Category Archives: TA Technology

HR and TA Technology You’ll Fall In Love With!

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Happy Valentine’s Day! I have a gift for you!

My friend, President of Recruiting Daily, and super brilliant HR Technologist, William Tincup puts together a quarterly list of HR and TA technology that he loves titled: 100+ HR and Recruiting Technologies Worth Watching. I get so many great ideas of companies off his list to demo, I wanted to share it with you, and if you’re smart, you’ll go follow William and get his updates to this list on a quarterly basis.

Some of these companies are well known, some I haven’t even heard about, but if William tells me to take a look, I take a look!

Here’s my recommendation. You know where your HR and TA tech stack are failing. Demo one company a month in your weak areas. These demos will show you a few things. First, you’ll see what’s possible. Second, you’ll get to see how other companies are doing the same thing, only better. Finally, you’ll probably get some ideas of how to do your stuff better, with or without the technology.

Either way, you win.

If you want to give me a gift, please send me a note once you demo’d one of these companies and let me know what you think! The sharing of information between peers is the real power.

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11 Proven Tips for Landing the Perfect HR Tech Solution

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It’s no wonder we all fall in love with technology: When we pick the right tools, they can save us a ton of time and headaches–and help us make our employees’ lives easier, too.

The catch, of course, is that getting approval for great tech can be a giant hurdle, what with the constant demand that HR do more while simultaneously cutting its budget. However, as HR tech expert Tim Sackett will tell you, there’s a realistic path to getting the HR tech solutions you desire without freaking out your CFO–and in this special Valentine’s Day webcast, he’ll show you the way.

Specifically, you’ll learn:

  • 3 ways to argue that HR tech should be a top priority within your organization.
  • 5 strategies for making your pitch to your executive teams.
  • 3 ways to ensure the HR tech solutions you choose won’t come back to haunt you.

The HR technology answers to your prayers are right around the corner! (Or, at the very least, you’re just a click away from getting some great, practical advice on how to boost your tech stack in 2017 … and beyond!)

This, free, webinar will run on February 14th (that’s right, the day of Love!) at 2 pm EST, just around that time in the day when you’ll need a nice big hug from me on Valentine’s Day!

So, if you’re lonely on Valentine’s Day, like I’ll be, come on over and we can commiserate together and geek out talking HR technology, since I’ll be hosting!

REGISTER HERE! 

 

 

 

T3 – Ruutly (@_Ruutly) – The future of job postings

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This week on T3 I take a look at job branding technology, Ruutly. Ruutly is a technology that is embedded into the top of your normal, boring, text-based job description/posting, turning into something modern that is highly interactive, branded and completely digital.

With such a high focus on candidate experience, it’s a wonder why organizations haven’t focused more efforts in developing a great job presentation to candidates, but the reality is most job postings are pretty much the same as they’ve been over the past twenty years or so. Sure, you now have them in a pretty frame with your logo, but it’s really the same old text-based, cut and paste job description with some prettier wrapping.

Ruutly allows you to do your job postings differently, and still work within your ATS. That’s huge. Many of the job posting/job branding technology to this point has been outside the ATS, which always made it a bit clunky to use. Ruutly turns your job posting into an interactive, branded piece of content, placed directly at the top of your normal job posting, ensuring there’s no change to your apply process.

What I like about Ruutly: 

– Simple, easy to use text editor that allows you to build a ‘ruut’ (the interactive job posting) to be placed “above the fold” of your normal job postings within your ATS. What does “above the fold” mean? It means, this will be placed on the part of the screen that you see first, no having to scroll down. The old text-based job description will now be below the ruut. Research shows candidates spend 50% of their time on job descriptions ‘above the fold’.

– You can easily embed video and secondary content into the Ruutly job posting. This is great for all of that content you have for candidates, like ‘why our city is great to work in’, awards, news items, benefits, etc. You can also use this space to show career path of the position someone is applying for, or related positions they might be interested in applying for.

