How Heineken's Turned Recruiting Data Into Business Results with Kobi Ampoma

0:00Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, rash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.

0:22Let's do this. This is Chad Sowash, yes, of the Chad and Cheese podcast. And welcome to the Amsterdam Talks. I'm with Kobe Ampoma, head of talent over at a little company called Heineken in Amsterdam and in Belgium. Correct. Yeah? Yeah. How long have you been doing that? So I've been in my role for the last three and a half years. Yeah. And recently, 1st of July, Belgium was added to my remit. Still enjoying what I do, love what I do. And I hope, you know, every company I work for, I can leave a mark in terms of how we attract. Yeah, well, that's awesome. Working for a beer company. Yes. I mean, everybody with the swag, you know, being able to go home with the good stuff, right?

1:06True. Tell me a little bit about that. How is it working for Heineken? Yeah, I think working for Heineken is great. I think the people, first of all, the people makes it great to work for. We do a lot of great products as well, which I like. Yes, you do. I like Heineken, but I also like Avicub. This is one of my favorite beers. And I think, you know, get an opportunity to work for a company where you can make impact. Yeah. Although it's a well-known company, I like the fact that you can make impact. Yeah. And working with leaders who give you the opportunity that you can make impact as well. Yeah.

1:40In the non-alcoholic beers, Heineken seems to be, at least to me, when I go to the bar and I see people drinking non-alcoholic, that's generally the Heineken beers. Those have taken off. Correct. We see that also happening in our sales numbers. I want to keep that position. Whenever, obviously, I have an event and I'm by car, and I still want to experience a good cold Heineken, then I choose the 0.0 option for sure. Yeah, very smart. Very smart. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about you. What makes Kobe tick? Yeah. So what makes me tick is connecting with people. I love connecting with people.

2:20It's part of my DNA. I'm also very, very family-oriented. So I like to be with my family. I have three kids. Nice. Boys, girls. I have two boys who have the youngest, and then I have a girl of 15. So I'm going through the puber. Oh, that's fun. Teenage years. As a girl dad, I know. I know. Today I had a conversation about school and work and exams coming up and how she needs to be focused. So it's definitely part of that. And then I'm a big sports fan as well. Who's your favorite team? The Blazers. So Portland Blazers basketball. Very nice. Yeah. New England Patriots is my football team. Okay.

2:56And then obviously local soccer team, as you may call it, is Ajax for sure. Ajax, okay. And if you go abroad, then Arsenal is my team. Okay. Luckily we won the championship last year. Yes, yeah. How long have you been an Arsenal fan? Not a bandwagon, right? No, no, no. Since I was 16. My dad took me to a football game in London when I was 16, and that became my team. That's amazing. And I think growing up, the different experiences with your parents also leave an impression on you. Always. So hence, Arsenal is my team. All right. Let's dig in. Okay, so you've been in your position for about three and a half years, obviously, even though Heineken's a great company.

3:34Everything doesn't go as planned. There are always problems. You're always trying to fight fires, those types of things. What are some of the biggest problems that you've had over the years? And how have you been able to, from a talent standpoint, been able to fix this, possibly with technology or maybe even process? Yeah. So I think one of the biggest problem is we're also a consumer brand. So there's always a lot of attention. and if you want to make sure that people still buy your product, I see this as a talent standpoint, it's very important for people to have an incredible journey. So one of the things that myself and the team, and I'm still echoing, is how do we make sure that we still give people great candidate experience, first and foremost.

4:21We also have a lot of people show interest in our opportunities, but how do we make sure that the right people show interest? And that's why I think technology can come in. When you're part of a team and you're setting a foundation and the way you work, I think it's very important to establish a great foundation. And let's start by, do we understand the process? That also comes with, you know, how do we make sure that we bring the right people on board? How do we assess them? And how do we make sure that we also develop ourselves? Because the technology is going so fast, in my point of view, it's very hard to catch up sometimes.

4:58Yeah. Yeah. So candidate experience hasn't always been great. Obviously, applicant tracking systems for years, you've had to go through like a half an hour of forms and those types of things. What have you actually done specifically to make the candidate experience better? Because you're 100 % right. I mean, those are not just candidates, they're customers as well. Well, I think the first part of making sure the candidate experience goes great is making sure that the business understands that as well. Yes. Right? We are an extension on the labor market. The candidates engage with us as a first point of contact.

