Top Tech Trends with Kevin O'Neill
Who better to teach us about the current trends in recruiting than the Technical Research Director at Staffing Industry Analysts, Kevin O'Neill! This one is a can't miss episode. Come see us on stage at the SIA Exec Forum next week!
Find Kevin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-o-neill-07616863/
[Transcribed from video below]
00:05.38
Brad Owens
Welcome everybody into another episode of the transform recruiting podcast I am your host Brad Owens and with me today I've got a special treat if you wanted to know. Ah, what's hot in the tech space. We've got the person to talk to this is Mr. Kevin O'neill Kevin thanks so much for jumping on so before we dig in I want to make sure everyone you know, truly understands where you're coming from your background and and get a solid understanding of you yourself. So.
00:24.25
Kevin O_Neill
Um, and a problem great to be here. Thanks Brad.
00:36.24
Kevin O_Neill
Okay, well I'm the technical research director at staffing industry analysts. So um, my I guess my sphere of influence or what I look at is um technology that's deployed in the staffing industry particularly front and back-office technology and any ah associated platforms and.
00:36.38
Brad Owens
Why don't fill us in.
00:56.25
Kevin O_Neill
Kind of ecosystem surrounding that. Um I had a previous life as ah as a cio so I've had um, probably close to 30 years in it and within the staffing industry. So it's been ah, it's been quite a a long and interesting journey.
01:12.10
Brad Owens
Yeah, no I love it I mean it sounds like everything that I nerd out about you get to do on a daily basis. So that's a lot of fun.
01:20.93
Kevin O_Neill
Yeah, it's it's It's probably a little bit different when you have to work on it and and and get it all um into production then nerd outed about it. So I kind of I guess I walk a middle line.
01:32.30
Brad Owens
Yeah, sure.
01:34.16
Kevin O_Neill
Um, it being and being in love with technology on one side and then going. Okay well um, I've got ah you know I've had to keep this this technology in place and going and and delivering a return on investment. So you know it's it is ah it's a fine line to walk.
01:48.82
Brad Owens
Yeah, sure is that's Excellent. So I know that recently you have put out a couple different research studies. So We can talk about those and hit off the highlights just because I feel like everyone will get a whole lot of value out of that. So What's the most recent. Ah, research that you've published.
02:09.93
Kevin O_Neill
Most recent research I published as an update to 2021 like a global landscape report on on front office software used in the staffing industry. So I I published ah that initially in in 2001 and then did an update.
02:19.62
Brad Owens
And cut.
02:27.77
Kevin O_Neill
Um, light last year.
02:29.61
Brad Owens
Okay, so let's it's always helpful for me at least and I know folks that are listening to to define What we mean when we say front office. So just that everyone has a ah you know ah shared understanding of where we're starting. So what is your definition of front office.
02:44.96
Kevin O_Neill
Um, a good question. Um front office and this is particularly front office systems and staffing companies would include functionality and would would include Ats functionality applicant tracking um crm. And what we call ah Roa which is requisition order assignment and then as you kind of move from frontend to middle. You've got you know other other modules like you know, onboarding time and attendance and um, you know there'll be then as you move into the back office. You'll of course you'll have your payroll and billing components. And in middle office. You might have compliance. So ah, you know because we don't do a report on the middle office. We we tax some of the middle office functionality and. Poured on it in the and the front office and and vice versa when we do a back office report. We take some of the middle office functionality as it relates to to back office tech yeah is is that clear.
03:38.10
Brad Owens
Yeah, that that middle area. Yeah, that is that middle area always blends into the others. So yeah, that makes complete sense. So ah, two directions I'm curious to go in with you thinking about the front office tech. So first currently.
03:43.60
Kevin O_Neill
It does it does so.
03:55.34
Brad Owens
What are see you seeing as the not so much differentiators because I don't I don't feel like we need to get into specific tech here. But Overall what are you seeing in the landscape right now for front office. What is most of the tech focused on what is what are firms looking to get out of front office tech. Just give us your opinion.
