Tools and Strategies for Sourcing in a Candidate Constrained Environment

TRANSCRIPT

Jonathan Covey: All right. I think we're live. I see some participants are welcome. I'm getting close to the end of the week here. Great conference. So, my name is Jonathan Covey, senior analyst with Talent Tech Labs. I have the pleasure of leading this discussion on a really important topic, considering the current economic state and really how constrained the candidate environment is.

Jonathan Covey: And that is passive sourcing. And so what we want to do here, and I'll introduce the panelists momentarily. The purpose here is to talk about practical strategies for sourcing candidates. That might be overlooked across the web outside of your systems, but also candidates in your systems that might be under leveraged.

Jonathan Covey: And the conservative goal here is to give you at least one or two tangible strategies that you can implement next week or in the near term. So that's the backdrop. I have the pleasure now of introducing some really smart folks on our panel. I'll go through the names and then we'll get a chance to meet them individually.

Jonathan Covey: So first is Steven Jiang, CEO, and co-founder of HIRETUAL. We categorize it as a social search tool, which involves a bunch of things, but you can think about it as a way to augment your candidate database. And also cleanse existing data and we'll get into it more. We have Emily Thompson, senior product marketing manager at LinkedIn.

Jonathan Covey: You've probably heard of them of course a social network for sourcing, but there's also some other interesting capabilities around labor market intelligence and other features that align with this topic. We have Jayne Kettles, the CEO and chief product officer of GR8 People. One of GR8 People's strengths is a candidate relationship management system, which is really a foundational piece of technology for nurturing passive candidates and getting them to apply so excited to have her join.

Jonathan Covey: And then last but not least, Vanessa Miller, the VP of talent technology at Atrium Works. And what's really good here is that we can get a sense of how a really progressive company like Atrium is using these technologies and what it's like for recruiters in the field. Actually using the tools that we're going to talk about.

Jonathan Covey: And there's a lot of tools because passive sourcing is a big umbrella of things. Let's go around to everyone and would love to hear your background. Let's start with Steven. 

Steven Jiang: Thank you for having me here. Thank you, Jonathan. And I am also very nice to meet you. Everyone. My name is Steven.

Steven Jiang: I am CEO and co-founder at HIRETUAL. HIRETUAL is a technology and product to make the outbound recruiting easy. When we talk about outbound recruiting, it's all about sourcing and engaging the right people at the right time and converting it. Okay. So, and that's a very very close to today's topic.

Steven Jiang: Job seeker sourcing very happy. I'm very excited to be here. 

Jonathan Covey: Thanks. Emily

Emily Thompson: Yeah. Hi everyone. My name is Emily Thompson. I've been at LinkedIn for over two years. I've been focused on the surgeon staffing segment the entire time and on the recruiter product the entire time as well. Previously I worked at a smaller SMB company called Thumbtack, which helps you find professionals.

Emily Thompson: So always trying to help folks find new jobs. And I'm super excited to talk about sourcing strategies as obviously LinkedIn recruiter helps you with passive sourcing. That is our main goal to connect you with LinkedIn. The world's largest professional network with almost 800 million folks on LinkedIn, which is an amazing talent pool for everyone to have access to.

Jonathan Covey: Thanks and Jayne?

Jayne Kettles: Hi everybody. Excited to be here. Gr8 is a total talent acquisition platform. So we help our customers attract. Engage and hire the best that's out there. So certainly in this post COVID may not post yet. But how a lot of the shifts in where the talent, you know, wants to be hired.

Jayne Kettles: Has been an interesting play for passive candidate kind of engagement and management. So I'm certainly excited to be here. I'm the product Chief Product Officer and one of the co-founders of Gr8 People. 

Jonathan Covey: Thanks and vanessa. 

Vanessa Miller: Great. Hi everyone. I'm Vanessa Miller, VP of talent technology at Atrium. Here at Atrium, we are women owned workforce solutions firms.

Vanessa Miller: So the talent technology team is tasked with providing talent technology consulting to our clients. We're in the position of providing various workforce management solutions, RPO, MSP, independent contractor compliance, et cetera. So really anything having to do with contingent talent or direct talent.

Vanessa Miller: There's technology involved. So we partner with a lot of the great technologies you see on the panel today and others and really help clients understand which technologies are used when and how so. Really excited to be on the panel today. 

Jonathan Covey: Great. Thank you. And there's certainly a ton of technology out there and a lot that supports use cases around passive sourcing.

Jonathan Covey: And I think for folks listening within your respective companies, it can be overwhelming to navigate. And so I'll just pose a question to the group and whoever can jump in. How do you identify where the most worthwhile problems are and how do you figure out where to even start when it comes to passive sourcing?

Jayne Kettles: So I'll jump in. I think that Passive sourcing needs to be a kind of strategy that becomes very tactical. So strategic in the sense there, you know, where do you want to build pools of people in order to, you know, be able to tap into when openings become available? Right. So, part of being really good at passive sourcing is creating a lot of content.

