Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
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Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
CEO of TALK - Bill Fanning - Career Club Live
Discover the secrets of transforming talent acquisition with Bob Goodwin, President of Career Club and Bill Fanning, CEO of TALK (Talent Acquisition Leadership Keynotes). Journey from his roots in Beverly, Massachusetts, through his military service, to leading the world’s largest talent acquisition community. Bill shares insights on balancing career and family, and the impact of AI in recruitment. Learn how companies use multi-channel approaches, including TikTok and Instagram, to attract top talent. Explore skills-based hiring, the importance of collaboration, and the costs of turnover. Join us for a comprehensive discussion on employee lifecycle, wellness, and the "Talk Talent Acquisition" community. Don't miss this enlightening episode!
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I know you're gonna find it. You gotta keep on at it. Hi everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is brought to you by a new pilot program we've initiated called Journey Forward. If you're a human resources or talent acquisition professional and you'd like to create a better candidate experience and drive your employer brand, we'd encourage you to check out Journey Forward, where we can take rejection letters and turn them into redirection letters and provide tangible resources for candidates who may not be moving forward in the current job process, but you'd like to keep them as part of your talent community, referring people to you as well as continue to be advocates of your brand. Again, that's called Journey Forward, and you can learn more about that on the Career Club website at careerclub. So with that, I'd like to welcome today's guest. Today's guest is Bill Fanning. Bill is the CEO of TALK, which stands for the Talent Acquisition Leadership Keynotes. I'll have to get you to explain that one to me in a minute, but, bill, first of all, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. I'm really glad to be here and excited for our discussion.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So for just a little bit of context, TALK is the world's largest organization of talent acquisition professionals, with nearly 12,000 members representing 80 chapters in North America. The TALK platform enables TA leaders to connect, share best practices, innovate, improve their business processes, manage local events and make new friends. So does that do a pretty good job of encapsulating TALK?
Speaker 2:That does a phenomenal job and that's fundamentally what talk is. This is an online talent acquisition focused community, and the word to me there that's really critical is community. It is actively engaging in conversations, discussions, webinars and local events across this country on a weekly basis. So I belong to other communities like this that aren't as active and as engaged, so it's one of the things I really got excited about when I was introduced to talk is the actual involvement of the members across the country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll get into that here in just another minute. Sure, before we do all that stuff, let me kind of do as we want to do just ask a few icebreaker questions so people can get to know you a little bit as a human being first. Yeah, so the easy one. Where were you born and raised?
Speaker 2:So I was born and raised on the North Shore of Massachusetts in a town called Beverly, actually birthplace of the American Navy at the first. Did not know that. Yeah, the first naval ship that was commissioned for the colonies was commissioned in the harbor of Beverly Harbor. Now the interesting aspect is where the ship was situated, because, depending on the distance from shore, it was either the Beverly or the Salem Harbor, the two towns, salem, which city? So there is still probably an active debate over that, since we are a group of people that thoroughly enjoy debating things of that nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go, so that's cool. And where did your Massachusetts accent go, by the way?
Speaker 2:There you go, so that's cool. And where did your Massachusetts accent go, by the way? So that's a great question. So I spent, prior to my professional career, 10 years in the military, and I quickly learned that not everyone embraces the Boston accent as much as people in Boston do do, so I actively worked to minimize it. So now it only really comes out when I'm super tired or around my family around family and I said being born.
Speaker 1:I was born in the south, my mother is from Alabama, my father was from New York and I ended up talking like who I'm talking to, so my accent would just sort of go to but if I'm in the South, like I can start drawing down the eyes and doing all that stuff pretty easily. So so you were in the military. First of all, thank you for your service. Which branch were you in?
Speaker 2:Was in the army Awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, again, thank you for that. And then, did you go to school before or after the army?
Speaker 2:I went to school during I went through a program called grain to goal, and so I went in as an enlisted soldier right after high school. I've always had this desire to try and challenge myself, so at that point the challenge was could I become an officer? So I submitted a packet and went through this program and went from enlisted to become an officer.
Speaker 1:So I through that and some private work, I was able to earn my college degree that is awesome.
Speaker 2:What was your degree? In Business administration, with a concentration in marketing and a minor in military history?
Speaker 1:Very good, that's cool, that's awesome. Now, right before we started, you needed to go take a time out to tell somebody to be quiet. Tell us a little bit about your family.
Speaker 2:Sure, I'm married, I have four kids, two dogs, two cats, and when we put all of that in one house it can get loud. So sometimes it's just always, especially when school is over and the ruckus is happening, to just stick my head out the door and get everyone to be quiet for a little bit, so yeah, we got four kids too, so my empathy level is very, very high. On control, yeah, it's funny because you know, parenting, true parenting, doesn't start until you're tactically outnumbered, that's what we say.
