Over the last few years there has been a massive proliferation in the number of talent acquisition tools and technologies on the market. The pace of change shows no sign of slowing down and it is increasingly difficult for talent acquisition leaders to know just where they should be focusing.
My guest this week is Lance Haun, Practice Leader at The Starr Conspiracy Intelligence Unit. The Starr Conspiracy have recently published their 2017 Talent Acquisition Brandscape Report. A piece of research designed to help make sense of a confusing and fast moving market.
In the interview we discuss:
• How do you categorize and segment such a “nebulous” market sector
• The current biggest area for innovation in talent acquisition
• Dealing with the potential implications of Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn
• The two key future trends everyone should be aware of
Lance also gives us his view on the future pace of change in the sector and the likely impact of any potential global economic slow down
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Before we start the show this week, I just wanted to tell you about a webinar presentation I’m giving in conjunction with my friends at Digital Marketing Agency Format. We’ll be discussing how to build the business case to invest in updating your career site. We’ll also be looking at how career sites are changing and talking through some great case studies from employers who are getting some impressive return on investment from their career sites. To find out more and to register, please go to www. Format.combc. that’s www. Format.combc. format is spelt with the number 4. Then mat.
Matt Alder [00:01:03]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 79 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Over the last few years, there’s been a proliferation in the number of talent acquisition tools and technologies which are available in the market. The pace of change shows no sign of slowing down, and it’s increasingly difficult for talent acquisition leaders to know where they should be focusing their efforts. My guest this week is Lance Haun, practice leader at the Star Conspiracy Intelligence Unit. The Star Conspiracy have recently published their 2017 Talent Acquisition Brandscape Report, a piece of research designed to help make sense of a confusing market. Keep listening to hear me and Lance discuss the report and generally geek out about talent acquisition technology.
Matt Alder [00:01:56]:
Hi, Lance, and welcome to the podcast.
Lance Haun [00:01:59]:
Thank you. Glad to be here, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:02:01]:
It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. For people who may not be familiar with you and your excellent work, could you sort of just introduce yourself and tell us who you work for and what you do?
Lance Haun [00:02:15]:
Yeah, of course. So I’m Lance Haun. I am a practice leader and principal analyst for the Stark Conspiracy. And so the Stark Conspiracy is a.
Lance Hahn [00:02:26]:
Basically a marketing agency that serves B2B software vendors.
Lance Haun [00:02:29]:
We’ve got a really good practice, sort of in the HCM category, so we follow that. We’ve got a lot of expertise in that particular area. So my background is in hr. I’ve spent my entire professional career involved in IT in some way.
Lance Hahn [00:02:45]:
So I started my career as an HR practitioner.
Lance Haun [00:02:47]:
I started off in recruiting. I moved into HR management roles and.
Lance Hahn [00:02:53]:
Those sorts of things.
Lance Haun [00:02:54]:
And then, yeah, I moved over to ERE Media, which is kind of a.
Lance Hahn [00:02:59]:
Preeminent publisher of recruiting information and also.
Lance Haun [00:03:02]:
Has some great conferences, which I know.
Lance Hahn [00:03:05]:
You’Ve been to a few of those.
Lance Haun [00:03:07]:
And I worked there for about three.
Lance Hahn [00:03:09]:
Years before coming here in 2013.
Lance Haun [00:03:12]:
So I’ve been with the Star Conspiracy, almost four years. And I think one of the things.
Lance Hahn [00:03:19]:
We’Re really excited about is just working.
Lance Haun [00:03:21]:
In the human capital space and working especially in the talent acquisition side, which I know we’re going to be talking about a lot about today.
Matt Alder [00:03:29]:
So you guys have just released a report. Tell us about that. What’s the report about and what’s the background to it?
Lance Haun [00:03:38]:
Yeah, of course. So, yeah.
Lance Hahn [00:03:40]:
So basically the 2017 Talent Acquisition Brandscape.
Lance Haun [00:03:43]:
Report is what we recently published. It was published, we released it February 8th. So what we try to do with this is we, we interact with a lot of people in the market lots of times.
Lance Hahn [00:04:01]:
It’s just great conversations.
Lance Haun [00:04:03]:
I’ve got a long background in the.
