The Changing State of Talent Acquisition

This week we welcome Chandan Golla to the podcast. Chandan is Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer for Included.ai, a DEI-first people analytics platform. Prior to co-founding Included.ai, Chandan spent more than 20 years delivering compelling experiences powered by data, having led product teams at eBay, OneTrust, and Integris Software.Topics include: the “touchy feely” nature of DEI efforts historically, DEI as a catalyst for the HR data revolution, closing the gap between DEI awareness and small actions that improve outcomes, the backwards-looking nature of most dashboards, the value of “live” DEI data, the challenge of setting realistic DEI goals, corporate accountability and the public sharing of DEI metrics, the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in supporting DEI initiatives, how AI uncovers hidden DEI insights, the use of segmentation to deliver tailored benefits and services to underrepresented sub-groups, and the connection between segmentation and intersectionality.

This week we welcome Adam Jackson to the podcast. Adam is a serial entrepreneur (Dr. On Demand, DriverSide.com, MarketSquare.com), startup advisor, and technology investor (Cambrian Asset Management). Adam's most recent venture, Braintrust, is the first and largest decentralized talent network completely controlled by its users.Topics include: the distinction between user-owned networks and corporate-owned networks, the concept of a “rake” as it relates to talent networks, why middlemen tend to extract an increasing amount of value over time, the case of DoorDash and stolen driver tips, how blockchain tokens help keep rakes low (or negative), the role of governments in regulating the gig economy, the historical purpose of corporations and the coming “unbundling” of labor, how elastic workforces benefit employers and workers alike, the likelihood of finding job security in the gig economy, the question of who “owns” a freelancer's work history, and how the Braintrust token serves as both an incentive mechanism and a governance system for the Braintrust network.

This week we welcome Delfina Stabile and Xavi Martinez Salcedo to the podcast. Delfina began her career in Buenos Aires, where she worked as a Recruiting Analyst for Michael Page, before joining Uber—first out of Mexico City, and currently out of San Francisco, where she serves as Talent Attraction Manager. Prior to joining Uber, where he currently serves as Head of Global Strategic Initiatives, Talent Attraction, Xavi served as Program Manager, Executive Search and Talent Management for Philips and Manager of People Technology for TomTom.Topics include: how the labor shortage is intensifying the war for tech talent, what matters to tech talent beyond salary, the importance of closing the feedback loop when conducting employee surveys, the tradeoffs associated with different organizational structures and the employer brand function, strategies for bridge building between employer branding and consumer branding teams, the importance of creating action plans prior to launching employee engagement surveys, how connecting an employer's EVP to the company's broader mission creates a stronger brand, how to measure ROI of employer brand initiatives, the value of discovering what doesn't work, talent acquisition as a cost center vs. revenue creator, and how organizations are navigating the post-COVID return to office.

This week we welcome Amit Parmar to the podcast. With more than 16 years of experience in technology and human capital management, Amit spent time at IBM, Deloitte, and Unisys before founding Cliquify, an AI-powered content marketing platform that drives equity in recruitment.Topics include: the fourth industrial revolution, how AI makes the current revolution more “sophisticated” than previous industrial revolutions, the plummeting cost of data analysis and processing, how automation stands to eliminate (and create) jobs, the likelihood of universal basic income becoming a reality in our lifetime, the concept of employees as “customers” of HR, time versus money as “currencies” in talent attraction, the question of where employer brand sits (and should sit) within an organization, how the labor shortage has elevated the stature of talent acquisition and employer brand, NPS as a measure of employee “stickiness”, how employee referral bonuses can cloud the meaning of NPS scores, and how employee referral programs can impede diversity and inclusion efforts.

Episode DescriptionThis week we welcome Jeffrey Spector to the podcast. Jeffrey spent more than six years at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he served as Chief of Staff to Melinda Gates, before co-founding Karat, a service that helps CTO's and CHRO's make technical interviewing a customer-centric experience. Topics include: the surging demand for software engineers, the parallels between training effective teachers and training effective interviewers, why interviewing can be a lonely craft, the notion of a professional interviewer, soft vs. hard skills often found in professional interviewers, the importance of offering “redo” interviews, the concept of a “false negative” as applied to candidate interviews, how candidate interviews can be leveraged post-hire, the meaning of the “access gap,” why many well-intentioned DE&I efforts are ineffective, how democratizing information about interview processes supports diversity efforts, and alternate education paths for technical roles.

