Everyone Wants a Talent Brand That Candidates Love, But…

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Everyone wants a talent brand that candidates will love, but almost no Talent Acquisition function is actually willing to love those same candidates back!

You get this, right!?

Do you know why you love certain brands? It’s usually a combination of an experience you had with that brand. You loved their product or service, how they/it made you feel, how you were treated, etc. The brand made you feel like you were apart of it. That it ‘loved’ you, just even a little.

We all want to have these amazing talent brands (employment brands), but part of having that amazing brand is you have to actually truly like the candidates who are reaching out to you. This is the single biggest struggle most organizations have with establishing a real Talent Brand. We want candidates to love us, but we don’t want to love them in return!

In fact, we don’t even really want to be friends with them! Or at least that’s how we act! Most TA shops treat candidates like they’re the enemy. Very similar to how celebrities treat the media. Love us! But, we’re going to act as you annoy us! Um, what!? This is about 90% of TA shops, and they’re completely flabbergasted when the data says candidates think they’re crap!

So, you want a Talent Brand candidates will love? Try doing some of this:

1. Change your internal TA culture to start believing candidates are our friend, not the enemy! Without these wonderful candidates, we don’t have jobs! We need you!

2. Do not allow your recruiters to talk negatively about candidates. This is really hard. It’s the teacher’s lounge mentality. Well, we’re behind locked doors they don’t know what we say. It’s not about what you say, it’s about the mentality of us vs. them you’re allowing in your shop!

3. Treat your candidates like you treat your hiring managers. Unless you also treat your hiring managers like crap, then don’t do that.

4. Invite random candidates in to talk to your team about their experience, especially those who didn’t get hired. This will really open eyes.

5. Don’t allow your team to use the excuse “we don’t have time”. Nothing is more important than communicating with candidates. Nothing. It’s really your only job. Stop doing everything else, except this. Then you’ll have time.

The reality is, it’s much easier to love a brand when you believe they love you back.

What’s Your HR Vision? #Insight18

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Spoke at Saba’s Insight conference this week on How You to Get Your HR Metrics to Connect with Your Executives, and a really great question came up from the audience, and it was foundational.

This HR Pro was like, “Hey, Tim, great information, but how do we even get from doing traditional reporting of metrics to leveling up and providing business intelligence?” Great question, my talk was on how to get them to listen to modern metrics, not about why you should even be using them and how to get your organization to even want to go down this path.

So, on the fly, my answer was this:

The first step to great HR, and delivering great HR business intelligence, is you first have to have a great HR vision. What’s yours? I hope part of that vision is delivering the information the organization needs to be successful. 

Oh wait, you don’t have an HR Vision? Okay, I get it, it’s not surprising, most don’t. You’ll have an organizational vision, but for me, great leadership is when you take the organizational vision and you bring it home to your own department and function in a very real way.

The organization’s vision is we are going to make the world a better place by delivering blah, blah, blah. Okay, nice! How will HR do that? That’s different from what the organization had to do, it’s very specific.

Great HR leadership, great HR execution, starts with a crystal clear understanding of what your HR Team stands for and how what you will do, relates back to helping the organization achieve its mission.  It doesn’t mean you need to spend two months creating a vision. Ugh, be better than that. It will mean sitting down as a leader and deciding who you are, and it will mean sitting down with your team and deciding who they want to be.

You might find that some folks on the team don’t want to be what you want to be, and this could be a roadblock to you as an HR leader and your function to finding success as you define it.

It’s a really cool exercise to go through with your team, and go back each year and analyze your HR measures and determine if that vision is being reached, needs to be tweaked, etc. But, we all need that true north in terms of knowing where we are going and how we will get there.

Being an HR leader is tough, you have to walk the walk within the organization, drink the kool-aid, but you also have to do it internally within your own department, it doesn’t just magically happen. Oh, we’re all in HR, we get it. No, we don’t, we’re just like every other function. We need to know where we are going.

So, ask your team today, what’s our HR vision? Then sit back and see what comes back, you might be surprised!

What Makes a Great Talent Acquisition Conference? #SourceCon

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Hey gang! I’m back from attending and speaking at my first ever SourceCon conference. Can I be real for a second? I never attended SourceCon in the past because I was intimidated. For real!

