One of the most prominent topics I hear being debated at the moment, both among my clients and at the events I’m attending, is recruiting automation. But what is recruiting automation? What are the benefits and just how far down the road of automation have employers got?
To help me answer these questions, my guest this week is Tim Pröhm, Global Practice Strategy Lead at KellyOCG. As well as Tim having hands-on experience in this area, KellyOCG has recently published some extensive research on digital disruption and automation in recruiting.
In the interview we discuss:
• The common recruiting challenges Tim is seeing in the market
• What is recruiting automation, what is possible and what is the uptake like?
• What advantages are companies at the vanguard of recruiting automation getting?
• The capability gap
• The danger of being burnt by bad or oversold technology
• Why companies need to take a more holistic view of talent
Tim also shares his thoughts on the future of the industry and tells us what developments he is most excited about
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from ClickIQ. ClickIQ’s groundbreaking automated talent attraction technology enables recruiters to spend less time looking for applicants and more time hiring great people by managing and optimizing their recruitment advertising. ClickIQ’s platform advertises roles across the largest network of PPC, job boards and social media to reach the best active and passive candidates in the most cost effective way. Using the latest AI and programmatic technology, ClickIQ ensures that jobs are always advertised in the right place at the right time and for the right amount of money, saving recruiters both time and budget. To find out how ClickIQ can help automate, manage and optimize your talent attraction Strategy, please visit www.clickiq.co.uk. that’s www.clickiq.co.uk.
Matt Alder [00:01:22]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt alder. Welcome episode 136 of the Recruiting Future podcast. One of the most interesting topics I’m currently hearing being discussed both among my clients and at the events I’m attending is recruiting automation. But what is recruiting automation? What are the benefits and just how far down the road of automation have companies actually got? To help me answer these questions, my guest this week is Tim Pröhm, Global Practice Strategy Lead at Kelly ocg as well as Tim having hands on experience in this area, Kelly OCG have recently published some extensive research into digital disruption and automation in recruiting. Keep listening to hear all the insights.
Matt Alder [00:02:13]:
Hi Tim and welcome to the podcast.
Tim Pröhm [00:02:16]:
Yeah, thanks Matt, Excited to be here. Thanks for having me on the podcast today.
Matt Alder [00:02:19]:
My absolute pleasure.
Matt Alder [00:02:21]:
Could you introduce yourself and tell everyone.
Matt Alder [00:02:23]:
A bit about what you do?
Tim Pröhm [00:02:25]:
Yeah. My name is Tim Pröhm, I’m located in Germany, I am German and I work for a American company called Kelly ocg. Kelly OCG is a subsidiary of Kelly Services, one of the bigger global staffing providers, 71 years of age so really founded the industry basically and my role within Kelly OCG who is an outsourcing and talent advisory provider is basically to focus on the strategy for permanent recruitment. We provide what we call recruitment process outsourcing services and I am leading the strategy team. So my job within the Kelly OCG practice is to really identify the next trends. How does technology impact talent acquisition, how is the requirements of talent changing and how need to adjust companies accordingly to make sure they still have access to best in class talent and can utilize technology new trends like automation or machine learning AI or blockchain during the process. So I’m basically a trend scout. I’m not a futurist, but I need to make sure I understand all the upcoming topics that we all see on the horizon that we talk about and really make sure I assess how feasible is it to use it in the talent acquisition space on behalf of our customers.
Matt Alder [00:03:45]:
Brilliant stuff. Now obviously there are lots of things about current trends that I want to dig in and ask you before we do though I suppose almost by, by, by way of context, you know, I’m sure you guys are in quite a sort of unique position in the market to see what’s going on in talent acquisition. What, what are some of the sort of common recruiting challenges that you’re seeing in the market at the moment?
