How Heineken's Turned Recruiting Data Into Business Results with Kobi Ampoma
What happens when you receive 25,000 applications a year, only speak to 4,000 of them, and have to reject 21,000 thirsty consumers without destroying your brand equity?
Live from Amsterdam, Chad Sowash sits down with Kobi Ampoma, Head of Talent at Heineken, to tackle the messy realities of enterprise recruiting. They dive deep into why recruiters still lose 30% of their workweeks wrestling interview calendars, the headache of navigating global compliance and legacy enterprise tooling, and how to finally ditch vanity HR metrics to speak the only language the C-suite cares about: lost revenue from vacant seats. Plus, Kobi shares the blueprint behind Heineken’s targeted "Women in Sales" campaign with VONQ that flipped their talent pipeline to 75% female hires—proving that strategic DEI isn't just corporate fluff, it’s good business.
Grab a cold pour and tune in for an unfiltered masterclass in candidate experience, process automation, and talent intelligence.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Intro Announcer: 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 & Cheese podcast!
Chad Sowash: Let’s do this. This is Chad Sowash, yes, of the Chad & Cheese Podcast, and welcome to the Amsterdam Talks. I’m with Kobi Ampoma, head of talent over at a little company called Heineken in Amsterdam and in Belgium.
Kobi Ampoma: Correct.
Chad Sowash: Yeah? Yeah? How long you been doing that?
Kobi Ampoma: So, I’ve been in my role for the last three and a half years. And recently, 1st of July, Belgium was added to my remit. Still enjoying what I do, love what I do, and I hope, you know, every company I work for, I can leave a mark in terms of how we attract.
Chad Sowash: Yeah, well that’s—working for a beer company. I mean, everybody with the swag, you know, the you know, being able to go home with the good stuff, right?
Kobi Ampoma: True.
Chad Sowash: Tell tell me a little bit about that. How's it how is it working for for Heineken?
Kobi Ampoma: Yeah, I think working for Heineken is great. I think the people, first of all, the people makes it great to work for. We do a lot of great products as well, which I like.
Chad Sowash: Yes, you do.
Kobi Ampoma: I like our Heineken, but I also like Affligem. This is one of my favorite beers. And I think, you know, getting an opportunity to work for a company where you can make impact. Although it’s a well-known company, I like the fact that you can make impact and working with leaders who give you the opportunity that you can make impact as well. Yeah.
Chad Sowash: Well, and the non-alcoholic beers, Heineken seems to be almost I I At least to me, when I go to the bar and I see people drinking non-alcoholic, it’s generally the Heineken beers. Those have taken off.
Kobi Ampoma: Correct, and we see that also happening in in our sales numbers, and want to keep that position. You know, whenever obviously, you know, I have a event and I’m by car and I still want to experience, you know, a good cold Heineken, then I choose the 0.0 for for sure.
Chad Sowash: Yeah, very smart, very smart. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about about you. What makes Kobi tick?
Kobi Ampoma: Yeah. So what makes me tick is connecting with people. I know, I love connecting with people. It’s part of my DNA. I’m also very, very family-orientated, so I like to be with my family. I have three kids.
Chad Sowash: Nice. Boys, girls?
Kobi Ampoma: I have two I have two boys, who are the youngest, and then I have a girl of 15, so I’m going through the teenage years.
Chad Sowash: Oh, that's As a As a girl dad, I know. I know.
Kobi Ampoma: Yesterday I had a conversation about school and work and exams coming up, and how she needs to be focused, so it’s definitely part of that. And then I’m a big sports fan as well. So—
Chad Sowash: Who's your favorite team?
Kobi Ampoma: The Blazers, so Portland Trail Blazers basketball.
Chad Sowash: Oh, very nice!
Kobi Ampoma: Yeah, New England Patriots is my football team.
Chad Sowash: Okay.
Kobi Ampoma: And then obviously local soccer team, as you may call it, is is Ajax, for sure. And if we go abroad, then Arsenal is my team. Luckily, we won the championship last year.
