Thursday 5th April is the second annual International Recruiters Day, and I wanted to mark the occasion with a special edition of the show. This week we have two interviews, both with recruiters who are bringing new ideas and innovations to the profession.
My first guest is Steve Acho. Steve manages a Technology Staffing and Technology Consulting company in Detroit and has recently written a book called “Why Technology Recruiting is broken and what to do about it.”
In the interview we discuss:
• Why hiring is broken and why employers continue to make the same mistakes
• The importance of outcomes in job descriptions
• Using Technology in a human way
My second guest is Steve Lowisz, founder of the Qualigence Group of companies. Steve is a long time recruiting entrepreneur with 25 years of experience in the HR and Talent space.
In the interview we discuss:
• Why the candidate’s view of recruiting technology is very different to the recruiter’s view
• The trouble with chatbots
• Candidate centric marketing that resonates
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Find out more about International Recruiters Day
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:06]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 123 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Thursday the 5th of April is the 2nd annual International Recruiters Day and I wanted to mark the occasion with a special episode of the show. This week I have not one but but two interviews with recruiters who are bringing new ideas and innovations to the profession. Both of my guests address the issue many employers are facing, finding enough qualified candidates and bring their own perspectives on how to solve the problem. First up is Steve Acho who manages a technology staffing company in Detroit. Steve recently published a book called why Technology Recruiting is Broken and what to Do about it and he has some great insights to share. Hi Steve and welcome to the podcast.
Steve Acho [00:02:04]:
Thank you sir. Hello to you.
Matt Alder [00:02:07]:
So a pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Steve Acho [00:02:13]:
Absolutely. Well, thank you again for having me. My name is Steve Acho and I run a Detroit, Michigan based technology consulting and staffing company. We have clients as big as Apple and General Motors and Chevron and some pretty big name brand companies, companies as well as some fairly large couple, two, three, four billion dollar companies that likely most people have never heard of. But they’re doing fairly big global business. And all of our consultants are really. Technology is such a broad word. Most of our consultants are in the big data and analytics and business intelligence. All the buzzwords right in that space. Essentially helping companies make really good actionable use of the data that they have.
Matt Alder [00:03:00]:
Fantastic. So you’ve written a book called why Technology Recruiting is Broken and what to Do About It. Talk us through that. What’s the book about and what’s your sort of view around this?
Steve Acho [00:03:12]:
Sure, well, I wrote it around technology, but my view essentially is really industry agnostic. It’s country agnostic. From what I see in the industry on how we’re hiring, I see some Things that probably happen in every industry. So I want to tell you a quick story that I think there’s a version of in every industry. So there’s a story about a woman who makes a roast for her family all the time. And her husband, after many years seeing her make the roast, he watches her prepare it and he notices that she cuts off the ends of the roast before she, you know, puts it in the oven to bake it. And he says, you know, I’ve been watching you do this for years. Why do you, you know you’re wasting like 20% of it. Why do you cut off the ends of the ro. And she says, actually, I don’t know, my mother taught me. So they call her mother and ask the same question and she says, you know what, call your grandmother. I don’t know, I was taught that way. So they call the grandmother and the grandmother says, you know, when we came from the old country, we had a tiny apartment and a tiny oven and the roast wouldn’t fit in the oven so we had to cut it. And I think, you know, there’s the obvious moral is that we do things just because that’s the way we work. They were always done. And also don’t waste meat. But the reason I want to start with that story is that I think what happens in many industries is we just continue to do things because that’s the way they were done. And then in this huge, amazing exponential technology blast that we’re living through right now, oftentimes technology really helps us to be more efficient, to communicate more efficiently and effectively. And then other times it exacerbates a problem, as if somebody created this brilliant technology that would very efficiently cut off the ends of a roast at 100 miles an hour when doing that to begin with isn’t a good idea. So when I say technology recruiting is broken, here’s essentially I’m going to give you kind of a three by five card version of why I think that. I think that often when people hire and they write job descriptions, they in fact aren’t describing a job, they’re describing the person that they think would be able to do the job. And then they’re evaluating it based on that. And my thesis is that when you do it that way, when you say we are hiring a Java developer and then you write a two page job description that simply says, must have 10 years of experience with Java, must have 5 years of experience with name your technology. There’s nothing in that that describes the job. And when you do it that way, you are on a path to hiring the least bad candidate who might be able to do the work for the rate that you’re willing to pay. So you’ll hire someone that way. And this is basically how the world goes around. But my argument is you’re not going to hire a top performer and you’re certainly not going to get to that person very quickly. So that’s kind of my first critique of how recruiting is done is that when we write job descriptions, especially for technology, right. Matt, I think if your company building an app, let’s say you’re a bank and you’re building an iPhone app, there’s no reason not to describe the job in terms of the outcome of what that app will do. Of course I understand