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6 Key Purchasing Points To An Integrated Future in TA and AI. Purchasing an Enterprise ATS – Conclusion

Need To Know Series: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS

Part 8: ATS Conclusions

For the last seven days, we’ve been talking about the process of purchasing an enterprise ATS. This is based on surveys and conversations we had with about 100 TA leaders across multiple industries and company sizes. We broke this up into six parts, and some of the big takeaways included:

Switching

  • The size of the company can determine switch, with the perception being that you simply outgrow your ATS. 
  • Keyword there would be “Perception.” It could be that certain features aren’t turned on.
  • Type of hires can also determine switch. And again, that’s typically an issue that can be fixed by training and turning on features as opposed to switching.

RFPs

  • Buyer’s top concerns for next ATS purchase were: (1) ATS Features and Functionality 87%, (2) ATS Tech Integrations 85%, (3) ATS Price/Contract Value 72%, (4) ATS User Experience 71% and, (5) ATS User Interface 46%.
  • Respondents also think that the RFP process isn’t perfect but they haven’t determined a different way, a more fair way, to compare apples to apples.  

Integrations

  • Integrations are tethered to workflow efficiency/inefficiently. Buyers love partner ecosystems and pre-integrated partners. They see sourcing & recruiting inefficiency in integrations that they have to build, wait for, or purchase. They want those integrations to work from day one.
  • Respondents to the RecruitingDaily survey also told us that they have a “must integrate” list before they talk with ATS providers. They know what technologies they’re going to continue to work with (commonly assessments) and they want that tech already integrated with the new ATS when they go live.

Workflow

  • The core problem that buyers want their ATS to solve? (1) 37% recruiting and workflow inefficiency, (2) 27% recruiting and sourcing inefficiency, (3) 22% recruiting, sourcing, and workflow inefficiency. 
  • Respondents believe that they have inefficiency somewhere in their hiring process and they think a new ATS purchase will fix those inefficiencies. 
  • Problem: there is no ATS magic bullet. We all know that process eats software for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
  • So, either we change their minds or we become more collaborative with process engineering.

CABs

  • Customer Advisory Boards are not being used strategically right now because (1) buyers are not being asked by technology vendors to serve in this way and, (2) they’re not proactively giving advice to software partners. 
  • What works for buyers about being in a CAB context? (1) they get to see functionality before the general public and (2) they feel like they influenced product design by their participation and feedback. True or not true, that’s why they felt being a CAB member was important. 

References

  • References that were in the same industry, size of the company, same title, etc were extremely important to help buyers specifically understand how a particular ATS could fit them. 
  • General references — not tied to what your company does, etc. — were only seen as valuable by 11% of respondents. 
  • The big surprise on this one (no sarcasm): 71% of the respondents said they would take their ATS to a new job. We’ve been told for years that ATS buyers are not loyal at all and we have proof that the truth is they are loyal especially to technology that they select, use for more than two years and have a comfort level with. They don’t want to learn a new system if they don’t have to. 
  • Maybe it isn’t loyalty; maybe it is more about hating change. 

Now let’s talk more

We’d love to keep going with this discussion. The ATS is, for better or worse, the backbone of most recruiting teams’ tech stacks. If that part isn’t working for your business model or your team, changing technologies is of paramount importance. There’s clearly a lot of shifting in the ATS world, especially as new-age vendors have come online with simpler solutions that have an eye towards candidate experience. Keep letting us know what you’re seeing on the ATS market and how itchy the trigger-fingers of TA leaders at different jobs you end up in are. Are they switching constantly? Why? And where are the headaches? We always love to know what’s up at the practitioner level so we can inform the buyer level and keep these conversations, and product launches, humming along for everyone. 

To a better, more integrated future in TA Tech and did I mention AI? *William coughs whilst saying bullshit*

Guess What?  We’re bringing in experts to discuss our findings and dive even deeper in real-time.

REGISTER HERE:

 

***This eight-part series (and survey) was partially underwritten by Greenhouse. 

This was NOT Surprising: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS – References.

Need To Know Series: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS

 

Part 7: ATS References

Maybe the single craziest statistic we got doing this ATS survey came in the references area. But before we get to the crazy-ish, let’s do something a little more basic.

This part was not surprising

“Like me” references were gold. That means getting references from companies in the same industry, have the relatively same number of employees, and from a person with a vaguely similar title? That’s everything on the vendor side when trying to sell. Get examples, case studies, and references in front of TA leaders that make them comfortable — that are “like them” in industry, vertical, size, and title. General references? References that come from different industries or company sizes or titles? Yeah. Those were not valued at all. Only 11% of our respondents saw any value in generalized references, and we’ll be honest — one of those respondents was the same person who answered “Dunno” to a couple of specific ATS-usage questions, so we largely threw that data line out.

OK, here’s the surprising part – maybe

The industry has said for years — maybe even decades — that no one is loyal to an ATS. No one takes it with them from job to job, in other words. But across the 100 or so TA leaders we spoke with, that was not true. Rather, 71% of respondents would take it with them to a new job. We dug a little deeper on this and found the sweet spot to be:

  • They selected the technology at Job 1.
  • They’ve used it for more than two years at Job 1.
  • They have a comfort level with it now.

If you hit those three targets, there’s a good chance they will try to bring it to, or argue for it at, Job 2. 

This finding aligns with what Greenhouse is seeing. According to Jon Stross, co-founder and President of Greenhouse, “a huge percentage of our new customers come from companies where a key person used our product previously. Happy customers are the bedrock of every successful SaaS business. I’m not sure why the HR Tech market hasn’t gotten that memo until now!”

The research debunks the idea that there’s no multi-job connection or job-hopping context to ATS. If there’s a bond between ATS and TA leader (they themselves selected the software) and there’s also familiarity, that ATS can continue into Job 2. 

Here it’s worth bringing in average TA leader tenure, which Indeed has put at about three years and NACE has put at about 2.5. Anecdotally, those seem about right. So let’s say someone comes in and drives an ATS purchase/switch, maybe from their last job. They last about 2.5-3 years at this job, still have comfort with that ATS, and take it with them again. So, if you’re an execution-level practitioner (i.e. a recruiter, or a cog in the TA wheel), you have two ways this can break out for you:

  • Follow around that senior TA leader to different jobs, and probably you’ll use the same ATS for a decade or so.
  • Stick at one job as different TA leaders rotate in and get to know the entire ATS landscape in about five-10 years.
  • {Audible} Quit your job and sail around the South Pacific. {This option requires financial means we haven’t yet discussed.}

No honor and loyalty among thieves? Turns out there just might be. 

Next up: We wrap everything up.

***This eight-part series (and survey) was partially underwritten by Greenhouse.

Seekout’s latest update: free tool into great tool!

SeekOut.io

 

Seekout’s latest update turns a decent free tool into a great one!

 

 

Today we are going to talk about an update to Seekout’s free Chrome extension, Seekout Sourcing Assistant. We love Seekout, and their Chrome extension was decent before, but not great. Well, now it’s great! 

Seekout Sourcing Assistant has a few different features that can help you save time while sourcing. Install it for free and you get access to 10 emails/social profiles per month. If you want more, they offer either credits or a monthly subscription.

So let’s get to it!

First, on a LinkedIn or GitHub page, it will pull all the data it can find off a potential candidate’s profile, including emails and phone numbers, profile links, education, everything you need. It’s all packaged up in a nice little layout that’s easy to read. Awesome! Seekout also plans to add data from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms very soon as well.

Another great feature is how the tool works on an X-Ray search. Pop open Google (or whatever search engine floats your boat) and run a search. Seekout Sourcing Assistant will aggregate all relevant candidate information into a handy box within your search results, so you can decide whether or not they meet your criteria before going to their page.

All in all, this is a fantastic update. It will grab and organize all the data you need, ready to export. We love tools that help us save time, and this will definitely do that!

