The last 12 months have been transformational for recruiting technology, with both employers and vendors having to adapt very quickly to the new market realities. So what does the technology landscape now look like in talent acquisition, what are the key trends and what do we need to keep an eye for the future.
My guest this week is David Wilson, CEO of industry analysts Fosway Group. Fosway. as ever, have been watching the market closely and have just released an updated version of their influential 9 Box Grid on TA technology. Keep listening to hear David’s insights on how technology has evolved in the last 12 months and where it is going.
In the interview, we discuss:
▪ The 9 Box Grid methodology and the type of vendors included
▪ How vendors have responded to the pandemic
▪ The pandemic as a catalyst for change in TA technology
▪ The ATS, CRM, TRM evolution
▪ Talent mobility and talent marketplaces
▪ Room for improvement in data analytics
▪ What will the next 12 months look like
Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes From Avature, the AI powered total talent platform trusted by 110 of the Fortune 500 from initial candidate engagement. Through onboarding, talent mobility and performance management, Avature enables organizations to meet their unique needs while delighting and engaging all stakeholders. Just listen to what Nilesh Boote, Director of recruitment at L’Oreal, has to say.
Nilesh Boote [00:00:27]:
The solutions that we have created are so specific to L’Oreal that it just feels like a team sitting outside of L’Oreal and working for us. If you sign up with Avature, it’s for sure signing up with a company with whom you will be really able to design solutions the way you want and also embark on a journey where innovation is at the core.
Matt Alder [00:00:50]:
Visit avature.net and discover why global leaders like L’Oreal join use Avature to power their recruiting and talent management strategies.
Matt Alder [00:01:17]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 354 of the Recruiting Future podcast. The last 12 months has been transformational for recruiting technology with both employers and vendors having to adapt very quickly to the new market realities. So what does the technology landscape now look like in talent acquisition? What are the key trends and what do we need to keep an eye on for the future? My guest this week is David Wilson, CEO of industry analysts Fossway Group. Fossware as ever have been watching the market closely and have just released an updated version of their nine box grid on TA technology. Keep listening to hear David’s insights on how technology has evolved in the last 12 months and where it’s going next.
Matt Alder [00:02:08]:
Hi David and welcome back to the podcast.
David Wilson [00:02:11]:
Hi Matt, nice to be with you again.
Matt Alder [00:02:13]:
An absolute pleasure to have you back on the show. For those people who may not know you, could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
David Wilson [00:02:20]:
So I’m CEO of Foss Way Group. We’re an industry analyst based in UK Europe and we track and commentate on.
David Wilson [00:02:31]:
The market around next gen hr talent and learning.
Matt Alder [00:02:34]:
Absolutely.
Matt Alder [00:02:35]:
And when you were you were last on the show? I think it was back in January 2020, back before the crazy disruption started happening. And back then you’d recently published your first nine grid report for talent acquisition. Now you’ve just done the updated version of that and I obviously want to talk about that in some detail. Before we do though, just give us a bit of a background to the nine grid reports, what they are and how you put them together.
David Wilson [00:03:00]:
Yeah. So thanks and obviously great to talk.
David Wilson [00:03:05]:
To your audience again.
David Wilson [00:03:07]:
Hopefully they find it interesting. So the nine grids for us are.
David Wilson [00:03:11]:
Our view of the supply side, I.
David Wilson [00:03:14]:
Guess the market options around the different topics.
David Wilson [00:03:18]:
We have five of them in total.
David Wilson [00:03:21]:
Published, actively published at the moment, coupling in the HR and talent management area, coupling learning and now talent acquisition. As of, I think we did an.
David Wilson [00:03:31]:
Interim one at the end of 2019.
David Wilson [00:03:33]:
And then first major one published April.
David Wilson [00:03:37]:
Last year and then we’ve just done the update cycle and as you said.
David Wilson [00:03:39]:
An interesting 12 months since, you know.
David Wilson [00:03:43]:
With the cold COVID pandemic, et cetera.
David Wilson [00:03:45]:
And everything else around it. The nine grids are basically our review.
David Wilson [00:03:51]:
Of the market supply options.
David Wilson [00:03:54]:
We spend a lot of time talking to corporates around what are they using, what are they doing, who are they doing it with, what works, what doesn’t, and what do they think of them in terms of the partners they’re working with around it. And that’s really the dominant view that.