people have to protect their competitive advantage and things like that, but there’s no reason to describe a job in terms of five years, must have five years of iOS development, must have three years of banking experience. If you just get right to the outcome and say we are building an app that does this and we’re looking for someone who’s capable of doing this, then you’re on a path to at least be in conversations with people who have done that or done something comparable. So that’s number one, is when the reason that it’s broken is that when we write job descriptions and discuss jobs, we don’t actually describe the job, we describe the person. And number two, most job descriptions are not compelling, they’re boring. And there’s no legal or really other reason to write a job description that’s boring. To me it’s like an advertisement. And so there’s a reason that you don’t drive down the highway and see a billboard sign for let’s say an iPhone. And it’s just, you know, lists, 30 bullet pointed list of specs of the iPhone. That would be boring. Everybody would just drive by. Instead, it’s got a beautiful picture of an iPhone and it’s got a handful of words and it tries to entice the target market that this product will make their life better. Well, when you’re hiring a Java developer or a Hadoop architect or something like that, that has to look like a career move for the right person. It has to be compelling and it has to describe the outcome. What happens is if you look at the big picture overall, we have this proliferation of what I’ll call online resumes. Just on LinkedIn and similar platforms. There are 500 million resumes, right? So we have access to people in the U.S. they say that more than 70% of adults are on social media. So we’re all connected to those people. The average corporate job posting gets over 250 job applications. So people are applying for jobs. In the US there are 500,000 talent acquisition professionals. So there are all these hiring experts and all these connected people and all these online resumes. Right. And the outcome is there are 6 million jobs open and 6 million unemployed people. So I’m not suggesting that the 6 million unemployed people can magically fill these jobs. But what I will say is that the biggest frustration that hiring managers have that they say these are their words, can’t find qualified candidates. And so my argument is if you’re attempting to qualify people based on really arbitrary requirements, right now in the corporate world, I think that most requirements are arbitrary. If you’re hiring a surgeon, of course there are. Right. There are legal and regulatory things that, that really do weed out 99% of the population who didn’t go to medical school and graduate. But when it comes to especially technology where we’re really just moving data around, we’re analyzing that data to see how we can make better decisions. We’re building things, we’re upgrading things, we’re creating reports, all of these important things. If we would simply describe the outcome and then this is really important, when you describe the outcome in the job description, then you evaluate people based on whether you believe they can get to that outcome. And so there are a couple of bad things I think that happen when you don’t do it that way. And by the way, I’ve looked at some job postings across the UK and in other English speaking countries or where there are English language job postings throughout Europe. And I do notice the same trend. What I notice is that companies really do a good job of branding their company. So they’ll say this is why you want to work for our company. And they don’t do a good job of branding the job. They say we’re hiring an accountant and you need to have 10 years of QuickBooks and five years of this and that. Right. But they still kind of are following the same what I believe error in the way that we’ve done it traditionally in the US which is to define those requirements that people need to have. And here are the two things I think that happen when you do it that way. When you ask people online to apply for a job only if they meet the requirements, then number one, you’re going to get people who meet those requirements. So for example, they have five years of Java or at least their Resume says that they do right, who may or may not be capable of doing the work. And to be fair to them, they don’t even know if they can do the work because you haven’t told them what the work is. But the second thing that happens, and this is something that I think you know, Matt, I bet you know the statistics on what it costs to make a bad hire and what it costs to replace someone. There are all kinds of numbers on this. Here’s something. I don’t know how you can get the number for this, but I think it’s real. The bigger problem of describing things that way is that there might be someone who is a very competent, capable, motivated professional who’s a perfect fit for this role. But when that person sees something like, must have five years of X technology and they say, oh, I only have three years, I’m out. You are now missing out on someone and you don’t even know it. So there’s no way to measure the number of people. But I can tell you a personal story. So I, you know, I remember seeing a job posting about a year ago that was for. I’m in the Detroit area. There’s a lot of automotive here. And there was a job posting for a sales or account executive that was for a tier one automotive supplier. And they were looking for someone to sell to Toyota or Honda or maybe both. And one of the requirements was that you have at least five years of selling to a Japanese oem. I remember that specifically. And there were other requirements too. So I remember looking at this. Now, I wasn’t personally interested, but if I were interested, that might have been perfect for me. Because a bit about my pre IT background. I lived in Japan for many years. I speak the language. I did my MBA there. I’ve been in the auto industry for 10 years. I worked for Mazda in Japan for the CEO. I also work for the CEO of a tier one automotive supplier. Now I don’t have five years of specific experience selling to a Japanese OEM, but I believe I would have been really great at that job if I wanted to. And I also would not have applied for it because of their stipulation. Does that make sense?
