As recruiting and HR professionals work to <a href="https://www.hrotoday.com/market-intelligence/research/rebuilding-the-workforce-post-crisis/">rebuild our workforces post crisis</a>, we continue to see the far-reaching effects of the pandemic touching almost all aspects of our everyday lives. Even with past financial collapses, natural destruction and moments of great tragedy, we are hard-pressed to single out one historical event that affected our entire beings, all at the same time. From our personal health and home life, to how we work and learn, and even to how we spend our free time, the impact of COVID-19 will likely be defined as the most all-encompassing global challenge we have experienced for decades to come.
In terms of the economy, while we&rsquo;ve experienced downturns, albeit some quite devastating, often times the industries affected were very specific, allowing for experts to trace back to the trigger event and formulate plans to course-correct. The ebb and flow of the continual reality of COVID-19 is something extraordinarily different however because of its grand-scale and subsequent waves.
With locations across the globe often seeing steps forward, then backwards, at a rapid pace, a massive web is spun consisting of multiple industries and areas needing immediate but different attention, all at the same time. Take for example the U.S. employment landscape. When we examine the current collective unemployment rate for the US, it is hovering near 8% according to the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm">September 2020 Employment Situation Summary</a>. Yes, it is a staggering number compared to most recent years, including the average of 3.7% just in 2019, but based <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2020/unemployment-rate-rises-to-record-high-14-point-7-percent-in-april-2020.htm?view_full#:~:text=Unemployment%20rate%20rises%20to%20record%20high%2014.7%20percent%20in%20April%202020,-May%2013%2C%202020&amp;text=The%20unemployment%20rate%20in%20April,available%20back%20to%20January%201948).">on the spring 2020 rate reported at nearly 15%</a>, the height of COVID economic shutdowns, it is thankfully a number that we are seeing trending down. It also doesn&rsquo;t necessarily paint the whole picture.
 Frightening unemployment numbers when broken down to the local level make planning more manageable
While the overall number is of great concern, there are industry and location factors that contribute to the employment landscape, which are particularly important to recruiters who focus on local job growth and who are actively formulating their own plans to course-correct.
For instance, while Massachusetts&rsquo; <a href="https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm">state unemployment numbers</a> released in August for July claimed a 16.1% unemployment rate, simply looking at those numbers at face value doesn't tell the whole story. A review in August suggests that <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2020/07/31/why-is-the-unemployment-rate-so-high-in-massachusetts#:~:text=Since%20the%20beginning%20of%20the,according%20to%20new%20federal%20data.&amp;text=%E2%80%9CMassachusetts%20had%20a%20higher%20employment,of%20jobs%2C%E2%80%9D%20Freeman%20said">pre-Pandemic, the Bay State was booming with jobs</a> &ndash; therefore it had that much farther to fall because of its expanded labor force now ground to a halt. Plus, with many jobs heavily focused in the retail, entertainment, hospitality, service and education sectors &ndash; all of which we can agree were hit the hardest because of shutdowns and social distancing measures &ndash; it made sense that recovery would take longer as the state follows specific reopening rules.
Add to the mix the high university student population, many who had graduated amidst a jobless outlook, and we can understand that Massachusetts has a unique set of challenges to address.
For recruiters however, the jobless grad students present a mobile opportunity. Students returning home may be at a point in their life status to pursue a job anywhere, and recruiters can help make those connections. Having not necessarily placed down roots upon graduation, these new job-seekers may have greater flexibility in reaching far beyond their surrounding communities for new opportunities.
Keeping track of the ever-changing line graph
Of course, you can set your watch by how quickly numbers will change (for better or worse), opening up new avenues or changing direction for job hunters and the recruiters looking to place them. In fact, <a href="https://www.bls.gov/lau/">by September&rsquo;s rate release</a>, Massachusetts already started showing improvement, no longer taking the top spot it held just the month prior. Now with a 11.3% unemployment rate, the sharpest decline for a state,&nbsp;areas that were struggling, particularly in industries that relied on foot-traffic, are showing positive gains, as more phased re-openings occur. Let&rsquo;s see what the next data release brings.
Utah on the other hand, seems to have evaded the prolonged downturns experienced in other geographies, steadily improving from the initial pandemic-induced employment plummet. With <a href="https://www.abc4.com/news/top-stories/utah-unemployment-rate-at-4-1-as-new-benefit-claims-plateau/">Utah&rsquo;s 4.1% unemployment rate</a>, just a fraction below Nebraska which touted the best rate in the latest bls.gov release, this state represents a step in a positive direction, even though some hard-hit sectors like hospitality, service and leisure remain a challenge. With this challenge, also comes an opportunity for recruiters to reshape the outlook. By reaching out to displaced talent with a <a href="https://www.allegisglobalsolutions.com/en/insights-and-analytics/podcasts/a-360-view">focus on reskilling and retooling</a>, recruiters can perhaps help change the trajectory on the work prospective for affected individuals. Working with prospects to share guidance and resources on how they can market their transferrable skills into new industry segments can keep the wheels turning.
Recruiting and hiring decisions supported by sound data
With <a href="https://www.quantum.work/blog/creative-recruiting-hacks">recruiters being no strangers to innovation and creative thinking</a> when placing talent, they can also take advantage of new technology that not only helps them locate and rank job seekers according to skill, but provides market conditions as well.
A first-to-market PaaS like QuantumWork will aggregate and provide an overarching, single view to all talent &ndash; including past and present permanent and contingent workers, as well as new grads and displaced workers. Couple the talent data portal with its in-depth analytical reports that outline job market conditions according to locale and industry, and recruiters can know who to place where at the right time, making a significant impact on helping our economy recover.
These new insightful tools are here to support the specialized knowledge recruiters already possess for the communities they serve. By having an expanded view into the talent that is really out there, the skills they have to share, and the job markets that have open opportunities, recruiters and hiring managers can begin to rebuild workforces more quickly based on the accurate and timely talent data now available to them.

As recruiting and HR professionals work to rebuild our workforces post crisis, we continue to see the far-reaching effects of the pandemic t

Unemployment Rates and Recruiting: Digging below the numbers

As recruiting and HR professionals work to rebuild our workforces post crisis, we continue to see the far-reaching effects of the pandemic touching almost all aspects of our everyday lives.

