The Latest from the Talent Tech Industry
February 1-6, 2021: The Bucs are champs, but Indeed’s ad on the telecast is still competing; Blockchain employment site Job.com acquires Talenting to accelerate its growth in the TA market; January BLS report with its modest increase in jobs may suggest a turnaround in employment; EU hears a legal challenge to Union funding for AI “snake oil” research; New SEC reporting rules acknowledge that the majority of public company value comes from human capital; Fountain adds a new analytics suite to its high volume recruiting platform; and Nucleus Research finds that TA solutions reduce turnover in “high churn industries.” It’s only February and things are moving at warp speed.
Indeed Looks To Bring Hope To Job Seekers In Its First Super Bowl Commercial
Indeed is looking to bring hope to millions of Americans who have lost their jobs amid the pandemic in its first Super Bowl commercial. The online job site will use the Big Game to showcase the emotional journey of job seekers. The 60-second spot will feature real people looking for a job, and their challenges and wins along the way. Given the seriousness and sensitivity around the subject, Indeed’s commercial could stand out for striking a more serious tone amid a larger batch of light-hearted and humorous ads. Indeed will also strike a different tone than other job search sites that have aired commercials in years past. Both Monster.com and CareerBuilder went for laughs, the latter of which was best known for featuring monkeys in its commercials. Indeed's Super Bowl commercial kicks off a new brand campaign that highlights the company’s mission to help people get jobs. This includes utilizing the hashtag #NowHiring to highlight industries, regions and companies with open roles.
Job.com Acquires Blockchain Startup Talenting
Job.com, the blockchain powered employment site, announced today its acquisition of talent management technology startup Talenting. Talenting brings its proprietary full-scale, end-to-end blockchain-powered technology to the Job.com ecosystem, expanding the reach and capabilities of Job.com's platform and allowing for continued growth in the hiring and recruitment industry. Job.com redefines the way companies attract, hire, and retain talent by creating a one-stop shop platform built on blockchain technology. With the acquisition of Talenting, Job.com will soon also be a premier, immutable storage solution for a global cache of workers' career data. Candidates will be able to access, control, distribute, and secure a lifetime of career information with a click, while providing employers with a verifiable and trustworthy curation of services and solutions. A new technological infrastructure and intellectual property, including mobile applications, will simplify and further secure the process of accessing and sharing candidate data and evaluating potential employee viability.
Job Growth Begins to Bounce Back
U.S. payrolls climbed out from a hole in January, as employers added 49,000 new jobs, according to the latest employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job growth had previously turned negative in December for the first time since May 2020 primarily due to restaurants and bars being affected by new pandemic-related restrictions and colder weather. The unemployment rate in January fell to 6.3 percent. ADP's latest employment report showed that 174,000 private-sector jobs were created in January, with the biggest gains in health care and professional services. Leisure and hospitality employers added 35,000 jobs for the month, according to ADP, but the industry remains millions of jobs below pre-pandemic levels.
‘Orwellian’ AI lie detector project challenged in EU court
A legal challenge was heard today in Europe’s Court of Justice in relation to a controversial EU-funded research project using artificial intelligence for facial “lie detection” with the aim of speeding up immigration checks. The transparency lawsuit against the EU’s Research Executive Agency (REA), which oversees the bloc’s funding programs, was filed in March 2019 by Patrick Breyer, MEP of the Pirate Party Germany and a civil liberties activist — who has successfully sued the Commission before over a refusal to disclose documents. He’s seeking the release of documents on the ethical evaluation, legal admissibility, marketing and results of the project. And is hoping to set a principle that publicly funded research must comply with EU fundamental rights — and help avoid public money being wasted on AI “snake oil” in the process.
The SEC’s disclosure rules are changing HR forever. Are you ready?
The past year has shown us all just how critical HR is to the performance of a business. And with new Securities and Exchange Commission data disclosure guidelines going into practice, the role of HR has finally risen to its rightful place—the boardroom. If you haven’t yet heard, for the first time in over 30 years the SEC has modernized its disclosure rules, requiring that public companies disclose far more detail about their human capital metrics than ever before. The move represents a fundamental shift in how the SEC perceives the health of businesses—and it elevates the prominence of CHROs in the process. In the past, the SEC had only one human capital metric: the number of employees at a public company. The thinking was that this was all investors needed to know about employees to measure the long-term health of a business and decide whether they wanted to invest in it. But times have changed since the SEC made its last major update to the disclosure rules back in the 1970s. In 1975, 83% of the value of S&P 500 companies was tied to the physical assets on those organizations’ balance sheets, according to Chief Learning Officer. Now, it’s almost flipped on its head. In 2015, 84% of the value of these companies mapped to human capital—and just 16% came from physical assets.
Fountain Adds Advanced Analytics to High Volume Hiring Platform
Fountain, the enterprise high volume hiring platform, today unveiled a new analytics suite. Users can drill into top-line numbers, customize filters, export, send, and schedule the distribution of pre-built reports to analyze candidate behavior and identify trends based on brand, location, stage, and more. Fountain's enterprise software now comes equipped with self-serve reporting and a data tool that offers multiple dashboards, reports, and visualizations for customers. Users can drill into top-line numbers, customize filters, export, send, and schedule the distribution of pre-built reports to analyze candidate behavior and identify trends based on brand, location, stage, and more.
Talent Acquisition Solutions Reduce Turnover in High-Churn Industries
Employers can reduce average turnover by 30% to 60% in high-churn industries such as retail, and 20% among organizations with salaried workers by implementing appropriate talent acquisition solutions, according to Nucleus Research. On average, companies spend more than 30% of an employee’s salary per turnover, which can increase with costs required to train a replacement.