At first glance, I didn't think this report would be very eye-opening.
I. WAS. WRONG.
The report stirs discussion around hard questions many HR and TA leaders have been asking themselves like.
What happens when HR leaders are severely disconnected from front-line recruiters?
What happens when it's harder to find recruiters than developers?
What happens when recruiters turn down working for your company due to a shitty tech stack?
Well, that day has arrived, and Aptitude Research's new report entitled: Talent Acquisition Technology and the Modern Recruiter only starts the discussions necessary in fixing a broken TA team, company, and industry.
Chad and Aptitude founder, Madeline Laurano cover three of the seven key findings in the report.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
INTRO (1s):
Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Chad (24s):
Welcome back to the Chad and Cheese podcast. Guess what kids today we have Madeline Laurano filling in for Cheeseman. Cheeseman is actually sleeping off New Year's. I think he might've had a little bit too much to drink. Founder at Aptitude Research, Madeline has joined us on several occasions. She always brings the smoke when it comes to research, when it comes to new topics, really topics that we don't have a lot of information behind. She always brings the good stuff. And this is another one it's entitled Talent Acquisition Technology and the Modern Recruiter damn Madeline. You can coming out of the barrel this year, smoking hot.
Chad (1m 4s):
How's everything going?
Madeline (1m 6s):
Everything's going well, thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited to be here and talk about this new research. I'm really excited about this report. It's a topic we've talked so much about Chad, about the recruiter experience and how recruiters are just not necessarily given the resources they need within companies today.
Chad (1m 23s):
Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have a lot of ears perk up on this one, especially because we both know right now it's harder to find recruiters than it is IT professionals or developers or what have you, right. You were actually just talking about some information that Shannon Pritchett shared on LinkedIn. Hit the listeners with that.
Madeline (1m 41s):
Yeah. Shannon shared this blew my mind. She shared that 14,000 job posting for recruiters in one day, this week on LinkedIn in a recruiter experience crisis right now. Wow.
Chad (1m 54s):
Wow. Yeah. So we're going to dig into that. So first and foremost, the title, first off, I read the title and you're like, Hey, you're really going to like this. I read the title. I was like, am I really? Cause I'm like, what exactly is the modern recruiter? So what do you mean by the modern recruiter?
Madeline (2m 8s):
So the modern recruiter is recruiters, sourcers people that are actually doing the work. I think so often. And I'm guilty of this too. I'll write research and we'll talk about topics in terms of T leadership, HR leadership. These are the themes that we're thinking about. This report really looks at the people that are doing the work, which is the modern recruiter.
Chad (2m 29s):
In the trenches, kids. So, all right, we have seven key findings in this report, but we're going to tease it out and only give you three, because first and foremost, you need to read this. It's not incredibly lengthy, but it has a ton of good material. So the first one that I want to share, that was one of my favorites that just jumped out off the page was "Recruiters will leave their job for better technology." This wasn't for higher wages, which they might, but still, this was for better technology. Tell me about this.
Madeline (3m 1s):
Yeah. And you know, I think what's happening right now is we're seeing companies increase their TA tech budgets, like spending so much on technology right now. And then what we found in the report is that there's a big disconnect between the technology that companies are buying, that IT wants, that HR leadership wants and the technology that recruiters actually want to you that may use that makes their job better. That makes their lives easier. And there's a disconnect there. And if recruiters aren't given the resources, they need to deal with the volume they have to deal with to deal with the stress that they have to deal with. Yeah. They're going to find a job that gives them that technology.
Chad (3m 38s):
I thought this was very poignant and it obviously jumped out on the page. 58% of recruiters do not believe that leadership understands their role in the organization. And then you start digging deeper into those who were surveyed. And they were asked if they have more jobs to fill this year. I think it was versus last year, right?
Madeline (3m 59s):
Correct.
Chad (3m 59s):
84% of recruiters agreed that they have more jobs to fill only 66% of TA leaders and HR leaders. And only 20% of IT. The difference between strategy and the people who are actually in the trenches. So this, to me uncovers a very serious disconnect in an organization. What about you?
Madeline (4m 23s):
Yeah. And I think we also asked, like, we can't find enough quality talent this year, 73% of recruiters and sources agreed with that. 39% of HR leaders, TA leaders agreed. And only 10% of IT. To me, this is just a disconnect with understanding the recruiter experience and also validating that experience. You know, I'm not a psychologist, but you have to validate someone's experience. And we're asking the people doing the work to fill positions, to work longer hours, to work harder than they've worked before, but we don't validate that their job is so much harder than it was pre COVID.
