Category Archives: TA Technology

T3 – The Next Great HR Technology Company

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The HR Technology Conference is coming in a few weeks and they just announced the list for a competition they are having this year called “The Next Great HR Technology Company”. Here’s what is, from HR Technology Chair, Steve Boese:

“Each year, the HR Tech Conference puts the spotlight on the latest innovations to emerge in the HR technology marketplace. As the industry as a whole continues to evolve and new challenges arise, there are many startups introducing game-changing solutions to help HR address the growing complexity. The ‘Discovering the Next Great HR Technology Company’ session will examine the offerings from some of the industry’s most promising startups, and allow attendees themselves to vote for companies they think introduce the most cutting-edge solutions to enhance how they do their jobs as HR professionals.”

So, who are these ‘startups’?

Clickboarding: is a comprehensive employee onboarding software focused on the new hire experience by not only leveraging cutting-edge cloud technology but also embracing regulatory compliance and providing a Candidate Care services team as an extension of the company.

Clinch is a Recruitment Marketing and CRM platform designed to centralize a company’s career pages, recruitment marketing, and talent network initiatives, enabling employers to source, identify, understand, engage and convert the best candidates – including the 90 percent of those who demonstrate an interest in their company but don’t apply.

Highground enables organizations to modernize performance development and engagement for a more productive, motivated workforce.

InvestiPro is a fully-automated workplace investigation solution designed to simplify the way employers conduct investigations.

LifeWorks will present its industry-first wellness and engagement platform that makes employees Feel Loved in any organization.

Qwalify will present its solution, Talent Dojo: a professional digital networking platform that is the evolution of talent engagement for recruitment.

RolePoint will present its leading internal talent mobility tool to deliver a streamlined career progression experience for employees and enable talent development teams to improve retention across their entire organization.

The Chemistry Group will present a combination of its technology and award-winning intellectual property allows its global clients to predict the future performance of potential and existing employees to an unparalleled level of accuracy.

I’ve known some of these technologies for a few years, others I’ve never heard of, so I’m really interested to see all of them, and then see what the HR Tech audience believes is the best Next Great HR Technology! Especially since all of these techs really don’t compete against each other.

For other HR Tech geeks like me, these types of competitions are awesome! You get to see a bunch of great tech in a small amount of time and you don’t feel like you’re being sold something!

An Introvert’s Guide to Recruiting Top Tech Talent

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Step 1: Listen really carefully to what your mind is telling you.

Step 2: Call someone who knows how to recruit and enjoys having one hundred small conversations per day and quickly building relationships with people they might never talk to again.

Step 3: Quit your job as a Recruiter.

Step 4: Find a career that values Introverts.

Step 5: Take that job.

Step 6: Tell your introverted friends to never go into Recruiting.

 

Thanks for the inspiration Heather Bussing, and check out her Introvert’s Guide to the HR Technology Conference. 

Live from CareerBuilder’s Empower

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I’m on the road at CareerBuilder’s Empower conference in Chicago.  This is the second annual conference designed for corporate talent acquisition and staffing agency pros. This year CB made a ton of changes to make it better from a content perspective for sure!

The first event last year seemed to be one giant commercial for CareerBuilder broken up by big name keynotes and food and drink.  It was fun, but not sure how much content and takeaways anyone really got.  This year’s Empower was totally revamped and after Day 1, I don’t think I really heard one product pitch at all!

Here are some takeaways from Day 1 at Empower:

– Sessions are practitioner-led for the most part. Great Day 1 speakers included: Kris Dunn, Jason Lauritsen, Stacy Zapar, Glen Cathey, and many others. This lineup is packed with practical takeaways that folks could take back to their shops and immediately put into action! Plus, the speakers are fun and engaging. CB did a great job putting the agenda together.

– Shinola (the Detroit Watchmaking Company) President Jacques Panis stole the Keynote show for the day. In an election year that’s all about asking ourselves whether America is great or not and how it needs to change, Panis gave a glimpse of how American companies, making American products, with American workers, is what is really great about America.

– CareerBuilder runs a first class conference and the conference this year was free for CB clients to attend. This means you need to cut money from other things like giant name keynotes and entertainment. What CB realizes is that recruiters don’t really need that stuff anyway! Give us great content and some good food and drinks, and we’ll entertain ourselves!

Best moment of the conference:

Panis from Shinola was being interviewed on stage and they opened up the mics for the audience to ask questions. One guy gets up and speaks a little bit about the challenges of hiring workers in Downtown Detroit, and asks, “Do you hire felons?”  Panis, without pause, said, “Well, they hired me!”