A warning: these statements are often true and crucially important when communicating with candidates.&nbsp; Most recruiters are honest and upfront with job seekers.&nbsp;Largely caring and committed, recruiters often genuinely care about every candidate.&nbsp; Even if they don&rsquo;t necessarily always show it.
The bad news is that many of the most common put offs, while usually well-intentioned and largely innocuous, are as integrated with the recruiting process as an applicant tracking systems or a reference check.
The good news?&nbsp; Avoiding these &ldquo;worst practices&rdquo; instantly translates into observing best practices, an improved candidate experience and an easy win for your employment brand.
5 Biggest Job Search Lies Recruiters Tell Candidates&nbsp;
1) When a recruiter says: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll keep you in mind for future opportunities.&rdquo;
It might really mean:&nbsp;&ldquo;Your resume will sit in our database untouched until you apply for something else. If you&rsquo;re not right for any of my open reqs, any memory of you ends the moment I hang up this phone.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Best Practice:&nbsp;Tell candidates up front whether you feel there will be other possibilities for them down the line. Offer them an explanation into your rationale. Provide suggestions for relevant training or experience to increase their chance of landing a future role.
2)&nbsp;When a recruiter says: &ldquo;Salary depends on experience; there&rsquo;s no real set amount.&rdquo;
It might really mean:&nbsp;&ldquo;I already have a figure with almost no margin for negotiation. So your expectations are really the sole determinant as to whether this conversation continues or if I&rsquo;ll keep you in mind for future opportunities.&rdquo; (see above.)
Best practice:&nbsp;An important element of every basic phone screen involves learning about a candidate&rsquo;s motivations in seeking a new opportunity; often, salary issues top this list.
While it&rsquo;s not appropriate to require a candidate to disclose their current compensation or targeted salary during an exploratory screen, it&rsquo;s crucial to address this directly if the candidate discloses an increase in pay as a primary driver or as non-negotiable.
If you&rsquo;re screening for a specific position and know the range, tell the candidate if the numbers match. Disclose an even slight variance; the candidate, not the recruiter, should determine whether or not there&rsquo;s a willingness to negotiate for this job. Having this conversation up front can avoid complications later.
3) When a recruiter says: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll hear from us either way.&rdquo;
It might really mean:&nbsp;&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll send you a templated rejection letter from a blind e-mail address, if you&rsquo;re lucky,&rdquo; leaving the candidate to wonder if they&rsquo;re still in contention.
Best Practice:&nbsp;Most applicant tracking systems send an automatic confirmation via e-mail to applicants; many of these same systems will also send an email to let candidates know when a requisition closes and they are no longer in contention.
Adding your name or a personalized message can help make a little effort go a long way.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s as easy as pressing &ldquo;send.&rdquo;
For candidates contacted for a phone screen, it&rsquo;s a best practice to let them know directly if they&rsquo;re not selected. If they took the time to follow up and answer questions, common courtesy suggests you should do the same.
It&rsquo;s OK to turn a job seeker down professionally; not informing a candidate about it is not.
4) When a recruiter says: We&rsquo;re interested, but we&rsquo;re still looking at other candidates.
It might really mean:&nbsp;&ldquo;An offer&rsquo;s been extended to someone else, and we&rsquo;re really hoping they&rsquo;ll accept so we don&rsquo;t have to go to Plan B: you.&rdquo;
Best practice:&nbsp;Be upfront about where the search stands. If there are some outstanding questions or concerns surrounding a candidate, let them know; there&rsquo;s a good chance they&rsquo;ll be able to provide information to inform a pending decision.
If the hiring manager&rsquo;s delaying making an offer for reasons that have nothing to do with the candidate, make sure they know exactly what those are and the timeframe.
If you don&rsquo;t know this information, let the candidate know the next time you&rsquo;ll speak with the hiring manager and follow up with both.&nbsp; Status quo is almost always better than no status at all.
5) When a recruiter says: &ldquo;I was passed your name by a mutual contact who asked to remain confidential&hellip;&rdquo;
It might really mean:&nbsp;&ldquo;I found your information online.&rdquo;
Best practice:&nbsp;This line remains incredibly common when engaging candidates for the first time.
While candidates show increased willingness to speak with someone based off a referral, it&rsquo;s important to let a candidate know how you developed the information to contact them.
This ensures active job seekers know what&rsquo;s effective while passive candidates stay informed about the visibility of information.&nbsp; It also leads to more effective source-of-hire reports, which are generally misaligned due to candidate self-identification.

A warning: these statements are often true and crucially important when communicating with candidates.  Most recruiters are honest and upfro

Big Fat Lies and the Recruiters Who Tell Them

A warning: these statements are often true and crucially important when communicating with candidates.  Most recruiters are honest and upfront with job seekers. Largely caring and committed, recruiters often genuinely care about every candidate.  Even if they don’t necessarily always show it.