04:16.80
Kevin O_Neill
Okay, so um, you know I mostly speak to vendors. So ah, you know my perspective will be from ah ah a someone looking to procure the tech. Um, what what? What do I need? What is it doing? Um so you know the. The thing I've noticed in the last couple of years is that there's been a lot of functionality effectively thrown into the the tech stack ah to solve various problems associated with the pandemic. So you know when you look at things like you know ee documents when you look at um, you know. Ah, online reference checking credentialing a whole range of um, ah functionality that that was there before but now it became a necessity and so so these are 9 must haves in the in the current environment driven by the you know demand and the pandemic. But I think what's happened is and certainly I've I've seen this over the in in the last updated report There's been a real push to improve the user experience because a lot of that functionality was put in probably without too much thought for whether it really suited the recruiter. It was really driven by necessity. So um, what I'm seeing is a real effort I think to refine and improve um the functionality to make it much easier for the recruiter to to use some of those applications and some of that new tech that's being deployed so that's kind of the main thing that came out of the most recent report lots of.
05:48.51
Kevin O_Neill
Lots of companies. Um and lots of sorry lots of vendors in the market really putting out New New Ui um and and really improving. You know what they had in place rather than pushing new tech into it that that I think that's probably the the landscape at the moment.
06:04.68
Brad Owens
Sure and I agree because I'm not noticing a whole lot of revolutionary change right now with Tech I'm noticing much more of a refinement kind of period and you know tiny little additions that that these vendors are throwing in did anything I guess. Obviously the pandemic changed things between the last time you did the the overview and then now but did anything stick out to you and surprise you whether it was something that they did or did not do.
06:38.11
Kevin O_Neill
Look nothing nothing specifically um, nothing specifically surprised me I I think um, ah with regards to the technology in terms of functionality. But what did surprise me was how quickly some. Ah, companies were able to scale with their existing technology particularly in the healthcare field. You know you know we had some some companies you know, go from you know tens of millions to hundreds of millions and and ah many hundreds of millions of dollars in turnover in a very short period of time without seemingly.
06:56.17
Brad Owens
Oh.
07:10.69
Kevin O_Neill
Putting a lot of stress on their on their technology stack. So They seemed to have applications in place and good foundations that enabled them to grow and extend their capabilities quite quickly. So Probably That's what surprised me the capability of some of the existing systems to deal with what was a very. Um, you know a very different environment and you know we always talk about ah deploying technology that can scale but often ah staffing companies. Don't think in terms of growing that quickly I mean they think of growing but not not kind of. In the in the astronomical and exponential way it did during the in the Pandemic. So So that surprised me how well some of these companies were able to you know, keep keep the lights on um when they're doubling and tripling. Um, you know their their turnover on a monthly basis. Um, and that might that was That's that's quite some challenge I think.
08:03.83
Brad Owens
Yeah I remembered last year almost a year ago now at the s I leadership conference the Exec Forum I remember talking about this and how companies are doing well and then all of a sudden someone takes the stage and talks about their healthcare staff and and there's something like. 10 x the industry averages and everything and like how in the world. Did you do that. So since everyone came out of the conference with that I'm sure you saw a lot of of similar stories. So you mentioned having the right kind of foundation in place to allow for ah that kind of growth.
08:23.81
Kevin O_Neill
Yeah.
08:41.13
Brad Owens
What sort of things. Are you do you feel like need to be in place to allow for that.
08:45.58
Kevin O_Neill
Well I think you know really you know foundations are important so you know having having applications of course in in the cloud where you can where you know you know you can grow your compute par without without um, too many issues. I think integration is really important if you have a lot of manual processes somewhere in between you know between front middle and back office. Well that's going to be a limiting factor because you've you've got to throw more people at processing time sheets or doing billing work or whatever it is and. So having having a really solid um integration framework in place I think you know that that's going to be um, that's going to be pretty important so you know the 2 things um it've been able to scale the application so you don't have any bottlenecks and 2 having um you know the the. Ah, a good integration. Um, probably a 2 wo-way integration with his visibility from you know back to front office and vice versa so that you can not only deliver it to the to the customers. But you can also process your payroll and billing if you're if you're in that space and I think I think 1 more Um. Having a good mobile presence. Um, if you already had that in place that was going to be pretty important because you were you know you were having to reach ah people without you know face-to-face meetings and interviews so been able to do.
