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Q. How much is the 3 year tuition at Stanford Law?Cost of Attendance | Stanford Law SchoolTuition Top Law SchoolsPriciest Public Law SchoolsStanford Law School Financial Aid7 Ways to Figure If Going to Law School Is Worth It (Bankrate)Is Going to Law School Worth It? Depends on Where (Investopedia) - Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2015 had the top 10% of lawyers earning more than $187,200. All told, it is not uncommon for a law school graduate to enter the working world with a net worth of negative $250,000. Ideally, recent graduates should earn yearly salaries equal to or greater than their total student debt. This level of pay usually allows for paying off student loans within 10 years without materially affecting a person's lifestyle.Cost of Attendance | Stanford Law SchoolTuitionTuition for 2016-17 totals $56,079. Tuition is due in October, January, and April.Cost of LivingFor single students, room and board in university residences costs approximately $23,205 for the 2016-17school year. Required books, if purchased new, cost about $1,530 a year. Local costs for transportation, clothing, recreation, and the like tend to vary. Most single students find they need to budget a total of at least $88,169 for the school year.Laptop ComputersStudents are required to have laptop computers and are advised to have a printer and modem, as well. In addition to using the laptop to write papers and create spreadsheets, students will have the opportunity to take examinations on laptops and will receive administrative notices only via electronic mail. Students may purchase a laptop from the Stanford Bookstore through a special program with the law school. Students who must purchase a laptop to meet this requirement are eligible to have their financial aid budgets increased by as much as $3,300. Only specific computers meet the needs of the law school’s computing systems.Do the math!JD Financial Support | Stanford Law SchoolFinancial Aid Yellow Ribbon Program FormsLoan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP)CSS Profile ApplicationFree Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)Financial AidStanford Law offers financial aid is to assist students who would otherwise be unable to pursue a legal education at SLS. Approximately 78 percent of the student body receives a tuition fellowship or loan assistance, with the average fellowship portion per recipient totaling about $23,000 annually. Aid is awarded on the basis of demonstrated need and is provided through a combination of tuition fellowships, government guaranteed loans and private loans.To apply for financial aid, please complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and the CSS Profile application. The FAFSA should be completed as soon as possible after January 1. A service of the U.S. Department of Education, FAFSA is free to all applicants. Please note that the Title IV School Code for Stanford Law School is E00341 and our CSS Profile code is 7832. To receive an aid package prior to the May 1 admissions response deadline, you must complete both applications by March 15, 2017.In general, the financial award system operates as follows:Each year the school determines a standard budget to cover basic costs (tuition plus living expenses).Each student’s need is calculated by subtracting reported resources from the standard budget. These resources include one–third of reported assets; 57% of summer gross earnings over $6,000; assumed earnings of spouse (if married); and an imputed parental contribution (based on the CSS Profile analysis) if the student is dependent.Each student is then expected to borrow or otherwise raise a portion of this need, with the remainder being an outright grant, subject to a limit of full tuition.Financial aid is evaluated annually. Therefore, one cannot be guaranteed the same level of aid over three years of attendance.Stanford Law School uses an age-based test to determine the dependency percentage from your parent contribution. Unless you are 29 years of age as of September 1, financial resource information from your parents must be submitted on the CSS Profile application. Parental information is never required on the FAFSAfor graduate students.Under our policy guidelines, the following rules apply:If you are 25 or younger as of September 1, we will take into consideration the full extent of our calculated parental contribution when determining your eligibility for our need-based scholarship assistance.If you are 26 as of September 1, we will protect 25% of your calculated parental contribution and use only 75% of that contribution when determining your eligibility for our need-based scholarship assistance.If you are 27 as of September 1, we will protect 50% of your calculated parental contribution and use only 50% of that contribution when determining your eligibility for our need-based scholarship assistance.If you are 28 as of September 1, we will protect 75% of your calculated parental contribution and use only 25% of that contribution when determining your eligibility for our need-based scholarship assistance.If you are 29 as of September 1, no parental resources are considered when determining your eligibility for our need-based scholarship assistance. Therefore, you need not submit any parental financial information to CSS Profile.Loans available to law students come primarily from three governmental programs: Federal Perkins Loans, Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford Loans, and Federal Direct Graduate Plus Loans. All graduate and professional students are independent for purposes of determining federal loan eligibility.Additional financial aid information is provided in the School’s Financial Aid Handbook.2016-17 FINANCIAL AID HANDBOOKYellow Ribbon ProgramThe Post-9/11 GI Bill, also known as Chapter 33, is the most commonly used VA educational benefits program at Stanford. This program provides funding for tuition, required fees, books, and housing. The level