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ROI Demystified: Using Data to Maximize Your Candidate Attraction Strategy

Understanding ROI:Using Data to Maximize Your Candidate Attraction Strategy

Running any kind of business is hard work. Hiring a candidate for that business, of course, can often be even harder. The amount of time and energy we dedicate to making every successful hire happen can leave most of us feeling downright exhausted.

Sometimes, that fatigue can set in, often in the form of picking the first candidate who walks in the door – if they’re even reasonably close to a fit, then you’re willing to make that hire simply so you can stop working 14 hour days all the damn time – you get to the point where you’re too tired to really care all too much about “top talent.” You’d much rather take a little rest.

The conversation around metrics driven recruitment isn’t new. Many organizations still struggle with gathering recruiting data and translating numbers into action.

Recruiting isn’t easy (contrary to popular belief).

The energy it takes to make a hire requires more than most successful business owners can handle – even the most hands on entrepreneurs, turns out, are trigger shy as a result, generally slow to hire and quick to fire.

Problematic employees, of course, represent an obvious liability, and selectivity in hiring preempts you ending up in the unfortunate situation where its your employees, not you, who are ultimately steering the ship and making decisions on their own, without any input from you. This, of course, creates a ton of tension – and can ruin an otherwise robust business and healthy bottom line.

They define and build internal processes for source tracking and reporting. The work can seem overwhelming.

But it is possible to make smart decisions. You can create a powerful system. One that keeps driving your talent attraction strategy forward.

Join us, as we uncover strategies to:

Reach the right candidates in a competitive labor market
Use automated source tracking to get accurate source of hire
Implement a source scoring methodology to easily track performance

Do Employers Care That Twitter is Killing Vine?

Twitter announced yesterday that it was shutting down Vine, the once-popular video recording and sharing app that carved out a brand by creating 6-second spots for users to publish. Launched and sold in 2012, Vine was a perfect app to create and publish video in a pre-LTE world.

The Internet, as usual, is ticked off. Longer videos and greater reach on platforms like Instagram and Facebook proved to difficult to handle, but it maintained a loyal, passionate user base over the years. As a New York Times writer said, “Some of it was total nonsense, and that’s why it was so great.”

Turns out, survival of the fittest works for video apps too. Periscope swallowed Meerkat. Instagram’s new video is hoping to put a choke hold on Snapchat. And Facebook Live is trying to gobble up everything in sight.

The question for this blog, however, is whether or not employers care?

Believe it or not, there was a time when thought leaders were touting Vine as a viable recruiting tool. “Recruiting with video is great,” wrote Jobcast’s Samara Parker back in 2013. “And while Vine is not going to replace a good old-fashioned YouTube video anytime soon, it’s a quick, inexpensive way to incorporate video into your social recruiting strategy.”

Indeed, there were a handful of hip companies who played around with Vine as a recruiting tool. Here’s one from Adobe-owned Aviary. It’s titled “What’s that? We’re hiring?!” Not exactly award-winning theatre, but I guess it does showcase the culture of their workforce a bit and actually promote their career site.

For the most part, however, doing video right is hard enough for employers who have YouTube, Instagram or even television at their disposal. Getting 6-second clips right is a serious mountain to scale. Throw in the fact that Vine never hit the big leagues like Snapchat or YouTube, and there’s even less incentive to give a shit, so most employers, and even the agencies that serve them never did.

“Vine is irrelevant to employers. I know of no company that ever used it for employment branding,” said Chris Russell, founder of RecTech Media and creator of explainer videos. “Platforms like YouTube are far better for companies wanting to tell a story that will engage job seekers in a serious way.”

I’ll second that. Like most first adopters, I enjoyed Vine for about a week and moved on. Believe it or not, doing 6-second videos is hard. Really hard. Especially making ones that anyone actually wants to watch. Employers don’t have time for that.

Flashback to 2013. I envision a conference room full of HR managers meeting for an hour about what should be in their 6-seconds of employer branding gold. What, only 23 people saw it? Yeah, Vine, not so much.

About the Author

Joel Cheesman has over 20 years experience in the online recruitment space. He worked for both international and local job boards in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. In 2005, Cheesman founded HRSEO, a search engine marketing company for HR, as well as launching an award-winning industry blog called Cheezhead.

He has been featured in Fast Company and US News and World Report. He sold his company in 2009 to Jobing.com. He was employed by EmployeeScreenIQ, a background check company. He is the founder of Ratedly, an iOS app that monitors anonymous employee reviews. He is the father of two children and lives in Indianapolis. Yes, he’s on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can hire him too.

Craigslist Says No More Free Job Postings for You

If you recruit in the U.S. and parts of Canada, say buh-bye to all your free job postings on Craigslist. The popular classifieds site that’s been giving newspapers fits since 1995 is letting users know that free markets will start charging for job postings, starting Nov. 1.

As reported by Craigslist news junkies AIM Group, Craigslist has posted notices on more than 60 local sites where job postings are free, letting them know prices will increase next month, charging between $7 – $10.

Two-hundred and twenty-six U.S. markets look to be affected. Pricing in markets that currently charge between $15 – $75 for job postings look to be unchanged for now.

Our friends to the north will be impacted as well. Till now, Vancouver, British Columbia was the lone Canadian market that charged a fee. However, AIM Group found notice of new charges in Toronto ($10 per listing); Montreal ($7), and Victoria ($7). Mid-tier markets, such as Winnipeg, don’t have price increase notices.

Markets in Europe, including London and Paris are unaffected.

It’s an interesting move for an organization entrenched in the mantra of peace-loving hippies doing good for the world, but it’s not entirely surprising. Craigslist started charging for posting in San Francisco in 2005, and methodically added other markets like New York.

Pricing has been more of a means to fend off spam than make money, but it’s unclear if this move is based on cleansing the content or fattening up the bank account … or both.

An app-driven, mobile world has probably been tough on poor, ol’ Craig the last 10 years. Throw in the fact that rumors abound Google may get into the job search game, Microsoft may get aggressive with new acquisition LinkedIn and offer free job postings and Facebook is getting more serious about its own marketplace, and you can just imagine what conversations are going on inside the executive meetings at Craigslist.

Hell, maybe increasing rent in San Francisco and ballooning tech talent salaries in the Valley is the only reason for the increase. Regardless, the free lunch looks to be over. It was nice while it lasted. I wonder if their peace-sign logo turns into a dollar sign on Nov. 1 too?

About the Author

Hot Deal: Programmatic Advertising Model For Jobs

When I say “car salesmen” what pops into your mind? A grease ball, right? A poorly fitted suit, slicked back hair, and a beer belly. I’ll add a creepy mustache for fun, just to really nail the visualization I’m going for here. It’s not the best foot forward, per se, for an industry that has rode the economic wave of the past few decades. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be one of them. They just get such a bad rap. Literally, they’re the go-to metaphor for slimy folks. You have to wonder how they get deals done and why they’re still the primary sales driver for new and used car purchases.

It’s a sales model that has been in existence for a long time unchanged, despite the persistence of some newer online car sales websites. I think we all wish there was a better way but let’s face it: The car salesman job has existed far longer than most career paths (and most that exist today – talking to you, social media ninjas), but why? It all goes back to the simple fact: it works.

As someone who has worked in a primarily commission role, I know what it is. It’s determination and persistence. It’s the must-have drive to keep pushing, to ask one more question – a lot of the reason they have a bad rap is exactly why they’re successful, now that I think about it. Persistence pays off whether you really enjoy it or not. It’s when the persistence crosses the line into annoying or ineffective that it starts to rub us the wrong way and they’re not successful.

Many approach the job description and sharing tactics with the same mentality – it works, don’t change it. However, we don’t really know the full scope of this assumption. We don’t know what we’re losing out on by buying into the stasis and choosing routine over evolution.

