Ep 829: What TA Leaders Are Talking About Now

0:00I was recently at Wreckfest USA in Nashville, where, unsurprisingly, AI was the main topic of conversation. However, when I asked people what had stood out for them, they talked about much more than just technology. So what is on the minds of TA leaders right now? Keep listening to find out. Support for this podcast comes from Vonk. Vonk's talent attraction platform is now unified as Echo. One platform, six connected stages, a shortlist that you can explain. Instead of disconnected hiring tools, Echo brings together job content creation, distribution, attraction, screening, interviewing and scoring in one continuous agentic workflow, delivering up to 70 % faster time to hire and 75 % fewer candidate drop-offs.

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1:42This is my show.

1:53Hi there, welcome to episode 829 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. TA leaders have to keep delivering for their business while they use AI to transform how hiring works. Wreckfest USA took place in Nashville at the end of September, and it was a chance to hear how people across the industry are dealing with both of these demands. So where should TA leaders be focusing their attention? I recorded seven short interviews at the event, and they fall into three main themes. Those themes are the value that talent acquisition brings the business, the risks that employers now have to manage, and what comes next for hiring.

2:35I'm starting with the first of those themes, and with Jamie Leonard, the founder of Wreckfest. I asked Jamie what he'd been hearing from the people at his own event. After Jamie, Steph Nikitas from Ace Hardware talks about quality of hire and the question of who should own it. Hi, Jamie. How are you doing? I'm very good, Matt. How are you, sir? I'm very good. So congratulations on Wreckfest. Thank you. How's it gone? Thank you very much. Yeah, no, really, really good. I'm really pleased with the turnout. The talks have been really busy. Content's been great. Weather's held up, which is nice. And yeah, people are staying, which is fantastic.

3:08Always a good time. No, it's still what time is it now? It's about one o 'clock on the second day. and it's still busy. And what's been the most interesting thing that you've heard people sort of talking about at this event? What topics, what's really stood out for you? I think the conversation is still very much AI heavy, but I think there's a lot more conversation at the moment about, and maybe this is born out of fear, it's about how TA aligns with business goals. I think that there's a fear that, you know, for years we've kind of just gone, oh, we have a process, we follow it, we bring people in.

3:35And now because we've got the robot coming along that might potentially take that away, people have to say, okay, well, we need to open head and maybe we should start thinking about what the business needs and getting a bit more attentive to that as well. Hi, Steph, how are you? I'm doing great. Good seeing you again, Matt. Just tell everyone who you are and what you do. I'm Steph Nikitas, and I'm the Director of Talent Acquisition with Ace Hardware Corporation. Now, this is not your first RegFest, is it? It's not. I'm actually a rebound, second year. And what have you been doing? You've been talking on a couple of panels.

4:02Tell us about the panels. Yes, I overcommitted a little bit. I was hosting a workshop on Monday during the Recruiting Leaders Summit. here at Geodas Park. And then yesterday, I was on two panels. One was on The Funnel Isn't Dead, It's Missing the Point with my Shaker friends. And then later in the afternoon, talked on quality of hire, the metric everyone wants, but nobody wants to own. Awesome. Tell us a little bit about that. That's interesting. Yeah, very lively conversations. We actually were in the morning with Shaker, a full women's panel, and walked up to Dolly Parton 9 to 5, which was a nice homage to her.

4:42especially being here in Nashville, and had great conversation around what matters as far as attraction, conversion, and metrics when it comes to the funnel, and that the funnel itself isn't the problem, it's usually the people. And then on quality of hire, we actually had a very colorful conversation because everybody, of course, has different opinions. Who should own it? What should it be? But I think at the end of the day, it's a big takeaway was it's not a one-size-fits-all for everyone. It really depends on your organizational makeup and what you're trying to measure. And that's kind of what we all went with.

5:14What does it mean in your organization? For us, it's around, we look at it more like a long range metric. Quality of hire for us is truly does the impact, does the individual that you're hiring into the organization make an impact? Not only on metrics, but from a performance standpoint, moving the organization forward. Are they contributing in ways that will potentially move them up into a leader position or further in the organisation to impact another team or the organisation as a whole. And measuring that is, for us, it's important because it's all about our mission to be the best hardware store in the world.

