T3 – @CaymanHRGuy Takes Over The Project – #SHRM17 Recap of @Beyond_Com rebranding as Nexxt

Posted on June 27, 2017 by Tim Sackett

My buddy Chris Bailey, Director of People & Organization at PwC, was at SHRM National this year, and I wasn’t. So, he sent along a post for the blog! I asked him to stop by and review Beyond that rebranded as Nexxt. Enjoy!

Make sure you follow Chris on Twitter @CaymanHRGuy!

Whats Nexxt? What Tics? Who’s here? So What!

Ahh, the annual SHRM Pilgrimage, this year set to the backdrop of live Jazz, beads and the all-night antics that is Bourbon St, yes that’s right we are in New Orleans! Alas our owner of this site, Mr Tim Sackett, decided New Orleans wasn’t for him, I’m not sure why but I don’t think Tim has recovered from the last time both he and I were in the same location at the same time (You can read about that by paying $10,000 into the Chris & Tim Cayman Fund for recovering HR peeps). But he has been heard constantly humming along to the sounds of “Now That’s what I call HR” available now on Itunes…..Thus he sent me, his roving eye in the sky to report on what’s hot and what’s not at the SHRM conference.

Now as we all know Tim is a technical genius on the HR stuff…pregnant pause… So he wanted me to look at one thing in particular; a company called Beyond.com (Now known as Nexxt).

Now I was intrigued with Beyond.com as literally when they heard we were coming to review I was sent a press release by a lady called Maren Hogan of Red Branch Media. If you don’t know Maren she is one of the hardest working media pros at the event, not only was she helping Beyond launch this latest iteration of the company but she attended and supported various speakers, went to all the various networking events and even found time to have fun at the Harry Connick Jr’s concert. I say this for no other reason than if you want a lesson in how to network at a conference, build your brand, be seen and be sought out, then simply spend next year as Maren’s shadow. I guarantee you will be exhausted, amazed and light years ahead of where you are now in terms of just how much effort goes into being at the top of your game.

Back to the task at hand, Beyond had their booth draped in black with mime artists, jugglers and a jazz band right up until the countdown clock struck zero hour and then to much fireworks, t-shirt throwing and fanfare they rebranded as Nexxt. A 20 year veteran in the space that has become more “tech-enabled” which at its core is a suite of agency tools that gives recruiters and talent acquisition professionals the ability to create customized campaigns that reach the candidate personas they design.

Does it work?

Sure it does, but so does Indeed, and so do a few smaller players in this space. It’s a little more niche than Indeed with some pretty impressive stats. I ran a search as a job seeker for an HR Director role in the US and had over 7000 results returned (Clearly a demand for HR folk!) The same search on Indeed has just over 8500, so pretty similar job stats. If you are an employer and want to search a CV database there are Millions to choose from, on indeed it tells you they have 7.5 million CV’s in their database. So it certainly proves its veteran credentials. Nexxt is easy to use and its deep dive is also robust.

From a candidate perspective, I really don’t know why they continue to allow Google ads to show up in the job search bar as it cheapens the look of the site. I know I keep reverting back to indeed but when the employers and candidate in your space rate it as the number one recruiting tool you can’t help but compare regardless of the technical difference between the two. The creation of targeted and budget specific advert campaigns is better functionally than Indeed’s filter, so I know results will vary. At the end of the day, it comes down to feel. I like the feel of Nexxt, it feels boutique with some big data behind it. It feels a little more personal and I would certainly test it in niche areas of recruitment. It has clearly been a crowd pleaser but so was Steve Jobs launch of “Next” Computers. The fab PR needs to be backed up by great performance and Nexxt has that ability (unlike Next computers!) so watch this space as I see Nexxt growing even more of a foothold into bespoke campaigns.

So what else went on at SHRM, Dawn Burke, Jennifer McClure, Steve Brown and his new book! Jason Lauritsen, Mary Faulkner and a plethora of other inspiring HR folks who at their heart just talk sense. I heard about other great talent presenting for the first time and I look forward to watching some of the sessions on demand as the next gen is here and making waves! There was also a sighting of the lesser spotted Rueittimann but these reports have not been confirmed.

Tropical Storm Cindy led to 15,000 HR folk turning into professional grade weather forecasters but New Orleans airport was un-phased and carried on operating regardless. Top marks.

Until Next year in Chicago! SHRM17 has broken me!