Speaker 1:It's not even a challenge until you're outnumbered. It's either two-on-one or man-on-man, like you can play that defense, but then it's a challenge. So yeah, come on, parents of four, we understand that. So how long have you been at the CEO of talk? How long have you been there now?
Speaker 2:So I just started in March, so very quickly I had an opportunity to start a talent acquisition candidate experience platform with a very talented CTO and over the course of the growth of that about a year, we just were struggling as a lot of talent acquisition technologies were in gaining momentum and scale. The biggest issue I found was connecting with the market with the tools available to build brand awareness, get people excited. So, outside of the individual networking that you can do, the ability to build pipeline and momentum for the organization to scale is very tough because it's hard to connect with your ICP. So when I learned about talk in a online active community of talent acquisition leaders being able to bring that to the market to other TA leaders and other TA vendors to build a broader community seemed like a no-brainer. So I was super excited at the opportunity to be part of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you've been around the talent community for quite a while.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, absolutely so. My first job coming out of the military was HR and payroll sales with ADP. You can't do better than that.
Speaker 1:That's sort of like the master's degree in sales and all things HR.
Speaker 2:It was phenomenal, and I worked in downtown Manhattan. We got into a situation we lost a lot of large deals to PeopleSoft which is a name some people may not be familiar with, but was the 800-pound gorilla at one point and so I went to work for them, learned enterprise sales, worked for Oracle, worked for big companies, and then, through consecutive career changes, I've focused much more on talent acquisition, recruitment, advertising, recruitment, marketing, things of that nature, which to me is just fascinating. And it comes back to the military in one way that I learned very clearly when I was in the military the power to get a mission done is the people period, and so one of the things that excites me about talent acquisition is, when you think about an employer, the power for them to get their mission done comes to the quality and the type of people they bring into that organization.
Speaker 1:They foster a culture of enablement to tackle and complete tough missions, and so I got really excited about talent acquisition, and it's remained uh since, uh, for years now yeah, well, I appreciate you saying that I mean because I'm saying about this early this morning you know the the focus that a company might put on something like their supply chain, laser focused and yet the reality is that sometimes talent acquisition is much looser than all of that. Right, yeah, it's buttoned up through no fault of the TA people, it's just sort of the nature of the beast. I was buttoned up through no fault of the TA people, it's just sort of the nature of the beast. And yet, to your point, the mission is 100% dependent on the people.
Speaker 1:And I think the other thing that maybe you and I have in common is I come into the HR industry more from a consumer insights marketing background. But it's all what makes people tick, what motivates people, and so when you're talking about recruiting, employer brand things like that you're selling at that level. Right, oh, 100%. And what does your ICP, your ideal consumer, profile? What are they looking for? What do they need, what are the benefits that they're looking for, what's the value proposition? And so all this stuff kind of swirls together and meets, but at the end of the day, it's about the people.
Speaker 2:Yes, I wholeheartedly agree and I think that and we'll talk about this in a little bit but I think, as we look at the evolution that I'm experiencing through the community and the conversations within talk, skills assessment, the different ways to assess and validate the fit of a person in your organization, both hard and soft, are evolving, I think, because people are getting more focused on bringing the right people into their company, beyond what we traditionally could do with some of the more static tools like a resume and things of that nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no we will definitely double click on that one.
Speaker 2:And yeah, last question.
Speaker 1:And for our listeners. I just learned this about 10 minutes ago before we pressed the record button. Bill, what do you like to do when you're not making talk? And even greater organization.
Speaker 2:Well, I like to go for what we call long runs. So this weekend we did a great marathon up in Vermont. It was phenomenal. It was made interesting due to the fact it was all on trails and it went up and down a mountain a couple times. So super fun and it's something I enjoy quite a bit. And yeah, so this weekend was a good kickoff to the season. I've got a couple more coming up and marathons, Marathons, but ultra. This was a marathon, but I tend to drift a little bit more to ultra marathon distances.
Speaker 1:And what's an ultra marathon?
Speaker 2:Anything beyond a regular marathon. So 50K, which is 31 miles or so, 50, 100k, 100 miles, something to that distance.
Speaker 1:And then how did you describe to me an ultra marathon?
Speaker 2:They're just just a mellow fun just relaxing relaxing event, just going out there, chugging along and enjoying yourself. And it is a very, very different community than shorter, more organized races. For me, I have found it to be a more relaxed, inclusive, fun culture where you know we're all there to do something that quote unquote could be difficult, but we're doing. We're also there to have fun and support each other.
Speaker 1:And I think that's cool. It reminds me my daughter did cross country and there were shirts that said your sports punishment is our sport.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah. My daughter used to wear a shirt all the time that said she was a lacrosse player, she was a goalie for years and she was just wearing this t-shirt all the time, said, um, if lacrosse was easy, I'd play softball.
