Categories
Blog

New Research: Pre-Hire Assessments

I am excited about a new research report, that we published this week on the assessment market. It is an exciting time to consider assessments and today, companies have better options to make data-driven decisions around talent. One case study that we featured in the report is Proctor and Gamble ( a ModernHire client). I was impressed with the company’s ability to balance science and validity with the candidate experience. This year, P&G announced an initiative to donate a liter of water to every candidate who applies for a job. If you aren’t following P&G or the incredible work of their I/O psychologists and talent team (including Daniele Bologna), I highly recommend it.

Below is the case study from the Future of Pre-Hire Assessments report:

Procter & Gamble (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods company headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by English-American William Procter and Irish-American James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of consumer products in six core categories: Beauty; Grooming; Health Care; Fabric & Home Care; Baby & Feminine Care, and Family Care.

As a Fortune 500 company with roughly 95,000 employees, P&G wanted to improve its talent acquisition process in order to reduce the number of steps and expand the use of assessments beyond campus recruiting. It embarked on a journey to improve selection with a more engaging assessment experience and improved reporting and scoring.

The Goals:

Procter & Gamble’s objectives were to deploy a new assessment for sales to reduce time-to-fill while providing an assessment that would enable quality hires. P&G also wanted to provide candidates with a “Day in the Life” experience.

The Strategy:

Through a partnership with Shaker, P&G was able to provide candidates with a Realistic Job Preview that would measure problem-solving, the ability to integrate information, customer service, teamwork, and relationship-building. Candidates were presented with a series of cognitive questions, scenarios, and prioritization sequences.

Beginning in July 2017, P&G began the job analysis that included focus group interviews and questionnaires, a pilot program to validate the assessment, and ongoing monitoring and refinement.

The Results:

P&G was able to achieve the following results:

Expand the funnel of diverse and highly qualified talent by 7%.

Shorten the interview process by ~2.5 months

Cost savings of 80% per assessment

Enhance candidate experience by reducing time needed

The report also features a case study from Comcast and new data and trends to think about in assessments.

Categories
Blog Uncategorized

iCIMS INFLUENCE Event: Esurance Competes for Tech Talent

Last month, iCIMS hosted its first-ever combined customer and analyst event in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was an opportunity for influencers and talent acquisition leaders to share ideas, research, and opinions on everything related to talent acquisition and its impact on business outcomes. One of the topics discussed during the event was the increasing competition for tech talent. According to iCIMS’ Hiring Benchmarking report, companies only fill 6 out of 10 tech positions. And, it takes 50% longer to hire tech talent than any other positions.

Anyone who has followed iCIMS’ journey over the past two decades knows its commitment to helping organizations attract and recruit talent and the tech sector is no exception. One of its clients, Esurance, was at the event and its head of talent acquisition, Kristi Robinson, shared the challenges and success with competing for tech talent in the Bay area.

Esurance has 3,000 employees and is owned by AllState. Attracting talent is difficult since most candidates do not recognize it as a tech company. Its recruitment efforts are focused on data scientists, engineers, and digital specialists. In order to compete for tech talent and differentiate itself, it has invested in the following strategies:

Start with the Employer Value Proposition (EVP): Esurance put effort into defining and communicating its EVP to both employees and candidates by focusing on team, culture and community.

Focus on Campus: Esurance decided to focus on campus and internship programs to compete for tech talent. It was successful at making the candidate experience as simple as possible by leveraging event management solutions, capturing candidate information through QR codes, and engaging with candidates consistently. Its campus offer rate is 62%, acceptance rate is 88% and conversion rate is 54%- all above the NACE industry standards.

Go Mobile: Esurance was able to improve the mobile experience and the mobile apply process. In 2016, applications submitted through mobile were only 26% and in 2019, they reached 39%.

Improve Communication: The tech company leveraged TextRecruit to help improve candidate communication. The text open rate is now 99% compared to 7.3% for email and the text response rate is now 46% compared to 2.1% for email.

By streamlining the recruitment process and investing in these strategies, Esurance was able to improve the candidate experience by 36% year over year and decreased cost per hire by 41% year after year.

The challenge of attracting and recruiting tech talent impacts organizations in every industry today. As talent acquisition becomes more complex for organizations, investing in providers with deep domain expertise and solutions that help to improve the candidate experience is critical. The good news is that companies can invest in strategies that deliver results in a very short timeframe.

