Implementing and then working with recruitment technology on a day to day basis can have some challenges. So how can you make sure you are getting the most from your system in terms of driving the efficiency and end-user satisfaction needed to achieve key recruiting objectives?
To share the benefits of their experience my guests this week are Megan Deville, an HRIS Analyst and Allison Thomas, Talent Acquisition Recruiter both of whom work for Laitram.
In the interview, we discuss:
- Laitram’s recruiting challenges
- Using tech to create more recruiter time
- Finding quality in quantity
- Driving process and tool adoption
- The power of diversity of thought
- Keeping pace with growth
- The importance of the personal touch
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Avature ats, an applicant tracking system that redefines user experience for candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. Just listen to one of the many ways in which L’Oreal USA has improved their hiring process with Avature, as told by Edward Dias, Director of Recruitment, Intelligence and Innovation. Since we’ve been using Avature ATS globally, we have been able to massively improve our communication rate with candidates during and following their application. Before, over a million people worldwide would never get contacted, but with the smart optimization and flexible processes, we’ve been able to change that and that’s been a huge achievement. Visit avature.net that’s a V A T U R E.net to learn why global market leaders like L’Oreal choose Avature to extend the candidate experience. From shoulder taps to first day.
Matt Alder [00:01:12]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 224 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Implementing and even working with recruitment technology on a day to day basis can hold some challenges. So how can you make sure you’re getting the most from your system in terms of driving the efficiencies and end user satisfaction you need to achieve key recruiting objectives to share the benefits of their experience? My guests this week are Megan Deville, an HRIS analyst, and Allison Thomas, Talent Acquisition Recruiter, both of whom work for Laitram. Enjoy the interview.
Matt Alder [00:02:10]:
Hi Megan and Allison and welcome to the podcast.
Allison Thomas [00:02:10]:
Hi Matt, how are you doing today?
Megan Deville [00:02:12]:
Hi Matt, Glad to be here.
Matt Alder [00:02:14]:
Absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you both introduce yourselves and tell us what you do?
Megan Deville [00:02:20]:
Hi, my name is Megan Deville, I am an HRIS analyst with Laitram and I’ve been here for three years. I generally like to describe myself to employees at the company as the HR Computer Nerd.
Allison Thomas [00:02:30]:
And my name is Allison Thomas. I have been here for about two years but I’ve been recruiting for about 28. This company Laitram and Interlocks were my biggest client when I was in the staffing world and I’m very happy to be here and having a great time.
Matt Alder [00:02:48]:
Now, before we get sort of further into your really interesting story, could you just for those people who may not be familiar with Laitram, could you just tell us what the company does?
Megan Deville [00:02:58]:
So Laitram and Interlocks, which is our largest division, especially overseas where you guys are, we’re a manufacturing, engineering and innovation company. We have about 2,800 employees globally. So our headquarters is in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, but we also have locations in Maryland, Amsterdam, uk, Brazil, Australia, China, India and Japan. We have six divisions and we pretty much do some of the most uninteresting sounding things that you can possibly imagine. We build shrimp peeling and nut pasteurizing machines alternating and our largest division, Interlocks, makes modular plastic conveying belts and complex conveying solutions. So on its surface, maybe not the most interesting company in the world. However, what really sets us apart and what is really important to our discussion today is that Laitram has a culture of innovation and continuous improvement at the at all employee levels. Our employees are empowered to be self managed and we’re coached to a mindset of continuous improvement and that is through our Laitram Continuous Improvement program.
Matt Alder [00:04:01]:
Tell us a bit more about recruiting and talent acquisition. What does that look like in the organization?
Megan Deville [00:04:08]:
So Laitram is a small, relatively hierarchically flat organization. Until recently we had two recruiters in the US and one talent acquisition coordinator, one recruiter for all of EMEA and one recruiter in all of apac. And those guys are really mostly self managed on their own recruiting strategies. We’ve recently added two US recruiters and one recruiter in EMEA as well as a director of Talent Acquisition. We’re running Aperture Recruiting for our applicant tracking system and candidate Relationship Management as well as onboarding. And me, Megan, the HRIS analyst, I support the Avature system as well as a number of other things here at Laitram.
