Talent Acquisition is uniquely challenging at the moment. Impossible talent markets, virtual recruiting, and evolving EVPs are just a small selection of TA leaders’ current challenges. At the same time, we are seeing an unprecedented amount of investment and innovation in recruiting technology being driven by AI. So how does everything join up, and how can talent acquisition teams use AI in a strategic way to address the problems they face
My guest this week is Rebecca Warren, part of the Customer Success team at Eightfold AI. Rebecca is a former TA leader, which gives her some unique insights and advice to share on using AI strategically.
In the interview, we discuss:
Talent Acquisition challenges
The best way of connecting with candidates in the current environment
Looking beyond the resume
Using AI to find skill adjacency, talent and potential
DE&I, what is happening in practice?
Which new ways of working are long term trends
How AI can make Talent Acquisition more strategic
The evolution of the EVP
Practical examples of AI in action
Advice to talent acquisition leader on AI
What does the future hold?
Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Eightfold AI. Eightfold AI delivers the talent intelligence platform, the most effective way for companies to retain top performers, upskill and reskill the workforce, recruit top talent efficiently, and reach diversity goals. Eightfold AI’s deep learning artificial intelligence platform empowers enterprises to turn talent management into into a competitive advantage.
Matt Alder [00:00:47]:
Hi, everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 377 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Talent acquisition is uniquely challenging at the moment. Impossible. Talent markets, virtual recruiting and evolving EVPs are just a small selection of TA leaders current challenges. At the same time, we’re seeing an unprecedented amount of investment and innovation in recruiting technology, which is being driven by AI. So how does everything join up and how can talent acquisition teams use AI in a strategic way to address the problems they face? My guest this week is Rebecca Warren, part of the customer success team at Eightfold AI. Rebecca is a former TA leader, which gives her some unique insights and advice to share on using AI strategically.
Matt Alder [00:01:43]:
Hi, Rebecca, and welcome to the podcast.
Rebecca Warren [00:01:46]:
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Matt Alder [00:01:47]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. You just introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
Rebecca Warren [00:01:53]:
Absolutely. Rebecca Warren. I currently work for Eightfold AI as a customer success executive. What that means is my job is really to make sure that our clients are happy and they’re getting all that they can out of the platform. But before Eightfold, I was in TA for a longer number of years than I’m going to say out loud, but have gone all the way from snail mail resumes to faxing, to leading teams to where we are. So I’ve done all of the pieces, both as a corporate, I’ve done agency, I’ve been a consultant. I’ve seen all different facets of ta. So really good fit for me to switch gears and move into a fold. And yeah, that’s me.
Matt Alder [00:02:45]:
I suppose you’re really well positioned to answer the first question, which is not the question I’m asking everyone at the moment, which is what are. What effect is the pandemic having on talent acquisition from your perspective, what are you seeing? What’s changing? What are the implications been?
Rebecca Warren [00:02:59]:
Yeah, it’s been super interesting. You know, one of the things, of course, is we’re seeing people working in different places and in different ways. I’ve always been a huge advocate for remote work and that has been in most of my roles, something that’s been really important to me and that I’ve been able to do so. It’s super interesting now to see how job seekers, as opposed to feeling more controlled by the employer, are now switching gears and taking that control back and saying, I’m not going to work in an office or I don’t want to relocate. Like, we’ve seen that, right? A lot of people say, I don’t want to relocate or I will only live in XYZ places. Right. I’ve done that. Moved from Minnesota to Arizona, to Nashville, back to Arizona. I didn’t really want to move to Nashville, but that’s a whole other story. But I think we’re seeing now where candidates and employees feel like they have a little bit more control over where they work, if not how they work. So I think that’s one of the biggest things where we’re seeing people just saying, no, my family, my, you know, life is too short. We don’t know what’s coming. So my family or my location, where I’m at really matters more than I think it used to. That’s one of the big things I’m seeing.
Matt Alder [00:04:16]:
What are the implications of that for talent acquisition professionals? I mean, what are you hearing from your clients? What are the sort of the best ways of connecting with candidates at the moment?