– An administrative dashboard shows you stats on your job postings that most people never see, like, total views, total clicks, average time spent on a job posting, total applies, etc. This is a great way to do some A/B testing to find out which job postings perform better.

I love this type of technology (I’ve also reviewed ViziRecruiter and GoSizzle, as well, in a post titled “Pimp My Job Description“) because there is such a high level of frustration in organizations on how bad our job descriptions are. HR hates them. TA hates them. Hiring managers hate them. Yet, we change everything we do in talent acquisition, except the job postings! This makes it easy and effective. Check them out, it’s pretty awesome technology for not that much of an investment.

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

T3 – ENGAGE (@engage_talent) – Using Predictive Analytics to Source Talent

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This week on T3 I’m reviewing the sourcing solution ENGAGE. ENGAGE allows recruiters to source from a real-time stream of over 100 million passive candidate profiles and receive alerts of when a candidate is more than likely ready to ‘engage’ you in a conversation about a new job.

How does ENGAGE know that a candidate is in the mood? Welcome to the world of predictive analytics! Named one of Gartner’s 2016 Cool Vendors, ENGAGE has built an algorithm that is fairly accurate in guessing when a person is probably more likely to be ready to change jobs.

The science behind combines a ton of stuff: competitor data, Glassdoor rating of their current company, key stats, recent company news, etc. Based on the algorithm they color-code each candidate from red to green. Green meaning they’re more likely to be able to be recruited.

ENGAGE uses 15 plus people aggregators to pull in the 100 Million plus profiles. They’ve also partnered with Payscale to also provide a ballpark salary range of the candidate based on all the criteria they’ve been able to gather on the profile.

What I liked about ENGAGE:

– ENGAGE allows you build both candidate and company ‘watch’ lists. You can build a search for let’s say “Facebook” and it will continually update your list as people at that company move from red to green, or vice verse. You can also do this by skill sets and search strings for candidates. Having a list that could change daily of when someone is ready to be recruited!

– Get daily emails sent to you on your most recent alerts for your most likely recruiting sources.

– ENGAGE also has a Chrome extension that allows you to easily pull information on target organizations and keep internal notes without having to jump back and forth into the system. This extension also works with LinkedIN showing you the ENGAGE information with one click directly from LinkedIn Recruiter.

– It has an intuitive search interface that will show you ‘similar’ candidates not only based on search terms, but on the type of target organizations, locations, etc. Also, the system allows you to export your search lists and easily upload them into your CRM.

– ENGAGE has made large investments into also providing actual candidate phone numbers and email addresses, and not just main company phone numbers, but actual cell phones, direct dial extensions, etc.

One thing that ENGAGE isn’t being sold for, yet, but I instantly saw as a secondary value is actually tracking the ENGAGE score of your own employees. Retention of your own talent is one of the most important issues we face an ENGAGE can actually be used to show you when someone in your own organization is most likely getting to the point of being recruitable.

Knowing this would allow us to set up a save strategy and work to re-recruit the individual moving them back into the red ENGAGE score, and less likely they’ll leave our organization. There a ton of sourcing tools on the market. Most of which are based on legacy data scraped from various places. What I really like about ENGAGE is the predictive nature. Well worth a look and demo (enter the code “fistfuloftalent” for a 5% discount).

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

Would You Facebook Live Your Interview?

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A few weeks ago, after an NFL playoff game, a wide receiver from the Pittsburg Steelers, Antonio Brown, Facebook Lived his coaches post-game talk to the team. That kind of talk is almost always a private conversation between the coach and the players.

Beyond the concept of betrayal between player and coach, this entire thing got me thinking about how our world has changed in what society views and private vs. public. My parent’s generation is extremely private. You don’t talk about money, political beliefs, religion, love life, family, your job, etc., with anyone outside your immediate family, and maybe not even them!

My generation was a little less, we would speak our political beliefs, talk opening about relationships, etc. The most recent generation to enter the workforce seemingly will talk about anything publicly! Somedays it seems like nothing is off limits within the walls of the office, this was not always the case.

