It’s true, TAtech was originally founded in 2007 as the International Association of Employment Websites (IAEWS). Ten of the largest and best known job boards at the time contributed the funds to support the launch of a trade association for their fledgling industry.
Ten years’ later, the IAEWS did a survey of its Members and discovered that the demographics of the organization had changed. While job boards and aggregators remained a large cohort of the membership, the population had expanded to include programmatic ad buying platforms, recruitment advertising and marketing agencies, ATS companies, CRM platforms, conversational AI solution providers, and companies with candidate communication, assessment, interviewing products as well as data and analytics tools. As a result, the IAEWS rebranded itself as TAtech: The Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions - the trade association for the global job board and talent technology industry.
Why is such a trade association important right now?
There are several reasons, but the most important involve the buyer – employers and recruiters:
First, today’s buyer is often mistrustful of so-called “vendors.” For that reason, the very first action TAtech took after its founding was to convene a working group of Members to develop a Code of Ethics.
As a result, the job boards and talent technology companies that join TAtech are also making an affirmative commitment to the Code. How does that help them? The Association sets them apart from others in the “vendor” community by featuring them in the TAtech Talent Technology Buyer’s Guide.
This resource is continuously promoted to TA and HR buyers as a source of job boards and talent technology companies which offer BOTH state-of-the-art capabilities and business practices they can count on. They are positioned as dependable TA partners, and that gives them a competitive edge.
And second, the buyer is also increasingly looking for solution providers with multiple capabilities. They no long have the time to research and assess companies they view as “one trick ponies.” They want to deal with providers that can solve more than one problem for them.
For many companies, the best way to acquire that wider range of capabilities was through partnerships with other companies in the industry. So, TAtech stepped up and created the Deal Center, a venue at its conferences that is specially designed to support B2B discussions of partnerships, product integrations, marketing joint ventures and more.
Does it work? You bet it does! At TAtech North America this year, for example, there were over 1,000 meetings held in the Deal Center during the two-day conference. And in one way or another, every one of those discussions explored how best to deliver multiple capabilities for employers and recruiters.
So, if your company is in the job board or talent technology business and is not yet a TAtech Member, fill out the short application form and make it one right away. The dues investment is small, and the benefits are huge!