Brand Revelation
- Chad and Cheese
- Feb 27, 2020
- 29 min read
Updated: Jun 4, 2020
Like it or not your brand is probably dealing disappointment to loyal followers and consumers who want to join your team.
LIVE from the base of the Canadian Rocky Mountains in Banff, Chad & Cheese bring you The Gathering onstage including:
Yeti -- Bill Neff, VP Consumer Marketing
Intel -- Allyn Bailey, Talent Acquisition Transformation Leader
Intel -- Tyler Weeks, Head of HR Data Science
A mind-broadening experience you will NOT want to miss all thanks to SmashFly, Let SmashFly help activate your brand and keep relationships at the heart of your CRM. For more information, visit smashfly.com today.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Joel:
This Chad & Cheese Cult Brand podcast is supported by SmashFly, recruiting technology built for the talent life cycle and big believers in building relationships with brands, not jobs. Let SmashFly help tell your story and keep relationships at the heart of your CRM. For more information, visit SmashFly.com today.
The Gathering:
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage bad-ass podcast hosts of Chad & Cheese Podcast, Joel Cheesman and Chad Sowash.
Chad:
I know it's early Canada, but come on, give it up. Come on. Good morning. Who was out till 1:00 AM last night?
Joel:
Nice.
Chad:
Nice.
Joel:
Nice.
Chad:
That's dedication right there.
Joel:
Actually it was someone on our panel who was up till 1:00 AM last night. That's how talent acquisition parties, baby.
Chad:
Yeah, hard. I'm Chad.
Joel:
I'm Cheese, and we are the Chad & Cheese Podcast. Most of you probably don't know who we are. We cover the talent acquisition, HR, marketing more and more, topics on our show. If you listen to podcasts, we invite you to go search whatever podcast platform you enjoy the most, type in Chad, Cheese or any combination of the two, subscribe. If you're not into podcasts in that way, go to chadcheese.com to find out more.
Chad:
Yeah. Can we get our slide? We have one slide.
Joel:
We've got to be on brand here, people.
Chad:
Yes. One slide.
Joel:
We're at a marketing conference.
Chad:
Real quick, gathering story. Everybody has their gathering story, right? Last year, I get this cryptic email, and it's like I have no clue what the hell these guys.
Joel:
Was it from Russia?
Chad:
I have no clue who this guy, no, close. No clue what this guy wants. So I'm like, "Can we talk?" So we get on the phone and he's like, "I want you to come to the gathering. I want you to become a part of the cult." I'm like, "My mom always said not to be a part of a cult." And he's like, "No, seriously. I think your mom is probably a really great woman, but come and join the cult."
Joel:
I'll vouch for your mom.
Chad:
Thanks. We came and we had an amazing experience and we really felt like fish out of water because we are HR, TA. I have 20 years of experience. I was with Monster before it was Monster. Right? So, on the tech side, on the HR side, talent acquisition, I've been an individual contributor. I've also been a leader of teams, actually marketing were reporting up into me. Built veteran hiring programs for some of the biggest brands in the world. Pipelining veterans, military veterans into their organization. And now I'm a duet.
Joel:
And aren't you a lucky man because you're now folically less challenged than you were before. Yeah, both of us have 20 plus years in the industry. So we like to think we know what we're talking about from that perspective. I've worked at Job Boards a little less well known than Monster. I'm an entrepreneur, so I've started and sold companies in the space over the course of my career. Well Known blog at one point called Cheese Said, and now I do the podcast. Surprisingly 85% of my time is through that. So it's been a real surprise success for me as well as I have a startup that helps monitor online employment reviews.
Chad:
So we want to thank the gathering. We want to thank Ryan for that crazy ass cryptic email, first off. Chris, for actually having a conversation saying, "Why the hell are we bringing these guys in?" And then really starting to form this idea between a blind spot that marketing actually has. M marketing, even cult brands. We'll talk about it today. Even cult brands who have been awarded have a blind spot. And for us it's not a blind spot, it's our every damn day.
Chad:
So we're excited to actually bring some guests on stage who can help us talk a little bit further, not just about the HR side of the house, but also bringing the marketing, the consumer base, all of that backend and that blind spot from now on, hopefully, especially here at the gathering. And if you listen to the Cult Brand series from Chad and Cheese, it won't be a blind spot anymore.