If you&rsquo;ve been in this business for any length of time (or even if you haven&rsquo;t), there&rsquo;s a good chance that at some point you&rsquo;ve heard the somewhat hackneyed clich&eacute;, &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s most valuable resource is no longer data, but oil.&rdquo; 
This asinine aphorism has been widely cited since the Economist published a <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/06/the-worlds-most-valuable-resource-is-no-longer-oil-but-data">2017 report</a> of the same title, and has been a mainstay of &ldquo;thought leadership&rdquo; ever since. As we only recently found out, however, the problem with this metaphor is that at the moment, oil has no market value; in fact, the price of West Texas Crude (a key indicator) is actually negative. Data, however, remains one of the most critical components of business today. And nowhere is that aphorism truer than when it comes to the business of talent.
It&rsquo;s convenient and cliched to say that our people are our greatest asset, which is completely false, considering they&rsquo;re also the biggest expense on any P&amp;L (assuming they&rsquo;re not written off entirely). The truth is, in fact, that the data about our people is our greatest asset, and it&rsquo;s one commodity that, unlike oil, has a seemingly infinite ceiling when it comes to market potential &ndash; and a significant impact when it comes to driving business and bottom line results.
Swimming Upstream
In recruitment, of course, like in the oil business, a significant portion of our capital expenses and infrastructure are dedicated to building a pipeline; there&rsquo;s a tremendous cost associated with extraction (sourcing) and candidate development (refining, to continue the oil metaphor). Therefore, it makes sense to store any associated surplus, whether those are candidates or oil, until there&rsquo;s sufficient market demand.
Dropping this extended metaphor for one moment, the idea of pipelining is obviously one that makes a lot of sense in resourcing; in theory, it sounds like the perfect strategy to ensure that there&rsquo;s always an available supply of qualified talent available with the experience and expertise recruiters are looking for.&nbsp;
Sourcing and engaging this surplus of talent, of course, takes a significant amount of time, as proactively finding and engaging mostly passive talent, particularly those with hard to find skill sets or niche industry experience, requires building a real relationship based on mutual trust; pipelining true top talent is anything but transactional or short term.
Open reqs, however, must be filled efficiently and effectively, regardless of relative market scarcity or candidate supply. Since even the best talent forecasts are inherently flawed (which explains why, in a December poll, fully &nbsp;<a href="https://www.hrdive.com/news/new-year-new-job-employees-will-increase-job-search-efforts-in-2019-stud/545431/">60% of global TA functions</a> planned on adding headcount in 2020), this makes pipelining something of an inexact science, at best.
Hiring is just in time, all the time, and candidates, like any commodity, are valued almost exclusively dictated by short term demand relative to available supply of qualified candidates and the market competition for them.
These factors, like all variables in the business of talent, are imminently dynamic and unpredictable, and exist beyond the control of even the most carefully constructed workforce plans and talent forecasts.
That means that most of the time, our pipelines are, at best, leaky &ndash; and, despite our belief that the bigger the pipeline or talent pool, the better it will be for our employers, the fact is that timing is everything. That&rsquo;s true for employers actively filling reqs, of course, but it&rsquo;s equally true for top talent.
A candidate with high job satisfaction or engagement is unlikely to consider other opportunities; they&rsquo;ll be more receptive to building relationships with recruiters &ndash; and consequently, entering a pipeline or talent pool &ndash; when their job satisfaction is lower, their career growth is declining or they&rsquo;re actively disengaged at their current roles.
If you&rsquo;re a recruiter looking to build a pipeline, however, telling the difference between the two prior to engaging them is an exercise in futility, and engaging a potential candidate around future opportunities if they&rsquo;re currently looking, or for an open role if the timing isn&rsquo;t right, effectively creates blockage in any pipeline that can not only disrupt the process for placeable candidates, but can lead to leaks, and ultimately, an empty pipeline.
Why is it, then, that sourcing is so inefficient? How can we do a better job with matching our candidates &ndash; internal and external, passive and active &ndash; to jobs so that we can move from building expensive infrastructure to an on demand model which negates the need for pricey infrastructure like dedicated sourcers, talent CRMs or &ldquo;talent communities&rdquo; while still allowing companies to hire just-in-time, all the time, to better align with current business conditions and market needs?
Human Capital Supply Chain Management: Your Wish is On Demand. 
I&rsquo;d like to introduce a concept that&rsquo;s probably familiar to many of you, particularly those of you who have worked in contingency recruitment or services procurement at some point. Human capital management must adopt the principles of supply chain management if it&rsquo;s going to succeed in the new world of work.
Doing so &ndash; that is, better aligning supply and demand to prevent not only pipeline inefficiencies, but also, effectively prevent us from over hiring new workers, or under resourcing our current ones (as companies are wont to do). This requires entirely rethinking our current approach to talent acquisition, but with a supply chain mentality, it&rsquo;s a business case which becomes entirely self-evident: companies aren&rsquo;t competing with other companies for talent; instead, it&rsquo;s about optimizing human capital supply chains to ensure the greatest returns for the least investment in the shortest amount of time. 
If talent acquisition is, essentially, a supply chain function, and the hiring cycle is essentially services procurement, then the real &ldquo;war for talent&rdquo; is essentially a battle for the human capital supply chain &ndash; and whether companies realize it or not, winning that war comes down to minimizing waste and creating a supply chain that&rsquo;s got as few inefficiencies as possible.
Lean on Me: Kaizen for Recruiting
It&rsquo;s no secret that TA has quite a lot of waste built into its processes, from sourcing and screening to offer development and onboarding. By using a lean approach to resourcing, companies can better understand how to eliminate any expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer. That means anything that doesn&rsquo;t lead to a candidate getting hired, or a hiring manager getting the workers they need for the work they need done, should instantly be considered as a potential place where employers can cut.&nbsp;
In supply chain and procurement, lean production practices revolve around minimizing work, and maximizing value creation. The two pillar concepts of lean, which was created and championed at Toyota as part of its TPS (that&rsquo;s Toyota Production System, if you&rsquo;re an Office Space fan) should sound familiar to anyone in resourcing or hiring:
<ol>
<li>Just in time (or &ldquo;flow,&rdquo; in TPS)</li>
<li>Autonomation (or what&rsquo;s often referred to as &lsquo;service enabled architecture,&rdquo; or &ldquo;smart automation,&rdquo; depending on its use).</li>
</ol>
Now, I know what you&rsquo;re thinking, but before you insist that recruiters aren&rsquo;t in procurement, and TA isn&rsquo;t just another category of spend, then consider a few foundational principals of the TPS model &ndash; and how similar they sound to sourcing best practices.
8 Lean Rules for Every Recruiting Roadmap:
<ol>
<li>Think long term: the optimal outcome isn&rsquo;t the most expedient, but rather, the one that will have the most utility and create the most value, over the longest amount of time &ndash; like internal mobility and development, for example.</li>
<li>Continuous Improvement: Every process can be further optimized, and only through continuously striving to improve efficiencies and drive results can real problems be identified.</li>
<li>Pull, Don&rsquo;t Push: Overproduction is predicated on being reactive; staying ahead of market demand means that you can control demand, rather than rely on available supply.</li>
<li>Find Balance: What the Japanese call &ldquo;heijunka,&rdquo; in lean, is a method that seeks to minimize overburden by reducing unevenness within a production process and ensuring that everyone not only contributes to the end result, but that the allocation of that work is balanced. Burnouts and process gaps are the primary causes of inefficiency.</li>
<li>Quality Counts: If you focus on being best in class and design your processes for quality instead of competency, then you accept that if a problem is identified, the most important thing is stopping to fix it.,</li>
<li>Build the Foundation: A process should work regardless of the people who work on it. Standardization and continuous improvement are key to business continuity, talent management and employee engagement.</li>
<li>Technology Serves People and Processes: Technology must be reliable, tested and augment or enhance, rather than replace or add complexity. If technology doesn&rsquo;t add direct value, and if a process has to be adjusted to accommodate that technology, then it is creating waste and undermining value.</li>
<li>Employee Development is Everything: It&rsquo;s easier to replace an existing part from a known supplier than it is to source a new one from an unknown and untrusted entity. Always reuse or repurpose existing assets, if possible.</li>
</ol>
If we apply these foundational facts to the &ldquo;deadly wastes&rdquo; of lean, we should have a good idea of what the future of total talent totally looks like.
Waste Management: 6 Things TA Messes Up
In talent today, having the most agility, flexibility and scalability in resourcing will increasingly rely on having not only the right processes, but also, the right technology partner, to implement, manage and optimize your hiring efforts for maximum efficiency and long term impact.
<ol>
<li> Inventory Management: Resourcing has the tendency to favor overproduction when building a slate of candidates. Whenever more product is produced than internal or external stakeholders require, this results in what&rsquo;s considered, in supply chain management, to the the worst kind of waste, as it hides or generates all other inefficiencies. Overproduction leads to too much inventory, which then diverts budget and resources to eliminate any supply not generated from demand. This is often the impact of relying on &ldquo;post and pray&rdquo; or traditional recruitment ads to attract more candidates than required, proactive &ldquo;pipelining&rdquo; of candidates without having an immediate need, and submitting multiple candidates to a hiring manager prior to receiving feedback (or submitting the same candidate to multiple roles and creating internal competition).</li>
<li> Inventory: Whether in the form of raw materials (uncontacted candidates or social profiles), work-in-progress (candidates being screened or submitted for consideration) or finished goods (new hires waiting for onboarding), must be actively processed, or they create waste. In recruiting, some examples of this are candidates who are engaged and interested, but not interviewed; internal and referred candidates who aren&rsquo;t considered or contacted; and neglecting to search an ATS or existing talent database prior to posting a job or proactively searching for new talent.</li>
<li> Transport: Every step in a process that requires the movement of inventory carries a significant risk, not to mention added costs for no value. In TA, this is often seen in asking top talent to interview multiple times; migrating data from one system to another without seamless integrations; or, commonly, requiring recruiters to deal with multiple stakeholders or decision makers during their hiring process rather than have a central point of contact and clear communications process.</li>
<li> Overprocessing: This is one of the most common TA inefficiencies, as it occurs any time more work is done in a process than the customer requires. From building specialized employer branding campaigns to using inbound social and digital marketing, to adding preemployment screens or assessments before hiring managers and candidates can meet, employers often add complexity and unnecessary components to their process of connecting the right candidate to the right job at the right time. It&rsquo;s easy to get too clever in talent acquisition, but we waste hundreds of millions of dollars a year as an industry on this one waste alone.</li>
<li> Waiting: The longer the process, the more waste is created &ndash; like how candidates have been known to abandon processes when the hiring manager won&rsquo;t decide on a final candidate or provide feedback, or constantly asks &ldquo;who else is out there?&rdquo; Given the excessive waste of waiting, the answer is inevitably, &ldquo;no one worth waiting on.&rdquo;</li>
<li> Defects: When the product doesn&rsquo;t meet the process or customer specifications, and must be replaced or fixed. In recruiting, this happens frequently, which is why the rate of failure of new hires in their first year is close to 1 in 4, according to a recent Deloitte survey. Or why agencies have 90 day guarantees, often.</li>
</ol>
Overcoming Waste in Recruiting:
So, how, exactly, are employers supposed to effectively match supply and demand proactively if talent pipelines are problematic and inefficient, and talent communities are largely made up of transient job seekers and unqualified candidates who have mostly opted in rather than being selected for process participation?
The answer is just in time. And it&rsquo;s always the right time for just in time with QuantumWork. Having the right people at the right place at the right time means that you can stop building pipelines and talent communities and start making hires. Our cutting edge, scalable and sustainable processes ensure that no matter what your resourcing demand may look like, you&rsquo;ll always have the supply of top talent you need to ensure your new hires succeed.&nbsp;
With QuantumWork, you&rsquo;ll get a total view of your total talent picture, giving you the ability to acquire the right people, at the right time, at the right place and in the exact amount based on real time demand. Significantly reduce waste, improve the candidate experience and better align your budget and resources to hiring instead of &ldquo;acquiring talent.&rdquo;
Because in times like these, we could all use a hire power on our side. And we&rsquo;ve got your back.

If you’ve been in this business for any length of time (or even if you haven’t), there’s a good chance that at some point you’ve heard the s

Suck Less At Sourcing by Matt Charney

If you’ve been in this business for any length of time (or even if you haven’t), there’s a good chance that at some point you’ve heard the somewhat hackneyed cliché, “ the world’s most valuable resource is no longer data, but oil.” This asinine aphorism has been widely cited since ...

