Hire Fast or Lose w/ Josh Secrest

Episode Synopsis: Shirtless Models, Big Macs, and the Death of the 16-Day Hiring Trap

In this episode, Chad and Cheese sit down with Josh Secrest, the Head of Marketing at Paradox, who somehow survived leading talent acquisition at both Abercrombie & Fitch and McDonald's.

Here is the breakdown of why your frontline hiring process is probably burning money:

• The 16-Day Snail Pace: The average company takes 16 days to hire a frontline worker. Meanwhile, companies using automated tech do it in 3.5 days. If you’re taking over two weeks to fill a retail or restaurant shift, congratulations you are actively hemorrhaging revenue while your overworked staff plots their mass exodus.

  
  

• The Death of Garbage Metrics: Josh politely explains that traditional "time to hire" is a useless vanity metric. The new math? The Break-Even Point (day 31, when a worker finally stops costing you money) and the Sticking Point (day 100, when they might actually stick around). If they quit before day 31, you didn't just lose an employee; you paid for the privilege of them leaving.

  
  

• Manager Misery: Frontline managers are currently wasting 10–12 hours a week playing secretary chasing down interviews and building spreadsheets instead of actually running the business. Paradox steps in to kill the administrative trivia so managers can do wild things like... face the customers.

  
  

The Bottom Line: Stop making candidates jump through 45-minute digital hoops for a fast-food shift. They are applying to 25 other jobs right now, and the fastest employer wins. Automate the blocking and tackling, or get comfortable sitting in the red.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rddc6kBHf4o

PART 2 - What Manager's Should Not Be Doing

PART 3 - Stop Measuring Turnover

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel: All right, let's do this. We are the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheesman. As always, Chad Sowash is with me as we welcome the head of marketing with Paradox, Josh Secrest. Josh, welcome.

Josh: Guys, thank you so much for having me.

Joel: I think your first time in the hot seat with Chad and Cheese. How does that feel?

Josh: Loving it. I can't wait.

Joel: Loving it, can't wait.

Josh: I'm going to bring it, yeah.

Joel: What, what did I miss in the, the intro? What do we need to know about you other than your title at Paradox?

Josh: Oh my goodness. Well, I'd love to chat with you guys today about frontline hiring and staffing and what's going on kind of overall within that market. It's pretty big. And I kind of have a unique background to be able to talk about it. So, I was head of Global Talent Acquisition at McDonald's.

Joel: Little company you've probably never heard of, McDonald's. Doing, doing a couple, couple... What do you think of the big arch? That's really the question.

Josh: I'm still loving it, after all of it. And so, learned a ton. I'll get into it. I was at Abercrombie & Fitch, led culture and talent acquisition there. Learned a ton in the retail side. So, retail and restaurants. And then since joining Paradox, I mean, this has been just like an awesome whirlwind adventure where getting to learn so much from so many of our customers and clients kind of representing so many different spaces, but a lot within the frontline. And then since joining Workday, have really focused a lot on frontline from both a talent acquisition perspective, but also workforce management, other ways that we can support that organization and industry. Just this past year was elected to the National Restaurant Association board and National Retail Federation Foundation board. So, learning a ton from a lot of wisdom on kind of those boards. And so, hopefully, my brain will keep getting bigger and keep asking questions.

Joel: You're a student. You're a never-ending student.

Josh: Trying, trying to be. I mean, there it's moving fast, especially with, with AI and all the tech.

Joel: And I love, I love these, these user meetings, meetups, client boards, whatever we want to call them. What do you, what do you hope to learn from the customers over the next few days?

Josh: Yeah. So, one, a client board's pretty special. So, maybe in some of your other conversations, you've been able to talk about it, but 100, 100 folks here in Arizona, whiteboarding with us, brainstorming. So, kind of two things. One, just like what are the hot, hot topics that we could help address or at least facilitate some pretty good conversations? And then two, help make our product better. We want to actually like whiteboard with them, figure out where maybe we've got some gaps, where we need to go. And we actually even have a, it's almost like a Shark Tank activity. It's pretty fun, but they get $100,000 in fake money and actually vote on some of the new stuff that's on our roadmap so that we can prioritize it accordingly.

Chad: Huh.

Josh: And so, it's kind of a cheat code for us in terms of, hey, it's smart. There's enough activity and action, then we can, we know what to invest in from a calorie perspective as well as dollars.

Chad: Well, talking about calories, you're going to talk about McDonald's, obviously.

Josh: Yeah.

Chad: But so, you have, I mean, you definitely have a unique perspective on the frontline side of the house. Abercrombie and McDonald's. I mean, those are two, you look at two companies in retail that are two entirely different types of organizations, but they have the same problems, I would assume. What, what did you see as a practitioner, and then what are you seeing now?

Josh: It's kind of an interesting combination because Abercrombie was all this like bespoke, hands-on, white-glove, how you kind of thought about recruiting and getting the best talent within, within retail, both at like the store perspective and at the corporate perspective. And then taking that to McDonald's where you just, I mean, from a scale perspective...

