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What the Tech? Consumer Solutions for HR Issues

As it turns out, we spend a lot of time talking about HR technology but don’t dedicate much energy to the regular, everyday consumer tech working behind the scenes. And what good is the house we live in if the foundation is shot? Consumer technologies underpin the world around us, at work, at home, and on the go, so it makes sense that we should maximize these investments, rather than overlook them. These solutions run the gambit from electronic equipment like TVs and gaming consoles to communication tools like cell phones and laptops. We interact with such devices all day long and rarely give them a second thought. Until now.

And while many of us are familiar with big trade shows like the annual HR Tech Conference, you might be less familiar with this little conference called the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Put on by the Consumer Technology Association, CES is a behemoth of an event that includes an annual awards program. With 28 categories on deck for 2020, it would be tough to find a correlation back to HR and recruiting for each of these innovations, but for the sake of it, let’s explore five favorites that fit the bill.

Accessibility For Disabilities

Accessibility is a topic that doesn’t get enough attention in HR technology, especially as it relates directly to diversity and inclusion. Says CES, these are “products and services with innovative features that enable ease of use by disabled persons to improve accessibility for seniors and persons with disabilities, regardless of cognitive, mobile, hearing and visual abilities.” Think about website add-ons that make it possible for all candidates to apply, not just some: screen readers, screen magnifiers, text readers, speech or voice input and other assistive technologies. With this consumer tech in place, you’ll be able to cast a wider net and engage a more diverse talent pool, while reinforcing a commitment to inclusivity.

Computer Accessories

We’re years past the BYOD conversation, and yet, depending on the organization, it sometimes feels like we’re beholden to only what’s provided. But do we have to be? In an era of remote work and increased mobility, why sit around three feet from the closest outlet when you’ve got better options? Enter one of this year’s CES Best of Innovation winners, the EnergySquare universal wireless charger for laptops. Without getting too technical, we’ll say this lets you cut the cord and work from wherever it’s convenient, without worrying about your computer dying mid-video interview. Obvious, but easy, the way technology should be

Software & Mobile Apps

No doubt you’re already using software and mobile apps as part of your daily outreach, but have you considered the relevant technologies outside the recruiting sphere? From getting organized to improving your social following, some add-ons can empower your process. Even something as simple as cleaning up those open browser tabs can make a difference and prevent you from falling down an internet rabbit hole. At the same time, social scheduling and insights can ensure you’re staying top of mind for candidates without spending an hour laboring over how well your last status updated performed. Save your energy for the important stuff, like finding the right GIF to include.

Audio/Video

A/V is a vast category when it comes to consumer tech, so rather than try and cover every possible angle, let’s look at another of 2019 Best of Innovation winners, Scosche’s BTFreq™ with Alexa. Basically, this is a dual-port car charger that plugs into your car’s cigarette lighter. And beyond charging up both a smartphone and tablet during your commute, it’s also got a Bluetooth FM transmitter with Amazon Alexa built-in. Think of the productivity! Hands-free note-taking, calendaring and so on. And it doesn’t have to be Alexa either, you can easily pair the device with Siri or Google Voice instead.

Virtual & Augmented Realities

Yes, we’ve seen VR and AR in HR before, but not so much coming from the consumer perspective. But forget Google Glass, there’s a new headset in town, and it looks much like you’d imagine. Designed with the enterprise in mind, the HTC Vive Pro Eye VR system is clunky on the outside with precision eye-tracking on the inside. There’s even the option to add handheld controllers. With this one in place, assessments, simulations and training become immersive, while the eye-tracking function analyzes the user’s movement, attention and focus, offering up deeper insights about performance and interaction. Or you can use it for virtual avatars and creep out your coworkers in meetings by blinking rapidly.

Consumer technology gives recruiters a whole lot more to think about than the average CRM. And figuring out where and when to use these solutions offers up a new take on the process. Happy shopping!

A Guide to Hiring iOS Developers

Where to Hire, How Much to Pay, What to Consider

The demand for mobile application developers grows year after year. iOS developers aren’t an exception. Sometimes it’s very hard to find and recruit the right person who’d become an effective member of a project or a team.

In this article, I’ve tried to give you more understanding of a candidate’s skill set (if you don’t yet know), possible hiring options, general things to consider, and more.

Skills any iOS developer needs

I suppose it’s useless to list the desired skills of developers by their seniority level since chances are the requirements will vary from company to company. Let’s just talk about the basic skills each iOS developer should possess.

So, the candidate has to be experienced with:

Objective-C or Swift
Xcode
Cocoa Touch and UIKit APIs
RESTful APIs
UI/UX design standards
OpenGL or Metal
Code versioning tools (e.g. Git)
Core Data framework

What hiring options do you have?

There are three and you all know them:

Recruit a full-time developer to the team.
Hire a freelancer to complete a particular scope of work.
Hire an outsourced developer to save recruiting time.

The right question to ask is what objectives does the company follow having decided to hire a developer?

Let’s now consider the pros and cons of each option so you could understand which one corresponds to those objectives most of all.

Pros and cons of hiring a freelance iOS developer

There are dozens of specialized websites where you can find different kinds of freelancers. Good old LinkedIn also works fine.

Pros:

Large talent pool. Just find a person who seems to be suitable via one of the freelance platforms and interview them.
It’s often much cheaper than hiring a person on the payroll since you can find a specialist from anywhere in the world who’d charge less compared to colleagues from the US, Canada or Australia where tech staff is one of the most expensive in the world.
No tasks, no expenses. You don’t have to pay an hourly rate to freelancers in case there is no work to assign to them.
No worries about extra office space, hardware, software, paid sick leaves and vacancies.

Cons:

There is no guarantee a freelance iOS developer won’t abandon a project because they get bored or happened to take a sudden vacation.
Many freelance developers tend to miss deadlines.
Language and cultural-related problems in the case of hiring a specialist from abroad. Often the case with Asian developers.
You can’t be sure the freelancer works only on the project you handled to them and doesn’t jump between several orders.

Pros and cons of hiring a full-time iOS developer

LinkedIn and recommendations work well here.

Underneath, I’ve listed things you should know about the pros and cons of hiring full-time mobile app developers.

Pros:

Full-time iOS developers are the best option for coordinated teamwork and fast problem-solving.
No communication gaps and meeting delays caused by different time zones.
Developers only work on one product and know it from A to Z which means better productivity.

Cons:

Full-time employees are on the payroll so they get paid whether there are any tasks for them or no.
Company pays for the software, hardware, sick leaves, vacancies, etc.

Pros and cons of hiring outsourced developers

It’s often the case companies hire outsourced teams for side projects or if they haven’t much time for recruiting suitable candidates.

Pros:

Software outsourcing companies invest much time in staff recruiting which means you get a list of skilled candidates.
Just like with freelancers, the company doesn’t pay for vacations, sick leaves, and other related stuff.
If it’s decided to hire a team of developers from the same vendor, it fully or partly eliminates the issue with communication.
Very affordable hourly rates depending on the country.

Cons:

Time zone difference is possible.
Communication and cultural-related difficulties.

What to consider to hire a perfect candidate

I hope you settled the question with hiring options. Let’s know look through some basic points related directly to searching for a suitable candidate.

1. Mind the expertise

If you’re looking for the iOS developer who’d build a product from scratch or join the team, it’s better to pay attention more to expertise rather than experience.

What does it mean? If the company works in the real estate field and the candidate has 10+ years of experience in healthcare, it’d be preferable to consider other candidates before making a final decision.

2. Portfolio

Ask the candidate if they have a portfolio to show. For iOS developers, the portfolio might be the list of applications they were working on and which are released on the App Store.

3. Communication

If it was decided to hire a freelancer or an outsourced iOS development team, you have to discuss the communication and task management tools you’ll be using. They can be Skype, Slack, Jira, Trello, and a bunch of others.

iOS developer salaries

According to Glassdoor, the average salary of iOS developers in the US is $107,829/yr.

In case you’re more interested to hire a freelancer, Codementor suggests that the average hourly rate for iOS development ranges between $80 and $100 per hour.

However, this is the average value for the whole world. In some regions, this rate is considerably lower. For example, $61-80/h in Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Talking about the option of hiring the outsourced iOS developer, rates pretty much depend on the country where one or another vendor is situated. I’m attaching the map with approximate prices below.