David Wilson [00:04:10]:
Gets expressed ultimately in the nine grids.
David Wilson [00:04:13]:
Is a distillation of insights really from the customer side, cross validated and backed up by a whole bunch of independent.
David Wilson [00:04:21]:
Vendor research we do as well.
David Wilson [00:04:23]:
So we do a lot of briefings obviously with all the main vendors. We do what we call a functional data capture where we go out to all the, all the main vendors and get them to fill in our forms and spreadsheets with hundreds of line items of functional capability. We do demos with them, we do customer referencing and so on. And all of that is used to then cross validate, as I said, the.
David Wilson [00:04:49]:
Perspective that we get from corporates.
David Wilson [00:04:51]:
So ultimately this gets distilled down into five dimensions, what we call potential performance, presence, total cost of ownership and trajectory. And then those all get mapped into.
David Wilson [00:05:06]:
The, you know, the 9 grid in.
David Wilson [00:05:08]:
Terms of the assessment process of it. So it’s a huge, huge monster of a process from our side. Each nine grid typically takes us three or four years in the first place to get to a published version. And then in each year there’s a huge amount of activity for each one. And the nine grid diagram is the very top tip of a very large iceberg of customer insight, data kind of research and stuff that goes around it. The report which goes alongside it also summarizes some of the kind of key.
David Wilson [00:05:42]:
Trends we’re seeing in the market. I’m sure we’ll talk about those in.
David Wilson [00:05:44]:
More detail and we would certainly suggest to people, they read the report rather than just look at the pretty picture and Certainly, I think that gives a.
David Wilson [00:05:54]:
Lot more insight in terms of how.
David Wilson [00:05:56]:
We’Re looking at the assessments we’re making around the vendors. As I said, it’s led by the corporate point of view, backed up by lots of independent vendor research and then distilled by our analyst team with a lot of peer review around that in.
David Wilson [00:06:10]:
Order to come out with the N9 grid.
Matt Alder [00:06:11]:
And a quick question about who kind of makes it on there, because there are lots and lots, lots of different types of talent acquisition technologies, and it’s a potentially confusing market. What does this grid actually cover? What are the sort of the criteria for the type of vendors that you include?
David Wilson [00:06:30]:
Yeah, so in the case of talent acquisition, obviously what we’re looking at is the main technology segments within the talent acquisition market. So historically, of course, applicant tracking systems were the sort of dominant start point for that.
David Wilson [00:06:49]:
And then over time, obviously what’s happened.
David Wilson [00:06:52]:
Is, and talent acquisition is very much.
David Wilson [00:06:54]:
What I would call an ecosystem market.
David Wilson [00:06:56]:
So there’s a whole bunch of different sets of technologies in there. The backbone from a corporate point of view is, say if you put this on with a corporate lens and a.
David Wilson [00:07:06]:
Corporate hiring lens, obviously, then obviously the.
David Wilson [00:07:08]:
Applicant tracking system was typically the entry point to that, then across into things like candidate relationship management and then across into a whole plethora of related kind of technologies and services that sit around that. But we’re focusing in this case mainly at what we would call the TA suite vendors. So the companies that are really trying to sell their solution suite out to corporate buyers, one of the distinctions in.
David Wilson [00:07:41]:
This particular 9 grid is we also look at specialist providers within that as well.
David Wilson [00:07:46]:
So one of the things we’ve done on the other nine grids is, is increasingly as we’ve looked at things, rather.
David Wilson [00:07:53]:
Than having the historical maybe ATS CRN.
David Wilson [00:07:56]:
CRM type classification, where when we originally started the research, I don’t know, five years, five, six years ago, you know, that would have been the logical classification to use. What we found was obviously over time that became less relevant as the ATS vendors started building out CRM capability and vice versa. So we started talking about talent acquisition suites covering kind of the majority of the backbone, I guess, of that T Acres system and then specialist providers who were providing maybe a more disruptive capability around that. So maybe around some, you know, just.
David Wilson [00:08:33]:
Around candidate experience maybe or recruitment marketing.
David Wilson [00:08:37]:
Or whatever it was, you know, interviewing and so on and things. So we’ve taken that kind of methodology into the whole thing. And actually it’s part of that transition also has infected the other nine grids. So we’ve moved to that kind of classifications in learning and in HR and talent and people success as well, to adopt the same kind of approach.
David Wilson [00:09:00]:
So when you look at the 9.
