With Martin Burns, George LaRocque and Chris Russell

1. TRANSCRIPT - RECTECH PODCAST EPISODE 44 WITH MARTIN BURNS AND GEORGE LAROCQUE
SUBSCRIBE: ​https://www.rectechmedia.com/podcast/
SPONSORED BY: ​https://www.lever.co/rectech
George Larocque: This is George Larocque, HCM analyst with HRWins.
Martin Burns: And, this is Martin Burns, strategy consulting leader from HireCLix.
Chris Russell: I'm Chris Russell. It's time for our year end re-cap, next on the RecTech podcast.
Speaker 4: Welcome to RecTech, the podcast where recruiting and technology intersect.
Each month you'll hear from vendors shaping the recruiting world, along with
recruiters who'll tell you how they use technology to hire talent. [00:00:30]
Now, here's your host, the mad scientist of online recruiting, Chris Russell.
Chris Russell: Happy New Year, everyone. It's time once again for RecTech, the only podcast
that helps employers and recruiters connect with more candidates through
technology inspired conversations.
So, I started the show last year in order to educate recruiters and employers
about how to better leverage technology to recruit. I think this profession is
becoming much more technically challenging to many of you out there. There's
lots of new tools and techniques you need to master. That's the mission
[00:01:00] of this show, to make you better recruiters overall. Thanks for all the
downloads in 2017.
First up, today's episode of RecTech is sponsored by the team at Lever.
Providing a modern take on the applicant tracking system, Lever combines ATS
and CRM functionality in a single powerful platform to help you source, nurture,
and manage your candidates all in one place. Lever offers a brand new job site,
custom sourcing tools, great metrics, email and calendar integration, along with
a host other benefits that your recruiting team is going to love. [00:01:30] Best
of all, Lever's deceptively simple interface means that hiring managers and
applicants will love it too. To find out how Lever can help you both accelerate
and humanize hiring, visit Lever.co/RecTech. Lever is where ATS meets CRM.
On a personal note, I just wanna thank Lever for becoming my new sponsor this
year. I like to be judged by the company I keep, and I think the Lever team is just
full of great people there. So, if you are in the market for new ATS [00:02:00]
this year, you would do well to consider adding them to your HR Tech Stack. To
Leela Srinivasan and crew, thanks for being a part of RecTech this year. I
appreciate it.
Alright, on to our guests, Martin Burns and George Larocque. Welcome to
RecTech. It's good to have you.

2. Martin Burns: Thanks, Chris. Good to be here.
George Larocque: Thanks for having me.
Chris Russell: We're all on the East Coast. We're batting down the hatches for this bomb
cyclone storm. You guys ready?
Martin Burns: It's going [00:02:30] through bible Genesis right now, or something like that.
Chris Russell: Polar vortex, bomb cyclones, they're just making this stuff up, right?
Martin Burns: They really are, and apparently Siberia, Greenland, and the North Pole are
showing up on Saturday, then the storm's done, so that'll be cool.
George Larocque: Winter is coming.
Martin Burns: Nah, I think it's here. A zombie walked by about an hour ago.
Chris Russell: It came way too fast, this year.
George Larocque: We beat the cold.
Chris Russell: Way too fast. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while, guys.
We've been planning it for about a month, or so. [00:03:00] First of all, thanks
very much for taking time out today. I know it's the first week of the year.
Everybody's trying to get back into the swing of things.
My goal today was to basically talk about what happened last year on a high
level, get your guys' thoughts and opinions. Feel free to speak your mind today,
and just have a great conversation about RecTech and HR Tech, and what's
going on.
With that, I guess let's ... first of all, let's start off with instructions. Let's talk
about who you guys are, [00:03:30] what you do. Martin, why don't you go first.
Martin Burns: Yeah, sure. My title, my big fancy title is strategy consulting leader or lead, for
HireClix. It's a loose term, right. HireClix is a marketing advertising consultancy
based out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, just north of Boston on the water. I tell
ya, it's a classic kind of fishing port, a neat place to have a ... you can easily see
what kind of work out of ...
What we do here, is we [00:04:00] help all our clients, on the ad side, with their
recruitment marketing and advertising, how to manage their budget, what to
invest in, in terms of products, how to track their advertising effectiveness,
design campaigns, do creative work. That's the ad side.
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3. My team, I co-leader with Kara Yarnot. What we do is, we help clients with some
larger, more strategy process and especially technology selection, which is kind
of where I side. I'm a tech geek at heart, I guess, just [00:04:30] like George and
yourself, Chris.
Chris Russell: Yep.
Martin Burns: I co-lead ... I founded and co-lead with George the Facebook group Talent
Product Plays, where we really have an ongoing, online conversation chasing
around technology in the recruiting space.
Chris Russell: Thanks for mentioning that. It's a great group. It's called Talent Product Plays on
Facebook. If you wanna learn more about RecTech, HR Tech, definitely join that
up.
George, how about you?
George Larocque: I am [00:05:00] the founder and principal analyst of HRWins. I'm an
independent market analyst. I've been in the market now for 27 years, and I
think what I bring to the table is unique perspective. Having spent 10 years as a
practitioner, I came out of recruiting on the third party agency side. Moved on
to the corporate side, worked on the employer side, [00:05:30] and then had a
small regional, what would now be called an RPO, up in the Boston area. So, 10
years there, then moved to the vendor side for 10 years, launched a few of the
larger brands in the space, all HR Tech.
The last seven years, I've been advising employers on strategy for their HR Tech
Stack, recruiting Tech Stack as well. And vendors, helping them get a better
understanding [00:06:00] of their customers. Sometimes I describe myself as a
translator in the market. I spend a lot of time looking at the trends, and a lot of
time looking at VC, and investment and so forth. I generally share as much as I
can in the market about what I see going on, and the Talent Product Plays is a
big ... one of the areas that I ... places I should say, that I do that.