10:09.45
Kevin O_Neill
All of the documentation all of the interviewing remotely was was essential and and with ah with a good mobile presence if you had that in place already then to scale it wasn't too much of a problem if you had to then deploy that in the midst of um that that growth that could have taken quite some time.
10:24.59
Brad Owens
Yeah, yeah, you raised a good point there with the integrations. So the last interview that I did if everyone wants to go back and look at the interview with John Barrnadovich we talked about integration a little bit and how there's kind of these 2 levels of integration and I'll just. I'll use the software terminology just because this is what's I think most people don't understand so to me, there's the we'll call it zapier level where hey we've got these pre-integrations built in if you just say yep I'm a subscriber to this and yep I'm a subscriber to that we'll do most of the work for you. But that comes with limitations. It comes with it obviously can't do everything. It's not going to be super customized and then you've got this other level where it takes almost like a system integrator. You need to hire some sort of contractor to come in and really tie these apis really closely together and. Feel like a lot of people are not getting enough from the zapier level that just hate point and click but they get overwhelmed thinking about the other level of things. Do you feel like there's a a low hanging fruit from an integration perspective. That people should focus on first.
11:36.92
Kevin O_Neill
Ah, yeah, good question. Um look I think you've you've summarized the the dilemma quite. Well there you know the you know the to take a very straightforward integration out of the box put it in place. You know most most people will see that as being. Pretty straightforward and it and it will deliver something for you. Um, as you start as you start to scale the requirements become more complex. Um, you start to find that you need to have some logic at at either end for 1 reason and another you need to have 2 wo-way integration in place. You need to have. Fields because you're doing something specific that is that ah that is not ah, not available as part of the out of the box um integrations. So you then start that to require um a more and more um, kind of complexity around around the integration. I I think that the the main thing for me is to make sure that that if you if you're in the the temp payroll space and and you've got a ah growing um temp base is to have that integration between front and back office very solid so that you're getting um that that. Everything is being done at the at the front office by the consultant most of the most of the things and the information is passing through and that there's good communication between the back office to the front office so recruiters have visibility of what's happening.
13:02.90
Kevin O_Neill
Um, and any gaps in the information that they require from their the workers or or applicants. So I think for me putting that in place and then you have a time and attendance component if you can get good integration with the time in attendance side and particularly 2 wo-way integration. So if you've got. Um, a requirement to to work with you know, vms systems. You know, been able to get time sheets from from those in India system very easily invalidated. It's going to be a big advantage. so so I think that probably for me that again. That foundation part ah part which is really between front and back and middle. That's the focus.
13:45.00
Brad Owens
That I feel like once you have some of those integrations in place being able to leverage those throughout the process is going to pay serious dividends and allow for that 10 x scale. It's it's the only way to do it.
14:00.36
Kevin O_Neill
Yeah,, that's right? Yeah, So the the data being um, easy to work with from one end to the other and it in it being reliable and it being complete and it being you know, really good quality up to up to kind of payroll processing quality. From back to front if you've got that it's It's a really really good advantage advantage I think.
14:21.75
Brad Owens
And it's something. That's not only super easy to get wrong, but really rough when you do because you know the other person who's getting that paycheck is looking to it down to the penny to make sure that it's 100% perfect so yeah that's ah, that's a tough one. That's one that most people.
14:31.54
Kevin O_Neill
Correct perfect.
14:39.12
Kevin O_Neill
Yeah, so that was.
14:39.41
Brad Owens
Wants to get right for it straight from the start so that was one I appreciate just going into depth on that one for the more the front office stuff. Um, let's talk about the other report that you had out so hit me with the highlights from that 1
14:52.82
Kevin O_Neill
That was the back office so little quite a different environment the back office. So sorry quite a different landscape. So not so many players um not so much requirement for you know your h I or or recruitment tech to be integrated. So. Um, so you know it's probably it hasn't developed at the at the pace at that you know the Ats Crm environment an associated environment has so um, so I found that there. Were less players in that space. Um companies probably didn't staffing companies probably didn't change their tech so much in the in the back office. Um, and interestingly there weren't so many global players quite difficult. For instance, if you look at the payroll space for example to ah. To to really genuinely deliver a global payroll solution that could be configurable for each jurisdiction. So you know there was ah um, a mix of ah, kind of local solutions for for back office I find more than. Um, you know more than than global solutions but some some very good um technology available I think if you look at the us market. For example, if you have to process. ah ah in the back office you know you're looking at California being the most complex um environment.