Chad Sowash: Yes, yeah. How long have you been an Arsenal fan? Not a bandwagon, right?
Kobi Ampoma: No, no, no. Since I was 16. My dad took me to a football game in in London when I was 16, and that became my my team. And I think, you know, growing up, the different experiences with your parents also leave an impression on you. So hence, Arsenal is my team.
Chad Sowash: Always, always. Let’s dig in. Okay, so you’ve been in your position for about three and a half years. Obviously, even though Heineken is a great company, everything doesn’t go as planned. There are always problems, you’re always trying to fight fires, those types of things. What are some of the biggest problems that you’ve had over the years, and how have you been able to, from a talent standpoint, been able to fix those—possibly with technology or maybe even process?
Kobi Ampoma: Yeah, so I think one of the biggest problems is we are also a consumer brand, so there’s always a lot of attention, and, you know, if you want to make sure that people still buy your product, I I see this as a talent standpoint, it’s very important for people to have an incredible journey. So, one of the things that myself and the team, and I’m still echoing, is how do we make sure that we still give people a great candidate experience, first and foremost. We also have a lot of people show interest in our opportunities, but how do we make sure that the right people show interest? And that's why I think technology can come in. When you’re part of a team and you are setting a foundation, and the way you work, I think it’s very important to establish a great foundation. And that starts by: do we understand the process? That also comes with, you know: how do we make sure that we’re bringing the right people on board? How do we assess them? And how do we make sure that we also develop ourselves, because the technology is going so fast, in my point of view, it’s very hard to catch up sometimes. Yeah.
Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah. So, candidate experience hasn’t always been great. Obviously, applicant tracking systems for years, you’ve had to go through like a half an hour of forms and those types of things. What have you What have you actually done specifically to make the candidate experience better, because you’re 100% right. I mean, those are not just candidates, they’re customers as well.
Kobi Ampoma: Well, I think the first part of making sure that candidate experience go great is making sure that the business understand that as well. Right? We are an extension on the labor market. The candidates engage with us as a first point of contact, but we need to make sure that the business understand that. And in a candidate-driven market, you know, candidates are in a position to have options. If we want the best talent and we bring them to you, you need to also treat them as such. So I think understanding, making sure that business understanding that piece, is very, very important. I would say the second part is, you know, when you have volumes, you also want to make sure that you can have some kind of tool that can help you with that. So we’ve experimented with CV ranking to see how that goes, always keeping the human touch, so we are making the decision. But if you have 500 applicants, you know, in a three-day span, how do you focus on the first 100, as an example? So that’s one of the things that we have also tried. And then we’ve also utilized sourcing. So for us, some part of our business where people may not know us as a prominent employer, you know, how do we source those candidates, and how do we use automation, in this case, you know, reaching out and make sure that there’s automation follow-up personalized, so that we can hopefully convert them as well. So I’d say those two things is what we are actually been experimenting, using, and seeing if it works, and we’ve tried different partners as well.
Chad Sowash: Yeah? How how have you seen the results on that? Has it been just like a a lot of testing that’s happening, and the the the jury is still out, or do you are you seeing big outcomes, are you seeing an an impact with regard to distribution and and being able to get targeted candidates, the right candidates?
Kobi Ampoma: It’s been a hit and miss sometimes, and I think, you know, how do we still keep the human element in there in terms of our outreach? And I think the the communication piece and the personalization piece has not always been great. So how do we make sure that that that's a a good part of the process? And what I've also seen is that, you know, obviously a lot of companies are promising, you know, us the world, and then when we test and try, you know, they still need to do a lot of alterations on their side. So, I do think, you know, still testing, still giving them our feedback, and still companies that are out there, you know, maybe forward-thinking and say, "Hey, how can we solve a problem you’re facing?" I’m always going to, you know, lean on or lean into that as well.
Chad Sowash: So back to the the candidate side of the house, candidate/customer side of the house, how many applications do you guys get a year?
Kobi Ampoma: So we get around 25,000 applicants, and we only engage with 4,000.