It brought down the house, and then he went off on a rant about America’s justice system and how we lock up way too many people in this country.  He spoke from the heart. He talked about how once you get into the system in this country you know longer have hope. He didn’t have all the answers to fix it, but one of his answers was that his company, Shinola, hires former convicts and gives them hope.

It was a great American story. Panis’s speaking fee was $50,000, and I’m sure the CB folks cringed when he told the audience this. He also donated all $50,000 to youth organizations in Detroit including the downtown boxing league that supports getting kids off the streets and teaching them discipline by providing an outlet and support.

T3 – What the Hell is Artificial Intelligence in HR?

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The HR Technology Conference is in Chicago this year from October 4-7 and I’ll once again be blogging live from the show. As I’m preparing and scheduling meetings with various vendors one thing have become perfectly clear, I’ll be doing a lot of talking about “Artificial Intelligence”(AI).

You know AI, right? The stuff we see in  movies in the future where computers and robots begin the think for themselves then very quickly understand that humans are inadequate so they ‘decide’ humans are no longer needed and only machines should run the world. Yeah, That AI! Sounds like the perfect HR replacement!

Okay, I’m only half joking.

So, what the hell is AI in HR, really?

The actual definition of Artificial Intelligence is simply, intelligence exhibited by machines. That’s pretty broad, but now you see why the movies have taken this to resemble human-like robots and overly aggressive computer programs with condescending attitudes. The greatest ‘real’ example of AI is IBM’s Watson (see the video below).

Artificial Intelligence in HR is designed to take and transform data into ‘humanized’ formats that we can easily digest and take action on. You will see this every day in the predictions and suggestions that your HR and TA systems make for you. A simple example would be pre-hire assessments that predict once candidate could possibly be a better hire than another candidate. This is AI for HR.

Not quite robots taking over your job, but it helps put into context the buzz word “Artificial Intelligence” is quickly becoming in HR and TA.

AI is moving into almost every kind of technology we’ll use in the next few years. There are systems on the market that can now, fairly accurately, tell you which of your employees will be next to leave your organization. Where you should be building your next call center. What groups of employees when paired together in a team will develop your next best selling product or service. That’s all really cool!

But, it’s still not robots taking over the world because they find you inadequate, yet!

So, get ready for the fall conference season knowing you’ll hear two things a lot as HR and TA vendors do their annual ‘let’s talk over your head’ by using really fancy, mostly made up, terms to make you think are tech is something you must have. “Machine Learning” and “Artificial Intelligence” (which are basically the same thing) will be shoved down your throat at an alarming rate!

While the sales pitch might be lame, you know I love the technology. Predictive technologies are the next level technology for most HR and TA shops. The challenge we all have as leaders and pros is trusting what the technology is telling us.  We still want to believe we, the humans, are smarter than the machines. Unfortunately, we are not.

The organizations who can get themselves to trust the technology the fastest and follow the recommendations, consistently, not just when it ‘feels’ right, will be out in front of everyone else. So, don’t get intimidated by AI or Machine Learning. Embrace the cheesiness of your local HR and TA vendor salesperson. Who knows, next year a robot might be selling you your software!

The 2016 Fall Michigan Recruiter’s Conference!

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This is the third annual conference we’ve done and they just keep getting bigger and better! We’ll have 150 Corporate TA Pros and Leaders joining us this conference, all working to become the best damn TA pros we can be!

This year’s lineup includes:

– Laurie Ruettimann – Mrs. Punkrock HR-Cynical Girl-Marathon Runner!

– Gerry Crispin – The Godfather of Candidate Experience & Co-Founder of CareerXRoads!

– Ambrosia Vertesi – Mrs. HR Open Source

– Chris Bailey – Mr. TEDx Seven Mile Beach, the King of Cayman Islands HR & Anything Over Ice!

– Kerri Mills – 2015 SourceCon Grandmaster Sourcing Champion, Indeed TA Pro & @TheJobGirl

Friday, October 14th onsite at the Amway World Headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan!  You can check out more details here – Michigan Recruits! 

Registration is now open! It’s $49! Why?  Because we think paying thousands of dollars to attend a great conference is out of reach for most Talent Acquisition budgets! At least it was in almost every organization I went to!  We wanted to bring great recruiting content, national level content, to our own backyard in Michigan!

REGISTER HERE! (It’s filling up quickly, we have limited space!)

We’ve designed this conference to be a corporate Talent Acquisition safe-zone! What does that mean?  Third party agency recruiters will not be invited. It’s not that we don’t like the agency folks. It’s that agency folks can’t shut themselves off when it comes to selling!  We want an environment that is about learning and development, about raising the recruiting game of all those attending.

