Christmas may have been a month ago, but SmartRecruiters has one more little present for its users: a new product release.

On January 25th, SmartRecruiters rolled out its Winter 2018 product update to all users of the platform. The release came packed with quite a few developments – including custom data reports, and integration of regional social networks such as DACH’s Xing and China’s WeChat – however, one of the most extensive updates concerns parallel processing and universal profiles.

What Exactly Are Universal Profiles and Parallel Processing?

Parallel Processing allows a candidate to apply for multiple positions within a single company. This new development takes full advantage of our new Universal Profiles, which allow you to quickly and easily see every application made by a particular candidate via a new ‘All Applications’ tab.

On an industry-wide scale, only around 15% of candidates make multiple applications with a single employer, although that number fluctuates depending on the sector, industry and job type. For example, companies which tend to source younger, graduate applicants are likely to see higher numbers of parallel applications, especially for entry-level positions or internships. Universal profiles will be particularly useful to these kinds of SmartRecruiters customers.

How Does It Benefit Candidates and Hiring Managers?

Universal profiles are designed to benefit both the candidate and the hiring manager at the same time. For the candidate, the benefits are clear: they can now apply for more positions within their favorite company, increasing the chances of nailing down that dream job. What’s more, hiring managers can keep better track of your applications, reducing the chance they’ll be lost in the ether. These developments will also result in a better candidate experience by providing additional transparency and ease of communication.

These benefits also carry over to the hiring manager. The increased collaboration and transparency means embarrassing mistakes can easily be avoided, such as two separate hiring managers sending offers or templated rejection emails to the same candidate. Now, thanks to Universal Profiles, each hiring manager will know where a particular candidate is in the process of all their applications with the company, as well as who is handling these applications, allowing them to better tailor their responses and communications.

All-in-all, this leads to an increase in candidate satisfaction, which leads to better employees and ultimately, hiring success.

Additionally, for companies undergoing expansion, restructuring or reorganizing, universal profiles could be an invaluable tool for dealing with many current employees reapplying to different positions within the company.

An Opportunity to Change Up Your Recruitment Process

Parallel processing also offers the opportunity to get creative with your hiring processes. For example, it could be used to foster internal competition between hiring managers for particular candidates, imbuing your staff with new drive and determination in their recruitment efforts.

If that’s not your style, the very same functionality can be used to encourage new levels of collaboration and cooperation. The ability for each manager to see where a particular candidate has applied means communication between users is seamless. So, if a candidate has applied to multiple roles, hiring managers can now easily discuss which position for which the applicant is actually best suited.

How Was Universal Profiles Rolled Out?

Universal profiles and parallel processing will became available from January 25th as part of our Winter 2018 product release. We understand the changes could impact upon existing workflows, and so a two-month opt-in grace period will be available from the date of release. Customers eager to jump in and take advantage of all parallel processing has to offer are free to do so from day one, however, those who want to take longer preparing, training, or testing the changes on test accounts will also have the time they need.

After the grace period, parallel processing will be rolled out to all customers as part of the SmartRecruiters platform.

This season’s release is a hat-trick of practical use add-ons that will make your candidate pipeline more efficient, give you greater power to interpret data and enable you to expand into local markets.

Every season we release new features, expanding our ever-evolving TAS to make your hiring process easier. Last season that meant integrating with big names like Slack, Facebook, Google, and Amazon to reduce your clicks and encourage collaboration from hiring managers. Another excitedly awaited functionality rolled out in Fall 2017 was ‘delayed candidate rejections’ which enables recruiters to delay rejection emails so if they immediately know someone is a poor fit, they can delay notifications.

Each season is different but we are always after the same goal. Make hiring better. Our Winter 18 features focus on transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness with add-ons that help recruiters find candidates in local markets, process them without redundancy, and then review their own work processes with easy to use analytics to keep improving their process for their company and their candidates.

Universal Profile

One person one profile. Each candidate creates a single profile with up-to-date information.

In large companies who experience a high volume of both internal and external candidates all applying for multiple jobs it can be harder than you think for one arm to know what the other arm is doing. Nothing looks more unprofessional to a candidate than to receive communications from two different hiring managers from the same company who seem to be unaware of each other’s existence.

Now, with Universal Profiles, recruiters can eliminate this common pain point and work across departments to find the best fit for every job opening.

Universal profiles source up to date CRM information from the candidates before and after the application process allowing employers access to the current status of every applicant.