of a qualifying veteran’s Chapter 33 benefits is determined by the length of military service since 9/11/2001. For the 2016-17 academic year, the base benefit for tuition and fees is capped at $21,970.If you qualify for Chapter 33 benefits at the 100% level, you will receive additional funding through the Yellow Ribbon Program. Under this program, Stanford Law provides an annual contribution to supplement the Chapter 33 base tuition benefit. The VA matches Stanford’s Yellow Ribbon contribution. For the 2016-17 academic year, Stanford Law’s annual Yellow Ribbon contribution for students will be 50% of the remaining tuition and fees with the VA providing the other 50% — together covering the full costs of tuition and fees.Most VA educational benefit programs pay benefits directly to students on a monthly basis. However, under the Post-9/11 GI Bill (Chapter 33), the VA sends tuition and fees benefits to Stanford, where the Central Financial Aid Office is responsible for applying the funds to the student account (university bill). Chapter 33 books and housing benefits are sent directly to students monthly. You may need to apply your housing benefits to the university bill to pay for on-campus room and board.FormsThe following forms will be provided by the Office of Financial Aid as necessary but are available here if additional copies are needed:Continuing Student Financial Aid Supplement Form 2016-17Loan Memo 2016-2017Loan Comparison Chart 2016-2017Loan Request Form 2016-2017Expense Budget 2016-17Due to the nature of federal, state, and institutional guidelines, this information is subject to change without notice.Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP)For graduates who take low-paying public interest jobs and have substantial educational debt, Stanford Law School offers the Miles and Nancy Rubin Loan Repayment Assistance Program — the most generous loan relief program in the country — along with a variety of other fellowships. Stanford Law was one of the first law schools in the country to launch such a program, setting the standard for schools that have followed our lead. Stanford Law makes loans to eligible applicants to help meet education loan payments. Loans made by Stanford through this program will be forgiven (up to 100 percent) depending on verification of participant income using federal tax returns. Visit the LRAP section of this site for additional information.7 Ways to Figure If Going to Law School Is Worth ItYour school's reputation"For the group of very select law schools at the top, the employment prospects are terrific," says Steven Harper, a former attorney and author of "The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis." "Life can look awfully good, and it will be awfully good for the vast, vast majority of those people, but that's maybe 10 percent out of 200 law schools."There's a sharp discrepancy in job prospects between first- and lower-tier schools. When comparing U.S. News and World Report's top 20 law schools with institutions that landed in the 126-to-146 ranking range, students attending upper-echelon institutions were nearly twice as likely to hold full-time, long-term law jobs as their lower-tier counterparts. Students attending lower-tier schools were also about 2.5 times more likely to be underemployed.The Ivy League isn't the only ticket to a post-graduate job, says Kyle McEntee, executive director of Law School Transparency, an organization that helps students with the decision to attend law school, and provides employment and underemployment data on law institutions nationwide. Schools with a solid local reputation and strong ties to the community can be just as effective at finding work in that area.Your rankRegardless where you attend, your performance will be a factor for future employers. A study published last year in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies shows that grades are "the most important predictor of career success," even more so than your school's reputation. The study, authored by law professors at UCLA and the University of Arizona, states that "... it is well known that judges care greatly about grades in choosing their clerks, professors care about grades in choosing their research assistants, and many employers insist on good grades in choosing new hires."Harper says that students who can stay above the bottom 25th percentile in GPA have the best shot at landing a job that pays enough to repay student loans."You have to be really honest and realistic with yourself about 'how well am I going to stack up against my peers?'" he says. "You have a very hard time convincing anybody, I think, who's entering law school that they'll ever wind up below the median, much less below the 25th percentile in anything, whether it's practicing law or something else, but guess what? That's just mathematics. There's an honest self-reflection that has to happen."Your specialtySome legal fields are hotter than others, which may explain why schools like New York University are changing their curricula to focus more on specializations. A study by Robert Half Legal of 200 attorneys in hiring positions revealed that litigation, business, commercial and health care law are expected to offer the greatest number of jobs.Leslie Levin, associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Connecticut School of Law, says that students can increase their marketability by having a clear idea of the law field they'd like to practice and by taking relevant courses and pursuing externship opportunities."Focusing on an area in which the student would like to practice and then positioning him or herself as somebody (who) is knowledgeable in that area will increase their employability," she says. "So, for example, if somebody gets a tax certificate, they are going to be more appealing if they want to go to a firm or the government and practice tax than somebody else."Summer associate gigs help, too. More than 90 percent of law students who held summer associate positions in 2012 were offered