In this episode Matt Alder talks to HR Technology expert Peter Gold
Most recruitment markets are now candidate led and more and more employers are increasing their hiring activity. This is not necessarily being backed up with an increase in budgets or head count for recruitment and many in house recruitment teams are finding their resources are being stretched to the limit.
In this interview Peter talks about “Recruitment Hacking” and how it can make technology an enabler for recruiting efficiency. Referrals, careers site conversions, job title optimization and content targeting are some of the key areas discussed. Peter also shares a number productivity tools that he feels everyone can benefit from.
Links to some of the tools discussed in the episode:
Buzzsumo
Hootsuite
Sanebox
Slack
Gmail Meter
Rescuetime
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:17]:
Hi and welcome to episode 13 of the Recruiting Future podcast. One of the biggest issues I’m seeing at the moment in in house recruitment is, is a shortage of resources. Most recruitment markets are now candidate led and more and more employers are increasing their hiring activity. This is not necessarily being backed up with increased budgets and headcount for recruitment. And many in house teams are finding themselves having to do more with less. My guest for this week’s interview is HR technology expert Peter Gold. Peter is just about to publish an ebook on recruitment hacking, something he feels will help recruiters maximize the resources they have to be more effective.
Matt Alder [00:01:00]:
Hi everyone and welcome to another Recruiting Future podcast interview. This week’s guest is Peter Gold. Peter, actually, do you want to introduce yourself and sort of tell us, you know, what you, what you do and why you do it?
Peter Gold [00:01:14]:
Yeah. Hi Matt. Happy to do that.
Matt Alder [00:01:17]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:01:18]:
So what do I do? So I’ve spent, you probably know, many years in recruitment before I got involved in recruitment technology. And I built a recruitment system back in 1999 which is now known as an ATS. I then started working with large employers from 2003 onwards on their recruitment strategy and helping them move from it all being paper based and relying purely on recruitment agencies to being more online. I also worked with many technology vendors during that time because I was working with the employers. I was seeing lots of technology vendors present to us. I was actually buying the technology with the client, implementing the project and everybody was a leading technology vendor. Everybody was the market, of course.
Matt Alder [00:02:06]:
Of course, yes, absolutely.
Peter Gold [00:02:08]:
It was interesting. And of course nobody could ever give any evidence what made them the leader, but they were all leaders. So as part of that kind of journey, I started getting contacted by the vendors and saying, could I work with them and could I kind of advise them on their sales and marketing? Because when I was running the projects for the clients, I was always quite derogatory about the fact that they all claimed to be leaders and nobody could actually back it up. I worked with a lot of the vendors over the years as well, but now I focus primarily on working with smaller technology vendors, on helping them get their sales and marketing strategy right, also getting their product right for the market. So good product, market fit.
Matt Alder [00:02:51]:
Okay. And is this exclusively HR tech or technology?
Peter Gold [00:02:56]:
It’s not exclusively HR tech. I do work with some people outside HR tech, but my focus is primarily HR tech, so I don’t go actively Looking for people who work outside the HR technology space.
Matt Alder [00:03:08]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:03:08]:
However, I have, I have got a client that has a antisocial behavior case management software.
Matt Alder [00:03:17]:
Wow. Is that even a thing? That’s amazing.
Peter Gold [00:03:20]:
I classes a CRM for bad people which kind of puts it in context at the end. It’s very similar to an ATS or CRM. But also I’m a real. One of my kind of biggest issues is that particularly not just vendors, but people don’t understand the market they’re selling to. They don’t really understand the customer. They don’t understand what keeps a customer awake at night. So one of my aims is to get to know my customers customer better than they do. So I also run something called the Global Talent Acquisition Directors Council for the conference board. So I work with a number of global acquisition Global talent acquisition directors in a roundtable environment where they can talk to other like minded people and debate the kind of challenges and issues they face. So that gives me a lot of really interesting insights into what the actual in house recruitment people face day to day. What are their real challenges?
Matt Alder [00:04:20]:
Okay, that makes sense.
Peter Gold [00:04:21]:
Quite a bit of a mix of things I do really.
Matt Alder [00:04:23]:
Okay, fantastic. And I suppose the topic for our conversation is sort of based on an ebook that you’re working on at the moment or you probably finished by the time this goes out. The topic of recruitment hacking. Tell us what recruitment hacking is.