Matt Alder [00:13:44]:
Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense.
Steve Acho [00:13:46]:
So that’s kind of the thesis is that we have this habit that’s been ingrained into us because whoever taught us how to recruit said, here’s what you do. When you write a job description, you make sure that the person has at least this many years of this. So we have this habit of just describing the person.
Matt Alder [00:14:08]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you’re right in saying that this is a global issue. I think it’s something that seems to happen in pretty much any country where recruiting is done. You also mentioned there that technology itself can cause problems. Can you talk a bit more about your thoughts around that?
Steve Acho [00:14:31]:
Sure. Well, given the preference that people have, or I guess just the automaticity of how they learned how to recruit, there are these great systems out there, these what I’ll call resume databases that allow you to post a job as a hiring manager and then just get a whole bunch of people who are applying for that job. And technology, as it gets better, it is applying all these super smart algorithms. Because when I post a job, I really would prefer not to have 1,000 applicants to look at. I really want, you know, fewer of the better ones. Right. So what these systems claim to do is they will very quickly sort out the profiles or the resumes that don’t have five or ten years of whatever kind of experience you’re looking for. And so it would be a very smart use of technology if the thing that they were doing mattered. And so to me, you know, it’s. It’s kind of like my view is that there isn’t really a bigger waste than trying to figure out how to do something very efficiently that shouldn’t be done in the first place. And so to me, when I think of these systems that say, hey, don’t worry about the thousand applicants that don’t meet your spec because we’re going to sort them out, we have this fancy algorithm that is the equivalent, if you remember the roast story that I told, that’s the equivalent of saying, hey, we have this super smart cutter that can very quickly and efficiently chop off the end of a roast. But no one’s asking, why is it important to chop off the end of a roast anymore. They were just taught to do that. So that’s one way I think technology exacerbates it. And the other thing is I talk to people that are fairly advanced in their career and they’re either in between jobs or they’re looking for more meaningful work. And so they’re kind of newly on the job market. And when they go apply, their biggest kind of gripe or concern is that they never hear back from anyone. They’ve put out 100 job applications or they’ve applied for dozens and dozens of jobs, literally, and get no feedback, nothing back. And I say, well, don’t worry about it, because in all likelihood, it is a machine or a very young person who was trained to just look at certain specs that don’t really matter. So you might have been a CFO for five years, but they’re looking for a CFO that has seven years. Likely some machine was the first person that met you and immediately disqualified you. And that’s what I think the problem is. I think it’s such a great use of technology when we apply it to things that matter. When we apply algorithms to things that help us, that move us forward, that kind of allow us to connect and have human conversation more quickly. But where I feel like technology exacerbates a problem is when they can just very quickly and without even getting back to somebody who applied for a job, there’s no need to get back for them. I mean, it’s like you can use technology to have a very human message back to them. Because of course, I’m sure you’ve talked about this topic before. There is this thing called company branding. And if I’m engaging with your brand as a potential candidate and all I remember about that experience is that, you know, I just got turned down and I never heard back, or even if I got turned down and it said, sorry, but you don’t have seven years as a CFO and that’s what we’re looking for. I’m going to remember that. And so there are ways to use technology to be more human. So I can leave you, if you’d like, with a very actionable. I mean, there’s a way that we use technology that I think is more human and that gets to the human conversation more quickly. And even without working with my company, there are ways for really even a startup, even a one person or a three person company to be able to integrate something like this. If you want me to let you know what that is.
Matt Alder [00:18:45]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think if you could give people a sense of strategies that can help them solve some of these issues, that would be a very useful thing.
