PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Technology is evolving, teams are sprinting, excitement is building, features are launching, and nobody notices... (waa waa) which is why Chad & Cheese cooked-up FeatuRama, a brand new competition which pits 4 companies against one-another, but only one can win and emerge with the BadAss Belt of Technology.
Contestants will receive 2-minutes to pitch their new feature and the remaining 13-minutes will be spent with rapid fire Q&A.
This Chad and Cheese FeatuRama episode features Andy Katz, COO of NEXXT, that's with 2 Xs kids. Chad & Cheese came equipped with questions, bourbon and snark, luckily Comuno's Cindy Songne, who was available to step in and inject brains into this judging panel...
Enjoy while Andy pitches NEXXT's newest feature.
Intro (1m 3s):
Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HRS most dangerous podcast. CHAD SOWASH and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts!
Intro (1m 33s):
Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Chad (1m 34s):
Got to wait for him to come back.
Joel (-):
Let's wait for the technology to catch up.
Chad (1m 38s):
Now, that's what I'm talking about now Andy from Nexxt Go!
Andy (1m 44s):
Thanks for inviting me. Nexxt is a recruitment media company with employment solutions catering to the next generation of hiring. For companies and agencies Nexxt is a full service recruitment marketing platform, providing method of sourcing the best people from abroad talent pool and for professionals and job seekers Nexxt is an employment solution powering more than 50 niche career sites, making finding the perfect job easier. Nexxtt combines predictive technology with multichannel multichannel marketing to diversify talent network of more than 75 million candidates on focused career sites, allowing recruiters or hiring managers to build custom campaigns and efficiently fulfill their hiring needs.
Andy (2m 26s):
So in other words, what does that mean? It really means that Nexxt plays in eight different buckets of advertising. Everything from talent communities to text messaging, to email marketing, to our job alerts, to retargeting campaigns, to branding campaigns. Everything that will put our employers opportunities in front of our job seekers, anywhere the job seekers want and any way that the employers want to advertise them. So it's really the whole ecosystem of Nexxt put together that really makes us a powerful platform.
Andy (2m 57s):
And, you know, in a nutshell, really what Nexxt is
Joel (3m 2s):
And your new feature.
Chad (3m 3s):
Yeah the new feature
Andy (3m 4s):
The feature, which you really want to talk about today are talent communities and what a talent community is from an employer standpoint, it's really the opposite of an applicant tracking system. Applicant tracking systems are where job seekers go to apply for a job. And they go in through the process. Talent communities are becoming more and more popular with probably about 30 different providers out there that allow that really they sell the employers software and technology and they keep candidates warm. So they're not applying for a job that day, but they go onto their site or they're directed specifically to the talent community, not to apply for a job, but to say, Hey, I'm interested in this company.
Andy (3m 43s):
I'm interested in hearing what you have to offer and keep me in mind. And then what the technology does is it sends the job seeker information about the company as new information comes available or not.
Joel (-):
Thanks Andy!
Chad (3m 58s):
That's your two minutes. Okay. Cindy, your first. Yeah.
Cindy (4m 2s):
Right. Seriously, Andy, you know, I love you, right? I can send you, but go ahead. Why is talent community? How is that different from what you've been doing?
Andy (4m 12s):
Nobody in the industry right now, driving traffic or job seekers directly into talent communities. Right now it's all in line for a job. And with the way the economy is today and with 40 million, 30 to 40 million, depending on what you read, people unemployed, there aren't jobs for everybody. So what this will do is go into the tech. These job seekers enter into the talent community, the employers, and they are now kept as warm leads. So while talent communities have been around for probably half a dozen years at this point, nobody from the job board or a lead generation type space is driving people directly into the communities alone.
Andy (4m 51s):
They usually get there by going to a career site or they get there by going to a corporate site and then just happen to stumble upon the talent communities. So now more than ever, it's important for companies to start building up these databases of talent communities. And that's where we come in. We don't provide the software. We don't provide the service. What we provide is the job seekers being able to join those talent communities.
Cindy (5m 16s):
So you're just driving traffic to directly into what employers are calling a talent community into their ATS,
Andy (5m 24s):
Not their ATS, two separate databases. So ATS has make a job seeker, an applicant. A talent community does not make them an applicant that keeps them as a warm lead for future opportunities.
Cindy (5m 35s):
Okay. Does it count? Does a candidate and elder not applying to the job?
Andy (5m 40s):
Oh, absolutely. And we actually did a survey to our audience of about a hundred thousand people. We got about 4,000 responses and we asked them, you know, what do you think about talent communities? Are you familiar with talent communities? And 72% of the job seekers that we pulled said they were absolutely interested in joining the talent community, especially if there are no jobs available that meet their needs. And even if they are so this way, they don't always have to come back to the employer to get more information or see new jobs posted.