Peter Gold [00:04:41]:
Okay, so recruitment hacking has kind of come from the concept of growth hacking, but I’ll talk about recruitment hacking first. And the concept between recruitment hacking is really about how do recruiters get rid of the low value tasks and activities that they do day in, day out so they can actually focus on what it is they really need to do that will make them successful and which is typically generally making hires.
Matt Alder [00:05:07]:
Okay, that makes sense. And how does that work? How does it sort of hang together? What’s your advice? Is it technology? Is it a methodology? What is it?
Peter Gold [00:05:22]:
Okay if we kind of just talk about quickly. Life hacking is where the kind of the concepts kind of start and life hacking is about looking to identify tricks and shortcuts or whatever things that can help you be more productive in your efficient in all walks of life. That’s kind of where what life hacking is supposed to be. Whereas growth hacking is a marketing technique traditionally developed by technology startups and it’s about mixing kind of tech and marketing together but being a bit more creative, a bit more analytical, utilizing social, ultimately all these different things to be more efficient at selling your products online primarily and gaining more Exposure. So that’s kind of what growth hacking is about. And that was a term that came from Sean Ellis in 2010, who helped a number of well known organizations grow with little or no marketing money. So say recruitment hacking is really about two things. It’s about what technology is out there, how can you use it, save time and automate more?
Matt Alder [00:06:32]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:06:32]:
And it’s not really about one of the key issues that recruiters day. It’s not about learning how to source.
Matt Alder [00:06:38]:
Okay. Yes. Because I think a lot of advice to recruiters and technology advice to recruiters appears to be kind of on that, on that topic at the moment. So. Not that.
Peter Gold [00:06:50]:
Yeah, it’s not learning how to source. I mean, talking about the ebook, the ebook will be launched any day now. And that’s in conjunction with Cornerstone. And we had a webinar, we had a webinar recently about it. We’re going into more detail on the second webinar because as I say, it’s really about how would you get more time to do the things you need to do.
Matt Alder [00:07:15]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:07:15]:
Really kind of the background to it is that 2015 is a candidate led market. Now some people say 2014 was a candidate led market. Whether it’s last year, this year, whatever. The market is very much candidate led.
Matt Alder [00:07:28]:
Yes, Agreed.
Peter Gold [00:07:29]:
A lot of recruiters, this will be their first experience of being in a candidate led market.
Matt Alder [00:07:34]:
Yep. Also agrees. Yep, yep.
Peter Gold [00:07:36]:
Because probably for the last seven years it’s not been candidate led. So first of all, they’ve got to start thinking about how they work. And you know, the old screening and workflowing of candidates is out, you know, and sourcing is in and conversion skills are in. Okay. And a lot of the kind of growth hacking techniques transfer nicely to recruitment. And the thing about conversion is if you’re getting traffic to your site and we know and I know and lots of people know from evidence and experience that you’re getting probably 70 to 90% drop off rate from somebody viewing a job to actually finishing an application.
Matt Alder [00:08:15]:
Yeah. No, it tends to be absolutely enormous.
Peter Gold [00:08:20]:
So actually as a recruiter, you may not have the time to learn how to source. And it’s not an easy thing to learn how to source, but you’ve got the traffic, so you’re actually better off trying to focus on how do you convert those candidates to actually turning to applicants.
Matt Alder [00:08:38]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:08:39]:
And the first rule, from a recruitment hacking point of view, the first rule is to cheat.
Matt Alder [00:08:43]:
Okay, interesting.
Peter Gold [00:08:45]:
Which recruiters shouldn’t have a problem with anyway.
Matt Alder [00:08:49]:
So what do you mean by cheat in this context.
Peter Gold [00:08:52]:
Okay, so cheat is first of all, get referrals, but focus on referrals. Don’t just think, oh yeah, we’ve got a referral program in place. So we already do referrals. Look at people like Dropbox who’ve grown their business on the base of referrals. You really need to focus on referrals and keep on testing it and keep on looking to improve it and be a little bit cheeky. Rather than give a couple hundred quid or 500 quid as a referral bonus, offer somebody an iWatch. Yes, an iWatch is probably something if I don’t know for an iWatch or an Apple Watch, I’m not really sure what you’re allowed to call them. I don’t know what the official, the.
Matt Alder [00:09:30]:
Official term is actually. Apple Watch. Yes, it’s an Apple Watch. I know you’re not either a fan or familiar with Apple products, but it’s. Yes, it’s Apple Watch, apparently.
