one time there is no reason you should be using Taleo!
  • 24-10 (SMB) – Greenhouse, Taleo, Lever and SmartRecruiters.
  • 0-9 (Small) – SmartRecruiters, Greenhouse, Lever.

– Fastest Growing ATSs might be a better gauge at what ATSs you should be demoing! Those are (in order): Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, WorkDay, and Lever. I’ll say WorkDay gets in under ‘fastest’ growing, but only because they convert their HRIS clients over to the recruiting product.

– The top ATS market for staffing agencies is: Bullhorn, PC Recruiter, BrightMove, CATS ATS, Crelate, and Compas. The problem here is most are built for direct-hire staffing and not contingent staffing which is growing fast and will continue. The contingent market is different in that they need an ATS that also flows into a pay-bill backend which no one has figured out well how to have great ATS technology and solid backend pay-bill.

– Tons of organizations every year which from one ATS to another. You see companies going from Taleo to Workday, iCims to Taleo, Taleo to iCims, Jobvite to Greenhouse, etc. What I find in most of these situations is the leader who implemented the original system has left and the new leader wants something they’re familiar with or just something ‘new’. Rarely are they actually upgrading to an ATS that is noticeably better?

Go check out the full report over at Ongig.

So, which ATS is the best? That is completely dependent on you and your needs. If you really want to know what I think, send me a note and I’ll give you an opinion based on a few things like the size of your organization and what your needs are.

T3 – Google for Jobs Doesn’t Care if Employers Like Them or Not!

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Okay, first let me say, I love Google for Jobs, mostly. Please, Google, don’t end my online life or anything! Remember, Don’t Be Evil! Okay, I know it’s now “Do the Right Thing!”

So, Google for Jobs (GFJ) was started with the best intentions to help candidates find jobs easier. Simple. Candidates want to know where the job is located. Cool! GFJ says to put the ‘exact’ address in your job posting. Okay. Candidates want to know how much a job pays. Cool! GFJ says to put the salary range of your job into your job posting. Got it.

Candidates want to apply for a job with one click. Okay, I’m not sure how I’m going to make that happen with this dinosaur of an ATS I’m running, but gosh darn it, we’ll find a way GFJ! Done!

Candidates want to work for companies with excellent reputations. Oh, okay. So, now we have to worry about and manage our online reputation on sites like Glassdoor, etc. Ugh, okay. But what about people who are lying on these sites? GFJ doesn’t care, candidates want this, so it’s going into the algorithm.

Okay Google, I’ll do it. I’ll do it because I want your candidate traffic. I’ll jump through your hoops, just like we used to make candidates jump through our hoops. You win almighty and powerful Google!

Wait, what? You, GFJ, want to allow Candidates to now choose how they apply for a job via a drop-down list of places that are all showing the same job? Now, wait just a god damn minute Google! So, a candidate finds my job on Google for Jobs that was listed there by CareerBuilder, but you will let that candidate apply to the job by just selecting “Monster” or “Career Page” or some other site which they didn’t find the job from?

Yeah, that’s happening, folks. Google for Jobs just discovered a major way to screw up your “Source of Hire” metrics! You might be investing major dollars in a certain site(s) to post your jobs. Google will scrap and find those jobs. If they’re duplicate, it will list the job that most highly fits its algorithm, but then it gives the choice of how to apply back to the candidate.

That sounds nice and everything, but it majorly screws up actual Source of Hire metrics for employers. If your job postings on CareerBuilder are working great, you want to see that candidate come through CareerBuilder, or whatever site the candidate actually found the job from. Here’s why. Candidates always think that applying for a job on the company’s career site somehow gives them a magical leg up on getting hired.

It’s not true, but we love to think it actually works. Google thinks this gives candidates choice to apply on the site that’s easiest for them to apply, but in reality, all that will happen is we’ll all see “Source of Hire – Company Career Page” shoot through the roof and think somehow we’ve really gotten a better at our career site hires!

You haven’t. It’s just Google screwing with your metrics, and not in a good way for any one – candidate or employer.

If ‘perceived’ applicants go up via company career page, you will invest less in other sources, but those are fake metrics! If you invest less in posting in other places, the chances a candidate will find your job will lessen. By Google making this change, they are actually hurting candidates in their ability to easily find your job. Not to mention hurting other vendors in the space for no real reason.

Do the right thing, Google!

Google for Jobs is designed to help candidates. This one change doesn’t help candidates or employers, it hurts both. I’m not sure how that’s good for anyone involved in the industry of job search. Companies actually need to know where candidates are really finding their jobs. Great, they found it on Google, but where did Google find it? That’s actually really important to how we fund our job marketing!

Also, Google please don’t hurt me. This is just one man’s opinion. I’m not even a big man. I have really small hands, and no one even reads this blog. I’ll take it down if you want!

