Joel takes a nap and Madeline Laurano, Founder of Aptitude Research steps up to the mic to talk about her newest High Volume Hiring research.
What exactly is High Volume Hiring?
Is high volume different than recruiting for gig?
Do I need a different system or will my ATS adapt?
Why are applicants dropping out at such a high rate?
... and much much more...
Quit rates are at an all-time high, 4.4m quit last month alone, and nearly a third of women have left or are contemplating leaving the workforce - reported by McKinsey. Let's face it the workforce, almost in its entirety, is just exhausted.
What's Talent Acquisition supposed to do? Listen...
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
"00:26.12 Chad This is the chad and cheese podcast and I am your host Chad Sowash. We are cheese free today and you are welcome but in Cheeseman's place we are welcoming guess who kids. Madeline Laurano founder at aptitude research welcome back to the show Madeline what's been going on."
"00:47.44 Madeline Laurano Thanks Chad Thanks for having me back. It's always it's always great to catch up with you here."
"00:51.54 Chad You have been busy this year I mean this is this is actually your fourth time on the show so that makes four reports. How many reports are you going to have just within this year ah"
"00:57.30 Madeline Laurano I know. Yeah" so by the time the year is over. They'll be around 15 and I don't know how but I don't know how we're going to get through it the next month but somehow I will but.
"01:13.27 Chad Oh and they are sexy I would say if you have not downloaded 1 of these things who and you need to take some time and enjoy anyway. So I tell you what? let's go ahead and let's have some fun with this new report you good with that? no."
"01:29.80 Madeline Laurano Yeah" sounds great and.
"01:31.94 Chad Okay" okay let's dig in all right? The state of high volume recruitment data Trends and strategies for high volume hiring success. Okay cool high volume. We hear it all over the place. What the hell is it I mean.
"01:46.35 Madeline Laurano Yeah" yeah.
"01:50.75 Chad Different people have different definitions. What was your definition going into this because obviously that's the first thing you do right? It's like okay" let's define this what what is it to you? What is it for this report? yeah.
"01:55.30 Madeline Laurano Um" yeah yeah it was interesting because I think when I think high volume I always think hourly like that's where I go like that's where my mind has always gone and I think about the industries that I would call high volume industries or retail hospitality food service. And doing this. That's like the first question we asked in the survey like Define high volume and 65 percent of respondents said they have some high volume needs today. So it's not just hourly. You know only a third of respondents defined it as hourly like it's the number of you know applications you receive. It's you know.
"02:15.70 Chad M."
"02:32.86 Chad Okay" Wow
"02:33.41 Madeline Laurano The volume you're doing only ten percent define it as gig I think a lot of people think it's just gig workers. So yeah" it's kind of all over there. Yes.
"02:43.59 Chad We're talking financial. We're talk I mean what? what? it's just anything where you have is it high turnover or is it high growth or is it both."
"02:52.93 Madeline Laurano It's high growth I think I think it could be both but I think it's you're receiving this number of applicants for each position that some people define it as a thousand some people define it more than that. But it's this You know this volume that I think after the pandemic we're seeing all these industries."
"02:53.74 Chad There."
"03:00.65 Chad Okay. The."
"03:09.67 Madeline Laurano Dealing with both right dealing with retention plus this this huge spike in in their hiring needs."
"03:13.67 Chad Okay" so according to the research sixty five percent as you'd said of companies have high volume recruitment needs. Are they using the same tech. What's what's the big hiccup for them right now we're hearing so many things it's wages. It's tech. It's I mean is it an onion. What? what? the heck is it.
"03:33.39 Madeline Laurano It's a lot of things I mean I think the first issue is it's so complex like we're taking the hiring process which is already too complex for professional hiring and we're trying to apply that to high volume when you need to fill these positions quickly and you need a simple experience and."
"03:35.40 Chad And yeah" yeah.
"03:49.33 Madeline Laurano That just hasn't been the case like most of the technology is technology that we're using outside of high volume. So if a traditional ats is going to be like your bread and butter for hiring high volume and you have forty five minutes to complete. Application process. You're going through a cumbersome process. You've got an assessment that's another forty five minutes that's integrated with your ats you've lost everyone and you're not filling those positions in 2 weeks let alone 2 days."
"04:07.56 Chad Yeah" ah.
