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

Forget Mobile Apply – It’s Mobile Connect

There are few buzzwords in the recruitment industry being used with more frequency right now than “mobile”. Try it – ask a talent leader at an organization: “What’s your strategy for 2015?” I’ll bet they say something along the lines of “mobile social candidate engagement – using big data!” And then, I’ll bet they run away.

That is, of course, ridiculous. They won’t just run away – they’ll throw a smoke  bomb at the floor, and ninja the heck out of there. And, yes, speaking of buzzwords, I just used ninja. Yikes.

The Risk of No-Mobile

But… to my point. Mobile is, despite the word’s now-ubiquitous use at recruiting conferences, important. There’s debate around how it’s going to be used, why, how to track it, etc etc, but… no real debate that we need to play catch-up when it comes to our career sites, how we communicate our jobs, heck, even the formatting of our job descriptions.

(Finally, btw, firms are being forced to stop throwing every stinking requirement into a job description – mobile demands pithiness, simply because of the screen size. I love this.)

A key part of all of that is mobile apply – that point where a candidate gets to in your job description, and they say “Ah, I want this job, I’d like to let them know I exist”. Quite often, they see a note that says “Interested? Great. E-mail this job to yourself”

Oof – you lose 40% of your candidates right there. And then, how many actually remember to apply when they get that e-mail? I’m still digging into hard evidence, but right now we’re looking at about 50%.

That’s insane, to me – it comes down a 70% drop off rate among mobile applicants. With mobile now accounting for half of all job searches, that’s a number that should make you nervous. Very nervous, indeed.

The Risky Side of Mobile Apply

Now that said, Jeff Waldman – who I happen to think is one of the most terrific people in the industry – raises a solid point in his post “Beware the Dark Side of Mobile Apply”. The risk of an uptick of quantity, without quality. Making it so easy to apply to a job that you get resume spam – your team is overwhelmed with applicants, most of who aren’t qualified for the role, and you lose out on time getting to the candidates you’d like to speak with. You wind up losing time, money, and hires. It becomes a bit like what happened when LinkedIn made it too easy to connect via their mobile app. Connection spamming began, and it’s just getting worse.

That’s… messy.

The Power of CRM

This is where I suggest you leverage your CRM – you do have one, don’t you? If not, get on it – the CRM is critical. As important as your ATS. Peter Gold does a good job explaining why, here. Well worth your read.

The CRM is, essentially, your marketing machine. It’s where you want to have an abundance of potential applicants – the key word there being “potential”. It’s your collection of talent pools, your own personal LinkedIn/ Monster/ etc. Not candidates, per se, just… strong contenders. You actually want to lower the barrier to entry to your CRM, while keeping the barrier to your ATS where it is. The ATS is the walled garden, that you invite individuals into. The CRM is the front lawn, where you’re just having a bit of a party.

So, to my mind, don’t make it a mobile application – that’s almost impossible as it is, considering screen size, human patience, OFCCP issues, etc, when it comes to mobile. Call it… Mobile Connect. Ask them to join your community – tell them (in essence) “Connect with us, and if you’re looking for a job immediately, let us know by checking this box – we’ll take a quick look, and if we see a connection to a role we have open right now, we’ll let you know. If not. or If you just want us to be aware of you, you fabulous person, that’s okay too – we’d just like to invite you to the party against the time in the future when we’re ready for that great dance. And, if you’re really eager and want to get an application going with us, there’s an option to do that, too – we’d just recommend you do it from a PC or a tablet, since there are a few extra steps it’s easier to go through with a bigger screen.”

They key thing is: don’t shy away from mobile, but don’t cast open the doors so wide that you swamp yourself. Turn it into an opportunity to power your CRM, instead, and reap the benefits of a solution that combines… egads.. mobile… candidate experience… social… and, yep, big data (hey – done right, this strategy’s gonna give you all sorts of fun data to slice and dice).