Jack Coapman is a senior executive at GR8 People, Inc. with strong leadership skills and experience formulating, developing, and implementing revenue generating strategies and policies. He assures continued growth and success through strategically charting business development and new business ventures. Jack has experience aligning client objectives and requirements with a technology platform that drives measurable results.
In this episode, Jack talks about the past, present, and future of the hiring process, beyond ATS.
[0:00 – 5:06] Introduction
- Welcome, Jack Coapman!
- Today’s Topic: The Past, Present, and Future of the Hiring Process (Beyond ATS)
[5:07 – 14:53] Products that Recruiting Teams Used to Rely On
- How paper requisitions informed the systems we use today
- The ATS and recruiting automation
[14:54 – 26:36] How People Work Differently than They Used To
- Seeking out sources of talent instead of waiting for applicants
- Recruiting technologies and the myths surrounding AI
[26:37 – 35:17] How Recruiters Will Deal with Present Pains in the Recruiting Process
- Branding opportunities based on the intended audience
- Eliminating hurdles for both recruiters and applicants
[35:18 – 37:45] Final Thoughts & Closing
- The world of talent acquisition changes often and perspectives can easily change over the course of a few months.
- Thank you for listening!
Connect with Jack:
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Resources:
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“You can’t take old problems and simply lay new technology on top of them and assume that, in the blink of an eye or a wave of a wand, [they’ll be fixed].”
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“[The] big theme today is candidate experience because if you’re not doing a good job in their eyes, they’re going to move on.”
Announcer:
Here’s an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what’s happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR data labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here’s your host, David Turetsky.
David Turetsky:
Hello, and welcome to the HR data labs podcast. I’m your host, David Turetsky. Like always, we try and find the most interesting people inside and outside the world of human resources to talk to you about what’s going on with HR data analytics and HR technology. As always, I have my good friend Dwight Brown with me. Hello, Dwight.
Dwight Brown:
Hey, David.
David Turetsky:
How are you?
Dwight Brown:
I’m great. How you doing?
David Turetsky:
Very good, because today I have my very old very dear friend, Jack Coapman. From great people, gr eight people. Jack, it is a pleasure to have you on how are you?
Jack Coapman:
I’m doing awesome. Thanks so much for having me, David and right.
David Turetsky:
It is distinctly our pleasure. And so now I’d like you to tell everybody why I know and love the dear Jack Coapman4. Describe yourself for people.
Jack Coapman:
I feel like I’m on a dating game here. I guess thanks so much. So, you know, I’ll start with I am the husband of one, the father of two and the grandfather of four. So that’s probably since since we had a chance to chat. But I have spent my life kind of in sales and marketing roles. Early in my career, I was carrying cash registers up and down the street and talking to restaurant owners and retailers and talking about the virtues of of automating your your front end cash procedures and everything. And in 2001, I had a friend call and say, Hey, I’ve just joined an organization. And I think you might be interested in it when he told me about it. I said, I have no experience in that I don’t know about recruitment technology, all I knew about when I was looking at a new opportunity was I was really disappointed that my resume didn’t get as much attention on monster at that point in time as it should have, or at least as I thought it should hit. So I joined great PR at that point, time joined the company by the name of virtual edge. And we were focused on recruitment technology at that point in time. And you know, fast forward many years have spent the last 20 years in this recruitment technology space and haven’t looked back once. It’s just a it’s just an awesome, awesome people. Awesome technology, awesome innovation. And but what’s nice is that tomorrow is going to be completely different. And that’s what keeps that’s what keeps us sharp on our toes.
David Turetsky:
And, and the way I know Jack is we’ve worked together both worked at ADP, because we were both part of acquisitions of organizations, I work for workscape, and Jack had worked for virtual edge. And I think you guys beat us by at least a year or two. That’s not true?