Suck Less At Sourcing

Creative Recruiting &ldquo;Hacks&rdquo;
A successful recruiter works at honing their craft. And make no mistake, recruiting is indeed a craft, and often takes intricate efforts. For the past several years - pre-COVID economic upheaval - recruiters were immersed in a candidate&rsquo;s market, characterized by low unemployment and fierce competition for any available talent. Finding talent and filling jobs ultimately became an art &ndash; with recruiters designing layered campaigns to unearth the right personnel, often for specialty positions, while focused on courting talented candidates that were highly sought after.
Today as we embark on reopening and recovery, high unemployment levels will fill an overflowing talent pool for recruiters. But a waterfall of candidates poses its own unique set of challenges in still finding the right candidates for open positions; positions which may have indeed been altered specific to requirements and offerings based on the unprecedented challenges organizations across the world have been experiencing. &nbsp;It will take a new mindset in the workforce from both employers and employees, especially as it pertains to flexibility and longevity, as well as <a href="https://www.allegis-partners.com/en/knowledge/articles/look-outside-your-comfort-zone-to-expand-the-talent-supply">considering skill-sets that may not traditionally apply to a role</a> but could be valuable nonetheless. <a href="https://blog.allegisglobalsolutions.com/into-the-unknown-world-of-recruitment">A recruiter&rsquo;s job in the post-COVID employment landscape</a> will take precision to deliver results.
Recruiters must always innovate
Recruiters have painstakingly developed their network, and they often leave no stone unturned to find the right professionals. They certainly need their databases (the ATS, the VMS, the CRM, et. al) and they reference these individual platforms frequently. But a quick search also shows that recruiting efforts often transcend the traditional methods that are promoted throughout the industry. Often called &ldquo;hacks&rdquo;, not to be mistaken with the conjured image of illegal, back-door entry into a data system, but more as innovative actions used to increase productivity and reach goals, and probably better described as &ldquo;creative recruiting.&rdquo;
QuantumWork&rsquo;s experience with some of the best recruiters in the industry have unearthed some of the most creative ways in which they have reached an audience or uncovered talent. Through available idea-sharing and first-hand commentary, we&rsquo;ve collected some ideas that have stood out over time below:
<ul>
<li> Targeting the Customer Base for Talent
<ul>
<li>Do you remember way-back when <a href="https://adage.com/creativity/work/career-instructions/25705">IKEA placed career assembly instructions</a> in their packages? Or when <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40999316">Apple hid job ads</a> on random pages throughout their web site? Targeting customer bases is a smart, cost-effective way to discover talent who already supports the brand.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> Time-Savers and Information Diggers
<ul>
<li>Did you ever hear of a Sourcing Hackathon? There&rsquo;s an entire culture dedicated to the nuances of sourcing. Global <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC87fpOVpZz7iQLer1rgti4w">sourcing challenges</a> and competitions exist for talent sourcing professionals and recruiters to demonstrate their skillsets, especially through remarkable data query and brilliant Boolean search technique.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> Industry Leaders
<ul>
<li>Do you source conference attendee lists? It&rsquo;s a great way to create contacts with leaders in any given industry.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Creative Marketing Campaigns, synonymous with Creative Recruiting Campaigns. You can find countless examples of ingenious recruitment marketing campaigns focused on finding talent, that simultaneously built brand recognition. Here are just a few:
<ul>
<li>To be a master Lego model builder is a child&rsquo;s dream; Lego recruited their next top <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD-AFynRd80">model maker who displayed #BrickFactor using an intense competition format</a></li>
<li>Google landed talented <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3916173">engineers who could decipher a stand-out billboard message</a></li>
<li>Solving puzzles as a first step to getting hired:
<ul>
<li>Creating a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11151478/Could-you-have-been-a-codebreaker-at-Bletchley-Park.html">crossword puzzle in 1942 to attract cryptologists and codebreakers</a></li>
<li>Online <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15968878">Crack the code game</a> finds top data minds to help the British intelligence agency combat cyberattacks</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
Recruiters are experts in creating productivity routines, and finding tools that will help them do their jobs well in order to keep the world working. Platforms like <a href="https://www.quantum.work/">QuantumWork&rsquo;s AI-driven talent solution</a>, which allows visibility into an <a href="https://www.quantum.work/blog/turning-visibility-into-opportunity-an-advantage-for-employees-and-flexible-workers">entire talent pool of past and present permanent, contingent, and freelance workers</a>, is one such tool that augments the clever practices and procedures that recruiters are known for. Through a combination of their tried and true methods along with new solutions that can help increase productivity and recruiting efficiency, recruiters will continue to be the wizards behind the curtain of a well-defined and successful workforce.
What kind of recruiting wizardry have you employed to meet your goals? What&rsquo;s your best recruiting success story? Share with us.

Recruiters are experts in creating productivity routines, and finding tools that help them do their jobs well to keep the world working.

Creative Recruiting “Hacks”

A successful recruiter works at honing their craft. And make no mistake, recruiting is indeed a craft, and often takes intricate efforts. For the past several years - pre-COVID economic upheaval - recruiters were immersed in a candidate’s market, characterized by low unemployment and fierce competition for any available talent. Finding talent and filling jobs ultimately became an art – with recruiters designing layered campaigns to unearth the right personnel, often for specialty positions, while focused on courting talented candidates that were highly sought after.

<h1>Recruiters, what technology invention has changed your job?</h1>
We all love a great &ldquo;tops&rdquo; list. <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/hot-100-turns-60/8468142/hot-100-all-time-biggest-hits-songs-list">Top 100 songs</a> of all time. The 100 <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/100-best-films-ever-hollywood-favorites-818512">best movies</a>. The highest rated athletes. And we can agree to disagree on almost every entry on each ranked list. Likewise, determining which <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6186351/ns/technology_and_science/t/technological-revolution/#.XwzFhpNKhTY">technological invention has had the most influence</a> on our lives can ignite heated debates concerning the &ldquo;chicken before the egg&rdquo; so to speak as to how tech evolved, building off each predecessor, to what it is today (or at least to this nanosecond).
<h2>Top Tech Lists</h2>
The staple mentions make every list but it is generally subjective which ones take top prize - the Telephone? the Personal Computer? the Internet? Electricity? the Smartphone? (It&rsquo;s the Internet, definitely the Internet). But beyond those headlines, there <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/10-breakthrough-technologies/2020/">are new technologies emerging every single day</a> &ndash; or better yet even the slightest tweaks to existing technologies &ndash; that create magnificent change in our daily work and lifestyles. For instance, how does a smartphone know 1) to show the user an ad and 2) send a promotional email about the item a user was searching for on Amazon, last night, from their home computer? Mind-boggling. And amplified by the fact that the email included a timely discount to purchase said item. That is certainly technological convenience at the highest level, driven of course by advanced <a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-us/blog/digital-innovation-and-the-future-of-digital-marketing">digital marketing thinking</a> that occurs with a few data points and the click of a button (and maybe just a smidgen of mind control&hellip;)
Aside from the life conveniences we universally enjoy every day, the technological changes to entire industries are exciting, daunting, necessary and yet not always welcomed at the same time. Can you imagine the life of a graphic designer before Adobe (insert software here)? An architectural firm without CAD, or a delivery service without GPS? The arsenal of rubber cement and x-acto knives, graph paper and street maps gave way to these revolutionary tech advancements and more; and practically every industry can pinpoint when similar changes occurred relative to how they worked, whether they welcomed them or not.
<h2>When Recruiting Got Tech-y</h2>
It&rsquo;s the same experience for the recruiting industry &ndash; whether you&rsquo;re the recruit-ee searching for opportunity or the recruit-er searching for the right hire &ndash; the way the process traditionally unfolded is no longer. A trip down memory lane reveals the moment when a resume printed on crisp, linen paper promptly mailed (then faxed) was replaced by a keyword-parsing ATS that simply scans your upload &ndash; and the hope that someone actually sees it. Or from the time our furiously circle classified ads evolved into receiving a text alert about a job for which we might be a good fit, even though we might not have been necessarily looking for a new position. How did they find you anyway?
Tech has certainly redefined the actions of a recruiter. There is access to an abundance of information about job applicants available through a number of entry points. With so many data options, you might not even know who or what you might be missing. Luckily for recruiters, even with technology moving so fast, there are <a href="https://vimeo.com/380374277">tools available right now to help you</a> hire faster and better, with data-driven decisions. And yes, there will be more choices tomorrow.
So, what&rsquo;s next on the horizon?
If you are immersed in the industry of people and work, and bridging them together, what technology has been the boon, or bane, of your professional existence? 
What do you envision can help, not hinder, you, as a recruiter and HR professional, in the future? 
Our pursuit at QuantumWork is to build tools to connect amazing people to organizations and opportunities. And those tools are borne from what we learn about what is or isn&rsquo;t working from those who share in our pursuit. We&rsquo;d love to hear from you.
&nbsp;