"04:15.34 Chad So corporate America can't be that stupid right? They can't they. They've got to understand that and they've got to know right out of the gate that these are entirely different people. Who engage entirely different with applicant tracking systems or whatever right? The entire apply process I mean we even knew this back in the day. Ah when we would have to go in. Let's say for instance like Burger king when I was 15 I had to fill out a paper application. Right? I mean that was different than you know" Maybe 10 years later when I was going after maybe a ah mid level management position. So I mean why we knew things were different back then why are we trying to throw everybody into the same process today.
"04:59.17 Madeline Laurano Yeah I think there's a couple different things I think the first is like people don't realize there is better technology like there are like we didn't have that option either when we had like the paper you know applications that we'd go in and submit or the kiosk remember the kiosks like that was the big technology trend. It was like."
"05:09.13 Chad Yeah" yeah.
"05:16.88 Madeline Laurano Oh now you've got a kiosk and you can enter your information and yeah" exactly um and then you know we've evolved quite a bit and there are solutions out there I mean conversational Ai there's you know Ats is just designed for high volume needs which is very new and very different.
"05:18.15 Chad There's a boat anchor. Yeah."
"05:26.24 Chad Um" yeah.
"05:34.93 Madeline Laurano And I think a lot of companies just gravitate toward the same systems and they don't realize there's this whole market growing outside of that."
"05:41.52 Chad Right? right? right? right? Wealth I mean there are gig platforms. There are high volume platforms and then there are your really your core talent platforms I Hate calling them aTSes. They're You're like your real core talent platforms. But they're not the Same. So What I'm hearing from you and what you found in the research is that that that. Old style you know Cryptic Ats That's not enough for what companies need to actually hire for high volume."
"06:09.50 Madeline Laurano Yeah" exactly it's not enough and it's providing a really old you know hiring experience for candidates. They're going to leave. They're not gonna they're not going to finish you know and move along in the process and I think people are seeing that like we found dropoff rates where you know a third of them are happening at the apply.
"06:16.10 Chad Ah."
"06:27.11 Madeline Laurano Process So you're losing just in ah in the apply process you're losing all these people but they happen pretty consistently throughout and it's you know it's everything from the experience is so poor to you know the the finding out about a pay like which is you know another big issue like we find it?
"06:36.24 Chad Ah."
"06:41.71 Chad Well talk about that talk about that I mean pay we hear all over the place that wages are an issue it. What did what did the report find out."
"06:46.42 Madeline Laurano Ah" pay. Yep.
"06:50.64 Madeline Laurano Yeah" that like forty six percent of companies are losing talent once they find out about pay and that often happens way down in the process like so you've got you know you've gone through the recruitment marketing or advertising these jobs and everybody's like advertising and spending a ton of money on advertising.
"07:05.40 Chad Um" yeah right.
"07:10.34 Madeline Laurano You get through the apply you can shorten the apply process you can keep it at forty five minutes whatever you're doing. You've got the apply process. You're moving people along and then they find out when they get the offer that their pay is not and then they're not showing up on the first day or they're getting other offers and. You know companies are doing everything from let's pay someone to you know to take an interview like have you heard this like 1 hundred bucks for people to come in for an interview or you know the the minimum wage is seventeen dollars an hour or whatever it's at and to me it's like an issue of transparency too like can we just have these."
"07:31.85 Chad Yeah" yeah.
"07:38.60 Chad Ah."
"07:43.88 Chad Um" yeah well and how and how pissed off would you be as a candidate. Okay so companies need to think of it and this is where we've fallen down for decades we have to think of it from the candidate side of the house. How pissed off would you be as a candidate.
"07:47.26 Madeline Laurano Conversations much earlier. Why do we have to wait."
"08:03.54 Chad Going through the process whether you're a gold medalist silver medalist or in six months you might be 1 of those in how you would not ever want to interact with that brand. Let alone buy anything from that brand moving forward I mean right."
"08:15.85 Madeline Laurano Um" oh yeah never yeah yeah exactly and think about it even from the manager's perspective. It's like you need you need someone in in 2 days.
"08:19.13 Chad This is this is a this is a brain conversation as much as it is a tech conversation."
"08:31.10 Madeline Laurano Like it has to be down or 2 weeks or whatever your time frame is you're overwhelmed. You need to build this team and you think that you've moved someone so far along the process. It's a no brainer. They're joining. You've told everybody everybody's excited on your team. Everybody's prepared for it and yet they don't show up on the first day."
"08:32.30 Chad Right."
"08:46.10 Chad And they don't show up because you weren't transparent right out of the gate. Wow. Okay" so let's talk about quality and what that means to actual efficiency getting people on the door obviously retention those types of things.