Allison Thomas [00:04:53]:
And I’ll just jump in there. As a recruiter here we have a very high volume of of jobs to fill. Although the company, Megan might describe it as small, I think of it as it’s a bigger company in our area, so we’re at close to maybe 2,700 people globally. The company is very rapidly growing. The divisions are all, we have multiple divisions and they grow at different paces. But all of us are moving in a very positive direction. So we have a high volume of activity and we’re a highly innovative company overall. It’s all about, like Megan said, continuous improvement. But we have a, we maintain a real logical and calculated move as we grow. So we’re very careful about how we’re growing and we’re very just a very customer service oriented company all the way around.
Megan Deville [00:05:43]:
To back up Allison, I do have a couple of numbers available. We currently have 175 RECs open globally. We have 149 in the US and our hires for 2019 year to date are 481, with 421 of those being in the United States. So we are, as Allison said, for our area, we’re a large company. New Orleans tends to be a very small business. But for the size of recruiting organization that we are, we do have a lot of activity.
Matt Alder [00:06:13]:
Absolutely. And I think it’d be interesting to kind of dig into that a little bit more deeply. So. So obviously you’ve got a large, you know, large volumes of recruitment going, going through. Tell us a bit more about the sort of specific talent acquisition challenges that you. That you have with that, you know.
Allison Thomas [00:06:31]:
Challenges are always I. For all recruiters, the biggest challenge is going to be time. Now that we have access to the Internet, so many more people can reach you if they want to. You just have an excessive amount of applicants. So time is, of course, something that needs to be managed very well. We also have issues with quality candidates versus the quantity of candidates. So pulling out that quality candidate from large volumes of, you know, the applicant pool is really important. So anyway, challenges, I’d say having the time to be proactive, being able to do more of a targeted outreach, real strong sourcing outside of our own system is important. And just having the time to network with people. So in today’s world, where you have such a high volume of candidates flowing into your company, being able to sort through those candidates in a real effective way is super important.
Megan Deville [00:07:36]:
You know, Allison and I usually come out on completely opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to answering questions like this, but I’m actually like 100% in alignment with you on, wow, that’s a question. So I think, and looking at that from the his analyst perspective is, I’m well aware that the recruiters that I am responsible for providing with tools have a lot of time for complex processes or constantly learning new ways of doing things. So the challenge from the technology perspective is how to state that desire for information and more and more desire for analytics for people who don’t have a lot of time to engage with the system or don’t have the skill set to engage with the system. So how can I provide them with tools that are low effort but very high value? And then for me, a secondary challenge on top of that is process adoption and tool adoption. So contrary to popular belief, a lot of effort really goes into designing these processes before we configure a system and roll it out to people. However, it’s not always exactly perfect. The first time through technology, especially these days, more and more as the systems become more flexible, is an ITERATIVE process that you need to kind of experiment and tweak as you go. We also have an additional challenge here at Laitram. Allison had indicated before that we believe very strongly in the human touch and really keeping a very customer service oriented focus. So as a HRIS practitioner, what I run into here sometimes is a very well meaning belief that the human touch is superior to technology and automation, when really it’s my job to convince them that those two things can be used in concert to provide a really great customer service experience. Yes.
Allison Thomas [00:09:29]:
And the tools, I’ll say this, the tools that I get from Avature questionnaires and lists, things that allow me to go through a candidate pool fairly quickly and efficiently and then get to those candidates that I need to reach out to personally. So all the tools that Avature provides to me are really just to help me streamline my day so that I’m not overwhelmed with a huge candidate pool at all times. I still have, I still look at all the candidates that come through, but I’m able to find those top level candidates pretty quickly. So those are the tools that really work for me.
Matt Alder [00:10:12]:
And are there kind of any other strategies that you’re using to overcome the challenges that you have?