Chad: Oh, jeez. Whoo.

Joel: Can't imagine.

Josh: I mean, just, just an incredible, incredible piece. At both, my role, I would say like at Abercrombie was very focused on corporate. And I think that's probably like all of us that have sat in talent acquisition roles, for the most part. And then at McDonald's, I got kind of a global talent acquisition role, and it was predominantly focused on corporate, but we got to support the restaurants.

Chad: The franchise.

Josh: Yeah, the franchise. And you know, McDonald's, it's probably a little bit higher now, but 92%, 93% franchise. 120 plus countries.

Joel: Wow.

Josh: You know, support millions of, of, of folks.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: And so, it was, it was really neat. But it just opened my eyes because it was like, after spending probably at that point 15, 16 years thinking about like corporate problems, corporate solutions, and then hitting McDonald's at that scale...

Chad: Mhm.

Josh: ...sort of right at the moment where AI was at least starting to like dip its toe in, and then I had to kind of think about, you know, solving some of these challenges. And so, the challenges for both were probably one, understaffing. We'll probably get into this, but like within frontline, understaffing is a pretty interesting topic for talent acquisition folks to attack because it's, you know, very directly tied to revenue.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: In our corporate jobs, we can definitely talk about, you know, how a chief marketing officer can draw in more, more revenue. But on your average position, it's sometimes more of a dotted line.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: You know, within a McDonald's or a QSR or, you know, a different type of restaurant, you can actually measure if you're understaffed...

Chad: Oh, yeah.

Josh: ...on one shift, in one day, that there's impact to revenue.

Chad: Versus, yeah, versus the same time last week and same hours last week. Yeah, yeah.

Josh: You have the data, and the data is coming through, especially within like peak hours. I think restaurants are maybe a little bit easier to do this with, but it's like, yeah, you can, you can see that if you have an understaffed location, there's usually typically a little more turnover.

Chad: Mhm.

Josh: That's not great. Your manager is kind of trying to balance this being understaffed and where they're supposed to be. Are they supposed to be back of house trying to staff up more, or should they be front of house?

Joel: Yeah.

Josh: You're actually able to see that your drive-through times maybe get a little bit slower, your cash wrap times get a little bit slower. You can actually calculate the hundreds of dollars. And we'll, we'll kind of dive into this, but we just completed a National Restaurant Association research report, Workforce and Staffing. And I mean, lots of different restaurant groups got on that report basically saying, hey, if we're understaffed by one person, one shift over a course of a month, it's costing us thousands to thousands of dollars, giving real numbers and real specifics. So, maybe just my, my two things would be, one is, I saw in frontline that there was this like revenue impact you could have from like a talent acquisition or HR seat.

Chad: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh: That's pretty interesting.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: And then two is, how do you give restaurant managers time back? For frontline, your restaurant manager is typically a recruiter.

Joel: Yeah.

Josh: Or frontline manager is your recruiter, right? So, there's just so much good that happens from giving time back to managers. And so, I think across the, the full cycle, that's been a big challenge and topic for the frontline that's I think going to start to get addressed a little bit more.

Chad: True, true story, Chad. I became an Abercrombie & Fitch model by eating nothing but McDonald's. It's kind of a nice intersection to this interview.

Chad: Said nobody ever. Said nobody ever.

Joel: Josh, you are so passionate about the numbers and the data points, and most people in our space are not. How do you square that circle about giving them digestible numbers that they can use in their everyday to be more effective? I know you go really deep, but how do you balance not going too deep where you lose people and customers?

Josh: Well, you'll have to call me out if I'm, if I'm going too deep on it.

Joel: Just for me, probably.

Josh: No, no. Excitement helps. I think for us, it's, it's, there have been so many data points in talent acquisition space, but sometimes those can be like these floating data points. Time to hire in frontline...

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: Which doesn't actually directly go into any business metric whatsoever. So, therefore, you have to make that...

Chad: Right.

Joel: Connect.

Josh: Right. Turnover numbers... We talk about quality of hire, we're going to get into that a little bit. Time to hire. But yeah, sometimes those things feel like dotted line metrics or things that have gotten passed down to us from, from the old days, I don't know.

Chad: But they're not.

Josh: I think what makes the numbers compelling without even going too deep is there's actually, if you just flip them just a little bit, there is some really exciting ties to revenue. And I think everybody sort of leans in as soon as you can say, hey, you're, you're not in just a support seat, you're actually in this revenue-driving seat.

Chad: Yes. Yes.

Joel: Which I think is almost, secret sauce. You got me on McDonald's. But the secret sauce of what Paradox does, in some ways to me is, you give employers the ammunition to have high-level conversations in the C-suite. And I think that is a real power that a lot of other companies don't have. Talk about that.

Josh: Yeah. I think a lot of it is kind of bringing some of these numbers to the table and just give them a, a different frame to look through it. So, let's do like time to hire. Again, this is, this is frontline. This is a very different conversation I think than just like trying to bring a spotlight and a lens to frontline hiring. So, I like this National Restaurant Association report because it gives us some real numbers to hold on to. It is restaurants, but I would actually say, hey, it's over 15 million people in the restaurant industry and food service.

