DayoneHR Tea Time Podcast Episode 6: Recruitment Tech Trends [Transcript]

Below is a transcript from Episode 6 of our Podcast. It has been generated using automated transcription technology, so please forgive any mistakes, including grammatical errors. Of course, if you’d rather listen to our Podcast, you can find this episode on Apple, Google, Spotify and Amazon.

Lauren: Hey everyone and welcome back to another podcast with us. This is DayoneHR Tea Time and we hope you have had an amazing start to the year. We are here to talk about recruitment tech trends and we have a special guest with us today. Elijah is joining us all the way from the East Coast, and he's gonna be talking a little bit with us about recruitment. This is his bread and butter, shall we say. I hope that translates across all countries. I am not gonna even try and do a poor attempt of introducing him. So, Elijah, without further ado, introduce yourself.

Elijah: Thank you, Lauren. Happy to be here. So as you said, my name's Elijah. I'm currently the VP of Services and Delivery at Comeet. So, Comeet is an HR tech platform. It's a recruitment technology. Comeet has, I think around over 700 customers globally using our applicant tracking system. Very strong presence in Israel. I've been here around two years and we also uniquely offer recruitment services as well. So, as far as I know, it's the only applicant tracking system in the world where if you're struggling to make a hire, you can click a button, talk to someone, and then end up getting a recruiter or sourcer to help you. So, yes, recruitment tech is something I care about and know a little bit about.

Lauren: ‘A little bit’ is an understatement. I will say that there. You do know a lot more than you let on. And that's why we brought you here today and we hope Yogina is gonna join us later. So if you hear her pop in, we'll make sure you know. But I really just wanna kick off because there's been a lot of change in the recruitment tech space. And I'd love to get your thoughts on where you think we are at in terms of ATSs, you know, we've got talent recruitment suites, there's a lot of things that are happening in terms of AI. Where do you think we've kind of come from in the recruitment tech space and where do you think we are now?

Elijah: Yeah, I think one of the trends I've noticed are like low-code and no-code tools starting to be used, not just for CRM usage - I'm talking tools like Notion, monday.com actually, who's a customer of ours. Those sort of low-code, no-code tools. Startups specifically are starting to build their own little, like mini ATS in there so that they use a form, right? And then candidates can apply and then they can kind of loosely track them. Now that does break down at some point. I've never seen, I'm not sure I've ever seen a 50 person company, let alone like a hundred person company, actually using one of those low-code or no-code custom options. But that's really interesting, right? That companies have started using those tools for a CRM/ ATS/ project management tool, like all in one. I think that's been really unique.

I think the other thing is some of these all in one tools, right? So like BambooHR, not quite HiBob, they don't have their own recruitment module currently. Which you've got like BambooHR, and then there's one other, Personio, right? Out of Germany, who's grown in the last few years. Kinda this all in one approach. They have recruitment, but again, personally, I think it only gets you so far. It's a little better potentially than like a low-code or no-code option. And then eventually you need to get something that's purpose built for recruitment, right? Like an actual purpose-built applicant tracking system for scaling. So that's been interesting.

I think another thing really recently, right, is this whole ChatGPT…

Lauren: Oh my God. Yeah, I'm so glad you have brought this up because we need to talk about this in more detail in a bit. But, definitely coming back to this topic, because this is hot.

Elijah: Yeah. A lot of people are talking about it. I think a lot of companies are not scrambling in a bad sense, but scrambling in an excited sense, for how they can implement it into their products. I know multiple sourcing tools, like SourceWhale for example, out of the UK. SourceWhale has recently, I think it's still in beta, but there's like a little button where you can kind of auto-generate a message. Like an email, to be able to send to a candidate. There's a company called Perfect out of Israel as well. They have kind of a matching thing, where it matches candidates to positions. And they're also working on an auto-generated text as well. Can't say too much, but Comeet is also, you know, looking into the applications of ChatGPT and other tools like that, right? ChatGPT is the one that's blown up. But it's definitely not the only one on the market.

Lauren: Yeah, because, we'll get into ChatGPT later because there's just so much to say on that. But that is, you know, a huge part of what's happening in terms of the next stage with AI. And I think that previously AI was kind of seen as happening in the background and nobody really understood what it was doing. And now people are kind of, it's more visual. It's more impactful to them personally. And they can use it. And I think that there are other things in that space that have come out of being in this really long pandemic that we're coming through.

And the other one that I wanna talk about was video interviewing. Because basically I had a conversation with someone yesterday. And I was saying, you know, I think video interviewing is really good. I can't understand why it hasn't been adopted more. It can work well in the right process. And he kind of came back and said, well, I sort of understand, but it's not great for the manager. The manager has to sit there and watch all these videos and things like that. And, it can create bias in the process. And that was kind of like the counter. So, I don't know, what's your vibe on video interviewing? I mean, should people be getting this?