Megan Deville [00:10:20]:
So I think starting more on a macro level here, I would say that the number one strategy that we’ve employed here is looking at a system not as this horrible unchanging monolith, but as like a living, changeable organism. It’s funny that I look at computers as people. Of course, there are some reasonable limits to this. Right? You can’t completely uproot it and change it all of the time. However, you can redesign in very small ways. So if you think of your system as something that is unchanging and unyielding, then you’re basically resigning yourself to just dealing with processes that don’t work for you. And if you look at your system as something that can be just ever so gently stretched and eased into a perfect fit, then you’ll find that you do have room for growth. And your end users are going to have a better relationship and attitude to the system that they are using because they know that it can be modified for their needs. So the flexibility of the system that we’re using, which is Avature, allows us to make those easy and quick changes that remove some of that pinch or ill fitting process for us. We are always identifying and implementing what I’ve termed as micro innovations to address system issues that all organizations encounter. Right. You set out on this journey, you define your process you implement your system and you find that maybe something’s not working exactly the way that you thought it would. And rather than just throwing your hands up in the air and saying, oh, well, we’re stuck with it. Now, what can you do in your system to ease that pain point or remove that bottleneck or personalize it ever so slightly? It doesn’t require a complete system redesign. You’re just making little tiny changes along the way that make it a more pleasant experience.
Allison Thomas [00:12:12]:
Yeah. And I’ll say, and let me add to that, you know, the one thing that has been really nice is that Megan will come to me and say, hey, what do you need? What do you need from this? And my needs can be different from another recruiter. I have a very high volume. So what I need this system to do is something very specific to me. And I’m able to ask Megan for very specific things. And having a flexible system allows for that, which has been really helpful. And what Megan needs from the system, I don’t need. And I don’t really care that much about reporting. I don’t care that they can tell how many jobs we filled. I just want to make sure they’re getting filled with the right people. So everyone’s got a different approach to this system and taking out of it what. What works for them.
Matt Alder [00:13:01]:
So, I mean, you obviously have a very close working relationship from a systems and a recruitment perspective, what makes that relationship work so well? And, you know, what are some of the other advantages that you get from being able to, you know, work so closely?
Allison Thomas [00:13:20]:
Matt, I’m gonna tell you that Megan and I really could not be more different in so many ways. So we’re different generations. We have very different personalities. So Megan is a process map A to B kind of person. And I’m like a hurricane spaghetti model. I know where I wanna go. I might zig when I should zag. We’ve come at things so completely differently. It’s kind of like watching Megan attack a problem. For me, it’s like looking at an outer space person from another planet because she comes at things so differently than I would. She’s very data driven. I’m a people pleaser. She’s cerebral. I’m emotional. But we appreciate those differences in each other. I learn a lot from her. I learned a lot about watching the process on how her mind works and where she’s coming, where she’s trying to go to solve a problem. And we really always have the same goal. We know where we’re trying to go, but we just Come at it from very different ways. So I really enjoy that relationship with Megan. I don’t want to work with someone who’s just like me. I won’t ever learn anything if I’ve got people around me who think the same way that I do all the time. So, anyway, I think that’s kind of where our relationship has blossomed in that we appreciate the vast differences. And I will say, I never know a single movie that I haven’t seen a single movie that she’s seen. I never know any of the references that she talks about, and she doesn’t know mine. But we promise that we’re going to watch each other’s movies one day so.
Megan Deville [00:14:48]:
We can get on an even field actually question too. Alice and I were in complete agreement. So I’m a techie through and through. I’m a huge nerd, which is part of its generational Part of. It’s just I’m really, really nerdy.
Allison Thomas [00:15:04]:
Really nerdy.