Tim Pröhm [00:04:13]:
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a funny question. And honestly the, the challenge hasn’t really changed over the last, over the last 10 years. I mean since I joined the industry, which was around 2000, everybody’s been talking about talent scarcity and how to get access to niche talent to really specific IT talent. And this hasn’t really changed over the years. So when I engage in discussions with our customers and prospects and other people in the market, it’s basically the same thing. The only challenge is that companies today have much more technology their disposal to find that hidden talent. But the majority of the organizations that I know that do not have a best in class brand recognition and then lead the hit lists of where graduates want to go after they leave the university, they really struggle to get access to specialized IT and engineering talent. And this is the case on the global level. So every company right now has that challenge and really needs to find out how can I access talent that is not actively looking for jobs that I need to identify via social networks like LinkedIn or Zing in the German speaking countries. And how can I make sure I have a good and robust value proposition so that talent actually wants to talk to me and hear more about the opportunity that I have. And I think this is something that a lot of companies now understand and therefore really work on upskilling their sourcing and recruiting teams. Because just screening CVs and waiting for candidates to apply to a job post somewhere is not working out anymore. And I think this has been the case for many years, but nevertheless it’s still accelerating now and more and more companies understand that they need to change something in the process.
Matt Alder [00:06:08]:
Absolutely. And perhaps we can sort of dig into that a little bit more as we go through. But one of the things I wanted to ask you about first is the kind of the summer conference season is upon us. And what I’ve noticed is that the phrase recruiting automation appears to be the sort of the buzzword of the summer in terms of what people are talking about when they’re talking about trends in talent acquisition. Tell us your perspective on recruitment automation. What is it and how does it work?
Tim Pröhm [00:06:48]:
Yeah, it’s funny that you say that because I really have to smile. I had to smile when you ask the question because realistically, exactly as you say, there’s a lot of buzz. And I think it’s worth digging deeper into it and understanding what recruiting automation can really do. There are plenty of videos out there on YouTube where a hiring manager goes to Siri or uses Amazon Alexa and says, hey Alexa, I need five high end engineers for IT development. And Alexa says, yeah, look in your email inbox, I send you the CVs. And this is what a lot of people have in mind when they talk about recruitment automation and automated sourcing. And I’m not saying that this is not possible, but we’re obviously a little far off at this point in time. However, I think that we see a lot of emerging new technologies and tools that can enable automation of parts of the process. And I think this is something that I really see in the market where a lot of companies see this is worth exploring further. And the first technology solutions that enable that automation of parts of the recruitment process are out there or can be bolted onto the existing ATS or CRM infrastructure that a company has. One example maybe that everybody’s been talking about also big buzz is its chatbots. You know that I think around 18 months ago, 24 months ago, max Facebook opened Facebook Messenger API and enabled chatbot automation or chatbot usage on the back of a Facebook Messenger. This obviously led to a huge rise in new companies, new startups utilizing that technology, utilizing that channel to automate certain parts of the communication. And so from my point of view, I think this is a very, very, very, very hot thing right now because it enables you to automate certain parts of the with candidates. And by nature a lot of companies right now start at the top of the funnel so at the first touch points that a candidate might have with the organization, which could be the Facebook page, it could be the company career page where they just go to get more info and updates. And also due to chatbots have the ability to ask specific questions, questions even that they might not would like to ask during an interview with a human. And I think this is A big opportunity for companies. And this is where we see a lot of movement. When you go further down the line of the recruitment process, things like automated screening or automated interview scheduling have been on the market for a while. So I think this is not new. Instead of playing phone tag going back and forth between the hiring manager, the recruiter and the candidate, many companies right now understand that a self scheduling approach for the candidate is much more convenient for everybody involved and then obviously also gains for a lot of efficiencies. But I think it’s really important for companies to understand. What parts of the process do you want to automate? How does that all fit in your overall technology strategy? And what is the actual backbone of the automation strategy? Because the system of record usually is ats. Many companies now switch at CRM or completely switch to CRM candidate relationship management tools. This is from my perspective where companies need to make sure that their technology has the ability to also initiate outreach and initiate triggers that then enable automation. I’m not sure if that was a little over complicated. I tend to get carried away, but this is just my perspective.
