Tag: Recruitment

From Shiny Objects to Real Solutions: Rebecca Carr on TA Tech

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 17, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m joined by the fabulous Rebecca Carr, CEO of SmartRecruiters, to talk about shaking up talent acquisition with personalized hiring workflows, API-first platforms, and tools so intuitive they feel like unlocking your phone.

With a deep history in product innovation and a fresh CEO perspective, Rebecca is laser-focused on three themes: meeting users where they are, empowering creativity through smart systems, and designing recruiting tools that keep pace with the speed of work today. Hiring shouldn’t feel like a chore — and Rebecca is here to make sure it doesn’t.

From making managers’ lives easier to scaling for global needs, Rebecca’s vision is exactly what this space needs right now. If you’re ready to reimagine recruiting technology for today’s fast-paced world, this episode is a must-listen.

Hiring Should Feel Effortless

Recruiting tech has evolved, but let’s not kid ourselves — it’s still clunky in too many places. It’s a pain Rebecca is all too familiar with herself, from her background in TA and experiences building out the SmartRecruiters team. “I’m hiring a CMO. And I’m an ATS creator — and the last thing I want to go do is log into my ATS and provide feedback,” she says. “I just want to do it in Slack or I want to do it on my phone or something like that.”

That’s where SmartRecruiters is flipping the script. Rebecca’s focus is on meeting users where they are‌ — ‌whether that’s integrating seamlessly with Slack, Teams or even a retail manager’s phone. It’s about cutting out unnecessary steps and making hiring feel natural.

“We’ve invested a lot in the tech stack so that our customers can customize user experiences,” Rebecca says. “Because change management is hard. The last thing your users want to do right now is [have to] sit on a webinar and learn how to use their recruiting tool.”

API-First Platforms: Building Smarter, Not Bigger

Rebecca knows that trying to do everything for everyone is a recipe for mediocrity. Instead, SmartRecruiters is leaning into its strength as a recruiting workflow orchestration engine, partnering strategically to bring the best tools to the table.

“If I could snap my fingers and do one thing to SmartRecruiters right now, I would make it 100% API-able,” Rebecca shares. Customers love what SmartRecruiters offers but need flexibility to tweak it for regional quirks. Her answer: design systems. You don’t like that box? Delete it. Want to make it work with ServiceNow? Done. It’s all about giving users the power to create experiences that fit their world, not the other way around.

This approach isn’t about shiny object syndrome: it’s about intentional partnerships that align with a shared vision. Rebecca’s goal for SmartRecruiters is to provide solutions for high-volume, high-velocity hiring at a global scale. “I’m a recruiting workflow orchestration engine,” Rebecca says. “My specialty is orchestrating a beautiful recruiting process.”

Innovating for a New Era

Rebecca’s leadership philosophy is as modern as her approach to tech. She understands that great innovation starts with the right mindset‌ — ‌and the right people. “We’re in an interesting moment. The people that approach with creativity are, generally speaking, people that are innovators at heart, creatives at heart, and those are great product and engineering leaders,” Rebecca says.

That’s why she’s focused on building a team that not only dreams big but executes with precision. “I have invested a lot in finding the right people to be the product and engineering bench,” she says. “Because it’s not even about building innovative products, but also doing it in a really efficient way.” For Rebecca, innovation goes beyond ideas — it’s about transforming them into scalable solutions that drive measurable impact.

At SmartRecruiters, this spirit of innovation touches every part of the business, from reimagining talent acquisition strategies to addressing global challenges and fostering strong customer partnerships. The result is a forward-thinking organization equipped to tackle today’s complex recruiting landscape.

Rebecca isn’t just making waves in talent acquisition. She’s redefining what’s possible. From personalized hiring workflows to API-first platforms, her vision is turning recruiting from a clunky chore into an intuitive, user-friendly experience.

Like Rebecca says, “We’re back.” And honestly? We’re here for it.

Catch this episode for all the tea on the future of recruiting tech, and as always, stay bold, stay real, and keep making work better for everyone.

People in This Episode

Rebecca Carr: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to Transformation Realness. It’s the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world work less sh*tty and have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad, and most of all, the real. It’s produced in partnership with RepCap and hosted by yours truly, dazzling, defiant, demonstrably insane, Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech and transformation.

Get into it!

Today we’ve got Rebecca Carr. Yes, that Rebecca Carr, who is now rocking the CEO title at SmartRecruiters. She’s been a product leader, an innovator, and now she’s in the driver’s seat to make some serious moves in the world of talent acquisition. From creating ATS magic to spearheading new strategies, Rebecca is here to push the boundaries of how we think about hiring.

And spoiler alert — incremental change just isn’t her thing.

Also, featuring my very good friend and dear business partner Madeline Laurano, who as you know is the founder of Aptitude Research. All right, well, so I have to say, isn’t it wild that all three of us, Rebecca, Madeline, and I, live in the Boston area, but we had to fly all the way to Las Vegas to see each other in the flesh? And somebody got stuck in a middle seat again, but I digress. Let’s focus on what really matters, big ideas about the future of work. Let’s dive in.

Welcome back to Transformation Realness Live from HR Tech. I brought an extra special friend today. Hi Madeline.

Madeline Laurano:

Hi, Kyle.

Kyle Lagunas:

How you doing?

Madeline Laurano:

I am good.

Kyle Lagunas:

Are you ready to interview one of our favorite people?

Madeline Laurano:

I am. I’m very excited for this.

Kyle Lagunas:

I am too. Hi, Rebecca. Welcome to the show.

Rebecca Carr:

Hi. I’m happy to be here.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s so weird that we all live in the Boston Metro…

Rebecca Carr:

We do.

Kyle Lagunas:

… And we’re seeing each other in the flesh in Las Vegas. What are we doing here?

Rebecca Carr:

I know.

Madeline Laurano:

Kyle and I have not seen each other in person in months.

Kyle Lagunas:

Literally.

Rebecca Carr:

Really? Seriously?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes.

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, well, Boston’s like the best city to get together in too.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. There’s literally always traffic. I left my house at 5:30 or 5:15 yesterday morning, and there was traffic.

Rebecca Carr:

Really?

Kyle Lagunas:

What are we doing here?

Rebecca Carr:

There was none when I was getting- I think we were on the same flight, by the way.

Kyle Lagunas:

Delta?

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah. 7:00 AM?

Kyle Lagunas:

I was dead.

Rebecca Carr:

I didn’t catch you, but I was like, I think I saw you running through the airport and I was like, I wonder if he was on my flight and I didn’t say hi.

Madeline Laurano:

He was in the middle seat.

Rebecca Carr:

That would’ve been-

Kyle Lagunas:

I was in the middle seat.

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, no.

Kyle Lagunas:

Like a peasant.

Rebecca Carr:

To be fair. I’m on a middle seat going home. I wanted to go direct.

Kyle Lagunas:

Don’t they know how important you are?

Madeline Laurano:

You’re a CEO.

Kyle Lagunas:

Speaking of important.

Madeline Laurano:

I am.

Kyle Lagunas:

Mama’s got a new job, right?

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah. It doesn’t feel that different.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s like Facebook official now.

Rebecca Carr:

It is. It’s Facebook official.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, talk to us about it.

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah, I’ve been with this company for so long. I started in 2014, ran product, launched the original product, went through all that hiring success phase. Remember the book?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Rebecca Carr:

And all the conferences?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Rebecca Carr:

It was great. Left. Came back two years later. Ran product at a interesting moment. We were going through a lot of transition. Jerome had just stepped down. CEO- doesn’t feel that different though. We’re such a good community within SmartRecruiters. Our people are really high tenure, lots of passion for this space, lots of former recruiters, people that have a lot of customer empathy. It feels right and this is a critical moment for us, too.

We have to make some changes as it relates to how we think about the recruiting space. There’s a lot of urgency around adopting new technology, and I want to be a leader there. I don’t want to sit around anymore and wait to make some incremental change to a button or a color. I think we need to do something really different and that’s what we’re out to do.

Kyle Lagunas:

We love TA. It’s where we’ve always lived. But it’s also probably the most crowded corner of the market.

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s changed now, but if you had a use case, you got $20 million seed round to build an AI-enabled enterprise-grade platform, BS BS. For you all to stay the course, we were here for it, but you also, you want to change the course, right? You want to be a part of catalyzing that change?

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Talk to us about it.

Rebecca Carr:

We’re… In my session in a little bit. I’m going to talk a little bit about the journey generally speaking of ATS. Like my first ATS that I built, the customer use case was I need to be organized. That’s all I care about. I’ve had so much paper, I have no idea what to do with it. No one’s helping me, bring it online. It’s how the Teleos of the world show up and things like that.

But tech just listened, delivered, but didn’t strive to do better until customers showed up and said, by the way, I’m in a war for talent. You need to be in the cloud and lower cost and more collaborative and easier to use. Thus, the SmartRecruiters of the world show up and they do a good job.

But now the whole market is stalling and trying to wait and see what AI and intelligence do for it. Meanwhile, user expectation — candidates, but also hiring managers, people in the field — is accelerating past us. I think we need to start thinking about hiring as not this long process where you have to click through a bunch of buttons, but how is it personalized, adaptive? How does it meet your flow of work? I am hiring a CMO right now. I’m ATS creator.

Kyle Lagunas:

We know somebody.

Madeline Laurano:

We know somebody.

Rebecca Carr:

You know somebody?

Madeline Laurano:

We do.

Rebecca Carr:

Give me referrals.

Madeline Laurano:

We have a good recommendation.

Rebecca Carr:

I’m hiring a CMO, and I’m an ATS creator, and the last thing I want to go do is log into my ATS and provide feedback. I just want to do it in Slack or I want to do it on my phone or something like that. That is very common. TA teams have been reduced by near 50%, at least in our customer base. Hiring managers have to do a lot more and they have to do it faster and there’s a lot of urgency around their hires and tech isn’t showing up for that moment.

I think that this next generation for us is going to be about that. Meeting the users where they are. It’s going to be about more personalization. We’ve invested a lot in the tech stack so that our customers can customize user experiences. Because change management is hard. The last thing your users want to do right now is also sit on a webinar and learn how to use their recruiting tool. They just want to just like the same way you open your iPhone and suddenly face ID exists. That’s what they want hiring to feel like.

Kyle Lagunas:

But they do want to come to a webinar of research-

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, yeah. That maybe.

Kyle Lagunas:

…with Madeline and Kyle at Aptitude.

Rebecca Carr:

Of course. But certainly not on how to create a job. No, that feels bad.

Madeline Laurano:

That feels bad. It’s interesting because, let’s talk about ATS market for a little bit. We all love it. We have been in the ATS market for a long time. SmartRecruiters has taken different approaches. I think when SmartRecruiters first came out into the scene, it was the cool provider. Everybody would talk about, okay, you can invest in your HCM suite, you can get a best of breed, traditional best of breed, or you can get the cool provider at the time, and that was SmartRecruiters.

Things have shifted in the market and we’re seeing a lot of companies saying, okay, we’re just going to go with our HCM provider. Now we’re seeing new providers like Paradox and Eightfold launching ATSs. The market’s changing quite a bit even though it’s stale. We talk about [inaudible] right now. The approach for SmartRecruiters, in the past, you’ve taken was to build this huge ecosystem of partners, build out a marketplace.

Then you went in a different direction and said, we can actually do all those things as well. You built programmatic, you built sourcing, you built a lot of these capabilities in one platform to do more with less. What do you see as you look at your new announcement in SmartRecruiters and the new vision that you have? Is it going to be a partner ecosystem? Is it going to be, do everything and partner where you can?

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah. Two comments on that because when you describe it that way, it sounds like shiny object syndrome, which frankly is we’re not alone. There’s a lot of vendors in the market that I think-

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s a lot of shiny stuff right now.

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah, exactly.

Madeline Laurano:

And you’re responding to what the buyers are looking for. Sometimes they’re looking for one at the time and it shifts.

Rebecca Carr:

Or just investments in adjacencies. Some of our direct competitors have gone in directions where I’m just like, oh, I wouldn’t have thought about that. But it’s an opportunity to respond to customer need and they run at it. For us, a couple of things. One, focus is going to be important for us in the next chapter. We have a problem to solve, but we can’t solve that problem for everyone. I think the approach we’re taking with this product strategy is, how do we think about specifically high-volume, high-velocity hiring at a global scale and how do we make that more agent-enabled?

Not just for the candidate. Candidate engagement, candidate experience, obviously a lot of opportunity for AI. But for the hirer, like the store manager sitting on the ground that doesn’t care about the recruiting tool, but they care about hiring. It’s a more focused strategy that I think is not something where you see as many of the HCM providers, because in those circumstances they don’t have the big Workdays. Or if they have the SAP, they don’t engage with it. Because decentralized has not historically been a real vertical for them.

The other way that I think about it is, I’m a recruiting workflow orchestration engine. My specialty is orchestrating a beautiful recruiting process. I’m not going to be a specialist in people analytics, even though that’s important to understanding how you should use a recruiting workflow effectively. I’m not going to be a specialist in job distribution or programmatic advertising or in Zoom interview transcription.

Probably just not going to be where I go. But there are great best-of-breed vendors out there that my UI should be able to adapt to so that I can give a great experience at scale like that, leveraging the best of a lot of people. But that’s going to require that I don’t just go and see, hey, anybody that wants to can be a partner of SmartRecruiters and all of you are going to have the same experience.

I’m going to have to actually go and build relationships with people in a more focused way to say, does your product strategy align to mine? Are we going to go to market together effectively? Are we going to make sure our customers are mutually successful? It’s a more strategic way of approaching ecosystem, but it’s one that I’m very open about. It’s critical. It’s just not going to be the same way that I think we did it the first time, which is here’s some APIs anybody’s that’s interested.

Kyle Lagunas:

I feel like we saw that play out really well. I felt like the intentional ecosystem design. I was at Beamery when this happened. Workday had just invested in Beamery. Paradox was coming up, HiredScore was coming up, and the three of us were going to market together to Workday customers. They were like, well, great. Part of the pitch here from HRIT was, we’re going to go on Workday recruiting, but then we can build our own preferred tech stack on top of this. Look, we have these partners that all do different things. I think the intentionality is, I absolutely love to hear it. You also were one of the first providers to really lean into the hiring manager. Do you remember their hiring manager mobile app?

Rebecca Carr:

Oh yeah.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Isn’t so fun that mobile apps are coming back?

Rebecca Carr:

There might be better applications of that in the future.

Kyle Lagunas:

I hope so. I hope so. Not that it was bad before.

Rebecca Carr:

No.

Kyle Lagunas:

I actually think it was HR Tech, like 2012 or something that I did a writeup on that when I was a blogger.

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, yeah. That is why H&M and Primark and people like that buy SmartRecruiters, because none of those people are sitting at a desk. They need something.

Kyle Lagunas:

Guess what? Those are still enterprise companies. We’re not talking about solving problems for just a small franchisee.

Rebecca Carr:

No, actually, where we have accelerated as a business over the last several years is really international scale. We are as much a European company as we are a North American company right now. It has to do with a decision, frankly, that Jerome made a long time ago where I thought he was crazy. He’s like, “We’re just going to go global really fast.” I was like, “Oh, but we haven’t conquered one market yet.” He was like, “Nope, we’re going to do it anyway.” As a result, we’ve been very successful at supporting multinational, and that is a hard thing to go do. Even if the best competitors on this floor decided they wanted to lean into that, it would take them years to really establish. Me keeping that gap is important. You’ll still see us lean into international, international, international.

Madeline Laurano:

You don’t just have customers that are international customers. You have feet on the ground, you have conferences that are international.

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah, conferences. Yeah, we just launched those again.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. I’m so glad.

Rebecca Carr:

I know. They’re so fun. We throw a good party here at SmartRecruiters.

Madeline Laurano:

You throw a great party. Are you going to be doing analyst days at these conferences?

Rebecca Carr:

Oh, yes. Well, we did one day this year. We did EMEA. We’re doing APAC in two weeks and next year we’ll do more. We’re going to extend them out. The content’s fantastic. The energy’s good. It’s who we are. As much as we’re a vendor to a lot of our customers, customer relationships have always been a key pillar of our success. We really enjoy spending time with them, and I think that those conferences are a good opportunity for us all to come together and celebrate.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, it’s community. Are you seeing as much? Because Rebecca had mentioned maybe I want to do this in Slack. Maybe I don’t want to log into my at ATS. I’m seeing a lot more vendors that are like, you know what? Remember UX/UI was a big thing? Now they’re like, you know what? We actually want to be interface agnostic. Bring your own interface, choose your own engagement portal. However you want to come, we’re ready for you. The API strategy shifts not just to background check providers and assessment providers. It’s actually into these enterprise systems.

