Recruiting Future with Matt Alder - What's Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?

Ep 13: What is Recruitment Hacking?

In this episode Matt Alder talks to HR Technology expert Peter Gold.Most recruitment markets are now candidate led and more and more employers are increasing their hiring activity. This is not necessarily being backed up with an increase in budgets or head count for recruitment and many in house recruitment teams are finding their resources are being stretched to the limit. In this interview Peter talks about “Recruitment Hacking” and how it can make technology an enabler for recruiting efficiency. Referrals, careers site conversions, job title optimisation and content targeting are some of the key areas discussed. Peter also shares a number productivity tools that he feels everyone can benefit from.Links to some of the tools discussed in the episode:Buzzsumo Hootsuite SaneboxSlack Gmail Meter Rescuetime Subcribe to this podcast in iTunes

Duration:: 31m
Broadcast on:: 18 May 2015
Audio Format:: other

In this episode Matt Alder talks to HR Technology expert Peter Gold.

Most recruitment markets are now candidate led and more and more employers are increasing their hiring activity. This is not necessarily being backed up with an increase in budgets or head count for recruitment and many in house recruitment teams are finding their resources are being stretched to the limit.

In this interview Peter talks about “Recruitment Hacking” and how it can make technology an enabler for recruiting efficiency. Referrals, careers site conversions, job title optimisation and content targeting are some of the key areas discussed. Peter also shares a number productivity tools that he feels everyone can benefit from.

Links to some of the tools discussed in the episode:

Buzzsumo
Hootsuite
Sanebox
Slack
Gmail Meter
Rescuetime

Subcribe to this podcast in iTunes

There's been more of scientific discovery, more of technical advancement and material progress in your lifetime and mine, and all the ages of history. Hi, and welcome to episode 13 of the Recruiting Future Podcast. One of the biggest issues I'm seeing at the moment in in-house recruitment is a shortage of resources. Most recruitment markets are now candidate-led, and more and more employers are increasing their hiring activity. This is not necessarily being backed up with increased budgets and headcount for recruitment, and many in-house teams are finding themselves having to do more with less. My guess for this week's interview is HR technology expert Peter Gold. Peter is just about to publish an ebook on recruitment hacking, something he feels will help recruiters maximize the resources they have to be more effective. Hi everyone, and welcome to another Recruiting Future Podcast interview. This week's guest is Peter Gold. Peter, actually, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us what you do and why you do it? Hi, Matt. Happy to do that. Yes, so what do I do? I've spent, as you probably know, many years in recruitment, before I got involved in recruitment technology, and I built a recruitment system back in 1999, which is now known as an ATS. I then started working with large employers from 2003 onwards on their recruitment strategy and helping them move from it all being paper-based and relying purely on recruitment agencies to being more online. I also worked with many technology vendors during that time because I was working with the employers. I was seeing lots of technology vendors present to it, so I was actually buying the technology with the client and implementing the project, and everybody was a leading technology fender. Everybody was the mock. Of course. Of course. Yes, absolutely. It was interesting. Of course, nobody could ever give any evidence what made them the leader, but they were all leaders. As part of that kind of journey, I started getting contacted by the vendors and saying, "Could I work with them, and could I advise them on their sales and marketing?" Because when I was running the projects for the clients, I was always quite derogatory about the fact that they all claimed to be leaders, and nobody could actually back it up. Yes. I worked with a lot of the vendors over the years as well, but now I focus primarily on working with smaller technology vendors, on helping them get their sales and marketing strategy right, also getting their product right for the market, so good product market fit. Is this exclusively HR tech or is it not exclusively HR tech? I do work with some people outside of HR tech, but my focus is primarily HR tech, so I don't go actively looking for people who work outside of the HR technology space. However, I have got a client that has an anti-social behavior case management software. Wow. Is that even a thing? That's amazing. My class is a CRM for bad people, which kind of puts it in context. At the end of the day, it's very similar to an ATS or a CRM. But also, one of the biggest issues is that, not just vendors, but people don't understand the market they're selling to. They don't really understand the customer, they don't understand what keeps the customer awake at night, so one of my aims is to get to know my customers' customers better than they do. They also run something called the Global Talent Acquisition Directors Council for the Conference Board. So I work with a number of