Peter Gold [00:09:42]:
Apparently. Okay, so an Apple Watch. So apparently a lot of people would probably rather have an Apple Watch than maybe three or four hundred pounds for referring somebody. So think creatively and cheat your way to getting more referrals. But also use third party sources to do the donkey work as well. Get them to do the hard work. That’s a skill they have. And actually for you to become a source overnight is not going to happen. So actually utilize those people and automate as much as you can. You know, job posting is something we’ve had automated for years in recruitment. If you’ve got self service functionality in your ats, use it, you know, interview schedule and that kind of thing. But also if you’re being more analytical and you’re actually measuring your job board performance and you’re finding that job ads actually aren’t working these days, you’ve got the budget, steal the budget and use it for something that might work.
Matt Alder [00:10:34]:
Okay, okay.
Peter Gold [00:10:35]:
So that’s the kind of first thing about, you know, cheating.
Matt Alder [00:10:39]:
Okay. So it’s kind of sort of maximizing what you already have. So everyone, well, not everyone, but lots of people have traffic and it’s, you know, how do you make the most out of that? How do you make the most out of, you know, the networks of people that you’re already dealing with.
Peter Gold [00:10:54]:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And then, but then you’ve got to start thinking like a growth hacker and you’ve got to think registration, not application.
Matt Alder [00:11:01]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:11:02]:
Because you know, if you look at a lot of the application forms, they’re either very long or they’re 20 pages.
Matt Alder [00:11:11]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:11:11]:
Or maybe only 10 pages. But your first priority is to get that candidate to at least register.
Matt Alder [00:11:16]:
Yes.
Peter Gold [00:11:17]:
You need to think about getting a faster application process.
Matt Alder [00:11:20]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:11:20]:
Also you’ve got to be, you’ve got to think about lots of unique landing pages or campaign pages.
Matt Alder [00:11:26]:
Yes, yes, agreed.
Peter Gold [00:11:28]:
Campaign pages are key and you make that message very specific.
Matt Alder [00:11:31]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:11:32]:
Because you keep segmenting your message. Because if you’re looking for retail buyers, not all retail buyers are the same. You’ve got junior buyers, senior buyers, fashion buyers, you know, hard goods buyers. So again, you’ve got to really be prepared to test things.
Matt Alder [00:11:47]:
Yeah, yeah.
Peter Gold [00:11:48]:
Assume nothing and test everything.
Matt Alder [00:11:50]:
Yeah. I think that’s really interesting because I think a lot of people, a lot of people that I work with still think that the best way of filtering is having a very long application form. And they’re not giving, they’re not giving. You know, they complain they have too many applications, but they’re not giving the candidates enough information to filter themselves out or to, or targeting them in a very precise way like you describe. And I think it’s a, it’s a very common problem.
Peter Gold [00:12:16]:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean growth hackers call it split the ask. Okay.
Matt Alder [00:12:21]:
There’s actually, there’s actually a word, that word for it. Cool. Yeah, absolutely.
Peter Gold [00:12:24]:
Well, it’s a phrase. I mean.
Matt Alder [00:12:25]:
Yeah, yes.
Peter Gold [00:12:27]:
I don’t know, but I mean like, but also things like using LinkedIn or Facebook advertising. If you’ve got an advert, a job advert and you’ve got a job title, I see a lot of big organizations, they have internal job titles they try and push outside that mean nothing.
Matt Alder [00:12:41]:
Yeah. Completely.
Peter Gold [00:12:42]:
Or they mean something different. So, but you can test your ads. So again, LinkedIn advertising is not necessarily designed for this, but you can run a couple of LinkedIn adverts. Same text, same image, different headline. And because the click through rates of social advertising are quite low, 1% is considered good.
Matt Alder [00:13:06]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:13:06]:
The beauty of that is that you need to get 1,000 people, let’s say, to even see your advert just to get 100 clicks.
Matt Alder [00:13:13]:
Yes.
Peter Gold [00:13:14]:
But in those hundred clicks you might get 70 people click on advert one and only 30 people click on advert two. So potentially, potentially within 24 hours and for the sake of 100 or 150 pounds, you’ve got some quick market testing to say. Actually the job advert title that we.
Matt Alder [00:13:32]:
Should probably use, this one is resonating with people better. Yeah, yeah, no, I get that. That’s really interesting. I think it’s interesting utilizing the Fact that not many people click through. Therefore, you’re potentially reaching a very large audience to, you know, to kind of persuade them to do that. Okay, cool.
