This Week, In Recruiting - Issue 45

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Open Kitchen:?What ATS Would You Recommend?

So I'm finally able to publish some data on the What Do Recruiters Want? survey.

As you might recall, late last year I asked you all to contribute to a survey on 'recruiter sentiment' in an effort to figure out what it was that we really wanted out of the jobs we are seeing advertised by employers looking to hire recruiters. The idea was if we could collect this information, aggregate it, anonymise it and then provide it back to those employers, then perhaps it will help them to design the type of job opportunities which recruiters actually want to do.

Exactly 2571 of you completed this massive 80+ question survey, with many hundreds (maybe thousands?) more who must have started it before having the good sense to abandon before completion ??. Thank you all for giving it a shot, because whether you completed it or not - we now have a massive amount of data!

Over the coming weeks, I am going to try and get this information out to you. I guess I am mainly going to do it on here as I don't really write anywhere else, but you might want to keep an eye out on this webpage, where I am building a small web app which you can use to interrogate the data.

As usual, I am telling you about this in 'completely unfinished state' as this is Open Kitchen. There is only one question up there right now, but it was a fun one to start off with and one of those FAQ's which recruiters never seem to tire of asking; What ATS should we be using?

This space won't be used to tell you the answer, so instead I am going to explain the process of getting it from a survey, and into a web app.

1. Data Collection Method

Firstly, I opted from free text input to collect this information on ATS sentiment. I chose this option as I knew that the marketplace was hugely fragmented and it would be a huge task to list all possible choices in multi choice or drop down. Additionally, by providing a set list to choose from, I'd be prejudicing the response and giving favour to those vendors who were on it. Hence, the free text input

The major issue of this approach of course, was a vast array of input choices respondents made. Not only were over 200 different products being nominated, but many respondents chose to elaborate on their choices, providing context, justification, hyperbole, invective and humour into their responses ??

It was actually quite funny to read, but a massive problem in processing it so that we could use it for insight. Hence, there was nothing we could other than go through each of the responses and figure out from the non-standard responses, what they mean. We - I - had to do a lot of 'data normalisation'

2. Data Normalisation Method

As I used Google Forms (mistake, should've used Typeform) for this survey, the data was immediately available in the form of an autogenerated google sheet. However, as we had 2571 responses, with 80 questions each, the entire sheet was way too unwieldy for any work to be done on it. Additionally, any human error on this spreadsheet might well have catastrophic consequences for the project, so the decision was made to isolate all questions which had free text input and therefore high variability of responses, extract them to another spreadsheet and normalise it there.

We wrote a script to generate a second column which contained the normalised choices. It was then a matter of going through each response and making sure a normalised corresponding value was made, apply some rules such as where multiple products were nominated, the first nominated would be selected and where responses without a nominated product were considered 'not known' etc.

In hindsight I should've outsourced this as it took absolutely ages.

3. Display Love / Hate Together

We realised that we had data on both positive and negative sentiment on a large number of nominated ATS products. To display this, we went for a positive negative bar chart, which we felt enabled users to quickly see which products generated the greatest degree of sentiment, and in which direction. The values are a simple count with no calculations, so users can also see the size of the sample when viewing the data

We did not collect information on the strength of sentiment - how much people felt about their nominations (i/e did they reluctantly nominate their 'favourite' ATS?) and did not attempt to infer this either, relying on just collecting the number of nominations.

4. Primary filter: by Country

There are a number of ways we can filter this data, but the first one I chose was by country. The reason was two-fold. Firstly, it was clear that part of the reason why there were a high number of products nominated was because the ATS landscape is geographically fragmented. Different countries produce different ATS's and some of them achieve a significant presence in their national territory but have not yet expanded significantly beyond home market.

Secondly, I want to show how effective market penetration was for vendors who think of themselves as global players. They no doubt have this data already from revenue figures from different territories, but sentiment value from the wider community might be a good data point on how far they can or need to go.

5. Future Filters?

Obviously this is work-in-progress and there are some obvious filters we can build into this segment. We collected employer size in the survey, so perhaps it would be interesting to see whether company size has an impact on optimal choice for ATS; intuitively we know this to be the case - another reason for the fragmentation of this market is that software rarely scales up / down with the customer base, but tends to be optimised for a few adjacent segments.

I'm actually quite open as to what other filters you might to see on this, so please do let me know in comments below if you have any views on it. Some early thoughts..