Chris Russell: Awesome. Alright, I appreciate that, guys. [00:06:30] If I look at the news from
last year, I think a few things stand out to me. We'll go over each of these.
Number one, would be the entrance of Google and Facebook into the
marketplace. I'd like to talk about some of the implications of what that means
for vendors and employers.
Number two, there's lots of new HR Tech coming out. There's never been more
HR technology than there is right now. We'll kinda go over that a bit.
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4. Of course AI recruiting, which is this buzz word that's out there. What that will
look like [00:07:00] from a practical standpoint. I'm curious from you guys, what
you're hearing from clients around that.
Let's start with Google and Facebook. To me, that was the biggest story of the
year, as far as the impact those two are gonna have on the overall marketplace.
What's your overall feelings on that, guys? What do you think?
Martin Burns: George, do you wanna go first? I've got some thoughts on this, but, please.
George Larocque: Why don't you kick it off?
Martin Burns: Go ahead. I'm trying to be a gentleman [00:07:30] for New Years.
George Larocque: You have the floor, Martin.[crosstalk 00:07:31]
Chris Russell: For a short cylinder.
Martin Burns: Yeah, yeah. This won't last. In thinking about the two of them, if we're
comparing the two of them, I start to feel like Google, I'm sorry, Facebook
landed with a bit of a thud. I'm not seeing as much traction there yet. I'm getting
retails now from them, to do more talking to our clients, and to do some free
job feeds, and what not, but I just didn't feel like there was a real strategy in the
roll out, at least from [00:08:00] my perspective and viewpoint. Still, I think that
there is [inaudible 00:08:03] there, but how are they gonna figure that? They're
still not really, either focused on it appropriately, or something's not really
kicking in.
I think Google's done a far better job with getting to the marketplace, getting
attention. I can only see so much when they're under Indeed with them, or run
a few things, but what they've done so far is interesting. The market's getting it,
and the simple fact is, the impact on Indeed [00:08:30] and the Outgraders, we
haven't even felt it fully yet, I don't think. That's still coming. That's going to be
interesting.
Chris Russell: Yeah, I agree. I think on the Facebook side, Martin, I think one of the reasons ...
number one, is that it's a closed eco-system, where you can't take the data out
of there, and put it in your ETS basically, which is a big reason why it hasn't gone
fully into the market overall. In fact, you should be able to play with it a little bit,
and when you can send the application to an email address, that's about as far
as you can go, as far as [00:09:00] getting it out of there.
Martin Burns: I'm with you on that. I tried bending it around, and it just sort of like, well, yeah,
but it's a compliance nightmare.
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5. George Larocque: That was going to be my contribution, was did you see ...
Martin Burns: Sorry.
George Larocque: ... there's a big ... No, no it's all good. There's that class-action lawsuit that is
currently in play, because it looks like they just took their B to C, B to B ad play,
where you can ... you know you can advertise [00:09:30] a product and say, I
wanna show this to a person of a certain age. That's who I wanna ... that's the
demographic. But, you can't really do that with jobs, unless you've got a real
reason to do that. A bunch of employers have had to come out and say we've
stopped doing that. Some have pulled their ads completely. It's another tech
player who didn't ... I always wonder, do they talk to anyone who understands
the [crosstalk 00:10:00] [00:10:00] before they merge in?
Martin Burns: Of course not. I've met a few of the Google product managers, and they're ... I
mean, it's Google. They're generally ... there's a certainly bar of excellence
there. But, they're very good, and they're thoughtful about it, and it's not the B
team. This felt like Facebook's C or B team when it came to product, and that's a
problem.
Ironically enough, Facebook doesn't have a lot of experienced people working
there. [00:10:30] They themselves hire for a very young demographic, and it's
very clear when you look at their employee population, age, gender, etc, who
they're targeting. So, there's some irony that they got caught, or they got in
trouble because their clients were doing that, right?
Chris Russell: Yeah.
Martin Burns: I think it's these inexperienced, never worked in compliance, never actually
worked in recruiting PM's and designers, just create this thing without thinking
about it, and understand what's actually gonna happen.
Google took a different approach. [00:11:00] That's why I like it better. We're
using Google Hire here as our ATS.
Chris Russell: How's that going?
Martin Burns: It's good. Our big issue is that we partner with so many technology vendors.
They're all good partners. It's great. We like a lot of the ATS's, and the group
market platforms, the Outgraders and what not, and the sourcing tools. They're
really cool people, companies, and tools, but if we picked just one of them for
our ATS, it picks everybody else up, which I understand. So we [00:11:30] hire
with it, because it's a beta. We can play with it a bit, and we are doing hiring
ourselves. We need to organize somehow, but we don't wanna do it in a neutral
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6. way. This was good for us, 'cause it's geared toward small companies that are
flexible, and that are Google scouts, and that's us.
For us it works really well. I cannot speak to, obviously, enterprise for Google,
that's not their target anyway, or even mid-size. We're 50 people soaking wet,
with plans for greatness over the next couple years, and growth was good.
[00:12:00] So, it will handle that, I think, but it's definitely not something that I'd
wanna drop in a Ford motor company or something like that.
George Larocque: They've been pretty clear, at least on the front end, that they're going after the
small business market, and you've got to be a Google Suite user to have access
to it. They do have some enterprise clients on the Google Suite, but [00:12:30]
to your point. It's really, for now, it's targeting the smaller employers, and there
are millions of them. So, this puts pressure on Jazz and other folks that were
focused on the small market. Your sponsor Lever, they've been moving up into
the middle market as did Green House and others. They're probably watching it,
but [00:13:00] not concerned about it. But, the folks who are providing anything
to under 50 employees, they need a new game plan for sure.