Let me explain. I’m not a Sourcing Nerd! I’m not going to sit down on my laptop and go deep diving into the national archives to find names of whatever or build search strings that are 5,000 characters long, so I thought, yeah, this just isn’t for me. I was wrong! It is for me! Okay, not the super sourcing nerd stuff, but I even like watching that!

SourceCon was filled with passionate Talent Acquisition pros and leaders, not just Sourcing Pros. Like I’m just going to come up and introduce myself and start asking questions about how I can better and share with you on how you can get better. The interactions at all levels at the conference is off the charts, and unlike I’ve seen at other recruiting conferences, especially around how to make you as a professional better!

So, what do I think makes a great Recruiting conference like SourceCon?

– Leadership to break away from the normal content stream and put different stuff on stage. Shannon Pritchett and the ERE leadership are always willing to push the envelop and try stuff!

– A culture of sharing! Everyone at SourceCon seems to be there to share openly with everyone else, and it makes for interactions and conversations happening everywhere!

– Feeling like you’re being welcomed into the trust circle! That was my initial fear. I’m not really one of them, they won’t want me, what do I have to give them!? It’s the opposite, truly. Steve Levy, an industry veteran is just one of a bunch of actual “Welcome Wagon” pros who volunteer to introduce you into the inner circle and make instantly feel like part of a movement.

– Content where you can’t write fast enough! The content at SourceCon is packed with “oh, crap, I’m stealing that idea and taking that back to my own shop and we’re doing that tomorrow!” Like every session!

– Content that forces you to think differently about what you and your organization are doing. That challenges you, and might even make you feel a bit uncomfortable. Not every session, that would be exhausting, but you need a little bit to force you to think differently about the profession.

SourceCon 2019 is in Seattle, and Shannon and the team just keep finding ways to make it better. Definitely check it out as a great development option for you and your team next year.

Could We Use Congestion Pricing Theory in Recruiting? #SourceCon

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Oh, lord, what the heck is Sackett talking about now!?

Congestion Pricing Theory (CPT) is basically paying more for convenience. We see it used on things like tollways, where if you want to ride on this road you pay a premium, or if you want to use this certain lane on a tollway you pay more for the access to a less congested lane of traffic.

You also see it at places like the movies. You pay $12 per ticket to go to a movie on a Saturday night at 8 pm, but if you go at 10 am on a Tuesday morning, you might get that same ticket for $8. It costs more to go during the busy time.

Airlines fully embrace CPT when you pay a little more to get on the plane first so you don’t have to deal with full overhead bins, etc. Theme parks now have tickets you can buy that lets you bypass the long lanes. Congestion Pricing Theory allows consumers to pay more for what they believe is important to them.

So, could we use this model in recruiting?

Let’s say you’re Google and you have thousands of people apply to your jobs that will never get seen. Could Google use CPT to allow applicants to pay an upcharge if they were certain to have their application examined and given feedback? Maybe it’s $25.

For $25 you can be assured your application will have a real human look at it. Would you pay to ensure that would happen? Depends on the company, the job, the competition, your income level, etc. But, the reality is, if someone turns CPT on in their hiring process, and their brand is very attractive, people would pay the fee!

Now, ethically, is this right?

Ethically is it right to have roads paid for by tax dollars, then to drive on those roads in a less congested way, you still have to pay more money? Is it right to charge one person a different, higher, price for the same service that another person paid less for?

One of the main complaints that candidates have about applying for jobs is the lack of information. The reason they don’t get the information they want is it costs too much money for organizations to properly staff TA shops in a way that would allow them to give this high level of feedback.

Congestion Pricing models would definitely give candidates and organizations an option to offer this service for those candidates who truly wanted the feedback they desired or at least more feedback then they’ve historically been given.

So, we don’t do this because we’ll say it impacts the poor and those out of work the most. They can’t afford the price to ensure they will be seen, so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I think it’s interesting that this is the main argument of doing something like this, but we don’t argue this type of pricing when it comes to other parts of our life where these things used to be free, and now they are not.

I’m not saying that we limit those who apply. All are still open to apply and all will have the same experience as they had before. Some, who choose to have an elevated candidate experience, will choose to pay for that experience.