Rebecca Warren [00:04:28]:
Well, so I think some of the implications are it’s harder to get people, it’s harder to find the right people. I think in a lot of ways, though, it’s good because it’s forcing employers to change and think differently. And that’s what’s cool about using Eightfold to help some of my clients get a whole new group of people. Because Eightfold uses AI, it’s not just looking at a resume, which, honestly, I mean, resumes are a tool to get in the door. You need to have something to showcase who you are. But resumes are not the be all and end all. And so using AI that we have, it allows employers to look more for. What are those skill adjacencies? What is the talent that they bring to the table, the potential that they may have, allowing employers to switch gears more and look for maybe somebody who doesn’t have everything they were looking for, but could learn it. And I think it makes us better. And that was something that I was always looking to do inside of TA is figuring out who’s the right fit, not who’s the right fit on paper. Because there’s a whole bunch of different things that show up or don’t show up on a resume. Right. So I think this is forcing employers to look differently at the talent pool. It’s not as easy for them to say, I want 100% of this, and that’s all I’ll take. And if it doesn’t work, blame it on the recruiter. It just doesn’t work like that anymore. Right. So there’s a lot of different things that I think employers need to look at differently. It’s not so much about the perks in the office, because a lot of folks aren’t in the office or don’t want to go to the office or the community in the office is different because of masking and distancing and safety protocols. There’s a lot more technology being used in conference rooms. So I have several of my clients who have conference rooms, and we do at Eightfold as well, set up to focus on a zoom screen. Right. A larger screen so that there can be video interfaces, regardless of how many people are actually in the conference room. So I think I’ve rambled a bit. But some of the things I think are changing are forcing employers to act differently. And of course, some of them are forcing candidates to act differently as well.
Matt Alder [00:06:47]:
One of the things that we’re seeing globally, in so many different talent markets at the moment, skill shortages, labor shortages, and a real struggle to fill vacancies and recruit people. Do you think by looking, you know, using things like AI to look differently at candidates and their experience and their skills, are people finding that this is a way to broaden talent pools and solve their sort of recruiting cris?
Rebecca Warren [00:07:12]:
Well, absolutely. I think what it’s also doing is not only expanding talent pools for employers to be able to pull different people in or maybe change their requirements, but I think this is the perfect time for candidates to think about reinventing themselves. There’s a lot of shortages that we’re seeing because folks are saying, I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m done with that. I want to do something else. And so this is also a way for candidates to reinvent themselves, whether it is taking additional classes or whether it’s looking outside of an area that they feel comfortable. That’s something I’ve been talking about with friends of mine as well as clients, is that we’re in a state of uncomfortableness. Right. I feel uncomfortable almost every day, learning a new role, moving into a new industry, working with different clients that have different challenges. I think we are all working towards reinventing in some way, whether it’s really small or really large. And I think the talent pools are looking different, not Only because employers are looking for different people, but because candidates are looking for different roles. If we don’t come and meet in the middle, I think we are going to continue to have that crisis. But I also think it’s causing employers to look at their expectations differently. Right. So if you’ve got a restaurant that says we normally need 20 people to staff our dining room and we need, you know, 15 people to staff the back of the house, and you just don’t have those people, what does that do for your business? Does it make you more efficient? Do you look at technology? Do you look at AI? Do you look at different ways to make those jobs more efficient, make the, the companies more efficient, but also then give better opportunities to candidates, maybe taking some of that boring. I don’t know, boring isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean, Taking some of that stuff off of their plates to allow them to do different jobs. So I think it’s reinventing in a lot of different ways. And the talent pool looks different now. I think it’s going to look much different, even just a year from now as well.
Matt Alder [00:09:30]:
Diversity, equity, inclusion is such a focus at the moment. Everyone is talking about it and focusing on it and thinking about it. Is that actually working in practice, though? How should talent acquisition professionals be thinking about dei and what are you actually seeing that’s happening?
Rebecca Warren [00:09:49]:
Well, of course, because of everything that happened with George Floyd in the middle of the pandemic. All of the things that I think were a little easier maybe to. I don’t know if sweep under the rug is the right way to say it, but a lot of things that we just didn’t pay as much attention to. A lot of organizations have diversity specialists. There was always someone there in the majority of companies. This shift has really brought that to diversity, equity, inclusion. How are we looking at different things? Right. I know I have some of my clients who are doing not just diversity training, they’re doing inclusion training. They’re looking at equity. They’re talking about bias. And we all have bias, right? So it’s looking at how are we more honest inside of our organizations? Let’s be real with each other, let’s acknowledge that we haven’t always included everyone in the right places. So let’s open up those conversations, let’s have honest dialogue and let’s talk about what that looks like. We’re not going to be able to change everything in the space of a year, two years, five years. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, but I am starting to see that trend where there’s more honesty in organizations, more acknowledgement of we haven’t done this so well in the past. We’re going to do better. And here are the things we’re going to do. Right. It’s not just diversity training on how not to look at race and gender in a certain way, but let’s talk about it in a more broad sense. So there’s, I think, some eyes that are being opened in a lot of places and I think that there’s a lot of changes that are happening in terms of what does that seat at the table look like? It’s not just someone who belongs in HR buried somewhere, who does a couple events now and then, but now it’s someone who needs to have that seat at the table. And that should be the first thing we look at as opposed to the last thing, needs to be proactive instead of reactive. So I think, unfortunately, because of what happened, we are being called to be better.
