It is very clear from the conversations I have with employers all over the world that modernising the recruiting process to fit the expectations of today’s mobile device centric talent audience, continues to be a real challenge. So what are the companies who get this right actually doing and how do you this at scale across a large and complex business.
My guest this week is Jez Langhorn Senior HR Director at McDonald’s in the USA. McDonald’s currently has over 850,000 employees in the US alone and has had much recent recruiting success by implementing several innovative initiatives round mobile technology.
In the interview we discuss:
• What McDonald’s are doing to avoid the demographic “Workforce Cliff”
• “America’s Best First Job”
• Challenging perceptions with the use of authentic employee stories
• How McDonald’s have radically reduced their time to apply by implementing a user friendly mobile application process
• How McDonald’s are using SnapChat and the results they have seen from their campaign
Jez also share’s McDonald’s experience based vision of the future
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes
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.
Edward Dias [00:00:25]:
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 automation and flexible processes, we’ve been able to change that and that’s been a huge achievement.
Matt Alder [00:00:48]:
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 [00:01:23]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 104 of the Recruiting Future podcast. It’s very clear from the conversations I have with employers around the world that modernizing the recruitment process to fit in with the expectations of today’s mobile device centric talent audience is a real challenge. So how do you do it and how do you do it across a large, complex business? My guest this week is Jez Langhorn, a senior HR director for McDonald’s in the USA. McDonald’s currently have over 850,000 employees in the US alone, and I know you’ll find it fascinating to hear how they’re innovating to solve some of their recruiting challenges.
Matt Alder [00:02:13]:
Hi Jez, and welcome to the podcast.
Jez Langhorn [00:02:15]:
Hello Matt. Thanks for having me.
Matt Alder [00:02:17]:
My absolute pleasure. Could we start by just having you introduce yourself and tell everyone who you.
Matt Alder [00:02:23]:
Are and what you do?
Jez Langhorn [00:02:24]:
Sure. My name’s Jez Langhorn. I work for McDonald’s primarily. My career has been in Europe and the UK, but I’ve been in the US for the past two years where I look after human resources for the west zone of McDonald’s. So it’s kind of Chicago to Hawaii and there’s about 7,000 restaurants and the franchisees and people that work in those restaurants.
Matt Alder [00:02:50]:
How many people is that altogether? Because I think sometimes people quite get the scale of the operations that you guys run.
Jez Langhorn [00:02:57]:
Well, McDonald’s in the US is one of the biggest employers in the USA, so we have 14,000 restaurants, the majority of which are owned and operated by our independent franchisees. And between our franchisees and the McDonald’s own and run stores. We employ about 850,000 people across the.
Matt Alder [00:03:16]:
U.S. so what are the main people challenges that you face as an organization?
Jez Langhorn [00:03:21]:
Well, I think there’s still a lingering kind of snobbery when it comes to jobs in the quick service restaurant industry. And we’ve seen that outside the U.S. and inside the U.S. so these are real perception challenges. You’ve probably heard of the word or the phrase McJob, which is a relatively derogatory term for jobs in the quick service industry and retail. And we think that couldn’t be further from the truth. We think we’re offering good jobs for good people who want to work hard, study and get on and grow their careers and their lives. And many hundreds of thousands of people do that with us every year. We’ve recently launched a commitment in the US to say that we’re committed to being America’s best first job. And that’s a commitment that we’ve taken really seriously. We know that people want a job that fits around their life, whether they want time to study for college or look after their family or just enjoy the things they love. And that’s why we believe vehemently in supporting restaurant employees and their desire to learn and earn by offering things like flexible schedules, opportunities to continue their education, training programs that provide skills that stay with them for life. And I guess ultimately we want to empower and train our people to do what they do best, which is to serve our customers brilliantly and make every visit for our customers special.
Matt Alder [00:04:56]:
So I’m guessing that with, with, with that many people there, you’ve got sort of quite considerable recruiting, recruiting needs on an ongoing basis.
Jez Langhorn [00:05:06]:
That’s true. And there’s also some demographic shifts that have been happening across the US and this is something that we call the workforce Cliff. By our determination, looking at all of the statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you know, the number of people available for work in the US Compared to the number of jobs that will need filling is a rapidly closing gap. We think that employment and getting the right quality and right quantity of people is going to be more and more of a challenge over the coming years.