"08:49.12 Madeline Laurano Yes" yep.
"09:00.47 Madeline Laurano Yeah I think you know the metric. We always think of in high volume is like efficiency. It has to be done I mean I've been even talking about that like we would we want 2 weeks we want 2 days. There are all these examples out there and efficiency is so important it's not to take that away but quality is also important and I think people don't often realize that they think it's just."
"09:06.40 Chad Yeah" yeah.
"09:19.91 Madeline Laurano You know it's just a time. It's just a time to fill metric here in high volume but quality is just as important and you know when companies are thinking about their strategy or how they define quality and the technology they use. It has to be laser focused in on that quality too because we've got the other side right with high volume like we're talking about recruitment."
"09:29.18 Chad In."
"09:39.24 Madeline Laurano But there's the whole great resignation like retention and whatever you want to call it or talk about but people are losing talent like crazy right now."
"09:40.89 Chad Yeah. Yeah" Well I mean candidate experience which you know we talked we talked about that has been a huge buds term in our industry and rightly so but in a landscape like you're talking about now where it's harder to find recruiters than it is to fill tech positions.
"09:59.33 Madeline Laurano Who."
"10:05.60 Chad We are. We're putting an anchor around recruiters necks number 1 because they we talk about the candidate experience and the process they have to go through if you look at some of these recruiting processes that these individuals have to go through. It's even worse so they have."
"10:08.16 Madeline Laurano Right."
"10:22.88 Chad Systems that they have to jump from tab to tab. It's ugly I mean and who wants to look at something that's ugly all day I mean come on I have to look at Cheeseman I get sick of it sometimes anyway. But I mean overall why are we talking about recruiter experience as much as we talk about candidate experience."
"10:38.80 Madeline Laurano Absolutely and the technology that supports the recruiter experience like where do like a talent acquisition leader is going to buy a set of solutions to support the team but where do recruiters spend time that helps them do their job and provides a good experience for them. Those 2 things are often very different things."
"10:42.86 Chad Yes."
"10:55.49 Chad Bright and."
"10:57.81 Madeline Laurano And yeah and we don't talk about the recruiter experience enough I mean they're reviewing. You know they’re reviewing applicants they're scheduling calls I mean these are all things that are not enjoyable ways to spend hours and hours and hours of your day."
"11:05.98 Chad No I hate going to my calendar and trying to coordinate with somebody else's calendar which is why I have a bot right? I mean it just it's I Just don't get I don't understand why this isn't just the process methodology in itself."
"11:15.59 Madeline Laurano Yes" yes exactly there you go.
"11:25.95 Chad isn't just standard so near future state doesn't this research point to systems that cater more to 1 type of job and providing relevant experience for different positions and individuals."
"11:38.92 Madeline Laurano Yeah" absolutely and I think there's some technology that's just really been fantastic for high volume right? Like we talk about this all the time you look outside of the Ats like programmatic. We I think we've talked about programmatic and every podcast I've been on with you because I mean the use case for high volume is tremendous.
"11:44.90 Chad Ah" f.
"11:51.98 Chad Yeah" yeah.
"11:58.57 Madeline Laurano It's saving time saving recruiter's time is providing expertise it's showing value in Roi conversational ai is the same thing. It's like you're using and you know conversational ai to support and assist in all the work that you're doing as a recruiting team or a manager team."
"12:02.45 Chad And."
"12:16.38 Madeline Laurano And you've got you've got that support system with you and um" you know these areas ai matching is another 1 We've got a report coming out on that too. But that is a way to you know improve that experience. It's not just for the candidate. It's for hiring teams as well.
"12:22.68 Chad Ah" nice.
"12:29.69 Chad The big question for me is after we we take a look back and and we find it ourselves where we are today and I don't see that we've moved that much with this conversation. Do we think that. Talent acquisition professionals are savvy enough to actually pull this off because we're not talking about a single system. We're talking about multiple systems we're talking about integrated stacks. Do we need to go further into tech and marketing for help on this."
"12:58.65 Madeline Laurano You know it's always I think a good idea to go and partner with marketing because they've done this and they've built these you know robust tech systems and and you know tech stacks. Yeah exactly. And."
"13:06.88 Chad Yeah" yeah Flea gen.
"13:12.23 Madeline Laurano Um" so I think that's always a great approach is to look at what other parts of the business are doing but I do think we're seeing these pockets in ta of companies that have done this you know and are so and are starting to think this way I mean I feel like I always talk about McDonald’s but
"13:14.79 Chad M. M."
