We're live here in Austin - halfway through our road tour of Texas. If you haven't heard about it yet, we're hitting the road this week to connect senior HR and recruiting people with our insider crew of vendors. Now, this isn't like any event we've been to in the recruiting industry. In fact, we had to partner with Brits, aka Reconverse, to make it happen. 

Why is it so special? You tell me.

How often do you get to talk to an HR tech vendor outside of budget season, an expo hall floor or most unfortunately, that awkward call with the kid who can't pronounce your name? Think about it - it doesn't happen often. We use a check list and spreadsheet to compare a few conversations and somehow, we're expected to make a decision that will impact work for our entire team, sometimes the entire company.

That's a big deal. No one wants to fight the budget cuts just to implement a failure of a system. But to take a few steps back, how did we even learn how to make a tech decision in the first place?

Failure, that's how.

After years of experience and failures, we finally figure it out. Or not, and you're stuck with legacy systems that don't actually help any process be more efficient. And they make you look bad, while you're at it. 

At its most fundamental element, these poor decisions are pipelined by bad questions on the front-end. Making a better tech decision requires asking better questions, so that's how we've kicked off every event on our trip. We're taking the time to do a quick training with these senior department leaders about what really matters.

So what are these "better questions"? How do you actually make sense of the sales talk?

Matt Charney took the stage to help figure out the answer, and here's what he suggests: 

1. What feature or product subset do you have that no one else in the market has? This answer should be succinct and not full of buzzwords. Let’s be honest, the cloud is not a selling point. If they say social media, run. 
2. How do you make money? You need to know if that company is going to be around and how much it’s going to cost you. You need to know if they make money off of monthly licenses or services.
3. How do you help me at the end of the day? What are the measurable business outcomes of this? It's all about bettering the business, right? This is the question that helps you get to that answer. 

We're off to Dallas tomorrow, riding in style on our Texas tour bus, and stay tuned for more recaps from the road.