Elijah: So when you say video interviewing, you don't mean interviewing candidates over like Zoom or Teams or something? Right. You mean where a candidate gets a question and then they record themselves responding to the question, right? Yes. Just to make sure I'm clear. Okay, yeah, so what I find interesting is that if you look at Sales specifically, they might do video demos and then there would be, I don't know, maybe a tool like Salesloft or there's some other sales tools that would join, analyze things, you know, maybe bring out some helpful data points, and then could potentially even help with coaching of that sales rep on the demo process, right? But it's still an actual personal interaction.

I don't really like video interviewing tools because - I'm not saying there's no good use cases - I am just saying again, if you think about sales, no one just wants to join a demo and they click a button and it's like a recording and they just watch it, or they're recording their responses about company size or pain points that they're trying to solve. Like that would be this weird interaction, right? That wasn't highly personal. Highly human. And I think companies need to be really careful to not, in the sake of trying to increase efficiency or automation, to actually make people feel weird or not valued. I don't know if you've ever done one of those. I've found it incredibly awkward. Yeah. I've had to re-record five, six times, you know, maybe the answer to a question and it ends up taking me longer than a 15 minute call with a recruiter where they tell me some information, I answer some questions, and then we're like, yeah, this isn't really the best fit. And it's like, cool, well it's nice to meet you. Let's connect on LinkedIn.

That to me is like, what Recruiters - not the only thing they're for - but it's being that face of the company, interacting with people. And I think there are certain companies, BrightHire comes to mind. I don't know a lot about BrightHire, but I think they actually help with that part of the process of bringing more intelligence from a Zoom interview or like a Teams type interview, like a sales demo, those sales demo tools do, to the interviewing process where it's like a video interview live. I think there's more to that, to helping recruiters improve, to giving a better candidate experience, than recording yourself and then the managers watching through it, and I don't know, I just, I find that more awkward. And, I’m drawn to the tools that help make live video interviews more effective. Sorry it's a long answer, but I have thought about it a lot.

Lauren: Yeah ‘cause I mean, the premise is that it's there to help improve the candidate experience. It's there to help improve the pipeline, to make it faster, smoother, more efficient, more automated, and sometimes that gets a bit lost. Ideally, you want to, as a company, have a really good candidate experience because then that is showing, you know, we also have a great employee experience and if you come and join us, this is what you can expect. And I'm just gonna bring Yogina in on this, in terms of candidate experience because Yogina is based out in Nepal. Of course, we love Yogina. Elijah and I both worked with Yogina for years and Yogina, in terms of the candidate experience where you are, how important is that in the companies that you see and work with, and are they using tech to make that experience better?

Yogina: Hey everyone. Good to see you guys. So, the term candidate experience is very new. Even for companies, the term people experience is a new term, where people are just starting to get used to things, about, you know, okay, people experience matters, a candidate experience is the next thing. But it's slowly in the market, where companies are realizing about it, and the companies that really wanna stand themselves out in terms of hiring the good talent, they are thinking of that in terms of it. But I'll say it's very, very limited right now.

So in terms of tech, there is an increase in use of - increased trend in use of tech for hiring, recruitment and things and such, which used to be a lot manual back in the days. And it's taking a good shape right now, after the penetration. A lot of people have been quite comfortable with adapting technology.

Lauren: Because this is part of the piece. And I think there's still a way to go in terms of recruitment tech and getting that improved candidate experience because there are some really great tools out there. But I think we are gonna have a start of a new wave of tools that maybe aren't managing the ATS piece, but are uplifting the candidate experience piece, that integrate with ATSs, looking at, you know, how AI works with that.

So, we need to talk about ChatGPT, because everybody's talking about it. I mean, I go on any kind of platform. It's like, they've had a hundred million users in two months. I mean like what the hell is happening? Because I go on LinkedIn, I see recruiters and they're like, ChatGPT has changed the game for my sourcing and candidate pools and you know, advertising strategies. I mean, is it all hype? Like, are things like ChatGPT actually gonna help recruitment?

Elijah: Yeah, that's a good question.

Lauren: The jury is out, isn't it? Because I mean, I do see, you know, people writing things into ChatGPT and getting maybe a list of, you know, 10 places they can source software engineers in Poland or something like that. But, I feel like at the moment there's a lot of excitement. So, I don't know if it's really doing great things with recruitment. But the other piece that I had read about, there is a lot of bias within the technology? I don't think there's like an ethics mandate there, and we already know there are huge problems in recruitment around bias, unconscious bias, discrimination, unfortunately, in some companies. So, where do we see this going? I mean, is this gonna be a thing in recruitment?