Steve Acho [00:18:54]:
Sure. Great. Well, so my first, my book is kind of divided into two parts. Why I think technology recruiting is broken and then what to do about it. So so far I’ve fairly cynical and I’m just ripping on it. So now I’m going to give you some things that I think will help your situation and will actually help people find more meaningful work and will help the hiring side be able to identify a better fit faster. So here are just the few things that I recommend. Number one, as I mentioned, when you write a job description, as much as you can make it compelling to a person who would want to do the work. So actually think of it like an advertisement and think of it like an advertisement that targets the right people. So you might think, well, this is an accounting job, it’s boring. An accounting job is not boring to everyone. And so whatever is interesting about that, make sure that it speaks to the person who might be interested in that role. Number two, make sure that the way I do this when I put quote requirements, is I say you might have PMP certification, you might have a degree in finance or accounting. I never stipulate that someone has to, but what I’m looking for is really, these are the performance objectives. These are the three to five things that you will have to do on the job in order to be considered successful. And one way to think about that and get yourself out of the mindset of describing the person. Meaning must have a college degree, must have five years of experience. To get out of that mindset, forget about for just a moment that you’re writing a job Description and think 90 days forward to the performance review. What is it that they will have done that will have made them a really good employee and give them a good performance review? Because if you think about it, Jack Welch the, the famous GE CEO said, I think I’m paraphrasing, but he said, the day you start your job, nobody cares what you have. Meaning you might have an mba, you might have a lot of contacts, you might have a lot of skills and experience, but that so great, that got you in the door. But the day you’re in the door and working people only care about what you do. So it’s not what you have that matters, it’s what you do with what you have that matters. So let’s attempt to write the job description in a way that describes the outcome. So that’s number two, write a compelling job description. Write a job description that includes the outcome of the work that they will have to do to be considered successful. Number three, have some kind of system in place for identifying the capable and motivated people. This is the opposite of what most systems do. What most systems do, whether we’re doing it manually or whether we’re paying a subscription for some service to do it for us and using technology, we are usually weeding out the week. So if I stipulate that someone has to have five years of experience and I get a resume with someone that has four years of experience, I’m just weeding them out and assuming they’re weak. But the way that we would do something like this. So imagine I’m a One person company, and I’m hiring someone to work for me. So I write a compelling job description, I describe the end result, I put it out there and I get a whole bunch of applicants. I get 100 applicants. Well, how do I possibly look through resumes and decide who I think is capable to do this? What I do. What I would do if you didn’t have a system or a company like ours is, I would just set up an auto reply. And so for every application that comes in, you can read the resume if you want, but I usually don’t bother when I’m actually recruiting. I don’t need to read a resume yet. What I do is I set up a system that allows them to qualify themselves and we have a real human conversation. So what happens is somebody applies for a job, they get an auto reply that says, hey, thanks very much for your interest in this job. As you saw, these are the performance objectives. And then I’ll do something like this someone that allows them to qualify themselves. So I’ll say, take the number one performance objective. It says, I want you to create a complex report around finance in tableau, whatever version of tableau that might be. Right. And so that person now has a chance to write something back to me and say they’re following my instructions. Basically, they’re writing a concise sentence that compares the most relevant thing they’ve done to one of the performance objectives. Now what happens? I’m going to have you guess, Matt, how many responses do you think I get out of 100 to that type of email?
Matt Alder [00:23:56]:
That’s a good question. I’m going to go with. I’m going to go with 15.
Steve Acho [00:24:01]:
That’s pretty good. That’s high, though.
Matt Alder [00:24:04]:
I thought it might be high.
