Transcript
Speaker: Hello, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to another episode of the Transform Recruiting Podcast.
Speaker: As always, I'm your host, Brad Owens.
Speaker: And with me today, I bring on the amazingly wonderful Mr. Thad Price.
Speaker: Thad, welcome, sir.
Speaker: Brad, great to be here.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: So I want to make sure that everyone at least starts with a solid foundation of who in the world I'm even talking to.
Speaker: So can you give them just a little bit of background on yourself, where you're coming from?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So hi, I'm Thad.
Speaker: I'm CEO of Austin-based Tauru, and I've been in the job search and online recruiting industry for almost 20 years now.
Speaker: So I've been spending a lot of my time in helping job seekers find the right job and helping employers find the right job seeker.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: And that's exactly why I wanted to bring you in.
Speaker: One, you've got a lot of experience in all this space.
Speaker: And two, from the word on the streets and talking with a couple of people that knew you, I was like, ooh, he's got a little different perspective here that I think everyone would want to hear from.
Speaker: So in your opinion, I mean, the show is called Transform Recruiting, right?
Speaker: It's the people, the ideas, and tech that are transforming the landscape.
Speaker: So in your opinion, what is the current landscape of recruiting?
Speaker: What are you seeing?
Speaker: It's exciting.
Speaker: It's changing in front of our eyes.
Speaker: We're moving in more of a data-driven experience than we've ever seen before.
Speaker: Recruiting is looking more like the connection of marketing and sales.
Speaker: I think we've all been living that and seeing that over the past years, especially when we think about the trials and tribulations of attracting talent, especially high-volume hiring.
Speaker: In frontline workers, it's harder than ever before.
Speaker: And so there's a calculus that happens when a job seeker makes a decision to apply for your job or to search for jobs.
Speaker: And there are a lot more opportunities than ever before.
Speaker: And so you have to really connect with your marketing team
Speaker: With your marketing experience and your sales experience to ensure that you can actually close the job seeker and drive a new hire.
Speaker: And so from our perspective, we like to think that there's this amazing evolution that's happening and how we recruit.
Speaker: And that evolution is made possible by innovation.
Speaker: And it's exciting to see a lot of the technologies and some of the interesting things that are in place right now.
Speaker: to automate more of the redundant process of recruiting so we can spend more time with people and more importantly, the right people, the right people that you can recruit and attract to grow your business.
Speaker: Now, innovation, you're speaking my language when you say innovation.
Speaker: So give me the the top two things that you see as being some of the most innovative, whether it's just purely ideas or tech or I'll leave it open to whatever you want to interpret that as.
Speaker: But what are some of the top two biggest innovations that you're currently excited about?
Speaker: So the first thing that I've seen, it's been a movement over the last few years that I think that has been really exciting.
Speaker: We saw this early on with traditional advertising outside of job advertising, employment advertising.
Speaker: And this was the idea of being able to attract the right audience at the right time in the right place.
Speaker: And the thought process is that if you are in market to buy a home, let's say, real estate agents will
Speaker: advertise to you, right?
Speaker: There's data that shows that you can attract the right audience for people that may be in market to buy a home.
Speaker: The same thing goes for folks in market for a new job.
Speaker: And so what I think has happened is if you've looked at the trends in advertising, traditional advertising over the last, probably I would say 10, 15 years, it's gone from this kind of point of
Speaker: process of I want to advertise on this site to I want to advertise where the audience is, right?
Speaker: I want to fish where the fish are.
Speaker: And I think that's a really interesting thing.
Speaker: We're in this now world of what is referred to traditionally in online advertising as programmatic, right audience, right time, right place.
Speaker: You're starting to see that now move over the last probably, I would say,
Speaker: seven, eight years, and it's increasing as well to online marketplaces, employment marketplaces.
Speaker: So when you think of this idea of I want to post a job on Indeed or I want to post a job on ZipRecruiter, it's changed.
Speaker: I want to advertise to audiences wherever those audiences may be.
Speaker: So essentially in that world, you're turning the internet into a help wanted sign.
Speaker: And you're using data and audiences to connect real time so that you're advertising to the right audience at the right time in the right place.
Speaker: And so I think that's pretty exciting, right?