Jayne Kettles: Engages people and drives them to your experiences, your website, your opportunities. And I think that it really kind of starts with, you know, where you're most needful right. And starts to build from there. 

Jonathan Covey: Yeah. 

Steven Jiang: So, I completely agree with what, Jayne, just, you just said. When it comes to passive sourcing.

Steven Jiang: So Jonathan, if you don't mind, that's changed to call active. I'll go. Okay. Call active sourcing and that's a better thing. So basically they require the recruiters to be very proactive and be very Alba. Okay. And you don't wait for the candidates to apply for your job and you want to go out to find, identify.

Steven Jiang: Best match candidates. So the first part is about where to start. It started with our people's mindset. So to hiring managers and recruiters, not only sauces, right. And everybody in that talent acquisition team, they need to have it as a pole activist. Right. And the second part is about pick, the right tool and system.

Steven Jiang: To build this very proactive recruiting process. Starting is hard, very hard. If it's a very outlier you don't have to be very persistent and continuously be, find, and engage and convert in passive job seekers. Right. And that requires a very effective workflow system. So that's my 2 cents.

Jonathan Covey: Yeah. 

Vanessa Miller: And I can add to that a little bit too. I think when you think of passive sourcing, obviously the first technology you think of is LinkedIn. And Emily can certainly talk to this all day long. But there it's hiring the right type of recruiters. So Atrium is hired all the time to recruit on behalf of our clients.

Vanessa Miller: And we always look for those recruiters that are natural hunters and are energized by that challenge of finding the right candidate, not simply posting the jobs and hoping you get great applicants. I'm actually going out, doing that, searching and understanding that sometimes it's a marathon as opposed to a sprint.

Vanessa Miller: I've talked to recruiters where they'll create relationships with candidates, just like salespeople do for a year and a half. Start talking to them about. What it's like to work at your company, not necessarily about a specific role, but let's start this relationship. Let me tell you what it's like to work at my company or my client's company.

Vanessa Miller: And then let me get your information. Enter technology. Let me get you into a CRM. And we'll kind of passively send news to your inbox about this industry that you're interested in the company or that functional area as well. We are kind of the recruiters, really the ones that succeed the most do a bit of coding.

Vanessa Miller: You, you want to you know, let them know how great it is to work at that company. You know, make a note for yourself when they're available to check in 3, 6, 9 months, whether that's powered by a CRM or simply by a calendar invite you know, you can use some of the easy tools that are at your fingertips.

Vanessa Miller: If a certain candidate, as an example, tells you there, Maybe they're interested. They're going on leave soon, others make a note that when they come, when they're coming back, just to check in and see where they're at in their job search. 

Jonathan Covey: Yeah. I think you both hit on something that's really important, which is the cultural element, the mindset of recruiters and then.

Jonathan Covey: The technology and the analytics, the customized communication, all that stuff becomes additive, but you gotta start with great people, no pun intended first, Emily, any thoughts on that topic? 

Emily Thompson: I mean, I really love Jayne's view that you have to start with strategic and then you move into tech, a tactical rather, and I think.

Emily Thompson: To start your search off on the right foot. You always have to align on the strategy with your hiring manager, with your client to really align them. Like, what are the qualities, what are the skills for the ideal candidate? So you make sure that you're studying. 

Emily Thompson: All of your searches in the best possible way to capture folks, you might not find on the first page and knowing things that like flexibility and remote work are top of mind now, ensuring that your client is aligned with that and that you can then create content based on that to capture a candidate's attention. Cause we know that like you mentioned flexibility, your post engagement goes up by 30 plus percent.

Emily Thompson: So really aligning on the strategy with your hiring manager will. We'll help your brand and also help your search in the long run.

Jonathan Covey: Yeah. Yeah. I think the takeaway there is you gotta be ready to adopt technology organizationally. So, and then when it does come to tech, I want to spend some time on the CRM, the candidate relationship management system, because that is such a foundational sort of piece that sits in front of the ATS and.

Jonathan Covey: Like it's been around. I think it's fair to say 10, 15 years, but adoption is still a challenge. Research out of Talent Tech Labs shows 60% of corporate companies have a CRM in place; it's even less so in staffing. And so maybe Jayne I'll pose to you. What sort of the business case behind a CRM.

Jonathan Covey: You know, a standalone ATS, like a Bullhorn and why is it so difficult for companies to get right. What are some practical tips there? 

Jayne Kettles: Sure. I just want to reflect back to the kind of expectations setting that is powerful when you're connecting with. Passive candidates. Right. So, you know, being prepared I think said was for the next step, right.

Jayne Kettles: You know, being one step ahead of what somebody might want to know about your organization or what the application process is. What career development looks like Gr8 People have an opinion about automation. That's kind required in order for a successful CRM tool to be adopted. And also being able to demonstrate value in the technology where at the end of the day, you want to deliver a list of people who have the qualifications that you're looking for, show a level of interest and engagement and start the recruiters, you know, eyes there.

