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Green Room: Shaker's Rachel Morgan

Subscribe to The Chad & Cheese Podcast

Buckle up, folks! This episode of HR’s Most Dangerous Podcast comes straight from the green room at Recfest USA in Nashville, sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Chad and Joel sit down with the one and only Rachel Morgan, VP of Client Services at Shaker, to talk about the glamorous world of recruitment marketing—mimosas in hand, of course.


Rachel takes us on a wild ride from her days of wrestling with job boards (RIP SimplyHired) to the modern marvels of programmatic advertising and employer branding. Spoiler alert: AI is still the buzzword, and job seekers are still stuck in application limbo. Rachel drops some truth bombs.


And for you TikTok skeptics out there, prepare to clutch your pearls—yes, people are finding career advice and jobs on the same platform where they learn to dance badly in 15 seconds.


But the real meat of the episode? It’s all about gatekeeping! Want to get your shiny new HR tech in front of Shaker? Be prepared for some "American Idol" realness, where only the best get through.


Enjoy!


PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION


Podcast Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts, complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.


Joel: All right guys, let's do this. We are live from Recfest USA in beautiful Nashville, Tennessee...


Chad: Green room.


Joel: From the green room.


Chad: Green room.


Joel: Sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Sitting down with Rachel Morgan...


Chad: I love a green room.


Joel: VP, Client Services at Shaker. Rachel, welcome to HR's most dangerous podcasts.


Rachel Morgan: Thank you. Great to talk to you guys.


Chad: Did you get any mimosa? That's the question.


Rachel Morgan: I did. I had to stop myself. I thought I could bring one in here, but there hasn't been a lot of food lately, so.


Joel: Never stop.


Rachel Morgan: As much as mainlining mimosas was, I'm on my third coffee.


Joel: That's right. So aside from a mimosa fan, our listeners likely don't know you.


Rachel Morgan: Correct.


Joel: Give them the elevator pitch on Rachel.


Rachel Morgan: Oh, great. Well, I've been in TA recruitment marketing basically since I was in college. I started as an intern, so I found this by mistake.


Chad: So about five years.


Rachel Morgan: Yeah, five years. Thank you so much. Yeah, I just graduated. I'm in client services. So I do all things talent acquisition strategy and a lot of consulting. So I came to Shaker about five years ago.


Chad: A lot of consulting. That's always fun.


Joel: So you've been around for a while.


Rachel Morgan: Yeah.


Joel: Talk about the evolution of what you're doing. How has it changed?


Rachel Morgan: Well, when I started, I was an analyst for PPC, so I was doing job postings on Indeed and building out SEM campaigns.


Chad: Oh. Oh.


Rachel Morgan: So it's gone a different way. That was still in the days of like Monster was half of our office swag.


Chad: I remember those days.


Rachel Morgan: SimplyHired was still a thing, and job boards were still figuring it out in terms of, that was like pre-programmatic days. So I would say we're shifting a lot more towards programmatic but we're also just looking at digital as a whole. A lot of PMax shifts away from different social platforms but also focusing a lot on tech. That's been the biggest thing since I came to Shaker, was we're neutral, so all of the tech.


Chad: As a consultant though, you have the opportunity to provide advice to the industry. What's one main nugget of advice that you would provide to listeners and viewers today?


Rachel Morgan: Please, please, please, please look at how long it takes to complete an application and see if you...


Chad: We're still having this conversation.


Rachel Morgan: Own recruiters are responding. I know, but you know what, I was talking to someone the other day and they were like, I have been searching for a job for a year. I'm still not hearing back. And we keep talking about AI and how we're fast tracking everything and we're making it smarter, but they're not hearing back any quicker in some cases. So there's still a disconnect there between what we're saying as an employer and what our focus is, and what our clients are actually delivering on.


Joel: So we're heading into 2025, but I wanna look back for a second. What were sort of the main themes of last year, the biggest gripes that companies had, the biggest questions they had about the tech that was out there?


Rachel Morgan: Still a lot of uncertainty around AI. Everyone's throwing it out in every product offering. What does that actually mean? How do you implement it? How does it engage with candidates and how are you teaching it? We were just talking about it this morning. AI is not new. It just seems to be the buzzword that everyone's attaching. And so kind of helping clients navigate what that really means for them. A refocus on employer brand. A lot of folks started looking at it in 2022 right when we were kind of like in the depths of getting out of COVID and what did they wanna refresh. I think there's a renewed interest there. And then I would say probably one piece that we still continue to look at is just media diversification. We get a lot of folks who have historically been going to traditional job boards, programmatic, but they really wanna know what's new, what's next? How are we leveraging social? But how are we looking at like untraditional channels as well to recruit?


Chad: What is new? What is next? That's the question.


Rachel Morgan: That is the question. I shouldn't say this, but I don't have a TikTok account. But I was talking to... I know, I know, really gonna age myself on that one. But I was just talking to someone and...


Chad: Oh, stop it. I have a TikTok account.


Rachel Morgan: They go to TikTok...


Chad: He has a TikTok account.


Rachel Morgan: To find all of their career advice, and that's where they're turning to get applications and to really engage with candidates. And I think for a while, companies looked at that as a fad or are we can't get it through our branding, or our legal team doesn't like it, or it's a little risky for us. And so I think just any social channel, but really with that, focusing on how you have your own employee advocacy and building those like micro influencers almost to help tell your brand.