Wrapping up

As you can see, there are a lot of options for hiring iOS developers suitable for various budgets and objectives. Everything you need to know is what kind of work you hire the iOS developer for and will it be long-term or short-term tasks.

6 Tips on Succeeding with Social Recruiting in 2019

via GIPHY

According to LinkedIn, 70% of the global workforce consists of candidates who are not actively looking for a job at the moment. It’s a lost opportunity if hiring managers do not tap into this vast pool of talent.

The obvious proliferation of social media across candidates’ personal and professional lives has made it easy for recruiters to connect with talent via social media. 91% of employers are now using social media to hire talent. This strategy of hiring talent is called social recruiting, but you knew that right?

What Is Social Recruiting?

Social recruiting is defined as a recruiting strategy that relies on social media platforms to source, engage, and hire candidates. Popular social recruiting channels include LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Social recruiting is not a stand-alone approach to hiring talent, instead, it draws on multiple recruitment marketing elements like your employer brand, advertising, job posting, and more. Recruiting has always been about engagement, and recruiters need to maximize social media to the end and not use it as a billboard.

Social recruiting can broadly be broken down into two key approaches:

The first is an inbound or pull approach as recruiters rely primarily on the company’s social media presence and other organic methods to source candidates.
The second approach is proactive, where recruiters reach out to prospective employees via social media platforms such as GitHub, Instagram, AngelList, LinkedIn, or Twitter. This approach is an outbound one as recruiters build engagement techniques to connect with the candidate.

With the concept of social recruiting out of the way, here are six tips to help you achieve social recruiting success in 2019.

1. Showcase Your Company Culture

Your potential employees are likely to already have an opinion about your organization even before they step in for a face-to-face interview. To ensure that it’s a favorable one, organizations have begun focusing on showcasing their company culture on their careers pages, social media handles, and across other digital touchpoints.

Videos are an effective channel to communicate your organization’s culture as you have the opportunity to demonstrate your organization’s values, offerings, culture, etc. in a relatively short span of time. Here’s an example of a great video produced by Zendesk that uses tongue-in-cheek humor to showcase the company culture:

Of course, if you’re don’t have the budget, you don’t need to go gung-ho on videos. A prompt response to a prospective employee’s query on social media can be a strong indicator of your company culture.

2. Encourage Employee Advocacy on Social Media

Employee advocacy empowers employees to promote company culture, its offerings, job openings, or other marketing activities on social media. According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report that surveyed over 33,000 respondents found that people trust technical experts (65 percent) and regular employees (53 percent) more than a CEO (47 percent) or board of directors (44 percent).

The rise of social media over the last decade has fueled employee advocacy where organizations are now incentivizing employees to be their brand ambassadors on social media.

From the perspective of social recruiting, encourage your employees to participate in the employee advocacy program by sharing new job vacancies or company culture on their personal accounts. You can develop a dedicated hashtag for the employee advocacy program.

Cisco has a hashtag called #WeAreCisco that its employees use on Twitter and Instagram. The hashtag has been used for over 39,000 posts on Instagram.

Other companies that have successfully implemented an employee advocacy program include LinkedIn (#LinkedInLife), Adobe (#AdobeLife), and HootSuite (#HootSuiteLife).

Note: The employee advocacy program should not be mandatory. You can gamify this activity through rewards and recognition to increase employee participation.

3. Handle Negative Reviews Courteously

No matter how hard you work to develop a world-class company culture, it is impossible to keep every employee happy. And you will likely receive some negative feedback on Glassdoor or other employer review sites. Rather than choosing to turn a blind eye towards them, you should try to answer such reviews graciously.

Although it may appear that this activity doesn’t contribute to social recruiting, organizations can’t ignore the fact that their candidates spend time on anonymous review websites as they’re often perceived as a trustworthy source.

The CEO of VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk proactively addresses the reasons behind bad employee reviews on Glassdoor.

HubSpot does a great job of managing negative reviews. Here is how Katie Burke (Chief People Officer, HubSpot) responds to negative employee experience.

4. Invest in Premium Social Media Features

It’s a good starting point to optimize your personal and organization’s social media profiles, post organically, and create groups to gain initial traction. But the growing popularity of these platforms has made it difficult to cut through the noise. Therefore, rather than relying exclusively on the organic aspect of social media channels, explore the premium features of social media.

Recruiters can invest in social media ads to promote new job opportunities to the exact target market. Products such as LinkedIn Talent Solution or AngelList’s recruitment solution provide an extensive set of features that include ads, pipeline builder, dedicated career page, and integration with applicant tracking systems.

5. Go Beyond Traditional Social Media Platforms

Social recruiting is rapidly evolving, and hiring managers need to stay on top of the latest trends. While social media platforms are excellent to identify the right candidates and establish rapport early in the hiring process, you need to tap into niche social media platforms and communities to hire the right candidate. For example, you can trust Instagram and Pinterest for designers. Similarly, dedicated Slack channels for niche job profiles get good results.

AngelList is a LinkedIn equivalent for tech startups. Whether you are an early-stage startup founder or a recruiter working at a well-funded startup, AngelList is your best bet to hire the cream talent.

You can use social recruiting software like Jobvite, Lever, Recruiterbox, etc.to streamline the entire recruitment process.

To further the recruitment process, hiring managers can experiment with online assessment platforms and digital interviewing tools to test their effectiveness.

6. Simplify the Application Process

Job boards are passé in 2019. 14.4 million job searchers have used social media exclusively to find a job in the U.S. alone. With most millennials using social media to land their next job, it is necessary to optimize the application process for social media channels. Recruiters need to do away with the age-old process of routing candidates through several websites to complete the job application. Most professional social platforms have a native job application feature which enables candidates to apply for the job with a simple click.

The flip side to this is passive job lurkers applying for the job without even reading the entire job description. A time-tested method to tackle this is to use Van Halen’s brown M&M strategy.

Credits: the smoking gun

Van Halen, in their 1982 world tour had mentioned a clause in their tech contract that required concert promoters to not keep any brown M&Ms in their food supplies. This weird clause ensured that the promoter had thoroughly read the tech rider/agreement.

Hiring managers can use this tactic in the job description to filter passive job applicants. They can ask applicants to mention a specific word or phrase in the cover letter. If the applicant hasn’t used the word, well, Ain’t Talking About Love.

Wrapping Up

Social recruiting is a must-do strategy activity that allows you to showcase your company culture, scout the best talent in the market, and engage them early on in the process.

Along with these six tips, build a networked community for job seekers that you can always bank on and create content geared specifically towards recruitment.

As social recruiting combines the best of marketing and HRM, rather than looking at it as an independent activity, find ways to make it a part of your overall marketing and HR ecosystem to get the best results.

Password Checkup protects your accounts

Keep your accounts secure with Password Checkup

Password Checkup is a Chrome Extension officially released by Google and designed to help you protect all of your accounts.

The tool is very simple and works from your extension toolbar like most other Chrome Extensions.

Every time you log in to a site, Password Checkup kicks into action, scanning all password breaches that Google knows of for your information.
If your information does seem to appear in one of the breaches, the tool sends you an alert and recommends that you change your password.
The tool also makes it easy to keep track of whether your passwords are safe or not. When your passwords are secure, the extension logo appears green. When your passwords are at risk, the logo is red.

While helping you to find out when your personal information is at risk, Password Checkup also works to ensure that the information the tool itself contains remains secure.

Password Checkup is a low-resource tool that can easily save you from disastrous problems down the road. It’s a no-brainer to add to your tool belt. ~ Noel Cocca

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

The Assessment Game: Finding The Right Recruitment Fit

There is a balance between speed and quality that we deal with on a daily basis but do not often think about. We have more open jobs than we can possibly fill and so there is a high demand for a constant flow of candidates.

On the other hand, most of the jobs we recruit for are specialized and require skills that most people simply do not have. While we do want to fill our high volume of jobs we also know we can’t just send anyone. Every day we are balancing quality and speed.

Most recruiters have a philosophy that they stick by. Some recruiters have the philosophy that they would rather have 2 great candidates over 5 good ones. Other recruiters tend not to worry about anyone job and they source, talk to and submit everyone they encounter that they feel might have a chance at the job. Who is right and who is wrong?