Lance Hahn [00:04:05]:
Space, I’ve been here for almost 15.
Lance Haun [00:04:08]:
Years, so I know it fairly well. But what we’re trying to do with this is really, for us, it’s kind of share our understanding of what’s happening in the market. We’ve done this across different categories.
Lance Hahn [00:04:23]:
We did one on employee engagement, we.
Lance Haun [00:04:24]:
Did one on HCM systems, you know, those traditional payroll and HRIS systems. So what we wanted to do with this one is really take a close look at talent acquisition and say, what’s happening here? And then of course, since our clients.
Lance Hahn [00:04:39]:
Are almost exclusively vendors in this space, how do they fit into this and what trends should they be paying attention to?
Lance Haun [00:04:46]:
As they’re planning out and looking at 2017, 2018 and beyond, what should they.
Lance Hahn [00:04:52]:
Be paying attention to? And then where do they kind of.
Lance Haun [00:04:54]:
Stack up in the competition and how do they sort of fit into this really nebulous category of companies? You and your podcast listeners are not strangers to this really rapidly evolving, always changing aspect of down acquisition. Trying to take a moment of time.
Lance Hahn [00:05:18]:
Understand where things are, where things are.
Lance Haun [00:05:20]:
Going is really where we do. So there’s a couple different components to the brandscape as far as doing sort of a vendor overview of where vendors.
Lance Hahn [00:05:32]:
Are kind of placed in competitive potential.
Lance Haun [00:05:35]:
Competitive strength, how good their message is, how strong their brand is, because we know that really gives people visibility into it. Give overview of those top vendors in the space, understand sort of what our impressions are of where they’re at, and then give our research on market share, market size, all that good stuff. I will mention the fact that these are generally North America only numbers, so we’re really looking at that market love.
Lance Hahn [00:06:08]:
To expand these to more global.
Lance Haun [00:06:10]:
But since we do a lot of business in the States here, that’s kind of where our focus is. But that’s kind of the gist of.
Lance Hahn [00:06:17]:
The report and what we’re super interested.
Lance Haun [00:06:19]:
In sharing as part of that report.
Matt Alder [00:06:22]:
I mean, that’s really interesting. And I think with the North American thing, what I tend to see is a lot of talent attraction trends, particularly technology trends, kind of start in, seem to start in North America anyway. So, you know, I think it’s of interest to everyone who’s listening to the podcast, no matter where in the world they might be. You used an interesting word there, which was nebulous, when you were describing the talent acquisition landscape. I’ve just been kind of super aware that in the last sort of 18 months to two years there’s been a lot of change around, you know, round talent acquisition and how we define it and what’s, what’s kind of happening before we sort of dive into some of the detail around the report. What’s your take on talent acquisition and how it’s been evolving recently?
Lance Haun [00:07:11]:
Yeah, that’s a big question. I mean, I think what organizations are really grappling with, I think from a broad recruiting spectrum is I think there’s.
Lance Hahn [00:07:23]:
Really a two headed monster here is.
Lance Haun [00:07:25]:
That I think folks are starting to really, at least here in North America, struggle with the scale changes of recruiting. You may need to hire 200 people in a month, then you might not need to hire that many people for the rest of the year. You need to be able to scale up and down. I think actually one of the things that’s happening here in North America is that companies are looking for ways to.
Lance Hahn [00:07:54]:
Balance that out with a mixture of services, technology. They’re really looking at trying to figure.
Lance Haun [00:08:02]:
Out how do we deal with those up and down trends of recruiting. It’s just part of the business. I think actually one of the things you say that I think technology follows from North America to a lot of these other markets. I think one of the things that we’ve stolen from Europe and APAC and all those markets is trying to be more intelligent about relying on staffing organizations, RPO agencies on those sorts of things.
Lance Hahn [00:08:33]:
As ways to supplement and be smarter.
Lance Haun [00:08:36]:
About what staffing choices you’re making for.
Lance Hahn [00:08:39]:
Your internal organization versus what you’re going to be using externally.
Lance Haun [00:08:42]:
I think when I look at that.
Lance Hahn [00:08:44]:
That’S a big macro struggle.