T3 – @HireVue’s “Introduce Yourself” is a pretty cool Recruitment Marketing tool

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Tim Sackett

This week on T3 I’m talking about the video interview and assessment platform HireVue. Most people know HireVue as the high-end video interview platform, but HireVue found out a couple of years ago that they could turn all of this video data into some really great pre-hire assessment/predictive data on which interviewee you should hire. Welcome to HireVue Assessments.

I like to tell you guys about stuff I know works, and I was able to talk to some actual users at Digital Disruption that were raving about a feature on HireVue’s interview platform called “Introduce Yourself“. The feature basically allows a potential candidate to briefly introduce themselves to your organization via video, without actually applying for a position.

Why is this good, or important?

Once someone is an actual applicant you have to follow the government’s OFCCP Internet Applicant Recordkeeping Rules. But, if they actually don’t apply and are just showing interest in your organization, you have a ton of flexibility on how you pursue them and next steps. What the HireVue clients are finding is being able to see these short “Introduce Yourself” videos before someone applies is opening them up to a great new pool of talent!

What does “Introduce Yourself” do for candidates and employers?

1. For candidates, it gives them a voice. I think if you were to ask candidates, “Hey, do you want me to present you as a recruiter, or do you want to present yourself?”, 100% of the time they would want to present themselves.

2. For employers, it gives them a chance to meet potential candidates before they actually apply for a job, and give you the option to recommend them for positions you feel they might be a better fit. With how we use TA technology right now, many times we miss candidates because the tech washes them out before we ever even see them. This way we get to at least see and hear them first.

Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO started using HireVue’s Video Interviewing tool in this way and found that it really helped them hire more diverse candidates. So, often diverse candidates fall through the cracks and the introduce yourself tool was one more way to get them front and center. 28% of Children’s hires from the Introduce Yourself tool were diversity hires.

Another thing that Children’s discovered were that they ended up hiring ‘serial’ candidates more often after viewing introduce yourself videos. You know, those candidates who have applied many, many times, but you never hired because their resume or application doesn’t seem to fit any of your openings. When you actually get to see and hear the candidates, you realize you’re probably missing some great cultural fits that you can train for positions.

Well worth a look! If a healthcare system can find value in a tool like this, I think almost any environment can!

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

How Big Is Your Hotel Room? Measuring your HR Influence! #SHRM17

Posted on June 19, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Just got off the spring HR conference season, although it seems like the HR/TA conference season is now never ending. It used to be the conference season for HR and TA conferences were spring and fall, with the one outlier being SHRM National at the end of June. Now, you can go to a conference in any month of the year!

As one of the many people in our industry that writes, speaks, etc. Some folks would consider me a person who has some influence in the space. I certainly don’t have the most influence, but I do okay. My wife likes to call me a ‘micro-celebrity’, meaning I have about 23-ish HR pros around the world who know who I am, and might want a hug when they see me!

When you go on the HR/TA conference circuit, as an influencer, you get humbled very quickly, as you run into conferences where your influence is minimal, and come conferences where you’re the rock star. I just came back from a conference where I was humbled, so I wanted to share how you can tell your value at a conference as an influencer!

It’s the size of the hotel room they give you!

Let me break down the ratings of Influence “5” being the highest influence, “1” being the lowest influence in the HR space:

Level 5 HR/TA Influencer: You’re in the suite life! Gerry Crispin is a level 5 influencer! I was at a conference with him recently and his “room” was actually 4 rooms with a breakfast nook, two fireplaces, and a hot tub! That’s influence! We won’t talk about my room as compared to his! Level 5 Influencers also are picked up at the airport by someone holding a sign with their name on it. Probably have a gift basket in their room that includes something cool like a pair of Beats by Dre or Oakley sunglasses or something. Most level 5 influencers do not attend conferences for free, many of these gigs are paid gigs. (I’m not saying Gerry was paid, just that those at level 5 can get paid if they desire)

Gerry is a level 5 influencer because TA buyers listen to what he has to say. If Gerry says buy “X” software/product, people will buy. If he says “Y” software/product is crap, people won’t buy. Don’t tell me you’re a level 5 influencer without being able to move the market!

Level 5 HR/TA Influencer upgrade moment – Kyle Lagunas had a giant suite on top of the Bellagio in Vegas this year. I got invited. It was HR nerds acting like rappers, and it was awesome!

