Market Watch for Talent & HR Nov- Dec 2022

Executive Summary

More than 120,000 employees in the US Technology market have been laid off due to economic contraction and years of exponential hiring. However, as a result of that, high skilled talent is available now to be hired bringing innovation, data science & AI leading-practices to accelerate enterprise transformation and help companies to navigate uncertain times.

As companies prepare for next year, it is important to remember that enterprise transformation has talent implications; whether you want to change the way you serve your customers, launch new product or services, or introduce new technology. These new market capabilities will require companies to reimagine talent strategy, validate skills, upskill employees, manage change and adoption. 

Hybrid work, people analytics, upskilling, talent acquisition and workforce management are key topics for 2023. Skills and data frameworks will need to be integrated and connected (skill taxonomy) across the talent lifecycle to find and attract a broader pool of talent, and develop people with new roles and assignments. Furthermore, HR technology is driving acceleration for upskilling and providing personalize learning experiences to enable talent mobility.

For tech startups, the startup market still looks slightly stronger than 2021 ($11B in investment until September). However, there is greater chances that the market slowdown will increase the impact on VC investments and startup valuations. Investors are willing to invest in HR Technology that have key differentiators and connect talent data, skills and ecosystems to build future-looking tech stack. 

Market constraints are a great opportunity for HR Tech innovation and for HR Tech players to re-assess their value proposition, invest in product development, marketing and GTM. Key elements growth this 2023 is to build partnerships with best-of breed-solutions, service integrators and major HR tech platforms.
 
More HR technology consolidation is coming in 2023 (due to proliferation of HR tools) to enable organizations with systems of experience, systems of intelligence and systems of engagement with insights and applications around planning, attracting, developing and retaining #talent.

See details below where I expand on the latest acquisitions, funding rounds and partnerships.

Venture Funding

• WorkJam, a frontline management platform, raised $500M in series D round. The investment will be used for international expansion and penetration in the U.S. market, and product innovation. See news HERE.
• Beekeeper, a frontline management platform, raised $50M in series C round. The investment will be used for product development and expand GTM and acquire new customers. See news HERE.
• Adway, a recruiting marketing platform, raised $10M in series A round. The investment will be used to develop product suite and support continued expansion into international markets. See news HERE.
• Sapai.ai, an interviewing platform, raised $17M in series A round. The investment will be used to expand its sales team in Australia and build on its presence in the US. See news HERE.

New Offerings & Partnerships

• Visier, a talent analytics platform, introduced “Alpine by Visier,” a platform as a service to make easy to compose, enrich, and scale powerful people-focused analytic applications.
  • Impact: Visier is becoming and end-to- end people-data analytics platform, this year the company made two acquisitions (Yva and Boostrs) bringing collaboration analytics as well as skill intelligence capabilities. See news HERE.
• Betterworks, a performance and engagement platform, announced partnership with LinkedIn learning connecting performance with development plans to drive upskilling. See news HERE.
• Oracle, a leading HCM platform, elected Global HR Research (GHRR) an employment screening services, drug testing, and verifications provider to optimize its human capital management (HCM) solution. See news HERE.
• Qualtrics, an employee listening platform, launched a new feature “Manager Assist” that gives managers access to real-time insights about their team sentiment and act on feedback from their own teams. See news HERE.
• HackerRank and Eightfold are partnering to combine candidate data insights to assess and interview technical talent through a single, and unified platform. See news HERE.
• Leapsome, a talent platform, announced its expansion in the US market. See news HERE.

Relevant Acquisitions

• Deel, a global payroll platform, completed its $AU 121M acquisition of San Francisco-based Pay Group. This acquisition will allow Deel to expand its customer base and enhance its payroll and technology capabilities. See news HERE.
• Simplilearn a learning platform, acquired US-bootcamp education company FullStack Academy. The acquisition will accelerate Simplilearn’s growth and enhance its market position to compete with other leading digital learning platforms. See news HERE.

Relevant Articles

• Josh Bersin published: 
  • “Understanding The Tech Layoffs. Could They Have Been Prevented?”. See news HERE.

• TechCrunch published
  • “Tech Layoffs In 2022: The U.S. Companies That Have Cut Jobs”. See news HERE.
• McKinsey published
  • “Taking a skills-based approach to building the future workforce”. See news HERE.
• MIT Sloan published
  • “Improve Your Diversity Measurement for Better Outcomes”. See news HERE.
• Harvard Business Reviewed (HBR) published
  • “Tech Talent Is Flooding the Job Market”. See news HERE.

Art of the Possible

• “True reality in a virtual world. Learn more about how the metaverse is evolving:” reported by World Economic Forum. See video HERE.

More to come! Stay tuned.

Note: All views expressed in this article do not represent the opinions of any entity whatsoever with which I have been, am now, or will be affiliated. My opinions are my own.