Lance Haun [00:08:47]:
Then the other thing I see that’s happening on a macro basis is just we could get so much more information on candidates assessments. There’s some really great, my background, there’s some great sourcing stuff out there from the folks that go to sourcecon and all those sourcing conferences.
Lance Hahn [00:09:14]:
There’s just Some really great tools out.
Lance Haun [00:09:15]:
There that don’t have super broad market penetration at this point. Whenever we’re looking at how can you add more intelligence to the talent acquisition process, that’s one of the things that.
Lance Hahn [00:09:31]:
We’Re really interested in.
Lance Haun [00:09:32]:
You look at things like AI, you look at things like robots proactively churning through external candidates, internal candidates, going through your HRIs and figuring out, okay, is.
Lance Hahn [00:09:46]:
There somebody inside the organization that can fill this really critical role for us?
Lance Haun [00:09:51]:
And having very little human interaction or.
Lance Hahn [00:09:54]:
Direction for, for those algorithms is really exciting.
Lance Haun [00:09:57]:
But I think there’s also some, some.
Lance Hahn [00:09:59]:
Natural trepidation as part of that.
Lance Haun [00:10:01]:
So I think, I mean, like when.
Lance Hahn [00:10:02]:
I look at sort of big macro.
Lance Haun [00:10:03]:
Trends, I think those are kind of.
Lance Hahn [00:10:05]:
The two biggest immediate ones that just.
Lance Haun [00:10:06]:
Stick out of my mind. And that kind of, for a lot of this report, kind of flow, flow through a lot of the big themes.
Matt Alder [00:10:14]:
I’ll come back to AI and robots taking over the world in a second. But before we kind of go into sort of more detail about that, I’m supposing that one of the biggest challenges of doing a piece of research like this, and it’s certainly a challenge that I’ve had when I’ve, when I’ve looked at this market, is actually categorizing the different segments of vendor and the different types of products and services that are out there. How do you guys break down the talent acquisition market? What kind of segments are you or categories have you identified that you use in the report?
Lance Haun [00:10:51]:
Yeah, that’s a big question, isn’t it? Because talent acquisition is huge. When we looked at the talent acquisition market, we look at a globally, you’re looking at over half a trillion dollars market. When you take into staffing at headhunter organizations, when you take in some of the great vendor management solutions that are out there, freelance labor tools that are out there.
Lance Hahn [00:11:18]:
That’s a huge report.
Lance Haun [00:11:19]:
This is already a big enough report. So I think we got 15,000 words on this thing.
Lance Hahn [00:11:24]:
If you print the thing out, it’s.
Lance Haun [00:11:26]:
Like 65 pages long. It’s already long enough. How we categorized is we really wanted to look at those companies that are really focusing in on what we think are the core areas of talent acquisition. We broke it up into five subcategories.
Lance Hahn [00:11:45]:
One is candidate discovery.
Lance Haun [00:11:47]:
The ability to go out, find the.
Lance Hahn [00:11:51]:
People that you need to.
Lance Haun [00:11:52]:
If you’re thinking of it from a.
Lance Hahn [00:11:54]:
Marketing perspective, which I always do, of.
Lance Haun [00:11:55]:
Course you’re thinking of that top of the funnel.
Lance Hahn [00:11:59]:
How do you get people to recognize.
Lance Haun [00:12:00]:
You see that you’re out there, those sorts of things.
Lance Hahn [00:12:03]:
Then kind of a very traditional candidate management perspective. You’re looking at ATSs, CRMs, those sorts.
Lance Haun [00:12:10]:
Of things where they’re really managing the flow from that funnel to consideration, trying to manage that process within a lot of different typ of organizations.
Lance Hahn [00:12:23]:
Then you look at candidate intelligence and.
Lance Haun [00:12:25]:
That’S really sort of the background screening.
Lance Hahn [00:12:27]:
The assessments, all the things that you.
Lance Haun [00:12:28]:
Use to bolster the decision making process of recruiting. Then you got two things that I think people were surprised to see in the report. One of those is rpo, which we’re seeing a lot of usage, especially here in the United States, but in close quarters to their technology stack. Part of the big consideration aspect of RPO is what technology, what sort of.
Lance Hahn [00:12:57]:
Innovative features and technology are you bringing to the table and how could we.
