It's never taken longer to fill the average job in the US

Job openings as tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the JOLTS report hit an all-time record high of 5.8 million in April 2016. 

And what I suppose could be considered a kind of perfect storm for recruiting, at the same time as job openings are at a record level, the average time it takes to fill an opening has also never been higher.

Check the chart below from the latest DHI Group report, the DHI-DFH National Mean Vacancy Duration, which has been tracking average time to fill for about 15 years:

The average job now takes 29.3 working days to fill, up from 27.7 in March, and represents an all-time high time to fill for the data series.

Should you or we or anyone care about this? After all, time-to-fill as a singular recruiting metric is kind of flawed, and some would argue that it is not important at all at an individual job level. 

But others (and I think I am one of them), that increasing time-to-fill duration means something, and in the aggregate, (across the entire organization or in a major job function or industry group), that it can tell you quite a bit about the effectiveness of recruiting strategies and technologies.

Because for me, when thinking about the massive amounts of investments made in technologies that are designed (at least on paper), to make recruiting, (again, in the aggregate), more efficient and effective, this all-time high level for time to fill suggests that we are all contributing in some degree to a pretty massive fail. What other industry or major business process can you think of that has actually gotten less efficient, despite hundreds of millions of dollars of investment over more than two decades?

Again, I know time-to-fill taken by itself and out of context might not be the best way to judge the health and success of technological investments for recruiting, but I think even the most cynical would have to at least admit that at a macro level that time-to-fill should not be increasing to all-time highs if organizations and their technology partners were actually functioning as designed or promised.

Shouldn't recruiting be getting easier? Even just a little easier?

I'd love to know what you think. 

Am I off-base to even be thinking that time-to-fill really matters? Most organizations would happily trade a few days to fill in order to make the 'right' hire. But shouldn't technology and process have evolved to the point where making that tradeoff should happen less and less?

This issue was on my mind way before this latest set of statistics has come out, and I am even putting together a general session at the upcoming HR Technology Conference in October to talk about it.

Two decades, millions and millions of dollars spent, and yet at least by this measure, we are not getting any better at putting people in the right jobs.

It's baffling to me.

Notes from the road #20 - Spring event roundup edition

A big part of how I spend my Spring each year is making the rounds of as many HR technology solution provider events (customer conferences and.or analyst meetings), as I can, all while planning for and developing the program for the 19th Annual HR Technology Conference and Expo to be held October 4 - 7, 2016 in Chicago, IL.

These customer events are a great way for me to stay in touch with the industry - the technology trends, the challenges that customers are talking about and seeking solutions for, and the big workplace issues that are top of mind. Additionally, these events help me to take the pulse and temperature of the market - information I need as I work on HR Tech.  

Since the Spring event season is just about over, (I think I have one more to attend, the always interesting HireVue event in a couple of weeks), I wanted to share at least a small part of what I saw, heard, and learned at a few of these events from early 2016. Hopefully, there is something in what I saw that might help you as you think about your HR technology plans for the remainder of the year.

Greenhouse - This was the most recent event I have attended, so it is very fresh in my mind. Greenhouse is a newer provider of recruitment technology solutions primarily serving the SMB market, (don’t call it an ATS), that has grown rapidly in the last few years, primarily in the Bay Area technology ecosystem. Greenhouse takes a fresh approach to HR tech, at least a different one I think, in that they really think about solving the challenge of recruiting for organizations who wish to become “great” at recruiting first, rather than simply chasing down specific features and functions. It is an approach that is hard to describe in a few words, but if you want to learn more about Greenhouse and what they are about, check an interview I was able to do with CEO Dan Chait on the HR Happy Hour podcast here.

Globoforce - The recent Globoforce customer conference, called WorkHuman, stands out from the group in that it is a very different kind of user event in that it does not (primarily) focus on the the actual products that Globoforce develops. Rather, WorkHuman focuses on making work and workplaces “better’, and showcases content and activities designed to help HR leaders better engage their workforces and that ultimately will elevate the nature of work. The solution set that Globoforce provides is positioned more as a complementary collection of tools that HR and organizational leaders can leverage in their efforts to simply make work “better” and more human. For more on this event, and how working more “human” translates to organizations, see this excellent piece from Trish McFarlane on the HR Ringleader blog.

Oracle - Oracle’s HCM World event has rapidly grown to become one of the largest HR technology user events of its type. The most recent HCM World held in early April, was a reflection of the growth of Oracle’s HCM Cloud solutions, and the success they are having in the market. There was tons to see and hear at the event, but if I could pick out just one thing that stood out for me was the continued development and refreshing approach Oracle is taking with its new Learning technology in the cloud. The new learning tools are meant to be mobile-first, collaborative, personalized, and video heavy - a key to me as the trends in video consumption are only on the increase across all kinds of platforms. It is  great example of how an enterprise technology provider is adapting to trends in the consumer space to develop and deliver technologies with which users will want to engage. For more on what Oracle is working in HCM, listen to this recent HR Happy Hour podcast featuring Oracle’s Bertrand Dussert.

Ultimate - Just like the other events listed above, Ultimate Software’s annual user conference is a reflection of the company itself - its culture, values, and philosophy. Ultimate's tagline has been “People First” for some time, but unlike most empty corporate slogans, Ultimate really does believe in putting its employees, customers, and community “first”. They are committed to their own employees and their family’s welfare and well-being, as evidenced by the generous and progressive approaches they take to engagement and development. But from a product capability standpoint, probably the most interesting area in which Ultimate is innovating is in the field of predictive analytics. These are modern approaches to give insight to leaders to be able to anticipate voluntary (and often undesirable) turnover, and to predict the likelihood of a candidate succeeding in a new role. But Ultimate is moving beyond just “predicting” events, it is trying to provide more meaningful and actionable recommendations and interventions to help leaders and managers better deal with these events. You can learn more about this approach on this by checking out another recent HR Happy Hour podcast with Cecile Alper-Leroux from Ultimate.