Speaker: This change of how we're thinking about online recruiting and advertising to be more kind of consumer oriented is pretty fascinating to me.
Speaker: I like that one because that has been a big bugaboo of mine.
Speaker: Every time I'm interfacing with someone that's like, oh, well, can, um, we're, we have this new job opening.
Speaker: We should definitely get that out on one of these, um,
Speaker: like posting aggregators.
Speaker: I could give this to one site and all of a sudden they shotgun it, right?
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: Or check boxes, right?
Speaker: You open a rec inside the applicant tracking system and you check boxes, right?
Speaker: It's like post here, post here, post here.
Speaker: You click submit and suddenly it's like $1,500 or whatever the number is, right?
Speaker: So here's my question on that then based on your talk track so far.
Speaker: I'm curious to hear your answer.
Speaker: Tell me why that's not a good idea.
Speaker: Well, I think the big thing is, is it's not a good idea because the best advertising solutions use feedback, use what, you know, what's referred to as more like return on ad spin feedback.
Speaker: So, and at the end of the day, what you want is you want the right candidates and you want applies.
Speaker: You want people to apply to your job.
Speaker: And so when you think about that experience, um,
Speaker: you know, years ago in online advertising, that was like, hey, I want to buy this spot on Yahoo, right?
Speaker: Because Yahoo is one of the top destinations.
Speaker: And Yahoo is great still today.
Speaker: Got a lot of people, a lot of access.
Speaker: But people don't wake up and say, I want to buy this spot on Yahoo any longer, right?
Speaker: They want to attract the audience through using programmatic advertising when they're hanging out on Yahoo and they have data that says that this person is in market for something.
Speaker: And so from that perspective, I think it's not a good idea because you're not connecting the data experiences, you're not connecting the data sources.
Speaker: What you need is you need to be able to say, okay, this source of candidates is
Speaker: drove an ROI.
Speaker: And in your world, an ROI is
Speaker: is an applicant, right?
Speaker: Now, ultimately the ROI would be a hire because that's what, you know, that's the, that's kind of the Holy grail of everything in our world is a hire.
Speaker: We all want to drive a hire, but there are a lot of things that influence whether you hire someone or not.
Speaker: So, you know, maybe you can drive an interview, but you definitely can drive an applicant.
Speaker: And so the best systems, and we do a lot of this here at Tauroo, right?
Speaker: The best systems leverage kind of that apply signal, right?
Speaker: to be able to scale up what's working and scale down what's not working.
Speaker: When you're just kind of in a checkout process and paying $1,500 for a job posting, whatever that fee is, you really don't have that data-driven experience where you're able to scale up anything and scale back anything.
Speaker: You're essentially paying to post and you're putting a stake in the ground and saying, my job is here, not...
Speaker: My job is here and driving applicants.
Speaker: And I think that's how we continue to see our market evolve.
Speaker: And with companies that are focused on outcomes for employers, first outcome being an apply, second outcome being a quality application, third outcome being an interview, and fourth, the holy grail being the hire.
Speaker: All the companies that are focused on outcomes are the ones that will win as the market continues to evolve.
Speaker: I agree with that.
Speaker: So you tell me your reaction to this then, because this is how I've typically thought of it.
Speaker: I think that for firm owners and those in executive level leadership at these recruiting firms or even internal recruiters or whatever it might be, their funnel for so many years has started from here's who has applied.
Speaker: I feel like, and I'm picking up on what, if I'm reading the tea leaves, right?
Speaker: You are suggesting what I've been suggesting for a long time now.
Speaker: And so I completely agree with you that the funnel begins way before the apply.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, you think of it in a typical environment, just easy numbers.
Speaker: You know, I would say a typical apply rate is throw it out 10%.
Speaker: So 90% aren't, right?
Speaker: And there's a reason for that, whether it's, you know, lack of brand or whether it's lack of, you know, really being competitive in pay.
Speaker: I mean, there's a buying that lack of transparency in applying for the job.
Speaker: There are all, there's this, again, there's this calculus that happens when people say,
Speaker: you know, I want to apply for a job or not.
Speaker: And you have to stir the pot as much as possible to get first understand who you're competing against.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Going back to, you know, in some of, in some interviews, I use, use a term that I believe a lot in, and that is like recruiting battle cards where it's like, who are you recruiting against?