Global Talent Acquisition Directors in a round table environment where they can talk to other like-minded people and debate the kind of challenges and issues they face. So that gives me a lot of really interesting insights into what the actual in-house recruitment people face day-to-day, what are their real challenges? Okay. That makes sense. What is a mix of things I do, really? Okay. Fantastic. I suppose the topic for our conversation is sort of based on an e-book that you're working on at the moment, or you've probably finished by the time this goes out. The topic of recruitment hacking, tell us what recruitment hacking is. Okay. So recruitment hacking has kind of come from the concept of growth hacking, but I'll talk about recruitment hacking first. And the concept between recruitment hacking is really about how do recruiters get rid of the low-value tasks and activities that they do day in day out so they can actually focus on what it is they really need to do that will make them successful and which is typical generally, making hires. Okay. That makes sense. And how does that work? What's the, how does it sort of hang together? What's your advice? What's it? Is it technology? Is it a methodology? What is it? Okay. I'll talk about quickly. Life hacking is where the kind of concepts kind of starts and life hacking is about looking to get, looking at how to identify tricks and shortcuts or whatever, things that can help you be more productive and efficient in all walks of life. That's kind of where life hacking is supposed to be. Yeah. And where growth hacking is a marketing technique traditionally developed by technology start-ups. And it's about mixing kind of tech and marketing together, but being a bit more creative, a bit more analytical, utilizing social, ultimately all these different things to be more efficient at selling your products online primarily and gaining more exposure. So that's kind of what growth hacking is about. And that was a term that came from Sean Ellis in 2010, who's held a number of well-known organizations grow with little or no marketing money. So say recruitment hacking is really about two things. It's about what technology is out there. Yep. How can you use it? Okay. Safe time and automate more. Okay. And it's not really about one of the key issues that recruiters say. It's not about learning how to source. Okay. Yes, because I think a lot of advice to recruiters and technology advice to recruiters appears to be kind of all on that topic at the moment. So not that. Yeah. It's not learning how to source. I mean, talking about the e-book, the e-book will be launched any day now, and that's in conjunction with Cornerstone. Okay. And we had a webinar, we've tried a webinar recently about it, and we're going into more detail on our second webinar. As I say, it's really about how do you, you know, get more time to do the things you need to do. Okay. Really, well, the kind of the background to it is that 2015 is a candidate-led market. Now, some people will say 2014 is a candidate-led market, whether it's, you know, last year this year, whatever, the market is very much candidate-led. Yes. I'm agreed. A lot of recruiters, this will be their first experience of being in a candidate-led market. Yep. Also, I agree. Yep. It's the last seven years. It's not been candidate-led. So, you know, first of all, they've got to start thinking about how they work, and, you know, the old screening and work flowing of candidates is out, you know, and sourcing is in. Yeah. Conversion skills are in. Okay. So, a lot of the kind of growth hacking techniques transfer nicely to recruitment. And the thing about conversion is, if you're getting traffic to your site, and we know, and I know, and lots of the people know from evidence and experience, that you're getting probably 70 to 90 percent drop-off rate from somebody viewing a job to actually finishing an application. Yeah. No, it tends to be absolutely enormous. Yeah. Yeah. So, actually, as a recruiter, you may not have the time to learn how to source, and it's not an easy thing to learn how to source, but you've got the traffic, so you're actually better off trying to focus on how do you convert those candidates to actually turning to applicants. Okay. And the first rule from a recruitment hacking point of view, the first rule is to cheat. Okay. Interesting. Which recruiters should never problem with anyway. So what do you mean by cheat in this context? Okay. So cheat is, first of all, get referrals, but focus on referrals. And just think, "Oh, yeah, we've got a referral program in place, so we already do referrals." Yeah. Look at people like Dropbox who've grown their business on the base of referrals. You really need to focus on referrals and keep on testing it and keep on looking to improve it. And, you know, be a little bit cheeky, you know, rather than give a couple of hundred quid or 500 quid as a referral bonus, offer somebody an eyewatch. Yes. An eyewatch is probably something, if I don't know if an eyewatch or an Applewatch, I'm not really sure what you're allowed to call them, I don't know what the official is. The official term is actually Apple Watch. Apple Watch. Yes, it's an Apple Watch. I know you're not. Either a fan or familiar with Apple Project products, but it's, yes, it's Apple Watch apparently. Apparently. Okay. So an Apple Watch. So