We all love a great “tops” list. Determining which tech invention has had the most influence on our lives can ignite heated debates...

Recruiters, what tech invention has changed your job?

We all love a great “tops” list. Top 100 songs of all time. The 100 best movies. The highest rated athletes. And we can agree to disagree on almost every entry on each ranked list. Likewise, determining which technological invention has had the most influence on our lives can ignite heated debates concerning the “chicken before the egg” so to speak as to how tech evolved, building off each predecessor, to what it is today (or at least to this nanosecond).

Recruiters, what technology invention has changed your job?

<h1 class="yiv5125070488msonormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;">QuantumWork Introduces New Look and Clear Message<o:p></o:p></h1>

<h2 class="yiv5125070488msonormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;">New website reflects simplicity of QuantumWork message and its platform that makes recruiting more efficient and informed.<o:p></o:p></h2>

(CHARLOTTE, N.C., July 30, 2020)&nbsp;QuantumWork, found online at <a href="https://quantum.work/">https://quantum.work</a> has unveiled a newly designed, simplified website that includes a real-time glimpse into its Platform as a Service (&ldquo;PaaS&rdquo;) technology. Their total talent platform allows recruitment, procurement, and talent acquisition leaders to match and stack rank talent fast, and within a single platform, for all forms of work and all forms of talent.<o:p></o:p>
&ldquo;With the myriad of candidate data management systems on the market, and the complexities that exist within so many products, QuantumWork sought to cut through the clutter using the same simplistic approach that our product is known for in our newly designed website,&rdquo; says Alan Barker, Head of Business Development for the Allegis backed Company. &ldquo;Our direction is clear and definitive &ndash; simply answering the questions &lsquo;what is QuantumWork?&rsquo; and &lsquo;who should use it?&rsquo;&rdquo;<o:p></o:p>
The new site, which is powered by QuantumWork, is a natural extension of the core platform and continues to expand its omni-channel capabilities.&nbsp; This addition enables an improved candidate experience while providing full customization of externally facing pages. Visitors can sample the product for a user-driven demonstration (<a href="https://quantum.work/jobs">https://quantum.work/jobs</a>), providing a glimpse into the improved candidate experience and easy approach to talent acquisition.<o:p></o:p>
The release of the new online look underscores the timeliness of the QuantumWork product that is poised to support job recovery in response to the COVID-19 crisis.&nbsp; The technology has specific benefits for candidates, employees and employers as the economic re-opening is underway.&nbsp; QuantumWork technology can make displaced workers more visible to potential employers, and more easily searchable for rehire in the near future based upon their unique skills and qualifications.&nbsp;QuantumWork delivers talent data and labor market analytics across all worker classifications and talent types.<o:p></o:p>
Barker adds, &ldquo;While talent data is currently housed in separate silos in any given organization, QuantumWork leverages the intelligent algorithms built into the platform to provide a single, simple view of all existing data components. Our tech ensures that recruiters and talent acquisition professionals see the entire talent landscape, to be able to fill open roles quickly and efficiently as organizations seek to rebuild.&rdquo;<o:p></o:p>
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>
About QuantumWork
<o:p></o:p>QuantumWork&rsquo;s comprehensive platform provides complete visibility across talent systems and sources so that companies can make better hires faster. By extending and augmenting, rather than replacing existing ATS and VMS tools, QuantumWork aggregates these various data sources into a single, simple solution which provides access to all talent, all in one place.<o:p></o:p>
QuantumWork&rsquo;s unique approach produces effective insights that help find the most relevant candidates in an efficient and organized way.&nbsp; Based on actual data specific to a company, industry, and job function, QuantumWork provides the ability to hire better, faster with data-driven decisions. To learn more, visit&nbsp;<a href="http://quantum.work/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">quantum.work</a>.<o:p></o:p>

QuantumWork unveiled a newly designed website that includes a real-time glimpse into its Platform as a Service (“PaaS”) technology.

QuantumWork Introduces New Look and Clear Message

QuantumWork, found online at https://quantum.work has unveiled a newly designed, simplified website that includes a real-time glimpse into its Platform as a Service (“PaaS”) technology. Their total talent platform allows recruitment, procurement, and talent acquisition leaders to match and stack rank talent fast, and within a single platform, for all forms of work and all forms of talent.

Missed opportunities are one of the biggest challenges to career advancement, and employers are feeling the impact. Lacking visibility into vacancies within an enterprise, employees leave the organization for new offers. Likewise, full-time, contingent workers, and contractors often start looking for their next gig in other companies because they are unaware that their services are needed in another division or location within their current employer.
The culprits behind these missed opportunities are silos of data that provide limited visibility into opportunities for employees or current contractors. Often, once someone becomes employed by an organization, the only information about the worker is tucked away in the HR system. As a result, a hiring manager for a new assignment or vacancy may never be aware of the person&rsquo;s availability or qualification. If you are a contractor, you are only seen through the VMS, and if you are a freelancer, your digital presence may only be in the payroll system that processes your check. In other words, if you&rsquo;re a worker, you&rsquo;re invisible to managers who may need your services.
Bridging the Silos of Talent
To stay engaged with the employer, flexible workers want a system to provide visibility to managers and opportunities, and that&rsquo;s a problem we&rsquo;re helping companies solve on an enterprise scale. The solution, delivered through our QUANTUMWORK strategy and technology platform, gives non-employee workers, recruiters, and managers a view to all opportunities across a company, and it gives managers a look into the flexible talent at work in their organization. For example, knowing the end-date of their project is approaching in several months, workers can check the system to see what opportunities are available in other areas, giving them a chance to book their next gig without looking outside the current employer.
For the manager, QUANTUMWORK solves the visibility problem by intelligently organizing talent. The hiring manager can search and match across the entire enterprise. The system provides access to available people, as well as insight on the work that needs to be done. It&rsquo;s not always about connecting one professional to one role. It could be a project that requires two contractors, a contingent worker, and two full-time or traditional employees.
Through the system, recruiters or managers can assess the body of work to accomplish and then look at the whole pool of available talent to arrive at a solution.
The Employer Vision: From Job Provider to Career Ecosystem
Moving forward, platforms such as QUANTUMWORK will become an anticipated part of the employee and flexible worker experience, where workers can start treating employers as an ecosystem of career opportunities rather than the provider of a single job. The employer that doesn&rsquo;t step up to this expectation will likely lose workers who move to employers that do. Career mapping, success planning, skills development, and matching all forms of work to all forms of talent &mdash; it&rsquo;s all part of the vision of a truly connected employee experience. By eliminating the silos of data and barriers to opportunity, we are bringing that vision to life.
<blockquote>
(This article originally appeared in&nbsp;&ldquo;<a href="https://learn.allegisglobalsolutions.com/technology_innovation?ecid=sm_ags_n_gen_xx_gs%E2%80%94%20smrtp_xx_xx_xx_20190522_0ba07a15">Smart Power: A Glance at Evolving Talent Technologies</a>.&rdquo;&nbsp;The report shares&nbsp;how&nbsp;advances in technology across talent evaluation, selection, and onboarding, as well as employee development and retention, translate to a real advantage for employers and workers.&nbsp;<a href="https://learn.allegisglobalsolutions.com/technology_innovation?ecid=sm_ags_n_gen_xx_gs%E2%80%94%20smrtp_xx_xx_xx_20190522_0ba07a15">Click here</a>&nbsp;to download your free copy.)
</blockquote>

