ADEPTO: CREATING THE WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE
Recognised as one of the world’s most important authorities on human capital, Dr. Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor, Professor of Management at the Wharton School and Director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources. Dr. Cappelli says, “Remember what your goal is when you’re looking to fill a position: It’s to find one person who really fits your needs, not to get thousands to apply.” Gig economy workers expect to work on-demand and have the flexibility in the choice of roles they take as well as how they work within an organisation. This idea of contingent work is a big shift and large organisations are now challenged to think about their workforce and approach to talent very differently –putting quality over the need to create multiple teams at multiple sites and enabling talent pools to be created as and when the work arises. Technology like Adepto can enable this shift in a more efficient way.
Adepto was formed in 2013 by Chris Milligan, initially as a more traditional recruiter. Along with Michael Derwin, his co-founder, a shift happened as they realized there was an opportunity for technology to have a bigger impact in enabling companies to find the right talent they need, regardless of work status. With this shift the Adepto platform was created. Adepto is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) technology platform that enables organisations to get a complete view of all the talent available to them, whether internal or external to that organisation making the process of hiring/building teams more efficient and hassle-free. Since then Adepto has grown from a small group in Brisbane to a global team headquartered in London with clients across a variety of verticals including professional services, government and education. Milligan shares, “Adepto’s growth has been fueled by the demand of large enterprise organisations that need to redefine the workforce of the future and create what we call a “total talent” organisation – finding the right talent when they need them, wherever they are in the world enabling an end-to-end view of every person available for a prospective role.”
The Adepto platform allows organisations to build a private talent network. Through invitations, a user quickly builds their personal profile via a user-friendly interface. Organisations can then search and build pools of talent and send job requests directly from the system. When speaking with organisations, Adepto often hears feedback of how difficult it is to locate the right talent. In some cases this is among their internal, full-time staff, in others they need a view of their external talent and still, in other organisations, it’s both. This often means duplications in costs to recruit people already known to an organisation from one team to another or missing out on great (and available) external talent. Adepto helps to minimise or eliminate that problem for hiring managers.
Adepto helps users to build a complete and up-to-date profile giving a potential employer the best visibility to past experience, current skills, aspirations and availability. As a hiring manager, this access, the ability to pre-screen and build talent pools can make hiring a far less arduous task. In addition, the ability to invite both internal and external users to the platform as a hiring manager helps them to get a true view of all the available talent vs. having to use multiple systems to find staff required for a project or role.
Adepto’s pricing is per manager using the system on a monthly basis regardless of the number of users on the system. The cost includes a base level of support to help customers with ongoing use of the system. With agile development, the platform is updated every fortnight to constantly improve and add features according to the needs of users and feedback from customer organisations.
With a constant focus on rapid improvement and updates leveraging the latest technology to improve the experience for users of the platform, Adepto is able to quickly update and adjust. “When we’re not directly building features into the system, we partner with key players to bring in the best functionality to anyone accessing the system,” says Milligan. This includes strategic relationships with companies like Degreed to integrate learning and development as an extension to its skill-based user profile.
Adepto is unique because they are not a traditional vendor or freelancer management system. The platform lets global organisations have visibility to enable internal talent mobility, keep connections to alumni and understand available talent outside the organisation. This “total talent” view is something most existing systems do not offer. Adepto is also able to integrate and connect to an organisation’s existing systems to provide a seamless experience. As a SaaS platform, Adepto works anywhere and everywhere. They now support clients in Australia, UK, Europe and the US.
Adepto is on track to continued growth, with an upcoming ambitious product roadmap that will see the integration of features to enable detailed analytics and the ability to add skills in real time. As more enterprise companies begin to understand the requirements for moving to a new way of working, the need for a total talent system will become critical.
QUOTE:
“Adepto is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) technology platform that enables organisations to get a complete view of all the talent available to them”
“Adepto helps users to build a complete and up-to-date profile giving a potential employer the best visibility to past experience, current skills, aspirations and availability”