From the conversations I’ve been having recently, it seems that the level of adoption for recruiting automation is going to dramatically increase as we come out of the current pandemic crisis. The problem though it that recruiting automation is often thrown around as a trend without any insight into the strategic and tactical practicalities of implementing it effectively.
To help give us an insight into what recruiting automation looks like in practice my guest this week is a highly experienced recruiter and talent acquisition leader Izzey Hung. Izzey has implemented automation and chatbot programmes at several employers and has some excellent insights to share.
In the interview, we discuss:
- Dealing with recruiting challenges
- A strategic process for recruiting automation
- The importance of understanding the market
- Getting your organization engaged
- How to decide what to automate
- A chatbot centric approach
- The benefits of recruiting automation
- Insight from new data points
- The future of recruiting automation
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast is provided by Head Start. Hire diverse future leaders Faster with Head Start create a fair and level playing field, hire candidates based on their potential, and manage thousands of applications with ease. Organizations use Head Start’s applicant tracking platform with built in data science to hire more diverse candidates, automate the hiring process and reduce cost per hire by up to 55%. Find out more and get your free Radical Recruiter T shirt at Headstart IO RadicalRecruiter. That’s Headstart IO RadicalRecruiter.
Matt Alder [00:01:03]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 257 of the Recruiting Future podcast. From the conversations I’ve been having recently, it seems that the level of adoption for recruiting automation is going to dramatically increase as we come out of the current pandemic crisis. The problem though is that recruiting automation is often thrown around as a trend without any insight into the and tactical practicalities of implementing it effectively. To help give us an insight into what recruiting automation looks like in practice, my guest this week is a highly experienced recruiter and talent acquisition leader, Izzey Hung. Izzey has implemented automation and chatbot programs at several employers and has some excellent insights to share. Hi Izzey and welcome to the podcast.
Izzey Hung [00:01:56]:
Hello Matt, nice to be with you again. Long time no see.
Matt Alder [00:01:59]:
Absolutely. It has been a while and pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Izzey Hung [00:02:08]:
Okay, so been in talent acquisition probably as long as you have, longer than we care to admit. I’ve been both in house RPO and on the kind of advertising agency side for a bit, so. But predominantly in talent acquisition.
Izzey Hung [00:02:25]:
Both local in the UK as well.
Izzey Hung [00:02:27]:
As global roles and recently been consulting for the last couple of years to.
Izzey Hung [00:02:33]:
Provide a more flexible lifestyle.
Matt Alder [00:02:35]:
And we kind of first met what seems like a very long time ago now and you actually helped recruit my team when I was working in the advertising world. So I’ve kind of seen your brilliance as a recruiter close up.
Izzey Hung [00:02:49]:
Sitting across the desk from you. I remember that, yes.
Matt Alder [00:02:51]:
The topic that we’re going to talk about today is recruitment automation and chatbots. I know that it’s something that you’ve had quite a lot of recent experience of. Talk us through some of the challenges that you were trying to, you know, what kind of company were you working for? What kind of challenges were you, were you sort of trying to solve for them?
Izzey Hung [00:03:10]:
So I think that the, the Word challenges is can be taken a number of different ways, but I think it is around for me it was working with a UK’s favorite coffee place, but also prior to that working with a technology company. And the challenges or the I suppose.
Izzey Hung [00:03:28]:
The things with problem we’re trying to.
Izzey Hung [00:03:30]:
Solve, how do we create a great experience or candidate engagement that doesn’t take.
Izzey Hung [00:03:38]:
Your recruiters away from the day job.
Izzey Hung [00:03:40]:
Or from the value added pieces. For a number of years now, I think the use of chatbots or AI, etc. Has been underplayed in the sense of we are just thinking about particular areas.
Izzey Hung [00:03:55]:
Like front end of a recruitment process.
Izzey Hung [00:03:57]:
But not really thinking about how it could actually add value to our internal communication. And I think example of that is in one of my previous jobs we had a number of different ATS systems. It was a global organization, so they weren’t connected.
Izzey Hung [00:04:13]:
And so a lot of the recruiters.
Izzey Hung [00:04:15]:
Were across regions and we looked at implementing something like a chatbot just to.
Izzey Hung [00:04:19]:
Literally help with internal FAQs.
Izzey Hung [00:04:22]:
Where do I go, who do I speak to? And I think that we the right words for this.
Izzey Hung [00:04:29]:
We don’t often think broader than what’s.