Jayne Kettles: So I think that it starts with you know, identifying the segments of talent and really having some structure around. That segmentation those specialties within that segmentation so that you could build out all of the things that you think that candidate is going to want to understand and know and support your brand in that manner.

Jayne Kettles: I think it's also important. That the candidate's expectations are met so that there's intelligence into that automation that really understands where they are in their talent acquisition cycle. Right. So the idea that you're not sending an introductory email to somebody who's in the interview process, things that you can flip on and off, depending on.

Jayne Kettles: You know where that person is in your engagement cycle, but it doesn't need to be, you know, total automation. There's a lot of high touch capabilities, but kind of recordkeeping quite honestly, from a relationship management, those reminders that Vanessa talked about you know, letting those Things happen and be enabled within a CRM.

Jayne Kettles: And the end result is just giving them a pipeline of people that, know, match your roles that you're looking to place people in and hire. 

Jonathan Covey: Thanks. And Vanessa, I think we're catching up. This is a transformation that you're going through currently. If there's anything. But you want to share about that?

Vanessa Miller: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And here at Atrium where we're implementing a CRM now going live next week. And so we've had a lot of focus on our own career site for our own internal TA and of course, and flipping that to our client facing strategies as well. In thinking about your career site, right?

Vanessa Miller: That is your front door to your employer brand. And companies spend so much time on their consumer brand or their customer brand, but their employer brand is invaluable for talent. So I want to make sure of that. Front entryway looks very welcoming and further, very welcoming to the types of individuals you want to hire, whether it be functional area, different different diversity targeted demographics that you're looking to hire as an example, those segments that Jayne had talked about are essentially turned into pipelines in your CRM.

Vanessa Miller: So you can have your career site show those different pipelines that you're trying to attract. A lot of times, and kind of thinking about diversity recruiting. A lot of companies have wonderful employee resource groups, or ERG, as an example, post day one, you can join one of those ERG or a diversity and inclusion council.

Vanessa Miller: Like we have here at Atrium as an example you know, boasting about that on your website show that you have that, that DE&I, that inclusive culture and then. Targeted pipelines more to functional areas. If you have seasonal hiring that you're doing, if you're hiring creative freelancers you know, Not for different events that are coming up, create those pipelines to get in front of it.

Vanessa Miller: And it's all about that proactive recruiting and not waiting for those applicants. And at the point in which the technology is doing the matching or it's a human doing the matching. Exercise to match that great job seeker to the job by the time that happens, they should already have some relationship with your company.

Vanessa Miller: If you're doing that proactive recruitment, marketing, and career site management correctly. 

Jonathan Covey: Thanks. Steven, Emily, I want to get to your solutions for sure. But just continuing this thread on CRM and what you're seeing Steven with clients or over at LinkedIn, any thoughts on this? 

Steven Jiang: John. How many, how about you first?

Emily Thompson: Oh, sure. I think before diving into any brand new search, it's always worth considering candidates that are in your pipeline. Already there. You can always go out and find new ones. You know, the Strat the bonus of this strategy, if they've engaged with you before. So they're likely interested in engaging with you again.

Emily Thompson: So we always recommend nurturing your candidate pipeline and to see if they might be interested in new opportunities that you have available to them. So it's always great to keep that nurture pipeline ongoing. 

Steven Jiang: Yeah. So, What we said is probably most CRM vendors and we have integration and we also the mutual customers.

Steven Jiang: I also learned a lot about the difficulties of adoption and in my personal opinion, the number one by CRM is a document. Okay. And so the adoption that usually comes from two big Baldwins, number one, the deployment and the implementation of a CRM system is very heavy, okay. Not easy. And Vanessa, I'll be aware of, we wish me a second part about the cold start, where you've deployed a system, it's an empathy and how to get people, uses recruiters, how to get started.

Steven Jiang: Right. And this is a non-natural workflow because of recruiters, behaviors. Either get a lot of applications and then review and deliver to hiring managers or they go to the platform at, and they can find the candidates. Okay. So, and, but CRM is a, it's a very long Cooney success pool. Okay. So they need a very natural process to get stopped.

Steven Jiang: Okay. And we also see that. Good practice. We sell CRM. So for instance when they pulled the data, I found ATS two they also deploy hydro or other technology together to make an ATS data up to date. So, and I also do the labeling and categorization very well in their new CRM, so people can not do it.

Steven Jiang: Segmentation and nurturing and creating the best and very dynamic. And they are able to start their nurturing because the data has been up to date. Okay. They can stop the ATS rediscovery and re-engage. Right. And that happens in CRM and because we have them with passionate data. Okay.

Steven Jiang: And the second best practice is about. Give them the tool to get, start with finding people, as Emily said, why do people winded up people? And then the CRM workflow to ATS CRM plus ATS starts to be effective. 

Jonathan Covey: Thanks, Steven. Yeah. So, what you're talking about is really that a social search tool like HIRETUAL could be supplemental to a CRM.