This week we welcome Lindsay Witcher to the podcast. As a member of Randstad RiseSmart's global leadership team, Lindsay guides the development of solutions that empower talent leaders to successfully manage mobility within their organizations. We sat down to discuss her recent article, “DeBunking 4 Myths About Reskilling Your Workforce.”Topics include: the connection between the current labor shortage and skills mismatches, how the pandemic has changed employee expectations, the shortening half-life of skills, the declining value of college degrees in the labor market, alternative approaches to post-secondary education, skills-based hiring and the limitations of current application tracking systems, the issue of newly upskilled workers leaving an organization for other opportunities, how to weigh the cost of a significant pay increase vs. replacing a lost employee, why entry-level employees are less likely to be offered upskilling opportunities, how company ‘eco-systems' can lead to mutually beneficial talent pools, and the distinction between attrition and regrettable loss.

This week we welcome Ali Hackett to the podcast. After starting her career in the agency world, Ali spent more than 15 years as a talent acquisition and employer brand consultant before co-founding Meet & Engage, an award winning candidate experience technology. We sat down to discuss virtual hiring events in a post-pandemic recruiting landscape.Topics include: how the pandemic has accelerated adoption of live virtual events, the challenge of standing out in a world characterized by “screen fatigue,” social mobility and the democratization of information, the use of talent personas to create personalized experiences, how positive candidate experiences lead to employer brand advocacy, key considerations when evaluating virtual event platforms, how to measure ROI of virtual event platform investments, the future of chatbots in recruiting, chatbot use cases and limitations, the importance of “humanizing” chatbot interactions, and how to create “social style” candidate experiences.

This week we welcome Bryan Adams to the podcast. As Founder and CEO of Ph.Creative, a leading employer branding and talent attraction agency, Bryan has spent more than 17 years helping organizations build world-class employer brands. His creative, unconventional and even controversial methodologies have changed the way people think about employer branding and EVP's. We sat down to discuss the state of the industry as a whole, as well as an article he recently wrote challenging the importance of retention as a metric against which to measure talent acquisition efforts. Topics include: the maturation of employer branding as a business function, the stubborn misconception that employer brands are “created,” good and bad aspirational branding, internal collaboration (and conflict) between employer branding and consumer branding teams, how strong employer brands generate revenue and value for consumer brands, the difference between retention and regrettable loss, how supporting employees who leave for better opportunities leads to higher performing cultures, the intersection of politics and the employer branding, the impact of virtual work on employer branding, and how remote work serves as a “litmus test” for strong employer brands.

This week we welcome Raghav Singh to the podcast. Raghav's career in talent acquisition spans more than 30 years, including chapters at Taleo (where he served as Product Manager from 2000-2004), UnitedHealthGroup, KornFerry, and Salesforce, where he currently serves as Director of Product leading a team building HR and talent acquisition products. Raghav also regularly appears as an author in noted industry publications, including ERE, where he's written extensively about the pre- and post-pandemic labor market.Topics include: the advent and evolution of the ATS as a SaaS product, the commoditization of HR technologies, the record high numbers of job openings in the US, the impact of government incentives on hiring, how lack of quality childcare and eldercare has forced women out of the workforce, the persistent bias against the resume “gap”, Baby Boomers and “forced” early retirements, the challenges of skills mismatches between recent college graduates and available jobs, the difference between American and European approaches to addressing unemployment, the long-term implications of birthrate falling below replacement levels, the outlook for immigrant workers entering the job market, and the effects of remote work on talent pools and wages.

This week we welcome Scott MacGregor to the podcast. Prior to entering the world of talent acquisition, Scott spent 17 years as Chief Revenue Officer for Flo-Tech, where he saw the company grow from five employees to more than 300. Along the way, his experiences with recruiting systems and processes led him to believe that talent acquisition is fundamentally broken, which inspired him to start his own talent strategy firm, SomethingNew. Scott is also the proud Founder & CEO of the Talent Champions Council, a private membership community designed to mobilize expertise in talent strategy from the best in corporations, the military and professional sports.Topics include: the value of applying first principles thinking to talent acquisition, why traditional recruiting fee structures are illogical, the “epidemic” of treating recruiting as a cost center, the disconnect between the importance of HR and its lack of attention from the C-suite, why many recruiters lack the skills required to effectively vet job candidates, what professional sports and the military can teach us about recruiting, how to use scorecards to make data-driven hiring decisions, the importance of investing in employees with robust onboarding and training programs, and the post-COVID outlook for talent acquisition.

This week we welcome Lindsay Pedersen to the podcast. Lindsay spent her early career as a brand manager at Clorox before starting her own brand strategy consulting firm, Ironclad Brand Strategy. Her recent book, “Forging an Ironclad Brand: A Leader's Guide” provides an accessible overview of what branding is (and isn't) and offers a multitude of real world examples to demonstrate how strong brands help businesses make better decisions—from product design, to customer experience, to talent acquisition.Topics include: the various meanings and incarnations of “brand,” the concept of brand as a relationship between a company and an audience (i.e., customers, candidates), the distinction between “functional” (rational) and higher order (emotional) benefits of a product or service, the connection between strong brands and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, how strong brands serve as “north stars” to guide business decisions, the recent emergence of “employer brand” as a concept and its connection to an organization's consumer brand, the value of having a singular unified brand for both employees and customers, the challenge of rehabilitating a brand with a poor reputation, the four P's of positioning, and the importance of building strong connections between talent acquisition and marketing.