Chris Russell: There's that theory too of the ATS is basically being commoditized, just like job
postings were, and that eventually we're gonna have a free version out there.
You guys agree with that theory?
George Larocque: Again, I think you've gotta ... context is important. I think if you're talking about
[00:13:30] the 'S' in the SNB, there are a lot of options there. Not only Google,
but Microsoft is doing some interesting things with dynamics and baking in
LinkedIn data, so there's some interesting stuff there.
I think in the small to medium sized employers, so maybe up to a few hundred
employees. There are a lot of options and Freemium will always be there.
SmartRecruiter has [00:14:00] re-committed ... doubled down there as well. But,
in the enterprise space, I don't see the demise of the ATS. I see new players, like
great people and existing players, that have a lot of resources, adding more
capabilities into ... extending those capabilities so, eventually the ATS is taking
on more marketing an CRM-like functions. [00:14:30] It's still serving a purpose.
Compliance is a big issue, tracking, reporting, having that back-end database
matters in the enterprise space. I don't know. Martin, how do you feel about
that?
Martin Burns: No, absolutely. I think we're gonna hit a point where ... I've been a buyer
multiple times in the course of my career, and the biggest headache, is dealing
with, nothing personal against the vendors in the space, but dealing with lots of
vendors all at once. You've got too many solutions, and they [00:15:00] don't
talk quite properly, integrations break or fail, or they're losing data here and
there, and data is people. You're losing track of people throughout the process.
It's painful, right? Having to make sure they work properly, they play well
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 6 of 22

7. together, and if you wanna swap part of it out, you're in trouble. It's a whole
new thing. It's kind of maddening on the buying side.
So, getting solutions that are more integrated ... they're more and more coming
online now, where you have basically my ATS, my CRM, my recruitment
marketer, they're all in one stack, [00:15:30] and it's easy. I deal with one
vendor. I like their force, their philosophy, yada, yada, and I like having one data
silo that I can tie things down to.
The negatives there, from my perspective, would be you're stuck with a vendor
and if they circle south, it's evident all at once. That's a problem you deal with. I
think there's more and more vendors who are quality coming up, who do the
whole solution, that will make it easier to buy into, buy just from them, 'cause
you're dealing them with less of a [inaudible 00:16:00]. You've got some
[00:16:00] responsibility. Is it perfect for everybody? I'm not sure. If you look at
the marketing and sales world, a Mercado and SalesForce combo is interesting if
you're enterprise, for some good reasons.
George Larocque: But if you're HubSpot ... it's a big world.
Martin Burns: Yeah, absolutely. But, if you're a small to medium sized organization, you
probably wanna buy stuff on the sales rep platform or what not, or you stick
with HubSpot or things like that. You're not gonna be going ... the recruiting
[00:16:30] side too, getting these all in one plug and play solutions available, I
think is a good move, and it's interesting.
George Larocque: Yep. Chris, if you don't mind, that point, I wanna take it back to the Indeed
conversation, because one thing that I keep reminding everybody of, is while
yes, on the SCO side, on the job side, Google sort of took SCO back, right? They
were allowing Indeed to [00:17:00] capitalize on that, and that's true. Now, they
took it back, but they're still kind of like ... they haven't locked it down yet,
right?
Chris Russell: Yep.
George Larocque: Now, the thing that I remind everybody of, is Indeed is a part of a 470 million
dollar organization called Recruit Holdings. It's a Japanese company, and they
have an array of products on both the job side, the data side, and the tech side.
[00:17:30] Indeed is one piece of that. I'm sorry, Recruit Holdings revenue went
up 11 percent last quarter. On the tech side, from the last reported quarter year
to year comparison, we talk about a 100 percent.
Chris Russell: How big is Indeed?
George Larocque: What's that?
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8. Chris Russell: How big is Indeed from a sales perspective, do you know?
George Larocque: Martin, do you know off ... you think I would've ... that's a question I would've
prepared for.
Martin Burns: What was the question again?
George Larocque: How big is Indeed?
Chris Russell: What are Indeed's sales, yeah. Is it [00:18:00] 300 million, 400, 500?
Martin Burns: I should know this. I can figure that out, but it's that could be about right
actually.
Chris Russell: It's in the hundreds, right? It's in the hundreds of millions. I don't know, or a
window higher.
Martin Burns: Indeed's revenue at 750 million.
George Larocque: Yeah, there it is.
Martin Burns: Before Q4.
Chris Russell: Interesting.
Martin Burns: That doesn't tie to [00:18:30] what was reported by Recruit Holdings.
George Larocque: I would say anybody really interested in this, they go look at Recruit Holdings.
They're public in the Japanese market, so that's why this ... you'll get all this
info. But, still, the point being ... Indeed, who do they acquire? Interviews or
something like that?
Chris Russell: Interviews, yup.
George Larocque: So, I would say [00:19:00] while Indeed is going to have a big impact based on
their revenue that was coming out of that job site of that business. I wouldn't
count them out long term because they're not a stand-alone shop where there
isn't a bigger picture. Indeed was always ... once Recruit Holdings acquired
them, they really became Recruit Holdings [00:19:30] entre into this market.
That's about all I know about Recruit Holdings. There are other folks who know
a lot more, but you just look numbers and I think ... and the reason I brought
this back is because, if you look at Recruit Holdings properties, we're talking
about a lot of data across a lot of market segments. Basically, most of the
Japanese market.
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9. Chris Russell: They have more staffing firms too, I think.
