As the debates about recruiting automation rumble on, it is easy sometimes to lose sight of the fact that automation isn’t actually all about technology.
My guest this week is Brandon Batt, Director Of People Operations at Four Foods Group. Four Food Groups put recruiting automation in place a few years ago using some simple tech tools that anyone can access. Since then they’ve learned a lot about the balance between humans and technology, making this a fascinating case study that everyone can learn from
In the interview we discuss:
- The challenges of recruiting in a candidate driven market
- Brandon’s DIY approach to reducing friction in the recruiting process
- Building a central recruiting function
- Pairing the human aspect with the technology aspect in recruiting
- Why it is easier to cancel on a robot
Four food’s talent experience and employer brand
Brandon also discusses what has surprised him the most during his Four Food’s journey and talks about their future plans and challenges.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Boone. Boon is a unique platform that’s making referral based hiring effortlessly scalable and infinitely effective. Maximize your recruiting strategy today by visiting GoBoon.com to learn more and schedule a demo. That’s Goboon Co and Boon is spelt B double O N.
Matt Alder [00:00:42]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 194 of the Recruiting Future podcast. As the debates about recruiting automation rumble on, it’s easy sometimes to lose sight of the fact that automation isn’t actually all about technology. My guest this week is Brandon Batt, Director of People Operations at Four Foods Group. Four Foods Group put recruiting automation in place a few years ago using some simple tech tools that anyone can access. Since then, they’ve learned a lot about the balance between humans and technology, making this a fascinating case study that everyone can learn from. Enjoy the interview.
Matt Alder [00:01:28]:
Hi, Brandon, and welcome to the podcast.
Brandon Batt [00:01:28]:
Hi Matt, how are you?
Brandon Batt [00:01:29]:
I’m very good. An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Brandon Batt [00:01:36]:
Definitely, and the pleasure is all mine. My name is Brandon Batt, Director of people here at Four Foods Group. We are a restaurant management and development company with over 100 locations across the United States.
Brandon Batt [00:01:53]:
Fantastic. For people who may not be sort of familiar with Ford, for Foods Group, could you sort of tell us a bit more about the brands that you represent and what the, what, what the company does?
Brandon Batt [00:02:02]:
Of course, definitely. So the brands that we represent. Well, first of all, I guess we started about 10 years ago in Lehigh, Utah. Our CEO, Andrew Smith has always been a foodie and actually left the tech industry and started four Foods Group, a restaurant development company with the first brand that we represented being Kneaders Bakery and Cafe. And that was kind of our introduction into the restaurant industry and we learned a lot. We had a great time with Kneaders Bakery and Cafe. It’s a fantastic brand. And about three years ago, we purchased and partnered with a few other brands on top of Neater’s Bakery and Cafe, one of them being RNR Barbecue. Great barbecue brand. The founder, Roger Livingston, is a great guy. Man, does that guy know how to barbecue. That’s for sure. But, but when we, I guess when we look into which brands we’re going to partner with, we don’t necessarily, obviously the food’s got to be good, but we really, we bet on the jockey, not the horse. So we make sure that the people we’re getting into business with are. Are really great people, and they fit. They fit our core values here at Four Foods Group, and those are humility, positivity, integrity, and competence. So we look for great individuals with those attributes, and we. We partner with them. And, you know, the. The gates are open and we’re off and running. I guess one of the reasons why people partner with us is we have all the. The systems and teams here at Four Foods Group that most business owners don’t have. So they partner with us for our finance teams, our restaurant ops teams, our HR team, recruiting team. So we really have it all here. And Andrew’s vision when he started Four Foods Group was to be a restaurant development company that does it all. So that our people in the stores, our boots on the ground, all they have to worry about is really delighting the guests and training employees.
Brandon Batt [00:04:25]:
Fantastic stuff. So talk us through some of the recruiting challenges that perhaps you’ve had historically. The company.
