As I said in my introduction to the last episode, the focus of the podcast is going to alternate between content to help you with your long term strategy and content to help you right now. This episode falls into the right now category and was recorded on Thursday 18th March 2020.
My guest is Johnny Campbell, CEO at SocialTalent and in the interview we discuss:
- Current market activity among global employers
- Moving to a virtual recruiting process
- Some important considerations for video interviews
- Onboarding new hires when people are working from home
- Motivating a remote talent acquisition team in a time of high anxiety
- What help is there for recruiters who are being laid off or who are worried about their jobs?
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Social Talent. Social Talent is the training platform for hiring teams, giving you the knowledge and skills you need to find, hire and develop great talent. Designed for everyone involved in the hiring process, this market leading platform provides training through a comprehensive library of video content delivered by the world’s best hiring experts. Trusted by the likes of IBM, intel and Siemens. Social talent has trained over 80,000 people across a hundred countries and a thousand organizations. Last year alone they enabled a million hires worldwide. Find out more@www.socialtalent.com. that’s www.socialtalent.com.
Matt Alder [00:01:11]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 250 of the Recruiting Future podcast. As I said in the introduction to my last episode that the focus of the podcast is going to alternate between content to help you with your long term strategy and content to help you right now. This episode falls into the right now category and was recorded on Thursday 18th March 2020. My guest is the one and only Johnny Campbell, CEO of Social Talent. In our discussion, Jonny talks about what he’s seeing in the market right now and shares some valuable advice on virtual hiring processes, including onboarding virtually and how to motivate a remote team. He also gives some details of the free support Social Talent are offering to recruiters who’ve been laid off or who are anxious about their jobs. Hi Jonny, welcome to the podcast.
Johnny Campbell [00:02:08]:
Hey Matt, good to be here.
Matt Alder [00:02:10]:
Pleasure to have you on the show. Now this show is a slight change from our original programming. Did an excellent interview with four or five TA leaders and Johnny about growth hiring, but we thought that it was probably more appropriate to actually have a chat about the current situation and its effect on the talent acquisition community and also what companies are doing to deal with this new reality that we find ourselves in. So first of all Jonny, how. How are things with you?
Johnny Campbell [00:02:38]:
So they’re good, Matt. I can answer that in a multitude of ways. I’m working from home today, actually the first time I’ve worked from home in 12 years. I’m not a big fan of it because I’ve got four young kids and I like to get away from the house but, but hey, this is the new world we live in and you know, I’m trying to remain calm in this and you know, there’s nothing else you can do. Be supportive of a community, supportive of your family and, and, and with us in our business. It’s, you know, support our customers in any way we can. That’s kind of number one priority. So, hey, you know, keep busy with work and keep busy looking after each other. And that’s probably the best motto for the moment.
Matt Alder [00:03:15]:
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. In a very similar situation at the moment, albeit only with one child rather than four. So what are you seeing in the market at the moment? Obviously we’re still very much in the kind of the shock and panic phase of what’s been happening, but companies are still recruiting. Some companies are having to recruit very quickly, in fact, at the moment. What are you seeing? How are people coping? What’s going on out there?
Johnny Campbell [00:03:41]:
So as you probably know, mat maybe some of your listeners won’t know, our solution is largely used by global employers. Right. So socialtown is a particularly effective learning solution for global teams who are already geographically dispersed. So the nature of the customers we’re talking to, they typically have global teams. So when this crisis started, when it was a crisis that was concentrated on Wuhan and shooting down parts of China, I was talking to some of our big customers and asking about how they affect their APAC teams. So my conversation started there many weeks ago. And if I’m being honest, the problems and the issues and the challenges that they were having in apac, they’re the same. They just expanded to our world, if you like. They call it the western world. Wherever you are in the world, it’s expanded out of that. And the first things I was hearing, I was asking about hiring freezes. And yes, hiring freezes were going into place in many companies. Not all. To be clear. I was quite surprised about the number of companies that didn’t have a hiring freeze. But I guess as COVID 19 has affected my geography more, I get it. FMCG, healthcare, pharmaceutical, other areas, even kids toy equipment is on the rise and people are buying more of it at the moment. DIY equipment, gardening equipment has gone up as people are spending time at home. So there are anticyclical businesses. But for the most part there was a cutback in hiring for recruiters. You know, there was a double impact. Positive impact I was hearing was for the first time probably in history, recruiters and sources were getting people on the phone. You could call up people during the day and they’d answer, which was like, wow, this is, this is brilliant. You can actually reach candidates. But I think universally I’m hearing across the board that people are afraid to move jobs. You know, even my next door neighbor works for one of the largest grocery chains in the world. He’s a senior leader here in the Irish business. And they’re crying out for staff in every department. Both the retail frontline staff managers, finance, marketing, hr. But he’s saying nobody will move. People are afraid, they’re paralyzed. And I guess even if you are in a recruiting business where you still have open recs to fill, there’s that downside of, you know, getting people to actually commit when there’s so much uncertainty. So there’s some of just kind of smattering of some of the things I’m seeing and hearing across, across the market.