"13:27.98 Madeline Laurano You know I think they've done a good a great job of kind of building out" not just mcHire but the transformation they've gone through and the tech stack they're putting in place is not a tech stack that's going to be used at JPmorgan. It's very specific to what their needs are I mean Lowe's is doing the same thing with Rob Doerty like they you know are very smart and strategic about what he's building.
"13:30.78 Chad Yeah."
"13:37.98 Chad Yeah."
"13:47.55 Madeline Laurano Um" Kyle's doing the same thing at Gm So I think we're starting to see this happen. Um it's you know and the more we have those examples we can talk about I Hope that.
"13:50.27 Chad Yeah" yeah.
"13:56.92 Chad Yeah" well I hope we start saying McDonald’s has spent money on tech there's no question right? We just I think I think the balances for companies like them. They have to start spending money on people. And that's what the report is actually demonstrating is that you can't just we have to find equilibrium right? You can't just spend money on 1 side of the equation and hope that everything turns out okay because that's just not the world that we're living in. So. Out of this entire report and again let's tease it because I want people to download it and read it read it. What was the number 1 thing that you actually pulled out of this that you would want to throw out to to ta and professionals and vendors today.
"14:43.31 Madeline Laurano That's a great question I think the getting back to what you started with the definition of high volume I think there are companies out there that don't realize that they are in this crisis today a high-volume crisis if you will."
"14:48.54 Chad M."
"14:55.62 Chad Yeah" yeah yeah.
"14:57.87 Madeline Laurano Right now in this moment. That's just not how they identify they don't think they're hourly companies I think if the biggest aha for me is that how pervasive this high volume topic is and how companies are still using these very traditional recruitment strategies or candidate."
"15:06.73 Chad Ah" so.
"15:16.33 Madeline Laurano You know relationships or technology to support that I think the first step is we really have to look at what high volume is and then realize there is a better way. Most companies are not doing the better way in terms of you know treating people like humans and also using the right strategies and technology."
"15:26.28 Chad Yeah" yeah.
"15:32.80 Chad Yeah" yeah now I agree 1 hundred percent I agree 1 hundred percent. My takeaway was that we as talent acquisition professionals need to adopt quick and we have to fail fast right? I mean that's 1 of the things that we've always been.
"15:35.71 Madeline Laurano Yeah."
"15:49.20 Chad Associated to risk because we're under HR and we hate to fail but we don't move forward and I think that's 1 of the things that you know I've made fun of McDonald’s over the years for doing but they've been brave enough to fail fast right? and they will trash whatever is not working and they will evolve."
"15:59.81 Madeline Laurano Right? right? right."
"16:06.27 Chad But what I got from this report is if companies don't understand exactly what you were just talking about understand the a gig economy what high volume actually means and they start to Morph and evolve not just in their brain but in their processes and in their tech and they don't do it quickly. They are gonna lose and they're gonna lose bigly."
"16:27.59 Madeline Laurano Yeah" bigly and it's happening right? We're seeing it happen already. These companies are losing and they're missing out and I think the other piece that goes along with all of this and we talk about I mean you talk about this all the time is this candidate care mentality. It's like we saw it during the pandemic. It's like people were.
"16:46.83 Chad Yeah" right.
"16:47.18 Madeline Laurano A little bit more compassionate and a little bit more understanding to candidates and recruiters but is this going to carry over and continue I mean I hope so but I'm fearful that you know we go back to some of the old ways And yeah."
"17:02.70 Chad Yeah" yeah I know I agree a hundred percent I think that we focus on not just nurturing candidates which we don't do well but we nurture employees and we talk. We don't just talk about internal mobility.
"17:06.70 Madeline Laurano And we'll see how that plays out."
"17:20.49 Chad Actually understand that promoting within the ranks is a necessity I mean there's so many things that we need to do in high volume and in the entire organization. Well Madeline I Appreciate you bringing this amazing report to the show talking a little bit about it. But you know where can people actually find out more about this where can they download it where can they read it and where can they send it to their friends."
"17:44.63 Madeline Laurano Oh thanks for asking. Um AptitudeResearch.com. We just got a new website should be super easy to find. It's right under the research tab and share away. It's free."
"17:48.89 Chad Man."
"17:56.32 Chad Excellence that's Madeline Laurano founder at aptitude research Madeline. Thanks once again" we appreciate it and you've got more coming up so look forward to having you back on the show. Excellent we out.
"18:06.68 Madeline Laurano Thanks chad."