Andy (6m 10s):
The employers are directly reaching back out to them, through their email campaigns and whatever strategy they utilize through their providers on their end.
Cindy (6m 18s):
Okay. Thank you.
Joel (6m 19s):
And who who's this for? Is this just for big enterprise company? Is it get thousands, tens of thousands of applicants or if I'm a 50 person or under a company, should I be looking at talent communities as well?
Andy (6m 32s):
So I'm going to flip that on you Joel, and say, if you bought a talent community, this is the product for you. So from a company standpoint, you have to decide, do I want to have a talent community? Am I big enough to have a talent community? Do I want to keep people warm and engaged over time until I'm ready to hire them? If they purchase the talent community, this is the perfect opportunity for them to populate that database. If they do not have a talent community, obviously common sense this isn't right product for them. But, but you know, again, you're not going to hide.
Andy (7m 2s):
You're not going to have a talent community. If you're looking to hire 20 people a year, you don't need to keep people warm and interested. You need to do this when you're doing not just high volume recruiting, but any volume of substance, you know, I would say, you know, again, it's have a talent, community providers, pitch, they are technology, but you know, if you're hiring less than probably a hundred people a year, you probably don't have a talent community and you definitely do not need our service to keep, you know, driving leads into it.
Joel (7m 30s):
So my fear is this would, this would look like a lot of work to accompany. And I'm curious, how do you keep the community engaged? Is it like a LinkedIn or Facebook thing where there's a feed and people are sharing stuff and talking to each other? Or is it more like we're going to send you a job alerts once a month? And we'll, we'll publish some, some articles from around the web, like exactly how high, how manual is a company going to have to be to keep this thing going and then vibrant.
Andy (8m 0s):
So good news is that's not our forte. We're not sending them information. We're not keeping them engaged after they joined. That is on the talent community provider that whoever's delivering that software and the internal marketing or HR department or HR marketing within that organization. What we do at Nexxt is we just drive qualified leads or job seekers that have not found a position into those talent communities. So maybe the best way to explain this is how do we get them in there?
Andy (8m 32s):
So when a job seeker joins Nexxt for the first time they go through a registration process, we collect information, their name, their email, their discipline, their location, and a couple of other data points based on those data points, the company that has the, the employer that has talent community can say, okay, we're looking for 10,000 drivers or 10,000 customer service people, or two hundred customer service people. And just this one area. So we have the ability to target our audience by specific functions, locations, salary levels, and only show this offer to join that company's talent community, if it meets their needs.
Andy (9m 11s):
So we're not company X's talent community and make it aware to all of our job seekers, because it might not be appropriate for a nurse, that might not be appropriate for a network engineer, but it might be appropriate for an accountant. So they get the ice, the audience any way they want.
Joel (9m 28s):
So, and I'm sorry, Chad's biting at the chomping at the bit. If I'm an applicant I could end up in quite a few different talent communities based on who I am. Oh, absolutely. Sure. If you're just going to say I'm a customer service person and I can work anywhere in the country, you know, you might see 10 different talent communities that you can join at one time.
Andy (9m 48s):
And then from there through our APIs, we send the job seeker into the talent community and that's where we stepped out and the T and the software takes over. Gotcha.
Chad (9m 59s):
I mean, any, any CRM or Tom community that's worth a shit can do any type of job distribution in the first place. And for the most part, these organizations are being used as a cosmetic layer because the ATS and the experience sucks there, right? So it's not the application process, although they are sucking jobs into that cosmetic layer so that they can do all of the job distribution piece. Right. And, and many of those, the smash flies, or what have you, they're all doing those job distribution pieces.
Chad (10m 29s):
So if they're doing that already, what I mean, why would they need this product?
Andy (10m 35s):
Right? So the smash flies that you just mentioned, the, you know, the, the talent, the pure talent communities, they are not sending out jobs. They're meaning to sending out jobs, you know, through a job and tool. And that's having the job seeker come back and apply for the job. Most of them today, after you apply through the job through the ATS application, would you like to join our talent community? So they aren't getting job seekers to at the end of that process to join the talent community if they wish to opt in. But what they're missing are all the job seekers that come to a site or to your career site.
Andy (11m 9s):
And they don't see a job at that time, but really big and bold on their screen. Even sometimes more prominent than the search for a job is join our talent community. Right now, their database, that's going to be sending out these information. These job alerts news of what's going on in the industry. ATS is as we know our, you know, the black hole of applications, most recruiters do not go back into the ATS every time a new jobs, open and search. So, and the ATS is not good CRM tools.