This week we welcome Hung Lee to the podcast. With more than 20 years of recruiting experience, Hung is the creator and curator of the wildly popular “Recruiting Brainfood” newsletter and community, and Founder of Workshape.io, a next generation matching service for tech talent.Topics include: the origin and growth of Recruiting Brainfood, the historical nature of resumes, alternative approaches to visualizing the interests and goals of tech talent, the inherent subjectivity of words and the implications for recruiting, the switching cost associated with moving away from the resume, employee experience and career pathing, the shift to remote work and the digitization of workforce behavior, opportunities to automate the ~170 unique tasks of a recruiter, and the use of AI for sourcing, scheduling and sentiment analysis. 

This week we welcome Aaron Kraljev to the podcast. Aaron began his career at Wells Fargo, where he served as VP - Marketing Program Manager for the Student Banking Program, before transitioning in 2009 to lead the organization's employer brand and candidate advocacy program. At the time, the concept of employer branding was still in its infancy, uniquely positioning Aaron to watch the industry evolve alongside his own career. Today Aaron brings his employer brand expertise to Fisher Investments, where he serves as Group Vice President for Talent Acquisition and  Employer Brand. Topics include: the recent history of employer branding, the connections between consumer marketing and talent acquisition, the challenge of translating talent acquisition concepts and nomenclature to marketing “speak” (and vice versa), the growing importance of data in employer branding functions, approaches to measuring ROI of employer brand investments, the tradeoffs of outsourcing talent acquisition efforts, the hidden costs of making bad hires and leaving positions unfilled, the future of job boards, and the value of a strong consumer brand for talent attraction.

This week we welcome Vivek Ravisankar, CEO of HackerRank, to the podcast. Vivek co-founded HackerRank in 2012 with the mission of using skills assessments to match developers with the right jobs. Since then, the company has helped more than 2,000 organizations go beyond résumés and ‘pedigree' to find talent with proven programming skills. Topics include: the advantages and limitations of using résumés in hiring for technical roles, the issues with relying on educational or career ‘pedigrees' as proxies for technical skill, the biases introduced when screening based on measures like GPA, why software development has been one of the last fields to “digitize” its screening processes, the role of emotions in making hiring decisions, the hidden costs of communication when hiring a remote workforce, the meaning of culture and the implications for remote workforces, the necessary ingredients for creating a thriving tech eco-system, how a city's “vibe” dictates which industries will thrive there, the attrition problem facing engineering departments, and the ways in which technology can enable career development within an organization. 

This week we welcome Francis Suarez, Mayor of Miami, to the podcast. Mayor Suarez made news in recent months with his Twitter activity promoting Miami as the next Silicon Valley. We sat down to discuss the tweet that went viral, how Miami is capitalizing on this “lightning in a bottle” moment, and the city's efforts to build a workforce development pipeline for tech talent of the future.     Topics include: the efforts of local governments to attract employers and employees, the concept of employer branding as applied to cities, Miami's divergent approaches to tax and public safety policy, the role of a mayor as a city's chief brand ambassador, Miami's pitch for Amazon's HQ2, the issue of gentrification, Miami's ongoing campaign to re-brand itself as a new tech hub, and how the city is cultivating tech talent of the future with its “Miami for Everyone” initiative.  

This week we welcome Ashutosh Garg to the podcast. Ashutosh is CEO & Co-founder of Eightfold.ai, the first Talent Intelligence Platform to address the talent gap by harnessing the power of AI and search, and Founder of Bloomreach, a leading vendor for Digital Experience Platforms. Prior to founding these enterprises, Ashutosh managed Search and Personalization efforts at both Google and IBM Research. With 6000+ research citations, 50+ patents, and 35+ peer-reviewed research publications, Ashutosh is one of the world's experts in machine learning.Topics include: hiring for potential vs. hiring for past skills and experiences, the connection between hiring for potential and diversity, the limitations of resumes and their modern-day equivalents, the growing problem of attrition, the mismatched incentives between advertisers (employers) and job boards, the importance of viewing talent acquisition and talent management holistically, the concept of a “half-life” as applied to skills, the hyper-specialization of jobs, “good” attrition vs. “bad” attrition, augmented intelligence vs. artificial intelligence, the importance of transparency when deploying AI-powered solutions, the rise of remote work and its effects on pay parity and talent pools, and and employer branding for cities. 