5:32Right. But we need to make sure that the business understands that. And in a candidate-driven market, you know, candidates are in a position to have options. Yeah. If we want the best talent and we bring them to you, you need to also treat them as such. So I think understanding, making sure the business understanding that piece is very, very important. I would say the second part is, you know, when you have volumes, you also want to make sure that you can have some kind of tool that can help you with that. So we've experimented with CV ranking to see how that goes. Always keeping the human touch.

6:08So we are making the decision. Yeah. But if you have 500 applicants, you know, in the three-day span, how do you focus on the first 100 as an example? So that's one of the things that we have also tried. And then we also utilize sourcing. So for us, some part of our business where people may not know us as a prominent employer, you know, how do we source those candidates and how do we use automation? In this case, you know, reaching out and making sure that there's an automation follow-up. Yeah. Personalized so that we can hopefully convert them as well. So also those two things is what we are actually been experimenting, using, and seeing if it works and we've tried different partners as well.

6:48Yeah? How have you seen the results on that? Has it been just like a lot of testing that's happening and the jury's still out? Or are you seeing big outcomes? Are you seeing an impact with regard to distribution and being able to get targeted candidates, the right candidates? It's been a hit and miss sometimes. OK. And I think, how do we still keep the human element in there in terms of our outreach. And I think the communication piece and the personalization piece has not always been great. So how do we make sure that that's a good part of the process? And what I've also seen is that, you know, obviously a lot of companies are promising, you know, us the world.

7:33And then when we test and try, you know, they still need to do a lot of alterations on their side. So I do think, you know, still testing, still giving us our feedback and still companies that are out there, maybe forward thinking and say, hey, how can we solve a problem you're facing? I'm always going to lean into that as well. So back to the candidate side of the house, candidate slash customer side of the house. How many applications do you guys get a year? So we get around 25 ,000 applicants. And we only engage with 4 ,000. So in our case, we have to disappoint 21 ,000. And how do we do that in the right way?

8:11Send them free beer. That's not sustainable. But so it also raised the question, out of those 4 ,000, how do we engage with them and how do we make sure that they get it proper? For the 21 ,000, how do we disappoint them in a way that we can still reach out to them at the later stage? And I think that's very, very important. Well, and those people already know your brand, obviously. They have already engaged with your brand. it seems like they're great that's a great opportunity to be able to engage them later for a job that might be coming up now, let's say. So do you use your current resume database in your applicant tracking system or in your CRM?

8:58Do you re-engage those individuals? No, we don't. Not in the way that I would like. So we have talent pools but there's no way at the moment that we can actually foster them, right? Keep them warm. So in my point of view, sometimes it's good to keep a candidate warm from three, maybe max six months because obviously the situation might change but we don't have that yet. We are getting an upgrade in smart recruiters and I hope that that community piece is solid so that we can keep that and do that better. But I do think there's a lot of potential show in, you know, not only in the 25 people that show interest, but if you look at Heineken globally, you know, think about all the candidates that we don't engage with, which I would like to also engage.

9:50And I don't know why, but that's something that, you know, I hope to tackle. Why we're not, let's say, why companies are not doing more with the people that show interest in themselves. Yeah. That's a problem I would like to solve. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's 21 ,000 prospects, the prospective workers, employees, right? Because you're only touching 4 ,000 of them. A couple of different things. I mean, one of the things that has really been mind-boggling for me over the years is not engaging them, giving them a good, like, you know, sorry you didn't make it, right? Give them good messaging and whatnot, but also keeping them warm, right, in that talent pipeline.

10:30Yeah. So in technologies that are out there today, I'm sure you've seen them. I'm sure you've been pitched them. And you have smart recruiters, Azure, applicant tracking system, Vonk for distribution, those types of things. It seems like today, and tell me what you think, it seems like today we still have the same problems that we did before, but it feels like the tools are becoming more honed. What do you think about that? I think, you know, if you're looking from a TA landscape, There's two components. I think companies who have a long lasting legacy when it comes to the tooling, it's very difficult sometimes to change and implement new tools.