Our VP of Product Rebecca Carr adds that in the future, “a proprietary ‘job fit’ score will be further amended to these profiles from the new SmartRecruiters Ai  which is currently in beta.”

So you can even use these profiles to source candidates for future jobs and encourage internal mobility!

Report Builder

A full-suite reporting command center including native reporting engine, ad hoc report builder, and real-time data warehouse unique and accessible to each customer.

We all know there’s a difference between having something and actually using it. Like the abandoned treadmill in the corner of most garages, a data set is only as effective as our ability to interpret.

As HR evolves to be a more strategic function and analytics are required to better understand candidate quality, cost saving, and business velocity, Director of Product, Natalia Baryshnikova explains, “Organizations will be able to compose, run and schedule real-time reports on their personal data sets across all SmartRecruiters modules, including the core platform and upcoming CRM and AI modules.” Which means you can start putting your data to work for you today instead of at some distant point in the future.

Latest integration: XING and WeChat

After integrating with big names like Slack, Facebook, Google, and Amazon, there’s still more collaboration to be had.

Most recently we’ve gained partnerships with regional vendors like XING (Linkedin competitor DACH) and WeChat in China, and all of Asia to further glocalize our suite and make sure our customers can find the candidates where they need and when they need.

You could perhaps be forgiven for thinking ancient literature and technology are not natural bedfellows. Well, SmartRecruiters sales-whiz and ancient cultures expert, Alkestis ‘Al’ Spinou is a walking contradiction of that idea.

Alkestis, who joined SmartRecruiters in 2017, is currently Head of Sales Development for DACH – that’s Germany, Austria and Switzerland to the un-acronym-savvy out there – and works with various customers from different national and business cultures. This means, as a sales person, it’s imperative she gets to know her clients closely, making sure she is finely attuned to their requirements and delivering the best solution possible.

With Alkestis taking so much time and effort to get to know others, it only seems fair we take the time to return the favor and get to know her too with her very own SmartRecruiters interview.

So, where are you from originally?

Greece. I grew up in Athens, but my parents are from two islands towards Italy: Zakynthos and Corfu.

How does Athens compare to Berlin for you?

I think Athens needs some years to become as multicultural as Berlin. I love the fact that I got to experience different cultures here.

How would you describe your job at SmartRecruiters?

Well, I create awareness around the issue of candidate experience. The opportunity to offer someone the best interview process and make them passionate about a position and a company before they are even hired. I also try to handle each company individually: see their problems, go through them and find a solution.

In terms of candidate experience, what do you find is the most important thing candidates mention a lot?

The fact that it is quick, modern and speaks to millenials. I’ve been through that myself, of course, because we use what we sell. Candidates especially like our one-click-application: no logging in, no filling in forms, no buzzkills.

I was going to ask you what is the easiest thing to sell about SmartRecruiters. Is this it, or do you find recruiters like another aspect?

For companies it is mostly the collaboration within the teams. It includes hiring managers in the process and allows them to work together with recruiters.

A perusal of your LinkedIn shows you studied Ancient Cultures and Languages. I always think history is a good grounding for any career, but how specifically does it help you with sales?

I studied papyrology and epigraphy – which is basically deciphering ancient scripts – and although it might not seem immediately applicable to sales, there are a lot of transferable skills. Firstly, it helps to develop strong research skills which you can apply, well, practically everywhere. Not to brag, but I am a very good researcher! Also it’s very important in academia to develop excellent communication skills, and be able to pass your message across: to someone with no experience in the subject all the way up to a professor who has been in the field for twenty years. This comes in handy when talking with different companies, all of which have divergent needs and people with different backgrounds representing them.

So, if you had to give someone the top three pieces of advice to becoming a great sales person, what would you say?

First, you have to personalize your approach to each potential customer. Second, you have to develop what we call in Germany ‘Seelenruhe’ which can be translated as inner peace, or peace of soul. You need to trust that things are going to work out. Lastly, do your research. There is nothing worse in sales than not knowing who you are talking with and what problems they might be trying to tackle.

To find out more about how SmartRecruiters personalizes solutions for its users, read our in-depth customer case studies.

Ok. So, how would you describe yourself outside of your work?

That’s hard. I love languages. I love museums. I love to travel. I love going to the movies. And on my day-to-day life I enjoy going out with friends, having a nice meal and, above all, playing board games. I’m that kind of person.

Oh really? What’s your favorite board game?