5:46Thanks, Steph. You're so welcome. Good seeing you. The second theme is risk. And the next three interviews deal with two forms of it. One is the legal and compliance exposure that comes with using AI in hiring, and the other one is candidate fraud. You'll hear first from Julia Levy, who was hosting one of the stages. She's followed by Jim Stroud, whose panel on AI went very quiet when he mentioned a particular lawsuit. In the third interview, Lorna Erickson talks about how employers can check for fraud without making the process harder for real candidates. Hi, Julia. How's it going? I'm having a fantastic day.

6:24Yeah. Just tell everyone who you are and what you do. I'm Julia Levy. I say I'm a recovering talent acquisition executive, 25 years in TA, starting out as a recruiter, did some TA operations and then leading Fortune 500 global TA functions. And how many times have you been to RecFest? This is my fourth RecFest in the U.S. I have not had the opportunity to make it across the pond, but I plan to shortly. And how does this one measure up? What's been going on today? I'm hosting the unplug stage today. So having a lot of fun hearing panel conversations around some of the big challenges that talent acquisition leaders are facing, having to do with workforce planning, AI, quality of hire, tool adoption, all the fun and sexy things.

7:17What's the one that's really stood out? The one that you thought that's a really interesting problem, really interesting discussion? I'm really focused on compliance and legal pitfalls and things that organizations face. So there was a session around that that was really interesting to hear the different leaders' perspectives on how they're handling some of the legal compliance issues around AI and pay transparency and things like that. Hey, Jim, how are you? I'm doing fine. How are you, sir? Yeah, I'm good. Quickly, tell everyone who you are and what you do. I am Jim Stroud, and I do industry outreach and marketing strategy for ProvenBase.

7:54I also produce newsletters, The Recruiting Life, and Career Intelligence Weekly. And I also have a podcast called The Jim Stroud Podcast. And when I'm not doing that, I am sleeping. Absolutely. I mean, you are a prestigious, prolific content creator and kind of always have been. And what are sort of big talking points? What have you noticed that people are talking about? Well, you can't get away from AI. You can't get away from AI. Everybody's talking about it in one way or another. I led a panel on AI's impact on recruiting. And one of the questions that put a hush on the crowd was I mentioned the lawsuit with Mobley versus Workday and how that lawsuit might impact the entire HR tech industry.

8:35And everybody was like, ooh, don't talk about that. Don't talk about that. I put a slide up saying apparently AI is going to kill us in 10 years. So I went one step further. That's what they say. Yeah. Thanks for talking to me, Jim. Thank you, sir. Hi, Lorna. How are you doing? I'm doing so well. I'm so happy to see you. Great stuff. Could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do? Sure. I'm Lorna Erickson. I'm a co-founder of Expert Interviewers. We train hiring managers how to interview. And then we kind of accidentally became content creators in the HR space. That was by accident, just using our former recruiting trauma to create funny situations where hopefully people see themselves and want to change and be better hiring managers.

9:14So yeah, we are at Expert Interviewers and that is our other part of our business. What kind of topics are you hearing people talking about? What's going on with tier leaders? What are they saying? What have you been hearing? You know what? One of the main conversations that I've noticed outside of the obvious AI is the candidate fraud component. And so we have been engaging in as much conversation as we can about how to identify candidate fraud and maintain a candidate experience for real people that are still going through those experiences. Yeah, I think it's really interesting, actually, the fraud thing.

9:49People are obviously taking it much more seriously. I think there was a sense that this couldn't happen to us, but it's happening to everyone, isn't it? It really is. And they're creative. And I was like, who wants to pretend to be a candidate? Candidates, I mean, that sucks. But it's a real threat for companies. And of course, they have to have their ears open. But how can we also do that and create Like good processes that have a good friction that real people won't notice. And was there anything like an answer to that? What were people doing or what do you think? Yeah, you know, they actually, instead of doing stupid things, and I made a video about this because I couldn't help myself, where I was being interviewed by somebody on camera and the somebody, also me, by the way, was saying like, Lorna, pick your nose.