Jack Coapman:
I think so. So ours was in let’s see, if I have to go back I think it was in 2006 and 2006 a little bit. But those were fun times it was fun, being part of that mix and bringing together you know, different types of technologies and and be able to kind of craft and work with the entire ADP and craft that message, the solution there.
David Turetsky:
It was so much fun creating the world of talent management inside of ADP. And you guys had set a really good grounding for it. And so that’s how we got to become really good friends because we were trying to fit all those pieces of HR technology together for the benefit of our clients and try and make it work together all within inside the technology stack that existed already there. So if you know Jack, one fun thing you may not know about Jack is, he’s a little obsessed with notebooks and pens. That’s fascinating.
Jack Coapman:
Well, you know, I am an old school that I have a real hard time with a laptop or a tablet in front of me when I’m having a conversation. And you know, I don’t want to typing on a key to be a distraction. I don’t want to try to you know, reboot a computer to be a distraction. So I have found comfort in terms of having nice journals and you know, nice pens to be able to kind of capture your thoughts and then you know, anything that comes up in those conversations. So yeah, if you looked around my office, David and Dwight, you’d see you know, probably 100 notebooks in all different states of repair and some of them some of are completely full some of only have one page and then there’s this giant box that have probably 150 pens in it that I’ve got my favorites and those are always out but a little a little crazy in that area.
Dwight Brown:
If you’re going to say if we ever meet face to face should I be guarding my pen so you don’t steal it?
Jack Coapman:
You might want to if you have good ones Absolutely. So
David Turetsky:
ADP used to give away really good pens at the trade shows Jack? Yeah. So, today’s topic is very near and dear to a lot of our hearts, especially people who are out on the front lines who are either trying to recruit people or who are trying to get recruited. And it’s talking about the hiring process and what changes it’s gone through. And we used to talk about the applicant tracking system as being the system of record for the entire recruiting process. And that might be a thing of the past. So today, what we want to talk about with Jack is the past, present and future of this process and of the technology that supports it. So Jack, our first question is, let’s talk about the past, let’s talk about the suite of products that the recruiting team has been using, and talk about how that technology and the data around the technology has evolved. Well, and we’ll start by the past, and we’ll talk about where it’s been,
Jack Coapman:
yep, we’ll kind of use that rearview mirror a little bit here. So, you know, I think when I got into it in the shared, I get into, you know, the recruitment space, a little over 20 years ago, okay, actually, over 20 years ago, at that point in time, you know, it was very much a, there was really applicant tracking system. And that was the technology that recruiting teams or staffing teams, you know, it’s been interesting watching the change in the naming of the convention, the naming conventions of the of this space, but that was really the technology. So, you know, it was very much applicant focused, it was very much driven by compliance initiatives in the organization, making sure that they were capturing the right information, making sure that when they did candidate searches that, you know, they were conforming to OFCCP regulations and everything. And at the end of the day, it was really, okay, let’s make sure we have an applicant tracking system so we don’t get into trouble in some other way. And, of course, you know, conversations would always revolve around performance and usability for the recruiters and the hiring managers in the job seekers and everything, but to that applicant tracking system, then, you know, there was still the need to integrate with your core HR Payroll platform, there was still a need to integrate with, again, in that, in that compliance, integrate with your background screening tools or assessment tools to try to get to the right person side. So you had you did have that applicant tracking system was the hub. And that was really the piece of it. But then there was a lot of different, you know, components that got plugged into it to address different challenges in the hiring process, or to sharpen the, you know, the pen or the pencil a little bit better.
