Aptitude Research’s Madeline Laurano: Recruiters aren’t happy with their tech

As our next event UNLEASH World approaches, we go back to May 2022 as UNLEASH director of content labs Kate Graham talks to researcher and analyst Madeline Laurano about applicant tracking, candidate experience, internal mobility and plenty more. This was filmed at UNLEASH America 2022, in fabulous Las Vegas.

Watch the video or read an excerpt of the transcript beneath, which has been edited for clarity. We join the conversation as Kate and Madeline set the scene.

Madeline Laurano: …to me, it’s really looking at the themes that we’ve been talking about today, and that we’ll talk about tomorrow around humanity and AI and the future of work. And we’re bringing it all together with the people that are building technology to support that. So I think it’s a really exciting opportunity.

Kate Graham: And how are you finding the show so far?

ML: Amazing, amazing. It’s packed. Tons of people, it feels like a reunion. But I’ve also met so many new people, I can keep up with the trends here, because the expo floor is packed. Main stage was packed this morning. So I’m just thrilled.

KG: Thank you so much. And then in your research, obviously, you’re so busy, your output is incredible. What are you seeing come through that’s particularly of interest? And is that being reflected in the conversations that you’re hearing and having at UNLEASH?

ML: Definitely, you know, one big theme this year has been around recruiter experience. So I do a lot of talent acquisition research. And typically, the TA (talent acquisition) tech stack is built for heads of TA or for IT. And what we saw this year is that recruiters were leaving their jobs, they felt burnt out, they were not happy with the technology that they were using – one in two recruiters would leave for better technology – so a lot of technology providers are rethinking their solutions for the people actually doing the work. And we see that on the recruiter experience, we see that with the employee experience, for the people that are doing the work. It’s really a different way to think about technology, it’s a different way to think about integration. And I’m definitely seeing those themes today.

KG: And how do you feel that the recruiting side, particularly the tech stack, with technology in our DNA at UNLEASH, how do you feel that that’s all evolving? Because there’s some really exciting new solutions around isn’t there, so I guess a) what’s exciting, and b) how do I keep up?

ML: There’s so many new providers, there’s new categories that emerge all the time. So it’s been really exciting to follow this industry and also very challenging. I think what we’re seeing is that the ATS (applicant tracking system) can’t do it all.

So there’s a whole ecosystem to support that that, could be conversational AI, companies like Paradox, which are here, or could be providers that have AI matching; it could be providers that are looking to just support that recruiter experience [through] programmatic job advertising.

KG: And there’s a real shift in recruiting isn’t there? Because I feel like we’ve talked about the Great Resignation, it’s obviously having such a big impact, but the switch from the recruiter to nurturing and relationship building and being proactive, it’s not just inbound anymore is it?

ML: It’s this whole candidate engagement and thinking about recruitment marketing, and looking at how do we attract the right talent, and internal mobility has kind of been a big theme of that, too. I mean, it’s a huge theme across HR, across learning, but within talent acquisition too, to be able to think about how are we not just looking at external talent, but also looking at internal as well. So that’s been a big shift in the past few years.

KG: And again, we didn’t script this, but you led me very nicely into into my next question, which is about the silos in HR; the walls are coming down, right? I mean, talent acquisition is not over here, learning’s are over here, tell everybody, everything is starting to converge.

ML: It definitely is. And it’s challenging, for companies to figure out how to make that collaboration happen. So I’ll give you this one example really quick. I talked to a company last week and what they did this is for internal mobility is that they put a role on their TA team to be an internal recruiter-coordinator. So they are the person that TA goes to for their internal recruiting challenges. Then there is a role on the HR side that’s ‘internal mobility specialist’. And those two individuals work together. Is there a team they’re best friends, and they make sure internal mobility really happens and those walls come down.

KG: And we’re gonna see more and more of that, right. And then obviously, with things like the analytics piece coming into play now as well, how are you seeing that filter through because it feels like something that HR talks a lot about, but people are still quite early in their journey with people analytics, but it’s potentially got the power to bring a lot of these previously silo-ed functions together.

ML: Absolutely. And I think what happens is that we have the data, but how do we take action on it? How do we understand it? How do we draw insights on it? What I think the interesting shifts that I’ve seen is, is that a lot of it is called ‘talent intelligence‘ now, and it’s almost like kind of the next stage of talent analytics. So whether you call it one or the other, I think the goal is the same…

Watch the whole conversation in the video above.

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