16:18.37
Kevin O_Neill
And then if you look to Australia Australia is probably California on steroids. So some of the um technology coming in the back office. It comes out of of Australia is actually quite suitable for ah you know, ah a more global deployment if it's you know rules based and flexible and can be configured for different. Um, for different environments so there are some you know there there are some ah there are some good applications around for the back-office. But again, mostly local.
16:49.34
Brad Owens
Yeah, and it makes complete sense because like you say California showy everywhere's got their own um their own I won't call them issues. What I want to rule say regulations there you go? Yeah, that has kept payroll individuals.
17:00.72
Kevin O_Neill
Regulations. Yeah yeah.
17:06.30
Brad Owens
In fantastically lucrative roles because they have to know the ins and the outs and they are the ones that are processing all of this stuff I've heard a lot of interesting opinions from those that have been you know the go to payroll person to now turning over all of this to to tech. It's it's very interesting but. I keep talking to those individuals about scale scale scale scale scale like it works when you're hiring at low volume. But what happens when you're not how do we make sure that you're not going to work a 90 hour work week to try and keep up with everything and yeah. It starts becoming a nightmare to think about all of the things you have to keep up with and all the things that have to be in that tech. Um, but what are some of the things you found that have been in those back-office pieces of software those types of features that stand out and and make someone want or choose 1 um. Particular piece of software over another.
18:04.40
Kevin O_Neill
Um, I think one of the the really key things has been able to process to be able to configure without code a lot of the rules associated with processing payroll. So um, if you can if you have a rules engine that ah you know, reasonably trained payroll person can can configur to to take a time sheet and calculate up a time sheet and generate a gross pay. Um, that's really key and there are some systems that do that very well. Um, and you can go down to the kind of nth degree on ah on granularity on a time sheet and you can pick up and process that that time sheet um without human intervention other than the the initial configuration of the rules. So to me if you've got. That in place. Um, it's ah it's a really powerful um part of the stack particularly if you need to scale so because that that you know that's that's a lot of where where the knowledge of a payroll person goes into it. You know, calculating a time sheet understanding all the rules. But. Almost all of those rules are are configurable So You can put them in in place in the in in in the stack and get an almost automated end-to-end payroll function but it takes some effort.. There's no doubt about that.
19:24.30
Brad Owens
Um, yeah, absolutely yeah, but that rules engine I mean that's like someone's brain in a piece of software and it's just ah, almost like a if then type statements creation that you're making and it's it's changing. People's worlds for sure.
19:34.10
Kevin O_Neill
Yeah.
19:39.42
Brad Owens
So you are able to see across a lot of the tech space. You're interfacing with a lot of the major players you are understanding what buyers are going to be looking for out of all this What are you excited about for recruiting tech in the next year or so. What's what's interesting to you.
19:59.60
Kevin O_Neill
It's it's really interesting to see what? um the the ai space. What's going to happen in the ai ai space. Um, you know everyone talks about chat Gpt and.
20:09.16
Brad Owens
Um, sure.
20:12.79
Kevin O_Neill
And you know a couple of years ago when I when I looked at the impact of ai on the systems that's in 2021 when I did that first report it wasn't really clear that they were adding a huge amount of benefit in in any areas other than you know the search and match side of things so there was um, you know you could see that. That that that that there was there was a genuine um benefit there but but nothing outside that and then a lot of um, you know a lot of talk about chat g gpt and and I've seen a ah you know some demos of of. Applications that can hold a voice a voice conversation. Um, you know an onboarding conversation or an interview end to end without deviating off track and in the way that um, you know the the chatbots and ah the voice bots had done in the past. So that was really impressive. So I'll be really interested to see how that technology then augments what a recruiter can do and and how stuff and companies start to use it because it's got numerous applications you know from writing ads to enhancing resumes to to um you know, compiling job specifications. So. You know it. It opens up a lot of avenues and it'll be really interesting to see will it really make a difference and I think um, probably the staffing companies that are that are clever about how they implement it will will see some benefits and really understand what it can do those that might try and.
