HRsmart Customers Just Took Another Hit

Follow the bouncing ball. In 2005, Monster agrees to be a reseller for an ATS called HRsmart. Over time, as the market shifts and other tools (Indeed, LinkedIn) outmaneuver Monster, it decides to roll itself out as a product company that also happened to have a deep candidate database, and a job board. They bought several companies, and began offering career site hosting, nominal job distribution, etc. They kept HRsmart at part of that offering, but did not acquire the technology

*(As an aside, the ATS is a super important tool to not control it as part of your tech-offering stack, if you’re offering a full stack solution for sale…)

Monster sells its solution to a number of companies.

In 2015, HRsmart is acquired by Deltek, a poor-man’s, wanna be Oracle.

You remember them, from the movies, right..?

They decide that since Oracle has an ATS, they need one too. Support and development at HRsmart stops almost immediately. ATS begins to go down for clients, sometimes for days on end.

In 2016, Monster is acquired by Randstad, which has its own set of tools, as well as investments in numerous recruiting tech start-ups. Including some which could compete with Monster’s tech stack – so, is the tech at Monster being sunsetted, merged, or what..?

This week, HRsmart drops the ball with at least a dozen clients. Jobs do not post, and applying is turned off, as they announce that Deltek is being acquired by Roper Technologies. And if you use HRsmart, and think things were bad under Deltek? Just you wait. This ride’s gonna get all sorts of bumpy for you.

Here’s the thing – this is where it helps to be able to “dial a friend”. If any company that bought HRsmart over the past few years had asked for our advisement, they would not be in the boat they’re in now.

It’s that simple. HireClix Consulting Services (we’re calling it “Sherpa”) is designed to help avoid just these types of problems. We have spent years getting to know the technology in our space – who’s doing what, where, what’s the innovation, what’s breaking, who integrates with who & how, who simply cannot be implemented, and on and on. Our depths and breadth of knowledge in talent acquisition technology comes from years of working within the space. We install, rip out, reinstall, fine tune, etc, ATSs, live within their CRM, marketing platforms, sourcing tools. Manage our clients’ tool selection processes.  Partner with the investment space, providing guidance to HC tech investors. Test products and help with design for vendors.

And, because of all of that – we don’t build products. Not ever. Any consulting firm that tries to offer advice on what tool to buy, when they build a tool like that… is pretty suspect. Our guidance is agnostic – client driven, and knowledge informed. We can get you to the top of your next mountain.

Meantime, if you’re reading this, and you’re using Monster’s technology, call us. Asap. It’s free – we’d like to help, since the site dropping, and acquisition, cannot be fun to be dealing with. Just email martin.burns@hireclix.com, or call: 617-851-7277.

Monster, Randstad, and… What’s That About HRSmart?

It’s entirely possible you heard the news. Possible. Certainly, if you work in the recruiting industry, it’s definitely possible. Maybe even highly so.

Anyways: Randstad (big giant Dutch recruitment process outsourcing company) bought (former) big giant US job board company Monster.

Which is interesting.

This acquisition may benefit Randstad – the integrations are going to be fascinating – and there’s nothing wrong with that. If they really keep the Monster brand intact, it’s going to be tough long-term (and I don’t see them doing that). So, if it’s not to create an entire separate product company, and it’s me at Randstad, I’m doing this for a simple reason.

Growth, through (a modest) diversification.

The RPOs have had several years of growth in the EU and Asia-Pac, but were more stagnant in the States and Latin America. They’ll likely slow in the EU (political and economic instability may hinder job growth), but continue to scale in Asia-Pac, as hiring by scale vs quality is still more the need for many of the larger manufacturers. The larger RPOs have been retooling internal processes lately, seeking innovations in models, technology, offerings, etc. On the technology side alone, many, if not all, of them are dealing with legacy contracts from clients, have to work with disparate ATS’s due to their client base, often don’t do CRM internally, etc. Because of this, they don’t have the ability to get a strong handle on source tracking, SEO, etc etc, because their data is in multiple places.