Matt Alder [00:05:46]:
And how, what kind of initiatives, you know, so over and above the things you’ve talked about by, you know, wanting to be the sort of the best place for people to have their first job, what sort of other specific initiatives have you put in place or are you putting in place to deal with those issues?
Jez Langhorn [00:06:02]:
Well, unfortunately, some of these perceptions are long held. So we’ve tried to take A new and we consider a slightly innovative approach to address these challenges. Firstly, we’ve got an ongoing program of tackling these challenges by telling stories about the opportunities available to people if they come to work at a McDonald’s brand restaurant. We’re doing that through the eyes and voice of our actual crew and putting them front and centre to help tell the story and break down those misconceptions we found to be very powerful. And that connects well with still a predominantly young workforce. Of the 850,000 people that work for us on our franchisees in the US, I think about 60% are aged 16 to 24. So if we’re not the biggest employer of young people in the us, we must be close to it. And engaging with that group of people requires some new and innovative thinking. So we’re looking at things like Snapchat, Spotify and Hulu as avenues to engage with job seekers and drive awareness of the opportunities that are available at McDonald’s, which are all new areas for us to tell our story in. And we’ve also looked at different ways about actually selecting and onboarding people. So we’ve got a new recruitment system that we just put into the US last year with a company called People Matter and Snagajob that’s driven the time to apply for a job at McDonald’s down from about 40 minutes to between 5 and 10 minutes. And that’s really boosted applications and simplified the application process. And we’ve also launched a website called Our Lounge, which is for all of the crew and managers at McDonald’s USA and is a place for them to come and engage with McDonald’s, see when they’re working, look at their schedules, get great discounts on whether it’s their mobile phone or gas at the pump. Some really great discounts that we’ve negotiated on behalf of them. So these are all kind of different ways we’re looking to attract and engage people in brand McDonald’s. And, you know, our partnership with Snapchat really is an extension of that. And the launch of, we think is an industry first of something we’re calling Snapplications.
Matt Alder [00:08:38]:
Now I read a little bit about the Snapplications Initiative. Could you sort of talk us through the details of exactly what it is and how it’s working or how it’s going to work?
Jez Langhorn [00:08:50]:
Sure. So we’ve already run the initiative in the US and it was very successful for us. Seemed to connect really well with our target audience of that 16 to 24 year old age group. And this really took the form of people going on to Snapchat and seeing a short 10 second video of a real McDonald’s crew member working in a restaurant, talking about the opportunities and what it’s like to work at a McDonald’s restaurant. And so that was quite surprising, I think, to many people. It was done in a very engaging and relaxed way in the voice of our employees. And then it was very simple for people to find out more. They literally swiped up on that video and they could go directly to the application page of McDonald’s.com so on the careers page there, there’s the application, and they could fill out an application immediately there to work in their local restaurant. So it’s a very simple, easy, intuitive thing for people to be able to do. And we saw some terrific results from doing it. We had a 35% increase in applications compared to the same period last year, and a 21% increase in hires for the month as well. So we think it resonated well with young people and they reacted well to it and applied in their drones.
Matt Alder [00:10:22]:
Absolutely. I mean, they’re really, really impressive results. Just to dig a little bit deeper into the actual application process, because you mentioned in general that the time, you know, you’ve really driven the time to apply down quite significantly. And you know, in other episodes of the podcast or episodes of the podcast, we’ve sort of looked at the effect the user friendliness of an applic process has on sort of converting the interest from marketing. What did you change or what did you do to make the actual application kind of efficient for the Snapchat audience?
Jez Langhorn [00:11:01]:
Well, as you can imagine, we stripped an awful lot out of it. We still take the basic information that we need to be able to screen an application, but we’ve removed psychometric tests, we’ve removed some kind of additional information that was really not a big predictor of whether or not someone would be successful in their role with McDonald’s. So we pared that down, ask a couple of really succinct questions, and then use that to be able to screen people and then come in to see a restaurant manager and be able to talk to them and have that face to face interview when they come in.
Matt Alder [00:11:46]:
Okay, so it’s all about making it as sort of frictionless as. As frictionless as possible.