Matt Alder [00:11:01]:
No, absolutely. And I know that you guys have been doing some research in this area. What do you think companies are getting out of this? What kind of results and what kind of advantages are the companies who are kind of at the vanguard of this? What are they getting from it?
Tim Pröhm [00:11:19]:
So. Well, the core thing, and thanks for pointing out the research. I think what’s important for me and my organization there is a lot of buzz, as we discussed already. So we really want to understand what is out there in the market. We scan the marketplace, we understand what the trends are, but at the same time we need to understand how far are our customers. How far is talent acquisition actually along the way? Because usually there is a gap and the capabilities gap is sometimes, sometimes even widening. But what we realize is that there is a lot of appetite actually by recruiters themselves to automate certain parts of the recruitment process. When we went out last year, we surveyed more than 1,000 talent acquisition leaders all across the world. I was really surprised by that result because like in other spaces, I sense that a lot of people are actually afraid of automation. Automation is very often associated with job loss or FTE reduction. Let’s make a machine do the job and we need less people. And I expected a similar tendency for foretelling acquisition. Interestingly, the majority of the people that we surveyed, which was way beyond 75% of the respondents, actually said we want to automate parts of the process. Because today non strategic Tasks, administrative tasks, like the scheduling I just talked about a little earlier, actually eat away time that we would like to spend with a candidate, because at the end of the day, it’s still about connecting humans to humans and really making sure that we understand what the candidate drives and then also build a relationship with a candidate. I think the bonding process is something that is very, very important and that we tend to forget nowadays because from the HR perspective, we nevertheless need to understand is that person, is that candidate a good fit for the organization. But today, talent acquisition organizations spend a lot of time on administrative tasks and therefore people actually want it and say, hey, I want to spend more time with the candidates. Let’s automate certain segments of the process.
Matt Alder [00:13:42]:
So you mentioned there that there’s a, a sort of a capability, capability gap when it comes to these things. What are the barriers that are stopping people sort of going wholeheartedly into automation at this stage?
Tim Pröhm [00:14:01]:
So what I feel and what I see, what our research showed is that there is a lack of available business cases. So a lot of companies, they understand, okay, there’s new technology out there, there are things that we can drive, that we can automate. But at the same time, it’s very hard to assess what is the actual outcome, what’s the return on investment when you are in a corporate environment like I am. The first question my CFO asked me when we started to implement Chatbot was, okay, what’s the roi? How many hours of manual work can you save? Honestly, it’s very, very hard to get reliable data to build a good business case on that. Just because the talent acquisition function is so diverse, there are so many activities going on there. So I think that’s something that a lot of people see. I think the second point that I observe when I go out to market is that there are a lot of companies who are really burned by bad technology. They might have listened to a bad salesperson, bought a technology in the ATS space, or maybe ERP in a different segment. It never really was able to deliver on the expectations that everybody had. So I think people are much more conscious of what is capable and what is really robust and reliable now, instead of just jumping right in and then just trying something out. Because big corporations, also medium sized corporations, they really struggle to identify certain segments where they can pilot. It’s very, very hard to do that, to find just a very small business unit where you can try a new technology and then really understand in a controlled environment what is the outcome, what’s the advantage that the technology is Bringing it, does it make sense to roll it out into other segments of the business? So I think that’s one thing. The other thing that I always see the market and the technology is becoming so complex. So when you think, think a few years back there were a few ATS providers, it was fairly early, fairly easy, you would go out, you would do an RFP and you would understand the capabilities. Today there are so many more startups emerging every week. There’s a lot of venture capital that’s going into the HR tech space and as a result there are like so many thousand. There’s thousands of vendors out there on the market that offer their services. And a lot of talent acquisition organizations are really overwhelmed. They are really overwhelmed by all the capabilities, by all the tools, the point solutions as I call them, who solve one specific challenge in the hiring process. So very often it’s just hard for them to even start. I think that’s just some of the obstacles that we observe when we look at the market.