T3 – @Uber is jumping into HR!

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This week on T3 I take a look at the ‘uber’ popular ride-sharing company Uber. Uber for Business made its debut at the HR Technology Conference this year selling itself as a legitimate HR technology company for HR and TA pros. So, how does the Uber we all know, make that jump over to the HR and TA side of technology?

Uber figured that all of us in HR and TA have to get our candidates and employees from point A to point B. One part of the Uber HR platform is a simple interface to help you and your employees manage the expense part of your employees using Uber and getting reimbursed or work-related rides. This side of the platform also allows you to award employees with rides as well.

The other part of the software allows HR and TA to manage candidate rides. You have a candidate coming in from their airport at 9am, it’s easy to schedule an Uber to pick them up and bring them to your office, and well as take them back to the airport when they’re done. Traditionally, this most likely done through a car or taxi service where you called and set this up manually. Now it can be done through the platform.

The industry analysts have panned Uber’s entry into the HR space as basically a non-technology play. I love the analysts, but most haven’t worked a real HR job in years, if ever, so how practitioners would use Uber’s platform is probably very different than what analysts believe HR really needs.

I can imagine most recruiting coordinators will love the Uber for Business platform. It’s a pain in the butt constantly calling and setting up transportation for candidates each and every week. To be able to do this through a dashboard is a significant time saver and it has the added benefit of being charged to one place.

On the HR expense side of the function, Uber of Business might be helpful to some, but probably a little less so, since it’s not just managing your ‘ride’ expenses, it’s about managing all business travel expenses. But, there are other functions for the HR pros like Uber’s ability to help you offer and manage employee commute perks. That would allow you to offer new employees or awards to current employees to pay a certain number of rides per week, month, etc.

Uber also allows HR to set up specific ride rules to match your internal travel policies, so you can be assured those are automatically followed by technology. No, Jimmy won’t be able to tell you he had to take Uber Black when in reality Uber X was available! Also, it allows employees to let you know when a normally non-approved ride is with a client, so it should be approved.

The reality is Uber is branching into many areas outside of just its normal ride-sharing service. Will Uber be a big player in the HR and TA tech space? Probably not, with its current offering, but it’s more intriguing that they are looking at the HR Tech marketplace, to begin with. Uber has the money and resources to do just about anything they want, so they will be someone to keep an eye on.

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 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net Also, I advise HR and TA tech companies. Interested? Let’s talk. 

LinkedIn and Microsoft launch “Resume Assistant” and it’s a big deal!

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Big announcement today coming out Microsoft/LinkedIn. The two companies are figuring out more and more how to integrate LinkedIn into the Microsoft office ecosystem and their new Resume Assistant is the first major feature announcement.

What’s Resume Assistant?

Microsoft’s Resume Assistant is a Word product integration that brings the power of LinkedIn directly into Word when you’re crafting or updating your resume.

How does Resume Assistant work?

It’s pretty easy. You upload or open an existing resume, made an old resume you have, and Word will automatically recognize that document is a resume and open up the LinkedIn integration. The integration pops up as a right-side window in Word so that your resume is on one side of Word and the LinkedIn Resume Assitant is on the other.

From here, Resume Assistant will do a lot of things but mostly use artificial intelligence to help you craft a better resume that will more likely be selected for jobs by recruiters. Resume Assistant does this through analyzing LinkedIn data of those profiles, work experiences, titles, etc. that are getting hired and moving into new roles via profile changes.

Don’t know how to phrase your work experience? The Resume Assistant will pull in specific examples, similar to you, of people who got hired and show you phrases, skills, and words that will help you get hired. RA will also easily allow you to go directly to other profiles on LinkedIn from Word to see how others have structured their profile.

Why is this a big deal? 

So, Microsoft and LinkedIn shared a bunch of data that led to this product creation:

  • LinkedIn data shows ‘job hopping’ has doubled in the past twenty years
  • LinkedIn is seeing 40% growth in job applies through LI
  • On average 100 candidates are applying for each position on LinkedIn
  • 80% of resume updates in the U.S. happen in Microsoft Word

Okay, and, so?!

Connect the dots! One part of the Resume Assistant is to also show each Word user updating their resume the jobs that most match the resume being created. So, 80% of job seekers will have LinkedIn’s 11 million jobs showing up in Word, right next to their resume while they’re updating and thinking about looking for a new job!!!

I would not want to be a job board today and be reading this. In fact, for how much Google has been swinging its weight around recently, this is also a pretty big punch back from LinkedIn and Microsoft to let them know they are not giving job search away!

Game changer!

Think about how many people use Microsoft Word. 100% of those people will now have a direct link to LinkedIn and the LI jobs when they are doing anything with their resume – Resume Assistant opens automatically when a resume is detected. It’s really a genius move by LI and MS.