Stasis Situation: Why Advertising Jobs Hasn’t Changed.

The mantra of “marketing is recruiting” is emphasized as the best practice in basically every blog that even approaches the concept of recruitment marketing but how that actually translates into action isn’t always so obvious. It’s harder work than it seems – truly shifting to a marketing model when it comes to recruiting and knowing where to start.

It’s an area where it’s almost too easy to go into neutral and cruise into interviews. The current lifecycle of a job is pretty linear – write your post, spray and pray, see what comes back, repeat. That repeat step typically involves copying and pasting the same job description, posting on the same job sites, lamenting about the same ridiculous cost per applicant, and yet we don’t change. We don’t seek out new models for driving applies and we don’t start at the top to create incremental improvements.

It doesn’t help that we’re really just guessing when it comes to advertising jobs. We’re guessing on where to advertise, what to say, where to be online and where to buy. We’re following lists and webinar content versus doing our research or using the technology that’s available. I mean, it works – right?

What we tend to forget by falling back on our fail-safe mantras is that our job ads are marketing our companies. They’re an opportunity in disguise, disguised by our philosophies and insistence that it’s “just a job.”

The Problematic Path: Personalities and Fear

Shifting into this marketing mindset starts with really knowing the audience and understanding where they spend their time online. Instead of researching “where to search for Java candidates” it’s doing a search to find Java communities and comparing popularity. It’s about going to different corners of the cave and discovering new people versus following the path everyone else uses.

Then, marketers test that theory. They use marketing pixels (a little slice of code that tracks where people go) to prove their strategies. To see if someone is actually doing what we expect them to do and if not, where they’re going instead. It’s about refining and retargeting instead of using the same recycled model.

Those expectations are typically designed with a persona in marketing. Unfortunately, starting from their inception, job ads are typically created with no personas in mind. Marketing personas, or recruiting personas as they’re translated here, are really just stories to tell about the types of candidate you want to hire. It’s evaluating what motivates and inspires them versus taking a one-dimensional approach of creating broad stroke statements that generically describe what could be their life’s work. The reality is that our job descriptions take passion and dull them into a bunch of adjectives and nouns that mean nothing to someone from the outside looking in. They focus on the work, not the demographics, psychographic and behavioral data that is so readily available with the addition of a few technology hacks like marketing pixels.

Why do we try to write without personas? My best guess is that we’re scared. We’re scared to be transparent about who we really want for fear of discrimination claims or bias to come through. We’re scared to put what we really want on the line for fear we might screw up and lose a great candidate because we were too passionate and bold, but I digress.

Programmatic: Making The Most of Data

There’s so much more to truly embrace marketing practices for recruiting but just by taking these initial steps – knowing where and who – we’re already on a better path to finding the right candidate for our jobs because we actually know a thing or two about these people. We’re tapping into a data set that can help us make better budgeting decisions when it comes down to the whole “spray and pray” job distribution method.

Using just this top level data, we can make decisions. We can start to track paths and understand where our best candidates are coming from. Plus, we can start to work backwards into advertising wisely.

That pixel I mentioned earlier delivers the big data we really need to improve and make decisions about advertising with more information. We call it programmatic advertising. At its most fundamental level, programmatic advertising is the automated process of buying and selling ad inventory through an exchange. Basically, advertisers open up their inventory and let you buy in at better prices. What makes it smart is all the intelligence and algorithms that go into making those decisions based on activity on your site instead of just a whim.

You’re probably wondering why you’d take the risk of trusting the computers to do your job, considering the current model might work. There are a lot of reasons, beyond just working smarter not harder:

You can target your budget goals more closely – Programmatic advertising keeps working even after you’ve booked the ad. It’s optimizing for applies instead of clicks and increasing overall ROI.
It’s cost-effective – With programmatic, you have the ability to adjust your budget in real time based on results instead of pouring your money into something that isn’t working.
You can gain more customer insights – Learn more about your audience to build effective personas. Programmatic technology is continually gathering data based on the type of candidates that apply to your jobs.
It makes media buying easier– Forget the acronym complications and researching things like RFIs, RFQs & RFPs. Instead, spend more time focusing on the next steps and following up with candidates.
It’s scalable – Programmatic allows you to to reach a larger audience across multiple websites and touch points in a timely and efficient manner.

Starting at the top means less time spent throughout the process and less time trying to market and recruit. It means paying per application versus paying per ad, in the case of Jobs2Careers.

Katrina Kibben is Managing Editor of RecruitingDaily.com

Author’s Note: This content was sponsored by Jobs2Careers who first made recruitment industry news when it offered Pay-Per-Application as a job advertising solution. From there, their offerings have only gotten better. Jobs2Careers is now taking that efficiency one step further by predicting how many candidates a single job can reach, the number of applications expected, and the budget needed. Then the technology does the work. Jobs2Careers programmatically places the job ad into the marketplace, reaching the right candidates at the right time.

Corporations are the New Job Boards, Just Ask This Retail Behemoth

You’re already familiar with Amazon as an online retailer, and most of you remember the days when Amazon only sold books. They’ve evolved, of course, and a lot of you know that Amazon Web Services (AWS) powers much of the world’s Internet via this cloud server solution.

You may not know, however, that AWS is a money-making machine for Amazon. Their last quarterly earnings call sheds some light on just how much of a money-maker it is. Revenues were up 58 percent year-over-year in Q2 2016; and operating income was up 135 percent year-over-year. This “side project” should be over the $12 billion mark in trailing twelve month Net Sales by the end of 2016.

It would be easy to just let AWS run and keep spitting out profits while the company focuses on selling merchandise to the masses. They’re not, however, and what they’re doing is pretty brilliant.

Realizing that education is important to the health of the business, Amazon launched AWS Educate in May 2015. AWS Educate is Amazon’s global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning endeavors. Since launching, some 500 institutions have signed on to use it.

“We built AWS Educate with a vision of helping to cultivate a cloud-enabled workforce. It’s been inspiring to see students from every corner of the globe – from Brooklyn to Bombay to Singapore to Seoul – embrace AWS Educate, eager to digest learnings from top computer science courses, and get their hands on their first Amazon S3 bucket,” saidTeresa Carlson, WP, Worldwide Public Sector, AWS, in a statement.

So, step one was build a platform. Step two was educate people on how to use us. Enter step three: build a job board.

That’s right, last week Amazon added a job posting feature to AWS Educate. Dubbed Cloud Career Pathways, it aims to provide relevant cloud internships and jobs from top employers featured on the AWS Educate. “We’ve designed Cloud Career Pathways that will help students get targeted experience and skills, and placed those side-by-side with relevant jobs from some of the most in-demand technology employers today,” said Carlson.

Placing an ad for a job on AWS Educate is completely free, as is using the site as a student or educator. But that’s not the point. It’s a brilliant strategy to support current users and cultivate future users, which translates into a healthy bottom line. More cloud professionals filling the needs of companies using and building cloud services means more money in Amazon’s pot.

Job seekers exiting spammy job sites in favor of the career sites of direct employers is not news. Leaving job boards in favor of corporate sites that now offer job listings from a wide variety of companies, however, is a bit revolutionary. Imagine paint professionals going to Sherwin Williams for painting jobs. Imagine film students going to Netflix to learn movie-making skills. Imagine landing a job in self-driving cars at jobs.tesla.com.

I’ll be the first to admit it’s a long shot. Dealing with spam, usability and site issues, compliance, marketing and customer service are just a few headaches job sites deal with and have learned to handle over the years that a corporate job board will now have to tackle.

That said, it’s a trend worth following. Corporations, especially ones like Amazon, have tremendous brand awareness and resources to throw at something like help wanted ads. Companies who do the math will likely find that farming new knowledge workers and cultivating a healthy employment ecosystem is well worth the investment that Amazon is now making.