George Larocque: Yeah, they do. [00:20:00] So you can look at a future that could have some real
interesting moves for Indeed, that would be a pivot for them, but would not ...
not like a startup making a pivot, right? That loses itself along the way.
Chris Russell: Yeah. They're not gonna ...
Martin Burns: Yeah, they're ...
Chris Russell: Go ahead, Martin.
Martin Burns: People we recruited won't be talking to our ... George has technically been
recruiting, because I've been a sourcer or researcher way too long. [00:20:30] I
had to find this out. They're a true blue revenue company. They do actually do
over half the revenue in Japan itself. So, they're doing more than a billion dollars
in recruiting functions in Japan. 40 million positions filled last year from their
staffing agencies, and things like that, so definitely to your point, I think that ...
like with Ranstad buying Monster, right? They're buying job boards, these big,
big recruiter organizations to get better SCO leverage or broadcast [00:21:00]
their jobs. It could be ... maybe there's a fight coming, kind of Godzilla versus
Mothra if we're saying a Japan kind of analogy, between some of these players.
Chris Russell: Yep. Are any of ... Indeed just raised their prices on customers from what I'm
hearing, from double to triple, which kind of follows what ZipRecruiter did. I
think last year, they doubled or tripled their prices. They've gotta pay for all
those ads now out there, those commercials. Do you think they're [00:21:30] at
risk of becoming the next Monster, on this slow downward slide of a business,
or have they peaked basically, do you think?
Martin Burns: I think they've still got more gas in them. They're definitely more nimble and
more product focused in innovation than Monster was.
Chris Russell: Yeah, they totally are.
Martin Burns: Monster got hit by HUBRIS, right?
Chris Russell: Yeah.
Martin Burns: I think LinkedIn had the same problem too, which is why they got acquired by
Microsoft for such a bargain. That could hurt you. I [00:22:00] don't think Indeed
had that level of institutional arrogance that Monster did at their height.
George Larocque: In our bubble, where we live in this recruiting tech universe, we see these
changes and react to them. But, if you go out on the street ... if I go ask my wife
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 9 of 22

10. if she were looking for a job tomorrow, where would she look? She would
probably start [00:22:30] in Indeed. She probably isn't doing a Google search.
I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of people who don't start with Google, but
they still have a brand around job search, and being able to be notified. So, I
think that brand gives, along with the cash behind them with Recruit Holdings,
gives them the legs that Martin talks about.
Now, again, I [00:23:00] think they will probably look like a very different Indeed
two years from now, than what we're used to looking at them as today. Part of
that looking different will be our education as to what the long term strategy of
Recruit Holdings always was.
Chris Russell: Yeah. It's hard to ... I knew Indeed when they were eight people, guys,
downstate from Connecticut.
George Larocque: Oh, wow.
Chris Russell: At least that office anyway, and I was one of their first customers with my job
board company that I ran back [00:23:30] in 1999. They've come a long way, and
it's amazing to see the path they took, and how they got there over these years.
It's been amazing, I think.
George Larocque: Good people, and they've held their focus well, I think. I've been impressed by
how they've maintained their culture and their growth.
Chris Russell: Yeah, definitely. Alright. Google jobs, what are your clients saying about Google
jobs? Are they asking to get on it? Are they seeing an increase in traffic from it? I
was curious.
Martin Burns: Yeah, good [00:24:00] question. If they're not on it, they wanna know why not.
That comes down to SCO and the way other jobs ... if they're not mapped into a
Google MOS, they're not gonna show up. So, we help them fix that. If they're
not on it, they wanna know why they're not on it. If they're on it, they seem
okay with it. Their not as focused as you think they might be. It was done so
naturally by Google, that it almost looks like it was part of the ... like it's always
been like that. Which [00:24:30] is part of the way they do UI Google, which I
think is impressive.
But, the smarter, savvier ones want to know how to make sure they're at the
top of the list, and how to make sure they are the ones who are found easiest.
That's your side scheme, and that's your marketing platform. If it's not doing the
pages correctly, rendered correctly, then you don't get picked up, you don't get
displayed, or you're buried, and sometimes that's just a technology limitation
that [00:25:00] you have to be able to break away from to a more modern
platform, or to maybe stop posting your careers yourself, and your jobs yourself,
but work for somebody externally.
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11. So, Google forcing a bit of that. What I think is really interesting about Google
Jobs though, at least from my perspective, is the salary piece. I don't think ...
Chris Russell: They're requiring your jobs to have salary on there, right?
Martin Burns: Not requiring technically, but if you don't have the salary on there, you're gonna
get knocked lower. It's a point off of your total grade. But, it's weighted pretty
heavily, so you can leave something in there. On the sides [00:25:30] of irony,
Google is not listing such salaries of their own jobs, but hey, good for the goose,
not good for the gander, apparently.
But, what I think is interesting is, the reason they claim they're doing it, and this
is the Google kind of marketing, spinning their slogan, don't be evil. Sometimes
they are, but they claim they're doing it partially to try and get rid of the gender
wage gap. So, your truth in advertising. The car is advertised for this price, it's
gonna be the clutch, [00:26:00] or [inaudible 00:26:00]. You know what you're
buying, when you go and walk into the showroom.
Right now, you walk in, you have no idea what the job pays, and you should.
That may help with negotiations, it may help with catching people up to where
they should be, etc, etc, is the stance Google's taking on this. True or not, we'll
see.
Chris Russell: The salary stuff is interesting. You're seeing other vendors like Glass Door,
putting suggested salaries, or ranges, things like that from the database.