• Employer Size
• Worker type (i/e agency recruiter, in-house recruiter etc)
• Seniority (i/e do leaders like a different ATS vs individual contributors?)
• Attitude to opportunity (any correlation between how motivated recruiters to leave vs the ATS they were using?)
• What else - let me know

Final thoughts

There is going to be lots more to come on this, there's load of data we have to present, so Open Kitchen will likely see several more write ups dedicated to these survey findings as they come through. I should also get around the responses and maybe write a report on it or perhaps a presentation on it. Got a feeling a presentation might be easier, so maybe I will do that and do a Brainfood Live on it.

Anyways, enjoy the app - bookmark it - because we will keep adding segments to it as we go through the data.

Out of the kitchen, onto the lounge ??

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What's in the News?

Handshake raise $200 Million Series F

Another massive fundraise for graduate recruitment platform Handshake, where it feels we are reaching some kind of denouement. LinkedIn have made no move to address this market, there is no comparable player in the space and the conquest of the 'rest of the world' is underway. Looking forward to seeing how this latest phase goes, especially keeping an eye on my buddy and GM EMEA Dimitar Stanimiroff - we need to catch up hombre, well overdue. Read all about the raise - and the vision - here

Totaljobs ending the agency rate!

One of the most venerable and popular generalist job boards in the UK are no longer going to offer different prices according to customer type. This looks like a significant shift to a focus on direct employer advertising - what do agency recruiters think about this move?

Stack Overflow retires as a job board / database search

In a somewhat surprising announcement this week, Stack Overflow announce the sunsetting of their famous jobs product. For a long time the No1 destination for hiring software engineers, Stack Overflow's pivot to employer branding is an understanding refocusing to a higher value proposition. Still, the developers themselves seem a little sad at the news.

Arctic Shores take ￡1.5 million in debt funding from Silicon Valley Bank

Good luck to Robert Newry and crew at Artic Shores. Got there long before the shift to remote made it obvious we had to find better ways of assessing job candidates than recruiters looking at CV's! Great to see the firepower in to keeping growing the business.

If you are a recruitment service provider or technology business and have any news to share,?comment below,?this is your application to get into next week's addition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it

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What's On Offer?

As usual, when there is no vendor making a decent offer to the community, you are going to have to make do with a rather ugly picture of me, looking accusingly, at you. Come rectech providers - do you want to use this space for a bit of free advertising? Give the community a deal, and you got it!

If you are a recruitment service provider or recruitment technology vendor have any?exclusive?offer for the community,?comment below?with your offer in order to be included in next week's edition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it.

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What's Going On?

What’s the Kryptonite in Your Early Careers Hiring Process? How to Make Candidate Experience More Inclusive through the Lens of Neurodiversity, Weds 26 Jan, 12pm

What is neurodiversity? Why is it important to consider the neurodiversity when designing your candidate journey? Important questions, especially in the early careers market. Join Nicola Sullivan and Theo Smith, in what promises to be a valuable session on an important dimension of inclusive hiring. Register here

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep141 - Recruiter Enablement - How to set up your RecOps Function, Fri 28th Jan, 3pm GMT

At a time when you can't be sure that you're going to be able to increase headcount in your TA team, it becomes imperative to make sure that you're getting the best out of the recruiters you do have. 'Recruiter enablement' is what we're talking about in this week's Brainfood Live On Air, in particular - how do you set up a Recruitment Operations function. We're with Daniel Martos, Recruitment Operations Lead (Preply) and Stephanie Baysinger & Recruitment Strategy, Operations & Enablement (Marqueta). Register here

How will the Global Mobility game change in the UK in 2022?, Wed 2 Feb, 2pm GMT

Brexit, Covid, Shift to Remote - there's never been a year like this for the UK labour market. What do UK employers need to do to attract the best talents to their businesses? To access the global talent pool, do you have to push the job out or is there an effective way to still attract the talent in? I'm delighted to host this conversation with Gordon Smith, VP of Sales and Jules Motcho, UK Immigration Case Manager (both Localyze). We're on Weds 2nd Feb 2pm GMT - register here

If you have an event, webinar or podcast going on next week and want it featured on next week's newsletter,?comment below?with the link and event details. Don't forget to @ mention me so that I see it

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Who's Hiring?