About the Author

Restless Bandit Makes Away With $10 Million Investment

San Francisco-based HR startup Restless Bandit announced during the first week of October that it had raised $10 Million in funding from GGV and Toba Capital. The HR software company uses data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning to go through a company’s records and search for missed potential amongst past job applicants. By doing this, Restless Bandit ports to decrease job listing expenses, reduce time spent to fill a position, and potentially increase the quality of job candidates.

The $10 million is divided in to $8 million of Series A funding and $2 million in seed investments. Restless Bandit will use these funds to increase the size of the company’s team and continue the operational costs of running its Talent Rediscovery platform and Resume Refresh offerings.

Through matching algorithms and date science, Restless Bandit’s software sifts through previously under-utilized databases of archived resumes as new positions become available within a company. Rather than recruiters spend as much time creating job advertisements, Restless bandit suggest past applicants who previously made it past certain requirements set by HR representatives. After which, it sends an automatic invitation to those prospective employees, suggesting they apply for the new opening.

Restless Bandit CEO Steve Goodman began seeking a solution to “rediscovering talent” within a company in 2014. LinkedIn bought Goodman’s former recruiting software startup, Bright for approximately $120 million. At that time, Bright was LinkedIn’s largest acquisition.

After the sale, Goodman created a team of engineers, drawing talent from Google, LinkedIn and keeping some from Bright. Two years later they had created their current platform. In order to teach its software how to find the best talent solution they generated over 120 million descriptions of jobs a recruiter might post and 30 million resumes. In addition, their product also goes through data made public online and refreshes resumes previously marked as outdated already available to the company.

“After tens of thousands of hours of analysis, we’ve shown the best candidates are hiding in plain sight—and they are 14 times more likely to respond to a company’s email than a cold recruiter message, because there’s an existing relationship.” Goodman told Fortune’s Heather Clancy.

Restless Bandit designed its products for companies that have a workforce of 1,000. According to Business Wire, companies that already employee 5,000 or more people usually have 50,000 resumes saved in their recruitment databases. Going through such a high number of previous applicants every time a company has a new job opening would take an enormous amount of time for a recruiter. Restless Bandit also doesn’t have any of the unconscious biases a human being might, which means it can assist in creating a more diverse workforce. This can help raise a company’s reputation, adaptability, and productivity.

Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner at GGV Capital, intends to join the Restless Bandit Board of Directors as an Observer. In a recent press release Solomon said that “identifying and retaining talent is a top priority for companies in the Fortune 500 and mid-market. Restless Bandit has invented the category of Talent Rediscovery, re-engaging past candidates to find the best matches for open jobs.”

“In our due diligence,” Solomon continued, “we spoke to several Fortune 500 recruitment leaders and uniformly heard that Restless Bandit’s Talent Rediscovery platform delivers unprecedented qualified candidate flow rapidly, utilizing existing profiles and obviating the need for expensive marketing campaigns. Restless Bandit’s positive momentum with customers, industry leading technology and proven team all contribute to our excitement and we’re very optimistic for the company’s future.”

Restless Bandit on CNBC — Restless Bandit Featured on CNBC

GGV Capital was founded in 2000 as venture capital firm specifically designed as an investing team focusing on opportunities in both the United States and China. Between the 8 funds managed by the firm they have $3.8 billion and a portfolio that includes such companies as Pandora, Airbnb, Domo and many more.
The effective of Restless Bandit’s services is dependent upon the quality of how job descriptions and resumes were originally written. Its algorithms were created to hone in on applicants who used particular words or phrases. In addition, it is incompatible with older applicant tracking programs which aren’t available as cloud-based services.

At this time, Restless Bandit only provides its product in English. Existing cloud-based products it works well with include applicant tracking software like Workday Recruiting, SAP SuccessFactors, Jobvite, IBM Kenexa, iCIMS, and Oracle Taleo.

Restless Bandit has already attracted more than 15 early customers such as Cabot, a chemical specialist company, restaurant chains like Applebee’s and IHOP, Four Season Hotels, media organization Gannett, and research company comScore. Their product could potentially be very useful to employers in the retail industry or others who often need to quickly hire a significant number people for lower level positions.
The cost of using Restless Bandit depends on the size of the company in question and the number of potential employees they already have stored in their existing databases. On average they charge around $25,000 a year.

According to the company’s website, Restless Bandit’s algorithm continues to get smarter by the regular addition of new job descriptions, potential employee profiles, and new data sources. Their goal is to consistently improve their ability to match candidate talent with job openings created by their customers. In an interview with TechCrunch Goodman mentioned that Restless Bandit has considered creating a front-end service focusing on job-seekers, instead of recruiters, in the future.

About the Author

Brandy Hagan graduated from Florida State University with a Bachelor’s in Social Science. She has over 3 years experience writing about the employment industry and creating SEO-rich content for marketing purposes.

Previous articles have appeared on the award-winning recruitment blog Cheezhead.com. She has also provided extensive coverage of the SHRM national conference in the past. She resides in North Augusta, South Carolina and devotes most of her spare time to writing fiction. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

The Seven Dwarfs of Employer Branding Videos

Every marketer dreams of going viral on social media. We’ve all seen it happen before. You know the ones – the videos that make everyone want to share, swear or care. They’re video you can’t help but to watch, even when you’re running late. The one you laugh out loud at and have to share with that one friend who it made you think of instantly.

There’s something really magical about making content that goes viral. To put this in context, 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute. One hour every second, every day. That means you’re one in a billion, not just one in a million. The one that goes viral is truly an anomaly but the formula to make it happen? Not so obvious.

That’s why it’s a hall of fame, of sorts. When things go viral – that’s a resume builder. A pillar that marks your huge success. It’s a medal moment among marketers yet sometimes employer branding people forget that we can do it too. It’s not an accomplishment that only marketers with big budgets and ad agencies can achieve.

That bar being lowered has led to half assed employer branding in one way or another – usually a result of not actually investing ourselves in the process in the first place by determining a culture and then working on how to share it. Doing the work and investing the time to find the most compelling part of our company and translating it into a video that’s equally as compelling.

Dopey, Sleepy, Doc: The Fairytale of Employer Branding

Most of these half assed videos are Disney level cheesy, and fall into two categories.

The first, and most common, is the poison apple. It looks harmless but when you take a bite.. it’s not what it appears. It’s a clone of a good thing. So many big brand recruitment videos are semi-scripted commercials nearly identical to their competitor’s videos and don’t actually reflect what’s happening in the organization. I imagine they come up with the script simply by finding the person who hates their job the least and wants to get out of work the most. It’s uninspiring and forgettable.

The second is the glass coffin. Videos that give you a “look inside.” Yeah, been there. Done that. Sure, it’s great to give people an inside look at your workplace and culture but it has to be better than an aerial shot of the building. Build a plot with a memorable story that motivates people to share, even if they aren’t looking for a job.

The reason both of these fail so miserably is that they don’t create an impact or, really, have any impact at all. They don’t tell stories but rather skip to the script. No one wants to share something that’s so predictable, like both of these examples.

Who is the fairest of them all?

Rather than create a bunch of predictable advice about creating your own videos, I wanted to show you what a great video looks like. You can take the best from the mess and sift out how you tell your own culture story in a way that’s original, entertaining, and most important – shareworthy.

Bashful (aka the heartwarming one): Mack knows their target audience, and it’s not millennials.

Dopey (aka the creative one): A clever approach to the same ol’ story.

Happy (aka the funny one): The joke is on you at Twitter because even with over 300 dislikes, they’re getting more shares than ever.

Doc (aka the news one): Change the rumors by telling your own story.

Grumpy (aka the relatable one): As HR folks, we can all relate and have a chuckle at this.