To echo iCIMS’ Chairman, Colin Daly, “Recruiting is not like the rest of HR. People are unique & special. Your recruiting platform to attract, engage & hire talent should be as well.”

Categories
Blog Uncategorized

A Love Letter to Startups

Early in my career, I was great at taking briefings with startups, writing about startups, and advising startups. At one time, covering startups was my favorite part of being an analyst. I loved the innovation and the excitement that came with emerging providers.

Ten years ago, talent acquisition was very much a startup market. Jobs2Web created a new way of engaging with talent. HireVue and Montage (now Modern Hire) were introducing video to the hiring process. Jobfox was the premier partner for the ATS market. And, Veechi offered capabilities to take a picture of a resume and parse it into an ATS.

But at some point, I became cynical about startups. I was bothered by the “change the world” mentality, the failure rate, and the inability to carry out the product roadmap. I started cautioning companies about investing in startups, which I affectionately named “two guys in skinny jeans.”

I wasn’t wrong.

Sometimes startups don’t have the experience or expertise to be able to develop great technology. Sometimes they don’t care about what talent acquisition practitioners want from technology. Sometimes they take too much investment.. or the wrong investment… or too little investment. Sometimes investing in startups is risky.

But sometimes, startups get it right. They understand what buyers want, and they are committed to delivering great products. Sometimes, startups bring change and hope to a market. Recently, I realized that I don’t spend enough time with startups, and I need to change that for next year.

Below are some of the startups worth watching in 2020 (this not a complete list).

Zapinfo: Founded by Doug Berg, Zapinfo provides recruiting intelligence by automating how companies find contacts and candidate profiles from multiple sites, add contacts to an ATS or CRM, and communicate with candidates more consistently.

CandidateID: CandidateID provides marketing automation to recruitment and helps companies manage their talent pipelines to engage better, nurture, and hire talent. As companies move from requisitions to pipelines, CandidateID offers a solution that can automate this process and better engage with talent.

Survale: Improving the candidate experience is a priority for companies in every industry and every geography. Yet, most companies fail when collecting feedback. Survale helps companies collect feedback on the candidate experience, employee experience, quality of hire, and references.

Small Improvements: Small Improvements also enables continuous feedback and recognition by fueling a company’s ongoing feedback culture, and integrates with collaboration tools such as Slack and Gmail.

Pilot: Pilot is a software-based employee coaching platform that helps companies empower employees and improve performance through feedback that is consistent, frequent, and meaningful.

Talvista: TalVista offers optimized job descriptions, objective data points from redacted resume reviews, and structured interview evaluations to help companies to support a company’s diversity and inclusion efforts.

Moovila: Moovila is helping companies bring autonomy to work and project management through the use of critical path modeling and diagnostics, Real-life Capacity Management, AI, machine learning, and IoT integration.

In addition to taking more briefings with startups, one of my goals for the next year is to focus on conversational AI solutions. I am also planning a major research study in 2020, including providers such as Mya, AllyO, JobPal, Paradox, TalkPush, Karen, and XOR.

If you are a startup and interested in a briefing, please let me know!

Categories
Blog Talent Acquisition Strategies

The Talent Landscape in 2020: Total Talent, Metrics that Matter, and Finding a Partner

It has been an exciting year in talent acquisition.

The technology landscape has changed. Talent acquisition leaders face new responsibilities and are being held more accountable for business metrics.

Yet, at the same time, so much in talent acquisition remains the same.

When we asked what recruiters spend their time doing, scheduling interviews and finding candidates in the ATS were top of the list. With new responsibilities, talent acquisition leaders need to think about partners that can help them focus on more strategic initiatives. I am excited because next Tuesday, I will join Jim McCoy, General Manager of Scout, for a webinar to discuss some of the most critical topics in talent acquisition in the next year that is driving change including:

Total Talent Acquisition: Although a flexible workforce can help organizations reduce costs, close talent gaps, and navigate change, developing a strategy around the use of contingent labor has become increasingly complex. In order to maximize the value of contingent labor and plan for future workforce needs, organizations must adopt a more systematic approach to the way they manage this critical talent pool. During this webinar, we will discuss how organizations are looking beyond the long-standing boundaries that divide traditional employee talent acquisition from management of the contingent and free agent workforce talent supply. Companies are adopting a single-integrated framework for employee recruitment, and contingent workforce supply chain management, yielding what is known as a total talent strategy. Nearly 30% of companies have a strategy for total talent acquisition.