Matt Alder [00:12:02]:
It’s been a very dramatic 18 months. Well, you know, getting, getting towards, getting towards two years now. We’ve seen lots of disruption, lots of change, lots of things happening at a speed we couldn’t have possibly imagined. If we go back a few years, what do you think is going to happen in the long term? How many of these changes and these new ways of thinking and these new ways of working are here to stay and other things that will just sort of fall by the wayside as we hopefully eventually come out of the pandemic?
Rebecca Warren [00:12:38]:
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that is, I think will change on a more permanent basis is how people work, looking at making things more effective. I think about in that one of the examples that I was talking about earlier, where we can find folks, if we have the right folks inside of the organization who are on board with it, we can find folks that are going to change how we hire. Right. If we’re looking for someone that doesn’t fit a resume, we could do the work on our own. I think we are going to see AI and technology here to stay to help make that easier. And I would hope that we are going to then continue to elevate jobs. I know one of the things that is a little scary about AI and technology is folks feel like they’re going to lose their jobs or they’re not going to be valuable. And that’s a huge thing in ta. Right. We all have worked really hard at our skill sets and are very clear on the value that is brought to the table. By ta. And so AI is a little scary because people feel like I’m going to lose my job or AI is going to take over my role. I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s going to make us smarter. I think it’s going to help us evolve. I think it’s going to allow TA to be more strategic as opposed to being in the weeds as much. Thinking about even how TA has evolved from the time when we were doing snail mail and faxing and then ATS came around and we were all like, whoa, this is crazy. I don’t want an ats, because that’s going to take my job. Well, clearly that didn’t happen because ATS’s are a necessary evil, but not the be all and end all. I think we’re going to continue to see that trend of helping us in TA become more strategic, thinking about things differently, making things more effective, making things move more quickly. And I also think that there’s going to be a continued shift in how we look at offerings for employees. It used to be, hey, come to our office because we’ve got the skateboards and the pool tables and all of that, and that’s not as much of a draw. So, of course, TA has to switch and figure out what’s really important to folks. And we’re continuing to see that it is important that there is a diversity equity inclusion policy, that it’s real, that there are employee resource groups, that there are more opportunities for folks to stay healthy. An increase in mental health resources, what does that look like? Taking away the stigma? And we’ve seen that in the broader perspective, not just in employees. Right. But in the broader perspective that mental health is really important. And especially as we change to doing things more remotely and we’re not as defined by the office hours, we kind of work continuously. Mental health is really important to say there’s time to shut it off. There’s time. When you take a day off, you need to shut it all down. Right. And employer is giving employees the permission to do that. I want you to take five days off in a row, and I don’t want to hear or see from you. Not because we don’t love you, but you need that break. So I do think there’s going to be continued shifts there. What is one of the conversations I was just having with some friends of mine was about leave. And what does bereavement leave look like? You know, we have some narrow definitions by law and also by company, but family is family, and we’re learning in today’s day and age that that’s more important. And so we need to be better about looking at the whole self and giving people resources down the road that are sustainable, to be able to work at the pace and to do the things that are expected.
Matt Alder [00:16:15]:
There are so many things that I want to kind of follow up and ask you about, just, just in that last answer, but in the interest of time, I’m just going to pick out one thing because it obviously ties in with something you said right at the beginning and you repeated there about the way that technology is changing Ta and it’s. It’s changing the way that people’s jobs work and making them. Making them more strategic. AI is a word or two words or an abbreviation or a phrase or whatever you want to call it. That gets thrown around a lot when it comes to talent acquisition. It’s transforming talent acquisition. It’s doing all these things, but there’s not much actual practical explanation about what it can do now and what it can do in the future. Give me just a few examples or thoughts around. How is AI actually practically helping the clients that you’re working with? What is it that it’s actually doing within talent acquisition that’s making this big difference?