Peter Gold [00:13:49]:
Yeah. And then you can also then say, okay, well, now we know the kind of phrase that the candidate, that particular target market candidate is interesting. You can then use, for example, some of the social analytics tools to say, well, who is talking about this particular phrase and where. Or even, you know, become a, you know, a content marketer and actually publish some posts on LinkedIn with those right. Kind of headline titles in the posts. Because you’ve actually used the advertising to test what people actually interested in.
Matt Alder [00:14:19]:
Totally.
Peter Gold [00:14:19]:
Kind of thing that you need.
Matt Alder [00:14:21]:
Okay, are there any. What analytics tools would you recommend for actually, you know, doing that, doing that research to find out, you know, where. Where those sort of things are being discussed?
Peter Gold [00:14:33]:
You know, when you’re on a live webinar or live podcast and somebody asks you a question and the answer to the question goes out of your head. That just happened to me. And the question, the tool I was going to tell you about.
Matt Alder [00:14:47]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:14:48]:
I can’t think of name, but it’s something. It’s Sumo or something.
Matt Alder [00:14:51]:
Oh, it’s.
Peter Gold [00:14:52]:
Do you know it?
Matt Alder [00:14:53]:
Yes, I do. It’s Sumo something.
Peter Gold [00:14:56]:
That’s sumo something.com, i think, isn’t it? Maybe. I can’t remember if it’s modern. It’ll be Sumo something IO now.
Matt Alder [00:15:02]:
So if we can’t remember exactly what it’s called, I will put it in the. I will put it in the podcast show notes so people can click through. But I know exactly the tool that you mean. It’s. Yeah, it’s absolutely fantastic.
Peter Gold [00:15:13]:
But also things like hootsuite will also help with that kind of thing as well. So there are various tool. But that’s that. Or you can even just literally use good old Google and search the phrase and see what kind of stuff’s going on or even search Twitter again to actually see it and hashtag it and all those kind of things. But there is a particular one with an unknown name that you and I can.
Matt Alder [00:15:33]:
An unknown name containing the word Sumo somewhere? Yeah. Okay, cool. We’ll find it out and, and let people know. Okay, cool. So what’s the kind of next stage or what’s the next piece of advice that you would give?
Peter Gold [00:15:48]:
Okay, so the big thing with anything new is time. And I mean, for years, as many of us been saying, you need to do this, you need to do that. And there’s so much information and so much advice and so much opinion on what recruiters should be doing to get better at their job. But one thing we don’t always tend to think about is the fact they’ve got no damn time.
Matt Alder [00:16:10]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:16:11]:
Yeah. So part of recruitment hacking for me is about how do you get more time? And according to McKinsey, we spend a third of our week managing email.
Matt Alder [00:16:24]:
Yep.
Peter Gold [00:16:25]:
Now, so therefore, you know, if you can get rid of email to a certain extent, then obviously that will help tremendously. And the other thing about email is that if you are trying to multitask too much again, it actually takes more effort to multitask and keep swapping from job to job than it does to actually focus.
Matt Alder [00:16:49]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:16:51]:
So it’s about time. And one of the kind of things I’ve read recently is if you try and concentrate on a task yet, you’d know there’s an email in your inbox. It can actually reduce your effective IQ by 10 points.
Matt Alder [00:17:07]:
Wow.
Peter Gold [00:17:07]:
Now I know I can’t afford to reduce my IQ by 10 points. So I try to have as little email in there as possible.
Matt Alder [00:17:15]:
Okay. Okay.
Peter Gold [00:17:16]:
But also this whole kind of digital self gratification thing is a feel good factor. So we’ve got these constant distractions from social and these constant distractions from email. And you know, we kind of put something on Twitter or LinkedIn and we get notifications, somebody’s commented and we can’t help ourselves but have a look.
Matt Alder [00:17:38]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:17:38]:
And then we have a look. We’re kind of distracted. And then, and then, you know, we kind of thinking, oh, did somebody else comment? So we’ll refresh the page and see has anybody else followed me today or commented or sent me a message. And that’s a constant distraction to us.