Martin Burns: They're putting in ... [00:26:30] it's not even suggested. [inaudible 00:26:34]
designed the system to make the [inaudible 00:26:35] do, that's not ... you can't
opt out of it, I don't think, is if you don't include your salary, then they're gonna
start feeding salary ranges for the [inaudible 00:26:44] candidate. We think the
job pays this. So, it's data that the candidates can have no matter what.
Chris Russell: Predictive salaries. [crosstalk 00:26:50]
George Larocque: That's a good point. They're forcing it too.
Chris Russell: They're also aggregating reviews now too, I noticed, from Indeed, Glass Door,
Kununu, and [00:27:00] one other site, I forget. So, that's interesting. Google
Jobs, it's evolving. I don't think it's really a polished product just yet. Especially
on the Google alerts front, the job alerts. I signed up for some stuff, and I'm just
getting a wide range of jobs in these alerts feeds that I'm not really looking at.
Martin Burns: No one's ever nailed that feature. No vendors ever been able to figure that out.
The matching just goes sideways.
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12. Chris Russell: Yeah. What's wrong with job alert? To me it's all about the [00:27:30] job title. I
think they need to simplify alerts more, and just stop looking for keywords
anywhere in the listing. Just focus on that job title. That's what, generally
speaking, the job seeker's looking for overall. I don't know. I think it has some
room to grow, but I'm definitely encouraged by what I've seen so far. It will keep
improving itself over time.
Alright, let's move on. Guys, lots of new HR Tech last year. George, you track the
investments in the space. [00:28:00] Can you tell us how much got invested in
HR Tech in 2017?
George Larocque: What I've tracked, and I don't claim to have the end all, be all, but I don't know
of anybody that has a better list but, I'll say that, is just under 1.1 billion in 2017.
The exact number that I have is about [00:28:30] 1.065 through December 31st.
Chris Russell: So, my main question there is, is there a bubble going on? Who's buying all this
stuff? I spoke to an analyst at Berson recently, and his thought was that, it's not
really a bubble, it's just that with the Cloud, everyone is starting something out
there. And he said, companies are buying it, so what do you guys seeing out
there?
George Larocque: I'll go first on this one, [00:29:00] Martin. I think the ... 2015 was the peak. We
had like a 1.5 billion dollar quarter in 2015, right, to put in perspective. And it's
... 1.1 billion in a year, is a healthy year. I don't see any slowing down.
I think [00:29:30] whoever it was at Berson that you talked to, the fact that the
barrier of entry is so low, certainly has a big impact. I think the bigger story is
that, we talked a little bit about the middle market, and those companies with
less than 5,000 employees, but all the way down to 50 employees, are acquiring
technology now, that's purpose built for recruiting or HR Tech.
So, [00:30:00] that market that's below 5,000 employee market, dwarfs the
larger enterprise market, whether you look at lives under payroll, you look at
number of firms, etc. And, it's still largely coming off of Excel spreadsheets to
manage most of their processes. You still have a big opportunity in that
segment.
To put it in context, I like [00:30:30] the context thing, just seven years ago, it
was really hard to find these employers. But now, as technology, the
macro-trends around search and mobile and social, have created more of an
opportunity, not just for vendors to find those employers, but for those
employers to become aware of, and find the technology.
It used to be that, the SNB largely, it was all about payroll [00:31:00] and job
boards, and that's not the case anymore. So, I think there's still a lot going on
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 12 of 22

13. out there. It's incredible to me. We used to ... a lot of people talk about
consolidation in the market. At some point, people are go out of business, or get
a acquired, and they'll be fewer vendors. I don't think so, because I've been
waiting for that since 1998.
People do get acquired. SuccessFactors got acquired. Taleo got acquired.
Brassring got acquired. [00:31:30] Verve got acquired. All go down ... Virtual
Webs. They all got acquired. What happened? More systems came in right
behind them, because of that lower barrier of entry, and the market opening
up. We're gonna keep seeing that.
Chris Russell: Here's the challenge though, I think, from speaking to some of these HR Tech
vendors out there, especially on the startup side, I think there's a login problem,
right? Where that they're pitching these HR departments on their technologies,
[00:32:00] but the problem is HR department doesn't have the resources to
actually implement that product. And, they don't want another system to log
into. That's what I'm hearing on the vendor side. Does that concur with you
guys? Do you guys hear on the employer side at all?
George Larocque: I think you're right, and I'll let Martin talk about his clients, but nowhere more, I
would say nowhere is that problem bigger than talent acquisition. Talent
acquisition [00:32:30] was the largest category in 2017. Not just in the dollar
amount that was invested at about 544 million, so just under half of the overall
deals that I tracked, but in the number of deals. Eighty-five different deals
whereas in ... I separate [00:33:00] HCM as sort of overall HR versus talent
management, which are things like performance, and learning, and
engagement. There, each of those categories, HCM had about 300 million, and
25 deals.
So, you've got a lot of smaller investments, a lot of point solutions, a lot of ...
think about the ebb and tide of trends around sourcing, and search, and so
forth. A [00:33:30] lot of apps that come out and [audio missing 00:33:32] hire a
lot of these zombie vendors that are out there, that have just enough traction to
keep going. But they're probably not ... they may or may not get to and 'A'
round, but they're just treading water and looking to be acquired. We might not
see consolidation as much as some apps sort of disappearing. I don't know.
Martin, what are your thoughts?
Martin Burns: Excuse me. I'm thinking the same thing. There's a [00:34:00] lot out there, and
George, I've been seeing alerts from you for other people, but so and so just
some seed of like 200 thousand dollars. That pays for my one develop, right.
But, they're doing a press release because they got a little bit of money. They're
just trying to hang in there, or they have one simple idea that they're hoping
somebody sucks up pretty rapid or they'll dump it.