Joel:
And I think to add to that, one of the things that we saw in coming to this was that everyone that goes on stage that's a keynote speaker, anyone that goes on to present talks about people. People are our greatest asset. Our brand starts with people. They're our front lines. They're the ones that are out waving the flag to the world. But yet there's a disconnect we think in terms of the recruiting process and how you guys reach out to candidates and appeal to candidates in the process. That's a real disconnect to what your brand is.
Joel:
So part of our relationship with the gathering, and Chris, I think you'll agree with this, is to say, how do we bring recruiting and marketing together? Because they have a lot more in common than you think. So we're real excited to have this presentation this morning to bring a great consumer brand and their marketing as well as some talent acquisition folks, some great brands. So without any further ado, I'd say we bring them to the stage and get this show started.
Chad:
Yep.
Joel:
Let's start with Allyn Bailey from Intel. Let's cheer it for Allyn. She's a little company, she's going salsa dancing after this presentation. So was that what you were wearing last night by the way?
Allyn:
No.
Joel:
Okay, so she's freshened up and ready to go.
Joel:
Nice.
Joel:
Next up is Tyler Weeks from Intel as well. Let's give it up everybody.
Chad:
So we had a challenge, I think about a month ago. So Bill, Joel and I already had facial hair and we said, "Hey, we're all going to grow a beard." And Tyler tried.
Joel:
Let's agree not to shave for a month.
Chad:
He really tried.
Joel:
And this is what we got from Tyler.
Chad:
Put your hands together for Tyler.
Joel:
He's going to be late for school today, unfortunately. And last but not least, you all know I'm Bill Neff, Yeti.
Chad:
Okay. So those are our guests. And I have to say that they're brave because we have many CEOs who won't even come onto this show, because we ask the questions that need to be asked, that aren't asked. We don't generally do the softball question and that's why people listen. They want the reality. They want to know what is going on and that's why we do it. I really appreciate it. Put your hands together for everybody, first off, before we-
Joel:
And Chad, we almost forgot the most important part.
Chad:
Oh yeah.
Joel:
We need to give some thanks. Big thanks to the gathering. Chris is here. Everyone that's great. SmashFly in particular for having the faith not ever being here. They kind of [crosstalk 00:06:47] put out a word at least this here for SmashFly, Stephanie Talent. So we want to give a special thanks to them-
Chad:
And Gina.
Joel:
... and Gina. Yes. Sorry, Gina. For supporting this effort and believing in us and getting a this thing together. Without any further ado.
Chad:
First question, hard question one that I want everybody to listen to very intently. Allyn Bailey, I always pick out on the land and that's why she sat way down there because I always pick on-
Allyn:
I know, I was like far away as I can.
Joel:
And we know that she can take it.
Chad:
So how many human beings actually apply for jobs at Intel in a year's time frame?
Allyn:
A little over 1.5 million.
Chad:
1.5 million. Okay, so Bill, how many people... Okay, so Bill on the consumer side, right?
Joel:
Marketing side.
Chad:
Marketing side. And then we've got the talent acquisition side over here. So they should know their shit. Keyword should. We don't expect Bill to, But bill, do you know how many?
Bill:
No.
Joel:
So there's your first takeaway Marketing folks. Go to HR and ask how many people are applying because why? That could be customers that are coming through the door every day and you're not even conscious of them.
Chad:
So back to Allyn and Tyler. Tyler is the analytics guy. So he generally has all the numbers. So Tyler, do you know how many people actually hit your career site a year?
Tyler:
It's over 2 million that hit our career site and fill out a talent form. And beyond that it's probably double that. About 4 million that just see it.
Chad:
Again, ask yourself, did I have any fucking clue that this was going on?
Joel:
Bill, do you know how much traffic yeti.com gets?
Bill:
Generally, yes. I get data.
Joel:
Would you share that or no?
Bill:
Well, I would share it, but like I would have to look at my Tableau report from this morning.
Joel:
I can tell you there's a good chance that between 10 and 18% probably go to the job section.
Would you guys agree with that?
Allyn:
I actually think that number's a lot bigger. On our end, we find that-
Joel:
That you can buy coolers at their website.
Allyn:
You're not going to buy a chip at my website. But we find that the career page is the number one driver for the consumer site for all Intel external-
Chad:
And we've actually seen that through data and analytics from all big time brands. They look at their web traffic and the number one it used to be, now this has changed, the number one is the home site and the second was the career site. They were going to the homepage to get to the career site. But with search engine optimization and these huge footprints that companies are putting together, how many jobs do you have open now?
