What is the sound of a new product working?

When considering what technology to purchase to help increase your speed to touch with top talent, it’s critical that you take a couple minutes to consider when a technology purchase makes sense and, even more importantly, when it does not. Technology is sold as a panacea. Read any product marketing slick and the promises are fairly universal: increased speed, enhanced efficiency, improved throughput, better organization, happier team. (And we are guilty of all the above with our product Voice Screener!)

As anyone who has ever implemented new products has quickly discovered, there is a “U” shaped curve associated with new product adoption. Early in the adoption cycle, a new product will fail to live up to its promises simply because of the dreaded learning curve. Before you can gain efficiency and better living through technology, people need to slow down and become beginners – leaving the safe island of the product you know and swimming a deep channel of dark water to the product you just bought.
In today’s information economy, learning new things feels harder than ever. Slowing down seems to be the worst thing you can do – won’t the competition beat you? Won’t you lose that candidate if you don’t text her back RIGHT NOW? Let’s face it, slowing down and taking the time to learn something new can be downright scary. Is this new thing something I should be paying attention to? Will this product help me be better at my job or? Or is it just another waste of time?

Nearly ever organization has felt the sting of poor product selection and/or implementation. A product was chosen that was too hard to learn, didn’t live up to its promises, didn’t work as advertised, or way too often… all of the above. Once an organization has been stung, it becomes increasingly hard of introduce new products. I believe this is one of the main reasons why Internet Explorer 6.0 is still common in staffing and recruiting firms. Even though Firefox is a dramatically better product, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Although this piece of common wisdom is comforting at first blush, it’s a prison that locks businesses into inefficient, outmoded technology that hurts profitability and organizational performance.

2009 is a watershed moment — a rare opportunity for those who can see past the fog of 20-40% revenue declines. 2009 forced everyone – even your fiercest of competition – to slow down. For industry thought-leaders, it was a time to reassess and redirect its time and resources. For everyone else, it was doing the same thing expecting different results, which is the definition of insanity.

For Beth Gilfeather, Founder of Seven Step Recruiting and CEO of Stride & Associates, 2009 presented her and her executive team with a rare opportunity to step back, catch their breath and assess the business. In March, her team made a list of process and cultural changes that they believed could better position them for the economic recovery. Although she knew that staying on top of technology was a never ending challenge, she didn’t want to be “three laps behind.” To help frame their discussion, her team asked three questions to help focus their efforts:

1. What is the client experience now vs. what we want it to be?

2. How are we perceived by candidates during the hiring process?

3. What can we do to ensure that our clients “love” us?

It was through the prism of these questions that all conversation around process modifications and new product adoption were asked.

Questions like these are a vital tool for new product selection. If a product improves client relationships but negatively impacts the candidate experience, then it would be a non-starter for leading companies like Stride.

Now the next question is: What are the drivers for your organization?