PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 266 - iCIMS and the Talent Acquisition Technology Suite

HR Happy Hour 266 - iCIMS and the Talent Acquisition Technology Suite

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest host: Madeline Laurano

Guests: Colin Day, Chairman and CEO, iCIMS; Susan Vitale, CMO, iCIMS

Listen to the show HERE

This week on the show, Steve Boese and special guest host Madeline Laurano are joined by leading talent acquisition technology provider iCIMS Chairman and CEO Colin Day, and iCIMS CMO Susan Vitale to talk about the current state of the talent acquisition technology market, and the importance of dedicated, purpose-built technology to support organizations in their recruiting efforts.

Additionally, we talked about the need for organizations to better integrate their different talent acquisition technology solutions with their 'core' systems, and how iCIMS is approaching that challenge and providing a platform to enable organizations to build integrated solutions.

We talked a little about 'big data'.(don't cringe), and how iCIMS is leveraging the information and insights that come from having millions of applicants and job postings from their thousands of customers pass through their platform. One of the promises of SaaS HR technology was that each customer would be able to learn from and take advantage of aggregated information and intelligence that can be developed from the massive amounts of data and transactions that happen across the entire customer base, and Colin and Susan shared how iCIMS is taking steps to make this kind of 'big data' intelligence a reality for their customers.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, or by using the widget player below, (Email and RSS subscribers need to click through)

This was a fun show, thanks to iCIMS for hosting the HR Happy Hour!

Reminder, subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and all the podcast player apps, just search for 'HR Happy Hour' to subscribe and never miss a show.

Feedback

Semi-frequent reminder as we all continue to push further and further into a world with constant, varied, and often very, very imperfect and uniformed feedback on almost everything we do, (I took an Uber ride last night from the airport to a hotel, I can only wonder what my driver was thinking as he 'rated' by performance as a passenger), that lots of the feedback we encounter is basically, crap.

Take a look at the image below, courtesy of the grapheine design blog on some potential client feedback if the classic French Tournee du Chat Noir poster which advertised a Paris cabaret theater was submitted today: (click HERE for a larger version of the image)

Just because we have better and more accessible tools to give each other, our organizations, and other organization's products and services more feedback, (and have that feedback be publicly available), doesn't mean that we, any of us, have somehow gotten better at giving and receiving said feedback.

As the image above describes, even classic, iconic works of art and design could be picked apart by less experienced and talented folks who by virtue of position in an org chart or on a project team feel compelled to pass their judgement on the effort of others. 

I am certainly not saying that having access to more forms and volumes of feedback is a bad thing, I am just reminding you that 'more' doesn't equate to 'better', at least not all the time. 

Le Chat Noir probably doesn't need any improvement. Your last work project might not either.

But if there are people in the organization who are pit into a position where they see it is their job to give you feedback, then feedback it is you will receive. 

Hopefully, it won't be the kind of feedback that compels you to alter your masterpiece either.

PODCAST - HR Happy Hour 265 - Women in HR Technology

HR Happy Hour 265 - Women in HR Technology

Hosts: Steve Boese

Guest: Bianca McCann, VP, HR Expert Network Cloud HCM, SAP

Listen to the show HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve Boese is joined by Bianca McCann, VP of the HR Expert Network for Cloud HCM at SAP to talk about the recent Women in HR Technology Summit that was held at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago in early October. 

Bianca shared her insights on the Women in HR Tech Summit, the importance of framing these issues in the organization as business challenges and business opportunities, and not just HR programs or 'we should do this because it feels right' activities. Diversity should be looked at as a business imperative and the way to actually move the needle in the organization is to look for root causes, and set about addressing these causes.The key is to bring facts and data to the table, and think through the problems in a manner that is similar to taking on all kinds of business challenges.

We also talked about the real business benefits from more diverse workplaces in the areas of innovation and growth or market share, the idea of the Illusion of Truth, the importance of listening to what the organization is saying about these issues, and some practical steps that organizations can take right away to become better and more inclusive workplaces, particularly for women in technology roles.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, or by using the widget player below, (Email and RSS subscribers click through)

This was a fun and interesting show, many thanks to Bianca for joining us this week on the HR Happy Hour.

Many thanks to our show sponsor Virgin Pulse - learn more about their products and services at www.virginpulse.com.

Reminder, you can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and all the major podcast player apps - just search for 'HR Happy Hour' to subscribe and never miss a show.

Learn a new word: The Illusion of Truth

Repeating something over and over and over again doesn't make it the truth.

That seems like a pretty easy statement to understand, and with which to agree. I mean we all get that right? It doesn't matter what the statement is, or who is saying it again and again, the act of repeating it so many times doesn't impact the fundamental nature of truth.  I think we all learned that back in grade school.

But here's the tricky part, even though we know, or think we know that repeating something doesn't make it the truth, or at least closer to the truth, we often are easily deceived.

And that brings us to today's 'Learn a new word' submission, especially interesting and relevant with Election Day in the USA bearing down upon us in then next week or so.

Today's word is 'The Illusion of Truth'. Definition from our pals at Wikipedia:

The illusory truth effect (also known as the truth effect or the illusion-of-truth effect) is the tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure. This phenomenon was first discovered in 1977 at Villanova University and Temple University.

This illusion of truth effect, which has been known for a while, was recently repeated in a study titled 'Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth' published in 2015 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

In that study,  40 participants were asked to rate how true a statement was on a six-point scale, and in the second, a different set of 40 participants were asked to simply state whether a statement was true or false. In both cases, repetition made the statement more likely to be categorized as true. This was the case even for statements that contradict well-known facts, such as, “Barcelona is the capital of Spain,” (when in fact, Madrid is Spain's capital).

