Need some inspiration? These Talent Acquisition resources are chock-full of knowledge and personality!

In the last five years, the recruitment industry found itself undergoing an exciting renaissance. A profession no one ever wrote books about is now smack dab in the zeitgeist, directly affected by both cultural movements (like #metoo) and technological advancements (such as AI and social media trends).

The human capital management (HCM) market is projected to grow to $22.2 billion by 2023, up from $13 billion in 2016. All this growth means the tools and practice of recruitment and HR will evolve at a rapid pace, and practitioners can’t rely on the grapevine to keep abreast of the latest news.

Fortunately, there are a plethora of recruiting podcasts, blogs, newsletters, online communities that keep pace with the industry goings-on. The following list is just a few of our favorites – seriously, there’s so many out there! We chose these because they are engaging and keep us coming back every day!

Feel free to tag us @smartrecruiters with ideas for our next edition.

1. Recruiting Brainfood

Longtime recruiter and industry influencer Hung Lee created the weekly TA newsletter, Recruiting Brainfood, back in October of 2016. Over 127 editions later (and 10,000+ subscribers), Recruiting Brainfood is now a community for hiring practitioners worldwide, with the largest concentration in the UK, but quickly spreading. (US folks can gain workplace street-cred by introducing this resource to colleagues.)

Subscribe to the newsletter for a manually curated collection of articles, interactive polls, and jobs relevant to the talent industry; or, join the Facebook group for community chats, live stream Q&As, and video interviews.

What makes this community special is how active the audience is in polls and conversations. This may have something to do with the host, Hung Lee, who has made a concerted effort to break the fourth wall, acknowledging new members and never letting a comment disappear into the internet void. A personal example, when I joined the Facebook group I was prompted to fill out a survey about the newsletter. I jotted down some thoughts (largely positive), and a couple of days later Hung followed up on my minor layout suggestion. Now, that’s engagement!

2. Recruiting Subreddit

Reddit is mainly known for memes and casual trolling, but it’s so much more than that! The annals of Reddit unpack practically every subject known to humanity. Whatever interests you, there’s likely a subreddit of people who care about it just as much (or more), and recruiting is no exception.

The Recruiting subreddit is a great forum to get feedback or ask questions. One newbie crowdsourced goals for their first quarter on the job, another for tips on no-show candidates. These – and generally all inquiries – were met with many specific and encouraging answers – proving that the internet can be a nice place sometimes!

3. HR Open Source

HR Open Source is kinda what it sounds like. In its own words, they are “a global community of practitioners who believe collaboration is the key to preparing their organizations for the future of work. Simply put, [they] make it easier to access peers and resources needed to thrive. at zero cost.” Practically, this means you join the community via their website or Facebook, and then you can share/read case studies or ‘Sparks’ (the site’s adorable name for abridged case studies), participate in surveys, talk to your peers, and even buy some cool merch.

Founded in 2015, the people behind #HROS (that’s how you should search their posts on Twitter) are two impressive recruiters you may have seen on the conference circuit: Lars Schmidt, founder of Amplify Talent, and Ambrosia Vertesi, VP of people at Duo Security. One great asset from this resource is their latest Future of Work Report. The data they collected from actual practitioners about how their teams are interacting with tech and allocating budget was extremely enlightening, and unique in that it wasn’t just spectator commentary.

4. HR Girlfriend

HR Girlfriend is a professional network for women working in HR, where members can find professional development and certifications, events, and industry job postings. Anyone can peruse the website and learn from their Real Talk Blog. For those folks in the US, HR Girlfriend regularly hosts and attends events, so you can catch up with the Girlfriends in person.

The Q&A section of their blog is a personal favorite. The questions are real and relatable, and the answers are super detailed without being long-winded. I should also mention that the advice comes from real HR practitioners. Last week’s question tackled how to handle a scenario where an employee complains about a coworker showing them an inappropriate photo. The reply included a step-by-step procedure as well as additional resources.

Sana’ Rasul, Chief Girlfriend, HR consultant, and cybersecurity expert, says of the group, “If I could sum up why I’m committed to the HR Girlfriends community it would come down to because we are ‘….in this together.’”

5. Evil HR Lady

The title in and of itself makes this blog worth reading. The eponymous ‘Evil HR Lady’, Suzanne Lucas picked the name to challenge the prevailing stereotype that HR folks are rigid and spitefull corporate goons. Her blog seeks to “demystify” HR, revealing there’s usually a lot more going on behind the scenes than the employee general population, or even management, know.

