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Always in motion is the future. — Yoda, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

If Facebook is the social lounge, then LinkedIn is the post-conference after party. It has disrupted the recruitment profession in the way recruiters perform their work. It’s one of the more valuable sourcing tools in the toolkit (see graphic). It’s not the only but currently the most important. keep reading…

A study by Deloitte estimates that companies will spend more than $4 billion annually on talent management technology this year. Because the HR technology industry is …

• Dominated by a handful of large players such as Taleo/Oracle, Kenexa/IBM, and Success Factors/SAP
• Also heavily represented by hundreds of smaller specialty tech companies who are agile and focused on growth, most of whom have been in business less than 10 years
• And changing rapidly changing in response to technological innovations (such as mobile computing and the cloud) as well as evolving reporting/compliance requirements

… buying decisions can be extremely complex.

At talentRISE, we are all too often contacted by clients who have made a less-than-optimal technology purchasing decision and are now seeking a post-purchase “fix.”  So, in this post, we want to share a few “lessons learned” to help others seeking to replace or upgrade current systems — whether an ATS, a comprehensive talent management system, or an HR Management System make the best buying decision possible and avoid buyers’ remorse.   keep reading…

That marriage of employee referrals with social media first mentioned on these pages three years ago and chronicled with new launches and updates many times since continues, as SuccessFactors works on a social-media/employee referral tool as part of its recruiting product.

This system suggests people who your employees might know — using their Facebook and LinkedIn contacts — who might be a fit for an open job. Employees can then send those people a note. The tool also, graphically, can show you any money an employee may have earned for a referral (e.g. $500), as well as a cumulative total.

This took about six months to make. Meanwhile, in August, SuccessFactors, an SAP company, expects to launch an improvement to the tool, where an employee can more easily distribute jobs on social networks, including Twitter, to their social media “friends” and contacts.

SuccessFactors’ social referral updates (and onboarding updates too) is just a taste of the many recent new launches and updates, such as: keep reading…

You post, you tweet, you activate social media, yet all the work you do to attract talent can go to waste if your applicant tracking system is too burdensome for candidates and your recruiting team. If you choose a strong applicant tracking system, your results will improve, candidates will have a great experience, and hiring managers will see more on-target resumes. A poor decision will have serious adverse effects costing you unhappy hiring managers, lost candidates, money, time, and frustration.

The following is a primer on things to take into consideration when making your decision on an applicant tracking system. It takes time and research, but the payoff will be well worth the effort. keep reading…

Futurestep has quietly been developing a tool called “Foresight” it will be rolling out to its clients, a dashboard meant to make heads and tails out of the recruiting information global companies have stored in their many databases.

Futurestep (a recruitment outsourcing company owned by Korn/Ferry) started thinking about this about a year ago, and has had an internal technology team working on it. It’s “high-end, graphical, display analytics,” Bill Sebra says.

Sebra is Futurestep’s North America president. He says the company’s global clients wanted more data — more real-time data. You may have “the people in China running something different from the folks in North America” when it comes to HR software, he says. “If you’re the chief talent officer, it becomes very difficult.” This challenge can be multiplied if you’re a company with, say 8-10 different firms you bought, all around the world. keep reading…

New Recruiter Homepage

Sporting a new look and with some new features — including a recommendation engine that ‘learns’ the kind of people a recruiter most want — LinkedIn Recruiter is getting an official relaunch this morning.

The redesign itself is an update of the classic LinkedIn Recruiter look to make it more consistent with the LinkedIn homepage redesign that was introduced last fall.

Parker Barril, Linkedin’s Talent Solutions head of product, unveiled the fresh, new LinkedIn Recruiter at a live and webcast user event — ConnectIn — in San Francisco. As he put it, “the consumerization of the enterprise,” the trend toward making products and services easier to use, “is influencing a new generation of products.” keep reading…

Not everyone can afford (or wants to pay) $300 or more to post a job on one of the premier job boards like LinkedIn, Monster, or CareerBuilder, and few recruiters (outside of agencies) have the time to proactively mine resume databases for talent. Given this, let’s look at some creative and unique ways to distribute your job postings to increase the flow of candidates into your applicant tracking system. keep reading…

The recruiting buzzwords circle in our brains: candidate experience, employer of choice, culture, employment branding, talent pools, talent communities, candidate relationships, etc.