Tyler:
About 5,000.
Chad:
5,000?
Tyler:
Yeah.
Chad:
Holy shit.
Tyler:
Give or take.
Chad:
That is actually a footprint, right? That's a footprint that Google can see and you're using a platform. You actually use SmashFly to be able to build out that footprint. So that footprint is seen by Google. So you're having people do job searches on Google and they're going directly to the actual jobs on your webpages. Tell me about that experience itself and do you work with marketing at all four basic job descriptions?
Allyn:
No, and we should. And I think we would love to do that.
Chad:
Has marketing asked you?
Allyn:
No.
Chad:
Why the hell aren't we involved?
Allyn:
Oh no. Nobody pays attention to the job descriptions unless there's something written in it that offends somebody and then they all call me. In 99% of the time people see job descriptions and by the way, they usually are as completely transactional purchase orders.
Joel:
Cold and corporate.
Allyn:
Exactly. Cold and corporate. This is my list of skills and requirements is all very legal and there's all this compliance around it and et cetera. We really see a clear distinction between the job description and the job ad. And for us as we start thinking about our partnerships in the marketing space, we really want to figure out how to get better at translating what is essentially a purchase order into something that's a compelling job advertisement that is real and authentic and helps people really understand what it's like to work in our environment. You don't get that from a job description.
Chad:
So to clarify real quick here, job description is more of a technical document, right?
Allyn:
Exactly.
Chad:
It's a technical document. The problem is, most companies use job descriptions as their job postings. Because lazy, they're not marketing. Because you guys aren't giving them the time they deserve. Anyway, the posting itself is the job description. The job description should be the marketing angle on selling the brand. Right?
Allyn:
Right.
Chad:
So Bill, is this news to you?
Bill:
Yeah, a little bit. Because we definitely do get involved in our job descriptions. We're a much different, much smaller than you guys. You guys have a real thing going and an engine really rolling. And we hire I think it was close to 300 people last year. So we're hiring about a person a day. And for us the talent acquisition group is like, "Okay, this is the job that I know is coming." The job descriptions requirement is on our side.
Bill:
The only thing about it is, and why this isn't a surprise is as we're growing, we're starting to cut and paste a little bit with job descriptions because it's a little bit easier and quicker and we're not probably taking the time to really... And then we let talent scrub it up a little bit and then post it and away they go. But we do make sure and work with our talent group. We have a much smaller group of people we're going after than you guys.
Joel:
And I think it's an important distinction, what Chad said was something that sort of happened in our industry in the past few years where Google has gotten into our industry. There are about a 100 million to 150 million people or searches done every month, in the States for job searches. So one of the things I wanted to point out is that marketing and typically gets involved with like the careers page and life at Intel and they do all these pages.
Joel:
But what's happening is job seekers go are going directly from Google or indeed directly to the job description. They're not even going to your careers page. So marketers should pay more attention to the actual job description because that's where more and more traffic is going directly. And in light of that, I'm curious, what was the last time any of you applied to a job at your company? Just to see the process.
Tyler:
I'm not even sure I work at my company. Things happen, I don't know.
Allyn:
He's like, I just see the numbers stuff. I don't know. I usually go into, my job is focused on trying to understand the experience and that's the lens that I take. It's part of my job to go and apply and I do it regularly, at least once a month. I'll tell you this, it doesn't change. It still sucks. It sucked a month ago and it'll suck next month. It'll suck the month after that.
Joel:
So we'll get to that in a second. Bill was last time you went through the process? Open and honest that's what we like.
Bill:
When I was forced to apply for the job that I have now.
Tyler:
Forced. That's a great-
Bill:
They're like, "Hey, we really want you to come in and interview. We want you to do this job." That's four and a half years ago. I was like, "Great." "All right. Go to the website and apply." And then you apply and it's like, I don't have any idea who the six people I need to list in all these things. And I'm like, "You called me."
Chad:
Real quick, we're starting to get into the meat of this. So you're all in. Now, I want you to do your little Twitter intro. Pretty much everybody knows who you are, but real quick, who are you, what do you do? And then all the way down the line real quick.
Bill:
I'm at Yeti Coolers and I'm Vice President of Consumer Marketing.
Tyler:
I'm at Intel. I'm the head of HR Data Science.
Chad:
Holy shit. What?
Tyler:
I'm a physicist and an artist and I love telling stories. That's what it is.
Chad:
Just keep that mic close to yourself. That's all I got.
