The Latest from the Talent Tech Industry
January 25-30, 2021: Bayard is acquired by Shamrock Capital and sets its sights on expansion, Twitter launches an experiment in community-based fact checking, Employers are cautioned to keep their logos off solution provider sites, New app helps job seekers find careers that don’t require a 4-year degree, GoodJob raises $3 million to grow its solutions for candidate matching and top performer “cloning,” TMP Worldwide, AIA Worldwide, Perengo, CKR, Carve and Maximum are integrated into a single new brand: Radancy, and Workday acquires employee feedback platform Peakon for $700 million. It’s starting to get fun!
Shamrock Capital & Bayard Join Forces
[Louis Naviasky, CEO of Bayard writes] Dear friends, clients, and partners,
I am so pleased to announce our acquisition by Shamrock Capital. This change for us is a historic and exciting event. The transaction closed on January 26th, 2021, and is an exciting next chapter for Bayard after nearly 100 years of family ownership. As many of you know, we were founded over 97 years ago as a family-owned and operated company. We have grown tremendously from our humble roots on Bayard Street in Lower Manhattan in the 1920s to a leading player in Employer Brand and Talent Marketing, as well as a go-to innovator in media buying strategy and optimization — all things that empower us to help our clients thrive and succeed. Shamrock’s investment will enable us to further grow and expand our offering in order to continue to provide best-in-class solutions for our clients.
Twitter Launches Birdwatch: Community-Based Fact Checking
Twitter wants the community to fact-check tweets, so it created Birdwatch: a website where program participants can, to use Twitter's words, "add context" to individual tweets. According to Keith Coleman, Twitter's VP of product, the company believes that "this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable." He went on to say that eventually, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors, Birdwatch notes will be visible directly on Twitter. Twitter was quick to acknowledge the potential problems with a relatively small group of community-based fact-checkers, but they also know the only way to solve those problems is to test the system. I don't think this will work in any meaningful way. Twitter is in the anonymity business. No one knows who anyone really is on Twitter, so trolls and bot armies run rampant. A good first step would be to take everyone's credit card and driver's license and make people accountable for what they post. Without accountability, you can fact check all you want, but nothing is going to change.
The Legal Lounge: Your Logo Should Be a No-Go on HR Tech Vendors’ Sites
Recently, HireVue admitted that their AI-fueled facial analysis of video interviews contained bias. For many of us who regularly lambasted this use of AI, it felt like a victory. Finally, someone acknowledged what common sense told so many of us — that using the analysis of candidate facial expressions would yield biased results, particularly against people of color and those with disabilities. This is also a warning for talent acquisition leaders: Don’t let cutting-edge technology companies use your logos on their website. You’re begging for a lawsuit if you do.
New app helps job seekers find careers that don't require four-year degree
Indigo Education Company has released IndigoPathway.com, a free online resource for job-seeking Americans, students, and workforce organizations across the country. IndigoPathway guides people from all backgrounds to new careers and industries that don't require a four-year degree. Employers are looking for a solution that connects job seekers to positions in long-term, sustainable careers. What makes IndigoPathway different? Indigo's system offers more accurate results than any other employment tool on the market. The career survey's algorithms are based on multi-dimensional data, with over 1,000 possible recommendations, making for highly individualized results. Other major personality and strengths assessments, such as MBTI and CliftonStrengths, have only 16 and 34 types respectively. No personality results are superior to another, and the Indigo approach guides all individuals toward career paths that align with their intrinsic genius.
GoodJob Secures $3M in Funding
GoodJob today announced that it has raised $3M to fuel marketing and sales efforts in major markets across the U.S. Finding the right candidates has become even more difficult in a remote-first environment where traditional job boards deliver resumes by the pound. GoodJob is transforming the recruiting industry by using psychology and data science to cut through the clutter to improve time-to-hire and retention rates by quickly identifying the right candidates. The company launched its web and mobile apps in June of 2020, primarily targeting the Birmingham, Ala. market. The two most popular tools for companies have been the vetting feature, which uses GoodJob's machine-learning AI to quickly sort and filter candidates in a company's pipeline and spot the best matches, and the PATH Assessment™, which allows companies to "clone" their top performers.
New Year. New Brand
TMP Worldwide, the company behind recruitment marketing platform TalentBrew, has rebranded itself to “Radancy.” In a blog post, CEO Michelle Abbey wrote “Why, did we decide to change our name? It’s simple really, over the past several years our business has seen tremendous growth. Both through organic means, like our unified platform, and through strategic acquisitions around the world. Radancy represents the full integration of TMP Worldwide, AIA Worldwide, Perengo, CKR, Carve and Maximum – combining the best technology, solutions and talent under one global roof. This allows us to simplify our story, eliminate brand confusion and take ownership of all that we do.
Workday to acquire engagement app Peakon for $700M
Cloud HCM software group Workday has announced plans to purchase Peakon, an employee feedback platform, for US$700m in cash. The deal is part of Workday’s efforts to help employers keep track of their teams in the era of remote working. The coronavirus pandemic has prompted organisations to switch to a remote or distributed workforce, but some employers have struggled to gain visibility into workers’ performance. Peakon specialises in monitoring employee sentiment and productivity, with the goal of enhancing their overall experience. The acquisition is expected to result in the creation of a “continuous listening” platform that will collect real-time data, support ongoing feedback, and suggest ways for managers and workers to cope with challenging situations.