Google's ATS Killer

Google's introduction of Hire, a SaaS job recruiting tool that works with the G Suite of office applications, promises to have a big impact on the talent acquisition tech market, but will it affect the enterprise or give more "power" to SMBs and startups is anyone's guess.

As I'm writing this, that continues to be the question that empowers me.

When Google created the Jobs API, HR tech futurists said this was about AI. Not fearing that our algorithmic overlords will replace recruiters, I had 2 arguments about what this meant. Behind closed doors, I chatted with my PPC/SEM pro that this was about advertising dollars because of the ad revenue drifting away from Google and over to this little social networking site. I arrived at this by pairing Matt Charney's thoughts about Google + circa 2013.

Openly, I thought that Google was creating a "trojan horse" of sorts. At the bottom of the press release announcing the Jobs API , a small tidbit. "Cloud Jobs API is now in alpha with a select group of customers, including providers of job boards, career sites and applicant tracking systems. Initial testers include CareerBuilder, Dice and Jibe."

I wondered "What would a company like CareerBuilder or Dice do with such an API?"

For Careerbuilder it meant equipping Google's Jobs API with deep knowledge in recruitment and human capital management. CareerBuilder could leverage the scale of Google’s expertise in machine learning to provide swifter, more relevant results for workers looking for jobs. Early tests show positive results in helping job seekers find the most relevant jobs and discover opportunities they wouldn’t have necessarily surfaced.

Says who?

“CareerBuilder will be able to layer our rich domain expertise over Google’s extensive search capabilities, opening the door to new efficiencies and opportunities for our business, clients, and users,” said Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder. “Working with Google will give us the backend framework that we can leverage as we accelerate our transition into a global HR software as a service provider and build our ecosystem.”

So Google has an API that can read all these years of data? No wonder they didn't buy LinkedIn.

Enter Google Hire

Talent acquisition tech vendors are on notice that there's a major new player on the scene, but this one already has a huge and familiar install base. It's one with a ready-made base of more than three million users of Google's G Suite of office apps, with which Hire integrates easily.

The search giant unveiled Google Hire July 10 with a blog post from Berit Johnson, senior product manager for Google Cloud, though Google had been previewing the tool to analysts and insiders for months.

We already knew this. We could read the tea leaves even without Charney clairvoyance. We knew it was the company’s latest project developed by its enterprise and cloud division, being led by Diane Green. Google Hire even referenced Green’s startup “Bebop,” which Google acquired back in 2015 for $380 million. Axios reported that behind those closed doors, Google Hire is very similar to rival services such as Greenhouse and Lever, and could also provide competition to the likes of LinkedIn or Jobvite. That is to say that Hire allows employers to post available job listings and accept/manage applications.

But... all of this applications are for the enterprise, right? What if Google went downstream where there is far more money?

This Is Aimed @ SMBs?

Analysts said Google Hire is likely to instantly affect the fast-expanding segment for talent acquisition systems for small and medium-sized businesses, not only because of Google's installed base, but also because of the elegance of Hire's technology.

I love some of the Enterprise ATS out there, but they are cost prohibitive for a company that occasionally engages in hiring or has low annual hiring plans. Think about your local pizzeria or 30+ person software start up. They can't afford it. Instead, they are saddled with the Fox News and CNN promise of ZipRecruiter.

With vendors like ZipRecruiter or Zoho Recruit targeting the SMB, there's green field and blue waters for a trusted brand like Google. And again, this is just so smart on Google's part about rolling this out. That being said, the segment itself is just massive, and Google isn't the only productivity suite in town.

Google's counterpart in the space, Microsoft, of course, boasts the Office suite, as well as recently acquired LinkedIn, which has evolved into a popular recruiting tool among its social applications. But... Google makes it simple from use to pricing, where Microsoft creates confusion.

Linked to Google Job Search Engine

Google Hire is optimized for Google for Jobs, a free service unveiled in May 2017 that connects Google search with job platforms such as LinkedIn, CareerBuilder and others. The two products will form a powerful combination, and Google could also move upstream with Google for Jobs with a premium version, as in LinkedIn's service, analysts said. But, I don't think that's likely. What's likely is copying Indeed's revenue model which Google kinda sorta pioneered with Google AdWords like a decade or so ago.

Simplicity

"Hire and G Suite are made to work well together so recruiting team members can focus on their top priorities instead of wasting time copy-pasting across tools," Johnson said in the blog.

Meanwhile, analysts who have seen demos say a key selling point of Google Hire is its simplicity and usability and how smoothly users can merge applicant tracking data and interviewing schedules with Google Sheets, Gmail and Google Calendar.

It's Coming For The Enterprise

"There is some game-changing technology embedded in the search algorithms," said Paul Hamerman, vice president and principal analyst for HR tech at Forrester Research. "It's a nice product. It's pretty simple."

Hamerman said it is not coincidental that the Google Hire release follows the defection to Google in 2015 of Dmitri Krakovsky, former senior vice president for human capital management products at SAP's SuccessFactors subsidiary.

Krakovsky, now a Google vice president, was intimately involved in the development of Google Hire, Hamerman said.

Another HR technology analyst familiar with Google Hire, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research, said that while the new talent acquisition tool is a strong entry into the SMB segment, it will not likely have an immediate impact on that market nor compete with sophisticated systems for large enterprises.

"There's no track record to handle complex talent acquisition needs," Mueller said. "No company will replace Taleo with Google Hire in the near future."

But... I think Mueller is wrong. Remember when Google Apps were just a thing for solo entrepreneurs? And then other applications like LinkedIn starting integrated with Google Apps? Or when a whole industry of "business consultants" grew up around transitioning from Microsoft Office to G-Suite? Or when those videos exploded in popularity on YouTube? Or when an integrator of "so-called SMB apps by Google" got bought by Accenture for like $400M?

Lastly, when Google Hire was in private beta, they didn't test it with SMBs. No, the number of companies currently using Google Hire for managing their job application process were funded tech startups including:

• Medisas
• Poynt
• DramaFever
• SingleHop
• CoreOS
• Nanz
• Touchlab
• Citizen Inc
• Pace Avenue

Analysts be damned. Google is coming for the Enterprise ATS market, but they are smart enough to realize there's more money in the SMBs.

As a member of Relus' recruiting team, Brian Fink focuses on driving talent towards opportunity. Whether helping startups ascend or enterprises adapt to the unknown, Fink works with innovators who can handle ambiguity of a constantly changing technology landscapes. His career includes 10+ years of successfully scaling IT, Recruiting, Big Data, Product, and Executive Leadership teams across North America. As an active keynote speaker and national commentator on recruiting trends and talent acquisition tactics, Fink focuses on client development, candidate engagement, organizational transformation, and recruiter education. Follow him on Twitter.