Allyn:
Could you hold it the right way?
Tyler:
Sorry, I'm totally screwing this up.
Allyn:
We give each other a hard time. We travel way too much together. Tyler is, we're like two sides of the same coin. I work in the talent acquisition space, but my focus is around experienced design and driving a larger base of our candidates to understand what it's like to work at our company, but also to build our culture through our candidate base. And so I'm Allyn and that's what I do.
Joel:
So the other takeaway for everyone in the audience is I want you to, before you leave Canada or band, is apply to a job at your company and just see how it is. See if your brand translates well into the apply process. And I'm going to take a bet that most of them don't and you'll be shocked at how cold and corporate and little that your brand comes through when you apply to a job. So I went through and applied to both of your companies before the podcast.
Chad:
It's like Jerry Springer moment.
Allyn:
I know, I'm like...
Joel:
And now, who's the father?.
Allyn:
I apologize now.
Bill:
Pop out of the cooler. Hi Dad!
Joel:
That would be good. For next time.
Bill:
Yes.
Joel:
Not turning out to be mean, but some constructive criticism because Yeti, your brand is very, it's warm, it's exciting, it's challenging the boundaries of what everything is. So I went into apply and the good news is it was a one page, pretty simple attach your resume. I liked that you had the ability to add a file, like a video file. So someone could actually, I don't know, go surfing and then go on the beach and say, "I want to work at Yeti because of whatever." So they could really build their personality in terms of their resume.
Joel:
I think where you dropped off a little bit was once you applied, the thank you message was like a lawyer wrote it. So I went through this whole process and I'm on Yeti and I love their stuff and I want to work there. And then it's like, I get the lawyers. And there wasn't anything like thank you, now follow us on whatever social media. Or we'd love to stay in touch or here's a coupon for 20% off your next Yeti purchase.
Joel:
So I think from a marketing perspective and brand, that was an opportunity to say, thanks for your time, we appreciate it. Now here's a real thank you. And then the second, probably worst part of the process was the follow-up email. So thumbs up that there was actually a follow-up email. A lot of companies don't do that and you should make sure that you do. But it was super legalese and it was like, "If you don't hear from us in six weeks, just assume that you didn't get the job."
Joel:
So you have an entire opportunity in an email to brand and build that message and keep that going and build some warm and fuzzies. And I ended the process feeling really cold and like I'm just part of the process now. So, overall you were better than Intel and I'll get to them in a sec.
Bill:
Thank you very much.
Allyn:
I'm ready. What happened.
Chad:
But still from a consumer brand standpoint, from your standpoint, you are touching customers. These individuals actually want to be a part of your cult, not just buy your shit. They want to be a part of your cult. So, how does that make you feel?
Bill:
I think it's really interesting. I hadn't applied for a job on the site. You assume that stuff is just sort of being done. I promise you it sounded like a lawyer wrote it because they did. But that's incredible feedback. We'll get upwards of 30,000 people applying for a single job. And while that's, may not be a lot for you guys, but it is a lot for us. How do you scale and then sustain as we continue to grow? But it's probably really smart of us to get in front of that now.
Bill:
Because the truth is if I was applying for a job at Yeti, I would want that there's a different emotional thing happening and not anything against Intel, but you guys are powerhouses. And so I'm not sure if I'm going there, it's because I'm probably really smart. And I don't know if I would expect the same type of butterflies in like and candy canes.
Tyler:
You said something that's actually interesting. You said we've got about 30,000 applicants. That's probably not a lot for us. That's a huge amount. And in fact-
Bill:
Because you have 5,000 jobs open right now.
Tyler:
Right. So we get about, on average if you average across the globe we get about 75 per position. So in some ways that organic interest in your jobs is a good indicator of your cult status. The fact that people are banging down your door to join the cult is probably a KPI that you should be looking at from a marketing standpoint in general. Because they're not just looking to buy a cooler, there's almost no commitment to that. Like saying I want to give you my nights and weekends and 40 plus hours a week and give up time with my kids to like work with you.
Bill:
Yeah. Even when you guys invited me on the podcast, it's taken me like hours to understand what the topic is.
Joel:
Are you understanding?
Bill:
Yeah, I am understanding it now. It clicked like 36 hours ago.
Tyler:
It's marketing, Bill.
Bill:
And because it's like not stuff we think about at all. I mean we just don't.
Chad:
It's a blind spot.
Tyler:
Yeah, it really is. And it is a blind spot too, for us, for sure.