Jonathan Covey: Could you talk more about some of these newer use cases around refreshing the CRM database, pushing information in, and then there's also an element of searching existing talent within systems and doing some matching. Is that right? Yep. 

Steven Jiang: So ATS data refresh, enrichment and rediscovery. This is not a new topic at all.

Steven Jiang: And it has been discussed for almost 10 years. And we also experienced a lot of that failures when we entered into a space about ATS rediscovered, by the way, we don't do ATS work. Okay. So we work with. 99% of the ATS vendors in the market and we plan a week. And the ATS data is very unstructured and very hot to identify and re-duplicate and also refresh and enrich.

Steven Jiang: Okay. So that is, that requires a lot of. Specifically in technology to empower network. And we do have that technology to make it much, much better today. Okay. So we are also improving and we, what can we say? A lot of cop cooperate enterprise customers to to deploy and to see, to know vulnerable we're practice now, ATS.

Steven Jiang: Rediscovery number one hurdle is that data identification and refresh. Okay. That is difficult. And the second part is about labeling. Reindex those data so that an AI search can be upright. You need to find the people who best match people who talked with you in the past. But the size is much, much smaller compared to any other company's platform.

Steven Jiang: and also compare it to the LinkedIn platform. Right? So the search standard, no standard for a search accuracy is much, much higher though. And the search, is it a second photo then a third of course is the engagement. You need to engage with them, but not spammy and also not a new thing. The context in a history record.

Steven Jiang: Okay. So that's my three points.

Jonathan Covey: Yeah, let's continue on this because data integrity is really important. Just the basics, having good contact information. I hear from folks maybe listening that recruiter adoption and these core systems can suffer if they don't trust the data. So maybe we could go around to some other folks and talk about it.

Jonathan Covey: How you're addressing that at great people, LinkedIn and Vanessa also curious about your perspective at Atrium and Vanessa, let's start with you. 

Vanessa Miller: Sure. And also realizing I didn't fully finish your question before Jonathan about adoption. So I'll kind of weave that in as it all fresh in my brain, as we've been working on implementing our CRM the last three months.

Vanessa Miller: But I think kind of, it goes hand in hand. So, encouraging adoption and that go live, start date. Right? So, to Stevens point, Having the data in the technology will help adoption. So, we encourage our clients to do this all the time. We encourage them to have known what we call known populations in the database before you launch, or if you've already launched, get them in there anyway.

Vanessa Miller: And examples where, you know, we've, payrolled clients for payroll associates for clients for years. And you're, you know, you have that, all of that great talent at your fingertips to invite into that CRM or auto, add them in there. They've already applied to a job of yours before, or you've payroll them before they could be an alumni, a referral community, which I know we'll get to later on.

Vanessa Miller: But the CRM allows you to cast that wide net, but when you're launching it makes sense to, and it can be in a staggered way. Don't on day one, try to invite all of you. Talent into technology. You can do it in a staggered way then that will actually help analytics and ROI of each campaign that you do to foster curation with each of those populations.

Vanessa Miller: That will also help adoption. As a recruiter, starting with a blank system is very scary and it, you know, they you know, if you have to start fresh it, that you won't get the adoption that you would, if you had that data migrated from your other systems, hopefully there's an integration to an ATS as an example for the recruiters to rely on less clicks you know, in all in, in the CRM, flowing into the ATS and vice versa.

Vanessa Miller: But also with adoption and with different talents, I will say as a bit of advice, don't kind of look at your talent holistically. Whether it's for recruiting for direct hire slash FTE, co don't forget about contract talent, slash, freelance talent, independent contractors pre identified associates, et cetera.

Vanessa Miller: We really kind of applaud the clients that want to take that total talent approach. And which, you know, isn't a new concept. Everyone's been talking about TTM for a long time. But it's kind of an art to do it the right way. Realizing that larger companies may have some compliance issues with you know, recruiting contract talent and direct hire talent in the same systems.

Vanessa Miller: But if you can kind of figure out whether it's in the same systems or not how to really have that. Front door that welcomes talent in general, kind of being talent agnostic. Whether that person wants flexible work. And especially in today's environment that's, you very coveted at the moment, flexible worker, you know, fixed term or full-time, et cetera.

Vanessa Miller: Really important to have. Front door kind of talent community sign up page and then let them tell you what they're interested in as an example. the more welcoming it is, the better. And then kind flipping back to the question about contact data, that's where that engagement comes in.

Vanessa Miller: So, so phenom as you know, people, as an example has. Get on a career site, there's a job personalization widget that's on the homepage. There's a bot as well. All of the different features on your career site, if you have a sophisticated CRM like that, and like great people, have great tools for this as well.

Vanessa Miller: The. The action item that bot is trying to get from you or an email campaign or a certain clicks is your current contact information, whether it's linking your LinkedIn profile as an example, At least minimum, at least if you can get an email address, which is connected to your LinkedIn, or if you can get a phone number even better.