If this is the first integration that the two sides have figured out, I can’t wait to see future integrations as well, and from the sound of things, both sides are moving quickly to make these a realities.

One note of importance. Resume Assistant will launch today for Microsoft 365 Insiders, at the beginning of 2018 for all Microsoft 365 users, and soon after for all other Word platforms.

T3 – Do you speak A.I.? If you’re in TA or HR you better learn!

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I’ve said this publicly before but John Sumser is one of the smartest people in our space when it comes to understanding HR and TA technology, or really any part of HR and TA that starts to get beyond the normal reach of HR and TA leaders. Pick a topic that is difficult to comprehend or understand, and Sumser is usually the first one breaking it down for the rest of us!

John recently sent me his latest research on A.I., or what he thought would be his latest report on Artificial Intelligence when he started doing the research. John goes deep in this report, over 90 pages filled with information on the latest and greatest A.I. related technology in HR and TA. I say related because what John found was that ‘true’ A.I. isn’t really present yet in the HR and TA tech stack.

We have a ton of companies telling us they have A.I. to sell us, but what they are really selling us is a form of ‘Intelligent Software’, advanced intelligent automation, and a whole lot of machine learning. Don’t understand any of that? Most of don’t. John breaks it down in detail and tells you the difference in all of it.

There’s no doubt that intelligent software has made its way into every segment of the tech stack in HR and TA. It’s important that as HR and TA leaders we actually understand what that means, where it’s all going, and how you will position your organization to take advantage.

One of the piece’s I loved from the report were questions John gives for HR and TA leaders to ask “A.I.” vendors they’re considering:

1. How long does it take the machine to learn something new? Can you define that both in calendar time and the number of transactions?

2. What are the feedback loops we should use to monitor the tool’s alignment with our culture, processes, and procedures?

3. What is the process by which we inform the device that it is missing something or needs to learn something new?

4. If the machine makes a recommendation and we think it is out of date, what do we do?

5. What sort of staff do we need to ensure the performance of our intelligent software?

Those questions are brilliant! All of us fail in asking potential vendors enough of the right questions, and John truly nails this.

If you want the full report you can download it at HRExaminer – The Emergence of Intelligent Software. The full report costs $249, but if you tell John that “Tim sent me!” he’ll give it to you for $249! It’s a cheap education of a really complex issue that we are all facing right now in HR and Talent Acquisition.

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 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net Also, I advise HR and TA tech companies. Interested? Let’s talk. 

T3 – The Reputation of Your Company As An Employer Actually Might Matter!

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Okay, I know Glassdoor has worked for a decade to make you believe that your employer reputation matters. Their own data says that 70% of candidates will check a companies reputation before making a career decision, and they have 40+ million candidates going to their site on a monthly basis.

The problem is, I don’t think most employers really thought that much about it, honestly.

Quick question: Have you gone out and claimed your company’s Glassdoor profile? 

I always like to ask that question when speaking to HR and TA leaders and it’s not too surprising to find most of the leaders in the room, over 50%, have not, or did, but have no real interaction with the site. If your employer reputation was that critical of a decision point for candidates, 99% of leaders would be on top of this and active in protecting their employer reputation online.

Glassdoor, like most great HR and TA technology platforms, does some things really well. The first thing they had to do was create a problem we didn’t know we had! Welcome to your employer reputation! OMG! I didn’t even know that was a thing until someone made it my thing! It’s actually great marketing!

Want to sell more airline flight insurance? Share a ton of stories about people dying in plane crashes! Sure you have a better chance of dying from a shark attack while simultaneously being hit by lightning, but hey, you never know when it’s going to your turn!

I think that is until recently. With the launch of Google for Jobs, your employer reputation might actually begin to matter for real this time! 73% of all job searches in the world, start on Google. The majority of the other searches probably go directly to Indeed or directly to your corporate career site, because we’ve trained people that “Indeed” is where they’ll find all jobs.

Google for Jobs is changing how job seekers are searching for jobs by basically keeping them on Google and not sending them to other sites. The other piece that Google for Jobs is doing is looking at the job search behavior, not from an employer perspective, which was done by every other company before it (because as it turns out employers pay money for this kind of stuff), but from the candidate perspective.

Google doesn’t really care how you want to make candidates jump through hoops and give them half-information about your jobs and company. Google is on the candidate side of the equation trying to disrupt. One way Google will disrupt the job search is by placing importance on your company’s reputation when it comes to job search results.

If your company’s reputation sucks, your jobs will show up lower in the Google for Jobs search results. This will be a killer to many organizations who haven’t managed their company’s reputation at sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, Google itself has tons of employer reviews (and will be getting a lot more!), plus at least a dozen other sites that track employee and past employee reviews as well.

So, what should you do?