Chad: Huge cohort.

Josh: Huge cohort. I mean, we're talking about probably 12% of at least the full frontline population. So, I think there's at least some of this data that we could extrapolate and say like, oh, this is probably reflective of what's going on out there. And so, their data is basically saying, hey, average time to hire right now is about 16 days in frontline. Okay. So, that's interesting. But, but again, who cares? Why does it matter? But if we tie it back to, oh, also in this report, it's saying when a restaurant's understaffed, it's hundreds of dollars in revenue per day.

Chad: Which is why it matters.

Josh: Now it matters, right? Because you're now sitting understaffed for 16 days.

Chad: Uh-huh.

Josh: What's more interesting about the data, and this is something where averages aren't always your friend, is 16 days is an average. But when you actually break up the data and you look at the top 25%, like the top top percentiles, so the top 25% of companies and then the bottom 75% of companies, what do you think you see? Any guesses?

Chad: I would say that the bottom, they shed people a lot faster.

Josh: Oh my goodness. Not only do they shed people a lot faster, but it's, it's they are really slow from a hiring perspective. 40 plus days.

Chad: Well, I think those two are actually connected because when you can't hire fast enough, you stretch your people way too thin, and then they're out.

Josh: 100%. So, that's where it starts to tie, tie in, right? And so, top 25%...

Chad: Uh-huh.

Josh: ...3.5 days. Okay. So, the average within the industry, 16 days. The fastest actually, 3.5 days. The slowest actually, 40, 50 days. So, there's actually this emerging have and have-nots because what's the common theme of the ones that are doing it in 3.5 days? Well, they've got something that's 24/7, it's automated. Tech. They've got tech. Whether it's us or somebody else, it's typically... But, you know, it's um, they, they've figured out a way to, to automate it. But why it matters, right? It's like, okay, if you're doing it in 3.5 days, that's all of a sudden revenue back into your business.

Chad: Yes.

Josh: So, we've given them some language, and they've given us some language on like how to be able to talk to that.

Chad: Yeah. Well, then also that churn, because if you can fill it in 3 days, you don't have to stretch your, your current staff too thin for 16 days, for over 2 weeks, or maybe even longer, and risk losing them as well and then going back through the cycle again. And losing, and that cycle is a, a losing money cycle.

Josh: Yeah, all these good things. Your, your manager's out on the front of the floor a little bit more, you're not losing those dollars, you're not losing some of that, that churn. From a customer, guest, you know, return rate, you know, if, if I'm going to a, my favorite coffee house and it's a, you know, a 20-minute wait, I might try and find something else the next time around. If it's fast and it's great service, then I'm going to keep going back. And so, there's all this good stuff that comes from just being, being staffed. And ultimately, you can't be staffed if it takes you too long to hire. And if it takes you too long to hire, there's going to be some of these complications.

From a quality standpoint, it's interesting on how that's starting to factor in from frontline because so many of our like TA talent brains on the corporate side would say, how much does speed, speed matter? And I would argue, well, like if I'm hiring a chief marketing officer and it's, takes me 10 more days to get the perfect person...

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: ...so be it. Heck yeah. Like let's get the best person because they're going to be with us for 5 years. Yeah, like let's do it. Within frontline, with what's going on and, and I'm, can't wait to get your brains on this from like an Indeed or job board perspective, but it's a lot easier for a frontline candidate to apply to a lot of jobs at the same time. Data from even like 3 or 4 years ago would say they're hire, they're applying to 20, 25 jobs at any given time. It's probably way, way more than that.

Chad: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh: So, that's interesting from a quality standpoint because if you're an employer that's 24/7, that can get back to a candidate basically like instantaneously after they apply...

Chad: Yes.

Josh: ...you can get the candidates who, really in frontline, you want them, your like shift matching to be as aligned as, as possible. Maybe they've got a little bit of experience, when you sit across from them, maybe great, great behavioral profile for your, your, your place. But, um, that's, that's pretty fascinating because if they're applying to let's call it 20 jobs at one time...

Chad: And you get back with them first, you get back with them first, you win.

Josh: You win. And data says that they'll stop applying if you get, if they get scheduled for an interview.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: You're beating those other 19 employers. Now, those companies on the restaurant report where again, average, 16 days...

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: ...that means they're probably not getting back to someone for 3 or 4 days. It's usually a manual process. So, now some of the best folks really from this like your schedule fit have all been wiped off the board because someone else has interviewed them within 24 hours and probably extended an offer.

Chad: Oh yeah, yeah.

Josh: So, it's pretty, pretty interesting. Last piece I'll, I'll leave with you is there was an inverted adoption curve that happened within the frontlines that I think is really fascinating. So, because of COVID and because of sort of when at least like AI and some of this automation started to hit, which was like, you know what, 2017, 2018, 2019. Once COVID hit, some of the biggest employers were the first to adopt, whereas sometimes for like, more innovative tech, it's, it's maybe smaller, medium-sized, like scrappy.

Chad: Oh, yeah.