I’m not saying this will ever happen, but if it does, I’m not going to be shocked because we’ve seen so many successes using CPT in other areas of our lives.

What do you think? Hit me in the comments.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @LinkedIn Talent Insights – LI’s newest product!

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Today on the Weekly Dose I take a look at LinkedIn’s newest product, LinkedIn Talent Insights, which is getting released today for public consumption. Talent Insights is LinkedIn’s first self-serve data and analytics product. Talent Insights provides companies with access to LinkedIn’s global database of 575M+ professionals, 20M+ companies and 15M+ active job listings, to help talent professionals and business leaders develop a winning workforce strategy and make smarter talent decisions more quickly.

What we know is if LinkedIn has anything, it has data! I first got to see this product at the 2017 LinkedIn Talent Connect conference when it was still in beta and they weren’t even quite sure what they had yet, and I was like, “Oh, boy! this is crazy cool!”

Here’s how it’s crazy cool. Talent Insights provides access to LinkedIn’s global, accurate and up-to-date data through two reports:

  • With the Talent Pool report, companies will be able to precisely define and understand specific populations of talent with global insights including skills the talent has, what industries and locations they’re in are, how in demand they are, what schools and degrees they have and what companies are hiring them.
  • Using the Company report, companies will be able to understand their own talent at the company level and see how well they are doing in attracting and retaining talent, and develop branding and recruiting strategies to get even better.

Here’s what companies can expect.

  • On-demand data: Talent Insights users will have the ability to access LinkedIn insights, in real-time, to quickly answer complex talent questions. As members update their profiles, the aggregated data within LTI also updates, providing real-time updates to help companies keep up with the market.
  • Actionable insights: The tool is simple and easy to use making it possible for recruiters, HR, and talent leaders to understand the most accurate view of labor market trends at any given moment, without relying on a team of data scientists.

So, why is this something HR, Talent Acquisition, Marketing/PR, Sales, and a lot of other functions in your company will want to get their hands on it? 

Talent Insights provides some super cool competitor data you can’t get anywhere else!

Need to know what kinds of people your competition is hiring and where? Talent Insights can show you that! In fact, it can give you insight to stuff your competitors are working on that isn’t even public if you can just connect a few dots!

“Hey, why is ABC, Inc. hiring a ton of autonomous developers in Omaha!? Oh, no they aren’t, are they!? Yes, they are!”

Talent Insights also gives HR leaders insight to your current workforce, like who’s coming after your talent, where are your employees going, where are the best coming from, where should you be looking to build your next headquarters (I bet Amazon is looking at this!), etc.

This is definitely a product that TA Leaders will want to leverage, and I’m in love with it’s ability to pull competitor data. Just know, as you’re pulling your competition’s data, so might they be pulling yours, and there’s nothing you can do about it. LinkedIn Talent Insights is available to anyone who wants to pay for a subscription, and you don’t have to be a customer of other LI products to get it.

LinkedIn Talent Insights is definitely worth a demo. You might find it’s just not data that your organization needs, but I think the more competitive you are within your marketplace, executitves are always willing to listen to you a little longer when your wrap your needs and wants around competitive data, so take a look!

The Weekly Dose – 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 The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

Happy John Jorgensen Day! @jkjhr

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January 23, 2012, my friend and super HR influencer, Laurie Ruettimann, new my super fragile ego needed a boost, so without me knowing she rallied the other HR influencer in the space that had blogs and she created the first-ever “Tim Sackett Day“! We used that date moving forward each year to recognize other individuals in our space who we felt were awesome but underappreciated.

Today, that same friend, Laurie, wants to start a new day for those who have put tireless effort into the profession of HR, but are not as recognized as they should be, for the effort they’ve given! Which is why she reached out to that same group of influencers and bloggers and asked us to write about our friend John Jorgensen.

So, what can I say about JJ on his roast day? 

– John is an old white dude. He’s so old, he’s become diverse. I think he might have been SHRM Member #1. That’s his actual SHRM number: 00000001.

– John has the worst twitter handle of all time. I’m guessing he made it so he could remember it, not so anyone else could remember it. “jkjhr”? The two “j’s” I get, we can guess the “k” is probably his middle name. Let’s just say it’s “Ken”. Ken is very white and old, so it fits! “John Kenneth Jorgensen HR” – there, now we can all remember how to find him on Twitter!

