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Modern Assessment Tooling

I’ve been deep diving into all new forms of assessment tooling, primarily for recruiting purposes. I’ve been asked many times to share my experiences and knowledge about them, so I’ve written a White Paper (Link at the end of this post) about it for you to download. Since the white paper is a 22-page read and I’ve learned most recruiters settle for the sound bites, I’ll summarise my findings in this article.

Why modern assessment tooling?

Let me start with the why of my research. The reasons for this are two-fold:

First of all, we seem to select really terribly. How often is someone not doing the job you hired him (or her) for like expected? Very often. In most cases, we say the expectations were ‘totally unrealistic’, but were they really? Usually, they were unrealistic for this person, but probably not in general. So we need a better way to select people and guess what, the problem is that a resume doesn’t really give us the information we need to be able to select well. It doesn’t tell us anything about the quality of the work of the applicant or the circumstances of delivering that quality. And the interview? We only confirm our initial bias based on the CV. So we needed something better, assessments seem to be able to do the trick.

But questionnaires are over the hill. Why? First of all, because the more I’ve researched them, the more I found their scientific base is actually not that strong as many people claim. Second of all because they’ve only been tested and validated in ‘working’ environments, not in applying/recruitment situations. And guess what: people act differently. Research shows this time and time again. Third of all, a question can simply be answered differently if you think you will benefit from them, so you can manipulate them easily.

Games

Games were my first love in this sector and if you look at the stage of development, they have developed the furthest. I’d say they are in adolescence when you look at maturity. Within the games, there are several different types of games. Psychometric (that measure behavior), Cognitive (that measure potential skills, that also result in natural behaviors) and Situational Judgement Games. All are useful in certain situations, depending on what it is you want to measure. Games can measure just about anything, except for ambition and preferred ways of working. Different suppliers have different quality and different strengths and weaknesses. A browser-based game delivers a better candidate experience for example but is relying on a stable internet connection. Modular games can be shorter depending on the job, delivering a better candidate experience, but because they cannot measure certain traits in more settings, scientifically they are less robust. I’m not saying they are not valid, but it’s like the safety of a Volvo versus a Seat. A Seat is perfectly safe, but a Volvo is known for being super strong in a crash.

The great thing about game-based assessments is the fact they are really hard to manipulate. In all the games I’ve played in only a few instances I actually knew what they were measuring. In those cases, you might be able to manipulate a little, like when you have a chance to retry a game. You can derive from that they are measuring your endurance and tenacity and try a few more times than you might have normally. But the potential for manipulation is very limited, so you get honest results.

Linguistic

Linguistic assessments derive your personality from how you write things. What words do you use? How do you frame your sentences? There are about 70 years of scientific research behind this, meaning it’s in childhood phase.

The great things about this technology are that it takes very little time and you can do ask two things at once. You can ask questions you would like to ask anyway and read the actual answer, and meanwhile, you have an algorithm build a personality profile that gives you an unbiased report of the persons Big Five and other personality traits.

The main problem I’ve encountered with this technology is that it doesn’t compensate (yet) for professional writers. I write a lot so my writing style changed over the years to more suit my audience than my personality. Writing with headers, bullet points for example. Things I never used to do. This makes me more structured and the linguistic assessments see me as very structured. That’s a mistake. I also tend to not put myself in the middle as much, making me a little more introverted than I am. Professional writers might include lawmakers, policy advisors, journalists, scientists. So the use is currently limited as far as I’m concerned with high volume jobs.

The solutions may be in either using a chatbot (since in conversations you communicate naturally) or using social media postings.

Social Media

Social Media assessments are in their infancy, to be honest. I’ve only seen one tool that delivers pretty credible results. But all that actually give in-depth analyses seem to fail time and time again. Even though many seem to use linguistics and adjust by other behaviors, these adjustments are very often man-made. And men is full of bias. To give one specific example, my liking of Linkin Park made me unhappy and discontent with the world according to one test that was transparent about their algorithm. Clearly, there is some form of bias at play here. Many social media tools also ignored all Dutch pages I liked, so they ignored most data because they didn’t classify that yet.

I believe these tests have great potential but need many, many years of research before I would suggest using them.

Facial expressions

There is a lot of argument about the fact if facial expressions, mainly micro expressions, have a scientific base. In short, they do and they don’t. There is no peer-reviewed article out there. That’s true. The reason for this is because as soon as it’s submitted people start yelling Nazi-science. This technology has no link to the nazi-science of identifying jews based on looks, but nobody wants to be associated with it. However, there are plenty of scientists that have done really good research into this. And this year an article did get published that we can derive 4 out of the 5 Big Five traits based on eye movement alone.

When it comes to the candidate experience, that’s really great. With a few minutes of video, you can build a profile that you cannot fake. Because you do not control your micro-expressions. You can control expressions (like raising an eyebrow or blinking), but not the microexpression (like in my case my eyebrow vibrating in 0,4 seconds).

What I love about this technology it has the potential to identify traits many other tools cannot identify, mainly in communication styles. I love this tooling when for example you want to assess a team’s diversity of thought. For example, do we have enough action-oriented people or analytical people or human-centric people in a team? Or are we all the same and is that why we keep failing in the same part of the process?

DNA

DNA based assessments are just conceived. About 5.000 people have done one. Scary stuff right? Your genes cannot tell us anything about your behavior, so they cannot be used for recruiting. They can tell us things about your potential and future. Because we eventually end up being our most natural selves. Usually, that’s why most of us start looking like our parents. We revert to our natural selves. It is possible to identify if someone might have a talent for something, just not if this talent has been nurtured and developed. Someone with great potential for music that has never played an instrument will not be able to but will learn much quicker.

Not useful for recruitment. Or at least not for identifying current qualities or traits. If you’re hiring for the future it does have great potential. Since we all tend to revert back to our most natural selves, hiring a 40-year-old with a DNA profile you know the behavior he or she will be displaying in a decade or so. Scary as hell, especially if you think about Crispr, a way to edit our genes and turn them on or off. Really scary, but keep an eye on in the future.

Brain Scans

Like DNA it’s only just conceived. Great potential. Unable to fake. Could be used in highly sensitive positions. It’s possible to see one’s brain react to certain stimuli and know if someone poses a risk under certain circumstances. For example, all major swindlers have certain area’s of the brain lighting up under certain stimuli. It doesn’t mean you will steal from your company if that happens, it does mean you run a much bigger risk that people who do not have this trait. Maybe not make them CFO of the company?

Interesting stuff?

Would you like to read more about a specific assessment technology, let me know in the comments and I’ll write a more in-depth piece about that technology?

If this has your interest: this is just a very short summary of the White Paper I’ve written on the subject. Download it for free here: https://rdaily.co/2KP6YZz

Talent Acquisition Movers, Shakers & News Breakers

Headlines in Talent Acquisition

Last Friday’s Jobs report has swarmed newswires with a plethora of predictions about where the US employment market and US economic conditions are headed. Here, we digest key data as reported by the US Department of Labor, along with some predictions about what this most recent set of data might mean:

  • Overall, hiring increased in most major sectors, most notably health care and white-collar firms.
  • In all, 196,000 new jobs were created, an encouraging boost from a startlingly low February report that rattled some analysts enough to predict an impending slow-down in growth and jobs, vs a “blip.” However, March outcomes exceeded the 179,000 number forecasted in surveys by the news source, MarketWatch. So back to February “blip” we go.
  • The influx of new jobs appears to have kept the unemployment rate near a 50-year low of 3.8%, as reported by the Labor Department.
  • Despite how job layoff numbers surged 35%, we also find this: Most firms still cite chief complaint as a continued shortage of skilled labor.
  • Competitive recruitment issues remain widespread, with the majority of TA paddling crowded waters. In light of these data sets, we remind readers of some reported solutions, such as:

The Fed

With the Federal Reserve scheduled to meet in less than two weeks, on May 1, and soon again on June 19, 2019, for purposes of deciding to raise, cut or keep interest rates the same; some speculate that these low unemployment and strong job numbers could translate into upcoming rate hike increases — and, hence, borrowing costs.

However, the Fed Reserve committee announced last month no rate hike at its March 20, 2019 meeting – as well as no foreseeable rate hikes for the remainder of 2019.

While there is no guarantee that this signal to keep borrowing rates steady will be realized; it still appears prudent in an environment of 2.25-2.5% interest rates to draft a few shopping lists.

Think: HR Tech to boost HR productivity, Staffing Firms to help with challenging job openings, Professional Development & Conferences to bolster skill sets, and a sundry of other means for boosting TA recruitment, retention, & organization brand, when planning Fiscal 2020 budgets.

Wage Increases at Bank of America and Target

Bank of America has announced it will raise its minimum wage to $20 per hour over a two-year period. The company says that the hourly minimum wage will increase to $17, continuing in increments over the next two years until it reaches $20 in 2021. The current minimum wage rate is $15 an hour. BOA says this is part of the company’s commitment to employees as well as delivering sustainable, responsible growth through competitive benefits and programs that support the diverse needs of its 205,000+ employees.

In the same week Bank of America announced its minimum wage hike, Target also announced a wage hike for its workers. By summer, workers will receive a minimum wage of $13 an hour, a $1 increase from its current minimum wage of $12 hourly.

First Advantage

First Advantage, a global leader in the background check and drug screening solutions, today released the second report in its five-part series exploring the state of the industry in 2019. The report, U.S. Product Trends, and Insights focuses exclusively on US practices and:

  • Examines how companies are using background screening to recruit, engage and retain workers;
  • Considers how, why and the different types of information that organizations seek to learn about potential employees.

Drawing on results, First Advantage highlighted five key trends:

  • Some crimes (i.e., DUI) are trending toward greater tolerance, provided it does not impact the applicant’s ability to perform on the job, when best-in-class companies review criteria for handling returned criminal records.
  • Retail received the highest drug positivity rate of any industry (7%), substantially higher than the average across industries (3.9%).
  • The leading cause of drug positives on returned tests is marijuana (79%), though most companies (64%) said they would not/could not hire an applicant that tested positive for the drug.
  • The vast majority of criminal searches are completed in one day (91%), helping to promote faster screening time.
  • A notable decline in “missing candidate information” (21%) reinforces report delivery time and offers an overall better candidate experience.

To support these conclusions, First Advantage explored criminal, verifications and wellness search activity across the country. For the criminal portion, this included conviction return rate by state, age, category type, and action. This analysis discovered that job candidates from 18 to 27 years old have the highest recorded conviction rate, followed closely by those ranging in age from 28 to 37.

The U.S. Product Trends and Insights report is available now for a limited time on a complimentary basis at: http://learn.fadv.com/2019TopScreeningTrendsPart2.