Steve Acho [00:24:05]:
Yeah, it’s 3 to 5%. And so what happens? And by the way, this is to answer your previous question about technology exacerbating a problem. I don’t know if you know this because you likely haven’t been on the job market in a while, but you can go on. I’m not going to name these systems, but all of the really big ones, you can go on a system. Let’s pretend I’m a job seeker and I’m looking for, let’s say I’m just going to use Java again as an example. So I put Java Developer. So now I’m looking for a job. So I put it into Dice or Indeed or any of these things. Immediately, 1,000 jobs pop up. It says, Java Developer in this city, Java Developer in that city. So there’s all these potential jobs that I could apply for on the screen. Some of these systems allow the job seeker to hit select all and apply all, which means that not only didn’t they read the job description, they didn’t even read the job title. They’re trying to make it so easy for people to just mass apply, which is great for them. It’s super efficient. But the person on the other side of it, you know, I mean, there’s all kinds. I’m sure every recruiter you’ve ever talked to has a funny story about this. But, you know, one of the ones that I use is, let’s say I’m hiring a senior IT project manager. And this is very specific project. It’s like implement a new CRM or integrate a new CRM into the existing one or something like that. Right? And so I get applications from people across the US that are project managers on a construction site, and they’re probably walking around in a hard hat and perhaps never opened a laptop in their lives, which is fine, but the word project manager came up. Right. And so they’re just mass applying for all these jobs. Well, I don’t want to read every single resume that comes in. Right. So that’s kind of a retort that I get. When I say, make your job description compelling, they say, yeah, but aren’t you going to get a thousand more applicants? And I say, that’s fine because I’m not looking at the applicants until they start having a human conversation with me. To me, those are just machines so far, right? So that’s the first chance that I get. So that 3 to 5% that comes through comes through with perfect, like, amazing answers. And they are happy to because they know. They probably guess that they’re one of the few that’s responding. So most people ignore it or most people don’t want to do the work. Whatever it is, we have a much smaller pool of great people to have a conversation with very quickly. So then we get to the other performance objectives. Well, the second thing you have to do is this. Tell me your experience around that. Great. So if you think about it, when people talk about soft skills, things like being professional and reliable and responsive and being a good communicator, I’m inherently testing for all of that. I want to know if someone’s capable and motivated to do the work. So I’m putting in a system that allows me to qualify them based on, not arbitrary requirements, like how many years of experience do you have? But what is your experience doing this specific Work. In other words, make an argument, make a case with me that you’re interested and you’re capable of doing this work. Now we can have a human conversation. And now, by the way, I have more time. I have all the time in the world for three to five great people, you know what I mean? So every time I do something like that. And by the way, this applies if there are people listening that are perhaps internal recruiters that work for mid size or large companies. I think this really applies even if you are hiring someone within your company for a job that’s within your company. I think the same rules apply what you want to know. No matter how this person got in the funnel, whether there’s someone you don’t know and they applied online, whether they were referred to you by someone you do know, or whether it’s someone internal that you have very good context for, but you’re trying to figure out if they’re right for the job. What you really want to know is, is this person capable and motivated to do the work? So as quickly as possible, you should have a conversation around the work. What does the work look like? What do you have to do to be successful? Who are you going to be working with? How will you be able to play nice with the other people that you’re working with and achieve these outcomes? That’s what the conversation should be about very quickly.
Matt Alder [00:28:38]:
Absolutely. And I think there’s some very, very, very useful advice. So just to finish, could you sort of tell everyone where they can find you and where they can find your book?
Steve Acho [00:28:49]:
Absolutely. Thank you. The one place that’s easy to get me, you can always get to me on LinkedIn. Steve Acho Acho. But I do have a site that has links to all of my companies and products and all that. And it is Steve s t v e acho a c h o resources.com.
Matt Alder [00:29:08]:
Steve, thank you very much for talking to me.
Steve Acho [00:29:10]:
Thank you, sir. Hope you have a great day.
Matt Alder [00:29:13]:
Next up is my second guest, Steve Lowisz, founder of the Qualigence Group of companies and a long established recruiting entrepreneur. Hi Steve, and welcome to the podcast.
Steve Lowisz [00:29:25]:
Hey Matt, how are you doing?
Matt Alder [00:29:26]:
I’m very good and delighted to have you on the show. Could you introduce yourself and tell everyone who you are, what you do?
Steve Lowisz [00:29:34]:
Absolutely. So my name is Steve Lowisz. I’ve been in the, the HR talent space. This is going on my 25th year. I got into it in the early 90s. Currently serve as CEO of what we call the Qualigence Group, which is really four different entities, all focused on both attraction of candidates as well as retention of candidates.
Matt Alder [00:29:54]:
So I’m guessing that in that time you’ve seen a kind of a huge amount of changes in recruiting and talent attraction.
Steve Lowisz [00:30:03]:
Yeah, I think we’ve. Any of us who’ve been in the business for more than five years have seen a fair amount of change, let alone the last 25 years, like yourself and I.
Matt Alder [00:30:10]:
Absolutely, absolutely. So I suppose, sort of drilling down into that, into that sort of last five years, what do you think the key things that are affecting the industry most are at the moment?
