A turning point for Talent Intelligence

When we started Crosschq in 2018, my co-founder Pete and I were fiercely committed to bringing more data to our Talent Leaders to help make better hiring decisions. Today, it’s with great pride that we announce the acquisition of TalentWall™, a U.S.-based data company that provides analytics tools to Talent Leaders to help optimize the hiring process. It is Crosschq’s first M&A deal following our $30M Series A financing in Q4 of 2021. With the deal now closed, I wanted to zoom out and offer our customers and partners a bit of context for the “why” behind the transaction and what it means for you as we continue to lead the charge in the emerging Talent Intelligence category.  

(Before we dig in, I want to assure all of TalentWall™ and Crosschq's customers and partners that there will be no interruption to any of your current services, rather you should be on the lookout for accelerated new features and capabilities).

Competition for talent has never been so fierce. As companies have migrated to the cloud, we’ve seen an explosion of technologies dedicated to helping add much-needed efficiency to traditional recruiting workflows. The average company now has nine different technologies in their TA stack alone; from Sourcing & CRM to Applicant Tracking, DEI, Video Interviewing, Assessments, Interview Scheduling, and even advances in how we distribute offer letters.

While this has helped save our recruiters and hiring managers countless hours, it hasn’t necessarily improved the quality of the hires we make. Leadership IQ’s report says that 46% of new hires don’t work out and SHRM estimates the cost of a mishire could be as high as an “astronomical” $240,000. With additional headwinds from the  Great Resignation now shifting to threats of a global recession, the pressure on our companies is even greater to move beyond hiring for efficiency. 

I firmly believe hiring teams are doing their level best with the tools they have. Shifting from metrics such as time-to-fill to a quality hire mindset is simply a function of Talent Leaders not having adequate access to the data and analytics necessary to make fully informed decisions.

At Crosschq, we’re driving the next great movement for Talent Leaders:  moving from a model that merely focuses on speed toward a model that focuses on the quality of hires. Organizing the world's talent data and connecting hiring decisions with business outcomes is core to Crosschq’s vision and is the basis of the next great innovation in the talent space - Talent Intelligence. 

Our Talent Intelligence Cloud™ is the foundation for making this a reality and TalentWall™ is a critical piece to accelerating that vision and giving Talent Leaders the tools they have desperately craved and deserved for far too long.

There are 5 Key “Fit” Reasons why TalentWall™ is such a perfect match for Crosschq: Founders, Technology, Users, Partners, and Market.

Reason #1: Founder & Culture Fit

First, and probably most importantly, Crosschq was drawn to the team at TalentWall™, beginning with the founders Jake, Jo, and Nick who in addition to being incredible entrepreneurs, have more than 35 years of direct experience as recruiters. Their simple motto of “For Recruiters, By Recruiters” resonates through everything they do from product development to caring for and intensely listening to their customers and users. Every other member of their team we met represented the same customer commitment and vision and left a lasting impression on us.  

Why this is good for Crosschq’s customers & partners

Too often the work tech industry brings products to market created by those who haven't really been in the trenches. This can lead to products that may have great features and over-the-top capabilities but fail to meet the mark for what our end users really need. TalentWall™ will help ensure that Crosschq always keeps the real needs of Talent Leaders front and center in our innovation.

Reason #2: Technology Fit

The TalentWall™ platform offers highly complementary capabilities to Crosschq's current tech stack. It fills a need that was on our roadmap, having been requested by many of our existing customers. Their core product, “The Wall” is the top-rated pipeline visualization tool in the market. And, their executive dashboards offer recruiters and hiring managers unprecedented access to analytics that were previously very challenging to access out of the ATS. In addition, their product roadmap includes exciting workforce planning solutions that will be a key piece in our quest to provide a complete end-to-end solution.

Why this is good for Crosschq’s customers & partners

Once our technical migration is complete, you will be able to use one integrated data platform to complement your ATS and enrich each step of your recruiting workflow. As you can see in the image below, our combined stack includes capabilities that begin with planning and include tools for sourcing, pipeline management, assessments, and closed-loop new hire engagement. Connecting all of this with an integrated Quality of Hire analytics engine gives you one integrated provider solving many of your current challenges. 

Reason #3: User Fit

TalentWall™ has more than 8,000 active users including recruiters and hiring managers across a wide range of companies including Stripe, Box, Bayada Health, and Lattice among many others. They are also close partners with PeopleTech Partners, a unique organization of innovative talent executives. This incredible user base, combined with Crosschq’s active users and industry-leading 82 NPS rating, represents some of the most progressive, data-driven thought leaders in the talent space.

Why this is good for Crosschq’s customers & partners

Activating the power of this group to help influence our future will fundamentally make us better in every aspect of our business. Our combined user base will continue to have a heavy influence on our roadmap improving capabilities that will be leveraged by all our customers.

Reason #4: Partner Ecosystem Fit

TalentWall™ is a current “Customer Preferred” partner of leading ATS vendor Greenhouse, and has activated integrations with other top platforms including Lever and SmartRecruiters, all three of which are Crosschq partners. Crosschq is also live on additional platforms including Workday, SAP, Jobvite, iCIMS, Bullhorn, Bamboo, and Jazz HR. 

Why this is good for Crosschq’s customers & partners

Partners will now have one vendor offering even more capabilities to their end-users through one seamless integration. Crosschq will be expanding existing shared partnerships and will accelerate bringing the power of TalentWall™ to additional platforms. This will drive better customer retention and immediate direct incremental revenue for our incredible platform ecosystem partners. 

Reason #5: Market Fit

TalentWall™ has impressively established product-market fit, having grown more than  350% in the last 12 months. Their success is directly attributable to tapping into the same vein as Crosschq, which is solving the data needs of our Talent Leaders. This theme is validated by the report below from PWC. In their 2022 HR Tech Report, the top challenges HR leaders have identified are around data analytics and recruiting. 

Why this is good for Crosschq’s customers & partners

The merging of the Crosschq and TalentWall™ platforms will directly address the top two pain points of HR leaders: lack of HR insights/data analytics and optimizing recruiting. Our merger is perfectly timed to solve our customers’ biggest needs, today.

Summary

Leading work-tech analyst George LaRoque made the following observation on our acquisition: "Our research shows that in today's hyper-competitive hiring market, businesses want a balance of fast, efficient hiring with data and insights that help them make the best hiring decisions with minimal bias at each step of the hiring process. The kind of data and insights that Crosschq can provide combined with a visual pipeline management solution like TalentWall™ provide a strong foundation for employers to reach that goal." 

I want to personally thank our customers, partners, and investors for all of your support and want to assure you that we will remain laser-focused on innovation that solves your biggest challenges for today and the future. Please join me in welcoming the TalentWall™ team into our family. We are excited to innovate together to build the Talent Intelligence market.

Mike Fitzsimmons, CEO | Crosschq

Please check us out at www.crosschq.com if you want to learn more and see our combined solutions in action.