David Wilson [00:09:01]:
Grid, you’ll see circles, which are really our assessing, assessment of them as a suite of capabilities and then specialists, which really only pay in part of the capability set. But maybe where they’re trying to do that with a more disruptive sense.
Matt Alder [00:09:16]:
Let’s talk about what’s happened in the market. So what are you seeing in terms of where the market is 12 months later and how have the sort of. How are, how have. And how are the software vendors responding to that?
David Wilson [00:09:30]:
Yeah, I mean, obviously the, to many, you know, the things that it’s been the COVID pandemic, that’s almost obviously the defining moment in everything or the defining driver in lots of, lots of things. And what we found is obviously that from the corporate perspective, to some degree.
David Wilson [00:09:48]:
We almost saw this kind of implode.
David Wilson [00:09:50]:
Explode dichotomy between them.
David Wilson [00:09:53]:
So some, some organizations, if they were in the right space, you know, someone.
David Wilson [00:09:56]:
Like an Amazon, for example, being the most obvious examples were, couldn’t recruit people.
David Wilson [00:10:04]:
Fast enough because of the changes to their business, led by other organizations, were.
David Wilson [00:10:09]:
Busy furloughing everybody or laying them off and probably not recruiting anybody in some.
David Wilson [00:10:14]:
Ways for, for a while.
David Wilson [00:10:16]:
And so that had massive impact in terms of the whole, you know, recruiting priorities, etc.
David Wilson [00:10:23]:
Within organizations.
David Wilson [00:10:25]:
And it’s kind of interesting that just to look at the response and the consequences that’s had on the vendors. So, you know, obviously there was a period, particularly in Western Europe and maybe the US where, where it’s sort of March, April time frame where nobody had a clue what was going in. It was the sky was falling in and there was kind of lots of uncertainty. And then I think what then happened was we started to migrate into how do we cope in this situation and what, what, what, what does that lead to? And I think depending on where, from a corporate point of view, where you were in terms of that implode, explode kind of spectrum, it had a big impact. Right. So I mean, obviously we saw certain organizations who had to literally kind of.
David Wilson [00:11:08]:
Transform the way they were operating straight.
David Wilson [00:11:10]:
Away to scale hugely and others that.
David Wilson [00:11:13]:
Effectively were shutting down to a large degree.
David Wilson [00:11:16]:
But where we found that, and this was a kind of narrative we predicted, but it was kind of interesting to see it materialize really, which was if you have an opportunity to change because effectively there’s a kind of slowdown Or a higher, a freezing freeze on hires, then there’s a massive opportunity to fix.
David Wilson [00:11:37]:
A whole bunch of systemic problems that you probably had.
David Wilson [00:11:40]:
And you know, one of the reasons.
David Wilson [00:11:42]:
We started looking at talent acquisition four.
David Wilson [00:11:44]:
Or five years ago was that almost every corporate we were talking, it was.
David Wilson [00:11:48]:
Broken as a process.
David Wilson [00:11:50]:
You know, there were lots of use of legacy platforms that were becoming increasingly dysfunctional. There was massive innovation within the market. The complexity of the ecosystem around TA was becoming more heavier and heavier and therefore there was a huge need for change. But in some ways there was a problem with the catalyst to actually doing that.
David Wilson [00:12:14]:
And I think in many ways the.
David Wilson [00:12:16]:
Pandemic has provided that catalyst. It’s forced the issue and a lot.
David Wilson [00:12:19]:
Of organizations have taken the opportunity to.
David Wilson [00:12:21]:
Make those kinds of changes. Obviously it’s also done is it’s within the, within the whole TA ecosystem. It’s also changed the balance of where people are focusing. So you know, there’s lots of interesting kind of things around talent mobility and changes around obviously the experience.
David Wilson [00:12:40]:
Word gets put around on everything.
David Wilson [00:12:42]:
So making that really meaningful in terms of how that impacts talent in the wider marketplace, talent pools and candidates and so on. There’s, you know, AI is all over the story and every vendor you talk to has got an AI roadmap. Diversity, equality and inclusion has kind of become a huge issue, obviously accelerated even further because of things like both gender.
David Wilson [00:13:12]:
You know, gender related things, but also.
David Wilson [00:13:13]:
Black Lives Matter and so on. So you know, there’s all these things have all kind of come to, into the melting pot all at once. And as a response to that, we’ve.