Joel:
So getting to Intel, I can tell you, you might be getting that many if your process was better in applying to your job.
Chad:
The thing is-
Joel:
So I applied.
Chad:
... we probably don't want then.
Joel:
Yeah. We'll get to that. This was where the dual goals come into play. In applying to Intel, Intel has a situation where they have what's called a talent community. And talent communities were created because applying to jobs through what's called an applicant tracking system became an incredible burden on job seekers to perform. So talent communities are a layer between, I want the job and I want to apply to say, "Hey, join our talent community." And that's almost like a business card of bit of information, right? You get the email address, the name, maybe they attach a resume. And then you send them to the crappy applicant tracking system apply process.
Chad:
And quick question, that's more important to you really than the applies. Is it not?
Allyn:
Yeah, no, absolutely. Because my goal is to build my relationship there. I completely, I get in trouble with this at work all the time, but I do not believe it is in our benefit to have people applying to jobs that they're not the right fit for. So I want to keep them from doing that.
Tyler:
And to steal a little bit of a lens language from some other presentations we've done. If you think about take those 30,000 people, you disappointed 29,999 of them. If you think about the average purchase opportunity for each customer, like let's say it's $100 a piece, and you multiply that by the 300 jobs that you have every year. Now you're talking about revenue that you're impacting. What we saw and the thing that we wanted to get out of the business of was dealing in disappointment. We just felt like we were these brokers of where we just like, what we're really selling you is disappointment every day.
Chad:
We'll get back to the interview in a minute. Building a cult brand is not easy, which is why you need friends like Roopesh Nair. CEO of SmashFly on your side.
Joel:
To become cult brands, companies need to build from the inside out. How can messaging and technology facilitate that type of growth?
Roopesh Nair:
It's easy to build a so-called employer brand in paper and say, "Hey, this is my EVP and these are my pillars of EVP." But it is much more difficult to activate it internally and ensuring that as you build your EVP, that activation is top of your mind. I've seen a lot of organizations build these awesome EVPs which stands for who they are, but then not necessarily using that effectively internally. Some of the times it's because the EVP is not created in a very genuine way.
Roopesh Nair:
Then obviously it will not stand the test stuff, that internal activation and hence you need to ensure that your EVP is credible and aspirational as you think about the future. But at the same time spending that time to ensure that every persona in your company understands what your differentiation is, what do you stand for as a company and why is it relevant to that particular individual in that particular role is very important as you basically ensure that you're building that culture or value proposition inside out. Then it's easy to activate it because then you can use your own employees to really activate your EVP and you brand as you think about external activation.
Joel:
Let SmashFly help activate your brand and keep relationships at the heart of your CRM. For more information, visit SmashFly.com
Allyn:
Right. And we really wanted to flip the switch and say, "Well, if that's not what I want to do, if I really want to understand that these 1.5 million people who come in and are saying, I'm interested, I like you enough to try and at least figure out how to navigate my way through this." If nothing else, some basic investment. I want to be respectful of that and to say, how can I now give you an experience that says we not only see you, which is mostly what people want, I see you, I appreciate you and it's not your job anymore to figure out how you connect to me. You've told me you want to be here. Now it's my job to figure out how I connect to you. How will we build relationships.
Joel:
In a relevant way.
Allyn:
In a relevant way, right? I'm driving you to the right opportunities because I'm taking the time to know who you are. That's to us what a talent community does.
Joel:
Did the marketing have any touch points with regard to the CRM or the actual implement branding piece?
Allyn:
They do. I will say this, we do have partners that we work with on the marketing side of the house, but it's interesting, different companies have different ways of approaching this. But we have our employer brand or our employer communication team. They actually have jumped between whether they sit in HR or whether they sit in marketing, but they always have this cross collaboration going on in that space.
Allyn:
But frequently, our collaboration, even with that team who understands employer brands and is thinking about employer brands, their focus is much more up in the very, very top of the funnel. They're looking at trying to build these big employer brand messages and not necessarily connecting it to when we actually pull people in. So we're left there by ourselves to figure that piece out.
Chad:
Tyler, you had a great example of how we look at and how we've seen employer brand is this thing by itself versus the overall brand. So the whole Apple kind of idea.
Tyler:
Yeah. We were having this conversation at lunch yesterday. If you go to a recruitment marketing conference, you'll hear a lot about employer brand. And there's a whole school of thought around employer brand versus the corporate brand and those often get talked about as two different entities. Like two different strategies, how can we make the employer brand more important?