About The Author:

Audra Knight is a Recruitment Marketing Strategist at Tenable Network Security and co-host of The #SocialRecruiting Show. When not sharing all things employment branding, she is a bassist in a rock band. You can connect with her on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter.

Balls, Balls, Balls: Men At Work.

So, I’m sitting in the office as my CEO and Finance Director – both male, suffice to say – are having a conversation about the upcoming budget, of all things. They’re talking while aggressively throwing a rugby ball between them, pausing their conversation to occasionally compliment their fine passes and great catches:

‘Oh nice one mate’. ‘Go deeper’. ‘Whoa, that was a hard one’.

Yeah. One of those. Now, at this point, I’m not sure whether I’m watching a business meeting or soft core porn, if I’m being honest with you. Any hope I had of concentrating on my own work or getting any sort of value whatsoever out of this conference were completely blown out of the water as this very loud, very obvious and very unsettling double entendre was happening right in the middle of the office.

I was sitting directly in the line of fire, I’m afraid. And it was all I could do to avoid choking on all the testosterone hanging heavy on the air, which, let the record show, turns out is not particularly conducive to creating beautiful copy.

I’d no choice but to sit there and stare, open mouthed, my head pivoting back and forth in time as the ball sailed through the air. And it was then I realized, staring at that rugby ball, that every single recruiting office I’d ever been to – hell, every sales floor, in fact – was literally balls to the wall.

Business As Usual.

It occurred to me there’s always a rugby ball; probably some weird sort of homage to the upper crust of English society, an affectation of the aristocratic aspirations most recruiters seem to share. This inferiority complex, of course, is only one reason why so many are entitled, pretentious and utterly insufferable boors.

In addition to the rugby ball, there are footballs, tennis balls, ping pong balls, bouncy balls – and should none of those things be readily available, rest assured you can trust someone will shortly raid the stationary cupboard for every elastic band that it possesses, and then fashion those office supplies into something suitable for a game of catch.

Failing the normally reliable stationary cupboard, one can always create a ball out of whatever happens to be on hand, even if it’s just a few crumbled bits of paper. Anything to brandish about while strutting across the office with the confidence of someone blissfully unaware of how ridiculous they look as they occasionally stop to toss the ball in a colleague’s direction. Of course, even the most casual of these interactions is inevitably accompanied by the worst sort of mixture of machismo and misogyny.

This highly primitive behavior seems designed to mark one’s territory, showcase their superiority and show off their masculinity on a regular basis in one of the modern world’s more ridiculous, most regular rituals.

I have always wondered, consequently, what exactly it is about an office environment that threatens men so much that they have to revert to running around playing with their balls.

Although, come on, you don’t have to be bloody Freud to see what’s really going on here.

Who Can It Be Now?

Men have dominated offices for years, so really (they would like to think), this is their stomping ground, but at some point in the hunting and/or gathering, turned over all the crap work to women, which is why historically the administrative side of business tends to be predominantly female led.

This created a dynamic whereby the would-be alpha males pace all around the office, keeping his hands busy with some sort of ball or similar sporting accoutrement while his secretary (or “admin”) speedily transcribes the fascinating, brilliant and manly ideas that require constant movement. The very act of sitting at a desk, and physically creating an actual body of work, doesn’t seem to sit well with most men. I’m not sure why.

Perhaps they feel that being made to sit down, shut up and actually do some bloody work for once is too closely aligned with the role traditionally played by their omnipresent admin; perhaps it’s because they don’t like to be confined to small spaces, where they might indeed be out of sight, out of mind and, ultimately, out of the pack.

It might even come as some sort of relic from the 1950s where the women all took shorthand while the men all shot the shit, where typing and the telephone were both best left for the women; niceties that would now qualify as “sexual harassment” were simply how you greeted the broads at work, or something like that.

Whatever the case may be, if you have to work at work, and that work happens to be in a small office space, generally speaking, this does not require any sort of strength conditioning, physical skill or stamina, and it most certainly does not require a single piece of sporting equipment.

Not even that damned rugby ball. In fact, unless the stapler happens to be jammed or you have to change out the tank on the water cooler, there’s almost no need for anyone to even break a sweat at the office. This is why company wellness programs exist, the understanding that the professional workplace is not, in fact, all that physically demanding. That does not stop most men from trying their damnedest, however.

Considering that we live in a world where strength and presence are still so closely correlated with masculinity, it’s no wonder so many men in business feel downright threatened should the time finally arise where they have to actually disappear quietly behind their computer screens and somehow attempt to produce the obscene amount of work the world of work today requires from all of us.

Women, on the other hand, have been disappearing into corners for centuries. Naturally, we’re much more adept at doing so when required.

But how well we evolve, and how well we adapt to a system that is both unequal and irrational is not the point. The point is, that if I were to stand up with any of my female colleagues and proceed to talk strategy or P&L planning while loudly launching footballs and double entendre at each other, it would be fucking ridiculous.

The entire office, no doubt, would stop whatever they were doing and stare at the two harpies tottering around in heels shouting, “great pass, babe” and wondering whether or not we’d lost our damned minds. It just wouldn’t happen. And the reason that this would never happen is because women do not fundamentally feel the need to reassert our femininity or reiterate our gender identity so that the entire workplace recognizes and learns to appreciate that we are women, hear us roar, or some bollocks like that.

And I should point out that women, most decidedly, do not need balls to prove their worth at work.

Overkill.

This is not to promulgate specious or sweeping stereotypes, nor is it to say that the occasional woman doesn’t find herself entangled in the odd game of “pass the tennis ball” around the office at some point, but when they participate, it’s for entirely different reasons. I know this, because I’ve done it myself.

Stepping into the middle of an impromptu office ball game, and being just capable (or even good) at something as simple as throwing or catching – and mind you don’t do either “like a girl,” then you suddenly get a certain type of recognition from your male peers. You can see that glint in their eye, surprised that a girl, of all things, can not only keep up with catching the football and hanging onto the conversation – that, “she’s not your average girl” look I’ve come to know so well.

It’s that instant respect of being admitted into the club, and honestly, I and countless other women have learned the utility of being in this club none of us likely want to be in. You see, it makes it a whole lot easier to ask men for help, or be trusted with a delicate task or difficult job, or even just chat up the predominantly male colleagues, coworkers and clients you encounter every day at the office when you’re suddenly one of the “cool girls.”

There. That’s the dirty truth to the matter. If you can be a “cool girl,” you can get ahead (or just survive) at work, but no matter what, in all honesty being one of these so-called “cool girls” will always make you feel used, dirty and just a little vulnerable afterwards. What those men with their balls think is “cool” is often anything but, and every woman out there knows the devil’s bargain we make when we have to step into the male arenas you normally wouldn’t, even if it is for work gain. Even if it is a silly game of football.

This is a whole other game, and there are no winners, just sordid feelings and moral dilemmas. Not so cool, girl.

No one needs to see the men in the office standing around swinging their dicks and saying, “hey, mate, look at what I’ve got,” flexing their muscles or tossing around a rugby ball all damned day – mostly, it’s fucking annoying, and no one needs to see it or be subjected to it. So put your balls down, already.

If you want to know how to impress women, here’s an idea: sit down, shut up and do your work without bothering anyone. That’s a real man right there.

About the Author: Salma El-Wardany, Head of Marketing, Recruitment Entrepreneur cut her teeth in recruitment at a global Plc, working in business development to win new clients and accounts into the company. She gave up corporate life in favour of the startup world, specifically recruitment startups.

Salma spends her days advising recruitment companies on their marketing, digital and branding strategies, and how to make their voice heard in an industry that is already overcrowded and full of voices clamoring to be heard. By night, she writes about many things, mainly all the things in recruitment that vex her.

Check out her blog, The Chronicles of Salma or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Here’s Why a Growing Number of HR Tech Vendors are Down Wit’ O.P.P. (Other People’s Platforms)

O.P.P., how can I explain it?