Steve Lowisz [00:30:19]:
Well, I think there’s two specific items, and one is kind of a part of the roller coaster of our industry, and then the other one is the technological changes. I mean, but if we think about, number one, the last, let’s call it five to eight years, the situation around the finances of our globe in terms of our economic condition and how things have gotten better, more jobs, less people qualified to fill those jobs. So we’re back into one of those. Those roller coasters of, oh, my gosh, we don’t have enough people. That’s one. But then you’ve seen the way that technology has changed, especially in the last five years. We thought LinkedIn and Facebook were a big deal. Now let’s look at AI and all the other pieces that are being applied to our profession.
Matt Alder [00:31:03]:
Absolutely. And how do you think those factors are actually affecting the, you know, the job seekers themselves, the talent, the people, the people looking for People looking for jobs.
Steve Lowisz [00:31:15]:
Well, it’s interesting because it’s a mixed bag, Right. You’ve got a certain number of people that are qualified that would say, based on where the economy is, I can go just about anywhere I want because everybody’s hiring. But then you’ve also got some across the globe that are saying what they’re hiring is very different. I’m left behind, so I’ve got to retrain myself. Now, that’s specific to the economic changes. It’s interesting when you have the dialogue around the technology changes, however, because if you talk to the recruiting population, both corporate and agency, they are head over heels in love with where the technology is going in the application of AI. We surveyed this just a few months ago on the candidate side, and more than half of those individuals are saying recruiting was already impersonal. Now it’s getting even more impersonal.
Matt Alder [00:32:06]:
That’s really interesting. I mean, can you tell us a bit more about that survey? And, you know, what do you think the sort of thinking is behind that kind of response?
Steve Lowisz [00:32:13]:
Yeah, we, so we went out and we’ve, of course, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of names in our, in our database. And we started to send out surveys around. Hey, where do you think recruiting is going? What’s been your experience as a candidate the last few years versus, you know, years prior to that? And we focused the discussion around interaction through technology and so on. So the questions were somewhat leading, but we wanted to get a sense of how candidates felt because when we talk to recruiters, recruiters are. It’s making my job easier. I can reach out to more people with chatbots and all these other things. I can source more people, I can engage with them. They don’t even know that it’s a computer that they’re talking with. But when we started to ask the question on the candidate side, they already have the issue of getting lost in the black hole of ATS systems. I apply and nobody responds. And then I get a Dear John letter, you know, three months later that I wasn’t qualified for a role that they never called me about. And now they’re starting to gain ground on this idea of they’ve got chatbots now reaching out to them primarily via email and other means, but they can get a sense that they’re not communicating with an individual, that they’re literally communicating with a recruiter. And 61 or 62% said that’s just not right when you’re dealing with individuals. So it’s, you know, you’ve got two sides to this coin here.
Matt Alder [00:33:35]:
What I think is really interesting is if we sort of, you know, specifically with chatbots, one of the arguments that people use for introducing chatbots into their recruitment process is it actually improves the candidate experience because they can talk to more people now, you know, the results that you’re getting there show that, you know something, you know something. Something’s going wrong with that somehow. Do you think this is down to the way the technology is being implemented? Is it the. The fact that it’s new to candidates, or is it something else? What do you think? What do you think’s happening?
Steve Lowisz [00:34:12]:
I think it’s a combination of those items. One, it is the way, in some instances, the way it’s being implemented is, you know, people are still trying to figure it out, what’s the right responses, because the AI in some of these chat bots is not yet smart enough to train itself where you’ve got to put in the responses and the questions that you would want it to ask. Right. So they’re still trying to figure that piece out. One of the comments we did get back though is, hey, it’d be okay dealing with a chatbot if people were honest about the fact that it was a chatbot. But in some organizations when they’re implementing this and they’re trying to make it look like it’s an actual individual, we’re not foolish. We’ve been on Facebook for years. We know what a chat bot is. Those are some of the comments we’re getting.
Matt Alder [00:34:57]:
Okay, that, that, that makes sense. And do you think that, you know, do you think that there will be a backlash against technology from, from recruiters or are things gonna sort of just accelerate the way they are and everyone’s gonna kind of get used to the, to the status quo? What. How do you see this kind of playing out?