Check it out! You won’t find a better one-day lineup anywhere in the world for $49! It’s crazy. Also, a big shout out to our two main sponsors – ViziRecruiter and CareerBuilder – without them we couldn’t keep it this cheap!

 

T3 – Behind the Curtain at LinkedIn

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I got invited to LinkedIn! Yeah, me, the guy who was blacklisted from LinkedIn because I tend to write stuff that isn’t so flattering about the organization. Before I tell you what I learned while at LinkedIn, I have to tell you that I had to sign an NDA the moment I walked into the building! So, what I’m about to say is what I can say without getting myself in trouble.

The meeting at LinkedIn was something dreamed up by Chris Hoyt and Gerry Crispin at CareerXroads after hearing feedback from some of their Colloquium members (FYI TA Leaders – if you haven’t checked out becoming a member of CareerXroads, you need to!) they felt LinkedIn would definitely want and need to hear. Everyone says they want critical feedback until you get it! To LinkedIn’s credit, they were willing to hear this feedback, which can be tough to take! No one likes being told their baby is ugly! This wasn’t going to be some vendor advisory meeting, this was going to be something completely new and different!

LinkedIn had multiple people from their leadership team attend and were highly engaged. It helped that the clients who attended were whales! Giant clients, clients that move your needle. These kinds of clients ensure you get heard.

So, what did I learn:

– LinkedIn has a vision and that vision has a lot to do with helping organizations attract and get talent from a product perspective. They also think member first, not a buyer of LinkedIn Recruiter seat first. That’s important. The true value of LI is not their clients paying for products, it’s the network. Without the network, LI is worthless.

– A ton of companies in the TA tech space want access to LinkedIn member data so they can make money. Not shocking, but most of the money they would make is directly at the expense of what LinkedIn has built and is making money on. Welcome to Capitalism, that’s not going to fly. So, you can complain that LI won’t allow access, to this or that, and you can continue to complain because it makes no financial sense for them to do so.

– What LinkedIn sees as important is probably not important to you, yet. That’s most of the disconnect between user and company. Recruiters can come up with many things that are wrong with LinkedIn and probably believe LinkedIn doesn’t have a clue. They do have a clue, but they’re also focusing on the future and fixing the problems as a set, not one at a time.

– LinkedIn can do way better from a PR standpoint of letting the user base know they are being heard and what they are doing about what they are hearing. Or more importantly, why they are not doing something. Many times not doing something is causing the most friction, when in reality there is a real reason why they are not fixing something you believe needs to be fixed or added.

– LinkedIn, like most HR and TA Tech companies, love their fans. If you only listen to your fans, you begin to believe you’re really, really good. The problem with this in Recruiting and HR is 80% (my number) of pros really don’t know any better. If you give them anything that helps them, they’re going to be super happy and think it’s the best, because they don’t know any better. LinkedIn has made a conscious choice to start listening to some of the people who are critical and finding the value in that feedback as well.

– Fake profiles, catfishing, etc. are a problem. They heard it. They heard it from their largest clients. This isn’t an easy problem to fix, and it has nothing to do with network growth numbers, even though almost every recruiter you speak with thinks that this is actually the case. My opinion is, after attending this meeting, that LI is less concerned with the overall total member number, and more concentrated on the number of ‘active’ member users on a daily and weekly basis. They want to raise engagement of all members.

– LinkedIn knows they have data you want as a Recruiting pro and leader, and they’re working on ways to bring it to you in a more robust, easy to consume manner. Again, it’s the 90/10 rule. 10% of power users want everything, but that would be overwhelming to 90% of the rest of us. Great tech gives you what you need, when you need it, in a way you can easily consume it. That’s not easy.

– LinkedIn Fangirl Stacy Zapar was there with me. I know people view Stacy as a walking billboard for how great LI is. I will tell you that out of everyone in the room, Stacy challenged LI’s leadership more than anyone and did it continually. She was fighting the fight for recruiters at the feet of the throne. If you love a product, you’ll fight to make it better. She has a unique ability to share negative feedback in the most positive way!

That’s it for now. I hope I don’t get a cease and desist email today! I tried to be as specific as I could without giving details. I was impressed with LinkedIn’s team. They came across as they cared very much about what everyone in the room had to say and are working to address all of the concerns.

I left believing, for the very first time, that LinkedIn actually cares about what we as a recruiting industry think. Thanks to Chris Hoyt and Gerry Crispin at CareerXroads for convincing some of their Colloquium members to come and provide this feedback. I highly recommend them to other HR and TA tech vendors who truly want to know what your clients and the industry think about your company and your products!