David Turetsky:
I don’t know if you remember this, but I go back to the days when a requisition was a piece of paper. And when a hiring manager needed to recruit for someone, there was this process flow, that would be on the manila envelope. And it would go from and we’ve talked about mental health envelopes a lot on the HR data labs podcast, but how it would go from place to place to place in order to be able to get the requisite information and insight needed for that end user, in this case, the manager to actually request a position or request a person or request a position that had to get filled. And then it would go through and go to HR to make sure we had the headcount and go to comp to make sure we had the right either FLSA or the right compensation ranges, then it would go to the recruiter, and it would sit with a recruiter until was filled, or until the the applicants would start coming in. And so that paper process and maybe I’m going way, way, way too far back, but I think that paper process generated the current process we even live with today, because a lot of the stuff that we’re dealing with today, really still, I mean, even you mentioned the compliance about it. All that stuff dealt with just automating the paper. Right? Yeah.
Jack Coapman:
Yeah. I mean, you had it, you had a lot of things to automate. Right? You had, you had that whole internal process that, you know, took weeks. And, you know, I’ll say weeks, but from the point in time that a hiring manager had a need to the point in time that it was approved and everything well, you know, you’re already already two weeks behind and, and, you know, remember, you know, when when those applicant tracking systems came up, that wasn’t too far after, you know, the whole advent of paper advertising, right, posting a job advertising it in. And I think what the, you know, when applicant tracking systems came out, the big value that organizations were seeing was that as people applied through the ATS, I could consider them for an opportunity down the road, you know, prior to that, it was like, Okay, I had had 1000 applicants for that position. Now I’m posting a very similar job just in a different location. I need to go through that whole process again, so that that that retention to those profiles is really key in the applicant tracking system world.
David Turetsky:
And the internet made all of this so much easier because it used to be you know, and I found my first job through the New York Times class classified section, but it used to be that you had to post post on a newspaper and you had to get into their calendar to make sure that they could get into the Sunday paper or whenever you aren’t. You’re advertising it. But the internet is made that in Gotcha. Sounds old now. But the internet has made that part process just, yeah, it’s automated. But it’s just made it so easy. And, and inherently I mean, if you look at the past, inherently, a lot of the things we used to do the classified ads, that’s just all it is right now. That’s what Indeed, and LinkedIn and Monster all have been. It’s just the classified sections of the newspaper.
Jack Coapman:
Yeah, we were fortunate when we started virtualized because we were one of the first that were kind of born on the web, you know, at that point in time, it wasn’t cloud, it was ASP, right? So certainly, yeah, absolutely. Yep. We need a lexicon of these, you know, like the old days, acronyms. But yeah, so so it was fortunate that we were kind of born of the way we didn’t have that legacy to bring along with us, like some of the other providers did at that point in time.
David Turetsky:
Sure. Sure. And I think what we’ve learned along the way is that, especially when things happen, and have happened, because we were moving paper around, and the lexicon is still the same, and the, you know, people say, when was that email postmarked? postmarked? What, what, when did you get that’s us, the ones that have the gray hair say that, but you know, it, it basically translates to what we’re dealing with today, and a lot of ways through the processes that we still carry. And so you know, as you said, virtual edge is one of those old products that were created pretty much net new on the web, for the web technologies to serve a different new process. And I wonder if we still haven’t, and, you know, we’ll talk about current in a second, but I wonder if we still haven’t overcome a lot of those still artifacts from the past?
Jack Coapman:
That’s a great question. I think there’s still, you know, many times when when we talk to customers, you know, they always kind of bring up well, you know, as an example, this is what my, this is my process for creating a new position, I have to do this, I have to get it salary banded, I have to do this, then I have to send it out for 18 different approvals. And many times, you know, organizations, because those processes are so rooted in their culture, so rooted in their culture that they want to know, can I do 18? You know, approvals? It’s like, well, yeah, you can, but I really need you to think about why you know, why, exactly. Because the more you know, the more approvals you have, the more time you are adding to the process of getting from the need to the availability of that position out to the job seeker. And that’s the objective is to get it out in front of people. So you know, it’s you can’t take old problems and simply lay new technology on top of it and assume that, you know, in a blink of an eye, or a wave of a wand that it’s going to fix that. So, you know, every organization regardless of the technology you’re looking at, it becomes an opportunity to look through and say, What do I need to bring forward from a process standpoint, because there very well may be some things that need to continue forward. But many times those processes were because there wasn’t a better way to do it. And now, applet technology in the web and collaboration tools in the such, there’s just a phenomenal, you know, set of tools and capabilities that help augment that.