IBM

IBM has announced that its AI-backed employee retention predictive attrition software can predict when employees are going to quit, with 85% accuracy (source link here: CNBC) The tool already is used and sold by the company to help retain employees. IBM reports that with their AI software, they have already been able to pre-empt employees on verge of quitting, in turn, boosting retention and savings of approximately $300 million.

Loxo

Loxo, a leader in the emerging web 3.0 era, has introduced a stunning new version of their AI recruiting platform while also announcing a completely free plan. Loxo, a best-in-class enterprise recruiting SaaS company, specializes in using AI and machine learning to help drive better recruiting decisions. The Loxo platform also creates a unified and seamless experience by combining the features that recruiters need on a daily basis such as: ATS, CRM, email automation, SMS texting, VoIP calling, personal contact information and candidate sourcing automation.

Just one look at their new developments and TA professionals may see why Tim Sackett, Top 10 Global HR Influencer, President HRU Technical Resources, and President Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals, asserts his choice of Loxo over nearly 1,100 other choices for applicant tracking systems in the marketplace:

  • New Product Design: Redesigned user interfaces (UI) and user experience (UX) to deliver a product that streamlines users’ workflow.
  • AI Enhancements: Users can adjust the criteria in their own private database and receive recommendations for the best candidates. AI can be custom tailored for each organization on the Enterprise plan.
  • Email Automation: Drip marketing campaigns to nurture talent communities, engage passive talent, manage recruitment marketing, or generate new business development and top of funnel sales pipeline.
  • SMS Text Messaging: Send SMS text messages directly from the platform as standalone messages, as part of integrated text and email campaigns, or both.
  • Find Personal Contact Information: Find both personal and work phone and email from inside Loxo, giving recruiters multiple options to engage new prospects, while having centralized historical communications
  • Reporting Analytics: Real-time analytics and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are available in the management dashboard. Enterprise customers have the option to add custom reporting or integrate with external systems.

 

Capital Investments, Mergers & Acquisitions

Kazoo

YouEarnedIt and HighGround, the market’s leading HR engagement and performance SaaS company, announces that each business will unite under a new brand: Kazoo. The comprehensive rebrand reflects a collective commitment to delivering an integrated people management solution.

What does Kazoo offer now, as YouEarnedIt and HighGround combine expertise, talent, and platforms? Kazoo proposes to:

  • increase productivity, retention, and revenue
  • enable companies to build purpose-driven cultures of high engagement and high performance.

How does Kazoo achieve these purposes?

By bringing three features into one easy-to-use platform:

  • Surveys feature that offers three flexible survey functionalities — eNPS, Pulse, and Custom Questions — to help companies create a culture of continuous, real-time feedback. As such, Kazoo empowers organizations with fast and anonymous ways to capture and act on the voice of the employee.
  • Recognition and Rewards feature that allows companies to build strong cultures by revealing and recognizing the positive work happening within their organizations. This intuitive, peer-to-peer platform is available for employees on the go, with both iOS and Android mobile apps, that make it easy for companies to showcase meaning and purpose of work, and to help employees celebrate achievements at work with:
  • Real-time recognition sent between employees, managers, and executives
  • Incentives to promote behaviors and business results
  • Engagement insights to inform managers
  • Powerful rewards engine to deliver custom products, gift cards, experiences, and charitable giving
  • Continuous Performance Management feature that proactively helps employees set goals that align with larger, company-wide initiatives. Simply put, teams have ability to track and applaud success together, enabling everyone to see the value of their contributions — and to stay motivated to do great work — in real time from any device. Even better: Winning teams are propelled by using continuous feedback to foster collaboration, innovation, and growth. Kazoo’s Feedback & Check-Ins help organizations shift from annual, backward-looking performance appraisals to real-time, development-focused conversations – not only between employees and managers but peers as well.

 

OneDigital

Human resources and benefits consultancy organization, OneDigital Health and Benefits, announces it has acquiredNorthwestern Benefit, the largest privately held benefits broker in Georgia.  OneDigital is in process of carrying out an aggressive acquisition strategy, completing 28 deals in 2018, as well as five in 2019 thus far. Its recent acquisitions have included consulting firms Paradigm Group, Cherry Creek Benefits, and Veritas Risk Services. OneDigital’s rapid expansion last year boosted annual revenue by $100 million in 2018, reaching $400 million. OneDigital’s core offerings now include strategic benefit advisory services, analytics, compliance support, human resources management technology, and insurance broking. The Atlanta-based firm has more than 80 offices in the United States.

 

Upcoming Conferences

WOMEN IN HR TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT IN ASIA:

MAY 8, 2019, Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre; Singapore

HRM Asia and parent company LRP Media Group, a diversified media publishing powerhouse and well-respected frontrunner in education and human resources markets, announce their first-ever Women in HR Technology Summit in Asia. The Summit will be held on the first day of HR Festival Asia, which takes place May 8-9, 2019 at the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre.

Jeanne Achille, founder, and CEO of The Devon Group and chair of the annual Women in HR Technology Summit at the U.S. HR Technology Conference & Exposition will deliver the opening address for the Summit. Also presenting will be:

  • Cecile Alper-Leroux, vice president of Human Capital Management Innovation at Ultimate Software;
  • Kylie Baullo, vice president, Client Services, Asia Pacific for ADP;
  • Anthea Collier, managing director, Asia Pacific for Randstad Sourceright;
  • Jasie Fon, general manager, ASEAN for Workday;
  • Dr. Jaclyn Lee, Chief HR Officer, Singapore University of Technology and Design; Philippa (Pip) Penfold, vice president, People & Strategy, PeopleWave;
  • Siew Choo Soh, managing director and Head of Consumer Banking & Big Data Analytics Technology for DBS Bank.

The Summit will explore a multitude of topics, including data and analytics, diversity and inclusion, women’s participation in STEM, leadership development, performance management and more. In addition to the Women in HR Technology Summit, the HR Festival Asia 2019 will include tracks considering HR and digital transformation, talent management and development, workforce innovation and recruiting, as well as a showcase of over 120 HR technologies and service providers on the expo floor.

Details available at http://www.hrfestivalasia.com.

INDEED INTERACTIVE: MAY 13-15, 2019 IN AUSTIN, TX

Why you should attend: Indeed Interactive provides fresh angles and industry viewpoints on data insights, productive rejuvenation and cost savings thanks to unique speakers who offer creative tactics and practical tools. While attending you’ll receive hands-on experience, networking opportunities, and big inspiration.

RECRUITCON 2019: MAY 5-8, 2019 IN AUSTIN, TX

Why you should attend: This event continuously helps talent acquisition and management executives and leaders discover new and emerging recruiting practices. Additionally, RecruitCon offers access to new-tech, cutting-edge analytics, which streamlines hiring as a process and delivers data as a foundation for decision making.

UNLEASH AMERICA 2019: MAY 14-15 IN LAS VEGAS, NV

Why you should attend: Leaders, innovators, and influencers will gather for UNLEASH America 2019. These individuals will learn how to transform organizations and identify and apply the right technologies. This event will dive into the simplifications and time savings of AI and machine learning, offering professionals room to focus on employee experience, learning, wellbeing and culture crafting. It will explore how blockchain can be used for safer, more secure information transfer and how HR systems are being implemented for transparency, honesty, and autonomy.

RECRUITINGDAILY #HRTX BOSTON MAY 2ND- BOSTON, MA

Why you should attend:  A full day of learning, workshop, and training with sourcing leader Shally Steckerl, Ronnie Bratcher, Sarah Goldberg, Holly Mallowes, and Brian Fink.  All for a cause!  RecruitingDaily and The Sourcing Institute have joined forces to bring much-needed awareness to a great cause. TSIF helps to reduce unemployment by providing sourcing & recruiting education to military veterans, spouses of active military, and disabled individuals.  All Info Available HERE.

 

 

People and Places on the Move

Blink Health, the pharmacy app that makes prescription drugs more affordable, announces that Madan Nagaldinne has joined the company as Chief People Officer. Nagaldinne is an internationally-renowned human resources leader known for successfully hyper-scaling growth at companies including Amazon, Facebook and Compass. He will play a critical role in attracting top-tier talent, creating an inspiring culture and developing Blink’s workforce into the most innovative in the industry.

Andrea Ebbitt, vice president, talent strategy and development with Cooper Standard Automotive Inc. has been recognized by Crain’s Detroit Business in their accolade list of Notable Women in Human Resources. Ebbitt has 30 years of human resources experience in the automotive industry and is helping Cooper Standard enhance its talent management initiatives. The firm said under her direction it has launched several key initiatives, such as the Cooper Standard University, an enhanced performance management process and on-boarding program.

 

Equifax has named Carla J. Chaney as its new Chief Human Resources Officer, replacing Coretha M. Rushing who is retiring after 13 years with the company. Chaney is a human resources leader with more than 20 years of experience and joins Equifax from Graphic Packaging International where she served as executive vice president of human resources and communications. In her role, based at the company’s Atlanta headquarters and reporting directly to the CEO, Chaney will have global responsibility for the human resources center of excellence, which includes human resources operations, talent management, total rewards and community affairs.

FanDuel Group announces that Lainie Cooney will join the company in the newly created role of Chief People Officer. Cooney will lead the development and execution of the company’s global people strategy, reporting to FanDuel Group CEO Matt King. Cooney brings more than 25 years of experience designing and executing human resource strategies, with a focus on operational excellence, change management, talent acquisition, and performance management. She most recently served as Chief Human Resources Officer for Blue Apron.

MedeAnalytics, a leader in healthcare analytics, announces appointment of Melissa Green Dexter as Vice President of Human Resources. Specializing in corporate restructuring, organizational development and human capital management, Dexter will be responsible for HR operations, facilities and administration at MedeAnalytics—as well as benefits, talent management and employee engagement.

Transaction Data Systems (TDS), parent company of the Rx30 and Computer-Rx pharmacy management systems, announces that Maureen Brennan has been named the company’s Chief People Officer (CPO). Brennan will lead this new function for the company providing oversight of human resources, including executive, leadership and associate development, compensation, benefits and designing strategies to attract world class talent for TDS, the leading provider of technology solutions for independent and community pharmacies.

Veracode a leading provider in application security testing (AST), has announced that Catherine Reid has joined the Veracode team as Chief Human Resources Officer. Reid brings more than 15 years of experience in developing and executing talent management strategies and managing complex HR operations in global organizations. Reid will report to Chief Executive Officer Sam King and is responsible for guiding HR best practices, partnering with leaders across the organization to foster collaborative relationships between global offices, and leading the effort to attract and retain highly qualified global talent.