Your expensive and time-consuming investments in all of these things won’t be worth it the technology is used wrong. Candidates will sour on you or abandon the process. They’ll self-select out for reasons having nothing to do with aptitude or job-related qualifications.

Let me explain. keep reading…

The hiring process is tough on everyone, especially the job seeker. It’s even a little bit harder on them actually, since while talent acquisition and management pros are used to dealing with the complicated ins and outs of applicant tracking systems, assessment programs, video and mobile technology and much, much, more — job seekers only have to deal with the front end of those systems when they’re looking, which is not “quite” every day.

And when they do go through your hiring process, they hate it. Here are the top reasons why: keep reading…

“There are hundreds of recruiting solutions available today,” Talent Sprocket says in its marketing materials.

Amen to that, but I have a couple you may not have heard of. Read on. keep reading…

One of the biggest complaints we get from college students and grads is that they need to fill out long applicant tracking system forms when applying for jobs. This becomes a bigger issue for students when they’re applying to 10-plus different employers (the norm these days) with each organization using a different system. These systems may help employers stay organized, but they also hurt the candidate experience and can even scare away good applicants.

If you’re talking about students and grads in computer science, engineering, and allied health, you can bet that these students will most likely forgo applying to your organization and will take one of the many offers that are already being put in front of them.

Here are some factors to consider when telling entry-level candidates to apply to your organization: keep reading…

Social media, employment branding, an employee-assessment company, a new tool you need to know about for using applicant tracking systems, and a job site focusing on screening for fit.

It’s all below.

Let’s start with Reqcloud, which launched about six months ago. “Nobody really knows about us,” says founder Ivan Kedrin.

I’m thinking you should, as this one may be around a while.

keep reading…

At once swooping up two of its largest competitors, Bullhorn today became one of the largest, if not the largest, technology providers to staffing and independent recruiting firms in the world.

Describing it as “an incredible moment for Bullhorn customers,” company CEO Art Papas announced the acquisition of both MaxHire and Sendouts.

“We’re acquiring two extremely talented teams, both of whom have succeeded in delighting their large customer bases with a combination of product innovation and excellent service,” Papas said in a news release. “These acquisitions dramatically increase our ability to execute on our vision of helping recruiters be more successful, develop new products, and serve our exponentially expanding user base.”

Details of the sale weren’t disclosed, however both MaxHire and Sendouts will operate under the Bullhorn brand. MaxHire’s CEO Peter Blitz, who founded the company in 1995, will become Bullhorn’s product innovation officer. Sendouts’ CEO Brian Hopcroft will become general manager.

Customers of each company will continue to use the existing software and will be supported as they always have, assured Andrew Hally, Bullhorn’s vice president of product and marketing. “Both products (MaxHire and Sendouts) are staying… We are not shutting down the products,” Hally explained, though the individual companies will immediately be folded into Bullhorn. keep reading…

Workday, the hot human resources technology company whose entry into the stock market made waves last month, is headed into the recruiting-technology business.

Workday Recruiting is no big surprise for Workday, a company that’s a cloud-based competitor of Oracle and PeopleSoft. The system for managing applicants, and onboarding them, isn’t yet available. Workday is merely announcing that it’s working on the product, and that it’ll include “headcount planning, job requisition, and pipeline management analytics” and “candidate workflow management, collaborative interview management, offer management, support for local data compliance and configurable rules, and connectors for postings, social sourcing, and background checks.”

It’ll be sold as an add-on to Workday customers in the first half of 2014, the company says.

Asking that silly interview question about where you want to be in five years is so old school. It’s only value any more is as a knockout question. If your candidate fumbles it badly, what that tells you is they didn’t do any prep work. Shoot, there’s something close to half a million results in Google for that question alone.

What you should be asking — and I loved this one from BrazenCareerist – is “Tell me about where you’ve traveled.” People who travel without the safety net of tour leaders and have to rely on their wits to solve problems when they don’t speak the language, know much about the culture, or have much idea of where they are — these people, says the author, make the best employees. keep reading…

New job sites for techies, musicians, designers — and a new applicant tracking system. More below. keep reading…

(This article was co-authored with Amy McKee, Sr. Director, Global Talent Acquisition, at Autodesk.)