Ranstad’s move makes sense, in this context. If they want to rip out a number of internal, hodgepodge systems, and replace them with something new, unified, and efficient (not to mention being able to provide this suite, at a cost, as a service to clients), then they have two options: build from the ground up, or buy an existing stack and adapt it.

My money’s on the latter. To buttress, consider this: the Ranstad Investment Fund that invest only in TA/ recruitment start-ups. Some of them, you know. They also have a really smart team.

Here’s why I think it adds up. First, Randstad is buying a stack that has some tested technology across most of the recruitment cycle. I say most of, for a reason. There are a couple important gaps.

Roughly, define the recruitment process as starting with “we need to hire someone” to end with “they started”. It’s everything in that gap. Monster’s tools hit at pieces of that process (sometimes over and over) – they’ve got workforce planning tools to get the job opened, advertising and research tools to find people, a CRM to keep track of leads, a career site hosting product for you, and an applicant tracking system (ATS) so you can track people as they apply and move through your process. The issue is… not all of it works well, or necessarily together. There are still issues with integration across the tools. The CRM is a challenge, to say the least. And – strangely – the ATS and career site hosting offerings aren’t even Monster-owned products.

That’s right: two of, one could easily argue, the most important parts of the overall hiring process, are not Monster. They’re HRSmart, owned by  . HRSmart no longer works very well (source tracking is minimal-to-nothing, career site occasionally goes offline for hours – sometimes an entire day, etc). We’ve been urging Monster to work on the issues, but… well, not their product. And the products owners are Deltek, which is simply a private equity backed acquisition play that is not investing in development. So they’re not gonna fix it.

I see a possible future. If Randstad completes their acquisition, they’ll have some holes to fill in the offering stack. Notably, ATS and career site. Randstad invests in recruitment technology, and there’s an opinion out there that it’s simply as a way to test and potentially acquire technology firms. One of their investments is a platform called gr8people: a career-site product, ats, and CRM all in one.

Again, if I’m doing strategy at Randstad, I’m sliding those products into the stack, and shoving HRSmart out. Heck, I’m looking at my entire portfolio, and saying “can we really step up, and offer a working ERP that focuses purely on TA? It makes sense, right? You get your own internal ERP running, since it can track the vast majority of your product cycle; can offer a full stack to your clients; and get all that anonymized data in one spot, finally, where you can begin to build data models.

Here’s the rub for you, the HRSmart user: this doesn’t happen tomorrow. You’re still stuck with a platform that’s frustrating, and not going to get any better due to the integration. You may get access to the Randstad stack at some point, but it’s going to come with costs (higher fees, unlikely you’ll be able to just buy career site hosting & ATS, pressure to go RPO).

If it’s me, and now I’m just me, the guy who used to run Talent Acquisition at a few places, and thinks about this stuff way too much, I’m going to want to hear about options if I’m an HRSmart customer. Heck, I may just want to hear about options because I don’t like my current platform. If only for safety, to make sure what I’m doing makes sense (there are a loooot of options out there right now).

Can I Help?

Since I’ve been there, and feel your pain, I’d love to make an offer (paying it forward, since I’ve been given similar help in my time).

Call me. Well, or e-mail me for times, and we’ll set something up. A half-hour chat, about where you’re at, and what are your options. I’ll pontificate, probably, but mostly there will be good advice, and probably some laughs. A shared war story. Or two.

Here’s the info:
Phone: 617-488-9444
E-mail: martin@hireclix.com

Farewell, Mobiquity

About a year and a half ago, a good friend & colleague in the talent acquisition field connected me with Susan Miele, one of the top human resources pros in the world (as a side-note, if you ever have the chance to work with Susan, jump at it). We hit it off, to say the least. After several hours over coffee, swapping stories, approaches, ideas and ideals, she asked me to come chat with the executive team at a company she had recently joined: Mobiquity.