Chad (5m 4s):
Well, how in the hell does IT even know how hard it is to find somebody to fill a position in the first place? That to me feels like a lack of respect to be quite Frank. Right. And we talk about candidate experience and we've been talking about candidate experience forever, and it has taken a priority over recruiter experience over the last decade or so, so, and you'd agreed with that, right?
Madeline (5m 32s):
Yeah, absolutely.
Chad (5m 33s):
So we've created this real sterile, I think technical flow term that we call experience to maneuver around the real human element during a pandemic. I think the psyche of workers has changed, they've changed dramatically and the time and money companies are spending should be spending on caring, caring about their humans and truly giving a shit. So, you know, the question is, will this impact your ability to attract and retain recruiters? And the survey says, hell yeah, it will.
Madeline (6m 5s):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it, that is what it's showing. It's showing the care aspect of it. And how can we focus on candidate care if we don't show recruiter care?
Chad (6m 14s):
Yeah.
Madeline (6m 14s):
And we're not caring for our own employees. So I think it's been really interesting. I mean, even going back to the IT point, it is disrespect to not understand what recruiters do when we're tasking them with so much. But I think also, I don't think it's, IT trying to be offensive in any way. I think it's, they don't know. I think they genuinely don't know. And there's so much information out there of how TA can help inform IT, of what the requirements should be and speak ITs language, talk to IT in their terms. We have to do the same thing. We have to get IT to understand and speak recruiting language too.
Madeline (6m 53s):
And we're just not doing that.
Chad (6m 58s):
To me this is a total miss. It's a whiff from TA and HR leaders, because what they should be doing is helping the entire organization understand that the company doesn't exist, the widget, the services, none of it exists without top talent being able to provide it. You can't develop a new product or maintain the code of a new product if you don't have individuals to be able to do that currently. Right? So talent and talent acquisition, HR really need to stiffen their spine and they need to think more around the business and how they impact every single aspect of revenue.
Chad (7m 38s):
And that's what the C-suite cares about. Right? That's what the CTO cares. If you talk about revenue, they're gonna go, okay, well, the CRO is going to get involved. So now I have to get involved. Right. So, I mean, do you think this is, we're finally getting a great awakening around not just the candidates, understanding that they are essential and they're necessary, but also in awakening of leadership to step the fuck up.
Madeline (8m 1s):
Yeah, I think so. And I hope it's going to continue because this is the situation that we're in and if we don't have the right talent finding the right talent, the business suffers. I mean, it's everything from not being able to staff campus events, either virtually or in person to thinking about, you know, just your recruiters on the, day-to-day doing their work to executive recruiting, the whole, you know, every single aspect of the business suffers.
Chad (8m 29s):
Yeah. Well the next point, which I thought was interesting, kind of funny at the same time, because we're always seeing recruiters versus AI, right. But the next point is recruiters are embracing AI. And to me, that's the way it should always be in the first place. I think it was Sean over at Hiring Soft, who first came up with kind of like the iron man example and I'm a Marvel geek so that just kind of made sense to me, that these two worlds actually belong together and recruiters should be embracing AI to make them stronger, faster, better at what they do more efficient on what they do. But it seems like from your survey, they get that now.
Madeline (9m 9s):
I think they want AI to help them do their jobs in a more efficient way. And I think they're embracing it. They're clearly embracing technology. And it's interesting because I know that a lot of other people like Kevin Grossman have done this type of research, but it shows the candidates also embrace AI. So candidates aren't saying we don't want it either, recruiters aren't saying we don't want it. You know, I think this is coming. We can't say no.
Chad (9m 35s):
Why would they, first and foremost candidates, you would talk about experience, but also care. This is all about, do we care? Do we give a shit as talent acquisition professionals? Do we care? Experience is kind of a sterile term. Do we care? That's more of a human term. Yeah. We should care. Right. And if we do, then we want to ensure, especially as we scale, we're trying to touch thousands upon thousands of candidates. We know that we can't do that from a human standpoint and candidates don't want to go into a black hole. I think it was a Sherm study that was done a couple of years ago that actually said candidates were fine with getting hit with a chat bot.
Madeline (10m 14s):
Right.
Chad (10m 17s):
That wasn't human because what's the alternative?
Madeline (10m 21s):
Nothing.