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 13 of 22

14. I think we'll see a lot of churn happening in the smaller solutions. I think a few
categories [00:34:30] are in need of a bit of a shakeup. I do think that. They
show the perennial Monster categories in the space, ATS, CRM, and now WOO
market platform is emerging as another big category that might suck in some of
these features. But, I think we're gonna see some dead mod in the ground
sooner than later, and it's about time.
Chris Russell: There's lots of those zombie vendors out there, I think.
Martin Burns: [00:35:00] Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Russell: A handful of clients that are just treading water like you said, George. It'll be
interesting to see if these die.
George Larocque: Half of that talent acquisition number, 43 of the deals and ... close to half, it's
about 250 million, went to job boards, which just ... I still can't get over that.
Now, most of them call themselves marketplaces, but only a few [crosstalk
00:35:27] actually provide more value. [00:35:30] Most of them are just job
boards with a different focus.
Chris Russell: Different spin.
George Larocque: It's amazing.
Chris Russell: And, they're all targeting these little niches like restaurants or hourly workers,
things like that, trying to get in the door there.
George Larocque: The gig economy.
Chris Russell: Yeah, the gig economy.
George Larocque: I'm done with that phrase for now.
Chris Russell: Alright, cool. AI and recruiting, what's that looking like from a practical
standpoint. I still don't think most recruiters get it. I still think that [00:36:00]
even building a chat bot is challenging for most talent acquisition departments.
You guys hearing anything out there? How many of your clients actually use AI,
Martin, would you say?
Martin Burns: That's a good question. How many of us are using AI period? Is AI really even in
our space? I don't think we've seen much real AI in recruiting yet. There's some
reasons for that, but it's a long conversation, but some of it comes down to
simply cost. To hire a good data scientist, [00:36:30] you're talking 300 thousand
dollars a year, or 350 for a decent one, and you need a bunch of them to make
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 14 of 22

15. AI real and big. I don't think a lot of players are spaced to have that capacity.
Recruit.com may be one of them. Google, right?
So, the new pieces of AI, they're doing machine learning, and that's ... if all
you're doing is machine learning, stop calling it AI. Just stop. It's like saying,
"Hey, I have a tire, therefore I have a car." You [00:37:00] need the whole thing
to call it a car. So, I don't know who's really doing a whole lot of AI. Some of the
chat bots are, and not mean to cast the spurs on to everybody. It's out there.
I have clients who wanna get into it. They themselves don't understand what it
is. They've heard it, or their boss has heard it, or someone's told them, "Hey,
AI's a big thing in recruiting. I saw an article while I was on my phone watching
my son's soccer game." Then the CEO ... you check and you have an email
Saturday afternoon, "Go find me some AI recruiting, because it must exist." So,
there's a bit of that pressure happening [00:37:30] too.
Some clients were asking about what it really is. I think chat bots are interesting.
I think there's some stuff you could do there with them around task automation
even for candidates, for sourcers, and a little more even with your CRM, or
integrate chat bot in a pretty elegant way as well as the into your market
platform. And make it one component, so maybe some of these chat bots get
sucked up by some of the bigger players, because they're borderline features
[00:38:00] as opposed to full product suites. They're really cool. They're
interesting, but I think that category might see some acquisition happening.
George, what are your thoughts on that?
George Larocque: I definitely agree that, that's where it's headed. If I'm a larger player ... let me
back up. There isn't one vendor of the large legacy or the big vendors that are
out there, the back offices, the ATS's, the HRIS's, [00:38:30] the talent
management, talent acquisition platforms and suites, they're all working on AI.
They're all looking at it. They understand that going to need some chat level
engagements, chat bots, machine learning behind it. They get that. Some of
them are rolling it out.
But, if I'm them, I'm gonna sit back while I come up with my strategy and my
game plan. [00:39:00] There's so many of these smaller vendors that are just
scratching the surface on this stuff. I'm gonna wait, and probably make an
acquisition or two to drop into the product, my platform down the road. I think
that's where we're headed.
I agree. I see a lot of these products. I see decision trees. I see chat bots that are
basically following a path on a decision tree [00:39:30] of logic. When I look at
the B to B and the B to C marketing space, I see that's where all the money in AI
is going. Customer acquisition, customer retention, and I think we're going to
follow that wave as we have in employment branding and recruitment
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 15 of 22

16. marketing, and we're probably not 10 years behind that wave like we were on
recruitment [00:40:00] marketing.
We're probably just a year or two behind it, and you're going to see ... in that
space, I've done a lot of research there to see what's happening, and they
haven't displaced the call center, so it's generally used in high volume settings.
What they're doing is empowering the call centers. So, if you think about high
volume recruiting, it's taking some of the front end candidate engagement off of
the sourcer [00:40:30] or recruiter's plate and putting it into the chat bot, and a
lot of self service for candidates to get questions answered to understand where
they are in the process, and identify who the candidates are that need
engagement from recruiters or sourcers.
I haven't seen anything yet, that's a game changer, where suddenly we've got
chat bots out in front of all candidates. We're just nowhere near that.
Chris Russell: Alright. [00:41:00] Let's get into some more predictions, guys, for this year. I
wanna start with the recruiting marketing, which I think has become a lot more
important because of the tight lid market we are in. I still think that 90 percent
of employers out there are doing recruiting wrong. They're not selling their jobs
properly. They've got bad ATS's out there. They're using bad experiences
overall.
I was working with a job board client up in Maine this year, or last year,
[00:41:30] and some of their clients were still using PDF files as far as job listings
goes online. So, I still think there's a huge chasm there as far as recruiting
marketing and employers goes. Martin, what are you seeing with clients about
their plans for this year?