David Turetsky:
My favorite thing that you just said, out of that entire piece of wonderful thought leadership was the word ‘why’ I don’t think we often examine what we do and how we do it, because we’re so rooted in tradition, and we’re so rooted in how things were done before. Why do you do it that way? Well, it’s always been done this way. It’s the worst reason, so. So you’re telling me that with all the great stuff you have laying around it, you you know, from a technology perspective that we have to worry about all those 18 approvals? Because that’s the way it’s always been done? If you have budgeted headcount, and your finance organization has already approved everything. Can you ask for things to get expedited as long as they’re not net new and whatnot? So so it bothers me when people don’t take a critical look at it, but but in some ways, that’s not what their job is. They’re not paid to do that they’re paid to keep the wheels on or, or to keep processing the way they already always have. I encourage people, though, to ask that question, why a lot.
Dwight Brown:
And I would agree, that’s very important. You know, I used to work in the quality world, and we’d work with Lean initiatives. And one of the biggest questions that we asked at every step of a process was, why do you do it that way? Right, and what’s the outcome? And I agree with you that oftentimes, organizations just bring in the historical process. And don’t ask that question then. So, you know, with today’s topic, it really translates to how can we be more efficient and streamlined and what does that mean for the organization?
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David Turetsky:
And that brings us to the next question, which is what is actually happening in the world today around the ability to find good talent, and bring people in? What’s the difference between today and what had happened in the past?
Jack Coapman:
I think that’s probably one of the most exciting parts of this space. Because, you know, every day week month, you know, I think this space is, is is looking at opportunities to kind of reinvent itself, I think the biggest thing, I think there’s a couple different things, you know, one, there’s been a significant shift of thinking of, you know, TA leaders that we can’t live in, in only an applicant centric world, because then oh, we’re going to capture those people that, that the job has resonated with them, the location has resonated with them, the company has resonated with them, and they’re going to click that apply button and go through that process, right? Now, the pendulum on talent keeps swinging back and forth, there’s times that we’ve got an overabundance of talent. And there’s times that we just can’t find anybody for a specific role. So the thinking around it has really changed to, I really need to have an opportunity to cast a broader net to capture both those applicants as well as people that maybe come to the brand come to my site, but don’t see their dream job, again, maybe not the right position, maybe that rights seniority, maybe not the right location, but we hope that there’s something that resonates with talent about our brand, you know, speaking as a TA leader, we hope there’s something that resonates about their brand that they want to learn more. And that’s the ability to kind of capture that information. So I always think about, you know, that approach to more of a talent, or total talent kind of an approach. So, you know, if you’re thinking about advertising job, shouldn’t you be thinking about past applicants? Shouldn’t you be thinking about people that have simply expressed interest? And shouldn’t you be thinking about employees that are looking for their next step in the career, so I think we’ve shifted from this applicant only to a broader thinking of, you know, talent that I want to speak with.
David Turetsky:
Jack, I think there’s another thing that I’ve heard and I have actually seen this in process change with some companies who have looked even before this in the supply chain for people. And that’s actually creating people going into universities and creating either think tanks or asking for specializations to get created around areas, like we’ve seen STEM for women, like, you know, the, if we don’t see the supply in the marketplace, go to the place where the supply comes from, and ask those places to actually create those resources for you. So that you have good steady supply, good, meaning you can rely on that university, they pump out really good, thoughtful human beings. And that’s where you can get those experiences. Have you seen a shift also to not just worrying about who’s in the market today, but also seeding the market? Not just for yourself, but for the industry?