Susanne posts a mixture of relevant articles from around the web, original content, and other resources, like webinars. Visit her blog or subscribe for the latest in your inbox.

6. Ask a Manager

You will get sucked into this Q&A blog! The questions range from ‘what should I do when I hit a coworker’s car in the staff parking lot?’ to ‘how do I handle misuse of sick leave?’, and much more. Every time I visit Aks a Manager, we can’t stop scrolling.

Alison Green started this website in 2007, and since then has written a book and launched a podcast covering all things management. The blog isn’t specific to HR and Recruiting, yet many of the questions cover relevant material. And, with three or more posts a day, there’s always something new to read.

7. The Lorne Epstein Show

Lorne Epstein is a recruiter and author in Washington DC, where he’s hosted his weekly radio show/podcast since 2016. The Lorne Epstein Show covers a diverse array of HR and Recruitment topics, from in-depth interviews with industry thought leaders like Lou Adler, to nuts and bolts how-tos of salary laws, to expounding the world’s most adventurous jobs – don’t you want to know what it’s like to be an FBI bomb investigator?

This podcast definitely has an ‘inside baseball’ feel, which is great for those of us who care about the proverbial baseball (in this case, HR and recruitment). So, if you get excited about the latest developments in the industry but are sick of the glazed-over look in your friends/partner’s eyes when you start on a future of work rant, this is the place for you!

8. Constangy, Brooks, Smith Prophete LLP Blog

Learn from experts with real employment litigation experience. Everyone has an opinion, but these are the opinions that really matter when it comes to legal issues at work. Of course, reading a blog does not count as actual legal counsel, it’s a place to stay abreast of the latest legislation and best practice.

The Constangy Blog focuses on US workplace law, though some subjects will be internationally relevant. That’s not to say that it’s all dry legalese – that couldn’t be further from the truth. Their contributors also offer editorials on topical issues like the movement for a $15 minimum wage and think pieces on historical work practice, like Radio Corporation of America’s HR guidelines for supervising female employees written during WWII.

9. The Chad & Cheese Podcast

To quote the hosts, Chad & Cheese is “HR’s most dangerous podcast. Lock your doors and hide your kids. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right in the face!”

The latest industry news with a healthy dose of snark – what’s not to love? The show listens like classic morning radio with irreverent attitudes and frequent sound effects, which is a nice change of pace for an industry known for buttoning up. Enjoy, but headphones a must if you are at work or around kids.

10. Hiring Success Journal

Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but we couldn’t resist. You already know about the Hiring Success Journal if you are reading this, but did you know that we have a weekly curated newsletter that delivers our latest articles straight to your inbox. Signup here for the latest recruiting stories, industry deep dives, and how-tos that will level up your TA practice.

Jerome Ternynck and Tracey Allison join Lorne Epstein on his eponymous podcast for a frank discussion on the challenges of today’s talent economy.

“The war for talent is over and the candidates have won,” says Jerome Ternynck, CEO and founder of SmartRecruiters, as he sits down with Tracey Allison, Director of Global Talent at Avery Dennison, on the latest episode of the Lorne Epstein “How To Capture Talent In Today’s Candidate-driven Market”, recorded at Unleash Amsterdam 2018. Far from taken aback, Lorne and Tracey laugh in agreement.

“[Recruitment] today is about how you attract talent to your organization,” says Tracey. “You are marketing candidates and bringing talent in, rather than, ‘I have a job – who wants to apply?”

During the next hour, the three experts discuss the needs of today’s talent practitioners from both a strategic and technological perspective, with stories of personal challenges they’ve faced in the field, from diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives to getting a seat at the table. Listen now for the full scoop and check out the top 5 takeaways below.

1. HR technology is a must.

“Why does everyone have great tech except recruiters?” Jerome asks.”Sales, Accounting, and Marketing software are all par for the course, yet people balk at allocating budget for Recruiting systems. Recruiting is a digital function now, and they need the right tools to be successful.”

2.Don’t force candidates to fit your mold.

“It’s about engaging the right way,” says Tracey. “We need to stop ticking boxes and go after talent. Right now, we should be driven more by the individual candidate and how they can be successful – which will really be your department’s ROI – versus just filling a job.”

