HR Happy Hour 202 - Zenefits and Disrupting HR Tech
Recorded Tuesday February 17, 2015
Hosts: Steve Boese , Trish McFarlane
Guests: Parker Conrad, Co-founder and CEO, Zenefits
Listen to the show HERE
In the latest HR Happy Hour Show, we were joined by Parker Conrad, Co-founder and CEO of emerging HR technology solution provider Zenefits. Zenefits has a innovative and unique approach to how it provides technology solutions to their customers - the HR and Benefits administration software is completely free for companies to use, Zenefits earns its revenue from commissions from insurance providers when customers elect to use Zenefits as their broker. It is a disruptive model on many levels.
But beyond that model, Parker shared Zenefits approach to building, supporting, and helping customers succeed with HR technology. One interesting concept Parker shared was the idea of how solutions should only gradually expose complexity to customers, i.e., the most common and generally simplest approaches should be on the surface, and only when more complex options are absolutely needed they should be revealed. This was a fascinating conversation with the CEO of one of the fastest growing enterprise technology companies in any domain - not just HR.
Additionally, Steve described the giant icicle hanging in front of his office window, we were reminded (again), that the show is much, much better with Trish in the house, software releases that are 'numbered' might mean complexity and trouble, and finally we learned that Steve once configured an ATS job requisition approval process that was 13 layers deep. Which was stupid.
You can listen to the show on the show page here, and using the widget player below, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through).
As always, you can listen to the current and all the past shows from the archive on the show page here, on our HR Happy Hour website, and by subscribing to the show in podcast form on iTunes, or for Android devices using Stitcher Radio (or your favorite podcast app). Just search the iTunes store or your podcast app for 'HR Happy Hour' to add the show to your subscriptions.
This was a really fun show, many thanks to Parker and Zenefits for joining us!