Ten years ago, if you wanted to launch a digital business, you likely bought a domain name, paid a designer to develop a web site, plugged in a database, threw in some programming and voila, hang out the “open for business” sign. People still launch businesses this way, as a matter of fact, as it still works pretty well. But for a growing number of companies, building on other people’s platforms (O.P.P.) is becoming the default.

Facebook took this model to the masses in 2007, when they allowed developers to build apps on top of Facebook’s solution. You may remember early apps like Texas Hold ‘Em, Scrabulous and Mob Wars. Employment-related apps like Branchout and BeKnown leveraged Facebook’s ecosystem.

Twitter followed Facebook’s lead and the job search apps came runnin’. Tweet My Jobs, Tweet A Job, Tweet Jobs and countless others jumped on board. Most of these early apps, if not all, are gone now … but we’ll come back to that in a bit. Android and iOS also opened the mother-of-all app stores.

The rationale is this? Why build your own solution from ground zero when you could build on existing systems that already have users? Another way to look at it, why buy when you can lease?

Now the trend is hitting employment platforms pretty hard. LinkedIn led the way early on, but have largely backed away from developers in recent years. Yammer, acquired by Microsoft in 2012, is noteworthy for its app ecosystem. Many applicant tracking systems have integrations, but they tend to be exclusive and clunky. ADP’s marketplace is an example of this.

Let’s say the app store model has been hit-or-miss up to this point. As far as recruiting goes, I’ll argue it’s been more miss than hit. However, that tide may be turning.

Earlier this week, Zenefits opened its doors to developers. Similarly to building applications on Facebook using their user data, programmers can now build solutions using data already collected by Zenefits.

“We think this idea of suites vs. best of breed is a false choice, this has been the choice of marketplace,” Zenefits CEO David Sacks said in an interview with Techcrunch. “You could use an antiquated suite or best of breed that’s limited. We’re building an app store for [human resources] for the first time, that’s the way to resolve this conundrum. You build an app store and you release some core apps yourself, but you allow third parties to provide best of breed apps.”

Companies currently taking advantage of Zenefits’ ecosystem include Microsoft 365, Salesforce and Quickbooks, but the company expects and hopes smaller players jump aboard. “We want to let 1,000 flowers bloom here,” Sacks added. “Anybody will be able to get a developer key.”

Slack is another example of a platform that’s friendly to third-party developers. Recently surpassing 4 million daily users and 1.25 million subscriptions, up from 3 million users and 930,000 subscriptions in May, Slack users have downloaded 6 million apps from their platform.

It’s worth noting Slack’s app store looks more like Facebook’s or Apple’s, featuring names like Hey Taco, Obie and Donut. Such names speak to a level of openness and scale that many others don’t enjoy. Yammer, in contrast, has been around longer, and should have a killer marketplace, but fails in this respect.

It’s debatable, of course, whether all this growth is a good thing. For developers, you get reach, but you also get headaches. Building for multiple platforms creates complexity that used to not exist. For the platforms themselves, policing app makers and fighting spam can be troublesome. For users, though, all is good and demand is high, which is why platforms are created in the first place and developers build apps.

This brings us back to a word of warning. Remember the growth of employment-related apps built on the shoulders of Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn? Most were burned, badly. Branchout is the best example. In two short years, they went from nothing to getting almost $50 million in venture capital, 25 million users and millions of job postings. They were going to be bigger than LinkedIn.

Then the bottom fell out after Facebook changed its algorithm, penalizing apps that were seen as spammy, inviting mass numbers of friends to download apps and share with more friends. Twitter changing up its developer rules took the air out of many of their job-related apps as well.

Regardless, I expect app stores to continue to flourish and grow. Will the cycle of changing the rules and screwing certain apps continue? Probably. But I think there’s less incentive to do harm to third party developers, and I also think everyone has learned some hard lessons they don’t want to repeat in order to keep marketplaces healthy.

Other people’s platforms are where much of the action is and will continue to stay. For technology platforms that have scaled well enough to justify an ecosystem, they’d do well to offer a marketplace or risk falling behind. I’ll apologize in advance and say, when debating whether or not you’re down wit’ O.P.P., the answer should be, “Yeah, you know me.”

About the Author

Real Lies, Realized: 10 Fake HR Tech & Recruiting “Trends” You Should Really Ignore.

For an industry whose professional certification involves “competency based assessments,” there’s a surprising amount of incompetence when it comes to sorting out the product marketing buzz and BS coming from companies offering the coolest stuff you never really needed to fix a problem you didn’t know you had.

Of course, where “best practices” are basically the same stuff everyone’s been doing since before we even started making up generational theory and talking about “Millennials.”

Client success stories and customer case studies are about as insightful as reference checks – yeah, of course your list of pre-approved people had nothing but good things to say.

So Many Tears: Get Real About These 10 Fake HR Tech & Recruiting “Trends.”

Even the most obsolete or archaic HR Tech companies (BranchOut, ADP, The Ladders) still have new customers, but then again, that’s because it’s easy to believe the sales guy who’s trying to turn your budget into a commission check or save his ass on quarterly quota.

This is, one assumes, why LinkedIn Recruiter and Taleo each have such dominant market share in their respective categories with products that makes the LaserDisc or N64 look like cutting edge technology, comparatively.

But you can’t blame them for hitting their mark; it’s almost impossible to miss (especially at SHRM events) – there’s a sucker born every minute, and the good news for VC investors these days is, most of them seem to end up as decision makers for HR Technology.

Because if these emerging and established players’ content marketing machine convinced you these 10 completely BS concepts are actually “trends,” well, you’re the kind of person who will follow a thought leader. Or, you know, shell out a couple thousand bucks to go to an ADP User Conference.

10. Passive Candidates.

An oldie, but a goodie. And one that still works, despite the fact this is actually defined by the EEOC and OFCCP – it’s not like compliance ever stopped an employer from buying a product, right?

Simply put, if you’re passive, you’re not a candidate, and if you’re a candidate, you’re not passive. Similarly, if you’re a kick ass recruiter, you can interest someone in an opportunity enough to at least get them to consider making a move.

When you activate anyone via direct sourcing or recruitment advertising, no matter what their employment status is, they stop being passive, period.

That’s why pipeline building is really just poorly executed lead nurturing, mostly. Which is why it’s so cute how y’all think you’re marketers all of the sudden.

9. Employer Branding.

This is a thing, but all you have to do is treat your people well and pay them fairly and the rest is mostly out of your control. You only need inbound marketing or overpriced consultants doing shit like developing “candidate personas” or “EVPs” if your culture sucks and you need to make the careers version of Triumph of the Will: propaganda designed to distract attention from atrocity.

Sex sells, but since this is HR, so too, apparently, does spectacle (#TalentConnect looked killer).Here’s a better idea: maybe your clunker of an ATS and crappy JDs are the real reason you can’t get people to apply for your jobs. Failing that, it’s your culture. And no marketer in the world can fix that. That’s kind of HR’s job.

8. Diversity.

Diversity has become like a corporate version of Reading Rainbow or a United Colors of Bennetton ad. If how people looked had any actual impact on your organizational performance or bottom line results, this would be called “casting,” and recruiting would look more like pharma sales or PR than the island of misfit liberal arts majors and Asperger cases we are today.

“Inclusion” is ironically nowhere near as prevalent as “diversity” (maybe because it’s not as easy to sell SaaS for) – but it’s way more important, too, since this is an intellectual capital issue, not a human capital one. We don’t do too well with critical thinking, which might explain why we’re still talking about business cases for improving the candidate experience.

7. “The Cloud.”

