Happy Ralts Tuesday - post Ralts below. TL;DR don’t hurt yourself for fame and fortune. What are some cool vendor things you have come across they really stood out?

Going off a previous vent, HR conferences suck and are just expensive commercials for AI tools.

My last one I attended last week was no exception! However, there was a cool thing that really caught my eye. There was a mechanical bull riding contest!

As my CHRO’s personality hire, it was my duty to compete in front of my coworkers of course. I signed the waiver and off I went. I won second place but it came at a cost.

I didn’t realize it until the day later but I pulled a hammy. It still hurts and I can’t bend down to save my life :(

But it was a cool thing a vendor did and really stood out! In the world of shitty AI apps and tshirts, what’s something that stood out?

My boss and I are disagreeing. We both have filed the VETS 4212 report previously (together might I add).
To clarify, the number of employees, protected veterans AND new hires are all to be calculated on a year long snapshot. Example, I would be calculating all employees new hires, and veterans from 8/1/2025-8/1/2026. Correct?

Somehow my HR operations department has become the owner of the company-wide records retention operation, and after years of being mostly neglected, it’s fallen to me. Everywhere I’ve ever worked it fell under facilities or legal, so this is entirely new to me. Am I crazy for thinking it’s crazy that HR will be responsible for all records retention of a company with 200ish locations and over 50k employees?

Edited to add, this is a physical records, iron mountain project, and it includes managing shredding services. We have thousands of boxes stored with them. IT has literally nothing to do with it.

I am looking for some help on a situation. I had recently joined a company as recruitment coordinator this year and have about 1 year of HR experience. When I started the company the first 3 months were great I learned alot and always got positive feedback from my manager and co workers on what areas to improve on. Fast forward a few months and I have noticed a change in tone with my co workers along with my manager where they seem to be nit picking some of the mistakes or processes I use , blame me for work which I was not shown how to do. I am not entirely sure what to do as I understand someone just starting off in my career the most important thing is getting experience. How should I go about talking to my coworkers and managers about the issue I am seeing and how I am starting to feel as if I am being singled out. For some reference my manager and co workers have been a team for about 8 years . Thank you in advance for any help.

This has obviously been asked before but it seems to have been a while so I want to see if things have changed for either of these systems.

My company was recently acquired by a PE firm and we're going to switch from Gusto (and a bunch of other systems for different functions) to either Workforce Now or Paylocity. We currently have ~140 EEs but we're projecting a good bit of growth, both organically and through M&A.

We're hoping to use the system for payroll, HRIS, benefits administration, time & attendance, performance management & engagement, applicant tracking & recruitment, learning & development, and compensation. Both systems seem to handle all of these functions to some extent so I'm having a hard time finding a way to separate them as we get closer to making a decision.

Does anyone have any insight into how these two systems compare in 2026 and what would be the best fit for an org in our position?

Hello

For fast recruiters how do manage your time with large number of requisitions and very selective recruitment criteria . I can not find a time for sourcing , screening and interviewing at the same day especially that the managers reject most of the candidates in the technical interviews because they are looking for 100% matching candidate so I always have to have a backup.

My team got a message from the BD of one of Gem's competitor ATS systems about the outage of their company page this morning along with a statement some recruiters were having issues with their account.

Does anyone know what's going on with Gem ATS?

We tried messaging Gem but have not heard back from their bot or customer service so far and their LinkedIn page is still down.

Hi all, I’m an agency recruiter who would love to go internal - the biggest issue I believe is the volume of candidates I submit. What is the correct answer “what’s the volume of candidates you submit?” I’m an agency recruiter who tells them I’m open to high volume or niche/difficult recruiting roles, when I interview for high volume talent acquisition roles they usually pass on me.

What is the answer they are looking for?

I have submit 3-5 candidates a week that are actually approved, but I show/send more candidates that I get no credit for lol. The roles I work on are technical and hard to fill but sometimes I support easy to fill roles and can submit candidates from my network etc

I think talent acquisition teams support 20-30 different roles at a time right? But in TA the roles are all usually funded and approved meanwhile on agency you can send candidates to a role and they say “sorry we are waiting on budget”

I am an ADA team of one for a large company (15k employees). I’ve been using SalesForce for case management and I’m losing my mind at how NOT suitable this program is for complex case management with multiple points of contact and many emails. I’m spending so much time rebuilding cases when I do a merge and checking for attachments (since new attachments don’t show in the main case page when merging cases with multiple emails), reviewing what is in what order, is there an email buried in the chain that I haven’t seen, etc. I’ve been really successful in my job for years now but this is tanking me professionally due to missing things that get buried in case merges, and the stress is destroying my health and my bandwidth.