11:12Because there's a legacy, maybe a global impact as well. Companies who don't have a long legacy, 10, 15 years, are maybe much more flexible in changing and adapting to newer tools. I think there's also an element of compliance. When you have a company that is not known, we also are held to a high standard when it comes to compliance. So we don't always want to take the risk that sometimes comes with trying things out. So now team, we need to talk legal, we need to talk to the global systems team to make sure that we have okay to test those two. So going through that process is always easy. You need to make a few doors.

11:52I think that's also something that always doesn't help us as a function. I think nowadays a lot of companies are doing easy interview scheduling. We still need to implement that. And that takes 30 % of our time as a recruitment function. So imagine, and that's why I'm putting my eggs in smart recruiters. When we implement it in Q1, it will help us reduce that drastically. So recruiters will have more time to do more with the impact that they can have, especially on the human touch in my point of view. And also, I think a company like Heineken, yes, a lot of people know us, but we want the right people to know us as well, right?

12:37And that's why I think, you know, for example AI can help us, for example working with Funk how can we engage with a target audience have a hypothesis try and test and see if it works or doesn't work So I think companies like FOM can help us also by trying and testing and making sure that we target different audiences that are also very important for us who may know us as a company, but know that we have the right opportunity for them. Okay, Kobe. So obviously technology has come forward very quickly, but we still have the same problems that we did years ago, right? Decades ago. Same thing. Like we're talking about, can you experience it and what have you?

13:24Do you see those new technologies? Do you see them actually finally catching up where we can start to give our recruiters more time and we can start being more human, which we've always talked about, Dov. I think so. It requires a little more time because I think the technology that is coming our way is coming very fast. Yes. And I think as a TA function, it's all about adaptation and going through their change and saying, hey, this is an element of my work which I can utilize and free up more space. And in my point of view, the space that we want to free up is to be more human and more interaction and more interaction with our business and with our candidate, if we want that to be an exception.

14:10I also think the challenge that we face, we have so many tools that can complement each other. at the end of the day as a TA function, ideally, we want everything to be in one. Ideally. But that's not the case. So, you know, interview schedule can be one thing. You know, recruiting campaigns can be another thing. How to call it? Automation could be a third thing. So, you know, keeping your community warm, it could be another thing. So it's all about, you know, all the different components that are helping us solve a problem. Right. Can we have maybe one tool that does a bulk of that? Yeah. I think that's where we need to go.

14:50So you mentioned that 30 % of the recruiter's time is spent on scheduling. Correct. And obviously, nobody loves scheduling. Nobody, right? I mean, that literally is a part of the process that sucks for everybody. So have you gone through, and I mean, that is such a huge opportunity to be able to give time back to your people. But have you gone through the process and literally pulled all the tasks out of the process and said, okay, which ones can we automate? Which ones should we automate? Have you guys mapped that out yet? Not entirely. So I'll say we've done the first 50 % of that. So identifying our process and the steps that are in our process and what difference a tool can make.

15:35So we do believe interview scheduling, which takes a bulk of our time. we can do more with that. And that is something that should be easy for us to be able to implement. With that gone, then you can actually say, hey, the time that you're freeing up, one of the things that is very important, we did a talent acquisition and maturity assessment is really understanding, you know, talent and insights. So if we are talking about tech talent is important for us or the commercial talent is important for us, do we know enough? Have we done enough in-depth research to do a few analysis where we can take a few key important elements out of it and say, hey, what can we do with that?

16:14And I think that is going to help us tremendously because there's a lot of discussion going on, hey, if tooling takes over a majority of the work, what are we going to do without time, right? In the industry, we talk about being a business partner, and I think the business partner element is understanding the talent insights, being able to translate that into your business, what it means, what it means to attract, and how can we make sure we are engaging with the right talent continuously. So that's why I see where the technology is going and can help us for sure. But when we talk about business, we don't, TA and HR, they usually don't speak business speak, right?

16:56We have our own metrics. Those metrics don't show up in the quarterly reports because they're not business metrics, or at least the C-suite do not see them business metrics. So how are you as a business leader taking those metrics, taking all of that talent intelligence and getting it over to the business in a way that they understand so that they understand what kind of impact we're making, right? But they also understand, hey, we need more budget. Well, great question, Chad. And this is not something that we did by ourselves. This is a close collaboration with indeed our people function, in this case, our people business partners, but also with our business leaders.