~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

Need 2 Know Series – Purchasing an Enterprise ATS – CABs

Need To Know Series: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS

 

 

Part 6: ATS Customer Advisory Boards

Customer Advisory Boards (CABs) are essentially partnerships between recruiting/HR Tech vendors and practitioners. In an ideal CAB relationship, the vendor would have a slate of new features to showcase, a list of questions about how the recruiters and TA leaders tend to use the software, questions about operations and process, questions about business relevance, and more. The two sides would come together and aim for a better, practitioner-focused end product. Now, because every organization is different and approaches recruiting differently, no one product is going to be one size fits all for every company under the sun. Amazon, which hires tens of thousands of people per year, needs a different end solution than a company in Leavenworth, Kansas that might make three hires this year. But, the essence of the CAB idea is that vendors and end-users get on the same page about what’s happening.

Problem is, per our research in late 2019, that’s not happening. The two biggest reasons/foibles?

  • Vendors don’t ask their end-users to serve in this capacity.
  • Practitioners and recruiting teams are not proactive about offering advice and feedback on the product (except when they want to switch).

We’ve known about the power of CABs for some time, though; First Round has even done a deep dive on it.

So what’s the issue/hold-up?

As with most things, human psychology and organizational design/process play in here. On the vendor side:

  • They might not want feedback, as it could derail their current product roadmap; hence not getting feedback from end-users, while seemingly a stupid business decision, does minimize chaos internally, which is sometimes (often?) the true goal of organizations.
  • It might seem like a daunting process to prepare for these in-depth discussions.
  • They might be worried about presenting features that are not fully baked, i.e. could these current customers lose faith/trust in us?

On the practitioner side:

  • They often don’t know they can give input or feedback.
  • They are not aware of the channels where they could. 
  • There’s a “diffusion of responsibility” where it’s assumed only the TA leader should have direct contact with the vendor.
  • They are too busy actually using the ATS day-to-day and trying to get it to do what they want it to do.

 

These are some of the issues that hamstring the development of the CAB. But where do the benefits lie?

The inherent CAB benefits

The vendor side is easy to understand, hopefully. They would get real-time info about their solution from people that use it all week. They’d understand better how people use it — maybe not in the ways that the vendor product managers think they do — and this knowledge can inform future iterations. Basically, they get a better product from having real conversations with end-users, and they strengthen their relationship, which can lead to reduced switching. Think about it: if a vendor is saying “Hey, let me show you some stuff we’re working on and let me value your feedback too,” is that someone you want to change away from when the contract is up?

Now, when we talked with TA practitioners about CABs as part of this survey, here’s what they liked when they have participated in a CAB:

  • They get to see functionalities before the general public (and before their rivals).
  • They felt they were influencing product design at some small level.

Again, trust, relationships, loyalty, partnerships, and better products. We can dream big, can’t we?

What’s the vendor’s perspective?

Sitting on the vendor side offers a different view on the subject of CABs. 

Jon Stross, co-founder and President of Greenhouse, said, “When evaluating the relationship you’ll have with a vendor’s product team, I’d recommend looking out for 3 things:

  1. Transparency – is it clear what’s on the roadmap? Is it clear what’s been shipped?
  2. Velocity – Is innovation still happening? Or, is new product development dead?
  3. Input – How can you as a customer have input into the roadmap?

While a Customer Advisory Board is a great tactic, they tend to be pretty small, only reaching a tiny percentage of the user base. At Greenhouse, we go deep with a small selection of companies, but our CAB is merely one channel of how we listen and communicate with our customer base.

We also have a robust learning process that includes listening to customer requests coming into Customer Support, in-person usability testing, strategic customer roadmap reviews, deep usage analysis, ongoing surveys and robust communication strategy including release notes, webinars, and more. So, while the overall topic of understanding how you’ll interact with your vendor is really important, I would caution on focusing on CAB too much.“

Could we get to more CABs?

Sure, although it does require a shift in thinking by vendors — and they can’t worry about “Oh, a rival may get access to our next roadmap!” or anything of that ilk. The problem is, that’s precisely how many people think about work and product development, so this is admittedly an uphill battle. 

The good news about TA and HR Tech, in general, is that it’s highly-driven by roadshows, trade shows, and in-person events. As a result of that, there’s a lot of potential for informal CABs to occur in Vegas, Orlando, Austin, and all points in between. Vendors want to sell and they want to buy fancy dog food; we get it. But vendors need to embrace that conversations and feedback will ultimately help them sell more and more, and buy fancier and fancier pet kibble. 

Work is built on trust and relationships, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. CABs are a more formal extension of that process. Let’s keep moving towards it in our space, as it should be a rising tide to lift all of our ships.  

Check out what we learned about the influence of references in ATS buying process.

 

***This eight-part series (and survey) was partially underwritten by Greenhouse. 

Need 2 Know Series – Purchasing an Enterprise ATS – Workflow

Need To Know Series: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS

 

Part 5: ATS Workflow

This article will look at ATS workflow concerns, and we’re going to start with a little tightrope walk. When we surveyed TA leaders on “What problems do you want your new ATS to solve?” here’s what we got back:

  • Recruiting and workflow inefficiency (37%).
  • Recruiting and sourcing inefficiency (27%).
  • Recruiting, sourcing, and workflow inefficiency (22%).

Clearly, there’s a belief here that some magical, mystical ineffectiveness or inefficiency lurks within your present ATS, and a switch can heal it, shaman-style. This is largely the result of the belief that “tech saves us” and “software is eating the world,” perpetuated by the sales bro level of some ATS vendors and other SaaS solutions.

In reality, we know from experience that process often beats software soundly. If you put process and software in a bar fight, the software would have a hard time walking out of Finnegan’s. If your process is a train wreck — and, unfortunately, many hiring processes still are — then having a new piece of software will not fix those issues. 

A better way to consider tech and software

Software — and tech in general — is a force multiplier. In recruiting, it works really well as a way to reduce task work for top-of-funnel hiring activities, i.e. screening and sourcing and even interview scheduling. If you save your human recruiting force time on those things, which tend to consume 6-7 of every 10 minutes across their week, then ideally what you get back is:

  • More strategy.
  • Skills gap analysis.
  • Long-term workforce planning.
  • Better relationships with hiring managers.
  • More proactive recruiting.

All these bullets are valuable, but the last one is super valuable. We actually met a recruiter in Tampa once at a trade show. She almost never filled an open requisition for her company. Rather, she had built a proactive pipeline by taking the best tech talent in the Tampa area out to lunch, out to coffee, out to happy hour, etc. When they were ready to jump, they called her. She went to her silo heads and hiring managers and got them in the door. She had brought in some of the most impactful people in the company, but she wasn’t on the recruiter hamster wheel trying to fill new openings constantly.

And why? How did she use tech? She used tech to save time on a lot of her tasks so that she could go to those lunches and coffees and happy hours. And in the end, her having more time — which tech provided for! — got the company some true A-Players and made them a bunch of money. 

Software should free you from BS (often necessary BS) without creating more BS. That’s what it does well, especially with large volumes of data. It cannot fix your recruiting process, because …

Yes, why can’t software fix process?

The recruitment process is often human-designed, and with it comes a lot of title flexing, assumptions, politics, backstories, etc. People want to protect their perch in jobs; it’s an increasingly uncertain career time for many. Many processes end up designed from this place of fear, not from “this would logically be good for the business.” When you buy an ATS, unless you wipe clean the entire emotional slate of your pre-existing human workforce, the ATS can not change or adjust or “fix” the current processes you have. Those are rooted in humans wanting to feel a certain way about their connection to this company. Software will not fix it, and hastily-introduced, low-context “hey we bought this new thing” software might make it worse.

Jon Stross, co-founder, and President of Greenhouse had much to say about this topic! 