Chad (10m 22s):
Black hole. Yeah, exactly. Nothing. Right. So, yeah, yeah. To me, that's not as shocking as I think it will be for TA leaders.
Madeline (10m 26s):
Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. And I think, you know, I think we'll see companies embrace AI a little bit more, hopefully a little more strategically over the next year.
Chad (10m 36s):
So what kind of AI, just between you, me and the fence post, what kind of AI is your favorite AI, do you think will be embraced more quickly just because it's part of the easy flow and it will provide efficiencies quicker.
Madeline (10m 48s):
Yeah. I mean, we've talked about this before, but AI matching, I mean, I think there's AI matching. That's not done well. And then there's AI matching that actually, you know, companies take a really strategic look at it, it's ethical AI or thinking and committed to it. And that, I mean, that improves the recruiter experience. Like nothing else it's providing that efficiency. It's helping them understand talent in a more effective way, reduced bias if it's done using ethical AI and I think that that definitely plays a role. And then I think the other, the other piece we've talked about too, is conversational AI, right? It's and when it's conversational AI, not just a chat bot, it's saying, can you help take on this work?
Madeline (11m 31s):
Not we're just going to push the work off and save us time. It's going to take the work on for the recruiters. So they actually can focus on other things and just improve their overall experience.
Chad (11m 45s):
Yeah. And I see a day in utopia land where, you know, a conversational AI chat bot actually engages with the candidate, gets the information, can push it into a system where the matching engine actually takes place and then starts to make those matches in real time. And then again, we'll continue to not just flush them into a black hole, but allow them the chat bot or text or whatever it is. We'll continue to keep them updated or where they're at in the funnel. If they don't get the job, give them that, Hey, I'm sorry, you didn't get the job, but guess what, here are two or three other jobs or would you like updates for new jobs? Right. It's just those little subtle touches. That really means something and tell somebody that you care.
Chad (12m 26s):
Right. And I think recruiters are definitely starting to get there, at least the quote unquote "modern recruiter" is starting to get it.
Madeline (12m 33s):
Absolutely. I think that's exactly the right formula. It's you start with the conversational AI, create that engagement, create that conversation, use AI matching and then feed right back into a conversational AI so that you can continue to build that relationship and answer questions and engage candidates. And some companies are investing in both heavily. So I think, you know, if we can create that experience for recruiters, it's a win-win
Chad (12m 57s):
And then you have all that money that you spent on that database and caring for those candidates. Now you throw recruitment marketing automation into it, so that it's constantly, you know, at least touching and starting to ensure that those individuals don't feel like they've been left. Right. I mean, there's just so much great tech that's out there and opportunity that's out there that goes beyond the relic we know as an ATS.
Madeline (13m 24s):
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Chad (13m 24s):
So last but not least, and this I think is amazing because I never would have ever thought that we would have heard recruiters talking about integration, but integration is, and I'm so glad that we are, but integration is a challenge. Tell me about that.
Madeline (13m 38s):
This was so interesting to me too, and I almost missed it when I first did the analysis, I sort of kind of glanced over this and just let it be, and then went back and I was like, wait a minute, recruiters and IT care equally about integration. That's their priority. And it makes sense, but the goals are different, right? IT wants integration for what we know and how we've been talking about integration, which is, you know, making sure that, you know, these implementations work that we're saving costs or saving money, the data is consistent, the experience is consistent. Recruiters want integration so that they can actually do their job and that they have a workflow that's consistent and doesn't require them to go in and out of different systems, which they don't have any time to do.
Madeline (14m 27s):
And if we can think about integration from that standpoint, we need to start asking different questions of our vendors.
Chad (14m 35s):
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I think the key word there is work flow. We look at a workflow that we've had that we've always done it that way, but it was back when we started to actually take our paper process and make it digital. All we did was take it and whatever we were doing in paper, we just mimicked that in technology, we've come so much further than that, where efficiencies and the availability to ensure that your recruiters are not doing those menial pissy ass tasks that nobody wants to do. And nobody should do! I mean, seriously, we just have a bot do it or have matching do it, or what have you. But I think from an integration standpoint, every startup that I talked to, even every big core system that I talked to, one of our biggest conversations is around integration because I don't know how many recruiters I talked to and they'll do a screen share and they have 25,000 fricking tabs open.
Chad (15m 31s):
And it's like, what are you? What are you doing? Oh, that's just part of the workflow that we have. And it's like, that would be maddening.