Speaker 1:used to crack me up all right, so let's dive into this. So I was so pleased that we were able to get this schedule bill because you're leading the largest organization in north America of talent acquisition professionals and to be able to tap into your expertise is phenomenal, so just kind of at a high level, and there's obviously several places we can go with this. But as you've gotten acclimated to your new organization plus, you've got deep experience in a lot of these issues. Anyway, you know what are you guys seeing? What do you all identify some of the fundamental challenges for ta today and maybe where that's likely headed in the future?
Speaker 2:so in in kind of generalities. What I have experienced is that there's a lot of organizations in kind of generalities. What I have experienced is that there's a lot of organizations today that their talent acquisition teams, function was reduced over the last 24, 36 months. What I'm experiencing is or not experiencing but able to watch and see people talk about, or not experiencing but able to watch and see people talk about is that that team size is now the same right, it hasn't grown back, but the volume and the hiring needs of the employers has started to restore itself, and so now what we're experiencing is a real need for recruiter enablement right, the ability to bring tools, processes and pieces together that allow people to do things in a much more efficient manner, which is why I think we're seeing some of the new trends in technology coming about to make that a possibility.
Speaker 1:So you know, people who are listening to this podcast will know that we work a lot with job seeking candidates. That's sort of the core of what Career Club does. And you know, I tried to explain to folks like, don't get mad at the talent acquisition person, because typically they're one of the first groups that got cut.
Speaker 1:When companies are doing, layoffs hey, don't use many talent acquisition people. So the teams got downsized and then they tend to be, to your well made point, one of the last groups to be restored. Because it's like, well, I guess we've got a company, now it's a. Because it's like well, I guess we've got confidence, hey, now it's a problem. You know, whatever, some of the KPIs that they're using regarding recruiting are not up to par. It's like, well, yeah, we've been telling you guys for months, we don't have enough people, there's too much work for the staff that we've got, and so it's always kind of like chasing the tail a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's always kind of like chasing the tail a little bit, and it's not TA's fault in that sense. But now let's go kind of look at some of the things that you guys are seeing that, whether it's maybe we can just start off with the most obvious one generative AI and how AI is being deployed to help you know, instead of one for one, let's just add more TA bodies back to the equation. How are you guys seeing companies using AI, maybe, and, or data and analytics, to help bridge some of those productivity gaps?
Speaker 2:So I think, at a high level, what I'm starting to see is traditional organizational marketing starting to bridge into recruitment marketing. Now there's a lot of people that talk about recruitment marketing as functional vendors delivering solutions. That's existed. What I'm starting to see is that the organizational TA function is starting to think much more business-like around the marketing and the sales aspects that other parts of the business measure themselves by. So people are getting much more business-like around the marketing and the sales aspects that other parts of the business measure themselves by. So people are getting much more effective in terms of who are we going after, where are they, what are the vehicles to reach them?
Speaker 2:And thinking a little bit broader, social media is a great aspect in terms of I'm looking to hire a frontline person or skilled labor person. Well, there's now tools that allow us to effectively distribute opportunity on platforms that you may not traditionally consider TikTok, instagram, facebook Reels I think it's Reels. So I see people starting to think a little bit more multi channel marketing capable in the recruiting aspect. And then I also see AI advancing in the TA space. So I'll use this example. Last year, I went to Unleash and what I experienced was a lot of vendors.
Speaker 1:Can you explain what Unleash is very quickly?
Speaker 2:Oh, unleash is a phenomenal trade show in Las Vegas. They do Unleash in very quickly. Oh, unleash is a phenomenal trade show in Las Vegas. They do Unleash in the US. They do Unleash in Europe. I think the Europe version is bigger and the predecessor to America, but it's phenomenal to be able to see HR and talent acquisition technologies, hear phenomenal speakers.
Speaker 2:It's in Las Vegas and I found the last few times I've gone a really rewarding experience. What I found the last year was a lot of vendors talking about the fact that we have AI and to me it seemed very cursory. This year it was much more functional use of AI in the platform. So I see the advancement of the technology going from we have it to let me show you how it's deployed natively within our technology tech stack and accomplishing something in a faster way than you could do it yourself, and I think that was really interesting in terms of pulling skills out of a resume, making mashing happen, helping organizations decipher interviews, whether they're in person or over a phone or over a video. But making things more tangible, less subjective and more measurable is where I saw a lot of AI coming to play.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, one of the things you just said reminds me, like you know, a typical or not typical, but traditional applicant tracking system is pretty literal. Like you know, these are the words you are looking for on a resume, yes, and sometimes with our clients. I will use an example, like client services and account management. Well, as a human being, maybe those are the same thing, close enough to being the same thing, but to an ATS, well, no, you told me, client services. This lady's resume says account management, so you know she's not going to go through because she doesn't have the requisite skill or AI can say no, that's the same thing. That's close enough to the same thing. Right, and be able to, you know, just be smarter about understanding the data that's coming to them by virtue of, you know, resumes as an example.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a hundred percent. And it goes back to what we were talking about, about skills-based hiring being able to take a term from somebody's background, independent of how you get it, and break the taxonomy of it down. So understand what is account management so, independent of what the title is, if we can define the taxonomy of it down. So understand what is account management so, independent of what the title is. If we can define the taxonomy of the skill set it takes to accomplish that role, then we can make intelligent skills alignment happen. And that's great for misaligned titles, but it's also think you know.