Missed opportunities are one of the biggest challenges to career advancement, and employers are feeling the impact. Lacking visibility into vacancies within an enterprise, employees…

Turning Visibility into Opportunity

Turning Visibility into Opportunity: An Advantage for Employees and Flexible Workers

<h1>QuantumWork, The Technology Business of Allegis Global Solutions, Offers Solutions to Help Displaced Workers Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic and Financial Crisis</h1>
&nbsp;
<h2>Companies furloughing workers or downsizing can utilize the QuantumWork technology as part of off-boarding solution</h2>
&nbsp;
(CHARLOTTE, N.C., May 5, 2020) QuantumWork, found online at <a href="http://quantum.work/">quantum.work</a>, is employing its Platform as a Service (&ldquo;PaaS&rdquo;) technology to help displaced workers during the current Covid-19 crisis and global economic shutdown.&nbsp; With global unemployment claims reaching staggering numbers, including millions per week in the United States alone, the total talent solution offered by QuantumWork allows recruitment, procurement and HR leaders to match and stack rank talent fast. Within a single platform, candidates are run against all of their open positions, including traditional employment, contingent and on-demand work.
The technology has specific benefits for both employees and employers during this time of economic shutdown and rapidly increasing global unemployment.&nbsp; For companies facing downsizing, adding displaced workers to the QuantumWork technology will make them more visible to potential employers, and more easily searchable for rehire in the near future based upon their unique skills and qualifications.&nbsp; And for employees furloughed or displaced, the technology will improve their ability to be rehired by increasing their visibility specific to matching positions.
&ldquo;Despite the unprecedented effects of Covid-19 and the surrounding global economic shut-down, organizations are still hiring, and companies continue to search for talented workers,&rdquo; said Randy Gulian, General Manager for QuantumWork.&nbsp; &ldquo;Our QuantumWork technology can help expedite the process and place workers in positions fast&mdash;whether it is full-time employment, part-time, contract or on-demand.&rdquo;&nbsp; 
Steve Parker, Head of Product and Technology mentioned, &ldquo;QuantumWork is&nbsp;adapting&nbsp;to the current situation in order to help furloughed or displaced workers improve their opportunity to be rehired while helping organizations plan for the tough decisions they might have to make within the current global crisis.&rdquo;
QuantumWork, an autonomous startup fully funded and supported by Allegis Global Solutions, is the first product on the market to deliver talent data and redeployment capabilities across all worker classifications and talent.
Because QuantumWork indexes all data from all forms of talent from millions of proprietary and external data points and compares these with historical data, QuantumWork leverages the intelligent algorithms built into the &ldquo;Quantum Core&rdquo; platform to automatically search, match and rank the most relevant candidates across an employers&rsquo; different talent pools and databases.
Gulian concluded, &ldquo;our tech makes it easy to search and match workers to soon-to-be open jobs and roles.&nbsp; The goal is to get your downsized employees back to work in the most efficient manner possible.&rdquo;
To learn more about QuantumWork, or to utilize the QuantumWork platform in support of your efforts to mitigate the economic effects of Covid-19, visit&nbsp;<a href="http://quantum.work/">quantum.work</a>.
&nbsp;
About QuantumWork
QuantumWork&rsquo;s comprehensive talent platform provides complete visibility across talent systems and sources so that companies can make better hires faster. By extending and augmenting, rather than replacing existing CRM, ATS and VMS systems, QuantumWork aggregates these various data sources into a single, simple solution which provides access to all talent, all in one place.
QuantumWork&rsquo;s unique approach produces highly personalized results that help find not only the most relevant candidates but also those most&nbsp;likely to succeed based on actual data specific to a company, industry and job function. QuantumWork means all your talent, all in one place. To learn more, visit&nbsp;<a href="http://quantum.work/">quantum.work</a>.

QuantumWork is employing its Platform as a Service (“PaaS”) technology to help displaced workers during Covid-19 and the economic shutdown.

QuantumWork, Offers Solutions to Help Displaced Workers

Companies furloughing workers or downsizing can utilize the QuantumWork technology as part of off-boarding solution. QuantumWork, found online at quantum.work, is employing its Platform as a Service (“PaaS”) technology to help displaced workers during the current Covid-19 crisis and global economic shutdown.  With global unemployment claims reaching staggering numbers, including millions per week in the United States alone, the total talent solution offered by QuantumWork allows recruitment, procurement and HR leaders to match and stack rank talent fast. Within a single platform, candidates are run against all of their open positions, including traditional employment, contingent and on-demand work.

QuantumWork Offers Solutions to Help Displaced Workers Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic and Financial Crisis