“The core question here that companies have to answer when evaluating a new ATS is,‘What’s your ambition for what you are you are trying to do in hiring?’

If you merely want a nice online job application and some knock-out questions, that’s a totally different thing than if you’re trying to upgrade your whole function, change how people collaborate, collect better data and systematically reduce bias.

While, of course, none of those great things happen magically the moment you plug in a new system, they are awfully hard to accomplish outside of technology.

What we see consistently is companies who are making a commitment to improve their recruiting function by instituting structured interviewing and are using technology to help make that change. To your point, it’s not easy and it doesn’t always work immediately. But, the alternative of instituting that sort of process change without a supporting system seems near impossible.

My recommendation to ATS buyers would be to truly understand what you’re trying to accomplish and find a system that will enable it. And, of course, don’t kid yourself that the tool will do all the heavy lifting of organizational behavior change for you.”

So what now?

Well, you should not believe that a new ATS is somehow a magic bullet, although many of our TA leaders did seem to believe that, at least at a low level. We have two options right now:

  • Change our minds about what software is and does (hard, but see above).
  • Become more collaborative about process engineering (also challenging).

As we mentioned in a previous piece, many of our respondents had their current ATS less than 1 year, or 1-2 years. There’s a lot of switching going on in the space. That’s why we did this series to begin with. And what’s driving a lot of that switching is this “magic bullet” belief, which unfortunately isn’t true. If your processes and workflows suck, the new software will not change them — and remember when we said software is a force multiplier? It might actually exacerbate your pre-existing problems. 

Now, in the next article, we’re going to discuss CABs or Customer Advisory Boards. That’s a forum in which vendors and practitioners work closely on the issues in the space. Right now, CABs are not being used too well in the TA world, but there’s some hope there that could get us to products with simplified workflows that might help to alter some of your internal BS around process — although, as always, there’s that pesky business of trying to get 10, 50, 500, or 1,000 human beings on the same page about a work process.

***This eight-part series (and survey) was partially underwritten by Greenhouse.

Need 2 Know Series – Purchasing an Enterprise ATS – Integrations

 

Need To Know Series: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS

 

Part 4: ATS Integrations

In our survey and discussions with TA leaders across multiple industries, we asked one question phrased up as “How important is integration with current talent acquisition process to the ATS vendor selection?” Every single respondent said either “Very Important” or “Critical.” It’s a big deal.

It’s a big deal because they tend to view it as an efficiency issue. There are broadly four categories that integrations can fall into:

  • It’s already there.
  • You need to build that.
  • We, the vendor, shall build it — but you need to wait for it.
  • You can buy it from us. 

The first bullet is gold. That means everyone can hit the ground running on Day 1. The other bullets are less and less gold. It creates sourcing and recruiting inefficiency. Everything seems to lag. No one is ultimately happy. 

The majority of our respondents were big fans of partner ecosystems and pre-existing integrations. Basic example: you want to bring on Ideal, which is AI-driven top-of-funnel work? Awesome. Well, if you have iCIMS as an ATS, that’s a pre-existing integration. That’s Day 1 territory. No waiting around. 

The must-integrate list

The majority of respondents to our survey had a “must-integrate” list for when they deal with vendors. Some of the big names (and categories of software) that popped there:

  • LinkedIn and LinkedIn Recruiter.
  • Job boards, i.e. Indeed.
  • DocuSign.
  • HelloSign.
  • ADP.
  • Workday (I know, I know).
  • Namely.
  • BambooHR.
  • Oracle.
  • Background assessments.
  • Pre-hire assessments.
  • Payroll.
  • Taleo Enterprise
  • BrassRing.
  • Training.

We got one response of “Not sure,” which was concerning.

We also got this: “The goal would be to have one system where everyone’s needs are met. Payroll, Benefits, Compensation, TA and Onboarding. We have yet to see that happen with any provider.”

That’s the major issue in the ATS integration space. Companies would often love for all these various needs to “talk” to each other, but that’s held up by the tech, the vendors making the tech, and internal politics of your company, i.e. different silos and groups needing to “own” things in their own way for increased relevance and control. None of these problems are likely to fully resolve in the next few years, so the best hope is to find solutions that speak to each other and get you as close to the total package as you need. 

Make your list

The smartest thing you can do to start is to make your “must” list. Think in terms of these broad categories:

  • Payroll.
  • Benefits.
  • Onboarding.
  • Sourcing platforms.
  • Assessments.
  • Training.
  • Background checks.

“Once you’ve filled in your ‘must-have’ list, start thinking about where your business (and the industry) is heading to see what additional tools you might need to connect. Your ATS’s integration ecosystem should span the gamut and allow you to craft your ideal TA technology stack, especially as your business grows and your needs change. When evaluating ATS partners, take a moment to understand their approach to pre-built integrations and unique partnerships, so you have access to everything you will need,” says Dane Hurtubise, Greenhouse’s VP of Platform & Partnerships.

But according to Hurtubise, there’s more. “Here’s a trick: Ask your existing vendors if they have opinions. While every ATS vendor will tell you they have lots of integrations and not to worry, your existing vendors can give you a more unvarnished look at which integrations are really good, which ATS vendors are good to work with, and how their customers generally feel about the various ATSs. Of course, some of your vendors will have a conflict (hi Workday!) but most HR Tech vendors love a good gossip sesh.”

What system is currently helping with each? Write those down. Now, within the RFP process, list those and list how your organization is using them. Try to get to 70-80% integration with your existing software and platforms. If there’s something that a preferred vendor doesn’t integrate with, could you maybe switch to something else for that area without disrupting workflow? (We know that means multiple switches — ATS and something else — in a short window of time, and that might be chaotic.) Think through all this and ask the vendor what they can do, and how quickly, and at what cost. The more systems that easily integrate, the easier your existence is day-to-day. This takes time and can feel tedious to manage at points, but if you do it right, you save a lot of issues on the back-end. 

And, in fact, the next article in this series will be about workflow, and how to make sure your ATS is maximizing your workflow. All that starts from having the right integrations in place.

***This eight-part series (and survey) was partially underwritten by Greenhouse.

Need 2 Know Series – Purchasing an Enterprise ATS – RFPs

 

Need To Know Series: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS

 

Part 3: ATS Request For Proposals

Over half of our survey respondents said they would use an RFP process in their next ATS purchase, which is broadly in line with the percentage of those in-market who use the process.

Within our survey of TA leadership across multiple industries, five key concern areas popped up:

  1. Features and functionality (87% noted this as a concern).
  2. Tech integrations (85%).
  3. Price/contract value (72%).
  4. User experience (71%).
  5. User interface (46%).

The good news from this list: talent acquisition leaders are getting a bit more “woke” as the HR Tech market evolves. Even five years ago, we’d throw money that price/contract value would be the top concern. Now companies are realizing their ATS needs to have the right features — so you can do what you want to do with it — and it needs to integrate with your entire ecosystem. In fact, around the same time we were conducting our survey, the City of San Francisco published an ATS RFP on Medium. What was one of the biggest components? A need for multiple integrations. 

When I asked Jon Stross, co-founder and President of Greenhouse about this, he commented that the most common mistake Greenhouse sees companies making is focusing too much on correcting the flaws in their current system without exploring what is even possible.

This has two downsides:

1) The ATS market has changed a lot in the last few years! If you’re merely looking to fix your 5 biggest pain points with your 15-year-old system, you’re missing out on all the innovation that’s happened. We always sigh when we see RFPs in which critical elements are missing because they didn’t even realize they could ask for them. Things like automated Candidate Satisfaction Survey, bias reduction tools and support for structured interviewing.