David Wilson [00:13:25]:
Seen quite significant changes in terms of.
David Wilson [00:13:28]:
The software vendors as they both try to become much more, you know, a modern TA suite away from whatever their.
David Wilson [00:13:38]:
Historical ats, CRM, whatever it was routes.
David Wilson [00:13:42]:
We’ve also seen big changes around things like pre boarding and onboarding. You know, now that basically nobody joins come for a period at least nobody joined company and actually physically met anybody. So it put a lot of pressure.
David Wilson [00:13:56]:
Around some of those parts of the spectrum as well.
David Wilson [00:13:58]:
So I think lots of changes across the whole board.
Matt Alder [00:14:01]:
Lots of things that I want to dig into a little bit, a little bit deeper. But to talk a little bit about the, the vendors themselves. When you did the original, when you did the, the report a year year or so ago, there was no one in the strategic leadership box and that sort of seemed to reflect what was going on in the market levels of maturity with some of the, the vendors as they sort of transformed what they did. That’s changed this time round, hasn’t that?
David Wilson [00:14:27]:
Yeah. And so. And in some ways that’s one of the biggest. I mean, I would say, you know, if I look at the 2021, you know, the most obvious, the biggest change is the, the we have, we’ve created people at Strategic Leader.
David Wilson [00:14:44]:
There’s also an increase in the number.
David Wilson [00:14:45]:
Of vendors that we’ve participated in IT and so on. And I think there’s been some actually.
David Wilson [00:14:51]:
Relatively significant changes around the kind of trajectory and rating on a number of.
David Wilson [00:14:56]:
Different vendors as they’ve really kind of stepped up in the last 12 months. And you know, that’s reflected through on the nine grid.
David Wilson [00:15:04]:
The strategic leader one is obviously the.
David Wilson [00:15:06]:
Thing that everybody focuses on. And in some ways the absence of.
David Wilson [00:15:13]:
A strategic leader in the previous two.
David Wilson [00:15:15]:
Iterations that we did both the interim and then the 2021 was a huge, I think, statement around where I think we saw the TA market. And just to be clear, it was.
David Wilson [00:15:24]:
The only 9 grid we’ve ever published that didn’t have a strategic leader in.
David Wilson [00:15:28]:
It, which is kind of. So it really isn’t. Was an exception.
David Wilson [00:15:33]:
And I think what we saw was.
David Wilson [00:15:35]:
That a lot of the legacy, particularly the nine grids, are focused on.
David Wilson [00:15:40]:
On enterprise organizations, you know, so typically.
David Wilson [00:15:43]:
Large or large or medium enterprise organizations. What we saw is that the legacy leaders for that space had kind of, because of various factors, because of acquisitions, because of other things had kind of gone away, you know, fallen away, but they still sometimes had significant market share. But, you know, and companies had yet.
David Wilson [00:16:08]:
To, as I said, really go through.
David Wilson [00:16:09]:
Find that real catalyst to accelerate the transition moment. What we saw was a number of candidate strategic leaders, if you like, so.
David Wilson [00:16:18]:
Companies that were typically either in Strategic.
David Wilson [00:16:20]:
Challenger or core leader, trying to trajectory up. But the reality is we hadn’t really seen them actually make that transition in our minds. You know, there were still, there were still question marks around whether they had.
David Wilson [00:16:35]:
Really kind of were proving that, particularly.
David Wilson [00:16:37]:
For us in emea, because we’re looking at an emea, you know, set weighted lens on this.
David Wilson [00:16:43]:
It’s not.
David Wilson [00:16:44]:
The 9 grid is aimed at European companies and buyers rather than US ones. So that also changes the equation a little bit. And so, yeah, so this year we’ve got three vendors we’ve positioned into Strategic Leader, one of which came out of the Strategic Challenger box, which was Avature and then Smart Recruiters and Phenom, which.
David Wilson [00:17:12]:
We’Ve moved up, Phenom obviously being a.
David Wilson [00:17:14]:
Specialist, Smart Recruiters and Avature being TA Suites. And that’s actually a really significant change.
David Wilson [00:17:21]:
In terms of the overall 9 grid.
Matt Alder [00:17:22]:
Just to go back to what you were saying about ATSS and CRMs the last time we spoke on the podcast we were talking about ATS were all building CRMs and what was the future look going to look like? And in the report you talk a lot about talent, relationship marketing. Give us an update on what you’re seeing in that area.