This week we welcome Alysha M. Campbell to the podcast. With more than a decade of experience as both a recruiter and HR business partner, Alysha is currently Founder and Principal of CultureShift HR, where she helps companies utilize and engage their best talent while creating diverse and purposeful work environments that help businesses grow and thrive.Topics include: the meaning of culture in an HR context, understanding culture as the “why” behind a business, the difference between company culture and employer brand, the “checkbox” mentality behind many HR initiatives, the effects of remote work on company culture, approaches to setting realistic goals for diversity and inclusion, the importance of building new pipelines for under-represented STEM talent, and how to measure progress on DE&I initiatives.

This week we welcome Laurie Ruettimann to the podcast. As the face of the popular “Punk Rock HR” podcast, Laurie will need no introduction for many of our listeners. Laurie began her career working in HR operations and recruiting for such organizations as Monsanto, Alberto-Culver (now Unilever), and Pfizer, before leaving corporate America altogether to speak truth to power through her websites (The Cynical Girl and Punk Rock HR), podcast, public speaking engagements, and books. Launching on January 12th and available now for pre-order, Laurie's latest book, Betting on You: How to Put Yourself First And (Finally) Take Control of Your Career, is an essential guide for employees hoping to work more effectively and approach their jobs in a smarter (and healthier) manner in the new year. Topics include: the importance of personal accountability in fostering positive workplaces, the practical meaning of empathy, why HR initiatives often fail to live up to their promises, the pitfalls of asking for employee feedback without a process in place to implement change, how to retain control of your time as a job candidate and employee, the need for “un-sanitized” feedback on employers, how the independent workforce is shifting the employer-employee power dynamic, universal basic income as a tool for employee (and entrepreneur) empowerment, HR as the intersection of work, power, politics and money, surveillance capitalism, and the future of remote work.

In our final episode of 2020, we are guest-free and share our reflections on Change State's second year in business, the lessons we learned along the way, and the topics and trends we'll be watching as we look ahead to the new year.Topics include: Change State's growth during a pandemic year, the value of founder-created content for organic business growth, the challenges of starting a content engine from scratch, our approach to hiring our first employee(s), soft vs. hard skills in making hiring decisions, the difficulty of writing high quality job descriptions, the meaning of company culture in start-ups with minimal headcount, the pros and cons of the gig economy, the bane of Powerpoint presentations, the economic ripple of effects of remote workforces, and employer branding for cities.

This week we welcome Kelly Robinson to the podcast. Kelly has founded numerous ventures in the talent acquisition space, including a staffing firm (MECS Communications), a job distribution platform (Broadbean), a marketing content sharing tool (Paiger), and most recently, RedDotMedia, a recruitment marketing agency.Topics include: the future of business travel, Graham's beard, why many organizations lack insight into their top sources of applications and hires, the problem of overworked and underpaid recruiters, the use of video conferencing background images as a basis for evaluating job candidates, reactive vs. proactive recruiting, the mistake of equating talent acquisition with human resources, approaches to incentivizing quality hires, the lack of quality data in talent acquisition, and employee engagement survey fatigue. 

This week we welcome Elliott Garms to the podcast. Elliott's career in talent acquisition dates back to childhood, when he helped run his father's executive search business out of the family basement. Much has changed since these early days of manually inputting paper resumes into a then-new-fangled system called an ATS; Elliott went on to found or co-found numerous tech recruiting ventures, including Tech in the Middle, HubFunnel, Dev Bootcamp, HumanConnections.io, and most recently, humanpredictions, a comprehensive database of tech talent that leverages public data to help clients find tech talent outside of LinkedIn.Topics include: the importance of bringing timing to sourcing, public vs. private “signaling” as it relates to recruiting, why high demand talent is often less likely to maintain up-to-date public profiles, how activity on platforms like GitHub can reveal an impending career switch, the natural connection between predictive sourcing and candidate nurturing, the importance of relationship building, the issue of job-hopping, and the rise of remote work and its implications for tech recruiting.

This week we welcome Mahe Bayireddi to the podcast. As a member of Forbes Technology Council, Mahe has co-founded multiple startups, including BHSP Nexus Software Consulting, BijaHealth, SnipSnap, and most recently, Phenom, where he currently leads as Chief Executive Officer.Topics include: why effective leaders must be effective recruiters, Phenom's audacious goal of helping one billion people find the right job, the importance of viewing talent acquisition and talent experience management from a global perspective, the value of seeing the big picture when thinking about workforce diversity, why focusing on D&I with hiring managers (the “interview” stage) can be more effective than focusing on frontline recruiters, approaches to setting realistic D&I goals and measuring progress by industry or role grouping, how to use AI to identify opportunities for improving D&I across all stages of the funnel, the concern about amplifying an organization's existing biases with “black box” AI systems, and the future of remote work in a post-pandemic economy.  