Level 4 HR/TA Influencer: You get to stay at the same hotel as a Level 5 influencer but you don’t get the same room! You probably don’t get the private ride to your hotel from the airport, but they’ll send you a note on what shuttle to take, you might even get the gift basket, but you will never get the breakfast nook! Level 4 and 5 influencers also are personally invited to these conferences, they never have to ask to attend. You’ve reached a certain level when you’re no longer begging to come to an event and work for free!

Once you reach level 4 you start getting invited to private dinners with vendors. Really nice meals at restaurants you would never go to unless someone else was paying and ordering drinks you wouldn’t if you were paying the tab.

Level 3 HR/TA Influencer: Welcome to the Hampton Inn, are you a Hilton Honors member? If so, we can get you a free bottle of water and move you to the top floor! Level 3 Influencers have made it to the land of not having to pay their own way to a conference, congratulations, that’s actually a huge step! The expectations though for this honor will be you’ll be writing, tweeting, IG’ing, Facebook live’ing, Snapping your life away for two straight days. It’s a big step to reach level 3, but that step comes with a lot of work conference organizers expect from you. At level 3 you’re probably booking your own hotel, flight and sharing an Uber to the event. But, you can turn those expenses in and get reimbursed.

Most likely at level 3 you probably had to ‘apply’ to attend the conference. Someone took a look at your name and others who applied and determined you carried enough influence to make the ‘list’. No one was contacting you asking you to come, but to be in the game, you must play the game! Level 3 influence comes with VIP access to the big HR parties, which usually means you don’t have to stand in line!

Level 2 HR/TA Influencer: You’re paying your own travel, but enough level 3-5’s didn’t want to come to our event, so we’ll give you a free pass to get in! With this free pass, we’ll make you dance like a monkey and do anything else we ask. Where a t-shirt with your logo? Sure! Many level two’s will bunk up in a two queen room. I once asked Kris Dunn if he wanted to share a room and he wouldn’t talk to me for a month! He was definitely not at level 2!

Level 1 HR/TA Influencer: At level 1 you’re paying your own way for everything. Travel, conference admission, etc. You’re probably sharing an Airbnb with other level 1’s and 2’s to help offset the cost, but you’ve got a dream, the Gerry Crispin 4-room suite dream! Plus, you can probably make at least a meal or two from snacks and candy given out at expo booths, and some giant HR vendor will have a huge party you can attend with the rest of the heard!

Some vendors completely screw themselves when they don’t understand the levels! If you’re a level 5 and a vendor treats you like a level 3, you can best believe you’ll never go back to that event! But, if you treat a level three, like a level 4 or 5, you just created an influencer friend for life! It works both ways!

The key for vendors is to try and get the most value for the level. It’s Moneyball! I want an up and coming level 3, who will probably be a 4 or 5 soon, to be at my event! I can get level 4 or 5 influence, on a level three budget. The hard part for all vendors is understanding who actually has real influence and who’s just pretending. Since I wrote the HR/TA Influence levels, I’m putting myself down as having some influence! 😉

The Best Recruitment Marketing I’ve Seen in Years! #VueDD17

Posted on June 16, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Okay, the last post from HireVue’s Digital Disruption, but it was something I had to share! TA leader Molly Weaver at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City is killing the game! If you do an interview with Children’s on the HireVue platform, they have actual kid patients ask you the interview questions via video!

I shared one on Twitter this week under the #VueDD17 stream and I haven’t been able to get those actual videos to share, but here’s one you can get a taste of how Children’s recruitment marketing is just amazing:

You’re in 2017. Molly and the TA team at Children’s is in 3017!

Seriously, talk about driving culture through your hiring process! It’s hard not to get emotional watching these kids ask you screening questions and then you have to go answer it!

This one single idea is the best recruitment marketing I’ve seen in years.

Imagine how you could take and use this idea in your own TA shop. Casual dining, go have actual guests ask the questions for your server screening questions. Get some half-drunk guy at the bar to ask bartender questions! (okay, just kidding!)

Go connect with Molly, she’s a brilliant TA leader and if you’re at CHRO in healthcare with a crappy TA team, back up a dump truck of cash on Molly’s door and talk her into coming over to your team!

Besides transforming their screening and interviewing, Molly’s team also added in HireVue’s “Introduce Yourself” tool that gives every possible candidate to your organization the ability to tell you who they are and why you should hire them.