– JJ (what I call him, but I’ve never heard anyone else call him that) is an undying Big Ten sports fan and loves to interact around that subject. The Iowa Hawkeyes are his team, so you know he’s a glutton for punishment!

– SHRM Illinois would not be where they are today, without his tireless and bitching volunteer work.

– John is SHRM’s biggest fan and one of their biggest critics. This makes an organization like SHRM better. Support them, and work to make them better from the inside.

– John invented the phrase ‘resting bitch face’. This is his actual LinkedIn bio photo! 

– John has forgotten more HR than most of us will ever know.

John tries to come off as mean and ornery, but the reality is he’s a big teddy bear. He’s the first one to volunteer, and he just loves this profession!

So, today, search out John Jorgensen and get to know him. He’ll act like all of this is annoying, but deep down he will enjoy the attention, and when you’re at SHRM National in 2019, make it your mission to search him out and take a selfie with him!

Happy JJ Day!

“Overqualified” is Just another word for Age Discrimination

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Had a really talented lady reach out to me the other day. 49 years old, college grad, great portfolio of work. She has been interviewing and is being told she is “Overqualified”.

There is some truth about her being called this. She does have more qualifications than the position requires, but she fully understands what the job is and she wants to do that job, with no notion of wanting to do more than that job, unless her performance shows she’s capable of moving up and the company needs her to move up.

“Overqualified” is just another way to say “Hey, I think you’re too old to work for me!”

Tell me I’m wrong! Give me all the reasons someone is “Overqualified” for a job they want to work at and understand what the job specs are?

I’m a Heart Surgeon but it’s a stressful job, so I decided to take a step back and just do some Cardiac Rehab work. Still get to work with heart patients, but it’s a less stressful workload and pays a heck of lot less, you need less education to do that job.

Am I overqualified to do Cardiac Rehab if I have experience as a heart surgeon? Only if you tell me I am! It’s a job I want, and I have the skills and desire to do that job, so I would say I’m quite qualified to do that job, not overqualified.

TA pros and hiring managers say someone is overqualified when they’re too stupid to come up with another reason about why they don’t want to hire someone who has great experience and more years of experience.

“Oh, Tammy, yeah, she’s overqualified to work in that job. I mean she wouldn’t be happy long-term reporting to me, and I mean she has more experience than I have!” Oh, she told you that? “Um, no.”

I constantly run into retired people who aren’t ready to retire and want to keep doing valuable work. They have great skills and knowledge, but 32-year-old Steve won’t hire them because Steve believes they won’t take his direction. That’s a Steve-issue, not the candidate’s issue!

By the way, this isn’t a young-to-middle-aged guy problem, women are just as bad! Turns out we all love to discriminate against old people, equally!

Tech companies are the worse. Creative companies are the second worse.

Tech companies believe only young people know technology. Creative companies think the only people who buy products and services are 26-year-olds on Instagram and Snap.

“Tim, you just don’t get it. I don’t want to hire someone who is going to retire in 5 years!” What’s your average tenure at your company? “4.2 years” Yeah, having someone for 5 years would really suck for you!

I had a hiring manager tell me this once when he interviewed a person who was 52! “I need someone who is going to stay long term!” Um, 13-15 years isn’t long term?! You’re an idiot!

I find telling hiring managers “You’re an idiot!” is super effective in getting through to them, and cutting straight through to their bias. It has worked 100% of the time in my career. It really works across all biases.

So, now tell me, why don’t you hire someone who is ‘overqualified”?

“Self-Insight” Might Be the Most Undervalued Personal Core Competency!

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I was having a conversation recently with a peer. We were discussing a company with a dynamic leader. The company seemed like it had every single attribute to make it successful. Smart and dynamic leader, great product, great design, female, minority, but they were having a hard raising capital.

My first reaction was, something isn’t right! Why can’t this company raise capital? I mean VC will give cash to a four-year-old who built something that looked like something out of legos if they think they can make a buck on it! There’s so much VC money flowing into HR tech right now, people are getting money for just having ideas about products!

