"We - Jobvite - have a responsibility to empower hiring companies with the data to explain business outcomes they are achieving." - Aman Brar, CEO Jobvite
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Chad: Hey it's Chad. Joel and I just landed from our time in San Francisco at Jobvite's Recruiter Nation Live, and we wanted to drop this stand-up comedy/vision keynote speech from our buddy, Aman Brar, the newly minted CEO of Jobvite. Enjoy.
Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
Aman: Thank you Amber. I got to admit my first 12-18 hours here, had a series
of awkward moments. I walk into the reception yesterday, and someone says, “Hey, Soledad,” and I thought, we both have amazing skin tone, but that's kind of a stretch. We'll have to do a side by side who wore it the best later. I'm take a few steps further down, probably getting a snack or something, and somebody says, “Hey, Aman." I said, what? They said, "You're like the Donald Trump of the HR tech-CO game.” I said, was I an unexpected surprise? He said, "Yeah, that's what I mean." I've been thinking about that for a good 12 hours now. I think I want to stop exploring it any further.
Aman: Big round of applause for my friends Chad and Joel of the Chad and Cheese show (applause drowns out speaker). I should explain that I should not clap. This is very loud. We're really excited to have our good friends, Chad and Cheese, here. They've really helped launch Canvas back in our legacy Canvas days.
Aman: I woke up this morning, opened my hotel room door, and stepped into the hallway. And there's just Cheetos's bags, Doritos, Oreo cookies, and pizza boxes. I was super confused. I had been confused for about 12 hours. It dawned on me. Having Chad and Cheese, and a few hundred recruiters in a state that legalized marijuana was maybe not (laughter drowns out speaker). When they go back to their home states, like Indiana, please be mindful. Take care of our fine folks out there. That's the end of the fake news segment of this program.
Aman: I did read an article this morning in the Wall Street Journal. I thought it was worth mentioning as a brain teaser, as we get started with this marketing mindset in this recruiting world. The article said that the number one enter into the job force right now on a monthly basis is a female. And it's a minority female. Raise your hands if you feel like you've spent enough time thinking about that opportunity. Many of us haven't spent an hour or two thinking about how we need to evolve our recruitment marketing game, how we need to evolve our employment plan to capture what this new workforce looks like.
Aman: Jobvite made a big leap. We raised a couple hundred million dollars, brought together a team of companies, Talementry, Canvas, RolePoint. It really took an amazing leap forward for the industry earlier this year, so it's been a very exciting year. A lot of people ask what you've been up to. We haven't heard a lot about the story. When I tell you what I've been up to is trying to take care of our people. Until our people understand the new vision, it doesn't make much sense to tell the world about the new vision. Today is the beginning of that journey. We spent the last few months meeting with our folks all over the country, with Portland, Oregon, Vancouver, San Francisco, Kitchener near Toronto, London, New York, Indianapolis, and in India. We're really excited about what we're building and how we're integrating as one company, one team, one group of people, fighting for a common cause, which is to help people and companies grow. Some things have changed. We've taken a big leap with technology, big leap with teams, but at the end of the day, it's about helping people and companies grow.
Aman: I was thinking about why do I care about this space so much. It is a special space. There's only a handful of things in our lives that can create as much growth, concern, excitement as a new job. You might buy a new house. You might get married. You might have a child, but you've got a finite number of new career opportunities you're going to take on in your lifetime. All of those have a mix of excitement and anxiety. The thing that is really important, not just as a company, is that while we're no doubt going to embrace and enable and drive automation in this space, we've got to keep the people at the center of it all. It's a type of process and of opportunity that still deserves and should have the right to have people engaging in such a critical part of our life's journey. I'm thinking every day about our people, how we can help them grow. We're thinking about our software and how we can help your company and your people grow.
Aman: Growth is not easy. It's incredibly hard. Recent survey data from Jobvite and recruiters articulated the three top challenges. 67% said the lack of skilled or high quality candidates. Really tough on us, so we've been thinking about the top of the funnel together. Intense competition certainly proven by the number of fistfights that occurred at the happy hour last night. Then I thought about the data and it all made sense. And lack of budget. This is an important one. I think there's a responsibility that Jobvite companies like us have to empower you all with the data to help explain the business outcomes you're achieving. At the end of the day, you need unified data to help you explain the business outcomes, open up budget, prove value, prove ROI. Job seekers, basically all of them are open to new job opportunities. We've got this classic three bucket problem. We're bringing in new candidates, people are leaving. We've got boomerang candidates now. The whole thing has gone bananas, but it's our new reality. 60% are looking externally for career growth. As we get into the sessions, thinking about your mobility is more important than ever.
Aman: How about this one: 29% have left a job within the first 90 days during their career. Just really reinforcing the value of strong onboarding programs, really creating that cohesion early on. We've now jumped the gun to pre-boarding. We're thinking about it well ahead of the actual onboarding time frame.
Aman: With all that, our role has really expanded. In the past, supply and qualify and the outward and tracking portion. We're thinking about recruitment marketing, employment branding, so much more recruiting, things like SMS, and multichannel. I mentioned the pre-board, the onboard, gift packs when kids go back on campus, employee referrals, and term mobility. It's become a very big job with so much scope. Who's been in the industry for more than five years? A big chunk of this room. Five years ago, did you think you were going to get into something called bot builder today? That is not what we were thinking about in the recruiting tech space. Now, many of us are spending our days building and managing bots and automating workflow. It really is a new horizon.
Aman: All this opportunity is capitalism at its finest. We've got a proliferation of capital, both intellectual and financial, that's surged into the industry. This is awesome. Lots of problems have been solved. New entrants like RolePoint, Telemetry, and Canvas are ultimately getting an opportunity to join forces with Jobvite wouldn't have happened if these signals weren't out there, if we didn't believe there was opportunity in this space. But if any of us look at our inboxes everyday, the number of SDRs that are reaching out for a new point solution is quite overwhelming.
Aman: HR originally quoted that a company may have up to 26 different HR systems. This creates some problems, so while there's opportunity, there's some chaos, challenge. We think taking this approach leads to an incomplete solution, creates a lot of process inefficiencies, and, more importantly, you can get your data in one place. There's a real lack of visibility. The powers that be defeats us with our investors. With Jobvite, they saw a real opportunity in this space, to bundle a group of key technologists together, to drive technology's simplicity, to drive smart automation. We're going to talk a lot about automation these next couple of days, a bit about that in our story we're going to get into later.
Aman: A better candidate experience has been something that's been top of the line forever. It's hard to find an HR tech company that isn't talking about candidate experience. I really think this cluttered environment has lead to a non-optimal recruiter experience. We think the bundling of our technology, the integration, the unified data's really going to lead to a better recruiter experience, so you know how to make your next move and better visibility. How do we help you prove your value? We're taking that really, really seriously. At the end of the day, it's a data game for many reasons. We're at this new data explosion. We think we've got the best depth in the industry that leads to better data, better machine learning, etc. Ultimately, you need the data to manage your business. You need the data so when your CFO calls, you've got clear answers as to how you're delivering value to the business.
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