With so much focus on technology, it’s essential not to forget the human nature of recruiting. Engagement, empathy, influence, and persuasion are not currently hard wired into chatbots or algorithms and are vital elements of effective recruiting.
My guest this week is Jodi Cohen, Director Talent Acquisition at The Tombras Group. With many of Tombras’s hires having to relocate Jodi using empathy and the questioning skills, she learned as an agency recruiter to build high levels of trust with her target talent.
In the interview, we discuss:
- The recruiting challenges at Tombras
- Persuasion based on building trust
- Personalization
- Hiring manager relationships
- Building an excellent candidate experience
- The differences between agency recruiting and internal recruiting
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from TA Tech, the Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions. T8Tech conferences are always great to attend, but they’re taking things to the next level this year by teaming up with unleash. The joint TA Tech Unleash Mega Conference takes place in London on March 24th to March 26th and we’ll bring together thought leaders from both Europe and the US to explore key issues in talent acquisition. From avoiding bias in tech based recruitment products to exploring how automation will change the role of recruiters from how best to buy and implement technology to optimizing advertising, ROI and the candidate experience. The program will be loaded with one of a kind insights and tons of take home value. For more information, visit tatech.org events that’s tatech.org and click on the TA Tech Unleash London Conference tab.
Matt Alder [00:01:25]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Walder. Welcome to episode 239 of the Recruiting Future podcast. With so much focus on technology, it’s essential not to forget the human nature of recruiting. Engagement, empathy, influence and persuasion are not currently hardwired into chatbots or algorithms and are vital elements of effective recruiting. My guest this week is Jodi Cohen, Director Talent Acquisition at The Tombras Group. With many of Tombras’ hires having to relocate, Jodi uses empathy and the questioning skills she learned as an agency recruiter to build high levels of trust with her target talent. Enjoy the interview. Hi Jodi and welcome to the podcast.
Jodi Cohen [00:02:18]:
Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:02:19]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Jodi Cohen [00:02:24]:
Yeah, absolutely. My name’s Jodi Cohen. I. I’m the Director of Talent Acquisition for Tombras. We are one of the largest independent ad agencies in America. Full service ad agency. We’re about 330 employees based out of Knoxville, Tennessee with offices in New York, Atlanta, Charlotte and D.C. area. I’ve been a recruiter for over 20 years, both agency side, primarily outside agency side, and fairly recently moved over to the client side.
Matt Alder [00:02:55]:
Fantastic stuff. So I’m sure that you have some sort of pretty interesting recruiting challenges in your role. Can you sort of tell us a little bit about. About what they are?
Jodi Cohen [00:03:06]:
Yeah, absolutely. So Tombras is based in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is not a major market in the U.S. you know, it’s not Chicago, New York, San Francisco. You know, our closest, biggest city would be Nashville or Atlanta. So. So we have to relocate most of our employees. So that’s Our biggest challenge is our agency is great and people want to come work for us because we do amazing work. However, Knoxville isn’t typically on people’s radar as far as where they’re looking to move. So we do have to proactively look for candidates and then explain to them how awesome Knoxville is.
Matt Alder [00:03:45]:
And how do you go about doing that? Because obviously there’s it’s probably. It’s a big sell to get someone to relocate. What strategy do you. Do you use there?
Jodi Cohen [00:03:56]:
Yeah, so I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn Recruiter. That is my life, and do a lot of proactive recruiting. You know, I have learned over time some trends I’ll see in candidates of who’s more likely to move than others. So, of course, I do focus on those candidates, and of course I look for people from competing ad agencies or from the industry. And then so much of it, once I once I can get someone’s attention. So so much of it is creating a very strong relationship with them, building some trust, of course, with candidates, and hopefully getting them excited about a move that maybe they weren’t thinking of making.
Matt Alder [00:04:38]:
How do you go about doing that? Does employer brand play a part in that? How do you sort of get someone excited about a particular role?
Jodi Cohen [00:04:45]:
Yeah, so we’re working actually more on our employment branding. It’s interesting because we do branding for our clients in such a great way and we’re working on ours. But a lot of it is the personal messages on LinkedIn Recruiter or if I’m sourcing them somewhere else, the personal messages. So if you’re getting a message from me, it’s because I specifically found you. It’s not a mass message. So I think that attracts people a little bit more because they do see a difference. They do see that it’s personalized versus the mass email that they can tell is from an ATS and is going out to everyone with one keyword.
Matt Alder [00:05:28]:
Absolutely. And how do you screen candidates? What are sort of some of the effective ways that you use to screen the people that you’re that are going through your process?