There’s the obvious VC bias towards both females and minorities. So, it’s easy for me to just go “holy crap” I’m seeing this live right in front of me! But the person I was talking to was a female and a minority, and she was saying, ‘slow down’ that’s not the issue here!

“She’s crazy, Tim!” 

Um, what? She seems super intelligent and the product is solid and I would give my own money to that company right now, it can’t fail. “No, she’s f’ing nuts!” 

Okay, so does she know she’s nuts? “Nope. That’s the problem! Super brilliant, but she has this blind spot where she’ll go off the rails and literally treat potential investors and even customers like crap. If she would just get out of her own way, that’s a potential hundred million dollar company.” 

Sounds like she needs a mentor. “Yeah, she thinks anyone who talks to her is below her, and they might be in terms of intelligence, but she refuses most advice. Anyone else pitching that product would have millions in backing at this point, with others waiting in line to get a piece.”  

After this conversation, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. First, I thought, what if this female was a male and acted crazy like this? Would “he” get the investment dollars? I think he probably would. What if it was me, a white guy up there, acting crazy, would I get the money? Probably, I would. So, I was pained to think this bias is real, regardless, but this person had a real viable product (and God knows I see so many that aren’t!).

I was raised by a very strong, single Mother, who had a tendency to be a bit crazy, so I know a thing or two about strong, aggressive entrepreneurial women. I grew up with one my entire life! The lack of self-insight is both a gift and a curse. With it and you might not go down the path of starting your own business against all odds. Without it, you potentially can’t your ideas out to the world.

When you take a look at the most successful people you know they have found the balance of self-insight in their life. A person with high self-insight knows when to listen to it, and when to ignore it. It’s a super fine line to walk, but it’s critical for success.

Influencers or Analysts – Who has the most impact to your brand?

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The worlds of Influencers and Analysts have never collied more than they are right now in the HR industry. Most of this has to do with the popularity of Influencer Marketing that has taken off in the past decade, and like most things in HR, we are now just catching up with the marketing trend.

Traditionally, in the HR space, companies selling products, technology, and services only really cared about two things: 1. What do our clients think of us, and 2. What do the “Analysts” think of us?

What’s an Analyst? 

Every industry has them. These are basically individuals who work for organizations like Deloitte, Gartner, Forrester Research, IDC, and hundreds of boutique firms specializing in specific parts of the HR ecosystem. The individuals spend a great deal of time understanding the landscape of a specific function in HR, the technology, the processes, what works and what doesn’t, etc. Then your organization pays their organization a great deal of money for this expert knowledge.

The hope is, using this expert Analyst knowledge will ultimately help you save time, money, and missteps because you’ve hired a firm of experts to help you make the right decisions. Many of these experts have never actually worked a day in HR, but hold MBAs and such. Some of these people are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and if you listened to them, they could truly help you. Some are idiots working for a big firm.

Examples of Analyst I admire: William Tincup, Madeline Laurano, Trish McFarlane, George LaRocque, Ben Eubanks, Kyle Lagunas, John Sumser, Holger Mueller, Jason Cerrato, Josh Bersin, etc.

This will then beg the question of well, then, what’s an Influencer? 

Influencer marketing has been around for a hundred years, but Kim Kardashian is the queen of modern day influencers. I’m famous! You see me talking about or using this product. You buy this product. That’s really the backbone of influencer marketing. I mean Kimmy D would never steer you wrong, would she?

An Influencer is anyone in an industry that a measurable amount of people are listening to, that will the influence their buying behavior. I write a blog post on some product that I’m using in my own shop. It’s super awesome! You go out, look at it, and decide to buy it and use it with your team. You’ve been influenced.

Most of the influencers in the HR industry are current or former practitioners, they’ve lived your life. Some are super smart and have the resume to back it up. Some are complete idiots. Any idiot can have a blog (I’m a great example!). Most influencers, like an analyst, have a specialty, something they’re better at than other stuff. Some influence full time, but most hold down ‘real’ jobs to pay the bills. So, they probably don’t have the time to deep dive into the industry, as you’ll see with analysts.

Examples of Influencers I admire: Kris Dunn, Dawn Burke, Carmen Hudson, Robin Schooling, Jason Lauritsen, Laurie Ruettimann, Jennifer McClure, Sharlyn Lauby, Steve Browne, Sabrina Baker, Joey Price, Mary Flaukner, Jessica Merrell, Janine Truitt, etc. (there’s really too many to name!)