David Wilson [00:17:41]:
Yeah, so, I mean, so first of all, I think if you want and for any of the vendors, they need to offer more than just that ATS core effectively. You know, they need to be able to move across or provide a backbone capability that goes across the wider TA life cycle and, and an ecosystem. So definitely we’ve seen that across fertilization between ATS and CRM continue. And I think some degree, some of the initial efforts there were still, you could still tell the root DNA. I’m sure, you know, this is a conversation you have with your other guests, but you could tell a little bit the root DNA of the company. And I think, you know, the, but the desire to transition I think has accelerated. You know, the need for those vendors to step up the, this, the looking at that whole CRM TRM kind of space really I think is interesting. So the, the vendors have talked a lot around, you know, relationship and candidate experience and how they kind of engage around that whole space. And I think that reflects, to be honest, what we see in the wider HR market as well.
David Wilson [00:19:02]:
So the experience word tends to kind.
David Wilson [00:19:05]:
Of become very dominant in terms of what we’re trying to do. But often it’s a bit, can feel like it’s a little bit of surface lip gloss. In other words, people focusing on a UX of a system and saying that now delivers a great, a great experience around it. And I think what’s interesting when you look at so the other byproduct in.
David Wilson [00:19:30]:
Some ways of the pandemic, which I.
David Wilson [00:19:31]:
Think is interesting, is when we went.
David Wilson [00:19:34]:
Into that pandemic, we know that skills.
David Wilson [00:19:37]:
Was a huge question, right? And the ability to, to recruit the right kind of people and right skills in certain areas, particularly around future focused things around digital skills and, and agile working and all these kinds of things. That was already a huge challenge. What the pandemic has done, however much it’s impacted all the rest of hiring, has put those skills even more in the spotlight as being of critical need and so on.
David Wilson [00:20:09]:
The difference now is every company is.
David Wilson [00:20:11]:
Trying to recruit those. So thinking about how you focus on building relationships with the, with people that are, have those skills in the market is becoming hugely critical, I think, and it’s also becoming inherently something that’s a much more omnichannel in terms of what.
David Wilson [00:20:35]:
You’Re trying to do.
David Wilson [00:20:36]:
So it’s, it’s not kind of the, the talent relationship management type thing is not just a nice to have. Yeah, it’s been an area where you building and maintaining relationships with the potential.
David Wilson [00:20:51]:
Candidate talent and including of course your.
David Wilson [00:20:53]:
Alumni and people that have left you is becoming really, really critical as a way of providing that ability to then.
David Wilson [00:21:02]:
You know, hire those skills that you want in the future.
David Wilson [00:21:05]:
Or, you know, particularly in the US where it’s been, it was actually, it’s.
David Wilson [00:21:10]:
More of a rehire rather than a reboard if you like, because they were.
David Wilson [00:21:13]:
Actually laid off rather than furloughed and.
David Wilson [00:21:17]:
Thinking about how you connect with those people as well.
David Wilson [00:21:21]:
So we think the TRM piece is something that’s just become really pivotal to the relationship between an organization and that potential kind of the talent outside it. And obviously I think also that is beyond just people that have already deemed.
David Wilson [00:21:42]:
Themselves as being candidates or you’re deeming them as being candidates.
David Wilson [00:21:45]:
So I think it’s something that has, and this probably reflects the way we think about marketing more generally is now is the way in which we relate to our potential market outside us has.
David Wilson [00:22:00]:
Become much more sophisticated, much more, as.
David Wilson [00:22:03]:
I said, omnichannel, much more data driven. And I think at the end of.
David Wilson [00:22:10]:
The day, the same is true between.
David Wilson [00:22:12]:
A company and its potential future talent. And obviously some point within that, some of that becomes people who are actually.
David Wilson [00:22:20]:
Candidates to be employed.
David Wilson [00:22:22]:
So I think this is an area where we see, we expect to see that continue. There continues to be more pressure and I think increasingly, particularly in a kind of knowledge economy type stuff, this stuff.
David Wilson [00:22:37]:
Will become hugely important. But it’s also very important in transactional and blue collar as well.