Metrics that Drive Success: Talent acquisition is being held more accountable to business metrics yet, some companies still fall behind in their efforts to measure the success of their talent acquisition efforts and recruiter performance. During this webinar, we will discuss the metrics that are most critical for talent acquisition leaders and solutions that can help to measure the performance of recruiters and recruiting teams.

Finding the Right Partners: According to Aptitude Research, nearly 50% of companies are still not measuring the ROI of their investments in talent acquisition technology and services. With so many new options and startups to consider, companies need to be careful when evaluating providers and look for partners that have demonstrated expertise and a commitment to talent acquisition. During this webinar, we will talk about the questions that companies need to ask when evaluating partners in today’s market.

And, it wouldn’t be a talent acquisition webinar without a discussion around AI, so we plan to discuss AI’s role as well. This webinar will help companies at any stage of talent acquisition prepare for the next year. I hope you can join us!

Categories
Blog Highlight

Symphony Talent Acquires SmashFly: A New Leader in Recruitment Marketing

My views on the recruitment marketing/CRM space have (admittedly) shifted quite a bit over the past two years. It is an exciting space to watch and a challenging one to predict because as the demand increases, the confusion around this market persists. In the research I have conducted this year at Aptitude, a few themes stand out:

  • 72% of companies are increasing their investment in recruitment marketing. Companies want solutions that can help them better engage and attract talent before they apply for a job.
  • The buyer is more sophisticated. We are seeing second and third generation buyers, and nearly 30% of companies have replaced or are looking to replace their provider this year.
  • This market is not apples to apples. The differentiators are clear since these products have different strengths and weaknesses. 
  • Adoption is low for many of the recruitment marketing platforms, so investing in a partner is critical. Companies need to work with providers to make sure that they have the services they need to support them.

One trend that I have gone back and forth on is the future of recruitment marketing. Will it be from a larger ATS and Talent Acquisition Suite or stand-alone provider. Several acquisitions earlier this year (K1 acquiring Jobvite and Talemetry and iCIMS acquiring Jibe) and the success of providers like SmartRecruiters and Avature selling integrated solutions hint at a future where one provider supports both. Yet, today, we are seeing a move toward the stand-alone model. Symphony Talent announced its plans to acquire SmashFly and enhance its products and services in all things recruitment marketing. This move signals that the value of recruitment is not in going broad but in going deep in one area.

I have spent time with both Symphony Talent and SmashFly over the years, and here are my early thoughts: 

Symphony Talent is a product company, and Roopesh Nair is a strong CEO. While other providers have pushed marketing and sales efforts, Symphony has focused on building out capabilities that customers want and support teams so that the product gets adopted. Symphony has continued to strengthen its deep functionality in career sites, candidate journey, and candidate communication. It has differentiated itself in a competitive market with an innovative product, global capabilities, and strong services.

With any acquisition, companies have questions about the integration of products and companies. We can expect to see the integration of some of SmashFly’s core features such as CRM and internal mobility into the product as well as the integration of sales and marketing teams.  

Symphony and SmashFly were competitors in the market, so we don’t expect to see customer overlap, but combined, they will have strong brands in the market, including Hilton, Nestle, and Intel.  

Services: Most enterprise companies invest in some recruitment marketing technology platforms and services from an agency or marketing firm. Although some have argued that services can dilute the value of the technology, having a provider that offers both is a differentiator for Symphony Talent. The creative services they offer can help support companies that are looking to strengthen their brands and engage with talent in a more meaningful way.

The acquisition was announced today, and it will raise many questions for customers, prospects, and anyone interested in talent acquisition. I know I still have questions. The good news is that at 2 pm EST today, George LaRocque and I will be interviewing Roopesh Nair live. I hope you can join us!

Categories
Blog Uncategorized

HR Technology Conference 2019: A More Sophisticated Buyer

The HR Technology Conference gives me the opportunity to reflect on the past year and look ahead to the future. In preparing for this year’s event, I decided to dig up old notes and presentations from the past 14 years. This landscape has changed dramatically. Integrated talent management has been replaced with employee experience. Big data is nowhere to be found. And talent acquisition and AI are at the center of it all.

