Buying and implementing a new ATS can be a long, complicated and frustrating process, not to mention the additional work required to drive adoption once the system is actually in place. So what can employers do to set themselves up for success and make sure the process achieves its ultimate objectives?
My guest this week is Shanu Varghese, Director, Global HR Technology at Apollo Global Management. During his career, Shanu has been responsible for over 50 HR technology implementations and has some great insights and advice to share.
In the interview, we discuss:
- The importance of keeping up to date with the market and having an open mind
- How to approach the RFP process
- Achieving stakeholder buy-in
- Strategies for successful implementation
- Tailoring your strategy to reflect geographical and role differences
- How to encourage usage and adoption
- The importance of understanding the vendor’s product roadmap.
Shanu also talks about recruiting automation and what’s next for Apollo.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Avature ats, an applicant tracking system that redefines user experience for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. Just listen to one of the many ways in which L’Oreal USA has improved their hiring process with Avature, as told by Edward Dias, Director of Recruitment, Intelligence and Innovation.
Edward Dias [00:00:25]:
Since we’ve been using Avature ATS globally, we have been able to massively improve our communication rate with candidates during and following their application. Before, over a million people worldwide would never get contacted, but with the smart automation and flexible processes, we’ve been able to change that, and that’s been a huge achievement.
Matt Alder [00:00:49]:
Visit avature.net that’s a V A T U R E.net to learn why global market leaders like L’Oreal choose Avature to extend the candidate experience. From shoulder to tap to first day.
Matt Alder [00:01:23]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 233 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Buying and implementing a new ATS can be a long, complicated and frustrating process, not to mention the additional work required to drive adoption once the system’s in place. So what can employers do to set themselves up for success and make sure the process achieves its ultimate objectives? My guest this week is Shanu Varghese, Director of Global HR Technology at Apollo Global Management. During his career, Shenu has been responsible for over 50 HR technology implementations and has some great insights and advice to share. Hi Shanu and welcome to the podcast.
Shanu Varghese [00:02:14]:
Hey Matt, glad to be here. Big fan of the podcast.
Matt Alder [00:02:17]:
Absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Shanu Varghese [00:02:21]:
Sure. My name is Shanu Varghese and I am a Global Technology Director at Apollo Global Management and I support our human capital function.
Matt Alder [00:02:30]:
So first and foremost, can you tell us a little bit more about who Apollo of what they do?
Shanu Varghese [00:02:34]:
Sure thing, yeah. Apollo is one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers, managing a little bit over $320 billion of assets under management. And in my role, I work across all of hr, or human capital as we call it, leveraging technology in new and different ways. Really much of my time here so far has been focused on building out efficiencies within our recruiting area specifically.
Matt Alder [00:02:58]:
And tell us a little bit more about yourself. What’s your story? How did you get to. What’s your background in the h technology space?
Shanu Varghese [00:03:06]:
Yeah, so I won’t lie to you and say I grew up dreaming of being in HR or becoming an HR technologist by any means. But after falling into it somewhat accidentally about 15 years ago, I ended up loving it and really have built a quite enjoyable career out of it. I spent the first 10 years of those on the consulting side working on and leading large global HR transformation projects for customers across several different organizations and roles. The last five years I’ve moved over a client side and done much of that same work from the inside out. I recently, interestingly enough, went back and tallied up how many implementations I’ve done and been a part of and the number was well over 50, which is really crazy. Looking back at it at this point.
Matt Alder [00:03:53]:
You’Ve obviously been in the space for quite some time. Why do you think technology is an important part of HR and more specifically, talent acquisition?
Shanu Varghese [00:04:02]:
Yeah, so this might be a surprising take coming from someone in my role, but I actually don’t think technology is the answer to all problems. So don’t get me wrong, I love technology and I love working in technology and all the advancements that have been made. But I think what I’ve seen too often is organizations simply purchase a new system to make up for their broken or in some cases missing processes. So I believe all organizations and HR departments specifically need to have solid processes in place, have those mapped out, have the appropriate buy in from the key stakeholders, which technology can then help to enable. So the advancements in talent acquisition technology, especially over the last five or 10 years, have been enormous. So the amounts of automation that have been inserted into the process have allowed recruiters I’ve worked with and HR departments more broadly, to become so much more efficient and given really the ease and the speed at which candidates can now find jobs and apply to jobs and apply to multiple jobs at the same time. These automation tools are really desperately needed for recruiters and HR departments to keep up with that influx of volume.
Matt Alder [00:05:12]:
Tell us a little bit more about technology at Apollo. What sort of projects have you been working on? How have you been looking to solve some of the acquisition challenges you might have with technology?