The answer is both, neither and it depends. We have stumbled upon a concept well known to all project managers. It is known as the project management triangle. Good is one side, fast another and cheap is the final. The idea is you can have two but not three. In my experience the view of the recruiter tends to reflect the environment they started recruiting in. There is one thing we can use to try to balance good and fast. That focal point can be assessments.

In process terms, assessments are a quality control element. Anyone who passes an assessment has passed a universally agreed to quality control measure. In recruiting, assessments are typically used to validate the hard skills that the recruiter simply lacks the knowledge to validate.

Here is the conundrum that you face as a recruiter:

The earlier in the process you place an assessment the less time you spend downstream with candidates who do not pass quality control. However, most skilled candidates are not willing to take the time to do an assessment unless and until they are confident they have a reasonable chance of landing the job. Typically that means they have at least spoken with a recruiter and possibly even a hiring manager.

So what is the answer? I think it depends on the type of recruiting you do.

If you have volume and you spend a lot of time saying no to people the assessment begins towards the beginning of the interview process. In this case, putting the assessment upfront ends up saving a lot of time with candidates who are not qualified.

If you recruit skilled and niche professionals I would advise moving assessments back in the recruitment process. This strikes a balance between good and fast that I believe is optimal. In a niche low volume, high value recruiting process quality checks are used primarily for validation as opposed to elimination. This tends to be why high volume processes benefit more from automation. Automation is great at sorting the candidates that do not fit a profile but it is not as effective on smaller data sets. That is due to the nature of automation as it requires large data sets to be able to accurately do its work.

Finally, prep your candidate for the process and the assessment. This is something I feel we have gotten away from as an industry. Assessments are meant to be a quality control element not a test of candidates on the spot reaction. Prep them for the types of questions they are going to be asked and how much time they will have to spend in order to complete the task. Also, make sure to tell them what they get if they pass the assessment. Is it an in-person interview?

There has to be a reward for the effort the candidate has put in. If they don’t pass the assessment tell them you will inform them. The worst candidate experience you can provide is to make a candidate take an assessment, have them fail it and never hear from you again.

If you think of assessments as a form of quality control the proper place to put them will become evident. If you don’t get it right the first time that is okay. Try something different, ask a different question because the truth is, we will forever be struggling with better, faster, cheaper.

Forget Internships: Freelancing for New Student Populations

By now you already know that there’s a new generation in town – Gen Z. But unlike their predecessors, the Millennials, this population is walking into a different sort of workplace. One that’s learning from earlier mistakes and welcoming Gen Z on their terms – this marks is a big adjustment for many of us, working through the last decade and change, with all the challenges and opportunities it presented. And part of what we see now, beyond this change in attitude, is a change in approach, too.

Historically speaking, internships served as the preferred way to gain experience before entering the workplace full-time. I would know, having completed 12 myself. Today, we see less emphasis on these positions, with Gen Z students seeking hands-on experience instead, often in the form of freelancing over interning. To get more insight on this, I sat down and spoke with Matthew Mottola, Lead Growth Project Manager for the Microsoft 365 Freelance Toolkit, and Jeffrey Moss, founder, and CEO of Parker Dewey, a mission-oriented organization that helps connect great talent with great companies.

Trial and Error

Some context: Mottola and Moss work together on micro-internships, with Parker Dewey helping to power Microsoft’s program. That’s surprisingly fitting, considering Mottola’s experience freelancing his way through school and Moss’ accidental founding of Parker Dewey. Being personally invested in the concept, both Mottola and Moss see freelancing via micro-internships as a way for students to gain lots of experience with different types of work, over-committing to one high stakes internship that may or may not work out in their favor.

For Mottola, freelancing offered more benefits than interning, giving him direct exposure to executive-level decision making that went far beyond his coursework. Moss echoes this sentiment, saying that there’s added value in freelancing, helping establish crosswalks that weren’t there previously and bridging the gaps between education and employment.

In addition to adding structure and rigor to early career development, freelancing allows students to try on different roles. Mottola likens this to dating a job before marrying it, while Moss explains that though the Parker Dewey platform has a sub-two percent failure rate, it’s enabling students to learn and fail without one project ruining their whole career. Parker Dewey reinforces this by intentionally omitting ratings from its technology, encouraging students to work for a variety of organizations to see what fits. Mottola and Moss see this as learning how to learn, something that the classroom doesn’t always provide.

Recruiting Benefits

Of course, student freelancing works to support hiring organizations as well, beyond helping to shape well-prepared, confident candidates. In our conversation, the two discuss the number of enterprise hiring managers leveraging freelancers without having the right system in place. A number that’s hovering around 50 percent, meaning that half of these organizations open themselves up to worker classification risks – an issue that’s similar to what we saw in the rise of text recruiting with corporate teams using their own cards and devices to pay for this not fully sanctioned strategy.

To avoid this and protect its client, Moss set up Parker Dewey using a consulting firm model. Mottola says that in effect, Parker Dewey functions like the popular dating app, Hinge, whose motto is “Designed to be deleted.” Once organizations implement Parker Dewey, they’re likely to find eager Gen Z talent, ready to reinforce that 98 percent success rate.

But that’s not all, with freelancing and micro-internships opening up a broader use of talent pools, and opening the door to outside the box thinking around individual candidates. Through short-term gigs, Gen Z students not only explore career options but also start to establish a professional network, which supports their hiring, along with the possibility of referring others like them. By expanding the organization’s reach, recruiters build out their talent pipeline, able to usher in graduates from a wider range of colleges and universities, with well-developed skills, rather than perfect GPAs. These pathways quickly become two-way streets, connecting employers with more diverse candidates through increased awareness and ultimately, conversion.

Future of Freelance

And while we’re just getting to know Gen Z, the freelance to full-time (or continued freelance) approach makes sense, as many try to find their way. Says one study from a few years back, less than half of high school students, 44.8 percent, don’t feel ready for college and a career. Why not give them the chance to overcome that insecurity by applying themselves to the type of work they’ll face on the other side of college? The work that goes beyond fetching coffee and observing meetings, the kind that moves the needle and helps not only the individual but the organization too. Because that’s a future of work, I can get behind.

Recruiting Automation & Chatbots: Moving Talent Acquisition Technology Forward

Since publishing this piece about consolidation in talent acquisition, the trend continues to reach across the space. Recently, we saw three programmatic vendors (Appcast, ClickIQ, and Perengo) picked up by three unexpected acquirers (StepStone, Indeed and TMP, respectively), followed by the announcement on the recruitment marketing side that Recruitics purchased KRT Marketing. These successive acquisitions prompted speculation about relevancy and utility as TA technology evolves further. Of course, we could hem and haw as to why any of that happened, but instead, let’s focus on what else might be coming over the horizon. Because perhaps nowhere are we seeing more innovation than in another market segment, recruiting automation. Think streamlined workflows, increased productivity, faster time-to-fill and truly contributing to business success.

Sure, there’s been some early M&A around these technologies – it’s a rapidly expanding landscape – though unlike last month’s programmatic activity, recruiting automation solutions are just getting warmed up. As the next wave of recruiting automation is centered on chatbots, the practicality of AI and Machine Learning have come under the microscope. The impact of these bots is palpable with chat windows popping up at the bottom of every website imaginable, ready, willing and able to engage with potential candidates and convert them into applicants. Except that’s not where the story ends. Instead, we see the rapid transformation of these bots into full-on digital assistants and beyond, capable of so much more than previously thought.

What’s Happened

For starters, we should clarify that there are two types of chatbots with two very different functions. First, there are social chit chat solutions like the ones referenced above. These bots talk to candidates through an organization’s website, functioning as a stand-in for TA professionals who might otherwise spend much of their time fielding common questions.

The second kind tackles task completion, following a preset list as determined by the user. Task completion bots move us in the direction of full-fledged assistants, capable of chit chat as well as gathering candidate information, competing profiles, scheduling interviews, providing recommendations and analyzing outcomes. By asking for specific details, these bots play an essential role in orchestrating the recruiting process, analyzing and automating as they go.