Elijah: I think specifically some of the use cases that it could help with, without messing with too much, right. Maybe a candidate message, potentially helping write like a job description or a job advertisement. There are the questions around gender bias and some other things like you mentioned Lauren in the technology itself, I believe, gosh, who was it? There's a tool, Textio, I think. They are an HR tech tool, right. That analyzes job descriptions and looks for gender bias. I hope I'm getting the name right. I haven't used it in quite a while. But I think they kind of used their own technology to see the way in which ChatGPT writes and that it does have a strong gender bias at the least.

So, yeah, maybe it is a little risky to use it for even job advertisements and things that are perceived as lower risk. I haven't used it for that personally yet, to see. I do know there are a lot of people, specifically like Hung Lee and his Recruiting Brainfood newsletter, he's been talking about it a lot lately. And that they're gonna start charging for it. So, that may be another element, right? Is it gonna give enough value where people wanna pay for it.

It may be that less of us interact directly with ChatGPT and more that tools like, yeah, SourceWhale, maybe Comeet and others actually integrate and take specific use cases and use it - and you almost don't even know you're using it, right? Like you click a button, you think it's Comeet, and actually it's ChatGPT or some sort of other AI in the background writing something for you, right, generating content. I dunno what Yogina, you think?

Yogina: I don't know. I don't have a lot of opinions on that, but I just feel like it's going to be- depends on how users use it. I see it as a next-gen of Google where recruiters could search, or even hiring managers could search for what are the best questions to ask for a certain role, and then candidates can go and search for like, if someone asks me this, how could I answer it?

But for me, I was talking about this to a friend a couple of days ago about like, no level of technology can, I think, surpass human capacity in itself or the way humans think and everything. So, it all depends on us, like how we make use of that platform. The platform could be used in a well manner to make sure you've done your research right. Make sure you have understood things that you need to. But at the same time not misuse it.

There was this very comedy shorts in YouTube that I just saw this morning about ChatGPT, where one student was told that she had been plagiarized in the essay that she wrote, and then she was all emotional and answering, and then there was the phone on the bottom of the decks where she was looking into and reading it, you see? So just like, how we use it depends. In terms of- but I do see that, you know, in terms of helping new people who want to start their career in HR or talent acquisition could use that as a resource research base, rather than completely being dependent on that.

Lauren: And I mean, this has become kind of like, well, it's moving into like a current trend. I mean, there's a lot of talk online like, oh, the AI revolution is here, and it's kinda like, no, it's been here for a while. But it's just changing. And that's the thing with trends. So, in terms of current trends, but more future trends, what do we think the kind of trends are gonna be in recruitment in the next one to two years, if we are starting out with high user rates in things like ChatGPT?

Elijah: So what I think would be really interesting, right, is if, if the AI does get to a place of relative quote unquote intelligence around specifically like identifying profiles. Sourcing is really hard work, right? We have our own sourcing team and they're all amazing people. They use different sourcing tools to be able to find candidates. And whenever you do recommended matches from LinkedIn, if you're using LinkedIn Recruiter, they're usually not super accurate.

So, I guess until hiring managers really know what they want, and job descriptions are more accurate of the real, you know, day-to-day job, the required performance. Kinda like Lou Adler talks about by setting up a performance profile. Until there's, you know, more clarity where AI can match the requirements of a job, the true requirements, not just word matching from the job description. Because we always know there's more to the job description, right? We always have a kickoff call with the hiring manager and take a bunch of notes before even trying to start the search. So until those two like inputs are really able to be more accurate, right, and understand the nuances between an individual contributor and somebody who's a manager. Maybe it says director of sales on their profile and the AI thinks, or the matching thinks right, that it's sales director and that's the exact same thing. Well, in some companies it might be and some it's not. Right?

Until you get all of that, I think it's really difficult to do the matching. But if eventually the matching gets better, then you could automate right, like the finding of candidates and then something like ChatGPT could read the profile, do some sort of personality assessments like Crystal Knows, right, make some sort of assumption based on the Big Five personality test or one of those, generate text, find the email address using People Data Labs or like one of the data providers, and then actually reach out, right? And then you just sit there, you click the button, right? You put in one input: the job description. It found the candidates, it reached out to the candidates, and then you just have candidates that are interested that you're reviewing. That's specifically how I could see a use case with sourcing. Right. Which is super, super hard work.