Lance Haun [00:13:01]:
Integrate our own systems so that you’re recruiting as well or better hopefully than our own team?
Lance Hahn [00:13:10]:
That’s a big part of the consideration.
Lance Haun [00:13:11]:
Then another one that’s just starting to emerge that we were super interested in.
Lance Hahn [00:13:16]:
Looking at is this idea of candidate connection.
Lance Haun [00:13:19]:
How do there’s been so much emphasis on the candidate experience and are we really putting our best foot forward whenever we talk to all these candidates?
Lance Hahn [00:13:32]:
What I was really interested in with.
Lance Haun [00:13:34]:
That particular area is what sort of.
Lance Hahn [00:13:36]:
Things are we doing to make the.
Lance Haun [00:13:37]:
Holistic process better, both from a candidate’s point of view, like where there’s less.
Lance Hahn [00:13:42]:
Pain to go through that application process.
Lance Haun [00:13:44]:
Which there’s a lot still, but also how can we help sort of incorporate those good decisions and better matchmaking into that process.
Lance Hahn [00:13:54]:
That’s a really emergent category where we’re seeing just a few different providers sort.
Lance Haun [00:13:58]:
Of starting to make some noise in that category, but something we see a.
Lance Hahn [00:14:05]:
Lot of potential in.
Lance Haun [00:14:06]:
And I have to be honest and be full disclosure here.
Lance Hahn [00:14:09]:
I’m part of the Candidate Experience Council.
Lance Haun [00:14:11]:
So it’s something that, that is really in the front of my mind as I’m looking at a lot of these new technologies. Talent acquisition is a huge category of companies. Over 1,000 I think is the number I’ve heard of different companies. We only cover about 100 plus in this report.
Lance Hahn [00:14:32]:
We’re really looking at those five subcategories.
Lance Haun [00:14:35]:
As a starting point for our discussion and our understanding of talent acquisition. Yeah.
Matt Alder [00:14:41]:
So this is absolutely fascinating. I think I could talk to you for probably several hours about all of those categories, but just with an eye on the clock. I’m just wondering, just in terms of highlights, what were the most innovative things that you found or that you’re seeing that kind of surfaced as you were researching the report?
Lance Haun [00:15:01]:
Yeah, for sure. Whenever I was looking at this kind of from an innovation standpoint, one of the things that I was just super, like, really interested in is just how much work has been done on sort of the predictive side of this. And so predictive can be both on.
Lance Hahn [00:15:19]:
Sort of the candidate discovery side.
Lance Haun [00:15:20]:
So whenever you’re going out and saying, okay, this person might be a good.
Lance Hahn [00:15:24]:
Fit for our organization, we should reach.
Lance Haun [00:15:25]:
Out to this person too. Predictive from.
Lance Hahn [00:15:28]:
We’ve talked to this person, we’ve gotten a lot of information on this person.
Lance Haun [00:15:31]:
We may have put them through an assessment.
Lance Hahn [00:15:33]:
Let’s figure out if this person’s going.
Lance Haun [00:15:35]:
To be a good fit. There’s just been, over the last probably 12 to 18 months, there’s been so much work on this, and there’s still a lot of work to be done on this. So when we look at this, we look at folks like Restless Bandit, we look at folks like Intello that have done just really, really interesting work on this part. I think part of that too is just how. I think probably the second one there that we’re probably looking at from an innovation standpoint is just how are people uncoupling themselves from LinkedIn? I won’t neg LinkedIn for anything, but.
Lance Hahn [00:16:21]:
I think there’s some real concerns in the market. What’s going to happen to that company.
Lance Haun [00:16:25]:
As they get integrated into Microsoft? How open is that data going to be? There’s a lot of big questions and challenges, especially in North America, at least how much reliance and how much heavy reliance is done. Is LinkedIn used for a lot of different hiring needs?
Lance Hahn [00:16:46]:
I’m looking at those two things and.
Lance Haun [00:16:48]:
I think there’s some interesting challenges there, for sure. And there’s a lot of innovation taking place to try to figure out how to handle those.
Lance Hahn [00:16:58]:
Those two separate issues. That’s probably the two biggest ones that I’ve noticed.