What sold me (beyond the chance to be mentored by an A+ level boss) was the opportunity to fix a pretty broken talent acquisition department. Over our tenure together, Susan and I have built a team that is second-to-none in terms of quality, camaraderie, and results (also, this team – if you have the chance to work with, for, or hire any of them, don’t lose that opportunity). We get things done, and we do it with a sense of humor. To paraphrase Joel Spolsky, we looked for people who were “Smart, Can Tell a Good Joke, and Get Things Done”. We succeeded beyond our expectations, and the team was able to play a key role in scaling Mobiquity from around 100 employees to close to 450, a small handful of offices in the northeast of the US to 12 offices on 4 continents. Personally, I’ve had the unique opportunity to spend time overseas, working on M&A from an HR perspective, along with traveling domestically helping open offices in key cities across the US.

It’s been a blast. And, now, it’s coming to an end – for me, at least.

I’m not going to say much, yet, about where I’m going, beyond saying that an opportunity arose that became too interesting for me not to pursue. When I was discussing it with a trusted colleague, in a Hamletesque moment of indecision they said: “If you don’t pursue this, I’m going to tell Susan to fire you so you can. You have to do this.”

So… I did. I’m beyond excited for my next step, while, like Janus, looking back with a pretty ridiculous smile at what my team hath wrought.

Here are (a few) of the people I had the absolute pleasure of working with – the Talent Acquisition team: Jeff Newman, Alex Bowler, Michael Fabiano, Melissa Adamo, Becky Bajan. I thank each and every one of them, and I can’t wait to work with them again.

More to come, soon – I promise….

How We Harm Our Daughters’ Futures

Not to soapbox (I have Facebook status updates for that), but this is something that struck a chord with me. For the past few years, I’ve been involved formally as well as informally, in efforts to encourage more women to get involved with technology.

It’s not because I’m heroic – it’s because I’m selfish and lazy. The more women there are who get involved in technology, the easier my work as in talent acquisition becomes. Not simply because there are more tech candidates (since, I’m not always a tech-focused talent acquisition person), but at a more meta level: the more people there are working in tech, the more rapidly we advance. New tools for talent acquisition, Better medications and technology to help us live longer.

We get to build NASA’s warp ship sooner.

 

 

Ahem – sorry… I get a little excited when I think about how WE’RE TALKING ABOUT BUILDING A WARP SHIP THAT CAN GET TO ALPHA CENTAURI IN JUST A FEW WEEKS.

S0. Right. Important real-world stuff time.

Do the math: over 50% of the populace in the US is female. The majority of college students are women. And yet: only 18% of college engineering majors are female. That not only makes zero sense, it’s also a major blow to us COLONIZING PLANETS IN ALPHA CENTAURI.

Google just released their internal study about diversity within the organization – and, it’s depressing. Admirably, they admit as much, and are committing to correcting the issue. (The race issue is another, and I suspect driven by similar social behaviors, issue that should trouble you greatly – we are wasting talent in so many directions…)

Here’s the thing: it’s blow-by-blow, the way we limit our development as a species. By constantly trying to make our girls more “girly”, we are killing them. Limiting their chances at success, while also limiting our society. There’s a terrific video out by Verizon that illustrates this much better than I can – I’m embedding it below. You should watch it. And then: watch yourself. I think we’re all guilty of this at some level, and it’s time we did better. For everyone’s sake… (also, so we can go to Alpha Centauri)

Public Appearances: Panels, Speakers, and Tigers… Oh My…

So…. Dusting off the blog (yet again). I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been putting content seemingly everywhere but here (I was even trending on Twitter last week… sorta). Regardless, if you follow Good to Know, you may have wondered if I’d kicked the can into the great playground in the sky. Particularly if we aren’t connected on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or some other random social site (I probably still have a Geocities account somewhere – if only I knew Japanese…) I do tend to yap a lot on those sites.

All that said: hi there. I’ve been busy with some travel lately, and some of that has involved me confronting my greatest fear: public speaking.*

Since I’m a shameless, if slightly lackadaisical, self-promoter (you should be, too – it’s your career, you need to manage it), I thought I’d catch you up on where I’ve been – in case you own a Tardis, and want to go check it out.

