October was an eventful month for HR tech. As more big tech names roll out permanent work-from-home options, HR tech companies are innovating, acquiring and integrating to meet the demands of an increasingly permanent remote workforce.
Not everything has been smooth sailing, however. Check out our list of highlighted stories from this month to see what pandemic pitfalls have occurred to contrast success stories.
Paycor Acquires Performance Management Platform 7Geese
Human capital management software company Paycor announced on September 29 that it had acquired 7Geese. “We’re excited to join forces with a leading all-in-one HCM vendor to continue to lead the industry and enable both people and organizations to thrive, especially in these difficult times,” 7Geese founder and CEO Amin Palizban said in a press release.
7Geese is an industry leader in employee performance management. Its platform will now be fully integrated into Paycor’s product suite to allow the HCM’s customers to further engage their employees.
Payroll and Benefits Management Software Company Papaya Global Raises $40M Series B
Papaya Global, vendor of payroll and workforce management software, announced their Series B funding. The $40 million round was led by funding from Scale Venture Partners and comes less than a year after their Series A round, which totaled $45 million.
Papaya Global is an Israeli startup that offers cloud-based payroll services and workforce management solutions specifically for global companies. Their software aims to automate operations for multinational teams in over 140 countries.
iCIMS Unveils New Brand Identity Alongside New Talent Cloud
On October 1 iCIMS rolled out the iCIMS Talent Cloud, an AI-powered talent acquisition platform that gives employers better functionality to engage and hire the right talent to build a diverse and adaptive workforce. The platform overhauls a company’s entire talent acquisition funnel from career sites to AI-powered recruitment and applicant tracking tools to career pathing and talent profiles.
iCIMS Talent Cloud’s introduction also served to unveil iCIMS’s new brand identity, including a new logo and website design. The news also arrives after Steve Lucas took over as CEO in March of this year.
Eightfold AI Raises Massive Series D Funding Round
Eightfold AI announced a $125 million Series D funding round on October 26. This series round brings the company's total funding to over $180 million to value the company at $1 billion. The company plans to grow its AI-powered talent intelligence software to make it a singular solution for managing the end-to-end talent lifecycle.
Founder & CEO at Eightfold Ashutosh Garg, shares that the mission of Eightfold is to leverage their expertise in AI to provide the right career for millions of job seekers. On developing a single end-to-end talent platform, he says, "This is the future of our industry, and has already made Eightfold the go-to provider for industry leaders in every sector. We are grateful to our investors, customers and partners for sharing in our vision, especially at a time when the immediate focus is on the well-being of the global workforce."
Phenom Acquires Interview Scheduling AI Company My Ally
Talent experience management platform Phenom picked up a major ally in AI interview scheduling company My Ally. The acquisition adds another tool to Phenom’s growing recruiting kit. My Ally’s AI will allow select candidates to self-schedule interviews by naturally conversing over email with an automated assistant.
CEO and Co-founder of Phenom Mahe Bayireddi is excited about their first acquisition, specifically stating that they expect My Ally to go from 200,000 interviews scheduled a year to millions. “If you’re doing intelligent automation, you have to always keep in mind [that] your experience should not be compromised anywhere in the talent lifecycle,” he said in a video announcement, “Our thought process is, how can we deliver that in an effective format?”
HireVue Acquires AllyO
Video interviewing innovator HireVue acquired AI recruiting tech company AllyO to include AI-driven chatbots and automated workflows to its existing functionalities. Co-founder of AllyO Sahil Sahni calls it a perfect pairing, as they share the same vision of creating a more equitable hiring experience. Sahni elaborated that their customer bases overlapped as well.
HireVue CEO Kevin Parkers says that AllyO is a natural extension to HireVue’s video interviewing solutions. Their plan is to streamline the end-to-end experience for hiring while creating more engaging, personalized conversations with applicants.
Glassdoor Unveils New Diversity & Inclusion Products
Company reviews website Glassdoor revealed their new Diversity & Inclusion product features. CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong said in the press release that Glassdoor has a responsibility to increase transparency in the workplace, especially as equity becomes increasingly important to job seekers.
The new product features are Diversity & Inclusion company ratings, voluntary sharing of employee and job seeker demographic information, and a new company FAQ resource that hosts the most popular questions asked by job seekers, including a dedicated D&I section.
PeopleFluent Updates OrgPublisher Software
Talent management software company PeopleFluent announced an update to their organizational charting software, OrgPublisher. The update is meant to give users better scenario planning and workforce visibility.