Speaker: And if you don't know who you're recruiting against, you should, because recruiting is a sales process.
Speaker: And you can go to Glassdoor and you can find out who you're recruiting against.
Speaker: And you can read what people are saying about your competitors and make sure when you're connecting with that, when you want to connect with that job seeker, that you're the alternative.
Speaker: Whatever people are complaining about, you've solved about your competitor, right?
Speaker: And so that's part of like building your battle cards, understanding exactly who you're competing with talent.
Speaker: But all of that should be, should manifest itself in the all powerful job ad because you have to realize you have to interest the reader
Speaker: You have to be transparent, you have to be competitive and quality connection yields a quality application.
Speaker: And I think we tend to forget all of that.
Speaker: It's just like, we think, oh, you didn't give me qualified applications.
Speaker: Well, you know, did you follow up quickly with the job seeker?
Speaker: Were you transparent?
Speaker: Were you competitive in compensation?
Speaker: All of that is about a quality of connection with the job seeker.
Speaker: And more importantly, what's important to the job seeker.
Speaker: And if all of that connects and checks all the boxes, then you've got a quality applicant.
Speaker: But if all of this happens, if all of this doesn't happen,
Speaker: regardless of how great your, you know, your marketplaces, your resume that you may have, you're not going to be successful at converting that candidate job seeker into an interview on a hire.
Speaker: I'm going to make sure everyone listening right now understands that I'm talking directly to them.
Speaker: Yes, that and I are having a conversation right now, but I'm talking to the person that is currently listening to this podcast.
Speaker: Pause it.
Speaker: I give you permission.
Speaker: What I want you to do is go to Google
Speaker: type in why your applicants hate you.
Speaker: Use my name, Brad Owens, or you can type in disrupt HR and type in why your applicants hate you.
Speaker: Literally the thing that got me started on this whole journey was that initial presentation that went viral about why your applicants hate you.
Speaker: It is everything to do with exactly what that just said.
Speaker: This will drive the point home.
Speaker: Okay, you can come back now.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: So anyway, yeah, Thad, you need to go watch that one because that will show you why I'm so passionate about exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker: This might be a fun conversation then to start turning us to.
Speaker: What's the first way that a company has been focused for so long on spray and pray?
Speaker: What's the first step for one of those companies to start doing this a better way?
Speaker: The first thing I would say is...
Speaker: look at your funnel and look at the steps in the recruiting process and track them.
Speaker: And you can't improve what you don't track.
Speaker: It's just life, right?
Speaker: So go through that process and stage process.
Speaker: And by the way, if you have a great colleague in marketing, go grab them, go talk to them, talk about their funnel, have a conversation with them, buy them lunch.
Speaker: I can tell you also from a recruiting perspective,
Speaker: as folks start to look at you internally as a more data-driven recruiting professional, it will open a lot of opportunity for you because most other, you know, most business processes are very data-driven.
Speaker: But first is you've got to track it.
Speaker: You've got to understand your funnel, your metrics, know your funnel, your metrics, what's happening behind the scenes.
Speaker: Once you track it and once you understand it,
Speaker: then you can start to really question, well, how do we improve it?
Speaker: What's the process?
Speaker: Be the job seeker.
Speaker: What happens when you apply for a job?
Speaker: How long does it take a recruiter to respond?
Speaker: What's that engagement look like, that entire process?
Speaker: I share with customers frequently, I said, imagine if you walked into, you know what people like to buy from Nordstrom?
Speaker: They like to buy from Nordstrom because you walk into Nordstrom, feels good, feels nice.
Speaker: You say hello, people are friendly.
Speaker: And you want to buy from there because they provide great customer service.
Speaker: And job seekers want the same thing too.
Speaker: As hard as it is to reject someone for a job, they still want something in return.
Speaker: And I think it's really important to think about that.
Speaker: it's okay to deliver bad news, but at least they're getting their expectations set through the process, if that's a concern for you all.
Speaker: But going back to the Nordstrom story, imagine if you walked into Nordstrom every day and said, hello, and no one responded.
Speaker: That's what's happening in our recruiting process.
Speaker: People are applying to a job, and for years we're not responding.