Matt Alder [00:06:04]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m seeing the same thing with the companies that I’ve been talking to and the, the interviews that I’ve been recording for the next few weeks, basically. So we could probably talk for a really long time about the situation and what’s happening and what companies might be doing. But let’s get down to some practicalities that, that might help people. What are you seeing in terms of, in terms of online interviews and the recruitment process sort of moving mo or more virtual. You mentioned that obviously people, people are now picking, picking up the phone. How is that affecting recruitment as it’s actually happening?
Johnny Campbell [00:06:36]:
So I still remember the day, and I’m sure you do, Matt as well. We’ve chatted about this over the years, you know, where people question the value of video, online video assessment software and tools, saying you can’t beat the real thing. You have to interview somebody in person. Even though all the data and science said otherwise. The fact that it’s, it’s even better at removing bias than doing an in person interview. So immediately the whole world just snapped its fingers and went, okay, I get it. We got to move towards this, starting with virtual interviewing for people who are out of the city and down to just people who still might be only a block away. They’re having to do video interviews. So I think everyone has just flocked to video interviewing. They’re scrambling. We’ve been inundated with requests for training on how to do video interviewing. Like we don’t, we didn’t have curriculum on this because I’ve been honest with you, I just didn’t think people needed it. But actually it is for a lot of people, a fundamentally different way of assessing candidates and they’re not sure the practicalities of using video interview. I’ll tell you a funny story not related to recruiting. My wife does a gym class three days a week, Matt. And she asked me, could I, could you borrow my laptop in my new recently assembled home office up in the top room as her gym instructor was basically doing, doing it virtually via Zoom. And I set it up for her and I was watching and you have these, you know, 40 to 50 people joining on to this instructor in her kitchen and delivering a gym class, but nobody knew how to use Zoom. They weren’t turning their mics off. The instructor didn’t know how to work it. You could hear one woman grunting along to the exercise, cursing about how much energy it took as the rest of the people were going, oh, oh my God, Turner, Michael. And you forget that, you know, I’m familiar with tech, you’re familiar with tech, but gosh, most of the world doesn’t use Vinti Video anything or didn’t beforehand. And it is a new world. And there’s a whole bunch of things that seem normal to me and you maybe, and to many people who are maybe interviewing tech candidates all the time from different cities, who are hiring from different countries for their roles, that’s not the world of recruiting for a lot of people. But it’s just become their new world. So I get it. People are really struggling to kind of get their heads around this. And if you’ve never done it before, it is a bit daunting. What should you do? How should you set it up? Testing it? What can you ask? What can you not ask? Even into practical things. My colleague Holly put a video out last week, a quick guide, and one of the things she put in there that I’d even forgot about was just making sure that you don’t ask about COVID 19 too much, because you could be exposing someone to reveal personal information that leads to a bias that causes problems both legally and morally in the decisions you make on that person. And I’m going, yeah, that’s a really, really good point. Like, ask them, do you have kids? Do you have an apartment? It seems so natural to ask these personal questions because we’re in this together. But it’s remembering that this is still a professional interview. You’re still, you know, required to comply with the laws of the jurisdiction you’re recruiting in and the moral and ethical grounds of, of asking these things. So, yeah, I think people are, are just looking for information and best practice and, you know, they’re right to.
Matt Alder [00:09:44]:
Before I sort of move on, I’m going to ask you about another aspect of this. But you know, as this is so important and people are sort of looking for information right now, are there any other sort of other top of mind things that People who might be doing interviews or video for the first time today should be, should be thinking about.