 

What news would you like to share with us for upcoming weekly news updates? Contact us at [email protected]

The Best Matches Measure Up

 

Using metrics to identify which type of worker to hire

Which pool is your next new hire swimming in? The chances that it’s in the “regular, full-time” pond are shrinking, while your sourcing options are growing. Will you cast your net hoping to land a contractor, intern, or volunteer? Or are you looking for nibbles from crowdsourced temps or robots? If you don’t already have an app answering those questions for you, you’d better begin building one. All you need to get started is the internal HR data that you should have at your fingertips.

More choices actually make it more difficult to arrive at the best match between open positions and top talent. Numbers are the tool to cut through the uncertainty; you can learn from past successes and project future ones by turning your collected data into powerful metrics. This objective manner of identifying the right type of worker and hiring relationship for the job should precede your usual application process. Don’t worry. There will still be time for a gut check.

 

Check your workflow numbers

Start with your job, its description, and past hiring history. You’ll want to collect data on which tasks the job covers, previous times-to-hire, and employee status (full-time, part-time, any contingent status). Then, look at outcomes. What quality of work has that type of employee produced, by role?

These are things that can be measured on a numbered scale and then plotted on a graph or spreadsheet. Include criteria such as job title, worker status, tenure, pay scale, etc. Once you have a visual map, you can begin to understand how well that job role and typical employee type have achieved your business goals in the past. This will allow you to make informed future projections.

 

Look at performance data

Now, look more closely at those previous relationships. Using annual reviews and input from managers, rate the employee type by key performance indicators. In other words, this is how well a full-timer did, this is how well an outsourced contractors did, etc. Enter this information numerically in your analytical map.

You’ll want to do this for all of your job positions, so you can compare how well your sourcing choices worked out. Include every talent channel and status, however formal or informal: executives, middle management, full-time and part-time regular employees, contractors hired by the project, interns, volunteers—even the boss’s kids who come in to do some filing. Now you’re getting some real insight into which roles and goals are best served by which type of worker.

 

What are those numbers telling you?

Forget about averages, for now. What are those high and low numbers saying about your hiring practices? For example, low scores for unpaid help may mean it’s time to move beyond internships or the boss’s kids to improve your outcomes. High scores for salaried positions indicate you’re on the right track.

Next, consider those same scores in light of the job priority. If your interns are just sweeping up and you don’t mind a little dust, it might not pay to bring in a janitorial service. Markedly low scores for high-priority work, however—across hiring type—mean you have decisions to make.

 

Act by the numbers

A full-time role that is falling short of outcome goals may have outgrown its description. You might recast the job for two part-timers, two outside contractors, or even split between an automated algorithm and another type of employee. You might “borrow” a seasoned worker from a partner company to redesign the role. You might invite a regular contractor to step into a more permanent position.

Finally, analyze your average scores to see which type of hire is moving your team forward as currently employed. Keep this information up to date and accessible. Now, how about that gut check? Use it as a tie-breaker! Building on what already works while staying open to new relationships will help you make the best matches.

 

Break the Student Barrier: Solving the 1 Percent Problem

capus recruiting

 

If we’re being honest: every industry has its issues. Those unique, deep-seated challenges that seem nearly impossible to uproot, no matter which way the disruptors and agitators approach the problem. This is true of diversity in every space from tech to construction or indeed inclusion from fashion to entertainment and pay disparity  from legal to transportation – you get the idea. Taken as an individual case study, the financial sector has all that and more, even in 2019, and it’s time we start talking about this space and how its recruiting and hiring practices impact recent graduates and entry-level candidates.

Financial services organizations are some of the largest employers of these populations, but according to a recent US report from Oleeo and Universum, the barrier for entry is nearly impossible to navigate. More specifically, of more than 3 million student applications submitted for the 2018 campus recruiting season covering financial and professional services, only 1 percent of those seeking employment in finance were hired. That’s downright abysmal – both for students and recruiters. But before we can address this, we need to figure out how we got here and where this is going.

By the numbers

There’s no doubt that the financial sector is ultra-competitive – that was established long ago and validated by the research above. Now, I write this as someone with an MBA from Columbia Business School who started their career at Lehman Brothers – however, at a time when unemployment is at a record low and digital transformation is on the minds of many an organization, it’s still surprising to see the percentage in print.

What’s more, when it comes to campus recruiting, the Oleeo-Universum study revealed the continued relevance of Ivy League educations. While students from these campuses made up 27 percent of those hired across the country, they accounted for 66 percent of hires for financial roles based in New York and Washington D.C. Outside that region, that drops to just 12 percent. Meaning that in the relative finance capital of the U.S. of the 1 percent of student applications turned new hires, the majority came from the nation’s top colleges and universities. To put that in context, there are around 131,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at the 8 Ivy League schools as of 2017. According to the latest numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics, there are 19.9 million college and university students nationwide.

So if the Ivy League makes up a significant fraction of the students graduating year after year, and getting the lion’s share of finance jobs out of school, then that doesn’t leave much hope for the average college student, does it?

Changing the game

Knowing all this, it’s clear that campus recruiting for the financial sector caters to just a few graduates. At the same time, this industry is ripe for change – and many organizations are sounding the call. We touched on this in a recent post exploring how Bank of America updated its student strategy to improve diversity and inclusion efforts. In doing so, the organization sought to reach the best candidates, wherever they are while reducing unconscious bias in its assessment processes. This means looking beyond a select number of schools in the Northeast and placing additional emphasis on digital channels including social media.

By casting a wider net, Bank of America is now meeting these candidates virtually and providing education to students about professional opportunities through dedicated webinars and content. While just one example, it demonstrates how seemingly different recruiting initiatives can work together to improve the overall results – which in this case, will hopefully impact more than 1 percent. Part of this too is about the technology they’re using to empower the process.

Solving the problem

Going back to the numbers for a moment, it’s important to note that there’s another factor influencing these outcomes: the sheer volume of student applications. There are millions of graduates vying for thousands of jobs, and there’s no immediate way to solve for that. That said, we can make the recruiting smarter, centralizing the apply step and using intelligent automation and machine learning to understand the needs of a specific organization better as candidates progress through screening and selection.

We’re at a point when algorithms can be trained to make decisions leveraging the evidence of abilities, competencies, skills, and experience without bias. Leveraging thousands of data points, we’re able to enhance conversions and preserve an ideal representation of hires versus applicants while maintaining compliance with EEOC selection rates. With this, we’re able to streamline our efforts without sacrificing the candidate experience for the high number likely to be dispositioned. And all that is helping to shift the financial sector from its current state to find the balance needed wanted and demanded by a higher percentage of today’s world.

 

Recruiting Studies Are Fooled By Randomness

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last six months reading studies. On recruiting. And interviewing. And diversity. And Quality of Hire. And I’ve mixed it with a healthy dose of Nassim Taleb, LessWrong.com and the work of people like Daniel Pink, Robert Cialdini, and Daniel Kahneman. 

What I’ve concluded is that “Business” is not that complex. Human beings are complex. And that’s where everything falls apart.  

Academic Studies

Let’s talk about academia, and how it impacts recruiting. In 2012, Lauren Rivera published a study of elite professional consulting firms and their hiring practices, The study purported to show that when hiring, the choices made by a manager ignored objective decision making and ultimately revolved around social ties. A popular summary is that squash players hired squash players and golf players hired golf players. 

Now that’s a headline. But is that what the data showed? Is that even what Rivera claimed, or is that how it was reported? 

One of the challenges in social science is the desire to draw conclusions from data. Data is simply information, and it is accurate or inaccurate. Conclusions taken from data are trickier. They can be right, but wrong. They can correctly predict an outcome, but not be accurate. And it’s easy to show. If I sit in a certain chair every time the Cowboys play football, they win. If I don’t sit in that chair, they lose. I can show data that proves this is true, and it can be 100% predictive. It’s clearly not the case that my choice of sitting in a chair can predict the outcome of a football game I’m not involved in, but you can draw an accurate conclusion based on observation if it works. The conclusion is correct in its prediction but wrong in its accuracy. We were “Fooled by Randomness“. 

It’s likely accurate to say that “objective processes” at the kinds of companies Rivera studied weren’t objective. The hiring process at the companies were not data-driven. We can conclude this because that was the point of the study. It’s not accurate to then move on and conclude that squash players hired squash players and golf players hired golf players as part of the crucial factor in decision making. That’s the sexy part of the story, but they didn’t test for that conclusion**(_see below_). 

The “they play golf” marker is not a rational decision on how to hire for high-value positions. That’s why it stands out in the data. As a correlation, Rivera actually concludes that managers seek to find a “spark of commonality” that gave the managers assurance that the candidate would be a good culture fit. If we’re having a discussion and I talk about a book I read, a movie I watched, a restaurant I visited, and a company I worked for, you’re likely to engage on the topic that you know the most about. If we both read the same book, we can talk about the book. Someone observing us would assume the book was the central part of the discussion, but it’s actually the one topic we settled on out of four topics.   

And here’s the kicker – whether its squash or Twilight, a shared interest is a sign of cultural fit. 

When we look at high-performing teams, a common pattern is similar communication patterns. The team has a high degree of confidence in their ability to understand what the other team members are saying. A shared language, a shared vocabulary, and a shared sense of motivation allow the team to solve problems without having to spend time explaining themselves or managing internal conflict.  When hiring, managers who search for common interests and a common language, they are screening for someone who will be a good cultural fit. 

What about Diversity? 

Studies clearly indicate that diversity in a team is good for identifying weakness in an argument or a clear bias. If everyone on a team thinks the same way, they are likely to blindly make poor decisions. What’s left out of the reporting on this topic is that the more diversity you have, the more conflict you will encounter. A diverse team is a more self-aware team, but a less efficient team. 

Like all things in life – there is a balance. You want a consistency of cultural fit that creates a smooth running team, with a diversity of background and perspective that allows for a broader view of the problem.

What is the manager’s job?

To hire and manage a smooth running team. What is the best way to do that? Hire people with a commonality of thought, or hire people who can learn to work together. Managers searching for a cultural fit have a rational reason to do so, even if they ultimately appear to rely on shortcuts like what sports you play. We may try to create an objective process that hires the best person for the job, but the rational process of the manager is a desire to hire teams that communicate effortlessly.

What A Study Can Tell You And What It Can’t

Rivera’s work showed that the “objective” hiring processes put into place by the firms she observed and collected data from, were not primarily responsible for the decision to hire. 

That’s it. That is the full extent of the data. That’s all it can tell us. 

1) The study cannot definitively tell us what other firms did. 

2) The study cannot definitively tell us the primary reasons used by a manager for hiring. 

3) The study cannot definitively tell us the best methods for hiring. 

4) The study cannot definitively tell us this hiring process was less effective than another process. 

But man, we really want it to, don’t we? A study, conducted correctly, is really only good at proving something is not true. Once we get to conclusions, we’re injecting our bias into the results.

Don’t take my word for it. Consider funding a study to see if I’m wrong. 