Chad Sowash: Okay.
Kobi Ampoma: So in our case, you know, we have to disappoint 21,000. And how do we do that in the right way?
Chad Sowash: Send them free beer?
Kobi Ampoma: That's not sustainable. But so it also raised the the question, you know, out of those 4,000, how do we engage with them and how do we make sure that they get it proper? But the 21,000, you know, how do you disappoint them in a way that we can still reach out to them at a later stage? And I think that’s that’s very very important.
Chad Sowash: Well, and those people already know your brand, obviously. They have already engaged with your brand. It seems like they’re they’re great that’s a great opportunity to be able to engage them later for a job that might be coming up, you know, now, let’s say. So do you use your current like resume database in your applicant tracking system or in your CRM? Do you re-engage those individuals?
Kobi Ampoma: No, we we don’t, not in the way that I would like. So we have, you know, talent pools, but there’s no way, at the moment, that we can actually foster them, right, keep them warm. So in my point of view, sometimes, you know, it’s good to keep a candidate warm for three, maybe max six months, because obviously their situation may change, but we don’t have that yet. We are getting an upgrade in SmartRecruiters, and I hope that, you know, that that community piece is is solid so that we can keep that and do that better. But I do think there’s a lot of potential in, you know, not only in those 25,000 people that show interest, but if you look at Heineken globally, you know, think about all the candidates that we don’t engage with, and which I would like to also engage. And I don’t know why, but that’s something that, you know, I hope to tackle, why we’re not, let’s say, why companies are not doing more with the people that show interest in them. That's a problem I'd like to solve.
Chad Sowash: Well, I mean, that’s 21,000 prospects, prospective workers, employees, right, because you're only touching 4,000 of them. A couple of different things. I mean, the the one of the things that is really been mind-boggling for me over the years is not engaging them, giving them a good like, you know, "Sorry, you didn’t make it," right, give them good messaging and whatnot, but also keeping them warm, right, in that in that talent pipeline. So, and technologies that are out there today, I’m sure you’ve seen them, I’m sure you’ve been pitched them, and you have SmartRecruiters obviously is your applicant tracking system, VONQ for distribution, those types of things. It seems like today, and and tell me what you think, it seems like today we still have the same problems that we did before, but it feels like the tools are becoming more honed. What What do you think about that?
Kobi Ampoma: I think, you know, if you look at it from a TA landscape, there’s two components. I think companies who have a, yeah, long-lasting legacy when it comes to the tooling, it’s very difficult sometimes to change and implement new tools because there's a legacy, you know, maybe a global impact as well. Companies who, you know, don’t have a long legacy, 10–15 years, are maybe much more flexible in changing and and adapting to newer tools. I think there’s also an element of compliance. You know, when you have a company that is that known, we also are held to a high standard when it comes to compliance. You know, so we don't always want to take the risk that sometimes comes with, you know, trying things out. You know, so our team, we need to talk to legal, we need to talk to the global systems team to make sure that we have okay to test those tools. So going through that process is not always easy. You need to knock on a few doors, but I think that’s also something that always doesn’t help us as a function. I think, you know, nowadays, a lot of companies are doing easy interview scheduling. We still need to implement that, and that takes 30% of our time as a recruitment function.
Chad Sowash: Wow. Yeah.
Kobi Ampoma: So, imagine, you know, and that's why I'm I'm putting my eggs in in SmartRecruiters. When we implement that in Q1, it will help us reduce that drastically. So recruiters will have more time to do to do more with the impact that it can have, especially on the human touch, in my point of view. And also, I think a company like Heineken, yes, a lot of people know us, but we want the right people to know us as well, right? And then that’s why I think, you know, for example, AI can help us, for example, working with VONQ: how can we engage with a target audience, have a hypothesis, try and test, and see if it works or doesn’t work? So I think, you know, companies like VONQ can help us also, you know, by trying and testing and making sure that we, you know, target different audiences that are also very important for us, who may know us as a company, but don’t know that we have the right opportunity for them.