Antonio Brown’s Facebook Live broadcast of this private moment got me to think about how long is it until we see someone broadcast an interview live!? This is truly a private moment between candidate and hiring manager. A time that both could look awesome or like a total fool.

There might be value for both sides to broadcast an interview live.

From a candidate perspective, you could show yourself in a very good light. If you nail the interview, not only do you have proof but now others also can see this and might want to hire you. If you bomb, having a video of this to analyze might be the best thing to help you get better at interviewing.

From an employer perspective, having a live broadcast of an interview might be a bonanza of publicity from an employer branding standpoint. We already know if would take a unique organization to be willing to do this, and every organization is trying to find ways to set themselves apart from their competition for talent. It would also be a great record for employment law purposes to prove you were compliant during an interview (or vice verse).

It’s easy to pick apart this idea and see both good things and bad. I suspect most HR and TA pros would see more bad than good, which is why I like it! If the majority only see negative, you can use this to your advantage.

The reality is, if you do what you should do, you have nothing to worry about and only could really use this to your advantage. If you suck and you don’t trust your hiring managers, this isn’t for you! That’s most of us, by the way!

It’s something to think about. I don’t see us, as a society, going backward as it relates to privacy. Every day another privacy barrier is broken. My question is, how long until we begin broadcasting live from the interview room?

Ugh! I Did a Video Interview and I Sucked! @Hirevue Edition

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First, let me say I’m a giant advocate for video interviewing. I think it’s brilliant and I absolutely love the technology and truly believe it’s only a matter of time until every single pre-screen organizations do are most likely done via video.

All that being said, I had never done a video interview, personally, until a few weeks ago.

No, I’m not looking for another job! I got asked to apply for a Board position with the new organization the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP). Being someone who probably spends too much time advocating for TA Pros, I couldn’t say no.

Part of the interview process was doing a video interview because the committee selecting the board members were located all over the world. Having candidates do a video interview would make it more effective from a time and cost perspective, plus this is for a TA Pro association. If we don’t use TA tech, how can we lead others in these efforts!?

Thankfully, Hirevue donated the use of their software to the selection committee to help with this process. I’ve known Hirevue for years when they were just a small up-and-coming vendor in a small 10X10 booth in the back of the vendor hall at SHRM national! The first time I saw the technology, I was a fan. I’ve demoed them a number times as they’ve improved and grown the system beyond just video interviewing. I don’t think there’s an analyst in HR or TA that has shown Hirevue more love than I!

So, doing a video interview with Hirevue should have been super easy for me!

I wanted to write about this because it wasn’t super easy for me. I sucked! It’s hard. It’s awkward. And, I still think it’s brilliant!

What you don’t get about video interviewing, unless you actually do one for real (real, meaning you actually want what you’re interviewing for, not some fake demo interview to see how it works) is that it’s hard talking to a camera and getting no facial or body language cues from your interviewers!

Normally, when you interview, you get asked a question and you start talking. Based on the non-verbal clues you get from those interviewing you, you continually auto-adjust. Your tone. The length of your answer. Your tempo. Etc. When you answer a question to the camera, you get none of this, and it’s a heck of a lot more difficult than you think!

I was even given the questions beforehand so I could prepare my answers, which might have made it worse since then you feel like you should memorize your answers. Regardless, the entire thing comes off like a bad monolog by a D-level actor!

This is important to talk about because I think if your organization is going to use video interviewing, you need to put every single one of your hiring managers, and yourself, through one of these interviews, then allow everyone to watch each other! You and your team need this perspective to understand, what you see on video might not be the best representation of that individual.

While younger generations will probably be more comfortable videoing themselves, we still have a great number in the workforce that will come across awkward. Hiring managers using this technology have to understand this, not everyone will rock the video interview.

I will say, using the Hirevue platform was super simple and easy, anyone could do it. It’s almost too easy!