**_To test the squash theory, you would have to run a series of interviews where squash and non-squash players were in four control groups. A series of interviews where the subject of squash came up or did not come up would then be compared to the control groups where it was brought up. A clear result might show that there was no difference. That would eliminate the squash reference. If the manager hired squash players no matter whether it was brought up or not, it would show there was a hidden reason we failed to identify. If the only group of the four that was hired were the people who played squash in an interview in which it was brought up, that would be at best be an example of ingroup bias. In terms of hiring, this ingroup bias of playing sports could be a better indicator of cultural fit than any other selection method we make up. 

How Interviews Increase Bias Towards Women of all Ages

gender equality interviewing

 

There is a fantastic piece of research about venture capital funding and the different questions that are posed to female-led companies versus male-led companies. They asked men about the opportunities for gain and women about the opportunity for loss.  It is a promotion versus prevention concept. The problem with these questions is that respondents answer them in different ways; a promotion question gets a promotion answer, while a prevention question causes women to reinforce points about potential losses, rather than the potential for the business. There is an obvious bias in the

The research analyzed job interviews at two leading US universities – University of California and University of Southern California – over a two-year period, and found that women were questioned more by hiring panels, they were interrupted more and faced more follow up questions. This meant that they spend more of their time reacting to queries than presenting why they are right for the job.

Add to this not just manterrupting, but a report from the Journal of Social Sciences which found that men are twice as likely to interject while speaking to a woman. Even powerful and highly respected women like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg can’t escape this. According to a 2017 study, male Supreme Court justices have reacted to the increase in women serving on the bench by increasing their interruptions of them.

All of which makes the interview a difficult and professionally challenging, dangerous place for a woman.

While it is easy to suggest that we use artificial intelligence (AI) to get rid of all this bias, I caution against such a move.

In October Amazon scrapped an AI recruiting tool they were using to analyze resumes to select the top five percent of candidates. Why? The company realized that the system was not rating candidates for developer jobs in a gender-neutral way. The model was built on patterns in resumes submitted over the previous ten years, most of which came from men and the AI was exhibiting a preference for male resumes.

The people behind the majority of today’s technological advances — the workers creating the algorithms — are predominantly white and male. The concern here is that when these white male coders assemble data for chatbots, the machines they design are likely to perpetuate inequities found in the real world. They are prone to hard code their own subconscious bias about race, gender and class into algorithms that are designed to mirror human decision making. This has the propensity to amplify existing stereotypes and create a stronger association for male and female-oriented images, behaviors, and careers.

Machines learn from masses of data. If that data has gender biases incorporated, it will become part of the algorithm. For example, researchers at Boston University and Microsoft asked the machine learning software to complete the statement, “Man is to computer programmer as woman is to …” It replied, “homemaker.”

In the excellent book The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, Clifford Nass reports how BMW was forced to recall one of its cars because male drivers in Germany didn’t trust the female voice offering directions from the car’s navigation system. In Japan, a call center operated by Fidelity would rely on an automated female voice to give stock quotes but would transfer customers to an automated male voice for transactions.

In 2016, Harvard published a report about the inherent bias in interviews and hiring managers to use their own context when evaluating individual applicants for a job. Another study found that women and man are more likely to hire a man for the job. When presented with two candidates with equal qualification and performance, the man was 1.5 times more likely to be hired.

But What about Ageism?

Another major -ism that is with us is ageism – in a world where youth is seen as a competitive advantage, being older is potentially being seen in a negative light. There has been extensive research about how much harder it is for older women to get interviews than older men. The National Bureau of Economic Research carried out research testing the prevalence of age discrimination in hiring, shows that the résumés of older women get far fewer callbacks than those of older men and younger applicants of either sex.

This is based on bias and unfortunately double bias for women who are older.

How Can Recruitment Help?

  1. Same Questions – Ask the same questions of people irrespective of age or gender.
  2. Reporting – There is an inherent lack of transparency in the recruitment process. We need to make this more transparent. We need to start recording the ratio of resumes by gender, interview candidates by gender to hire by gender.
  3. Group Interviews –  The same research showed that managers were more likely to remove any gender bias questions or comments in their interview if they were sitting with other people.  
  4. Bias Training –  People don’t realize they are biased unless they are shown how their unconscious (and conscious – let’s be honest) do not align with the corporate culture and expectations about their role in the hiring process.

 

 

Use Swordfish For Contact Data & Sourcing

 

Use Swordfish to help you navigate and build your pool of talent

 

Swordfish works as a Chrome Extension to find contact information on a wide variety of sites and profiles. The tool itself is very simple.

  • Once the tool is open on a site, it scans the profile to find contact information, including phone numbers, email addresses, and more.
  • After you see what kind of information it has found, you can decide if you want to use a credit to reveal the contacts. To do this, you simply select “show.”
  • You can save the contact information you have found to your lists.
  • An “Auto open” option makes it easy to quickly bring the tool up on any site.

The simplicity of the tool makes it a simple and painless addition to any workflow.  We love that.

Using a credit in Swordfish unlocks all of the contact information associated a certain profile. With the free version of Swordfish, you are given fifty free credits a month. Alternatively, you can pay for premium credits, which provide additional information, such as social links.

Overall, Swordfish is worth adding to your collection. It works for the United States as well as internationally, and has proven to be powerful and accurate. It also works with some sites that comparable tools may not, such as with Gmail profiles. ~ Noel Cocca

 

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

 

Dialing in with Data: Metrics to Predict Recruiting Performance

 

Despite the hype, effectively matching candidates to jobs directly is still years away, but an alternative approach—using historical recruiter performance data—provides an accurate predictor of success for landing better candidates faster

 

For years, the magical “resume to job matching” algorithm has represented the ‘Holy Grail’ of recruiting for corporate talent acquisition (TA) leaders.

Unfortunately, despite dozens of much-hyped resume matching solutions and hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the technology, there is still no generally applicable solution for effectively matching candidates to jobs directly.

Why? Well I think it boils down to one thing. Candidates are unpredictable.

Whether you work for a huge, global company or a Mom and Pop shop, you know this fundamental truth. That means basing an algorithm or basing recruiter performance on them isn’t the right approach for measuring recruiter performance. It also means we can’t base it on their input, the resume.

But successful matching requires large amounts of (objective) data

This is because, for any matching algorithm to be truly effective, the data being matched needs to be objective and there needs to be a lot of it.  In the case of corporate recruiting, you need millions of objective resumes (ideally, with quantifiable assessment and/or skills test results) and millions of accurate and well written job descriptions for the technology to “learn” and therefore predict successful matches.  

Unfortunately, as anyone in the industry knows full well, no two resumes are the same. The documents are inherently subjective. So are the job descriptions, which are limited and often inaccurate. As a result, acquiring the volume of objective data required to make resume matching ready for prime time will take many years. Decades, even.

But that doesn’t mean we’re left dataless in the cold in the AI and machine learning world.  

Given these challenges, companies have long turned to external search firm recruiters for help, especially for the most critical and difficult to fill positions.

But with over 20,000 staffing and recruiting companies in the U.S. alone, there is an overwhelming choice of external resources for candidate sourcing, screening and matching. And while most will promise to find the best people for all of your roles, research proves otherwise. In fact, analysis from a massive database of search firm recruiter placements over 18 months shows that that 91% of successful placements come from specialty recruiters.

What is a specialty recruiter?

Specialty recruiters are external search firm recruiters who focus on particular job type, category, industry and/or geographic region. Through years of experience, these recruiters have become experts in their specialty, and they typically possess the following qualities:  

  • Strong understanding of hard and soft skills required (despite poorly written job descriptions)
  • Trusted relationships with both passive and active candidates
  • Ability to screen applicants down to a small slate of the most qualified candidates
  • Proven track record of success (quality candidates delivered quickly)

Until recently, there has been no easy way for employers to locate and assess the right search firm recruiter for every job.

Consequently, most employers resort to using search firm recruiters “who they know,” or a search firm recruiter recommended by colleagues. This is obviously not optimal but seems like an easier alternative to searching blindly online or sitting through sales pitches from untested vendors. As a result, most employer/search firm relationships are not ideally matched, which makes for terrible experiences.

Changing the equation: search firm recruiter to job match

Similar to the marketplaces created by Airbnb and Uber/Lyft, which find the best room for your stay or the driver best able to take you from point A to point B, recruitment marketplaces find the best search firm recruiter to fill your job.

Switching the dynamics and focusing on the right equation has already helped employers fill positions 40% faster and achieve 32% higher fill rates. In fact, after one year of using a recruitment marketplace, employers typically find that nearly 50% of their successful placements come from marketplace recruiters—new search firm recruiters introduced via the marketplace.

There’s also a job satisfaction element for search firm recruiters who have the ability to stay niche and dramatically increase their efficiency, fill more positions, and make more money.

The network effect

Just as seen with the evolution of consumer marketplaces, as more and more participants enter the recruitment marketplace, more data is captured and acted upon, which continually improves the experience. This “network effect,” helps make predictions for job-to-recruiter matches more and more accurate, thus attracting more employers and external recruiters to participate.  

While no one disputes that having the right talent in the right role is a make-or-break success factor for any business, most people acknowledge that great people are not easy to find. Thankfully, advances in marketplace dynamics and machine learning technology make it possible to find and engage specialty search firms with proven success in sourcing and recruiting hard-to-land candidates. And with the right external recruiters in place, internal TA professionals can spend less time on low-value administrative tasks and more time focusing on high-value activities such as interviewing candidates and ensuring a great hire for each position.

 

Talent Acquisition Movers, Shakers, And News Breakers

ADP March 2019 job numbers report reveals US job growth at its lowest in 18 months, since 2017. Private payrolls increased by 129,000, missing economist estimates, following an upwardly revised 197,000 gain in February. (Wow…oops?!) Goods-producing jobs shrank for the first time since December 2016.

However, some forthcoming iCIMS data, shown below in our news headlines, offers a varying data set and hope — that things aren’t getting too, too bleak — yet.

US Dept of Labor (DOL) has created much buzz after issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), to revise the regulations governing the calculation of the regular rate of pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

What is this? The proposed regulations, (released in reams of detailed electronic documents) outline multiple shifts in long-standing (+50 years) legal conceptualizations that constitute current regular rate of pay. Should this affect you, in your organization’s role, pay heed to this synthesized bullet list (source link here) showing what DOL proposes not to be included in regular rate calculations:

  • Employee discounts on retail goods or services
  • Tuition programs
  • Show-up pay and call-back pay
  • Discretionary bonuses
  • Benefit plans, including accident, unemployment and legal services
  • Payments for unused paid leave and bona fide meal period
  • Reimbursed expenses incurred by the employee on behalf of the employee
  • Reimbursed travel expenses that do not exceed the maximum Federal amount permitted
  • Gym access, gym memberships and fitness classes on or offsite
  • Wellness programs (health risk assessments, nutrition classes, weight loss programs, etc.)
  • Cost of providing onsite treatment such as chiropractors and message therapists

When is “RIN: 1235-AA24” enacting? This is not enacting now, nor is it in effect yet. There is a customary 60-day comment period (ticking away as we type) on any proposed regulations to, set to close May 28th. DOL will consider comments before issuing final regulations. Anyone wishing to submit comments to US DOL should do so here.