And while there’s nothing wrong with social chatbots, their value for recruiters is limited. They work best in customer service roles, where the transaction opens and closes in one instance. Task completion bots, on the other hand, function more as digital assistants, and in some cases, can move the process from end to end without leaving the system. These bots are omnichannel and play into text-to-apply and mobile chat apps. They can listen to spoken words and respond appropriately while processing and analyzing large amounts of data and communicating back the critical insights it discovers. In this scenario, the chatbot is acting as a digital member of the team interacting with the ATS or CRM, rather than as a standalone tool.

This is the present of bot-based recruiting automation, wherein the combination of AI, automation and analytics offer an unparalleled package of capabilities – when used correctly. Recruiters need to be recognizing and leveraging this subtle but significant difference between these solutions.

What’s Happening

As we see task completion bots advance, they’re growing in strength, power, and usefulness with each product release. In addition to the administrivia of recruiting, they’ve made it possible to facilitate person-to-person connections and communications through other channels, including SMS and video. At the same time, taking unstructured data from these conversations along with the structured task-centric content, and processing it. Combined with the ability to empower transactions, manage workflows and input data, your digital assistant becomes a veritable data machine, capable of analyzing each interaction and producing meaningful metrics. Right there, that’s systematizing the recruiting process more so than any earlier technology ever could.

Now you can have an “interactive” extension of your team that can converse with all participants while running the process across several systems in a single deployment. That’s right, we went from basic bots to workflow conductors almost overnight, taking recruiting automation from ATS and video interviews to background screening and assessments, all the way through to onboarding. That leaves time for recruiters to recruit, without having to worry about coordinating calendars or checking in with top candidates – the solution does it all, unifying engagement layers across the tech stack and ensuring data synchronizes and processes flow.

What’s Next

Because of this ongoing evolution, today’s bots may become tomorrow’s platform leaders, moving away from point solutions and the mass acquisitions we saw with the programmatic tools. As the bots grow more robust, functioning as meaningful business suites and processing significant amounts of data, the technology will evolve to the next logical level: intelligent, interactive, digital assistants that perform as a full-fledged team member.

With digital assistants monitoring the data stream and delivering key insights to decision-makers and stakeholders at crucial moments, we move away from today’s world where busy people need to log into disparate systems, make sense of multiple dashboards and intuit what to do as a result of what they see on screen. By assuming a more substantial role in the recruiting process, automation tools will help TA pros achieve delegation over a relegation, which is what we’ve seen up until this point. In turn, this makes space for a change in nature, propelling TA into a more advisory role, tasked with strategic relationship building and business consulting.

The point being, if we allow our understanding of bots to expand, so will our application of these technologies. With this, these solutions will grow and expand to meet changing needs, growing with the market and the future of work as it relates to talent acquisition.

Talent Acquisition Movers, Shakers, & News Breakers – August 2019, Part 1

August 2019, Part 1

There’s no sign of a summer slowdown in HR and recruiting tech, in fact, quite the opposite, with the same steady stream of product news, M&A and industry-specific events. Here are some key headlines:

Workday Named ATS of Choice for Fortune 500

New research from Ongig posits that Workday Recruiting is the most used ATS of the Fortune 500, beating out Taleo by just a hair (22.6 percent vs. 22.4 respectively). In third place is SuccessFactors with 14.4 percent market share, followed by Kenexa BrassRing at 9.4 percent and iCIMS at 7.4 percent. Homegrown systems still retain 2.6 percent, with a 4.8 percent unknown factor. Thirty other ATS make up the remaining share with nominal percentages.

How Job Boards Handle Discriminatory Posts

While there’s a lot of talk about unconscious bias in the recruiting process, Suzanne Lucas, a.k.a. RealEvilHRLady looked into how popular sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Indeed combat blatant discrimination. That’s right, she reached out and asked what they do. No surprise here but even with technology, actual humans are required to scrub these postings from job boards, which leads one to wonder how many sneak by unnoticed.

Beamery Unveiled New Careers Sites

Candidate relationship software company, Beamery, introduced new Careers Sites, drawing a major correlation between job-hunting and online shopping. Taking note of the need for personalization, Beamery says that with Careers Sites, “Enterprises can tailor the experience to every individual candidate journey, convert passive talent, and get the data they need to drive better decisions.”

Talenize Hits the Market

The team behind FindaTruckerJob.com and FindaNursingJob.com, Fusion Recruiting Labs, announced the launch of its newest platform: Talenize. Designed for high-volume, high-turnover industries, the solution works to improve candidate communications and source direct leads for recruiters.

WayUp Finds the Best Internship Program

Job site WayUp recently asked 100,000 college students about their internship experiences and published a list of the top 100 programs. The results may surprise you – especially considering who’s in first. Step aside, Google and Facebook, because SAP takes the top slot. WayUp explains that the company orchestrates internships with more than 1000 students at any given time, making them feel connected to the company with one of the highest offer-acceptance rates to boot.

Capital Investments, Mergers, & Acquisitions

On the M&A front, Recruitics acquired KRT Marketing, combining two recruitment marketing agencies into one operating under the Recruitics brand. The move will further promote the “Four Pillars of Talent Attraction™ methodology, which includes programmatic job ads, targeted media plans, brand awareness, and sourcing and engagement.

In terms of funding, we saw no shortage of cash flowing into the space, with the pre-hire assessment folks at Harver raising $15M in Series B with intent to “reinvent the volume recruitment process through digital automation.” Harver works to vet candidates using assessments rather than first impressions.

On the career experience and talent mobility side, Fuel50 brought in $14M in Series B, which it plans to use for customer acquisition efforts and “significant additions” to the company’s tech stack. Fuel50 uses AI algorithms to match workers with internal opportunities while identifying any gaps in knowledge.

In a similar vein, TalentGuard, which also supports career pathing and talent management, snagged $4M in funding to use toward growth initiatives, including sales and marketing expansion as well as product innovation.

The gig economy got a boost too, with Jobble, an hourly workforce management solution, securing $11M with plans to expand its operations and footprint. The marketplace-style platform helps connect on-demand, part-time, and full-time workers with talent seekers.

Upcoming Events & Conferences

August 20 – How Do You Solve The Problem of Recruiting Gen Z? webinar
August 29 – HRTechTank in Singapore
September 5 – HRTX Recruiter & Sourcer Training Workshop in Chicago
September 10 – DisruptHR in London
September 11 – Texas SHRM Global HR Conference in Houston

Other recent highlights:

Talent analytics and engagement platform Talentegy shared details of its Q2 momentum, including customer wins, expanded product features, resources, and a new board member.
Talroo and Brazen announced a strategic partnership combining talent attraction and candidate engagement to strengthen the overall experience.
AI recruiting technology company Ideal secured a patent for “A system, method and computer program product for determining the suitability of a candidate for a role in an organization.”
ADP launched Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Advertising Services to help HR teams improve the exposure of job opportunities.
JazzHR added texting capabilities to its recruiting platform for small and medium-sized businesses with the intent of speeding up time to hire.

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

Recession Recidivism: Understanding Millennial Job Market Fears

Full disclosure, I’m a Millennial. No matter which way you slice or dice the generation, I’m in it (albeit at the elder end of the category). I’m also not a huge fan of sweeping generalizations about entire populations of people, no matter what the avocado toast industry says. But before you click away, I want to propose a theory I’ve been working on with Laura Mazzullo, Owner of East Side Staffing, a boutique HR Recruitment firm, and fellow Millennial.

See, we’re observing some unusual behavior in a subsect of our peers, who also go by Gen Y. One that’s impacting the recruiting, hiring and career development of certain Millennials – ones you likely work with every day. Let’s call them the “07-09ers.” These are the folks who graduated from college and entered the job market amid the Great Recession. Faced with limited options, many took whatever job they found and hunkered down. Mazzullo says that today the 07-09ers are making good money, having changed jobs maybe once since starting their careers, well-positioned to advance – but unsure of themselves and the current market.

Success vs. Direction

But why? Well, for starters, they’re terrified. And for a good reason, as “Workers who start their careers in a recession earn 2.5 to 9 percent less per year than those who do not for at least 15 years after starting a career. Research further suggests that one reason for these lower earnings is that new entrants take jobs that are a worse fit for them when they start their careers in a recession.”