When thinking about trends, the pendulum always seems to swing back and forth between start-ups driving innovation and traditional players enhancing products. As I tried to figure out where I would land, I began to realize that this year’s event wasn’t really about the technology. It was about the people.

HR professionals were driving innovation and change at this year’s event. They were asking the tough questions, aligning with business objectives, showing value in their investments, and evaluating providers that can stand-up as partners. Executives from P&G, Walmart and Spectrum openly shared their experience with AI and deep learning in talent acquisition. Fedex and Verizon questioned the CRM providers’ ability to support legal concerns. Oh, and McDonald’s announced that candidates can now apply for a job using Alexa or Google Home. The HR buyer at this year’s event was more sophisticated than ever before.  

Solution providers need to keep up with these expectations. They need to work  to establish partnerships across every layer of the organization from leadership to product teams to customer support. Below are a few of the providers making partnerships a priority.

Talent Acquisition

Beamery:  Beamery, a company founded in the UK, has had tremendous success expanding into the US market with significant brand awareness and customer acquisitions. It is a product company that continuously innovates while somehow mastering the art of customer success. It is helping companies clarify this market through its Talent Operating System model which helps companies at any stage of recruitment marketing. 

Cornerstone OnDemand: Cornerstone is making a commitment to talent acquisition this year. It has focused on improving the user experience for all stakeholders, improving speed to task and automation, and investing in internal mobility as well as personalization.

Jobvite and Talemetry: All eyes have been on Jobvite this year with K1’s acquisition of Jobvite, Talemetry, Canvas and Rolepoint. Over the past 16 months, Jobvite has continued to maintain its strong commitment to product and client support. Last week, it announced a fully integrated talent acquisition suite that uses smart automation to connect data, processes and interactions across the candidate journey. The big focus is to help clients get data from one place and consolidate all reporting and analytics.

Symphony Talent: Symphony Talent has continued to strengthen its deep functionality in career sites, candidate journey, and candidate communication. It has differentiated itself in a competitive market with an innovative product, global capabilities, and strong services.  

Entelo: Entelo acquired ConveyiQ this year and is in the process of combining two products to provide companies with better sourcing capabilities, automation and candidate communication.

Scout: Scout is a recruitment marketplace that connects search firms and corporations. Originally founded in 2012 as an agency, Scout is now a platform that uses machine learning to analyze billions of recruiting performance data points to predict recruiter success by specific job type. Scout’s AI then matches specific recruiters to specific jobs to ensure candidate quality while reducing fill times.

Yello: Aptitude has identified campus recruiting as a top area of investment for companies this year and Yello continues to be a leader in this market. Yello is enhancing its campus recruiting capabilities. It is focused on sourcing and the candidate experience. Its Passport product uses one code and a single point of entry for candidates to update their resumes for all jobs that they may want to apply.

Employee Experience Surveys

Willis Towers Watson: Willis Towers Watson’s differentiator is its deep domain expertise across services, data and technology. While many of its traditional competitors have not been able to expand into software, Willis Towers Watson has seen tremendous growth in its Employee Insights solutions including surveys, pulse surveys, and its HR portal. It helps clients ask questions in the right way, use data to drive decisions, and take action on findings.

Ultimate Software: Ultimate Software is a provider that has excelled through strong products, team and a focus on partnering with companies across every area of HR Technology. Its Perception product helps companies track, measure and improve the employee experience through better communication and AI that enables change.

Limeade: Limeade brings together employee well-being, inclusion, communication and engagement in one platform. My briefings with Limeade are always a highlight at HRTech because I get to spend time with its incredible team talking about the topics that matter in the workforce. Limeade has built a framework around care and the impact a culture of care has on the employee experience.

Moovila: If you have ever led a project or leveraged a project management tool, you know that projects are rarely delivered on time or on budget. Moovila is helping companies bring autonomy to work and project management through the use of critical path modeling and diagnostics, real-life capacity management, AI, machine learning, and IoT integration.

Conversational AI

IBM: IBM offers clients several AI solutions including Watson Candidate Assistant (WCA), Watson Recruiter Assistant and Watson Career Coach. WCA includes a wide range of capabilities from chatbots to messaging and is rolled-out to multiple sites and by geography. WRA partners with several of the larger ATS to offer capabilities that improve candidate communication and candidate match. WCC is a post-hire solution that enables career development and internal mobility.