OTHER HEADLINES in Talent Acquisition

Capterra reports how TA software costs may be an even larger consideration than previously thought. Replacing “ease of use,” price of TA Software now stands as a considerable variable in this $12 billion industry.

While this may be more confirming vs. eye-opening for those vending such products, some hefty reassurance for sales and marketing tenacity is reflected in Capterra’s data: Talent Management software users are satisfied 80% of the time with their purchasing choices. Another significant data finding: half of these software users spend at least 10 months searching for their ultimate software choice.

What significant weight does this study have for TA Software firms?

Multiple pass-throughs may be necessary with clients when pitching/proposing software benefits and ROI. Yes, while products may bring virtue, balancing patience with sales savvy of software vendors will be a viable soft skill to bring to initial marketing and negotiations/follow-up.

Ceridian, a global human capital management (HCM) technology company announces the launch of Dayforce Payroll, enhancing industry-leading payroll capabilities to the Australian market. Ceridian states that Dayforce Payroll offers customers with Australian operations a single solution to develop, schedule, and pay employees in one application, that allows on-demand access to employee information.

With their product launch; Ceridian intends to mitigate Hanover Research findings:  How approx 61% of Australian employees surveyed report levels of unsatisfaction with their employer in areas such as timeliness and accuracy of pay.

iCIMS reports this week how a February hiring activity slowdown may be only a radar blip: US employers’ hires rose 1.6% and new job openings rose 4.5% on a seasonally-adjusted basis in March. Results are tabulated using iCIMS’ Monthly Hiring Indicator, a leading economic indicator drawing upon an iCIMS database of more than 75 million applications and 4 million hires yearly.

According to tracking data, the March jump in new job openings may signal an overall rise in hires within the proceeding 2-3 months., as seen below:

And of course, this means that with the US labor market at near full employment, TA will remain a busy place heading into the summer season.

Need more proof?

Says Josh Wright, chief economist at iCIMS, “The job market still looks strong and the weak February payroll report appears to have been in an air pocket…It’s going to be hand-to-hand combat among employees for the best candidates, especially with wages rising.”

 

Illinois companies and organizations, statewide, now face the prospect of legalization of recreational marijuana use. Despite his predecessor opposing such legal measures, new Gov. J. B. Pritzker now says he supports the legalization of marijuana. Lawmakers plan to consider legislation this year.

If lawmakers succeed, Illinois would join 10 other states, and the District of Columbia, that have already legalized recreational marijuana. Medical marijuana is already legal in Illinois.

Protocol Communications, Inc. has settled an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) lawsuit with the US Equal Opportunity Commission. The suit was settled for $31,000. The suit was filed after an employee with dyslexia filed a complaint alleging how a director of Human Resources stopped her training, denied accommodation and terminated the employee upon learning of her disability. The employee, training to be a telemarketer, alleged that her request to take home a script, for practice, led company officials to query if the employee had a disability. Upon confirming a disability existed, the employee was told that continued training had “no point,” denying the request for the script practice accommodation.

Protocol agreed, according to EEOC settlement terms, to a two-year consent decree that obligates equitable relief to fully resolve the suit. Specifically, the company must provide all current and newly-hired employees with disclosure documents, outlining policies and procedures that prohibit disability discrimination and that also address reasonable accommodations. In addition, the company agreed to provide more ADA training to managers, supervision levels and HR staff.

Randstad Sourceright has released a report on how the healthcare market continues to face tightening talent pools, supporting anecdotal evidence of this hypothesis.  Says Randstad Sourceright, a booming 85% of human capital leaders, (among 800 international leaders queried) report talent scarcity as one of their greatest remaining concerns. Other eye-catching data include how:

  • over half (52%) also cite AI and robots as ways to optimize recruitment
  • a stunning 89% reveal how TA should be driven by value creation vs cost savings.

Citing STEM skills “war” for talent, leaders report value creation plans for TA such as:

  • Integrating full time and gig workers
  • Outsourcing non-core activities (such as manufacturing, IT and back-office functions)
  • Cultivating collaborative relationships with external partners
  • Initiating project-based hiring
  • What significant weight does this study have for TA health care organizations?

Health care and life science companies that focus on multiple levels of employee engagement/camaraderie, external collaboration, innovative non-core activity outsourcing, and project-based hiring may gain sounder footing, attaining hard-to-get STEM talent.

Capital Investments & Acquisitions

US Equity markets have been on fire with IPOs, most recently the much anticipated LYFT IPO. A flurry of market equity IPOs often translates to a concomitant boon in mergers and acquisitions, as our readers will see:

 

Alight Solutions, a leader in technology-enabled Heath, wealth and human capital management (HCM) and financial solutions, announced that substantially all of its acquisition is completed, of the Workday and Cornerstone OnDemand cloud practices of Wipro Limited. Alight Solutions CEO Chris Michalak will remain at the helm to oversee more than 300 colleagues join his existing team, to strengthen Alight‘s leadership in cloud-based HCM and financial deployment and services.

Outmatch, a leader in predictive and culture analytics announced that it is joining forces with The Devine Group to become one company under the name OutMatch. Devine Group clients and prospects can take advantage now of the scalable, integrated OutMatch platform, including pre-hire assessments and employee development, as well as culture analytics and video interviewing from OutMatch‘s recent acquisitions of Pomello and Wepow. Outmatch now provides employers with a competitive edge through a deep understanding of candidates’ cultures and behaviors that drive success across industries such as finance, healthcare, hospitality and retail.

Hopkinton-based Human Resources software firm PrismHR has acquired Kansas-based AgileHR, a cloud-based talent management software company. The acquisition was announced just two months after AgileHRs performance management solution was integrated with PrismHR‘s platform for human resource outsourcing. Gary Noke remains CEO of PrismHR following the acquisition.

TMP Worldwide has now closed its previously announced acquisition of CKR Interactive. Based in Campbell, CA and founded in 2001, CKR Interactive has grown to become a leader in employee branding and recruitment, bringing a new range of client solutions and platforms including TalentBrew to TMP‘s business. CKR Interactive will continue to operate under its existing name and will be recognized as a TMP Worldwide company led by President and CEO, Curtis Rogers.

Truli Technologies announces its acquisition of Recruiter.com, Inc., a recruitment technology platform, in a subsidiary merger transaction.  As a result, Recruiter.com, Inc. is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Truli.

Simultaneously, Truli purchased certain specialized recruiting assets of Genesys Talent, LLC, which will continue to own and develop its own candidate sourcing and engagement technology, MatchList.

Going forward, the company will effect a name change from Truli Technologies, Inc. to Recruiter.com, Inc.  Miles Jennings will continue as CEO. Michael Woloshin, founder and former CEO of Recruiter.com will act as the company’s independent business development consultant. After these acquisition/merger movements, Truli Technologies, Inc. will continue its focus on the development and acquisition of technology that solves industry recruitment challenges through connections, automation, and engagement.

Unit4 has acquired Intuo, a talent management solution focused on internal performance, engagement and learning. Located in the Benelux Union, Unit4 sees Intuo‘s solution as a platform to bolster its own more traditional, transactional HR system, with key features including:

  • 360 feedback and recognition
  • Frequent engagement pulses and surveys
  • Learning Management
  • Guided and customizable check-in conversations
  • Dashboarding and advanced behavioral analytics

Intuo‘s platform also offers direct integration to services like Office365 and Slack, and already has gained approx. 120 customers since 2013, including BMW, Verisure, Brussels Airport, Thomas Cook, FairFX, Ag Insurance and Europa Bank.

 

Conferences

Campus Philly, a non-profit organization that fuels economic growth by encouraging college students to study, explore, live and work in the Greater Philadelphia tri-state region, is holding their first Young, Smart and Local Conference, to take place April 9 and 10. The first of its kind, the Young, Smart and Local Conference will be in partnership with Action Greensboro, an economic development organization in Greensboro, NC. The conference will take place with two goals:

  • To create a network for other cities that are doing similar kinds of work
  • To create a cross-sector network, allowing college students and the area of Greater Philadelphia to collaborate, to enhance relationships, and to jumpstart efforts to attract and to retain new talent.

Key topics of the conference include issues for first-generation and underrepresented students, and available resources for such students. For more information or to register, visit: Young Smart & Local Conference

 

Intern Bridge, Inc., an Austin, TX based research and consulting firm, will be presenting the Total Internship Management Workshop on April 16 at St. Cloud State University. This workshop is designed to serve the needs of companies seeking to increase ROI and increase structure for the success of internship and entry-TA initiatives. For more information or to register, visit Total Internship Management Workshop .

 

As these keystrokes hit the page, let’s also take note of our very own HRTX Dallas 2019 RecruitingDaily Conference at the Stonebriar Country Club in Frisco, TX.  Expect more buzz and chatter soon, about this Un-Conference and Training Event held on April 4.

 

People and Places on the Move

A hearty congratulations is extended to the following organizations and people, moving, shaking, and bringing TA to new levels of exceptional records and service:

 

Human Resource Partners, an operational HR solutions firm based in Dover, New Hampshire announces Amy Mayo joining their team as HR Business Partner. Mayo brings an extensive background in HR compliance, employee relations, benefits administration, policies and procedures, union/labor relations, employee career development, retention and much more. Prior to joining here, Mayo worked for Associated Grocers.

 

Randstad Sourceright has been named a Leader and Star Performer for recruitment process outsourcing services in Everest Group’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing Services PEAK Matrix Assessment 2019. Randstad Sourceright demonstrates its highest ratings across verticals of Vision & Capability as well as Market Impact. The Everest Group‘s annual assessment designates RPO providers as Star Performers based on the greatest relative year-on-year movement on the PEAK matrix.

 

Ridgeway Partners, a global advisory firm specializing in executive search, board appointments, and succession planning, announces hiring Julie Zadow to its leadership team. Zadow joins Ridgeway with over 20 years of leadership experience in marketing, talent strategy, culture mapping, and organizational design. She will be based in the Boston office.

 

Los Gatos CA-based real estate firm Serena Group announces Don Tornincasa will transition from Regional Manager and take over as Senior VP, TA, effective immediately. Tornincasa joined the firm in 2016, with 29 years’ experience in and around the business as both a top-selling agent and manager. In his new role, Tornincasa will be mentoring new company management and actively meeting with community agents to cultivate external relationships with Serena Group.