10:31And I'm like, excuse me, what? Like, we have to make sure that you're a real candidate. Pick your nose. You know, they have some, you know, they're wiping their face or turning around in their chair, doing the hokey pokey. But instead of that, just seeing like after this conversation, what's a good phone number that I can reach you at? And oftentimes if it's a fake candidate or like somebody who's, you know, a catfishing, it's like they're going to have a tough time with that. So it's like including simple questions that a real candidate wouldn't even notice. But somebody who was fraudulent may have a tougher time coming up with that information right away.

11:00Thank you very much. Thank you. Support for this podcast comes from Pebble. I know that many of you listening are hiring internationally. And you'll be all too familiar with the wall of paperwork, rules and approvals. And you know just how much this red tape can slow things down. That's what Pebble is designed to fix. Pebble makes global hiring simple through embedded compliance and AI-driven workflows. The Pebble platform takes the delays and guesswork out of going global, so you can move fast without adding risk. The bottom line is that anywhere is possible with Pebble. With global hiring simplified, founders and HR leaders can spend their time on focusing on what and where comes next for their business.

11:46Pebble has a special offer for recruiting future listeners. Pebble is normally$399 a month per employee, although a no-brainer for what you get. But right now, there is a limited time offer on their site that makes it even easier to get started. Go to HiPebble.ai before it's gone. That's H-I-P-E-B-L.ai. Terms and conditions apply. The final theme is what comes next for hiring. And that was the subject of the talk that I gave at Wreckfest. My argument on stage was that candidates and employers will increasingly be represented by AI agents, and that those agents will end up talking to each other.

12:30The last two conversations are with founders who are building technology in this area, and I wanted to know how much of the future they're already seeing. First is Mark Chaffee, co-founder and CEO of HackerJob, the company behind an AI agent called Archer. After Mark, you'll hear from Ben Russell of SonicJobs on what happens now that job seekers are using tools like ChatGPT to look for work. Hi Mark, how are you doing? Very well, thank you, sir. How are you? I'm very good. How has Wreckfest been for you? I may say this is my favorite Wreckfest US so far, actually. I think there's obviously a lot happening in the world right now, so the content's genuinely innovative and interesting.

13:07You're top of my list, so big shout out for that. Are you going to share those slides publicly? Yeah, I will do. I'll probably kind of also re-record it as a podcast or something like that because it's kind of interesting content. And obviously, in the presentation, I mentioned your Archer product and rebrand. Tell us a bit about that. Yeah, so a year ago, we launched Archer. Archer is an AI agent that works for both sides of hiring. So job seekers sign up, have a 10-minute conversation with Archer, and Archer will help them find their next role. And then on the employer side, companies will brief Archer on what they're hiring for.

13:42Archer will go out, find talent, engage them, qualify them, and then introduce them if it's a good fit on both sides. And so, yeah, we took the bold decision a couple of weeks ago to rebrand the company. Archer is now the both customer and candidate facing product. HackerJob exists as the company, but there are no more HackerJob products. Well, you're all looking resplendent in your pink t-shirts, which are very difficult to ignore. So in my presentation, I was talking about agent to agent hiring being the sort of feature of TA, which is an interesting discussion. From the work you're doing, is that true?

14:17Are you seeing the kind of results that would indicate that this is the way we're going? I think the key thing for us is both sides, both recruiters and candidates are suffering from a lack of trust. On the candidate side, they apply for 100 jobs, don't hear backs, they apply for another 100. On the recruiter side, they get 500 applications, two of which are relevant. And so where I think there is the potential for agent-to-agent hiring really working is you create an ecosystem of trust. When Archer recommends a candidate to a job, they're more likely to get an interview. And when Archer recommends a job to a candidate, they're more likely to want to go forward.

14:47and the data that we have so far suggests that candidates that get introduced via archer are 5x more likely to get an interview than going direct to the career site why is that well because the recruiters trust archer's recommendations and so you end in this really nice like cyclical motion um so that's definitely our thesis and hypothesis and i think we're starting to see some really great data around it thanks very much cheers matt yeah so i'm ben russell i'm one of the co-founders at sonic jobs um yeah i've been with the company for about six years now and i live on the west coast outside of san francisco now you work in the area that i'm kind of most interested in this uh in this section at the moment which is the the kind of the geo llm optimize optimization um tell us what that means tell people what it is so so we think about the geo game being a data game because if you to optimize geo without knowing like the search data how people like how people are searching your natural language how people are using chat gpt called gemini without knowing how they're searching, you don't know what content to build in order to optimize.