3. Engage hiring managers, they are your friends.

“The relationship between recruiters and hiring managers is, in many ways, a broken one,” says Jerome. “It doesn’t get supported through technology, which should be the enabler. At the end of the day, hiring managers and recruiters both want to find great people. If you put them together in one place where they can actually work together then suddenly you don’t have the dynamic where hiring managers are the customers and recruiters are the service center. Instead, it’s a shoulder-to-shoulder partnership where recruiters feed the pipe and hiring managers close the deal.”

4. Sell a lifestyle.

“In a candidate-driven marketplace, getting the message of what life is actually like at a particular organization is extremely important,” says Tracey. “More and more, the lines between work and life are blurred, and it’s all about the experience.”

5. D&I every step of the way.

“First, you have to go the extra mile to source candidates from underrepresented groups,” says Jerome.  “And it’s not good enough to do a regular sourcing effort, and then say ‘oh well, only white guys applied, not our fault’. You have to actively go and source people that are underrepresented. Diversity is critical to business success in every organization. Second, you gotta make sure that once you have that diverse talent coming in, that they’re not being discriminated against. Which, in recruiting, means having some objective criteria to rate these candidates throughout the interview process.”

Learn more about creating an interview process that discourages bias in the full episode, alongside other awesome learnings including examples from Tracey on how TA can be a strategic partner for business success.

The biggest Hiring Success conference to date continues to drive engaging content alongside top-tier networking with over 1,200 talent acquisition (TA) leaders.

Are you a compliance wonk? A D&I devotee? An HR buff? Or, an HRIT connoisseur? Do you live recruitment, breathe TA, and are always thinking ‘what’s the next level for the industry?’ If so, get ready, because we are ready to nerd out with you at the fourth annual Hiring Success Conference, February 26-27 in San Francisco!

SmartRecruiters returns, once again, to San Francisco’s storied bay for Hiring Success 19, where TA leaders from around the globe will come together for two days of interactive sessions, the latest recruiting tech innovation, and top-tier networking that will define the future of recruiting.

Register now until January 18 for last chance on early bird pricing!

With 50 sessions, 100 speakers, and over 1,200 attendees #HIRE19 will be our largest event to date.

Participants can look forward to the scenic views at  Pier 27 that overlook the San Francisco Bay, where floor to ceiling windows and contemporary design gives a refreshing indoor-outdoor experience that will promote presence throughout the marathon of learning that is #HIRE19.

Recruiters on the front lines of today’s talent scarcity know firsthand how digitization is pushing everyone – from candidates to employees – to constantly sharpen their skills and stay abreast of the latest innovations. Hiring Success 19 helps practitioners do just that. TA practitioners share their experiences, learn from industry leaders, and workshop challenges with their peers.

Hear from practitioners like Sam Sepah, Organization Development Program Manager at Google, Anita Grantham, Chief People Officer at Pluralsight, Tara Strebe, Senior Director Global Talent Acquisition at Visa, alongside industry thought leaders like Lou Adler and Bill Boorman.

Three tracks help you create your own learning adventure. Mix and match to meet our expert content at your point of need. (full agenda to be announced shortly!)

• Innovation: Understand the latest recruiting tech and see how these digital tools will actually affect you and your practice.

• Inclusion: Stories of success and inspiration from hiring practitioners that will help you create the business case for a diverse workforce and inclusive work culture.

• Hiring Success: The case studies and hiring hacks from practitioners who have #BeenThere and know your pain points.

Two fan favorites return this year: Hiring Success Hackathon and Recruiting Startup Awards.

Hiring Success Hackathon Grand Prize: $5,000

This year we are excited to announce our second annual Hiring Success Hackathon. Teams will challenge themselves to build innovative features on top of the SmartRecruiters talent acquisition suite in just 24 hours. Inspired by our commitment to innovation and usability, we invite developers to join us in testing the limits of our Public API – and their own creativity.

All are welcome to apply! Submit your idea and list of participants to hackathon_team@smartrecruiters.com by January 15.

Recruiting Startup Awards Grand Prize: Gold Sponsorship for #HIRE20

Over 100 recruiting startups leverage the power of their networks to earn a spot as one of the final six teams who will pitch it out for the grand prize in front of our expert panel of judges and the entire #HIRE19 conference. Vote here to decide who makes it to the final round!  

See the latest recruiting tech, from AI job boards, and in-depth analysis tools to chatbots with big-personality and even bigger functionality. Be amongst the vanguard when it comes to TA innovation alongside the dreamers, makers, and entrepreneurs disrupting HR tech.

