The latest trends in TA Tech | with Jonathan Kestenbaum

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Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm Johnny Campbell. I'm your host for the next 40, 45 minutes of episode 118 of the Shortlist this week. We're coming live from Paris where we're at unleash the conference about all things HR technology. I've been proud to be involved with Unleashed for the last 12 years. Always a great event to see what vendors are out there talking about, what tech, what thought leaders are speaking about, what topics to do with human resources, people, talent, talent acquisition, all of the above and more. And it's a pleasure therefore to invite our guest today who's somebody who's been a go to person for me around certainly talent and talent acquisition tech for the last few years. And if you know him, he's probably your go to person as well because that's what we're going to be talking about, the latest trends in TA tech for today's episode. And it's kind of a funny time, right? You know, Town's acquisition is constantly changing. 2022 is one of the craziest years for this, right? Starting with such demand, heading into recession and inflation, yet towns still is impossible to find out there, right? What was, was once best practice pre pandemic has been overtaken by new ways of working, new strategies, new tools like all that innovation is great for the industry. It means, you know, hopefully candidates are getting a better deal and we're more in tune with what they're looking for. But with all this different tech, it's hard for the TA and the talent folks to keep up. It's hard for the candidates to keep up as well. So, so what should you be focusing on? Right, if you're looking at your TA organization, your team thinking, you know, at the end of the day, I just want to find great talent, bring them into my organization and keep them. What tech should you be looking for? What's, what's happening, what's worth looking at, what categories are out there, what are the kind of up and coming vendors, what are people no longer using, what's merging, all this kind of stuff. And to help us make sense of it, I'd love to welcome an expert in HR and talent technology, Jonathan Kestenbaum, who's joining us from the east coast of the US And Jonathan is the Managing director of Technology strategy and Partnerships at AMS or Alexander Mann Solutions as you might know them. And John's going to be sharing with us today his deep knowledge in this space and talk to us about how he stays up to date in the latest trends in TA Tech and maybe how therefore you could do the same. What impact the trends are having on the industry, what, what challenges are being solved and how can we take advantage of these insights as leaders to get ahead of the game? Jonathan, it's a pleasure to have you. People might notice that technically we're not sitting in Paris right now. We're pre recording this a little bit early because we're probably right now on the floor of a niche in Paris, walking around doing our thing or listening to a talk. But tell me this, maybe you can introduce yourself because I think for folks listening and hearing you for the first time, it's interesting to know your background and where this knowledge and passion comes from and then maybe what your role is today within Alexander Mann Solutions and why you have this. Trust me, it is an expertise in this space.

Thanks for having me. Really excited to be here today. As you know, I'm John Kestenbaum. I'm the managing director of Tech Strategy and Partners at ams. I've spent my career evaluating talent technology. I'm actually a lawyer by education. I'm still a licensed attorney. I've been an entrepreneur in the HR technology space my whole career. Prior to joining ams, I founded an organization called talentech Labs. Many of you might know of talentech Labs for the ecosystem infographic we used to publish with all of the talent acquisition technology tools. And now talentech Labs publishes a talent management version of that ecosystem. And I've really been passionate about helping folks find the right job. And you know, I think that talent acquisition, talent management, what's more exciting than, you know, helping folks either find a company to go work for or within that company understand how they could grow, learn and find the right opportunity.

So I just want to clarify for listeners who are concerned or about to press pause on the podcast, Jonathan is not here to pitch you any talent technology. He's not here to sell you anything because that is not what this is about. This is about independent advice and opinion on what's happening. And you may disagree with this opinion, but trust me this, you will not be sold anything over the next 30 or 40 minutes. So Jonathan, tell me this, right? First of all, you mentioned talent Tech Labs that you see my go place source for what's happening in the TA tech space, should that still be my go to source? Where else do you get your inspiration from for our listeners and viewers? Where do you suggest folks go to really understand what's working, what tech they should be looking at and what's not working?

Yeah, no, I think. I mean, Talent Tech Lab is still a great place to go learn about talent technology. We at AMS are actually launching a platform that we call AMS Verified. We're actually launching at the conference in Paris and ultimately we're out in the market. If I learned anything over the last eight or so years that I've been evaluating talent technologies, it's that the technology is only as good as the people and process you build around it. And so what we've been able to do with all the clients that we're working with at AMS is start to gather intelligence on how these technologies are working in market. Really not just what the technologies do but what they do well, what features are resonating, does it actually integrate with the solution? And so we've built a marketplace called AMS Verified where we're sharing information about vendors. So in addition to Talent Tech Labs, you now have AMS Verified as a solution to start to learn more about.