Talent Acquisition Technology Ecosystem Taxonomy
As we’ve previously discussed, the Talent Acquisition Technology Ecosystem is divided into four stages. Each of these stages consists of various verticals and sub-verticals that further define and describe the current state of TA tech. While the overall structure of the Ecosystem remains unchanged, several changes and adjustments have happened at the vertical, sub-vertical, and vendor levels. We’ve added one new vertical, one new sub-vertical, and consolidated four sub-verticals into two, reflecting the rapid pace of change, innovation, and disruption in the market today. In the first part of our Ecosystem 10, we took a deeper look at the first stage of the Ecosystem, the Source stage. Then, we switched gears and began to evaluate the second stage of the Ecosystem, the Engage stage.
Today, we look at the third of our stages, the Select stage.
See what changes and evolutions have been made to the third stage, the #Selection Stage, of @TalentTechLabs #Ecosystem10 in their latest post: Click To TweetEcosystem 10: Select
Key highlights and trends regarding employment assessments:
The Behavioral Assessments sub-vertical remains noisy from a scientific validation standpoint. Nonetheless, interest from companies in understanding the psychological profile makeups of both their candidates and internal employees is strong. This year, the most noteworthy trend is the integration of assessment and matching data in the same dashboard, demonstrated through the Pymetrics-HiredScore partnership. While users can now see both skill identification and validation data in the same dashboard, we expect to see in the future a combining of both datasets to make more robust candidate evaluations and predictions of job success. Outside of that, Traitfy’s acquisition by Paradox shows an interest from the market in applying short personality assessments to high-volume hiring.
Skill Assessments remain highly occupational-specific. Technical coding assessments, which account for the largest segment within this sub-vertical, continue to provide more immersive, gamified experiences. Some vendors are incorporating biometric eye-tracking and other anti-cheating mechanisms given the increasing prevalence of fraud in such assessments. The larger players are expanding their feature sets horizontally to support more of the recruitment process from sourcing to selection, similar to what we’ve seen over the last two years in the Video Interviewing segment.
Key highlights and trends regarding interviewing:
Video Interviewing market leaders all seem to offer some type of technical and psychological assessment at this point in time. One of the most notable acquisitions this year was HireVue’s purchase of leading conversational bot provider AllyO. When fully integrated, we think this will provide high-volume hiring companies with a robust offering of capabilities. We’ve also seen innovation in the vendors’ development of interview scoring features. Many buyers who perceive bias in gamified and other behavioral assessments are looking at automated scoring modules (like the one released by Modern Hire this year) as an alternative to cognitive ability testing.
Key highlights and trends regarding employment background checks:
The Background Checks and References and Recommendations sub-verticals are highly fragmented and commoditized. Most of the “innovation” in this category is digitizing the process and increasing the number of integration points. Notably, from a client’s perspective, this process was reported to be the most automated across all recruiting functions in our annual Pulse Survey. Some companies are looking to spice up the category by incorporating other solutions, such as Searchlight.ai’s mashup of soft skill assessment and reference check or Veremark’s use of blockchain as an ostensibly better backend.
The focus is on #selection tools and trends in the third stage of the @TalentTechLabs #Ecosystem. See what changes and advancements you can expect in their latest blog: Click To TweetKey highlights and trends regarding artificial intelligence and labor market tools:
Labor Market Intelligence vendors are specialized tools that offer insights into the labor market and are increasingly used by companies looking to take a more strategic and analytical approach to their recruiting function. The biggest trend in this category is combining internal and external data to make more informed strategic decisions.
The Matching Systems sub-vertical is becoming more advanced as Artificial Intelligence capabilities evolve and Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing become more readily available. We see this sub-vertical evolving towards Talent Management capabilities in Internal Mobility that will match existing employees to open opportunities. Such solutions can either be embedded into existing hiring systems or accessed as a standalone platform. We’ve combined Matching and Resume Parsing, as Matching Systems offer parsing capabilities, and traditional Resume Parsers have expanded into semantic search and matching.
In the next part of our Ecosystem report, we’ll focus on the final stage of the Ecosystem, the Hire stage.
To stay updated on the latest conversations, trends, and technological insights into the talent acquisition space, sign up to join our TTL membership portal. For the full scope of what our Ecosystem 10 has to offer, download your copy of the report now.