That’s a quick look at four of the events I was able to attend in the last few months. And while each one was different of course, when I think back upon them, and the others that I was not able to list here, I am reminded that the challenges and opportunities facing HR leaders and their organizations remain pretty common and consistent. Finding the best talent, engaging the workforce, developing and retaining the best people, while all the time ensuring compliance and accuracy in all HR administrative processes. Thankfully, modern and innovative technologies like the ones being developed by the five providers above continue to rise to these challenges, and are able to help HR leaders reach their goals. And of course, you can see these providers, and hundreds more, at the upcoming HR Technology Conference in October.

CHART OF THE DAY: We have all the apps we need

Question time, then today's Chart of the Day...

How many smartphone apps would you say you use regularly?

10? 15? Maybe more?

Likely more, actually. According to some recent data from Statista the average US smartphone owner uses about 27 apps on a regular basis. 

But here's the interesting thing - that number is hardly changed in the last three years. Let's look at the chart, then some FREE comments from me after that.

Three quick takes...

1. As you can see from the data, we aren't using many more apps than we did in 2012, but the monthly time spent on them has almost doubled since 2012. Which means fewer apps are breaking through the clutter and noise of the Apps stores, but the ones that do are commanding more and more attention and mind share.

2. Getting user's attention with any new app is getting harder and harder by the month. Sure, we do sometimes swap out some older apps for some newer ones, but we seem to have no more room for an increase in the number of apps we can manage and use. So not only does any new app need to offer a compelling value proposition in its own right, it likely also has to 'replace' something in most user's minds, since we can't 'fit' more apps into our lives.

3. If you are considering rolling out any new apps for your workforce, no matter how fantastic and functional they may seem, you are competing for precious and limited time and attention from your targeted users, and are also fighting a battle for phone screen real estate and attention not just against the web-based version of that HR system, but also all the personal apps your employees are using every day. And what the Statista data suggest is that collectively we are running out of app capacity in terms of what we can and would like to engage with on our phones.

Do you need an app for your HR, recruiting, benefits or other HR tools?

Maybe. Probably even.

But will your users have the bandwidth and ability to adapt your fancy new app?

Maybe not.

Have a great Tuesday. 

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 247 - Greenhouse and the Future of Recruiting Technology

HR Happy Hour 247 - Greenhouse and the Future of Recruiting Technology

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest: Daniel Chait, Co-founder and CEO, Greenhouse

LISTEN HERE

This week on the show, recorded live in San Francisco on site at Greenhouse Open, the customer event for recruiting technology provider Greenhouse, Steve sat down with Greenhouse Co-founder and CEO Daniel Chait to talk about how companies can become great at recruiting and how modern recruiting technology can help them achieve this goal.

Turns out, at least some of the process changes that companies can implement, like going into candidate interviews with a structured plan, or making sure you understand which are the key elements or attributes that are likely to make a candidate successful can elevate an organization's recruiting function into the top 10%.

Additionally, Dan and Steve talked about the market for recruitment technology, why it might be so crowded with solution providers, and why most recruitment technology providers have made a mistake by trying to make recruiting simple and somehow 'not core' to the business. Dan and Greenhouse feel that recruiting is hard, important, and are creating tools to make organizations successful at these tough challenges.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, or using the widget player below:

This was a fun and interesting show - many thanks to Dan and the entire team at Greenhouse for having the HR Happy Hour out at the event. And also, many thanks to our HR Happy Hour Show sponsor Virgin Pulse, www.virginpulse.com.

Finally, remember to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and all the major podcast apps - just search for 'HR Happy Hour' to add the show to your subscriptions and you will never miss a show.

RECRUITING OPPORTUNITY: The Hotel Gym at 6AM on a Wednesday

Quick take from the road on a busy Wednesday, (note to self, this should have been a 'Notes from the road' post, but I digress). 

Tried to do the 'stay relatively healthy' bit early this morning by hitting up the Hilton gym at about 6AM or so today and walked into probably the most packed facility I think I have seen in weeks on the road. There were easily 40 or so folks already grinding out a run on the treadmill or faking their way through some pull downs on the lat machine.

In fact, the place was so crowded, I noticed six or seven folks enter, look around, and then leave since pretty much every available piece of cardio equipment, (and most of the weight machines), were being used. This was at 6:19AM on a Wednesday.

Now this may not seem all that remarkable, the hotel is pretty large and there are three or four different events and conferences going on here this week, so packing 50 people into a gym may not be as big a deal as I am making it out to be.

But if you subscribe to the notion, as many folks do, that industry meeting and conferences like the ones going on at this hotel this week are great places for networking and recruiting then it stands to reason that at least some of the 'right' kind of folks you might be looking for can be found in the gym at 6 in the morning.

The 6AM gym folks are (at least trying) to go the extra mile (pun intended), to keep their s%#% together while on the road - which isn't easy at these kinds of events where the overwhelming tendency is for folks to spend hours and hours sitting in hotel meeting rooms, hitting buffets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and hitting up the endless open bar each night.

There are almost certainly recruitable and desirable candidates at every event.

It could be the most recruitable ones are on the treadmill at 6AM. 

Are you going to be there to meet them?