Shanu Varghese [00:05:23]:
Yeah, so Apollo being a large global organization with a really large footprint across the financial industry, we do leverage technology really across all areas of our business. So we use technology across our financial solutions, we use technology with our customers and our clients. But one area that we were a little bit behind the times was within the talent acquisition technology. So we identified that need to be able to ramp up our hiring and the speed at which we do it and really have visibility within our organization. To our hiring process, allow our hiring managers and our leaders to be able to see much more closely where the hiring process was at, being able to forecast budgets and other things of that nature at a much more granular level. We made the determination about two years ago that we needed to have a much more sophisticated process in place and really find a state of the art ATS that could help us leverage all of that.
Matt Alder [00:06:20]:
And how do you approach the RFP process for selecting new technology vendors?
Shanu Varghese [00:06:26]:
Yeah, and I think this is really important, something I’m passionate about. So having done this many times over, one piece of advice I’ve given people is to truly immerse yourself in the process. So I’ve rarely found any useful information in sending out a five or six page questionnaire to a vendor, having them fill it out and return it back to me and then go back and ask more questions. At least personally I found that to not give me a ton of useful information back. Instead what I’d like to do is really immerse myself into the space. So let’s take the example of an applicant tracking system. So really research the market, find out who the key players are out there, look at whatever market research is out there, find my own customer feedback, whether it be from rating sites or from people within my network and just start cold calling them or LinkedIn messaging them and understanding what their organizations are using, finding out what the challenges they have are then moving on to step two in the process which is actually reaching out to these vendors that you’ve started. A short list, seeing demos of the system. Absolutely. But really getting hands on within the system, really being able to actually touch and play the systems before you’ve decided to purchase them I think is an important element as well. Then also having vendors actually build out specific use cases for you as part of a next round demo I think are really useful as well. Also, I think it’s important to have the right audience from your side in the RFP process. So it’s not as simple as just having one or two people in the room that are watching these demos. I think it’s important to have a core group that’s involved in the RFP process. So whether that’s a mix of talent, acquisition, leadership, but also bringing in some of your key influencers on the actual recruitment team. So bringing some of them in to understand how they actually do their jobs day to day and help get them bought into the process early on, help have them be part of the decision process and then ultimately they’ll help become your first line of defense, help become the champions of the system, help advocate for the system within the organization, and then I think having such a robust process will make sure that you ultimately select the right vendor for your needs.
Matt Alder [00:08:44]:
In your sort of case of looking for an ats, once you’ve been through this process, who did you ultimately select and why did you choose them?
Shanu Varghese [00:08:52]:
Yeah, at Apollo, I think we were in a unique situation. Even though we’re a global organization with a large footprint across many different countries, we had never had an ETS or even a career site truly. So we had operated without the benefit of those tools, still being able to hit our very aggressive hiring targets, but without those additional technologies. So we really wanted to make this first choice the right choice. We didn’t want to have to switch over in a couple of years like I’ve seen a lot of customers do elsewhere. We really wanted to be able to do such a robust RFP process, but ultimately select the right vendor that was the right fit for our needs today, but also be able to grow with us. So we ultimately selected Avature as our choice for both recruiting CRM and ats. They also host our Career site, which is a highly customized career site that we wanted to align with our Apollo branding. We also have several other solutions from them, including a hiring manager portal, as well as referrals and internal mobility portals as well.
Matt Alder [00:09:58]:
Vendor selection. So the RFP process and vendor selection is only a small part of the overall story. What are your strategies for successful implementation and rollout, and how do you make sure that happens?
Shanu Varghese [00:10:12]:
Yeah, great question. So what I’ve taken with me from my consulting side is the projects that always turned out the best were the ones that had engaged customers on the other side of the fence. So once I moved over to the customer side, I always wanted to carry that with me. So I always like to be a very, very involved client and technology product. I think if the vendor is doing all the work for you, that’s great. The product will probably turn out just fine, but you won’t be able to own that post implementation. I think one key piece of advice I’d give people for an implementation is to be very, very involved, to learn as much you can from your implementation team. Those are probably the most knowledgeable people on the product. So gleam as much information as you can off of them. Ask as many questions as you can about why is the system doing this this way and how can I make it do something a little bit differently and understand what capabilities you as a customer have versus what things need to go back to the vendor. I think those are also important to then express back within your organization so you can say, hey, this is a key decision point that we need to make because if we don’t decide it today, if we need to change it at a later point, we’ll need to go back to the vendor. There may be a cost impact, there may be a time delay and so on. Again, really immersing yourself in the implementation process, just like the RFP I think is critically important. Also I think again, just like in the rfp, involving the right stakeholders in the process are really important to get buy in and also to help them become champions once you’re up and running and you move on to the adoption phase of the process.
Matt Alder [00:11:46]:
So I mean, talking about that adoption phase next, I mean, what happens after your life? How do you encourage usage and drive adoption of the solution?