entry-level positions after graduation, reports the National Association for Law Placement.Your expectations"(Students) should think foremost on why they want to be a lawyer," says Andrew J. McClurg, author of "1L of a Ride: A Well-Traveled Professor's Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School." "If their only reason was to make a whole lot of money, that was never a good reason, even when the economy was great."Many students have unrealistic expectations about post-law school life and few have a clear picture of the daily lives of practicing attorneys, says Levin. Some don't know that they may not use their J.D. A survey by the NALP shows that 1 in 5 2012 graduates worked in a nonlegal profession or held jobs where a degree might have been an advantage or requirement, but passage of the bar was not required.The best way to understand what attorneys do is by observing them first-hand, she says."Even in college, people often will get part-time jobs in law firms. They can volunteer for organizations where lawyers are working and doing public interest work. They should talk to lawyers; if they know lawyers, they can shadow lawyers," she says. "The one thing they shouldn't do is assume that what they are seeing is the entire range of what lawyers do."Your connectionsGetting into a good school and acing your classes is only half the battle. The law grads who are getting jobs are the ones who have spent time hobnobbing with future employers, says McClurg."Joining student organizations and going to bar functions and putting yourself out there and making connections, other than your academic record, that's really one of the only things you can do" to increase your marketability, he says.That also means remembering that you may not be able to get a job in your first choice of legal field, says Blair Gould, a third-year law student at Wayne State University who's primarily interested in corporate and real estate law but is also gaining litigation experience."People need to continuously be diversifying their legal skill set," he says. "Take advantage of any kind of connections you can make and join any civic or social organization you can because all of those things will come into play eventually. You never know what's going to happen in the future."Your financial prospectsNearly 9 out of 10 third-year law students advise those considering law school to consider an institution's financial aid package before enrolling, reports Kaplan. That's because how much you borrow will largely determine where you work after graduation.Median starting salaries at law firms clock in at $90,000 per year -- a 28 percent drop since 2008 -- but not every lawyer is bringing home the big bucks. Median salaries at public interest organizations hovered at $44,600 annually, while judicial clerks and government employees earned $52,000. That's barely enough to cover the $558 monthly student loan payments public law students face if they borrow the average $76,000 in loans at an 8 percent interest rate over a 30-year period. On the flip side, the median salary at large firms is $160,000.The good news is that more than 100 law schools offer loan assistance and forgiveness incentives, reports Equal Justice Works, and public interest workers may be eligible for accelerated federal loan forgiveness. Scholarships also abound, but read the fine print, warns McEntee."Oftentimes scholarships come with stipulations, and stipulations are difficulties," he says.Your goalsIf working in the legal profession is what you want to do for all the right reasons, debt and employability statistics shouldn't derail you, but they should be a consideration, says Levin. To keep financial figures in check, Levin recommends that students consider lower-cost state schools or attend law school part time. They should also do some serious research to ensure they understand what attorneys do, the variety of contexts in which they work and whether they would be a good match for the legal profession."If (being an attorney) is really what makes you happy, it may take longer to pay off the debt, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it," she says. "(Whether law school pays off) really depends on what you hope to get out of your law degree and what you want to do with your life."Read more: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/college-finance/going-to-law-school-worth-it-1.aspx#ixzz4XVp2B6s2Follow us: @Bankrate on Twitter | Bankrate on FacebookIs Going to Law School Worth It? Depends on WhereBy Greg DePersio | Updated January 26, 2017 — 6:00 AM ESTA 2015 study by the Access Group Center for Research and Policy Analysis found that only one in five people who graduated from law school between 2010 and 2015 strongly agreed that obtaining a law degree was worth the cost. Perhaps more troubling, only 38% of law school graduates, down from 56% between 2000 and 2009, described themselves as having a good job after graduation.With four out of five recent law school graduates at least somewhat regretting their decision to attend – and six out of 10 failing to find a good job after graduating – it makes sense to examine whether going to law school is still worth it in 2017. Keeping in mind the high tuition costs, interest rates and potential salaries, another good metric to consider would be its ROI (return on investment), calculated as its salary-to-debt ratio in a new study by online lender SoFi.Law School CostsGoing to law school full-time requires a three-year commitment, and the average tuition and fees for just one of those years at an American Bar Association-accredited institution often exceeds $40,000. This cost does not include rent, food, transportation and other living expenses. As the law school workload does not permit most students to hold jobs, student loans represent the most common method of paying these costs. Consequently, the average law school graduate in 2015 took on over $140,000 in student debt to obtain his or her degree.For many students, student loan debt accumulates on top