Major updates include profiles, user experience enhancements, and easier navigation. PeopleFluent mentions that the improvements are aligned with their commitment to invest in product upgrades and maintenance.
Justworks Acquires Time and Attendance Software Company Boomr
Professional employment organization Justworks announced the acquisition of Boomr. The merging of the two companies brings Boomr’s time and attendance services to Justworks customers.
Founder and CEO of Justworks Isaac Oates says the decision was driven by the evolving needs of small businesses for an all-in-one solution. “This acquisition will supercharge our ability to innovate in an increasingly important area of product development for our existing customers while also enabling us to serve more diverse types of businesses with a true all-in-one solution moving forward,” announced Oates. Justworks customers will get access to Boomr’s solution for free until December 31, 2021.
AI-Driven People Intelligence Platform Findem Launches
A new people intelligence software company is on the market. Findem announced its launch on October 14, backed by a $7.3 million Series A funding round led by Wing Venture Capital. The solution uses AI and analytics to streamline HR operations.
Findem’s platform features two key solutions called Atlas and Compass. Atlas is the people intelligence arm, which uses AI to compare and contrast a company’s teams against their competitors to recognize and close talent gaps. Compass then uses that data to help hire the right candidates to cover those gaps.
Cornerstone OnDemand Announces Integrations with Beamery, ServiceNow
People development solutions leader Cornerstone OnDemand announced two major integrations this month.
On October 14, Cornerstone announced integration with talent operating system Beamery. The alliance of the two companies creates a seamless end-to-end recruiting experience. The integration enables real-time syncing of Beamery’s Talent CRM, Marketing, and Compliance solutions with Cornerstone’s recruiting software to help companies hire and onboard new employees.
Just two days later, Cornerstone announced another integration, this time with ServiceNow. The partnership aims to optimize learning workflows. By connecting training platform Cornerstone Learning with ServiceNow’s HR Service Delivery solution, companies can now access training modules directly in ServiceNow instead of switching between applications.
Acorns Branches Out With Job Finder App
Saving and investing application Acorns announced a surprising new venture called Acorns Job Finder to help their customers find job opportunities via their app. CEO Noah Kerner sees the new functionality as an extension of their mission to empower people to save, invest and achieve financial wellness.
The Job Finder listings are powered by ZipRecruiter to connect Acorns customers with millions of full-time, part-time, and seasonal jobs. In addition, Acorns is hosting a free, virtual job fair called Acorns Career Day on October 29.
More Companies Offer Permanent Work-From-Home Options
Microsoft follows the lead of tech leaders Twitter and Facebook to provide employees with long-term work-from-home options. The coronavirus pandemic initially made remote work a necessity. But after half a year, more and more companies are realizing that flexible work options might actually improve business operations.
Microsoft specifically announced that some roles need to come into work in-person, but that there will still be increased flexibility to work at home part-time. If given managerial approval, Microsoft employees that don’t need to be in-office can work from home permanently.
Dropbox also announced that employees can work from home permanently. They’re calling it Virtual First, meaning that home office work is the primary experience. However, the company will also facilitate in-person team gathering in collaborative spaces called Dropbox Studios. Dropbox’s current offices are to act as studios alongside on-demand spaces in other locations.
Indeed announced that they will offer employees a choice as well. The job board company created three categories for their workforce depending on role: completely remote, hybrid, and full-time in office. The company said they have no plans for a completely remote workforce as of now. However, Indeed realizes that employees can be equally productive at home and work flexibility leads to a better employee quality of life.
Cyber Attacks on Job Boards Used in Unemployment Benefits Scams
Career sites Gr8 People and CareerBuilder were targeted by cybersecurity attacks that may have been used to scam state unemployment systems. The coronavirus pandemic caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, resulting in increased reliance on state unemployment benefits.
Managing Director at HR tech consultant firm Akers Advisors Josh Akers revealed that many states are facing attacks by entities seeking to exploit the crisis by attacking overwhelmed unemployment systems. “If they can pilfer jobseeker PII [personally identifiable information] from private sector job boards, they can weaponize that info in the public workforce systems to file fake unemployment claims," Akers said in a statement for Recruiting News Network.
HR Tech Giant SAP Sees Major Stock Drop
German tech giant SAP, innovator in the HR tech space with such systems as the SuccessFactors Human Experience Management platform, saw a major drop in shares on Monday October 26. The company cited delayed recovery from coronavirus for many of its important customers as the reason for the over 20% drop.
Many analysts are contributing the drop to a delay in SAP’s cloud-based revenue. Their customers have not migrated fast enough to the cloud during COVID-19, despite SAP saying the opposite.
Wrapping Up
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