Matt Alder [00:17:52]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:17:53]:
So the first thing is about, you know, getting rid of those distractions. But if we kind of look at email, there are so many tools now with email that can reduce the amount of stuff you have to deal with. So in the kind of, the ebook we’ve put together, I go through a number of specific tools that I use to filter my email down. And I think I get something like two and a half thousand emails a week.
Matt Alder [00:18:17]:
Yeah, sounds about right.
Peter Gold [00:18:18]:
It’s crazy, but actually almost 2,000 of those now I don’t have to deal with.
Matt Alder [00:18:25]:
Cool.
Peter Gold [00:18:26]:
And I then do deal with, then get filtered even further. So I use a product called SaneBox as a start point. Sane Box, Gmail and Outlook.
Matt Alder [00:18:37]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:18:37]:
And it will filter your email and it kind of automatically works out what’s important, what’s not important.
Matt Alder [00:18:43]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:18:44]:
Okay. So Therefore, you know, 80% of your email you get day in, day out is, is not that urgent.
Matt Alder [00:18:50]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:18:50]:
And doesn’t need dealing with immediately. So just, just by getting your inbox under control.
Matt Alder [00:18:57]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:18:59]:
You can save anywhere between five and ten hours a week.
Matt Alder [00:19:03]:
Okay, that’s interesting. Definitely interesting.
Peter Gold [00:19:06]:
Then when you’ve got more time, you’ve actually got more time to actually do the things that you should be doing. Okay. So actually look at those in email tools. But there’s a lot of investment going in by technology vendors to create systems and tools that make you more efficient. So Slack is one of the biggest ones out there.
Matt Alder [00:19:27]:
Yeah, I love Slack.
Peter Gold [00:19:28]:
It’s great to use and I couldn’t quite get my head around it at first, but to me it’s very clear. It’s like anything internal should be on Slack. Anything external is on email.
Matt Alder [00:19:39]:
Yes. Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:19:40]:
And the thing is, first off, people kind of think, well, I work for a big organization, we wouldn’t be allowed to use that, take too long to get it signed off, blah, blah, blah. The basic version’s free.
Matt Alder [00:19:49]:
Yeah. Yeah. You can just use it. You don’t have to get permission to do it. And it’s, you know, works right from your phone, you know, very, very easy to kind of get started with. And I think, I think that kind of ease of getting started is why it’s so popular and why it’s now worth so much money.
Peter Gold [00:20:06]:
Exactly. And the thing is, and recruiters can use it and it’s about this going. Okay, how’s that going to save me time? How is it going to make messaging more efficient, particularly between the team? Well, there’s one thing straight away, you probably find 50% of your emails internal anyway.
Matt Alder [00:20:21]:
Yeah, yeah.
Peter Gold [00:20:23]:
But just using things like I use Gmail meter and I use rescue times, Gmail meter and rescue times, many others, they’ll tell you where all your emails coming from, they’ll tell you how quickly you respond to email. I’ve now got the point now and I appreciate not all in house recruiters can do this, but I’ve got to the point now where I don’t open email till 11:00.
Matt Alder [00:20:43]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:20:44]:
Because I actually found that I was responding to emails too quickly and actually it does. Yes. Whereas most people were not responding back necessarily that quickly.
Matt Alder [00:20:54]:
Right, okay. So, yeah, so there’s kind of like that kind of lag time. Okay, that’s interesting.
Peter Gold [00:20:59]:
And it’s about getting rid of that distraction. If you’ve got Outlook switched off or you’ve got Gmail switched off, then you can focus on doing what you need to do.
Matt Alder [00:21:06]:
Okay, just to interrupt and backtrack slightly, that tool is called Buzzsumo. That’s the one I’ve just remembered. So B U double Z, sumo.com IO or co. I don’t know, but I’ll put, yeah, exactly, I’ll put it, I’ll put a link up to it. But it’s, it’s a really great tool. I’ve not seen many people using it in the, in the recruitment space yet. So yeah, that’s, so that’s a good recommendation.
Peter Gold [00:21:35]:
And again, you can use it, you can do some initial tests for free.
Matt Alder [00:21:38]:
Yeah, perfect. Fantastic. Okay, so what other parts are there to this kind of approach?
Peter Gold [00:21:46]:
Well, it’s then about saying, okay, what are the specific recruitment examples? You know, so yeah, okay, you’ve looked at where you can save some time. So it’s simple stuff, you know, it’s what is your attraction process? How are you automating that mostly for jobs? And then what does the interview process look like? You know, is your interview process as automated as possible? And again, onboarding, getting your onboarding automated as well. One of the concerns is that in the webinar we did this week, somebody said, well, doesn’t it make the process very impersonal? And yes, it does, but the idea is to actually get rid of the low value stuff so that you can actually talk to people. So this is not about not talking to people anymore.