Speaker: People are saying, hello, hire me, and we aren't responding.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: How long, you know, the impact to brand is just tremendous.
Speaker: So could I be a devil's advocate just to see how you're potentially reacting to these types of things?
Speaker: So every single time I've ever brought this up and every single time I've worked with a customer that's, uh, is thinking, yeah, I know, but I don't have time.
Speaker: How, why is this even important to start?
Speaker: And how do you find time to do this?
Speaker: This takes so much time to respond to all these candidates.
Speaker: Well, I think there are a lot of solutions out there that can help you through that journey.
Speaker: And I think if you were able to dig into some of your applicant tracking system functionality, it's probably easier than you think.
Speaker: But it all starts with just understanding that there's a problem, that you strategically think that this is a problem you need to solve, and then look for the solutions in your current system that you're using.
Speaker: And I bet their solutions are most important.
Speaker: have the ability to easily trigger this process.
Speaker: Another thing you could do, believe it or not, as simple as it is, is add an autoresponder.
Speaker: Let's say you don't have an applicant tracking system and you just have hiring at your company name.
Speaker: Have your IT team add a little autoresponder saying, hey, thanks for your interest in our open rec.
Speaker: you know, we'll be in touch with you shortly, you know, and maybe add a link to, you know, maybe add a link to learn more about you, maybe add, you know, some of your, of your values that are important, but just receiving something on the other end is better than, is better than, you know, nothing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think that's one thing I think, I think like in many issues in business, I think we try to
Speaker: we try to solve a problem and manifest an issue in a way that we aren't necessarily breaking it into bite-sized chunks.
Speaker: And this is a very easy way in which you can use what you have, which isn't going to cost you a lot of time to actually provide value.
Speaker: And little by little, if you do this little by little, you will improve your perceived reputation,
Speaker: you know, as an employer of choice.
Speaker: And that's what it's all about.
Speaker: People talk.
Speaker: And if you don't think people talk, go to Glassdoor and type in your company name and hold your breath.
Speaker: Watch out.
Speaker: That hurts.
Speaker: I have been in those meetings where they say, well, we don't need to do this.
Speaker: I'm like, go to Glassdoor.
Speaker: And then watching the look on their face.
Speaker: It's if you are currently scared to go to Glassdoor and research your company name, that tells you everything you need to know.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So, all right, we've given them the first easy step of don't be a candidate black hole.
Speaker: Don't be the person that is just silent.
Speaker: Don't be the company that says nothing.
Speaker: After you feel like we can increase that candidate satisfaction by at least giving them something to respond to, um, how do we go about widening our net from
Speaker: our marketing brothers and sisters side of the world.
Speaker: How would we go about posting a job or do we even post a job?
Speaker: What would be kind of your first steps?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the first step I would say is, you know, there are a lot of ways within your local market where you can focus your energy.
Speaker: And I would say that's part of an overall process and plan as you think about this.
Speaker: So, you know, I said earlier this movement of like programmatic where you're focused on the right audience at the right time at the right place.
Speaker: All that's a movement that's been happening.
Speaker: We're integrated with most of those programmatic, all of those programmatic systems to help orchestrate job advertising and recruitment advertising, which has been great for us.
Speaker: And we continue to use our data to help ensure that we're reaching the right audiences for those partners.
Speaker: The second thing that I would say is before we kind of automate and drive a lot more candidates in the funnel, I would say, let's try to automate whatever we want to automate.
Speaker: Because if we automate whatever we can automate,
Speaker: that leaves more time to connect with humans.
Speaker: And that's what we're in the business for is connecting with humans in a lot of levels, right?
Speaker: And it's part of, you know, it is the superpower of recruiting is that human connection.
Speaker: And so the first thing I would say is, all right, you've got this idea, you think, hey, you know, you're buying into this idea of,
Speaker: It's not about a single job posting in a single destination.
Speaker: It's about finding the right audiences at the right time or the right place, connecting data from the applicant tracking system to be informed those decisions so that I can drive the right candidates.
Speaker: Now, when you do all of that, now you've got to automate that process because now you're going to have a lot more candidates in the funnel.
Speaker: And if you just have all these candidates in the funnel now and you're not automating the process,
Speaker: Then what happens is you're just creating, you're perpetuating this bad experience of not contacting the candidates within 24 hours of applying for the job, not giving the ability to immediately sync and find to schedule an interview.