of debt they already carry from undergraduate school. Members of the class of 2016 graduated college with over $37,000 in student debt on average. While most lenders allow the deferment of undergraduate loan payments while attending law school, any unsubsidized portion of such debt continues to accrue interest. All told, it is not uncommon for a law school graduate to enter the working world with a net worth of negative $250,000.Expected SalaryTaking on such debt might be a smart investment if a law degree provided reasonable assurance of a high-paying job. Ideally, recent graduates should earn yearly salaries equal to or greater than their total student debt. This level of pay usually allows for paying off student loans within 10 years without materially affecting a person's lifestyle.Stories abound, however, of law school graduates struggling to find any sort of legal job, much less one that enables the repayment of student debt in a timely manner. The New York Times revealed in 2015 that more than 20% of graduates from the class of 2010 held jobs that did not require law degrees. Only 40% worked in law firms, compared to 60% from the class of 2000. The remainder operated solo practices, with varying degrees of success, or performed contract work.The SoFi study, which incorporates data from student-loan refinancing applications between Jan. 2014 and Dec. 2016, shows that some schools do better than others when it comes to both job placements and salaries. Looking at students three years out of law school, Cornell University, Columbia University and New York University take the top three spots in the SoFi study with average salary paid in excess of $177,000. Consider that the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2015 had the top 10% of lawyers earning more than $187,200.For the Class of 2015, Columbia University saw 401 out of its 413 graduates find full time jobs; at New York University the numbers were 474 of 485. In some cases, of course, students may choose to put off those high-money jobs for prestigious public service spots: In 2015, 99 of 199 Yale Law School graduates were employed in clerkships, which paid a median salary of $69,000 (Yale ranks 8th on the SoFi list for salaries).Graduates of second-tier programs often settle for work outside of top law firms, where the pay is much lower. The 2015 median pay for law school graduates across the board was only $64,800. Idealistic young attorneys who choose public service fare even worse financially. Entry-level district attorneys earn a median pay of $37,000; public defenders do slightly better at $40,000.Schools with the Best Salary-to-Debt RatioEven new lawyers who land good jobs rarely receive paychecks commensurate with their debt levels. The SoFi analysis also ranks law schools based on which offer the best value defined by their salary-to-debt ratio. That figure is an indication of how much more your potential salary could exceed your potential debt and help make a more informed decision about whether law school is worth it.Brigham Young University takes the number-one spot: With students expecting an average salary of $108,000 and holding an average debt just below $65,000, the school has an impressive 1.7x salary-to-debt ratio, making it a a good value-for-money bet. University of Texas at Austin, comes in second with the ratio at 1.4x on the back of lower debt burden thanks to its relatively cheaper tuition. Yale Law School ranks third – not just because of higher salaries graduates get compared to the top two on this list ($177,771; BYU is $64,873 and UT, $147,44), but also because of its generosity with financial aid.Opting for schools that fare poorly on this metric could cost you. Take for example, Florida Coastal School of Law, which ranked lowest on the SoFi ROI list, with a salary-to-debt ratio of 0.5x. Let's break down the numbers: The school's tuition, $44,000, is at par with some of the top schools in the country. Students graduate with $158,427 in debt (considerably higher than the $123,793 Yale grads have), but the average annual salary for graduates is only $84,664.Other ConsiderationsThe numbers do not consider the financial risk of being a law school dropout. The first-year law school attrition rate nationwide is nearly 7%. A handful of law schools lost over 30% of their first-year students in 2015. Enrolling in law school but failing to finish offers no greater marketability than a bachelor's degree. It does, however, substantially add to a person's debt load.All told, the decision to attend law school is one that should be approached with great consideration. Indeed, 1% of attorneys have successful, high-paying careers. Supply and demand dynamics, however, have changed considerably since the 1980s, with fewer high-paying, entry-level jobs and many more law school graduates chasing those jobs. Pile on tuition costs – which, for decades, have risen at three times the inflation rate – and going to law school is not the financial no-brainer that it once was. For more on the choice, see Career Advice: Accounting vs. Law and Career Advice: Investment Banking vs. Law.Read more: Is Going to Law School Worth It Anymore? | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/082416/going-law-school-worth-it-anymore.asp#ixzz4XVq64gcoFollow us: Investopedia on Facebook

