Curated Intel from the Talent Tech Industry
March 7-13, 2022:
• Recognizing recruiting’s All Stars: TAtech announces the Winter Class of its Top 100 in TA;
• Expanding the talent pool: Cappfinity now offers a lifecycle solution for neurodivergent talent;
• Raising the heat on tech companies: EU & UK antitrust regulators probe Google-Meta ad pact;
• Feeling the impact in the office: The war in Ukraine is also a war on the US talent market;
• Reinventing talent screening: Fama raises $11M to make background checking a brand positive.
PLUS
• Don’t miss the only conference specifically designed to promote the success of companies offering talent technology solutions – job boards, ATS companies, CRM platforms, recruitment marketing & advertising agencies, programmatic platforms, AI solutions and more – TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum. Early Bird registration is now available.
TAtech Announces the Winter Class of its TAtech Top 100 TA Thought Leaders
TAtech: The Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions announced the 2022 Winter Class of the Top 100 Most Influential Talent Acquisition Thought Leaders. This list of extraordinary men and women is different in two ways: First, unlike traditional HR recognition lists, it doesn’t treat Talent Acquisition as an afterthought, but instead focuses exclusively on the innovators and idea creators in recruiting. And second, it doesn’t publish a one-and-done list that’s quickly forgotten, but instead releases its list in four classes, one each season, ensuring that the recognition continues all year long. A third of the Selectees currently work for employers and are located in North America or the European Union. Selectees among solution providers are based in North America, the EU and Australia. Better than four-in-ten (44 percent) are women.
Cappfinity & Lexxic to help organizations embrace neurodiversity
HR tech firm, Cappfinity, has announced a new partnership with specialist neurodiversity consultancy, Lexxic, to help businesses create a culture that enables neurodivergent talent to flourish. Operating since 2007, Lexxic was founded by Chartered Occupational Psychologist Nicola James after experiencing the challenges of her own Dyslexia in the corporate sector. Neurodiversity refers to the different ways a person’s brain processes information. It is a term used to describe alternative thinking styles such as Dyslexia, DCD (Dyspraxia), Dyscalculia, Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). As part of the partnership, Lexxic conducted an extensive audit of Cappfinity’s product portfolio, enabling the business to offer organisations a lifecycle solution that will support neurodivergent individuals throughout their employment journey, from candidate through to employee.
Google and Meta Ad Pact Being Probed by EU and U.K. Antitrust Regulators
European Union and British antitrust authorities launched parallel investigations into a 2018 online display advertising deal between Google and Facebook, adding to a long list of regulatory challenges facing the U.S. tech giants. Alphabet unit Google and Facebook, whose parent company is now called Meta, defended the "Jedi Blue" deal, which the EU said may thwart ad tech rivals and disadvantage publishers in online display advertising. So-called header bidding allows publishers, such as news providers, to offer ad space to multiple ad exchanges and networks simultaneously, potentially generating more ad revenue. The Jedi Blue agreement enables Meta via its Meta Audience Network, to participate in Google's Open Bidding programme, which is a rival to header bidding. "A competing technology to Google's Open Bidding may have been targeted with the aim to weaken it and exclude it from the market for displaying ads on publisher websites and apps," EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
The War on Ukraine Is a War on the U.S. Talent Market
The talent market is one area that has seen a boom in offshore outsourcing, and the U.S. has become the largest consumer of offshore talent, over any other country. This is for good reason (especially in technology) since companies can access the same level of capable engineering talent in offshore labor pools with up to 81% savings over onshore. Ukraine is one of the U.S.’s biggest partners of reliable and scalable offshore tech talent. In fact, the country is ranked 5th out of the top 25 global tech talent exporters. The market is worth $6 billion in Ukraine’s economy and over 200,000 of their IT professionals are employed as offshore resources. The country ranks 5th globally when it comes to skill versus value with a 93.17% score. Ukraine has over 130,000 engineering graduates per annum, which when compared to the U.S.’s 237,000 graduates (from a population eight times that of Ukraine’s) is remarkably large. The high concentration of computer science and technical graduates is reflective of previous forecasts that the country's offshore services market size will grow to $8.4 billion by 2025. The U.S. depends on this talent supply and the consequences could be dire if we don’t take further actions to stop the members of Russia responsible for the invasion, with further aggressive sanctions.
Fama Raises a $10m Series B to Reinvent Talent Screening
Fama, the world’s largest social media screening company and a leader in applying AI to background screening services, announced its Series B investment this week. The company allows HR departments to leverage insights from the public web and bring them into their talent screening process. More than 1,500 businesses in 32 countries turn to Fama to help protect their brand and ensure a safe and welcoming workplace culture. Fama, which supports more than 90% of the background screening industry and the majority of the executive search industry, plans to use the funding to scale its go-to-market team, launch new products, and innovate for the future. "The definition of a ‘background check’ has evolved substantially over the past five years. Businesses are finding that changes in the market - namely the enhanced focus on brand and reputation, the importance of developing a welcoming workplace culture - mean that their screening products need to cover new types of risk," said Ben Mones, CEO and Founder of Fama. "It’s one of the main reasons that social media screening is the #1 area of new, planned product expansion for screening professionals the world over."
Make the Business Connections That Build Success
Business connections – with partners, allies, and customers – are critical to bottom-line success, and the past two years have made it infinitely harder to forge and maintain them. The TAtech Deal Center – the central feature of TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum – solves that problem. It is the only venue in the world expressly designed to help solution providers identify and meet with the business connections that matter. This unique conference will be held in Austin, Texas on May 31-June 2, 2022. It has historically attracted a Who’s Who in the talent technology industry – from job boards, ATS providers and CRM platforms to recruitment marketing & advertising agencies, programmatic ad buying platforms and conversational AI companies. They’ll all be there and you should be too.