This week we're guest-free and discuss the nominees for Recruiting Brief's MVP award in the category of employer branding as well as Glassdoor's new “Review Intelligence” offering.Topics include: the impact of COVID on employer brands, the ways in which our predictions in March proved (in)accurate, whether an organization's pandemic response is a basis for a differentiated employer brand, the rise of remote work and its effects on company culture, the evolving meaning of “work-life balance,” the importance of creating processes and frameworks to reinforce an organization's commitment to its employer brand pillars, how employee referral programs can be misleading indicators of employer brand health, the importance of combining NPS with other employee satisfaction metrics, the ways in which virtual meetings have deepened employee-employee connections, the evolution of employee wellness initiatives during COVID times, and our early impressions of Glassdoor's new “Review Intelligence” offering.

This week we welcome Richard Carsley to the podcast. Rick has led talent acquisition teams at a number of well-known brands, including Farmers Insurance, Bankers Life and Casualty Company, TSYS, IKEA, and most recently, Freedom Mortgage, where he currently serves as Director of Talent Acquisition. Topics include: the superiority of Wawa pizza subs, the FinTech recruitment landscape during the 2020 pandemic, the synergies between mass market consumer brands and their talent brands, the differences between “awareness” marketing and job-specific marketing, how (and why) recruitment marketing lags consumer marketing in its approaches to truly understanding its target “customers”, how job boards have failed to adapt to the explosion of remote work opportunities, why posting remote jobs nationwide may be counterproductive from a cost/efficiency point-of-view, the different challenges posed by too-many and too-few applications for a given requisition, how to effectively deploy gamification to automate assessments at scale, the double-edged sword of employee referral programs, how employee referral incentives can undermine the value of NPS as a employer brand health metric, and the future of industry conferences and trade shows.

This week we welcome Morgan Llewellyn to the podcast. As a trained data scientist, Morgan shares his wealth of experience from a career spanning multiple industries, with stints at Salesforce, Predictive Partner, and eventually Jobvite, where he currently serves as Chief Data Scientist.Topics include: the history and purview of “data science,” how the explosion of available data in recent years has increased the demand for data scientists, the challenges and opportunities presented by this new wellspring of “big data,” the importance of keeping analysis rooted in specific business problems and use cases, the different forms of bias that exist within the recruiting function, how seemingly minor differences in job descriptions and skill requirements can have significant effects on the types of talent an organization attracts, how AI can help organizations identify biases within recruitment processes (and what to do about them), approaches to addressing D&I by expanding talent pools, and logical starting points for organizations newly focused on identifying and correcting biases in their systems and tools.

This week we welcome Prem Kumar to the podcast. Before co-founding Humanly, an Y Combinator-accelerated startup focused on improving the efficiency of candidate screening, scheduling, and engagement at scale, Prem spent ten tears at Microsoft, where he was responsible for delivery and operations of all software initiatives for the organization's HR portal. He also served as Director of Product at TINYpulse, an employee survey and engagement platform.Topics include: the meaning of “accessible for all” with regard to HR tools and tech, the prevalence of male-gendered words in job descriptions, why years of experience often isn't predictive of an employee's success, how technology can reduce our reliance on resumes as screening shortcuts, how an organization's chosen mode of interviewing candidates (e.g., video, phone, chat) can introduce biases against candidates with certain personality types or communication styles, the importance of using candidate feedback to improve hiring team outreach and communication, and differing approaches to measuring employee impact or “employee lifetime value.”    

This week we welcome Lucy Williams to the podcast. Lucy's distinguished career in talent acquisition spans more than twenty years, with stints at such organizations as RP International, IBM, and most recently, Visa, where she led a team as Regional TA Director for Central Europe, Middle East and Africa.Topics include: the similarities and differences between talent acquisition functions in US, the Middle East, and Africa, how and why hiring timelines can vary widely by market, the importance of creating a robust workforce plan for multi-national organizations, proactive vs. reacting recruiting, the necessary inputs to create a viable workforce plan, getting beyond the “cost center” mindset in talent acquisition, internal mobility as an crucial component of an effective TA strategy, the meaning of “company culture,” the difference between highlighting individual employees' personal brands and an organization's employer brand, and the relationship between company culture and employer brand.

This week we welcome Bas van de Haterd back to the podcast (our first repeat guest!). Bas proudly identifies as a “professional snoop” — a title that captures his more than 15 years of experience as an HR consultant, candidate assessment and experience expert, and frequent conference speaker. Topics include: the problems with using questionnaire-based assessments in recruiting, why game-based assessments are more accurate for testing cognitive skills and assessing personality traits, the difference between conscious and unconscious “bias” in candidate self-perceptions, how our frame of reference influences our perceptions of ourselves, how pre-screening technology can reduce bias in assessing job candidates, the parallels between assessing “chemistry” in romantic relationships vs. business relationships, the meaning and implications of application order bias, how pre-selection technologies can help reduce application order bias, the difference between true AI and “explainable” AI, the concerns about relying on AI to make “black box” recruiting decisions, and how using employee performance data to predict future-