Johnny Campbell [00:10:00]:
Yeah like it’s, it’s, you know, the importance of practice using, using make sure you’re in a well writ room, well lit room. The number one thing that I try to tell people is make sure you have good light source and make sure it’s in front of you. You know, I, I’ve set my home office up in front of a bright window as natural light beaming in on your face is the best way to do it. Lacking natural light, you want to make sure you’ve got a strong light source but it’s always in front of you. People kind of think right, I gotta have a bright light and they tend to have it behind them and then the software just makes a mess of it. It sounds like a silly thing, but it’s one of the most super practical things to do just to have a well lit room make someone feel at home. It’s making sure you follow the same structure of your interview that you’re not deviating from that. The fundamentals of an interview don’t change. You still need to follow that. Making sure you turn your camera on. Some people are camera shy. You want to give the person the best opportunity and most communication is non verbal. You know, up to 58% of communication is non verbal according to a lot of studies. So you know, if you want somebody to turn their camera on and really give them the opportunity to do a great interview and communicate properly with you, you got to go onto the call with your camera turned on. You present, you know you’re presenting yourself in your best tone as well. So you know, it’s some of those things I think that are, can be really practical tips. Getting your lighting set up, making sure you’re comfortable, put someone at ease by being, turn your camera on. Like people forget to do this even when they go on to video assessments and remember it’s still an interview. The same rules apply.
Matt Alder [00:11:34]:
Absolutely. I think that’s very helpful advice. One of the things that I’ve noticed actually from being on LinkedIn in the last couple of days is that a number of people are starting new jobs and they’re now having to start these new jobs working from home. And I’m guessing that that’s going to be, that’s going to be a trend that’s certainly going to increase in the coming, in the coming few weeks. What are your thoughts on that? How, you know, how can companies possibly deal with that situation in terms of onboarding people but not actually meeting face to face.
Johnny Campbell [00:12:05]:
So I guess a few years ago recruiters would have rightly maybe said it’s not our problem. We don’t do onboarding. That’s the HR team. But most of the TA teams that I’m working with, I’ve seen that their role has broadened to encompass, if not onboarding, certainly pre boarding. You know, getting someone set up up until the day they arrive on site, in the office or factory or store or whatever they’re being hired for, making sure they have the right equipment ready, making sure they’re at ease. And that’s come a large part from a recruiter recognition that if they don’t handle that process well, the wreck is going to end up back open on their desk a few weeks later. And they don’t want to work the same wreck. No recruiter wants to have to work the same wreck two, three months later. You know, they genuinely want the candidate to be successful. And so even if it may not be their role, they see a role in that for them. So that’s been a trend for some time now. It’s really all hands on deck. The HR teams that we would typically hand over to, whether they’re in a recruitment agency handing over to them or you’re an in house recruiter handing over to them, you know, those teams are swamped. You know, there’s so many people issues they’re dealing with at the moment. Like so many people panicked about benefits, sick leave. What does it mean for me, potentially redundancies or just an influx of new hires because they’re overwhelmed? There’s a lot of pressure on those individuals. So often the onboarding or pre boarding process might get dropped and for a lot of companies there isn’t an office to onboard them into right now and there may not be for several months. I heard a great. If you don’t mind me mentioning in the podcast, the Career Crossroads podcast with Chris and Jerry and Shannon on a couple of days ago I was listening to several people speaking on that and one of the senior TA leaders in Amazon was talking about the fact that they, I think had currently thousands of people waiting to join corporate roles around the world and they’ve shut down their corporate offices. So, you know, what is your plan for that? You know, like it’s probably, it’s probably easier if you’re Amazon, I’m guessing they’ve got good systems. But what if you’ve never had to do this before virtually, you’ve never hired somebody who’s a virtual worker? Like, you know, you still got to make sure that they, they got to still have a job to start it because they’ve got work to do, they have a team to bond with, they have to start acclimatizing to. How does this company work? What’s the culture, what’s the hierarchy, the rule structure? How do I get things done? How am I, you know, given work, how am I giving praise, feedback, support? All those things are still needed. Everything you need as an employee in a physical office, you still need virtually. And you know, organizations aren’t necessarily ready for that. But you’ve got to get ready fast. Like, you know, the fear of joining a new company is large anyway. The fear of joining a new company right now must be tremendous. So how are you working to put those people at ease, to give them a virtual onboarding experience that mirrors as much as possible the one you would create in a normal office or retail or factory environment? That’s a big challenge, but I think it’s one that is not difficult to overcome.
Matt Alder [00:15:08]:
One of the things that just kind of has occurred to me when we were talking there, when you were talking about Amazon, is there are people who will have been hired to show up for jobs that they have to actually attend physically and they’ll have been hired by recruiters who are working virtually and HR teams who are working virtually. How’s that going to work?