Chad Sowash: Okay, Kobi, so obviously technology has come forward very quickly, and but we still have the same problems that we did years ago, right, decades ago? Same same thing. Like we're talking about candidate experience and what have you. Do you do you see those new technologies, do you see them actually finally catching up where we can start to give our recruiters more time and we can start being more human, which we’ve always talked about doing?
Kobi Ampoma: I think so. It requires a little bit more time, because I think the technology that is coming our way is coming very fast, and I think as a TA function, it’s all about adaptation and going through that change, and saying, "Hey, this is an element of my work which I can utilize and free up more space." And in my point of view, the space that we want to free up is to be more human, and more interaction, and more interaction with our business and with our candidate, if we want that to be an exception. I also think the challenge that we face, we have so many tools that can complement each other. At the end of the day, as a TA function, ideally, you want everything to be in one, ideally, but that’s not the case. So, you know, you know, interview scheduling could be one thing, you know, recruiting campaigns could be another thing, how do you call it, the automation could be a third thing, so, you know, you know, keeping your your community warm could be another thing. So it's all about, you know, all the different components that is help is helping us solve a problem. Can we have maybe one tool that does a bulk of that? I think that's where we need to go.
Chad Sowash: So, you you mentioned that 30% of the recruiters' time is spent on scheduling?
Kobi Ampoma: Correct.
Chad Sowash: And obviously, nobody loves scheduling. Nobody, right? I mean, that literally is a part of the process that sucks for everybody. So, have you gone through—and I mean, that is just such a huge opportunity to to be able to give time back to your people—but have you gone through the process and literally pulled all the tasks out of the process and said, "Okay, which ones can we automate? Which ones should we automate?" Have you guys mapped that out yet?
Kobi Ampoma: Not entirely. So we’ve done I would say we've done the first 50% of that, so identifying our process and the steps that are in our process, and what difference a tool can make. Right? So we do believe, you know, interview scheduling, which takes a bulk of our time, we can do more with that, and that is something that should be easy for us to be able to implement. With that gone, then you can say then you can say, "Hey, the time that you're freeing up, one of the things that is very important, we did a talent acquisition maturity assessment, is really understanding, you know, talent and insights." So if we are talking about tech talent is important for us, or commercial talent is important for us, do we know enough? Have we done enough in-depth research to do a few analysis, where we can take a few key important elements out of it and say, "Hey, what can we do with that?" And I think that is going to help us tremendously, because, you know, there’s a lot of discussion going on, "Hey, if tooling takes over all or majority of the work, what are we going to do with our time, right?" In the industry, we talk about being a business partner, and I think the business partner element is understanding the talent insights, being able to translate that into your business, what it means, what it means to attract, and how can we make sure we are engaging with the right talent continuously. So that's why I see where the technology is going and can help us, for sure.
Chad Sowash: But when we talk about business, we don’t TA and HR, they usually don’t speak business-speak, right? We have our own metrics, those metrics don’t show up in the quarterly reports because they’re not business metrics, or at least the C-suite do not see them as business metrics. So how are you, as a business leader, taking those metrics, taking all of that talent intelligence, and getting it over to the business in a way that they understand, so that they they understand what kind of impact we’re making, right, but they also understand, "Hey, we need more budget?"
Kobi Ampoma: Well, great question, Chad. And this is not something that we did by ourselves. This is a close collaboration with, indeed, our people function, in this case, our people business partners, but also with our business leaders. So one of the things that we have identified, you know, when a sales, or in our case, an account manager is not in the seat that they need to be, we know there’s a loss of revenue, you know, on a monthly basis.
Chad Sowash: Yes.
Kobi Ampoma: So one of the things that we did is, you know: how can we make sure we can build pipelines for our sales organization and hire more people to make sure that, you know, they can cover different regions when we come into a situation where we may not have somebody in there? So we looked at data, we said, "Hey, you know, if we look at the sales talent that we normally bring on board, what are the key drivers for them? What are the push factor for them? What are maybe other companies doing to attract that we may not be doing?" And that’s actually how we came into a partnership with with VONQ on, you know, creating this recruitment marketing campaign to identify sales talent, commercial talent, heavily focused on women as well.