Madeline Laurano:

100%. I think I got an email from a corporation a couple of weeks ago and they saw a big HCM provider announced a collaboration tool, but it wasn’t integrated with Teams. For them that was a deal breaker. It is, and I think with co-pilots, what we’re seeing with a of co-pilots and assistants right now is it’s great to have in the product, but what value [do] you get out of having that in your work tech?

Rebecca Carr:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes. That’s a layer into that orchestration concept. It’s like, I’m orchestrating? Then I’ve got to account for anybody’s user preference.

Rebecca Carr:

If I could snap my fingers and do one thing to SmartRecruiters right now, I would make it 100% API-able. I’m close. I’m getting there. It’s part of the strategy. But really our customers are saying, “I thought- I love you guys. I thought I could buy a fully productized end-to-end and I could push it out to my field, but the reality is in this country versus this country, I do need that box gone. How do I get rid of it?” Well, design systems. You can just delete it or create your own experiences. You can push them into platforms like ServiceNow, is a good example.

Madeline Laurano:

Where they spend their time.

Rebecca Carr:

Where they spend their time.

Madeline Laurano:

It makes complete sense.

Rebecca Carr:

That is a big- where with our announcements this fall we’re launching with a bunch of design partners and a big piece of what they’re leaning into is that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, Rebecca, your history in the space I think really sets you up as a chief executive officer at this time. You are not coming in with just completely fresh eyes. We do need to know the space. There are some that come in and they pound their chest about we’re not HR people, we’re not TA people, we’re technology people. It’s like, well, that’s cool, but right now you need to know what your customer’s up against.

Rebecca Carr:

You got to learn from the mistakes of the past right now.

Madeline Laurano:

You’ve got the expertise. I have a question-

Kyle Lagunas:

You need to know the market in ecosystem. Yeah.

Madeline Laurano:

I have a question about this new role for you. Because we’re seeing more CEOs that are coming from a product background and that’s not something we’ve seen before. That would be like, wow, now there’s a lot of, Paradox, Adams had a product, so we’re seeing a lot of examples of that now. We’ve got AI and generative AI now completely changing how you think about tech. How does this change how you approach your team and who you’re hiring? Are you looking for a completely different skill set than you were as head of product now as CEO? Or is this just an extension and an evolution?

Rebecca Carr:

Well, certainly I feel like I have invested a lot in finding the right people to be the product and engineering bench. Because it’s not even about building innovative products, but also doing it in a really efficient way. You need to start looking at an R&D organization as, okay, you’re going to have to innovate. You’re going to have to do great things, but you can’t add one person. You need to start practicing what you preach and adopting AI technology in order to make yourself more efficient while also driving growth.

Because we’re in an interesting moment. The people that approach with that creativity are generally speaking, people that are innovators at heart, creatives at heart, and those are great product and engineering leaders. When I came in, I focused on those roles first and my SVP product, she’s amazing. She was a founder that sold the HiBob and just loves this space, loves solving this problem and loves a data problem. Which this is going to, in the new world where UIs disappear, this is a data industry.

Kyle Lagunas:

Where AIs are talking to Ais?

Rebecca Carr:

Yes. You’ve got to be highly technical and you need to be ready to educate. But educate in a way that the market can understand-

Kyle Lagunas:

Enablement.

Rebecca Carr:

… a relatable way. I’ve leaned in a lot to that. You see a lot more product speakers generally speaking, versus CROs and CMOs. But I’ve had to also balance that with a C-suite that are pure operators that can think through not just how to drive efficiency in R&D, but in sales and marketing. How do we think through balancing PLG motions, like consumption motions with subscription software? Those are good product and revenue problems. But not your tried and true seller that’s just sold enterprise software for the last 20 years. It’s a different moment and profile and feel like it’s coming together. We’ve got new CFO, new CMO coming in. We’ve got our new product leader, obviously. Good engineering DNA, tenure. Yeah, I feel good about it. I got a good bench.

Kyle Lagunas:

Literally, you’re such a badass. I’m sitting here.

Madeline Laurano:

I love it.

Kyle Lagunas:

Got it.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah, I remember seeing you probably at the last hiring success event that I was at. I know there were probably a couple after the last one, and you were the star of the show. You gave the keynote, the opening keynote, you opened it up, you led the analyst session. Jerome was there obviously. We were both on a panel with Jerome at that event.

Kyle Lagunas:

Jerry walked in as the panel was beginning.

Madeline Laurano:

I love Jerry. I loved that panel. That was a great panel. But you were the star of the show and you kicked off.

Kyle Lagunas:

Absolutely.

Madeline Laurano:

Jerome was setting the stage. I feel like this has always been the vision. The vision has always been you would be the seat.

Rebecca Carr:

It’s funny, when this moment came to be, he just looked at me- because, I had left, we had a moment when I first left where I was like, “You know what? Seven years, Jerome. I love this space. I need to learn something different about another space so I can understand how to balance what TA brings versus what it doesn’t and to learn from the best of other industries.” When I came back and they put me in this role, he looked at me and he was just like, didn’t say anything. Just on the Zoom, just smiled. He was proud, I think.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, proud papa.

Rebecca Carr:

But I think that’s the case for a lot of the people that sit in leadership roles at SmartRecruiters now. There’s a lot of tenure. Even my chief of staff is eight, nine years of the business, things like that. There’s a lot of people that want to see this through that really want to change this industry. That starts with me. Frankly, we’ve gotten a lot of energy as a business from seeing product become the centerpiece.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s like revitalized.

Rebecca Carr:

We’re back.

Madeline Laurano:

You’ve been quiet for a while and I feel like you’re back.

Rebecca Carr:

We’re back.

Kyle Lagunas:

Everybody’s holding their breath for a minute.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah. The nice thing is you’re not cleaning up a bad reputation. You are just a company that went quiet for a few years and now you’re re-entering-

Rebecca Carr:

Yeah, there was some change and transition, but I like to see momentum. I thrive from winning and seeing success and all of that. I think that’s what the future holds for a couple of people on this floor.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Well you definitely-

Rebecca Carr:

It’s going to be an interesting 18 to 24 months.

Kyle Lagunas:

It really is. You know what? You’re making it really hard for us to be industry agnostic right now, industry neutral, because we love you. We’re rooting for you.

Madeline Laurano:

Yes. We’re all in Boston now.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know.

Rebecca Carr:

I know. I love you guys too. Dinner on, I don’t know, we’ll go on Newbury Street. Do something fun.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, can we never meet in Vegas again.

Okay, that is a wrap, little chickadees. Huge thanks to Rebecca for sharing her story and her vision for shaking up talent acquisition. And big thanks to Madeline to joining us for this special little convo. Honestly, I have a ton of notes from this. Personalized hiring workflows. API first platforms. Making recruiting tools feel as easy as unlocking your phone. Yeah, I’m really into this.

But I’m also really into Rebecca.

Her leadership isn’t just inspiring, it’s exactly what I think the industry needs right now. She’s not here for business as usual, and neither are we at Aptitude. This was a super cool, honestly, just very down-to-earth conversation with somebody that we admire. Rebecca, thank you for spending some time with us today. We will catch you and all of our friends here on the next episode of Transformation Realness. Until then, stay real, stay bold and make all your recruiting tools actually make your life easier. Until next time, this is Kyle signing off. Bye.

Tags Recruitment, Recruitment Technology

Blog Podcast

Stop Guessing, Start Listening: The Real Approach to Hiring

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 12, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m joined by hiring tech trailblazers Jahkedda Akbar, Senior Vice President of Innovation at Radancy Labs, and Matt Lamphear, Head of the Digital Team at Radancy. Together, they unpack how Radancy is taking talent acquisition tech from “meh” to meaningful by blending data-driven insights with good old-fashioned common sense (and a touch of empathy).

This isn’t about shiny new features — it’s about solving real problems for recruiters and candidates alike. Our conversation hits everything from streamlining bloated tech stacks to tackling the ever-shifting whims of today’s candidates. Ready to take notes, HR leaders? Let’s go.

Staying Real: Why Innovation Must Be Grounded in Reality

Let’s talk about why so much of what passes for “innovation” in HR tech is just hot air. Radancy isn’t here for that. Instead, they’re laser-focused on what people actually need. “My main job is to work with our customers, our solutions engineers, [to] bring the voice of the customer back to our product team as they configure and determine, prioritize what to build next,” Matt says.

Radancy isn’t out here building tools that no one asked for. Instead of guessing, Radancy’s product strategy is based on real feedback from customers, advisory boards and even the complaints that come in through support tickets.

Radancy Labs cranks it up another notch. Jahkedda’s team combines big data with focus groups and qualitative research to dig into user behavior and context — with a tight focus on real people with real problems. “Oftentimes in technology we lose sight of the humans on the other side … So my team and I are really focused on, yes, big data, understanding trends, but contextualizing those trends,” she explains. In other words: No navel-gazing allowed. Radancy is about innovation that delivers, not just checking off RFP boxes.

Innovation isn’t about adding more features. It’s about delivering the right solutions at the right time. Jahkedda and Matt fundamentally believe that if they don’t understand the recruiter experience, they can’t build tools that make their lives better. HR leaders, take note — this is what staying real looks like in practice.

Don’t just chase the shiny new thing. Get feedback from your teams, your candidates and yes, even your customers. Stay connected to the reality of the work.

Candidate Motivations Are a Moving Target — And That’s Okay

Remember when candidates cared most about finding “interesting and challenging work”? Yeah, neither do we. The pandemic flipped the script on candidate priorities, and guess what’s at the top of the list now? Job security and compensation.

Shocker, right?

Jahkedda shares that Radancy’s been tracking candidate motivations since 2018, and that historic data has been a game-changer. “We could not have predicted that putting that in place in 2018 meant that we were going to have historic data to actually vet and validate based on this space we’re in today,” she says.

Here’s the kicker: These shifts aren’t slowing down. Jahkedda explains how candidate motivations swung wildly every 30 to 45 days during the early days of the pandemic — “I want purpose! No, wait, I want security! Actually, I want both!” — and they’ve kept evolving ever since. To keep up, employers need to be nimble. Messaging must adapt in real time, and employer branding can’t be a one-and-done exercise.

Matt adds that Radancy’s dashboards help clients track sentiment and motivations by department, location and job category — and even externally, across Radancy’s client ecosystem. “We give our customers dashboards so they can view not only how people are answering their own brand perception, their NPS score, their motivations … but you can drill it down by job and then you can compare it to others within Radancy,” Matt says.

Agility isn’t a buzzword — it’s a survival skill. Stay ahead by grounding your decisions in data and continuously adapting your approach.

Say Goodbye to Tech Chaos and Hello to Synergy

Let’s face it: You’re drowning in a sea of point solutions, and your recruiters are over it. Radancy gets it, and they’re here to throw you a life raft. Instead of cobbling together a dozen tools that don’t talk to each other, Radancy’s platform creates synergy by bringing it all under one roof — programmatic advertising, employee referrals, hiring events, CRM tools — you name it.

“Everything we’re doing is about taking the different channels that are available in our platform because we have had a history of investment and acquisitions,” says Matt, who is bringing those different resources together into a single powerhouse product. By reducing dependency on paid media and leveraging existing resources more effectively, Radancy helps clients get better results with less chaos. It’s all about making life easier for recruiters while delivering real value.

And can we talk about how Radancy uses challenge statements to keep things focused? Instead of telling their product team to “build this thing,” they define customer pain points and let the nerds (lovingly!) figure out the best solution.

Jahkedda and Matt know that the less time your team spends juggling tools, the more time they’ll have to focus on what really matters — like hiring great people.

People in This Episode

Jahkedda Akbar: LinkedIn
Matt Lamphear: Linked I n

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. It’s me. Welcome back. Here we are for another very special episode of Transformation Realness, which, as you know, is the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less shitty and they have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad and, most of all, the real. It’s produced in a partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by none other than the dashing, daring, totally cool Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech in transformation. Get into it.

In today’s episode I am joined by two absolute powerhouses from Radancy, Jahkedda Akbar, SVP of Innovation, and Matt Lamphear, Head of the Digital Team. We’re getting into the nitty-gritty of how they keep their product strategy sharp, balancing the human side of innovation with the demands of enterprise software.

These two are breaking down what it takes to prioritize customer needs, optimize tools and avoid the dreaded trap of building solutions in a vacuum. And, yeah, we’ve got thoughts on the future of talent acquisition. Spoiler, it’s not about more point solutions, although I think we’re still buying a lot of stuff. No, this conversation goes pretty deep, but it’s also packed with practical insights. Whether you’re trying to make sense of a shifting candidate motivation or figuring out how to leverage all the data you’re sitting on, this episode has something for you. So grab your notebooks or at least just listen very actively and settle in. This one’s all about innovation that actually delivers. Check it out.

Why don’t you guys introduce yourselves? Matt, do you want to go first?

Matt Lamphear:

Sure. Thanks, Kyle. Matt Lamphear, I oversee the digital team here at Radancy. My main job is to work with our customers, our solutions engineers, bring the voice of the customer back to our product team as they configure and determine, prioritize what to build next for our software.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s super cool. It sounds like you might be an analyst in residence. That’s kind of what my job is, but I don’t have just one product team.

Matt Lamphear:

I will learn from you today. There we go.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jahkedda, hi, who are you?

Jahkedda Akbar:

Hi, Kyle. Good to meet you. I’m Jahkedda Akbar. I’m the SVP of Innovation and I head up our Radancy Labs. At Radancy, in our Labs team, I’m really interested in understanding really the side of the user behavior. I think that oftentimes in technology we lose sight of the humans on the other side and we’re going technology down in product development. So my team and I are really focused on, yes, big data, understanding trends, but contextualizing those trends. So having a market researcher on our team who’s doing the qualitative side, really bringing to bear what’s happening from a macro trends perspective so that we can bring that together. That informs both our strategy and our innovation.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, that’s super cool. I mean, I love that because there is, as you all know, a real tendency in the solution provider space to innovate in a vacuum, to do that navel-gazing or to build that thing that you’d missed that you’re getting dinged for in RFPs. Or you’re getting all these feature requests and just responding. It’s really easy for your product strategy to get bogged down with just what is insulated in your organization. So I really love you guys for having this lens, make sure that you’re innovating for impact. You’re delivering solutions that your customers need. Yeah.

All right, but tell me about Radancy for those who don’t know, who are you? Because you guys have been around for a while, right? But we have had a rebrand, what was that, two years ago, three years ago?

Matt Lamphear:

A couple of years ago we renamed to Radancy, not a real word, so it was quite a process to pick a new name, but we are a software company. We continue to invest and expand our software, but we do so for the enterprise market and we do so with a specific lens. It’s not just helping customers hire faster and save money, whether it’s from reducing their key metrics, cost per application, cost per hire, but also reducing dependency on paid media because we have so many different channels that we can use, helping them maybe consolidate, not need so many point solutions. I do so-

Kyle Lagunas:

Are you saying that there are too many point solutions in talent acquisition?

Matt Lamphear:

Not at HR tech, I don’t think so.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God, girl, there is really so much. How long have you been at Radancy?

Matt Lamphear:

I don’t like that question because it’s close to 30 years now. It’s the only job I ever had other than Taco Bell and-

Kyle Lagunas:

You worked at Taco Bell?

Matt Lamphear:

I did work at Taco Bell. Do you eat Taco Bell? Do you get down on that Taco Bell?

Jahkedda Akbar:

So I will say that is my secret. I do eat Taco Bell. I know it’s-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, no, no. This is a very safe space. I went and ate at Taco Bell in the restaurant with my mom for my birthday this summer.

Jahkedda Akbar:

It’s fantastic.

Kyle Lagunas:

That Crunchwrap Supreme, it needs to be crunchy, it needs to be hot. I need that Baja Blast Zero. I want it crispy.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah, well I remember when we would do different bets with friends and the loser had to do the $20 Taco Bell Challenge, which-

Kyle Lagunas:

… which used to really be something. That was a lot of Taco Bell.

Matt Lamphear:

… used to be a lot of Taco. Now it’s pretty easy. But to eat, not including drink by the way, not a drink, $20 Taco Bell. You had to eat it all in one sitting.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God. Well, now, anyway, we’re not going to go too far down that rabbit hole. All right, you’ve been at Radancy for a little while. What about you, Jahkedda, how long have you been there?