Tyler:
Really, it's like you're sitting on two different sides of the table and you're staring at the same Apple and you're describing the side that you see and I'm describing the side that I see. If someone's listening to their conversation, they might think that there's two apples there. Just because we're seeing different things, but we're really talking about the same entity. They're inseparable. That's why if you have a cult brand like Yeti, you'll get 30,000 applicants. That is tied to your brand.
Tyler:
And vice versa. Where Intel for example, has enormous market share in servers and PCs we get a ton of applicants from college students, will be in the 1,000s per position. Where we're in new markets where we're trying to grow our growth engines as a company, like autonomous driving. Nobody thinks of us as automaker. Did you know that we're an automaker? No you didn't. We struggle there to get applicants because they just don't have that association. And it all comes down to our brand. Our employer brand is our brand.
Chad:
Right. Bill, let me hear your feedback on that.
Bill:
I want to know if it's rude if I take notes up here. My wheels are turning and-
Tyler:
If I'm sitting on stage with Bill Neff and he's taking notes.
Chad:
You've just made it.
Allyn:
His head's gone like, we do not need that happening.
Tyler:
Please take notes. Elyse take a picture.
Chad:
I have thoughts. So have you ever heard of employer brand? This is like a new concept. Because I remember talking to Douglas Atkins saying employer brand and he looked at me like I had three heads.
Bill:
No, I've never heard the terminology of that. Now I'm not saying our talent team doesn't. And we do have a good relationship with our talent team because they're a small group and we're still relatively a small group, we work really close together and we're friends. But no, I don't even know really what it (Employer Brand) is ]. I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. But the idea around, you said something that I thought was really interesting and it's like it isn't about a customer acquisition that wants to buy a $300 cooler. They want to give you their time and they want to give you their sweat and they want to give you their brain and they want to give you there their self.
Chad:
They want to join the cult.
Bill:
That is like a super powerful statement that you said because I never have thought about it like that. And how do you cultivate that. And at least acknowledge that. That's humbling that you want to come join us.
Chad:
But we see them as candidates, we don't see them as customers or somebody who want to, we don't have that view. Because it's become so transactional.
Bill:
Yeah. As much as we want to be humbled to the process and we are a humble brand, but there's probably some arrogance to it. You want to come join us, why do you want to come join us? And I think that's really a wrong way to look at it.
Joel:
And that's very common.
Bill:
You see the candidates walking through and they're getting interviewed and all that. There's probably an element of pride that I'm here and you're not yet, that is probably a little unhealthy. But understanding that this person is, is wanting to join the team and how exciting that thought process is and potential is.
Allyn:
So the emotional investment somebody makes when they do that, also means that their reaction when that doesn't work for them, has an even bigger downstream implication for you because they're much more passionate about it. There's research out there now that shows that over 60% of people who are told no by your company during the application process change their consumer relationship with you. They say, "And." Right? "But I'm going to make it worse for you." And over 70% of people who have a negative experience with your company during the application and hire process, tell all their friends and family with huge amount of emotional resonance.
Chad:
We saw Chris's graphs yesterday. What was the most influential bar chart? It was friends and family. It wasn't the influencers. It was the friends and family. So that and is pretty damn important.
Tyler:
Can I ask the crowd, can I ask the crowd something?
Joel:
No. Let's ask the crowd if you can ask the crowd something.
Tyler:
No, I'm asking you if I can ask the crowd. Can I ask them if I can ask you something? No. How many of you have an awful experience either interviewing or applying to a job or you just got horrible like you just, you're just emotionally scarred? Yeah, I thought so.
Chad:
Pretty much everybody.
Joel:
I'm going to call you out on that a little bit because getting into your talent pipeline was easy. Applying to your job was, I didn't even make it through.
Allyn:
Oh, it sucks. Nobody does that.
Joel:
We were talking earlier and you're like, "I don't want them to apply, I want them to get in my funnel." But then you're saying, "well if they have a bad experience then we're really screwed." We talk a lot about in e-commerce, you want people to buy something as easily as possible. And if they leave your shopping cart, you send them emails that say, "Hey, it looks like you left something in your shopping cart." If they go to click off your site, you put up a popup that says wait before you leave, get 10% off that purchase you were just about to make. So on an eCommerce perspective, they want it as easy as possible to buy products. But on the job seeker side, it's almost like you want hurdles. You don't want people to apply. You don't care if they do or not.