2) RFPs tend to be very feature-focused rather than value-focused. Think ahead to the part where you have to ask the CFO for a budget. It generally goes poorly when your evidence is a big feature matrix that is merely focused on relieving recruiter pain (CFOs don’t care!). You need to start from the beginning in the RFP on the negative business impact of your current ATS and focus on how your new system will serve as a big win w for the business.  Then line up requirements that will support this win.

So how do you write an RFP that works?

This varies by organization and needs, but broadly that’s where you start: What do you need your ATS to do? What is the end goal? Work backward from there.

PeopleFluent has outlined one logical approach, especially for companies newer to this game.

You take the requirements and turn them into questions, like so:

  • Here are some specific business problems we have, i.e. time-to-fill (time-to-hire) is too slow. How can your solution fix that?
  • Does your ATS make it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to collaborate?
  • Are there single workflows, or multiple workflows?
  • What do you offer that points to candidate experience?
  • What metrics do you deliver, and what is the reporting format?
  • How does the system manage compliance and legal issues?
  • How does the system reduce bias and enable DE&I in hiring?
  • How does your system improve candidate experience?
  • How will the system support structured interviewing?
  • How does your system support Employer Branding?
  • How will your system support required integrations, both existing and future?
  • How does your system enable us to hire more qualified candidates?

You also need to think of an ATS in terms of tiers. For example, a CHRO will have one set of needs for the system, because TA/recruiting falls under him/her. But a CHRO will not use the ATS often, and definitely not every day. Recruiters will. Then you need to think of hiring managers; they should be using the system more, but it will need to be intuitive and user-friendly. And, finally but most importantly, how will candidates perceive it? When you have a clunky, long, “Oh-there-was-an-error-back-on-Screen-6” process, you alienate your best candidates. They often just don’t finish the application.

Within the RFP process, you also usually need to dance with members of IT and members of procurement. They will also have different needs and questions. Get everyone to the table as you begin to draft the RFP. Not bringing in IT early is a death knell, often — if they don’t think they had input into the process, they’re not going to prioritize fixes and tickets for the ATS once it’s in play in your organization. That’s honestly just human nature.

As you draft the RFP, here’s what you’ll want to include:

  • Why are you sending out this RFP now?
  • What’s the timeline for vendors?
  • A little about your company (funding/revenue/projected hiring # in 2020).
  • A basic list of requirements.
  • How should the vendors answer this? (Detailed, concise, concise + links to additional resources, etc.).
  • How answers will be evaluated (usually if 70% or more of the requirements are met, but varies by industry and org).
  • Who to contact with clarifying questions (a point of contact email/phone)
  • What are your ultimate goals for a new system?
  • Within your basic list of requirements, make sure to specify which are must-haves versus nice-to-haves.

Are RFPs perfect?

To quote Royal Tenenbaums: “Good Lord, no.” And most of our survey respondents noted that. They know it’s flawed, and they know too many cooks in the RFP kitchen can mess up the ratatouille, but they haven’t figured out a better — read: more fair, compliant — way to compare apples to apples. As such, the RFP will persist, so it’s time to get your ducks in a row on it. 

Next up: a crucial component of the RFP process, namely how to deal with integrations and make sure you’re finding an ATS that can “talk to” all the other platforms and suites you use weekly.

***This eight-part series (and survey) was partially underwritten by Greenhouse. 

AI Cheat Sheet for the C-Suite

 

AI Cheat Sheet

 

 

Almost every time we talk about RPO with c-level executives, the first thing they want to know is how AI fits into the solution. True, there’s a lot to be excited about when it comes to integrating AI into the recruiting process and even the C-suite is allured by its power and potential.

But this started me thinking – how much does the C-suite (and the recruiting team) really know about how AI is being used in the talent acquisition process? Would they be able to gauge team readiness to embrace new technology? Are they willing to invest in it? And just as important, do they understand where it falls short?

Let’s hit pause and unpack some of the latest ways AI powers the recruitment process and where the human factor still reigns.

AI Helps Recruiters Get More Stuff Done

From attracting passive candidates to conducting initial interviews, AI gives recruiters plenty of opportunities to improve quality of hires while reducing time and costs.

Before we get into the specifics of how AI is being used in the recruiting process, let’s talk about the differences between “AI” and “automation” – two technologies that most of us refer to interchangeably. But, they are different. Automation follows pre-programmed rules. You can be sure that every recruiting team now uses automation to handle the more tedious parts of the hiring process like collecting candidate data and scheduling interviews. Unlike automation, AI learns from data, similar to how humans process information to influence behavior and inform decision making.

As you will see below, automated processes can be informed and continuously improved through the use of AI, making automated workflow tasks even more intelligent and effective.  Here’s how:

 

  • Candidate sourcing and attraction: Many recruiters now use AI to create more targeted talented pipelines. AI further automates sourcing, collecting online data from social profiles and resumes posted on job sites. AI analyzes language patterns to refine search criteria not only for obvious things like job titles, experience and hard skills but also for subtleties such as personal preferences and interests. Recruiters tap AI to write better job descriptions, replacing those dull, unexciting ones with language more relevant to targeted audiences.

 

Well-managed Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) can also use AI to improve attraction models for both active and passive candidates. For example, an ATS can be used to uncover past candidates who may not be actively searching. Even candidates classified as “inactive” or “off the market” will be quickly recognized by the AI system as it searches the entire candidate database -regardless of status – to provide the best matches.  Oftentimes, those best matches are ‘underemployed’ individuals who become active again once contacted with the right opportunity.

 

  • Candidate engagement: Much more than conversational chatbots that greet you when you land on a website, AI helps nurture candidate relationships with more intelligent automated updates, real-time feedback and quick assessments that can attract a candidate to apply. You can also use AI to create alert systems based upon candidate-generated parameters such as “alert me if the following job description conditions are met.”

 

Bots, too, play a role in quickly moving candidates through the screening and assessment process, advancing them through information gathering and adding them to a queue for recruiter review. If questions arise during an automated chat, bots can direct candidates to FAQs or provide contact information for the best person with whom to follow-up.

 

  • Selection and hiring process: Use AI to inform and automate time-consuming process tasks such as scheduling interviews, assessment tests, background checks, drug testing and follow-up on previously sent materials. Bots can proactively send availability slots to the Hiring Manager for both phone and face-to-face interviews.

 

Some recruiting teams are even using AI to make contact and conduct initial interviews to assess for shortfalls and experience relevance.  Using AI in this part of the process – particularly with your most highly qualified candidates or passive candidates who you brought into the process – can prevent disengagement from candidates when the time to the first interview seems to drag on.

 

  • Onboarding: Automated tools can help keep busy talent management teams in contact with recent hires by providing FAQs or other data to help ensure these new employees stay engaged. Intelligent bots can alert HR or Hiring Managers to potential problem issues and facilitate key phone calls to ensure things are moving forward.

 

Keeping the Human in Human Resources

Want to know how many times I’ve been disappointed after meeting candidates in person and comparing them to the perfect picture I built based on “paper?” Too many!  Then there are times when candidates I thought were weak on paper turn out to be completely the opposite after an in-person meeting. It still happens, AI or not.

AI is proving its merit throughout the recruiting process, but it cannot replace the intuition, insight and experience of practiced recruiters.  Simply put, AI still falls short when it comes to getting a read on key soft skills, body language, communication habits, preferences, and leadership styles.  AI is also not particularly useful when it comes to exploring alternative roles with a candidate, coaching a candidate on things to consider, or trying to figure out why a strong candidate did not return a call.

Bottom line: It still takes us humans to connect the dots and add it all up.

Is Your Organization Ready to Reap the Benefits?

We should all be excited about the value of AI.  But, as with any new technology, look before you leap. Make sure you can answer the big questions: Are you clear on the business goals you want to achieve with AI? Are you dipping a toe or jumping all in? Do you have the right expertise on board to manage the tools? Is the team excited and welcoming to the idea of learning how to use data? And last, but definitely not least, are all the stakeholders aligned on the commitment? Budget is always a top priority and AI success requires a willingness to risk hard-won revenue dollars on newer technologies that have yet to demonstrate tangible and repeatable benefits over the long term.