Speaker: So I would say now focus on that mid funnel activity, which is what I can automate, which depending on what systems you're using can provide.
Speaker: Once you've automated that and you figured out, all right, well, how can I make it easy for qualified candidates to schedule an interview?
Speaker: How can I qualify the experience a little bit more?
Speaker: Then it's, okay, now I can invest and now I can...
Speaker: you know, put the pedal down to ensure that I'm accessing and advertising to these audiences.
Speaker: But I wouldn't do any of that until I have kind of this mid funnel automation secure, because then you're just going to create a bad experience.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Agreed.
Speaker: Completely agreed.
Speaker: Uh, so I realized that we've been dancing around this, but please tell everyone what Talroo is.
Speaker: Please tell them, please tell them what this can do for them.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So Tauru is a talent matching platform.
Speaker: We spend most of our time in helping companies recruit frontline team members.
Speaker: And we do that, help companies reach the right audience at the right time, at the right place, at the right price within the Tauru ad platform.
Speaker: So we power billions of job searches, billions of job searches a month.
Speaker: And so companies use us to help source and advertise their jobs and again, find the audiences.
Speaker: that are right for them and that can hopefully they can convert to an interview into a hire.
Speaker: So that's how we help companies today.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: So this whole filling your funnel with applicants thing.
Speaker: Yeah, but you work before that even happens.
Speaker: Work before that even happened, you know, orchestrate kind of that talent matching experience.
Speaker: Companies, we sync directly with an applicant tracking system.
Speaker: So, you know, companies, you know, say you're using ISIMs, smart recruiters, whatever applicant tracking system you're using.
Speaker: We work with them and we connect and attract prospects to the applicant tracking system.
Speaker: We're not another system you need to use.
Speaker: And those applicants will then funnel into your current applicant tracking system so that you can kind of go through your motions and your recruiting process.
Speaker: So, you know, I like to think of it as the new way to advertise jobs that's focused on, you know, productive experiences.
Speaker: It's focused on quality.
Speaker: It's focused on all the different things.
Speaker: But what I will say to you is that we can be great at reaching the right audiences.
Speaker: We can be great at advertising and ensuring we're reaching the right audiences so you can drive the candidates you need to hire.
Speaker: But if we aren't spending time on brand, if we aren't spending time on transparency and understanding the market,
Speaker: hard to, it's, it's hard to drive that, that top of funnel candidate volume without more of a holistic view in what it means to attract the right team members.
Speaker: So I always encourage, you know, companies to really take a step back and think about, you know, what it means to be holistic in your thought and your views on recruiting.
Speaker: And that, that starts, that starts day one, which is
Speaker: you know, our North star, you know, where are we going?
Speaker: What are we doing?
Speaker: And how that manifests itself in our brand and how we treat and connect with our job seekers.
Speaker: Kind of makes such a huge difference.
Speaker: You know, like every,
Speaker: recruiting function that I have seen, worked with, advised, partnered with, whatever it might be.
Speaker: Every single one of them starts with, well, we have to be on this job board.
Speaker: And I immediately push back and be like, no, that's not where your process starts.
Speaker: Your process starts well, well before that.
Speaker: You may not even need the job board.
Speaker: Sorry, job boards.
Speaker: You may not even need them.
Speaker: But I can't tell you how much I appreciate the conversation and how much I appreciate you giving this kind of knowledge to everyone.
Speaker: Where would you like people to come and find out more?
Speaker: Yeah, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Speaker: And hopefully, if there are any ways we can help you, we're there.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Well, I have all the links in the description below.
Speaker: Thank you for coming on and sharing your opinion and letting people know more about what you're seeing in the marketplace because it's always great to get different perspectives.
Speaker: So thank you.
Speaker: I appreciate it, truly.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: Thanks so much, Brad.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: All right, everyone.
Speaker: Well, that was yet another episode of the Transform Recruiting Podcast.
Speaker: If you have any questions on this or other episodes, you can head over to transformrecruiting.com or shoot me a note.
Speaker: It's hello at bradowens.com.
Speaker: I will be back with another episode next week.
Speaker: Until then, I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your week and we'll talk soon.