Vanessa Miller: Cause then that will allow the SMS text engagement which everyone is okay with today. I feel like everybody. I Want to text as opposed to email these days. So, I think getting the phone numbers is just as important as the email, obviously, but you're going to have stale information. If you're inviting, known populations that you have raised With in five years, you might have an old email address, but if you can you know, get in, you know, get in contact with those people, get, and then get the right information and and then keep it you know, keep those profiles updated with that curation. We call it watering the garden, getting in their inbox, keeping them interested, and then they will provide that updated LinkedIn profile or resume to you.

Jonathan Covey: That's great. Yeah for refreshing candidate information, we talked about social search tools like our high ritual, but to Vanessa's point, you could use a bot and just ask for it. And that's definitely true. A good opportunity. You mentioned total talent management, and I think that's a good segue to sort of that ethos of Gr8 People

Jonathan Covey: if you'd like to comment on that, Jayne, and maybe tell us a bit about how you approach data integrety 

Jayne Kettles: Sure. And I love what Vanessa just said, because those are definitely strategies that are successful. Making sure again, you're meeting the expectation you're representing your brand. You're being transparent on how you're using their information is really important from our perspective because we manage the whole cycle.

Jayne Kettles: For most of our customers, we do sell CRM. Generally integrated with the workdays of the world. The important thing is you know, from the data, integrity is. Kind of that intelligent workflow that allows you again, to realize where somebody is in their kind of their journey with you. Whether, you know, they're somebody who was dispositioned wasn't selected, but is that, you know, silver medalist.

Jayne Kettles: You know, how do you start the re start the conversation with them as somebody that's no longer in a process and making sure you know, that you're have some level of engagement, dialogue, conversations, tagging, whatever technology you would want to support that so that maybe you can re-engage with them.

Jayne Kettles: Maybe somebody who turns you down for whatever reason. So they withdrew for a certain reason, maybe. The right time or the right region or whatever that you have that information so that you can create different strategies around maybe hard to fill roles or different labor information that you may be able to retrieve that information and then put a good campaign around it.

Jayne Kettles: That's intentful on an open. You know, engagement for the roles that you have available. So, I agree with everything that Vanessa said is the idea that you need to be inclusive of all the types of talent that you hire and work for within your organization and make sure that you're not leaving anybody out.

Jayne Kettles: So yeah, that's what I would kind of add to that from a data integrity. 

Jonathan Covey: Cool. And yeah, Emily, if anything's top of mind, please share. I also want to. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Finish your question. We could move on right after please. You go first. 

Emily Thompson: I was just on a data integrity front within LinkedIn.

Emily Thompson: We are now prompting members to give their work preferences. So if they are open to work, if it's immediate or if they're flexible in terms of their start date, They can say, if they're interested in remote work, they can say, if they're interested in contract positions. So it is representing the broad swath of the workforce that is available.

Emily Thompson: And, you know, if a member is saying it and we like to think that's the truth. So it's something that is available within recruiter searches to see who is open and available to different types of works. 

Jonathan Covey: Great. Thanks. And Emily, I wanted to ask you specifically about LinkedIn. Of course, everyone knows that to be a social network and a tool for sourcing among other things.

Jonathan Covey: But wanted to give you the chance to maybe talk about some other underappreciated use cases of LinkedIn. I mean, in the staffing world, Folks use your labor market intelligence tool. So this is by no means, not like a new thing, but labor market intelligence definitely is a strategy for passive sourcing in that it gives staffing companies data on supply and demand in different geographies all sorts of data that informs.

Jonathan Covey: Really your recruitment marketing spends and how recruiters prioritize, who to go after. Any, anything to share on that front from you.. 

Emily Thompson: Yeah. So the feature or product rather here is LinkedIn talent insights, which we've seen more integrated into recruiters. So less toggling for folks during their workflows.

Emily Thompson: I know time management is always top of mind. But within LinkedIn talent insights, yes, it can help with both business development and then the hiring strategy for those clients. So for example, within business development if you are in healthcare staffing, for example, you can see. Where folks might meet, need the most nurses and say like, okay, I need to look into Nevada as an example, as a new market where I can offer my services. And then once you are, you have that client, you can figure out like, okay, this from. Had some layoffs and they have reciprocity in terms of licenses. So I can then reach out to these folks to help place, know, the 15 candidates that the new company needs. So it really helps with the RFP stage and the hiring strategies stage.

Vanessa Miller: Yeah and I can add a little kind of the human element to that. Our recruiters here at Atrium used features within LinkedIn, all the time. For example, you can create lists within LinkedIn. Based on profile searches, where if you're searching a hard to fill market exactly. As Emily just said, a certain city that you or your client is going into, you know, you need to proactively recruit to set up a saved search, and then you'll get updates when new people join that list as an example.

Vanessa Miller: Further to that kind of taking, taking it beyond the LinkedIn event. In a lot of CRMs they offer spotlight searches are actually company watch lists as an example, and it kind of weaves into keeping up with what your competitors are doing from an employer standpoint as well. Example, you can create a company watch list again, with that saved search within a CRM and on LinkedIn as well.