Once you have the answers, forge ahead. Willing and clever recruiters will find many ways to use AI to increase their productivity and provide powerful results to their Hiring Managers and customers.

 

Need 2 Know Series – Purchasing an Enterprise ATS – Switching

Need To Know Series: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS

 

Part 2: ATS Switching

When we conducted surveys and conversations with talent acquisition leaders across a variety of industries, one of the questions was “How long have you had your current ATS vendor?” Far and away — over 75 percent — of the respondents said “Less than three years,” with a sizable chunk of that crew saying “Less than 1 year.” Many of those TA leaders were from 500+ employee companies. They had an ATS prior to the current vendor. While we knew this anecdotally before, the stark reality is that switching is happening — and it’s happening faster than some people (on the vendor side and the internal TA side) might realize. 

Why all the switching?

There are dozens of reasons why decision-makers switch Applicant Tracking Systems. Above all of them is probably “The tech was sold as doing one thing, but doesn’t seem to actually do it,” and/or the processes are time-consuming and taking away from truly strategic talent acquisition. Lever, a well-respected ATS in its own right, has pointed this out too: Oftentimes, companies end up drowning in resumes and want to do more proactive sourcing, but that requires insane (and inane) data entry to get done. 

Also:

  • Long time to hire: This conveys that something is working (see the next bullet too). There’s a jam-up in the process somewhere. It could be internal communication or it could be that the system is clunky and the internal team can’t use it in a streamlined way. Empty headcount, i.e. “empty seats,” is typically viewed as a draining cost. Middle managers and higher want to see it filled relatively quickly. If the perception becomes the ATS is slowing down the process, the ATS will be switched.
  • It becomes shelfware: Basically, your hiring managers and recruiters don’t use it anymore and are creating workarounds or subverting the problems they see in some way. The process is probably out the window, cats and dogs are living together, and the whole thing is chaos. But if you’re paying for something and the teams supposed to use it ain’t using it, well, time to switch.
  • Outdated: Think of your hiring process in the same way that the marketing and sales team think of their funnels. That’s not a perfect analogy by any means — and the debate about whether recruiting is similar to marketing has raged since the mid-1990s, if not before — but generally speaking, CRMs are better pieces of tech than ATS’ are. So if you go with a more modern ATS option, you get something that can focus more on the experience of the candidate. A-Players don’t like to be jerked around in hiring processes; they won’t come to you because of someone else — maybe a rival! — isn’t jerking them around. So if your ATS is a 27-screen process and there’s a chance to do a simple resume attachment and knock out questions, it might be time to switch.
  • Size of company: As companies grow, there’s often an internal perception that they’ve outgrown their original ATS, which they perhaps bought because it had a big slice of the SMB or mid-market. This can often be right but can be a dangerous assumption too. A lot of times, what’s actually happening is that certain features exist but they’re not turned on yet — and if there were more training being done, your current ATS might be the right ATS for you, even with 200 new employees since last year. Headcount is certainly a driver, but be careful that you’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Sometimes it’s just a learning issue. A few of our respondents were 1,000+ employee companies and had used their ATS for five+ years. (It was a lower number than those who were switching every three years or less, admittedly.)
  • Types of hire: If you hire more for hourly positions in certain parts of the year (seasonal), or if you switch strategy to more 1099/hourly or (conversely) more entry-level, mid-level W-2 employees, the perception can be “Oh, because of the staffing strategy switch, our ATS is now outdated.” Same as above: often true, but sometimes just a training issue. When you switch staffing strategy, one of the issues is integrations — say, payroll or training for the newer type of employee. A lot of ATS have scaled up integrations in recent years and have a pretty robust suite. It’s a question of asking what’s available in the context of your new approach, and then getting trained on it.

Jon Stross, co-founder and President of Greenhouse added this perspective, synthesizing several of my previous points: 

“Another common reason we see companies give for switching is that the reporting in their current tool isn’t sufficient. he reporting in my   When you scratch under the surface, it’s indicative of a deeper problem. Typically, the product is hard to use and teams have built ‘side processes in spreadsheets,’ meaning the data in the tool isn’t accurate. Meaning their reports become useless. Operating in the dark like this works… right up until when it doesn’t. Maybe the CEO starts asking questions or TA isn’t keeping up with the hiring plan. Suddenly, the lack of data becomes the stated reason for switching. But the real, and sometimes unspoken, the impetus is the underlying rot of offline processes.”

Those are some of the reasons for switching. In a specific company, obviously, there might be others. One of the big ones you’ll see is “the decision-maker who bought this software just left.” That usually creates a switch.

So what should you focus on in terms of switching?

In our next article, we’re going to talk more about the RFP process, but here’s a sneak peek — in our surveys/conversations, the majority of respondents said they’d use an RFP the next time they switch ATS. Their main concerns to address were: Features/Functionality; Integrations; Price/Contract Value; User Experience; and User Interface. We were a little surprised “price/contract” fell to No. 3 on that list, but we’ll explore more in the next article about RFPs. For now, figure out whether the need to switch is a product limitation or a learning/knowledge limitation. Switching is good but can be painful. Switch for the right reason.

 

***This eight-part series (and survey) was partially underwritten by Greenhouse. 

Need 2 Know Series: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS, Introduction

Need To Know Series: Purchasing an Enterprise ATS

 

Somewhere north of 90% of the Fortune 500 uses an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Makes logical sense, of course: at that type of scale and hiring needs, having a centralized system to organize everything — and, more importantly, stay compliant — is huge. But if you’ve danced the #HRTech dance for even a year, or ever been a job-seeker, you know the picture around ATS is never completely rosy. (Hell, it’s usually not even halfway rosy.) We’ve all encountered the thought leadership on X-amount of reasons you need an ATS, but we’ve also encountered the reality of having one: 

  • They’re often clunky.
  • They’re hard to customize.
  • They don’t seem to do what you want (or when you need it). 
  • It pisses off candidates.
  • It pisses off your internal IT. 
  • You get pissed and want to switch.
  • You’re afraid of landing in the same pile of manure, so you either act quickly or go to analysis paralysis. 
  • Rinse and repeat.

Most candidates hate ATS. The common joke you’ll see from job-seekers online is the whole “Why did I upload a resume and then have to input all that data across 27 screens?” joke, usually with a cat throwing a laptop across the room or something. Those are memes and meant to be funny, but they’re not lies. Many ATS move you away from candidate experience, and many might actually have a negative impact on your overall brand.

Even though we’ve been in these loops for years, we find ourselves constantly talking about the best ways to buy HR technology. This time, we wanted to apply some data and share our discussions with real ATS-purchasers and decision-makers into everything. Let’s walk through what we did and how we’re going to roll it out to you.

What we did

We partnered with Greenhouse to sponsor the research. We realize the value of this study would benefit everyone, and we needed a partner who would support that approach. As Jon Stross, co-founder and President of Greenhouse put it, “we see a lot of people embark on the journey of replacing their ATS with similar challenges. They also end up making the same mistakes. We’re behind any effort to help demystify the process. But also, we obey the first rule of dealing with HR Tech influencers never pass up a chance to provoke Tincup!”

We surveyed (and had subsequent discussions with) roughly 100 talent acquisition leaders from a variety of industries, including genetic testing, banking, pro sports, Big Tech, e-commerce, direct-to-consumer sales, and more. 

In those discussions, once we got their basic demographic data, decision-making authority, title, etc., we asked them about the ATS purchasing process through these lenses:

  • Who gets involved in the demo?
  • Who gets involved in buying?
  • How soon do you discuss contract terms?
  • The role of software training and when that comes up.
  • The various integrations you need, from “must-have” to “nice to have”
  • Who do you have brand recognition of in the space as the process begins?
  • Is headcount a factor?
  • How often do you switch ATS?
  • How many vendors do you bring into the process, usually?
  • How early (if ever) do you discuss implementation?