Josh: Entrepreneurial-sized companies. But this is where it's like, you see the, you know, the FedExes, the Chipotles, the, you know, McDonald's of the world, like all RBI, which is Burger King, you know, Yum Brands, all of those adopted early. And so, again, when you start to like bifurcate the data, like the haves and have-nots, it's actually a lot of like the largest employers and largest companies that have some of this like strategic advantage in the short term.

Chad: Is that because they had the data and they knew that it was impacting their bottom line? So, it made sense to go into automation much faster because if they didn't, they were going to lose money?

Josh: Yeah, 100%. They probably a little bit more sophisticated analytics on that side, just felt the pain during, if not during COVID, even just like leading up to it because even that labor economy going in still...

Chad: Well, it gave us time though to back up and literally it, I mean, because it's the forest for the trees when everything is going and it's going at full speed. COVID happened and everybody got to back up because nobody was buying anything. I mean, there might have been some Grubhubs that were happening or what have you, but you had a chance to actually sit back, look at the data and figure out what the hell was going on where you didn't before. And maybe, maybe that was the reason that they, they had an opportunity to dig deep and then make those changes.

Josh: Yeah, and it was interesting even listening to earnings call, I listen to a lot of like frontline organizations' earnings calls. It's pretty awesome. And this is another one where AI is great because it summarizes those calls really well for you. But it was interesting for some of the companies that adopted or like had it had stuff live, whether it was us or maybe a great competitor, you actually heard it during, during those like COVID years and just post that that some of the stuff was actually impacting the business.

Joel: Well, remember the Chipotle CEO on Jim Cramer's show talking about Paradox. Little Mad Money action.

Josh: Little Mad Money action, right?

Joel: I'm sure that you look at those earnings calls much differently than most people and go, oh, Wendy's is

struggling, here's why. Or these, these restaurants are struggling. You look at it from an employment standpoint as opposed to beef is higher.

Josh: I do look at whether, whether food costs are, it's nice to be able to know all the different pieces. But yeah, from a labor standpoint, how much that makes a difference on the restaurant side, but I'd argue retail side, it's like, those are, those are, those are people businesses and they, you know, there certainly lay there. There are products and within those products, all the different dynamics that go in with, with the products and but the, the people side can just have such a huge, huge dynamic to it.

Joel: Josh, I'm reading all the headlines that say the robots are here and they're coming. So, going back to frontline workers, you have a perspective that I'm sure is unique on automation at, at restaurants and distribution centers and warehouses. Give us your take on sort of the big picture of automation in that space. And don't say Flippy, okay? Don't say Flippy.

Josh: Wow. I think we would want to like separate a couple different topics within this. So, one would be frontline work isn't all created equal. We're doing a lot of different research, even some...

Chad: UPS versus McDonald's versus Abercrombie & Fitch.

Josh: Yeah. Well, let's, let's like break it down. I mean, we can do four really simple profiles and, and we're going to take this a little bit from a TA perspective, but that's our audience here, right?

Chad: That's what we do. That's what we do.

Josh: Okay. So, you've got a, you've got let's call it like a high-volume support profile. It's like it distribution center, maybe like a, a FedEx packaging or like a retail distribution center, like what's going to happen there. Okay. Then let's say we've got like a frontline customer-facing type of role. So, it's like a folks at the Gap, folks at Starbucks, folks at McDonald's. They're interacting with your customers, there's kind of probably going to be a slightly different process there. Then we've got healthcare. So, we were talking about like how much does restaurants cover. Well, I mean, actually, healthcare and transportation are two of the bigger sectors. Those are two different ones to pull apart.

Chad: Yes.

Josh: But there's actually some common themes there because there's usually a like certification, license, or skill. So, let's call that sort of this like frontline labor with skill. And the fourth I'd call out would just be like a frontline manager. Okay. And so, those, those roles are important because they actually kind of cross a lot of the different industries within frontline. The industries that we're talking about, we covered a lot, right?

Chad: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh: All right. Healthcare, retail's going to be the next big one, hospitality and restaurants is another, then we've got manufacturing, transportation, those are like our, our five big. Construction's going to come in at, at six. Each of those different industries, we're going to be looking at robotics versus AI. I get that robotics and AI have some like intersection in automation. It feels like what we're seeing is like robotics on back of house, distribution center is probably where there's like the most progress. I mean, especially as you look internationally.

Chad: Manufacturing.

Josh: Manufacturing.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: So, that's starting to pick up. That's like a, that's a real thing. I think when you even look at that anthropic report though, what at least stuck out to me is those sort of bottom wedges within that report of where maybe AI and automation, AI and robotics aren't replacing jobs yet or don't even have the capability is very much on these kind of like frontline wedges that we just, we just covered. Again, manufacturing might be impacted a little bit more. So, to your question, I think the role that's the most interesting to think about is the like frontline manager role. And like how are they going to get some, some benefit off of off of AI? Like are their jobs going to be replaced? And I'd argue like absolutely not. It's definitely not what we're seeing there. If anything, those jobs become more and more valuable.