Lauren: Yeah. Sourcers are like dreaming of what you just said. Because their life would be so much easier and less stressful by using the process and technology that you are explaining. But I think-

Elijah: But it doesn't exist.

Lauren: No, not yet. Not right now. Everything is moving forward and at the end of the day, it all links to the process. If you've got a really good hiring process and you've got your culture and your values within that process. I mean, you know, companies like Amazon, they do that so well, like their leadership principles are ingrained in the hiring process and no one's getting hired unless they link to those principles. And I just think like if companies have a really great initial process, they can use the technology to kind of build from that.

But I just wanna finish on a topic that will make us laugh, basically. Because this is about where hiring goes wrong, and this is sometimes tech problems, but it's also sometimes people and process problems. But we've all been there. We have all witnessed it in organizations that we've even worked in or we have known someone who's worked in, and things have not gone great. So I would love to hear, and for us to talk about some of our stories. Who would like to share a story first? You don't name the company. Don't name the company. We don't wanna do that. We're not shaming today!

Elijah: Do you have one specific in mind, Lauren, just to kinda get us started? ‘Cause I don't have one off the top of my head yet. I'm trying to think.

Lauren: Well, I've had the obvious, which I think has happened in every organization. And this sometimes happens through an ATS or sometimes it happens on email. Where recruiters have emailed the candidate when they were supposed to email HR or the line manager with the feedback or with an outcome of their interview or them in the process. But it's not actually meant for the candidate. So, usually there's an email that has been sent in error that is saying we don't think this candidate's a good fit. They spoke about this and you know, we really need someone like this. When should we let the candidate know?

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen that. I have seen that within tech platforms where they've just clicked the wrong button. Or I've seen it where people are rushing, they're trying to get an email out and they've realized they've replied all instead of like forwarding the email. And then the candidate writes back and they're just absolutely appalled. They're straight on Glassdoor, like terrible candidate experience, don't go and work for this company. Nine times outta 10 it's just human error and it's because that recruiter or that person has got so many roles that they are recruiting for. They've just got things mixed up in the system or in the inbox. And I really shout out to anyone that has, you know, that you've done that. I mean, it’s just heartbreaking when they come back and you're just like, oh my God, that email should not have gone to that person. I've heard those stories quite a few times.

Elijah: I haven't heard. Yeah, I haven't heard that or had that happen personally, I think. Yeah, maybe part of the reason I haven't had that happen at least in recent memory, the way Comeet is set up is really task based. So you're told exactly what email to send to who. It's a little different than like, I don't know, Breezy or some of the ones where it's visual workflows. It's like when I log into Comeet, it's like, here's all the candidates you need to email. And if it's a rejection email, it even is like pre-populating it, but then you check over it first, so it's not kind of fully automated.

I don't know, yeah, I haven't experienced that. I have experienced where they want to, you know, reject a candidate and then we do, and then someone else, I don't know, the CEO actually really liked them and pushes back. And then we have to reach out to the candidate and say, oh, I'm so sorry. Like, you know, there was a mistake. Actually we'd love for you to continue on the process. It's awkward, but usually the candidate is, you know, happy to hear it if they were excited about the opportunity. Maybe that's pretty common, though.

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, I haven't heard any recent stories about it. But it did used to happen a lot when you would have high volume pushes to recruit people and bring them in. And I think we've all had terrifying interview experiences on the candidate side, not just the- you know, we talk a lot about the business side and the tech that's owned and run by the company. But I mean, on the candidate's side, there are just so many stories where things haven't gone well or they have had a shock in the interview, and it wasn't what they expected. Sometimes it ends up they get the role and sometimes it doesn't.

I mean, from my personal experience, when I first interviewed for Amazon about 10 years ago, I got completely lost on the way to the fulfillment center. And I found out that the postcode they gave me didn't go to the location that I was supposed to go to. And I was in a really big town like driving around and, you'd think I'd see like an Amazon fulfillment center because they're so big. But I didn't because it was surrounded by trees. So that didn't help. And when I got there, I made it just on time. They were waiting for me and I was sweating, I was shaking. I was then put in like a windowless call room, where like each person that was interviewing me was gonna take turns and come in. And I just remember going home and thinking: I am never, ever getting that job. Like, no way. Looked like a mess. I was so like, you know, breathing too fast. I just didn't feel calm enough. And then the next day I got the call and they were like, come join us, come to Luxembourg. And I was like, what? That's crazy.

So I think, you know, we've all had weird candidate experiences where we can't quite work out what's going on, but on the hiring side, you know, sometimes things go wrong and actually it doesn't impact the outcome, but sometimes things go wrong and it's not great. But do you, Elijah, have any tips for recruiters on how to avoid the pitfalls of poor recruiting?

