April 10, 2016

Three Key Takeaways From Our Interview with Jobcase

Written by

Fred Goff, the CEO at Jobcase, was a recent guest on our podcast, B2B Nation. In this episode, we discuss his thoughts on how B2B tech talent is changing, innovative talent strategies, and the future of the HR industry.

Below are our three biggest insights from the conversation.

  1. CMOs today have become very data-centric, whereas even six years ago, they were still coming up to speed.

Corporate America is getting smarter and smarter about the value of big data. HR was behind the curve on this, but is catching up quick. Look at how disruptive and fast moving companies like Zenefits, Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, and Jazz are in the ATS space. Then in the recruiting space, look at what LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Jobcase are doing.Their taking advantage of some unique trends.

  1. Right now, on-demand labor is changing the world.

Whether it’s Uber or Thumbtack or a similar place, you aren’t a W2 employee — you’re just working part-time to make extra money. The labor participation rate is dropping, which is an indication of a big shift in the way we think about work.

One of the big things that’s really challenging for our members and causing a lot of changes in the HR industry, is this complete breakdown of the employer-employee bond. With our parents, there used to be that company loyalty aspect. Even as recently as a few years ago, there was a stigma attached to being a job hopper.

That’s gone today. There is an expectation people moving jobs every two to five years. A lot of people without a college degree move jobs every month. Nowadays, tenure is measured in months, not years.

The Department of Labor found that retiring Baby Boomers average 12 jobs over their lifetime, or about 30 or 40 years. They just did a study last year and said that by the time Millennials are 25, they’ve have had more than seven jobs. And that is biased by education stats. If you take the 70 percent of the country that don’t have four-year degrees, it’s about six or seven jobs by the time they’re 21.

We live in a world where you have to be your own free agent. You have to think about your own career path, and yet no one has really advised anybody about that. It is very hard to do. How do you manage on a landscape like that?

  1. When you examine labor shifts and the lack of loyalty versus the rapid rise of new companies, there’s just a lot of opportunity there.

There’s a lot of opportunity to make things better. But the companies that are doing it, the ones that are really succeeding, seem to be the ones that don’t have the burden legacy technology. New companies like ours, we design everything mobile first. Everybody has a computer in their pocket and we get to architect the database on the cloud starting from day one.

There are a lot of benefits to being the new guy these days. I’d rather be the David, not Goliath.

The Goliaths are trying to continue providing good services that they’ve done historically. But to be able to keep the trains running while you rebuild the bridge at the same time, that’s really tough to do. And so far, the excitement in the HR industry is coming from some of us new guys more than the existing people.