Matt Alder [00:22:42]:
I think that’s fascinating and it really does reflect some of the other conversations that we’ve, we’ve had on the, on the podcast with vendors and the practitioners themselves in terms of the sort of the importance of, of that relationship management, but also the way that learning is starting to cross over there. It’s kind of really sort of fascinating area and development. And I think the other thing, and again you highlight this in the, in the report that’s sort of related to that is talent mobility. And certainly in the early stages of the pandemic, that’s what everyone was talking about, what was the talent ability within their organization. But there was a sense that the Technology wasn’t really there to do what it needed to do. What are your findings on that?
David Wilson [00:23:22]:
Yeah, so I think obviously again, the.
David Wilson [00:23:26]:
Pandemic massively increased the organization. The needs for organizations to be a.
David Wilson [00:23:30]:
Lot more agile and to be able to redeploy their resources in order to reflect what was going on in their business on the way that business was.
David Wilson [00:23:40]:
Going to grow and evolve in the future.
David Wilson [00:23:42]:
So, you know, from a basic level, just to keep the lights on towards a situation now where, you know, beyond.
David Wilson [00:23:49]:
Surviving into, how do I thrive in.
David Wilson [00:23:51]:
This kind of scenario? And we also talked obviously earlier about, you know, the scarcity of key skills around this. So, you know, a bunch of topics, talentability and how do I optimize the ability for the talent I have got internally within the company to, to be able to be redeployed or used in ways that’s the most productive and frankly.
David Wilson [00:24:18]:
More interesting sometimes to the employee themselves.
David Wilson [00:24:21]:
How do I connect that with an outside view of potentially kind of the talent that’s there? You know, I can either to some degree build, buy or borrow that the skills that I need. So how do I look at that on a more, on a more wider basis and a more connected basis? So joining up the view of mobility internally as well as externally I think is really critical here. And we’ve seen things like talent marketplaces become really an interesting disruptor space. We look at those a little, you know, a little bit obviously from the, from the talent acquisition side of things, but also within talent and people success.
David Wilson [00:25:01]:
And the wider kind of HCM story as well.
David Wilson [00:25:03]:
So we’re looking at those from both those angles. I think you’re right that sometimes this felt like it was more story and a bit of hype than necessarily the product reality, if you like, that was going alongside it. But it’s moving really, really fast. And I think what is happening to.
David Wilson [00:25:24]:
Organizations as we start to emerge maybe.
David Wilson [00:25:27]:
Out of this stage of the pandemic and going to, looking towards Future operating models, etc. Are just going to put more pressure, I think, on us being able to look at that talent mobility question from both sides of the equation.
David Wilson [00:25:44]:
In other words, from the company’s point of view, but also from the employees.
David Wilson [00:25:48]:
Or candidates perspective and how they might actually know where we maximize the opportunity of everybody around it. And there’s very basic things that, you know, within the, within the recruiting side of things where, where we can obviously do a lot better job of working out that, you know, whether applicants for a job in one place are applicable or usable in Other places, whether we look at our kind of alumni and.
David Wilson [00:26:13]:
Rehiring some of those people and so on as well.
David Wilson [00:26:15]:
So. So I think that we’re still in early stages of maturity around that in terms of the solution capability, but also.
David Wilson [00:26:25]:
The way in which it joins up across the talent life cycle.
David Wilson [00:26:28]:
I think that’s also, as I said, both between, you know, externals and internal.
David Wilson [00:26:34]:
Resources and alumni and so on and things like this.
David Wilson [00:26:36]:
So. But it’s an area we’re seeing a huge amount of interest in. It’s definitely one of the specialist disruptor stories that we see with a lot.
David Wilson [00:26:45]:
Of large enterprise organizations.
David Wilson [00:26:48]:
You know, this is an area where.
David Wilson [00:26:49]:
They think they can really have a big impact quite quickly.
David Wilson [00:26:52]:
So it’s a good area for specialists, if you like to play. And almost by definition, if that’s true, that also means it will be a.
David Wilson [00:27:02]:
Good area for the sweet players to.
David Wilson [00:27:04]:
Play and a good area for acquisition. So I think we’ll see quite a lot of things emerge out of that.
David Wilson [00:27:12]:
As we go forward over the next 12 months.
Matt Alder [00:27:14]:
One of the things that we talked about last time was data and analytics and how they play in these tools and how the employers use them. It would certainly seem that things are getting more sophisticated in talent acquisition when it comes to. When it comes to data analytics. Is that something that you found?
David Wilson [00:27:32]:
Yes, but I still think there’s a lot of room for improvement there. I think, again, analytics is part of.
