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Max: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Recruitment Hackers Podcast. And I am delighted to welcome on the show today, Quincy Valencia, formerly known as the Queen of bots. Today, the VP and Research Director for Ventana Research, and previously working at AMS, at CLO and ADP and a long, long career in recruitment and talent acquisition technology. And so I’m really happy that Quincy agreed to come to our show, to talk about some of the trends from the year that’s ending now; 2022, for those listeners who are listening to this podcast in the future, and where we might be, we said we would talk about a few trends. 

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So expect a conversation on hyper-personalization of the candidate experience, consolidation of the tech vendors, TA tech vendors, and what it means for the market and for the candidates. And perhaps we’ll talk a little bit about the bots and conversational AI from its origin, or let’s say the recent history of the last five or six years, and what the near future may look like. So, Quincy, welcome to the show.

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Quincy: Thank you so much for having me, Max, I really appreciate it. I love these kinds of conversations, especially with people in the industry that I respect and admire. And that would be you, you fall in that category. So thank you.

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Max: Well, you’re too kind. It’s an honor to be in that industry. And it’s great that we live in a world where you’re in South Carolina, I’m in Ireland, and we can talk to our global audience about stuff that nobody cares about.

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Quincy: Somebody cares about it, you and I care about it. So if nothing else, we can go back ourselves and listen to ourselves talk to each other and be very excited about it.

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Max: Okay, a deal. So, well, before we get started, perhaps a word about Ventana Research. What’s this organization that you joined earlier this year? And what kind of services do you deliver? Who should be coming to talk to you? In what situation?

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Quincy: Yeah, so Ventana research is celebrating its 20th year in business as of this year, it’s a boutique technology analyst firm, and the primary focus is tech. And we have several coverage areas including, not just HCM tech, which I own and lead that practice, but data analytics, digital innovation, CX, so we kind of span the board there with different areas of technology that we cover. And we do primary research, we do thought leadership, consulting, advisory, so on and so forth, all the things you would expect of an analyst firm. And it’s an exciting place to be. It’s a fun, interesting time to be in this industry as well.

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Max: Are your services called upon when somebody does a big RFP? And they want somebody to write the RFP?

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Quincy: No, we don’t write RFP, but we do…. Yeah, sorry. We will help people evaluate those RFPs and responses. And, you know, our clientele are the vendors, certainly, but also end users that will be using products too. So we have a great mix, we just recently verticalized our entire product offerings, and now we’re looking at specific verticals like healthcare, manufacturing, financial services and retail and several others that we have expertise in within our organization. So it’s just another lens to look at the products and services that we deliver into the market.

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Max: I think I’m gonna latch on to this as a segue to our first industry topic. What was the word? Verticalization.

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Quincy: Verticalization, yeah.

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Max: So verticalization of talent acquisition, I think is a real thing. It’s not just a bunch of syllables. I think it’s happening.

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Quincy: That’s an actual thing. I agree with you. Now, you never have to say the word again.

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Max: We agree about the thing. So I first noticed it a few years ago, and I saw some ATSs pop up specialized in hiring drivers, of all things.

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Quincy: Yeah. 

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Max: But now it seems like there are ATSs for healthcare companies, for retail specialists and others. Yeah. What are you seeing in the market and how verticalized is the industry now?

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Quincy: So I see the exact same things that you have. But if you look at what the issues are in recruitment for some of those industries, they’re parallel. And so you don’t necessarily need one TA tech for just healthcare or one just for retailer, or one just for hospitality. You look at what are the issues that arise within those industries that are the same. So if it’s high volume, low barrier to entry, high volume of transaction, those are the types of things that you want to look for when you’re looking for technology. And so in some cases, once you may have started out just as, hey, we’re going to start in quick service restaurants, or we’re going to start in retail, or we’re going to start in whatever, they’re quickly bringing in different industries into their organization that they’re marketing to because they can support those just as well. 

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I think the only one that I would say probably deserves its own is drivers, because that’s an interesting beast, the way you market to them and sell to them and contact them and the way they can come back to you and what you need, and the regulations and documentation and all of the verifications that you need is a little bit different. But, I can see why there was a need, you know, for some of the players in the market, but I think a lot of it continuing the trend is a little bit of consolidation, because, again, you can start marketing to, hey, I’m just going to do hospitality. And you see that you have the opportunity to expand your reach by bringing in other verticals into that same business that operate similarly.

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Max: Yeah, I mean, from a vendor’s perspective, our perspective, we knew there were some little bits and pieces missing, for us to be relevant in some industries, and you add them progressively as you go. And, of course, you know, it’s a go-to-market strategy. Initially, it makes sense to keep talking to the same people over and over again, until you’ve established a good position in that market. But, at the same time, considering that recruitment platforms are becoming integrated with assessment vendors, and, you know, assessment vendors are more specialized. So, that makes a stronger case for saying, you need a recruitment software that just does healthcare, just does, you know, logistics, for example.

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Quincy: I don’t know. I mean, I think it depends on the type of assessment that they’re crawling into bed with, for lack of a better term. Because if you look at the tr…