The Top 10 HR Technology and Recruiting Tools of 2017.As the 2017 HR Technology Conference gets ready to kick off next week in Chicago, it should come as no surprise that the industry’s biggest trade show expects to get even bigger, with the over 400 established players and emerging products alike crammed into McCormick Place, transforming the trade show floor (for a couple of days, anyway) into the epicenter of the entire ecosystem.While the number of sponsors and exhibitors at this edition of #HRTechConf represents a 30% increase over last year’s massive event, organizers remain unable to keep pace with the demands of a boom market, quickly selling out of the space necessary to accommodate the rapidly evolving and constantly expanding HR Technology landscape.Boom or Bust: What the Future Holds for HR Technology.· The end of HR Technology as an independent category, fortunately, isn’t necessarily an inevitability – just for the companies who have been around long enough to screw things up so badly in the first place. Hiring isn’t broken, but most of the software and solutions required to do it well sure as hell are.· We still can’t fix employee engagement and can’t shut up about diversity, yet the billions we spend on solving these problems every year has somehow actually made both problems worse, with disengagement and workforce diversity both hitting record lows in 2016.· And don’t even get me started on employer brand or candidate experience, which are really just inbound marketing and UI/UX disguised as distinct concepts for the point of selling solutions to categories that aren’t really problems products can fix in the first place, although your current providers are likely responsible for breaking them to begin with.· That is why this year, we’re look past the biggest booths and flashiest events in Chicago to the emerging companies and killer products that aren’t just great HR Technologies, but great technologies, period.The Top 10 HR Technologies and Recruiting Tools to Watch in 2016 (and Beyond).· We admit that this is completely subjective and arbitrary, but unlike traditional analyst firms, we own that fact – but the difference between these biz dev plays posing as some sort of legitimate award is that we’ll try to explain our reasons why they’re included.· In no case is the reason for their inclusion because these companies pay Recruiting Daily money for marketing services or equity for advisory work. Hell, in those cases, it’s actually in spite of that fact, mostly.· Similarly, we’re trying not to duplicate any of the companies we’ve previously recognized in years past, including Salesforce for HR, Glassdoor and Oculus, even though those entries remain very much worth watching, although their previous inclusion preempted their addition to this year’s list. If you don’t know, now you know. And apparently our lawyers are happy, too.· Next week, we’ll close out our list of the top 10 Talent Technologies for 2017, which includes some of the most exciting emerging technologies and startup solutions poised to disrupt the HR Technology market and reinvent the HR status quo that aren’t necessarily on every employer’s radar – yet.· We’ve tried to balance these out with some of the bigger players making the biggest impact on HR Technology today, too – although please note that all companies listed are all closely held and VC backed as a baseline for inclusion (and to minimize our liability, naturally).10. Jobvite.· Jobvitejobvite isn’t the sexiest or most cutting edge ATS, but it’s certainly one of the most reliable and flexible solutions out there capable of serving multinational enterprises and SMBs alike – the product’s scalability, in fact, is one of its primary selling points.· This, unlike the “Frankensuites” being built by competitors, is being done pretty much all organically off of a native code base rather than through acquisitions, which bodes well for its long term sustainability and viability, considering it’s not overly reliant on integrations or third party data to deliver on stuff like CRM and advanced analytics employers in its move up from the mid-market.· This also means that while it might face increased competition from emerging ATS providers like Greenhouse and Lever, it’s proven that not only can it scale, but also that it’s probably not going away anytime soon in an acquisition or other exit event. Not so for the startups (one hopes).· I was fortunate enough to have the chance to get a sneak peek at some of the new features and capabilities Jobvite plans on rolling out to users recently, and while you’re probably surprised by their inclusion on this list, if you think you know Jobvite, think again. Jobvite is built to last, and I have no doubt that it’ll be one of the last pure HR Technology players left standing after convergence with consumer technology finishes playing out.· Hell, they’ve survived downturns before, and that they’re more focused on data privacy than on design and more concerned with data security than social media might not make them the slickest solution, but it probably makes one of the safest bets on the market that doesn’t totally suck.· Which is about all any enterprise software buyer could ask these days, TBH.9. SnagAJob.· snagWhile most sourcing and recruiting technologies out there are built around exempt roles requiring some sort of specific expertise, industry experience or niche skill-set, there remains a relative paucity of solutions for hourly, high volume and low skilled positions, despite these constituting the majority of hires made by direct employers every year.· This segment has been historically ignored by most emerging HR Technology plays, which is good news for SnagAJob, which has quietly maneuvered its way into the #5 job board in North America by traffic, and the biggest job board in the country in terms of proprietary listings (the top 4 slots are all held by aggregators – including Indeed and SimplyHired, which are now both owned by corporate parent Recruit Inc. at #1 and #4 last month, respectively).· SnagAJob, like the candidates who use it, probably isn’t the most innovative or flashiest option out there, but it delivers as promised for the manifold multi-unit, multi-franchise type employers out there who at any given time have half a million active job postings on SnagAJob, a number that’s trending upwards, contrary to most every other traditional job board out there on the market.· This growth has not only enabled SnagAJob to raise a staggering $100 million in their most recent round, a Series D, back in February, boosting total investment to $141 million, but also to expand its offerings into the HR Technology space by acquiring PeopleMatter, an ATS provider with a largely duplicative client base, in June.