These are a few highlights – I’ve done some breakouts, coffee seminars, etc in between. These stood out as, well, the most fun:

• First up, I spent last week at the annual ERE Conference in San Diego. I was lucky enough to be invited onto the keynote panel, where we chatted about Strengthening Your Recruiting Department’s Internal Reputation and Influence. I was also asked to lead a team of recruiting leaders in a discussion around using mobile in recruitment – a topic I find fascinating.
• Late last year, I was asked to present at HireClix’s Recruitment Media Day, which is a neat event where recruiting leaders get to meet with various vendors of recruiting tools (Indeed, LinkedIn, etc etc) all under one roof, and do some one-stop shopping. Lots of fun talking about what’s coming over the horizon in recruitment. Hat top to Scott Ryan and Neil Costa for inviting me.

Now, and, probably more importantly: where I’m going to be/ what I’m up to:

• iRecruit Expo, Amsterdam, June 4th & 5th: That’s right – I’m crossing the Pond. And, apparently the Channel. Also a few canals. I’m leading a panel with my pal, Gordon Lokenberg. We’re going to dig into using mobile in recruitment (because, that really is the big deal everyone thinks it is). I’m also running an unconference session there, thanks to Bill Boorman.
  • If you’re interested in attending, please let me know. I’d love to catch up with you in person.
• Day-to-day-wise, I’m still with Mobiquity. With our expansion into Europe, I’ve been spending about two weeks per month there at our office, helping with an integration, as well as looking at locations for additional offices/ hiring/ etc. It’s been fascinating. I’ve also started wearing skinnier pants, and funkier shoes. This gets me made fun of in our Boston office – and I like it…
• I’m looking at a writing project, either an ebook, or an actualbook. I’d like to look at where the industry is going, as I think we’re in another evolutionary phase in the talent field. If you know a good publisher… feel free to warn them.

More to come – a few deals I haven’t fully committed to yet, for the fall. Once I have them set, I’ll update.

Best,

Martin

*Fine: I find shaved bears more terrifying than public speaking. You would, too: I mean, just look at this thing.

How to Retain People

So, I was on Stack Overflow (I like it there). The keychain “feature” Apple offers drives me nuts from time to time (or, maybe it’s just the sketchy way Chrome saves passwords…), and I was looking for solutions. Came across a question on the topic, with a highly rated answer. The answerer, a guy named Amro, has a blog.

Long(ish) story short, he has a solid post from about a year ago, about how to hang onto your employees – particularly the tech talent that’s all the rage these days. Bunch of good thoughts, but the one that sticks with me is “Employees don’t want to feel like “resources.””

Bingo. I work with someone who refers to our colleagues as resources. I’ve never once heard them say “colleague”, “employee”, or even “human resource”. A cog in a factory, a robot welding a car, a cow in a freaking farm: are resources. People aren’t. People, btw, absolutely know who refers to them as resources – and, feel the same level of loyalty to that company as, say, that cog does to its factory.

Want to retain people? The bells & whistles, benefits and pay, matter, but they stop mattering the minute you try and turn those people into “resources”. Want to know how they feel? Here:

Cut. It. Out.

Seriously. Shocking that it’s still going on – and, my peers in the HR & Recruiting communities have a share of the blame. Fight the power, etc etc. Make sure you capture data on work-life balance both when you’re recruiting as well as during exit interviews. Tie that into why people are leaving your company, and add in how often it comes up as a pain-point when you’re talking to candidates. If you can reduce turnover by 10%, multiply that times your cost-per-hire, and you can make a pretty quick case to your colleagues about treating people like, well, people.

*Also – and as an aside – Amro’s a great example of why it pays to have some level of presence online, and in your field. He’s now thought highly of by a company in his space, that’s doing very cool things. This is how you maintain a career, people.

Seeking Extraordinary Talent Acquisition Professionals: Boston, Redwood City, and Beyond

In putting together a job description/ ad for the talent acquisition professionals I’m looking for, I wound up writing a manifesto. Not sure it’s what I’ll run with, but I like it. Kind of a lot – thought it deserved life somewhere, and since I have this handy little platform available to me, I’m going to take advantage. Please, feel free to pass along, dissect, disavow, dissemble, diagnose… just, don’t duplicate (unless you’re willing to pin the blame on me). Never was a fan of copycats.