Jack Coapman:
Yeah, I mean, I have so there’s certainly a lot of, you know, campus recruiting initiatives that go on with from an outreach perspective with organizations going on campus to try to find those right people, you know, I have heard, you know, trying to incubate different types of talent profiles in an organization. That’s a hard road to hoe, right? I think it’s certainly it’s thoughtful, it’s certainly will pay dividends down the road, trying to get people interested in different vocations different areas, I think is going to be critical down the road.
David Turetsky:
When I was in the investment banking world, you know, in the investment bank world had a very interesting way of recruiting, we recruited people out of the best schools and put them in a training program, the analyst training program, and then we got them to a stage where they were sufficiently trained, and then they would go off to grad school, we encourage them to go to grad school, and then they’d come back and be part of what we call the Associate Program. And then once they graduated the Associate Program, then they had all the knowledge, all the understanding, because they had they spent their summers are whatever time with us. And they’d come back and be exactly what we needed to fill in those leadership positions in the investment banking areas or the Institutional Equity areas. And so we built our own feeder programs, they worked across the entirety of the industry, and was always a constant supply because we were always going from the first year to the fourth year, they graduated, they go to the next program, first year, fourth year graduate. And so it was a good feeder program. And and I don’t see that happening a lot in other industries, do you?
Jack Coapman:
Yeah I mean, we’ve see, you know, there’s a lot of industries that are still, you know, challenged from from a from they’ve got a supply problem, right. If you think about if you think about, you know, pharmacies and such there’s still gaps in that in that, you know, supply demand curve. And so, you know, there’s a lot of organizations that are tracking you know, people that are just entering pharmacology school, so looking at that their first year, their second year and beyond in starting engaging with them so that when they come out with a degree that your organization is going to be top of mind And, you know, I think you’re seeing it in engineering, because there’s still an imbalance between that supply and demand. And I’m sure there’s other organizations, you know, some, some, some industries are tough, you know, some of the high volume hiring and stuff to do that with, but, but yeah, I think when you get into some of those specializations that require longer educational curves, and the such things and different certifications, the earlier that you can get your branding message in front of them. And and, and hopefully it resonates with them that there’s been the research done to say, this is why I think you should be interested in our organization and our, our opportunities, the sooner you get that message out there, the better it’s going to be for them.
David Turetsky:
And so is there a technology play here, like the communities and stoking communities and you know, online communities? Or if they’re, if they’re passive candidates creating passive candidate pools? You know, has the technology evolved to kind of keep people like a follow on LinkedIn? Is there a way that we can keep them on the hook to, you know, if a role comes available for them that they might be interested in? Even if it’s not?
Jack Coapman:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the, you know, as as the thinking about, you know, the broader, you know, the broader perspective of talent acquisition is expanded beyond just, you know, the applicant, right? It goes all the way back to the branding side. So, you know, you’ve got the concerns in terms of, do I have the right brand? Is it being presented to them? Is it aligned with a different type of people that are coming to my site, so that I have a message that resonates with he or she at that point in time? And then it becomes a matter of how do I keep people engaged? Well, you know, it’s always amazed me that the that the TA, or HR department for many years really didn’t have an opportunity to learn from the customer relationship management processes that were in place in the sales team that they didn’t have an opportunity to learn about, you know, marketing in those different kind of marketing cases that are out to them. Well, you know, very quickly that has come, you know, full steam ahead. So, you know, world class organizations today have that approach across the entire, you know, talent continuum, if you will, from how am I branding, my organization, the end of it is how I’m hiring it, the middle is, most people drop out of the process, as people express interest, how do I keep the message in front of talent to ultimately lead them to the right job? The problem is, the problem has always been, as the years have gone by, there’s been hundreds, if not 1000s, of different types of technologies that organizations can take advantage of. And, you know, I tell people, you know, you’ve made the right decision over the years to add this branding tool, or add the CRM tool or add this employee referral tool, or this event management tool or whatever, those are the right decisions at that point in time. But now you’ve got an opportunity to look back and say, was it you know, how am I doing today? Well, if they’ve got one strategy, that that, you know, goes across the entire talent continuum, but they’ve got 15, 20 different technologies, what how is that impacting them? Right, and, and so, you know, integration challenges, heaven forbid, at the end of the day that they that they want to report that speaks to all of that. So it’s really, it’s really, it’s really, you know, impacted that entire, that entire approach.