Matt Alder [00:22:30]:
Right.
Peter Gold [00:22:31]:
But it is about really looking at your process and breaking it back down. Thinking like a growth hacker and understanding that we’re in a candidate led market. Yes. And in the past I’ve looked at recruitment processes and the process was set up when they first implemented the ats. And the ATS had been in place five years.
Matt Alder [00:22:50]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s very true as well.
Peter Gold [00:22:52]:
Everybody had kind of inherited that process and just kind of go, well, that’s kind of how it is. And I’m sure there’s a lot of that still around. So, you know, it’s about, oh, most definitely learning the skills of sourcing, which obviously are important. But saying, are we doing the best of what we’ve got right now today for a candidate led market?
Matt Alder [00:23:12]:
Yeah. And I suppose the other thing as well is that a lot of this is around using, you know, widely available, either free or very inexpensive tools that you kind of wouldn’t sort of procure them as an enterprise, you perhaps even use them as a, use them as an individual. And it’s, you know, rather than looking to your ATS provider or something to build all this kind of stuff. It’s just using the sort of fantastic array of apps and software and things that are out there to really be more efficient, I guess.
Peter Gold [00:23:49]:
Absolutely. Yes. And that is it. And very often people go, well, we can’t use Axe. It needs to be integrated with our ats. But actually it doesn’t have to be. Yeah. Let’s just say you could get a 10 point saving if it was integrated with the ATS.
Matt Alder [00:24:04]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:24:04]:
But you could get a six point saving by it not being integrated. If you sit and wait for it to be integrated, that might never happen.
Matt Alder [00:24:12]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:24:13]:
Of course you’re losing out on potentially a six point saving just by going out and using Slack, for example, or Buzzsumo or doing something in ads or whatever. And, and that. It is a mindset thing.
Matt Alder [00:24:23]:
Yeah, it’s interesting.
Peter Gold [00:24:24]:
Absolutely. These, these tools are out there and it’s making the most of.
Matt Alder [00:24:27]:
Do you, you know, do you sort of know in house recruiters who are working like this already? Are there any, any companies kind of embracing it? You know, what’s your sort of view on how on the uptake of these kind of approaches in the market at the moment?
Peter Gold [00:24:44]:
There will be. But I don’t, I don’t personally know of any, any. I mean the, the term recruitment hacking. We’ve only just kind of come up with the, you know, the bandwagon called recruitment hacking.
Matt Alder [00:24:55]:
Sure.
Peter Gold [00:24:55]:
I’m sure there will be many jumping on.
Matt Alder [00:24:57]:
I’m sure there’ll be a recruitment ha.
Peter Gold [00:24:59]:
Conference somewhere in the world before the mobile recruitment.
Matt Alder [00:25:03]:
Yeah. Oh, that’s true. That’s true.
Peter Gold [00:25:04]:
Absolutely.
Matt Alder [00:25:04]:
Yeah. No, it’s interesting.
Peter Gold [00:25:05]:
Early days.
Matt Alder [00:25:06]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:25:07]:
I’d be delighted to work with some in house recruiters on how we can make this happen. I mean, I’m obviously doing that with Cornerstone because they kind of are working with me on the kind of whole concept. But again, absolutely. The plan is, can we run some workshops maybe and actually get people utilizing this stuff? Because the reason why I kind of dropped out of the whole social. Social recruiting piece and doing the social recruiting workshop because I wasn’t actually a recruiter anymore. And I’m thinking, you know, who am I to tell recruiters how to recruit when I’m not actually a recruiter anymore? And the world changed massively. However, with the sales hacking techniques and the recruitment hacking stuff. I’m using it personally.
Matt Alder [00:25:50]:
Yeah.
Peter Gold [00:25:51]:
I’m using the stuff and finding real time saves and that’s why I’m happy to kind of talk about it publicly because I absolutely Know this stuff works because I use it.
Matt Alder [00:25:59]:
Totally, totally.
Peter Gold [00:26:00]:
And so from a recruitment point of view, that’s why I’m not going to tell you how to do sourcing because I’m not a sourcer. But actually I reckon I can show you how I save time and the same, how the same techniques can be used within recruitment to save you time so that you can do what it is you do best to hire people.
