I’m here at the 2012 HR Technology Conference in sunny but chilly Chicago. One of the best reasons to come to the HR technology show (besides the great people here, the sessions and parties) is to talk to people and vendors about the new technologies they are working on
Like many of you, I love to focus on technology as part of my job. But, as I go through the floor here in Chicago, I’ve tried to pull out the recruiting vendors from the rest of the human capital space. As is typical, recruiting is often leading the pack in innovation and new products.
Here’s a brief rundown of the things I’ve seen (and haven’t seen) at the HR Technology show:
Kenexa
This summer, IBM acquired Kenexa. So certainly, when I spoke with them this week, they have some excitement about what the acquisition means for the company. We talked about the new enterprise possibilities, their tablet-focused Rapid Hire product as well as some wins they have on the RPO side of their business. They’ll continue to get deeper integration with IBM business suite, especially as we head into the new year.
HireVue
I spoke with digital interviewing company HireVue about their award winning mobile application, their social interviewing app OpenVue and their integration of their last acquisition, CodeEval. One of the more difficult things to do as you are gaining market share rapidly as HireVue has is to keep an innovative edge. What HireVue seems to want to do is help make the entire hiring and decision-making process easier for recruiters, not just save them money.
Hireology
Hireology focuses on making selection management easier for non-recruiters. I learned during our conversation that they have internally developed questions, assessments and selection tools specifically for ease of use for non-recruiters. While no scoring system is perfect, they believe they have a strong enough correlation of success in order to roll out. As they continue to grow, they anticipate they’ll be able to tighten and tweak to adjust based on client feedback.
Smashfly
The recruiting marketing platform Smashfly continues to grow and expand capabilities. Their aim is to be an all-in-one recruiting marketing solution. We talked about their marketing platform where they’ve built everything from job distribution to a recruiting-specific CRM. Their solution is built on a single platform (and single codebase, since they’ve built all of their technology) but they can turn specific capabilities on and off, depending on customer need.
Luceo
One company I hadn’t heard of as I rolled into Chicago is CareerBuilder-owned ATS Luceo. The company has European roots but was only recently launched in the US. The company told me that they want to simplify the recruiting process and make their product easy to use whether you’re the recruiter or candidate. They’ve also focused on having localization early due to their international presence.
OneWire
While OneWire has shifted a bit, their community-based, focused approach to recruiting hasn’t changed. They have re-upped their investment in making a great community for finance professionals and will soon be adding more video content that will help candidates understand what it takes to work in the financial industry.
TalentWise
Background screening company TalentWise has continued to push the innovation envelope in an area that is often ignored: pre-screening and background checks. They recently released TalentWise Hire, what they call as a promise fulfilled to their customers. It offers full integration in both recruiting systems as well as leading HRIS systems. The customizability, as well as the focus on ease of use and compliance, helps the company separate themselves from other screening providers.
Entelo
When we last saw candidate sourcing platform Entelo, they just had launched. That was all of a week ago. We talked not just about passive candidate sourcing but also sourcing based on the availability of candidates. They are also hoping to up the partnerships they have with other platforms, tighter integrations and figure out ways to use the crazy amount of data they collect.
Who wasn’t here?
BranchOut has revamped their platform. The Facebook-based business networking and recruiting tool has had some trouble continuing to attract regular users. Their monthly average users have dropped from nearly 14 million to now less than 3 million. A year after being named a top product of the year here at the HR Technology Conference, they are nowhere to be found here in Chicago. We’ll see if the application’s revamp helps BranchOut gets what it wants most: regular users.
Some entertainment
During lunch yesterday, we were treated to guitarist Mike Rayburn. I’m usually not the guy that focuses on entertainment but his guitar playing is both entertaining and technically complex.