Steve Lowisz [00:35:18]:
I think there’s going to be a short term bit of a backlash because again, we as recruiters, we tend to be early adopters of technology, chatbots and AI and all this, we love this stuff. But it sometimes will exacerbate the problem with candidates where it’s already seen as impersonal. I think there’s going to be a period of time, just based on my interaction with candidates, that there’s going to be a little bit of rebellion. And then as a result of that, we’re going to have to take a step back and properly reimplement some of this technology and be very transparent with candidates. When we’re using technology to speed up the process and create that experience for them that we’re trying to do, it’s when we’re hiding behind technology and it’s more about us on the recruiting side versus them on the candidate side because we talk about candidate experience, but in most circles they’re talking about saving themselves time. So it becomes very kind of self paced as opposed to candidate facing.
Matt Alder [00:36:17]:
That’s interesting. And I think that certainly, that’s certainly true from what I’m seeing. What would your advice be to recruiters who, who want to make the most of the technology that’s coming, coming onto the market to make themselves more efficient and more competitive, but also want to engage candidates in a really positive, in a really positive way? What would your adv.
Steve Lowisz [00:36:41]:
So what I’ve been telling our clients is really take a look at your process without the technology first. And is it giving the candidate experience that it should? Because if it is not, and you accelerate the process with technology, what you’re basically doing is accelerating something that’s already broken. If you can create, at least on a smaller scale, without technology, the type of Experience you want begin to implement that consistently across your organization. Now introduce technology to speed up a positive process. Right. Instead of taking a broken item and putting it out there even faster, take something that has a rock solid core and now augment with technology because then you’ll start to focus on the candidate experience in the right light. What’s happening is it’s showing the inconsistencies in organizations and some of the brokenness in some large organizations when it comes to the candidate experience, which we all know is critical.
Matt Alder [00:37:42]:
Absolutely. And I suppose coming back to one of your earlier points about, you know, there being more jobs than there are qualified individuals to fill them out there, how obviously there’s a lot of noise in the market with people sort of approaching the same candidates and creating a lot of marketing noise and all that sort of stuff. You know, what strategies do you see working in terms of sort of cutting through that noise and identifying and engaging with quality candidates. What would your advice be to employers in terms of doing that?
Steve Lowisz [00:38:17]:
Well, let me kind of talk about it from the opposite side and talking with candidates about, you know, what’s the differentiator, because most qualified candidates will tell you that they’re being bombarded by recruiters on a consistent basis, whether it’s electronically, whether it’s through a chat, whatever the case might be. And the stories are all the same. We’ve got a great opportunity, we want you for this. And it becomes very selfish. The recommendation that I would give to employers, whether you’re doing this through marketing efforts, you’re doing this through inmails and emails or any other type of electronic communication, let’s start keeping in mind the needs of the candidate first. Right. So let’s not focus all about what we need, what we need, what we need, and be pitching what we need, what we need. But think about reaching out to a candidate instead of saying, hey, I saw your profile on LinkedIn, you’d be perfect for this position. We’ve got a great opportunity start to do what great marketing organizations have done and connect with them emotionally first. It’d be very different. Think about reaching out to a candidate with any medium and saying, look, I don’t know much about you. My goal is to understand you. The next steps in your career, if there are next steps, again, in any medium, whether you’re marketing, whether you’re sending an InMail email, doesn’t make a difference. Candidates are saying the approach of learning about them is something that separates recruiters they will respond to or marketing plans that they will respond to versus it’s all about the company itself. Consumers buy rationally or buy emotionally. They justify rationally. We’ve got to keep that in mind as recruiters.
Matt Alder [00:39:56]:
And who. Who are you seeing doing this? Well, which. Which organizations do you think are kind of engaging with. Engaging with talent in the right way?
Steve Acho [00:40:06]:
So.
Steve Lowisz [00:40:06]:
So this is an interesting question, Matt, because I don’t think I haven’t seen an organization that is doing it consistently across the organization. What I have seen is, is recruiting groups within large organizations that really seem to get this the right way. For example, here in the United States, one of our largest financial institutions, bank of America, there are some very key groups in their executive search group that understand this. And the message that they’re sending out is all about you, the candidate, versus all about us as the employer. And that seems to be resonating with candidates because the response from the candidates is much higher today than it’s been in years gone by when it was very much the approach of it’s for us, it’s for us, it’s for us.
Matt Alder [00:40:54]:
So that’s very interesting. So in terms of, you know, once that sort of engagement with a candidate has taken place, what’s the best way? What are you seeing sort of leading employers do in terms of really sort of making sure that the right fit is there between the candidate and the employer?
