Take Control of Your TA Technology Choices and Use Them to Drive Your TA Strategy

Part 5 of Allyn Bailey’s Series on Driving Talent Acquisition Transformation

In my last article in this series, Transforming TA While Remaining Compliant?, I talked about the challenges of navigating change in TA while balancing the heavy presence of compliance in our work. If you missed that or any of the other articles in this series where I outline lessons 1 - 19, you could read them all?here.

In this installment in the series, I want to address the process of incorporating technology into your TA landscape.?The truth is that the introduction of new TA technology is often the kickoff of transformational change in many TA organizations.?Although this is common, it is by far not the most ideal situation.?It’s not uncommon for TA teams to either be handed a technology solution and told to get on the bus by their IT, finance, and HR partners or to falsely believe that the first thing they should do to make immediate change and improvements in their TA infrastructure is to buy the shiny new TA tech solution on the market.?In either case the TA team is in for a world of hurt, dashed hopes for revolutionary improvements to their day to day and increased disenfranchisement from their teams and customers.?I don’t say this because I assume in these situations the TA technologies being implemented are bad, or not worth buying.?I say it because without fail these solutions have been put in place without forethought into what the TA strategy or intent is.?This means the technology drives the direction and design of the processes, roles, and execution of the TA team, not the other way around.?This scenario leads to TA teams not being able to really address the challenges in their TA belief systems and strategies and instead results in TA tech force feeding a doubling down of historical practices. ?I think it was Tim Sackett, who I first heard say, “TA tech does not make you suck less, it makes you suck faster.”?(Forgive me Tim if I misquoted that.) The goal for the next few hard-won lessons I am about to share with you is to help you avoid this trap or if somehow you find yourself already in it to make the best of a bad situation.

Lesson 20: Don’t choose a technology until you know what your TA philosophy and design principles are

I cannot overemphasize how important it is that you choose technology that supports the intention of your TA process.?Intentionality is critical.?The truth is technology is a tool, nothing more.?It does not magically improve your execution, your strategy or your stakeholder satisfaction numbers just because it is the newest shiniest kid on the HR tech expo floor.?There are literally hundreds of TA tech solutions available to you and all of them will promise you nirvana if you book a demo and sales conversation with them.?Their job is to get you to believe they can solve whatever problem they want you to believe you have.?You heard me right, “they want you to believe you have”.?If you do not walk in knowing what you need the technology to do and why it’s important to help you reach your TA strategic intent, then you are not able to truly analyze if the solution you are viewing can support you.?You instead become entranced by cool interfaces, fancy words like “AI” and “efficiency” and get lulled into making TA decisions based on what is cool not what is needed to execute your intended strategy.

To prepare you for the TA tech buying and selection process, you need to have a clear set of design principles that reflect your TA strategy.?For example, if you are designing a strategy that is intentionally low touch but you want candidates to still feel like they are important to you, you need to have a design principle that articulates that.?Having this design principle in hand when you begin to prioritize what technologies you may want to include in your tech stack, how they will interact with each other, what features they will have etc., you can ask yourself continually, “Does this allow us to operate in a low touch manner but make candidates feel important?”?If yes, then it’s the right TA tech solution, configuration and/ or feature for you.?If not, keep exploring until you find a better fit.

Lesson 21: You own your technology configuration choices, not the vendor or implementation team hired gun

Anyone who tells you they know how to configure your tech solution, that has not been deeply entrenched in your organization’s operating model and design principles is either lying or misguided.?After the technology choice, configuration is the most important part of the technology implementation process.?A little secret I want to share with you, is that it is up to you as the owner of the TA strategic design to know how the technology you are buying works under the hood, to the degree that you can have robust conversations with your implementation team about how to configure the system to meet your specific requirements, even if you are asking them to do it in a way they have not thought of or done in the past.?You own the configuration decisions, so you need to be able to be smart enough about the technology to be able to not only use it as is “designed” but imagine how it could be used to meet your design intent.?Configuration and implementation teams honestly hate this thinking, because it makes things less routine and more complicated, but my favorite phrase to use with them is, “does the science exist to do X, because if it does, help me imagine how we can create our configuration of your system to do it.”

Lesson 22: Align your organization roles & processes to your technology capabilities

Technology does not operate on its own.?To work it requires people to put data in it, take data out of it and take a variety of actions.?This means that no successful technology implementation happens without thinking through how your business processes need to adapt to align to the technology and how your organization roles and their designated tasks and workflows need to be adjusted.?I have been in more than one organization that has thought this is something that can be left to after implementation and be done as you “see how it goes”.?Not one of those implementations were successful in terms of adoption, satisfaction, or impact.?

You cannot win the adoption race by “wishing” or “assuming” people will change their current practices or behaviors because you are introducing something that you and maybe even they themselves theoretically think is a better option.?People are creatures of habit and, even the rebels like me, of process design.?If you do not design the process or actions to match the intent of how you want the technology leveraged, people will not instinctively change their ways to get on the bus.?In fact, you may find that there are processes or workflows that without adjustment make implementing and leveraging your new technology more complicated or time consuming then following the old way of doing things.?Therefore, you must review the processes, workflows, roles, and actions considering the new technology.

Lesson 23: Be purposeful about the data pathways

TA technology ingests and spews out data.?Data is the lifeblood of a strong TA practice.?TA teams need to be able to access and trust candidate, behavior, and transaction data to take needed actions, make smart decisions and manage the overall business of TA.?This means you must make sure you think through how data moves through your technology solutions so that it maintains its validity and is accessible to the right people in the process at the right time in the tools and technologies they are using. To do this you need a data map. You also need to be purposeful about how you collect data, using standardized nomenclature and measurements, how you move data through integrations, who you provide access to and in which technology tools they need to use to leverage the data and which technology tools drive which reporting functionalities.?Needless to say, data mapping is essential and complicated.?Don’t leave it to the end of the process or you will be sorry.

Lesson 24:?Technology is like a living breathing thing, you need to be prepared for it to grow, develop, and change over time

Finally, let go of your notion that technology implementation is a one-time project. No matter what TA technology tool you choose to integrate into your TA solution suite, you will be faced with regular product upgrades and feature enhancements.?You need to keep a proactive eye on these changes and thoughtfully address how they fit into your TA strategy to determine implementation priorities, define needed changes in business process or roles or even make changes to your TA strategic design to account for new thinking or customer expectations in the ecosystem.?What I am trying to say is you are never done with technology implementation. It is a full time, constant job.?Technology is like a living breathing entity that needs to be managed continuously and nurtured to ensure it stays healthy and continues to support your organization.?Just like you plan for upkeep of new car with oil changes and tune ups you need to be prepared for upkeep of your technology solution.?

Incorporating TA technology into your TA strategy and execution is complicated but rewarding.?Good technology choices can make the difference between a strategy that accomplishes what you intended and a strategy that goes off the rails.?The number one thing to remember is that you must be thoughtful and purposeful about your choices.?Don’t be afraid of the terminology or sales pitches and remember you are the one who knows what you need technology to do for you. All the vendors and consultants are there to address your usage model needs, not to convince you that you need to adopt their technology because it will solve a problem they have defined for the industry and thus want you to believe is your priority to solve.?You are in control.?Own it.

In the next installment of this series, I am going to be talking about how you make your TA transformation design principles a way of thinking vs just a call to action.