Curated Intel from the Talent Tech Industry
September 5-11, 2022:
• Offering a pearl to knowledge workers: Oyster intros Global Employment Pass to ease hiring;
• Adding TA capability: AI-powered talent engagement platform Sense acquires Skillate;
• Signing out of the office: Google searches for “remote work” hit highest level ever in August;
• Making it dicey to share employees: NLRB proposes new rule that may threaten joint employers;
• Winning the art contest at the CO State Fair: AI text-to-image processor upsets human creatives.
PLUS
• Looking for a target-rich environment? Meet HR/TA leaders interested in your specific technology at any one of TAtech’s three one-day, one-topic Leadership Summits this fall: Technology & the Candidate Experience (September 28 NYC), Applications of Recruiting AI for Enterprise Employers (October 25 Chicago), and Recruitment Marketing (December 1 Boston). Sponsorships are still available, but going fast so contact TAtech CEO Peter Weddle (peterweddle@tatech.org) right away!
Oyster Launches its Global Employment Pass to Connect Knowledge Workers with Distributed Companies and Remote Jobs
Oyster, the global employment platform that empowers companies to hire, pay, and care for their global teams, today announced it has launched its Global Employment Pass. With the world's savviest employers embracing talent no matter where they're physically located, Oyster's Global Employment Pass will serve as a central hub for knowledge workers to increase their hireability, create career-defining work experiences, and connect job seekers with open roles. The Global Employment Pass offers access to free training courses through Oyster Academy, Oyster's educational resource program on the future of work, plus exclusive templates and materials to help job seekers effectively communicate how prospective employers can utilize the distributed workforce model.
AI-driven talent engagement platform Sense acquires Skillate
AI-driven talent engagement platform Sense announced its acquisition of Skillate, an AI recruitment platform incubated within SAP Startup Studio. The addition of Skillate’s technology enhances Sense’s ability to provide AI-powered hiring including candidate matching, job distribution, job description assistant, and talent relationship management. Sense, which is in hyper-growth doubling YoY over the past few years, had secured a $50 million Series D from Softbank in 2021 and counts Avataar Ventures, Accel, and Google Ventures as its other marquee investors. Currently, Skillate’s technology is deeply integrated with core HCM platforms including Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle Taleo, Smart Recruiters, and more.
Google searches for ‘Remote jobs’ hit their highest level
Searches in the UK for ‘remote jobs’ has hit their highest ever level during August of 2022, more than two years after the very first COVID-19 lockdown. This shows that the working cultural changes initiated by the behavioural changes triggered by the pandemic continue to resonate. A new study, which comes from document management company SmallPDF reveals that Google searches for remote jobs hit their highest ever level since searches began being recorded in 2004. According to the UK government, searches for ‘remote IT jobs’ also hit their highest level ever, indicating a demand in the industry for working from home opportunities. For many, working at home remains a new development. For example, 56 percent of those currently working remote have only been doing so since the onset of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
Proposed Joint Employer Rule May Increase Employer Liability
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) wants to change the standard for when two employers that do business together are considered to be joint employers and thus liable for one another's unfair labor practices. On Sept. 6, the board issued a notice of proposed rulemaking that would replace the proposed rule that took effect on April 27, 2020. Under that rule, an employer could be a joint employer of another entity if it had direct and immediate control over the essential terms and conditions of employment of the other entity's workers. Under the proposed rule, two or more employers would be considered joint employers if they "share or codetermine those matters governing employees' essential terms and conditions of employment." Comments on the proposed rule are due Nov. 7. The NLRB is likely to act quickly on finalizing and enforcing the rule after it reviews comments, according to Steve Bernstein, an attorney with Fisher Phillips in Tampa, Fla.
AI text-to-image processors: Threat to creatives or new tool in the toolbox?
An image produced from scratch by a video game designer using an AI tool recently won an art competition at the Colorado State Fair, as has been widely reported. Some artists are alarmed, but should they be? For several years AI has been incorporated into tools used by artists every day, from computational photography within the Apple iPhone to image enhancement tools from Topaz Labs and Lightricks, and even open source applications. But because an image generated entirely by an AI tool won a competition, some see this as a tipping point — a sign of an AI catastrophe to come that will lead to widespread job displacement for those in creative fields including graphic design and illustration, photography, journalism, creative writing and even software development. The winning image was generated using Midjourney, a cloud-based text-to-image tool developed by a small research lab by that name that is “exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.” Their product is a text-to-image generator, the result of AI neural networks trained on vast numbers of images. The company has not disclosed its technology stack, but CEO David Holz said it uses very large AI models with billions of parameters. “They’re trained over billions of images.” Although Midjourney has only recently emerged from stealth mode, already hundreds of thousands of people are using the service.
Hyper-Target Your BizDev Opportunities
Meet HR/TA leaders interested in your specific technology at any one of TAtech’s three one-day, one-topic Leadership Summits this fall: Technology & the Candidate Experience (September 28 NYC), Applications of Recruiting AI for Enterprise Employers (October 25 Chicago), and Recruitment Marketing (December 1 Boston). These unique conferences are specifically designed to promote connections among busy corporate and industry leaders. Each program provides both a deep dive into an important talent acquisition strategy and plenty of time for senior-level peer-to-peer interaction. That makes them the perfect venue for building your brand and generating sales leads. Sponsorships are still available, but going fast so contact TAtech CEO Peter Weddle (peterweddle@tatech.org) right away!