Right now, it’s 7 Wonders Duel. This version is obviously only for two players. Of course, with board games it’s always the more the merrier. But with Duel, I cannot stop playing. I’m addicted.

What kind of board games do you prefer? Do you like the American action-oriented ones, or the indepth German ones where you have to build a rail network or something?

I like both depending on time. I think for a casual game, something in between would be awesome.

Something that has a good level of difficulty but doesn’t take 3 hours to explain?

Exactly.

It seems like board games are really becoming more popular now and have kind of shaken off their geeky reputation.

I have been into board games from a young age. It didn’t help through high school, but who cares. Board games are cool.

You mentioned films as well. I always think films are a good indicator of the person. So what would you say is your favorite film?

It’s really difficult… One film that comes to mind, because I watched it three or four times, is As Good As It Gets with Jack Nicholson. I also enjoyed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I cried through La vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful), a classic comedy-drama set during the war.

You like quite sad films then?

What I figured out about myself is this: if I were to pick a favorite day-to-day genre it would be sci-fi. But the film that I will definitely watch again is a feel-good-in-the-end type film. Not just romantic and pink and clouds all over but, one which shows signs of hope. Or just reminds you to be happy and grateful.

You mentioned music earlier? Are you someone who listens to music while working?

Yes. I don’t have a go-to. I sometimes listen to Greek radio. It’s got some really positive vibes, in my opinion. I have two or three stations back in Greece I listen to, so genre-wise it can be a little bit random.

So you can listen in Greek and work in English and German at the same time?

Yeah, it doesn’t make sense I know! Well, this job requires some serious multi-tasking, and the fact that I have the radio on and working on something else is really helpful.

Want to find out more about our incredible staff? Check out: Meet Valerie Bertrand: SmartRecruiters’ Rock-Loving Head of Legal

Lawyers are often thought of as terrifying, stern, bespectacled types. SmartRecruiters’ Valerie Bertrand proves you can know your legal jargon and how to have a good time.

If you work for a company that conducts any business in or with Europe you’ve no doubt heard a certain acronym thrown around the office with increasing frequency, and intensity: GDPR.

If you haven’t, you might want to start shouting it yourself, because avoiding the General Data Protection Regulation could prove very expensive.

At SmartRecruiters, we’re living in a GDPR-stress-free zone, thanks primarily to our Head of Legal, Valerie Bertrand.

Valerie joined SmartRecruiters in August 2017, following successful careers in both the public and private sector. To us legal laypeople, the day-to-day work of company lawyers can seem slightly mysterious, even a bit daunting. I spoke with Valerie about how she came onboard and how her legal work has changed through the years. The first topic, unsurprisingly, was GDPR:

We recently attended a TruBerlin event in which a lot of conversation was concerned with GDPR. What has been the general feedback to GDPR in tech circles? Fear, confusion, readiness?

I think European companies are really focused, though it depends on each country. We had three webinars in December about GDPR; in France, England and Germany. You can measure the interest by the number of attendees. In Germany, there were more than 200, which is quite big. In France there were around 70, and 60 in the UK. We also ran a webinar for the US, but the audience wasn’t so big.

A lot of companies are concerned because they may not be compliant.

You mentioned the UK. Do you have any inkling how Brexit could affect GDPR?

I had this question raised at the UK webinar. I think a lot of people are concerned. I cannot predict the future, but in the UK you have an authority for data protection already, the ICO. And so far they speak a lot of about GDPR. It suggests they are telling UK companies to be compliant. For UK businesses, they’ll continue to transact business and process candidates from Europe. So I think UK companies have no choice but to comply. Let’s see.

A quick perusal of your resume shows you’ve also done legal work government institutions. What are the biggest differences you’ve found in tech and recruitment?

Before SmartRecruiters I was with the German Institute for Urban Affairs, an entity with funding from local authorities to conduct scientific research. I was in charge of tenders, contracts, checking supplier terms, vendor conditions and so on. You have to apply rules, and you have a time-frame you just have to comply with. For government, you have a lot of time, and a lot of people involved at every step. It’s positive sometimes because you have time to think about your project, but here, everything is for today, or tomorrow, so you have to act much quicker.

Are there any unique challenges to SmartRecruiters?

I decided to join SmartRecruiters because I knew I had a lot to do in the beginning, since the legal function was new here. The were no lawyers, so I had to build from scratch. That was the big challenge and still is the big challenge.

So this is different to what you’ve done previously in this sector?

