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Most of us have heard the question, “If you were stuck on a deserted island and could bring only one [fill in the blank], what would it be?” Maybe it would be your favorite book or music album. Occasionally, the blank in the question is replaced with the word “thing,” and smarty pants respond by saying, “a large, seafaring vessel stocked with food, liquids and fuel.” Fill in the blank with “one type of HR technology,” however, and you have the premise for today’s #HRTechChat.
 
Wilson!

Your HR technology could be sick, and you might not know it. That was a key takeaway last week, at #HRTechChat Episode Fourteen, when we took our walking pneumonia–afflicted technology on a jaunt to the waiting room at the human capital management technology doctor’s office. While we waited, we chatted and, as surprisingly good and appropriately themed background music softly played via speakers built into the waiting room’s walls, we stumbled upon the five stages of HR technology sickness, its diagnosis and cure or exacerbation.

The word’s in the name. All start-ups, including start-ups starting up technology for human resources, recruiting or talent management, have starting points. Somewhere, at some point, because of some reason, someone started that start-up.

Your co-host is. When the common cold is bad enough, we tell people that we have the flu, and when the flu knocks a workaholic on his back for nearly 36 hours, suspicions that a weapons-grade virus, bioengineered at an undisclosed military installation somewhere near Groom Lake, start to make sense. But that’s probably just the enervation-just-this-side-of-unconsciousness talking.

Actually, yes, it’s JASS, too. Employee Self-Service, a.k.a. ESS, has fueled many an innovation in technology for human capital management. Have you heard of its cousin JASS? Short for Job Applicant Self-Service, JASS is an acronym that appears to have been concocted right here, on this very page. Throw a ™ up there next to it and call us aspiring neologists, and for #HRTechChat Episode Thirteen's focus, keep reading....
 
Pump Your Own Gas
 

Dear Tweeter Fantasy, type us a tweet, something about HR tech’s future…
 
#HRTechChat’s tweeters last Wednesday tweeted us many songs, ones that made us all happy. Traffic would have been proud. Tales of human capital industry professionals’ fantastical visions flooded the stream, and one takeaway we took is that crowd-sourcing ideas about the future of HR technology can yield takes that rival or surpass the wisdom of official pundits.

The marketplace for human capital management continues to see noteworthy acquisitions. Just last week, for instance, Deloitte announced plans to acquire HR technology consultancy Aggressor LLC, with significant market implications related to Workday.

Who’s heard the song? Rock and roll comprises three words: Run them together, and you get three syllables. That’s the same number found in HR Tech, run together. Sing the song, but with “HR tech” in place of “rock and roll,” and you’ll have the musical backdrop for this week’s chat.