So, one, shout out to all frontline managers. One of the hardest jobs I think I've, I see out there, they're responsible for like 12 different things. They're responsible for people, running a business.

Chad: Herding cats.

Josh: Herding cats. I mean, a lot of them are like almost like, think of like a, a Target or a Walmart manager. I mean, they're running a small city.

Chad: Oh, yeah.

Josh: You know, it's, it's really incredible. And so, you know, for, for AI and automation there, you think of kind of breaking down how valuable a manager's like day is and time is.

Chad: Oh, yeah.

Josh: You want them with their team. You want them with customers, you want them looking at the business but then taking action to maybe pull some levers to impact the business.

Joel: Not putting out fires.

Josh: Not putting out fires every day. When you actually survey managers and what they do, it's like 10 to 12 hours a week focused on like hiring tasks. And you're like, oh, well, interviewing. It's like, no, not interviewing. It's like interview scheduling and like responding to people. Then it's like, they're, they're figuring out shift schedules.

Chad: Mhm.

Josh: And like all the back and forth with your schedule. And shift swaps. Okay. And then they're in the back office and they're, they're, you know, pulling reports and trying to analyze some of those, those reports.

Chad: Mhm. Mhm.

Josh: It's a lot of administrative work.

Chad: Oh god, yeah.

Josh: All of that is going to be the stuff that starts to say like, hey, if, if some of that can get automated or processed in a much better way, and we've got a front-row seat to that on frontline hiring, which has been cool, you know, those 10 hours going into 2 hours, that's, that's returned back to the business. And it's front of house stuff instead of back of house stuff. And so, I get excited there because it's like the perfect example of this position that can drive revenue that's really exciting for a business. And we're already starting to see how, you know, if you can automate some of the repetitive administrative tasks, you're putting them front of house, you know, quite a bit more and, and actually impacting the business and...

Chad: Well, okay. So, talk, talk about that a little bit because now Paradox, owned by Workday, full suite going way down the funnel, right? I mean, we're not just talking about talent acquisition, we're talking about talent management, you're talking about scheduling, talking about all these things. I mean, interview scheduling, and then you've got obviously scheduling, work scheduling, you know? Is that something that we can expect to see from a lot of these, these bigger systems that are out there, like the Workdays, to be able to start literally, finally having talent acquisition, talent management creating a talent organization and trying to at least orchestrate that, that entire thing?

Josh: Yeah, I mean, it's already happening. Can't speak to some of our, our competitors, you know, some, but I mean, really, our acquisition, as you hear Aneel talk about it, so our CEO at Workday, and then Carl, who's our, our head of product, the acquisition of Paradox was to invest really in this frontline. And so, it's been something I've gotten to step into. Can you tell I really love it? I got to step into, and we're, we're supporting kind of across, across Workday. And so, what's great is now you've got, for us, Paradox, so let's, let's solve hiring. We've, we've got a head start there, but we want to keep innovating and doing really great things to give time back to the manager. There's already a really strong workforce management product that's only getting better within Workday. So, now we've got this seamless, you know, connection between hiring plus, when I say workforce management, for those like in the TA space, this is going to be shift scheduling, time and attendance, um, some of the like labor optimization components.

Chad: Sick days.

Josh: Sick days. And so, being able to have that, those are two really cool, key components. And then Paradox, quite a few of our customers are already starting to do this, but we have a communications tool which is, yeah, just like Paradox in hiring, but now for employees and so allowing for you to text and get answers. It's allowing for you to swap shifts at, you know, via your phone. Just making things really simple. And I think that's, that's, that's key for a couple of reasons. One, you know, we talked about solving manager challenges, and I think that's really our focus. You know, if we can have a tool that's really like simple and starts to automate a bunch of things, uses AI that makes your managers that much better, more capable, actually makes that role that much more powerful and useful.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: But really passionate about like team members too. You know, it's, it's, it's 70% of the US population is in frontline or deskless type roles. It's 80% globally.

Chad: Jesus.

Josh: It's a ton.

Chad: Wow.

Josh: It's, it's people that are heads of households, it's people that are in their first jobs, it's, it's teens, it's, it's, it's 80-year-olds. I mean, it's, it kind of it runs the gamut, right?

Chad: Also second jobs.

Josh: Runs the gamut, right. And it's I think one of those places where we're saying, um, there are parts where this can actually warm up that experience. It's not all parts. And so, when we, when we, when we talk and consult or whiteboard with, with employers, it's like, hey, we're actually going to start the design process, whether it's recruiting or employee experience, with like where is it most important that there's like human, human face-to-face interaction and that like, all right, let's map those in there first. And then like, what's the just like the stuff that we could like automate...

Joel: Yeah.

Josh: ...offload. Offload there. And so, so I feel like the more we're able to be able to do that, I think that's going to be really exciting for, for team members because now you're talking about something where, you know, in a hiring process, we have these like crazy great candidate experience scores, even though they're largely interacting with AI until the point of an interview.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: And it's because like they can apply in 2 minutes, they can apply in any language. By the way, 23% to 30%, depending on industry, don't speak English at home. So, now you can apply in any language. You can ask any questions about the job, you're going to get some interview tips, you're going to hear if you qualify right away, you're going to get an interview the next day, you can reschedule your interview if you want to. It's actually pretty nice and warm.