Martin Burns: It's tough on my end. Bear in mind, my lens is marketing [inaudible 00:41:54] for
an extent because of where I sit. Some clients, naturally we're talking to, we're
gonna be talking about it, but we're looking at broader [00:42:00] trends. We're
looking at percentages and certainly at the marketplace. It's generally the
number one or number two topic of every TA leader out there.
In terms of how they're actually going to get out their brand and get better at
advertising, the issues [inaudible 00:42:13] how do I actually do that. There's the
old saying from advertising or recruitment marketing, from a marketing leader
the [inaudible 00:42:23], "I know half my budget in advertising's working, my
problem is, I don't know which half it is." [00:42:30] Nowadays, you can
measure all that. That's no longer going to be said by corporate marketing. It's
being said by recruitment marketing.
They haven't figured out yet, some of them, that you actually can measure
every single dollar you spend, understand what performing or not performing,
and switch pretty rapidly week over week, day over day to make sure you're in
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 16 of 22

17. the right sources. But, they're getting better at it, and I'm seeing some really
strong players coming into leadership roles who either come from either an
advertising or marketing background, and then moved into recruitment
marketing, and bring that discipline in, but also love [00:43:00] recruiting and
kind of get it. Or they group recruiting, then went into marketing and figured it
out, and they've got the right balance.
We're seeing more leaders like that, and that's a really good thing. They're able
to derive from a topic of conversation, they can sell value, they can get budget
for tools they need. I think that may actually drive some of the consolidation out
there as well, as in the marketplace around tools, because they know what
they're looking for now, and they're gonna ask for what they want, and ignore
some of the fly by night stuff out there.
[00:43:30] We're seeing definitely, a growth. We're seeing interest. There is
some confusion. We're seeing a lot of interest in targeting, so we use what they
call geofencing which is from the corporate world.
Chris Russell: Oh, you do, huh?
Martin Burns: Yeah, it's awesome, and our clients love it. That way when you explain it to
them, it makes total sense. Why wouldn't we be doing that with our recruitment
marketing. Why wouldn't we be focusing on this specific region if we're doing
career fair for asking for these kind of jobs? [00:44:00] Why wouldn't we target
our competitor headquarters with ads? 'Cause you can do all that. It's pretty
awesome.
Chris Russell: I wanna talk to you more about that at some point. That's a really interesting
topic, I think. I saw a story on it.
Martin Burns: Yeah, it's fun, right? So, we're seeing more in the savvy consumers, asking for
solutions like that, and seeing the value in engaging with us. It's kind of fun for
us. We're seeing evolution of our customer base, and we're seeing more need
from leadership too. So, good things [00:44:30] for us.
Chris Russell: How about this trend? I was reading on TLNT. Companies will be dragged kicking
and screaming into career transparency, partially driven by younger generations
demanding it. I think you're seeing that now, with stuff like Glass Door and all
these company review sites. Will that continue to gain traction this year, do you
think?
George Larocque: Yeah, I think from transparency in a general sense, sure. I think we've got ... I
[00:45:00] don't like using the generational labels. I think the real issue is we've
got an increasing number of folks that are digital natives, so they've only ...
they're just more comfortable with technology. They've grown up and entered
the work force with profiles and data being exposed. Then, you've got folks like
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 17 of 22

18. me, that are comfortable with it, and I'm sure Martin and [00:45:30] yourself,
who have a bigger comfort level, even though we're not part of the younger
generations entering the work force, because it's the world that we live in and
we understand it.
I think, yes. You'll see more transparency. I think it's easier to be transparent
now. I think the push back on that is going to be the privacy laws that are
coming into play in Europe. That will continue to be challenged [00:46:00] in the
US.
Chris Russell: Well, guys, it's been a great conversation. We're coming close to the end here,
but I've got one more question for both of ya, that I wanted to ask, and that is, if
you were building, and this is for each of you to answer. If you were building a
piece of HR Technology, that doesn't exist today, what problem would you
choose to solve in HR Technology? It could be anything. Do you guys have
something in mind?
George Larocque: You first, Martin.
Martin Burns: Well, I was gonna say, it'd be an AI driven, good economy Roomba.
George Larocque: [00:46:30] That's a good one.
Martin Burns: I've worked on a couple things. One that I don't wanna talk too much about, but
I think is pretty interesting. It's just a side project, but in kind of a broader sense,
I'd love to see, what I'm working toward, solutions where we remove some of
the pain from the job decision and searching process where the job almost
comes to you. The career idea comes to you as an individual [00:47:00] based on
your habits, who you are, things like that. You're targeted by the right kind of
jobs and careers, that match up with your interests.
And, take some of the pain and frustration out of the search process from the
candidate side. I've talked a lot about the candidate experience, yada, yada. I
just need a ways to go with that. There are tools that could improve that and
make it so that you're not fighting blind when you're looking for a job.
Chris Russell: Yeah, job hunting is so time consuming today. I think you're right, there's room
there to [00:47:30] make it more efficient for the seeker overall. Interesting,
okay. How about you, George?
George Larocque: I am repeatedly attracted to the idea that we can take assessments and remove
the actual assessment out of the picture, so the non-assessment assessment.
So, sort of similar, a different angle, a different point in the process, but similar
what Martin was saying. [00:48:00] There's so much data and information that
we have. I've seen some folks get close to where they can provide, whether it's
a skills assessment, a personality assessment, competency based assessment,
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 18 of 22

19. and find the fit for the job or the fit for the department or company without
making candidates actually fill out a survey or play a game, or spend [00:48:30]
20 minutes doing anything. Just by presenting themselves and the behaviors
that they represent, and the data that we have access to, we can do a much
better job.