Jez Langhorn [00:11:51]:
Yeah, absolutely. Simple and easy is the kind of mantra that we were looking for. I don’t think ever filling out a job application would be enjoyable, but we can make it simple, we can make it easy and, you know, so that it’s as you said Frictionless for the, for the potential employee, for us.
Matt Alder [00:12:10]:
You mentioned a couple of other platforms.
Matt Alder [00:12:12]:
That you were using there. What, what else are you doing? What other innovations are you sort of and experimenting with at the moment?
Jez Langhorn [00:12:18]:
Well, our relationship with people like Spotify and Hulu. For us to start serving up different video footage, different verbal messages, different written messages to help debunk these myths around McDonald’s and work at McDonald’s in a place where young people are and going to them rather than expecting them to come to where we might be, we’re finding very useful. And that’s starting to resonate, we think, pretty well with young people. So we’re going to continue to look at those, but we’ll also continue to look at other innovative options that come to us. We’re keen to work with stakeholders, whether they be in state or federal employees, to help debunk some of these myths and really demonstrate how McDonald’s is supporting local communities across the US with employment and training and education.
Matt Alder [00:13:18]:
And obviously, you know, things are evolving very, very quickly at the moment in terms of sort of innovation and technology and that kind of stuff. What is the, what are the, what does the future look like for McDonald’s? What’s on your radar at the moment for the next two to four years?
Jez Langhorn [00:13:34]:
Well, in the same way that we’re trying to make things simple and easy for people to apply to us, you know, when it comes to our customers, we’re looking for new and innovative ways for them to engage with McDonald’s. So the introduction of things like mobile order and pay, which we’re testing and deploying across the US at the moment, where people can, you know, order in Advance Using the McDonald’s app, turn up at any McDonald’s restaurant and, you know, using geofencing technology that picks up their order, serves it to the kitchen, who cook and prepare their order while directing the customer to park in a certain bay and then we run it out to them so they don’t have to go through the drive through lane or don’t even have to come in the restaurant. So that’s new and innovative and something that again, customers are reacting really well to. You probably heard about our relationship with Uber Eats, where we’ve now got delivery running in three and a half thousand restaurants in the US of our 14,000, where you can order online through Uber eats and have McDonald’s delivered directly to your door 24, seven from those three and a half thousand restaurants. And again, customers are reacting very well to that added convenience. And then in our restaurants we’re continuing to remodel our restaurants here in the US into something we’re calling experience of the future restaurants. We’re adding table service. We’ve added kiosks to our restaurants as well. So really simplifying the ordering process. So now, you know, big groups of people can come in or, you know, mums with kids, you know, dads taking the kids out, can go to a kiosk, order in their own time and go and sit down, and we’ll bring the food directly to them, you know, with table service, using some Bluetooth technology to locate them in the restaurant. So always to, you know, simplify the experience for our customers and make it more and more enjoyable for them to come and visit us.
Matt Alder [00:15:41]:
Is that something that you’re kind of mirroring with sort of people in recruitment as well?
Jez Langhorn [00:15:46]:
Well, it doesn’t. This has fundamental impacts on. On where people work in our restaurants. So, for example, if we introduce kiosks to a store and table service, you need less tills in a restaurant for people to walk up to and therefore less people on them. And it’s a common misconception that, you know, we were introducing kiosks to reduce the number of people needed in a restaurant. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. What we’re doing, though, is just redeploying those people into more customer facing, customer supporting roles on the dining area, helping them order through kiosks, delivering food to their table, engaging with them there. And what we’re finding is that’s a much more fulfilling experience both for our customers and for our crew managers. You know, they enjoy doing it. They can be more relaxed and themselves at work, you know, perhaps, you know, slightly less structured in what they have to say and do with customers. They’re, you know, free to bring more of themselves to work and that’s, you know, resulting in, you know, good increases in customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction as well.
Matt Alder [00:16:53]:
Fantastic. Jez, thank you very much for talking to me.
Matt Alder [00:16:57]:
My thanks to Jez Langhorn. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes on Stitcher or download the show app on your smartphone. Smartphone. Just search for recruiting future in your app store. You can listen to all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can also 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.