· While PeopleMatters is one of the clunkiest and most archaic options on the ATS market, it still beats the hell out of a help wanted sign and printed job applications, and will see significant improvements in features and functionality now that it shares funding and data on over 70 million hourly workers with one of the fastest growing online recruiting plays in the country.· It also enables SnagAJob to diversify their offerings as both an integrated and standalone solution, which helps create a unique value proposition for a very specific, very lucrative and largely ignored segment of the population.· The other good news for Snagajob is that due to its target demographic, an economic downturn or hiring slowdown would probably not represent an adverse impact on overall business. This makes them one of the most valuable properties in the marketplace, and in an enviable position of being poised to be the next Unicorn to emerge from the HR Technology segment (if their valuation hasn’t already put them in this exclusive and elusive club.8. Portfolium.· portfolium-logoI first ran into Portfolium in April at Collision, a massive emerging technology in New Orleans, where they were chosen as one of three finalists among the 16,000 other startups in the event’s signature competition, proof of my favorite part about this product: it’s simple enough to understand where anyone can get the product and the problem it solves in a 3 minute pitch.· Simply, Portfolium is building an incredibly sophisticated proprietary, fully searchable candidate database with a matching algorithm designed explicitly for college recruiting, and reaches students directly on campus through exclusive partnerships with over 150 Universities.· Through these partnerships, the company offers best-in-class solutions for white-labeling professional networks, digitizing career services centers and automating alumni engagement as free add-ons to their core offering, an expedient way to populate a proprietary, fully searchable database of segmented talent.· These organic solutions are supplemented with integrations with LMS systems like Blackboard and Canvas, social profiles and ATS/HCM providers through an open API. The stack ranked results, of course, are supplemented by data that goes way beyond a resume to uncover candidates that campus recruiting efforts might otherwise have overlooked due to its emphasis on skills and work product instead of employment experience or educational pedigree.· Students can do a better job representing themselves to employers, and employers can start adding sourcing and data methodology to the graduate hiring madness. Talk about a win-win. With enterprise clients like Oracle, Marriott and Qualcomm already on board, and a database of 5 million users and counting, Portfolium seems to have momentum on their side, having completed a successful $5.3 million Series A round in mid-September.· With the market for college recruiting estimated at a whopping $10 billion a year, Portfolium is already stealing major enterprise customers away from the behemoth that is LinkedIn, which seems to have effectively abandoned this market (where it’s been notoriously ineffective) in favor of producing their own career content, effectively leaving that significant source of recruiting spend open for the taking.· TechCrunch, whose coverage of the company referred to Portfolium described them as a “Github” for “employers across a range of industries – not just IT.” While we may have a STEM shortage in college recruiting (which Piazza Careers, which made last year’s list, is hard at work on fixing), for those 95% of us who majored in worthless stuff only to find ourselves deep in student loan debt and with few options, can certainly appreciate.7. InterviewJet.· interviewjetAlmost every entrant in this space, like in so many other industries, aspires to become the “Uber of Talent,” hoping to do for recruiting and retention what Uber did to the taxi industry.· This perpetually pithy product pitch remains more purple squirrel than unicorn largely because companies like Hired and Vettery are spewing venture capital in an attempt to own the entire staffing industry.· InterviewJet, however, seems to recognize the realities of a fragmented and oversaturated staffing and third party solutions space, and that talent acquisition, unlike most other industries, isn’t a winner takes all kind of market.· While Hired, Vettery, RecruitiFi and a handful of other emerging players fight for market share scraps in an attempt to displace or disrupt the staffing industry, InterviewJet seems to be building a business based off of augmenting the existing ecosystem, with fully 40% of their booming client base coming from third party vendors. That represents a pretty damned good proof of concept that InterviewJet works at making placements, TBH.· InterviewJet has a relatively straight forward business model, billing itself as a “members only” platform that’s built on the premise of selectivity over scalability. Instead of try to build up a multi-level marketing scheme disguised as a “recruiting marketplace,” InterviewJet instead delivers a curated list of 10-15 handpicked, high quality candidate directly to members’ inboxes once a week.· There’s no cost to sign up or interview this super slate of highly targeted, highly skilled free agents; once employers are approved as members, all they have to do upon receiving the email is simply clicking on any of the candidates to request an interview. If a candidate accepts that request, InterviewJet then coordinates the calendaring and coordination of those interviews, so hiring managers don’t have to.· Turns out, the key to a better candidate experience is by giving control to the candidates themselves. Employers only have 72 hours to connect with candidates before they’re gone for good. Of course, there’s no obligation to employers – and the good news is if it doesn’t work out within that finite timeframe, there’s always another curated A List waiting in members inboxes the next week.