That’s a snapshot. We asked a bunch of questions on top of this, then did follow-ups. 

We took the information, cross-tabbed it, broke it down, and decided to turn it into an eight-article series. You are currently reading (hi!) the first article, which is just an introduction to what the hell we’re doing here. 

What happens next

There will be six articles focused on a specific aspect of the ATS purchasing cycle, those being:

  • Switching.
  • RFP Process.
  • Integrations.
  • Workflow.
  • Customer Advisory Boards (CAB).
  • References.

So we’ll roll out those six, and then the 8th and final article will put a bow on everything, link back to the others, and draw some conclusions. If you are considering jumping ATS in 2020, looking at the final article and relevant article sections from the six above would be a great start.

Happy to have you on board. Let’s get going, and try to make your ATS reviews more valuable going forward.  And speaking of going forward, find check out what we learned about Switching an ATS here.  

 

Editor’s Note:***This eight-part series (and survey) was partially underwritten by Greenhouse. 

How to Build a Powerful Recruiting Tool Stack on a Budget

If you’re running a small to mid-sized business, building, tracking, and managing an effective recruitment stack on a budget can be challenging. Especially when you’re competing with organizations with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of recruiting spend.

However, that shouldn’t keep you from developing a great recruitment stack. Today, you can put together an incredibly effective recruitment technology stack without shelling out a small fortune every month on expensive software, in-house resources, and change management. If you use the right mix of solutions, you can develop a recruiting stack that meets your needs and addresses major recruiting challenges as you head into the new year.

In this article, we look at:

  • What is a recruiting stack
  • What does an ideal recruiting stack look like
  • Which tools should you consider deploying
  • Building a recruiting stack on a budget

So, let’s look at how you can use the most basic, inexpensive or even free recruiting tools to compete for talent with organizations using much more sophisticated software.

What is a Recruitment Technology Stack?

A recruiting stack is a bundle of technologies that recruiters use to find, attract, and hire talent. A recruiting stack will help you improve the business impact of your recruitment activities and allow you to connect and hire more qualified candidates. By using the best recruitment solutions out there you can hope to outperform your competitors in the war for talent.

What Does an Ideal Recruiting Stack Look Like?

An effective recruitment technology stack covers the entire candidate journey from awareness to onboarding. By creating a technology strategy that covers every candidate touchpoint in the journey, you can improve your candidate experience and significantly increase conversions.

An end-to-end recruiting technology stack for an SMB typically includes one or more tools for each stage of the recruitment process:

  • Recruitment Marketing and Employer Branding
  • Talent Sourcing
  • Candidate Screening
  • Interview Scheduling and Management
  • Employee Onboarding

While an operational website and active social media handles are pre-requisites to deploying most of these solutions, additionally, you might also want to create a Glassdoor profile for your company to help potential job seekers learn more about your culture and employee experience.

Image of a full recruiting stack for SMBs
Figure 1: A comprehensive recruiting technology stack for SMBs

Recruitment Marketing Tools

Recruitment marketing plays an integral role for small businesses looking to attract top talent. While some would argue that your employer brand and reputation grow organically, technology can certainly do a lot of heavy lifting for you. Providing a better candidate experience and driving visibility through content marketing and social media are just a few ways in which recruitment marketing tools help you position yourself as an employer of choice. Here are a few budget-friendly tools that can help you boost your recruitment marketing efforts and draw the best talent to your company:

  1. AgoraPulse: A social media marketing solution, AgoraPulse offers recruiters a rich array of features to build social engagement, improve branding, and benchmark against competitors. It can be used across all major social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Additionally, its social listening capabilities and InboxZero enable you to respond to candidates and prospects proactively at scale. It is the one-stop -hop for all your social recruiting strategies. It also offers a 28-day free trial for users who want to take it for a spin before zeroing in on a subscription plan.
  2. Zoho Recruit: The first comprehensive recruitment solution in our list, Zoho recruit features multiple capabilities including a dedicated CRM, career pages, automated job postings across popular job boards, customized email and SMS templates, and social media job postings. Zoho is one of the most affordable solutions in the market, with subscriptions starting at $25/user/month.
  3. Freshworks: Freshteam by Freshworks is another end-to-end recruitment platform that offers cost-effective recruitment tools for SMBs. Built around a traditional ATS, Freshteam allows recruiters to create and post jobs, manage all communication in one place, build career sites, and connect to multiple sourcing channels. Like Zoho, Freshteam covers the entire spectrum of recruitment workflows to help businesses hire better. What’s more? Freshteam has some of the most competitive subscription options out there with the Sprout package offered free for businesses with up to 50 employees. For a free plan, Freshteam punches way above its weight, making it one of the must-have solutions for SMBs on a shoestring budget.
  4. GoHire: GoHire is yet another excellent product for SMBs looking to get the most bang out their buck when it comes to recruiting. GoHire features advanced employer branding tools such as career pages, job postings, application forms, along with core recruitment modules like ATS, interview management, and talent assessment tools. With special plans for early-stage startups and SMBs, GoHire is very competitively priced with plans starting from $40/month.
  5. Breezy: Breezy has emerged as one of the preferred recruitment automation solutions for SMBs for its feature richness and advanced recruitment marketing capabilities. Breezy offers candidate management with pipeline creation, automated job posting across leading job boards, candidate communication suite, and careers sites. It also provides a module for candidate sourcing as well. What makes a great option for SMBs? It offers a free subscription plan that includes a host of features that are typically billed as premium by many recruiting software companies. Paid plans start from $149/month, which include advanced features like mobile apps, task management, video assessments and more.
  6. CareerBuilder: A long time player in the recruitment marketplace, Careerbuilder offers a comprehensive recruitment solution that includes modules for recruitment advertising, candidate sourcing and job matching. Best known for its resume database, Careerbuilder also sports some of the best recruitment marketing features as well. From job posting across niche job sites to social referrals, Careerbuilder is a great tool for SMBs looking to land qualified talent quickly.
  7. TalentLyft: Geared for SMBs looking to attract talent through content marketing, TalentLyft’s recruitment marketing solution offers career sites, talent networks, career events, and careers blogs. With subscriptions starting at $49/month, TalentLyft is one of the most compelling best-of-breed recruitment solutions out there.

Candidate Sourcing Tools

As the war for talent rages, candidate sourcing has become one of the most important recruitment activities. Sourcing opens up new talent pools you had no access to before and enables you to reach out to not only active candidates but also passive talent who otherwise wouldn’t apply because they aren’t aware of your company or job vacancies. Let’s look at some of the most cost-effective sourcing tools at your disposal today:

  1. HiringSolved: HiringSolved is a talent discovery platform that uses AI to automate candidate matching. The solution offers numerous integrations with ATS, CRM, and HCM systems to help recruiters streamline their candidate sourcing strategies. Its powerful search engine scrapes information from social media to provide recruiters with an accurate database of eligible candidates based on skills, talent, experience, education and so forth.
  2. Monster: TalentBin by Monster is another database that gathers candidate information from across the web for hard-to-fill positions. TalentBin also automates recruiting workflows to stream your processes and tracks candidate engagement with your jobs. While typically suited for high-volume hiring, TalentBin subscription starts at $249/month which makes it appealing for organizations with 50 – 100 employees.
  3. LinkedIn: With more than half a billion members, LinkedIn is easily the largest talent repository available to recruiters. LinkedIn offers two distinct pathways for recruiters to connect with talent – organically (you add them to your network) or by using the Recruiter feature that unlocks multiple tools to help recruiters reach candidates not within their network.
  4. Hiretual: Hiretual is an AI sourcing platform that uses context-based data to help recruiters find the perfect candidate. It offers easy integrations with most ATS and CRM systems which helps you consolidate all data in a single place. Pulling in data from over 30 social platforms such as Angel List, Indeed, GitHub, Stack Overflow, and others, Hiretual offers one of the most extensive candidate databases. It offers a free chrome extension that allows recruiters to look up 10 contacts per week. Paid subscription starts from $89/month.
  5. Pipl: Easily one of the largest identity directories online, Pipl helps recruiters find and verify candidates’ contact information for further outreach. Pipl charges a per-match fee starting at $0.10 and going up to $0.40. It is an ideal tool for recruiters looking to fill the gaps in their candidate database.
  6. Indeed: The most popular job sites in the US, Indeed, has one of the largest candidate databases to help you source the right talent. Sponsored job postings on Indeed start at $5 a day and you have the option to create a budget that meets your requirements. You can also post free jobs on Indeed, making it a powerful sourcing tool for businesses of all sizes.