David Turetsky:
So let’s change topics a little bit and talk about the the elephant in the room that everybody always harps on when it comes to recruiting technology, which is the artificial intelligence issue. And we’ve talked about a lot on HR data labs. And one of the reasons why is because there’s good AI, and then there’s AI that we don’t like so much. And especially in the recruiting world, we see AI used a lot in checking resumes to make sure that someone’s a good fit for a job or not, is kind of the first eyes on the resume. Can you talk about the you know, what’s happening in the world today around AI? And how you think it is affecting the candidate experience?
Jack Coapman:
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I think everybody’s got a different definition of AI. And I think sometimes they get confused with automation, right? You know, we think well, well, I’m automating it, so I’m doing it through AI. You know, I always look back and say what are the what are the steps in the process that AI can help with or that that some kind of an engine, some kind of a tool can help with and, you know, our major constituents when well, not just ours, but it but anybody is really about, you know, the job seeker and the recruiting function. So, from a recruiting side? Why do I have to go through and fill out this complete form that just to find a job that I think is a match for me? So I think that you’re starting to see different AI oriented tools at the front end, whether they be chatbots, whether they be, you know, tools that allow you to simply upload a resume and say, Hey, find the job for me, you know, I don’t want to search. I’m a valuable commodity. I shouldn’t have to spend time hunting and pecking around to find that job. Here’s my profile. Here’s what I want to do. Here’s my experience, right? You tell me if there’s a fit in your organization, because if there are if there is I’m all in If there’s not a next, so I think you’ll see you know much more on that side as well. And, and you know, AI in the terms of knowing that job seeker knowing what they’re interested in. So the next time they come visit you that you recognize them, you respect them, and you serve them up with additional information. So big thing today is all about candidate experience. Because if you’re not doing a good job, and they’re in their eyes, you know, they’re going to move on. You know, from the recruiter experience. There’s so much manual work, David, and Dwight, as you as you know, right? It drives me nuts when, when a job is opened and I talk to recruiters, and I say, well tell me what you do. And they say, Well, I really don’t have visibility to anybody, it’s applied to jobs in my organization in the past. So, you know, I have to go out and post this on a million different sites and look at the applicant pool as a result of that. Meanwhile, you know, they’ve had people that were a bronze or silver medalist for a job, that would have been a perfect fit for that they’ve had people that they’ve been nurturing for months, you know, you know, many months to, you know, talk about the brand. And they also have a lot of employees that would be looking for that next step in their career. So, you know, the ability to now to take all of that learning and do something really, really easy, but but impactful to the recruiter, here’s the people you should be talking to Now, here’s the people that that are a match that you should be getting a message out in front of them. Now, while that whole while you’re going through those 18, those 18 approvals, here’s the people you should be reaching out to now let them know that the job is upcoming, and we might want to consider you for this.
David Turetsky:
So let’s transition to the next topic. Because what I want to say is, how are we going to fix all that? So what’s the future of the recruiting process? And of the talent acquisition process? How do we get smarter with either better tools or better processes? What is the solution?
