Emerging trends from HR Tech Conference 2019

Attending the annual HR Tech Conference in Las Vegas is now become an increasing Aussie thing to do.

This year, I saw numerous “friends of ATC”, including Enboarder, Curious Thing (ATC2019 Innovation Lab winner), LiveHire, Fuel50, Weploy, on the vendor floor. I also met more than a few familiar faces amongst the crowd too.

It never ceases to amaze me to attend this conference. This is my fourth trip and I still feel overwhelmed at times. There were 432 vendors showcasing their technologies and getting around to see all of them was literally mission impossible.

However, out of all the razzle-dazzle and action, I did notice some trends emerging from my discussions with the people I met and the vendors that I did manage to talk to. This is what I observed:

InnerMobility is the new thing

Organisations have traditionally focused on external recruiting to find new Talent, but with growing skill shortages, they are finding it more challenging to rely on this channel alone to fulfil their needs. Hence, they start looking internally.

At the conference, there were multiple vendors offering solutions for this area. Two of them that I looked at in detail were Gloat and Hitch. These products are identifying and engaging internal Talent in several ways, including:

• Projects – These products are able to match employees with suitable skills to available projects within the organisation. Employees may then register for these projects indicating the time they have available each week.
• Mentoring – Internal mentors and employees can be matched to foster personal development, gain new skills and capabilities, and augmenting the organisation’s mentoring programs.
• Internal Mobility/Career Pathways – Employees with the required skills and experience can be readily identified for internal vacancies across the organisations. The product can also assist employees who are keen to explore a different areas of work to understand what skills are required to move to their desired positions;
• External Mobility – Employees looking for opportunities external to the organisation can also be matched. Gloat does this especially well.

These products also integrate with some ERP and ATS Solutions.

Sourcing/CRM meets chat bot

Previously, we see powerful TA tools working separately to complete specific tasks within the hiring process. Now, these tools are beginning to integrate, and we are starting to see products that offer a much more streamlined experience.

For example, AllyO (ATC2019 Innovation Lab runner up) is a conversational AI recruiting chat bot that helps us manage, engage and screen candidates. They have integrated with Zapinfo, an automated sourcing tool, to create a powerful tool that enables us to search for skills and engage with the candidates all on a single platform.

This has the potential to significantly reduce recruiter workload and get qualified Talent who are interested in our opportunities through faster without a lot of effort. 

Obviously, the recruiter still needs to set up the search and oversee the process but from what I could gauge from the demonstration, this would be excellent for positions that are recruited on a regular basis.

In addition, it would appear that both solutions could work with an organization’s ATS database and some job boards. Both Indeed and Seek were mentioned but I did not observe this feature.

It is always interesting to compare what is happening and coming out from the US to Australasia and see where we sit in terms of innovation. I dare say we are just as, if not, more innovative than our American counterparts, given we must contend with the lack of critical mass in our market.

Hopefully we can bring some of these innovations across to ATC2020 so we can all learn from each other!