With a nod to Senator John Kennedy (R Luisiana) and his best-selling book about nonsensical Senate practices, I offer 5 guidelines on how to avoid being dumb in the TA solutions industry.

First, don’t fake it ‘til you make it; deliver something that does what it claims to do. Poserware may work for the bro boys in Silicon Valley, but it’s way out of bounds in the recruitment industry. Why? Because we’re dealing with peoples’ lives or at least their careers. So, don’t AI wash your solution, don’t sell black boxes and don’t’ let your salespeople overhype what you can do and how well you can do it. Pollyannish? Maybe, but also definitely the opposite of dumb.

Second, don’t sell products, sell solutions. Talent technology isn’t a plug and play kind of business. As a minimum, every new product affects the customer’s tech stack and, in some maybe many instances, it forces the customer to change procedures, practices and/or policies. So, spend as much or more on your customer success teams as you do on your technology. Actually leave the customer better off than they were before you entered the picture.

Third, don’t develop technology, create a good answer. The recruitment industry is littered with startups that build a nifty application without a well-defined purpose and then clog recruiters’ email-boxes, voicemail boxes and conference time trying to sell them something they neither want nor need. That’s not a business, it’s market sludge. Instead, do something worthwhile: solve a problem or provide an improvement that will genuinely help recruiters get work done.

Fourth, don’t be clueless; do your homework. The TA solutions industry is a wonderfully innovative space where original ideas emerge all the time. Unfortunately, however, it also sees more than a few new players every year, all claiming to have developed, for the very first time ever, an ingenious recruitment capability that has, alas, been around for years. It’s a fact they would have easily uncovered if they’d bothered to research the market before putting their wizardry to work.

Fifth, don’t spout technobabble; communicate in human language. Yes, some concepts and applications in the technology field are complicated, but the most successful leaders, developers and salespeople are competent, even expert translators. Their goal is the effective transfer of information and understanding, so they calibrate their use of technical terminology to their audience without exposing them to condescension or humiliation.

There are, of course, many other tests for business acumen in the TA solutions industry. These five are just a starting point, and I’ll share more in the future. Consider them:

Food for Thought,

Peter