Our very own Jonathan Kestenbaum sat down with The HR SOURCE’s YouTube video host, Cynthia Prospers, to discuss what’s emerging in the HR Tech space, women in HR Technology, and what sets Talent Tech Labs apart from its competition. Check out the breakdown of the interview below, or watch the full interview here.
Cynthia Prospers: What is Talent Tech Labs?
Jonathan Kestenbaum: Talent Tech Labs is an Innovation Lab focused on Talent Acquisition Technology. First, we studied the Talent Acquisition Technology space and currently we are tracking about 1,500 emerging technology solutions around the world. Second we write publicly about the trends we’ve seen in the space. We share a lot of free information for the purpose of building a community around Talent Acquisition Technology for the community of entrepreneurs in the space, investors, technology buyers, agencies and staffing firms. We’ve got about 50,000 people in our community. We also build and host events all around the world. We have three commercial offerings in the space. The first commercial offering we started fours years ago and it’s an incubator. So we take equity from early-stage startups, generally companies that are post product with or without revenue and we use that equity for market intelligence, competitive analysis, etc.
Get the lowdown on a recent interview focusing on #HRTech between @THEHRSOURCE and @JKestenbaum of @TalentTechLabs Click To TweetThe second commercial offering is for later stage companies, these are companies generating more than a million dollars in revenue that still want access to clients, investors, and market intelligence.
The last is an advisory practice for heads of talent and CEOS of staffings firms on emerging technology. We do that through events, reports and one-on-one conversations.
What is an element that sets you apart from other companies that are assisting early stage companies?
Jonathan: Our unique differentiator is our access to the buyers. We have relationships with heads of talent at enterprise companies. One of the cores to our thesis, at least around the incubator, is that getting money from investors is good, but it’s not as sustainable as getting money from companies that buy TA technology. This is because if they pay for it, there’s product market fit and generally they’ll continue to use it. We believe that connecting you to the right buyers is a significant differentiator.
Explore our latest Trends Report focusing on how AI is changing Candidate Experience.
Is Talent Tech Labs then cutting out the middleman?
Jonathan: Not necessarily. It’s really hard to get buyers’ attention, they get bombarded with thousands of pitches a year. It’s hard for them to identify which technologies are going to add value. Through our commercial offerings we help both sides help the companies frame what they’re doing in a way that the buyers would be excited by it and build something that actually adds value. We then help the buyers understand what these companies actually do and not let them get confused or overwhelmed.
How does TTL contribute to women in technology?
Jonathan: I don’t know the exact stats today, but I can tell you that over 30% of our incubated companies are female-founded. We are actively looking to find female-founded companies and add value where we can. We use data to help us identify interesting investment opportunities and we have learned that female entrepreneurs are better investments than both teams that have worked together and males that have sold a company.
We also collaborate closely with organizations like SHRM and The HR SOURCE to both engage women in Talent Acquisition Technology and help them excel in their careers.
Find out how @TalentTechLabs is contributing to women in tech in this interview with @THEHRSOURCE Click To TweetWhat are the trends in HR tech and what is HR Tech’s future?
Jonathan: Directionally, four years ago, sourcing was thought of as building a team to go find addresses to build a database. Today, it’s drastically changed because of the rise of social networks, people’s general engagement on the internet and social search technologies, which pull all publically available information on the web and create profiles for people.
Over the next 6 months you’re going to see a number of interesting matching solutions come to the market. Big companies like Google just launched their matching algorithm. You’re going to see companies like IBM and Watson coming into the space. You’re going to start to see ATS integrating third-party matching technologies.
This year is the year of assessments, we believe this because now that you can identify matched candidates, the next step for us to look at is how do you assess them? How do you make sure they’re a perfect fit?
Find out more about assessment tools in 2017: The Year of the Assessments
Can you explain the picture behind you?
Jonathan: Behind me is a small version of what we call our ecosystem infographic, but this is the taxonomy through which we look at the world of Talent Acquisition Technology. It has evolved over the course of the last four years and we have broken the same into 27 different sub verticals, 13 different verticals and bull burst stages. We are always looking for feedback in the ecosystem, you can actually submit your companies on our website. We’re always looking for ideas and get excited when new categories come out.
View the Talent Acquisition Technology Ecosystem.
If you want to learn more about Talent Tech Labs, watch the full interview with The HR SOURCE or check out the services page to see the process. Don’t forget to sign up for our blog or head over the Talent Tech Labs website to get more industry insights.