Speaker 2:Technology, even within talk, is probably our largest industry.
Speaker 2:It's certainly a large volume of hiring. That's happening because so many organizations are becoming digitized. But looking at technology backgrounds and making the comparison, ai is phenomenal at that when a person can't do it quickly. So if I'm a recruiter and I put a job out and I get 300, 500 applicants, and I put a job out and I get 300, 500 applicants without that technology, it becomes subjective of whether I'm making good alignment of the people who have applied and they're fit for the role when an AI supporting system, whether it's in the ATS system or additional, can quickly go through that stack and help you find the great alignment, the diamonds in the roughs, making smart. Or find somebody who applied for role A but is a phenomenal fit for role B and maximizing the value of those applicants coming in. You know, I think that's a phenomenal use case for me, knowing some of the metrics that have been challenging, for when that resume review is being done manually, where you can really extract a higher degree of value than people raising their hand saying they want to work for you.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate it. I think I'm learning something. So thank you with this idea of what are the underlying core skills and attributes for somebody who is successful in this kind of a role. Attributes for somebody who is successful in this kind of a role, whether that title is present or not, even synonyms forget synonyms, just like but this person has done a lot of the kind of work that we need that we know people who are successful in this kind of a role have done. That's one that's really cool. And then two is the ability to kind of cross-pollinate. Well, she applied for the director of you know whatever marketing role, but what she'd really be good at is our employer recruitment stuff Because, to your earlier point, a lot of the things she's done is exactly what we need for this.
Speaker 1:You know, recruitment, marketing, that we're starting to double down on, and so I think that you know AI and I're starting to double down on, and so I think that you know ai and I want to ask you about this.
Speaker 1:I mean, ai's definitely got some uh, watch outs, shall we say, associated with it, but when you start to think about and this is this is my number one frustration, because I just see it hampering our's ability to land a really good job sooner is when the kind of first and second wave of the assessment process that the AI is doing actually opens up the spigot, not narrows it, to say, oh, this is actually a very qualified candidate, you know, let's put her forward. Like that makes me really, you know, encouraged that AI is going to be opening up more opportunities for people, not, you know, narrowing again the opportunity for people. But I guess I did want to ask you because I just said the word watch out. Where do you guys see? What are you learning? That might be some of the watchouts. Yeah, the technology's cool, but you need to do your due diligence on what.
Speaker 2:I think, the amount of use it's had for that particular function.
Speaker 2:So, when you think about AI and again, I'm not a data scientist, so I operate in very general terms but it's based on the quality of data that it has analyzed and what it has learned, anything that has AI as part of its functional capabilities, or it's an AI specific solution the question I would have is, well, what confidence or what degree of validation has happened to prove that this is doing accurate skills alignment, that it's matching people appropriately, that it's doing the things it needs to do in a way that's fair, that's equitable things it needs to do in a way that's fair, that's equitable, that's distributing opportunity the right way, versus boxing people out, um, because it hasn't had the, it hasn't processed and learned enough to effectively do what it's it's being tasked with.
Speaker 2:So that that is my uh. Outside, listening to people, what I see is I mean, there's also people using AI or chat, gpt, in particular, for writing, and so then the question is is it writing fair, equitable, discrimination-free job descriptions, or you know like really need to think about the use case of the AI that is being deployed, and one for me is it capable of doing what I'm asking it to. And two, is it being used properly once it is deployed to deliver, you know, the right material back to a job seeker or independent of? I mean it can be used for a lot of writing capability. So just obviously wanna make sure it's doing the right work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, because that is the lure is that it's fast, right, it's efficient, but it needs to be fair, accurate, right and not reinforcing biases, because sometimes the data. We had a woman, hilka Shellman, who wrote a phenomenal book called the Algorithm. It's about the use of AI in the workplace and she had examples in her book where it's like oh, we have a preference for people who play baseball. Why? Because somewhere in the data that the thing was trained on, whoever played baseball you know tended to be higher performers or were named Greg or other. You know things that you know. What is it?