Brandon Batt [00:04:34]:
Definitely, definitely. There was a point in time a few years ago where the economy shifted here in the United States, where it went from being one of the worst economies we’ve had to now. We’ve been on a roll here for quite some time, and there’s a lot of open jobs. I mean, you walk down the street and seems like every business you pass by has a now hiring sign. And I remember sitting with our chief operating officer, Josh Bouchard, and we were just talking about the struggle that we were having hiring hourly employees in our restaurants and managers. And we kind of got to talking, and I said, you know what, Josh? I think I can help here with my past experience and the hospitality industry and recruiting, I think that we can really create a department here that alleviates all of those frustrations around staffing. And one of our first initiatives was, and this was a few years ago, where there weren’t a lot of technologies out that we have now, or at least not any good ones. So I kind of pieced together a few systems to make it easy for the applicants to apply for our jobs. Prior. Prior to this, our job descriptions were long and lengthy and all sorts of compliant words in them that just our applicants weren’t taking the time to read through, because why should they? There’s, you know, 100 other places hiring that they’ll bring them on right away in five minutes. Right. Why would they. Why would they spend 10 minutes reading a job description? So we. The first thing we did is we made it easy for people to apply. So we. I Guess one of the systems was we created a phone number. Now there’s, you know, all these text, hire me to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You know, there’s all sorts of companies out here today that do that. But I feel like we were, we were one of the first, you know, I signed up for a Google, a free Google number. And you know, I put that on top of all the job ads. Skip the lengthy application process and text this number and schedule an interview. Schedule an interview. So they would text that, that phone number. And I created a calendar page for each one of our restaurants where the applicant within two minutes was scheduling an interview with our, our general manager. It was that, that easy, that fast. They were going in same day to hold interviews and our applicant flow almost tripled just overnight. It was definitely, we weren’t prepared for the number of applicants that were coming through with that, but it really helped and our general managers definitely slept a lot better at night after that. One of the issues with that is we had too many applicants coming in. So that’s kind of where phase two of our people, operations and recruiting department came into play. Here at Four Foods Group was okay, now we don’t have an applicant sourcing problem. Now we have too many people coming in where our general managers just don’t have the time to interview them all to set up the interviews. So we hired a couple people here on the restaurant support center side here at four Foods Group to take that load off our general managers shoulders. So what I did was go into the brands themselves and hand picked a couple great, positive, happy individuals and brought them here to the restaurant support center where they could really help our general managers. They knew what it was like to work in our restaurant. So we took that load off of the general managers as well, where we have people here talking to applicants, screening them, setting up, answering questions, setting up interviews for our general managers. We’re really all they need to worry about is being there to perform the interview. We really try to do the rest.
Brandon Batt [00:08:55]:
That’s a really interesting journey and I think it kind of throws up a couple of questions for me. The first one, you know, it sounds like you were kind of out there inventing aspects of recruitment technology before some of the vendors came along to solve those problems. Presumably your sort of technology strategy has moved on and are you sort of now using established recruitment technology or are you still in a do it yourself kind of phase?
Brandon Batt [00:09:27]:
That’s a great question. Yeah, a little bit of both actually. We do use some softwares that streamline it a little Bit right. No more free Google. Google phone number. But what we found was when we became too automated, we kind of. We lost. We lost a little personal touch in our recruiting, and we saw the numbers come down. So we try to pair, you know, the human aspect with the technology aspect. So our people are still. Or, sorry, excuse me, our applicants are still setting up their own interviews. But we also have that human touch where someone from our restaurant support center is calling them, confirming the interview, asking any questions. So we really feel like that human touch, especially in today’s market, really sets us apart from the rest of the crowd.
Brandon Batt [00:10:20]:
That’s really interesting. And it’s interesting that you were able to sort of look at the data and see where that tipping point is. I mean, could you tell us a little bit more about where you sort of draw that line between automation and human interaction? I mean, it sounds from what you’re saying that the candidates are doing a fair bit themselves through technology, but could you kind of expand a bit more on the. On the role of the humans and when that intervention takes place?