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Finally, networking: the exchange of ideas that only comes from being together with your peers (and heroes) in person. As much as we all value planning and strategy, there must always be room for the spark of spontaneity that happens when we unwind and digest all the learnings of the conference with other people who speak our TA language.

At #HIRE19 we leave space for you to make connections and follow up with presenters. Catch-up during one of the networking breaks, or meet during the Smarty Party while we all relax with food, drinks, and entertainment.

Be sure to follow us @smartrecruiters for agenda and speaker announcements.

Register now until January 18 for last chance on early bird pricing!

Twenty percent of turnover happens within the first 45 days, here’s how to get through this delicate period with optimum retention!

Bad hires are more than just a drain on company morale (which by the way is a big deal). Bad hires are estimated to cost several times that person’s first-year salary. In fact, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh was quoted as saying that his own bad hires had cost the company well over $100 million. In almost every industry, salaries and variable costs related to the workforce are, by far, the highest costs of doing business. Point blank, hiring the wrong person should be avoided at all costs. What happens, however, if the hiring decision process is being blamed for a poor or non-existent onboarding process when the problem lies with poor onboarding?

Why your poor onboarding process could be your company’s biggest threat:

Imagine the time, effort and money put into recruiting, interviewing, vetting and hiring the best candidate for your team only to have that investment squandered as they walk through your doors. This is an all-too-familiar tale in companies where onboarding is not done right or not done at all.

• Retention starts day one. The job market is competitive. Recruiting and retaining good employees is more important than ever. The September jobs reports that announced a decline in the unemployment rate by 0.2 percentage to 3.7 percent; the lowest seen in the U.S. in decades. Fewer job seekers are actively looking, and in certain fields like tech, finance and medical, these sought-after pros can pick and choose where they land.  
• Culture is contagious. Culture is a recruiting competitive-edge that wins top talent to your team. Lack of communication, poor training, and high turnover rates not only cost your business money, they negatively impact your culture.
• Your brand is on display. What happens inside your company, no longer stays inside your company. With online networking on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and other platforms, new candidates now have the ability to learn what truly happens in your organization. Make sure what they see is positive!

Four ways HR tech solves your onboarding conundrum:

So, if you recognize your human resources and onboarding weaknesses, you’ve made a great step toward identifying the problem. And, no need to panic, you’ve got a bevy of tech tools that you can easily tap into to help you get your onboarding up to snuff ASAP!

1. Reach remote teams. The number of remote workers in the U.S. workforce has been trending upward for the last ten years. While offering remote work options is a great recruiting tool, it can create some training and communication challenges. Technologies like enterprise chat and robust, cloud-based project management systems are readily available that allow new team members to stay connected, get face-to-face training (even if it’s screen-to-screen) and provide visibility to progress.
2. Dot Is and cross Ts. Compliance is an ever-evolving area of human resources. When hiring new employees, it’s important to comply with federal, state and local regulations and document that compliance. By using HR tech tools to digitize the entire paperwork process, you can protect your company from risks of non-compliance or poor record-keeping. And the new hires will love you for streamlining this not-very-exciting-but necessary part of the onboarding.
3. Communication flow demystified. Your current employees, as well as your new employee, need a constant flow of communication. In fact, a top complaint of unhappy employees is that their company did not let them know when things changed. Transparency, easily accessible communication, and consistency are the keys to keeping your workforce (both new and existing) feeling in-the-know.
4. Gain key insights. HR tech tools can also provide you with insight as to what’s working with your onboarding efforts and what’s not. Using qualitative tools (like creating confidential feedback channels) and quantitative tools such as performance metrics or training follow-up surveys.

Your company only gets one chance to make a first impression with your new hires. And up to 20 percent of turnover occurs within the first 45 days of employment. The good news is there are countless technology tools to help support and grow with the demands of your unique team.

MobieTrain swept the recruiting startup finals today at UNLEASH, a strong message that learning and development are what employers care about now.

“Every Startup – from Google to Facebook – starts with someone believing in the idea. That’s what we are here for today!” said Jerome Ternynck as he kicked off the final pitch session for the recruiting startup awards at UNLEASH, in Amsterdam. As the founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters, MrTed, and others, Jerome knows the nerve it takes to get on a stage in front of hundreds of people and pray they see your vision for the future.