Rebecca Warren [00:17:11]:
So I chat with a lot of my clients on a regular basis about what Eightfold does, what AI does, how it works, and in the trainings that I do, I talk about that. It is a tool. It’s not magic. It seems like sometimes it’s magic because it makes things happen more quickly. So what I share when I first start doing an overview of the platform or talking about it, is saying what we see even in the platform is the area, the iceberg above the water, right? There’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens underneath the water. What does that look like? And I tend to compare it to your gps. If you’re trying to go somewhere and you’ve got your phone and you’ve got this magical tool called maps, and it’s got all kinds of information, but if you don’t, you have to tell it what you want it to do. You can’t get in your car and stare at your phone or your GPS module, whatever. You can’t get in your car and just stare at it and expect it to know what you want it to do. So it’s intelligent, but we drive it. And so that’s where I share. Looking through our platform is the different pieces that you work with the platform on will get you to where you want to go. Right. If you’re looking at how you calibrate a position that is getting you to the state that you want to go to, and when you go and add your filters and put in your different searches, that’s getting you to the city that you want to go to. And then when you narrow it down even more and you’re looking and contacting particular people, that’s getting you to your friend’s house. So there’s a lot of pieces that, that AI can do that are underneath the surface that have looked at the skills, adjacencies, but we still have to drive it. It’s not going to get there on its own. So when I look at how AI does things differently, for instance, if you’ve got folks in your ats, and this was always such a pain. So right when I was leading teams, and I would say, hey, go back into the ats, because we have people that have applied in the past and they’re probably amazing right now, and they didn’t fit for whatever reason. Go back and search the ats. Well, the ATS doesn’t normally have a lot of functions or features for doing that. And even when you do that, then you’ve still got to go get that name. Okay, well, they applied four years ago. I wonder what they’re doing now. And then you have to go to LinkedIn or Google and do a bunch of searching to figure out where they’re at now. So when I think about the time that’s saved from saying, hey, let’s use talent rediscovery, you can go in, you can look at your position, you can see anyone who is in your ATS that has already been then synced with Eightfold. You can go in and you can look at these folks that have been candidates in the past. We’ve already gone out, we’ve looked at any updated information that they have updated that into their profile. You’re looking at your leads and your job, and it’s already connected. So when I think about time saving, what used to take me and my teams, right, sometimes days, weeks, to find the right candidates to make those matches, to pull people in who have already said, yes, I want to work with you, the systems will do that automatically. So that’s a huge time saver. Right. We can go from. It’s taking me a long time to figure out who I need to. That can happen within five minutes. How much easier it is to contact people, figuring out how they want to be connected with. There’s so many different things that the AI underneath the Surface has already done for us, right. Looked at almost 2 billion profiles, pulled all that information out, put the skills back together in different ways. It’s stuff that we’ve been talking about for a long time. It just makes it easier.
Matt Alder [00:20:40]:
What would your advice be to talent acquisition leaders in terms of how they should think about AI and what they should be doing in terms of how they interface with technology?
Rebecca Warren [00:20:49]:
Yeah, I think it’s. I talked about before being uncomfortable. I think it’s easy for us, especially as leaders, that we get into a bit of a groove. And I know this is super easy for recruiters. You get into a groove, you know, the way that you want to do things. You’ve got your Boolean searches or your Google searches or the 10 things that you do every time you open up a search. And so it’s. We all have to, I think, encourage ourselves to be uncomfortable, to look at different ways of doing things. If we bring in some kind of AI tool or a different way of using technology, always looking at how is that going to make us better? What now can we do that’s going to serve our clients, going to serve our candidates in a better way? How do we continue to reinvent ourselves? That’s been a struggle, I think, for a lot of folks because we get into a rut that has worked, but we can be better. And I think it’s giving ourselves the permission to change and the understanding that we’re not going to be working ourselves out of a job. I think it’s giving ourselves the understanding of we can’t get there by staying here.
Matt Alder [00:21:58]:
And as a final question, you’ve talked a bit about the future and how things might move forward post pandemic. If we’re having this conversation in 18 months, 2 years time, what would you hope that we were talking about? How would you have liked to have seen things move on?
Rebecca Warren [00:22:13]:
I would love to see job seeking and employment feel more of an equal proposition right now. It feels lopsided towards the employer. I think that’s changing because of what’s happened in the pandemic. I would like to see it to feel more transparent. We in TA in a lot of ways have felt more possessive about compensation and about expectations and kind of hold things close to the vest. And a lot of employees feel like. Or candidates, I should say, feel like there’s not a lot of transparency and they’re not in control of what happens. I would love to see down the road that there’s more of a fairness to it. Right. Not controlling PTO or time off or where you work or how you work, letting employees have more control. Candidates have more control over the process, more transparency, and to make it feel more like a match as opposed to okay, I know this is going to suck because I’m going to apply to 400 jobs and I’m going to hear back from 12 of them and I’m going to get ghosted by all but two down the road. I would love to see it become more of a fair proposition where employers are more transparent with candidates. Candidates feel comfortable to be more transparent with employees. And if it’s not a good match, let’s just say it’s not a good match. Let’s be fair, give that feedback and help it feel more of a a partnership as opposed to one person has the upper hand and has the power.
Matt Alder [00:23:54]:
Rebecca, thank you very much for talking to me.
Rebecca Warren [00:23:56]:
Thanks for having me. This has been a great chat. I appreciate it.
Matt Alder [00:24:00]:
My thanks to Rebecca Warren. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