Johnny Campbell [00:15:28]:
If you think about the types of people who might be arriving on site still today in this environment, you know, they’re probably frontline staff, whether that’s frontline staff who are healthcare workers, or if they’re working in a retail store, a food retailer, or if they’re in logistics in terms of moving goods around, they’re all still frontline services, public transport. If you still gotta arrive on site to a job with any of those sectors, it’s probably an environment where you’re going to have to hit the ground running and really, really get stuck in. So, you know, I don’t think there’s an exception for those. They’re not different. I think perhaps even more so. They need help with virtual pre boarding and onboarding. And this is something that as an example, when a year ago, when times were a lot different in social talent, with our incoming staff, we started building pre boarding training whereby the fortunate ability to be able to use our own software, where we were basically putting all the resources someone needed to understand before they joined online, where that’s meet the team, here’s how our systems work, here’s the difference what teams do, here’s what we’re all about, here’s what our priorities and OK OS are right now. And the idea was that when people arrived in day one, they already knew half of what they needed to know. Right? And you can do that quite easily. You can put together online resources so that people have access to this information before they start, but also supporting them when they do start so that they’re going home in the evening, watching some videos, reading some documentation so that they’re able to deliver quickly to your business because you probably need them to deliver really, really quickly right now, but they’re still able to balance all the needs they have as a new employee, like, how do things work? What are the rules? Who are the people? What’s the culture? How do I get to know people? So it’s stopping to remember that. And whilst everyone’s busy right now, it might seem like you have no time for them, but if you’re onboarding multiple people and you will be over the next few weeks and months, stop now. Trust me, you’re not going to get more time in the next few weeks, you’re going to get less time. Now is the time to sit back and prepare and say how do we give them still a good experience so they’re part of the team because it’s a crazy time for them too. And if someone’s not onboarded correctly or well, chances of them leaving are having, you know, really, you know, are being a low performing individual because they just don’t know how things work is so high. Your business can’t afford not to do this right now.
Matt Alder [00:17:48]:
A question specifically to help talent acquisition leaders. Again, just watching what people are saying on, on LinkedIn and Twitter and all those kind of places. Obviously a lot of TA teams are working remotely and their leadership are sort of trying to find, at the moment they’re trying to sort of, you know, get the, get the technology working and work out the sort of the right cadence for communication. But, but, but ultimately and this probably something that, well, this will be something that also applies so you’re probably in a good position to, to answer it. How, how do you keep people motivated, working remotely like this, particularly when people might be quite stressed out and anxious.
Johnny Campbell [00:18:27]:
So the way we’re approaching here in social talent and the way we’re going to recommend to, to our customers, it’s a balance between, you know, making sure that you are, first of all, you know, you feel like you’re still part of a team. Like that’s, that’s just so important. So you know, when you look at Virtual. Virtual has the ability to, able to huddle together quickly, you know, at the start of the day, end of the day, for 15 minutes just to say hello to everyone, make sure everyone’s doing good things. I saw a great tip from my friend Maren Hogan in the US and her business, she’s always used this with her team because a lot of them worked virtually where they huddle every morning and they have what they call hashtag six, six, six things. And it’s everyone has the six things they’re going to do and they just shout out what they’re going to do that day and they basically, you know, these are my six things today. These are my six things. These are my six things. Great, let’s go do it. And then they catch up at the end of the day to see how they got on, start the process the next day. Like simple things like that are super effective to get a team motivated. I used to work in the pub industry, in the hospitality industry, running nightclubs and bars and you know, you do the same at the start of the night, quick huddle with the staff. Right before we get going, what are we doing? What’s everyone doing? We know what’s happening and you hold them together at the end of the night. And you know, I remember that approach. I didn’t use it in the office environment, haven’t used it for 20 years. But you know, it works really well in a virtual environment to come together as a huddle. But it’s also practical things like stopping and. Because when you’re, you know, you just focus on the business side. Let’s work hard, let’s get things done and forget the personal side. I think that’s where you go wrong. So I think it’s also stopping and saying, let’s have a coffee together. Like let’s just throw up a zoom call or an online call and just sit and look at each other and have a coffee and ask each other how things are going. Because you can always remember that having the right mental health and well being during this time is super important. And people get lonely. Like, you know, I joked at the start of the podcast that I’ve got four kids and it’s crazy working from home. Like, I’m glad I have noise in my house, I have people to see. I’m probably going to be stuck in this house for a couple of months and it’s lonely if there’s nobody else here. So just remember your colleagues, you might not have as many people in the house and visitors and you know, it’s it’s, it’s. Yeah, get, you know, organize yourselves to do good work and make sure people are on the work and doing the right thing and you’re talking as a team, but also make sure you give plenty of time to just chat and say, how are you? I’ve seen great examples of companies who are doing, you know, 4pm on a Friday, they’re going online on a virtual call, not having a beer or a glass of wine or a soda together. You know, you gotta make time for those social interactions. Even when you feel like it’s, you know, everyone’s fine, they can do that themselves. They’re working it from home. You know, it’s your job as a manager, as a leader, as a business owner to make sure that you’re balancing that, you know, because that’s how you keep saying that’s the motivated people aren’t just given lots of great work to do. They got to have time to let off some steam every day, every couple of days where you kind of just have a rant with somebody, share some thoughts and don’t talk about work. So yeah, I think they’re important things to remember as you’re kind of balancing this new world of working and managing teams remotely.