So even though they might earn a comfortable living, poised to catch up with their counterparts shortly, the 07-09ers have no idea what they’re doing with their careers – and little understanding of the recruiters contacting them. Mazzullo chalks this up to self-awareness, explaining that many of these candidates took the first job to come along – where they wanted it or not. Fast forward to 2019, and they’re unable to articulate what they’re looking for because they have no idea. At the same time, their job search experience is out of date and out of step with the current market. This puts recruiters in a tough spot, especially since the 07-09er fear often masquerades as arrogance.

Uncovering the Obstacles

Mazzullo sees this as a defensive mechanism, mostly in candidates unable to answer seemingly simple questions like: What’s motivating you to leave your current role? What are you looking for in an employer? Having never had the chance to think about work in this context, the 07-09er candidates bristle, psychologically struck in an early career mindset. And while I’m not one to bash my fellow Millennials, considering the barrage of hate we’ve received over the years, she isn’t wrong.

Many of my 07-09er friends kept their heads down these last 12 years, just trying to get by without rocking the boat. Whether it’s shame or humility, they seem unable to reconcile being in demand for the first time ever. Getting married and growing families further magnifies their anxiety about a game they don’t seem to know how to play. To the point that they’re almost eager to reject employers in retaliation for their formative experiences.

One way to spot this behavior, Mazzullo shares, is in the words candidates use to describe their interactions. Some use feeling words, like “That interview made me so excited,” while others rely more on logic, countering, “It seems like a good opportunity.” Rather than write off the second response, we need to help reframe the narrative and equip these candidates with the insight necessary to grow their careers – provided they’re willing to do the work.

Seeing Both Sides

While there’s no denying that some candidates pose more of a challenge than others, what we need to do is understand why. The 07-09ers represent one easily recognizable example. And despite the extenuating circumstances of the Great Recession, their experience isn’t wholly unique – it’s happened before, and it will happen again. Other candidates come with individual baggage, less tied to external events.

Plus, as Mazzullo acknowledges, not all recruiters are coaches – and not all candidates are willing to be coached. Though for those that are, and those that do, we need to hold one another accountable throughout the process, offering support and digging deeper when necessary. That might mean softening your communication style, developing a worksheet that asks candidates to express their career goals or reassuring them that they have options. The goal here is to reduce frustration on all sides, reinforce the available options and boost confidence as needed. If we assume best intentions, rather than force-fed stereotypes, we’ll be more likely to improve outcomes.

Because be it trauma, or good old fashioned insecurity, the 07-09ers and others like them need a little more support than your average candidate. Either way, we’d probably all benefit from a little less shaming and little more listening.

Employee Monitoring – Creepy or Useful?

More and more, our data is being used in ways that we don’t completely understand. From Facebook to our credit score, it’s unclear who knows what and what we can actually do about it. Now, companies are starting to use data to monitor employees throughout the employee lifecycle.

Vyopta, an Austin-based tech startup providing workplace communications monitoring and analytics, recently announced that it raised 7.5 million in series B funding from Elsewhere Partners. While Vyopta describes itself as “the leading developer of monitoring and analytics tools to optimize workplace collaboration,” the services it provides sound eerily similar to those of something akin to an employee monitoring solution.

For example, Vyopta’s website claims to provide visibility across video and voiced-based collaboration platforms with a variety of features including intelligent video monitoring, voice monitoring, and data collection on instant messaging, screen share sessions, and usage by user and system totals. The website also boast’s the software’s ability to collect data from phones, smart whiteboards, and video endpoints with cameras and microphones as well calendar systems like Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange. While the website never goes so far as to say it listens to or watches employees, its data collection potential and tracking capabilities are a bit creepy for potential employees.

Vyopta is not alone, however. In today’s digital age, there are a variety of employee monitoring software solutions which are becoming increasingly popular especially with companies who are looking to improve employee engagement and productivity. These technologies bring into question the ethics/legal implications of tracking employees and whether certain monitoring practices violate employees’ privacy. Employers need to be aware of where employee monitoring crosses the line and goes from becoming a business asset to becoming a potential danger and burden to employees.

Benefits of Employee Monitoring

So, why are companies willing to risk employee backlash and lawsuits? Well, just like Facebook has driven tremendous value from their flexible moral regarding privacy, there are massive potential rewards for employers.

Employee monitoring makes it possible to detect how often workers are distracted by non-work-related activities. By uncovering these distractions and helping employees develop better habits, you can significantly increase worker productivity. Employee tracking data can also reveal how long employees spend on certain tasks. This can give you insight into what tasks employees are struggling with so you can then provide them with more guidance for those tasks.

This data also allows you to reprioritize tasks if you want an employee to focus more attention on a certain project, which of course can drastically increase your productivity. Employee monitoring software also ensures data security by detecting hackers or preventing unauthorized access to private company data and information.

Where Employee Tracking Can Go Wrong

On the other hand, an employee monitoring solution has the potential to greatly harm your business as a whole if it is not implemented carefully. One particular hazard is that tracking your employees may imply a lack of trust in them. This cause feelings of resentment among employees and can lead to decreased motivation and retention. It may also cause unfavorable public opinion of your company which can make it more difficult to recruit top talent.

If your employees find out they were being monitored without their knowledge, or if they discover you were collecting their data with an ulterior and hidden motive, it can do irreparable damage to your brand and business. For companies that collect data on employees as individuals rather than as aggregated data points, there is also potential for catastrophe if your system suffers a data breach. If private data about individuals at your company is leaked or falls into the wrong hands, it could lead to enormous legal issues for your company.

Let’s be honest here, a lot of this is very reminiscent of what’s happening with China’s mass surveillance program. While it may be great for a benevolent central authority to have all of this information, the dangers seem to outweigh the upside.

Best Practices

Employee monitoring can be an asset to your company, but it must be implemented very carefully. You should consider who will have access to the data and how they will be held accountable for keeping with fair practices. It is also important to keep in mind that you shouldn’t be collecting data to “catch” employees, but rather to work to change problematic patterns of behavior to make your business more efficient overall.

Employees will feel more comfortable with being tracked if you make it clear that the purpose of the program is to improve as a business, not to micro-manage individuals. The most important thing to keep in mind is to be transparent about what you are doing and try as hard as possible to keep data on an aggregate level. You should tell your employees exactly what information you will be collecting and outline the specific business goals you hope to achieve with the program.

Ultimately, while the goal of employee tracking technology is to enable businesses to make data-driven decisions to improve the efficiency of their office, businesses need to tread carefully to ensure they are not imposing on their employees’ privacy.

The Beginner’s Guide to Recruitment Analytics

HR is under increasing pressure to justify the ROI of recruiting today. As HR embraces the idea of data-driven decision-making, the recruiting function stands the most to gain. After all, very few HR functions have the same kind of bottom-line impact as recruitment. However, traditional recruitment metrics often fail to demonstrate the real-world business impact of recruitment. This is because recruitment is still considered somewhat a dark art. It’s not a perfect science – it combines technology, messaging, human interactions, and human judgment. Measuring the efficacy of all these moving parts in the recruitment process becomes difficult using conventional metrics and tools.

Enter big data analytics. By applying the principles of big data analytics to recruitment, HR and talent acquisition leaders can easily measure the business impact of recruitment. Recruitment analytics is quickly emerging as a key focus area for high-performing HR teams. Let’s look at the definition of recruitment analytics, and how you can get started on your recruitment analytics journey today.

What is Recruitment Analytics: Definition, Scope, and Examples

Recruitment analytics is defined as the application of statistical analysis and modeling to the recruitment process to improve business outcomes. Recruitment analytics essentially informs HR leaders and recruiters of the present and future performance potential of their recruiting processes and workflows. It enables you to answer critical questions about your recruiting process. For example:

How much does it cost to fill a vacancy?
What share of candidates apply to your organization from job boards?
What is your quality of hire?
How close are you to achieving your diversity goals?
How many applications do you receive per opening?

These questions can only be answered using recruitment data. Recruitment analysis takes into account recruiting data from multiple sources and candidate touchpoints to answer all/any questions you have about your recruiting process.

Recruitment analytics is a subset of HR analytics that focuses only on the recruitment cycle. As recruitment becomes a driver of competitive advantage for organizations in a tight labor market, recruitment analytics becomes the fuel that drives this advantage. It helps you identify gaps in your recruiting strategy and process, and also tells you about the areas you already do well.