For the record, I got the position. You are now looking at, err reading, about the next Board member to the Association for Talent Acquisition Professionals. So, apparently, I sucked a little less than some other folks! But, I’m super excited, along with the other board members, to begin growing and working with ATAP! I can’t tell you how long I’ve desired and hoped for an association like SHRM, but for Talent Acquisition.

Check us out and join! My goal is that organizations around the world will seek out ATAP members when they look to hire great TA Pros and Leaders for their openings.

Here’s how to JOIN the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals!

T3 – @Appcast_io – Talent Attraction is the New Talent Acquisition

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Yo, gang – I’m doing this webinar this week. Check me out!

Discover why talent acquisition is being laid to rest, giving rise to a new game in town: talent attraction.

Thursday, January 19th | 2:00 PM ET

This free webinar present simple strategies to start ‘attracting’ talent to your organization.

You’ll learn:

  • What current processes are broken in most traditional talent acquisition practices?
  • How to get your organization on board with one consistent version of your employment brand.
  • Core concepts of industry leading employee referral programs and innovative ideas surrounding implementing such programs.
  • How organizations are using employee ‘story-telling’ to market and share their employment brand within their industry.

Register now!

This is a concept I brought to Appcast because I think moving forward organizations should be more concerned with attracting talent than acquiring talent. Those are two very different concepts, yet most organizations still work in practices to acquire versus attract.

Should be a great conversation with some new ideas for you to begin using right away in your recruiting departments.

T3 – @Lever #ATSDifferently

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Over the holidays I’m taking a break from normal writing and sharing some of my most read posts from 2016. Enjoy. 

This post ran as part of my Tuesday HR and TA technology series. Lever is a really great ATS, but I think they might be even better at SEO as this T3 post gets read heads and shoulders over anything else I’ve written for T3! 

This week on T3 I get to look at a rather new entrant to the applicant tracking system (ATS) field, Lever.  Lever was designed from the ground-up to be different than every other ATS on the market.  Most ATS software are built for the recruiter in mind. The thinking being this is a software used by recruiters, we need to design it so the recruiters will love it.

That all makes perfect sense, if the basis is true – used by recruiters for recruiters.  Lever decided that basis wasn’t totally true. ATS software should be used by everyone in the company. Yes, recruiters definitely need to use it. Also, hiring managers need to use it. Those in the interview process need to use it, etc. If attracting talent is a key component of your organizational success, then you need an ATS that is designed to be used by everyone, not just recruiters.

Lever is designed for organizations who are really focused on talent attraction, where hiring managers own the talent on their teams and are keenly involved in the talent acquisition process. Lever isn’t trying to be the ATS for everyone. They’re trying to be the ATS that companies in tough talent markets use, where talent is an organizational priority, not an HR or TA priority.

5 Things I really like about Lever: 

1. Lever structured their database differently so that you don’t end up with duplicate profiles within your ATS.  It’s structured around the candidate, not requisitions, so you end up with a much cleaner database overall.

2. Lever is designed around CRM functionality, it didn’t bolt on a CRM to it.  This makes a difference when it comes to the functionality of how it automatically follows up in the future for you.  The hope is you don’t end up with a gold mine of talent in your database that you can never mine. Lever is constantly working to mine the gold you already have.

3. Lever’s reporting is a step above most ATSs in that they, again, went at it from an organizational need, not HRs need. Within Lever you can instantly see your pipeline speed and conversation rates all at a granular level to see the detail you need to make quick decisions.

4. Candidate interview scheduling is built within Lever, and integrates all parties, the candidate, hiring managers, interview teams, HR and TA. No back and forth stuck in the middle go between any longer. You select who to involve and the system will instantly show you when and what conference rooms are available to get it done. All in one step.

5. Collecting candidate feedback is another strong functionality within Lever.  It’s a simple interface any hiring manager or anyone on the interview team, can use easily. Plus, there are auto reminders that will continue to bug all involved until it’s done!