Lance Haun [00:17:04]:
And I definitely want to keep an eye on the clock too. But I could talk about this forever, but those are two really good ones I think that we’re kind of keeping an eye on.
Matt Alder [00:17:12]:
So one of the sections of the report looks at future trends, things that you guys have got your eye on. We mentioned AI and robots and things like that. Can you sort of talk us through the trends that the future trends you identify in the report?
Lance Haun [00:17:30]:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I think one of the. So a couple of trends that I’ll.
Lance Hahn [00:17:34]:
Highlight here is sort of the ATS and everybody loves to hate on the ets, right?
Lance Haun [00:17:39]:
Because for good reason, too, because it’s oftentimes like not a very good process. And really, when we look at the ETFs, I think from a macro scale, if you look at just what it’s doing, it’s not really advanced the way that we would hope. So I think a lot of recruiters want to kind of get out of the old style of sort of. This is just my digital version of the file cabinet I used to have. And I’ve just got to manage it the same way. There’s got to be more innovation there. We’re not seeing it.
Lance Hahn [00:18:11]:
So right now, all ATS is serving.
Lance Haun [00:18:13]:
Is sort of that. It’s sort of the recruiting system of record at this point.
Lance Hahn [00:18:18]:
So everything has to tie into it.
Lance Haun [00:18:20]:
Everything has to go through it eventually. But a lot of organizations are trying.
Lance Hahn [00:18:25]:
To figure out ways to work around.
Lance Haun [00:18:28]:
Doesn’t work because a lot of those ATS build in compliance checks, all of those important things that definitely need to be happening. But it’s really challenging. We’re definitely seeing some really interesting things from Jazz, hr, smart recruiters, Greenhouse Lever, all those companies are doing some interesting things to try to figure out what’s the way forward, what’s the next step, what’s ATS 2.0? We haven’t seen a clear vision for that. Then I think the other one that I like to talk about is the disappearing services and technology divide. I talked a little bit about the increasing role of RPOS in North America.
Lance Hahn [00:19:14]:
Staffing organizations, those sorts of things.
Lance Haun [00:19:16]:
But really, I think what recruiting leaders.
Lance Hahn [00:19:17]:
Are looking at, they’re looking at outcomes.
Lance Haun [00:19:19]:
They’re looking at saying, how do I hire the best people for my organization in the right time? They’re looking at it strategically. And so they’re looking at the combination of. So people are less insistent. Like, it has to be a technology solution. It has to be a staffing organization that we’re using. They’re going to look at, they’re going to say, you know what getting a.
Lance Hahn [00:19:41]:
New ATS system is going to be like?
Lance Haun [00:19:44]:
It’s going to be compared to using an RPO or using a staffing organization, using a temporary hire organization to get these roles. Like, we’re going to compare these all across the board.
Lance Hahn [00:19:55]:
So the competitive landscape is getting more confusing.
Lance Haun [00:19:57]:
And then you’re seeing companies like jobvite move into more job distribution. They’re going closer to candidate discovery, and they’re to make candidate intelligence better.
Lance Hahn [00:20:10]:
You’re seeing this.
Lance Haun [00:20:13]:
Call it the EBB.
Lance Hahn [00:20:15]:
And flow of categorization where you see.
Lance Haun [00:20:18]:
Companies really moving outside of that. You see Career Builder adding HCM capabilities, they’re adding new candidate intelligence and assessment tool to their solution. So they’re expanding beyond just kind of being known as job board. So you see a lot of those different changes. Those are kind of, I mean we’re.
Lance Hahn [00:20:40]:
Kind of looking at those future trends.
Lance Haun [00:20:42]:
I mean we got five big ones that we mentioned, but those are two ones that I see just really impacting.
Lance Hahn [00:20:49]:
A lot of different organizations that we.
Lance Haun [00:20:51]:
End up talking to.
Matt Alder [00:20:53]:
So final question, final thoughts. You talked about this disease rate of change. We’ve both identified that there’s been a huge development and shift in the market in the last couple of years. Do you think that pace of change and that pace of development is going to continue? Is it going to get quicker or is there going to be a bit of consolidation around how the market works?
Lance Haun [00:21:20]:
We obviously study a lot of different.