Recruitment analytics is usually offered as a part of the larger HR analytics suite or as a standalone product. Most HCM and recruitment technology providers offer some version of recruitment analytics to track key metrics like time to hire or cost per hire.

Predictive Analytics in Recruitment

As technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning, make inroads into the world of business, HCM and recruitment technology vendors have responded by integrating these technologies to offer predictive capabilities across recruitment solutions. Predictive analytics leverages new and historical recruitment data to forecast behavior, trends, and outcomes of specific processes. A great example of predictive analytics in your daily life is the recommended products list that you see on Amazon. Or your recommended playlist suggestion on Spotify. These companies use predictive analytics to make hyper-personalized recommendations based on your previous choices of products or music.

In the recruiting process, however, the real promise of predictive analytics is its ability to bring objectivity based on actual data rather than relying on subjective human judgment. For example, it can help you:

Projected time-to-fill
Estimate future candidate performance
Interview acceptance probability
Predict candidate tenure

These are just a few ways predictive analytics can improve your recruitment outcomes and guide better decision-making.

Getting Started with Recruitment Analytics

Integrating analytics into your recruitment process does not have to be complicated. So, before we delve into how you can start applying recruitment analytics, let’s look at how it really works.

A recruiting analytics solution typically captures recruitment data from all digital touchpoints which could include your careers page, your recruiting CRM, your applicant tracking system (ATS), mobile app, application form, interview scheduling software, video interviewing software, social media handles or your offer management software. So, it is crucial to ensure that all of this data is accurate. Any analytics solution uses the principle of GIGO: Garbage-in, Garbage-out, which means your input data quality will determine the quality of your output. Therefore, flawed data-sets lead to flawed insights.

If you already use an end-to-end HCM system or recruiting platform, data quality shouldn’t be a problem. However, if you’re using discreet systems for specific HR tasks, you might need to manually collate all your recruiting data in a single platform/destination in the absence of related APIs. Now, when you collate this data, it is important to cleanse it to eliminate any duplications or repetitions. That way, you can be sure that your analytics output data is pristine.

The last part of the analytics puzzle is dashboarding and visualization. Data visualization allow you to make sense of all the data by creating context around a single metric or graphic. Ideally, your recruitment analytics dashboard will get updated in real-time to help you expand your understanding of process performance and outcomes. It visually tracks your KPIs and key data points to provide a single location to help you monitor and analyze your HR department’s impact on strategic business goals.

Succeeding with Analytics in Recruitment

Deploying a Recruitment Analytics Solution:

Assuming you decide to deploy analytics in your recruitment function, the next step is to consistently monitor your analytics workflow to weed out any inefficiencies, errors and risks, and implement structural changes to avoid them in the future. Now, what are the risks associated with an analytics system? Well, one of the biggest concerns around the deployment of smart technology in the recruitment process is its ability to ingest and amplify existing human biases.

If you’re planning to build an AI analytics solution in-house, check and double-check the data-sets your analytics solution will be trained on. Are the data sets skewed in terms of sample sizes? Do your historic hiring patterns display a clear preference for a specific sex, age demographic, or ethnicity? If so, your data might be unsuitable for training your analytics algorithm.

On the other hand, if you’re looking at deploying a SaaS-based analytics solution, try asking potential vendors questions about the development of their analytics solutions. What kind of data was used to train the algorithm? Does the vendor perform regular audits for adverse impact? Has the solution been successful for organizations of your size? These questions are critical to ensure that you’re able to achieve your intended goals with your analytics solution.

Building an Analytics Strategy:

Deploying a data-first recruitment strategy is as much about technology as it is about the organizational mindset. So, change management is what will truly position you to unleash the real power of your analytics solution. Here are a few essentials to succeeding with recruitment analytics:

Creating a data-first culture: Having the right technology solutions is just one part of the puzzle, the second and the most important part is encouraging a data-first culture. The key to improving the performance of your recruiting processes is identifying what’s working and what’s not. A data-first culture focuses on building accountability, driving analytics adoption, and encouraging responsible use of data. This requires a top-down approach for execution, where talent acquisition leaders, the C-suite, and other HR executives champion the cause of data-based insights for decision-making.
Developing the right skills: Effective use of your analytics solution relies largely on the skills of the people using it – your recruitment team. While you don’t need to be a data scientist to work with recruitment analytics solutions, some data skills are desirable. Workshops, training programs, or even e-learning courses on working with recruitment data can help you bring your team up to speed on recruitment analytics swiftly.
Linking metrics to business outcomes: Crucial to your analytics’ initiative success is your ability to link recruitment metrics to clearly defined business goals. For example, demonstrating the value of ‘quality of hire’ (QoH) will be challenging, especially when you look at it in terms of measurement. However, when you break-down QoH into related and measurable components like new hire retention rate, new hire performance, and time to fill, you will be able to show the direct business impact of this metric.

Technology is transforming recruitment for the better. And data holds the key to leveraging this technology to create real business value. Recruitment analytics is no longer just a good-to-have tool but is imperative for organizations looking to turn their talent acquisition function into a competitive advantage.

Recruiting Gen Z: Five Lessons Learned from Y

Gen X Y Z Arguably the most scrutinized lot of the last 12-15 years, Millennials are sick and tired of being talked about publicly. Since entering the workforce, they’ve been bad-mouthed every which way imaginable, accused of living off their parents (who, cough, raised them), overconsuming their share of avocado toast and killing off everything from bar soap to the doorbell industry. In the midst of all that, the majority of these folks got jobs, took on their share of responsibilities and grew up. And yet, they’re still the subject of ire and ridicule at conferences, despite making up a decent percent of the attending audience. Even coming from my Gen X corner, another once-maligned population, I can’t say I envy them.

And so, from my firmly adult perspective, I’m going to do my best to prevent history from repeating itself with Gen Z. That’s right, someone has to stick up for these kids, and I’m volunteering. Why’s that? Because the last time around, when the Millennials rolled into town, recruiters acted like they didn’t know what hit them. Lest we make that mistake again, I’m going to share some lessons learned from Y so we can collectively avoid the years of ranting, raving and self-sabotage.

Lesson #1 – Don’t write them off yet

Yes, Gen Z is young and inexperienced. We all were at the start, Millennials most recently. Aside from that, Gen Z knows what you said about their predecessors and seem fully prepared to fight back. They’re gamers after all. So gird your loins and proceed with caution. They want to be taken seriously and expect that you’ll give them that courtesy. And why shouldn’t you? Again, we were all entry-level at once upon a time, and probably still remember the person who gave us our first real break.

Lesson #2 – They know about the economy

Sure, everything is A-OK right now, but Gen Z lived through the Great Recession, too. And they witnessed what it did to their parents’ careers, first-hand. Doesn’t mean they know how to prevent another collapse, though maybe they have some ideas. Who knows until we ask? Either way, these candidates are going to demand job security from the get-go, so don’t get any ideas about unpaid internships. There are probably still a few Millennials out there thinking that this next one will be their big break.

Lesson #3 – Up your tech game

Remember pagers? Millennials might have, but these candidates definitely don’t. That cool Nokia with Snake loaded on it? Forget it. We’re talking about true digital natives. Many even skipped over the iPod and went straight to the iPhone. You’re going to need to follow suit and use technology that speaks to their skill set and interests. Maybe that means recruiting over Tinder or TikTok. And if you don’t know what those are and how you could use them, do a Google.

Lesson #4 – Don’t waste their time

Because Gen Z understands tech even better than Y, they also know how to multi-task and while talking to you might be making dinner reservations, uploading a pic to Instagram and answering a group chat or 12. That’s just how they operate. As such, you’re going to have only a few brief seconds to get their attention and hold it – so recruiters need to plan out what they’re going to say and mean it. No dragging out the process, no back and forth – just a well-defined process that maximizes the opportunity to connect.

Lesson #5 – Call them by their names

The days of one to many strategies are gone. So are the days of 100 candidates per rec, when Millennials were nameless, faceless resumes accumulating somewhere in an ATS. Gen Z wants to see that you know who they are and what you’re about before they’ll consider moving ahead. Think about how Spotify curates playlists based on a user’s listening history. That’s what you’re up against in terms of personalization, better think creatively.