Megan Deville [00:15:05]:
But I don’t know the first thing about recruiting, right? So I need somebody who’s going to be brutally honest with me about what your day to day is like so that I can understand that and I can understand what tools are going to fly and what tools are not going to fly. And what’s really great about Allison is she’s very open to experimenting with new tools and methods, and that’s so important. But it’s really hard to find. In a lot of instances where I’ve been working on systems with end users, they say they’ll give it a fair shake, but then they don’t. They either just don’t use the tool at all and tell me they didn’t like it or try it for a day or two and get frustrated because it is difficult learning something new. So it takes that time. We’re all very pressed for time. And I can completely understand that. But Allison is just so amazingly willing to just keep at it, give it a fair shake, give it a few days to settle in, and then if she’s still unhappy with it, she’ll tell me, like, here’s why this doesn’t work. It’s not helpful. It takes too long. It doesn’t give me the exact information that I need. I trust her to be really honest with me. And I think that trust is really important. I trust her to be really honest, to give it a real try. But she also trusts that, like, my heart is in the right place and that I really want to provide her with the best possible tool. And I would not have suggested this if I didn’t truly believe that it might make her experience or our other recruiters as well, to make their experience better if they give it a shot.
Matt Alder [00:16:31]:
That’S absolutely brilliant because I think you’re kind of really demonstrating the success of having people with sort of diversity of thought working together can bring. Moving on to innovation. You said that innovation was very much in the DNA of the company and you talked about some of the kind of micro innovations that you were doing. Innovation is kind of a massive topic in talent acquisition. Everything’s changing, you know, new technologies are coming on board, new ways of thinking, new ways of working. How do you keep pace with the innovation that’s kind of going on in the wider industry? And have you got any sort of particular strategies to drive innovation within your own operation?
Megan Deville [00:17:15]:
So you’re absolutely right that we as employees of Laitram, with our philosophy of continuous improvement, that’s just the way our minds work. We’re always thinking about ways that we can be better at doing the things that we’re best at. But with regards to our talent strategy in particular, and I love coming out of the gate with this, we don’t necessarily have our act together. Right. You always perceive that your Ciscos and your large companies with these huge talent acquisition areas, they have this plan, this three year plan, the five year plan, they know exactly what they’re doing. We’re a small organization with very few people, and I’m here to say it’s okay to not know what you’re doing at some point. So for us, the last three years has really been a series of band aids on some major problems that we had run into. So our talent acquisition strategy involved Lotus Notes, Outlook and a standard office telephone for a number of years. And that was fine for us. And then all of a sudden our growth started exploding and you realize in one of those moments that it just dawns on you like, we’re not fine anymore. We were yesterday and today we realize that we’re not. So for the last three years, what we’ve been doing is putting some band aids out there, just trying to stop the bleeding and to catch up with where we perceive the rest of the TA world is. And now at that point, our priority was what do we need to be successful right now? And within the last six months, we’ve really reached a point where we stopped the bleeding. We’re comfortable, we are at a normal. We’ve just evened out. Right? So now we’ve actually recently hired on a director of talent acquisition who is kind of helping us to craft our talent acquisition group and eventually our talent acquisition technology into a more forward facing strategy. So I would just say, if you’re out there and you’re listening to this and you’re just doing what you do and you’re making it ends meet every day, there are tons of companies out there like you that are just making the ends meet. Who your strategy right now is, what do I need to be successful today? And then you start asking, what do I need to be successful next year? And what do we need to be successful three years from now? Sometimes that’s technology, sometimes that’s people, sometimes that’s processes. It’s going to be different from organization to organization.
Allison Thomas [00:19:46]:
Yeah. And I’ll add to that when it comes to innovation and technology, I use those as a tool for me to be even more personal with the employees and the applicants. I’m not looking for technology to separate me more from the personal touch. So when they come up with something, you know, some kind of new technology for me, I’m like, how is this going to free me up so that I can even be better and more accessible to more people? You know, our company is very, like Luke said, we have a continuous improvement philosophy. It’s to treat people as you would like to be treated. And recruiters have a really important job here. I mean, we are. Our role is very vital to make sure we’re hiring the right people. And, you know, the hires that you bring in can change the landscape of a company. So you want to make sure that you’re taking that job very seriously. And that requires a personal touch. For me, I’m all about, you know, I want to have more interviews, I want to do more phone screens, I want to network with more people. You want to keep that human contact really important and not let the computer take over your day and take over your job.