Chad: But we have platforms that actually can help companies. And you can send out links to employees or managers or hiring managers, whatever it is, and have them do videos, and then it comes to a central location that we control and manage. So this is not an excuse anymore.


Rachel Morgan: It's not. And they need to have a dedicated resource. A lot of times that's what we find, is, well, it's great. Once we get all that content, what do we do with it? Who's gonna monitor it? And you need to have somebody dedicated. That's not going to go away. There is still a piece that needs to be a person behind the camera, just, or library.


Chad: Yay humans.


Joel: Yay humans.


Rachel Morgan: Yay humans.


Joel: Yay humans.


Rachel Morgan: Yeah.


Joel: And speaking of humans, let's talk about gatekeeping. You talk about knowing all the tech at Shaker. There's a lot of tech to know.


Rachel Morgan: There's a lot of tech.


Joel: We have a lot of startups and companies that listen to the show and want to know, man, how do we get into Shaker? How do we get in front of the right person? What's the process? Talk about that for the company out there that wants to get their tech in front of you. And it's a good tech, let's pretend that, that you want to get it in front of your customers. It's not a shitty tech. What should they be doing?


Rachel Morgan: Reach out. We just revamped our website. Shaker.com. Drop us a link. Megan Tracy, our VP of partnerships, that woman is fantastic. She's kind of our first line of defense, if you will. She's gonna do a vetting process. If she likes you, she brings in the VPs. We do kind of a collaboration. And if all goes well, you make it in front of the entire client service team or the extended teams, Siobhan and our social team, depending on the tech that we're looking at.


Chad: Let me translate that. If it's worth it, it's gonna take a minute.


Rachel Morgan: Yes.


Chad: Okay? This does not happen overnight. And I mean, as advisors to startups, we tell them, talk to the Shakers, and it's not gonna happen overnight because they have to do the due diligence that these companies just are not doing, and that takes time.


Joel: I have this vision of American Idol where there's a big line out and you get one song to either make it to the next level or get the hell out.


Rachel Morgan: Really I'm thinking more The Voice. We all have chairs. They turn around if we really like you. Yeah, you get a ding?


Chad: Oh, I do like The Voice.


Joel: That's fair.


Chad: A little Christina Aguilera.


Rachel Morgan: A little raise some hand.


Chad: No, I like that. Yeah.


Joel: I'm too young for The Voice. How many get through?


Chad: Because there are tons.


Rachel Morgan: Okay. So we have 29,000 vendors in our system.


Rachel Morgan: You Shaker, 29,000...


Chad: Shaker have 29,000 vendors in our system.


Chad: How many do you review a year though? Do you know that?


Rachel Morgan: Oh, hundreds. So we have meetings twice a week that are set up with vendors for education, continued learning, seeing new product releases. I'm having people come in and do pitch demos.


Chad: These are the ones that made it through.


Rachel Morgan: These are the ones that make it through, correct.


Chad: That's where everybody wants to be.


Rachel Morgan: That's where the... Yeah, you gotta get the eyes. So yeah, two every week, and that's just for continued education purposes. And then we do one-off calls. We're always happy to take a demo, even if it's just one-on-one and see if it's right fit.


Joel: So clearly there are some diamonds in the rough, but it's your job to find those diamonds. As we go into 2025, what from your viewpoint are the next big things, either whether it's trends or the next companies or startups that you're really paying attention to and excited about?


Chad: That's a good question.


Rachel Morgan: That is a good question. So I'm not going to give you a specific vendor. I would say our key focus right now is anything ROI driven. So I was just talking to John Graham, our VP for D&I. And he was talking to a vendor today about the idea, how do we measure employer branding? You just launched an EVP or an employer brand refresh. What's the measurement? We always get asked that like, oh, how did it perform? We're like, I don't know. And so I think that's gonna be a key focus. We were just talking to a partner about that who does more employee advocacy and how we could potentially gauge that. But our thing is ROI all of the time, whether that's a tech partner, whether that's a media vendor, get some tracking in place, help us, help you, what are your integration capabilities? And ultimately that's gonna be the story that we tell and how you get in front of us.


Joel: I was really fishing for that Grindr for Jobs. I was really hoping she was gonna say the next big thing.


Chad: Not gonna happen.


Joel: Grindr for Jobs.


Chad: Not gonna happen.


Rachel Morgan: I think the swipe right, swipe left might be out, but we'll see.


Joel: She's saying there's a chance.


Chad: No, I'm with her. I'm with her. Not a chance. If somebody wants to be able to connect with you on LinkedIn, I think Joel, you should do this right now.


Joel: I should.


Chad: Where would they send you or where would you send them? I've had too much mimosa.


Rachel Morgan: Where would I send them? On LinkedIn.


Joel: Yes. We're on day two for the listeners out there.


Rachel Morgan: Solid. Solid. Rachel Morgan, you can find me at Shaker. You can also go to shaker.com and drop a line. We will get your email and know it will be directed to me.


Joel: Thanks for hanging out.


Rachel Morgan: Yeah. Thanks guys.


Joel: Chad, that's another one in the can.


Rachel Morgan: Another one.


Joel: We out.


Chad: We out.


Podcast Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called, the podcast, 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 of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. There's so many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any who, 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.

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