Jahkedda Akbar:

Well, so this is also a question that’s a little weird one for me. So I’ve been technically at Radancy for about 10 years now, but I am a two-time boomerang. So I’ve been on the solution provider side of the house and also a practitioner.

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay, work!

Jahkedda Akbar:

Left twice, went to two different consultancies to be a part of their candidate engagement team. And then I actually built the very first employer brand recruitment marketing function at a digital consultancy. So, yeah, I know it from both sides of the house.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I’m really glad I asked the question because that street cred is so important. There are a lot of people that, I mean, that… TA is a really interesting and dynamic space. I always say that recruiting is one of those jobs that everyone thinks they can do better than you. And I also think that in the solution provider space, and I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it, they think they know what your problem actually is. And, for you, especially in your function, I think that, yeah, you’re running a team that is giving you context and giving you vision and helping you stay ahead and stay relevant. But then you are also having that understanding of how this is really going to go. I’m not trying to cook up problems to sell more product. I’m trying to lean in deeper and deliver more value. Am I putting the right words in your mouth?

Jahkedda Akbar:

Absolutely, yeah. When I think about our software, I always think about working with TA teams. So in my last role I was a part of the marketing communications function.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, really? Okay.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Yeah, and I actually partnered with TA. And what I remember saying to the TA executives all the time was, “I know that your number one concern is your recruiter burnout, is making sure that you have products that make sure they are efficient, that we’re supporting you as a recruitment marketing function.” And so I was oftentimes pulled in, we had an internal digital business transformation function. And so a part of my lens was also making sure the software that they had made sense, that we’re understanding the ROI. So then, coming back on this side of the house, I can bring that to bear and say, “Is our software doing what it needs to do with all of those things in mind?”

Kyle Lagunas:

No, honestly, that’s really interesting. And, I mean, there has been a lot of change at Radancy too. I think it’s super cool for them to have that recent experience. A lot has changed in the space. But tell me a little bit about what you guys are up to right now. What are you cooking up?

Matt Lamphear:

Everything we’re doing is about taking the different channels that are available in our platform because we have had a history of investment and acquisitions. So now in one platform you’ve got not just the programmatic advertising, but you’ve got the employee referrals, the hiring events, the CRM. And what is the relative contribution to each of those when you-

Kyle Lagunas:

In-person events, virtual events?

Matt Lamphear:

Both of them, both of them.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah. We’ve been integrating on our roadmap, all of it together. Unified profile in the CRM, making sure that profile has what events they attended, who they were referred by, what they were rated on. Making sure that any advertising external budget includes both individual jobs, branding, but also event promotion. So we think there’s a lot of synergies there. And I feel like I’m a kid in the candy shop because there’s a lot more connections that we can make. We want to do more predictive campaigning when, here’s my goals, here’s my timeframe, here’s what I would expect each individual channel to contribute. And that helps me, at least, where do I start? And then optimize along the way so we have that data. We can get that.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, that’s what’s so… Look, I’ve been an industry analyst for 15 years. I was born when you started at Radancy… JK!

Matt Lamphear:

That wasn’t nice.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, but I have been watching for a while and it’s been interesting and that’s why I keep doing it. I stepped over to the practitioner side to see if I knew what I thought I knew and I didn’t. There’s a lot I didn’t know, right? But we have literally never seen this much change this fast. And I’m not just talking about the impact of Covid and the scale up and the scale down and the hire up and then hire… all of that chaos. But then also the technology innovation that’s happening, the way that we have completely shifted human behavior. We live on these devices and on these screens so much more than we ever have before. So you’re a kid in a candy shop too, but how do you zero in on, “Where am I going to… What am I?” You can’t do it all, right? How are you guys zeroing in on, “What are we going to prioritize? What are we going to get done?”

Matt Lamphear:

We’re doing it more efficiently every year. And this year we did a really good job with Jahkedda’s help in getting all the feedback, whether it was from customers direct, from our software advisory boards, to the individual tickets that are entered into our backend systems and what product managers are being asked for. And we, basically, with the help of generative AI, we change those into challenge statements and those challenge statements then are delivered to the product team. And of course you prioritize the challenge statements, but that’s what they work off of and then make solutions.

Kyle Lagunas:

Challenge statements, talk to me more about that. I haven’t heard of it before.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah, so from a product development standpoint, I’ve worked with the product team enough, they don’t want you to tell them, “Hey, build this.”

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay.

Matt Lamphear:

They want you to say, “What is the challenge of the customer?”

Kyle Lagunas:

Those nerds are so self-important.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah, they’ll actually kick it back…

Kyle Lagunas:

But let me tell you…

Matt Lamphear:

“Don’t tell me what to build here, but just tell…”

So we provide that and we help…”Hey, sales, tell us which of these challenge statements are most important, you hear most often during the sales process.” And so we provide the product team with a prioritized list of challenge statements and then they know the tools and the data that they have and they build the roadmap off of that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay.

Matt Lamphear:

So I’m actually proud of how far we’ve gotten this year, and every year we get a little better. And so 2025 is going to be pretty awesome.

Jahkedda Akbar:

You can get to this place where you are evolving based on the things that you’re hearing that are problems and issues and that’s how we create the challenge statements. What my team does is we also go in and we’re talking to candidates. We’re actually doing focus groups to understand, “How do you feel about different solutions that we’re actually putting out?” And so a massive important part, again coming back to the beginning, is that we’re not innovating in a silo, that we’re actually understanding how does this work in real time? None of us work in high volume situations. Maybe we did when we were 17. So talk to someone who actually works that job and understand what makes the most sense for them. Bring that to bear when we’re building out a roadmap.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I really love to hear that too, because just like the recruiter experience has changed, the candidates, their experiences have shifted a lot too. Well, and look, the employment environments that we are in right now are also way different than they were two years ago. So when we were getting ready, you guys were talking about a couple of concepts you are working on. Do you want to share some of that? I think, what did you say, the candidate motivation research? Yeah, talk to me about that.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Sure, I’ll talk a little bit about that. So, interestingly enough, we developed out this solution back in 2018, and it was really to mirror the information we would derive from both our customers in terms of their employees, understanding what motivates them, and the external market. We wanted to have a real-time solution surveying candidates all the time to understand how are motivations changing over time. We could not have predicted that putting that in place in 2018 meant that we were going to have historic data to actually vet and validate based on this space we’re in today.

Kyle Lagunas:

Ah, yeah, that’s cool.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Amazing. So in 2020 what I saw is every 30 to 45 days motivations were swinging wildly. It would be like, “I want purpose. No, I want security. No, I want this and that.” And so what we’ve been seeing over the past, let’s say, five or six years since the pandemic, is that motivations continue to change along every single new thing, including technology. So it’s return to office, it’s the economy, it’s the great resignation, and then ChatGPT and candidates and job seekers are thinking, “Well, how do I upscale myself? How do I remain relevant?” And so really paying attention to those key factors. What we’re seeing that is on average was about a 27% decline from when things were great in 2019. The top motivating factor was interesting and challenging work. Now, fast-forward to now, that’s really come down to maybe the third or fourth most important motivator. So that, for us-

Kyle Lagunas:

I’ll work on anything for a paycheck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jahkedda Akbar:

So that is what keyed us into this idea of, “All right, well we have to be more agile with messaging-“

Kyle Lagunas:

Because your customers do too.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Absolutely. And so getting ahead of that for our customer-

Kyle Lagunas:

They’re operating on that front line every day.

Jahkedda Akbar:

And so your brand isn’t changing, but how are we understanding the motivations aligned with your brand to make sure that whole right message and market at the right time, if we don’t know what the message is and what the right time is then how do we get ahead [of] it? So it’s the message, it’s being able to be agile about delivery and then optimization across the full platform.

Kyle Lagunas:

I love it. It’s also giving data to inform these things.

Jahkedda Akbar:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

Because, look, marketers love to think of new things. “What if we spin this? What if we spin that?” But if I can actually go and say, like, “Hey, I actually am monitoring this thing, I’m seeing this thing. We need to respond to this thing,” then you are actually going to get, I think, more alignment and buy-in for that continuous adaptation, right? If I say, “Hey folks, our EVP is not relevant, and I’m not just telling you that our recruiters are not getting signals of response rates. It’s not just that. I’m actually seeing in our sentiment analysis that people are not caring about these things that we are pushing. It’s just not landing.” You know what I mean? I might have that anecdotal perspective, but to move a ship in that much, that big of a way, anecdote is not going to be enough.

Matt Lamphear:

It’s even down to not just the time level, but it’s the location and department level too. So when we do have this data, we give our customers dashboards so they can view not only how people are answering their own brand perception, their NPS score, their motivations, are they finding what they want on the career site, but you can drill it down by job and then you can compare it to others within Radancy, because we use the same question set across all our clients so they can put in context, “Is this a good or is this a bad score?” And then our technology allows us to deploy whatever messaging needs to be deployed per job category…

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. So what I really like about that is that is the kind of personalization that I’m looking for. I’m not just looking for it to remember my name last time I applied, right, and to show me what job I applied for. I want it to serve up the content that’s relevant to me.

Matt Lamphear:

Yeah. And we need to tie what is their main motivation to what can the company offer, tie those two things together and make sure-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, that’s really sophisticated. And look, I mean, I know that you guys have been on a transformation journey yourselves and positioning more as that technology player, but I think that your deep roots in delivering recruiting solutions, having that whole portfolio of capabilities, you can say, “We’re seeing an opportunity to make an impact and we have the tools to activate on all of this across multiple channels, multiple assets.” Right? Systems….

Matt Lamphear:

We want to partner with our customers, make it successful as possible. So we pride ourselves on not set it and forget it, “Here’s our software, but here’s the messaging you should deploy through that software. And here’s why.”

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, honestly, it sounds super interesting. I mean, I can talk about anything all day, but is there anything else that you guys wanted to make sure that we landed on today? Anything you wanted to bring up?

Matt Lamphear:

Well, I think the big message here is we always want to make sure that we’re helping reduce the dependency on paid media. And there’s really a hierarchy to do that. And our solution allows us to make sure you’re looking at your past candidates, make sure you’re looking, leveraging your employees, make sure you’re utilizing everything at your disposal. And then when paid media comes, we’ve got programmatic to do it. It’s the story that we’re telling. It’s one source of data, one reporting less work for your IT team, less report work for your legal team, your procurement team. So it’s really bundled up nicely together. We’re excited about the future too. We’re going to continue to push.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think so. I mean, look, there’s a big push for efficiency, right, and cost-cutting, but it’s not just face value, move faster and work cheaper. It’s like, “Get better, get more excellent.” You need the right data in place. You still need the right tools in place, and I think we need to be better stewards of the resources we have. It sounds like you guys are enabling your clients to do that.

Matt Lamphear:

And you need to measure it consistently.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, I mean, literally, I felt like during Covid we backed off big time on some of our recruiting scorecard, recruiter performance metrics, because we didn’t want anybody to leave, right? And guess what? When the business came and said, “What are all these people doing?” You’re working hard. You have no data to show them. They’re like, “Okay, well, they’re all gone.” So I think that’s also it, too. You guys are empowering your customers to be excellent in this new era of, look, you’ve got to know your stuff. So it’s super cool. You guys have a lot to offer.

Matt Lamphear:

Appreciate that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Thanks for coming and spending time with me.

Matt Lamphear:

Appreciate the time. Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay, that is a wrap, another episode of Transformation Realness. Big thank you to Jahkedda and Matt for coming on and sharing how Radancy is raising the bar with smarter, more intentional tech. From turning candidate motivation trends into actual insights to keeping innovation grounded in real-world insights, they reminded us that solving the right problems requires staying curious, connected, and being adaptable.

The takeaway for me, it’s not just about building solutions, it’s about building the right solutions and continuously fine-tuning along the way. Whether you’re on the tech side or leading a talent team, it’s pretty clear the days have set it and forget it are over. They’re behind us. They need to stay behind us. Bye. Innovation is a moving target, and those who stay nimble and aligned will be the ones that are leading the way.

Thank you as always for spending some time with me and my little friends. I’ll catch you on the very next episode of Transformation Realness. And, until then, stay bold, stay curious and, above all, stay real.

Tags Recruitment, recruitment marketing, talent acquisition

Blog Podcast

No More Quick Fixes: Why Top Solutions Are Integrated

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 10, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m joined by none other than Yvette Cameron, Senior Vice President of Cloud HCM Product Strategy at Oracle. Yvette is a visionary (and certified badass) reshaping workforce technology with a focus on what actually matters: skills, culture, and empowering managers to lead in a rapidly changing world.

We tackle big questions about how skills fit into the bigger picture of talent strategies, the challenges facing today’s managers, and the incredible potential of generative AI to transform work — without getting lost in the hype. If you’ve ever wondered whether technology can solve your talent problems, let me just say: it can help — but no app is going to fix a broken culture.

If you’re ready to think bigger about the future of work, this conversation is for you.

Skills Aren’t Just for TA and L&D

If you’ve rolled your eyes at every “skills-based” solution on the market, you’re not alone — I’ve been right there with you. But Yvette sets the record straight: “There are so many ‘solutions’ … on the market that focus on skills-based recruiting, or skills-based learning,” she says. “And when you have these siloed systems that are focused on that one process, you can improve the process. But skills don’t stop when you hire people.” You need skills data for scheduling, planning, upskilling, budgeting — it’s about integration, not silos.

The real magic happens when skills data becomes foundational across the organization. From aligning workforce planning with future needs to creating intentional upskilling opportunities, Yvette says it’s time to stop thinking of skills as just a recruitment or learning tool — and start using them to drive strategy.

That’s why, under Yvette’s visionary eye, Oracle has adopted a more comprehensive approach that lets companies aggregate skills into a system of record. Collecting skills data across the spectrum of HR processes provides data that’s richer and more accessible. The result? You have the foundations of a strategy, not just an idea.

Managers Need More Than “Self-Service”

Let’s talk about managers — the unsung heroes holding it all together. “Managers are the ones who know how the real work gets done, right?” Yvette says. “They know the tasks that their people have to perform. They know the unique skills and qualifications that they need.” While HR plays a critical role as architects of people strategy, we sometimes lose sight of the people on the other side.

New tools and processes are great, but managers are already overloaded, so anything we add needs to tie back to a clear business benefit — and especially answer your managers’ “What’s in it for me?”

When HR leaders tell her they’ve adopted self-service modules to make the managers’ lives easier, for example, Yvette is quick to counter that assumption. “I say, ‘Is it really self-service? Are you putting your work on your managers, or are you giving them direct access to the information and support, and processes that they need?’” she says. “And I think that’s a fundamental mind-shift, right? Is it HR work, or is it really empowering managers?”

And this is where technology can shine. AI can nudge managers with reminders to check in with their team or even suggest agenda topics for those meetings. But as Yvette wisely notes, no tech can replace empathy, trust and a willingness to share talent across teams. Culture trumps tech every time.

GenAI: Transformative, But Not a Cure-All

It wouldn’t be Transformation Realness without a little GenAI talk. Yvette’s take? Game-changing potential, but tread carefully. Oracle’s approach includes agents that automate low-risk tasks (like scheduling) and provide managers with real-time answers and insights. But Yvette stresses that people are still core to the process. “We don’t like to take the human out of the loop,” she says.

And for all its promise, GenAI is no silver bullet. If your managers still have a talent hoarding attitude, for instance, introducing an AI-enabled talent marketplace won’t have the impact you want it to. “That’s a culture and a business process that has to be addressed,” she says.

Yvette brought the fire in this conversation, reminding us that transformation is about more than just tools — it’s about building the right foundation, empowering people and addressing the cultural barriers holding us back.

Stay tuned for more Transformation Realness, and remember: transformation isn’t something you buy — it’s something you build.

People in This Episode

Yvette Cameron: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome to another very special episode of Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are working to make the world of work less shitty, and who are brave enough to tell their stories: the good, the bad, and most of all, the real.

It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by none other than yours truly, the ever so charming and ecclesiastical, Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research. The boutique firm leading the charge in HR tech in transformation.

Get into it!

Before I jump in, I have to say a special thank you to the team over at Glider AI, whose sponsorship made our Talent Transformation Ecosystem, EP possible. Thanks, fam.