Molly had some awesome stories of finding and hiring candidates from this tool that they might never have found without it. Some of these folks applied to jobs at Mercy several times and never made it past the first stage. Also, an amazing 28% of these hires were diverse candidates!

Before you say you don’t have the resources to do all this awesome stuff, know that Molly and her team did this on a shoestring budget! Found the kids on their own, filmed them, kept it as real as possible, and it’s brilliant!

Really amazing stuff, I’m starting the Molly Weaver fan club, let me know if you want in!

Should Talent Acquisition Be Driving Revenue in Your Organization? #VueDD17

Posted on June 15, 2017 by Tim Sackett

I’m on a plane flying back from HireVue’s Digital Disruption in Park City, UT this week. Really well-done user conference which is more non-user conference than user conference. Agenda loaded with great TA content, a ton of really high-level TA leaders in attendance to drive great conversation and almost no product pitch!

One of the panels they had took a strange turn down the path of whether or not, as part of a great candidate experience, TA should be making consumer offers within the apply-hire process. Basically, everyone on the panel (all retail of some sort) were really excited about their ability to drive increased revenue by sending candidates consumer offers during the hire process.

“Hey, Mary, thanks for applying for the Manager of Accounting on Wednesday, we hope to get back to you soon on the next steps! In the meantime, please feel free to use this code for 35% off regular price merchandise at the Shoe Barn!”

My first reaction was horror!

The last thing I need my TA leaders concentrating on is driving revenue. I need talent. Figure that out and then let’s talk about you and your sales capabilities!

But the more I thought I about it, the more I think I’m on the wrong side of this!

If you’re in the business of making money to stay in business, shouldn’t every single part of your organization be focused on driving revenue? I think so. Profit or Non-profit, I want an organizational culture that is about maximizing revenue so we can better serve our mission, whatever that might be.

Can TA drive revenue through candidates? Yep. The bigger your are, the more opportunity you have. Clearly, retail, dining, etc. probably have a better chance of being more successful at this task.

Word of Caution: If you want to leverage candidates to drive revenue you better first have your candidate experienced buttoned up end to end! You can’t be awful at candidate experience and think your discount offers are going to play well when the candidate is pissed off because they never even heard if you got their application!

Bad candidate experience will more than likely lead to a bad consumer experience. So, don’t think that offering a ‘Free Appetizer” to candidates who got turned down are going to make them feel better about not getting the job!

The panel offered up a great suggestion to where these offers probably fit best – after the first interview. This goes out to those candidates who you felt were worthy of the next step, give them a little thank you and an opportunity to experience your organization on the consumer side as the process moves forward.

All of these offers can be tracked and TA can actually show how much revenue they are driving to the top line of the organization. Don’t gloat too much about your $250K in revenue you gave away at a 35% discount. That margin is low, but revenue is revenue, and besides Ops, no one else in the organization can say they added to top line sales!

I actually asked one of the HireVue product people if they would be willing to tie a data point to candidates who buy the most on one of these offers! They laughed in my face! But think about the slippery slope this creates.

I want to hire ‘fans’ of my brand. My biggest fans probably spend the most in buying stuff from my brand. So, if I can offer applicants a code to buy, why wouldn’t I want to talk to the ~~suckers~~ candidates who bought the most!?!

Food for thought Revenue Driving TA Leaders!

The Perfect Change Model for HR #VueDD17

Posted on June 14, 2017 by Tim Sackett

I’m out in Park City, UT this week at Hirevue’s Digital Disruption conference. The conference is designed for TA pros and leaders looking to ‘disrupt’ their current TA shop and the agenda is packed with great content and speakers.

Rusty Rueff kicked off the conference with a great keynote on disruption and change. (Side editor’s note: Rusty joined a growing trend of keynotes bringing their notes on stage with them and referring to them often to ensure nothing was missed. Many ‘professional’ keynoters would consider this taboo, but I find it refreshing and more authentic)

Rusty offered up this change model:

#1 – Compelling Vision: The only way you get change started is to have a great compelling vision of what this change will be.

#2 – What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) – If you need your employees to drive change you quickly have to define what’s in it for them, and it you better make it compelling. “You get to keep your job” – is not a compelling WIIFM for most people in 2017!

#3 – Lead the Way – Servant leadership is they key. Are you doing what you say needs to be done, and are you helping in every way to get everyone on board with you?