Chad: So, well, yeah, but the funny part is we keep hearing that, you know, candidates don't like this whole chatbot thing. And my whole thought is they used to get the black hole, and now they're getting all of this. Are you seeing engagement is, is high without the high ejection rate? Because for, for me, when I see those stories, it all just sounds like bullshit to me.

Joel: The anti-ghosting magic.

Chad: Yeah, yeah. It just, it... I...

Josh: Maybe a couple of things, right? Like, not all experiences are created equal. Can't, can't speak to like every single experience out there and I'm sure some of them are quite frustrating. And, and I think rightfully as a candidate, it's not only like the experience that we've put out there today, but with LLMs and these chat experiences getting better and better, I think it's, it's okay and right that their expectations for those experiences keep up with their interactions with Gemini and ChatGPT and, and all of those things. But yeah, from our, our data perspective, two, two kind of things... You're going to tease me on all this data, but I think, I think you'll like these.

Joel: I was going to ask about the survey and we'll tease the audience. What sort of findings, what's worth sharing, what's worth sharing? There's some good...

Josh: Well, one would be, from a conversion rate, this is where we just, we get to like see all this stuff. In a frontline sort of automated experience, this is Paradox data, conversion rates can be 73%. Okay. So, someone applies, you...

Joel: Conversion being...

Josh: Yeah, apply, they start to apply process, they finish the application. I can then combine it with if you've then selected and screened them, right, how many actually then schedule an interview. Okay. And then how many show up for the interview. Okay. We can, we can get to 73%. The typical is 3%. So, it's wild. The other piece is we can actually ask during the process, not just at point of hire, like how's your experience, but like at any point in the process, we can ask. And so, a lot of our clients, this was something they, they came to us with, was like we, we don't want to just ask our hires because we're actually biasing the data. Because like they're going to say, yeah, it was a good experience, right?

Chad: Of course. Yeah, yeah.

Josh: Yes, yeah. So, they ask much earlier, like, hey, how is this experience for you? And so, even for people who aren't getting offers at those companies, the satisfaction rate on that experience is 96% to 97%. Even those not getting the offer.

Joel: And all those people buy Quarter Pounders, Chad, just so you know. And jeans.

Josh: So, I mean, some fun ways to like back to that like, hey, I love the question because it's like relatively the process we were coming away from was like actually like long forms and a lot of waiting and pretty cumbersome.

Chad: It was horrible. It was horrible.

Josh: We're now at a new phase and I think it's going to keep getting better. And it, and it should, you know, and we should keep pushing. Agreed.

Joel: I'm really interested in how you're getting into the, the employee experience. I'm, I'm em, I'm employed now, Olivia or whatever we're calling it is part of my entire employee journey.

Josh: Yeah.

Joel: And where is that going? Is that, is that going to stick around in the what are my benefits and time off and get someone to take my shift? Or is it going into somewhere more interesting around social media or employer reviews or you could see where this can go when you start plugging in the employee into this, this platform. Talk about that.

Josh: Well, one, we've got like 12 whiteboards huge out there. So, I'm going to need you to come out and do some whiteboarding on the future that platform. I would say though, step one is, is what you just called I think not the interesting stuff, but I think it's the the key stuff.

Chad: Joel's favorite thing, is it? Yeah, the one platform.

Josh: Solution to rule them all.

Chad: We always say the boring stuff is the most important stuff and the most profitable stuff.

Josh: But I think, I do think that's the, that's the important thing to solve. It's hard for employers to just communicate with their employees. A lot of times it's your manager using their own cell phone to communicate. So, like not sexy, but it's important. We need, we're going to solve that. All right. We're going to solve being able to, understand when your pay is coming and get connected to all those systems. We're going to make sure that shift scheduling, gets, is as easy as possible and blocking and tackling. Let's get the blocking and tackling. And then I think once we have that foundation, we can really start to do a lot more with it. One of the things I think you guys would, would like is, there are a lot of really interesting conversations in the space and I think, this conversation's actually driving some of our design. And the conversation is around, quality of hire and how frontline spaces, especially frontline spaces with high turnover... Typically due to a high part-time population... I'm going to give you a lot of good stuff to, to go into. Whoo. How they should be reporting to their C-suite about turnover.

And so, what's historically happened is that you, you talk about your turnover in an annual, in an annual way. And so, those numbers, no matter your improvement, and you can see a bunch of these out there because some companies actually report on their annual turnover numbers, it's like, we, we went from 165% turnover last year to 132% this year. That's, isn't that good we had an improvement, and it's like, oh, yes, that is good, but what's the first reaction that they get from their C-suite?

Chad: Why is it holy...

Josh: Holy smoke, still 130%. What is going on? And then you get into these conversations of like, well, a majority of our population is part-time, and a majority of that population is maybe going back to school or, you know, did this for a few months, and we were okay with that for X reason.