. @jerometernynck hosts #UNLEASH18 startup competition! pic.twitter.com/orEHg3wqAG

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

Today, four startups took the stage with vim, and laid it all on the table in the hopes of becoming this conference’s recruiting-tech champion.

First up, MobieTrain, a micro-learning platform for the retail sector. With content at the point of need as well as fun badges and helpful nudges, this app is imparting needed-knowledge without the headache of lengthy courses.

Micro learning with @mobietrain goes for the gold! #UNLEASH18 pic.twitter.com/q6xu93n1xz

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

Second on the stage, Career Spark, this company wants to transform career pathing by making people decisions more data-driven rather than opinion based. How? Through machine learning and fact-based data science that helps you learn from your company’s top performers.

.@career_spark wants people-decisions to get data driven! #UNLEASH18 pic.twitter.com/ZHJJbDo4Vx

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

Third, Candidate.ID, the platform that turns your recruiters into marketers. Save time and increase the quality of hire with this ATS/CRM integration that includes candidate nurturing and scoring, email marketing, and closed-loop, real-time reporting tools.

“Genuine talent pipeline means you know who is cold, who is warm, and who is hire-ready!“ — @Candidate_ID pic.twitter.com/hsqQtSYnY4

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

And finally, Zapiens, knowledge management software that uses AI to raise the level of intelligence in your company so your employees can get answers fast!

.@zapiens find talent — and keep it — with data based learning solutions for your employees! #UNLEASH18 pic.twitter.com/kMtZqrgRDO

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

After the pitches, we heard from the judges about who they found impressive, Candidate.ID and MobieTrain emerged as clear front-runners.

“I’m split between Candidate.ID and MobieTrain,” shared Bill Boorman. “Though I am leaning slightly towards the latter because I think a platform that focuses on one sector, in this case, retail, tends to do better.”

“Yes,” agrees China Gorman, “I like that MobieTrain isn’t trying to boil the ocean.”

In the end MobieTrain won out, with Candidate.ID taking a close second. As Jerome pointed out, ”Sometimes it’s better to attack the market with a knife over a hammer.”

The main challenge that judge Yvette Cameron foresees for today’s winner is content creation. A stellar learning flow still needs the right sequence information. It will be interesting to see how this fresh recruiting-tech tackles this in the year to come.

Are you a Startup ready to compete? Check out Hiring Success 19 Recruiting Startup Awards!

Assessment is an important pre-hiring step, but if not done correctly you could be in a world of legal hurt.

Today’s employers must shoulder the burden of responsibility when it comes to knowing and complying with relevant anti-discrimination laws. According to a recent study, 42 percent of TA professionals felt that negligent hiring practices were the top concern for companies in 2018. “Ban the box” legislation, GDPR compliance, and other legal restrictions mean that companies need to be hyper-vigilant about their hiring practices.

Aware of these sensitive legal issues, a diverse team of scientists, business executives, and HR professionals came together in March of 2011 with the goal of building legally-defensible pre-employment assessments for any job. This team sought to create a cost-effective and time-saving solution that would empower organizations of all sizes to hire better quality candidates without sacrificing candidate experience.

The result? RightHire, an internet-based pre-hire assessment solution that is the only one of its kind to leverage a powerful innovative feature known as Synthetic Validity (patent-pending).

Using the RightHire platform, employers can build assessments that are legally defensible, highly predictive, offer a more positive candidate experience, and are 20 times faster than traditional methods of building assessments. Additionally, customers can build assessments for all types of positions, even low volume roles that aren’t typically covered by other solutions.

To learn more, we talk to Dave Mayers, RightHire’s VP of Business Development.

Briefly, on the back of a cocktail napkin, how does your product work?

Our assessment system evaluates applicants for any job. Administrators on the SmartRecruiters applicant tracking system (ATS) create customized job evaluations for each particular role within a company. Recruiters can then access this template library, and invite candidates to complete the relevant assessment. Once the candidate finishes, the hiring team receives a score for the applicant’s likelihood of success.

Why is your product a necessary tool for any SmartRecruiters customer?

Our pre-hire assessment system saves time while increasing the quality of hire, which means more productive workers who stick around longer.

What does your product do that can’t be replicated?

Our system is based on a novel technology called Synthetic Validity, exclusively licensed from the University of Calgary, Canada, which allows our customers to build legally-defensible job assessments that save companies precious resources.

How does your product help make the hiring process as easy as possible?