Allyn:
Right. Because think about it. Here's the one fundamental way in which consumer product marketing differs from employer or job marketing. You want all of those consumers to be consumers. You have and you will figure out enough product to sell to all of them. So the 30,000 people, if they were going on to click onto a job, we're actually going to get 30,000 different jobs, you'd want as many of them in there as you could possibly get. Because it's all about, I can give you something when you do it.
Allyn:
In a job application process, I only have one job for that 30,000 people. So the other 29,000 people, I have to figure out how to let down in a way that feels relevant and personal and connected. And on scale, big companies just can't do that well. In fact, if I think about most of you who put your hand up and said you had a crappy experience, it was probably related to a lot of the key issues we have.
Allyn:
People who go in and apply. Of those 30,000 people, 29,000 of them or a thousand of them. Sometimes in our case, not only have a bad experience, but it's based on the fact that nobody ever talked to them, they go into a black hole, they go and invested their time and energy. We know it's a crap process to apply for a job. There's all sorts of reasons I can go into about why that application process just sucks, but it does. And there's things we can do and try and make it better, but it never gets good enough.
Allyn:
It always feels like a very personal thing when you go and tell somebody you want them to like you, which is what you're doing when you fill out an application. It's all this emotional investment. And 90% of the time we don't have the ability to go and personally tell you why, "Thank you very much, but it's not the right fit for you." And it ends up being this paper computerized note that feels like it came off a dot matrix printer in 1982, that says, "Thank you for applying. Please consider us for your next-"
Tyler:
That would actually be more personal. That would actually be more personal than an email because they had to put it in the mail.
Allyn:
That's true. I guess in my mind that's why it's a fundamental difference. I don't want people applying to jobs unless they're the right fit for those jobs. Because I don't want to disappoint them and I don't want to put burden on me to figure out how to manage that piece. I want to keep that relationship where we can build and connect and figure out if you're not the right fit for this opportunity, how do you stay connected to me and my brand?
Bill:
Okay, so let's go back to Bill real quick because again, you're dealing with a 1,000 or 75 that apply per. How do you wade through when you might not have this, because you haven't done it. But you're team is wading through 30,000 and that is literally impossible. So it's almost like a first come first serve. How does that work? And do they become a part of a pipeline much like I would think in marketing that you continue to get more brand that's coming out, maybe more angler info or things like that. Really relevant info, which is one of the things that Intel's trying to do with their CRM.
Bill:
There's pretty stringent job requirements on our jobs now. So there's years of experience and all those things. I actually don't like it that much because I think you pass on people based on a couple of years less or... But there's 30,000 but over half of them are just out of college applying-
Chad:
Spray and pray.
Bill:
... for the director of marketing job. Yeah. It just isn't right. And they don't have the years of experience in that. That weeds out a lot. But then they get down to it and then we surface the ones most the time that the marketing team will identify other brands that we admire or if we want someone with an agency mind. And then those will start to surface a little bit and then a lot of it is through network. This world is so small and you can figure out who these people are pretty quick specifically and in our world. And there'll be 10 or 15 really surface and that's the ones that we see.
Bill:
But we don't see really any of the other ones and have to trust the process in some capacity. And of the 15 that make it five will probably be some names that have been given to us through referrals. And then the other 10 are ones that we think match it. So I'm saying this only really truthfully guessing. I don't know how they weed through them and I don't know how they get to-
Joel:
I think the constant connection with these folks as well is really important. I think that's a place where marketing misses probably the market in many cases is that do you continually talk to them on a regular basis and let them know what the company is doing? I'm guessing with the talent community, you guys are conscious about keeping in touch with them on a regular basis. And what are you doing currently and are you guys looking at how can we take a job seeker and keep them energized for years and years, either selling them stuff or letting them know about our company? Are you guys doing anything around that currently?
Allyn:
Yeah. I mean, that's the whole point. Having people in the pipeline, it does us no good unless we have data and information about them to be able to figure out how we build relationship with them and how we help them connect with us in a way that makes the most sense. And so we have an entire team of people located in different regions whose main job is just to manage that pipeline and the relationships in those pipelines and to network to those pipeline to build connection.
Allyn:
We talk about relationship, but for us this is where I start sounding really manipulative but it's true. We build relationship because we understand that if you trust us you're going to tell us more about yourself. The more you tell me about yourself, the more data I have-
Chad:
These are marketers. That's exactly what they do all the time.