Today’s guest is one of my favorite people in our industry, a longtime friend and personal mentor, Yvette Cameron, Senior Vice President of Cloud HCM Product Strategy at Oracle, just this tiny little tech startup you’ve never heard of. No, seriously, this powerhouse is shaping the future of workforce technology, making sure it’s not just buzzwords and feature dumps, but real strategies that move the needle in our space.

From skills-based workforce planning to the growing influence of GenAI, Yvette is here to share with us what’s really going on in the space. Plus there’s some super fabulous insight about the challenges that managers today are dealing [with], as they’re navigating this changing world themselves. Are we empowering them, or just giving them more stuff to do? Big questions, real answers, buckle up kids, this is going to be a good one.

I am joined by one of the baddest bitches in the space. Hi, Yvette Cameron.

Yvette Cameron:

Hello Kyle. So good to see you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Always good to see you. It’s always a pleasure.

Yvette Cameron:

I love being introduced as one of the baddest bitches. I actually really love that.

Kyle Lagunas:

But you know it’s so true. For those who don’t know, what is your job? What do you do?

Yvette Cameron:

So I’m the Senior Vice President for Oracle’s Cloud, HCM Product Strategy. So my team is out there visioning, “Where are we going to go in the next 12, 18, 24 months, three years?” Five years is a little more difficult. Things are changing so fast.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, especially now.

Yvette Cameron:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

I don’t even know if you can really do 18 months?

Yvette Cameron:

You can-

Kyle Lagunas:

Look at this last 18-month cycle.

Yvette Cameron:

I know, but you know what? Flexibility is the story, right? And a strong strategy for where the technology’s taking us.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Agility is the only way to be now, right? That’s where resilience comes from. Well, tell me about your session? What did you talk about?

Yvette Cameron:

I would love to talk about the session, but I actually want to start with the elephant in the room, Kyle? There’s something we have to cover first.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God. What is it?

Yvette Cameron:

It’s huge. The fact that you were on the cover of New York Times recently? Oh, my gosh. I looked and I saw your face and I was like, “Wait a minute”-

Kyle Lagunas:

Man.

Yvette Cameron:

… “isn’t that Kyle?”

Kyle Lagunas:

You know.

Yvette Cameron:

Sweetie? So congratulations on that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Thank you. We’ve been friends for a long time. For those who don’t know, I started as a little humble blogger. I actually have worked really hard to get where… We both have, right? But it was so validating, it was really cool. You know the coolest part? They came to my house, girl? And while they’re taking my picture… Which by the way, I cleaned the entire house, and then he wanted to take pictures in the backyard.

Yvette Cameron:

And was that your cat there? I loved that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes. So we’re sitting there taking pictures, my cat just walks over and sits down and he’s like, “What’s up dorks? What are you guys doing?” He looked so regal. He’s just like… And my arms look huge. I’m like…

Yvette Cameron:

That was awesome. So congratulations. Well, I didn’t like the way that they said that you had a little rant going on about [managing HR].

Kyle Lagunas:

Whatever.

Yvette Cameron:

So whatever. But it was fantastic-

Kyle Lagunas:

That was a microaggression-

Yvette Cameron:

… congratulations.

Kyle Lagunas:

… against gays.

Yvette Cameron:

Oh. Okay well, that’s another podcast.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. That is another podcast. All right, but talk to me about your session? Seriously, because it’s like standing room only at HR Tech, I mean that’s huge. Especially because… And no offense, but you’ve been an analyst… People don’t always want to go and hear from vendors?

Yvette Cameron:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Right?

Yvette Cameron:

You know, when I’m speaking and when most of my team is speaking, we really try to bring the thought leadership, and really how do we succeed in this market? Of course, there’s a bit of how our technology can support these strategies.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s why you’ve chosen where you land it, right?

Yvette Cameron:

Exactly. Exactly. And so my session was Five Keys to Unlocking Workforce Potential, and of course it comes down to experience. Which is also supported by today’s latest generative AI capabilities, ensuring a solid skills foundation to drive engagement and opportunity across the organization. Experience is also around empowering managers to be more people-centric-

Kyle Lagunas:

Work, yes.

Yvette Cameron:

… and empathetic leaders. And so we talked about that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes.

Yvette Cameron:

And then of course, really focused on the data of the organization. And one of the biggest challenges I think HR has, is moving from data to insights, to taking action-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

… on that data. So it was a really compelling session. I think the HR Tech people recorded it, and hopefully it’ll be available online somewhere soon.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m so sorry I missed it. I had to go to an-

Yvette Cameron:

I will send it to you first thing.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, yeah. I mean honestly, I want to see the deck. I know, especially because I love when thought leadership is being driven by somebody that’s so accomplished, but also sits and has such a huge purview in the market. Almost 100% aligns with research that I’m doing. It’s really validating. I mean, so I’m not going to lie, I was getting really sick of skills-based everything. I was getting extremely cynical the last year, because it seemed like the new employee experience.

It was just like a catch-all, we were talking like, “Oh, this is going to make magic. It’s going to do all kinds of things.” And I just really wasn’t seeing it. Especially because I saw solution providers, not Oracle, but I did see some solution providers in the space that were almost making false promises, over simplifying this. They were saying, “Oh, if you buy our software, you’ll have skills-based everything.” Right? And you and I know that doesn’t work, so I was getting kind of cynical, I’m like, “I don’t know if this is a thing?” It’s a thing, baby.

Yvette Cameron:

It is a thing. But I think your cynicism is well-placed, because there are so many solutions, and I say that with quotes around it on the market, that focus on skills-based recruiting, or skills-based learning. And when you have these siloed systems that are focused on that one process, you can improve the process. But skills don’t stop when you hire people. You need to be able to schedule people according to skills, that’s critical in the healthcare industry.

You need to budget and plan, based on the skills need of the future. And that comes not just from the skills you’re bringing into the organization, but the way you’re driving upskilling, and learning and development. You need that skills-based learning. Skills-based learning alone isn’t enough, right? As there’s just skills even in how you’re managing your people, and the performance reviews-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, absolutely.

Yvette Cameron:

… and stuff that involves-

Kyle Lagunas:

Imagine if you’re-

Yvette Cameron:

… it’s just impossible.

Kyle Lagunas:

… only doing skills in learning, and then you’re not actually evaluating skills and performance?

Yvette Cameron:

Exactly. Exactly. So we talked about that in my session-

Kyle Lagunas:

Cool.

Yvette Cameron:

… yesterday, and one of our big points-

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s why it is ubiquitous, right?

Yvette Cameron:

It is. It is. And one of our press releases this year recently at our CloudWorld, was an announcement about how our investment in skills has broadened. So in the past, like many others, we took an approach of, “Here’s our skills ontology, here’s our AI that’s going to enrich the skills. And here’s how we have infused skills across everything in the HCM suite.”

But what we missed was the reality that there are still many organizations who, despite our being an end-to-end suite, are using that one solution outside, that’s in recruiting or learning or XYZ space, or multiple. I was talking with an organization the other day, who partners with an organization focused on the needs of manufacturing. The very unique skills, they have a subscription for that. Those change, there’s-

Kyle Lagunas:

Shifting landscape of skills needs in manufacturing.

Yvette Cameron:

Exactly. The shifting. And so our approach now, is that we are an open skills aggregation platform. And there’s a lot of goodness around that, and I won’t pitch that here on this podcast, but I will say-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, pitch baby. Just kidding.

Yvette Cameron:

… there are differences. I was talking to a couple of other analysts and unlike you, I’m hearing, “Oh, but everybody’s got skills. Everybody’s got AI and GenAI, everybody’s doing the same thing.” We’re not. The approach that the different vendors, and that Oracle is taking. I think especially because we’re not only an applications vendor, we’re a technology vendor.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

It gives us the-

Kyle Lagunas:

With deep-

Yvette Cameron:

… opportunity to do things differently.

Kyle Lagunas:

… industry, vertical expertise.

Yvette Cameron:

Deep industry vertical-

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

… right. So I think this is a huge space. Skills are incredibly important for organizations to really make sure they’ve got that agility that we opened with, in the future.

Kyle Lagunas:

But also it enables the intentionality with workforce planning. I’m not just looking for heads, what are these people going to do? What are the skills that are… What skills risks do we have? Or what skills opportunities do we have, right?

Yvette Cameron:

Skills are changing so quickly. One of my quotes yesterday was that over 62% of the workforce is quiet quitting. Pretty disengaged. In fact, I read that in the UK that number is an astonishing 92%. And how do you combat disengagement? One thing, is, you reach out to your workforce and you say, “Hey, grow with us. If we up-skill in these areas, here are some opportunities for you to grow.” And without a skills infrastructure and across all of your opportunities, again in scheduling and learning, and the way you’re recruiting, et cetera, your just-

Kyle Lagunas:

But it’s just a good idea?

Yvette Cameron:

… in little pieces. That’s a great way to say it. It’s an idea as opposed to a strategy, that you can really execute on.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Well, so as you’re talking, I’m thinking, “All right, for a long time you’ve been watching the HCM space, for a long time you’ve been in the HCM space as a solution provider consultant, we’ve looked at what are foundational aspects of an HCM suite,” right? And you’re like, “All right, well, you got to have learning. You got to have TA, you got to have performance.” We’re thinking about the apps that you need to be that suite? You’ve got to be cloud, and maybe on-prem too?

There’s just things that we’ve thought about were core parts of that architecture. Actually, skills is a foundational aspect I think, of the modern HCM suite. You are that platform, and whether they’re going all in with you, or if they are plugging in other little things that are solving very specific problems that they just like. All of those things, skills needs to be relevant and standardized from learning to TA, from the front end to the back end. You know what I mean? And that’s more than just a philosophical conversation. That’s a data conversation, right?

Yvette Cameron:

It’s a data conversation for sure. And that’s why our approach is to bring skills that we deliver, or that you organically build through AI understanding how the skills-

Kyle Lagunas:

Or with a consultancy, you build your own special taxonomy?

Yvette Cameron:

You bring in libraries from different sources, an Eightfold or a TechWolf or any of these other solutions. Bring them into the same system of record where your people, your work data, and your job architecture is. Because when all of that is in the core system of record, then your opportunity to understand and really leverage it-

Kyle Lagunas:

And activate it?

Yvette Cameron:

… is phenomenal. You can activate it, exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

So one thing that I also was noticing about skills, which is why I think it had in my opinion, a rough go at the beginning. Where you like… were going in stops and starts, there was a lot of conversation, but not a lot of impact. Part of it was, we were solving this at a use case level: TA, learning. And what we were doing over in TA, might not actually had bought in an alignment with our skills concepts across the business, or in learning too? Do you remember competency models, when these were the big things?

Yvette Cameron:

I do, it’s painful.

Kyle Lagunas:

How much work went into it? HR came over here and brought their… We really poured our hearts into this and our minds, we were feeling so good about what we built. And then we bring it to the business and they’re like, “What the hell is this?”

Yvette Cameron:

I know I told the story in my session yesterday. I remember back in the late ’90s, early 2000, getting my competency library CD, I would plug it in, we’d unplug it-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my God. Yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

… and we’d get an update from the vendor every six to 12 months. Those days are so, so far gone.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, but you know what’s not far gone? That HR still needs to make sure that what they’re innovating, and what they’re dreaming up, is relevant to the business?

Yvette Cameron:

You know, that’s absolutely true. But I would say that it’s not just on the shoulders of HR.

Kyle Lagunas:

Go on.

Yvette Cameron:

So managers are the ones who know how the real work gets done, right? They know the tasks that their people have to perform. They know the unique skills and qualifications that they need. HR is great, and needs to be setting foundational and top-down instructions on what we need in the organization. And what learning we need, and what specific skills for particular jobs. But more and more, work is shifting very rapidly, and it’s really the business leaders and the managers who know the actual tasks of the work.

And that’s one of the areas that we’ve invested, is making sure that managers are able to define their own needs for their team, what skills, and how do you build them? And think about it, HR is busy bringing libraries in and saying, “Here’s how you’re going to develop those skills.” But my strategy team is different than the strategy team over in customer support, or in supply chain, where at different levels of product maturity, we’ve got different responsibilities, a little bit than the other teams?

Kyle Lagunas:

Some things are more complicated than others.

Yvette Cameron:

And so I’m out there telling and assigning to my team, “I want you to build these particular skills,” and the sources might be going out and reading Kyle’s blog, or subscribing to this report, reading this book, and other things that HR has no insight to. Now, through the investments we’ve made in Oracle, managers can do that. And what HR gets from it, is a view across the enterprise of those hotspots of skills that are growing. They can see them associated with key roles.

They’re seeing the resources that are starting to surface, and when they see commonality, they can create new learning programs and skills development. So a bottoms-up approach to identifying what skills really are defining the work of the business that matter, and then looking for the resources. And if they’re going to be ad hoc, that’s great, but if there is a commonality, let’s spread that and make that an official HR mandated or supported policy.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, let’s scale that out. Yeah. No, I really like it. I mean, honestly, there’s so much on the shoulder of managers these days, so much. And HR is bringing them something new, and it’s just more work, you know?

Yvette Cameron:

And it feels like-

Kyle Lagunas:

… “well, thanks for more HR stuff.” We got to make sure that this is not that. That’s what I said, it has to be relevant to the business, it has to have immediate tangible value. Otherwise it’s just like, “Well, why am I going to do this?”

Yvette Cameron:

So one of the first things when I talk to organizations, and they’re talking about their manager self-service, when I’m talking to an HR leader. I say, “Is it really self-service? Are you putting your work on your managers, or are you giving them direct access to the information and support, and processes that they need?” And I think that’s a fundamental mind-shift, right? Is it HR work, or is it really empowering managers?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. But we haven’t been able to deliver that in the past. That’s why, I mean… Look, we’ve been studying innovation cycles, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as explosive as GenAI has been for us. And so talking about like, “Are we giving them immediate access?” Like agents, right? Where I’m going to have a conversational interface and I’m going to say, “Hey, so-and-so is about to go on maternity leave. What am I supposed to do as a manager for this?”

And I’m going to try to get my HR business partner to talk to me? No. I’m going to go to this chat interface and I’m going to say something in my natural language and it’s not going to say, “Go to the HR handbook, the employee handbook.” Instead it’s going to pull up that article, right? This one actually, I loved, like you guys were showing us, it’s going to give me an answer, and then I’ll actually be able to click to go in, and see where did this come from?

Yvette Cameron:

See the source doc then.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Where did-

Yvette Cameron:

Right.

Kyle Lagunas:

… this come from, right? So that enablement, that immediate access and support, that is transformative, right?

Yvette Cameron:

It really is. And this is where I caution the buyers in the market to really explore how their vendors are approaching this. Because I’ve seen across the 100 or so vendors here, I’ve seen cases where they’re using ChatGPT, or some other public model, and it’s not going to give you that context of the individual. And then they’ll say, “Well, but we’ll train it. We’ll train it on the customer’s data.” But where are they training it-

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, that’s risky, baby.

Yvette Cameron:

… and is it exposed to the public model?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

So there’s things you have to get under the covers and look at. And I think GenAI is fantastic, and Oracle, we’re already on our 3rd kind of iteration of capabilities. We started a year ago, within a year of ChatGPT hitting the market and hitting 100 million users, we were delivering by last September, our first GenAI use cases. Creating job descriptions and summarizing performance evals, and a lot of productivity tools.

Now this year, in this last second half of 2024, we’re delivering agents. So we’ve got the benefit agents answering very specific questions, hiring support and other things. Now we’re working on what we’re calling agentic workflows, which are agents calling other agents to do end-to-end processes. And even for the first time, doing some reasoning, and perhaps automating some of that decision-making for you. We don’t like to take human out of the loop, but where it’s very low-risk, and the humans can still get involved-

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, the answer is yes or no.

Yvette Cameron:

… let’s streamline a talent review process schedule, for me. I don’t need to be in the loop of scheduling reviews with managers. That should be something that an agent takes care of. So we’re, again, moving fast and I think GenAI is transformational, but I can’t underestimate the core classic AI. So one of the things, again, yesterday was such a great session. You’ve got to see it when I get it.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m so bummed, I’m mad at myself.

Yvette Cameron:

But one of the points I mentioned is that from a manager’s perspective, they’re overwhelmed. They’re being asked to do a lot, HR is putting self-service on their plate a lot. There’s so many changes, remote workers, and we’ve got to manage them, and be empathetic in ways that we maybe haven’t been trained for. And so even the classic AI can bring information forward to managers and say, “Hey, it’s time to schedule a check-in, and here’s recommendations on what you should meet about.”