One last thing. I looked for blue Kool-Aid everywhere on LI’s campus and couldn’t find it! I secretly wished they would have it everywhere in those water coolers on every floor, that would be so awesome and funny at the same time! Maybe they hid it away knowing I was coming! Stay tuned. My hope from this meeting is I’ll have more to share in the future on LinkedIn and its going-ons.

T3 – @SocialTalent – Recruitment Training

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This week on T3 I review the recruiter/sourcing training platform Social Talent. Okay, before we get started on Social Talent, I have a confession to make. I’ve actually known about Social Talent for a while but haven’t written about them because I was taking my entire team through their training! I didn’t write about them because I didn’t want to share how awesome it is!

Social talent is an on-demand platform that trains your recruiters to get a ‘black belt’ in internet recruitment. Social Talent also has an advanced black belt and an inclusion and diversity recruitment certification. The program is micro-video driven, enforces learning through quick quizzes on the learning and of course the big black belt certification assessment at the end.

The program is recruiter-driven and takes about an hour or so per week to complete, over 16 weeks. My recruiters actually spend a little more time than an hour per week because Social Talent continually adds in the newest information around sourcing and recruiting and the platform constantly engages your recruiters to learn more and get higher level skills.

5 Things I really like about Social Talent:

1. Built by recruiters for recruiters. The platform is built around learning, recruiting and performing. The training has changed the way my recruiters tackle an opening and opened up the number of sources each of them uses.

2. The bite-sized video in Social Talent is consumed easily and reinforced by practice. The training is developed in a way that allows both new recruiters and experienced recruiters to get the most out of it.

3. Social Talent isn’t only teaching the tech skills of Boolean Search, Advanced LinkedIn searching, etc., it’s teaching recruiters to build their own personal brand and how, to build networks and pipelines, and how to build your employer brand.  It’s the gift and the curse of the platform, your recruiters will make themselves more valuable by going through this training. This is true development for recruiters just not skill-enhancement.

4. Metrics platform gives talent acquisition manager great insight to who is using the platform, how they are using the platform and gives them the ability to send social positive reinforcement. One of the best training platforms for recruiting I’ve seen that truly helps you ensure you get full user adoption and most out of your investment.

5. Ongoing bi-weekly live training sessions to reinforce all the new skills that your recruiters are learning, plus gives it lets them challenge the Social Talent team on their harderst searches and shows them exactly how the ‘pros’ would use the system.

I have to say this again, I didn’t want to share this with you because I truly believe it gives my recruiters a competitive advantage over every other company who doesn’t use it! But, I started T3 to share, so asmuch as this hurts me, I’m sharing this with you.

Socical Talent is the single best recruiter training tool I’ve used in my twenty-plus years of recruiting and managing recruiting teams. It’s not a small investment, but I can tell you that my team took full advantage and we feel like we’ve gotten a full return on our investment and my team, across the board loves it!

Check them out, you won’t be disappointed!

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 HR, 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- @WeVue – Where Culture Comes to Life

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This week on T3 I review the employment branding/culture mobile app WeVue. WeVue is a mobile app that enhances the experience of being on a team by bringing company culture to life through the power of photo and video sharing. It’s a mobile platform that turns your entire employee base into one big social network of sharing and communication.

It has a little Snapchat/Instagram Stories feel to it, but with a lot more functionality to communicate amongst teams. An employee gets started on WeVue by downloading the app and using their work email address as their way into company side of WeVue. From there the first thing they are taught to do is a step-by-step process of making a video of themselves for everyone in the organization to view, share and comment (think great first-day orientation exercises!).

WeVue allows your employees to share their stories and experiences with your organization simply and effectively. The platform also allows the team, or an individual, to celebrate accomplishments, start events, give positive feedback, etc. They can push these notifications to individuals, teams or the entire organization.

5 Things I really like about WeVue: 

1. WeVue is a mobile platform that has a very familiar UI/UX for most employees who are familiar with using social apps on mobile. This makes it user adoption much easier because almost everyone will download and immediately be able to begin using the app and setting up their profile.

2. I love that WeVue starts out by having each employee making an introduction video. This has so many applications to begin great orientations and make people feel instantly welcome in your environment. The profile can also be easily changed and added to as an employee sees fit.

3.  Ask questions/Get Feedback. WeVue’s platform allows users to ask questions and gather feedback quickly and easily. App admins at your organization can control access and whether you want this to be anonymous or open, also who can ask questions can also be controlled by company admins.