Vanessa Miller: To be alerted when new people fit that criteria have left your competitor as an example, there available, or really any activity that you want to see based upon your search. We're taking it a bit further, keep an eye on what your competitors are doing from an employee wellness and flexible work standpoint.

Vanessa Miller: A lot of companies, some companies right now, or are mandating you know, going back to. Return to office full-time or part-time it's a candidate market. We all know it. So if I'm flexible work and going into the office is not something that a candidate wants to do. They're going to be looking elsewhere.

Vanessa Miller: So keep an eye on that stuff, on that, on those trends. And then further add those companies to those watch lists and then. You know, watch those candidates that are at those companies, because they may be thinking for their own personal reasons that they unfortunately need to make a change. And if you're in their inbox first and you know, a higher chance that you'll get to them before your competitors.

Jonathan Covey: Absolutely. Yeah. And where these tools are going, as it's becoming more proactive, like imagine a world where in the recruiter, stash board, you get a trigger that Pepsi is laying off people. So these tools can actually ingest news and then that could trigger a campaign in the CRM or at least let folks know, Hey, call now.

Jonathan Covey: This is an opportunity. Awesome. 

Emily Thompson: One thing to add on the save search alert. Thank you, Vanessa. That is like, I recommend this feature to everyone, but within it, what's great for all of our searches is similar profiles. So if you do see folks who are added in, you can go on the right-hand side and see other people.

Emily Thompson: And maybe there are keywords in there that are not in your search and you can update your search and that'll likely expand your talent pool. So always like iterating on your safe searches. You can have unlimited. So it's kind of like a great tool. 

Jonathan Covey: Thanks. Cool. So this is great. Let's keep talking about alternative strategies for passive sourcing.

Jonathan Covey: One of the things that Vanessa mentioned earlier was referrals. And it kind ties into what we were talking about around the human element and making sure that the organization is set up to adopt technology because. We've seen companies use one referral system and it acts as a success in one company and then in another it's a complete failure.

Jonathan Covey: And so, let's talk about the process around referrals and incentive structures, positioning it to the organization. And Vanessa, maybe we'll start with you because you are currently building out a program around this at Atrium. 

Vanessa Miller: Yeah, absolutely. The referral program we've used an Atrium for years, but we're constantly evolving it and kind of adapting to the candidate market.

Vanessa Miller: But what you know, if possible I know budget is always you know, is covenant in different areas, but if you can provide a monetary reward for referral program. That's where we see the most success for us and our clients. And we've, we have our own referral program for associates that we place for our clients for our own internal hires.

Vanessa Miller: And then we've also launched referral programs for our clients completely. I think two, I get two or three bits of advice if you can get a monetary reward, even if it's a $100 Amazon gift card. But you know, obviously the higher, the better, but we see immense success, especially in tearing it. So, your first referral, a certain amount, second gets a little higher, third, fourth, fifth, et cetera.

Vanessa Miller: And then also tiering it by level. So, Bonus amounts are a little bit higher for a mid-level to senior level, you know, up to C-level as an example. And then once you have that referral program kind of buttoned up, you know, work with your marketing team, make some awesome collateral that you can circulate internally.

Vanessa Miller: Tools like great people as an example, have wonderful internal mobility tools. Just like phenom does iCIMS, et cetera. Utilize those internal mobility tools. If you don't have one, that's fine too. You can use your internet. If you have Yammer, just a good old BCC email. We just kind of shout it from the rooftops, your referral program, it's going to catch, you know, everyone's eyes. Unfortunately today there's not hallways and water coolers, but you know, the different ways of communication that we've all adapted to, obviously.

Vanessa Miller: But once that referral program is buttoned up you know, do a launch whether it's to your internal folks there are technologies out there. That catered directly to referrals, a technology called drafted as an example, all they do are employee referrals. Then there's wonderful CRMs that we've talked about.

Vanessa Miller: Other direct sourcing technologies like WorkLama as an example that really focused on referral programs. So, and. Powered by a you know, financial reward or recognition. I think most companies have success in coming into their internal employee base and contractor base. Everyone wants to find clones and similar profiles as an example.

Vanessa Miller: So once that program is buttoned up, utilize whatever tools you have for communication internally and externally, and again, to all all types of talent, not just full-time employees. Give those give you those bonus rewards to contractors as well, because they're an extension of your, they are your employer brand to 

Jonathan Covey: yeah.

Jonathan Covey: You mentioned, you know, there's a lot of point solutions out there, but some of this functionality could be available in the CRM. For example Jayne, any thoughts on how staffing companies can navigate that question? 

Jayne Kettles: Yeah, I think you know, employees can absolutely be your best ambassador, right. And that human connection from a technology perspective, certainly makes it very easy to communicate the program what's in it for me, maybe a leaderboard and technology.