In any event: I’m building a team. It’s going to be fun. There’s loads of potential, a great platform, some interesting challenges, and support from the executive team. Don’t expect me to breathe down your neck, but do expect me to help you when you need it. I know I need people in Waltham (near Boston), Redwood City (that’d be near San Francisco), and I’ll probably need somebody in Gainesville.

Senior Talent Acquisition Consultant                                                                                                                               

Ever want to be part of building something extraordinary? Now’s your chance.

Why Join Mobiquity? Why Now? Because it’s Your Best Move, and Now is When it’s Available

There’s a reason why thought-leaders like Andrew Hiser, the pioneer of human-centered software design, have joined Mobiquity. It’s because they see the future becoming the present: Mobile changing everything.

It’s the 5^th Wave. The world in your pocket. Applications that tell doctors how well your medication is working as it passes through your body, to ones that alert a restaurant that you’ve pulled into their lot and are ready for you to walk their take-out to them.

Apps that help drug addicts recover, and apps that will help you retire wealthy.

We’re not talking about flinging birds at pigs anymore (fun as that is). We’re talking about changing how people behave, how business gets done, and how we will shape the future.

Mobiquity is at the leading edge of the wave. Positioned to define the future of mobile, a name that will become as familiar to the world as the names of the biggest successes out of the Internet wave.

Talent Acquisition Makes it All Possible

Without solid talent, organizations stagnate and fade away. Without the greatest talent, organizations can’t surge, can’t become the key leaders in their space. Our job is to make sure that happens. We seek real recruiters. Budding talent acquisition thought leaders. We get the big It: that it’s always about the people. That A players hire A players, while B’s hire C’s, C’s hire D’s, and well… then you get to F. Failure.

Our role is to find the A’s, engage with them, excite them, and help them through the hiring process. We’re matchmakers to the Nth degree, but we’re also business people. We use marketing, social media, talent pools, innovative sourcing & research, and a degree of sales skills to attract the very best. We never cut corners, we don’t lie, harass, or avoid hard truths: we are the A-players of recruitment.

We Are Looking for You

Join us, if you see recruitment as much of a calling as a profession – if it’s your passion, as much as your paycheck. We’re going to blow some things up. You should find that exciting. You should feel process is a tool best used lightly. You should be funny. Funny matters, in this role and in life.

If you’re sitting there, thinking “holy crap – I’ve been looking for this!”, you have the next step in your journey to greatness: Find our Talent Acquisition leader, Martin Burns (you can use your mad Boolean to do that right now, or just scroll down a bit). He’s looking for people want you to share some new skills, try new approaches and make some mistakes along the way, and to grow into leaders in our game-changing, rapidly evolving profession. His goal is to make sure you get the opportunity to do all of that.

Make the Best Move – Join Mobiquity

You can find Martin all sorts of places: mburns@mobiquity.com. 617.851.7277. twitter. linkedin. facebook. etc, etc…. You’re in the game. You get it.

Related articles

• Dr. Changelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Went to Mobiquity (recruiter.wordpress.com)

Dr. Changelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Went to Mobiquity

Funny, how life goes. A few weeks ago, I was buzzing along, running Talent MatchUp & working with a great client called Magenic. I’d been working onsite with them for a little over two years, and it was great. Smart people to work with, a nifty little model that I think may be a significant part of how we do recruitment in the future, and I’d become friends with many of the people there.

All that said… something was missing.

That’s not unusual, of course. You spend a few years doing the same thing, and you can start to feel a bit stale. The work had become fairly routine, I was in a pattern, and… I hate that. I’m not someone who’s good at rinse-cycle-repeat, and that’s where I’d gotten myself. Not that the work didn’t have its fun challenges, but still. I wanted something harder.

Like many entrepreneurs, I don’t know how to say “ahh, this is good – don’t mess it up.” On the contrary. I honestly think I exist to mess things up. A little bit of chaos, of weird, seems to suit me. It’s probably why the Absurdists have always resonated with me. Why I felt so at home the first time I stepped into the ICA. Why I find comfort in The Fairy Fellers Master Stroke.

Safety isn’t exactly in my power alley.

So. Last Tuesday, like I do from time to time (and, you should, too), I reached out to my network. Said something along the lines of “I’m sure you haven’t, but if you’ve heard of my dream job being open, could you let me know?”