Chad Sowash: Okay, okay. So literally going to the CRO per se, and saying, "Look, we are losing X amount of revenue," which they probably know, right? So you're having the same discussion with them that they already know, and they know that in reporting to the board, they're going to have to have this discussion: "How do we actually get butts in seats faster? How do we get sales faster?" You're you're already having that discussion with them.
Kobi Ampoma: Yes, and that is, once again, a very close collaboration. But by doing so, we also understood: hey, for our sales talent to be successful, they need more attributes in in, let's say, in their backpack. So there's also an onboarding program that has been created, predominantly for the sales team, to make sure that they're fully equipped that two months in their role, they can actually make a major impact. Because there's always a ramp-up time for commercial talents, and we have seen a lot of commercial talents who maybe have 60% of what we ideally look for, but how do we make it complete? And by making it complete, we said, "Hey, let's target the right people. Let's target make sure that we open it instead of saying sales, but maybe commercial talent. How can we get, you know, more female in there? Where do the female move? Where do they see opportunities? What are important for them in opportunities they seek?" And working with with VONQ has been tremendous because they were able to help us identify, you know, the right target audience, the right platforms where these talent actually navigate, and we've been able to convert. And I think the conversion that we managed was 75% female talent that we were able to add based on our close collaboration.
Chad Sowash: Wow. Well, talk about that a little bit, because I know that it the the diversity, the DEI conversation, is always—it’s big and then it’s not, and then it’s big and it’s one—but from a business standpoint, it means something, right? So can you talk a little bit about why that means so much to Heineken from a business standpoint, because it does impact the business?
Kobi Ampoma: Yeah. So, I mean, from a high-level perspective, we have a strategy, which is Women in Sales. We want to have more female talent into our organization from a leadership perspective, but also in our sales organization, because we truly believe, you know, having a mixture of diversity can really help our consumers and customers. And for me, you know, being a big advocate when it comes to DEI, hey, any role I can play a part of that is is always going to be something I grab with both hands. So for us, it's much more, you know, working with the business, trying to understand the pain points that we experience. We also had, you know, like a small table where we identified a few female who have been in our business and said, "Hey, this is why I work here. This is something that I think which you should critically look at." And then how do we engage with our leaders, and then transform that into a, when we're having conversations, we know this is a topic that is important for you, these are our answers, this is what you will encounter when you join us, if you're still okay with that, obviously we welcome you in open arms. So I think from a business perspective, is very important to have it as a part of the strategy. And then how do we then take on this, and how do we work with our, you know, wider people team in making this happen? And like I said, you know, a tremendous job for VONQ to help us with that, because they were very instrumental in our recruitment marketing campaign, engaging with our leaders to be able to have that conversation, because we're not experts. So I lean always on experts to help us, you know, convey a message, to help convey maybe different topics that we want to tackle. And I think, you know, for us, the close collaboration, you know, the check-ins, how do we actually transform this into a successful story? Yeah, I’m very, very proud of my team, but also proud of the work that VONQ was able to do.
Chad Sowash: Yeah, yeah, I mean that was the smart way of saying it. The dumb way of saying it is: women buy beer, too! Right? You’ve got to look at your community, you know, and what they want and what they need. So, the organization should look like the community it actually serves.
Kobi Ampoma: Correct. I agree.
Chad Sowash: Kobi, I uh I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for coming down to the beautiful Muziekgebouw and uh while we're getting ready for for the House of HR event. Um, but I appreciate you. Thanks so much.
Kobi Ampoma: Thank you for having me, Chad.
Chad Sowash: Have a good time, man.
Kobi Ampoma: Cheers.
Outro Announcer: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad & Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there’s no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you’ll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can’t look away. And like Chad’s favorite Western, you can’t quit them either. We out.
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