4. Culture Feed. WeVue has a timeline type function where most of your employees will spend time on the app, this is your ‘Cultural Feed’. As people share items, give shout-outs to each other, etc., all will be seen by the entire company here (similar to a FB timeline). Also, you can Broadcast announcements on the app, one-way communication by leadership, HR, marketing, etc.

5. Social share to a custom landing page. The app allows users to share information and you can have it go to a custom landing page, like maybe your career site!  This easily allows you to share your culture with perspective candidates and drive additional traffic to where you want it.

WeVue is an organizational culture app.  Designed for organizations who want to share and drive a strong sense of what and who they are as an organization. As companies grow quickly this is one of the first things that gets lost, and once it’s gone, it’s almost impossible to get back. This helps companies stay small, as they get big, and let’s big companies seem a bit smaller. WeVue is like having your own private social media site for your employees.

Check out WeVue. Easy quick demo. Fairly inexpensive for what you get and can build in terms of culture. I’m a huge believer in letting your employees be your brand advocates through sharing their stories at work, and WeVue makes this very easy.

How WeVue changed Logan’s career? from NiceGuy with a HeadFull of Ideas on Vimeo.

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 HR, 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.

How did Monster Lose Out in the Job Board Wars?

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I’ve been a Monster customer for at least fifteen years.  I’ve used Monster in four different companies that I’ve worked for. I also use (or have used) CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, Indeed, and Dice. So, I’ve got experience dealing with large spends on the Job Board side.

Having a presence on Job Boards is part of almost every recruiting strategy that’s out there, it’s one place most organizations need to be, I truly believe that. If you’re not, you’re going to miss a pool of talent.

For those who don’t know Monster was purchased this week by multi-national staffing and RPO firm Randstad. I’m not going to speculate on why Randstad would buy Monster, but there’s no doubt Monster had a ton of data and clients that a staffing firm would find desirable.

My question is why did Monster lose out in the Job Board Wars?

In the big Job Board game, there are really only three players: CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, and Monster. Dice and a bunch of niche players in that category will always be around if they can actually attract talent to their niche. Here is the reason I think Monster couldn’t keep pace with CB and LI:

The Sales Team: Flat out job boards need to sell job postings, resume database memberships, branding opportunities, etc. CB and LI are modern day sales sweatshops! Monster barely recognizes I’m a customer and a fifteen-year customer. I know three levels of CB sales people on my account. I can’t tell you the last time I even got an email or call from Monster! LI is similar to CB. They constantly hawk me to buy.  In a game of three, the ones who can outsell the others will win.

At least quarterly I sit down live or on a call with my CB rep to take a look at metrics and how my team is utilizing their platform. Did I mention I never get a call from Monster? During these calls with CB I get numerous suggestions on how we can get better. Many times they’re trying to upsell me for more product, sometimes that works.

I get contacted from LI at least six times a year on various solution selling types of things for my business. I get invited to webinars constantly. The CRM machine for LI is strong. A little different than CB, which is more high touch, but LI’s selling automation is relentless.  As is Indeed’s. Indeed is another player in this game that has made all the job board players up their game. Their sales team took a page right out of CB’s selling book. I get at least a call a month from CB.

I got one call from Monster last year. It was to renew my contract. The call came from a person who I didn’t know and who didn’t know who I was or my business.

You can have the best brand (and I would argue of all the job boards Monster has the best brand), the best technology and the coolest stuffed animals to give away, but if you don’t sell, you’re going to get bought by a staffing firm for pennies on the dollar of what you really could be worth.

 

I Need A Nurse, Stat!

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In the United States, we are facing a major nursing crisis, unlike anything we have ever seen. If you’re in the healthcare industry, you already know this and you’re living this nightmare each day.

Your recruiters are beyond frustrated in trying to fill openings, only to have more nurses leave every day. So, what can you do?

Join Cathy Henesey, ASHHRA Board member, and Director of Talent Acquisition & Workforce Planning at AMITA Health and myself for a free webinar hosted by CareerBuilder that will outline 10 things you should be doing to fill your nursing openings! The webinar is August 3rd at 1pm EST. 

What can you expect to hear:

  • Old school and new school ways to recruit great talent to your hospital or health system.
  • Metrics around what recruiting pools will be most effective for you to be fishing in.
  • What best practice organizations are doing right now to retain their healthcare talent so they don’t have to fill as many openings!
  • What technology is worth the investment when it comes to purchasing recruiting tech.

Register Here! 

It will be fun, fast-paced hour packed full of great tips and ideas to help you energize your recruiting shop!