Steve Lowisz [00:41:14]:
It’s a great question, Matt. And it’s one of the things that we’ve been trying to teach our clients, both on the recruiting side, corporate recruiters, hr, as well as the hiring managers, because the way they look at candidates is all over the board. There’s no consistency. So we’ve developed this approach for both sides, making sure the candidate is right for you and making sure you’re right for the candidate. And as I mentioned, we don’t want to make it all about us. It’s got to be about the candidate. And it’s this concept of what we call the Core 4. And let me just kind of break out. There’s two pieces to the Core 4. There’s what I call Core 4 production. Can they do the job for us? And there’s Core4purpose. We’re all driven by something when it comes to making a decision about anything, whether it’s our career, whether it’s about a spouse, whether it’s about the pair of shoes you bought this morning. And it’s how do we process that? So let me just quickly break those two down, if I can. On the core for production side, this is again, the selfish piece. This is, can the candidate do the job that we need him to do. And there’s four pieces. And let me explain quickly the four pieces. It’s what I call capacity, character, competency and culture. And some of these terms you’ve heard before. Capacity is the same as skill. Recruiters do a really good job of figuring out do they have the right skill, because statistically we only fire for skill. 11% of the time, 89% of the time, we fire for something outside of skill. So being able to understand the character of the individual, trustworthiness, loyalty and so forth by asking competency based questions, we know what those are. That’s character. Number three, competency for the position. We know behavioral based interviewing and the value of competency based questions. And number four is this idea of culture, which is absolutely ambiguous, but is one of the most important pieces. But the simplest way of looking at culture around this core four is the competencies needed for the company. So you’ve got competencies for the position and competencies that fit the culture of the organization that support the values of that particular group. And I think we understand that one pretty well. The opposite side is what I was getting at earlier, and that’s understanding the candidate. And this is what I call the core four purpose of the candidate. And there’s four sections here too. Quickly. Pain is the first one. And we do this, we do a pretty good job as recruiters. We identify the pain of a candidate. What do they have right now that they need to get rid of? Think about it in those terms. What do they have right now that they need to get rid of? Number two is pleasure, which we often forget about. What do they have right now that they want to keep? Often we’re trained to focus on only the pain of a candidate. But if the items that kept them at their previous employer are still important to them, that could potentially outweigh the couple of points of pain. So we’ve got to understand both. So pain and pleasure. The third one is pursuit. What do they not have today that they want to get? And then the last one is this idea of personal. Not that you can make any changes as a result of it, but are there things that they are willing to share personally that you can address? I have a special needs child at home or something along those lines that I need to be cognizant of. But by understanding all core four of those, we get to know the candidate better. And I can’t tell you, Matt, how many times I’ve asked a recruiter break it down for me. Pain, pleasure and pursuit. And they’re unable to do it. No wonder they can’t get the candidate to the table.
Matt Alder [00:44:46]:
That’s definitely a very interesting model, and I can see how that would be really successful for the companies that are implementing it. Just final question. I’m really interested to see where you think the industry is going next. We’ve talked about technology. We’ve talked about the kind of mismatch between candidate expectations and what recruiters are doing. And we’ve talked about engagement and really drilling in and looking for that, that kind of right fit. What’s on your radar next? What do you think we should be looking out for in the next sort of 12 to 24 months?
Steve Lowisz [00:45:27]:
Well, I think technology will continue to evolve at a higher pace than in the past. So that’s one the other item we’ve all got to understand and corporate organizations, large corporations need to understand. This is the whole freelancer side, right. More and more and more individuals, especially of the younger generation, are not looking to join big companies, but are looking to do work for big companies. So think of organizations like upwork and others that are matching up employers with individuals. That seems, I think in the next five to 10 years, that’s going to be a significant driver and a significant issue potentially in the way in which we recruit. And that’s going to be augmented and exacerbated by the use of technology to do that matchmaking as well.
Matt Alder [00:46:10]:
Steve, thank you very much for talking to me.
Steve Lowisz [00:46:12]:
Matt, thanks for having me on your show.
Matt Alder [00:46:15]:
My thanks to both Steve Acho and Steve Lowisz. And if you want to find out more about International Recruiters Day, Please go to www.internationalrecruitersday.com. you can subscribe to this podcast in itunes or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future, your App store. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
