ProcureCon-Contingent Staffing is one of the most significant industry events of the year. With 50 expert speakers, 55 interactive sessions and 8 hours of networking opportunities, it is a great opportunity to gain insight into the hiring strategies of some of the largest companies with an eye on harnessing the right technology to improve efficiencies in contingent workforce ecosystems.
As one of the largest workforce solutions providers in the nation, the event is highly relevant for us at Compunnel Staffing. Here are our key takeaways from the speakers, roundtables and other attendees:
1. One of the most productive sessions during the event was a talk on ‘The Future of Work’ with Patrick Youngs of KellyOCG. This talk discussed the inclusion of gig labor in various workforce models, specifically. It also noted a trend wherein many gen-X and gen-Y workers are leveraging their years of experience by picking up new skills in the realms of Machine Learning or Data Science to position themselves as extremely high-value, independent contractors.
2. Another discussion centered around the importance of pay rates and how technology can now enable employers to engage a given talent pool with it as a matching criteria.
3. A recurring theme throughout the event was how enterprises can choose to deal with the liability of professional services that supply them with contingent employees who are largely developers. The debate between whether to use an MSP or a payroll service provider with IC compliance was largely based on the cost optimization factor.
4. Buyers attending for the first time are more likely to smile and be friendly. This provides a greater opportunity to learn, share and network with them. An open attitude goes a long way in the exchange of ideas. We would love to see more of this from veteran buyers so that we can learn from each other and forge fruitful relationships in the future.
5. Enterprises are very interested in creating a seamless process that incorporates background checks integrated within the VMS workflow and how it can improve the entire workflow of hiring contingent workers.
6. While enterprises are super excited about the self-sourcing trend that is top of mind in every discussion, they are not quite sure that they’re ready for it. They feel that their maturity level in executing what is required to pull off successful self-sourcing is still lacking.
7. Enterprises are starting to see the ‘Human Cloud’ as a new way to get work done. White collar jobs are being divided into separate tasks and then made available to a mass of remote workers willing to take them on. However, they also acknowledged the challenge of adopting the technology at a practical level as internal stakeholders are still resisting the idea.
8. Zerochaos held an interesting talk with regard to AI in the realm of recruiting. They stipulated that performance-based recommendations of candidates is the future of hiring.
9. Enterprises are also learning to deal with new policies regarding the hiring of H1-B candidates. With increasing barriers to hiring these candidates that often have skills that are in shortage in the American talent market, employers were interested in how suppliers and MSPs can verify their status as well as practices to comply with changes to immigration policies.
10. Learning more about the concerns of our clients has given us assurance in our own direction as a supplier in the contingent workforce space. In our endeavor to simplify, streamline and ultimately transform the way organizations engage and hire talent, we have been working on several solutions that are likely to bridge the gap between our clients and the talent they need with technology.
Willhire is Compunnel’s direct sourcing solution. It aims to bring down costs and improve operational efficiency by leveraging talent referrals, private talent pools, generating inbound direct talent traction from online sources, driving candidate engagement via job recommendations delivered via machine learning and bots as well as using machine learning to screen candidates. It achieves all this by delivering a plug and play solution that can be directly integrated with our clients’ VMS. It offers zero disruption to the client’s existing and is much like putting the program into overdrive.
StafflinePro is our internal tool for increasing the velocity with which we are able to find suitable candidates for our clients. Its resume parsing and matching capability enables us to automate a large part of the candidate search process. It also includes communication and tracking tools that allow our recruiters to engage talent from first contact, all the way to off-boarding and engaging them for future opportunities.
Leyla is our proof of concept chatbot endeavour. In its current incarnation, Leyla was created to match the ideal personality for an HR representative in Compunnel’s learning arm, InfoPro Learning. However, as we gain the expertise needed in employing chatbots in other use cases, we foresee a version that works within StafflinePro to to free up time for our employees in various departments across the company including, Accounting, HR, Payroll, Timesheets, and Recruiting, improving end to end candidate experience.
At the same time, we expect to use data to create training programs for our internal teams. To schedule a demo on how to build a viable chatbot for your contingent workforce program with us, click here..