And those recommendations are coming in our system from all the interactions across HCM. Kyle got a feedback, he’s got a milestone coming. His goal is here, he’s had a conversation over here. So from across all these different areas to build an agenda for the manager, and the employee receives the same recommendations. So that you are talking about things that are relevant, timely, and that will make an impact on the culture. So empowering managers for us, that’s what that’s about. Making them better, more human-centric leaders.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I think it tracks to what HR needs to be doing anyway? If you look at that role, that is a critical role for the success of the evolution of any HR strategy, right? And look, they’re the ones that are moving the business forward. If you are delighting in supporting that stakeholder, talk about credibility, talk about trust. We need to be building that up right now. A lot’s depending on them.

Yvette Cameron:

Especially I would say now, and I think we’ve seen a lot of promotion of managers, of people who did a good job at their-

Kyle Lagunas:

At their job?

Yvette Cameron:

At their job, but they weren’t necessarily trained as leaders. And so how do we use the technology to support it?

Kyle Lagunas:

But also leadership in the workplace has completely changed in the last three years, where we all went home and suddenly I’m on a call, and my direct report’s nanny called out sick. And so this did literally happen. We have a really important presentation and her daughter is in the room with her, and I can’t tell her to tell her daughter to stop talking to her. Do you know what I mean? There’s just so… We’re in each other’s homes now?

Yvette Cameron:

Which I love.

Kyle Lagunas:

And then we’re also… Managers having to have really tough conversations like, “We have to come back to the office, by the way.” It’s just is what it… The amount of challenge that managers are under now-

Yvette Cameron:

It’s-

Kyle Lagunas:

… I’m glad to be back on my own-

Yvette Cameron:

Well-

Kyle Lagunas:

… an individual contributor and solopreneur-

Yvette Cameron:

Again, I-

Kyle Lagunas:

… I couldn’t be back in enterprise now.

Yvette Cameron:

I think technology’s very helpful. There’s so much more it can do, but ultimately the culture, the practices of the organization, the mindset of the organization sets the stage. No amount of technology-

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s more important now than ever, that we have time and capacity-

Yvette Cameron:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

… for those things.

Yvette Cameron:

Absolutely. No technology is going to change the fact that if you have a talent marketplace, where you’re offering up gigs and projects to build out skills and experiences, and managers are treating their talent as their own moat. And say, “No, I’m not going to share you. I can’t let you do that for two weeks or even part-time,” then no technology is going to fix that. That’s a culture and a business processing that has to be addressed.

Kyle Lagunas:

Wait, I can’t buy transformation out of the box?

Yvette Cameron:

No, gosh, as much… Actually, let’s see, that would be 25D release.

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, shady. All right. Well, thanks for coming to the show.

Yvette Cameron:

Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

I will never be able to live down that I missed your session. But for what it’s worth, my friend who’s a practitioner was speaking at HR Tech for the first time ever, and I was in the front row to show her some love.

Yvette Cameron:

Oh, that’s great.

Kyle Lagunas:

So she needed me, and-

Yvette Cameron:

That’s great.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Yvette Cameron:

So listen, I would like to come back in a year, let’s do this next year. Because I’ve got to tell you, I think GenAI is going to do more than just automate, and make things more efficient and productivity growth. It’s going to literally change the face of technology.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m here for it.

Yvette Cameron:

These menu navigations and various things. A year from now, we’re going to see a lot of difference in the works on the actual benefits.

Kyle Lagunas:

Bet. I will be right here. And I hope that you’ll find that, as an analyst, I’m asking the right questions, I’m paying attention to the right things, I’m really hoping that… Because it’s going to be really easy for us to fall into feature level, shiny object syndrome right now.

What I love about you and me is, we are really looking at impact. We are really looking to see what results this drives, how this changes things. And not just like, “Oh, look at all this cool,” I mean, there’s cool shit, there really is. But hold me accountable for that then, if I come to this next year and you’re like, “Kyle, you’re missing it, you’re missing the point?” Call me out, girl.

Yvette Cameron:

I completely doubt it-

Kyle Lagunas:

We’ll see.

Yvette Cameron:

… but I’ll be ready.

Kyle Lagunas:

All right.

Yvette Cameron:

All right.

Kyle Lagunas:

Next time.

Yvette Cameron:

Love you, sweetie.

Kyle Lagunas:

Thanks, Yvette.

Well folks, that is all the time that we have for today. Big thanks to Yvette for bringing the fire, keeping it 100 about the future of work, and the impact of tech, like GenAI. Honestly, it’s refreshing to hear someone with such a massive role, talk about actual solutions and not just shiny objects. I feel like this one was way overdue. Yvette and I spill the tea all the time, off the record, now we got to sit down together.

So what did we learn today, kiddos? Well, first of all, skills aren’t just some big buzzword. They’ve got to be baked into everything, not slapped on with a bit of software. And managers, they need more than just tools thrown their way. They need real support if we’re gonna expect them to be people-centric leaders. No tech can solve a broken culture, y’all. It’s up to us.

All right, well thanks for tuning in. And, as always, if you liked what you heard like and subscribe, share the love and tell your friends. We’ll catch you next time on Transformation Realness. Stay curious, stay candid and remember, transformation isn’t something you buy, it’s something you build.

Tags Recruitment, Recruitment Technology, talent acquisition, talent management

Blog Podcast

Flipping the Script: How Employ Is Reinventing TA Solutions

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 5, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m hanging out with the brains behind Employ: Dara Brenner, Chief Product Officer, Steve Cox, CEO and Lucy Zarlengo, Chief Marketing Officer. Employ, the force behind Jobvite, Lever and JazzHR, is rewriting the rules of HR tech by combining these brands under one unified vision. But they’re not just smushing these brands together and calling it a day — they’re flipping the script on HR tech, redefining what it means to deliver impact for recruiters and talent teams everywhere.

This conversation gets into the nitty-gritty of brand unification, inspiring teams from the inside out, and delivering tools that don’t just look good on paper but actually work in real life.

Jazz, Lever, Jobvite — Oh My!

Turning three or more brands into one cohesive powerhouse isn’t for the faint of heart, but the team at Employ makes it look easy. “We can go in, we can do real discovery with customers and say, ‘What are your business problems? What are your pain points?’” Dara says. “And as a part of that, provide the right solution to solve it because we have so many options in our toolbox.”

Let’s talk strengths: JazzHR is great for high-volume, quick-turnaround hiring. Lever’s got that professional talent vibe with a scalable, recruiter-friendly design. And Jobvite? It’s the pro for handling complex workflows in industries like healthcare. “I look at it as something that can really target highly regulated industries, because of the complexity that goes along with that, [and] the compliance that goes along with that,” Dara explains.

The biggest challenge in unifying the brands was finding the common thread across them. For that, Lucy leaned into variety and giving customers options. “I think one of the differentiations for us is that we have choice,” she says. “We have three different ATSs. We don’t want to necessarily eliminate folks understanding who Jazz is, who Lever is, who Jobvite is, but as their needs change and evolve as an organization, they can move across our entire portfolio.”

No Silos, No Drama, Just Results

Employ’s bold rallying cry — “Flip the Script” — is about shaking off old habits and doing things differently. “We don’t have to make [only one] solution fit to our customer’s business needs,” Steve says. “We can understand [their] business needs and take any of our solutions, and create customizations of modules on top of the ATS to be able to go deliver them the service that they need and they want.”

Internally, it’s a vibe shift too. Steve makes it clear: “We’ve built a really strong low-ego team, and the benefit of having a low-ego team is that we can move together as a unit and we can move together fast.” No more silos, no more “not my job” nonsense — just one team working toward the same goal: making life easier for recruiters.

But Can You Prove It? How Employ Helps TA Leaders Show the Receipts

Let’s be real — every HR tech vendor loves to shout about ROI, but how many of them are actually helping talent acquisition leaders prove it? Employ’s stepping up to the plate with a new ROI dashboard baked right into the product.

“You’ve got to make that connection,” Dara says. “It’s great to be hiring people, but what is that really doing to the bottom line business? The CFO and the CEO want to know, how are you growing revenue, how are you reducing margin or whatever their key metrics are? We’ve got to arm the talent acquisition people with that capability.”

This isn’t just fluff: it’s about empowering TA pros to take a seat at the table and hold their own. “Talent acquisition leaders need the same data-driven credibility as their counterparts in finance or marketing,” says Steve. “We’re giving them the tools to tell that story.”

Employ’s also leaning into AI — but not the scary, “we’re replacing you” kind. “Done right, people shouldn’t even really know that the AI is there,” Steve says. “It should just help them sort through, make them more efficient, help them with decision making, but ultimately allow the human to make the decision.”

Employ isn’t just merging brands — it’s creating a whole new way of thinking about HR tech. From empowering TA teams to streamlining their tools, they’re flipping the script on what’s possible in this space.

Ready to rethink how you approach talent acquisition? This is your sign. Until next time on Transformation Realness: stay bold, stay curious and, above all, stay real.

People in This Episode

Dara Brenner: LinkedIn
Steve Cox: Linkedin
Lucy Zarlengo: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to another incredible episode of Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are trying to make the world of work less shitty, and who have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad and, most of all, the real. It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap, and hosted by none other than yours truly, the shining, shimmering, splendid Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, the boutique research firm leading the way in HR tech and transformation.

Get into it!

In this episode, we are talking about the fascinating journey of Employ, the brainchild of tech giants like Jobvite, Lever, and JazzHR, all rolled into one beautiful little baby brand, a force to be reckoned with. What does it take to pull off such a transformation? Well, we’ve got the leadership team here to spill the tea. First up, Dara Brenner, Chief Product Officer with 25 plus years experience in HR tech. And let me tell you, this woman’s got a vision.

Joining her is Steve Cox, the new CEO, who has joined Employ to drive it to its next chapter. He’s still getting his feet wet in the HR tech space, but guess what? He’s married to a recruiter, and also he was brave enough to jump right in and talk the real tea here on Transformation Realness. And of course, we also have their CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, Lucy Zarlengo, fellow Austinite extraordinaire. It’s a pretty big conversation.

In this episode, we are diving into what it takes to consolidate multiple brands, build a unified vision, and flip the script on what HR and talent tech should be. Spoiler alert, it’s not just about selling software. It’s about driving impact for the people on the ground, the practitioners who need real tools to survive, and dare I say it, thrive. Are you ready? Are you listening? Do you want to know what’s really going on? Well, let’s get into it.

We are coming to you live for Transformation Realness from the Glider AI Booth. I’m actually really excited, because if you are tracking the space, you know that every day is a new day, and it feels like there has been a lot of action and activity in the vendor landscape. Of course, companies like Jobvite and Lever, and I think Jazz is a part of this, too. We’ve got a lot of different pieces of really fun tech. They all have been rolled up into a single new brand called Employ.

Today, I’ve actually brought the leadership team to talk to us a little bit about what are they up to, what are they doing, and how are they going to get from here to there? Yeah, so I’m actually going to invite you guys to jump in and say hello. First, we’ll introduce ourselves, since nobody knows us. We’re going to say who we are and what we’re doing here.

Dara Brenner:

Okay, so I’m Dara Brenner. I am the Chief Product Officer at Employ, and I have been in the HR tech space for a minute, actually about 25 plus years, from large organizations to small organizations. I just absolutely love this space, and I’m so excited to be responsible for the vision at Employ.

Kyle Lagunas:

It was actually our meeting where you showed me your vision and I was like, “All right, we got to record something because I really want to dig in here.” Thanks for coming.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Hi, Steve. Who are you?

Steve Cox:

Hey, yeah, thanks. My name’s Steve Cox, CEO of Employ. I’ve currently been here about six months. This is my first time in the HR tech space, so I’m new to it, but I’m not new to the concept of talent acquisition. I’m going to drop my favorite line. My wife is a recruiter, and so I have an inside track into the day in the life of a recruiter. That’s helped me immensely get up to speed in this journey.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s exciting. Now, you’re going to have somebody that’s like, “Well, I actually don’t know if my wife agrees with you on that.”

Dara Brenner:

Actually, I use it as an opportunity. Anytime I come up with some crazy idea, I’ll run it by Steve and I’ll say, “Hey, do me a favor. Can you run it by your wife?”

Kyle Lagunas:

I love it. You know what? Let’s get her here now. Do you want to say hi too?

Lucy Zarlengo:

Sure. Lucy Zarlengo, the Chief Marketing Officer. I joined Employ this time last year. Actually, HR Tech was my second week of joining-

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s right.

Lucy Zarlengo:

… The organization, but I’ve been in B2B software marketing my entire career.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah. Where do you all sit? Are you in Austin, Texas?

Lucy Zarlengo:

I’m in Austin. Yep.

Kyle Lagunas:

Did I learn that? Okay. What about you guys?

Steve Cox:

I’m in Denver, Colorado. We just opened our new office. Yeah, center of excellence is now there, and based myself out of there.

Dara Brenner:

I’m from Atlanta, GA.

Kyle Lagunas:

Atlanta. Hot-lanta.

Dara Brenner:

You got it.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’ve actually only been once, and I think I went for an afternoon meeting in Buckhead, and then left the next morning.

Dara Brenner:

You didn’t even get to enjoy any of our fantastic restaurants?

Kyle Lagunas:

We went to a good steakhouse, but that was it.

Lucy Zarlengo:

The food scene is great.

Dara Brenner:

You got to come back, Kyle.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. Maybe we should do something in Atlanta next, once it cools off. All right. Well, so Dara, let’s start with this epic vision you have. Last year when we met, it was all still the individual brands. We were trying to maybe just get our arms around it, but you really are coming at this, and I was stunned and inspired by what you have in mind. Do you want to share with us a little bit?

Dara Brenner:

Absolutely, thanks. If you think about it, and you mentioned it in the opening, you’ve got Jobvite, we’ve got Lever, we’ve got JazzHR, we also have Telemetry.

Kyle Lagunas:

I knew I was forgetting one, yeah.

Dara Brenner:

Which is part of the acquisition, and there’s a few others that were acquired over time, more features in my mind than products themselves. When you look at all of these things, you actually have the opportunity to put together a story that’s really compelling. What it gives us the ability to do is to really look at the customer base across those different solutions and say, “What is similar within each one of those areas?”

What we’re starting to find out is that people in the Jazz world, as an example, tend to be folks that want to really get hires in the door quickly. It could be large hourly workforces. The person who’s leveraging something like a Jazz in a lot of cases could be a franchisee manager, like a store manager, and they just need to get people hired as quickly as possible. By the way, they’re not professional talent acquisition people.

Kyle Lagunas:

What?

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, exactly. You compare that to a typical Lever customer. In this particular case, it’s much more of a scalable-

Kyle Lagunas:

You’ve got a very evangelistic sell, by the way. Lever was like, “We’re going to change the world.” It wasn’t just an ATS.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, and it worked in a very interesting part of the market. If you are a tech company, if you’re a professional services company, if you are really looking to scale quickly, in most cases, Lever was a perfect fit for those particular customers, and you’re starting to deal with people that have more of a professional view on recruiting and talent acquisition. You could have a sourcer, you could have a professional recruiting team, talent acquisition team.

For that particular type of user or that particular type of company, you really want something like Lever to fit for those folks. We have that as well. Then if you think about the other one that I haven’t mentioned yet, Jobvite, in terms of an ATS, it is so well-built to handle complex workflows. When I think about Jobvite as a product, I look at it as something that can really target highly regulated industries, because of the complexity that goes along with that, the compliance that goes along with that.

If you have an organization that has a ton of different hiring types, so let’s use a hospital as an example. You could have a neurosurgeon, you could have a janitor, you could have the cafeteria worker, you could have the biller, you could have clinicians. It’s so many different candidate types. And in all cases, they will need different workflows-

Kyle Lagunas:

With very different interview types, application interfaces-

Dara Brenner:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dara Brenner:

Because of the ability to handle the complexity in Jobvite, it gives us a unique opportunity to really sell that solution. We can go in, we can do real discovery with customers and say, “What are your business problems? What are your pain points?” And as a part of that, provide the right solution to solve it because we have so many options in our toolbox.

Kyle Lagunas:

So you’d be more consultative.

Dara Brenner:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

That was the challenge in front of you before. It was like, “Well, these are different. We have different client bases, they’re all built on different code. What are we going to do, integrate all of these products?” Now you’ve renamed them. Are you keeping the legacy names?