I know, I&rsquo;m out here shilling for a startup on behalf of my day job, so that makes me a giant hypocrite, considering my long battle against the conflagration of sales pitches and content marketing (they&rsquo;re more or less different means, same end, admittedly).
But the thing is, I don&rsquo;t ever endorse products I think suck &ndash; in the almost half a decade I worked at Monster, guess how many nice things I had to say about our roadmap or employer product? Ditto the, er, global HR Tech provider whose marketing department I was hired to support in advance of their move into talent acquisition from L&amp;D (don&rsquo;t look at my LinkedIn, it could be any company).
Both of these companies are somehow still around, only one is no longer a component of the S&amp;P 500 index (or even on the market), and one of them has lost more market cap in the last year since WeWork. I guess you could blame the brand marketing hire who&rsquo;s an &ldquo;industry expert,&rdquo; but I jumped ship a long time ago, and both times, for the same reason: I won&rsquo;t be affiliated with a brand I don&rsquo;t believe in.
Even when I was ostensibly an independent journalist, my partners at Recruiting Daily probably never loved the fact that I refused to present with, write about or byline anything that was paid for with good money, but from bad vendors.
A week in, I almost got canned when I publicly denounced an email blast that had my name as the sender endorsing the Ladders Mobile App (that was the last one that went out in my name without a perfunctory edit); our biggest client when I was hired, for context, was LinkedIn.
A couple months in, we ran a Valentine&rsquo;s related, cobranded content package on &ldquo;falling in love with a candidate.&rdquo; Yeah, I know &ndash; that well ran dry pretty quickly when we dispensed with the conversation hearts and actually asked recruiters what they thought about the product and its ROI. Not to mention the lawsuits (I can&rsquo;t by consent decree).
It&rsquo;s no secret that I think most recruiting products are pretty crap &ndash; a position that&rsquo;s gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years, but one that I have to abide. Recruiting is hard, man &ndash; and having a bad system can make even a good TA gig absolutely miserable. Problem is, no one ever says anything, as long as the checks cash, analysts and &ldquo;influencers&rdquo; included. I&rsquo;m neither.
I just geek out for HR Tech, which is not something I would have expected to ever admit openly. The 17 year old version of me hates myself right now for that, but it&rsquo;s true &ndash; a lot of HR Tech is actually really, really cool.
The problem is, while we have the potential to change the way people find jobs, and people find work, often the best interests of our software and services providers win out over meaningful change, embracing the status quo at the expense of both recruiters and candidates.
Our industry could be actually transformative. Instead, we&rsquo;re too busy quibbling over SMB market share for CRM solutions, or whether AI and ML are synonymous, or some crap like that, to really make any sort of meaningful difference. As important as candidate experience is, if looking for a job still sucks, and fully 1 out of 3 candidates quit within the first year, and over half of us report having terrible onboarding or transition experiences when moving to new employers, it&rsquo;s really irrelevant. If anything, the ones who didn&rsquo;t make it might just be the lucky ones, after all.
That&rsquo;s a lot of pretense for this post. But here&rsquo;s the thing. I really, really like QuantumWork a lot. And I think you will, too. The reasons are more or less outlined above, but it does what I think every talent tech platform should, and all too few actually do.
<ol>
<li>
<ol>
<li>If You&rsquo;re Stuck With Bad HR Tech, There&rsquo;s Hope:&nbsp;QuantumWork augments and extends the capabilities of legacy systems instead of building a better mousetrap for the same profiles and candidate data. That means you can teach an old ATS or VMS new tricks, and extract value from an investment that started depreciating decades ago, without going through the whole selection, migration and implementation nightmare that&rsquo;s inevitable even amongst the most cutting edge of people platforms.</li>
<li>Beyond Classification:&nbsp;It solves an actual business problem, unlike 99.9% of VC backed plays out there. Back a lifetime ago, when I was recruiting onsite at an RPO, I was consistently the top performer in the TA organization (in terms of filling reqs, if not entirely playing the game). I got plaques and gift certificates and stuff every month just because I knew how to batch upload Google results into a proprietary ATS, which apparently makes you a boy wonder. The CHRO actually made it a point to have me in meetings (this was fun while it lasted). But I was a consultant, and my badge was red, not blue. This meant I couldn&rsquo;t eat in the cafeteria, had to park in a different lot, didn&rsquo;t get to go to company meetings or retreats, and according to the corporate directory, my actual last name was &ldquo;*Contractor.&rdquo; I didn&rsquo;t care who was paying me, but our RPO team had the drive, talent and results to put our in-house counterparts to shame.If companies realize that the best workers don&rsquo;t always work for them, and search for the best matches on the market without paying attention to classification, everyone wins.I truly believe that QuantumWork can help democratize workplace access, and ensure that companies see their total talent picture, and not just the ones who come in through an ATS for FTE roles. Data doesn&rsquo;t discriminate, and by standardizing and structuring people information from across systems, we can finally judge workers not by the color of their badge, but by the product of that work and the organizational impact it objectively has. I think QuantumWork can help employers turn inclusion from a TA buzzword into a workforce planning and talent management imperative by ensuring that recruiters can have a single view of talent, no matter how fractured their workforce.</li>
<li>Products are Built by People.&nbsp;Pretty much everyone who&rsquo;s even tangentially related to startups knows that their relative success or failure isn&rsquo;t driven by the product, provided that product isn&rsquo;t vaporware, is legal and delivers more or less as promised. It&rsquo;s the people &ndash; the Steve Jobs&rsquo; (how do you pluralize that, by the way), the Elon Musks (if you&rsquo;re into that kind of thing) and the Stanford CS Alumni Association who are the real reasons startups succeed (Zuck, looking at you), fail (uh, Zenefits guy, why are you still here) or succeed and fail spectacularly (Elizabeth Holmes and Meg Whitman, for example, or the tech bros behind WeWork and Tom from MySpace). And the people building QuantumWork know what they&rsquo;re doing just about as well as any team in the industry. From Steve Parker, who actually ran IT Professional Services and Strategic Sourcing at Lowe&rsquo;s (if you think hiring is hard from a tech perspective, try literal hardware) to the single data scientist building an algorithm in a matter of months that can actually go head to head with most any job matching or data mining tool in talent today, these are smart people. The exception, of course, is Alan Barker, but he&rsquo;s in sales, so you can&rsquo;t have it all &ndash; and with him, you have to settle for industry knowledge and doing a real demo instead of looking at some specious deck with a &ldquo;Hiring is Broken&rdquo; slide just for show, I promise.I&rsquo;ve seen the team pitch this product dozens of times, and I don&rsquo;t yet want to slit my wrists. Trust me, it&rsquo;s worth a half-hour &ndash; even if you don&rsquo;t buy it, you can at least waste Barker&rsquo;s time, and that&rsquo;s a win for everyone.I kid because I love. And there&rsquo;s a whole lot to love with the people who are putting their passion into a product that&rsquo;s actually, well, pretty awesome (and getting better literally every day, they&rsquo;ve got some world-class developers). Plus, they&rsquo;re not from hella Silicon Valley, which means that they get the real world and real recruiting &ndash; which you do when you happen to be located in Charlotte, America&rsquo;s diabetes and banking capital (no pun intended). I&rsquo;m not trying to score points with my coworkers; they work with me, so you know how they feel about me already. I&rsquo;m just saying when it comes to the intangibles, I think this is a team that can give you the product you need with the support you want. This is a low baseline, but few startups in this space ever manage to have decent people working on people products &ndash; and about all a buyer can control for in today&rsquo;s talent tech market.</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
So, yeah. I guess what I&rsquo;m saying is, I rarely publicly endorse products. Never in my career have I given public plaudits to any product which also had me on payroll, because, well, I&rsquo;m not going to shill stuff just because it&rsquo;s my job to market it. In this case, it&rsquo;s not my job at all; that would be Mr. Craig Fisher (@Fishdogs on Twitter, y&rsquo;all).
But I&rsquo;ve always felt it&rsquo;s my job to let recruiting and HR leaders know about what&rsquo;s worth watching in terms of talent acquisition technology, and which few products actually live up to the hype for recruiting and hiring. Which is why I&rsquo;m bylining this blog post.
I&rsquo;m not trying to sell anything, for the record. QuantumWork kind of does that during a demo &ndash; which I was definitely not expecting the first time I saw it. I was expecting my &ldquo;honest feedback&rdquo; would be anything but; instead, my honest feedback is that they managed to prove me wrong and build a product that&rsquo;s worthy of promoting.
This is not a sponsored post, and any opinions expressed herein are entirely my own, and not necessarily those of Allegis Global Solutions. Just like everything else I put out there.

I know, I’m out here shilling for a startup on behalf of my day job, so that makes me a giant hypocrite, considering my long battle against the conflagration of sales pitches and content marketing (they’re more or less different means, same end, admittedly).

You Should Buy This

I’ve Never Sold Anything Before. But You Should Buy This.