#4 – Change the work – If you want to change the way you work, you need to change the work. What!?! So many times we want to make big changes but we are unwilling to change how we do things. That’s a problem. If you can’t attract talent, you need to stop what you’re doing, and do something new!

#5 – Make it stick – Big change is hard and it’s super easy to go back and do what you’ve always done when the initial change seems to be worse or not having the results you wanted. You must be courageous to see your vision through to completion. You might fail, but if you don’t make it stick, you’ll never know for sure.

Rusty focused on big change to big things. In the end, this is what matters.

If you focus on making small changes, or even big changes, to small things, it really has little impact. Focus on making big changes to those things that are most important to your organization that isn’t working. Swing for the fences.

This is super hard for us in HR and TA. We never want to break anything, even when it’s not really working. We’re scared of screwing something up more than it’s already screwed up. I can’t tell you how many executives I speak with that fire HR and Talent leaders simply for this reason alone. The fired leader was unwilling to take the chances needed to fix what was broken.

Are you ready to make big changes to big things?

T3 – Where are they now? The Ladders edition!

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Remember The Ladders (they go mostly by “Ladders” now)? You know the website where you could search 6-figure jobs that no one else had access to! Founded in 2003 as a job board members-only site where they guaranteed every job listed on their site had a starting salary of at least $100,000 or more.

It started off really well, they found an audience of people who actually wanted to make $100,000 or more! Who knew!? The HR bloggers and influencers were not fans. Why? Remember what started to happen around 2005?

The great recession was beginning to happen. Charging candidates a monthly subscription fee seemed a business model where you were taking advantage of people who were the one group of people you shouldn’t! Those desperately seeking work.

Since the end of the great recession, you’ve virtually heard nothing from Ladders. I’m guessing many of you are surprised to hear they are even still in business, and most of you will be more surprised to hear they’re thriving!

Why?

Timing.

What happened during the recession? Netflix. Spotify. StitchFix. Etc. Membership model ‘exclusive’ service industry came into vogue in a big way. Ladders 2003 was ahead of its time. Ladders 2017 seems to fit right into what most people like.

Sure you might not be willing to pay for access to six-figure jobs and work at upgrading your own career, but your neighbor is. Just like you pay for Spotify, but your neighbor is fine listening to the commercial version. We are in more control of our lifestyle buying behavior than ever before.

Ladders of 2017 actually seems to fit right into the candidate management behavior of today, and the consumerism of today. In 2005-ish, they didn’t seem to fit, and it’s why so many in our space worked to discredit what they were offering to candidates.

The goal of Ladders has also remained the same to organizations. Eliminate unqualified candidates to companies and recruiters. Candidates only see jobs that match their background and skill sets. Candidates can’t freely search the entire database of jobs, only those jobs that they’re matched to.

Ladders also made some changes. Still, a candidate member model that allows all recruiters to view candidates and contact all candidates for free, and post jobs for free. Ladders now offers “Indeed” type sponsored jobs for recruiters, and the ability to contact candidate members outside the system for upgraded subscriptions.

Ladders also spent a ton of resources developing their own content publication. Career-minded content and development for mid-career candidates that are in management and executive roles, and those looking to move up into those roles.

I’ve been hearing some rumblings around my network that The Ladders was alive and kicking, and actually doing very well. The original founder of The Ladders, Marc Cendella, came back as CEO after being away for a while, and that certainly helped get them back on focus.

It seems like Ladders is the one job board-type organization that is focused differently than every one of their peers. Ladders is paid by candidates (for the most part) and thus what they do is shaped by taking care of who their true client is. While recruiters and organizations can clearly take advantage of some great talent, Ladders continues to focus on their members (candidates), and find that refreshing.

In the 2017 candidate market Ladders looks to be another tool we probably need to go back and take a look at. I’ll tell you some of your recruiting peers are already doing this and finding some great talent!

Which Applicant Tracking System (ATS) Should We Use?

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Tim Sackett

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!

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. It’s one of my favorites and I send the link to people weekly who are asking me, “Which ATS should we be using!?”

T3 – @Ascendify – Intelligent People Management

Posted on May 23, 2017 by Tim Sackett

This week on T3 I review the end to end talent acquisition platform Ascendify. Ascedify currently is a cloud-based platform that is completely mobile and social enabled, combining all of your talent acquisition technology needs in one platform. Ascendify is also adding talent management to its platform as well and you’ll soon get performance management and employee development as well.