Why were the participants in the study, and the rest of us too, more prone to believe a statement was true if we had heard it repeated over and over? According to the researchers, it is because trying to figure out whether new information is true is kind of hard, and requires more brain processing power than just simply accepting it.

From the above mentioned study's summary:

Research on the illusory truth effect demonstrates that repeated statements are easier to process, and subsequently perceived to be more truthful, than new statements. Contrary to prior suppositions, illusory truth effects occurred even when participants knew better. Participants demonstrated knowledge neglect, or the failure to rely on stored knowledge, in the face of fluent processing experiences.

And this from the conclusion:

Inferring truth from fluency often proves to be an accurate and cognitively inexpensive strategy, making it reasonable that people sometimes apply this heuristic without searching for knowledge. 

Thinking about things is hard.  It takes energy. Even doing simple fact-checking might be a bridge too far in many situations. But 'going along' with something largely because we have heard it many times before is always easier, and often makes sense and is a sound and harmless strategy.

Except when it's not.

So that's the trick then. To know when to trust the process if you will and when to do your own research and make your own conclusions. Gosh, that sounds like work.

But be aware that we all are more susceptible to the illusion of truth effect than we may think.

Happy Halloween!

HRE Column: How to choose which disruptive HR tech solutions to chase

Here is my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech that can be found here.

This month, in the aftermath of the HR Technology Conference and still thinking about all the innovative and potentially disruptive HR tech solutions that continue to appear in the market, I thought about how much more difficult it must be getting for HR and business leaders to assess and evaluate and decide which types of disruptive technology to pursue.

Note, I am not really talking or thinking about specific technology evaluations like, "Which ATS should we license?", but rather larger questions of "Which types of potentially disruptive HR technology would benefit our organization, given our needs and our circumstances?", and "What should be the impact of these technologies on the organization and our people?"

I came up with three general categories or impacts that potentially disruptive HR tech can (and perhaps should) have on the organization, and some thoughts on how HR leaders can better evaluate new HR tech in this model. I tried to describe what this kind of categorized impact assessment looks like in my HR Executive column. From the HRE piece:

One of the highlights of the recently concluded HR Technology Conference and Exposition^® was the record-breaking Expo Hall, which featured nearly 400 technology solution providers offering an almost dizzying array of tools, technologies and innovative approaches to help organizations with HR, talent-management, employee-engagement and other workplace challenges.

But such a plethora of modern and innovative technologies also presents quite a challenge for HR and business leaders in that the growth of the HR-technology market and landscape has made the identification, research, assessment and eventual selection of the "right" technology solution all the more challenging. Probably the most frequent type of question I get from HR leaders over the course of the year is: "There are so many HR-tech solutions out there; how can I figure out which ones I should give my time and attention?"

Note that this kind of question is different from "Which applicant-tracking (or learning-management system, or payroll solution) system is the best one?" I do get those questions too, of course, but probably less frequently than in the past, as most HR leaders today understand that there is never a universal "best" solution for anything, but rather a "best" solution for the individual organization, and its unique goals, requirements and circumstances. Lately the discussions and challenges I hear about from HR leaders seem more focused on trying to make sense of a complex and growing HR-tech market, and how to best take advantage of all this growth and innovation.

One way for HR leaders to approach these kinds of challenges and determine how to spend their time and resources is to consider innovative and potentially disruptive HR technologies across a set of three criteria or broad categories of impact. I'd like to take a look at these three broad-impact categories and offer examples of how new HR-technology solutions fit into each.

Category One: If the HR solutions reduce or eliminate organizational barriers for HR and employees

There are a slew of HR technologies that are necessary and essential for organizations to either own or license for regulatory and compliance reasons. In other words, every organization that has regular employees has to, at a minimum, have a way to pay them, and to complete all the required tax filings and payments. This category is not really about those kinds of technologies. (If your organization has a critical need to solve such compulsory challenges, then you probably should take care of those before entertaining the idea of adopting new or disruptive HR technology.)

This category is more about enabling organizational success via the elimination or reduction of the friction points that can hold people back from getting work done effectively and efficiently. You can get to the direct impact of implementing technologies in this category by asking questions such as, "Where does our employee's workflow get bogged down?" or "Where do we have data manually replicated in multiple systems?"; or simply by asking teams and leaders can simply be asked to talk about "What is it that makes my job more difficult than it needs to be?"

Some real HR-technology solutions that help to solve problems in this category include learning systems that can surface content and assets in real-time and in context when employees need them the most or even more technical solutions that better integrate, validate and keep clean key HR-data elements and values across multiple systems. Almost every new HR-technology solution you introduce into the organization should solve at least one important "barrier" problem and eliminate a pain point for your targeted audience once it is adopted.

Category Two: If the HR solutions help to elevate customer service -- for internal customers or external customers

At the HR Tech Conference, one of the more interesting technology developments I remember seeing was an example of a deeper integration between an employee self-service type of portal and the company's HR-shared-service-center knowledge base and help-desk functionality. The idea here is that if employees were viewing their payslips or benefits enrollments and needed more information or had a question about the information they were viewing, they could, with one click, launch a "help" ticket or process to indicate to HR they needed assistance. HR practitioners would not only see that the request was made, they would automatically have all the needed context from the page or subset of information the employee was viewing...

Read the rest of the HR Exec column here 

Good stuff, right? Humor me...

If you liked the piece you can sign up over at HRE to get the Inside HR Tech Column emailed to you each month. There is no cost to subscribe, in fact, I may even come over and rake your leaves car or clean out your gutters or even help you pass out the candy on Halloween. 

Have a great weekend!