Elijah: I would say the biggest one that we talk about, our kind of main philosophy is empathy driven recruiting. Having empathy in the process for the candidate. Exactly what you said, Lauren, like remembering those stories about yourself and from your own interviewing experience, and then having empathy for the candidate to try and help them either prepare like, hey, here's the LinkedIn profile of the hiring manager, just so you know. Here's some articles you could read through. Just remembering what that felt like and kind of putting yourself in their shoes can help, I think, have an awareness of how they may be experiencing the process, right? Like going through a hiring process is incredibly vulnerable.

For candidates, you're feeling judged and marked on your performance in the interview. And maybe you didn't feel well, maybe your mother was just diagnosed with cancer or something like that. Right. Like there's all these things going on in people's lives and I think it's important for recruiters and hiring teams to have empathy for the candidate. What I think a lot of recruiters struggle with more so than that, is actually empathy with the hiring managers. Like they're super busy, they're trying not to make a bad hire cuz they don't wanna get fired if it's one of those types of cultures, unfortunately. And the hiring team, like the interviewer, were they prepped? A lot of companies don't do interview training, right? Especially startups.

We just try to talk about having empathy for everyone that we're interacting with, each other, and even trying to understand ourselves a bit, in that process. I think that can help a bit; trying to kind of be driven with empathy for everyone involved.

Lauren: Yeah. And Yogina, have you got any tips for recruiters or even companies in terms of, you know, setting themselves up for success when it comes to recruiting?

Yogina: I think there's a lot to talk about. Yeah. But I think the one go-to factor would be, or things to consider would be, not just evaluating people on the basis of skillset or like giving that a high level of value. But also thinking about the behavior aspects, their attitude and how they treat people, is quite important as well.

I was just reading a blog yesterday where it talked about a tech company who fired a very skilled developer because the person was not a team worker and because of that, the team had to suffer. And the business also had to suffer a loss of reputation in front of the client. So, you know, also evaluating these factors from doing recruitment is something I find is very important and critical for businesses to understand. Rather than just looking at it as a certain value, but thinking long term, how it's gonna also look into other factors, not just only at the business side of it, but then also the whole people experience part of it.

Lauren: Yeah. And that's the thing. It's like, you know, you have to have a great recruitment process. You need to have the technology to help you have a great process. You need to have great people in the process. You need to have your values and your culture in that, in that whole specialism. And, if it isn't there, then you have a situation that you're talking about where you've hired someone that's not a team player and one of the key requirements of the role was to be a team player. And that's just not happened and then, you know, we all know when someone exits a company, how difficult it is for the people around them, especially their team to readjust to change.

So, I definitely hear what both of you are saying from the recruit side and, you know, get the tech in place to help you with that, to lift the burden. Especially if you're going through a really high recruiting period. Because it can get stressful, things can get complicated. One manager's hiring 20 people, the other one's hiring five people, and it goes on and on. And everyone's role is urgent. If I had a pound for every time somebody said “but my role's really urgent”, “I need someone to start on Monday”. And it's like, yeah, okay. So, the onboarding process is over seven days, so that's not going to happen. But yeah, that is just so, so common.

I think we need to finish it up there, guys. I know we could talk about this for ages and we could talk about so many systems as well. We didn't get a chance to mention a lot of systems, but Elijah is here representing Comeet. So, if you wanna know more about Comeet, we'll put some links in the description. And we'll also put Elijah's LinkedIn profile in the description, if that's okay, Elijah? Yeah. I just appreciate you all being here. Thank you for listening to the podcast. We'll be back with another podcast soon. So make sure you look out for us…

Yogina: Lauren, sorry to cut you off, but before we end up, a very happy anniversary to DayoneHR completing six years.

Lauren: Yeah. And do you know what is so funny is that this is episode six that we're recording and yesterday was DayoneHR’s sixth birthday! So yes, I can't believe it. I don't really know where the last six years have gone, but it has been a blast and check out our post on LinkedIn that we've done as well, just kind of thanking everyone and recognizing that, you know, we celebrate the birthday every year because we know how hard it is to keep going and supporting clients everywhere. And yeah, we just love building relationships.

So, thank you Yogina, I completely forgot to mention it. And I was going to. I just got really into the topic. That was the thing. Okay. Right. Well we'll leave it there and we'll speak to you next time. Thanks guys!

Yogina: Take care guys. Bye-bye!

Elijah: Thanks. Bye-bye!

If you’d like to talk to us about any of the subjects discussed in the Podcast, or have any questions you’d like us to answer in the next episode, please reach out to us here.