Brandon Batt [00:10:49]:
Definitely. Definitely. So with our systems at the beginning where applicants were scheduling their own interviews, what we found is we were getting a lot of people scheduling interviews and not a lot of people showing up. Right. It’s easy to cancel or not show up on a robot, on a piece of technology. But there’s a different aspect when they know that they’re not showing up, when Elliot has called them and confirmed, right. There’s that human touch there where they don’t want to disappoint another human being. Where just scheduling an interview and showing up when there’s not that human aspect, it’s. There’s no problem for them. There’s not. They’re not disappointing anybody.
Brandon Batt [00:11:35]:
That’s really interesting stuff. And, you know, I love the phrase it’s easy to cancel on a robot. And obviously, you know that that human touch is kind of. Is kind of really important. You’ve obviously mentioned that you’ve got a lot of competition for talent in the restaurant space. Other than the sort of the process improve improvements that you’ve made. How. How else do you sort of differentiate yourself from your. Your competition to get the. The. The talent that you’re looking for into the. Into the business?
Brandon Batt [00:12:09]:
Yeah. At Four Foods Group, we’re. We’re a people business. I would say the thing that separates us is we. We really go above and beyond for our people. We have what we call the Four Foods Group Institute. It’s a training course that brings people on and, you know, we, we start with training individuals on how to be good human beings, just how to be good people. And they can take that on to other careers and in other industries. We’re fine with that. That’s our main goal is how do we support people, how do we make people better? We have training from teaching people how to interview, teaching people how to manage. I think that’s one of the biggest things that sets us apart is we’re a company where someone can really, you know, come on board and learn and grow with us. And something we’ve realized is, you know, we’re okay with being a good company from people to come from. For a while there, our turnover was very low. But what we realized is we were training people in such a way that other opportunities were presenting, were being presented to some of our leadership. You know, we’re, we’re okay with that. We’re okay with, like I said, being a good place to come from.
Brandon Batt [00:13:32]:
It sounds like you’ve got a sort of a really strong employer brand. Brand there. And I, you know, a really interesting idea about being a good place to. Good place to come from, which obviously, you know, must really help your reputation as an employer in the industry. How, how do you sort of communicate that employer brand during your sort of process, but also during your, your recruitment, marketing activity?
Brandon Batt [00:13:57]:
We here on our people operations team. I feel like it almost starts from the first phone call that, that we have with people. We’re here for the people in our first, our screening interviews that we have. You know, it’s not a typical, what hours can you work? Where, where have you been? How many jobs have you had in the last five years? You know, we ask questions that have to do with them as people. We end our screening interviews with handwritten thank you card. We want to thank people for their time. We know that in today’s market and with technology, time is precious for everybody. So we write thank you cards for every single person that we interview here at the restaurant support center and send it off to them. So I think it comes from day one, we really appreciate people and we appreciate their time and we let them know about it.
Brandon Batt [00:14:54]:
And what’s the one thing that surprised you the most from sort of going through this, this, this journey with forfeet?
Brandon Batt [00:15:02]:
I’d say the thing that surprised me, surprises me the most is that, that people care and people want to be listened to. I think that’s what sets us apart as a company is we’re not just hiring individuals to work in our restaurants, we’re hiring family members we’re hiring people that we want to listen to, that we care about and we want to see progress. Whether it be a seven dollar hourly employee or a VP here at our restaurant support center. People want to be listened to, they want to be a part of something and they want to be cared for.
Brandon Batt [00:15:42]:
Fantastic stuff. So final question. What’s next? What does the future hold in terms of how things are going to develop, use of technology just the way that you guys are planning to move forward from here?
Brandon Batt [00:15:58]:
I think in the future it’s still trying to work out how we’re going to incorporate artificial intelligence and the human aspect. I think that’s going to be a big key in in recruiting is how do we keep that personal touch and how do we scale and use both AI and human beings? I guess it’s something that we’re starting to find and really come into a good groove here at four Foods Group. And as more companies go to AI and technologies for the ease of scalability, there’s companies out there that are really setting themselves apart with human to human communication. I feel like that’s going to be something that helps us scale and really helps us find the right individuals to keep growing.
Brandon Batt [00:16:53]:
Brandon, thank you very much for talking to me.
Brandon Batt [00:16:55]:
Thank you, man.
Matt Alder [00:16:56]:
My thanks to Brandon Batt. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts 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 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.