Dara Brenner:

We are. Lucy, you may want to chime in on this as the CMO.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Yeah, so we’ll continue to use the product names or the solution name, right? Employ is the overall company. JazzHR, Lever, Jobvite are our solutions. There’s deep resonance in the market and awareness in the market of those names. Really, I think the challenge for us and what we’ve started to work through as an executive team is how do you actually build a connection across those brands? I think one of the differentiations for us is that we have choice,r right?

We have three different ATSs. We don’t want to necessarily eliminate folks understanding who Jazz is, who Lever is, who Jobvite is, but as their needs change and evolve as an organization, they can move across our entire portfolio. It’s valuable to us to go to market as Employ and how do we build some distinction there, but also maintain the current brands as well?

Kyle Lagunas:

I like it. I feel like there’s cohesiveness with this approach. Having somebody that has a lot of experience in this space, you know the complexities of these things and the nuances from one to another. For you, though, I feel like you have a lot of meat to tell. You have a lot of storytelling that you can do in market, right?

Lucy Zarlengo:

We do, absolutely. We have stories that we can tell in terms of the individual solutions. We have stories we can start to tell of customers who’ve moved across solutions, et cetera.

Kyle Lagunas:

Then my question for you, as the business leader, how do we make sure that we’re not just selling a bunch of stuff, you know? What kind of commercial organization are you trying to bulk up and build to make sure that we don’t just have a big, we’re not just a portfolio company, that we don’t just have a whole bunch of things?

Steve Cox:

No, absolutely. I think that’s a really good call out as well, because when you think about the journey of Employ and where it started, it was the bringing together of these brands under a single name. It was bringing together of the brands under the name only. There was no real integration inside the organization, so very siloed. Everybody stayed in their lane, all the way from product development and engineering, right, away through to go to market.

One of the things that we are doing now is we are bringing the company together in a single structure with a set of products, rather than keeping it as a house of brands. Everything we are doing now from a product development and engineering perspective flows through as like ATS, data and integration, and AI teams that work across multiple products. We are starting to now run that through our organization. We are there in terms of products and engineering. We are well on our way in our customer group, and we are at the, I would say, the early stages in our go-to-market of driving this messaging around choice.

And we are breaking out of the small, medium and large for the products, and we are bringing it together as optionality for customers. Rather than having to find out-

Kyle Lagunas:

I love that matrix. I really do. You have small, highly complex companies, right?

Steve Cox:

Correct.

Dara Brenner:

Exactly.

Steve Cox:

Absolutely. I think this is where we have a key differentiator in the market, because we don’t have to make our only solution fit to our customer’s business needs. We can understand our business needs and take any of our solutions, and create customizations of modules on top of the ATS to be able to go deliver them the service that they need and they want.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, I’m excited, I’m really interested. This is a friendly space, but we got to get this right. This moment in the industry is a really tough moment in the industry, and if we are not getting it right, we’re all really vulnerable as solution providers, right? Having a good idea, there’s a lot of good ideas on this floor, and execution is a big one. Maybe for you all now, I don’t know who wants to pick this up, but how are we going to get there? How are we going to get that done?

Steve Cox:

I’ll start and let everybody else chime in. For me, it’s the beginning of it all starts with people. We need to find the right people. We’ve built a brand new executive team of people that have got not only 20 plus years experience in this industry, but also 20 plus years in building enterprise software companies. We’ve built a really strong low ego team, and the benefit of having a low ego team is that we can move together as a unit and we can move together fast.

We are proving that in the things that we are doing. It’s not lost on us that the time is now. I see it, we see it in the industry, we see it with our competitors, and I think we’ve got a winning team with the experience to go out and dominate in this space.

Dara Brenner:

I would say from a product perspective, we want to move really fast, but we also want to make sure that we’re getting feedback along the way, so typical kind of agile, but if we’re going to- one of the things I hadn’t mentioned yet was Telemetry. We’re going to break that apart and allow every customer, regardless of their ATS, to leverage capability there.

What we may do is say, “Okay, let’s go ahead and take a piece of that, and let’s start selling that, because the capability is there from a product perspective, to our Jazz customers, to our Lever customers, get some feedback on it, and then continue that journey.” Go really fast, but do it in a well-informed way after customers have the opportunity to use the technology and see the benefit that it has.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Well, I’m glad to hear low ego, I think, is such a ticket. You’re not the only company that has had this kind of consolidated moment, but there’s a not my job mentality, like, “Oh, that’s them. This is me.” It’s like, “Well, no babe. We’re all on the same team here now.” There’s a lot of culture that we have- like, change that has to drive to enable it. You all can be connected and on the same page, but that’s going to come all the way down to that CSM, who’s also trying to get the engineering team to respond to these feature requests or these bug reports.

I am coming into a QVR, and our engineering team hasn’t said shit to me, so I have no idea what’s going on, actually. You know what I mean? There’s a really deep level of integration that we need to work on to make sure that we’re delivering on this vision.

Steve Cox:

And change management, right? Change management and culture is absolutely key, like you said. We run a monthly all-hands, and we share updates around the business. We do internal, just started to do internal product reviews, product roadmap updates, create feedback loops. I think what’s really important is we have to have a mission to be able to get everybody to rally behind.

We’ve just introduced a new rally cry inside of our business, which is “flip the script.” It’s all about challenging our people to just go do something different. Let’s not do what we did before in Jobvite, Lever, Jazz. Let’s do something new as Employ, let’s do something meaningful. Let’s put customers right at the heart of our decision making, and let’s make it easy for them to have choice.

Kyle Lagunas:

Look at all these goodies you get to play with.

Lucy Zarlengo:

It’s super fun. We can get you a flip the script T-shirt as well.

Kyle Lagunas:

I love a hoodie, I love a cardigan.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Put in your swag order.

Kyle Lagunas:

I was at a dinner last week where we designed our own Levi’s jackets.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Oh, I love that.

Dara Brenner:

Oh, that’s cool.

Kyle Lagunas:

I got… What is the leather? Not tassels, but anyway, fringe.

Dara Brenner:

The fringe. That’s awesome.

Kyle Lagunas:

… On the back.

Lucy Zarlengo:

That’s amazing.

Kyle Lagunas:

We’ll see. I had a couple of cocktails at that point, so I had a lot of ideas. Well, that’s really, honestly, I do want to see this work. I really do. Jobvite was a long-time client of mine, and Telemetry was an early CRM. I worked in the CRM space. I really want to see it work, but it’s a competitive space too. One thing, as you were talking, Steve, I’m thinking, you do need to inspire these teams that you have, because it has been a bloodbath the last several years.

You couldn’t build fast enough, you couldn’t sell fast enough, you couldn’t deliver fast enough. Especially coming out of that “everything’s on fire” moment to now, it’s everyone’s budgets getting cut, all of these things that we just sold might actually not get implemented. It’s still a really uncertain time. Keeping the people inspired is also important as at the same time, delivering, and building product, and getting out in market. You guys really do have a big challenge ahead. Are we excited? Are we… You know what I mean? Are we fired up?

Lucy Zarlengo:

Super excited.

Steve Cox:

Super excited. I see this right now. There’s a real opportunity in the market with some of the people that have done recent layoffs. There’s a lot of good talent come to the market. It’s an opportunity, and you’ll see this from us in the coming weeks, that we have the opportunity to bring in some of that talent to just enhance and make better our processes, programs and controls, and then bring more of our benefit into the market.

Kyle Lagunas:

I love to hear you say it. I’m glad to see you guys fired up, but I also feel like yes, we need to inspire our teams and give them a rallying cry, but I’m also looking like, yeah, it’s been tough in the solution provider space, but it’s been even harder for the practitioners that we support, for the teams that we’re trying to support. I would love to know, what opportunity do you guys see there to become absolutely obsessed with solving the customer’s problems?

Steve Cox:

Yeah, I see two real things. One is that, we just run a jump start program back in July to bring in 15 new customer success managers into our business. They were not replacements, they were additions to the team. We are really over-indexing in being able to put people on the ground to talk to our customers, help them get the most out of our products, help them become more efficient. As you say, it’s a tough time recruiting teams of downsize, and work effort in terms of backfills, even if not growth, is still there.

So I think that’s one of the things that we’ve done. Then one of the other things I think that I’ll let Dara talk about is what we’re doing around our ROI dashboard. Being able to take out data and analysis, put it into the hands of a talent acquisition professional, so that they can go show leadership the value that they’re adding and the return on investment that they’re getting, to go try and garner extra resources to help them do their job better, faster, more efficient.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we’re looking to do, and I don’t know what it’ll be called ultimately, but the idea is that everybody talks about ROI on the front end, but no one can ever turn around and say, “Did you achieve the ROI that you expected to achieve by using this solution?” We’re going to bake these into the product itself, into the products themselves.

And essentially, at any given time, to Steve’s point, the talent acquisition leaders could use it to justify additional resources, because they can show the impact that they’re making on the bottom line business. Because you’ve got to make that connection. It’s great to be hiring people, but what is that really doing to the bottom line business? The CFO and the CEO wants to know, how are you growing revenue, how are you reducing margin or whatever their key metrics are? And we’ve got to arm the talent acquisition people with that capability.

I think we’re doing that by spending a lot of time going back to being customer obsessed and spending time with customers and saying, “What is it that’s not getting through for you? How can we help you be a better business partner?” You know, being in this industry forever, HR folks have been wanting to get a seat at the table, and so now they have a seat at the table, but talent acquisition people need the same seat.

They need to be able to be armed with the same data and information that shows the business leaders, their CFO, their CEO, that this is really important, this function is important, and the impact we’re making is valuable.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, it’s the right time. I said a lot, I feel like part of the vulnerability for TA was that when the jig was up, the business was like, “Well, what are you doing?” We were just like, “We had been so head down just hiring, hiring, hiring.” They’re like, “I don’t think we had really strong ROI stories.” We’re like, “What do you mean, what have I been doing? Barely keeping it, barely staying alive is what I’ve been doing.”

We needed to see actual tangible ROI, and it’s like, “I love you, I’m sorry, but we can’t justify having all these recruiters when we don’t have this much hiring to do,” ya know? When I was a talent leader, we backed off on recruiting scorecards because we didn’t want to micromanage people. We just were trying to deliver, deliver. Even there, I couldn’t say, “Well, this is what my recruiters are even up to.”

If you are investing in the CS organization and you’re building this product, I want to get all of my CS team using this product as part of my QBRs. I’m going to be building my QBRs in this product.

Dara Brenner:

It’s funny that you say that, because the very first stakeholder is our CS organization.

Kyle Lagunas:

Love it. I’m a genius.

Dara Brenner:

Before we roll it out, exactly, before we even roll it out, we’re already working in Q4, so in the upcoming quarter, to roll this to our CS so they can start using it.

Kyle Lagunas:

I love it, because then you’re also practicing what you preach. Using the product, being actual product experts, you’re going to get closer to your user experience. Look, I’m thinking you’re going to have, yes, the head of TA, but also the team leads, right? And the individual recruiters. Everybody needs to show what they’re up to, which kind of sucks, because it’s like, “Will you just get off my back? I’m just trying to stay alive here.”

No, they’re like, “The new normal, we got to show what we’re up to.” I like that this maybe gives you an opportunity to empower your customers with the product, and not just facilitate a new workflow.

Steve Cox:

As we start to return back to growth, we see the tech companies growing, we see the industry, the economy growing as a whole. Talent acquisition is going to be the first thing to bounce back. They’re going to have the problem scaling to keep up with growth. Today, it’s about, how do we become efficient with a reduced workforce? Then it’s going to become how do we go scale?

Kyle Lagunas:

See, I love that, though, because in the past, efficiency, everybody in the back of our heads are like, “Oh, cost-cutting. That’s what that is.” I don’t know that that’s… Look, we did need to cut costs. Spending was out of control. Efficiency now, especially in the AI age, efficiency is excellence. We need to be building the most excellent functions right now, so that when we’re scaling up, we’re not just throwing bodies at problems, we’re actually building out new operating capacity is what it is, right?

Steve Cox:

The phrase you used there is one that we’ve lived by, is scaling efficiently, right? It’s easy to throw people at a problem and try to get a better result, but the more efficiency that we can build in now, that’s going to allow organizations and talent teams to be able to scale efficiently through the work we do today. Everything we do sets itself up not only for today, but for future growth and scalability.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m really into it. I think that’s what teams are really feeling, just like waiting for one more shoe to drop. They’re working tirelessly still, but with something like this, I can engage my business stakeholders and build that credibility back up. Everyone’s jobs are hard right now. It’s not easy anywhere, but most of these other functions, you’re going to come to your boss and have some reports, and not just some fluff stuff. You’re going to get into the nitty-gritty, and you are too.

You’re going to want to click down and they’re going to be ready for it. I just feel like TA hasn’t had a moment to catch its breath and be investing that time in being more data driven, and being more just excellent and efficient. It’s just like, “Cut here, cut here, scale back up, scale back up.” You know what I mean? It’s just so reactive. I really think that this might be a good new foundational moment for us to build up a stronger base.

Steve Cox:

We can be at the heart of that because if we can provide the tools that drive that kind of-

Kyle Lagunas:

We’ll see. Just kidding.

Steve Cox:

We will see. I’d bet on us, though.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I hope you would.

Steve Cox:

We have the opportunity to be at the heart of that, and to be able to give them the tools to be able to do the work that they want to go do. That’s what’s super exciting for me, is to just think about what we can go build to go bring the underrepresented talent organization up in stature inside of a company, and get people to really understand and recognize the value they provide.

I think that’s lost at the moment, right? There is no data, there is no insight that can be shared. So some of the work we’re doing will bring that kind of front and center.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think it’s really cool. I’ve been a Jobvite friend for a lot longer than, I don’t know if you guys ever knew Jobvite before, but once upon a time, the head of marketing created- remember when social was a big deal and social recruiting was all the rage? They created the social recruiting report that they published annually. It was a best practice every year.

It was good market research. You guys did it yourself. An analyst didn’t do it for you. Do something about data-driven recruiting. That’s what’s new now, and that’s what we really need to figure out. I would say invest some time in building the thought leadership that’s going to empower your people and get interest in market, but just building on what you’re already doing.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah, and it’s interesting that you say that, because one of the things that really got me excited about joining Employ was that we have 22,000 customers from very small to very large, so 22,000 customers have a lot of data. When you aggregate all of that data, it provides insights that really no one else can match. When you combine that, and that provides the insights to our customers with, and again, you mentioned AI earlier, and people still think of AI as, “You’re going to replace me with AI.”

We don’t view it that way. We view AI as part of our DNA. If we’re doing AI right, and we’re combining that with the insights that we bring to bear, you don’t even know. You don’t know there’s AI inside, if you will. It’s kind of like Intel inside. It’s just there. It’s just making you more efficient.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, good. It’s not a feature play, right? This is a new found- you’re talking about new foundations.

Dara Brenner:

New foundation.

Kyle Lagunas:

It’s a core technology now. It’s a core capability.

Steve Cox:

Done right, people shouldn’t even really know that the AI is there.

Dara Brenner:

Nope.

Steve Cox:

It should just help them sort through, make them more efficient, help them with decision making, but ultimately allow the human to make the decision.

Kyle Lagunas:

I was talking, there was a session yesterday about candidate experience, and I forget where this person worked, but they were talking about their chatbot for scheduling interviews or candidate care, and they were saying that even after an interview had been scheduled, which completes the workflow, the candidates were still texting with like, “Thank you so much. Is there anything else I should know,” like chatting with the bot, knowing it was a bot, by the way.

Dara Brenner:

Oh, that’s funny.

Kyle Lagunas:

I think it’s so interesting what we’re going to do.

Dara Brenner:

That’s funny.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, thank you guys for coming, opening up a little bit. I am really looking forward to what you guys can do. I think the vision is definitely going to be a really good guiding light. Let’s flip the script, girls.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Let’s do it.

Dara Brenner:

Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Okay, cool. Well, thank you, guys. We’ll see you again soon, okay?

Lucy Zarlengo:

Thank you so much.

Dara Brenner:

Thank you, Kyle.

Lucy Zarlengo:

Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Ugh, that one was so much fun. I loved it. But unfortunately, we’ve reached the end of this episode, folks. A huge thank you to Dara, Steve and Lucy for coming on the show and bringing the heat. We really got into it. Everything from building low-eagle leadership teams to the realities of transforming brands without losing sight of the end user. And the message that hit me the hardest: success isn’t about throwing bodies at a problem. It’s about scaling with excellence, with purpose and with heart.

