HR Tech 2013: The Scoop on Applicant Tracking

By: Manoj Tiwari, VP of Product and Business Development, Berkshire Associates



Posted by Berkshire on October 15 2013
Berkshire
By: Manoj Tiwari, VP of Product and Business Development, Berkshire Associates
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Technology and human resources are quickly becoming synonymous with each other, which is why the HR Tech Conference is the perfect event for today’s HR professionals.

I was pleased to see how much the conference has grown since the last time I attended two years ago. This year they had 8,000 registered attendees, over 2,000 more than the previous year. To me, HR Tech is like the SHRM National Conference for people involved in the technology side of our industry. It’s a “must-attend or else you’ll miss out” type event—especially for large company HRIS and large system managers/owners/vendors. Speaking of vendors, there were 300 in attendance, and it appeared to me that every large HR software vendor was there. But that didn’t stop the little guys—I would say two thirds of the vendors were small businesses doing BIG things.

Now I’ll get to the good stuff—the scoop on the technology trends, topics, and super cool new additions that were covered at this year’s show. First let me say, almost every company has moved to the Software as a Service (SaaS) based deployment model. I did not see a single company selling or promoting desktop or client based products. It’s safe to say…drum roll please…the future of HR is in SaaS, without a doubt. All desktop and client server technology has or will become obsolete in the next two to three years. With that in mind, here’s a breakdown of the noteworthy technology and trends I saw at HR Tech:

The consolidation of HR functions in HR technology

For example, applicant tracking software (ATS) is not just to collect résumés and fill out the application anymore; it’s a self-contained full recruitment tool. Like Berkshire’s BALANCEtrak, we started with requisition management, application/ résumé management, and job-boarding—but now ATS extends to internal and external sourcing, candidate relationship management, prescreening/testing/assessment, video interviewing, background screening, candidate analytics, and onboarding. This happens in one platform which is integrated to hand-off to the HRIS and talent management systems. Integration and consolidation of functions is the name of the game.

New technology worth mentioning:

  • The coolest technology I saw was by a relatively new company, Entelo, which integrates with other ATSs, and works stand-alone as well. It links candidates’ profiles from LinkedIn and other social networks to give a very broad or detailed view of a candidate. For example, if a candidate applied for a job at Berkshire a few years ago and the same job opens again but this candidate has not applied for it, an internal search can find this candidate, as well as assess the profile and see what has changed and if they are in the market again. Entelo's Sonar monitors patterns across the web, and predicts when candidates might be ready for a move. I don’t know if the reality is as good as the claims, but it sounds like a great concept. 

  • Another cool technology was a total information management application from your mobile phone. I didn’t see the entire demo, but it looked very interesting and most likely the future of information management. The company is Hunite.com, and here is what it says: Combine the information of existing systems into one secure point of access instead of supporting multiple siloed apps and traditional portal platforms. 

  • Like it or not, video interviewing is here. Not many companies are using it yet but it’s becoming a standard feature in most of the high-end recruiting systems.

  • Based on my estimate, approximately 50 percent of the solutions at HR Tech were related to recruiting technology and services. It’s the happening thing in HR.

To sum up HR Tech, I will steal a comment someone made at the show, “If you are in the HR technology business then you MUST be at HR Tech.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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