Jobpal: Jobpal was founded in 2016 in Berlin and has some significant global customers including British Airways, DHL, and BSF. It is helping companies communicate with candidates and improve conversion rates and has strong integrations with messaging platforms. We can expect to see Jobpal emerge as a leading player over the next year with new partners, capabilities, and plans to develop internal mobility capabilities.

AllyO: It has been a big year for AllyO. This providers has raised $45 million and expanded capabilities beyond talent acquisition.  AllyO is tackling the employee experience and bringing its conversational AI solutions to help companies better engage and retain employees. AllyO Connect provides a SMS inbox for companies to engage with employees and candidates in one central way.

Mya: Mya is impressive on all fronts from its strong leadership team to its product vision to its customer success model. Mya has established a very strategic partnership with Workday as well as Bullhorn, SmartRecruiters, Avature, and SAP. This conversational AI platform enables customers to improve talent acquisition efforts including  93% screen completion rates, 79% time-to-interview reduction, 2.5x increase in funnel conversion, and 144% recruiter productivity gains. It is helping provide clarity to the role conversational AI plays in talent acquisition and the value it can deliver.

Assessments and Interviewing

Modern Hire: The lines between assessment and interviewing have blended. Earlier this year, Montage and Shaker merged companies to create what is now Modern Hire, a platform that combines science, technology, and predictive analytics to improve hiring and candidate communication. I have worked closely with both companies over the years and have always been impressed with the teams, clients and products. Combined, their clients include nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies.

Outmatch: The acquisition of Wepow last year proves to be a valuable investment for Outmatch as it expands its offering beyond assessments. Outmatch is seamlessly integrating these products to give customers the flexibility to use video and assessments together. Outmatch offers a simple user experience that helps companies identify quality hires through its solutions.

 The future of HR Technology is in the ability to partner,  stay flexible to what customers need, and deliver on what has been promised. Providers that will succeed will be those that understand and work closely with today’s more sophisticated buyer.

 It is a great time to be in HR Tech!

Categories
Blog Talent Acquisition Strategies

iCIMS Announces a New Framework for Talent Acquisition

The talent acquisition technology market has experienced significant transformation over the past few years with new products, providers, categories and startups. It is an exciting time to be in the recruitment industry but at the same time, it can feel incredibly overwhelming as companies try to understand what a modern technology stack should include. Furthermore, a lot of organizations are stuck with the technology they have today and aren’t able to switch off systems that aren’t meeting their needs.

Models have been created to show the breadth of products companies need to include in end-to-end talent acquisition, but most don’t align with the priorities or strategies that talent acquisition leaders have in place. And, many of the providers tend to overcomplicate an already complex market.

iCIMS is one provider that is committed to helping meet clients’ needs within the talent acquisition market. It has announced a new framework that helps to simplify the market with a new product portfolio for customers to invest in solutions that they need at the stage that they need them. The portfolio includes three suites: recruitment marketing suite, advanced communications suite and a hiring suite (after a candidate applies for a job). These suites can be integrated with other applicant tracking and HR systems.

The Recruitment Marketing Suite: By definition, recruitment marketing includes the activities and strategies to nurture and engage with talent before they apply for a job. According to Aptitude Research, 70% of companies are investing in recruitment marketing this year yet, only 2% of companies are using all of the functionality that their provider offers. Recruitment marketing needs to be simplified. iCIMS customers can leverage recruitment marketing capabilities through dynamic career sites with iCIMS Attract, and through a CRM (what iCIMS is calling its Nurture product). These capabilities were made possible through the Jibe acquisition iCIMS made earlier this year.

The Communication Suite: 1 in 2 companies still use email as their primary form of communication with candidates and 62% of candidates never receive any communication from employers. iCIMS is helping companies improve this through “live communication” with iCIMS TextRecruit which includes chat, text and social media messenger and iCIMS ARI (Automated Recruiter Interface) which uses artificial intelligence to automate repetitive, high-volume tasks like candidate screening and interview scheduling.  

The Hiring Suite: This suite of solutions includes recruiting, offer and pre-onboard. This suite includes the ATS capabilities as well as communication and compliance that needs to happen with employees before they join an organization. Aptitude Research found that the growth of the ATS market remains strong at 10% with companies looking to invest in true partners.