Yes. I worked for Lumesse before, which had a big team compared to here. I had four people with me. I know the sector, so the industry of SmartRecruiters is not new for me, but the project here is innovative and novel compared to what I’ve seen in the past.

And you prefer this freedom compared to, say, working in the government sector?

Yes. One of our values is that ‘you are your own CEO’. And I like this. Especially when dealing with this volume of work, it’s very important to like what you do.

What was it that made you want to work in legal?

After college I had no idea what to do, to be honest. So I chose law at university because I thought, “Yeah, why not?”. I discovered different faces of the profession, like, in France, you have solicitors, but I didn’t want to go to courts and plead and so on, but  I chose to work as an in-house counsel because I like to work with different profiles – engineering, sales, finance. I like to advise people and not only work on the big matters.

So if I was launching a tech startup in Berlin or elsewhere, and I asked you for some legal advice, what would you tell me?

Make sure you have all the intellectual property rights to develop your business. With technology especially, you have to protect your intellectual property and make sure it isn’t owned by someone else. Sometimes you attend conferences and hear presentations of products and you think “that is not new”. So make sure your business is really new and fully protected.

Legal can sometimes seem quite dry and serious. What do you do to in your free time?

The classic one. I have two kids – 15 and 10. It is not a secret they keep me busy. Music is a big passion for me, so when I have time I like to go to concerts.

Classical?

No. Rock!

Oh really? What kind of stuff?

Everything, but especially indie. Y’know, all The Smiths, all Oasis. But also artists like Rufus Wainwright and MGMT. I also like theater and movies, but if I have to spend money on an outing, my preference is a concert.

What was the last concert you went to?

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. But before that was a classic one, The Rolling Stones in Paris.

What kind of sly tricks and crafty machinations are wielded to spot, engage and recruit the ultimate recruiter?  According to one of our more eagerly anticipated Hire18 speakers, turns out it’s mostly a matter of having a solid product.

As the days wend ever closer to our annual Hiring Success 18 conference – register here! – we asked our own Head of People, Sarah Wilson, about the complications that come from recruiting recruiters.

As quick as you can, Sarah, don’t think too much: How does one go from growing up in a remote series of airbase-adjacent Canadian towns to department-head in Silicon Valley?

“Slowly,” answers Sarah Wilson, bright-eyed at 8 am in an empty SmartRecruiters office. “Very slowly.”

It’s American Thanksgiving, and having celebrated the harvest-time holiday on its proper, seasonally accurate Canadian date back in October, Sarah’s taking full advantage of the silence to redact entries on a long yellow legal-pad of a to-do list.

Having come on board three months ago as Head of People, it’s a long list, but more than daunting and ominous, Sarah says after her last job at Indigo, “Canada’s Biggest Bookstore”, where she was a manager more than anything else, she was excited to get out of the boardroom and back to the sandbox.

“Yes,” she nods, “it is a bit like being a kid again, getting my hands dirty, playing in the sandbox. When I see the results of something, I know I had a part in making it, not just delegating it.”

Par for the course in a startup, you might say. And you’d be right. But in HR Tech, in 2017 – and contrary to the knee-jerk denials of those uninformed on the topic – there is a real sense of pushing up on a frontier, racing towards an inexorable horizon and having a say what the beach will look like when you get there.

“HR has traditionally been a company’s stabilizer. Very risk-averse. So anytime you are an agent for change, that is disruptive.”

These are the kinds of terms you hear thrown around in social media circles, endeavours spoken of in post-Bezos terms, tech sectors far more hip than, ugh, “HR”. But from the time CVs were stacked and sorted in filing cabinets – been there done that – to storing names in a computer and tracking applicants over an internal spreadsheet – check, check – the technology has reached a level where an entire industry is likely to have a new baseline, and having always been an early adapter, even when the tech was multicolored sticky tabs, Sarah knew the jumping ship and sailing down to the Bay Area was a move that would allow her to make a big contribution to how the next-level recruiting cards get shuffled.

“Anywhere I’ve worked,” she explains, “I’ve been a builder, starting from scratch or fixing what was already there. I’ve never worked where everything was already set. At SmartRecruiters, we are blending the physical and digital worlds, and with the speed of technology we use every day, like smartphones, the expectations people have for digital products is very high.”