Jayne Kettles: From an integration perspective or a platform perspective to make it really easy to honor all of those transactions. Right? So as somebody is selected, you know, making some rules that make it very easy to understand what the payout is, or to be able to communicate splits or. Really complicated sometimes in some of these programs can more than one person refer somebody, is there time limits on the house?

Jayne Kettles: Somebody owns them. Right. So technology can definitely help you you know, be successful at, you know, repeat customers and your employees. So yeah, I think that's a great way to continue to build strong talent pipelines. Is that the whole referral operative? 

Jonathan Covey: Yeah. Now for HIRETUAL, I don't know if this is something you support natively, but maybe you've, you know, you talk to clients all the time.

Jonathan Covey: Any insights to share with Steven.

Steven Jiang: So one thing we often ignore about today's difficulty for a staffing world is that they are all recruiters, hire recruiters are as difficult as a software engineer. Okay. So, so. Our clients cry for war recruiters. Okay. So I think a referral may be very important for the staffing agencies and recruiting agencies and one pitfall.

Steven Jiang: My own practice internally in an all hands meeting. I only have two sites. One site is about the CEO 's message the Atlanta site. Yeah position. I was promoted to get an employee before.

Jonathan Covey: Yeah. Was a question came in, Scott Mendell. What sourcing tools are out there that most recruiters don't know about or even utilize? How about LinkedIn?

Jonathan Covey: So, you know, there's this trend around what we at Talent Tech Labs called estaffing. This idea of hiring as a service, there are a couple of startups that have raised money Dover. Robot I've had on an expert demo day at Talent Tech Labs finds him, has raised money and you may have run into them at HIRETUAL.

Jonathan Covey: But they're younger and they have a managed service component where they're, they sort of augment the resources on the recruiter team and find folks for you. And in line with that, there's also recruiter marketplaces out there. Hired was one of them, there were few others. I know this is a little bit outside of our domain, perhaps for the panelists or but Vanessa may be, have you run into these types of approaches?

Jonathan Covey: Have you explored. Going down that path. 

Vanessa Miller: Yeah. And estaffing, just double checking. Is that including recruitment marketplaces as well? 

Jonathan Covey: Separate. The idea of being a recruitment marketplace is like a talent marketplace, like Thumbtack, but of recruiters that gotcha. Yeah. 

Vanessa Miller: Okay. Got it. So I think east staffing or kind of online staffing firm under understanding correctly we've certainly seen that as you know, we've seen.

Vanessa Miller: As complete competitors to, you know, to, to a company like Atrium, as we're staffing with humans instead of everything online. But also we've seen some staffing companies actually create their own online staffing inside of their firm for different rates as an example. So you could, you know, kind of go the full concierge.

Vanessa Miller: As an option and then, or, know, or the online staffing piece of it. So I think as you know, for companies that are kind of growing and are small to midsize and growing and needing a lot of help in recruiting it, estaffing is a decent route to go. Generally, you know, lower costs to start out.

Vanessa Miller: I think, I I'm a little biased, but I do think at some point that the concierge kind of recruiting services is definitely needed and, you know, to the recruiters that have the experience and then with all these wonderful tools at their fingertips is kind of the best way to go. Totally biased in saying that.

Jonathan Covey: Thanks. So I know we got about 10 minutes left here. Want to make the most of it? I thought it'd be fun to talk about these unconventional sort of new age practices we're seeing in employers. Or really just job marketing advertising. And that is that candidates are on Tik ToK, creating animated resume things.

Jonathan Covey: If you've seen that we got Snapchat ads and a lot of these. Using geo location technology. So if you are hiring nurses, you would do that around a local event. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on, is that something that you think it's real and where that's going, maybe Emily, you could chime in internally on LinkedIn are folks talking about this.

Emily Thompson: Yeah, so, and I think it's great. The folks are very interested in getting their name out there. We've seen folks create videos that they are open to work, which, you know, have gone viral on our platform. But I really think at the end of the day, Going back to basics and focusing on getting your, you know, your brand out there and emphasizing culture, like not focusing on consumer and customer stories, but rather on employees stories and using those to entice new candidates and really listening to feedback.

Emily Thompson: So if employees are saying, I want. Balanced. I want to be taken care of. Then you also, your message. And maybe that's through Tik TOK or Snapchat, but I think it's really the message at the end of the day that matters. And we've seen this in employee posts. If you mentioned culture that gets six, almost 70% more engagement.

Emily Thompson: So I really think it's all about the message versus the medium.

Jonathan Covey: Anyone else, thoughts on that topic we can move on to. So, ROI is important. There's so much tech out there we've talked about. I don't know five, eight strategies, things that you can buy, but as far as business outcomes, Measuring this kind of stuff. You know, how do you measure the ROI on passive sourcing?

Jonathan Covey: I know that's a big question, but perhaps you could talk about within your respective solutions. So like Steven, HIRETUAL. How do you justify the price versus traditional job advertising and how do you measure success? 

Steven Jiang: So. We have a lot of discussions and conversations that we sell with clients.