The truth is the HR tech, TA tech landscape — no joke right now. Everyone’s working twice as hard to keep up, and let’s face it, no one has the luxury of just coasting. Here’s what I love about Employ’s approach: they’re putting customers at the heart of their process. They’re staying agile, and they’re building tools that actually help instead of just complicate these processes. That’s the kind of transformation we need.

If this conversation got your gears turning — and I know it did — be sure to like and subscribe, share with all of your friends, and leave us a review. Don’t worry, we’ve got even more juicy content coming your way in future episodes. Until next time, take care of yourselves. Stay sharp, and remember, excellence isn’t just a goal: it’s the standard. Thanks for hanging out with me. We’ll catch you on the next episode of Transformation Realness.

Tags Recruitment, Recruitment Technology, talent acquisition

Blog Podcast

Don’t Leave People Out of the Skills Conversation, Y’all!

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date December 3, 2024

In this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m sitting down with Toya Del Valle, chief customer officer at corporate learning platform Cornerstone OnDemand. As one of the leading players in the skills space, Cornerstone has been making major moves to help organizations build workforce agility, including through the acquisition of SkyHive.

Toya’s background is in the high-stakes world of airline transportation, where she supported organizations through 9/11 and the Hudson River landing. “Being an HR leader in that space, it brings the HR, the talent, operations, people learning — it brings it together,” she says. “Cornerstone has been a really great place for me to continue that learning and growth, bring in what I’ve learned through that experience, but then also just fly and do even more with the folks that are here now and the way the world is changing.”

Toya brought some serious realness to our conversation, reminding us that skills are fundamentally about people. It’s not just about finding the right talent or building fancy new tech — it’s about creating a culture where people can thrive and grow within their organization.

You’ll want to take notes for this one, folks. Toya dropped some serious truth bombs. Special thanks to the team over at Glider AI for making this episode possible as a sponsor!

Why Skills Are More Than Just a Buzzword

We all know that skills are having a major moment right now — but what does it actually mean to build a skills-based organization? “Everyone talks about skills and many folks are trying to figure out: what [are] skills? What [are] competencies? What do I do with it? Is it a buzzword? What really is it?” Toya says.

For her, it all boils down to agility.

In a world where disruption is the new normal, businesses need to be able to adapt quickly to changing market conditions. And the only way to do that is by having a workforce that’s equipped with the skills they need to pivot on a dime. “It’s the absolute glue that’s going to move us forward,” Toya says.

But here’s the thing — you can’t just recruit your way out of a skills gap. As Toya points out, there aren’t enough people in the world to fill every open role, and even if there were, simply hiring someone with the right skills doesn’t mean they’ll thrive in your organization. You’ve got to invest in developing your existing employees, too.

Practicing What You Preach: Building Skills at Cornerstone

I was super curious to hear how Cornerstone was approaching skills internally, given all the work they’re doing to enable skills-based strategies for their customers. And Toya didn’t disappoint. Turns out they’re “drinking their own champagne,” as they say in the biz.

Cornerstone is using their own tech and talent strategies to help their customer success team stay ahead of the curve. “As we continue to build capabilities for the organizations and what the customers expect from us, we have to be able to deliver,” Toya says. “Part of that is ensuring that our team members … know how to utilize AI not just as a tool, but as a transformation journey so they can meet those outcomes.” This includes using AI to personalize learning journeys, identify skills gaps and recommend career paths — all within the Cornerstone platform!

Toya also shared that Cornerstone is using the data they’ve gathered from their customers and their acquisitions, like SkyHive and Talespin, to inform their own talent strategies. It’s really cool to see them practicing what they preach — and using their unique insights to help their customers do the same.

Customer Success Is More Than Just Checking Boxes

One of the most refreshing things about my conversation with Toya was her focus on value. “We talk a lot in my team about value. How are we bringing value to organizations?” Instead of just checking boxes and delivering features, she’s challenging her team to think about how their work is actually driving business outcomes for their customers.

She shared a powerful example of a banking customer who was struggling with compliance reporting. Instead of just helping them build the right report, Cornerstone’s customer success team dug deeper and realized that the bank’s underlying goal was to open a new branch in an underserved community. By understanding the bigger picture, they were able to deliver a solution that not only helped the bank comply with regulations, but also made a real difference in the lives of people in that community.

I love Toya’s take on customer success as a force for good, and I think it’s something we can all learn from. Let’s move beyond just building features and start thinking about how our work can create real value for our customers and for the world.

People in This Episode

Toya Del Valle: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries, and welcome back to Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less sh*tty and have the guts to share their story: the good, the bad, and most of all, the real. This podcast is produced in partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by yours truly, the unstoppable, unbelievably charismatic Kyle Lagunas, Head of strategy and Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech and transformation. Get into it.

Special thanks to the team over at Glider AI, whose sponsorship made our Transformation Ecosystem EP possible.

Today, I am sitting down with none other than Toya Del Valle, Chief Customer Officer at Cornerstone OnDemand. Over her 10 plus years at Cornerstone, she’s overseen their transformation into a powerhouse of skills-based talent strategies.

But wait — there’s more.

Before Cornerstone, Toya led teams in the airline industry through historic moments, including the Hudson River landing. Yeah, with Tom Cruise, he was there, I think. I saw the movie. We are also joined by Madeline, who, as you recall, is my illustrious, invincible, incredible business partner. Madeline Laurano, Founder and Principal Analyst here at Aptitude.

In this episode, we are talking with Toya about the future of workforce agility, why skills are more than just a buzzword, and how Cornerstone’s latest moves, including their acquisition of SkyHive, are reimagining what it means to be ready for what’s next. Let’s dive in.

Hey, everybody, it’s Kyle back for another episode of Transformation Realness live from HR tech with Madeline, my BFF, my OG, my boss. She’s in charge here. Speaking of boss, we also have a boss lady here. Hi, Toya Del Valle.

Toya Del Valle:

Hello. How are you? Great to see you both.

Kyle Lagunas:

We’re actually really excited to be sitting down with you. I mean, honestly, the five-letter word that nobody can stop talking about is skills in our space right now, and one of the leading players in the space, with probably some of the most product innovation, is Cornerstone OnDemand. Maybe you’ve heard of it.

Toya Del Valle:

I have. I’m proud member of the team.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yes. Actually, how long have you been at Cornerstone?

Toya Del Valle:

A bit over 10 years. I’ve heard it’s a real transformation journey of that Cornerstone to today’s Cornerstone to the future of Cornerstone, so pretty excited.

Kyle Lagunas:

She’s ready for it. Well, tell us a little bit about your background, because when we talked before, I was actually stunned and could see some of the best practices you were pulling through into the SaaS space. I think it’d be really helpful for people to know the leadership that you’re bringing to the table.

Toya Del Valle:

Absolutely. Prior to coming to Cornerstone, as I’d mentioned, I’ve been here just over 10 years, I spent 15 years in the airline transportation, so working for the largest carriers in the U.S. and internationally, leading operations teams and also HR and people teams. I was in the airline industry from the 9/11. I was with Northwest Airlines during that period of time, leading in customer care and customer operations. I say that my team and I were the first TSA, in the sense when the airlines operated, we mobilized and did that. I was with U.S. Airways whenever we had the landing on the Hudson and managed that critical incident, which was very successful to the lives of those individuals. When I think about operations-

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, Tom Hanks made it through.

Toya Del Valle:

Made it. When I think about the power of operations and what that must be for individuals that are being serviced with the solution, with the product, with the service, and I think about what’s important for success to look like towards an outcome, all of that has come together. Also, being an HR leader in that space, it brings the HR, the talent, operations, people learning, it brings it together. Cornerstone has been a really great place for me to continue that learning and growth, bring in what I’ve learned through that experience, but then also just fly and do even more with the folks that are here now and the way the world is changing.

Kyle Lagunas:

Now, do you see why I wanted to sit down with Toya?

Madeline Laurano:

Yes. I’m so impressed.

Kyle Lagunas:

Honestly, just such a baddie. Well, especially, all right, we started with skills. You guys made a major acquisition that I think really enhanced your go-to-market, your strategy capability around supporting skills-based strategies. Do you want to talk a little bit about SkyHive at all? Yeah. How’s that been going?

Toya Del Valle:

How that fits in? Sure, absolutely. We’ve always had skills embedded into our overall platform with the acquisition of Clustree and how we’ve just been building. But now, with SkyHive, is an absolute game changer to the now and the future of skills. Everyone talks about skills and many folks are trying to figure out what is skills? What is competencies? What do I do with it? Is it a buzzword? What really is it?

Kyle Lagunas:

Why does this matter?

Madeline Laurano:

How do I get started?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Toya Del Valle:

How do I get started is number one in that. What SkyHive is doing with us is that it has brought on this magnificent platform of data intelligence that really puts together, not— its skills, but not more than skills in the sense of what is happening in the world, what is needed, what is sitting out there that folks don’t know how to do it, what it is, and how do they embed it into their organizations so they can meet those future needs.

Instead of skills being a skill, it is a transformation into the workforce agility or the gap that we see within the world of how we move from what we need individuals to do from an organization standpoint and how do we actually get there. It’s the absolute glue that’s going to move us forward.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I think so too. I didn’t see the acquisition coming at all, and I was just like, great work. Really good.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah. I mean, there are large providers that are tackling skills as you are at Cornerstone, and then there’s providers that are really specific on supporting a skills-based approach to talent. SkyHive was one of those providers, so to see that as being the first company get acquired was very cool.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I think what I really love about the way you guys are thinking about this skills-based— Any talent strategy, any HR strategy that is designed in a vacuum without context, without connection, without relevance, how’s it going to be impactful? It’s just going to be another HR pet project. We got to make sure that this stuff is actually moving the business in the direction it needs to, getting us more resilient to disruption and helping us to be a little bit more future-proof, and, dare I say, agile. I think that might be a magic word of the day.

Toya Del Valle:

Oh, yes. Skills is about people. It is about people, just like we talk a lot about AI. AI is about people, should be about people.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it has to.

Toya Del Valle:

I think you’ve talked about the human first. That’s what it has to be about. All of these are tools and ways of moving from one place to another, but the foundation of that being… Agility, because we have to be agile, because look, we really don’t know exactly what the future holds. We have forecasting, and designs and a hypothesis. This is allowing that agility, that flexibility, to say, “I know that I’m a learner. How do I even be a learner so that I can be prepared for what’s next? How do I pivot?” Those are skills, dare I say, to know how to get into that next phase. All of that is critically important. I’ll also add that as important as recruiting is, and it is very important, companies cannot recruit themselves out of this.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, I totally agree.

Madeline Laurano:

No, they can’t.

Kyle Lagunas:

They’re trying to.

Toya Del Valle:

Some are. It’s not going to work.

Kyle Lagunas:

Actually, I think they’re doing the same thing with skills they did with diversity. They’re trying to recruit their way through diversity and leaving off EIB. They’re missing the whole point.

Madeline Laurano:

Yeah.

Toya Del Valle:

I mean, diversity, you make that a recruitment thing, but you don’t create the right environment for those individuals to join and be a part, not an add, but a part of the organization. Same with anything else. It will not be successful. It’ll not be successful.

Kyle Lagunas:

But so is skills, I think, is actually… I hadn’t really thought about it. We’re trying to just buy skills.

Especially, are these people going to fit into our organization? What do we do with the people that don’t have the skills that we are actually looking for right now?

Madeline Laurano:

It needs to be dynamic. It changes all the time, so how do we evaluate?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, got to be on top of it.

Toya Del Valle:

And that is that gap. You have to bring people forward. You have to bring people together, because even if you thought you could recruit yourself out of this, there’s not even enough people. It’s like everyone’s going to do it. No, keep that culture within your organization and start showing successful pathways for this is where I started in the organization, this is how I grew into the organization. You begin to create the culture that must be necessary for growth.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. It’s like this is the path to the future for me in this organization. We’re not just talking about workforce agility as an enterprise capability, although it is. It’s like, I want to be future-proof. I want to be recession-proof myself. So interesting. Well, one of the other things that I really like about the work that you’re doing is I feel like you’re practicing what you preach as somebody that is leading the customer organization for… I mean, Cornerstone offers a lot of transformative capabilities. HR struggles with change management, they struggle with long-term program management. I really think you have built out, for your customer success organization, a lot of different capability, a lot of different expertise. It’s like you are leveraging skills-based talent strategies yourself, right?

Toya Del Valle:

Yes. I say that Cornerstone benefits from Cornerstone.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, it has to. In this space, you have to practice what you preach.

Toya Del Valle:

I can’t think of any organization that would say honestly that they’re immune from skills. They’re immune from this gap. They’re not. What we have done at Cornerstone is that we have identified, okay, great. Here’s where we are, here’s what our customers expect of us. This is how the world is changing. How are we going to be ready as we continue to acquire new organizations? As we continue to build capabilities for the organizations and what the customers expect from us, we have to be able to deliver.

Part of that is ensuring that our team members know how to deliver. They know how to utilize AI not just as a tool, but as a transformation journey so they can meet those outcomes that’s expected of us because we have the data that we have. No one has data like we have related to the customers that are within our own portfolio. The acquisitions, the talent intelligence that SkyHive brings, the data that Talespin brings forward with VR. I mean, all of that is just pretty magical. But if we don’t practice, and enable, and transform our own team-

Kyle Lagunas:

Your team doesn’t know what to do with it, how is your customer?

Toya Del Valle:

They’re just going to be tools, and there’s a lot of tools. The difference between the tools and activation and growth are the humans that will continue to empower them, and including AI that is powered by humans.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Well, I think it’s really cool to see, at this point, a lot of people are investing a lot in tech innovation. I’m not saying Cornerstone’s not, but at this moment, it’s really important that you all are making significant investments in the customer organization. You have to be there for them. You have to help them-

Madeline Laurano:

Understand what they want.

Kyle Lagunas:

Exactly. You’ve got to be that partner, and you can’t do that by just building more features.

Toya Del Valle:

No, and we talk a lot in my team about value. How are we bringing value to organizations? An example that I would give, say, one of our banking customers, and if someone said… I say, “How are you bringing value to this customer?” In the past, someone may have said, “Well, I helped them with reporting, and they really needed this reporting. It was awesome. It was very necessary for their business.” I said, “Okay, but let’s rethink that. Was it the reporting that was necessary or did you help them ensure they have the right reporting so that they can ensure that they were compliant to the regulators so that they could open up a new branch in a neighborhood that maybe was unbanked?”

Now there’s individuals in this neighborhood that can bank, and they can build, and have a new school or a new home that they have. That’s the power. That’s how we think about value differently, that yes, we are creating or solving an issue, but what does that issue do for the organization? That’s the value.

Madeline Laurano:

The customer, right. I mean, you have a lot of customers. I think one thing that’s interesting about Cornerstone compared to a lot of other companies right now is you’ve made 15 acquisitions in the past five years, and that’s a hard job for you because you’re dealing with customers that have different products that are now part of Cornerstone. How do you manage, as a chief customer officer, all of these different acquisitions and different customer expectations under this new agile skills-based approach?

Toya Del Valle:

Sure. We definitely have had several acquisitions, and we’ve done it a couple of ways. One of the things [is] that we bring in these acquisitions for a purpose. We’ve been very careful to not disrupt that very specific talent that we brought into the organization. We found a way to really cultivate that talent, and it’s not just taking those individuals and those products and bringing them into Cornerstone. In some cases, we brought Cornerstone into that acquisition as well because we’ve learned from them, so it’s been kind of a two-way learning process so that we don’t lose that magic, lose the reason why we purchased that product. It’s been two-way.

Saying that at the same time, part of our Galaxy that we just released is about bringing it all together. How does learning management align with learning experience? How does our recruiting come together and our performance connect with the learning component? How does talent marketplace align to skills and bring…? That’s exactly what we’ve done. We’ve taken each part of these acquisitions, which have been very strategic, in the sense that they have been add-ons to existing products that we have or the existing products have been able to carry those additional acquisitions through. They’ve all been very purposeful back to the customer to ensure that the customers have what they need to continue their learning journey, to continue their talent journey, again, to hit the future, future-ready, future-proof, future needs, future ongoing.

Madeline Laurano:

Amazing.

Kyle Lagunas:

Toya, I know you’re a very busy woman and this is a busy week, but thank you for spending some time with us. Really appreciate you.

Toya Del Valle:

No, thank you. I really appreciate you all as well. I mean, you have a very powerful platform and you also share a lot of information. It’s very necessary to really demystify some of these different areas of HR tech and talent, and so thank you all as well for the work that you do.