This week we're guest-free and begin with a recent ERE article about AI and screening bias, before unpacking an article from Bas van de Haterd about the future of digital assessments.Topics include: biases in screening and assessments, the ways in which AI can amplify (or minimize) the biases of the human recruiters who use them, the problem of training assessment tools on employee datasets that have inherent biases, how rising employment has increased the importance of effective screening at scale, the value of “pre-screening,” how the sorting problem is different for volume vs. professional roles, the connection between the shifting educational landscape and the declining value of resumes, the difference between using assessments for hard skills vs. culture and personality “fit”, how reducing reliance on resumes and traditional educational milestones can support diversity and inclusion initiatives, and how the preference for candidates with a good stage presence introduces a bias against otherwise qualified introverts.

This week we welcome James Ellis to the podcast. A self-proclaimed employer branding "nerd", James is a leading voice in the world of talent branding, having led EB initiatives at GroupOn and Universum before assuming his latest role at Roku. He's also the author of several books, including "Talent Chooses You" and "The Employer Brand Handbook Volume 1: The Real World Guide to Working With Recruiters."Topics include: The relative lack of formal education programs for employer branding in the US, what the COVID pandemic and George Floyd situation has (and hasn't) changed about the nature of employer branding, how the rise of remote work has challenged the traditional notion of company culture, why employee testimonial videos often fail to be differentiating, the ways in which employer branding is (and isn't) about people, how formal and informal rewards reveal an organization's values, the similarities between understanding an employer brand and psychotherapy, why there's no such thing as a "great" company to work for, why recruiters tend to be resistant to process changes, the difference between backward- and forward-looking recruiting metrics, why measuring quality of hire is difficult at scale, how to use the lens of "rewards" to attract candidates most likely to thrive in your organization, the importance of understanding your employer brand's competitive set, understanding recruiter bias as a kind of workflow shortcut, how generic job descriptions undermine recruiting, and the importance of salary transparency in job descriptions.

This week we welcome Ed Pedini to the podcast. Ed has worn numerous hats in the HR space, from practice director at an RPO helping start-ups scale their workforces, to Co-Founder of All2.io, an employee experience solution, to his current role as Director of Customer Success at Seekout, an AI-powered sourcing tool for recruiters. Topics include: how establishing recruiting processes is different for start-ups than for established organizations, the "oil tanker effect" larger companies face, the value of data and analytics, why candidate experience remains low priority for many organizations, the importance of seeing the emotional dimension of job applications from the candidate's POV, how to provide great candidate experiences even for applicants who are not offered a job, how to move past the "cost-center" mindset surrounding recruiting, the ways in which job boards have become victims of their own successes, the distinction between EVP's that "repel" talent vs. encourage talent to "self-select" into an organization, how legacy ATS's have failed to adapt to modern recruiting practices, and why pre-hire technology often fails to understand the workflows of its core users.

This week we welcome Adam Gordon to the podcast. Adam's career in talent acquisition spans more than twenty years, from his early days sourcing accountants as a frontline recruiter, to a stint at PWC as a consultant in the organisation's HR practice, to his current role as Co-Founder and CEO of Candidate.ID. Topics include: the meaning of candidate nurturing, how to apply the marketing concept of "total addressable market" to recruitment, why cold sourcing talent is generally inefficient, the similarities and differences between consumer purchases with long purchase cycles and job searches, considerations when balancing the "long-tail" of candidate nurturing against the immediate needs of filling open roles, how to find bandwidth on TA teams to reallocate to candidate nurturing activities, why toddlers are prone to interrupting podcasts, how to set realistic expectations for ROI on nurturing tools and campaigns, why recruitment CRM's often fail to deliver value for candidates and TA teams alike, and the redundancies that exist between ATS's and CRM's.

This week we discuss Google's announcement of its plans to disrupt the higher education market by offering skill-focused certifications for as little as $49/month. We also announce our new initiative, EqualOpportunityHires.com, for bringing equal opportunity jobs to underrepresented talent where they already “live” online.Topics include: the fundamental issues facing American higher ed, the stigma attached to online education, how traditional degrees may (or may not) retain their value in the job marketplace, the inherent recruiter bias against non-degree candidates, the current state and limitations of diversity job boards, the gaps left by creating job boards as destinations, the meaning of “candidate-centric” when it comes to diversity hiring, how to bridge the gap between equal opportunity employers and community organizations, the connection between “inclusion” and employee upskilling, and how providing career paths that lead outside your organization can help create a compelling EVP.