apparently, a lot of people would probably rather have an Apple Watch than maybe three or four hundred pounds for referring somebody. So think creatively and cheat your way to getting more referrals. And also, use third-party sources to do the donkey work as well, get them to do the hard work. That's a skill they have. And actually, for you to become a sorcerer overnight is not going to happen. So actually, utilize those people. And automate as much as you can, you know, job posting is something we've all had automated for years in recruitment. Yes. If you've got self-service functionality in your ATS, use it, you know, interview schedule and that kind of thing. But also, if you're being more analytical and you're actually measuring your job board performance and you're finding that job ads are actually on work in these days, you've got the budget, steal the budget and use it for something that might work. Okay. Okay. So that's the kind of first thing about, you know, cheating. Okay. So it's kind of sort of maximizing what you already have. So everyone, or not everyone, but lots of people have traffic. And it's, you know, how do you make the most out of that? How do you make the most out of, you know, the networks of people that you're already dealing with? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And then, but then you've got to start thinking like a growth hacker and you've got to think registration or application. Okay. Because, you know, if you look at a lot of the application forms that are either very long or they're 20 pages, or maybe only 10 pages, but your first priority is to get that candidate to at least register. Yes. You need to think about getting a faster application process. Okay. So you've got to be, you've got to think about lots of unique landing pages or campaign pages. Yes. Yes. Agree. Campaign pages are key. And you make that message very specific. Okay. Because you keep segmenting your message because if you're looking for retail buyers, not all retail buyers are the same. You've got junior buyers, senior buyers, fashion buyers, you know, hard goods buyers. So again, you've got to really be prepared to test things and assume nothing and test everything. Yeah. I think that's really interesting because I think a lot of people, a lot of people that I work with, still think that the best way of filtering is having a very long application form and they're not giving, they're not giving, you know, they complain they have teaming applications, but they're not giving the candidates enough information to filter themselves out or to, or targeting them in a very precise way like you described. And I think it's a, it's a very common problem. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a growth hackers call it split the ask. Okay. So there's actually, there's actually a word, the word for it, call. Yeah. That was a phrase. Yeah. Yes. I don't know. But I mean, like, but also things like using LinkedIn or Facebook advertising, if you've got an advert, a job advert, and you've got a job title, I see a lot of big organizations, they have internal job title, they try and push outside that mean nothing. Yeah, completely. Something different. Yeah. But you can test your ad. So again, LinkedIn advertising is not necessarily designed for this, but you can run a couple of LinkedIn adverts, same text, same image, different headline. And because the click through rates of social advertising are quite low, you know, 1% is considered good. Okay. The beauty of that is that you need to get a thousand people, let's say, to see, even see your advert, just to get 100 clicks. Yes. But in those 100 clicks, you might get 70 people click on advert 1, and only 30 people click on advert 2. Yeah. So potentially 20 within 24 hours, and for the sake of 100 or 150 pounds, you've got some quick market testing to say, actually, the job advert title that we should probably use. And this, this one is resonating with people better. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get that. So utilizing the fact that not many people click through, therefore, your potentially reaching a very large audience to, you know, to kind of persuade them to do that. Okay. Cool. Yeah. And then you can also then say, okay, well, now we know the kind of phrase that the candidate, that particular target market candidate is interested in, you can then use, for example, some of the social analytics tools to say, well, who is talking about this particular phrase and where, or even, you know, become a, you know, a content marketer and actually publish some posts on LinkedIn with those right kind of headline titles in the posts, because you've actually used the advertising to test what people actually interested in. Tasty. Kind of thing that you need. Okay. Are there any, what analytics tools would you recommend for actually, you know, doing that, doing that research to find out, you know, where, where those sort of things are being discussed? You know, when you're on a live webinar or a live podcast and somebody asks you a question and the answer to the question goes out of your head for someone, that just happened to me. And the, the tool I was going to tell you about. Yeah. I can't think of it. It's something, it's sumo. Oh, it's, um, yes, I do, it's sumo something, um, sumo something dot com, I think, isn't it? I can't remember. If it's modern, it'd be sumo something.io now. So, uh, if we can't remember exactly what it's called, I will put it in the, I will put it in the podcast show notes so people can click through, but I, I know exactly the tool that you mean it's, um, yeah, it's absolutely fantastic. But also things like, um, Hootsuite will also help with, um, yeah, that kind of thing as well. So there are various tool, but that's that, or you can even just literally use good old Google and search the phrase and see what kind of stuff's going on or even search Twitter again to actually see it and hashtag it and all those kinds of things. But there is a particular one with an unknown name that you and I can, and I know name containing the word sumo somewhere. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, cool. Well, we'll find it out and, uh, and let people know. Okay. Cool. So, um, and what's the, what's the kind of next stage or what's the next, um, in a piece of a piece of advice that you would get? So, okay. So the, so the big thing with anything new is time and I mean, you know, for years with many of us been saying you need to do this, you need to do that, and there's so much information and so much advice and so much opinion on what recruiters should be doing to get better at their job. Um, but one thing we don't always tend to think about is the fact they've got no damn time. Okay. Yeah. So part of recruitment hacking for me is about how do you get more time? Okay. According to McKinsey, we spend a third of our week managing email. Yeah. Now, so therefore, you know, if you can get rid of email to a certain extent, then obviously that will help tremendously. And the other thing about, you know, email is that if you are trying to multitask too much, yeah, again, it actually takes more effort to multitask and keep sweeping, swapping from job to job does to actually focus. Okay. So it's about, you know, time and, you know, one of the kind of things I've read recently is, you know, if you try and concentrate on a task, yet you'd know that an email in your inbox, it can actually reduce your effective IQ by 10 points. Wow. Now, I know I can't afford to reduce my IQ by 10 points, so I try to just leave mail in there as possible. Okay. Okay. But also, you know, this whole kind of digital self-gratification thing is a feel-good factor. So we've got these constant distractions from social, these constant distractions from email. And, you know, we kind of put something on Twitter or LinkedIn and we get a notification somebody's commented and we can't help ourselves but have a look. Yeah. And then we have a look. Great. And then we're kind of distracted. And then, you know, we kind of think, "Oh, did somebody else comment so we'll refresh the page and see, has anybody else followed me today or commented or sent me a message?" And that's a constant distraction to it. Yeah. So the first thing is about, you know, getting rid of those distractions. But if we kind of look at email, there are so many tools now with email that can reduce your amount of stuff you have to deal with. So in the kind of the e-book we've put together, I go through a number of specific tools that I use to filter my email down. And I think I get something like 2,500 emails a week. Yeah. Sounds about right. That's crazy. Yeah. But actually, almost 2,000 of those now I don't have to deal with. Cool. And what sort of I then do deal with, then get filtered even further. So I use a product called Sanebox as a start point. Sanebox. And email and outlook. Okay. And it will filter your email. And it kind of automatically works out what's important, what's not important. Yeah. Okay. So therefore, you know, 80% of your email you get day and day is not that urgent. Yeah. That doesn't need to deal with dealing with immediately. So just by getting your inbox under control, you can save anywhere between 5 and 10 hours a week. Okay. Perfect. Definitely interesting. Then when you've got more time, you've actually got more time to actually do the things that you should be doing. Okay. So actually look at those in email tools, but yeah, and there's a lot of investment going in by technology vendors to create systems and tools that make you more efficient. So Slack is one of the biggest ones out there. Yeah. I love Slack. I love Slack. Great. He is. But to me, he's very clear. It's like anything internal should be on Slack. Anything external is on email. Yes. Yeah. And the thing is, first of all, people kind of think, well, I work for big organization. We wouldn't be allowed to use that take too long to get it signed off. Blah, blah, blah. The basic version is free. Yeah. Yeah. You can just use it. You don't have to get permission to do it. And it's, you know, it works right from your phone, you know, very, very easy to kind of get started with. I think that kind of ease of getting started is why it's so popular and why it's now worth so much money. Exactly. And the thing is, recruiters can use it. And it's about this going, okay, how's that going to save me time? How is it going to make messaging more efficient, particularly between the team? Well, there's one thing straight away. You'll probably find 50% of your emails in turn, anyway. Yeah. Yeah. But just using things like, you know, I use Gmail meter and I use rescue time. So Gmail, meet and rescue time, as many others, they'll tell you where all