Which is true, and makes a lot of sense when considering what would have led Sarah to defect from her old job to grow a company at the leading edge of a revolution. Fine, a revolution confined to HR, but those working in and watching it happen realize how momentous a time it is. Which ruins one of the more interesting enquiries one might have for Sarah Wilson, mainly, how did the master recruiter get recruited? For someone who can identify a dud candidate sometimes in a manner of seconds, a high priestess in the dark arts of gently saying no, what kind of squirly juju would have to be executed, what kind of cauldron-churning sorcery would it take to lure her in? Or, more crassly, how many sacks of money did Santa leave on your doorstep this year?

Lovely for her, disappointing for us, Sarah came into the SmartRecruiters orbit when she spoke at the Hiring Success ‘17 conference last March, as Director of Performance Management at Indigo, as, well, just another satisfied customer. Then, when they asked, she said yes, “because I have used the product and I believe there’s a huge opportunity to be a leading example of how this function can operate.”

Far from becoming the HR head for a digital HR company being a bit of a Luddite thing to do, Sarah is confident that as much time as the SmartRecruiters Talent Acquisition System will save — in fact, it may be the first product touted as s time-saving device that doesn’t end up taking up more of your time — there will always be room for the human touch. And as the dialectics of our culture-at-large continue to sway from full digital embrace back to a noble analog past, Sarah’s confident a fully AI Head of People is still a ways off.

“Pretty sure I’m safe at least until I want to retire,” she smiles.

Chris Riche-Webber runs professional services in Europe for SmartRecruiters. That means he’s away from home at least 10 days a month, on-the-go and optimizing from the UK to Malta. Today we bring you his top tips for getting the most from SmartRecruiters and your hiring team.

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We caught Chris during his two-day jaunt to Berlin where he’s certifying a small group of customers as administrators in the SmartRecruiters platform. When we met, the roll call included Tipico, reBuy and International SOS among others.

Chris knows all too well the pains the people in this room experience, and he comes equipped with solutions to the intricate situations our HR heads face while getting to know the platform.

“I was a recruiter for several years,” explains Chris, “first with Barclays and then Royal Bank of Scotland before I moved into the engineering industry with BAE Systems and Cobham. So when I train people on the system I definitely know what they’re trying to achieve and the difficulties they face.”

He’s seen how the wrong technology can breed an atmosphere of complacency that eventually leads to employees working outside the system, so part of his job implementing SmartRecruiters is getting everyone back on the same page.

“As a recruiter, I have experience in poorly configured systems,” he says. “I know how much of a block they can be and how the team, especially recruiters and hiring managers, get used to just working outside the system with shortcuts or workarounds.”

This is a guy who’s ‘been there’. And by ‘there’ we mean frustrated. Frustrated with obtuse tech that clunkifies your work with superfluous clicks and endless glitches.

It takes a guy who’s been there to restore the faith in tech to a team that’s been disillusioned by ill-fitting solutions. So if anyone can make you believe again, it’s Chris.  

What’s a good way to get people used to working around the technology, to come back and work within it?

Avery Dennison is a great example of adoption across a company with over 25,000 employees and 50 countries. This manufacturing giant implemented our hiring solution over the course of nine months, and they’ve really reaped the benefits of their extensive roll-out process. Managers and recruiters login consistently and their hiring process is more collaborative now.

If I could point to one thing in their implementation process that made it so successful it would be their efforts to educate their team, not just on how the product works, but why it’s important. People need to know the why as well as the how.

Your job now involves an insane amount of time on the road, can you give us a pro tip for work travelers?

I always pack my trainers so I can fit in a run in every city I visit. It’s a great way to see a new place, especially when you are on a tight schedule.

What’s a common mistake users make with SmartRecruiters?

Not staying up to date. Administrators and Super Users should make it a priority to educate themselves on the latest updates in the system.  We make these updates four times a year so staying abreast of the seasonal releases is important for your knowledge of our system.

Look for the webinar notifications and remember they’re recorded so you can always watch them when it’s convenient.

What’s one thing that has surprised you in these training sessions?

I’ve done more trainings than I can count – with all kinds of companies, but no matter how many I do, people have new questions. I’m always impressed by how specific, detailed and thoughtful the questions are. It shows how our customers are really engaging with the product – They have goals and want to reach them.

If a company is deciding who should be the administrator, what qualities should they look for?

That depends a lot on the company, but something to consider is that this person will have to wear different hats. One second they will be discussing building an API-driven career site and creating screening questions the next. Jumping between these two personas is key.

What is one way the average SmartRecruiters user could optimize their usage today?

Start by looking at analytics and see what that tells you. Are recruiters not moving candidates through the system? Are hiring managers taking too long to give feedback? Identify potential problem areas then talk to people! See what’s going on! The data is only one part of the story, you also need context.