With several acquisitions over the past few years including TextRecruit and Jibe, iCIMS is providing clarity about its offerings and flexibility around how companies can adopt technology solutions to meet unique needs. It simplifies the talent acquisition technology market and makes it feel more manageable to companies that are confused with where to begin. These suites are supported by a unified platform with access to a marketplace of hundreds of providers that integrate with these core suites.

 

Categories
Blog Talent Acquisition Strategies

New Research: Talent Acquisition Buyer’s Guide for the SMB Market

George LaRocque and I have been busy this past month research trends in how SMB organizations evaluate and select talent acquisition technology. While so much focus has been on the enterprise market, SMB organizations, in many cases, are rethinking their tech stack and focusing on innovation. And…they have great options. That Talent Acquisition Buyer’s Guide for the SMB Market sponsored by Verified First and JazzHR, published last week and we are sharing some of the key findings on a webinar tomorrow. Below is an overview of what we plan to cover:

 The talent acquisition technology landscape continues to evolve every year with new providers entering the market and traditional providers expanding their offerings. Evaluating and selecting the right technology partner is becoming increasingly complex as companies try to navigate this new landscape. Additionally, business leaders are putting more pressure on talent acquisition to make strategic decisions and demonstrate the value of their investments.  According to Aptitude Research’s 2019 Talent Acquisition survey, companies are using up to 20 different technology solutions and only 38% of SMB companies are measuring the ROI of their investments.

SMB organizations face a unique set of challenges when evaluating technology solutions and finding a partner has become challenging for many smaller organizations that do not always know what options they have available in talent acquisition. Small to mid-sized companies are rethinking the way they identify and attract talent in order to align more closely with business objectives. They are shifting their priorities and investing in technology that will improve quality of hires, recruitment efficiencies as well as the candidate experience. And, more importantly, they realize they do not need to sacrifice one for the other. According to Aptitude Research’ 2019 Talent Acquisition study, nearly 70% of SMB organizations invest in technology that is up to date with consumer technology and 80% of SMB organizations want solutions that will help to improve the candidate experience.

This webinar will help organizations answer the following questions:

        What is the current state of the talent acquisition technology landscape?

        Who are buyers for talent acquisition technology at SMB organizations?

        How can buyers gain the support of senior executives in their organization?

        What is the key criteria for selecting talent acquisition technology?

        What internal and external questions should companies ask before selecting talent acquisition technology?

 I hope you can join us!

Categories
Blog Talent Acquisition Strategies

Google Hire: What Went Wrong?

“We’ve made the difficult decision to sunset Hire by Google on September 1, 2020. While Hire has been successful, we’re focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio.”

If you work in talent acquisition, you probably heard the news. Google Hire (once considered “the future of the ATS market”) is shutting down. It comes as a surprise since just last year it was the most popular topic in the ATS industry among thought leaders, competitors, and companies. If anyone could disrupt the talent acquisition market, it had to be Google. The plan was to gain momentum in the SMB market and then eventually move up to the enterprise market. It seemed to be working, and enterprise companies seemed very interested. But two years later, the company decided to sunset the brand and got out of the ATS business.

Before we focus on what went wrong, it is important to start with what went right.

What Made Google Hire Great?

In 2017, Google launched its Hire product and gained immediate attention as being THE de-facto ATS for small companies, inevitably replacing providers like Lever and Workable customers. Its main differentiator was efficiency. Companies could “Hire Faster with Google,” and it was able to prove this through various case studies and ROI examples. Lola reported that they could hire talent in seven days, and Trader Interactive was able to save recruiters five hours a week of administrative work. In a time when showing the value of tech is becoming harder and harder, Google Hire seemed to figure it out. And it wasn’t just efficiency that Google did well. It was also interview scheduling, candidate profile, and analytics. It integrated with the Google Suite of products. It was simple, and based on a candidate-centric model.

So, What Went Wrong?

Although Google’s decision to exit the ATS market may seem sudden, the wheels seemed to come off the bus earlier this year. A few things stand out:

-Google has a long history of killing products, including products that appeared to be successful. Some people call it the Google graveyard. Over the past few years, it has shut down Google Hangouts, Google Trips, Google +, Google Allo, Google Notification Widget (called Mr. Jingles), Google Goggles, and Google Weather. And these are just a few examples. Google Hire now joins this list.