Matt Alder [00:21:40]:
I think that’s incredibly important. And that kind of ongoing communication and virtual socializing, I suppose a word we’re going to be using quite a lot, it’s kind of vital. I mean, I’ve already been for a couple of video conference coffees with people and I’ve got my first after work Skype drinks tonight. So it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s funny. So, final question. I normally sort of ask about the future as the final question on this podcast, but with the sort of the topic that we’re talking about and you know, event, day to day, the day to day changing on a day to day basis, that’s probably not, not appropriate right now. One question to ask is, obviously there were a lot of talent acquisition professionals and recruiters who are being married, redundant or being laid off or concerned about their jobs. What can we do to help those people or what would your advice to those people be?
Johnny Campbell [00:22:29]:
I think we got to help each other as communities. I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me and to our team over the last few days and week, just asking, can we help? And I’ve seen a lot of other businesses offer their help and so big companies are offering help to all businesses in the way that they can. That’s brilliant. But you know, particularly in the TA and recruiter community, it’s a much smaller community of people. And if you’re in this community like we are, I think it’s important to try and help each other and support each other. So if you know of jobs going in the companies or sectors that are anti cyclical, that are growing through this, you know, share that with your fellow recruiters who you, who you know are out of work. If you know somebody who’s fearful of being out of work, you know, work with them to help them be indispensable. I think this is the time in a business if you haven’t been laid off and you’re at fear of being laid off, become indispensable. You know, I’ve seen this trend of talent acquisition merging with talent kind of teams over the last year or two. Anyway, now’s the time to see if your HR colleagues or anyone else in the talent team need your help. You know, prove that you can be an adoptable person before negative news comes your way. They’re good skills to have. So they’re the important things that we can do as individuals and as colleagues. We at Social Talent want to try and do our bit to try and help those who’ve recently been laid off, made unemployed as recruiters and TA folks. And if you’re out there, get in touch with us. We have learning resources that we can provide to you to upskill, get qualifications so that you know when you do get that interview, when you are back in front of somebody who is hiring over the coming weeks and months, that you’re going to nail it with the best practice from all over the world of how to do recruiting and talent acquisition really, really well. So reach out to us and we want to be as supportive as possible to that community. We’ve got free resources and you know, we want to give people access to our platform to train up. If they have been recently made renowned and laid off, just to make it as easy as possible and to give them the best skills, you’re going to be stuck at home. I always say, when you’re out of work, treat it like a job. Getting a job is a job. Get yourself on your desk, give yourself focus and target for the day. What you’re going to do, who you’re going to reach out to. You can’t just sit there and wait for the world to happen to you. It doesn’t work that way. So take control, develop your learning, develop your skills, broaden your skills into new areas. If you’re a specialist, become more generous. Learn what your other colleagues do, train up on those skills. We’ll help you free of charge to try and do that and reach out to your network, get their advice, but make it a work day. You know, give yourself tasks and responsibilities every day to yourself to basically get yourself back motivated, trained up and in a new job. No one knows how long it’s going to take, how long it’s going to last for. As you said, Matt, there’s no point in predicting the future. It’s a fool who tries to. But taking control is important and making sure that you set your agenda every day and realize that it is in your control to do these things, to try and you can’t control somebody giving you a job, but you can control the effort you put into it. You control the effort in self development, in learning and broadening your skills. And when an employer comes around, they’ll appreciate someone who’s put that effort in.
Matt Alder [00:25:44]:
Johnny, thank you very much for talking to me.
Johnny Campbell [00:25:46]:
Thanks man. Hopefully we’ll talk next time under better circumstances.
Matt Alder [00:25:50]:
My thanks to Johnny Campbell. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. The show’s also on Instagram. You can find it 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.recruitingfuture.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.