When you include your people in the solution they are more likely to use it. It’s simple but easy to forget.

Let’s talk analytics. What are the pitfalls when it comes to reporting?

The reports can tell you so much but they are only as good as the data you put into them. It’s important to update everything in real-time. Educate your users on the perils of data gaps.

What kinds of conversations can you start with these analytic reports?

One of the most interesting resources is our sourcing analytics. This feature is available right on the dashboard and it gives you data on the volume and quality of candidates you are receiving from different job boards. From there you can track your company’s investment and make informed decisions about where you want to advertise.

Maybe one job board is more expensive but delivers more quality candidates. Sourcing analytics will help you justify and explain this investment. And that same piece of data can be used to negotiate with media providers.  

In 2015 Linkedin lost their case against data scrubbing, is that going to start making a difference for our customers in the coming year?

A lot of vendors are excited this door has opened to enrich their products. For us, it means being able to make use of the vast amount of data LinkedIn hosts without navigating a lot of settings or walls.

What is an important feature people underuse?

Candidate comparison. This feature allows you a side by side comparison of candidates according to your hiring team’s ratings and feedback. Anyone looking to boost collaboration in their hiring process should start taking advantage of this.

What is a feature people are usually delighted about? Like a little extra thing that makes people happy?

Delayed rejections. It means if a recruiter knows right away that a candidate isn’t a good fit for an open position they can send a rejection that doesn’t arrive to the candidate immediately. This way the candidate feels consideration has been taken regarding their application instead of just bouncing them away.

As a recruiter, this is something I wanted 10 years ago. Being able to update your candidate lists all at once and forget about it is such a gift. It used to be that you would have to remind yourself later but sometimes things fall through the cracks and when that happens you give the candidate a negative experience. So this one small feature has really made a difference in the day-to-day, both in terms of efficiency and candidate relationship management CRM.

Top three tips for new admins.

1. Stay on top of releases.
2. Constantly talk to users and get feedback.
3. Don’t be afraid to try new things!

If you are interested in a certification class please contact us here!

Meet Adrian Ivanov: SaaS nerd, sales veteran, and the busiest man alive.

You wouldn’t guess it from his level of engagement, even from 9,099 km away, but Adrian Ivanov is always en route to the next thing. His phone, even out of sight of the webcam, is an orchestra of notifications and when you log into his Google calendar it looks like an oriental rug.

I steal a moment in his round-the-clock Zoom conference for a quick breakdown of his new role.

Adrian is already signed into the Zoom conference, finishing a meeting with the lead of Sales Development. As Chief Revenue Officer, Adrian is responsible for all revenue and customer-facing functions at SmartRecruiters including Sales, Service, Support and Customer Success. Prior to joining our company, Adrian was a founding executive team member at FinancialForce, where he led global sales and customer success, helping to grow annual recurring revenue from zero to beyond $100 million.

As an established executive, what can you tell us about your first job – how did little Adrian get his start?

When I was a kid I delivered a local newspaper. It was a pretty common first job back then but the idea of a paperboy is totally foreign to my children now. Payment for the paper was voluntary, so I quickly learned how good customer service translated to more money in my pocket.

Chief Revenue Officer, it’s a fancy title. Tell us what you actually do.

What I really do is make sure the customer has a cohesive journey with SmartRecruiters – A SmartRecruiters experience. There are many teams in a SaaS company who interact with the client, sales, customer support, product etc. my function is to make sure that whichever team a buyer works with, they feel like we’re one company.

Why SmartRecruiters?

It’is the right place for me for three reasons: the people, the culture, and the importance of our solution. As a sales leader, I appreciate the necessity of hiring strong talent and how hard it is to find those people. Without a great team, you have a very low probability of achieving great things. So I fundamentally believe in the importance of our value proposition and Jerome’s vision for the future of recruiting.

What makes a great hire?

I learn as much or more about a candidate through the questions they ask – or don’t ask – as I do from their responses to my questions. Curiosity means you can learn. I also want to see passion. Passion for what they’ve done and a genuine interest in the job for which they are applying. The last quality is the hardest to assess but is obviously critical to success and that is drive. I often joke that if I could teach “drive”, I’d be retired by now.

What’s your favorite feature of the SmartRecruiters Platform?

As a sales professional, I’m always thinking “pipeline”. The ability to view our pipeline of candidates for any of the current and future open roles within my organization, and to be able to do so via my mobile phone, is game-changing. Recruiting is a team sport and frankly, I’m not sure how I managed without SmartRecruiters.