See, here’s the thing: sometimes, when you speak into the Void? The Void also speaks back to you.

In this case, it was my friend Steven. He’d heard of something. Something that was Really Cool. Perfect. Insanely great. So, like I’m always telling people they should do, I took the resume I routinely update (you should, too), and shot it to him. He made an intro to their insanely great Chief People Officer. We had coffee. She’s insanely great.

So’s the team that she lined up to meet me on Monday. They’re really great. Winning dream-time kind of people. A smart idea, and first to market. Profitable in their first year. An inspirational founder who has multiple successes under his belt. Big goals, and smart plans on how to achieve them. I really wanted in.

So… yeah. It happened. The big IT. Susan (the Chief People Officer – did I mention, insanely awesome?) asked me to come onboard, and build their recruiting department. I think I hesitated for…. no. Nope, didn’t hesitate. Couldn’t. Took the job.

So, in my rambling way, I’m very (very) happy to announce that I will be joining Mobiquity later this month, as their Director of Talent Acquisition. I’ll be rolling up Talent MatchUp in the meantime, since Mobiquity is going to be scaling hugely, and will need all of my focus (along with the recruitment team I’ll be building). It also means that Magenic will be looking for an experienced talent acquisition specialist for Waltham (know a good one? send ’em my way, and I’ll treat ’em right).

Mobiquity is going to be big. They’re a year out of the gate, and already a leader in the mobile space – and, with IT directors now saying that mobile spending will be  growing by 50% in 2013, that’s a good place to be. The executive team is impressive. Well planned expansion underway. They’re – wait, _we’re_  going to be hiring. A lot.

If you – or, someone you know – is looking to get in early with a game-changer, this is it. Find me anyway you can, and let me know who you (or they) are.

Short term (ie, yesterday, if possible), I’m looking to hire several experienced Sales Executives for New York and Philadelphia, as well as a Client Partner for New York. I’m going to have a lot more to share, soon (developers, developer, developers….G&A. Marketing. Recruiters…). Stay tuned.

Also: the career site needs some work. Which I find geekily exciting. Just bear with us for a brief bit.

Microsoft Tech Junkie? Like Your .NET, C#, SQL? Come to Code Mastery, Boston – It’s Freeeeeeee……

So, this is a little bit of me helping out a favorite client (Magenic), a little bit of me helping you out (if you’re a smartie who happens to dig developing in and around the .NET platform, or just wants to be around a bunch of nice geeks on a Wednesday), and a bit of me helping, well, me (because, I’d like to meet you, and help you with your next career move into a great company).

Magenic is a very cool, high-end custom application development shop. They do big project based work for clients that have hard problems to solve. The projects typically run 6 months+, are local to the office, six-seven figures in size, and require the use of the most cutting edge Microsoft technology available (for those of you whose religion is, say, Java, Ruby, whatever, calm down – .NET people are good people, too, they just develop in a diferent church platform than you do). The typical project team is a mix of architects(s), senior engineers, design, QA, project manager, etc. They don’t tend to outsource, as it helps with quality control. In between projects, consultants focus on training, speaking engagements, etc. Because they have to do some pretty heavy stuff, they hire really engaged, talented engineers and architects to get that done. Then, they give them lots of training opporunities, cool projects to work on, and the opportunity to speak at technical events like Code Camp, SharePoint Saturday, etc, about what they’re working on.

Which brings us to the post in question. They also run a series of events called Code Mastery. These are free, day-long events where they talk about what’s happening now, and whats coming, in the future for Microsoft. The speakers are interesting, bright, and highly informed, and include MVPs like Rocky Lhotka You’ll walk away with a ton of actionable information, as well ast contacts who do what you do, so well. There’s one coming up near Boston in a week that I think you should get to, if it sounds like your kinda gig.

And, if you’re looking for a job, you may well walk away with an interview scheduled…

Here’re the particulars:

Register here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3290438791?ref=ebtnebregn

Go here: 21 Jones Rd, Waltham MA o2451

On: May 2nd, 2012 at 8 am

Hope to see you there.