Izzey Hung [00:04:31]:
In front of us when we come to chatbots. And with the coffee place, it was really to look at how do we in some ways reduce the top end of the funnel. So many applications coming in potentially for.
Izzey Hung [00:04:45]:
Your kind of hourly paid workers.
Izzey Hung [00:04:47]:
We were looking at how could that.
Izzey Hung [00:04:48]:
Automation support the front end of the process in a way that was more.
Izzey Hung [00:04:52]:
Engaging, but actually the way that we.
Izzey Hung [00:04:54]:
Used it in the end was completely different.
Matt Alder [00:04:56]:
Fantastic. Keen to sort of find more out about how you did eventually use it, the kind of results that you were getting. Before we dive into that though, it’s probably worth sort of talking about the whole process that you, that you went through. So you sort of identified that initial need for people who are looking at implementing this type of technology. What sort of process did you go through? What lessons did you learn from that?
Izzey Hung [00:05:17]:
I think one of the things that I’ve learned over the years, and I think when I was first ahead of.
Izzey Hung [00:05:22]:
Talent acquisition, you think you can do everything.
Izzey Hung [00:05:25]:
And over the years I’ve probably, like most people, I’ve learned that actually if you pick one or two things off and do it well, it generally produces the best outcome. And I think for a number of years I’ve been thinking about how do we use bots, how do we use.
Izzey Hung [00:05:38]:
Some of this new technology?
Izzey Hung [00:05:40]:
And I think we’re always afraid to stand on the top of the cliff and jump in. What I ended up doing was I.
Izzey Hung [00:05:47]:
Actually went to a number of different providers or suppliers and really just asked.
Izzey Hung [00:05:52]:
Them, how does it work?
Izzey Hung [00:05:54]:
All the fundamentals are things that you’re.
Izzey Hung [00:05:56]:
Worried about is like, oh, I don’t want to go and get a chatbot, because isn’t that lots of hard work? Or I don’t really know the technology behind it. And so I did quite a lot of research around what is a bot? What’s the difference between a bot and AI? How expensive is it? Over literally the last couple of years, I think, because a lot of organizations or recruiters or talent acquisition managers like myself have been in that same boat.
Izzey Hung [00:06:24]:
What do I use it for?
Izzey Hung [00:06:25]:
How do I use it?
Izzey Hung [00:06:26]:
Is it expensive?
Izzey Hung [00:06:27]:
I just did the research and I.
Izzey Hung [00:06:29]:
Just reached out to suppliers and asked them.
Izzey Hung [00:06:31]:
I think that’s one thing that I would definitely recommend.
Izzey Hung [00:06:35]:
There’s no harm in asking.
Izzey Hung [00:06:36]:
And we forget that the art of questioning and getting that kind of almost like Pareto’s Law 8020. If you can do all your thinking upfront with using a chatbot, I think that’s probably highly recommended in terms of what are you going to use it for, how are you going to use it, what’s the outcome going to be? And do you have the budget for what you want to do that with? You know, obviously the more complex you.
Izzey Hung [00:07:00]:
Go, the more expensive it becomes.
Izzey Hung [00:07:03]:
But over recent years, what I have discovered is that it is getting more accessible and less expensive because more and.
Izzey Hung [00:07:13]:
More people are using it.
Izzey Hung [00:07:14]:
And I’ve always taken my learning from.
Izzey Hung [00:07:17]:
The marketing side of things.
Izzey Hung [00:07:19]:
So if we look at kind of.
Izzey Hung [00:07:20]:
Omnichannel marketing, we look at the customer.
Izzey Hung [00:07:22]:
Service or the customer proposition or whatever you want to call it, Consumer journey. They’ve been using chatbots and things. We all know we go on to our telephone, mobile phone providers and the chatbots there, etc, everywhere you go. Now, I think for me it was about solving my own challenges around how nervous I was because I didn’t understand. Understanding it was the first point of going, okay, now I feel ready to jump into this. I think that was definitely a big thing for me. And then it was the second to that is, how do you get people.
Izzey Hung [00:07:54]:
In your organization as engaged?
Izzey Hung [00:07:57]:
Yeah.
Izzey Hung [00:07:58]:
What is the problem statement you’re trying.
Izzey Hung [00:08:00]:
To solve internally that would bring the con, open the conversation to chatbots and AI if your organization isn’t using it already?
Matt Alder [00:08:09]:
Absolutely. How did you go from there? How did you select a supplier? What was this sort of the next stage?