· With over 60% of interview requests by employers accepted, and a nearly perfect placement rate amongst its growing roster of blue chip brands using InterviewJet to drive what can only be described as passive sourcing of active candidates who don’t suck, it’s really like getting the best of both worlds – a retained search firm, but without any upfront costs.· Their pricing model, which eliminates the surprises and variable costs associated with the bullshit “bidding” the competition requires for placing candidates with a flat rate of 15k a placement gives InterviewJet a competitive differentiator that just might be the silver bullet necessary for this product to live up to its potential as a category killer in the future.No matter what, InterviewJet is already a pretty killer product today.6. RAI by Hiring Solved.· raiI’m breaking a couple of rules by including this product on here. The first is that we wouldn’t have duplicate entries from last year’s list of top HR Technology products of 2015 (sorry, Textio, Clinch, Rolepoint and Lever). The second is that I wouldn’t feature any companies in whom I had any sort of financial or equity interest.· The thing is, I’d be remiss to put together a list of top technologies to watch without including RAI, Hiring Solved’s most recent release, which the company describes as “the world’s first artificial intelligence assistant for recruiting.” Which kicks ass.· While in the interests of full disclosure, I do serve on their advisory board, the fact is it’s only fitting to break a few rules for a product that’s doing the same thing to the HR Technology space. Plus, if Fast Company felt it warranted coverage, I’m not going to argue.· RAI represents a dramatic departure from the core HiringSolved platform, as well as a sneak peek at what’s new and what’s next (and what’s even possible) in recruiting and hiring. The end product speaks for itself more eloquently than I ever could. Which is the entire point of RAI, really.5. Kaleo Software.· Kaleo, which integrates directly within your company e-mail, can turn even the most boring software, like Outlook, into a robust enterprise employee communication and collaboration platform by creating a shared repository of employee generated content, insights and information that can be accessed wherever and whenever that institutional knowledge is needed.· These “knowledge networks,” which are curated by internal subject matter experts, are built around questions and answers, positioning Kaleo as sort of a Quora meets Slack meets Sidekick – and the combination of these capabilities proves pretty powerful when they’re part of the same package.4. RolePoint.· RolePoint started as more or less just another point solution provider, albeit one focused on optimizing and maximizing recruiting results specific to the two most common sources of hire: referrals and internal mobility.· Their solutions for these case uses kicked ass, as did their growth rate, install base and word of mouth momentum; doubling down on their investments in these areas would have been a smart investment by any measure, from revenue generation to value creation.· In fact, RolePoint was so successful in selling their point solutions that they hit a brick wall in scaling their business: having to simultaneously deal with a bunch of disparate ATS and HCM integrations, which kind of made implementation a giant pain in the ass.· As difficult as implementing software is, integrating with a legacy point solution can be an even bigger challenge. That’s why, although their referral and mobility offerings are easily best in class, it’s Rolepoint’s “Connect” layer that’s taken this little solution into the HR Tech Big Leagues.· A middleware product, Rolepoint Connect basically sits on top of a company’s core ATS/HCM system (it’s got deep partnerships in place with pretty much any vendor you’d be using), allowing it to not only feed bi-directional data into the system of record simply and seamlessly, but Rolepoint also has preexisting integrations with pretty much every point solution out there, meaning that turning on an integration between your core system and any current or future point solution a plug and play proposition.· Implementations are painful for every employer; being able to turn a product on out of the box, and having every integration already built in and configured within a single solution is far superior (and more cost effective) than the highly manual, highly complex and highly frustrating alternative.· RolePoint feels that pain; after all, it’s what inspired them to build what might just be the first true middleware play in an industry whose tech buying patterns are pretty much the case use for this category’s existence.3. TalentDojo by Qwalify.· People generally ignore the booths outside the confines of an exhibit hall; giving demos when you’ve been given a card table and 5 minutes in between sessions to do them in is an impossible task. Cards are exchanged, swag is given out, badges are scanned, but very little other is every seen of the product other than maybe some generic brochures or a few demo screens.· Not only was there a line forming in the back of the SourceCon lobby for the chance to see TalentDojo in action (sessions be damned), but a handful of recruiting leaders, like Jim Schnyder at PepsiCo or Jim Stroud of Randstad were so excited about the product they walked me over to make sure I demoed it.· These people are not only world class sourcers and extremely advanced technologists, but are also really hard to impress with anything that doesn’t involve building white label search engines on the black web or using Boolean strings to find archived org charts or random geeky stuff like that. I thought, awesome, here comes another idiot savant ready to talk to me about how to workaround firewalls and scrape networks and whatever it is people in HR who think of themselves as hackers do to occupy those long and lonely nights at home.