Lance Hahn [00:21:22]:
Areas of the HCM landscape and one of the interesting things about talent acquisition.
Lance Haun [00:21:27]:
Is that there’s always money coming into talent acquisition.
Lance Hahn [00:21:31]:
There’s always budget to buy new things, there’s always new solutions, there’s always shiny objects to chase.
Lance Haun [00:21:38]:
There’s definitely a point in time where some macroeconomic things can happen. A global slowdown, economic slowdown could definitely change the pace. But that would only. I think we’re going to continue to.
Lance Hahn [00:21:54]:
See consolidation as these categories battle it.
Lance Haun [00:21:58]:
Out as sort of. We kind of figure out, okay, is.
Lance Hahn [00:22:01]:
ATS really going to take the mantle and really be this hub of recruiting?
Lance Haun [00:22:06]:
And then you’re going to say like.
Lance Hahn [00:22:08]:
You’Re going to treat it the same way as talent management?
Lance Haun [00:22:10]:
Where are you going to do kind.
Lance Hahn [00:22:12]:
Of a best of breed approach where.
Lance Haun [00:22:14]:
You’Re just going to be tapping in.
Lance Hahn [00:22:15]:
All of these different solutions.
Lance Haun [00:22:17]:
So I talked to one organization recently.
Lance Hahn [00:22:19]:
They have almost three dozen different talent acquisition solutions tying into one another in.
Lance Haun [00:22:25]:
A really complicated spaghetti on the plate mess. Are you going to take that sort of approach, which I would not necessarily recommend 3 dozen talent acquisition solutions for any organization or you take kind of a suite approach where you say I’m going to buy ISIMS or Jobvide or SuccessFactors or Oracle’s and we’re going to deal with the technology that they’ve got.
Lance Hahn [00:22:48]:
We’re going to try our best to.
Lance Haun [00:22:50]:
Not put a bunch of things into this thing. I think we’re going to see that same battle figure itself out, but I think for the most part we’re going to continue to see new companies Coming into this space we’re going to continue to see people get confused about what fits into what category. What’s the value proposition for these new technologies? How could they make my life better? What kind of outcomes can these guys solve? Then as those start to develop out the big apex players suites Workday is working on a recruiting platform. They continue to try to grow that base. SuccessFactors, Oracle, IBM, all those big guys.
Lance Hahn [00:23:36]:
Will continue to try to bring in those little solutions to try to take.
Lance Haun [00:23:40]:
That sweet approach while the jobvites isims of the world also try to take a really specialized approach and try to make the right plug ins to their platform to make it that ideal platform. I don’t know if there’s a too long didn’t read on that but we.
Lance Hahn [00:23:57]:
Continue to see growth. I think it’s going to be mostly.
Lance Haun [00:24:00]:
Trended to if there’s a global slowdown, if hiring slows down globally, that could certainly impact I think the pace of new companies.
Lance Hahn [00:24:13]:
But we know even through the recession there was new recruiting technologies coming out.
Lance Haun [00:24:18]:
There was a lot of companies that were founded in 2007, 2008 that are.
Lance Hahn [00:24:23]:
Still around, still kicking and still doing really well.
Lance Haun [00:24:26]:
So we know that it’s possible and we know that that growth will continue for sure in this segment.
Matt Alder [00:24:32]:
Interesting times indeed. So I’m sure that people will want to read the report for themselves. Where can they find it?
Lance Haun [00:24:40]:
Yeah, if you go tothestar conspiracy.com and that’s a star with two Rs, we’ve got a link to the report there. You can also if you have any.
Lance Hahn [00:24:50]:
Questions, hit me up on Twitter helance.
Lance Haun [00:24:53]:
And I’m always happy to answer questions.
Lance Hahn [00:24:55]:
That’s probably the easiest way to get.
Lance Haun [00:24:57]:
In touch with me. But yeah, so those two places are where you, you can find information and get your questions answered if you have any.
Matt Alder [00:25:04]:
Lance, thank you very much for talking to me.
Lance Haun [00:25:06]:
Thanks Matt. Appreciate it.
Matt Alder [00:25:09]:
My thanks to Lance Haun. You can subscribe to this podcast on itunes, on Stitcher or via your podcasting app of choice. Just search for recruiting future. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me Me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
