Accelerated pace of innovation relies on partners, automation and stronger analytics

2019, the year we captured all the data

In 2019, our rate of innovation was higher than ever, as we hustled to keep up with the demand for a more complete system of record and engagement for high volume recruiting. Recruiters around the world were upset with still having to spend so much time matching data between different (non-integrated) systems and often spending more time on excel than actually talking to candidates! They asked us what we could do to capture all the data in one system, so they wouldn’t have to do any more of this mindless back and forth. Here is how we responded:

• Career Site and Job Landing Pages that can continue the conversation on Messaging: Our landing pages now have more options to customize aesthetics, as well as new digestible and intuitive design for candidates. A new opt-in feature for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger allows applicants to decide where they want to continue the conversation.

• Offline activity is now tracked via the Candidate Welcome Center, where employers can welcome all candidates with slick iPads and track all their footfall activity from walk-ins or scheduled candidates.

• Automated Group and Individual Scheduling: No more back and forth emailing to nail down that interview time. Candidates can now schedule their interviews according to available slots. Recruiter calendars are synced in real time with incoming interviews.

• Embedded Analytics Dashboard: All key metrics are now available without ever having to leave the platform. Users can just scroll through a dashboard that contains channel analytics, candidates satisfaction, recruiter productivity metrics and much more. 

Three 2020 resolutions, in response to candidates’ increased expectations

Resolution #1: Integrate with best of breed applications to offer the best candidate experience

Resolutions aren’t just for individuals, they also work great at the team or the company level. We drafted our 2020 resolutions in order to make Talkpush more candidate centric than ever before. We are noticing that candidates are being more demanding, less patient, and we want to adapt. Candidates now expect employers to show the same level of personalization, care and responsiveness that they are receiving as consumers.

In the world of consumer marketing, where innovation resources are always richer than in recruitment, marketers have embraced a tech stack more complex than ever. Ten years ago, marketers had to fight hard to get a CRM budget separate from the sales team (and their SalesForce CRM for example). Today, marketers would be scolded for not owning at least one marketing automation platform (think Marketo, Hubspot, etc.). Why? Because if you ask a single software vendor to offer the best possible experience to customers at every stage of the process, you are asking too much.

The last 8 years have seen an explosion of the marketing technology (aka Martech) stack.

What happened in marketing is starting to happen in recruitment. Good talent is being fought over by good recruiters using an ever-growing number of systems and tools. Anything that will give them an edge. As talented and aggressive as our product and engineering team is, it cannot be best of class in every single domain and feature. This is one of our resolutions: to embrace integrations to drive customer success. Integrating third-party software into existing processes is the new market standard. Messaging communications compatibility is a prerequisite for any solution which wants to remain competitive and relevant, as attention spans are shortening. Talkpush can help assessment platforms like HireIQ deliver a better candidate experience thanks to our experience in conversational AI.

A good example of a product partnership is the one we have with Envoy, which allowed us to release our Welcome Center in record time, while delivering the best possible candidate UX. In 2020, we plan on being even more proactive in studying our customers and seeking out new solutions through integrations. Our customers are “recruitment hackers,” equipped to build the best end-to-end candidate experience, even if that means having to use a little glue!

Resolution #2: A candidate journey that is completely automated

Over the past few years, we have built a unique expertise in the use of chatbots for the recruitment process, and have received hundreds (thousands?) of requests for building customized workflows. We’ve built dozens (hundreds) of them but we simply can’t keep up with the demand. Our solution: enabling our users, the “augmented recruiters”, to take the matter into their own hands.

We’re currently working on a key feature that will make it possible for our users to build the entire workflow of a recruitment campaign end to end, from the first click on a job ad to the first day on the job. In 2020, we want to minimize manual tasks surrounding sourcing, pre-screening, background checking, and finally, on-boarding. Our team of developers is on the case, and very soon Talkpush users won’t have to worry about moving candidates from one stage of the recruitment process to another manually. They'll be able to build custom flows, automating every stage of the journey using their desired parameters. Think of it as a RPA meets CRM meets TA. (If those acronyms don’t speak to you yet, you need to start reading our blog more!)

Resolution #3. Help recruiters make more data-driven decisions

Last year we launched a new analytics dashboard embedded right on the Talkpush platform. You can read all about it here. It was a big step in the right direction. As everything can be measured, we’ve been adding new metrics almost every month, with adjustable parameters that have countless iterations for customization.

In 2020 we want to take it one step further. Our goal is to give each customer the ability to decide their own nomenclature and select which metrics they want to track (and which ones they don’t). Our challenge is to deliver more insights on the candidate experience, increase data capture through partnerships with tools like the Daxtra resume parser, while still allowing each business to adapt our analytics to their world.

These initiatives are focused on one thing: to #levelup the candidate experience, a mission we stay committed to through the years. Candidates have no patience for employers with choppy broken processes. Candidates will not trust you if you do not handle their data properly. And it’s only getting worse…. Generation Z are demanding real-time interactions even more than millennials do. In 2020, along with our customers, we will simply try to keep up with them!

We won’t shy away from holding ourselves accountable, that’s what resolutions are for.