David Wilson [00:27:38]:
Pretty much every vendor’s story to some degree.
David Wilson [00:27:42]:
And I think one of the things I may have talked about before, but it’s a theme we’ve talked about many times, is the difference also between big analytics and little analytics or between big data and little data. So I think there’s a couple of.
David Wilson [00:27:59]:
Different lenses is we can look at that analytics piece.
David Wilson [00:28:02]:
So one is to do with the.
David Wilson [00:28:04]:
Efficiency and efficacy of the processes we’re.
David Wilson [00:28:07]:
Using and the feedback that we have around those. And I think when we look at the tools, there’s a lot more that.
David Wilson [00:28:16]:
Could be done to provide, I think.
David Wilson [00:28:18]:
Meaningful data into the hiring managers and.
David Wilson [00:28:23]:
People managing the overall processes as well.
David Wilson [00:28:27]:
As well as people running the overall processes to really give them good insight on what’s going on within their. Within their hiring processes. The other thing that I think is missing from a lot of the TA vendors is outcome. You know, they’re still focused on things like time to hire and those kinds of measures, rather than the impact that those hires have on the organizations afterwards. So I think joining up the view of outcomes from within the TA processes to the impact that those people have.
David Wilson [00:29:09]:
Once they’re hired afterwards and do they stay, let alone even do they perform.
David Wilson [00:29:14]:
I think is a really critical kind of lens that’s a bit missing. The other interesting thing I think here is there’s a big difference when you look at this from, you know, the recruiting angle from let’s say an HCM suite where they’re trying to sell this kind of whole, you know, this whole value chain story and look at the analytics from more of an HCM centric view and then sort of rippling that across into TA versus obviously, if you’re looking, looking at it from a TA only perspective, trying to work out how you, you add more, you know, add more value and have more impact. The other area I would say that that’s, that’s kind of interesting is the more that we go away from the ATS being the whole answer, if you like, and that it’s all about the whole, the whole TA ecosystem as a whole. And there’s a lot more kind of.
David Wilson [00:30:15]:
Escher around the front end of the funnel rather than just the back end.
David Wilson [00:30:18]:
Then obviously that also changes the kind.
David Wilson [00:30:20]:
Of analytics that we want to use as well.
David Wilson [00:30:22]:
So. So I think that’s an area where again, the more that suites become stronger across the wider TA ecosystem and lifecycle, the more that they will also build out analytics to be more meaningful associated.
David Wilson [00:30:38]:
With that rather than really just focusing.
David Wilson [00:30:41]:
On the applicant process once they’re actually in the system. Does that make sense?
Matt Alder [00:30:46]:
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It’s such interesting time in terms of how everything’s going to, going to develop. I suppose that’s a, that’s a sort of question to you, looking, looking forward, over the next 12 months. Obviously in all of these areas, you know, you’ve talked about how you think things are going to develop, but what would you sort of overarching predictions be in terms of how things might move forward in 12 months and what would, what we would be talking about if you came back on the show again this time next year?
David Wilson [00:31:13]:
First of all, there is some, there’s some really big themes which I touched on earlier, but we haven’t gone a lot of detail. But I mean the whole DE and I agenda, the use of AI, I think within there from a technology point of view, as I said, every, pretty much every vendor has it in roadmap.
David Wilson [00:31:28]:
But I think it’s been quite slow to materialize through to become really disruptive and there’s a lot of obviously concerns.
David Wilson [00:31:36]:
Around things around bias and ethics within that as well, but I think those are areas where I can just see more, both of those topics having more and more pressure. I think the other thing is to some degree onboarding is still an under, under invested, you know, correlation in this whole discussion. Maybe that’s the transition between TA and being employed. But at the end of the day in, you know, we’re in a world.
David Wilson [00:32:05]:
Now where onboarding has become like hugely.
David Wilson [00:32:09]:
Hugely challenged because of the lack of.
David Wilson [00:32:11]:
Physical onboarding, I guess.
David Wilson [00:32:13]:
And I think the key thing that.
David Wilson [00:32:14]:
We’Re seeing across all the markets is.
David Wilson [00:32:16]:
Effectively digitally LED, is the dominant model now because you can’t guarantee who’s going.
David Wilson [00:32:22]:
To go into the workplace or who isn’t.