Junior-Mid Tech Recruiter, OLX Group, Warsaw, Poland

Global Leadership Recruiter, OLX Group, Berlin, Germany

Senior Technical Recruiter, OLX Group, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Technical Recruiter, OLX Group, Lisbon, Portugal

EMEA Talent Acquisition Events Lead, BCG, London, UK

GTM / Sales Recruiter, Stream, Boulder, CO, USA

Recruiting Manager, First Mode, Seattle, WA, USA

Technical Recruiter, Deepgram, Remote USA

Manager, Talent Acquisition, Minted, San Francisco, CA, USA

Sourcing Specialist, On Deck, Remote Global

Corporate Recruiter, On Deck, Remote Global

Tech Recruiter, On Deck, Remote Global

Executive Recruiter, On Deck, Remote Global

Senior Manager, Technical Recruiting, project44, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Talent Acquisition Partner - Engineering, Rasa, London, UK

Senior Technical Recruiter, Spokeo, Remote USA

If you want to get your job featured, post jobs on the Brainfood Jobs Job Board?here

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Who's Available?

Ed Hackett, currently Director of Talent at Wheely, is looking for his next opportunity in a TA leadership role. Cross industry experience in Finance (Munich Re) and e-commerce / logistics (Amazon). The end goal is CPO, so any position with a 'more than just recruiting' exposure would be the ticket. Looking for a TA Director / Head of TA? - contact Ed directly here

If you are looking for your next move and want people to know about it, comment below and let me know what you're looking for. You might find yourself in the next issue

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Who's Moving?

Serge Boudreau joins CareerBeach as VP of Business Development, in a wonderful story of connecting first with founder Yves Boudreau (no relation) through the excellent Recruitment Flex Podcast. Providing content and being a community leader is reward in and of itself - but exciting career opportunities are almost always guaranteed to then follow. Congrats to the Boudreaus!

Ana Tavares joins MANTA as Global Head of Talent Acquisition, after spending time in similar leadership roles at PandaDoc and Pipedrive.

Daisy Peak joins MiYoHo as Global Talent Acquisition & Employer Brand manager, after spending time in leadership roles with ByteDance, TikTok and Alibaba. Few more impressive CV's than this - a future guest for Brainfood Live I hope!

Mark Mansour joins CapGemini as Regional Strategic Talent Acquisition Lead. Great landing spot for the big man - Mark brings a ton of experience from across a dizzying array of industry sectors to the table.

Ben Brett joins Boom Talent as Head of Customer Experience. Ben was one of the most impactful senior leaders I had the great fortune of learning from in my early days in the industry. Fantastic to see continued contribution at high level to our sector

Colin Harris joins KANDIDATE as Talent Partner, I believe the first hire in Ireland for this growing boutique RPO. Few are better networked to build a territory in Ireland that Colin - another community builder who brings network as well as individual talent to the table.

Hannah Manku joins Tractable as Tech Recruiter, after spending 3 years plus at Gousto in individual contributor and team lead roles. Super interesting business - AI for calculating accident repair costs based on image recognition. Great challenge to be recruiting engineers for this unicorn.

Finally, congratulations to Rich Lewis-Jones who moves up to Regional Director APAC SmartRecruiters. From being the 'first guy in' Down Under, Rich has cultivated the network to become an integral part of the recruiter community in Australia / New Zealand, the effort being see by the brand sentiment on the SmartRecruiters product.

If you have made a senior exec appointment to your business,?and feel the wider community needs to know about it,?comment below?with the details and see it featured in next weeks issue.?Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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What Are You Doing?

Matt Bradburn launches Heron - a new full cycle compensation management platform for tomorrow's workforce. Fantastic to see recruiters productise their know-how and give startup a shot. Get on the waitlist here.

Jenae Lyn is launching a new service aimed at making over your LinkedIn presence. Few people are going to know more about this than Jenae who not only brings a wealth of experience working in the HR tech space, but also has years of experience actually working at LinkedIn. Think you know it all about LinkedIn? You probably don't ??. Contact Jenae and upgrade your game here

Pete Weddle is looking for nominations for Top 100 Influential TA Thought Leaders 2022. I made this list last year, so don't vote for me again, but have a think about someone who has inspired you in the last 12 months and who you think more people need to know about! Do it here or contact Peter directly on here.

If you are doing something new,?comment below?with what it is and share a link to where you want people to go. Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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End Notes

Super tired today - I blame the beer, gin, white wine and port combo I had yesterday.

It wasn't a huge amount of booze but damn the mixing really did me in. Obviously the only solution is an overly greasy lunch - fish and chips I think is going to happen.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this post. Let me know if you have any news that you want included in next week's issue

Hung

Hung Lee is the curator of?Recruiting Brainfood, and now This Week In Recruiting. Subscribe to both if you are into recruiting or HR or just interested in world of work.