It’s easy for me to sit on the outside and cry at the moon. I'm not running a business behind this blog. I try to keep the hypocrisy to a minimum by being my own harshest critic, so I don’t know why I am always so pleasantly surprised when I see this behavior in others. And yet here is Colin Kingsbury, surprising and delighting.
Colin (of
HRMDirect fame) has written a great piece
about ATS vs. CRM.
This is a topic that is very near-and-dear to my heart. After stints at
Resumix, Recruitsoft, EZ Access and Hire.com, as well as leading teams
that built Intellimatch 2.0, Leaders on Line and EIS, I think it is fair to say that I have been around
the block a few times on the subject of ATS. It is a subject that frustrates
the hell out of me: on the one hand, generally low ATS price points (compared to other enterprise offerings) are a sure
indicator of the lack of understanding in the “C” suite of the value of talent.
On the other hand, ATS functionality is almost completely commoditized and
rarely focuses on the most difficult challenge facing corporate recruiting
departments: the identification, initiation and expansion of relationships with
people who help organizations win, or who have friends who fit that need.
Here at
EA we use Resumix as our “system of record for applicants” and will be for some time. But I get calls from ATS vendors almost daily, and I am constantly
surprised at their lack of depth of thinking on the subjects that matter (which
is almost as frustrating as their completely lack of understanding of our
business). There are of course exceptions: I spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday
with David Russo of
PeopleClick. His depth of understanding of the
real problems facing talent organizations, now and in the future, was truly
refreshing. Gary Albright
at Trovix is another person I have conversations with,
as is Raghav Singh
at Lawson and
Gary Alpert at WetFeet.
There is
a lot more to write on the subject of the innovations that we are creating here
at EA (along with our amazing partners at JLA:
Jeremy and Sean). But the point of this post is that the fact that there are
vendors out there like Colin, who are willing to add the value of their insight
into the network before they require any in return (a la 68 Posts),
who are constantly scanning the horizon for clues about the future and who are
merciless in examining their products in light of what they learn. These vendors
give me hope for the ATS industry. Otherwise there is a very good chance that
in the next five years it won’t even exist.
I look
forward to Colin’s next piece defending the ATS approach, but for right now…
Colin, call me to set up a demo. Any product you are a part of is something I
want to see.
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