Customers can use our assessment system at the top of the recruiting funnel to assess all job applicants and screen-out poor-performing candidates. Alternatively, customers can use our assessments on applicants that pass the resume/phone screening, so interviewers can spend more time with vetted candidates.

How long would it take for the average existing SR user to implement and take full advantage of your product?

Implementation and startup take less than two hours, allowing hiring teams to augment their recruiting function the same day they sign up for RightHire.

What do you see as the future of Talent Acquisition and how do you fit into it?

We believe that innovation is key to the future of TA. RightHire is the first assessment to enable customers to quickly and cost-effectively build assessments for any of their jobs in a legally defensible way.

Fed up with human inefficiencies, this former recruiter used her math skills to automate a very human process, and save a ton of time in doing so.

Aida Fazylova used her background in mathematics and data science to sketch out a new approach to automate as much of the recruiting workflow as possible using artificial intelligence, automation and chatbot technology. The result, XOR.ai, is a customizable AI chatbot and workflow automation to engage, screen and hire candidates 33 percent faster than the normal hiring process, providing extended analytics about the candidates, including predicted employee lifetime value. With XOR, the recruitment process is completely automated, from the moment the candidate engages, right up to making a job offer.

Now, headquartered in Austin, Texas, with major customers in 15 countries around the world, XOR is the emerging leader in Human Resource/ Talent Acquisition process automation, and we sat down with Founder and CEO Aida Fayzlova (picture below explaining her amazing product at Hiring Success 18 Europe), to hear why this is so important.

Why is your product a necessary tool for any SmartRecruiters customer?

Our product combines the latest in Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, automation, and chatbot capabilities, eliminating the most time-intensive parts of the recruitment process. It’s available on your website 24/7, and can communicate in over 100 languages. XOR moves candidates through the funnel even while you sleep. Our AI will learn from your recruiters, hiring managers and candidates who come to your site, answering questions and gathering information, all to offer predictive analytics regarding future candidates and employees.

Briefly, on the back of a cocktail napkin, how does your product work?

Your candidate experience journey is elevated. XOR is with your candidates every step of the way, communicating conversations and data back to your hiring team in the ATS.

What does your product do that can’t be replicated?

Currently, XOR supports 103 languages and has global hiring capabilities. Our product is also known for its sophisticated scheduling functions.

How does your product help make the hiring process as easy as possible?

XOR automates 60 percent of repetitive administrative tasks that your recruiters are handling every day, which allows more free time for your team to focus on more imperative, strategic tasks.  

At what stage of growth are you, and where is that relative to how big you want to be?

We’re at a healthy stage of growth with a great headquarters in Austin, and major customers in over 15 countries around the world.

How does your product compliment the SmartRecruiters TAS – philosophically and technologically?

XOR is considered a one-stop solution for candidate experience. Providing self-scheduled meetings with recruiters, it’s available 24/7 to answer questions for candidates and walks applicants step-by-step through the entire application process. XOR will keep your candidates continuously engaged and send status updates until the position has been filled. Our software works the front end of the ATS for your candidates, automating a great deal of work for your recruiters and is proven to recruit 33 percent faster.

What led you to partner with SmartRecruiters?

SmartRecruiters has the same sweet spot we do. Most SmartRecruiters clients are enterprise customers and high-volume recruiters, which is really interesting for us. The simplicity and the beauty of the ATS is elegant and modern. Designing products and platforms in that same vein is why we chose to partner with SmartRecruiters.

How long did it take to become integrated into the SR marketplace, and what were the obstacles or adjustments in that process?

Our integration into the marketplace only took about a week, with one person, which was a pretty quick turnaround. We avoided any obstacles through preparation and research. There are some obstacles in getting the API to speak to each other but once we integrated it’s been working great.

How long would it take for the average SR user to implement and take full advantage of your product?

Set up will take about 3-6 weeks, most of this time will be spent with XOR’s customer success team, working closely with TA pros, learning the knowledge piece of the chatbot, going over screening scenarios and linking calendars to chatbots to self-schedule candidates. Our team wants to ensure your chatbot is customized to your recruiters’ needs and goals to be as successful as possible in their recruiting efforts.

What would you say to a company unsure about joining the SR marketplace?

SmartRecruiters marketplace is one of the best on the market. It’s full of incredible partners which gives you a great reach to SmartRecruiters customer base and vice versa. Great events like Hiring Success are organized to focus on bringing as much business to their partners as possible, and during those events, you are able to start building relationships with businesses and close a lot of deals.