Ascendify can run your complete TA tech stack – ATS, CRM, recruitment marketing, onboarding, etc. If you already have an ATS you love, or you’re stuck with, Ascendify can run all the parts of your TA tech stack that are missing on your ATS, with current integrations with Taleo, Workday, Kenexa, etc.

So, what does Ascendify do? All the stuff you read about, but can’t make happen with your ATS alone! Ascendify allows you to run your own talent communities, helps you run your employment branding and recruitment marketing, engages and nurtures prospective candidates, gives you one-click apply, source tracking, multiple forms of messaging candidates, create multiple landing pages for hiring events you have, and built in employee referral, to just name some of the functionality!

What I liked about Ascendify:

– It’s built for Global enterprise talent acquisition. High security, scalable to multiple locations, divisions, different employment brands, etc.

– Easily build out talent communities based on gender, veteran status, diversity, locations, etc.

– Ascendify will help you build and re-design your career site to better use this level of technology. You’ll be driving a Ferrari, you can’t just park it out on the street!

– You can have and build separate employment brands within your organization, but still, share candidates between the brands and divisions. Super flexible and supportive of each employment brand, which letting you all work together within one system.

– Ascedify is designed so that your TA team will spend their entire day within one system to post, communicate, source, pipeline, market, etc.

– Tag candidates under ‘champion’ status giving one who interviewed a silver or bronze medal status based on finishing as a runner up in the process, knowing those who finished second and third are many times still really great candidates who barely missed out, and then we forget about them!

What I liked most about Ascendify is they know they have a big, giant sophisticated platform they are offering you. You’ll go from horse and buggy to a rocketship! That’s pretty scary, and difficult! So, they also work hand-in-hand to help you build it all out, and show you how to use it and how to kick your competition’s butt using it!

When you purchase a piece of TA technology like this, it’s a big investment in resources and time, and it’s critical you pick a vendor that isn’t just selling you the technology, but is also selling you the talent acquisition expertise to help you build out your ‘new’ TA strategy, because that is what will happen if it’s done right!

They are an enterprise level Talent Acquisition technology to be sure. If you’re a TA leader looking to modernize your processes Ascendify is definitely a technology you need to demo.

T3 – @Skillscout – Experiential Hiring through Videos

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Tim Sackett

This week on T3 I take a look at the employment video development company Skillscout. Skillscout is a platform for employee-generated recruitment videos. They help you develop job videos and work samples to help organizations hire candidates who are a better fit for the job and the organization.

I became aware of them when I posted the question, “Why don’t we have technology that will, easily, allow organizations to make their own employment branding videos?” I should have known, someone much smarter than me was already on top of it, and being successful at it!

Skillscout has developed a process that will allow you (yes, you, TA and HR pro) to make your own employment videos for your organization. They actually send you a video kit and step by step how-to guide. You take the kit, your iPhone and go start videoing. They show you how to upload your videos and then you sit back and wait for the final product.

They have a team of folks who take your videos and produce them into a very professional looking, branded video that you can use on your career site, with social media, etc. Here’s an example of a finished product:

Skillscout also

What I really like about Skillscout:

– They give you both options of Do It Yourself video, or they’ll also come on site and help you. Then once you become comfortable with how to do it and what to shoot, you can start doing your own shoots for all kinds of employment branded video in your organization.

– With Skillscout videos you can make video job postings for all of your jobs. This gives candidates a much better understanding of the job they are applying for and what they’ll actually be doing in the job.

– Skillscout was originally developed to be used within manufacturing to also be able to use video to screen applicants. Where the applicant watches a video within your career site then answers questions or is directed to do a certain task to demonstrate skill.

– When I first saw Skillscout I was thinking about how this could be used within a white collar environment, but Skillscout has actually used this very successfully to help companies attract more and higher quality blue collar workers.

– Cost is extremely reasonable. For a normal 90 -180 second of employment branding fully produced video you’ll pay around $20,000. Skillscout does this for a fraction of that cost. They’re pricing is transparent and listed right on their website.

I love the fact that Skillscout gives some really great direction to get you started with video, but once you get going they also will help you with more culture related videos as well. A technology and company like Skillscout truly help SMB and mid-sized talent acquisition shops to be on a level playing field with enterprise-sized organizations and budgets. If you are in the market for video, this is a must see.

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team

Category Archives: TA Technology