Madeline (15m 39s):
Right. Right. And then, I mean, you just don't get any work done that way. It's just not sustainable.
Chad (15m 47s):
So question and this is to obviously all the recruiters and, talent acquisition who listened to the show as, as well as, as vendors. Do you believe that recruiters will be asking during the interview while they're being interviewed to perspectively, come to this new company as a recruiter, what tech stack do you use?
Madeline (16m 8s):
It's happening already and some in some instances, and I think for some recruiters, they want to know, especially the sourcing tools, like, are you using this, that and the other? And I think we're going to see it happen more and more. I mean, as recruiters start to learn to get comfortable with technology, as they start to expect it in their day-to-day and in their workflow, these are questions that they should be asking. I hope they, I hope they do. And I hope companies, listen.
Chad (16m 34s):
Well here's a shot over those companies bow, one third of new recruiters are looking for new jobs and this wasn't in the survey, but I'm willing to bet 99.9% of the recruiters that are out there today are being contacted by other, being poached by other companies. So if you have a shitty process, you have a shitty workflow and you don't even know how many reqs your recruiters are managing versus what they were last year, because you have less are their workloads worse. What are your thoughts on turnover for recruiters in the next six months?
Madeline (17m 9s):
I think we're going to continue to see this crisis that we're seeing today. And companies are going to have to start to pay attention, validate that experience, invest in the right technology and take it pretty seriously. It really is serious.
Chad (17m 24s):
I think that's the biggest key. So according to the research, 67% of companies have increased their investment in TA tech this year and 73% plan to increase their investment in 2022. What I'm saying, and I want to hear from you, what you're seeing, what I'm saying is a bunch of band-aids, right? They're buying point solutions to be able to layer over something as a band-aid instead of what they should be doing. And in my honest opinion, it should be blowing the entire process up in building it from ground zero. Because first and foremost, what they've been doing is probably decades old and slow and not efficient.
Chad (18m 4s):
Secondly, they probably have so much redundancy right now that they could perspectively save money. I think the whole bandaid over bandaid over bandaid is something we've done for decades and it's going to implode. What do you think?
Madeline (18m 17s):
I think 100%, I think there's so much redundancy and I think as you get budget, you invest in something new, even though you might have something else. That's the same thing.
Chad (18m 25s):
Yeah.
Madeline (18m 25s):
What I thought was so interesting from this study is a third, only a third of recruiters are involved in technology selection decisions. So it was like, you're having like 70% of companies investing in new technology next year. They're not asking their recruiters to be involved in evaluating that technology or selecting that technology. And they're going to be left with the band-aid approach or a bunch of technology that recruiters just don't want to use.
Chad (18m 51s):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure, but I've always said that, you know, talent acquisition, they can't be experts in everything. And there's so much that's happening today with regard to process, with regard to technology, with regard to compliance, with regard to diversity, equity, inclusion so much that's going on today, do you see a need for really more specialized individuals who focus on really imploding their current process and trying to help companies rebuild tech stacks?
Madeline (19m 22s):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think to have that in-house, like we've seen consultants do that and do a great job of doing that. We know some that do a great job with that, but to have someone in-house that can do that and really pay attention to what a company needs and not be afraid to just, you know, blow it all up and start a fresh is amazing. What a fun job!
Chad (19m 40s):
That would be a fun job. It would be a fun job. So I don't know if you're out there? I'm sure there are plenty of you who love the, to play in tech stacks, but definitely everybody who's out there go to aptituderesearch.com and look for Talent Acquisition Technology and the Modern Recruiter. This is Madeline Laurano. Madeline, tell us a little bit more, where else can we find this, where else can they find you to connect for not just this research, but for past research and for future research?
Madeline (20m 13s):
Awesome! So yeah, the report's on the website and it was sponsored by Hired Score. We're going to be promoting it for the whole month. So you'll find us on social. My social is @Madtarquin on Twitter. We're on LinkedIn. We're on Twitter, @aptitudeHCM. So lots of we'll probably do some sneak peeks too at some future research.
Chad (20m 34s):
Again, thanks so much for coming on. Take a look at that research. It's pretty eye-opening, it's amazing whether you are a recruiter, you're in TA leadership If you're in IT leadership, take a look at this research, aptituderesearch.com. Thanks so much, Madeline.
Madeline (20m 43s):
Thanks, Chad.
Chad (20m 50s):
Excellent. We out thank you for listening
OUTRO (21m 42s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.
留言