Matt Alder [00:26:18]:
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I think that makes perfect sense. I mean I use a number of these tools myself as well and they’re fantastic. But I think there are examples actually because I’ve come across a number of recruiters in the tech space who are using a lot of the tools that we mentioned and I think it’s the, you know, perhaps because they’re exposed to, you know, some of them recruit for some of these, some of the companies that we’ve been talking about, you know, they’re exposed to that kind of technology, then they’re kind of using it and obviously, you know, tech has been a candidate driven market for forever. So you know, I think that’s, I think that’s, I think that’s really interesting. Great. Well, thank you, thanks very much for sharing. Before, before we finish though, I just wanted to, I kind of ask everyone this question. Where do you think HR technology and recruitment technology is kind of going? We’ve talked about social and we’ve talked about mobile. You know, we’re talking about sort of getting back productivity in this conversation. You know, what’s next? What’s on your radar? What, you know, what’s the, what’s the next big technology breakthrough? You think that’s coming, coming down the line.
Peter Gold [00:27:29]:
If you have a look at, I don’t know how you, how you pronounce this company, but X IA So that is using artificial intelligence.
Matt Alder [00:27:36]:
Okay.
Peter Gold [00:27:37]:
Have what looks like a human conversation between a real person, a computer to organize a meeting. So you get introduced to your assistant called Amy. And okay, you might send me an email and say, Peter, can we meet for coffee? I’ll reply to you, say, yeah, great, be good to meet up Matt. I’ve cc’d Amy and Amy will organize with you. The computer then sends you a message and says, hi Matt, see you want to have a meeting with Peter. Has access to my diary. How about this date or that date? I see you’re based in London. Is London where suits you. And you go, oh hi Amy, yes, that’d be great, thanks. Et cetera, et cetera. Now it’s enclosed beta, but yeah, I’VE read the reviews on it and it come, the reviews are excellent now. So I think we’ll start seeing more real artificial intelligence, say kind of such a word, real artificial intelligence actually coming into more the process. So, but actually to give the candidate a much better, faster, more efficient experience, I think, yeah, 95% of candidates are rejected.
Matt Alder [00:28:34]:
Yeah, I think that’s interesting actually, because I think, you know, from what, from what you said before, I mean, you know, people, people will tend to think that this technology is about, you know, automating and giving a worse, giving a worse experience, but it’s actually about kind of shortcutting to, to those kind of high value conversations with, you know, with people. I saw, I did an interview with Matt Buckland a few sort of two, three weeks, weeks ago now. And he, he was very, you know, he recruits in the tech space, but he was very evangelical about, you know, conversations and recruitment being, you know, a discipline of its own and, and having these kind of human conversations and, and you know, I can actually see that, you know, you’re both coming from the, you’re both coming from the same. Technology is the enabler here, basically.
Peter Gold [00:29:24]:
Yeah. And I think more and more technology will be reading our mood through our interactions. And actually then you’ll have Amy, the HR officer who will go, hi, Matt, I see you’re not having a very good day today. You might want to take some time off and here’s a couple of programs you might want to consider and you’ll think, actually, Amy, that’s really perceptive of you. I would like that training program. And yes, you’ve identified that I have got the budget and you’ve even given me slots in my diary when I’d be available. And all I’ve got to do is click a link to say, yes, book that course now.
Matt Alder [00:29:57]:
Interesting.
Peter Gold [00:29:58]:
That is not entirely far fetched.
Matt Alder [00:30:01]:
No, the technology is there to do it or it’s certainly being developed.
Peter Gold [00:30:05]:
That’s what I think. That’s what I think we’re going to see more of. And I listen to your podcast with Matt and I totally see where he’s coming from. And my point on will technology replace recruiters? Technology will replace the activities that the recruiter doesn’t really need to do. It doesn’t necessarily do that well. And I actually even think that technology will start predicting who’s about to leave, who needs to be moved, who’s ready to be moved. And I think technology will do that more efficiently and more accurately than people sometimes can.
Matt Alder [00:30:46]:
Absolutely. Peter, thank you very much for coming on the podcast and sharing your thoughts with us.
Peter Gold [00:30:52]:
My pleasure, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:30:54]:
My thanks to Peter Gold for his recruitment hacking thoughts. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes or Stitcher and you can listen to all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com. thanks for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