Jack Coapman:
Well, first off, there’s a there’s a lot of really, really creative solutions on the market. You know, this is this is an industry that is always reinventing itself. And in looking at those those challenges and such. You know, I think there’s, I think there’s a couple things, I think, I think one is, you’ll one is going to be the data because you really, you really don’t know what you should be doing unless you know, how it’s working today, or how it’s not working today. So, you know, the ability to kind of present to people, you know, fundamental KPIs to a recruiter to a talent leader to a sourcer, that speaks to their line of work that they do for the organization is really key. And, and, you know, it’s there’s just, there’s so much information, and we like to think or how I think it is, is that you should be able to kind of go through your natural workflow, you know, the way that you source candidates, the way that you screen them the way that you move them through the hiring process. And those KPIs should be a byproduct of that, right, I shouldn’t have to go out and create something new. So the ability to kind of, you know, have a place that you can go to to see, how are people converting from a brand new leader prospect? How long are they spending in each stage of the process, what has impacted them to move from step one to step two, and have that one single line of sight across the board there. So I think it all roots in terms of the ability to have that data now, that becomes much more difficult, as you know, when you’ve got multiple technologies in place becomes that much more difficult to tie those things together. So, you know, we’re we’ve already seen, we’ve already been in this space that you’re seeing the advent of, you know, a much more platform approach to organizations to have a single platform that is not just has the breadth of capabilities, but also the depth of capabilities. So there’s a lot of tools that have the breadth of capabilities. But when you start talking about, well, I’m hiring for drivers and retail operators and senior level executives, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don’t do all of that. Right, you have a workflow. So I think organizations are going to start moving much more to that side, once again, depending upon the breadth of the needs that the client has, but also the depth of you know, how complex their opportunities are. And once they get to that point, now they’ve got the data in one place, and they can start reporting data or, or the organization’s need to go to more of a data warehouse approaches, you know, and bring it all these disparate and things and hopefully, that you can pop out the right, you know, relevant information out there. But, you know, I think I think that’s going to be key. I think that that approach to tail total talent is going to be key for organizations, when they think about, you know, advertising their positions, engaging with job seekers, not just those that are coming to work for you on a full time basis, but also those project or gig type, you know, roles in the organization. So, why can’t I think about how I want a brand to the gig worker that is only looking for a 90 or 180 Day engagement with me? Should I have different branding for them? Should I have different workflows for them? And I think I think that’s that’d be key.
Dwight Brown:
I was gonna ask a follow on question to that you talked about the multiple disparate systems out there and tying the systems together. You know, one of the pieces that I have seen and experienced is the fact let’s take, for example, the job application process from a candidate perspective, I go out on to the various posting sites, and I find a job. And in some cases, I can apply directly from that site to the job. But in the majority of the cases, what I find is that I can do a preliminary, but then I have to go to the company’s website and basically transcribe my resume into all of the fields for the applicant tracking system. So where it seems like that’s moving at a snail’s pace, and I have to think that tying together the technology is probably the rate limiting step there. What do you see is the biggest challenge to tying the technology together? What are you seeing out there in the market that’s keeping us from doing a better integration?
Jack Coapman:
Well, I think any more like, I don’t know, you know, I, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a technology issue, right? I mean, we we’ve transitioned from, from, you know, a model that we were kind of exchanged flat files and move them to FTP servers and grab them and then interpret them and such, I mean, we’ve moved, we’ve moved into much more of a, you know, an API, you know, oriented world, right. So I don’t know, if technology is really, you know, the stumbling block there, I think kind of business models come into play, right. So when you think about a corporation, they want people to be returned to their website, through their different advertising mediums, so that that investment they’ve made in the employer brand comes through to them, right, so so you’ve got that from the corporate side. And then you’ve got, you know, different job boards, you know, different job boards that have a different business imperative in front of them, right, they want to capture that profile, make them come back into such so you’ve got competing business priorities out there, and I don’t think technology is necessarily necessarily yet you know, you should be able to put a put a an advertisement on LinkedIn or, or Twitter or Facebook, or whatever the case is, or any other kind of, you know, vehicle out there, they should be able to return directly to the job, take a look at that, be able to explore what it’s like to work at that organization, apply through that, and then work through the process. And then if they don’t get that job, they come back into the marketing cycle and automate that introduction of new opportunities to them.