Speaker 1:Coincidence isn't the same as causality, right? So you know it starts to build in these weird bits of logic that actually you know. If you looked at it, you know that's stupid. But if you just sort of cede control over to a black box that you don't understand, then I think what you did then is you like put a turbocharger potentially on going in a bad direction, and then you know technology and AI is going to get a black eye when part of it is on the person that was training the thing and doing their due diligence. That, hey, the tool is, as you say, bias-free or as bias-free as we can make it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the quality of the data that it's used to learn what other process it's trying to execute on behalf of its user, I think is also a really relevant aspect to consider. So in that use case you just talked about, I would guess and again not a data scientist but the level of data that that AI engine was looking at was somewhat unique and it didn't have aspect to other organizations. Maybe it was looking at something specific from that ATS system, which is a very small amount of data. So it learned, based on that small sampling, that baseball was a relevant aspect to who they should hire, going forward where it's probably't. And if it had a and this goes back to the due diligence of before you use the technology of understanding how it was designed and how it was tested if it had access to a high volume of data so it could learn correctly, then you're in a situation where maybe that's not going to happen. So I think that's a great example.
Speaker 1:So let's move on to and you've referenced it a couple of times and it's a near and dear topic for me is skills-based hiring. So you're kind of the traditional model is where'd you go to college, what did you study and what's your experience after college and how are all those things relevant to the role that we're trying to fill? And okay so, but the world hopefully seems to be moving to something that is more skills based, and skills can be hard skills and soft skills, right. So learning, agility, you know, contribution, motivation plus proficiency. If you're going to be a digital marketer, you need to be good at digital marketing, but we also need soft skills like collaboration, the ability to learn, because the technology is changing so quickly.
Speaker 1:And then there's the whole bit, bill, on. What about all the people that didn't go to college who might be really great fits for you know, the talent needs of a given organization? Absolutely right, how does talk, you know? I don't know if it's educate, discuss, you know, think about non-college degree talent sources.
Speaker 2:So I have been able to experience a number of discussions around assessments, pre-hire assessments and the ability to evaluate somebody's innate skill sets whether they're hard or soft skills to do a particular role. Now there are a number of roles where the brand of that company is sitting in the hands of those frontline workers. So bringing somebody in who represents that culture and being able to test that within them is imperative. So they put the right people in the right roles and so there are assessment platforms out there that offer those capabilities to evaluate them. So I think that organizations are starting to recognize that it's important to move past the resume and a subjective interview process. Standardization of that process is certainly a great point. That a lot of organizations are focused on the collaboration between the hiring manager, the recruiting team and the ability to exchange and share information to properly evaluate somebody but then also to test their skill set, is really becoming more and more common is really becoming more and more common. And obviously I'll go back to Unleash a core topic that I experienced when I walked around and looked at a lot of the vendors that were out.
Speaker 2:There was pre-hire skills or skills assessment, not just in the hiring process but also in the retention employee engagement experience as well, because you have people who are already at your organization there's a little bit off topic but still incredibly relevant that you want to hopefully keep, given that they're the right people and grow within your organization.
Speaker 2:The question is, well, what can they do? And so skills assessment can evaluate and determine somebody hey, they would be great over here. Or you have somebody who's in technical support who would be a phenomenal customer success manager, you know, because of their people, skills or something on that example. So I think the technology is really important and what I'm seeing is more and more open minded discussions around how do we embrace skills assessment? Who are the vendors that are delivering quality products? How do we make sure we don't experience sizable drop-off when we ask people to do it, things of that nature? So there's a lot of different specific trap conversations that fall under that umbrella, and it's really interesting to see how the course of the talent acquisition process is flowing very much towards that that I'm seeing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, so, you know, while you know, generally I would be a fan of things that would, you know, open up more opportunity to more people, for sure, and it is the kind of hard and soft skills stuff but at the same time, you know how to make sure that we are not biasing against folks who, for whatever reason I mean, I think, like ACT and SAT tests, you know, have taken hits in the past, for you know they bias against people who come from, you know, disadvantaged backgrounds, right, you know the way that questions are phrased, the vocabulary that it uses, the topics that it uses for suppositional kinds of questions.
Speaker 1:It's like, well, that's not part of my background. I don't know how to think about the way you just phrased that question, because that's not right grew up or whatever, are just people that like, aren't good test takers, for whatever reason. They kind of freak out because like, oh my gosh, you know the timer's going and I've got to answer all these questions, that's, you know not. It's the people that freak out at the doctor's office, right, they're, they're going to take your blood pressure, your pulse. It's like, uh. So I mean, I guess, with everything, right, you know, there's watchouts, there's caveats that we need to be aware of, but if assessments that truly work and are in fact predictive of, you know, I don't know if success is right, we're at least fit for role.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fit for role, fit for culture? Yes, I mean there's a couple different parameters that we're testing to make sure people fit into, but I think we're going down a similar thought process as we were with talking about AI, which is the validation that the vendor or the technology that you're choosing to use has the capability to do that. For example, has it been thoroughly vetted by somebody who has the background because I don't, maybe you don't to eliminate racial, ethnic and gender bias in the way it asks and talks to the potential applicant, because that's really important and phrasing things in a way that make it available to somebody who may not have a college degree and may not have a certain industry vernacular at the ready, but certainly can understand things if it was explained in a more common way and give a great response to it, you know. So those are things to me that I think are are really important as you make a decision on the technology you're going to use to be part of a process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so. So I'm optimistic. You know that the tools like this, you know, will drive. You know the, the principles of DEI. You know the, the principles of dei, right, yeah, so that, yes, because I do believe in those. I think some of the programs maybe haven't been amazing, but the, the kind of aspirations of what what programs like that should be delivering on, and to the extent that you, that companies are able to bring in a more diverse workforce, I think that highly benefits them. I think that's good business, not virtue signaling, I think it's just smart. And then I like how you said that how can the questions on a simple phrase, in a way that doesn't bias against people? You know, doesn't bias against people.