Kyle Lagunas:

Thanks for recognizing it. It’s mission work, isn’t it?

Madeline Laurano:

It is. It’s hard work.

Toya Del Valle:

I don’t know. It’s hard to clarify something that’s super confusing too.

Kyle Lagunas:

My family still thinks I’m a recruiter.

Madeline Laurano:

Mine thinks I fixed cell phones.

Toya Del Valle:

Mine’s like, “Wait, where are you? Where are you today?” I was like, “Yeah.” Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

No. All right. Well, we’ll let you go, get back to the next one. Thank you, Toya.

Toya Del Valle:

All right, thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

And that’s a wrap. One more episode of Transformation Realness in the books. Big thank you to Toya for joining us today. What an absolute powerhouse. Honestly, she had me rethinking everything. From building resilient teams to redefining value beyond just ticking boxes on functionality — who knew customer success could get so deep? Well, actually, I think all of us did, and I’m glad we went there.

Big takeaways for me: you can’t just build features or hire your way out of complex challenges. Real transformation in the world of talent and HR starts from within. And, as Toya said, it’s literally all about the people. Whether we’re talking AI, skills or customer success, humans are the ones that are driving the magic.

Thank you all for listening. Whether you’re here for the laughs, whether you’re here for the insights, or maybe just to prove to your family you don’t fix cell phones for a living, I see you. That’s all the time we’ve got for today though. Be sure to like and subscribe, leave a review, tell everybody you know about how wonderful this conversation was. And hey, we’ve got more exciting conversations coming your way, so stay tuned.

Until next time, keep it real, stay agile, and remember, transformation waits for no one. Catch you on the next episode of Transformation Realness. This is Kyle, signing off. Goodbye. I miss you already.

Tags Recruitment, skills, talent acquisition

Blog

The ATS Market: A Changing Landscape

Post author By Madeline Laurano
Post date May 29, 2024

The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) market has long been the cornerstone of recruitment technology. For companies with over 100 employees, having an ATS is almost a given. The market for the past 10 years has been uneventful. Companies buy an ATS, replace their ATS, and complain about their ATS.

This year, however, the landscape of ATS providers is rapidly evolving, driven by growing dissatisfaction among users and significant gaps in traditional systems. As new providers enter the market with innovative solutions, it’s an exciting time to be looking at the bread and butter of recruitment technology.

The State of the ATS Market

The ATS market is facing three undeniable truths:

Widespread Dissatisfaction: Many companies are unhappy with their current ATS. Issues range from user-unfriendly interfaces to limited functionalities that fail to meet modern recruitment needs. We found that less than half of companies are happy with their ATS.
High Replacement Rates: Aptitude Research found that 1 in 4 companies are looking to replace their ATS within the year. This statistic underscores a significant shift in how businesses are approaching their recruitment technology.
Gaps in Functionality: Traditional ATS platforms often lack critical capabilities in candidate relationship management (CRM), frontline worker support, and effective candidate communication. These gaps are increasingly difficult to overlook in today’s competitive job market.

Historical Options: Best of Breed vs. HCM Suites

Historically, companies choosing an ATS had two main options:

Best of Breed: These are specialized ATS providers focusing solely on recruitment technology. While they traditionally offered advanced features and superior user experiences, many have struggled to keep pace with evolving demands. Some have been acquired by private equity firms (iCIMS and Jobvite and Lever), which has often led to a shift in focus away from end-users.
HCM Suites: Large enterprise software providers like Workday, UKG, Oracle and SAP fall into this category. These providers have been winning deals over many of the best of breed providers for integration, advancements in AI, and the ability to integrate ATS capabilities into broader HR functions.

Current Landscape and Emerging Trends

The dissatisfaction with current ATS options and the gaps in traditional systems have paved the way for new providers and innovative solutions to emerge. Key trends include:

Recruiter Experience: Greenhouse stands out in the best of breed category by maintaining a strong focus on both the candidate and recruiter experience. And, one of the few best of breed ATS providers still committed to DEI initiatives with recent announcements that include resume anonymization and enhancements to its scorecard funcationality. While it primarily serves the lower enterprise and mid-market segments, its commitment to the recruiter sets it apart.
Integrated CRM and Communication Tools: Modern ATS providers are increasingly incorporating CRM capabilities and enhanced communication tools to improve engagement with candidates throughout the hiring process. This shift addresses one of the major gaps in traditional systems. But for many of these providers, CRM is just a check the box and lacks meaningful functionality.
Support for Frontline Workers: There is a growing recognition of the need to support frontline workers, who often have different recruitment needs compared to office-based roles. New ATS solutions are emerging that cater specifically to these requirements, offering more tailored functionalities. We found that 1 in 2 companies with frontline workers are reevaluating their ATS and now they have better options (hello Paradox!).

New Entrants and Latest Announcements

Several players have recently entered the ATS market, bringing fresh perspectives and innovative solutions. The categories are not clearly best of breed vs. HCM suite anymore. Companies have options that not only fill the gaps with traditional systems but offer advanced capabilities that range from skills to communication to AI.

These new announcements change the buying behavior around recruitment technology. It makes the ATS not the core component and shifts the value to areas of TA tech that can drive real transformation.

These include:

Paradox: Paradox launched an ATS for frontline workers and has been supporting companies like McDonald’s with end-to-end recruitment.
Gem: Gem added ATS to its suite of solutions that includes CRM and sourcing and analytics.
Eightfold: Eightfold announced the first AI-native and talent intelligence ATS system two weeks ago at its Cultivate event to expand its TA solutions.
Payroll Providers: Every SMB or mid-market payroll provider seems to be expanding its suite into broad HCM that includes ATS. These providers offer a simple option and integrated capabilities.

These are just a few of the ATS announcements this year and we expect to see more. This disruption is addressing longstanding issues and introducing advanced capabilities that cater to the modern recruitment landscape.

The ATS market is undergoing a significant transformation. With a clear trend towards improving user experience, integrating advanced communication tools, leveraging AI, and supporting diverse worker types, the future of ATS looks promising. As new providers continue to innovate, we can expect a more dynamic and effective recruitment technology landscape, better suited to the demands of today’s employers and job seekers.

Tags ATS, HRTech, Recruitment, TATech

Blog

Recruitment and Retention: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Post author By Madeline Laurano
Post date October 30, 2023

Our latest report in partnership with Plum focuses on the link between recruitment and retention. I will be sharing these results on a webinar with my friend, Chad Sowash on November 28 at 11am EST.

Every trend that we have covered this year has impacted on both recruitment and retention. Yet only 41% of talent professionals consider retention during the recruitment process.

A well-executed recruitment process helps companies recruit talent who are not only qualified but also aligned with the company’s values and vision. This alignment increases the likelihood of retaining top talent, as employees are more likely to stay committed to an organization that reflects their personal and professional aspirations. Conversely, effective retention strategies make it easier to see a return on the investment made during recruitment, as it reduces turnover and improves productivity and engagement.

Companies need a holistic approach to talent—one that recognizes the interconnectedness of these functions. And…it starts with a conversation around data.

Sophisticated talent acquisition and HR leaders are actively reassessing their strategies, technology infrastructure, and performance metrics to better prepare for the future. It has become increasingly evident that the practices that brought success a few years ago are no longer sufficient for the challenges we face today. Companies must adopt a more strategic and nuanced approach, cultivating a deeper understanding of the data that drives success and performance.

Success in talent acquisition is no longer gauged solely by the speed and cost-effectiveness of filling positions; rather, it hinges on the ability to link recruitment and retention- making informed, equitable, and intelligent decisions using accurate data. Aptitude Research found that companies that align recruitment and retention goals see the following:

2X improvement in retention
2X improvement in quality of hire
3X improvement in productivity

In this report, we look at the close relationship between recruitment and retention and highlight the role of data and technology in reshaping how companies prepare for their future talent needs. I hope you can join us on November 28 as we share these results and talk about the shifts in the role of the recruiter, data, and technology.

Tags HR Technology, Recruitment, talent acquisition

Blog

New Research: Key Trends in Interviewing

Post author By Madeline Laurano
Post date July 1, 2022

For most companies, interviewing is still broken. According to our latest research report, one in three companies are not confident in their interview process today and one in two companies have lost quality hires due to a poor interview process this year. Companies face several challenges with interviews, including a lengthy process, too many interviews, inconsistency, lack of objective data, and bias. These challenges not only impact the efficiency of talent acquisition efforts but the overall candidate experience. As a result, only 24% of candidates are happy with the interview process. The challenges with interviewing are not new and the pandemic did not bring much change.

Here are some findings about what goes wrong and how technology can help.

Where Does the Interview Process Go Wrong?

Interview Process Is Too Long: The interview process can be frustrating for both employers and candidates. Companies that create lengthy interview processes do not necessarily collect data that can inform decision making. A longer interview process does not equate to more effective hiring. It puts a company at risk for losing talent. Forty percent (40%) of candidates stated that it was over two weeks since they heard anything from an employer after their first interview, and 52% of companies state that the interview process lasts four to six weeks.

Too Many Interviews: Over half of companies make candidates go through four or more interviews. For companies looking to reduce time to fill, too many interviews can impact efficiency as well as experience. Companies are at risk of losing quality talent when the interview process is delayed or too many interviewers are introduced.

Inconsistent Interviews: When companies lack a strategy for interviews, hiring managers and recruiters often go rogue and ask questions or conduct interviews with little guidance. Inconsistency in the interview process can create inequity and damage the employer brand.

Data-Driven Decisions: Organizations feel pressure to act quickly and may make decisions based on gut. Companies are not relying on data and insights to drive these decisions because they don’t have information beyond the resume, which only provides a limited, often biased view of a candidate.

Bias in the Interview: Companies must recognize and acknowledge bias in the hiring process. Only 30% of companies identified bias as a top challenge in talent acquisition, yet one in three candidates have experienced bias in the interview process. Relying only on human interviews creates inconsistent hiring standards and introduces bias.

How Can Smart Technology and AI Help?

The right technology can help companies address the challenges they face with interviewing to:

Empower recruiters and hiring managers to make smarter decisions
Improve recruiter productivity
Improve hiring diversity by using blind smart interview technology from the start
Create consumer-grade candidate experiences through the convenience of a smart interviewer

The pandemic accelerated the investment in digital interview solutions. In February 2020, less than 60% of companies were using or planning to use video interview providers. One year later, over 80% of companies were using or planning to use a broader set of intelligent interview platforms. Video was the tool of choice at the beginning of the pandemic for asynchronous hiring. The problem was that many of these solutions merely replaced face-to-face interactions, with a less human way of interviewing. Many candidates do not feel comfortable with the format of a video interview, especially if they are timed. For many companies, abandonment rates are high on video.

Today, there are technology choices available that remove that cognitive load and deliver on candidate expectations. AI is fundamentally changing every aspect of HR and there is growing curiosity and appetite to understand it. According to Aptitude Research, 63% of companies are investing or planning to invest in AI solutions this year, compared to 42% in 2020. This study found that 39% of companies believe it brings positive benefits, and 32% of companies are starting to leverage AI in interviewing.

If you are interested in the full report (sponsored by Sapia), you can download it for free here.

Tags Candidate Experience, interviewing, Recruitment, talent acquisition

Blog Talent Acquisition Technology

Top TA Tech Trends in 2022

Post author By Madeline Laurano
Post date March 7, 2022

Conversational AI: Transforming Talent Acquisition

The talent acquisition technology landscape has shifted over the past few years. According to Aptitude Research, 72% of companies are investing in new technology in 2022, but only one in two companies measure the ROI of that investment. Traditional providers are reinventing themselves, startups are emerging overnight, and new categories are being created. Talent acquisition buyers have more opportunities, but they also face new pressures when considering remote work, candidate communication, and employer brand.

Talent acquisition success is measured by its ability to adjust to change. And talent acquisition leaders face pressure to adopt the latest technology innovations in a short time. Keeping up with the latest trends is no small task.

I am excited to share the latest research on TA tech from Aptitude tomorrow on a webinar with Appcast, a leading programmatic job advertising provider. A few of the trends we will discuss include:

The ATS Is Not Enough: The modern talent acquisition system is more than a workflow or a traditional ATS. It includes recruitment marketing, CRM, onboarding, and internal mobility. Many providers have enhanced their interview management capabilities, have dabbled with AI-matching, and have made commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The modern talent acquisition system is an end-to-end platform that supports attracting, recruiting, and hiring talent.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: DEI is a priority for companies investing in TA tech but not every provider is providing support beyond marketing messaging. We will discuss what tech can and cannot do to support DEI through leadership team, culture, product capabilities, and services.

AI Matching: It is difficult to talk about talent acquisition technology without including the impact of AI. Providers have focused on AI matching in a big way over the past year. Many providers are investing in both candidate-centric and employer-centric matching as part of their solution.

Internal Mobility: Companies are looking closely at their internal mobility as it relates to talent acquisition. Most providers offer basic capabilities in this area that include dedicated career sites and personalized communication to internal hires. Few providers go deeper with skills frameworks, succession planning, and career development.

Foundational Layer: This presentation looks more closely at the foundational layer of the TA tech stack and includes analysis and considerations for integration, data management, and automation. Companies that achieve the most success with their talent acquisition systems are paying close attention to this layer of technology.

Programmatic Job Advertising: : Unlike traditional job advertising models that are slow and time-consuming, a programmatic approach solves an immediate need for companies today – greater efficiency. Companies state that the key driver for technology decisions is reducing time to fill and improving overall efficiency. By streamlining advertising and targeting the right candidates, the process of attracting and recruiting talent improves significantly. Aptitude Research found that for companies using programmatic job advertising, 90% are either continuing to invest or will increase their spend this year.

Candidate Communication: Candidate communication is a critical part of improving the candidate experience, especially in a remote world. Communication is more than mobile apply and SMS texts. Our analysis of each provider included integration with messaging platforms, conversational AI, and collaboration platforms. 42% of companies are investing or planning to invest in conversational AI this year.

It will be an exciting year in TA tech! I hope you can join us!

Tags Conversational AI, Recruitment, talent acquisition tecnology

Blog Talent Acquisition Technology

2022 Talent Trends: Care and Humanity

Post author By Madeline Laurano
Post date January 14, 2022

If 2021 was the year of rethinking the approach to talent, 2022 is the year for rebuilding it. Companies are facing intense pressure to both recruit and retain talent today. The pandemic has changed the relationship between employer and employee, and many companies are looking for ways to engage their workforce better.

Over the past two years, the focus on care has helped to improve this relationship by providing more empathy and understanding to the employee and candidate experiences. But, unfortunately, care and humanity are not priorities for every company. According to Aptitude Research, only 22% of companies stated that humanity is part of their company culture, and only 10% of companies have a clear idea of what they need to do to bring more humanity and care into their work environment.

Companies in the process of evaluating their talent processes and technology must lead with care.

I am excited to discuss the future of care and humanity on a webinar with Misha Chakrabarti, Product Marketing Specialist at Avature, on January 20 at 11 am EST.

Below are a few themes that we will discuss:

Skills, AI and Automation: Many companies embrace AI to improve efficiency and save recruiters’ and managers’ time. But, AI and a skills-based approach to talent can also provide greater humanity. It allows companies to understand candidates and employees better, connect them with the right opportunities, and provide a fair and inclusive process. AI can lift the administrative burden placed on recruiters and managers and allow them to focus on relationship building.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Over the past year, companies increased their investment in services and technology to support DEI initiatives. While technology can help to reduce bias in the talent acquisition and talent development processes, it is not a fix-all. Companies need to consider what changes they need to make to their culture and talent practices to provide a safe and inclusive work environment. Companies committed to care will start by looking internally before investing in technology.
Communication: Care is only possible through strong communication. Companies must consider the tone of their communication with candidates and employees and the communication methods. Communication must be frequent and meaningful, but companies must reach talent where they live and spend their time, including text, messaging, chat, and video.
Agility: Every company proved to be flexible and agile during the pandemic. Companies had to adapt in a short period of time. Agility helps companies respond to immediate needs but also prepare for the future.
Hybrid Work Model: Not every company is clear on their future workforce model, and 2022 will likely bring more change and uncertainty. Companies that listen to their employees, adjust to the unknown, and provide transparency will build better relationships with talent.

2022 is a year where these ideas and concepts of care will be tested. For companies committed to recruiting and retaining talent, a focus on care and humanity is the only way. I am excited to share some of our research on these topics. I hope you can join us!

Tags HR Technology, Humanity in the Workplace, Recruitment