HR Tech 2022 Recap

If you’re anything like us, the whole team is energized and ready to tackle big challenges with fresh ideas after taking in all of the great content at the HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas. You’re still probably sorting through notes, assessing what HR tech is a must have and setting up meetings to help you find your next true partner. The good news is we’re doing some of the heavy lifting for you by sharing key themes that emerged over three days of sessions, customer meetings and discussions with industry analysts.

People are why we’re here – let’s do right by them

Years of sheltering in place, increasing polarization, and geopolitical crises have everyone pausing and bringing it back to the core goal: helping people find jobs where they can thrive.

Our friends at Indeed talked about their number one value—putting the job seeker first., Even the HireVue event tagline in Vegas was all about the human touch. Everywhere we turned there were reminders about the joy of connecting people to jobs, better benefits, and deeper connections. And that is something worth remembering as we all recover from the marathon that is HR Tech.

And central to the theme of centering the job seeker was a continued emphasis on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Companies are seeking vendors that build products and processes that work for people from all walks of life and they’re asking tough questions about exactly how you can deliver. 

For help figuring out the right questions to ask a potential partner about DEI&B, download the complete guide to improving equity in hiring. 

AI in recruiting works and vendors are proving their bonafides

Don’t take it from us, take it from Josh Bersin, who said in his conference recap that recruiting is, “The space where AI has truly proven itself to be a big help is in HR Tech.” Recruiting today is a problem bigger than any one team can solve and thriving in this tight market requires leveraging ethical AI to achieve your goals. 

In her fireside chat with HireVue CEO, Anthony Reynolds, talent acquisition maven JB Bartels told the crowd how Sitel Group leveraged interview assessments to scale hiring for one client with a team of 19 recruiters – without an AI-driven process they would have needed an additional 35 recruiters on staff. And this was just one of the many examples during their discussion where the Sitel team was able to lean on technology as the super-charged team member in the room.

No conversation about AI in hiring would be complete without mention of regulation in the space, and to put it plainly: we see that the broader conversation is catching up to what we’ve been engaged in for a long time. Experts are calling on vendors to lean into an audit program (here are our IO and algorithmic audits) as well as explainability statements (we’re the second company in the world to release one). And if your session included a discussion about AI but didn’t talk about regulations and how you were preparing, a savvy audience member was almost always ready to ask you how you’re preparing for what’s to come.

Assessments and 24/7 chat are no longer nice-to-haves

In his closing session of the conference, Jason Averbook, CEO and founder of Leapgen, reminded attendees, HR practitioners in the crowd, that their main job is to break silos, “We in HR have to stop working north-south, and we have to start working east-west.” We see this reflected in the massive growth that continues in both the assessment and chatbot market. 

A bi-directional approach with assessments means measuring for the skills a candidate has today, but for a job you might need them in tomorrow. Our customers have long known the power of validated assessments, with companies such as Unilever leveraging them to save £1M in a single year while also increasing diversity 16%. But now companies are taking it a step further and designing learning paths based on skills. Our Chief IO Psychologist, Dr. Nathan Mondragon says it best, customers are now asking, “If they learned one skill, who's to say they can't learn something else?" 

Getting out of binary thinking means designing hiring experiences that take place concurrent with customer purchases. Have a shopper in line waiting to check out? Design a text-based application so their teenager can schedule an interview before you walk out the door. The line between customer and candidate is almost non-existent – communication must be designed accordingly.

Didn’t get a chance to stop by our booth? Meet with one of our team members virtually and learn how your high tech process can still center the human.