Allyn:
Exactly.
Chad:
Manipulative? I mean, come on.
Allyn:
The more data I have about it, then I'm able to throw it over to Tyler and his team who were able to put great analytics and artificial intelligence and algorithms behind it to help me figure out who you are, connect you on what to do with you.
Tyler:
Because I mean for on the, on the talent acquisition side, volume is not the game. And we've said that a few different times. So our challenge to break down who our audience is at a more granular level is big. Because we need to know more than just what your interests are. We need to know what you're good at and what your aspirations are. Those are three different things. You may be very interested in our company, you may be a wonderful accountant and you may be interested in doing machine learning. That doesn't mean you're qualified to do machine learning.
Tyler:
So the quality of our pipeline is also overlayed with ability. We have this framework that we use of ability, interest and opportunity. That sound simple but understanding those three at any given point, actually has a lot of nuance to it. But that's how we build and strategize and think about this audience that we've got.
Chad:
So we talked yesterday about resentment and being able to get away from resentment. And I think that's a big word for a room full of people who are focused on brand and touching those, those individuals in a great way. As opposed to having a bad experience, you're having a great experience. You're more on the HR side, Bill can answer this too. Why do you think marketing, they don't interact with TA as much? Why do you think this isn't like more of a symbiotic relationship? Is it HR and HR is just scary?
Tyler:
I don't mean to scare you people.
Bill:
You are scary.
Chad:
Bill's called the HR, HR, Bill please...
Allyn:
I don't know what it's like in every company, but I know what I see and I think in a lot of the big large enterprise companies, HR organizations have been over the years really reconstructed as transactional organizations focused on driving transactions around paychecks and applicants. And so it doesn't feel like it, unless you tell the story and start having this conversation, it's not a natural moment. I'm imagining where you sit down in the marketing department and go, I wonder what's happening in our candidate relationships. Right?
Allyn:
Because when you think about HR and you think about what they're doing in talent acquisition, you're thinking, I wonder how many applicants they're processing so that I can fill my seats as quickly as possible. Our measures are that way. We use in the HR space, sales measures, not marketing measures. And so we're not building that conversation.
Tyler:
I'd go a little deeper. Nice answer, Allyn.
Allyn:
Whatever dude.
Joel:
Shallow but nice.
Allyn:
Fine.
Tyler:
I think here's a historical component to this where, I'm venturing a guess. I'm just making shit up right now. I'll bet that retailers where historically you'd walk into the store with your resume and that's the same place that you're going to buy their products have actually found a tie between these two for a very long time. That'd be my intuition. I'll bet that companies like ours who are more an OEM or you're more B2B, the place where you go buy things and the place where you would walk in with your resume into the headquarters, we're two different locations and two totally different experiences. And it's only been in the last couple of decades that those have converged into one portal on a corporate website. And so I think we're just learning as an industry how to combine those two.
Chad:
Very nice. Very deep. So HR is here-
Joel:
You guys talk. You guys are in frequent communication with HR?
Bill:
Yeah. Just because we're friends.
Joel:
And do you get to go strategically and talk about-
Bill:
No.
Joel:
No.
Chad:
We have beers, we do all this stuff, but we do not talk about strategy.
Bill:
I think probably the biggest deterrent from it is just time. It's not our job.
Chad:
It's not a priority.
Bill:
It's not a priority for us.
Chad:
The question is, do you think it's priority?
Bill:
Yeah, like this stuff I wrote down. I think there could be a real priority. I do. And I think it could be things that we actually change to just make that your experience the warm and like excitement to the cold and like. I think it's a real takeaway for us.
Joel:
It's like an air ball at the end of it. We're running out of time. Let's hear a warm round of applause for our guests.
Chad:
Allyn, Tyler and Bill, thanks so much. And again, I'm sure you're going to want to re-experience this in a podcast way while you're on a treadmill. You can just go to wherever you listen to podcasts. I don't know, maybe even Spotify and look for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. We'd love to have you.
Joel:
And everyone go and apply to your jobs and set a lunch date with your HR department.
Chad:
We out.
Joel:
We out.
Allyn:
Thanks guys.
Tyler:
Thank you.
Walken:
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast. Yeah. The Chad, the Cheese, brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing, just a lot of shout outs to people you don't even know, and yet you listen. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one. Not cheddar, blue, nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss. There's so many cheeses and yet not one word. It's so weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode and while you're at it, visit www.ChadCheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.