What do you see as the future of Talent Acquisition and where do you fit into it?

We see it as a rise in conversational interface. Right now, most web interactions are form based. Forms are great, but there are better, more customer-friendly interfaces. Your friends meet you and they want to have a conversation, not fill forms, right? The same thing happens online. Users want to engage, ask questions, and have a personalized experience, not be stuck with one-size-fits-all forms.

You’ve already heard the buzz around Berlin’s venture capital swarm. Now meet one of the fastest movers in the hive.

MoBerries is a Berlin-based HR AI technology company, founded in 2015. CEO Terence Hielscher developed the idea while working for one of both Europe and Southeast Asia’s predominant Venture Funds, having observed the value in establishing a shared talent pool for their portfolio network. After only six months, over 50 portfolio companies were actively sharing and referring candidates within the network. Together with his best friend from University, Mo Moubarak, and a trusted colleague from within the Venture Capital Fund that built StudiVZ, Andre Zayarni, MoBerries introduced itself to the German market.

Why is your product a necessary tool for any SmartRecruiters customer?

The fact that you are using SmartRecruiters means that your company is in a state of growth. MoBerries is today’s largest shared-talent platform and a new candidate sourcing channel for SR customers with over 10,000 weekly candidate referrals. The partner network consists of leading DAX and digital companies, as well as venture capital funds.

Briefly, on the back of a cocktail napkin, how does your product work?

MoBerries sources actively searching candidates to be placed in open positions in real time.

What does your product do that can’t be replicated?

The network effect. Every partner company contributes to an exclusive candidate pool, enabling partners to access quality applicants when they need them most. Over 10,000 referred and active candidates join the platform each week. Profiling candidates and companies alike helps drive matches based on a reinforced learning approach, derived from live interactions on the platform. The AI further uses neural network methodologies to source faster, by taking into account your feedback in order to identify the perfect company/candidate match.  This is especially helpful for non-traditional roles where not all candidates have the prerequisite skills clearly represented in their CV.

How does your product help make the hiring process as easy as possible?

Traditional recruitment consists of three steps: Posting a position to job boards, screening candidates, and hiring the most suitable one. MoBerries eliminates the first two steps for its partners, and our platform identifies where talent can best unlock their potential based on predictive models centered around their interactions within the job market. Essentially, we are a scalable sports agent leveraging a technology to get people where they need to go, as fast as possible.

At what stage of growth are you, and where is that relative to how big you want to be?

MoBerries is rapidly expanding, already working with leading DAX companies, VC funds, and the majority of digital companies in Germany, as well as other European countries. Next step for us: Expansion to the US. We are driven by the mission to be the world’s leading shared talent platform.

How does your product compliment the SmartRecruiters TAS – philosophically and technologically?

SmartRecruiters and MoBerries share the same values, which are reflected in our talent acquisition (TA) strategies. Both of us see the market as an ecosystem within which we need to adapt. We are in the business of people, and people, as well as the greater marketplace, are in a constant state of change. To be able to keep up, sourcing tools & applicant tracking systems (ATS) alike need to be flexible and able to evolve to meet new market norms.  

Offering a smart and effective solution is not merely about finding candidates a dream job, but how technology can help them build their dream career. To ensure integrity, both solutions work in parallel towards a transparent, honest and feedback driven marketplace.

What led you to partner with SmartRecruiters?

HR is becoming more and more consolidated, and the best providers find ways to come together to form a recruiting stack. A company should be about how to integrate these various services seamlessly and provide the most robust HR experience. As a sourcing channel, we integrated because SmartRecruiters is all about the managing of talent and efforts of a company partner whereas we are about the analysis and optimization of talent sourcing. Not to sound cliche, but it really is all about people.

How long did it take to become integrated into the SR marketplace, and what were the obstacles or adjustments in that process?

From all the integrations we’ve run, this was one of the easiest. It took approximately 60 days.

What were some benefits of partnering with SR?

The main benefit is the consolidation of two tools for the end customers. By integrating our systems we provide a more seamless experience to hiring managers.

How long would it take for the average existing SR user to implement and take full advantage of your product?

The integration only takes seconds. You will have to be a member of MoBerries in order to take advantage of this integration and connect both accounts. For anyone interested in trying MoBerries we encourage you to reach out to us and your SR account manager. Once contacted you simply click a button under your MoBerries integration tab within your dashboard and you are ready to get started.