The Cloud is the tech version of Gen Y: everyone knows it’s BS, talking about it makes you sound like you’re an octogenarian, and the only SaaS you need is from Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia (and maybe Life Alert, which I guess is actually wearable tech, like Depends Adult Diapers or those bifocals you need for the Readers’ Digest).

Wait, you didn’t graduate in the same class as Jesus, Don Rickles or Dr. John Sullivan? You don’t eat at Luby’s at 4 PM? And you actually have a smart phone? My mistake. See, only old people still talk about “the cloud,” just like they’re the only ones left on Facebook these days.

For the average 5 year old, though, the thought of streaming or on-demand content available from any internet connected device is already a pretty moot point. For the average Gen Y worker, even, it still sounds like you’re trying to justify that monthly AOL subscription, still have a Yahoo! e-mail address, and only use Internet Explorer.

It’s not new, it’s not news, and if you’re still considering switching from on premise, you should probably be fired, dead or retired by now. Or at least talking about how kick ass the cloud is at Oracle HCM World. Of course, podcasting is like the preferred method of B2B marketing now, and I think the last time episodic radio was a thing was in the 1930s, so what do I know?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that old people are quick to embrace cloud technology. I mean, they need some way to log onto eHarmony and find that perfect someone who won’t let them die alone.

6. “Marketplace.”

A marketplace is nothing more than middleware with pre-configured APIs. This used to be referred to as “channel sales,” and constituted a kick back if someone successfully sold your product to their existing customers (or touted “partnerships” if selling to potential clients). Now it’s basically e-commerce, but with third party PID instead of PayPal as the common currency, and you don’t get anything other than a shitty system with a bunch of point solutions at premium pricing.

If you know what the “Cloud” is (see above) then you know you already can buy, deploy, manage and measure any “marketplace” software no matter what “ecosystem” it’s from. If it requires implementation, complex training, expensive consultants or an up-charge for anything related to “services,” then it’s not “The Cloud.”

But even without a Cloud in the sky, somehow shitty enterprise providers are making it rain. And it’s your parade.

5. Machine Learning.

Machines can’t learn. They can, however, get a bunch of your data, throw it against a “proprietary algorithm” and since those are trade secrets, there’s no way in hell of knowing whether or not those scored results or stack ranking really work.

It’s not machines that are getting smarter, it’s that we’re all getting dumber.

4. Content Marketing.

Show me how the hell to market without content, and I’ll concede this point. But you gotta have something, or else it’s PR or “thought leadership.”

3. Pulse Surveys.

Congratulations, you’re spending billions of dollars annually on a really imperfect and statistically questionable sentiment analysis tool with a limited sample size and a bunch of administration and design issues.

But hey – if someone completes a survey, they are engaged, no matter how specious or asinine that may be, right? Winner.

2. “The Gig Economy.”

It’s actually trickle-down economics – and yeah, that didn’t work either. Of course, it’s sexier than talking about outsourcing or offshoring, which is where the future of work is really headed. That is to say, apparently “micro-indentured servitude.” Feel free to steal that, McKinsey.

1. Bots: It’s like building a Boolean string in the form of a question instead of a bunch of modifiers – it’s kind of cool, completely unnecessary, and recruiters love it because “natural language search” means they don’t even have to learn the basics (NOT).

Seriously, though, it’s structured data in, structured data out, only it’s like Jeopardy! – please word your answers as questions.

Why? Just shut up and take the blue pill, Neo.

The only thing that matters with any of this stuff is whether or not it will help you make better hires more effectively and efficiently – and how that makes a real impact on real business results.

The rest is just product marketing and AdWords.

Matt Charney is the Executive Editor for Recruiting Daily. Follow him @MattCharney or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Espresa Hopes to Bring Google-like Employee Perks to Every Company

Google has been the inspiration for many vendors in our industry. I could argue, for example, that Indeed mirrored Google’s business model and user interface to achieve their success. The ease-of-use and speed Google is famous for, especially their homemade applicant tracking system, has been an inspiration for a wide range of HR technologies.

One startup, however, was inspired by how Google treats its employees. A trailblazer for how they keep employees happy with free food and complimentary services like dry-cleaning, Google is a beacon for employee retention.

Meet Espresa

“The Google employee I knew wouldn’t stop talking about the employee perks,” said Alex Shubat, CEO and co-founder of Espresa. “He wasn’t talking about self-driving cars, virtual reality or the other cool things they were doing. He was talking about car washes and laundry.”

Cutting his teeth in the semiconductor industry, Shubat was part of an acquisition by Google, which gave him an insight into how the company treated their employees. From that experience, the idea for Espresa was born. Essentially, the service aspires to empower companies of any size to offer Google-like perks to their employees.

Perks have become commonplace for well-known employers in Silicon Valley, but smaller companies are challenged to offer such benefits because of a lack of resources. Espresa sees this as a tremendous opportunity to help smaller companies, and eventually companies everywhere to offer Valley-like entitlements.

“We want to make these kinds of employer services as common as health and dental insurance,” said Shubat.

Founded in June 2015 and landing its first customer in Feb. 2016, they have a long way to go to make such perk ubiquitous. However, a $2 million seed round completed in Aug. of this year will help. The company currently employs 25 people and are looking to raise an undisclosed amount of money in an A round in the near future.

How It Works

After signing up, new customers are onboarded by a team of Espresa employees. Employers can access all the services they want to offer their employees through an online dashboard.

Perks are in the form of both free services or deeply discounted offerings. Examples include getting on-site oil changes, car washes, haircuts, massages, dry cleaning, yoga and event discounts.

Pricing for Espresa’s solution is $1 per employee, per month. Companies commit to a yearly contract. After each year of being a client, pricing is adjusted based on current headcount.

Currently, only employers in the Bay Area can take advantage of Espresa. The company is looking to grow nationally in 2017, based on client demand, and will look to international markets in 2018. The company also generates revenue from its vendor marketplace.

“We survey our current clients,” said Shubat. “They tell us we’re saving employees 1-5 hours each month by taking everyday tasks off their plate. We think the value we bring and the opportunity to help companies retain and recruit their best talent is huge.”

Huge indeed.

The workplace services market is estimated at $3.5 billion annually and is relatively untapped. As competition for top talent tightens, perks like the ones Espresa offer are only going to get more appealing. By creating scale and affordability to the process, benefits that are currently associated with the most progressive cities and companies exclusively should eventually be commonplace everywhere, with all types of employers.

About the Author

Election 2016: Hiring Trends In Swing States

We all know the 2016 election will be a special one, and not just because it features two of the least popular candidates in recent memory. Less widely discussed is how this election year’s job market is another anomaly. The candidates are too busy talking about creating jobs than reflecting on the current situation. By the traditional headline measures, the U.S. labor market appears to be in fine shape. Yet, despite years of remarkably strong and steady job growth, there are reasons for serious concern.

The good news is that the numbers are striking. The unemployment rate has dropped by about half from its peak in the great recession, as 7.5 million people have left the ranks of the unemployed. Nonfarm payroll growth has been averaging above 200,000 per month for about 18 months – over twice as much as necessary to keep the unemployment rate falling.

The bad news? There has never been such a divide between the headline labor indicators and the secondary ones. Among the latter, many voters and workers are concerned about wages and underemployment. Despite a record rise in income last year, real household income remains below its level in the 1990s, and the number of people reporting that they have to settle for part-time work remains high. Even recently created full-time jobs may not offer the security and benefits that Americans once took for granted.

This divergence between headline jobs figures and secondary indicators helps explain the pessimism we hear in response to survey questions about the country’s direction, but it also raises a lot of questions. The current atmosphere of economic insecurity presents a real opportunity for economists, journalists, and politicians to raise Americans’ literacy in economic data and critical thinking about economic issues. Unfortunately, no one seems to have found a way to seize that opportunity in the mass media. The candidates – and to a lesser extent, reporters – seem to have focused on voters’ fears about their economic prospects.