In first-ever marketscape report on standalone talent acquisition systems, SmartRecruiters paves the way to the new normal.

In a recent study conducted by Information Data Corporation (IDC), author Kyle Lagunas dubbed SmartRecruiters the youngest industry leader in talent acquisition – and foremost of those evaluated in the field of strategy.

“Is talent acquisition a critical business driver in your organization?” asks Lagunas, research manager of emerging trends in talent acquisition at IDC. “Do you believe there is no such thing as ‘good enough’ in candidate experience, hiring manager satisfaction, and quality of hire?”

Well, SmartRecruiters can help you with that.

A Boston-based market-researcher specializing in IT and communications since 1964, IDC’s report evaluated 12 companies at the forefront of Talent Acquisition Software (TAS), and this at a time when 22% of 500 companies currently using TAS are planning to update their software within the next 18 months.

This means SmartRecruiters is poised to grow even further its share of this ever-competitive sector.

IDC measures companies on 24 criteria including current offering, global support capabilities, breadth of services, and future roadmaps. They obtain the data over months of surveys and interviews from users, providers, experts, and influencers of the talent acquisition industry. All this boils down to two main categories – capabilities and strategy.

This graph from the September IDC report visualizes Lagunas’ findings with companies ranked by influence, capability, and strategy, with SmartRecruiters in the top influencer tier and number-one in overall strategy.

As the youngest entrant of the five companies in the Leaders category – established in 2010 – Smartrecruiters’ rise is all the more impressive for its TAS having just recently turned three.

And like any healthy growing organism, SmartRecruiters’ TAS is not static, but evolving with the marketscape. As of fall 2017, Google Job Search and Slack have been integrated into the ecosystem.

“SmartRecruiters is bringing a different kind of talent acquisition system to market,” stresses Lagunas. “They have designed a solution that delivers modern capabilities to recruiting teams and supports more effective collaboration with hiring managers… They are challenging their clients to think differently about talent acquisition technology.”

Defy Ventures is an entrepreneurship, employment, and character development training program for currently and formerly incarcerated men, women, and youth. I learned about the program while at SmartRecruiters’ Hiring Success conference in April 2017. I was getting drinks with some colleagues and met a panelist from the conference who had just returned from a weekend in California’s only maximum security prison volunteering with Defy Ventures.

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Images courtesy of Christopher Michel Photography.

He spoke with so much passion about the life-changing impact of the program that one drink with him turned into a 4-hour conversation. By the end, we knew each other a lot better and one thing was certain, I could not miss the next opportunity to be part of Defy Ventures. So a few months later I found myself on a bus making the 8-hour journey from San Francisco to Southern Oregon and the Pelican Bay State Prison to spend the weekend with 77 incarcerated men. I knew already the experience would affect me but I didn’t yet know to what extent these men and their stories would stay in my heart.

“Kunlyna, who has been incarcerated for over 15 years donated to Defy Ventures the wages he’s earned in the prison at a rate of a $0.37 an hour.”

One moment I’d like to share is when Kunlyna, who has been incarcerated for over 15 years donated to Defy Ventures the wages he’s earned in the prison at a rate of a $0.37 an hour. In fact, when the payment to the program took too long to process –he put the cash in an envelope, looked up their address on a brochure, and mailed it in.

At Pelican Bay, like most prisons, there isn’t much association between individuals of different races. It’s dangerous to even try. These division dissolved within the 77 volunteers enrolled in Defy Venture’s 6-month full-time immersive class. These men make strategies for entering the workforce after their release whether that’s finding a job or starting their own business. They also make emotional strategies for expressing their feelings. Participants graduate this program with a sense of excitement at the prospect of the ways they’ll be able to contribute to their families and communities.

“The participants feel acknowledged as people instead of another number in the prison system.”

The program creates a space where racial division is no longer a survival strategy. The participants feel acknowledged as people instead of just another number in the prison system. Exercises of recognition like giving each other bear hugs or words of encouragement may seem uncomfortable at first but have a profound effect on how these men see themselves because, in the end, they leave with a renewed sense of self-worth. 

Participants of the program are called Entrepreneurs-in-Training (EITs). At the end of the 6 months, the EITs pitch their startup ideas to the volunteers and one idea is chosen and that EIT receives, upon his release, a stipend to pursue his business idea. As one of those volunteers, I was able to provide feedback and allocate points to determine who would win.