  1. At a minimum claim your Glassdoor profile (the free version) and respond to every single review that’s given in a position way. You might have a poor reputation, but candidates will see that you’re working on making it better.
  2. Glassdoor is just one site, there are over a dozen you probably should be tracking. No one has time for that, but there is a technology already created to help do this on one platform called Ratedly. I actually wrote about this a while back on T3.  Created by Joel Cheesman who is a really smart thought leader in the HR and TA space, and the idea is so simple and effective, and inexpensive, you should really take a look.
  3. Get your executives to understand why this is important. Of course, you don’t want a bad reputation, but also you have this extra issue of having it affect your applicant traffic which just made this reputation thing begin to have real pain!

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 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net Also, I advise HR and TA tech companies. Interested? Let’s talk. 

T3 – @Breezy_HR, err ATS!

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This week on T3 we get back to the business to talking technology with the recruiting software platform Breezy HR. First off, Breezy HR has nothing to do with HR, and everything to do with Recruiting.

About 2 1/2 years ago, a lifetime in the technology world, I highlighted Breezy right here on T3! I liked them then, and I like them even more now. Back then I called them recruiting technology ‘light’, kind of like BambooHR for HRIS. And, that was probably fairly accurate. At that time they were an entry-level ATS for SMB.

In the last 2 1/2 years (or 30 months if it’s your baby) Breezy has built a full-blown, full functioning end-to-end recruitment platform for the SMB to Mid-size ATS market, that still has a great price point for those just wanting to start out.

Things I like about Breezy HR:

– Breezy just launched a built-in A.I.-assisted messenger, called “Hello” for recruiters. The bot will engage candidates right away on your site, and let recruiters take over at any point to have real-life conversations with candidates. Great functionality for an ATS at any level.

– Intuitive U.I. that uses a very familiar drag and drop functionality to allow recruiters to easy move candidates through the pipeline.

– The candidate ‘profile’ is one of the better-designed profiles among ATS vendors incorporating social profiles, resume, notes, etc. With the ability to one-click action almost anything you would ever do with a candidate from the profile.

– Built-in video assessments and on-demand interview guides let hiring managers easily become a part of the process in a way that makes sense to them.

– Automated reference checking. What!? Again, another function you just don’t see built into most ATSs.

The Recruiting Platform/ATS market has really picked up its game over the past couple of years. You can find so many good options, but if you’re an SMB or Mid-sized organizations the choices are still fairly slim. Breezy is definitely a platform you need to check out, I was surprised at everything it had embedded into it, and it’s super easy to use!

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 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

HR Technology is Outpacing Leadership Skill #HRTechConf

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It’s the big HR Technology takeaways 2017!

So, as you’re reading this I’m flying back home from ‘the’ HR Technology Conference. Another great show put on by Steve Boese and the LRP team!

There are so many things I take away from this year’s show and I wanted to share some of the bigger ones:

– HR and TA Technology sophistication are surpassing leadership ability in those functions. That’s a broad statement. There are many great HR and TA leaders out there that understand this tech at a very deep level, and they’re doing amazing things at their organizations. 90% don’t. This is a competency we have to increase!

– Artificial Intelligence will take your job. The A.I. company’s marketing will never tell you this, but you’re an idiot if you don’t understand how this works. A.I. will take away more and more task-level work. If you’re a practitioner that spends most of their day doing task-level work, you’re no longer needed, or not as many of you are needed. The ROI for A.I. is not more profit, it’s expense reduction.

– Technology doesn’t stop to let you breathe and catch up. I’ve been coming to HR Tech for years and the one thing is very consistent, every year the technology advances at an increasing rate. You have to work really hard to try and stay up with it.

– HR and TA Technology salespeople continue to struggle to connect the dots. And I think it’s getting worse! I think the biggest issue is trying to sound too sophisticated, and using too much ‘marketing’ speak to explain how your product can help. For the most part, we (HR and TA) are pretty unsophisticated. Just tell us like it is, show us how it works, and what impact it will make. 90% of us will never want to know how the sausage is made, or even care that you know. We get it. You’re smart. Now help us actually solve a real problem.

– This stuff is really cool! I wish we could break everything down easier so everyone felt more comfortable digging into their HR and TA tech stacks and want to get more involved because it’s pretty awesome to see how this industry is evolving our profession!

– There are good guys and gals selling great solutions who truly care about helping you make your company better. And there are assholes who want to make money and could care less about your success. Search out the good guys. Much of the tech we use is not that awfully different from one competitor to the next, but how much they truly care about the success of your organization can vary widely!

The future of HR and TA Technology is very bright. There are really smart people working on stuff that you can’t even imagine. Our industry will look very different in five years, and most of the direction will be coming from successes in other functions like marketing, sales, operations, supply chain, etc.

Keep demoing. Keep advancing your stack where and when you can. Don’t allow IT to pick what you use. Fight for better technology for your teams and your employees.