Voice of Reason: Labor Indicators

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has taken a different tack. She has been outspoken in drawing attention to alternative labor indicators. She may be right when she says that the unemployment rate is still the single best labor market indicator, but it doesn’t summarize the labor market the way it used to. The labor market is shifting in response to demographic and technological changes, and it is not always straightforward to compare today’s unemployment rate to another era’s.

Hiring trends are more straightforward, and may provide insight into voter sentiment heading into November. The statistics in an iCIMS report on hiring trends in swing counties are about actual jobs reported by employers. By “swing counties” we mean counties that are large enough or persuadable enough that they could tip the balance in the key swing states that could, in turn, tip the balance in the Electoral College. Our data indicate that the growth in total hiring has been stronger in most of the Florida and Ohio swing counties than across the country as a whole, although they haven’t seen a consistent increase in their proportion of full-time jobs. In Pennsylvania, the swing counties have underperformed the nation as a whole – their hiring growth rates slowed to the point of outright declines.

Election Day: What Does This Mean for November 8?

It’s worth noting that the strength of hiring seen in most of these swing counties is consistent with the positive results of major surveys of consumer sentiment about the economy. Moreover, strong consumer spending numbers show that Americans are optimistic enough about the economy to go out and shop, however downbeat they sound in opinion polls. When it comes to economic sentiment and spending patterns, economists generally assume that the most recent few months are of primary importance.

For polling and voting patterns, it’s less clear when views on the economic outlook consolidate, let alone how they interact with views on incumbent versus challenging parties, candidates, and policy platforms. Political scientists believe that anywhere from 40 percent to 90 percent of election results can be attributed to economic fundamentals such as the job market. Economics isn’t everything – least of all in the election of 2016 – but hiring trends suggest a significant tailwind for the incumbent party in the swing counties of Florida and Ohio, but a headwind in Pennsylvania.

About The Author: Josh Wright is Chief Economist at iCIMS, and is responsible for analyzing proprietary data in order to produce fresh insights on emerging trends in the U.S. labor market. He contributes to the publishing of quarterly trends reports, as well as semi-annual reports and blog posts on ad hoc labor topics. In addition, Josh supports in the development of software that allows customers to analyze their own performance relative to industry benchmarks by collaborating with data scientists, software developers, and marketing executives.

A former Federal Reserve staffer, Josh helped build the Fed’s mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolio of more than $1 trillion, among other responses to the global financial crisis.

As a researcher, he has published on labor and housing markets, as well as U.S. monetary policy, and advised policymakers across the legislative and executive branches of government.

Talent Development Platform Everwise Raises $16 Million

Everwise, a start-up based out of both New York and San Francisco, recently raised $16 million in Series B funding and has almost tripled its number of customers in the last nine months. Financial backers include Sequoia Capital, Canvas Ventures and Webb Investment Network.

Three years old and employing 80 people, the company plans to release a new element to their existing offerings; a software platform that utilizes social learning to bring people together with the resources and tools geared toward aiding them throughout a variety of stages in their professional lives.

Everwise started out as facilitator matching would-be protégés with the right mentors. In this respect, the company matches executives willing to volunteer their time with industry up-and-comers and others looking for career guidance, including everyone from entrepreneurs, sports coaches, and those who desire to climb the ladder in Fortune 500 companies.

Everwise has done this by utilizing users’ existing LinkedIn profiles alongside personalized surveys and plugs the information into an algorithm that matches them with executives from other companies that possess more experience. The startup followed this up by adding more software features based on the suggestions of its volunteer mentors. These services include reading lists, TED talks, and the ability for users to create their own career development goals or even import them from their own performance reviews, along with giving them the ability to chart their progress in reaching these goals.

However, the startup and its backer Sequoia are now shifting the company to provide a more robust set of career education tools. They are doing this with their new Enterprise Social Learning Platform, which is already available. They aim to help top organizations find solutions for critical talent-related issues, aiding in diversifying staff, creating inclusive workplace cultures and engage millennials. Everwise will also help onboard new employees and give organizations the necessary tools to effect structural change.

Everwise CEO and co-founder Mike Bergelson

“HR leaders have historically had to choose between solutions that scale and those that are effective,” commented Everwise CEO and co-founder Mike Bergelson. “We believe this is a false choice. Every employee should have access to a personalized, impactful social learning experience. The human connection is critical to translating knowledge into behavior change.”

Another aspect of the new SaaS-Based platform includes a tool referred as EverwiseWomen, which aims at closing the gender gap found in many workplaces by helping to increasing the number of leadership positions held by women. While another feature called Ask Me gives users to ability to ask experts questions through the platform.

Everwise’s current network of mentors individuals with expertise volunteer their, roughly 10 hours of time during a span of six months. At this time the startup boasts mentors in 170 different industries and have members in 70 different companies. According to Sequoia CEO Bergelson individuals continue to use the service because “they learn a ton through the process, including how to be better coaches for their own teams and within their own companies.

He went on to say that providing access to online content alone won’t solve the talent crises companies face today. This is why organizations and employees are demanding a completely new model for career development. HR leaders have historically had to choose between solutions that scale and those that are effective. We believe this is a false choice and that every employee should have access to a personalized, impactful social learning experience. The human connection—where people learn from and with each other—is critical to translating knowledge into behavior chance.

Mentors themselves have found satisfaction with the program, with 90 percent asking Everwise to match them with another mentee as soon as their obligation to their first is completed.

Everwise will now be offering three tiers of services, the average cost to customers being an average of $150 per employee per month, but cheaper options exist. For example, the most limited service includes Everwise’s software modules only.

This option costs anywhere from $10 to $40 a user per year, a price that is dependent upon which software modules the user wants access to. The next level of service includes the software plus access to mentoring and access to an Everwise employee who works as a personal trainer and motivator for the particular employee’s career.

The third tier includes the aspects of the previous two levels with the additional benefit of face-to-face events, peer group support, a mentor, and various other training extras. Peer groups usually include around 8 individuals. “There’s a reason that Navy SEALs tend to work in teams of eight. Research has shown that’s the most effective size,” said Bergelson.

While Everwise hasn’t released which tier of its services bring in the bulk of revenue, it now touts over 250 clients, including major companies such as T-Mobile, Visa, Microsoft, Genentech, and Oracle Systems.

About the Author

Help Wanted: On The Hunt For A Recruiting Job

We function as the primary job contact for so many people, then when the tables turn – what are we supposed to do? How do we find a recruiting job?

Today, there are about 90 million unemployed people. The causes of job loss vary drastically, as we all know from talking to job seekers regularly. There are those who got fed up and said enough is enough, walking out of their job feeling bold. There are those who experienced a layoff. Veterans transitioning into the workforce. Listing every scenario would take days, if not weeks, but there’s one scenario I find particularly interesting: when the recruiter becomes the job seeker.

I mean, looking for a job sucks regardless of your career background. It’s a mix-up in your otherwise happy existence. That ugly little thing called change is being forced on you and you have to bounce back and put on a happy face for a litany of interviews and applications with the hopes that one will shake out to be a good fit for you. You also have to answer all those random questions about “what’s next” and more importantly – actually consider the options.

The only thing that makes the job search context worse is when everyone around you assumes you know everything because your last job was in recruiting. It’s hard to get family and friend to commiserate when despite your current unemployed status, they’re still asking questions and offering comments like: “Don’t worry, you’ll get another job in no time. You’re a recruiter – you know how to get a job faster than anyone, right?” After some time passes, the conversation then turns to, “What’s happening? Why aren’t you working yet? You were able to get other people jobs, but you can’t get one yourself?”

Shame tactics. Harsh, I know. But it happens. We function as the primary job contact for so many people, then when the tables turn – what are we supposed to do? How do we use all of that to make a better job search strategy?