This week we welcome Bas van de Haterd to the podcast. Bas proudly identifies as a “professional snoop” — a title that captures his more than 15 years of experience as an HR consultant, candidate assessment and experience expert, and frequent conference speaker. Topics include: the myriad dimensions of candidate experience, how optimized career sites boost candidate conversion rates, the disconnect between organizational D&I goals and the employee experience portrayed on career sites, the issues raised by having marketing or IT “own” your corporate career site, why career sites are “multipliers” for candidate flow, the distinction between having analytic skills and an analytic mindset, why résumés make poor predictors of employee success, alternative approaches to cognitive and personality assessments, and strategies for removing unwanted bias from candidate screening and assessments. 

This week we welcome Jody Ordioni to the podcast. Jody is Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, founder of Achieve Engagement, and author of The Talent Brand, and award-winning book on structured approaches to brand building.Topics include: the value of viewing consumer and talent brands holistically, the limitations of content-first approaches to talent branding, the distinction between “employer” brand and “talent” brand, how strong talent brands build equity for their consumer counterparts, the importance of getting beyond internal “hunches” when defining an talent brand, why employee surveys are foundational to structured talent brand initiatives, how good surveys support employee engagement, the key characteristics of a strong talent brand, why HR (and talent brand) has historically been viewed as a cost center, how to measure ROI of talent brand with “business” metrics, the connection between recruiter performance metrics and talent brand health, and the connection between diversity and inclusion efforts and talent branding.Connect with Jody OrdioniLinkedInWebsite: BrandemixBook: The Talent BrandAchieve Engagement

This week we welcome Todd Davis to the podcast. Todd's career spans more than 25 years in talent acquisition, from his current role as a Global Talent Executive at IBM, to leadership roles at Ancestry, Amazon, and WarnerMedia.Topics include: why HR lags behind other departments in analytic prowess, the limitations of focusing recruiting efforts on the top of the funnel (“we need more candidates”), approaches to up-skilling recruiters and hiring managers, how data analysis can reveal surprising opportunities in candidate sourcing and selection, the ways in which good data “tells its own story,” the good/fast/cheap triangle of project management, differing approaches to measuring candidate quality, how implementing consistent metrics across recruiters can lead to better insights, how to think about the apparent tension between analytics and the “human” side of talent acquisition, the role of intuition in making hire decisions, the value of conducting regular interviewer process audits, how flashy new pre-hire technology can distract from talent acquisition goals, why analytic dashboards have risen in prominence, and how dashboards focus our attention in good ways and bad.

This week we share our thoughts on the recent announcement regarding the Glassdoor/Indeed partnership, and discuss the results of a recent poll we conducted regarding LinkedIn's Workforce Diversity Report.Topics include: what we know about the new Glassdoor/Indeed partnership, the migration of Glassdoor sponsored jobs to Indeed, what is likely to happen to existing Glassdoor sponsored jobs packages, the implications of the partnership for job aggregators and the candidate experience, the future of Glassdoor (and Indeed) ratings, likely scenarios for the merging of reviews from both sites, the potential impact on staffing companies and RPO's, unanswered questions about quick/easy apply and ATS integration, LinkedIn's lack of minority representation in its leadership teams, how labor market statistics can provide a benchmark against which to measure D&I efforts, the connection between under-represented employee groups and educational attainment, the value of publicly sharing an organization's D&I statistics, the difficulty of connecting minorities with forward-thinking employers, and how employer can meet under-represented “where they live.” LinksPress release: Glassdoor and Indeed Partner to Help Employers Hire More EfficientlyArticle: 2019 LinkedIn Workforce Diversity Report

This week we start the show with a continuation of our ongoing discussion of candidate experience, and end with a deep-dive into our recent blog post, "Diversity and Inclusion Is Not an Employer Brand Strategy."Topics include: how job aggregators negatively impact the candidate experience, why Glassdoor has paused its job board partnership program, why quantity has historically trumped quality with regard to job board traffic, alternate job board revenue models that prioritize candidate experience, the four key qualities of a strong EVP, why diversity and inclusion is not a basis for a differentiated employer brand, how strong EVP's are inherently exclusionary, the apparent tension between a strong EVP and D&I efforts, and the question of whether D&I is a "table stakes" dimension of employer brands.LinksBlog post: Diversity and Inclusion Is Not an Employer Brand StrategyBook: Give & Get Employer Branding: Repel the Many and Compel the Few with Impact, Purpose and Belonging

This week we welcome John Ambrosino to the podcast. John is Chief Employment Officer at Employing.us, and brings more than fifteen years of HR expertise to the table, ranging from payroll, to candidate experience, to reputation management.Topics include: why the “black hole” of candidate experience remains a persistent challenge, how candidate experience expectations and challenges vary by organization and role, the importance of establishing recruiter performance metrics specific to candidate experience, how poor HR tech can undermine even the best recruiters' efforts, the challenges posed by having too many candidates, how strong employer brands can improve candidate experience (and vice versa), how to define a compelling mission statement for high volume recruitment, the blessing and curse of employee review sites, how average ratings obscure crucial differences that exist between (and within) departments, and how diverse employee personalities (via testimonial videos) interact with an organization's overarching employer brand.Connect with John Ambrosino:LinkedInThe 4 Minute Podcast 