Shanu Varghese [00:11:55]:
Yeah. So in my opinion, this is always the hardest part of any project. Right. Is change, is the change management of rolling this out to your organization, rolling this out, asking people to change behaviors that they may have been doing for many, many years and in some cases may have been working just fine before. So I think adoption is, is a challenging phase, but it’s obviously critically important. So some of the steps I’ve taken that have worked successfully in the past and even here at Apollo from an adoption perspective, is to be again, very hands on. So understanding that even though recruiting is a single function within the organization, there are different groups that may operate differently. Right. So for different types of recruiting, for example, we have a private equity division within our organization that has one specific type of recruiting, and our intern recruiting might be very different and our leadership recruiting might be very different. So understanding those different areas within recruiting may all operate in very different manners. And being able to tailor your adoption strategies and your rollout plans to those groups in different ways, I think helps adoption significantly. So one of the things we’ve done is had very different rollout strategies globally as well. So in the US we have one particular recruiting strategy and we work with a lot of recruitment agencies, but we also rely heavily on referrals. Whereas in different parts of Apollo across the globe, that makeup might be slightly different or that ratio might end up being slightly different. So we tailor our adoption strategy differently for those. We also understand that even within regions and with departments, there may be differences. So we built the system in such a way that it’s very flexible and allows our human capital team to structure the recruitment process and the workflow different from role to role. So this really gives them a lot of flexibility in case one role, the hiring manager is going to be very involved, or other cases where it’s more of a white glove experience where the hiring manager may be less involved and may just want to see the finalist candidate, for example. So having a system that allows us to be much more flexible and nimble really helps go a long way with the adoption phase.
Matt Alder [00:14:11]:
And were there any sort of particular challenges with that, with that phase that you faced? And I mean, how did you overcome them?
Shanu Varghese [00:14:19]:
Yeah, absolutely. So operating in a very fiscal year cycle, from a recruitment perspective, having gone live in the middle of a year was definitely a challenge. I’d say. We obviously wanted to take the appropriate amount of time for implementation and rollout, but the challenge that put us into is going live in the middle of a year when some roles are already being recruited for some roles have actually already been filled by that point. Definitely created a pretty big adoption challenge. So, you know, what we did in our first year is we understood, hey, we’re going to do our best. We’re going to try to get as many roles as possible into the system and recruited through and candidates tracked, but there’s only so many battles we can fight at the same time. So we did as much as we could while still building out the system, while still enhancing our processes and our automation, and then having the following January 1st really be a clean slate, where we’re now trying to push for every role, be in the system as much as humanly possible, but also understanding that we need to build out our processes even more robustly in order for that to happen. So we’ve built out additional automation, we built out better reporting and dashboards to make the process easier for our human capital team and our recruiters. And we’ve also added in additional filters and screening questions and knockout questions and things like that that’ll help manage the influx of candidates and allow the process to run a little bit more smoothly.
Matt Alder [00:15:50]:
There are lots of people listening who might be looking at putting an ATS in for the first time or changing ATS vendor and putting a new system in. What would your sort of key bits of advice be to someone in that position?
Shanu Varghese [00:16:05]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I think it’s really important anytime you’re entering this new type of a process, especially starting at the RFP process, is going in with an open mind. So understanding that every organization has different challenges, different ways they approach recruiting and going in without any bias into the process. So by that I mean you may have a core HR system, you already work with that may have a recruiting module or you may have a recruiting system that a lot of your recruitment team or HR team have used in the past and have been fans of. But I still think despite those things, it’s important to go in without any of those biases. Understand what the market looks like today because especially in talent acquisition, the technology is moving at such a rapid pace that it’s important to revisit who the players are, what the technology is, what the advancements are every couple of years. Going in with an open mind to the process, really understanding what the technology landscape is and involving the right people in the process, I think are all really important things to making sure you ultimately select the right partner. Also understanding what their growth plan looks like, what their roadmap looks like, and understanding that your feedback gets baked into their roadmap as well.
Matt Alder [00:17:17]:
Final question, what’s next for talent acquisition at Apollo? What are you sort of looking forward to over the next 18 months to two years?
Shanu Varghese [00:17:25]:
Yeah, so the name of the game is really about efficiencies here. So we’re building out additional things like reporting and dashboards to build out better efficiencies for our human capital and recruitment teams. Also being able to leverage additional sources of talent that we previously hadn’t had a ton of reliance on for multiple reasons. Right. So we’re bringing in additional diversity. We’re starting to look a lot more closely at the diversity of our slates. We’re starting to look a lot more closely at the recruitment agencies and the sites that we get talent from and who are really providing us the most diverse slates and the most qualified candidates. And then really honing in our efforts on those particular sources. And then also from an automation perspective, we’re really trying to automate the process as much as possible, especially on things that are repeatable tasks like request out to candidates or screening questions or knockout questions. Those types of things that previously would have taken a lot of man hours to execute. We’re really trying to automate those as much as possible.
Matt Alder [00:18:30]:
Chanu, thank you very much for talking to me.
Shanu Varghese [00:18:32]:
Great. Thanks. Had a great time.
Matt Alder [00:18:34]:
My thanks to Shanu. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find the show by searching for Recruiting Future. If you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes at www. On that site. You can 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.