What do you see as the future of Talent Acquisition and how do you fit into it?

As the recruitment market starts to move at a more rapid pace, the onset of AI-based technologies are intended to work alongside humans in order to enable HR managers to focus their attention on the element of better marketing their firm and lasering in on the best fitting talent.

HR managers are becoming more like sports agents, understanding the importance of constantly reinventing the way they market their team, culture & vision. A technology stack allows them to focus on what they do best, and that is selling the brand to perspectives.

We want our B2B partners to hire faster by focusing their efforts on selling to the most suitable talent. We continue to build our technology stack around creating value for all parties, which in the end allows us to offer a smart and efficient online platform.

New research gets inside what companies really want from – and how they really use – their applicant tracking systems.

Recruiting software is the backbone of the talent acquisition (TA) process. First debuted in the late 1990s, the original Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) were designed to make the recruiting process digital, and revolutionized how we hire. On the candidate side, they automated the once paper-heavy process of the job application; and on the recruitment side, they improved and streamlined the process of applicant tracking.

Two decades later, the world, and especially the world of work, has undergone a technological revolution, but ATS technology remains largely unchanged. The result has been a scramble by recruiting leaders to deploy add-on solutions and modules in order to gain a competitive edge in recruiting top talent.

Based on numbers collected by Aptitude Research for all of 2017, below is a visual survey of how companies currently engage with their ATS systems.

As you can see, only 20 percent of companies surveyed were happy with their ATS provider. Less than 50 percent of businesses are investing in three or more ATS systems and three or more primary sourcing tools, while 70 percent of companies plan to increase investment in solutions and strategies that promote internal mobility. When you look at where that investment goes, it’s all about trust, 80 percent of employers will rely on word of mouth (above even their own requirements) when selecting an ATS, yet less than 30 percent recommended their enterprise resource planning (ERP) to their peers . This makes sense when we see that 43 percent think their ATS provider should be a partner, but only 40 percent actually feel like that is the case. Looking back on 2017 we see great strides in candidate experience, with 36 percent of companies ramping up efforts to make the hiring process better for applicants. 

While this chart can help identify pain points and where there’s room for improvement, many facets are solved simply by implementing SmartRecruiters’ Talent Acquisition Suite. Take a look for yourself to learn why recruiting teams are ditching the ATS for hiring success.

If you want to stay ahead in the hiring game, there are some tech advances you need to be aware of, or even more, to master.

There’s a large skills gap in today’s job market, and hiring professionals are finding it difficult to find the right candidates in this highly competitive market. This has given rise to hiring managers leaning more on social recruiting, artificial intelligence products, and overall HR technology upgrades. Here are four ways HR Tech will take your talent acquisition process to the next level.

1. Implementing Artificial Intelligence/Chatbots

Using artificial intelligence or chatbots in your recruiting process can drastically reduce tedium. Reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews and internal coordination are all necessary, but with a chatbot, all these tasks can be automated, leaving HR and recruitment professionals to focus on more complex activities such as employer branding, improving outreach, and other related tasks.

2. Posting on Multiple Job Boards

Recruiting professionals are relying on job boards to source quality talent. According to Zety, about 52% of applications arrive via from job boards. Most applicant tracking systems (ATS) offer job board integrations. Posting to several job boards at once is a great way to get more exposure, and with an ATS, your hiring team can save hundreds of work hours otherwise lost to filtering through a pool of applicants.

3. Pre-screening Candidates

AI for recruiting is designed to reduce or remove time-consuming activities like manually screening resumes. 52% of Talent Acquisition leaders say the hardest part of recruitment is screening candidates from a large applicant pool. AI screening software adds functionality to the ATS by using hiring data like performance and turnover to make hiring recommendations for new applicants. The recommendations are made by applying learned information about existing employees’ skills to automatically grade new candidates.

4. Using AI to Remove Bias From Recruitment Process

AI is able to assess data points around successful employees and objectively determine the best hires in a talent pool. Recruiting AI can be programmed to ignore demographic information, such as gender, race, and age to increase the opportunity for diversity.

AI also exposes bias in your recruiting, giving you a clear view of potential problems and the ability to address them.

If you’re thinking about improving your talent acquisition process, start with a 30 day free trial of XOR, which will streamline your process, lower your cost-per-hire by 50% and decrease your time-to-fill by 33%.