Steven Jiang: Every quarter, every month. So we built the rapport in a product so that we don't hide anything. Okay. So what, whatever we present in the numbers, they see it in real time. Okay. So that makes the conversation about you easiest. So generally I observed three key metrics, people track and sourcing candidate effort.

Steven Jiang: Okay. So, and they say, Hey, how strong they are sourcing muscle EDS. Okay. First the highest, how many hires from sourcing. Okay. And he saw something versus there's an outbound versus inbound versus . Okay. And that's a very solid one. Okay. No one can delight in that metric at all. Okay. So that is all right.

Steven Jiang: Gotcha. And the second, most common is about no responses and basically it moved to the upper layer. Okay. The sourcing is very parked there and we need to find the people and also engage in sending the right message. So, and to test how effective it is saying it's about response rate and how many responses.

Steven Jiang: Yeah. And especially if we're for staffing agencies, recruiting agencies, this is a they're part of. Okay. And for enterprise, it's also very important. So that being said, if they recruit us with poor tech, they have branding there. Well, okay. A third, is it about how big a pipeline? Okay. So, they evaluate because of the sourcing, did we increase the quantified and the quality candidate size?

Steven Jiang: Yeah. Now the pipeline size. So those are three metric sites. Off course 

Jonathan Covey: Excellent Jayne, anything to share around key data points that you're capturing on the CRM side to show certain stuff. 

Jayne Kettles: For sure. Kind of quarter our platform is a workflow engine that basically captures all the enabling interactions with users and users or any kind of automation and We can significantly demonstrate lower costs per hire with kind of the attribution models that we have based on understanding where candidates kind of are begin their journey understanding your brand and engage.

Jayne Kettles: To business acceptance, to silver medalist, to retargeting. So everything that kind of happens in our system is recorded. Kind of what the activity was, who performed it. So there's lots of information that we have to show ROI. And there's soft costs too that are, you know, not as easily to to.

Jayne Kettles: Show kind of in, in metrics. But just the time supported the brands making the application process easier with the, all the alerting and things that can happen because you're understanding. A person is in their talent journey. The reflecting of the brand, because you understand that they're you, they're new to you and you're not sending the wrong message or you understand their lane, you know, their specialties, their career tracks, and you can personalize the messaging that you want to to have and how that can reinforce the brand and make it a better experience for everybody.

Jonathan Covey: Thanks, Emily. Thoughts on ROI. 

Emily Thompson: Yeah. So within LinkedIn recruiter, we do have a great hiring funnel report that shows you everyone. Who's moved through awareness all the way down to influence tires. So starting at the top of awareness, it's everyone who's visited or viewed rather your sponsored content, so on and so forth.

Emily Thompson: But to go back to Steven's point response rate, I think is just an extremely important metric and we have one great feature. 

Vanessa Miller: In mail analytics, which 

Emily Thompson: helps you view your response rate and performance over time, which candidates responded the most based on time and roll score, your response rate versus industry benchmarks, which InMail templates get the best response.

Emily Thompson: So not only do you just have metrics, but you can also go back and improve this amazing engagement tool. 

Jonathan Covey: Thanks. And Vanessa, it's a tougher question for you because Atrium is huge and there are a ton of systems in place. Any specific analytics tools that you'd call out like a Vizier or a build your own and power BI that you're doing and how to measure success.

Vanessa Miller: Sure, I'm answering the first part, the how to measure passive ROI. So obviously, you know, tagging those clients that they were passively recruited is huge. And then if you're doing it well to Steven's point that your costs for the job boards will hopefully go down. But. With w keeping an eye on those that are tagged as a passively recruited resource, I'm looking at your interview to hire ratios.

Vanessa Miller: You're in your submission to higher ratio an interview, or kind of submission to interview, and then interview through to hire a little bit more contingent related, but you know, within contingent labor programs, you can get a good pulse on a lot of those analytics through a vendor management system or VMS as an example.

Vanessa Miller: And then I think analytics in general you know, we're launching phenom next week. Fantastic analytics just in general with that tool, but it also utilizes different tools. W, you know, we internally use power BI and can, you know, create pretty much all technologies connected into power BI these days.

Vanessa Miller: So that's our system of choice, but being able to get the analytics you need and then present them to those individuals, whether it's your own leadership for us, it's out to our clients on a cadence is always good when those, you know, with the reports and analytics can go right into those inboxes.

Jonathan Covey: Great. Well, we've jammed packed a ton in this discussion, and I want to thank you for sharing all of these insights and for all the participants listening. You know where to find these folks, if you want to explore, use cases and their solutions connect with us on LinkedIn. Other than that, I think we can park it here.

Jonathan Covey: Thank you so much.

Vanessa Miller: Thank you, have a great weekend. 


Speakers

No items found.

Speakers

Vanessa Miller

Steven Jiang

Emily Thompson

Jayne Kettles

Jonathan Covey

Duration

59

min

Watch Session now