David Turetsky:
And Jack using API’s get the data directly from LinkedIn. So the person does not have to complete their their application like in every single dotted dotted, dot the I and cross the T, because that is painful. And it makes the candidate say oh, I gotta do this again.
Dwight Brown:
The other thing is the candidate pool it oh, he narrows the scope where people just get sick of it. They’re like, well, I don’t want to spend two hours on something that I’ll probably get an automated reply for. So yeah,
David Turetsky:
Well, the problem is the velocity of Change today is so high people leaving people looking for new roles. And there are many candidates out there looking for jobs. The question is, how do they optimize what they’re doing in order to be able to find the right role. And like you said, there are some technologies that will help them look for it, but it can’t help them be able to market themselves, it seems like it’s in a little imbalanced in the world where LinkedIn is a way for someone to market themselves, and they can put their hand up and said, I’m open to work. But it doesn’t seem like there’s the closing of that loop jack to kind of go back around to say, here’s all the people who are out on the market, here’s their expertise, here’s what they’re really good at. I can’t believe there’s not that that one push into those ATS is or into those, those requisitions. To say, and here are the great people that are available that want jobs and
Jack Coapman:
Well you know there are. So there are that are interested to advances in all of that. So, you know, there’s been a lot of new, you know, in addition to LinkedIn, there’s a lot of new sourcing platforms and everything that have been introduced out that are that are places that recruiting professionals can go to to find new talent and bring those pros, you know, we’re big about experience. So we try to embed as many of those capabilities in our platform is possible to make it easy for the recruiter, we can’t, we don’t want them kind of going and spending time over here. And as such, we want them kind of focused on the work at hand. So there are there are a lot of different places that they can go to find talent and bring those over. But again, you know, certain sites don’t want you to have all the information from them because they want you doing the work within their platform and as such, and that’s fine. And then you know, I certainly respect that. But, you know, I’m always looking at the role of the recruiter and they’re, you know, I have such tremendous respect for that role of the recruiter because, you know, they are on the frontline. They are representing the organization, the impact they can have on somebody’s lives. Finding the right job in their organization, I think is key. So I’m always looking at how can we eliminate any kind of hurdle, you know choking point or anything that hits the fluidity of the of the process? How can we make sure we make their job easier to have more transparency to talent, more transparency to opportunities in the organization, and more collaboration across the team to make sure we get them into the right position?
David Turetsky:
Alright, so Jack, we talked a lot today about the recruiting process and recruiting technologies and recruiting data, we talked about the past and where all this stuff came from. We talked about the struggles that recruiters have had over the years and candidates and hiring managers. We talked about the process today and some of the advancements, and you talked about the way in which data can be used as a, as a way in which we can find new ways of being able to be better by using the analytics around the data, and then talked a little bit about the future of recruiting technologies recruiting process, what didn’t we cover? What didn’t we ask you?
Jack Coapman:
Well, we covered my my passion for paper, and pens, and all of that stuff associated with that. Here’s what I think is interesting about this space, Dave, and Dwight, you guys know as well as I do, we can have those same three questions posed to us in 90 days, and could probably have some different perspectives, at least in terms of what’s being done today. And what’s going to be done in the future. And I think that’s, I think that really speaks to what organizations are looking for when it comes to, you know, any type of recruitment technology platform, they’re looking for that flexibility and agility that they can react and respond to the movements that an organization is making the such. And again, the responsibility of TA professionals has just continues to expand and and you know, they really are a key component of the success of any organization out there. So hopefully, we have a chance to camp those same questions in 90 or 180 days.
David Turetsky:
Well, we’re definitely going to ask you back. So thank you very much, Jack. And thank you very much, Dwight.
Dwight Brown:
Thanks for letting me stay on.
David Turetsky:
My pleasure. And thank you for listening, and we really appreciate your support. If you liked this episode, please hit subscribe. If you know somebody who might like it, please send it their way. Thank you very much. Take care and stay safe.
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