your emails coming from. They'll tell you how quickly you respond to email. Yeah. I've now got the point now and I appreciate not all in house recruits can do this, but I've got the point now where I don't open email till 11 o'clock. Okay. Because I actually found that I was responding to emails too quickly. And actually it does, yes, whereas most people were not, were not responding back necessarily that quickly. Right. Okay. That's kind of like that kind of lag time. Okay. That's interesting. Get me that distraction. Okay. If you've got outlook switched off, or you've got Gmail switched off, then you can focus on doing what you need to do. Okay. Just to interrupt and backtrack slightly, that tool is called BuzzSumo. That's the one. I've just remembered. So BU double Z, S-U-M-O. Is it dot com dot I-O or dot CO? I don't know. But I'll put it up. Yeah. Exactly. I'll put a link up to it. But it's a really great tool. I've not seen many people using it in the recruitment space yet. So, yeah. So that's a good recommendation. And again, you can use it. You can do some initial tests for free. Yeah. Perfect. Fantastic. Okay. So what other parts are there to this kind of approach? Well, it's then about saying, okay, what are the specific recruitment examples? Yeah, okay, you've looked at where you can save some time. So it's simple stuff. What is your attraction process? How are you automating that mostly for jobs and then what does the interview process look like? Is your interview process or as automated as possible? And again, onboarding, getting you onboarding automated as well. And one of the concerns is that in the webinar we did this week, somebody said, well, doesn't it make the process very impersonal? And yes, it does. But the idea is to actually get rid of the low values stuff so that you can actually talk to people. So this is not about not talking to people anymore. Right. Okay. But it is about really looking at your process and breaking it back down, thinking like a growth hacker and understanding that we're in a candidate-led market. Yes. But and in the past, I've looked at recruitment processes and the process of setup when they first implemented the ATS and the ATS have been in place five years. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's very true as well. And everybody had kind of inherited that process and just kind of gone, well, that's kind of how it is. And I'm sure there's a lot of that still around. So, you know, it's about learning the skills of sourcing, which obviously I'm important, but saying, are we doing the best of what we've got right now today for a candidate-led market? Yeah, and I suppose the other thing as well is that a lot of this is round using widely available, either free or very inexpensive tools that you kind of wouldn't sort of procure them as an enterprise. You perhaps even use them as an individual and it's rather than looking to your ATS provider or something to build all this kind of stuff. It's just using this sort of fantastic array of apps and, you know, software and things that are out there to really be more efficient, I guess. Absolutely. Yes. And that is it. And very often, people that are, well, we can't use apps, it needs to be integrated below ATS, but actually it doesn't have to be. Yeah. Let's just say you could get a 10-point saving if it was integrated with the ATS, but you could get a six-point saving by it not being integrated. If you sit and wait for it to be integrated, that might never happen. Yeah, of course. So you're losing out on potentially a six-point saving just by going out and using Slack, for example, or BuzzSumo or doing something, being ads or whatever, and that is a mindset thing. Yeah, it's interesting. Absolutely. These tools are out there and it's making the most of them. Do you, you know, do you sort of know in-house recruiters who are working like this already, are there any companies kind of embracing it, you know, what's your sort of view on how, on the uptake of these kind of approaches in the market at the moment? There will be, but I don't personally know of any, I mean, the term recruitment hacking we've only just kind of come up with the bandwagon called recruitment hacking. I'm sure there will be many jump in. I'm sure there will be a recruitment hacking conference somewhere in the world before too long. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's interesting. Early days. Yeah. I'd be delighted to work with some in-house recruiters on how we can make this happen. I mean, I'm obviously doing that with Cornerstone because they, they kind of working with me on the kind of whole concept. But again, absolutely, the plan is, you know, can we, can we, you know, we run some workshops maybe and actually get people utilising this stuff, because one, the reason why I kind of dropped out of the whole social recruiting piece and doing the social recruiting workshop, because I wasn't actually a recruiter anymore. And I think in, you know, who am I to tell recruiters how to recruit when I'm not actually a recruiter anymore and the world has changed massively. However, with the sales hacking techniques and the recruitment hacking stuff, I'm using it personally. Yeah. I'm using the stuff and finding real time saves. And that's why I'm happy to kind of talk about it publicly because I absolutely know this stuff works. Because I use it. Totally, totally. And so from a recruitment point of view, that's why I'm not going to tell you how to do sourcing because I'm not a saucer, but actually I reckon I can show you how I save time and the same, how the same techniques can be used within recruitment to save you time so that you can do what it is you do best to hire people. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I think that makes perfect sense. I mean, I use a number of these tools myself as well and they're fantastic, but I think there are examples actually because I've come across a number of recruiters in the tech space who are using a lot of the tools that we mention. And I think it's the, you know, perhaps because they're exposed to, you know, some of them recruit for some of these, some of the companies that we've been talking about, you know, they're exposed to that kind of technology, then they're kind of using it. And obviously, you know, tech has been a candidate driven market forever. So, you know, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's really interesting. Great. Well, thank you. Thanks very much for sharing before, before we finish though, I just wanted to, I've kind of asked everyone this question, where, where, where do you think HR technology and recruitment technology is kind of going? We've talked about social and we've talked about mobile, you know, we're talking about sort of getting back productivity in this conversation, you know, what's next? What's on your radar? What, you know, what's the, what's the next big technology breakthrough you think that's coming, coming down the line? Have a, if you have a look at, I don't know how you, how you pronounce this, come up at x.ia. So that is using artificial intelligence. Okay. Have what looks like a human conversation between a real person, a computer to organise a meeting. So you get introduced to your assistant called Amy and okay, you might send me an email and say, Peter, can we meet for coffee? I'll reply to you and say, yeah, great, be good to meet up Matt. I see seed Amy and Amy will organise with you the computer then send you a message and says, hi Matt, see you want to have a meet up with Peter, has access to my diary. How about this date or that date? I see you're based in London, is London where suits you and you go, oh hi Amy, yes, that'd be great. Et cetera, et cetera. Now, it's enclosed beta, but yeah, the reviews on it and it come, the reviews are excellent. Now, so I think we'll start seeing more real artificial intelligence, such a word of real artificial intelligence, actually coming into more the process. So, but actually to give the candidate a much better, faster, more efficient experience. I think, yeah, I think that's interesting actually because I think, you know, for what you said before, I mean, you know, people, people will tend to think that this technology is about, you know, automating and giving a worse, giving a worse experience, but it's actually about kind of short cutting to, to those kind of high-value conversations with, you know, with people. I saw it, I did an interview with Matt Buckland, a few about two or three weeks ago now and he was very, you know, he recruits in the tech space, but he was very evangelical about, you know, conversations and recruitment being, you know, a discipline of his own and having these kind of human conversations. And, you know, I can actually see that, you know, you're both coming from the, you're both coming from the same, from, from the same place and technology is the enabler here, basically. Yeah, and I think, you know, more and more technology will be reading our mood through our interactions and actually, you know, then you'll have Amy, the HR officer, who will go, "Hi Matt, I see you're not having a very good day today, you might want to take some time off." And here's a couple of programs you might want to consider and you'll think, "Actually, Amy, that's really perceptive of you. I would like that training program and yes, you've identified that I have got the budget and you've even given me the slots in my diary when I'd be available and all I've got to do is click a link to say, "Yes, book that course." Now, interesting. That, that is not entirely far-fetched. No, the technology is there to do it, it's certainly being developed. That's what I think, that's what I think we're going to see more of and, you know, I listen to your podcast with Matt and I totally see ways coming from and my point on will technology replace recruiters. Technology will replace the activities that the recruiter doesn't really need to do. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily do that well and I actually even think that technology will start predicting who's about to leave, who needs to be moved, who's ready to be moved. And I think technology will do that more efficiently and more accurately than people sometimes can. Absolutely. Peter, thank you very much for coming on the podcast and sharing your thoughts with this. My pleasure, Matt. Bye, thanks to Peter Gold for his recruitment hacking thoughts. You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes or Stitcher and you can listen to all the past episodes at www.RFpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. I'll see you back next week and I hope you'll join me. Bye. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]