We’re proud to announce Datapeople was selected as one of Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech. This recognition celebrates technology breakthroughs that are anticipated to define their industry and address important real-world problems.
Next Big Thing in Tech 2023!
Datapeople was founded on a singular idea, to empower talent acquisition teams around the world to deliver a more human hiring experience. To accomplish this we saw one big impediment. Talent acquisition as a function was underserved by existing technology and saddled with asymmetric internal relationships forcing teams to add manual processes to cover gaps yielding a wholly inefficient hiring process. For many in the industry, this was just the cost of doing business but as team sizes were cut, the cost of doing business was escalating just as company expectations of the functions were reaching new heights. 2023 will be remembered as the year that the hopes of a return to historic budgets and staffing vanished. Whether it is the rise of new work accelerants like generative AI or just the demonstration that we can succeed with less, no longer will open jobs have a linear relationship to a team’s headcount and budget.
Thus, industry leaders have embraced the new mantra of lean hiring, which recognizes existing process and technology challenges cannot be overcome with the addition of a new manual process or a point solution. They are smartly investing in the true requirements for predictable and equitable hiring: implementing standards, establishing shared commitments and executing collaboratively, and measuring all actions (not just those in the ATS) to more holistically identify breakdowns. These leaders are not just seeking incremental changes and minor optimizations, they are building a whole new foundation so Talent Acquisition can genuinely be the strategic partner to their organization.
Today we, alongside Fast Company, who has named Datapeople among The Next Big Things for 2023, celebrate these visionaries. Our customers as well as our investors and partners have been bold enough to address the structural and systemic inequities and frictions that exist in today’s hiring process and talent markets. Datapeople would not exist without your inspiration, challenges, and partnership.
These relationships have meant so much to us – and for the millions of job seekers who have experienced a more human hiring process. So, while we are proud of our inclusion among Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech 2023, what is more meaningful are the diverse, equitable, and efficient hiring processes and candidate experiences they bring to life for millions.
Sustainable change requires data
Hiring is inherently a data-rich process. But frustratingly, much of that data is trapped by siloed systems or ignored due to the challenge of capturing and synthesizing the data into actionable insights. This frustration has led some to make decisions that add substantial direct or indirect cost to hire while doing little to systematically improve the outcomes.
For example, on the surface, selecting a more modern ATS should offer more data insights but the cost to migrate, integrate, and train is substantial and often this only shifts the problem. For others, the solution was to add new manual processes to time- and motivation-deficient talent acquisition or hiring managers but this too added drag to the hiring process.
Whereas some who were bold enough to go a different direction realized that a different path was required, as neither a new point solution nor a new manual process would solve deep process frictions. They instead realized a fundamental truth about great hiring – it’s a team sport – and that most HR technology adds isolation rather than nurturing a shared experience.
To achieve this shared hiring experience, they needed something different – a data- and engagement-rich workflow platform. One that effortlessly exchanges data between technology systems (i.e., ATS) and establishes a single standardized perspective shared by all those involved in the hiring process. A platform that captures all the data inherent in the hiring process and rewards participation with powerful data-rich recommendations that reduce effort and unlock sustainable improvements and outcome delivery certainty.
A more perfect future for recruiting requires systematic and data-informed changes. While recruiting professionals often have applicants’ best interests at heart, they lack the intelligence and control needed to drive systemic change and predictably influence the quality, diversity, speed, and cost of hires. The data collected by the Datapeople platform provides the intelligence and an efficient means to deploy the improvements, giving TA managers what they need to design and implement people practices that benefit their businesses, staff, and all of their potential candidates.
From promise to reality for more equitable hiring practices
Datapeople began as a free job search engine that indexed jobs from 40,000 companies’ careers sites every day. This soon led to a seemingly simple question: “Why do some jobs perform better than others?” Considering this question led to others focused on fairness and the overall efficiency of hiring.
To address the clear inequities of the market, we started by launching the Datapeople Smart Editor in 2018. We had a hunch this wouldn’t address the entirety of the problem, but it offered a seamless way to inject market calibration, clarity, and collaboration into one of the most frustrating parts of the hiring process – the writing of the job post. The idea took off. Before we were able to expand our team, Fortune 500 companies were emailing us asking for access and pushing our capabilities far beyond just job post editing. Our customers started asking for our tools to work where and how they work, and for more insights into different parts of their process. Very soon, we had hundreds of customers using the product in over 80 countries around the world. These customers pushed the capabilities of our Smart Editor and challenged us to think bigger, illuminating the need for the comprehensive data-rich workflow platform that we offer today. It is this platform that Fast Company has recognized will change the course of our industry, forever changing the way we identify, acquire, and nurture talent.
Looking forward
We couldn’t be more thankful to our global community for being part of our journey. The results we’ve collectively achieved are clearly worthy of celebration and recognition – shout out again to Fast Company. However, they also serve to ground us in the reality that there is so much more to do and reinforce our confidence in our direction.
To truly level the field for talent, we need to ensure that hiring organizations give talent acquisition a full seat at the table. There’s so much more innovating to do, both within the Datapeople platform and across recruiting workflows, and we can’t wait to partner on what comes next. To learn more about Datapeople and explore embracing a workflow platform that is built for your team sport, sign up for a demo.
Read original story here.