Many of these people are HR Famous! They have worked hard to create an audience who for the most part listens to what they have to say.

You also have people that fall into this strange middle ground of Influencer-Analysts types that have no name. Maybe they started out as an influencer, then became an Analyst, or maybe they were an Analyst who became popular and started influencing. Examples in this camp are folks like: Josh Bersin, Jason Averbook, Sarah Brennen, Trish McFarlane, Ben Eubanks, etc.

(BTW – All of these people you should connect to! )

So, who has the most impact on your Brand? Influencers or Analysts? 

This is not an easy question to answer because like almost anything it depends on a lot! We all know of a certain product we love and regardless of the influence or what some expert is telling us, we will just buy it because we love it!

We also have an untold number of products and services we buy because someone we trust told us about it, and because we trust them, we go buy it.

If you’re a large enterprise level product or service, basically selling to companies that have more than 5,000 employees, you better make nice with the Analyst community! They tend to have the ear of more enterprise buyers then you’ll typically see from influencers. I doubt very highly the CHRO of Google is reading this blog! (but I know the CPO of GM is!)

What I see is companies selling to enterprise usually work with both Analyst and Influencers. They want to ensure their message is heard across the buying community, so they don’t miss out on a potential buyer, and they have the money to do both.

Companies selling to under 5,000 employees and it starts to get a little harder to determine the impact of Analysts. I mean how many HR and Talent shops in Small to Medium sized businesses have the money to pay for Analysts Research? Not many! If you run an HR shop of a 1500 person company, you do not have $50,000 to hear what the best ATS is! The ATS you buy won’t even cost $50K!

Behind the scenes, most analysts understand their biggest impact in on the enterprise buyer, and because that’s where the money is, that’s exactly where they want to be! If you have buyers across small, medium, large, and enterprise markets, it then becomes a more difficult decision on how you use Influencer marketing.

The real answer to the question above is you engage with the analyst and influencers that have the most positive impact to selling your product. Unfortunately, most organizations have little or no idea if either side is having an impact to selling their stuff.

Who has the juice? 

I call someone who has ‘real’ influence as having the “juice”. If you have the ‘juice’ you have the ability to influence real buying decisions on a regular basis. Laurie Ruettimann tells you to go out and buy this new great HR product, and that organization will see a measurable sales increase directly tied to the links in her posts. She’s got juice!

I wrote about an HR Tech company a few months ago after a demo and a month later they sent me a bottle of gin because they landed a six-figure deal directly from my mentioning them in a post. That’s gin and juice! 😉

Most people who call themselves influencers in the HR space have little or no juice. Usually, because they just don’t have a large enough, sustained audience who is listening. They might be 100% correct in their recommendations and insight, but not enough people are listening to move the buying needle.

I love what the folks are doing over at HRMarketer because they are actually showing organizations who have the juice and who doesn’t. I can tell you I have the juice and say I’m the #1 Influencer in the HR marketplace, but the reality is, anyone can say that! HRMarketer is actually giving data behind those words to let people know where the real juice is.

The truth around all of the analyst vs. influencer chatter is that you’ll find people in both groups who can help you, and people in both groups who are complete idiots and have no value. The best thing to do is build a relationship with both, find out who moves your needle and aligns with the messaging you’re trying to get out, and then measure. Eventually, you’ll find the right mix that will work for your organization.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: My Review of The HR Technology Conference #HRTechConf

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Last week was my HR Nerd Christmas as I was attending the annual, and world’s largest, HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas. It’s one of my favorite conferences to attend, the expo is beyond words, the content has increasingly gotten really good, and they keep pushing the envelope and trying new ways to engage the audience. Hat tip to conference chair Steve Boese and the LRP crew!

What did I like this year at HR Tech? 

– The inaugural Pitchfest was a freaking homerun! 30 companies pitched their product to judges in the middle of the expo hall with giant crowds surrounding the stage. The energy was awesome. People who watched it got to find out about 30 new companies and determine which ones they might want to deep dive later.  6 Finalist emerged, with one winner! (To be fair, all 30 were winners as just making the round of 30 gives each company some great publicity) The finalists were:

Blendoor – (The overall Winner) – is a hiring technology that reduces unconscious bias by hiding data that’s not relevant and highlighting data that is. Their CEO, Stephanie Lampkin, blew everyone away!