Chad: But we've got boomerangs who come back, and it's like you try to create the, the good storyline or narrative around it, but you've, you've got to do that through data.

Josh: You got to do it through data. And some of it's seasonal, oh my gosh, there's, there's all this stuff. Anyways, so where they're starting to go with it is they're identifying two like kind of key points within their businesses as unique to their business, I can give you some like averages, and you're going to get a chuckle out of what the averages are. But one point is, what's my break-even point for a frontline hire within my organization? And this is probably going to have to be by role. Okay. And so, break-even point, right, let's go through it. I think this is largely based off of the like Maya Joseph-Bagley like model, right, of employee lifetime value. But you can do it for frontline and it's really nice. And so, basically, you would say, oh, it costs me something to hire somebody, it costs me something to onboard until they're ramped, right, they probably have cost me some money. I actually haven't hit my break-even point though until they've been ramped and then worked some time.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: Right. Because they need actually like pay it back.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: Okay. And so, what I would posit is, if someone leaves before the break-even point, it's a bad hire.

Chad: Yes, right. They lost you money.

Josh: What's your what?

Chad: The, the what is, was that they were a bad hire or the system is flawed? And I mean, but you need data for all that.

Josh: Totally. And that's a good... No matter what, good humans, right, across the board. But yeah, how are we defining bad hires? And could be bad managers. Could be bad managers. Either way, you don't want people leaving before that break-even point. And so, you've got to adjust who you're hiring or the system in terms of...

Chad: And you have to know where it's at, right? Which many don't.

Josh: You need, yeah, you need to at least, yeah, dial in to some, some point. Because now I can start to say, I've had X amount of hires who left before my break-even point. And that's going to be one of our go-afters in the next couple quarters is to reduce that number from 30% of my hires that are losing us money...

Chad: Right.

Josh: ...to 10%. And I'm going to report that up. The next one is the retention sticking point. So, at any point within a frontline organization, you can look at the data, and then you can basically start to see where turnover starts to dissipate. Okay. So, think of it in another way as like, if they get to like X number of days, or Y number of days, they typically stay actually another 6 months. Okay. And so, different organizations have different kind of like sticking points. And both of these, the like let's call it X for break-even and Y for retention sticking point, both of those are unique by role and unique by company. But if you can identify that, then all of a sudden you're going to your, C-suite and being able to talk about hey, we're getting a lot more people past this sticking point, this like retention place. We're having way less quick quits that are costing us money.

Chad: Right.

Josh: We're at least having okay hires or great hires as measured by these things. Yes, we have some turnover that happens at the 6-month or 9-month mark. But for us, our break-even point is, you know, 30 days. So, off of this National Restaurant Association report data, it says for restaurants, it's 31.8 days. And then the sticking point is 100 days. Okay. Now, the caution I would give is, those are unfortunately for me, a little close to the like 30, 60, 90.

Chad: Yeah, yeah.

Josh: And so, that's okay, but I would just reframe it within an organization. Instead of calling it a 30, 60, 90, which means nothing to anyone...

Chad: Right.

Josh: ...you can say, hey, yes, we're, our break-even point happens to be 30 days. And like here's how many people left before it. And our sticking point happens to be 100 days. So, it just gives a slightly different language that's tied...

Chad: So, explain that to me, you're saying if someone gets to that 31 whatever point days, they're much more likely to get to 100 days, or is, is that what you're saying when you say that, or is...

Josh: So, so it's actually less that. So, there are two key points. So, one would be, we need to get them to a profitable hire, so that's after the break-even point. So, if they've left before 31.8 days...

Joel: Okay.

Josh: ...in restaurants, you're in the red.

Chad: You're in the red.

Josh: Okay. Do less of that. Those are bad hires.

Joel: Stop that.

Josh: Stop, stop that. Increase that percentage. Yes. Then your, all of your benefits programs, your retention programs, training, and onboarding should be directing people to get past this like retention sticking point, hopefully. Um, getting past that place, you're having more good hires into your organization and retaining. So, past the, before this point, real bad. Okay. But, between these two points, hey, they at least didn't lose you money, but you would prefer to make as many hires as possible to get past this retention sticking point. But it just gives a slightly different language that's tied...

Joel: But if they get to that 100-day mark, they're much more likely to be a long-term employee, someone who does.

Josh: Yeah. And even redefining what long-term employee is because then I would just say like, hey, if your business says that like, break-even points at 30 days, and they ended up working for us for 10 months, in the old system, you would report that person as an annual turnover and get a, and an text. And now it's oh, actually 10 months of a good employee for a specific type of business might actually be okay. Like you, your team should get like that's, that's, that's a win. That's okay for a part-time model.

Chad: Well, and I think that if you take a look at that, so that's on the strategic side as you're pushing that to the C-suite so that they can understand the workforce, benefit, you know, obviously, not, not losing money model. Um, but from a management standpoint, being able to know by location, by manager, who is missing their break and their stick points, right? That to me is even is, is even more important...

Josh: Love that.