Staffing Industry Analysts, a global advisor on staffing and workforce solutions, is pleased to announce that Subadhra Sriram, Editor & Publisher, is among the winners of this year’s Jesse H. Neal Awards. Sriram is the recipient of the 2019 Timothy White Award, that recognizes exemplary leadership in the face of challenges that editors face daily. This memorial award is named after the longtime editor of Billboard who served as a moral compass in the music industry, tackling controversial issues.

Ultimate Medical Academy recently recognized six nonprofit healthcare educational institution’s top employee partners with Spark awards at their recent Spark Summit, aimed to ignite collaboration, networking, innovation and change within the booming healthcare industry. Ultimate Medical Academy, headquartered in Tampa, FL, is a nonprofit healthcare educational institution with a national presence. This year’s recipients of Spark awards include:

  • Torchbearer Award (the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award) to CVS Health
  • Opportunity Award to BroadPath Healthcare Solutions
  • Spark of Change to four employers:
  • Cielo (Walgreens)
  • TTEC
  • Sykes Enterprises
  • CiOX Health

 

What news would you like to share with us for upcoming weekly news updates? Contact us at [email protected]

 

Making Money Moves: The HR And Finance Connection

Money Moves

 

For years, there’s been this debate raging inside HR. Well, to be fair, there are more than a few going on, but in this instance, I’m talking about HR and marketing. Without deep-ending on the specifics, the overarching premise proposes that if HR is to earn its “seat at the table,” it needs to think like marketing. As if the two were somehow inextricably linked.

The funny thing is that while we were arguing the point, hemming and hawing over what we could learn and how to act more like marketing, HR started moving in a different direction. Because simply put (and borrowing from the Six Million Dollar Man) we have the technology. That’s right. I’m talking about things like artificial intelligence and machine learning and what that means for the future of the industry – and how the farther down the road we go, the less we’re like marketing and more we’re like finance. Or at the very least, could use their help.

Rethinking HR Analytics

I’m sure many of you are thinking, “Wait, what?” but hear me out. See some very smart people from Oracle did an entire study on this topic, talking to more than 1500 HR and finance executives about things like data and collaboration between teams, and it’s not as out there as you might think. Actually, the results make a whole lot of sense when you consider everything that’s going on in HR.

A few years ago, all anyone could talk about was Big Data with a capital B and D. After that, everyone started salivating over predictive analytics and how that was going to change the game. Now we exist in a world where AI, ML and automation reign supreme. The common factor between these advancements being smarter information, though, as Oracle so gently reminds us, “Having the data is not the same as being able to use it effectively.” The irony of this statement being that some 26 percent those surveyed by Oracle ranked spreadsheets as their primary tool when the same percentage also reported that their biggest challenge with analytics is understanding the results and implications of analyses.

That’s the kicker. Historically speaking, HR folks aren’t great with data, and up until recently, they didn’t need to be. Plus, the available info sucked. So HR pros remained functional and transactional and earned extra points for strong communication skills (there’s that marketing talk). But all that and a bag of chips only gets you so far – and it’s not enough anymore.

How Finance Fits In

Ok, but why finance? That’s easy. Finance is all about data and always has been. They have skills and abilities beyond HR – and that’s exactly why we need them. It’s not that HR can’t do the work, it’s that they haven’t had to – or as Oracle so neatly explains it, “As HR organizations mature in their analytics capabilities from descriptive to diagnostic to predictive and prescriptive, the key challenges will be interpreting and acting on the data to solve issues and effectively advise business leaders.”

Let’s unpack that, shall we? Oracle is talking about four different ways of looking at data – from knowing what it says happened to figure out why that happened, over to what is likely to happen and what we should do about it. Fair enough. So to figure out where things stand in this exact moment, Oracle asked respondents about how they’re using their data. And guess what? Just about half of those surveyed said their organization could perform advanced predictive and prescriptive analytics. Clearly, there’s room for improvement.

What’s next?

Here’s the deal: Whether HR cares to admit it or not, knowing that we don’t know everything gives us a path forward. Take workforce planning for instance – by most accounts, it’s an essential HR process. And one that becomes almost impossible without keen understanding and analysis of some pretty heavy information. You try to determine the future of a workforce and what an organization should be looking for without running the numbers first. And you know who knows numbers? That’s right, finance. Not to mention they know different ones, and developing a clear understanding of the relationship between talent, cost and financial performance requires having the whole story.

That’s probably why integrating HR and finance data is a top priority for so many executives included in this Oracle report: Over 90 percent are in some sort of agreement that this should happen in the next year. What’s more, those who are working together currently are planning to up their game in the coming months. All in all, exciting stuff, and likely way more impactful than HR vying for a spot on the marketing team.

 

Glassdoor Reveals 50 Best Jobs in America for 2019: What Story Does Their Data Tell?

Talent Acquisition

 

Unless by choice, no Talent Acquisition (TA) recruiter or job candidate wants to navigate through what we see above: Middle of Nowhere, towing some narrow line, on a slick path, where anything can creep up from behind or head-on, to uproot goals, destinations. Fortunately for all of us, Glassdoor has paved a straight-forward pathway, packed with data that provides succinct clarity regarding employment outlooks, in their recently released study, “50 Best Jobs in America for 2019.”

 

Attention Grabbers & Implications

Let’s start with findings that usually grab the highest levels of attention:

1) Tech jobs still remain most represented, with 19 jobs on this year’s list, down slightly from 20 in 2018;

2) For the 4th consecutive year, Data Scientist ranks first, followed by Nursing Manager, Marketing Manager, Occupational Therapist, and Product Manager;

3) 22 new jobs, nearly half of the list, surface here, with New Best Jobs including Security Engineer, Radiologic Technologist, and Sales Manager;

4) Top Gun salary? Highest areas of demand? Lowest?…Wait for it!

 

Milk Toast Tech Job Satisfaction Levels. Let’s digest some findings here, before plucking from another data platter. Emerging tech remains hot across sectors, so it comes as little surprise that Tech jobs cast an expansive shadow over this list. But lurking clues within data reveal more than how a majority of TA is focused on recruitment for tens of thousands of Tech openings.

Take, for example, job satisfaction scores in some highly specialized areas: Software Engineer (3.6), Java Developer (3.7), Solutions Architect (3.6), Systems Engineer (3.5), Software Developer (3.5), Systems Administrator (3.6) and UX Designer (3.7). All rank in the bottom quartile of Job Satisfaction rankings. Implications here extend beyond how TA professionals are all hunting for candidates and niche skills here: This data also suggests how employees eventually may feel the urge to hunt for higher job satisfaction with competitors, looking at all those openings Glassdoor drops here. Add to this how many Hiring Managers already are engaged in passive recruitment efforts themselves, esp. for niche skill talent. Consider, for example, CareerBuilder’s co-sponsored study, released this month, revealing how 55% of Hiring Managers plan to contract in the next five years with Search Firms. Thus, fear of greater passive recruiting suddenly unfolds into starker reality — especially considering these employees who may feel itch due to disgruntlement/disengagement.

Engagement Implications? At least some of this mid-range (aka “milk toast”) job satisfaction also suggests that some mid-level Tech Employee Engagement levels may be running below radar of “passionate/fulfilled,” in their respective organizations. So, it behooves TA professionals to don deep-diving masks, exploring if this bottom-quartile job satisfaction is lurking within their own organizations. How? First, collaboration with Software Engineer Managers (4.0) and Software Development Managers (4.2), who show higher levels of job satisfaction ranking in the second highest quartile, looks quite beneficial. What separates Managers as substantially more satisfied? Or, instead, collaboration with diverse subgroups of Tech staff/management, to explore/address any explicit or implicit signs of lower engagement, could proactively mitigate high-quality personnel flight risks. Perhaps soft skills, i.e., mentoring/coaching receptivity/availability, communication, leadership skills, etc. could be swabbed onto slides for microscopic looks.

Other Milk Toast Data Slices. What other positions appear in that bottom quartile of job satisfaction? Electrical Engineer ratings poke out (3.7) while one notable triad appears in another interesting cluster: Business Analyst, Business Development Manager, Risk Manager (3.7).  Meanwhile, Health Care TA folks, take note: Speech Language Pathologist and Physician Assistants (3.7) and Nurse Practitioners (3.5). Everything ok there in Denmark?

Median Salary Disproportions. US Dept of Labor (DOL) reveals 2017 median pay for nurses at $70k. Yet this study shows a premium of only 16% for this list’s Numero Dos position: Nursing Managers ($83k). That seems rather substantial until deeper dive into data shows how Software Development Managers ($140k) earn a premium of 43% over Software Developers ($80k) and how Software Engineering Managers ($153k) earn 33% premium over Software Engineers ($104k). And that data path leads to how Speech Language Pathologists ($72k) and Physical Therapists ($70k) jut out here somewhat, too. But that’s just how it goes down in tech department budgets, right?

Well, factor in how these, and other, HC professionals must dedicate portions of their training to unpaid clinicals and lengthy internships, potentially (also) racking up student loan debt averaging $8,100-8,600 annually (using 2018 National Center for Educational Statistics figures, reporting student- vs parent- assumed loans). Or how Physical Therapists will, in 2020, need to earn doctorate degrees (as per APTAs Vision 2020). And well, something this weighty, off-kilter, in the overall TA landscape could pique others’ attention when health care TA recruiters attend budget meetings. Add to this how Nurse Manager, Speech Language Pathologist and Physical Therapy job satisfaction ratings appear in the two bottom quartiles and we add more fuel to budget fatwood.

Pandora’s Box. Anything else attention-grabbing in the box, Pandora? Lowest demand? Software Development Manager (1.2k); Software Engineering Manager (1.4k); Brand Manager (1.5k); QA Manager (1.9k). And oh, yes…Top Gun median salary? That goes to Software Engineering Manager at a plum $153k, followed by Strategy Manager and Software Development Manager, ($140k respectively). At the polar extreme, we find lowest median salaries in a tie: $48k to Radiologic Technologist and Recruiter. That Recruiter finding piques interest, considering how this list shows some daunting job opening numbers in four areas, all well exceeding 25k: Software Engineer (49k), Physical Therapist (35k), Project Manager (30k), Speech Language Pathologist (29.5k). At least HR Managers are faring well (upper-mid band range @$85k) while they scour for this and other global talent. And as that fight for talent ensues, it’ll be interesting to see how that moves the HR Manager job opening needle, now appearing in the study’s lowest bottom quartile: 3.9k.

Final Thoughts

Here, we examine Glassdoor’s “50 Best Jobs in America for 2019,” citing positions with highest overall Job Scores from their vast user database. Here, we summarize attention-grabbing segments within this study, and outline potential implications, forward-thinking actions, that TA professionals can consider in today’s steeper competition for talent. That said, how does this study’s information potentially affect you as a TA Professional? What aspects/findings do you relate to closely — or not as much? How might others within your organization respond to findings? We welcome your insights and comments. What say you?