Hi, I&rsquo;m Steve Parker. It&rsquo;s a pretty exciting day for the Charlotte team, as we officially opened up&nbsp;<a href="http://quantum.work/">QuantumWork</a>&nbsp;for general availability today (<a href="http://www.insidetalent.org/quantumwork-press-relea">click here</a>&nbsp;to read the official press release).
Of course, this news is a little bit surreal, too &ndash; the culmination of the many months it&rsquo;s taken to turn QuantumWork from little more than a few notes on a whiteboard to a powerful platform that&rsquo;s not only a robust initial release but one that will continue to rapidly evolve.
I know I&rsquo;m probably a bit biased, but I&rsquo;m really proud of the technology we&rsquo;ve built, and even more proud of the team responsible for taking a leap of faith and rolling up their sleeves to turn an idea &ndash; maybe more of a vision, really &ndash; into a reality.
I&rsquo;m not just saying that &ndash; from our data science leaders to our product teams to our program managers, QuantumWork proves its basic premise: that when you have access to top talent and can match the right talent with the right opportunity, the world of work works a whole lot better for everyone.
Every day, my job is a great reminder that work (and life) is easier when you hire better. And while I can&rsquo;t say building a platform more or less from scratch in a couple of months was by any means easy, the fact that it was possible at all is a proof of concept for the platform we&rsquo;ve been building together.
Here&rsquo;s the thing: a couple of months ago, we were nothing more than a logo, a high concept and me, sitting at a borrowed desk buried in the back of an office a thousand miles or so away from most of my colleagues and coworkers.
When&nbsp;<a href="https://www.allegisglobalsolutions.com/en/integrated-talent-solutions/quantumwork">Allegis Global Solutions</a>&nbsp;told me that they were expecting QuantumWork to function as a true startup, man, they weren&rsquo;t lying &ndash; once the plan was approved, we were given the green light to build the proposed product, and then it was time to just figure it out if we&rsquo;re being honest.
The reality &ndash; I was bit nervous, and unsure &ndash; at least at first, but, I like to focus on outcomes, impact and enjoy a challenge so this was definitely where I wanted to be.
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Once we started hiring for our team, however, I admit I went from cautious to confident pretty quickly. That&rsquo;s because while everyone brought something different to the development process, we all bought into the same vision. It&rsquo;s a simple one, really: to help make recruiting the right talent at the right time for the right job more efficient and effective for employers everywhere.
We get it &ndash; after all, I had to hire architects, developers and data scientists in Charlotte over the past few months. I&rsquo;ll be the first to tell you that there&rsquo;s more competition, fewer qualified candidates and more open roles to fill than ever before. That&rsquo;s why getting total talent right is more important than ever before, too.
Whether you&rsquo;re one of the multinational employers we&rsquo;ve traditionally supported at AGS, or a startup that&rsquo;s looking to hire the world-class team required to build a world-class product in world record time, business success comes down to hiring success. I know it&rsquo;s kind of trite to talk about people being our greatest asset &ndash; and it&rsquo;s not even totally true. &nbsp;In the knowledge economy, they&rsquo;re really the only asset that matters.
No pressure.
<h2>ALL YOUR TALENT, ALL IN ONE PLACE.</h2>
This is where QuantumWork comes into play. That&rsquo;s because filling your jobs is our job. We built our platform to solve real hiring challenges, not to create more complexity for candidates or talent teams. We believe in the power of technology to transform the way businesses hire, and we believe in the power of people to transform the way business gets done.
Here at QuantumWork, we believe that total talent should be about getting work done, not getting reqs filled.
We believe that true talent can&rsquo;t truly be classified, and we believe that the impact of individual workers on your business and the bottom line is more important than the titles on their business cards.
Most importantly,&nbsp;we&nbsp;believe&nbsp;in the power of people to power our organizations forward today, and tomorrow.&nbsp;We&nbsp;believe&nbsp;that talent is the only true competitive advantage every company has and that the only way to win in business is to be the best &ndash; and the best work only happens with the best people, no matter where in the world of work they happen to be working.
We&nbsp;believe&nbsp;in the power of high tech to power high touch, and&nbsp;we believe&nbsp;that no matter how good software or the system might be, total success at total talent is impossible without having the right processes and people in place, first.
Which is why&nbsp;we&nbsp;believe&nbsp;that with QuantumWork, the future of work is right now. All the talent you need. All in one place.
Well, believe&nbsp;it.
<h2>QUANTUMWORK: MY SINGLE VIEW OF TALENT</h2>
I know what you&rsquo;re thinking. But trust me, I&rsquo;ve spent enough time looking at enough HR Tech to know that this isn&rsquo;t just another product, because, well, QuantumWork was built to address a market need, not as a &ldquo;me too&rdquo; sort of solution where there are already plenty of options to choose from.
Nope. We&rsquo;re sort of different. We don&rsquo;t come from Silicon Valley. We&rsquo;re in Charlotte, home of banking and BBQ. We aren&rsquo;t building a product for investors or for shareholders. We&rsquo;re building it for the end users responsible for sourcing, recruitment and hiring.
We&rsquo;re not building it for a professional niche or specialized vertical &ndash; we&rsquo;re building it to work across every workforce, for every worker, anywhere in the world of work. Our roadmap is motivated by our team&rsquo;s experience in the talent trenches, and we&rsquo;re building the product we and our client want, not a company that we&rsquo;re trying to sell.
That makes us unique from most startups. So too does the support of Allegis and their unparalleled talent intelligence and global recruitment expertise.
We don&rsquo;t mind not being the typical startup &ndash; in fact, we believe taking a different approach than the rest of the market is one of our primary competitive advantages.
After all, we&rsquo;re not AI.&nbsp;We&rsquo;re not big data.&nbsp;We&rsquo;re not a VMS, or an ATS, or a CRM.&nbsp;We&rsquo;re not an HCM, either. And no.&nbsp;We&rsquo;re not some fancy point solution for sourcing, and&nbsp;we&rsquo;re not the silver bullet for employer branding.
That&rsquo;s because QuantumWork is a new kind of platform for a new kind of worker and a new world of work.&nbsp;We don&rsquo;t fit into a category, and we&rsquo;re not easily classified &ndash; just like the workers you&rsquo;re trying to hire. The results speak for themselves.
<h2>FORECASTING THE TALENT CLOUD: HOW QUANTUMWORK WORKS.</h2>
Just like a search engine uses an algorithm to guess which&nbsp;websites are the most relevant to users, QuantumWork combines millions of external and proprietary data points with your company&rsquo;s historical hiring data to return the candidates that are the most relevant to you.
Because we index all data from all forms of talent, QuantumWork provides highly personalized results to help you find not only the most relevant candidates, but also, the ones that are the likeliest to succeed based on actual data specific to your company, industry and job function.
<figure id="attachment_535" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-535" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img class="size-full wp-image-535" src="https://quantum.work/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/QuantumWork_Core.jpg" alt="QuantumWork" width="800" height="450" srcset="https://quantum.work/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/QuantumWork_Core.jpg 800w, https://quantum.work/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/QuantumWork_Core-300x169.jpg 300w, https://quantum.work/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/QuantumWork_Core-768x432.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />
<figcaption id="caption-attachment-535" class="wp-caption-text">A visualization of the QuantumWork Core. All your talent, all in one place.</figcaption>
</figure>
With QuantumWork, you get one single view of talent, without having to switch between point solutions and without the inordinate time, expense and threshold for pain required to survive most implementations or even integrations.
QuantumWork wasn&rsquo;t built as a system of record, and is designed to augment and enhance, rather than replace, your existing technology investments.&nbsp;We&nbsp;seamlessly combine all the people data from all private and public systems to create a single view of talent that makes it easy to see, search and select the best talent available across all your systems. After all, you can&rsquo;t see the big picture with the small view of a single system or solution.
And when it comes to hiring, that&rsquo;s the bottom line.
Recruiting is everyone&rsquo;s job.&nbsp;We&nbsp;think it&rsquo;s time&nbsp;we&nbsp;gave everyone the tools to do that job as effectively and efficiently as possible.
<h2>FIT HAPPENS.</h2>
QuantumWork alleviates the burden of sourcing, manually shortlisting and identifying qualified candidates from sea of profiles that aren&rsquo;t a fit. Recruiters and talent managers will have more time to do what they do best, the human elements of recruiting.
Screening, slating or identifying qualified submittals is more effective with QuantumWork. That means you can stop losing candidates and start extending offers &ndash; early QuantumWork users reduced time to fill by an average of 65%.
That might sound impressive, but with hiring and talent managers able to see candidates for open roles in a matter of minutes, not days or&nbsp;weeks, it not only saves a lot of time, but a lot of hiring headaches, too.
It&rsquo;s important to remember that today&rsquo;s launch isn&rsquo;t the end, but just the beginning for QuantumWork. The real work starts now that we&rsquo;re dealing with real workers &ndash; but from our robust (and aggressive) roadmap to our premiere marketplace partners to our (growing) team, we&rsquo;ve got a lot to look forward to in the future. The journey is just beginning, and we hope you&rsquo;ll join us along the way.
After all, QuantumWork makes fit happen.&nbsp;We&rsquo;ll get your fit figured out, too.

It’s a pretty exciting day for the Charlotte team, as we officially opened up QuantumWork for general availability today

The Future of Work is Right Now!

It’s a pretty exciting day for the Charlotte team, as we officially opened up QuantumWork for general availability today.