Lever is fairly new but already has over 700 customers, with some major tech companies who have recently switched over from some very big ATS products, which really speaks to how they are doing things differently within the ATS space.  Definitely worth a demo if you are not happy with your current ATS, or in the market looking for something new.

Lever is led by a great team, and I suspect you’ll continue to see innovation come out of this camp.  I met with them personally at HR Tech, and their CEO, Sarah Nahm, was one of the few HR Tech executives who truly seem to care what I thought about the product and took written notes as we discussed it. Most just want the free publicity, she wanted to know how to make her product better. That’s rare, and exciting!

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 – VISANOW Rebrands as Envoy

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It’s no secret that recruiting technical talent in the IT and Engineering sectors is next to impossible. Because of that, more and more organizations are digging into the aspects of hiring foreign technical talent for positions they have open throughout the world.

VISANOW is a technology that provides an immigration management platform allowing you to seamlessly hire and manage a global workforce with an army of internal staff and attorneys on retainer. VISANOW announced today they are rebranding as Envoy. The comprehensive brand relaunch includes a new logo, positioning, website, content hub (www.worldreadyworkforce.com) and URL (www.envoyglobal.com).

From the press release:

“Nearly 20 years ago, VISANOW was founded to simplify and expedite the arduous immigration process by combining expert legal representation and proprietary technology. As the HR industry and global talent marketplace has evolved, we consistently hear from our customers that they’re seeking an end-to-end global workforce management solution so that they can take advantage of opportunities — wherever they beckon. This rebranding effort combined with the recent release of the latest generation of our immigration management platform underscores our ability and commitment to serve as our customers’ envoy as they build and manage a world-ready workforce,” said Dick Burke, president and chief executive officer of Envoy…

Envoy’s patented cloud-based platform aids companies leveraging both inbound and outbound international talent — offering transparent and simplified immigration services that help save time, money and stress as well as increase efficiency and security. Its features include organization, collaboration, planning and compliance modules that allow businesses to manage their international workforce around the world from one intuitive online platform. Dedicated teams of experienced and knowledgeable immigration attorneys and a global network of local practitioners provide Envoy customers consistent, proactive and personalized counsel. This combination of expert counsel, high customer touch, automation, and transparency offers an unparalleled user experience — driving a net promoter score of 77.

Envoy empowers companies to acquire the best talent regardless of where they are in the world; helps mobilize employees around the world to take advantage of business opportunities; and enables the management of entire global workforces, providing a strategic, proactive view into workforce and financial forecasting and compliance.

Simply, Envoy helps take the fear, stress and complication out of your immigration hiring process. Hiring visa candidates was always a stressor for me in the past because I didn’t feel I fully understood it clearly and I didn’t want to pay high priced attorneys. Envoy can help walk you through the hiring process, step-by-step, for a fraction of the cost of shopping this work to the outside.

T3 – The 100 Hottest HR Technologies on the Planet

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My good friend William Tincup (@WilliamTincup) is probably the single smartest person I know in the HR and Talent Technology space, worldwide! That’s saying a lot because this space is filled with smart men and women.

At HR Tech Fest this year, William made a comment on stage that there is roughly 21,000 HR and Talent Technology companies in the world. Seems like a number I can’t even get my head around – I might know 250 or so!

To prove his point, William quickly put together 100 of the hottest companies on the market and shared them on LinkedIn. Since most of you don’t visit LI but once or twice a month, I wanted to share them here as well.

My suggestion is to demo one of these companies each month. One hour of development per month, 12 hours total for the year. Any of us can do this. Pick out the ones that make the most sense to you, in your role. This will change you professionally. You’ll be smarter. You’ll see what your competition is doing. You’ll begin to think more strategically. Yes, just be looking at, and better understanding the technology that is shaping your profession!

Yes, just be looking at, and better understanding the technology that is shaping your profession!

This list is alphabetical. None of these organizations are paying me (yet). If you’re not on it, but want to be, connect with William on the Twitters and just ask.