Talent Assessment Tools

Pre-employment testing and resume screening are time-consuming processes and cause major bottlenecks in hiring. Talent assessment tools and testing software have evolved over the past few years to automate screening and help recruiters choose the right candidates for open positions. However, as technology and skills become more specialized, you might need solutions that cater to specialist positions like a software developer or data architect. Here are a few screening pre-employment testing solutions that can help you asses candidates more efficiently:

  1. HackerRank: Designed for recruiters in the technology industry, HackerRank is a technical skills assessment platform that can be used to create role-specific assignments conduct technical interviews. Powered by AI, HackerRank’s database is constantly optimized to help you make more informed hiring decisions. Pricing starts from $249/month which makes it a premium offering in this category. However, for SMBs operating in the software industry, it is a small price to pay for top technical talent.
  2. Criteria: As HR leaders look for competency-based approaches to recruitment, Criteria’s aptitude, personality, and skills testing solutions provide a great way to make data-informed hiring decisions. With tests designed to assess cognitive aptitude, measure behavioral traits, and evaluate job-related competencies, Criteria boasts one of the most comprehensive assessment feature lists in the market today. It caters to businesses of all sizes with unlimited tests and assessments.
  3. Berke: Similar to Criteria, Bereke is an assessment solution that measures personality and problem-solving traits that provide you with insights into your candidates’ ability to succeed at your organization. It also offers job-specific hiring profiles to help you assess candidates for unique positions at your organization.
  4. Interview Mocha: Interview Mocha is yet another assessment platform that helps you hire for technical positions. Covering a wide array of IT skills, coding languages, domain skills and more, it also features easy integrations with leading ATS and HCM systems. With subscription starting from $150/month, it is one of the most affordable technical assessment solutions in the market.
  5. Pymetrics: An AI-powered talent matching platform, Pymetrics leverages behavioral data to help recruiters find the right candidates. It provides bias-free and accurate data on your candidates to help maximize your chances of hiring high performers.
  6. ClassMarker: Classmarker is an online testing and quiz platform designed to help organizations find qualified candidates easily. Pricing starts at $39.95/month.
  7. Quodeit: Quodeit is a technical screening platform for businesses hiring programmers. It offers pre-built tests, a question library, and API integrations with major ATS solutions. It has a pay-as-you-go pricing model which is $5/candidate.
  8. Vervoe: Vervoe helps organizations hire better through its dynamic skill-testing platform that supports a large variety of question and answer types, including text, MCQs, videos, document editing and more. It gives recruiters a fair idea of how candidates will perform on-the-job tasks. Vervoe also offers job-specific and soft skills assessments that can be customized and graded automatically. Vervoe is one of the very few assessment platforms out there that has a free Pilot plan for startups and small businesses.

Interviewing Tools 

While job interviews have largely remained unchanged over the past years, the shortage of qualified candidates is compelling organizations to approach interviews in a more structured manner. Moreover, the rise of remote work and the gig economy have broken through geographical barriers when it comes to talent acquisition. Video interviewing tools and scheduling software is driving this transition where employers can conduct structured interviews with candidates who live thousands of miles away. Also, the evolution of AI and machine learning have helped employers understand candidates much better and are empowering recruiters to make data-driven hiring decisions. For SMBs looking to tap into a rich global talent pool, interviewing tools can come in handy. Here are some of the best interviewing tools you can use to hire your next great candidate:

  1. HireVue: Hireue is an on-demand interviewing platform that leverages the power of AI to automate interview assessment and predict job performance. It greatly brings down the time needed to conduct and evaluate interviews improving the performance of your recruiting process. HireVue costs between $25 to $175 per interview depending on whether you have a subscription or not.
  2. Sonru: The next video interviewing solution on our list, Sonru, helps you schedule and conduct video interviews flexibly. Based on the questions and criteria you set, candidates can respond to those questions in their own time from the comfort of their own mobile devices or desktops. Sonru also provides API frameworks for all major ATS solutions, allowing you to seamlessly embed video interviewing into your recruitment workflow. While Sonru doesn’t have a fixed price subscription model, most small businesses can expect to purchase a subscription starting at about $100/month.
  3. SparkHire: SparkHire is yet another on-demand video interview platform that makes hiring easier and faster. SparkHire offers some pretty useful customization options to employers like limiting think time and restricting maximum answer length. Additionally, its video messaging feature provides an excellent way for organizations to boost their employer brand. Plans start from $119/month for a single position to $599 for unlimited positions.
  4. Shine: The video assessment platform offers customized assessments and scheduling for organizations looking to improve their candidate experience. It also enables recruiters to hire for cultural fit with its value-based assessment software. Subscriptions plans start from $200/month.
  5. ConveyIQ: The company bills itself an intelligent candidate engagement platform and offers a host of messaging, interviewing, and scheduling features. ConveyIQ uses automated messaging to significantly improve the candidate experience and eliminate communication gaps. It also features on-demand and live interviewing capabilities, providing you with more flexibility to conduct interviews. ConveyIQ pricing ranges from $0 to $250 for the basic plan. Advanced features come at a premium.

Onboarding Tools

What does an ideal first day for a new hire look like? A ton of paperwork and a blur of meet and greets with colleagues? That doesn’t sound too productive, right? Employee onboarding has for long been a major pain point for organizations of all sizes. Today, when the workplace is becoming more employee-centric, it is crucial that you develop a structured onboarding process that helps new hires ease into their roles at your organization. Onboarding tools are key to ensure a smooth transition. Here are some budget-friendly tools that can help you deliver a delightful onboarding experience:

  1. Namely: Namely’s employee onboarding software helps you streamline the process by centralizing all information in a single place, eliminating paperwork and physical signatures, and easy benefits enrolment. While subscription costs vary by organization size, Namely typically charges $15-$30 per employee per month.
  2. Webonboarding: Webonboarding is a mobile-first employee onboarding platform that provides a paperless, hassle-free onboarding experience for new hires. Webonboarding enables new hires to understand the onboarding process and request changes to their contract even before they step into your office, making onboarding a lot faster and simpler.
  3. Eloomi: Eloomi is a comprehensive learning and onboarding solution for SMBs. It provides pre- and post-joining onboarding programs that allow employers to design customized onboarding courses or select pre-built programs, conduct compliance tests, create automated learning pathways. Pricing starts from $0.20/user/month.
  4. BambooHR: BambooHR is a comprehensive HR solution designed for SMBs with advanced onboarding capabilities. It helps you deliver a great candidate experience through its customized preboarding packages, welcome emails, IT checklists and more. Pricing for BambooHR starts from $6.19/employee/month based on total headcount.

There you have it. By using a combination of integrated suites and best-of-breed solutions, you can build a formidable recruitment technology stack for under $400/month. Depending on your industry the cost could go up if you invest in niche talent matching and assessment platforms.