21:45.87
Kevin O_Neill
You know replace a recruiter with it. Um, you know might might struggle in getting the yeah the uptake.
21:52.66
Brad Owens
You know it's really interesting that you mentioned the end-to-end interview conversations when I will give someone an example if they wanted to go have some fun which had Gpt. So what I did is I took the text of a ah job description. Put it in a chad dpt say here's a job that I'm looking to hire for and I just pasted it in and it understood it I said what do you think this person needs to know how to do and they came back with a couple little things and then I put in a a the text of a resume I said here's someone who's applying for this specific job Where do you see gaps and then I let it list them out and then I said. What questions could you ask to identify if this person had those skills or not and it busted out like 5 or 6 different questions and to me I went. Okay, this isn't replacing a recruiter but if I had a recruiter that was fresh in seat who was just sitting down for their first month on the job. And I needed them to be able to ask intelligent questions about identifying gaps in this person's resume that would be a game changer and it wouldn't have to actually have the conversation just give me the conversation prompts and I went ooh. There's something here. So I'm with you I think there is some fun that we can have with that. Um.
23:00.38
Kevin O_Neill
Yep So I think there is.
23:04.80
Brad Owens
I agree with you I don't think it's going to truly replace because I haven't yet found a Ai that I can have a relationship with and that can persuade me. Um, that's not to say it can't learn how to do that. But currently I feel like that's one of the gaps. Um.
23:12.83
Kevin O_Neill
Persuade association.
23:20.92
Brad Owens
But yeah I think once that becomes more of a reality and is more in our space you and I need to talk about that a little bit more because that that one's exciting to me.
23:28.28
Kevin O_Neill
Yeah, yeah, it'll be very. It'll be very interesting to see how it how it plays out. You know it's it's it's starting to be ah adopted in various places and um, you know I was interested in seeing. A demo of a product that had ah um, you know could conduct. Ah a voice conversation. So um, and and ah introduce so ring up someone introduce them themselves as a virtual ah a virtual recruiter. And go through a screening conversation with with a person with all the intricacies that that you know people on the on the phone typically have um without going off track. No that was just a couple of examples. But if you can get that enabled consistently. Um, you know via Ai then it's it's quite a powerful tool to allow screening to be to be happening with um you know with candidates. Um, you know 24 hours um if you can ring people 24 hours probably would be a good idea but but certainly it can. It can take an individual recruiter and and make them much more productive. You know by having a virtual assistant sitting alongside them.
24:34.13
Brad Owens
Yeah, if I'm a recruiter and an international corporation where I could have interviews that happen when I'm not working and then show up in the morning and say here's the summary of the past 10 interviews that have happened I mean wow that's just unreal.
24:47.19
Kevin O_Neill
Then.
24:50.65
Brad Owens
Ah, well, that's amazing. Thank you so much for coming Kevin and sharing some of your insight on this if people wanted to find more about you and your work and what you're doing where would you like to send them.
24:59.61
Kevin O_Neill
They can go to the Sia website. Um, all all our researchers there all the information that that we provide for our members and there is some you know free research that's available there but it gives a summary of basically on what we do.
25:13.90
Brad Owens
Okay I will send them there that link will be in the description as well. Are you? Okay, if I link people to your Linkedin as well. All right? perfect. We'll reach out there if you have any other questions you can pass them along to hello at bradowwens.com or you can just visit the website at transformrecruing.com and put in a question there.
25:18.66
Kevin O_Neill
Please feel free to.
25:32.45
Brad Owens
Hope to see you on the next episode and Kevin thank you so much for putting time in I really appreciate it. Thank you.
25:35.53
Kevin O_Neill
No problem. Thanks for inviting me on.