Matt Alder [00:17:03]:
One of the questions that I always ask people when they come on the show is about the medium to the long term future. I think we can see very much that automation is a, is a big focus for people at the moment and it’s probably likely to be so for.
Matt Alder [00:17:21]:
A little while yet.
Matt Alder [00:17:23]:
I know that you guys have done some more research into the sort of the future of talent acquisition from a sort of strategic perspective. What have you seen from, you know, what have you seen from the work that you’ve done in that area? What do we sort of have to look forward to in the sector?
Tim Pröhm [00:17:40]:
I think one, that’s a brilliant question. And I think one thing that talent acquisition traditionally has not been focusing on is non traditional talent. So we very often talk about emerging trends like the gig economy, we talk about contingent workers, we talk about independent contractors. Companies work with other suppliers via a statement of work. And I think what we see and what our prediction is for the future is that there’s actually going to be a merge of the different skill sets and skill categories that a company is working with. Because today the majority of the companies we talk to, we speak with in the market, they’re operating in silos. Talent acquisition is traditionally looking at full time talent. This is what they’re asked to do. Whereas the procurement function of an organization is focusing on the contingent talent, but also the functional areas of the business, maybe the IT sector or the engineering division, is operating with independent contractors or other service providers under a statement of work. And the majority of the companies struggle to have A holistic view on talent and what we see. And I just recently had a discussion with a big life sciences customer of ours about that, about that topic where we see that in certain segments like in IT or engineering, you do not find talent that wants to be employed permanently just because they have a very, very specialized skill set. They can earn much more money when they’re an independent contractor. So going down the path of a permanent employment will not give you access to the talent. Traditionally, HR would raise the hands at some point in time and say, hey, we have a problem here, we cannot fill the role. But there is no cross functional overview on what other employment opportunities there are just because there’s no governance. And I think this is something that will have to change just because as we discussed in the beginning, talent is becoming much more scarce and at the end of the day, companies need to look at talent much more holistically and will look at talent much more holistically in the future.
Matt Alder [00:20:08]:
Final question. We’ve talked a lot about what’s happening now, what might happen in the future. What are you personally most looking forward to when it comes to the future of the industry? What’s going to be a highlight for you?
Tim Pröhm [00:20:23]:
I think it’s a combination of everything we discussed. I am a techie, I have to admit that, and you might have realized that by now. So I’m really, really excited what’s coming on the technology front because I think it’s a very, very fascinating area and topics like machine learning or AI that help us to make better decisions. Things like automation, like with chatbots, which by the way is only a bridging technology from my point of view, until we really interact with technology via voice, then I think there are so many interesting things out there. So that there’s going to be a lot of change. And I think a lot of people are afraid of change, but I think it’s, it’s change for good because ultimately it will enable us to focus more on talent and strengthen the human relationship. And I think this is something that over the last years a lot of organizations have lost out of sight just because they were thinking about efficient, gaining efficiencies, bringing technology in, ATS technologies where people can call, they have a question, don’t call us, we’ll call you. And I think because the balance is shifting and the talent is much more, much more powerful today, it will ultimately strengthen the relationship. And I think this is a very, very important thing because as I was mentioning in the beginning, it’s still about connecting humans with humans. And technology is just the enabler. I’m not sure if I answered your question, but this is something that I feel very passionate about and that I look forward to, honestly.
Matt Alder [00:21:59]:
Tim, thank you very much for talking to me.
Tim Pröhm [00:22:01]:
Perfect. Thank you, Matt. Thanks.
Matt Alder [00:22:03]:
My thanks to Tim Pröhm. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future in your App Store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can also find the show there. You can find 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.