Izzey Hung [00:08:14]:
Yeah, it was an interesting journey at a previous technology company that was kind of two or three years ago, I actually rang up a number of industry colleagues and asked them and we actually ended up working with someone that was part of the IBM Watson group and we kind of built something from scratch, but it’s not like that anymore. So I literally went to the likes of Meet and Engage roborecruiter and just asked them how did it work and what was going to be best for our organization. And interesting enough, when we implemented RoboRecruiter, it wasn’t what we started with in the beginning.
Izzey Hung [00:08:54]:
Originally I had gone to them to.
Izzey Hung [00:08:57]:
Ask me, how do we deal if we are going to take on the recruitment for all hourly workers across a large scale of headcount? So 10,000 approximately, maybe, or maybe more, what would that look like? And we thought about what originally I did. I thought about automating the whole of the process, end to end. So rather than outsourcing or building your own recruitment team, how could I end to end all of our hourly workers?
Izzey Hung [00:09:27]:
And one of the reasons for that was because actually, how do we become more compliant? So how do we support GDPR if.
Izzey Hung [00:09:33]:
You’Ve got managers in stores or hospitality.
Izzey Hung [00:09:36]:
Or areas where they’re not on their.
Izzey Hung [00:09:38]:
Laptops all the time and they’ve got.
Izzey Hung [00:09:39]:
People walking in handing them their CVs.
Izzey Hung [00:09:41]:
We were more concerned about the compliance elements of it in terms of handing that CV over. We were looking at the compliance of right to work because with all of Brexit, how are we going to maintain control of that? But also actually, if it was fully automated, how could we help line managers do the whole process on their mobile phones?
Izzey Hung [00:10:04]:
Because obviously in hospitality and things like.
Izzey Hung [00:10:07]:
That, and maybe any hourly worker, right, they tend not to be on their laptops or work laptops.
Izzey Hung [00:10:13]:
How can we help them when actually.
Izzey Hung [00:10:15]:
It’S their personal phone and it’s not a business phone as well? And there was a lot of chat around how we did that. And in the end, the reason why.
Izzey Hung [00:10:23]:
We ended up with a hybrid solution is because actually the business wasn’t ready to understand a fully automated process. And whilst that could have been a leapfrog solution, some organizations aren’t prepared or.
Izzey Hung [00:10:35]:
Ready to take that leapfrog because they may be, you know, wouldn’t want, you.
Izzey Hung [00:10:39]:
Know, far behind the curve themselves in their own thinking.
Izzey Hung [00:10:42]:
And so we opted for a solution.
Izzey Hung [00:10:46]:
That kind of introduced them to it, shall I say? So the front end of the process.
Izzey Hung [00:10:50]:
And actually because of. We actually ended up because one of our. We were moving atss changing our atss, we discovered very quickly that our ATS system was probably going to be down over a period of time for about by the time you’ve locked down the.
Izzey Hung [00:11:07]:
Old one, put in the new one.
Izzey Hung [00:11:08]:
Was about four weeks, three to four weeks. And rather than looking at the big fully outsourced solution for hourly workers, we.
Izzey Hung [00:11:16]:
Said actually, why don’t we just test it while our systems are down?
Izzey Hung [00:11:20]:
Because we’re not going to be able.
Izzey Hung [00:11:21]:
To have application online.
Izzey Hung [00:11:22]:
It’s going to have to go through email, the recruiters are going to have.
Izzey Hung [00:11:25]:
To get hundreds of emails. Let’s use it as a front end.
Izzey Hung [00:11:27]:
Tool and demonstrate how this can actually help us and what data does it give us so that when we turn our systems back on, we can then.
Izzey Hung [00:11:35]:
Look at it for a longer term solution.
Matt Alder [00:11:37]:
Fantastic stuff. So you said you kind of went for a hybrid solution. What aspects of the process did the chatbot deal with?
Izzey Hung [00:11:44]:
So as our system was down, we decided not to put adverts onto the.
Izzey Hung [00:11:50]:
Career site as static.
Izzey Hung [00:11:51]:
So our original thought process was let’s put a section on the careers site.
Izzey Hung [00:11:56]:
That was marketing for example, or it.
Izzey Hung [00:11:58]:
That kind of outlined the types of.
Izzey Hung [00:12:00]:
Roles or skill sets you’d require.
Izzey Hung [00:12:02]:
When we thought about that, we thought, oh my God, that’s going to allow.
Izzey Hung [00:12:06]:
Us to be inundated.
Izzey Hung [00:12:06]:
How do we stop that inundation?