Andy (11m 40s):
That's where the talent communities come in.
Chad (11m 42s):
So here's the question though. And I get that, but here's the question. One of the things that we need to do better in our industry is they've probably acquired those candidates four or five times already, and they're already in their database. And are we, are we really focused on trying to go external all the time? Or should companies be focusing on the money that they've already spent in their internal database to try to drive better matching and better nurturing from that?
Andy (12m 8s):
Right. So that is absolutely, you know, recruiting 101, you spent a ton of money in the past, obtaining these users acquiring them. You should always look there first, but again,
Chad (12m 21s):
Oh, can you help them with that though? I mean, cause you guys have great tech, can you help them with that nurturing process or even getting them out of the ATS, into their talent community.
Andy (12m 31s):
We can help them get out of the ATS into the talent community. But again, we're very strict with, you know, our own job seekers and they have to opt into each one specifically. So for the most part, if you're joining an ATS, unless there's a buy in on that application and say, I also wish to receive further information from company XYZ, they didn't up into the talent community. And then you are breaching spam cam laws, you know, with receiving emails from you about the weather in Seattle, Washington this week, they, they're not asking for that.
Andy (13m 4s):
They were asking to apply specifically for your job. So talent communities again is a CRM tool, which is, you know, a candidate relationship marketing tool. And ATS is definitely not a CRM. There is no relationship. It's, I'm applying for a job. Are you interested if we're interested in, we're going to reach back out to you, if not, you're pretty much going into that black hole,
Joel (13m 26s):
Cindy.
Cindy (13m 27s):
So this is kind of like a reverse database search because you have the database and we're sending it to,
Andy (13m 33s):
We have the database. So there's two, there's two nuances to this, as I explained the first way is when a job seeker joins next, we're going to give them the opportunity to opt into a talent community provider. So now the job seeker comes to Nexxt. They might not have done their faith. They didn't, they do their job search first to say, here's the return of 20 results that match you. They're initially saying, I want to hear from this company. So I'm joining that and they're going to be reaching back and forth and having that relationship.
Andy (14m 3s):
So it's, yes, it's our database, but they don't have access like to an unlimited amount of our database. You have to opt in to that employer. So they'll say these are on the initial registration of next. And then what we plan on doing is sending, you know, we're not sure how often yet anywhere from a monthly to a, every other month of email out to our job seekers saying, Hey, these employers want to hear from you. Here's 10 talent communities. Here's five, whatever it is that you know, that want to hear from you, would you like them to opt into them and then they can opt in.
Cindy (14m 36s):
how do you charge for this?
Andy (14m 38s):
So we charge per lead and there'll be a sliding scale. Yeah. So there'll be a sliding scale on, based on volume.
Joel (14m 44s):
I assume there's still my pricing question. I got a lot of questions out there at the beginning. If you had one Chad go for it.
Chad (14m 49s):
How big is the database again?
Andy (14m 52s):
Well, our database is currently 75 and 80 million that we can reach out to. But if you really want to say, you know, everybody can promote, Oh, you have 75 million users. Yeah. We know they're not active users. If you said to us on a given on any given day, we have somewhere around five to seven, five to six, really call it million active job seekers that are still within, you know, what we call our window of opportunity, which is depending on the plan, somewhere between 90 and 120 days
Joel (15m 22s):
You have a pretty powerful text messaging platform that you guys have been having opt-ins for like a decade, right? Are you pushing out alerts to them to join communities, be a mobile?
Andy (15m 31s):
Not yet. This is again, just a new product that we just launched. We had two clients trial. It just wanted to get everything going, everything worked perfect. And now we're really, this is again, the Chad and Cheese, where's the best place to go to launch a new product where there! So to answer your question, text messaging is not out of the realm, but it's not the first, you know, we're very careful as an organization on how we use our text messaging. Text messaging is what other people opt out very quickly if it's not really directed towards them.
Andy (16m 5s):
So we're very, I wouldn't even call it stingy on who we text message and having
Cindy (16m 10s):
Tell me about the predictive analytics. How are they used?
Andy (16m 14s):
Be more specific, which predictive analytics.
Joel (16m 17s):
doesn't matter time is up.
Andy (16m 19s):
Ah, damn it,
Joel (16m 26s):
Nexxt with two Xs, two XsI don't get that third X I'll be kicked off the stage.
Outro (16m 37s):
Look for more episodes of Feature Rama! This Chad and Cheese podcast series devoted to breaking through the noise and highlighting new recruitment tech and platform features. Subscribe on Apple, Google podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss a single episode for more visit ChadCheese.com.