David Wilson [00:32:24]:
And you know, whilst obviously maybe in 12 months time the workplace will look different certainly than it has been over the last 12 months and it will go partly back to normal, it’s not going to completely go back to normal. So I think that’s an area where companies could massively do a better job in terms of how they do that and how that also connects into, as I said, you know, the outcomes afterwards.
David Wilson [00:32:52]:
Who stays, who performs, etc.
David Wilson [00:32:54]:
I think that’s a critical piece from a vendor marketplace. I think one of the interesting dynamics is that despite maybe the kind of the politics of it that you, the European market or EMEA has become quite, quite attractive to a lot of the US companies. So one of the things that’s been going on in the background actually for.
David Wilson [00:33:20]:
A while is that the us, some of the bus players of, obviously, so.
David Wilson [00:33:24]:
Someone like an ISIMS would be a good example of that, has become much more assertive about what they’re trying to do within emea and that’s starting to bear some significant fruit for them in terms of building momentum. You know, the other, another big interesting projection there is obviously one of those.
David Wilson [00:33:46]:
Legacy players that we saw has becoming.
David Wilson [00:33:49]:
Kind of more dated and part of.
David Wilson [00:33:51]:
The kind of history story was Taleo.
David Wilson [00:33:54]:
And Oracle has started to get an awful lot more assertive also, both on an HCM level but also within the recruiting space again with its recruiting cloud offer. Workday obviously continues to put a lot of pressure on from an HCM level to convince people they don’t need to.
David Wilson [00:34:15]:
Buy TA suites and specialists.
David Wilson [00:34:17]:
I think all of these dynamics are going to continue to amp up further over the next 12 months. The thing I think I most hope is, if you like, that the sort of dam is kind of broken and the floodgates will open a little bit.
David Wilson [00:34:34]:
Around the continued transition of organizations.
David Wilson [00:34:37]:
As I said, the reason we started looking at talent acquisition in the first place was because it was so obviously.
David Wilson [00:34:44]:
Broken within most large companies that we were talking to and there was a.
David Wilson [00:34:47]:
Real need for change and that change.
David Wilson [00:34:53]:
Is being driven from a number of different directions.
David Wilson [00:34:55]:
I think the pandemic has helped to unblock that and to open the floodgates.
David Wilson [00:34:59]:
A little bit to the transition.
David Wilson [00:35:01]:
Despite all the challenges it creates in terms of the economics on companies and so on, I think they recognize that they can’t function like they were before and I think so. My biggest prediction is ultimately that we expect that to continue and that effectively companies will have to take a more.
David Wilson [00:35:20]:
Radical approach to the way that they.
David Wilson [00:35:22]:
Are looking at the talent acquisition thing and that they have to really up their game in terms of what they’re trying to do. As we come out of the more of the pandemic. I think, as I said, the skills we couldn’t hire before are massively more in demand now.
David Wilson [00:35:35]:
Every company has to be digital, not.
David Wilson [00:35:38]:
Just those that see that as a visionary transition. So. So I think the pressure on skills.
David Wilson [00:35:44]:
Is going to be more acute in.
David Wilson [00:35:46]:
The future and that companies, corporates need to up their game really around how they engage with that and the processes they use, the relationships they build around that future talent, and that hopefully really is a strong vindication of what’s going on in the talent acquisition market already. But as I said, I expect that to amp further as we go forward.
David Wilson [00:36:12]:
Over the next 12 months.
Matt Alder [00:36:13]:
As you said, we’ve only really managed to sort of scratch the surface of this in the last half an hour or so. So I think everyone really needs to go and read the report. So final question. Where can people find the research?
David Wilson [00:36:24]:
Yeah, so it’s on the Foss Way website. If you go to our nine grids area, you can see the talent acquisition.
David Wilson [00:36:32]:
As a section there and you can download the report.
David Wilson [00:36:36]:
For free from there to actually look at it as well as, as I said, look at the diagram. The other thing is the. All of the report, the reports of our nine group reports, etc. And research is available in German as well. So if you’re in the DAC market, there’s a.
David Wilson [00:36:50]:
There’s also a switch you can put on and get access to the report in German as well as English.
Matt Alder [00:36:54]:
David, thank you very much for talking to me.
David Wilson [00:36:56]:
Thanks, Matt. Nice to speak to you.
Matt Alder [00:36:58]:
Again, my thanks to David Wilson. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram you can find us by searching for recruiting future. You can search all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