Jodi Cohen [00:05:36]:
I try to take a step back and realize that the interview process, you know, in the job searching process, can be very emotional for people, and especially with a relocation. I mean, that’s a big decision for a candidate and their family. So, you know, I do take a step back and when I’m screening a candidate, not only am I looking to see if they’re qualified for the role from a skillset standpoint, but is this something that is going to be a fit for their life. I mean, sometimes you can tell right off the bat that a candidate is very mobile and this will be an easy move for them. Sometimes, you know, you hear a little bit more about their life outside of work and, you know, maybe their family and that their in laws are right next door and, you know, they have kids in school and maybe it’s not a realistic move. So I do try to engage them on their overall sort of life to figure out if this is something that we should even be talking about. And then from there, you know, then I start to really go into their goals, what they’re looking for, and really hear about them and sort of their whys. And that helps to, I guess, assess the candidate.
Matt Alder [00:06:49]:
How do hiring managers fit into this? What kind of relationship do you have with the hiring managers that you work with?
Jodi Cohen [00:06:54]:
Yeah, so hiring managers, I, first of all, I think they have enough trust in me now that they know I’m not going to send him a candidate who won’t realistically relocate. But while I was building that trust, that was always the number one question. So right off the bat, I make it very clear that this person is interested in relocating and being part of a team. But one thing that I learned is really important, especially being on the internal side, is staying updated with the hiring managers. Tom Bris actually was my client for over 10 years before I came on board with them. So I’ve known the company for a very long time and it’s very easy to become complacent. And you know, for example, if a hiring manager says, I need another account executive, it’s very easy to just assume that I know exactly what they need. But in some cases, it’s been a year since I’ve asked them about their team size, or maybe it’s a new client that they’ll be working on. So taking that time every single time they open a job to just go over the basics, a lot of times it is just rinse, repeat. It’s exactly the same role we filled six months ago. They just need another one of those people. But sometimes it’s very different and we forget that we haven’t communicated that with each other. So I like to take the time with each hiring manager to just go over, you know, if there’s been any changes, what’s super exciting about this role, what’s super exciting about their team and what they absolutely must have out of this candidate. So when I am coming to them with candidates, they know that those are some of the things I’m looking for in a candidate and that I’m not just, you know, sending them someone that may be okay.
Matt Alder [00:08:34]:
I think what’s interesting there is that you are obviously an agency recruiter, and you’ve effectively moved to your. Your biggest client. How is it different working for them as an employee as opposed to working for them when you were working with them when you were at the agency?
Jodi Cohen [00:08:50]:
Charlie Tombres, who was our president and CEO, he’s since stepped down, and his son is now. But Charlie and I always had such a great relationship, and so he actually really kind of treated me almost like an internal recruiter. And so I’d say almost from the company side, it hasn’t changed that much because. Because I did have such a close relationship with the company. What has changed, though, is the relationship with candidates. It’s interesting how candidates treat you when you’re internal versus external. So I’d say that’s the bigger difference. Candidates are. I think sometimes they’re not as candid because I am essentially the employer versus the agency recruiter, where they feel like they can tell me a little bit more when I’m outside. When you’re inside, they may not be as willing to say. I’m also interviewing at three other places. When you’re outside, they do tell you that more. So the change has been more the relationship with candidates than with this company in particular.
Matt Alder [00:10:01]:
That’s interesting stuff. And I mean, what would your advice be for anyone who is moving from agency to being an internal recruiter?
Jodi Cohen [00:10:10]:
Yeah, Well, I would say, first of all, although I don’t know any different, I would say I would recommend to any recruiter to start on the agency side. I mean, that training, getting that full picture of, you know, business development, finding candidates, all of it, negotiating the deal, negotiating the placement agreements. That experience is immeasurable on how valuable that is. So I would recommend to anyone just getting into the industry to start on that side or to get that experience before they come to the internal side. I think having that experience has made me much stronger. I know how to work with different hiring managers. Every team is a little bit different. The personalities are a little bit different, so that’s helped. But also just getting the full picture from candidates, I do dive probably a little bit deeper with candidates and don’t necessarily take everything at face value. I think it’s also made me better at asking the tougher questions like I ask candidates all the time. Where else are you interviewing? How does our opportunity rank in comparison to the other places you’re interviewing? I don’t Think I would think to ask those questions if I didn’t have my agency recruiting experience.
Matt Alder [00:11:27]:
Having moved in house. What’s your view now on external recruiters and agencies and the recruitment industry in general?