Fundamentals and Faux Pas

But first, let’s go back a step to that part about “knowing it all.” I have two fundamental problems with that assumption that recruiters know everything about the job search. The first is that recruiters and sourcers don’t find jobs for people, they find people for jobs. These are two very different things and it’s a stereotype I’m constantly fighting against.

The second is that just because we may have heightened search abilities does not mean our own efforts to find a new gig are any easier. No matter how hard you try, repeatedly (and with great fervor) pressing that big red “Easy” button from Staples doesn’t work. I know, I tried. It seems like people think that new jobs just appear, as if there’s a team of “job gods” who grow and harvest jobs from the magical job tree in Jobville and then ever so delicately present those jobs at our feet for review. Nope, not so much.

Job searching is by and large no different for those of us in recruiting. It has to be strategic, targeted and it takes time. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, your education, or your background – unemployment doesn’t discriminate. And neither do bad candidate experiences.

That’s really the biggest difference between recruiting candidates and other industries: our lower threshold for black hole candidate experiences and bad recruiter behavior. There’s a lot of discussion surrounding candidate experience nowadays and rightfully so, but when the shoe is on the other foot and recruiters are the ones who are the candidates, you can be sure that candidate processes and flow are even more scrutinized.

The worst version of a bad candidate experience? Trying to apply for an opening that requires you to create an account and register to be part of their “special” talent network. Seriously? I do one thing when I come across a job post that requires such silly hoops to jump through: close the window. Nope, not even gonna play. Why would I spend anywhere between 10 and 45 minutes going through some elaborate and duplicative application process? I could be applying for 30 other jobs in the time it takes to complete one online profile and then manually entering my experience. Ridiculous.

Sourcing Work: A Recruiting Job Search How To

I take the same approach to my job search that I would with a really specialized, niche candidate. First – avoid the lame-o ATS when possible and use my sourcing superpowers to find a name and email to connect with. Then, I use the research and writing skills I put into recruiting talent into my applications. Showing off skills during the apply doesn’t have to be as lame as a one dimensional resume.

Or here’s a crazy thought: in addition to sourcing my direct emails, I utilize my network to see if someone I know is connected with where I’m trying to apply. It’s taking the typical sourcing approach and flipping it for the recruiting job search.

There are a few more resources and pieces of advice I highly recommend for recruiters on the job search. If you’re not yet familiar with Jim Stroud, you need to be. One of the resources on his site includes a pdf doc of search strings for Recruiters looking for work. Very handy. Also, Jeff Newman. He’s been in recruiting for 20 years and has some great info on his own site as well, in addition to discussing his own jobsearch experience on the Recruiting Animal Show last year.

About The Authors:

David Nicola has over 15 years of experience in various Human Services functions and has been in staffing since 2010. In addition to founding the Central Coast Recruiters group on Meetup, his sourcing background covers agency, corporate, and startup environments. After hanging up his sourcing cape and tights each day, he enjoys spending time with his amazing family and watching his beloved San Francisco Giants. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

José Watson is a data driven recruiter who enjoys storytelling about employment brands. He believes the best way to recruit is to combine old school methods with modern approaches.

Here’s the No. 1 Reason to be Bullish on A.I. for Recruitment

If you attended the HR Technology Conference in Chicago earlier this month, there were two buzzwords you heard more than once if you visited the expo hall: Engagement and A.I.

Getting behind the idea of engagement is easy. Companies who care about their workforce – especially a knowledge-based workforce – have better odds of succeeding with said workforce than a competitor who doesn’t engage with their employees. Caring is profiting, it turns out.

A.I., or artificial intelligence, is a bit tougher to sink your teeth into. I say that not only from an employment standpoint, but an everyday one. My phone talks back to me, I apparently need a monolith in my house that I can talk to and manage my life and cars will soon start taking me anywhere I want to go, but I’m not sure I understand the technology behind it, let alone the ramifications.

So, it’s no surprise the world of recruitment is struggling with this phenomenon of A.I., currently highlighted by chatbots with pleasant-sounding, non-aggressive names like Mya, Tara, Esther, and now Olivia.

If you don’t know Olivia, the first product from Recruiting.Ai, you likely know one of her sister companies in Jobing, Recruiting.com or Hire Story. Why? Because they’re all a part of the Recruiting Ventures family tree, headed up by industry veteran Aaron Matos, officially founder and CEO of Recruiting.Ai.

“Recruiting software today – ATS’s and job boards – still mirror, and in many cases are still built on, the same foundation of software from 10-20 years ago. We see a tremendous opportunity to reimagine the candidate and employer experience with new A.I. tools, NLP, and a mobile first mindset that will bring a new modern paradigm to recruiting,” said Matos.

Not surprisingly it’s that industry experience that helps Olivia shine over other offerings. While solutions like Mya automatically answer questions based on pre-existing responses, Olivia’s sequence of Q & A funnels candidates through an application process. Therefore, Olivia is built to be step one of a job seekers journey, and not a post-apply customer service application.

Built on a text-messaging foundation, job seekers express interest in a company. The first question asked is “What’s your full name?” Answering means you just filled out the first datapoint of an application process. Another question asks if you’re at least 18 years old. While it feels conversational to the candidate, the whole process is very directed at getting bodies into a database of prospects.

“We’ve talked to thousands of job seekers and they’re tired of long job applications, tedious forms, broken mobile experiences, and never hearing back from employers. Olivia is able to create a better candidate experience, and at the same time improve candidate capture and conversion,” said Stephen Ost, Head of Product for Recruiting.Ai.

Fixing Mobile Apply

Applying for jobs still sucks on mobile devices, where, by the way, a growing number of candidates are going. The process continues to be the same old forms squeezed into a 4-inch screen. Even applying with your LinkedIn or Indeed account credentials tends to be clunkier than it needs to be.

Shamrock Foods Jobs - Olivia AI — See Oliva in the bottom righthand corner.

Chatbots like Olivia may be the answer. Recruiting.Ai is currently working with client Shamrock Foods to integrate Olivia into the application process for driver jobs, an audience well-known to be on-the-go and mobile-first. When job seekers visit a responsive landing page touting these opportunities, they’re greeted by Olivia in a style similar to chatting on Facebook mobile (see screenshot). Once a job seeker clicks Olivia, the application-via-chat begins.

The data Olivia captures goes into a CRM, where recruiters can access candidates with their own responsive dashboard. The recruiter can even choose to chat with a job seeker manually as Olivia or as themselves. At that point, it just feels like everyday messaging, the most popular activity on a mobile device. Sorry, email.

Recruiting.Ai says results have been transformative to the recruiting process, including over 93 percent candidate capture and completion rates compared to <10 percent for typical applicant tracking system (ATS) applications, and improving traditional media effectiveness by up to 300 percent vs sending candidates to an ATS.

If chatbots and A.I. can fix mobile apply, everyone will be better off. Candidates can apply without feeling like its 1986 and that they aren’t investing 15 minutes filling out forms and throwing a resume down the infamous resume black hole. Employers can actually start engaging with candidates in a way that’s appealing, intuitive and timely.

Of course, change is never easy. A lot of people are perfectly fine searching through candidates in their ATS, reviewing resumes and playing phone tag. The knee-jerk reaction will be everything has to flow through an ATS. The hardest-fo-fill positions with the highest churn will get in line first, especially if they have a mobile-first audience. Companies with native apps for consumers will finally be able to recruit in a way they haven’t before.

Olivia is currently in beta. If you’d like to be added to the wait list, you’ll need to – what else – chat with Olivia. And doing so will put you in the vendor’s database of prospects, similarly to adding your email address to be added to a wait list. Bots make the process much more personal, however, and according to the team at Recruiting.Ai, way more effective in closing sales.

Disclosure: I am a former employee of Jobing and still a shareholder.

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