Megan Deville [00:21:06]:
I think that’s really, really important. Allison. Like, I’m getting ready to go to HR Tech next month and look at all of these amazing technologies. And the misperception of technology is that you buy a technology and you implement it and all of your problems are solved. People overestimate what that technology is going to do for you. And Allison is amazing. Like, obviously I believe technology is going to solve all of our problems, and.
Allison Thomas [00:21:29]:
I believe it’s just going to create a couple of hiccups. It’s not necessarily going to solve them. And if it starts solving them for us, then we have a problem.
Megan Deville [00:21:38]:
One thing that I reiterate, especially because our company not just the recruiters, but the hiring managers also are very strongly behind this notion of keeping a human touch. So Allison grounds me, the hiring managers ground me and they remind me constantly. This is about the humans that we are dealing with. It’s about our candidates and giving them a great candidate experience. For us, for the recruiters and me as hrf, it’s about our hiring managers and making hiring easy for them. And that’s so important to remember. Ask how each technology that you are considering is going to make things better for your end users. Not more complicated, not more flashy, not more not adding processes and adding time. How is it going to be a tool in their tool belt that is going to release them from administrative tasks or non value added tasks so that they can spend their time doing what they do best, which is providing that human to human touch and the subjective human to human interactions that are so critical to the recruiting function.
Matt Alder [00:22:44]:
So, final question. Tell us a bit about the future. What have you got planned? What excites you most about the future of talent acquisition within your organization?
Megan Deville [00:22:54]:
I think this is one where Allison and I are going to be on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Allison Thomas [00:22:58]:
Yeah, I’m literally about to say I’m looking for this. What I like about technology, number one, is that it is allowing us to reach out across the globe. You know, years ago when I first started recruiting, I had a stack of index cards on my desk and a telephone and you could only access basically people who read your newspaper and walked in your door. Well, now we can access people all across the world and that has, that’s exciting. And it opens up. We’re a global company, so we’re allowed to reach out globally and bring a lot more people into our consideration. So the use of technology for me is just to increase my ability to engage with more people. But Megan sees, you know, she’s a brave new world kind of girl. So I will take the innovation that she gives me and work the best that I can with it. But I’ll let you take it from here.
Megan Deville [00:23:50]:
No, that’s a perfect jumping off point for me because that gives me heart palpitations. Right. Like you are getting more and more and more and more candidates and frankly, it’s getting easier for candidates to just throw their name in the hat for any job. You know, before you had to fill out a six page form with a pen and drop it off somewhere by driving there and doing this in person. The first round of technology, you had to laboriously type all of your information into these forms. Well, now you can come to our website and you can apply for 12 jobs with just the click of a button. You pull your resume up from Google Docs, you throw it into our application, it parses everything and you hit submit. And now you’ve applied for 14 jobs that you’re not actually qualified for.
Megan Deville [00:24:36]:
Right.
Megan Deville [00:24:36]:
So I’m looking at that nightmare and thinking, how do we make this more efficient for recruiters? Because this is only going to continue. So for me, recruiting is this kind of nightmare of gray area and inefficiency. And what I am most excited about in HR technology for talent acquisition space is things that are going to remove some of that mess and make it easier for us to all connect. So I’m really excited by the technology that’s coming out that’s matching, predictably, matching candidates to jobs is like my number one thing that’s really exciting at the moment. And I know Avature has something on their docket for us in the future. And I’m really excited to see when that comes out because right now, lists and forms and questionnaires can only do so much to help weed that out. And also thinking from your candidate experience, I’m thinking about my recruiters, but I’m also thinking about the candidates. Obviously they’re putting their names forward for jobs that they’re not qualified for because it’s so difficult to figure out what you are qualified for. So how can technology help candidates know where they would be best used? And how can it help our recruiters identify the best candidates? And how can that be a seamless process that doesn’t require a ton of analytics work? It just requires you to log into your system and that is ready for.
Matt Alder [00:25:59]:
For you, Megan and Allison. It’s been absolutely brilliant to talk to you. Thank you so much for being on the show. My thanks to Megan and Allison. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find the show by searching for Recruiting future. If you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@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 time and I hope you’ll join me.