Izzey Hung [00:12:08]:
And so that our recruiters can just focus on the most important things.
Izzey Hung [00:12:12]:
And so we use the chatbot. We built a and it was really simple. It was kind of like the way you think of it is how do.
Izzey Hung [00:12:19]:
You have a conversation backwards and forwards?
Izzey Hung [00:12:21]:
How do we stop the applications that we all know that we get? That, you know, 5% of the applications we get are probably the ones we.
Izzey Hung [00:12:29]:
Want to focus on. So we looked at what that would look like.
Izzey Hung [00:12:32]:
And also as are all of our systems with were down, even our managers and stores weren’t having access. How do we kind of, how did we negate some of that? So we used the chatbots to front end and we put a note on.
Izzey Hung [00:12:46]:
The Careers site, said look, we’re in transition of our systems, but please go.
Izzey Hung [00:12:49]:
To our chatbot that can provide you.
Izzey Hung [00:12:50]:
With some basic information during this period in time.
Izzey Hung [00:12:55]:
And the chatbot, the first thing it asked was are you interested in X or Y in terms of hourly workers or non hourly workers? And then we created, I suppose a.
Izzey Hung [00:13:05]:
Conversation path that led them down to.
Izzey Hung [00:13:08]:
Either live jobs because it had some touch of AI in there. So a series of questions that led them to particular jobs or it gave.
Izzey Hung [00:13:18]:
Them information of how they might be able to apply.
Izzey Hung [00:13:21]:
But right at the front end, we asked them, did they have a right.
Izzey Hung [00:13:26]:
To work in the uk?
Izzey Hung [00:13:28]:
And we always thought that, our assumption was we always thought this was quite.
Izzey Hung [00:13:33]:
A big issue for us.
Izzey Hung [00:13:34]:
And what we found was of the people that engaged with the chatbot, you know, give or take, the average 50%.
Izzey Hung [00:13:42]:
Of those people actually came out of that process and didn’t make it all the way through to completion of an application.
Izzey Hung [00:13:49]:
And we can only assume that that is, you can see from the first.
Izzey Hung [00:13:55]:
Question when they dropped off.
Izzey Hung [00:13:56]:
So the chatbot allowed us to see at what point were people jumping out of that conversation, at what points in.
Izzey Hung [00:14:03]:
The question path were they jumping out?
Izzey Hung [00:14:05]:
And at early stage, the first question.
Izzey Hung [00:14:07]:
Do you have a right to work in the UK?
Izzey Hung [00:14:09]:
50% on average, we’re dropping out at that stage.
Izzey Hung [00:14:12]:
Which helps us understand as we implemented, we’re implementing new ats. What we had originally done was ask.
Izzey Hung [00:14:18]:
That at office stage. And that has actually brought that decision making said, guys, we need to ask this at the front end because if.
Izzey Hung [00:14:25]:
We’Re seeing 50% in this four week.
Izzey Hung [00:14:27]:
Period, we want to stop those applications coming through into the system anyway.
Matt Alder [00:14:31]:
What other kind of questions was a chatbot having? What sort of type of conversations?
Izzey Hung [00:14:35]:
So it then asked, what type of job function do you want to work in?
Izzey Hung [00:14:39]:
Let’s just pick marketing.
Izzey Hung [00:14:41]:
And then it would ask you a series, it would ask you a question around what type of marketing and then it would level off, show you some jobs. So it’s really very basic. So we didn’t have a, at this stage, we haven’t got an ats, right.
Izzey Hung [00:14:56]:
We are putting jobs onto a spreadsheet and this hopefully helps people understand.
Izzey Hung [00:15:00]:
We’re putting jobs on a spreadsheet, Marketing manager or social media manager, for example, put the postcode in, so the location of where that was. And then we put a series of, like, I suppose traditionally, right, Ask a.
Izzey Hung [00:15:14]:
Series of questions that you might build.
Izzey Hung [00:15:16]:
In your ats, how many years marketing experience you got, or have you got this skill set, if it’s, you know, it, you know, etc, etc. And we asked you, we asked a.
Izzey Hung [00:15:27]:
Maximum of five questions related to that job. And then depending on the, on the.
Izzey Hung [00:15:32]:
Answers, they were yes or nos, depended.
Izzey Hung [00:15:34]:
On whether you went to the next.
Izzey Hung [00:15:35]:
Job and whether you got the full application stage. And so in some jobs you could.
Izzey Hung [00:15:40]:
See that people followed that all the way through.