· Nope. I actually saw the product that offers a functionality I’ve been waiting for years for someone to actually roll out – a way to measure and visualize the strength of connections of internal employees, how communication filters across the enterprise and a sort of internal Klout to identify who, within an organization, is the most influential and connected with other employees. I always thought that would be a killer app.· For TalentDojo, that data visualization capability is comparative child’s play compared to their more sophisticated features that are so advanced I expected a cameo from Captain Io at some point during the demo. I’m not going to go too much into the product – it’s too robust – but my favorite part is that it uses existing employee networks to automate and match people your employees are already connected with and stack rank results not based on keyword relevance, but culture fit based on how they align with your existing top performers.It’s like Quora for culture, and when candidates ask a question, they know a real employee will answer them instead of another recruiting shill selling a seat for them to stick their butt in.· Similarly, candidates are measured on brand engagement and affinity, based off of both behavioral based prescreening questions and predictive analytics, so you can figure out which candidates are the best fit culturally, which candidates engage most with your brand and around what messages, and other input points needed to go from blindly blasting email to treating every employee referral equally instead of considering which employee referred them and whether or not that employee is a top performer or rising star.· You obviously want to treat their introductions a little differently than that guy on a PIP who sends over some random clown every day in a futile attempt to make a couple hundred quick bucks (and every organization has one). Talent Dojo not only automates recruiting for culture and brand alignment & affinity, but it also backs up those soft skills with hard data that’s not only predictive, but prescriptive, too.2. Oculus.· I know, I know. Oculus isn’t an HR Technology…yet. In making a list of either my favorite technologies, most promising plays or the tools recruiters and employers need to watch, I’d be remiss for not including the technology that I’m confident is going to disrupt the business of talent as much as the introduction of the internet itself.· While I’m still suspicious that an algorithm can tell you whether or not a candidate is going to be a culture fit, or that personality testing can predict productivity, or that candidates can get an accurate feel of what working at a company is really like from the stock photos and crappy copy of a career site, I am convinced that this immersive virtual reality tool can do all of this – and more. It is, in fact, closer to reality than social, with its inherent artifices.1.Piazza Careers.· Piazza Careers is a category killer for tech recruiting, and if you’re in tech recruiting, you should probably go ahead and set aside some spend for this game changer that’s only now making its move out of the classroom – where it’s already fundamentally changed the way STEM graduates learn, engage and even socialize – and into the real world of recruiting.· Piazza is currently used by 1.25 million students a day at over 2,000 of the world’s top college and universities, who spend a staggering 2-3 HOURS a day on site (compared to 7 minutes monthly on LinkedIn) using Piazza’s class discussion platform that’s kind of like a Blackboard for Nerds. It’s used almost exclusively for technology coursework, and most of the CS and engineering coursework, class discussions and group projects at schools like Stanford, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, etc. is already being conducted directly on the Piazza platform.· That it’s cornered this market speaks to the elegance, ease of use and utility of their underlying technology; within only five years, the company has become ubiquitous in CS classrooms, largely because professors and students love using it not only for academic coursework, but as a communications tool. Piazza has replaced Facebook for many as their go-to social network, since turns out that the nerds and the jocks don’t like hanging out online, either, and Piazza has become the social media equivalent of the AV or Chess club – a safe place for the tech talent of tomorrow.· Let’s assume if you don’t how Major Bren Derlin screwed up on Hoth, you’re probably not going to do an awesome job communicating with this cohort as a recruiter in the first place, even with some personal information collected from a Dice Open Web or Entelo. And it’s not like engineering or CS students at Ivy League schools really have a lack of opportunity when it comes to finding a job. So, they end up at the same big brands in Silicon Valley while the rest of the recruiting world wonders why they can’t find these candidates online.· That Piazza has just now opened up the same closed network that tech grads are already using for all their coding, coursework and class discussions to employers represents a huge opportunity to finally connect this cohort with careers. Not only will recruiters have access to the largest database of college tech talent in the world, they will also have the ability to see their course history, work samples and applicable experience that often doesn’t make it onto a resume. Employers can also see how their employer ranks against other employers and build that brand by building rich company profiles and career pages on the Piazza platform, too.· This rich information and unique feature set, as well as the ability to directly message targeted talent and communicate with candidates directly on the platform is pretty priceless for employers, which is why Piazza has already signed up a “who’s who” of the tech industry’s elite (from startups like Box and AirBNB to established players like Microsoft and Google) as part of their closed beta that’s just now opening up to the rest of the recruiting world.