 

Break the Student Barrier: Tech, Trust & Management

Campus Recruiting

 

When it comes to hiring, today’s employers have a lot on their minds. There are skills shortages to contend with, low unemployment rates putting limits on the number of active candidates on the market, a growing need for increased diversity, inclusion and belonging – and that’s just scraping the surface.

Amid this, a whole new generation is beginning to graduate and enter into the workforce, presenting their own set of challenges and opportunities. And preparing for them requires figuring out what candidates want and giving recruiters what they need. We started this conversation in a recent series about student outreach, citing some of what Gen Z expects to see from their potential employers. Now it’s time to balance the scales and look closer at the recruiter side of the coin.

 

Where we’re at

Much of what we know already helps validate traditional college recruiting strategies. Oleeo’s report with Universum certainly proved this point, capturing the insights of some 20,879 business students from across the U.S. Responses from that sample demonstrated the importance of on-campus events and careers fairs as the number two source for hearing about student opportunities (right behind careers sites and services).

But we also reviewed another dataset, looking at anonymous application data from more than 3.2 million candidates applying to campus programs in the financial and professional services sectors. Results from this segment were a little more surprising. Perhaps most shocking was the fact that approximately 40 percent of all applications were incomplete – so while these candidates start to apply, something like 1.2 million eventually dropped off, never submitting their application. That’s not exactly great news for recruiters (and no doubt equally frustrating for those recent grads who are likely inexperienced with the hiring process). At the same time, another 45 percent of applications got screened out before any further assessment or interviews. Yikes, game over.

And there’s no denying that college recruiting is a tough business. And it’s getting harder all-around, with only 2 percent of applicants hired during the 2018 season, averaging out to a 1 percent hire rate in financial and 1.5 percent in professional services. Taken collectively, this additional data tells us several things, including how high the bar is set, how quickly the experience can end and how much work we have to do with early talent.

 

Where we’re going

See, hiring these soon-to-be professionals requires strategies and solutions that support their goals and aspirations while respecting the high-volume nature of recruiting efforts. So if understanding Gen Z was step one, and learning about the current state of college recruiting is step two, our next move would be to leverage this knowledge and develop an action plan that combines events, management and technology.

Without knowing what they don’t know, Gen Z students are looking for employers that will help them connect the dots. Recruiters are looking to make that happen by doing what we mentioned earlier, using those integral on-campus events and career fairs to connect with students. So how can we improve this model to ensure that these job seekers remain active and engaged post-event?

Well, as the saying goes, there’s more than one way to crack an egg (provided you have the right resources in place). In an ideal scenario, these will account for management and technology components, helping recruiters facilitate events, both in person and online, and overseeing candidate capture and the follow up needed to build meaningful relationships. Through this, recruiters can get on the candidates’ level and help them on their journey in hopes of increasing not only application completion but also screening rates.

 

How to get there

Whether we’re looking to attract undergrad or graduate students, networking and campus events provide a clear path to one of the most diverse talent pools available. Keeping that in mind, recruiters need to craft an approach that also puts them in front of students and positions them as a trusted guide. Depending on the number of reqs you’re looking to fill, this means finding a way to streamline event management without sacrificing the high-touch experience that students crave. Using a technology designed for this purpose, recruiters can go from event creation to registration over to sourcing and screening without ever leaving the solution. Prescriptive recommendations, dynamic workflows and other functionality can even advance students onto the interview and move the entire initiative forward.

By saving time otherwise spent on manual functions and administrative work, we can focus more on emerging talent, helping them develop and submit stronger applications and improving hiring outcomes. Because we’re only as good as our next hire, and when it comes to recruiting that next generation, we’re just getting started.

 

European Recruitment Tech Start Ups To Watch 2019

Recently Unleash visited London again and as always there were plenty of start-ups I hadn’t met before. So like last year I’ll talk about the ones I’m most enthusiastic about.

Now, this isn’t a prediction of success, since I usually look at the product, the quality of it and the potential of it and we all know marketing and sales tend to have at least as big, if not a bigger, influence than the product.

Assessments

For the past few years, I’ve been deep diving into all assessment tools I can find. I’ve tested dozens of them (and even wrote a white paper on that (www.ta-live.com/whitepaper). So it’s hard to impress me, yet some still did.

Owiwi

(www.owiwi.co.uk) is a Greek start-up I like. They made a game-based situational judgment game assessment that made the entire experience into a story. It’s an actual game with levels and a storyline. It looks like a game you might play on your iPad for fun. It looks like a role-playing game (RPG), although it’s an RPG from the distant past with only text-based choices, but great graphics. They focus purely on psychometrics by situational judgments and they have a semi-fixed model about right or wrong answers, but those answers can be weighed per organization or job.  I’m not too happy about that part, since the right answer isn’t the same in every organization, not even for a quality like leadership. They could also add so much more by using the full game potential, with checking certain cognitive skills, but the choice right now to have a focus and I can respect that a lot. They are not there yet, but I am keeping my eye on them since they have a few unique features I haven’t seen in the dozens of tools I tested before.

Capp

(https://www.capp.co/virtual-reality) is another assessment tool I loved. Just like Owiwi not for the place they are in right now, but for the potential they show. For the first time, and I’ve tried several before, I saw a virtual reality assessment using the power of VR. They didn’t put a normal assessment into a VR environment like I’ve seen often, they used VR to create a better assessment. They have for example a presentation room where you need to give a presentation for an audience. This could be used if, with one of my previous jobs, presenting is a big part of your job profile. They have a room that was a model of the actual machine park of one of their clients, you can fix these machines, show us. As I said, they are not there yet, since the entire assessment itself is done manually. There is no eye tracking yet when presenting for example. It’s all done by an assessor looking at the screen. However, it’s got huge potential when I see the way they are using VR to create better assessments.

Devskiller

(https://devskiller.com/) is a tool specific for IT testing I like. Although I’m no developer, so I can’t the validity of the tool, I look at the way they actually test and use common sense to see if it’s something that looks good. And in their case, it does. What makes them different? They made the tests more like actual programming and, and this is really important, they test the ‘understanding the business skill’ of the IT professional. What they do, more than most other tools, is make it ‘real life development’. Basically, it works like this: The business wants this, here’s the code we’ve got, make it work, there are no limitations in use of frameworks or googling for solutions, just like in the real world. This tests a few things. First: are you able to understand the business request? Very important skill. Second: can you actually develop good code? The code doesn’t just get tested on ‘does it work’ but also ‘is it efficient enough’ and of course ‘how long did it take you’. Third: it probably shows you something about the natural way of developing this specific programmer. Hence, it seems to give really good information you need to assess if a developer is not only good at his or her job but also a fit in development style.

Chatbot

Eva

(www.eva.ai) is a chatbot that does engagement and is a combination of Robo recruiter and Pocket recruiter I wrote about last year. Eva won this year’s start-up award, with Robo recruiter winning last years, you might start to think the judges have a preference for chatbots. But Eva is a great product. It basically has two options. You can either send it out to start chatting with people that uploaded their CV to a CV database and see if they are actually interested or you can have them re-engage with your silver medalists. The people that have applied before and are in your ATS. You might use it to make sure you are GDPR compliant if you want to keep them in your ATS. You can use it to see if someone would be open for a job is a new vacancy opens up. But you can also use it to engage with prospects that were ‘not experienced enough’ when they applied, but now might be.

The great thing about Eva is that you can very easily create different workflows for different people and positions. You can go as far as to 100% personalize it. For example, this executive wants to be called sir, but that’s probably to labor intensive to use. But you can use a different tone of voice for execs than you do for graduates. You can have an automated workflow for people that have been in your ATS for people that were not experienced enough when they applied the first time than for those that qualified but didn’t get the job because there was a better one. Since I’ve always stated, since I started in recruitment over a decade ago, that the most wasted capital of an organization were resumes in an ATS, I love everything that can help us re-engage with them in the right way.

Feedback

Starred

(www.starred.com) isn’t rock shattering, mind-blowing, extremely innovative, but it’s one worth a mention since they made something easy and accessible I feel we as TA professionals have not spent enough time and money on. Getting feedback from candidates in a structured way. Basically, they integrate with your ATS and let you build a workflow when a candidate, rejected or hired, should get a request for feedback about your process. So you can get this tool to ask every rejected candidate a day after rejection what they felt about the information in the rejection for example. With a simple 5 star rating and a comment option. You can ask every candidate a week after their interview about the quality of the interview. You can then of course combine this with internal information about the recruiter or hiring manager, and with the type of job or maybe the time between application and rejection. This gives you valuable information on for example well-performing recruiters and hiring manager when it comes to candidate experience and optimizing the time between application and rejection. As I said, it’s not rocket science, but I like the data this tool can provide.

Video

Videomyjob

(www.videomyjob.com) has been around for a while, but I’d never actually seen the product in action. And now that I have, I totally understand why so many people love they guys so much. I thought it’s just another video tool, but it’s not. It’s the most user-friendly intuitive video editing platform I’ve seen to date. It helps you create the best video but showing you where to stand because of lighting. It has the option to have a script running on your phone while making the video. It’s got really easy editing tools to cut out parts. It has options for branding logo’s in it, but also for putting pictures in the middle of the video or even a video in video. I mean, this tool was so easy to use, for the first time I even saw myself becoming a vlogger.

Let us know in the comments if you saw tech you thought worthy of mentioning and we will take a look also.

 

Social List adds new Contact Finding feature

Social List is a very cool recruiting & sourcing tool that allows you to search through a wide variety of social sites to find people and contacts that fit your needs.  Created by Irina Shamaeva of BrainGain, you know it has to be good. In its most recent update, it adds a great new feature: the Contact Finder.

I won’t go into too much depth on the previous features, but overall Social List packs a lot of power and versatility. You can search through social sites such as LinkedIn, Github, Meetup, ResearchGate and more. Better yet, these searches are specifically tailored to each site. For example, the LinkedIn search agent lets you search by company and title, and there’s even a specific search for people “Open to New Opportunities.” The results of each search are displayed in a way that makes sense, highlighting Name, Title, and Company.

However, the new Contact Finder feature of Social List makes it an even more valuable tool. The Contact Finder tab can be found at the top of the screen and takes you to a new search tool.

  • Search by First and Last name, Company name, Company Domain, and/or Profile URL.
  • Results include location, email addresses, phone numbers, social profiles, and other relevant links.
  • The found information is displayed in an extremely readable format.

This tool makes it very easy and fast to pull out all the information you need.