So, what are you going to add to your recruiting tool stack? Let us know in the comments.

Chrome Extension Review: Use Ally for data scraping

 

Use Ally to stop manually copying and pasting from your search results!

 

It’s Tool Time! We have a brand new Chrome extension for you to check out called Ally. So brand new, it’s not even out for public use just yet! You can sign up to get early access and be added to their waitlist. This tool is really going to save you time when saving profiles and candidates from your search results.

What this tool does, it takes search results and can extract pertinent data into a format that’s easier to read, manipulate, and use. Automate, instead of manually copying and pasting data from your search results!

Just pop open the extension from a search results page, and choose the options that best fit your needs. There will be multiple choices available as suggestions for extraction, or you can customize the mapping based on what you are looking for. Within the table preview display, you can even name the columns, add/delete items, or add tags for additional mapping locations.

Save and name your customized maps for use later on! Once the data looks the way you want, you can save the lists, copy the data, or save it as a CSV file for further manipulation. It’s a great little tool, and it’s pretty easy to figure out. Use it on targeted site searches or within LinkedIn to grab names, emails and profile links!

 

~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

Talent Acquisition Movers, Shakers, & News Breakers – December 2019, Part 2

Talent Acquisition News

 

Talent Acquisition Movers, Shakers, & News Breakers – December 2019, Part 2

The last few weeks of the year provide us with the opportunity to reflect on everything that happened in the previous twelve months. In the HR and recruiting, 2019 saw tons of M&A activity, colossal funding rounds, the continued rise of artificial intelligence followed by the inevitable backlash, and low unemployment rates impacting hiring outcomes across sectors. To say it was a busy year would be an obvious understatement. And while it’s too soon to tell what 2020 has in store, we’re going to take this moment to recap the most recent highlights as well as the top stories we saw roll across the RecruitingDaily desk. 

Here’s what’s going on lately, mostly in terms of capital investments, mergers, and acquisitions:  

AI talent marketplace Gloat will close out the year with a $25 Million Series B round. Gloat intends to use the money to “further its mission of democratizing career development, unlocking skills, and enabling enterprises to build a future-proof workforce.” It will also go toward making new hires for the company’s New York and Tel Aviv offices and enhancing its technology. 

VNDLY, a “new age” contractor and vendor management system, announced $35 M in Series B, which included participation from ServiceNow amongst the traditional VC types. The funding is earmarked for the standard “product innovation, global expansion, and the continued investment in customer service and support.” The ServiceNow involvement stems from the companies’ existing integration and partnership. 

Employee experience company Limeade raised approximately $68 M through its recent IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange. Limeade chose to enter the ASX after being approached last spring, saying, “The more we looked at it, the more we found it was a perfect fit for our financing needs.” The funds will be used for product development, customer support and sales. 

Jumpstart, a recruitment platform that aims to increase diversity, finished its Series A with $8.5 M raised. The company focuses primarily on helping recruiters widen the candidate pool for early-career knowledge worker-types. Company founder and CEO Ben Herman is a former recruiter turned entrepreneur, looking to do more than simply save recruiters time in their day.   

Learning Management System Absorb Software made its third acquisition of 2019, taking on ePath Learning, a cloud-based learning technology company. This comes after the purchases of eLogic Learning in August and Torch LMS last May. Suspect, we may hear more from Absorb Software in the New Year as the company pursues an aggressive growth strategy.  

 

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2019 Monthly Headlines:

  • January 2019 kicked off with a bang, with Infor landing a $1.5 Billion investment ahead of the company’s proposed IPO to take place within 12-24 months. Almost 12 months later, no sign of the IPO just yet, but it’s safe to say that Infor set the bar high for the rest of the year. 
  • Charging into a decidedly different direction, Ultimate Software took us into February with news back in February that it was going private in an $11 B private equity deal. Given one of the investor’s relationships with Kronos, this one sparked speculation but so far, the two continue operating independently.
  • March roared in with Ceridian buying up almost all of the assets of an analytics firm named Clearview Logix, and select intellectual property rights from Paysa, an AI-powered personal career advisor. 
  • As April came to a close, industry analyst Josh Bersin introduced “The Josh Bersin Academy” to help HR practitioners invest in themselves. Course programming ranged from agile learning to well-being at work.  
  • Assessments provider Shaker International and interviewing solution Montage joined forces back in May, before re-branding as Modern Hire in late September. The two companies retained their respective teams and offices, collectively focused on re-imaging recruiting through predictive intelligence and automation.  
  • In June, the AI technology company, AllyO, completed its Series B financing round with $45 M. That brought the company’s total raised to $64 M since emerging from stealth mode in early 2018. Since then, the company continues to expand its product offering to encompass more of the overall HR experience.
  • July saw the programmatic advertising market on the move, with StepStone taking a majority stake in Appcast with TMP Worldwide acquiring Perengo and Indeed acquiring ClickIQ. Happening in quick succession, these stories indicated a growing, albeit competitive, interest in the programmatic side of recruiting. 
  • Near the end of August, recruiting software Entelo took on ConveyIQ, provider of candidate engagement SaaS solutions, in an effort to become the first company to offer end-to-end management of candidate interactions from source-to-hire.
  • In September, Human Resource Executive Magazine unveiled both the Top HR Products of the year as well as the Awesome New Technologies. The lists featured names such as iCIMS, Paycom, ADP, Talroo, DDI, and Paradox. 
  • At Workday Rising in October, the company rolled out a series of new applications, including Workday People Experience, Workday People Analytics, and Workday Credentials. These features corresponded closely with some of the biggest trends spotted throughout 2019 as a whole.  
  • Recruiting technology solutions provider, Oleeo announced its corporate privatization from the London Stock Exchange in November. The company, formerly known as WCN, made the move to “accelerate its AI technology innovations and market expansion, while also increasing its investments in customer success.” 
  • And just in time for the holidays, the productivity automation company, Zapier, published The Work Resolutions Report and found that eight hour days are no longer with the norm with the average knowledge worker spending almost ten hours a day working. On that note, we’ll be back in January. 

Got news to share with us for that next update? Contact [email protected].

Sourcing Contact Info Using Xlek Search

xlek search

 

Use Xlek as another free tool to search for contact information

 

We have another free people search tool for you to use. This site is called Xlek, formerly known as Cubib. Xlek allows you to search for people by name and location to find public records of addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and more!

Where do they get their information? The public data is sourced from all over. They pull from property records to patents, and it has all been collated and indexed for easy searching.

What would I use this for? Well, this would be most useful when you simply can’t locate contact information on one individual in particular, rather than hundreds, as there is no way to easily download the results. Our test drive found mostly good information, but some of it was outdated. So, some of the search results may not be the most up to date information, so double-check what you find!

That’s all folks! It’s easy, and it’s free. Xlek is another way to find people, information, and do what you’ve got to do. Look yourself up, your boss, or your significant other. Just note that Xlek prohibits using their site for nefarious means, so don’t go and steal anyone’s identity with this!

~ Noel Cocca

 

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

Source top candidates with Microsoft MVP

Source top candidates with the Microsoft MVP database!

 

Microsoft has done us a huge favor and published their MVP or Most Valuable Professional list. These are people that are certified and highly regarded in fields related to Microsoft technologies and are often sought after for top positions.

They are all listed in this searchable database. Let’s see what we can do with it!

First off, I’m going to choose the United States, so we can filter out international experts. Then, choose the award category. We went with Microsoft Azure. Boom, 33 people! Overall, there are almost 500 people across all award categories in the United States and about 2,800 people in total.

Each person’s profile will give their biography, display their number of awards, any certifications, and social links. Recent activity will show past projects, workshops they were part of, as well as speaking engagements!

This is a great resource to learn about a potential candidate, or to source from some of the top industry leaders!

 

~ Noel Cocca

 

Look inside with Dean Da Costa: