4 Key Takeaways on the State of HR Today

David Webb, President of BrightMove, was a recent guest on the TechnologyAdvice Expert Interview Series. The series, which is hosted by TechnologyAdvice's Josh Bland, explores a variety of business and technology landscapes through conversations with industry leaders.

In this episode, we discuss the impact of mobile on recruiting, the growth of RPO, and best practices for onboarding.

Below are David Webb's four biggest insights from the conversation.

1. BrightMove Onboarding integrates seamlessly with all of our applicant tracking products

It's all brandable. We can co-brand with our RPO partners or we can co-brand with their customers so that from the candidate experience it looks like they're actually moving through a process at the HR department they've applied to. It's all seamless and very customizable, and can pretty much fit any ongoing process that needs to be automated.

2. In 2008 we saw a really big shift from the availability of candidates in relation to the number of job openings.

For a while, the market was flooded with candidates because of the layoffs that our economy experienced. The main shift we've seen in the last year or two is that's kind of equalizing again. Whereas before, if you were hiring, it was very much a buyer's market for a good five years. And it's now shifting toward where a candidate has a little bit more of the leverage.

There's more opportunities, and there's less candidates available right now. And the way we help our customers compensate with that is through HR software solutions, social media integration, and keeping that pool of qualified candidates ready to go and constantly connecting with them almost like a customer relationship management type relationship so that the time to hire and time to fill is cut down. The staffing agencies and the RPO companies are having to compete now, more than ever, for filling jobs quickly with quality candidates.

3. Most people interact with their friends, family, and colleagues with their phone and internet more than the desktop PC at this point.

I don't think anybody would refute that. It's very important, which is where SMS text messaging comes in. If you're trying to get a candidate for a job and you need to get in touch with them, the difference between you hiring that candidate and not hiring them might be the difference between them getting a text message at 11 A.M. or waiting for them to get home and check their personal email at six or at the end of the day.

4. There's a large initiative here to complete a BrightMove 13, which is a totally responsive application.

We have about half of the app left to convert. The web app will be responsive and look great on phones, tablets, and any size PC monitor you have. That's a big initiative of ours. To me, it's all about integration. And as a development company, it's what we care about when we're picking the tools that we want to use.

Integration between systems and being able to choose the best-of-breed of everything out there and having them work seamlessly together, that's going to be the future.

This podcast was created and published by TechnologyAdvice. Interview conducted by Josh Bland.