The Wrap #15: Turning Unicorns into Horses

It's been a great 20 of so years in technology. There have been numerous ways we've used advances in technology to better our lives:

• The iPhone squished a computer, jukebox, TV, and phone and put it into your pocket. Almost overnight, it became the most important device people owned.
• Social media allowed us to connect with anyone anywhere and share what's happening in our lives.
• Ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft gave us easier and cheaper ways to get from point A to point B.
• Netflix offered ad-free streaming of quality shows and movies for a low monthly price, eliminating the need for DVD libraries or watching another ad-filled version of Deep Impact on TBS.

Life was good and full of promise and wonder at all we could do. But as we move towards the close of 2024, I'm looking around wondering what happened.

Here's how those innovations look now:

• Smartphones are still great, but now cost a small fortune (plus a monthly charge) and are extremely addicting. Don't think so, try leaving your house without your phone and see how long it takes until you have a panic attack.
• Social media is making everyone's life seem worse than their friends and political hate is everywhere.
• Ride-sharing apps have become as expensive as cabs with less security and more waiting.
• There are too many streaming platforms and they are now filled with ads or cost as much as cable once did.

In my view, once these new technologies came out, they were like unicorns in a field of horses. They stood out from the pack and provided real value. Yet over time, the corporate entities that owned them got greedy. They filed down a part of the horn that made the unicorn different by adding ads, or markups to increase shareholder value. They kept doing this until they filed the entire horn down. Now in 2024, we're looking around and noticing they're not any different from the horses we had before.

As we move to a landscape in HR Tech where everything is AI-powered, everyone has generative AI, what's going to stand out? Will we get unicorns or horses?

What do you think? Drop any thoughts you have in the comments below.

On to this week's news. This week's Wrap features the debut of Winston from SmartRecruiters, Upwork adding an AI agent to their gig marketplace, Gloat introducing a Skills planner, ADP acquiring WorkForce Software, UNLEASH World wrapping up in Paris, and the incredible discovery of Sandy Irvine's foot on Mt. Everest. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

SmartRecruiters unveils Winston, a new AI-powered copilot for recruiting

If you've been following HR influencers lately, you might have noticed a ton of them taking pictures with binoculars and scanning the horizon for Winston from SmartRecruiters. Friend of The Wrap John Baldino was hoping Winston could save him from a hurricane so powerful it created tornados in Florida.

Well, Winston is officially here to change recruitment technology, or at least to put SmartRecruiters on equal footing with providers like Paradox who have already removed the time-consuming front end of recruiting to get candidates directly to the interview stage. It's a good move for high-volume hiring and I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves into more complex hiring that involves multiple skills and nuances. Check out the full product here.

UpWork adds AI agent to gig marketplace

I've written before about gig marketplaces and getting lost in the shuffle and that everyone has an AI copilot now, but this has some interesting potential. Here's what Upwork's"Uma" can do:

• For freelancers, Upwork is rolling out the ability for Uma to create tailored proposal drafts, leveraging custom AI models trained on winning proposals, to help them stand out and win more work.
• For businesses, Uma will identify top freelancers that align most closely with project needs and evaluate proposals, providing a side-by-side comparison that shows how professionals’ skills and experience fit the job post.

The business case seems promising, but I'm wondering how it identifies the "top freelancers" in their database. Does it recommend based off user ratings? How active they are in the platform? I wondering because I have a feeling that it will pull the same users over and over again, limiting the results such as Google does with its search returns. Users can pay more to Upwork to get listed more toward the top of the results by boosting their profile (see screenshot above). Is Uma on the take? Is she only recommending profiles paying a premium? Something to think about as you look through the full release.

Gloat introduces skills planner

Gloat has taken the logical next step in skills by introducing Skills Planner, which provides customers with a real-time look at their organization's skills and flagging at-risk roles, skills gaps, and emerging talent. This is a great safeguard for protecting the business and upskilling talent for the future. If I'm an employee, I'd rather learn how to maximize using AI than be replaced by it. You can check it out here.

I've always found the skills space interesting. There is so much happening and I truly believe hiring specifically for skills is the future if it isn't already happening now. Any readers out there using Gloat? I'd love to hear about your experience. Thanks!

ADP Acquires WorkForce Software

HR Tech juggernaut ADP has purchased WorkForce Software, boosting their global capabilities in workforce management. As you can see in the Nucleus Research grid above, WorkForce is a leader in the space and will be a nice addition to ADP's global services.

Spotlight - Unleash World wraps in Paris

I have some FOMO after missing Unleash World in Paris this week. The latest HR tech innovations combined with the city of love, you can't miss! Marc Coleman and his team put on a fantastic event each year and while Vegas is fun, it's nice to visit a place with so much history and culture. I was lucky enough a couple of years ago to visit the Louver and the Musée de l'Orangerie with Kevin Mullins and Sarah Mulcahy years ago and I can thank Unleash for adding some culture to my life.

Wikipedia of the Week - Sandy Irvine's foot found!

I'm a sucker for exploration and expeditions. There is nothing cooler than venturing out into the unknown and solving great mysteries. One of those mysteries may be closer to being solved as hikers found Sandy Irvine's foot on Mt. Everest last week. I won't do it justice, so I'll let the Smithsonian article on the find speak for me:

"In 1924, British explorer Andrew Comyn Irvine—nicknamed Sandy—and his partner George Mallory aimed to become the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest. But the two climbers disappeared on the expedition, prompting a decades-long mystery in the mountaineering world.

Mallory’s remains were found by alpinist Conrad Anker in 1999. But many still wondered: What happened to Irvine? And did the two ever reach the summit?

Last month, below the north face of Mount Everest, a documentary team from National Geographic made a discovery that has revived these long-standing questions. Protruding from the ice in the melting glacier was an old leather boot. Inside, they discovered a frozen foot and sock.

“I lifted up the sock and there’s a red label that has A.C. IRVINE stitched into it,” Jimmy Chin, a climber and filmmaker, tells National Geographic’s Grayson Schaffer. The team quickly realized the significance of their find—that the remains belonged to the famously lost climber. “We were all literally running in circles dropping F-bombs,” Chin adds."

We may never know the full story of what happened to Irvine and Mallory on their ascent up Everest, but I'm hoping that they could find the rest of Irvine and possibly the camera he was carrying. If that camera has a photo of them on the summit, then Irvine and Mallory were the first to climb Everest, almost 30 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did it.

Read more about the man behind the foot by visiting his Wikipedia page here.

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