Speaker 1:So one of the other things that's in the news a lot these days obviously, return to office is a big deal. Shrm just put out something a couple of weeks ago saying 45% of 44% of workers are feeling burnout. You know my, my manager, what did I say? People leave, they don't leave companies, they leave bosses. Percent of workers are feeling burnout. You know, my manager, what do they say? People leave, they don't leave companies, they leave bosses. People want to be developed in their career. So maybe the learning development curriculum isn't amazing at XYZ company. All those things weigh on retention, productivity, you know. I guess the flip side of retention is attrition. You know, does that start to fall into the broader, you know, kind of mandate for talk and talent acquisition more broadly?
Speaker 2:You know, we just had a conversation a couple of weeks ago. We do a weekly webinar within talk and it usually has a couple of hundred people who attend. It's very, you know, it's. It's a great environment and it's and webinar is not the right term, it's a. It's a fireside chat or discussion around the topic. And so the topic was the role of employee wellness in the talent acquisition process. Right, so it comes back to employer brand candidate experience, but employee experience and how that continues through the life of the, the employee, when they've made that transition from applicant to actual physical employee. It was really amazing to me the thought that organizations are putting into showing that they care for and will nurture and grow people who come and work for them. Right, that is part of the brand.
Speaker 2:So I'm a I'm a sales guy. I've been a sales guy for a long time. I am one of those coin operative sales guys Like I would be. Like you know, oh, we give you three weeks vacation. We give you wait, just comp plan. Show me the content. That's all I want. That's all I want to see. That's great. I didn't come here to take time off. I came here to sell and to make money. So show me how that's going to happen. That's different today, right, and so people are looking for a much more um involved or considered experience, where the employer is actually giving back to the employee. That's giving so much to the employer. Um, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 2:As you may have noticed, I had a lot of time alone in the woods this weekend. One of the things I was considering, as I was trotting along at an incredibly slow pace, was the concept of work-life balance, and so could have been in a dehydrated delirium, but what I walked away from was that that's a misnomer and it's work-life integration or synchronization, right, we have to think about the fact that balance doesn't exist anymore. We are asking employees to do more than ever, we're asking them to come to an office, but how do we synchronize or integrate those experiences? Honor the fact that you're a person with a life, but you're also coming to do a phenomenal job, and create a way that we're also coming to do a phenomenal job, and create a way that we're going to help you grow, help you learn, honor the feet that listen to you, honor your feedback, um, and and value you as part of this community which is the employee, the employee community of that company, um, and share that with you as you come in as an applicant, make you know that that's part of the value of working for whatever organization you're applying to.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a really interesting message model that has to happen. There's a lot of interesting pieces along the way that are pre-hire assessment, it's candidate experience, it's onboarding, it's the employer experience, it's performance management. There's a lot of pieces to it, but it also goes back to something I said earlier, which is this is where some of the traditional marketing messaging, crafting value now is transitioning to another side of the business, where we're communicating to our applicants and our employees the value of working for us in a way that they can go out. This is exciting.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, gosh. You're making so many good points. So just back on work-life balance and work-life integration, which I you're watching this on the video, I'm holding my hands up like scales. That implies that they're in conflict with one another, and balance is just minimizing the conflict. Right, that's what balancing does in a scale, versus the integration which allows you to be in your flow state, because you are the same person at home as you are at work. This company's values tie into your values. You're not trying to be somebody else at work that you are at home and vice versa because, that's conflict and that stress and it's exhausting.
Speaker 2:It's the point of turnover. Yes, so that's why employees leave jobs? Because they are not getting the experience in their life that they want. And, um, I think that the newer, uh generations coming into the workforce are going to want that even more well, they're getting there. I mean, exactly, and that's why I fostered the conversation around employee wellness. It's like this is something that is a real need. How are we addressing it? Let's talk about this.
Speaker 1:And it was a great conversation.