ComplianceHR – is the first ever and only, a suite of intelligent employment applications, delivering expert legal guidance at internet speed and scale. Like your own employment attorney without the $500 per hour fees.

Jane.ai – Jane is an artificial intelligence platform that makes all of your company’s information accessible through chat. Like having your own HR robot that can answer almost everything!  (This was one of my finalists during my judging – very impressive!)

RelishCareers – a job board platform that helps grad school students and alumni get discovered by employers looking for top talent.

SwarmVision – A globally-validated Profiler to assess your innovation skills. Need to increase the amount of innovation in your company? This was really cool.

Talvista – (The overall diversity winner) -provides a view beyond the noise of unconscious bias, ensuring a skilled talent pool and workforce that is more diverse and inclusive. While Blendoor’s CEO was the best presenter, Talvista had the better technology in this space.

Many of the 30 that presented that didn’t make the final six just weren’t able to articulate what they did and why you should buy them in the 3-minute pitch and 2 minute Q&A allotted. That is super tough! Put yourself in front of anyone right now, start the clock, and tell them why they should use you, over everyone else, in three minutes!  Oh, and surround yourself with hundreds of onlookers!

– iCIMS CMO, Susan Vitale, on her panel said that out of their thousands of clients, millions of candidates, they’ve seen a 90% increase, year over year, in candidate traffic coming from Google For Jobs (GFJ). It was just one example at the conference of the impact GFJ is making across the industry that everyone is watching. For decades we’ve conditioned candidates to look for jobs, first via job boards, then via sites like Indeed, and now it will be through Google for Jobs.

– Monster.com came out of hibernation to announce a new leadership team, and some new technology, including Monster Studios, which lets you record, edit and publish video job ads from a smartphone in minutes. Loved the tech! And all the data shows video job ads get a higher response rate. Beyond that, Monster, like CareerBuilder and ZipRecruiter, has done a great job helping their clients navigate the job schema around Google for Jobs and they are seeing huge traffic increases. JobBoards didn’t die, they just re-tooled, and are still relevant in the talent attraction game. If you haven’t checked them out in the past 24 months, it’s worth some testing if you’re struggling with your traffic and Indeed is asking you to spend the double amount you did last year.

– Chatbots are everywhere, even if you’re not seeing them, yet. Some of the coolest A.I. I saw was Jane.Ai and AllyO. When A.I. first hit hte market they were extremely careful to say this tech wouldn’t eliminate the need for real humans, that marketing didn’t work, so they are now willing, to tell the truth! It does! That’s what the ROI is based on! Hello! Also, this tech, while not perfect, has exceptional potential and it keeps getting better.

– The future of the HR Tech and TA Tech stack are not a big umbrella, we do everything, enterprise systems (Workday, Oracle, SAP, etc.). The future of the tech stack is something akin to the Apple App Store. You have your base HR Tech platform, let’s say Ultimate Software, and then you go into their App store and pick the best of breed tech you want it to work with! Same with the TA Tech space. You pick an ATS like Greenhouse, then pick all of the TA tech you want it to work with, sourcing, interview, assessments, etc. But, not as it is right now with integrations and separate contracts, etc. Pick your core, foundation tech, then surround it with the best tech on the market that fits your business needs. There were a number of new startups positioning themselves in this space. We want all the advantages of using “one” system, but one system can’t give you all the best tech. For those who want the best tech, in all aspects, your world is coming!

If you’re an HR or Talent Acquisition leader today, one of your core competencies has to be around technology. It used to be that we would just allow IT or the CFO to pick what we used, but we’ve quickly moved into a world where your HR and Recruiting tech stack has a unique competitive and strategic advantage. Future HR and TA Leaders will not be sitting on the sidelines when ‘their’ tech stack is chosen.

If you haven’t been to The HR Technology Conference, or haven’t been for a few years, it’s something as a leader you must put back into your plan for next year! Way too much to learn here about how modern HR and TA practics are running!