Mobile …finally! DNA footprints in the cloud; recruiting back to basics: getting to know the candidate; the end of the traditional ATS; emerging markets dominate; augmented reality; disruptive marketing and stunt PR; the end of social media; candidate cloning and the end of recruiters as we know it!

The impact and level of debate created by Recruitment 3.0 & 4.0, certainly took us by surprise. Based on feedback, it is clear that there has been healthy discussion and many companies have re-appraised/reviewed their recruiting strategies.

Recruitment 5.0 is the final paper in the trilogy.

3.0 was all about building.

4.0 all about driving value.

5.0 is all about … Personalization, self-sufficiency, predictability, big data, and back to basics.

The defining features of Recruitment 5.0:

• Mobile recruiting finally takes off and becomes the dominant channel.
• Recruiting gets back to basics and focuses on building relationships. Included in this is a focus on personalization/humanization and dominating/driving communications.
• Footprints in the cloud. Companies obsessively get to know their customers/consumers, and recruiters do the same with their “corporate” talent pools
• Data DNA: Companies draw data to profile candidates based on online habits and trends.
• Technological developments bring an end to the traditional ATS.
• Emerging markets emerge and dominate.
• Augmented reality and disruptive marketing dominate recruiting marketing.
• As companies seek to attract the best talent in a candidate short market, they set up their own courses, universities/academies, and “clone” future employees.
• As talent becomes more scarce, talent becomes more contract by nature and more flexible.
• It’s the end of recruiters as we know it … the death of the recruiting profession?

Some meaty stuff.

Reviewing these bullet points, some companies are already experimenting and executing on elements, but as time passes, these will become dominant in our thoughts, plans and strategies.

Let’s explore in more detail. keep reading…

I’m here at the HR Technology Conference in sunny but chilly Chicago. One of the best reasons to come to the HR technology show (besides the great people here, the sessions, and parties) is to talk to people and vendors about the new technologies they are working on.

Like many of you, I love to focus on technology as part of my job. But, as I go through the floor here in Chicago, I’ve tried to pull out the recruiting vendors from the rest of the human capital space. As is typical, recruiting is often leading the pack in innovation and new products.

Here’s a brief rundown of the things I’ve seen (and haven’t seen) at the HR Technology show:

keep reading…

By now we’ve all heard the news about IBM’s acquisition of Kenexa and have likely read a few of the many opinions about the meaning and implications of this blockbuster deal.

In some sense this deal represents a logical pinnacle of a trend that has been going on for the past five or so years. While some have referred to this trend as the “death” of talent management, I prefer to look at it as the birth of a new era for humans and the organizations they call home.

No matter how you feel about it, this deal is about data and the ability to apply it to HR and organizational performance. The combined IBM/Kenexa organization will blend IBM’s capabilities with data with Kenexa’s ability to harvest data across HR functions using a mature set of tools such as ATS, surveys, and assessments, while helping IBM gain additional competency in the measurement of human traits that are important for defining, evaluating, and managing performance within the workplace.

The ability to provide sound measurement of the human elements that are required for effective job and organizational performance is a critical supplement to the type of raw empirical data IBM is used to working with. As we move forward, the real value in HR systems will not be in simply ballistic (unguided) data crunching, but rather in blending it with rationally guided measurement captured and managed within HR software and systems.

It will likely take a few years before we the consumer see any direct impact of this deal. In the here and now, it has meaning because it shows that pre-employment assessment has finally hit the big time and is poised to become the visible face of three major trends that are shaping the future of how people relate to work and vice versa. keep reading…

Today, talent-focused big data comes to small business. While in France, big data comes to big employers.

Both developments involve Monster’s cloud-based semantic search, SeeMore. Both are big news for the company, representing in the first instance a market push into the long tail of employers, while in the second, a broadening of its service offerings into non-English speaking Europe. But otherwise, the developments are unconnected.

Somewhat more than a year after Monster first launched SeeMore, Monster is now offering the service to companies with as few as 50 workers. It’s not a stripped down version, Javid Muhammedali, Monster’s director, Product Management, assured me. “We didn’t slim down the feature set.”

What the developers did do was to make some adjustments so employers without a technical staff could begin to use SeeMore right after they sign up. For instance, instead of using APIs, the SMB version of SeeMore is email-based. Send one resume, or Zip up hundreds. keep reading…