Speaker 2:But I think, yeah, 100%. For example, let's say you have a phenomenal onboarding experience and you get to a place where you meet your hiring manager and the job that you got excited to take all of a sudden takes a twist or a turn. How long? You know. Now you've, you've started a, an employee off that has a sizable investment in cost to get there on a negative foot foothold. You know, and, and so those are simple things that we talked about, up to much bigger. You know employee resource groups, welcoming environments. How are we supporting the people as they come in with their different, unique backgrounds, which we want to right? We want to bring that collective presence together and foster one team as best we can.
Speaker 1:So do you see companies and this is probably just my ignorance but do you see companies where the entire talent experience is integrated and it's not? We've got a VP of talent acquisition, we've got a VP of learning and development, we've got a VP of total rewards and all these functional silos versus all of it being more integrated. Because it seems to me that, at the end of the day not doing all those post-employment things that you just did a great job, which is just making the talent acquisition people, in theory, more busy than they should be based on the organic needs of the organization.
Speaker 2:But it's also damaging your employer brand, right? So the more people you bring in, that turn back out. And I'll give you a great example. I mentioned I have four sons, one's a coder. And I'll give you a great example. I mentioned I have four sons. One's a coder Went through a long interview process with a large financial company here in Boston.
Speaker 2:Four years in post-assessment the interview that he thought he was going to get the offer. They ghost him. They don't even show up, and so he is literally a year old young man sitting on the couch in tears, and so I had to sit down next to him and say listen, um, this isn't you right being slighted. This is a problem of a process, of a small team with an amazing workload. They probably filled the role somebody was supposed to call you. You're probably still valuable to them, but for lack of process integration, something happened where nobody showed up. Everybody else thought they told you what had happened and you were left in the dark. So it's not you, it's a process. But what it did is later that day.
Speaker 2:Because he's a, he builds and does a lot of gaming. He he's on a webinar, a talk, chat with 50 other developers and all they're doing is saying negative things around this one employer. So what happens by not doing a good job is not only do you have the cost of turnover, not only have you asking the recruiting team to bring people back in, but going back to the marketing of your ideal candidate profile, that brand can start to get tarnished by that turnover and stuff like that. So I think it's really important for that integration of the you know as a salesperson I don't know if you've ever done this you've mapped the customer lifecycle.
Speaker 2:Where are we adding value? How are we managing this? Right? They're going to come in. We're going to convert them. We're going to turn, we're going to make them happy. We're going to do quarterly review Right, are we doing that with the candidates? And a lot of organizations are mapping the employee lifecycle, the journey of somebody in your organization and everybody understanding the role they play in it. I think and not just me, but from what I'm hearing is becoming much, much more important because people are starting to value the opportunity of an employer beyond just what they're going to get paid. Right, they want that integration.
Speaker 1:Yes, so. So this is really interesting because you know we also seen the data that the tenure with companies is shorter, not longer. So for millennials it's about three years. So an employer could argue well, if they're only going to be here for 2.8 years, cfo would say why am I investing in this person? Because they're going to one probably still be part of our ecosystem, right, because they've had industry experience. They may be a client, they may be a partner, they may be a vendor to us. That's one. Two is boomerangs. That's that's a pretty popular thing.
Speaker 1:To go back to a company on another day. There's being part of your talent community in terms of referring people. Hey, bill, I saw this posting on you know financial company. We won't name who I think you'd be. This looks like a perfect role for you. You should like stay away from them. They suck like you don't want to work there, right, and they're horrible. And then if you are a consumer facing brand, then it's like hey, is your money with them? Absolutely not, like I'm with Schwab. I'm not with those guys, right, because they didn't treat me well. So you know, sometimes I think people get a little short-sighted on why do we want to take care of the candidate, as you said. But then secondly is like why are we making this investment in employees when their tenure? You're already telling me, talent acquisition expert, that they're only going to be here for less than three years.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, let's maybe back up for a second, because the question that immediately comes to my mind when you say 2.8 or three years the first question we didn't talk about is why?
Speaker 2:Well, maybe the reason for the 2.8 turn is they just feel like a cog on a wheel and they want to go do something else. Now you know, and there are organizations out there that embrace it, like I've worked with in a hiring role a number of times where I say to people hey, I get, you're only going to be here to three, four years, just like going back to college. So let's talk about what you're going to graduate with. Yes, right, we're going to teach you these things, this, this is the value of being here, that you're going to, you know, and so what you're? You're setting the foundation of enrichment that a person is going to get by working for you. And if they leave in two and a half years or three years and they become an ambassador of your brand in that community, that's awesome. That's what that's at the end of the day. Just like in traditional consumer brand, you want somebody to use product A and then go to all their friends.
Speaker 1:This is phenomenal yeah, but you know. I appreciate what you said too, though, about what's driving them to want to change yes, that's.
