Google Wars

It is a period of great abundance, new products, mergers and acquisitions. The old guard, Taleo, maintains its dominance in the ATS universe, stubborn in its fight against the new and improved platforms.

Workday, Lever, and Greenhouse amongst others continue to forge ahead in a crowded and progressive landscape slowly clawing away at Taleo.

During the battle, Google announces Google Hire and Google Jobs. Rumours abound that this is the end of the old guard, and job boards. A.I and machine learning… the ultimate weapons in this battle of old versus new. Enough data to destroy the recruitment technology landscape.

Tired of the poor user and candidate experience, Google pursues players old and new to forge a new dynasty, a new hope in recruitment technology to help save and improve the candidate and user experience.

The reality of Google moving into both the Job board and ATS space should be concerning. Google is far more advanced in terms of A.I and machine learning than most software companies out there. This alone will put fear into the eyes and pockets of the big enterprise providers out there. Google is a platform, unlike its insular competitors its ability to leverage swaths of data and tools for the benefit of candidates and employers would be unrivalled. That depends of course how segmented the products are from its suite of other products.
How will Google serve up jobs to candidates? Will it use the information it receives from my job hunting activity and begin serving up related jobs? Like that story of a father complaining to a major retailer for advertising pregnancy information to her due to her Facebook activity? I hope so. How will they monetise it? Will it be cost prohibitive? I don’ think so. Will it be Indeed Free? Maybe, but I doubt it.
Google Hire will be interesting. Will G+ be integrated? It would certainly revitalise what in my opinion has become a wasteland of profiles. I would hope for a lot of automation to create additional efficiencies in the recruitment process. You know, like booking interviews between candidates and interviewers and coordinating diaries. One click apply for candidates with the ability to see their application progress. Simple API integrations with third party providers. And tableau like reporting at the touch of a button or at least some intuitive dashboards.
I’m excited to see what Google does, if anything it will drive progress across the HR tech landscape and that is a good thing.
Image: Shutterstock

Join your peers at the largest Talent Acquisition & Management conference on the Southern hemisphere to learn more about the latest trends and pick up useful sourcing tips & strategies. Get in early to enjoy greater savings – tickets available here.