There are, of course, a slew of differences between generations Y and Z, and recruiting the new kids on the block won’t look like it did in recent years. At the same time, it’s important to recognize how we got to this juncture and what, if anything, we can do to learn from our previous approach. In doing so, you’ll come to find out that there is no rule book anymore, just a series of guidelines and best practices. And as Gen Z continues to flood the workplace, additional themes and patterns are bound to emerge. But for now, I invite you to ride the wave with them. There’s always a learning curve, but with the lessons learned from the Millennials, it shouldn’t be so steep this time around – at least let’s hope not.

How To Prepare for an “AI in Recruiting” Meeting

You just got invited to a meeting on using AI for recruiting. Now what?
Don’t panic. Here’s is what you need to know…

We are all aware that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic across most departments and businesses, including amongst recruiters and talent acquisition managers. HR and TA analysts have written prolifically on how AI can help employers to recruit, engage, evaluate, educate, and retain the first-rate talent. But for most, getting up to speed on AI technology and applications seems like a daunting task.

While 42 percent of HR leaders believe artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) are “among the biggest transformation challenges they will face in the next five years” (according to KPMG’s The Future of HR 2019 report), a troubling 50% admitted to being “not at all prepared” to respond strategically to AI and ML. This means a significant number of HR and TA professionals are unsure how to proceed when it comes to researching and planning deployment; how to set goals, priorities, and evaluate AI recruiting solutions for their organizations.

If that describes you, don’t worry: you’re not alone!
Given that AI is new and complex, but also has great promise, you need to prepare for that inevitable meeting. Here are suggestions to help you get ready, so you can ask intelligent questions, and get the most out of the meeting:

Familiarize yourself with AI-related terms

Sure, you’ve heard terms like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Algorithms, Natural Language Processing, and Predictive Analytics…but do you know what they mean?

In advance of the meeting, be sure to acquaint yourself with the terminology of AI technologies and applications (such as chatbots, classification, and matching).

Identify the functions you hope to address and the problems you are trying to solve

AI isn’t a panacea for recruiting challenges, nor can any technology replace many of the functions provided by talent acquisition professionals. Automation can help you manage the recruitment process, source, and screen candidates easier, and provide candidates with a better experience. But matching, engaging, selecting, and closing applicants still requires a human touch and the expertise of external and internal recruiters. Identify your pain points and make sure your organization is clear about which recruiting processes are being targeted for improvement. In other words, make sure everyone is crystal clear on what problem you are trying to solve with AI.

Understand the complexity (in terms of human decision making) of the tasks you wish to automate

When choosing which problems to tackle with AI, be sure to assess task complexity. And, if your organization is relatively new to implementing AI, start with simple versus complex activities. Typically, activities best suited for AI are the higher volume/lower complexity tasks at the beginning of the recruiting process. Tasks later in the hiring cycle are much more complex and not well suited for AI, at least as an initial application. For example, AI is helpful for recruitment marketing, as well as for arduous and time-consuming activities such as scheduling candidate interviews. Similarly, chatbots can efficiently capture and analyze applicants’ answers to screening questions. However, AI cannot handle the more complicated human tasks of selecting and closing (i.e. debriefing, aligning and summarizing team feedback; making and negotiating job offers).

Set clear objectives and expectations; apply best practices

Just because the technology is new, doesn’t mean you can’t apply standard best practices you already know about for adopting new tools or technologies. For example, to effectively plan for implementation of AI for recruiting, consider adopting the SMART approach to setting objectives and expectations. SMART is an acronym that spells out that your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. Thinking through exactly what you can realistically achieve, and planning how you’ll execute your initiatives, will make it easier to document and demonstrate your success. Set specific and clear goals for your first applications. For example, many companies choose to automate one highly labor-intensive task with the goal of a breakeven ROI within 12 months.

Additional best practices include conducting due diligence and checking references, ensuring proper integration points with other systems and departments, and managing data effectively, including security and privacy, across your organization

Ensure you have the right algorithms to meet your objective

Ensure you have the right algorithms to meet your hiring objectives. Don’t let the word “algorithm” intimidate you. At its core, an algorithm is simply a step by step process to accomplish a task.

As you evaluate systems from solutions providers or your own team, it’s essential that your team and vendor have the right algorithms for the technologies needed to address the task you want to handle (again, see the Sidebar). For collecting and analyzing screening questions, you will need sophisticated chatbots. For categorization and matching, you’ll need powerful machine learning algorithms.

Those with experience with the applicable technologies probably will have the needed algorithm experience as well. You can ensure this is the case by asking your vendor and/or team about relevant use cases and examples.

Confirm the appropriate data exists to be effective and to test the results

The success of AI and Machine Learning systems are directly related to both the quality and quantity of your data. As “Moneyball” (the book, and later Brad Pitt film), clearly showed — analyzing data of individuals’ performance can be helpful in predicting the future success of new players. The same goes for new hires, but in baseball, there are great sources of high-quality data. In other fields, such as recruiting, that isn’t always the case. For recruiting applications to deliver value, it’s essential your company has accurate data that is relevant and necessary to your hiring process and success. Machine learning becomes more and more powerful the more it crunches data and it’s crucial that the data is of high quality. “Bad” data will spoil algorithms from the outset and lead to inaccurate insights and poor, and possibly biased, hiring decisions. Be sure to ask about the data quality that your company has or how any vendor being considered ensures high-quality relevant data.

Conclusion

While most recruiters aren’t expert in artificial intelligence and analyzing data to improve hiring results, the technology is critical for the future of recruiting and more and more employers are embracing AI. Therefore, it’s smart for you to educate yourself on the basics so you can participate and help determine how and where it is adopted in your organization. Becoming familiar with AI terminology and some of the implementation basics is a worthwhile investment in your future. And, it will prepare you to ask critical questions, look smart and be prepared for that dreaded but inevitable AI meeting.

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Sidebar: What is AI?
Computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.

AI Technologies (“How It’s Done):

Machine Learning – method of predicting outcomes based on data and without explicit programming
Natural Language Processing – a method that enables computers to understand, interpret and manipulate human language
Speech Recognition – technology that enables recognition and understanding of spoken words, by digitizing the sound and matching patterns against the stored patterns
Expert Systems – a program that is designed to emulate and mimic human intelligence, skills or behavior
Robotics – the design, construction, operation, and use of robots, as well as computer systems for their control, sensory feedback, and information processing
Machine Vision – technology that enables a computing device to inspect, evaluate and identify still or moving images

AI Applications (“Things AI Can Do”):

Learn (Ex. Netflix recommendations)
Classify (Ex. Job type structure)
Identify (Ex. Find the cat in the photo)
Extract Meaning and Context (Ex. Smart replies)
Translate (Ex. BabelFish)
Converse (Ex. Chatbot)
Predict (Ex. Demand for pricing—hotels, and airlines)
Decide (Ex. Siri, Alexa)

The Brave New World of AI, Bots, and Video Interviewing

A few years ago, many recruiters and HR pros were nervous. Artificial intelligence was coming – and it was going to take their jobs. Candidates wouldn’t need to talk to real people anymore, because AI-driven bots would handle everything from start to finish. Fear ran rampant. OK, maybe that’s overdoing it, but people were legitimately worried.

Fast forward to today, and we know with some certainty that automation and AI will transform HR processes. It’s already happening, in fact, with chatbots popping up all over the place, engaging candidates, capturing their information and advancing them through the hiring process. At the same time, the use of AI spread into other technologies, from screening to video interviewing. But as quickly as AI caught on, so did legislators, concerned about the technology’s implications.

So much so, that Illinois unanimously passed the “Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act,” stipulating that employers must tell applicants that they use AI to analyze video interviews, obtain consent, and explain how the AI works and what specific characteristics it evaluates. On top of disclosures, employers must also limit the sharing of video interviews with only those involved in hiring and destroy any copies within 30 days at the applicant’s request.

if Illinois is passing this type of regulation, other states are sure to follow. Last fall, California instituted 23 principles to guide the development of artificial intelligence, covering everything from research to ethics and values. The state also criminalized the use of bots “with the intent to mislead” someone about its artificial identity. Over in New York, the state’s AI panel continues to mull over similar legislation, fully aware of the technology’s potential impact on its workforce. To date, we see a push for transparency, and increasing demand for vendors to provide resources that educate and inform users.