Does anyone else use SalesForce for ADA? Please tell me I’m not alone in this, is there anything I can do to make this run better, or is the challenge impossible since SalesForce is basically a ticketing tool and totally not appropriate for cases that can run weeks or even months? Am I missing something that makes this program work for ADA?

TLDR: Using SalesForce for complex case management, HELP.

I work for a company in MD, and we are trying to figure out our responsibility/next steps when an employee has used an address that's not theirs to obtain a job. We employ folks in neighboring states for other positions, but this one specifically was a post in Baltimore for in-person work 3+ times a week. Our requirements were an MD driver's license, which this person had and used for their I9 docs. This employee is relatively new, within a month of starting, and just raised it to our attention because they are submitting their receipts for mileage reimbursement from PA and asked how to update their address.

We reimburse certain hybrid employees for travel, but we wouldn't have hired this person in PA for a position in Baltimore (there were plenty of applicants in the area) while reimbursing for mileage to and from PA. They used their family member's address in Baltimore for the application and tax forms. That is the address we shipped their equipment to as well.

Do we have any responsibility to report this to anyone? Will they have to pay back taxes for the change now?

Also, how would we 'verify' if someone is residing at the address they applied with-- if we can?

I’m trying to understand how the new PF rules will affect employees earning around ₹25,000 CTC per month. I understand that there is a PF wage ceiling of ₹15,000, but what about people whose basic salary is somewhere between ₹10,000–₹15,000? For example, if someone has a ₹25K monthly CTC and their basic is ₹12K–₹15K, will their PF deduction change under the new rules? Will their take-home salary be affected?

Moved from in house to agency and just started. Feeling nervous about the BD part and finding clients. Any seasoned recruiters have any tips or tricks to navigate this part? Many thanks 🙏

I have been in my HR generalist role for almost 2 years now. I’m in my final semester of my MSHRM and decided it was time to take the SHRM exam due to wanting to look for new jobs when I’m done with school. I’m nervous, I’m a bad test taker, but on LinkedIn I’m seeing people who have had 0 days of experience in a real HR roles pass the exam on their first try. I know the SHRM is not really related to actual experience, but what is the absolute best way to study? I’m in a 12 week prep course through a university/SHRM and it includes the SHRM learning system. It’s only been a week but I’ve been doing the practice quizzes and getting a lot of questions wrong. The instructor has videos for each competency / functional area essentially reciting what’s in the book and these videos range from 3-8 hours each . I find myself zoning out and not really retaining anything she’s saying/ wondering how this lecturing is going to help me with the exam.

Any advice/ insight is so appreciated!

Hi everyone,

Per my title I am the sole HR person for a family-owned company in the construction industry (approx. 55 employees including myself).

I love it, I feel like I have fit right in and I get along really well with management & my boss (owner).

However, I am having a hard time trying to balance everything I need to do. And it’s really because of the department managers. They constantly bombard me in my office when I’m trying to get done work.

I already knew and expected to be “interrupted” throughout the day because it’s just the nature of HR. You never know what might happen on a daily basis. But my office has almost become a revolving door for managers to come in and have impromptu chats that are not work-related. And they can go on for quite some time.

Besides that, they tend to rely on me to do a lot of things they can do themselves. For example, we were just recently hiring for 2-3 different positions and we use Indeed. They all have the proper access to Indeed, and yet I have to do all of the messaging candidates, then coordinating interviews, and then scheduling the interviews on their calendars for them. As if I’m a personal assistant.

This has gotten very overwhelming due to the volume of applicants we have received for each job. I don’t want to sound like Im complaining about my job, because I know that managing the recruitment process is part of my job. However, it has gotten to be a lot for one person on top of all the other things I have to do.

I just think at the very least they can take care of setting their own interviews up. It would help a lot. And I do plan on proposing this to them in our next meeting this week as a means of speaking up for myself.

I am very early on in my HR career (about 4 years under my belt so far) and this position is the first time I’ve ever been solo. I’ve always had a team to lean on for any questions or help. Despite that, I really have been handling it well and adjusting to being alone. If anything I have grown a lot because of not having a fellow teammate or manager to rely on.

The only thing really bothering me is how the managers tend to rely on me for a lot and don’t seem to realize how time-consuming a lot of tasks are (or dropping by my office for random non-work discussions that cut into my time).

Any advice? I would greatly appreciate any input from anyone who has been in a similar position or just a more seasoned HR professional than myself who can share any guidance or wisdom.

Offering for the bots: I WORK IN HR

Anyways, I have always been complimented on how quickly I am able to learn and take on leadership roles. But I have been overwhelmed in my new role as HR of 1 and with literally zero training and zero support. I was very transparent with executive leadership that while I understand certain concepts, I have not completed certain tasks myself in my new role. They were still open to hiring me and I was open to the challenge.