Jodi Cohen [00:11:35]:
Yeah, that’s been very interesting to see from the other side because I spent 20 years as an agency recruiter, so it’s been very interesting to see. And unfortunately, there’s a lot of recruiters that I’ve seen give us a bad name. And you know, when I was on the agency side, I had so many candidates say I don’t work with recruiters because I had such a bad experience. And I think just as an industry, first of all, we should all just try to be better and not be that recruiter that is giving candidate or, you know, giving us the bad, the bad reputation. And the way we do that is not pushing candidates into a job that maybe we know in our heart of hearts isn’t right, but we want to do the deal. I personally don’t think you should ever have to technically close a candidate. If it’s the right opportunity for them, they’re going to accept it. Now, pointing out the pros and cons of your role versus another role. Absolutely. And there’s going to be times where you know that your opportunity is the right one for their, for your candidate and maybe they’re not seeing something or maybe something wasn’t explained in the interview process that they need to know. Absolutely. Point that out. But when we try to push a candidate into a role that we want to fill, but we know it’s maybe not right, they’re going to be a fall off, they’re going to leave, they’re going to get let go and it ends up being a bad situation just a little bit later down the road. So I think that’s something that’s very important to just come to terms with and I guess pay attention to when you are at the offer stage with a candidate.
Matt Alder [00:13:17]:
And so going back to the candidates and the relationships that you’re building with them and indeed the sort of the role of hiring managers within that, I’m presuming that to persuade people to relocate, part of your persuasion strategy is going to be having a kind of an excellent candidate experience. Is that the case? And if so, what are the elements of that and how do you make sure that people do get that excellent experience?
Jodi Cohen [00:13:47]:
Yeah. So our first step is obviously going to be the phone interview. And what typically happens, because most candidates are not already in Knoxville, is that they’ll phone interview with me. And again that’s more of the pre qualifier, but that’s also the first impression of our agency. And then they’ll probably phone interview with the hiring manager and if that goes well, we bring them to Knoxville and we try to knock everything out, of course, while they’re in Knoxville for that interview and make a decision then. So we want this candidate to be pretty excited by the time they come to Knoxville and feel pretty comfortable. So that does go back to kind of that first phone call I have with candidates. So, you know, I do a lot of work really trying to understand the candidate’s full story, you know, making sure all the dots connect and understanding their why, their motivation, why are they talking to me, why are they even interested in this opportunity and does that match up with what we’re looking for out of a candidate? The other thing I try to go pretty deep into is the candidate’s reason for leaving. That’s probably my favorite kind of question when I’m talking to a candidate is why did they leave this job? Why did they leave that job? I feel like that shows trends in the candidate. It also shows their motivations. You know, sometimes you’ll see a candidate who. Or if a candidate just says growth or better opportunity, that doesn’t give me anything. I mean, everyone’s looking for more growth or a better opportunity. No one’s looking for a worse opportunity, right? So what does that actually mean to them? And then I can truly understand the candidate a little bit more and sort of gear their job search to work with their motivations and also present them with opportunities that are going to fit them best. The other thing that is so, so, so important is that follow up, you know, and, and I have to remind myself too, but it’s so easy to follow up with a candidate when everything is great, when you know that we want to move forward or we want to make an offer. It’s so easy to make that phone call. It’s the follow up of, I’m still waiting on the hiring manager, I don’t have an answer for you yet. Or of course the follow up if maybe you have bad news for them and we’re not moving forward. But I think that follow up and follow through throughout the process really helps build kind of build that rapport with the candidate.
Matt Alder [00:16:19]:
So it’s very clear that you’re very focused on the sort of the personal human side of this recruitment process. And that obviously makes perfect sense in terms of the objectives you’re trying to achieve. Does technology play in all of this? And do you think that technology could play a greater role in the future.
Jodi Cohen [00:16:42]:
Obviously, a good ATS is so valuable. So, I mean, in terms of tracking with the follow up, I mean, you can only remember to do so many things. So just of course, as far as just reminders and searches, of course technology plays a great role. And like I said, LinkedIn recruiter is my favorite thing in the world. But I do feel like that personal touch does make a huge difference. And again, throughout our process, because a lot of times, let’s say we’re hiring someone, relocation falls into this. So it’s that being available to walk someone through, hey, these are the apartment complexes that are really popular. Or here’s the name of a hairdresser that a lot of people go to. You know, whatever it is just making people feel a little more comfortable. So, you know, if anything, for me, it is almost stepping away a little bit from texting or emailing and trying to pick up the phone as often as possible to have these conversations.
Matt Alder [00:17:47]:
So final question. What’s next? What are you sort of planning or what are you looking forward to most in the next 18 months?
Jodi Cohen [00:17:53]:
Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, we’re growing. I think we hired close to 100 people last year, so we’re growing. We are working on some employment branding, which is super exciting. So I’m looking forward to that and I think just really looking forward to getting our name out there. Putting Knoxville a little bit more on the map, of course, is always a good thing for us, but the agency has some exciting things going on, so I’m really excited to see what’s in store for our agency and bring some other great talent on.
Matt Alder [00:18:29]:
Jodi, thank you very much for talking to me.
Jodi Cohen [00:18:31]:
Thank you. It was such a pleasure to be here.
Matt Alder [00:18:34]:
My thanks to Jodi Cohen. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us 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@www.rfpodcast.com. 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.