I think the first vendor that nails that, and can deliver it at scale without a lot of
consulting around it, will see a big shift, because that's something I think,
especially in the enterprise and large middle market, folks are looking for.
Chris Russell: [00:49:00] Nice. Okay. My idea would be to, I've had this for a long time actually,
is build some kind of wizard that basically creates a nice sounding job
description that sells the actual job, versus just these bullet points, that laundry
list that people put out there. Some kind of automatic wizard that an employer
can use to create a job that sells itself. Whether that's building a Q& [00:49:30]
A type of interface for them and pushing that out there as the actual
description, using more marketing language overall to sell the idea, but some
kind of drag and drop tool, wiziwig tool to build better job descriptions. That's
what I would build. I hate Tech's job descriptions and they're not getting any
better, guys, as far as I can see.
Martin Burns: No. It's interesting. I thought Tech SEO ...
Chris Russell: That's great, but it helps you [00:50:00] technically make the grammar sound
right, but it doesn't help you sell the job listing at all, I don't think, right?
Martin Burns: I thought they were heading in the right direction, but then they jacked their
prices up. No one can afford them. We actually lost work in there.
Chris Russell: There's still stuff out there like something called ViziRecruiter that creates these
visual lists, job descriptions. Some vendors are kind of getting towards that, but
I still think that there's a tool out there that [00:50:30] is gonna come by one
day that's really gonna change that perspective, I think, that dynamic.
Martin Burns: There's some way out there stuff too. Have you heard of Magic Leap, by
chance?
Chris Russell: No.
Martin Burns: Magic Leap. Alright, that's worth looking into. It is the most funded stealth
company in the history of the world. Ali Baba's in there, Google Venture's ... I
think they have like four or five billion dollars. They're down in Florida, and what
they doing with VR [00:51:00] is ... it's like Minority Report, but all around you at
all times. Ready player one level interaction with the world around you. They've
cracked something. They've made some crack in the computer, but they aren't
saying, but they've got something going around that's really interesting.
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 19 of 22

20. But, maybe that becomes ... all of the job descriptions becomes experiential.
You're in the factory. You're looking to where you're trying things out. You're in
it. That's 30 years out there, 40 years out there, but that'll be interesting
[00:51:30] too, I think someday.
Chris Russell: Yeah, VR job try outs.
Martin Burns: You could walk in.
Chris Russell: Yeah, that's coming.
Martin Burns: It goes beyond even VR. This almost real reality.
Chris Russell: Nice.
Martin Burns: This is true simulation. Magic leap, I'll give you that much. It's kinda fun to look
at.
Chris Russell: Sounds good.
George Larocque: So, are they going to lead us into the dystopian future of recruiting?
Martin Burns: Hopefully, yeah. I figure, like you, the Scorch Trial Hunger Games kind of thing
could be fun.
Chris Russell: Director of VR recruiting, there you go.
Martin Burns: Yeah, exactly. What's the ... [00:52:00] Running Man. To get the job like
Schwarzenegger, the Stephen King [inaudible 00:52:05] movie, that's how you
get the job.
George Larocque: Back in the day, we ...
Martin Burns: How's that for a reference? My back pocket.
George Larocque: That's excellent. Back in the day, late 90's, early 2000's when we were taking a
lot companies on to the web for the first time with a lot of these systems, we
would walk away from the client saying ... a lot of conversations [00:52:30]
saying, "You know what they really want is a helmet. They wanna put the
helmet on, and just think about the job, and all the work gets done." The job
description gets broadcasted, advertised. Candidates come in. That's the killer
app right there.
Chris Russell: The ultimate recruiting tool. [crosstalk 00:52:49]
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 20 of 22

21. George Larocque: But it does that.
Martin Burns: That's awesome.
George Larocque: Just screw the [inaudible 00:52:54] to the back of your head every morning, and
just think about it.
Chris Russell: Nice, well [00:53:00] let's [crosstalk 00:53:00] end on that note, guys. We're out
of time. George Larocque, Martin Burns, thanks for joining me. Tell people
where they can connect with you guys online.
Martin Burns: Thanks everyone, take care. Bye. Thanks. HRWins ... I'm sorry. I forgot about
that. I should post myself.
Chris Russell: Yes, [inaudible 00:53:17]
Martin Burns: So, it's HireClix.com. H-i-r-e-C-l-i-x dot com is how you find us.
Chris Russell: Alright, Martin, and George, you're at HRWins.com?
George Larocque: HRWins.com, yep.
Chris Russell: Alright, awesome. I'll link to you guys in the show notes. [00:53:30] Alright, we
should do this again, guys, maybe once a quarter or something? What do you
think?
George Larocque: Yeah, fun conversation.
Chris Russell: Yeah, I liked it.
Martin Burns: Yeah, I really enjoyed this.
Chris Russell: Well, alright. Let's keep that on the radar then. Alright, well that will do for this
edition of the RecTech podcast. Thanks again to our sponsor, and remember to
check out Lever.co/RecTech for your ATS needs. They've got some great e-books
on there as well, so check it out. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes,
Google Play, SoundCloud, and Stitcher Radio. Hey, if you liked the show, please
leave a review on your channel of choice. I'd love to [00:54:00] see your
feedback, or mention us on social media with the hashtag RecTech. Next show,
we'll be speaking with the founders of Qualified.IO. It's a new screening tool for
hiring software developers, so stay tuned for that. Follow me on Twitter
@ChrisRussell or visit RecTechmedia.com. You can find the audio and links for
this show on our blog, and just a reminder, I'm a consultant that helps both HR
Tech firms and employers get more clients or candidates. Thanks for listening
everyone.
Ep44-YearEndRecap Page 21 of 22

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