Key Takeaways
If you’re in the world of hiring in any capacity, you’re probably very familiar with the monumental challenge of finding talent in 2022. The pandemic totally reordered how we live and work: we’re more aware of remote capability, meaning people can apply to jobs all over the world. We’re more ready to rely on new technology, which means people are embracing recruiting tech ever faster. The world may never be the same…but that’s not the scary thing it might seem to be at first. In fact, it’s an opportunity to grow and improve both our personal recruiting skills and our workforces.
Last week, our CEO, Gal Almog, was interviewed by hiring and HR-world up-and-comer Hannah Michelle for her podcast, Hannah Talks Hiring. This new and exciting series of interviews with HR and talent innovators and experts is a great source for any hiring professional.
Gal spoke with Hannah about the story behind Talenya and how technology is changing the talent acquisition landscape. You can listen to the full episode, “Embrace New Technology Instead of Fearing It” or read about the key points right here!
Who is Talenya CEO Gal Almog?
Gal has been spent 20 years in the recruitment tech field, and was included in TAtech’s 100 Most Influential Talent Acquisition Thought Leaders last year. Before founding Talenya he founded Pandologic (then known as RealMatch), another talent acquisition software, which has since been acquired by Veritone.
In addition to these business successes, Gal is a published author and a musician. He writes jazz music and lyrics which can even be found on Spotify!
Talenya’s Story
Gal recounts how he entered the recruiting tech world because his wife was a recruiter, and he saw how much time she spent on logistics. She explained to him how there just wasn’t an efficient option for finding and sifting through resumes, so he created Pandologic to help bring resumes right to her!
As he worked on that project, the idea of fully automating passive-talent sourcing rolled around his brain for years until he finally couldn’t ignore it anymore. When the time was right, he and co-founder Doron Segal threw themselves into achieving the formidable goal of creating an AI that could act like a recruiter. It took three and a half years of hard work to crack the code, but eventually they were able to say they had a working product that would genuinely make recruiters’ lives easier.
The turning point, says Gal, was when Talenya held a competition between a human recruiter and their AI. Each was given the same job description by the same hiring team, and each returned 20 resumes that they thought would go over well. When the hiring team chose more resumes from the AI than from the recruiter—that’s when they knew their Talenya was going to be big.
Another feature that Gal wanted the AI to master was diversity prediction. That process was even more complicated, but Talenya’s AI can now predict a candidate’s demographic with 98% accuracy! That’s been incredibly helpful, because Talenya can now run studies that reveal why diverse candidates get passed over and how to better include them in a search.
The Future of Recruiting
In addition to speaking about Talenya and its history, Hannah and Gal had an informative conversation about technology and the changing talent acquisition world. The talent market is more competitive now than ever. Says Hannah, recruiting is steeped in tradition and best practices. But for recruiters to survive the new paradigm they must shift their mentality and their methods completely.
They will need to find new tools, grab good talent faster, and spend more time on tasks only humans can do like interviewing, screening, onboarding, and marketing. New technologies such as Talenya’s AI can take care of the initial search and engagement—and it’s imperative that hiring teams use them. If they don’t, they will fall behind and have a lot more trouble filling roles when all the best candidates are taken by companies that have embraced the new way.
It’s true that this flies in the face of deeply-entrenched recruitment philosophy: people spend years perfecting their Boolean search and cultivating communications with candidates. But as it turns out, passive talent will respond to opportunities that interest them—even those presented by an AI.
Of course, this is not the only shift that needs to happen—hiring teams also need to be prepared to offer more flexibility, to hire without assuming it will be long-term, and to hire as soon as they see someone without adding many extra steps…among other things.