This week we discuss Gem's recent “2020 Recruiting Trends Report.”Topics include: the continued dominance of LinkedIn as a sourcing tool, the lack of basic email click and open tracking among recruiting teams, why a majority of TA leaders don't think they need to understand “marketing” to do their jobs effectively, the connection between employer brand and marketing, the challenge of finding quality candidates when speed (e.g., time to hire) and cost are often the dominant metrics against which recruiters are measured, the prevalence and future growth of CRM's, the top initiatives for TA leaders for the remainder of 2020, and the growing importance of data-driven recruitment marketing practices.

This week we welcome Brad Markis to the podcast. Brad is an Instructor of People Analytics at the University of Toronto and a Director at McLean & Company.Topics include: why Fortune 500 organizations struggle to deploy sophisticated HR analytics programs, the importance of using business outcomes to guide your HR analytics strategy, why dashboards have exploded in popularity in recent years, the ways in which chatbots are under leveraged within talent acquisition teams, why HR often lags behind other departments in its analytic education and prowess, how AI/machine learning has caused many organizations to overlook time-tested analytic models and approaches, recommended starting points for organizations interested in “resetting” their people analytics strategies, and how to select a framework to bridge the gap between analytic strategy and tactical execution.Brad's LinkedInBrad's Course: People Analytics - University of TorontoBook Mentioned: The New HR Analytics: Predicting the Economic Value of Your Company's Human Capital Investments

This week we discuss our recent blog post, “Employer Branding for Entry Level Positions: How Your Most Satisfied Employees Should Guide Your Strategy” as well as a recent article by Bas van de Haterd entitled, “Future TA Skill: Ethic Advocates.”Topics include: the special considerations when developing an EVP for high volume recruiting, how Maslow's hierarchy of needs should inform your employer brand strategy, using surveys to create “personas” of satisfied employees to enhance recruitment marketing messaging and targeting, the distinction between developing personas based on attitudes (e.g., NPS) and behaviors (e.g., tenure), the effects of record unemployment and the stimulus on high volume recruiting, which recruiter tasks are best “outsourced” to technology, how to use AI to elevate the role of the recruiter, and the questions talent acquisition leaders should be asking of HR tech providers. 

This week we welcome our first guest to the show, Janine Nicole Dennis, Chief Innovations Officer of Talent Think Innovations. Janine's career spans more than fifteen years in HR and Talent Acquisition and has taken her through the world of pharmaceuticals, healthcare, staffing and R&D. Her deep industry experience, combined with her upbringing as the child of a black NYPD sergeant, affords her a unique and invaluable perspective about the TA challenges facing police departments at this heightened moment of awareness. Janine first shared her thoughts on race and police relations in a 2015 piece entitled, “Dear NYPD: You Need a Talent Management Overhaul.” In this episode, we discuss the article, what has (and hasn't) changed since its publication, and the lessons talent acquisition leaders in any business can glean from her experience.   Topics include: the challenges of attracting black candidates given the historical frayed trust between the police and communities of color, the issues that arise from assigning rookie officers to patrol disadvantaged neighborhoods, the problem of police officers living outside the communities they patrol, the difference between “compliance” and good faith D&I efforts, the true meaning of “inclusivity,” and what it means to create a culture that not only attracts diverse talent, but allows it to thrive.

This week we discuss our recently published HR Digital Transformation: 2020 Trends deck, with particular focus on how the pandemic is accelerating the pace of change for organizations of all sizes. Topics include: automation of recruitment team activities, gaining better insights on talent analytics, the importance of investing in employer brand, using social media to drive candidate engagement, and new approaches to improving the employee and candidate experience. We also discuss a recent article on HR Dive about how COVID is changing the pre-hire tech stack. 

This week we discuss why the term ‘recruitment marketing agency' has such a negative connotation in the talent acquisition world. We share our views of a flawed compensation model, and our own client frustrations that led us to start Change State. Then we unpack Marty's own blog post, 'Candidate Experience and the Hidden Costs of Cheap Job Seeker Traffic,' to highlight how the search for the cheapest 'job seeker click' can produce a scavenger hunt for job seekers, creating hidden costs in terms of candidate experience and employer brand.

This week we dive into our biggest learnings from our first year of bootstrapping Change State, our recruitment marketing agency. We highlight our focus on writing original content, the use (or overuse) of social media, explain a 'Jar of Awesome' and more. Plus we unpack the article 'COVID-19 and the Great Re-Hiring' shared from VC-Firm Andreessen Horowitz's 'Software is Eating the World' news feed.