15:52So we think it starts with data. And so we've built a new product, CareerGPT, which is a ChatGPT-like experience built by us, which is natively on your career site. So it provides that beautiful ChatGPT clawed Gemini experience, but fundamentally it gives you all the data, all that search data and what people care about and how they search. And that becomes the kind of bedrock of your geo strategy. So I was talking on stage this morning about the future of agent-to-agent recruiting. And this discovery of job content and careers content by large language models was a key part of that. And lots of examples in other sectors of companies really kind of embracing this.

16:33Has hiring and recruiting caught up? Where are employers with this? Do people even know what it means? Yeah, I'm not sure. I guess there are some players. The guys who do get it are the same names. it's like the indeeds of the world these guys who were really good you know 20 years ago now at identifying the biggest channel then you know search and google they're the ones really leaning in and understanding so that presents kind of risk opportunity because like clients now do want to well i guess they want to not be disintermediated they want to disintermediate players so i think people are taking it seriously i think everyone this is the conference everyone's talking about about AI, GEO.

17:15But it's hard to know where to start. So again, that's why we try and anchor it back at like the data seems like the logical place to start. But I think everyone, the good news is everyone's thinking about this like really critically. And have you seen anyone sort of getting it right or getting some really good results from taking it seriously? I don't know how much has been published. We've built some tools that also monitor visibility on the chat to pt so we can run it for clients see how they're kind of showing up um what we found interesting is we've been experimenting ourselves of like can we can you influence can you really influence the lms or is it stacked in the favor kind of like the seo game where you need to have brand authority over say 20 years right so we've been testing like can we sonic jobs show up for searches where really we have no right to show we don't have any sort of like historical credibility So we started building career intelligence pages about things like new grad nurses, lab technicians.

18:13We just identified a whole bunch of industries. And we started building LLM-optimized content on these sites. And what we found fascinating, it only took weeks to start seeing results and start seeing that we were showing up for answers of like, what's the average salary for a lab technician? And we were cited as the number one source ahead of, say, a CVS or an Indeed. so we you know it's early days but what is exciting about that is it doesn't feel like hey do the work now and in 10 years time there's payoff yeah it feels like if you're like taking it seriously and making moves you can start seeing results really quickly which is like we all want results immediately Wreckfest is held outdoors and feels more like a festival than a conference I finished most of these conversations by asking why people should come and the answers give a good sense of what it's like to be there.

19:04Why should people come to Wreckfest? It's a conference that's different than any other conference you'll ever attend. To start with, it's outdoors in beautiful Nashville here. It's kind of like a carnival without the scary clowns. It's very laid back. The interaction with people that attend, with vendors really, it's a completely different approach. Wreckfest is one of the most engaging conferences that I've been at but I think what makes it special is the people and maybe it's because you're not in a Vegas hall and so it's just more relaxed people are having more fun open to conversations and one of the things that we were doing on our stage is encouraging people to get up and meet someone I saw that yes and so that's been a lot of fun watching people engage with each other and not just stick with the people that they know.

20:01This is my first Wreckfest USA and my first Wreckfest period. And what do you make of it? I think it is lovely. It is wonderful. I'm seeing so many people. I think what makes this different for me is that people are having real conversations. It's not just grab the swag and leave. Do you hear my voice today? It's always raspy, always. But this is four octaves lower than normal because I've been laughing and yelling and having so many fun conversations. So that's why you should come is because it's fun and amazing and there's wonderful people here. For my team, it's been eye-opening. They don't want to go to any other conference anymore.

20:34They just want to go to Wreckfest. I definitely will be back. I really, really will. Back in Nashville next year? Back in Nashville next year. We've rebooked the venue. So it'll be our third year in the fairground. There's plenty of space for us to grow and Nashville's a fun town. It certainly is.

21:17will join me.

21:25This is my show.