Izzey Hung [00:15:42]:
In other jobs, you can see where they dropped off. What was interesting was, is that I suppose the head office jobs, I suppose your functional jobs or your business functions related jobs, most of them went through, you only had probably about 20, 25% drop off. But when we looked at, I suppose the more of what I call the store manager types of jobs, you saw greater drop off depending on the questions.
Izzey Hung [00:16:06]:
That were asked, which was useful for.
Izzey Hung [00:16:09]:
Recruiters to see where their drop off was.
Matt Alder [00:16:11]:
So what happened when the ATS came back on, back on, back on stream, did you sort of, did you extend what the chatbot was doing?
Izzey Hung [00:16:19]:
So we are in discussions at the moment around how that can help us going forward, particularly with obviously the outbreak.
Izzey Hung [00:16:24]:
Of our famous friend the virus.
Izzey Hung [00:16:27]:
For me personally, I would see this as a real opportunity to be able to communicate so that the recruitment team are not getting all of the 100 million questions that I’m sure all of our colleagues are getting at the moment around is recruitment still going on? How are people being onboarded?
Izzey Hung [00:16:42]:
I think there’s a real opportunity to.
Izzey Hung [00:16:44]:
Extend that from where we are today.
Izzey Hung [00:16:47]:
In this current environment.
Izzey Hung [00:16:48]:
And I think one of the things.
Izzey Hung [00:16:49]:
We definitely learned is because there was.
Izzey Hung [00:16:51]:
A search facility within that you were.
Izzey Hung [00:16:54]:
Able to see what were the most.
Izzey Hung [00:16:55]:
Popular words being searched. And I think that gave us a.
Izzey Hung [00:16:58]:
Learning too in terms of why people are coming to the site.
Izzey Hung [00:17:01]:
What are the predominantly, what are the.
Izzey Hung [00:17:03]:
The, what are the jobs that people looking for most prominent but also what are the locations?
Izzey Hung [00:17:07]:
Because we also asked them where they lit, where they were based. So you able to see that as well. But at the moment we, we haven’t gone forward in terms of renewing that, but we are in discussions absolutely, 100% final question.
Matt Alder [00:17:20]:
I’m getting quite a lot of questions asked to me personally about what the future look like in terms of, in terms of automation. You know, obviously taking into account current situation. You mentioned sort of earlier in the conversation that there was the possibility to automate the whole recruitment process and other things like that. What’s your sort of view on the future? Where do you think automation is going?
Izzey Hung [00:17:44]:
Oh, this million dollar question.
Izzey Hung [00:17:45]:
Right. I’m a great believer in personal touch. Yeah, I don’t think we can do.
Izzey Hung [00:17:51]:
Necessarily a whole recruitment process without a person engagement at some point in the process.
Izzey Hung [00:17:56]:
But what I do believe is that it can help us get to the value add quicker. And if you, if you think about.
Izzey Hung [00:18:04]:
The pros and cons of having like.
Izzey Hung [00:18:06]:
A chatbot, it’s quick, you satisfy people quickly in that sense, you reduce the labor at the front end, particularly around volume hiring. And it can be multipurpose, internal FAQs, external FAQs, right to work and compliance. It can provide some upfront early engagement both internally and externally. How to guides all of that sort of stuff. However it is limited in terms of response.
Izzey Hung [00:18:34]:
People can get front frustrated if they.
Izzey Hung [00:18:36]:
Don’T get the right answer.
Izzey Hung [00:18:37]:
The more complex you go, the more.
Izzey Hung [00:18:38]:
Expensive it is, you know and it’s not good for all areas of business or HR or talent acquisition. So I think it’s there is some.
Izzey Hung [00:18:48]:
Options in there to front end stuff.
Izzey Hung [00:18:51]:
To get to the people that you.
Izzey Hung [00:18:53]:
Want to talk to faster.
Izzey Hung [00:18:54]:
So you can provide the nice value add engagement piece. You know, equally, you know a chatbot with Meet and Engage. You can invite them to live events.
Izzey Hung [00:19:04]:
So that people can then interact.
Izzey Hung [00:19:06]:
So I think it eliminates some of that administration piece so that you can end result.
Izzey Hung [00:19:13]:
So for me I think this will.
Izzey Hung [00:19:14]:
Become it’s got to become the norm to be able to get to the value add.
Matt Alder [00:19:19]:
Izzey, thank you very much for talking to me.
Izzey Hung [00:19:21]:
Pleasure. Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:19:23]:
My thanks to Izzey Hung. 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 listen to 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.