17:40So one of the things that we have identified, when a sales or in our case, an account manager is not in the seat that they need to be, we know there's a loss of revenue on a monthly basis. So one of the things that we did is how can we make sure we can build pipelines for our sales organization and hire more people to make sure that they can cover different regions when we come into a situation where we may not have somebody in there. So we looked at data, we said, hey, if we look at the sales talent that we normally bring on board, what are the key drivers for them? What are the push factor for them?

18:17What are many other companies doing to attract that we may not be doing? And that's actually how we came into a partnership with Funk on creating this recruiting marketing campaign to identify sales talent, commercial talent, heavily focused on women as well. Okay. Okay. So literally going to the CRO per se and saying, look, we are losing X amount of revenue, which they probably know. Right. So you're having the same discussion with them that they already know. and they know that in reporting to the board, they're going to have to have this discussion. How do we actually get butts in seats faster?

18:56How do we get sales faster? You're already having that discussion with them. Yes. And that is, once again, a very close collaboration. Yeah. But by doing so, we also understood, hey, for our sales talent to be successful, they need more attributes in, let's say, in their backpack. So there's also an onboarding program that has been created predominantly for the sales team to make sure that they're fully equipped, that two months in their role, they can actually make a major impact. Because there's always a ramp up time for commercial talent. And we have seen a lot of commercial talent who maybe have 60 % of what we ideally look for, but how do we make it complete?

19:38And by making it complete, we said, hey, let's target the right people. Let's target, make sure that we open it for making something sales, but maybe commercial talent. Right. how can we get more female in there where do the female move where do they see opportunities what are important for them and opportunities they seek and working with Fong has been tremendous because they were able to help us identify the right target audience the right platforms where these talent actually navigate and we'll be able to convert and I think the conversion that we managed was 75 % female talent that we'll be able to add based on our close collaboration.

20:19Wow. Well, talk about that a little bit because I know that the diversity, the DEI conversation is always it's big and then it's not, and then it's big and it's not. But from a business standpoint, it means something, right? So can you talk a little bit about why that means so much to Heineken from a business standpoint because it does impact the business. Yeah. So, I mean, from a high-level perspective, we have a strategy which is women in sales. Yeah. We're going to have more female talent into the organization from a leadership perspective, but also in our sales organization. Because we truly believe, you know, having a mixture of diversity can really help our consumers and customers.

20:59And for me, you know, being a big advocate when it comes to D &I, any role I can play a part of that is always going to be something I grab with both hands. So for us, it's much more, you know, working with the business, trying to understand the pain point that we experienced. We also had a small table where we identified a few female who have been in our business and said, hey, this is why I work here. This is something that I think we should really look at. And then how do we engage with our leaders and then transform that into a, what we are having conversations, we know this is a topic that is important for you.

21:36These are our answers. This is what you will encounter when you join us. If you're still okay with that, obviously we welcome you with an open arm. So I think from a business perspective, it's very important to have it as a part of the strategy. And then how do we then take on this? And how do we work with our wider people team in making this happen? And like I said, a tremendous job for Fung to help us with that. Because they were very instrumental in our recruiting marketing campaign, engaging with our leaders, to be able to have that conversation. Because we're not experts. So I lean always on experts to help us convey a message to help us convey maybe different topics that we want to tackle.

22:19And I think for us, the close collaboration, the check-ins, how do we actually transform this into a successful story? Yeah. I'm very, very proud of my team, but also proud of the work that Funk was able to do. Yeah. I mean, that was the smart way of saying it. The dumb way of saying it is women buy beer too. Right? You got to look at your community and what they want and what they need. So you've got to, the organization should look like the community it actually serves. Correct. Kobe. I agree. I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for coming down to the beautiful Musica Bau and while we're getting ready for the House of HR event.

23:02But I appreciate you. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me. Have a good time. Cheers. Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chat and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey. Or just watch big booty Latinas and bugfights on TikTok. hark. No, you hung out with these two chuggle-heads instead. Now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap, because you'll be back.

23:48Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite western, you can't quit them either. We out.