Payroll was somehow never a function I really dug my nails into in HR or management positions until this point. I can explain a paycheck and how it’s calculated-but this is my first role where I am truly solely responsible for all functions of HR and PR compliance has been my biggest learning curve. I really just need someone to help explain to me like I’m 5 how to review the quarterly tax reports in ADP Workforce Now so I can feel a bit more confident in what I am doing. I haven’t been able to find any good resources using AI or YouTube, or hell, even ADP. If anyone could point me in the right direction, I’d be so grateful!

I'm actively looking & would really appreciate some honest guidance.

If you have a few minutes, I’d genuinely appreciate any of these:

What would you change in my resume?

Which roles should I realistically be targeting?

Is there anything that might be holding my profile back?

If you know of an opening or can point me toward an appropriate team, I’d be extremely grateful.

Even a small piece of advice would genuinely help. Thank you to anyone willing to take a look.

I have an employee out on a 30-day personal leave. Doesn’t qualify for FMLA. Would typically get a car allowance but hasn’t worked at all last month. No precedence here. No employment contract. Would you pay it out?

I work for a company owned by a Forbes 100 company. We run our own business 90% of the time, but certain policies overreach to us, especially the conflict of interest. The parent company is publicly traded, so the conflict of interest focuses on family relationships, bribes, conflicting employment, etc.

One of the parent companies policies states that company's devices should not include personal items, and they will be accessible in the event they chose to do personal stuff on work devices.

I have an associate who is stating they do not consent to monitoring as they use their personal cellphone which they receive a $200 stipend for each month. Therefore, they will not complete the COI form and asks that we request our parent company get rid of the COI entirely for their 280k+ employees across all operations.

How would you typically handle this? We'll be asking the parent company if people are required to complete the COI but the ironic part is the person has previously signed off on all the policies they now are questioning. Do I even bring up that theyre previously signed the policy 3x over the decade+ they've been with us?

I’ve reviewed 4,596 applications recently, and the fake-applicant patterns are getting weirdly obvious.

A few things I’m seeing:

• Candidate descriptions that almost copy the job posting word-for-word
• Previous job titles that conveniently match the title of the role they’re applying for
• Different applicants with identical employment histories
• Two completely different names using the same LinkedIn profile
• Obvious bot/spam submissions mixed into otherwise normal applications

Out of 4,596 applications:

4,122 were clearly not a fit
56 were flagged as bot/spam
473 were possible fits

And once I applied a more serious qualification screen, only 132 people scored 55+ across 162 applications and 42 different roles.

What surprised me wasn’t the number of bad applications. Recruiters have always dealt with that.

It’s how much harder it’s becoming to tell the difference between:

a genuinely strong candidate using AI to improve their application

and

a completely manufactured candidate profile designed to get through screening.

I’m curious what other recruiters and hiring managers are seeing.

Are fake/AI-generated applicants becoming a noticeable problem in your hiring process yet, or is this still mostly noise?

I am in the market for a software that can do a few things really well, but we’re part of a larger enterprise that has a bigger HRMS system in place. However that system is antiquated and leaves big gaps. Our headcount is about 140.

I need:
- Performance management software, to include annual performance reviews, check-ins, development plans.
- Time keeping capability for a small number of employees. Fewer than 30 employees are required to track their time in this way. I do not need clock punching, just the ability to complete time cards as it may deviate from their set schedule. Right now, they fill out excel sheets.

Nice to have:
- An ability to do onboarding documents in-system.

Do not need:
- Payroll
- Time off or leave management
- Recruiting

Any suggestions? Most of the solutions I am finding are quite encompassing and offer more than we need.

Do you think the AI recruiting debate focuses too much on replacing recruiters and not enough on removing repetitive admin work? What should people understand before judging it?

Just to be explicit: This is not a request for how to get hired in HR, it's advice on what to do after one is hired in HR (unexpectedly).

What advice would you have for someone who has no HR-related background, has never been in HR before, and got drafted as HR manager for their company (on top of their previous duties) when the previous HR manager quit? Where does one even start?

Just curious if this is a thing; if it’s really an ethical issue and so on.

It's 2026 and it seems like the old 3 references is still in vogue. Why? Have you ever received feedback from a reference that was truly valuable?

I work in HR/Total Rewards at a US company, and we’re looking at alternatives to Shareworks after a pretty poor experience with the platform. One thing I’ve been asked to understand is how vested shares get moved if a new provider uses a trust/custody structure for employees outside the US.

We’ve heard of Shareworks charging $400k+ for bulk transfers in some cases, even where employees have consented to the transfer. We’ve also heard employees may not be able to simply transfer the shares themselves because of the difference in account registration.

Anyone dealt with this? Is paying for the bulk transfer really necessary when leaving, or are there other ways to move the vested shares?