Tim Sackett is a straight-talking HR pro with over 20 years' experience. With a career perfectly split between recruiting and HR generalist roles – (also split between the HR vendor community and the corporate world) – he's seen the HR world from all angles of the boardroom table. We asked him four quick questions about HR tech – from what to buy to the next best thing for the HR tech world.

Not understanding what problem they're truly trying to solve in their organisation. They'll start with a broad problem, like “We need to find better talentâ€'. Then they go and try to find a solution. Well every talent acquisition solution's going to say, “We can help you find better talent.â€' It's really spending more time defining what the problem is. It could be a recruitment marketing issue, it could just be recruitment automation. Maybe you have the talent in your ATS but you don't have a way to get it out. There are so many aspects to HR, so it's really understanding what it is you're trying to solve at a really deep level.

You definitely want a cross-functional view of the problem. Sometimes we get influenced and sold by one group, and then the other five functions in our office will say, “Oh, no. That's not a problem we have, we have something totally different.â€' Be careful not to let the person with the biggest influence or the loudest voice dictate what the company is going to do from an HR technology perspective.

That's tough. First and foremost you need a core HR system. That would be the first thing I would buy. Now if I'm in a startup mode with only 20 people, do I really need a core HR system? Maybe not. Maybe I need a talent acquisition system and then later on I'm going to buy a core HR. It depends on the situation you're in, knowing that if worst comes to worst you can always open Excel and build what you need for the most part. We all get embarrassed by saying we're using Excel, and yet most of us at some point are still using spreadsheets for something. In fact Key Interval Research found the number one technology across every kind of HR function, whether it was talent acquisition, benefits compensation, performance management, was still Microsoft Excel.

The money right now is in talent relationship marketing and talent automation – the CRM based products. These technologies help us look at the people we've recruited in the past, the ones that we may need to recruit in the future, and automate it all. Many organisations have thousands or even millions of people in their applicant tracking systems, and yet have no way of really interacting with them after the fact. A lot of HR solutions I'm seeing are taking what companies are doing from a sales standpoint and turning that into a talent acquisition solution.

About the Author

Tim Sackett is a HR pro with over 20 years' experience. With a career perfectly split between recruiting and HR generalist roles – (also split between the HR vendor community and the corporate world) – he's seen the HR world from all angles of the boardroom table. You can check out all his other brilliant ideas over at www.timsackett.com or download his free eBook: The Ultimate HR Tech Buyers Guide.

Tim was a popular presenter at HR Tech Fest 2015.