Chad: ...because how do you, how do you actually push better past the 31, or, you know, more people past the 31 days? And more people past the 100 days? Well, you've got to do that low, right? You've got to do that at the management level, at the training level, development level. What's the problem there? Is that because they need more time with their people and they're doing it on too much administrivia? You know what I mean? So, it's like to me, it just starts the conversation of, it's amazing from a strategic standpoint, but from a tactical standpoint, it could be gold too.

Josh: Yeah, and it's, it's where, you know, we're talking about this within the restaurant space because they were gracious enough to do this pretty deep dive. This report is like 35 pages and it goes, it goes deep. But now take it into, let's go into like transportation, distribution, distribution center. Oh yeah, yeah. So, I mean like, so now we're talking about the, one of the third largest industry within this, this space. Okay. So, then you, you talk to that industry about, you know, sort of this break-even point. And again, not all, some would say, well, Josh, our break-even point is, is one day. And it was like, how can that even be possible? It's like, well, in, in basically, we can get them, they'll come through, they'll, we're going to walk them through the, the warehouse, it's going to be a little bit, then we're going to do some like training paper, then we're going to walk them through some like benefits and then we're going to teach them how to do their thing. And then they've got 6 hours to do that thing. And by the end of that shift, they've done the thing well enough where, like ultimately, it would have cost us a lot of money if we didn't have that spot on the floor filled.

Chad: Mhm.

Josh: And they were, they were quote-unquote profitable. We hope they come back the next day. We want to hire people who are coming back day after day. That is, that is certainly our intent.

Chad: Which is why you have Olivia send them messages every day, "Can't wait to see you tomorrow."

Josh: Certainly, but for, for them, they've been able to then say, we want to have a really warm experience to make sure that like, training's good, all the benefits and like how we've got HR for those folks is good, but it's, it's more stacked on the employee side than on the hiring side. So, you're starting to see, and you guys have probably chatted with a lot of like TA leaders in the space where, when you start to hear these like instant hiring stories, or like the apply to a contingent offer in 10 minutes...

Chad: Yes.

Josh: ...disproportionately, they're happening in this transportation, distribution, warehouse space. Exclusively? Disproportionately, yes, yes. And I mean, that's kind of interesting because you know that they've kind of done the math. If we had a line that was open a person, we know how many packages or pieces of widgets can't go through, and that would be detrimental to our business. It's actually better to hire a bunch of people, get them there... We know there's going to be some baked-in turnover, we know there's going to be some baked-in folks not passing background checks, but ultimately, it's better to move them through that process seamlessly, get them, get them in our facility and then hopefully retain them through higher investments on the HR side.

Joel: Quick eye to the future. You mentioned giving the attendees of this event Monopoly money, if you will, to invest on the new features that they are most excited for. Curious about where, where you're, where you're putting your money on, the features of the future that we should be excited about?

Josh: Ooh, that's such a good one. My piece is really around this um, one platform. And so, really, really seamless experiences kind of across like an employee lifecycle.

Joel: Joel's favorite thing. Is it? Yeah, the one platform.

Joel: Solution to rule them all.

Josh: Oh, man. Well, I've walked into that then. But I think, I think I like it though from a persona perspective. So, if it's frontline, it's like, I want that team member of ours, you know, whether it's in a restaurant or a... to be able to, you get, you get hired on one, you know, one thing, you're, you're building sort of a, a relationship. You can, you can get in touch with a human as you need to. You're then onboarded through that same thing, you can then get your schedule through that same thing, you can then ask questions in any language through that same thing. You're, like all, all of that I think is really great. And so, what we're, what we're whiteboarding on is like closing a lot of those gaps. For us, that's a little bit more on the onboarding space.

Chad: Oh, yeah.

Josh: Certainly, in some of the employee space because it's like you want that to be super robust. And then supporting a lot of this like shift scheduling and like pay component. So, I really like that from a frontline space. And then from a corporate space, similar. So, we've got kind of two audiences there. One would be, folks who are Workday customers. And so, now that's pretty nice. We're seamlessly...

Chad: Easy transition.

Josh: Easy transition. And, and, you know, we just want that to be as simple as possible so that if you have Workday recruiting, Paradox, so or Paradox and hired score in it, it just all feels like one thing. And so, we have lots of conversations that are going on there.

Chad: Yeah.

Josh: And then for folks, because over 50% of our customers are still non-Workday customers, right? And so, making sure that if they choose to sit us on top of, you know, their ATS, whatever that is...

Chad: Sure.

Josh: ...it's really, really seamless and we're still showing them that we're, we're innovating and moving really fast there. And so, a lot of the things that, that we're talking about on that end is some of this analytics and interview intelligence, and just making sure that kind of all the key tools they need specifically in recruiting there, can be, can be excellent.

Joel: Yeah. Very cool. Josh, thanks for hanging out with us today.

Josh: Thanks, guys.

Joel: That was Josh Secrest, head of marketing at Paradox. I'm Joel Cheesman, he's Chad Sowash with the Chad and Cheese Podcast. This is the AI series. We out.

Chad: We out.