With the addition of this new feature, Social List can now help you with multiple aspects of your recruiting process. You can use Social List’s search agents to find people (and profile URLs) that you want to research further. Then, take that information into the Contact Finder feature to pull contacts!

If you haven’t used Social List in your workflow before, now is a great time to give it a try. ~ Noel Cocca

 

Look inside with Dean Da Costa:

 

 

 

HRTech’s High Growth List

We launch conversation today with another roomy question for our reading colleagues to explore alongside us: Which HR Tech companies (HRTCs) are experiencing the highest growth, as leaders of growth, and why? To address such broad query, we launch investigation through exploratory study, where we establish key search terms, collect and sift through findings, eventually analyzing data into categorical sets, themes that emerge within multiple concept webs. It’s in intersecting spaces where we identify what emerges from our data, what stories we have found.

Yawn, a shady palm tree of financial net earnings, gross revenue, amortization, when cracking this topical coconut, right? Hold onto umbrellas, and give us a bit more chance. Collectively, our exploration crops most EBITDA photos, illustrating how and why HRTech ingenuity is “E-ffecting” growth in unprecedented ways, from mega-corporations to start-ups:

Cloud-based expansion”E-ffecting” global embrace of cloud technologies: No longer the red-haired stepchild of core HR management, clouds are increasingly accepted now by all-size companies, en masse. And let’s not forget HCM concurrently reaching into cloud space for e-learning expansion. Last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers found, in survey data, 75% of companies now using at least one cloud-based system, while hold-outs reported 2019 plans to launch into this space.

Employee Engagement Drivers “E-ffecting” higher levels of workplace retention & satisfaction: As Gallup 2012 survey data may waft a bit stale, its findings are not: organizations still struggle with up to 70% of employees either Not-Engaged (think, “checked out”) or Actively-Disengaged (think, unhappy and undermining others around them) vs only 30% who are Engaged — feeling profound connection to their brand, moving forward with innovation/purpose. How are HRTech companies “E-ffecting” higher engagement? By ensuring HRTech — AI especially — brings evidence-based effectiveness entwined with purpose. Try punching that into your Blackberry raised keyboard?

Purpose Economy-oriented innovators “E-ffecting” global shift: What’s possibly at the core for such low levels of employee engagement? Says Jim Stengel, known for his eponymous “Stengel 50” list (think, the 50 highest-performance global companies): Higher-Order Purpose — transcending focus from brand profit to brand ideals. As such, pure profit vs palpable purpose becomes a competition. Really? Analysis of 2000-2011 corporate growth reveals 382% gains Somewhere vs -7.9% Elsewhere (think, SP500 getting the Elsewhere team jersey here).

 

2019-02-06 20:40:09.784000

Freelancing visionaries, “E-ffecting” Future of Work forecasts: World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2017 predictions for the Future of Work underscore how the majority of US Workers may freelance by 2027. Citing Edelman Intelligence’s study, surveying 6,000 US workers and commissioned by partnership of Upwork and Freelancers Union; WEF amply supports such forecast. (Think, almost half of the millennials freelancing now, and how much talent acquisition competition could increase for organizations, concomitantly.)

2019-02-05 17:41:32.344000

 

Let’s now take a closer look at what HRTech Companies comprise a representative sample of mega-, mid- and start-up organizations from our findings of growth leaders, high growth achievers, in this evolutionary, dynamic space. But um…what’s up with that inverse alpha order? What better way to help our reading colleagues better envision how these HRTech’s knock pyramids onto their apex, envisioning and tackling needs inversely:

Textio

When recruitment pools don’t attract the best possible talent, including those freelancers, nothing described in our findings framework floats. Enter Textio, with its AI application “augmented writing platform,” helping organizations compose more effective vacancy postings. Textio offers the ability to use predictive analytics (think, lots of qualitative data scouring) to determine what identifiable patterns emerge from successful outcome job posts. Plus: Textio applies findings to help you synchronously write job postings, avoiding pitfalls that caused others to sink. Textio offers a “learning loop” of “collective insights” using AI prompts to encourage rewrites. Skeptical? Watch their free demo, as a bevy of their clients must have done (IBM, P&G, Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, CVS, Ebay, American Express, Nestle, Alcoa, Bloomberg) to name only a handful. Purpose integrated with effective, evidenced-based AI tech earns organizations an honor roll list like that.

Paradox

Ain’t it grand when one human being evolves into an AI bot? In dictionary lingo, that’s called a Paradox. Enter Olivia, Paradox BOT by day and Olivia Matos, aka Olivia, Co-Founder of Paradox, by, um…er…day; alongside spouse, Aaron Matos, Founder/CEO of Paradox. Hold on? Let’s visualize a company growing so fast that it’s assisting talent acquisition across 150 organizations, in more than 60 countries, across 6 continents, using 36 languages, to engage candidates immediately in recruiting and beyond. Olivia is AI that engages with candidates through web/social/mobile platforms to capture heat when irons are hot, guiding candidates through initial steps/engaging conversation while routing “green light” candidates straight to recruiters. Olivia even schedules interviews and conveys next steps all the way throughout hiring — with texts vs toll calls. Clients already include Delta, Staples, CVS, Public Storage, among host of others. No wonder both Matos leaders already are doubling staff; adding extra office locations and off-shore contractors. No confusing paradox there, at least, for how this HRTC hones into/bolsters engagement, pronto.

Imperative

When only Alligators remain in murky waters, what’s left? Our food chain provides a crystal-clear response: Other Alligators. Enter Aaron Hurst (only without actual reptile heads mounted to office walls), founder of $15B pro-bono organization, Taproot, now CEO of Imperative. A true Stengel scholar, Hurst evolutionizes higher-order purpose, putting products/services in center ring with brand ideals. Is this just fleeting early mid-life crisis; some remake of Will Smith’s character seeking “Happiness“? Considering how Imperative raised $2.8 million from angel investors, Hurst is showing otherwise. What makes Imperative’s “2.8m burgers sold” sign great? 1) online assessment “purpose drivers,” ultimately uncovering each person’s core beliefs via purpose statements; 2) engaged, online peer-coaching, matching up colleagues for curated offline conversations to transform careers/relationships; 3) integrated purpose development across teams, utilizing meeting reports/agendas centered on teams’ purpose; 4) Certified Purpose Leader learning, integrating people- and brand-purpose, with platforms to bolster leadership and purpose-driven culture. As a TEDPrize finalist, with clients including Campbells and Bank of America, Imperative embodies how shift happens, by engineering “E-ffects” for people craving more purpose.

Degreed

For these folks, three consecutive years of 100% revenue growth is moving to their small potatoes plate. Last year, in only six months’ time, Degreed added 50M new clients and 1M license users. But even bigger than that, Degreed secured $42M in Series C funding (think, future IPO here?) adding to $75M secured to date. Known for training in 1,500 certification skills, with benchmarks measuring growth in each, Degreed collects emptied inkwells from writers describing their bevy of free and fee EdTech. But laurels here are for embellishing logos…not for sitting upon, at Degreed. This year, Chairman David Blake collaborates with Chris McCarthy, newly minted CEO, to launch their newest shiny product: Skill Certification, alleging the world’s first system to certify and rate any skill. Here, Degreed drives deeper insight into client and end-user skill sets/developmental needs, by combining data science and machine learning, tools and analytics — to guide employees forward with feedback on what else, what next they can do, to enhance performance. Unilever, already a big buyer of these alternative certification seats, leads the pack as other big clients (i.e., Cisco, Schlumberger, Hyatt) consider continual, value-added employee credentials. For any HCM ready to flip organizational culture to purpose first, followed by impact/success measurement, then skills needed to execute each; well, Degreed is certainly willing partner to foster such shift change, via their expansive product lines, including on-demand learning accessed via cloud.

Ambit Analytics

Camped outside of Menlo Park’s pearly gates, where halos hover for venture capitalists, and in a time when investment$ become scarcer with Fed rate hike$; Ambit Analytics’ growth as a San Francisco start-up is catching more than buzz. Someone definitely has “shown them the money,” securing $1.1 million seed funding from Romulus Capital last summer. Ambit now embarks on trailblazing paths, with analytics-driven AI technology, targeting workplace cultural growth in empathy and other forms of EI. How? Ambit’s HRT scales into workplace conversations using voice-recognition, then voice-analysis, to review communication effectiveness (and yes, privacy issues are to be addressed via tech enhancements). In essence, Ambit aims to provide partners with AI-EI (oh!) Executive Coaches to cultivate leadership skills, (i.e.), listening/talking and most especially, empathy. Whether tutorials apply Wiggins & McTigue’s (2005) EI taxonomy, where empathy is identified as penultimate EI skill; well, that remains to be seen. But as aforementioned Gallup data reminds, nearly 3/4’s of workers imply human connection shortfalls in the workplace, possibly impacting engagement. Of course, Ambit faces incoming PiP (think, “prove-it pressure”) to demonstrate the efficacy of their AI products, after some glitches reported in larger firms recently. (But no woodshed here…such names outside Ambit’s turf remain nameless in our press.)

ADP

Ok, have we saved the best for last, at least for HR accountants craving a little EBITDA right now? One peek into the Q2 Fiscal 2019 report of Human Capital Management (HCM) outsourcing company, ADP, reveals significant growth, both on books and in outlook forecasts. Shareholders, already gaining nearly 11% ROI last year according to Zacks, should continue to enjoy ADPs impressive boon in two service categories, Employer (comprehensive range of HCM/HR outstanding solutions) and PEO (Professional Employer Organization). In YoY comparisons, ADP already claims the following increases: 1% in new business bookings, 7% in Employer Services, 2.3% for clients using ADP payrolls, 12% in PEO revenue; and average worksite employees paid by PEO up by 9%, representing nearly 545,000 worksite employees total. And the acquisition of Celergo in summer 2018 sends ADP even more effectively into global HCM space, adding octane to existing cloud-based HRT. How? ADP now benefits from Celergo’s foresight to expand cloud-based applications using cross-currency and expatriate payment services. Considering how ADP also acquired Global Cash Card and Work Market, prior to Celergo, ADP is forging ahead with cutting-edge growth by addressing global workforce shifting into PT/freelance positions. Considering WEFs aforementioned 2027 ten-year freelance prediction, ADP is blazing this trail well in advance. (Btw, Accountants, that was six hefty “ands,” not counting commas/semicolons.)

 

Here, we examine through exploratory designed study: Which HR Tech companies are experiencing highest growth, as leaders of growth, and why? Our assessment provides not only insightful conclusions but also a lens for further query and exploration, to broaden or to funnel our perspectives presented above. That said, who else might you, your HCM colleagues, add to this representative sample list, and why? What additional themes do you think of in this space, when envisioning HRTCs as growth boons, innovative, unique? As we publish our findings, we remain eager to open doors, push our own boundaries, and listen to readers’ ideas. What say you?