– Bogomil Balkansky, who was the VP of product for Google Hire and connected to most people in the industry, seemed to go on some type of sabbatical last year. Sabbaticals happen especially at companies like Google, and his reasons may have been personal but taking time off when a product is gaining so much traction is unusual.

-Most of Google Hire’s clients appeared to be in the tech market. While having clients at innovative companies is exciting; anyone that has sold tech to tech knows that it is hard work and challenging to scale.

– Google for Jobs started to raise some concerns. Over the past two years, Google has faced over $9 billion in anti-trust fines and Google for Jobs is now under fire for claims that it is unfairly pushing users to its services and away from other third-party sites.

What Happens Next?

Now that the future of the ATS market looks a little different, what can companies expect over the next year?

Current Customers: Google is extending contracts up to a year for current clients. Customers will have a year to figure out where they want to go next.

Competition: The ATS market has always been competitive, but Google’s announcement has added fuel to the fire. Providers like Workable and RecruiterBox are aggressively going after these Google Hire customers. HireHive posted this message on Twitter: “Google Hire is shutting down. Well, at HireHive we’re not planning on ‘sunsetting’ our platform, ever. And we’re offering every Google Hire customer a free account for six months.”

LinkedIn: Last year, LinkedIn announced it plans to develop an ATS for small companies. Google’s exit could allow LinkedIn to gain market share and establish itself as a leader in the ATS space.

Above all else, the Google Hire story highlights the tremendous opportunity providers have in the SMB market. Too often, providers try to move upmarket, chasing large deals and customers. But, what they forget is that SMB companies want to change and either has no system or a homegrown product. Providers that stay committed to this market can achieve significant growth.

 

Categories
Blog Talent Acquisition Strategies

New Research: Digital Transformation in Talent Acquisition

I have worked on some very exciting research projects over the past 15 years but our latest research on Digital Transformation in Talent Acquisition might be my favorite to date. Aptitude Research and Alexander Mann Solutions partnered together to create a report that would cover both the digital transformation roadmap as well as the digital transformation landscape. Below are some of the key highlights from the report (which is available now):

1. People are the Foundation of Success When it Comes to Transformation: Digital transformation is successful when companies are prepared and have the right support to ensure consistency and adoption. Too often, companies focus on the technology and ignore the role of change management and the impact of existing services to enable a successful digital strategy. The design of digital transformation has to have the user at its center. It takes strong leadership, planning and expertise to successfully implement real change, yet only 17% of companies in Aptitude Research’s study stated that senior leaders were confident in their current strategies to support digital journeys. Additionally, only 32% of companies have the internal resources they need and only 26% of organizations have the budget they need to support digital transformation (Aptitude Research, 2019 Talent Acquisition survey).

2. Companies Achieve Success When They Start Small: The greatest mistake organizations make with a digital transformation is starting out too big. Organizations should consider a focused approach with one or two areas of talent acquisition and even start within a single early adopter business unit. According to research conducted by McKinsey in 2018, only 16% of companies stated that digital transformation had successfully improved performance and 8 in 10 of organizations stated that digital transformation was too wide in scope. Organizations that are able to adopt agile project methodology, which has the user at its center, have a better chance of delivering a positive experience. Even more important than the initial project is ensuring that organizations have the budget and infrastructure to manage continual improvements, deliver incremental changes based on user feedback, and align business needs to a set of core design principles.

3. Brand is a Critical Component of a Digital Strategy: Digital transformation provides opportunities to show candidates and employees more about an organization and establish trust and partnerships. Yet, only 29% of companies believe that brand plays an important role in digital transformation (Aptitude Research, 2019 Talent Acquisition survey). When embracing digital technology, companies need to align their strategy with employer branding efforts and organizational culture, as well as consider the role of branding throughout the entire candidate’s journey from recruitment marketing to onboarding and new hire engagement. Consistency of messaging is critically important in a digital transformation.

4. Most Companies are at the Early Stages of Digital Transformation: Over 50% of companies in all regions said that they consider themselves to be in the early stages of digital transformation either just starting their journey or implementation process (Aptitude Research, 2019 Talent Acquisition survey). It is critical for these companies to develop a strategy to achieve success in adopting digital solutions. Industries that have the most mature digital transformation strategies in place include retail, technology and manufacturing according to Aptitude Research. Companies beginning the process should look at these industries for lessons learned and best practices. The true benefit and bi-product of digital is to enable relationships and human interactions.