Speaker 2:That's the part that I I'm very curious to like. I've tried to dig in and find some of the things, the root causes of why. Maybe there's things, maybe it's just culturally how things are changing. But if there are things you can do, that has a dramatic impact on just you know, recruiting and replacing people is expensive.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 1:That's the exact point is all that turnover just creates more need for expensive and you know, not without risk hiring Yep. And so you've got somebody that works there. They know the industry, they know the company, they know the culture. They're a good fit. But they decide you're not a good fit. That just opens up this whole cycle. You know we don't have anybody in that role, that work's not getting done. Other people are having to pick up the slack along the way. There's recruitment marketing expense, blah, blah, blah. It's just like man, hold on to the good people that you've got. Natural growth needs at the business drive. You know more of the talent acquisition efforts instead of just running on the hamster wheel. We just keep replacing people because we can't keep them long enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean I question the overall impact of TURN, like you just talked about. We keep replacing people, so then do the people who are there start questioning do I want to stay here because everybody's leaving? Right, it creates this interesting change in the thought process of the people who are like in you and I've seen it in professional companies, I've seen it in the military and the mindset of the people there, when they know you care about them and you're investing in them, could create a very different culture. I'm sure somebody can argue against it, but a perspective I see is that makes people more excited to come to work every day. You know the remote aspect versus hybrid work environment versus office environment. You know that's. I don't have a solution for that. I see a lot of people talking about it. I don't know what the right answer is because, let's face it, my wife's in health care. That's a job that needs to be done at a health care facility. She's not, you know. I don't want.
Speaker 1:She's not sending me away to patients.
Speaker 2:No, I don't want my living room to become the ER, you know. So you have to be where you need to be, but that's part of the job. On the other side, maybe going back to that concept of integration, of work-life balance, maybe there's a way to be more flexible for some roles, and I think a lot of employers are putting a lot of thought and time and effort into figuring that out. But it's going to be a challenge for a while.
Speaker 1:Well, let's start putting a bow on this. I think what you're doing there in your organization. It's awesome If I'm a talent acquisition professional, not yet a member of talk what are? Some things I should be thinking about joining, and how would I do that?
Speaker 2:So joining is super easy, and one of the things that I really value about talk for anyone who is a talent acquisition practitioner is there is no cost, right? So all you have to do is go to the website, which is talktalentalonewordcom. You're asked a couple of questions geographically, so all you have to do is go to the website, which is talktalentalonewordcom. You're asked a couple of questions geographically, so we can assign you to the right community and industry. We validate everything with LinkedIn and then you're part of our community and you can participate in a number of activities and events, and that will continue to accelerate. Where we started the year, at about 10,000 members, we're sitting at about 12 and a half right now. I expect us to end the year at about 20,000 members.
Speaker 1:You're going to double in a year.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, we are. We are, I mean, even without, even without us really doing anything to promote it organically, through referrals of our friends in the events we're doing, we're seeing a sizable uptick in people wanting to join Because it's by TA, it's about TA, it's focused on talent acquisition, so it's while there are others out there. It is an all of value. By the way, I think this phenomenal company is doing talking about talent acquisition, other groups and organizations, but this is this is one that has a topical discussion forums, polls, feedback around vendors. It's it's and it has no cost. So I think it's a highly usable resource that people, if they are interested, can come and become part of.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So are there any? Because I do want to be respectful of your time and listeners. Time Is there. Is there anything else? Just about talk talent acquisition that we didn't cover, maybe a point that you would want to just reemphasize as we wind this down.
Speaker 2:I think that it is just an exciting community where there are probably whatever you're experiencing right now, there's probably somebody out there who can collaborate with you and come up with creative ways to discuss and engage problems, so you're not alone, right, and that's what I love about it. I see people from across the country talking about aspects that they're dealing with and sharing concepts and ideas and learning from one another, building those friendships, best practices that we talked about at the beginning happen on a daily basis, and I think that's phenomenal. I'm very excited to have a role in this organization.
Speaker 1:Well, and then you know, at Career Club, community is a really big piece of our value proposition too. And what I really admire about talent acquisition folks is, you know, they are enablers to this work-life integration that we were talking about. Right, they are introducing people and helping facilitate getting people into roles where they can have that fulfillment and kind of be.
Speaker 1:you know living out their purpose and their passion in the workplace while still, you know, maintaining their real life and hopefully they can reinforce each other. So you know huge, huge respect and appreciation for what talent acquisition people are doing professionals, practitioners are doing. So I appreciate your leading it, bill. You know I'm excited about what the future holds for talk and I'm very, very grateful that our paths crossed. So thank you for sharing your time today.
Speaker 2:Oh, I really appreciate it. It was a great discussion and I'm glad we were able to connect and have it.
Speaker 1:Awesome, okay, well, everyone, thank you so much for listening. And again, if candidate experience is something that resonates with you, I encourage you to go to careerclub. There's a section there for employers and then you'll see a tab for candidate experience and we call that journey forward. So, with that. Thank you everyone, you, everyone, bill. Thank you and we'll see you next time.