Whether hiring is part of your work or something that becomes personally important when you find yourself on the job market, these issues impact all of us. So let’s talk about considerations, implications, and potential outcomes.

For Vendors

The HR technology vendor community is all too familiar with AI. If it wasn’t on the product roadmap before 2019, it is now. And while privacy laws like GDPR might not have factored into solution design before, moving forward, vendors will face stricter regulation on what they can and cannot release into the market.

At the same time, some early AI faced scrutiny around bias, perhaps most notably at Amazon. The company spent close to four years building AI-based programs to automate the review of job applicants’ resumes, only to scrap the project after it realized that the system didn’t like women. Vendors in the space need to acknowledge the role humans play in creating technology, factor in the evolving legislative landscape, and of course, test their logic thoroughly to ensure solutions remain unbiased with all types of candidates. Likely, the development of educational resources to accompany the product across its many use cases will become universally required as well.

For HR & Recruiting

Even with the perfect AI in hand, there’s work to do on the HR and recruiting side of the equation. We know the many ways that AI works to support talent acquisition, from candidate sourcing to assessments, but identifying when and where to use the technology falls to the humans making the buying decisions. This requires asking the right questions before making a selection. And since it’s highly doubtful that a bot will take the stand should something go awry, HR and recruiting teams need to stay on top of the laws in the U.S. and around the world. From there, it’s up to these pros to manage compliance and mitigate the risks associated with capturing data.

On top of all that, there’s still the recruiting and hiring that needs to get done. Because no matter how advanced AI and automation get, with the path we’re on, human oversight will remain critical every step of the way. AI will always work best with human expertise to support it.

For Candidates

According to Mercer’s 2019 Global Talent Trends report, 60 percent of companies around the world plan to increase workplace automation this year. Given the current speed of innovation, it seems unlikely that candidates will fully understand what that automation entails and how it impacts their job search. Here’s where transparency re-enters the conversation, creating both issues and opportunities for HR and recruiting pros to help guide this understanding. It’s not about explaining the algorithm per se, but rather, offering up answers to questions about how companies use the technology, and what it means when candidates opt-out because they don’t want their facial expressions to be analyzed by AI in a job interview, for example.

And while we wait to see where legislation and AI take us, the brave new world of HR tech is here. We can embrace this world – and all the possibilities that come with new technology – as long as we commit to keeping each other informed and keeping humans at the forefront, every step of the way.

Witness the Change: The Reality of Workplace Misconduct Reporting & HR

79 percent of participants witnessed harassment or discrimination within the last five years. But 77 percent never reported it to HR

Workplace harassment and discrimination aren’t new topics, but in the wake of #MeToo and the launch of TIME’S UP, a fresh dialogue opened up – one that goes deeper than the high profile news of Harvey Weinstein’s trial or Al Franken’s resignation. People are paying attention and looking at these incidents from different perspectives. Spot, an AI chatbot, recently conducted a study that looks at the role of witnesses in reporting issues to employers. And even though it seems we’re talking about these matters, the findings were surprising.

Notably, 79 percent of participants witnessed harassment or discrimination within the last five years. But 77 percent never reported it to HR. Let that sink in for a second. That doesn’t mean they didn’t tell anyone though – because more than two-thirds of witnesses did share the story with someone outside of their organization, like a friend or family member. Leaving only 2 percent of participants who told their employer what they observed.

What Do We Know?

Before figuring out how to solve for this, we need to understand why people don’t report – and why they do. Neta Meidav, CEO of Vault, a startup that built software to re-imagine workplace misconduct reporting, shared that she turned down a job after being sexually harassed by the hiring manager. But she didn’t report the incident because she “didn’t trust the system to treat her fairly.” Meidav isn’t alone in her thinking, because the EEOC found that 70 percent of victims, like the witnesses mentioned above, don’t talk about harassing conduct with their employer. And so the cycle continues.

In Spot’s research, the main reason why included being worried about the consequences; not wanting to interfere; not knowing that witnesses could report; not wanting to be a snitch and not knowing how to report. That last one is interesting, and the problem that companies like Spot and Vault are trying to solve. Asked about it, the Spot study participants called out issues within the process. Some didn’t know-how, as well as others who said the reporting process is too complicated or that they didn’t have time to report.

With so many reasons not to get involved, it’s clear that we need to empower employees through trust and accountability. Something Meidav believes technology can enable.

Trust & Tech

Until recently, reporting solutions typically relied on a hotline that employees could call. Otherwise, they might also go and talk to their HR person directly. Neither option instilled a whole lot of confidence in the process, and likely that’s one of the reasons we ended up where we are today. However, there’s also the trust factor – and people don’t necessarily trust HR, or their employer to help them. But overcoming that obstacle requires more implementing a new tool – it’s a cultural shift. One that technology can support, but not supplant.

Because, as the Spot research points out, there’s a “social contagion” effect at play. It’s not just that witnesses tell people outside of the office, they also tell others around the workplace – just not the people who can take action. Almost half of those surveyed shared the incident with a coworker, which Spot says “infects the company culture, and has the potential to continue spreading … This shows that barriers need to be broken down to encourage reporting within the organization to those who can rectify the situation and restore a healthy workplace.

With that in mind, we need to find a way to make reporting more available, without making it feel visible. Employees – witnesses or victims – should feel safe about reporting, free from fear of retaliation. And unfortunately, that’s all too often the case as we saw happen at Google earlier this summer.

We need to remove the reasons why not to report from the equation and replace them with the right combination of resources that capture the information and ensure an investigation takes place. We also need to encourage employees to report whenever an incident occurs by promoting conversation with HR and destigmatizing the function. Yes, HR serves the organization while supporting its workforce. The technology they use fuels processes while helping manage compliance, but that’s hardly the reason people enter HR. These are people who want to help if we let them.

Until we eliminate instances of workplace harassment and discrimination, we need to find a better way to handle a sensitive subject. HR doesn’t stand a chance if they don’t admit to the problem in the first place. In recognizing the systemic nature of the misconduct, we can attempt to fix it – together – starting with our mindset before moving onto improved reporting.

Accessibility For Disabilities

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Where to Hire, How Much to Pay, What to Consider

Skills any iOS developer needs

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Pros and cons of hiring a freelance iOS developer

Pros and cons of hiring a full-time iOS developer

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What to consider to hire a perfect candidate

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iOS developer salaries

Wrapping up

What Is Social Recruiting?

1. Showcase Your Company Culture

2. Encourage Employee Advocacy on Social Media

3. Handle Negative Reviews Courteously

4. Invest in Premium Social Media Features

5. Go Beyond Traditional Social Media Platforms

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Here is the conundrum that you face as a recruiter:

So what is the answer? I think it depends on the type of recruiting you do.

Trial and Error

Recruiting Benefits

Future of Freelance

What’s Happened

What’s Happening

What’s Next

August 2019, Part 1

Workday Named ATS of Choice for Fortune 500

How Job Boards Handle Discriminatory Posts

Beamery Unveiled New Careers Sites

Talenize Hits the Market

WayUp Finds the Best Internship Program

Capital Investments, Mergers, & Acquisitions

Upcoming Events & Conferences

Other recent highlights:

Success vs. Direction

Uncovering the Obstacles

Seeing Both Sides

Benefits of Employee Monitoring

Where Employee Tracking Can Go Wrong

Best Practices

The Beginner’s Guide to Recruitment Analytics

What is Recruitment Analytics: Definition, Scope, and Examples

Predictive Analytics in Recruitment

Getting Started with Recruitment Analytics

Succeeding with Analytics in Recruitment

Lesson #1 – Don’t write them off yet

Lesson #2 – They know about the economy

Lesson #3 – Up your tech game

Lesson #4 – Don’t waste their time

Lesson #5 – Call them by their names

Familiarize yourself with AI-related terms

Identify the functions you hope to address and the problems you are trying to solve

Understand the complexity (in terms of human decision making) of the tasks you wish to automate

Set clear objectives and expectations; apply best practices

Ensure you have the right algorithms to meet your objective

Confirm the appropriate data exists to be effective and to test the results

Conclusion

Sidebar: What is AI? Computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.

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Sidebar: What is AI?
Computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.