The winning pitch came from Troy. His idea was to start an organic garden service. He asked for $5k for seeds, tools, and gardening materials. His pitch was that people don’t possess the knowledge or time to plant their own gardens but they still want a patch of their own. His business would be to consult these people, helping them plan and cultivate their own garden. These edible gardens would provide produce and promote healthy living.  In order to spread the word, he would advertise at farmer’s markets in conjunction with a simple website on which he could display a growing portfolio of work from offering his services to family and friends. His goal is to earn a profit of $2.5k per month and offer a free garden to the elderly community. 

His pitch was perfect. He even did the research to find out there was no competition in his area. I thought this idea addressed a real need and ended up awarding him all my points. If his business ever extends to San Francisco he will have a loyal customer in me. The niche he found spoke to his interests and experience. I was blown away. 

“Jolly Jonathan is a 25-year-old who has spent 16 of those years in prison. Prison has been his life since he was 9 years old. Imagine that. “

Someone else I want to introduce is Jolly Jonathan. A 25-year-old who has spent 16 of those years in prison. Prison has been his life since he was 9 years old. Imagine that.  The reason: A scene that involves his parents, drugs, and a bad decision. What could he possibly know at the age of 9?

I learned this when we did an exercise called Step to the Line. EITs form one line, volunteers form another. The lines face each other about 10 feet apart. Each EIT faced a volunteer. The organizer would then state a sentence. If it were true for any individual, they’d step forward. Volunteers and EITs were confronted by their similarities as they stepped toe to toe for many statements. For one statement – “I lost my innocence before the age of 10” – both Jonathan and I stepped up to the line.
As the exercise progressed, questions got deeper, and both EITs and volunteers realized how much more they had in common than either had imagined. Tears, hugs, and empathy, poured from both rows.

Two questions stood out to me: “I had 50 or more books at home growing up”. Almost all volunteers stepped to the line but this was the opposite for EITs. They stayed back. The second question was “At least one of my parents told me ‘I love you’ frequently while growing up.” Again almost all volunteers stepped to the line and EITs stayed back.

“That’s when I broke down. The earlier question about losing our innocence before the age of 10 took a deeper meaning.”

That’s when I broke down. The earlier question about losing our innocence before the age of 10 took a deeper meaning. When I was 9, I was in a situation as grave and provoking as  Jonathan’s. The difference was that he acted whereas I stood back immobile and frightened. I had felt this way because I never grew up in a rough neighborhood like Jonathan had. I had more than 50 books at home and had read them all. My dad kissed my brother, my sister, and me goodnight every day. I was a secure child and could count on love whereas Jonathan could not. Because of that, he reacted and I did not and he ended up where he is now. Both incidents stemmed from circumstances that were out of our control.

EITs ended the course with a graduation. For many of these men, this was the first time they were experiencing a graduation. Families in attendance gleamed with pride and cheered on their loved ones. What caught my eye was how EITs were sitting and interacting with one another. The racial divide was obliterated. A once segregated group was now simply a group of friends. 

“I thought that being a man meant being physically strong and holding my ground. Defy Ventures made me realize that I can have a productive future, a career that will make my family and community proud. That’s what matters to me now.”

One EIT stated after the graduation “I thought that being a man meant being physically strong and holding my ground. Defy Ventures made me realize that I can have a productive future, a career that will make my family and community proud. That’s what matters to me now.”

Defy Ventures graduates totaled 197 in 2017, that’s almost 10% of the entire incarcerated population of Pelican Bay. According to those who work within the prison, there is a palpable change in the attitude of the participants of Defy Ventures and it has a positive influence on the entire Pelican Bay culture. Defy Ventures hopes to initiate 30% of all prisoners into the program within the next 2 years which could be a major tipping point that changes the culture within the walls of California’s only maximum security prison.

“Defy Ventures is in 30 prisons to date and plans to be active in every prison in America in the next 13 years.”

Defy Ventures is in 30 prisons to date and plans to be active in every prison in America in the next 13 years. The stats speak for themselves Defy Ventures’ graduates have a 95% employment rate once they leave prison whereas 89% of them were unemployed when they entered. 72% of people who leave prison  find themselves back behind bars but only 3% of Defy Ventures graduates re-enter the prison system

Defy Ventures is changing the nature of mass incarceration in America. Its impact is long-lasting and undeniable. I’m a volunteer, a donor, and a mentor and I welcome you to join me in creating a new future for these deserving participants.