There have never been as many forces driving change in Talent Acquisition as there are in 2025. Skills-based thinking, economic pressures, the rise of AI, and the resulting change in both C-Suite expectations and Job Seeker behavior, to name a few.
Unsurprisingly, then, TA Teams are scrambling to demonstrate the impact they have on and the value they drive for their business. However, this is much easier said than done with the relentless increase in the pace of change.
So, how can TA Leaders harness 2025’s winds of change to demonstrate their teams’ impact and the value they drive?
Where better to get expert insights, shrewd commentary, and actionable advice than Transform? For those of you who are unaware of Transform, it is one of the best industry conferences out there, and I recently got back from Transform 2025.
While there, I asked a range of people what they thought TA should be doing to make a measurable impact in 2025. Here are a selection of the answers. Get ready to hear from Daniel Chait – CEO at Greenhouse; Allyn Bailey – Senior Director of Brand Experiences and Communications at SmartRecruiters; Mike Stafiej – CEO at Erin; Jocelyn King – CEO of Virgill HR; John Baldino – President at Humareso and Adria Ferrier – CEO at Elayne.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Is your talent acquisition team driving real business value or just managing processes? In this year’s perfect storm of economic and AI driven disruption, the difference between TA motion and measurable impact has never mattered more so how will the most successful teams make an impact in 2025? Keep listening to find out. Support for this podcast comes from Indeed. They’re a brand that I’m sure you all know as the hiring and matching platform where employers can connect with over 580 million jobseeker profiles. But did you also know that their front row seat to the global economy gives them a massive data set which you can access for free? This allows you to see the latest information on job postings, salary trends and much more. Or did you know that Indeed’s new AI tools make it easier than ever for you to find and connect with active and passive job seekers? There’s much more to Indeed visit Indeed.com.
Matt Alder [00:01:23]:
Hi there. Welcome to episode 690 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. There have never been as many forces driving change in talent acquisition as there are in 2025. Skills based thinking, economic pressures, the rise of AI, and the resulting change in both C suite expectations and jobseeker behavior, just to name a few. Unsurprisingly, then, TA teams are scrambling to demonstrate the impact they have on and the value they drive for their businesses. However, this is much easier said than done with the relentless increase in the pace of change. So how can TA leaders harness 2025’s winds of change to demonstrate their team’s impact and the value that they drive? Where better to get expert insights, shrewd commentary and actionable advice than transform? For those of you who are unaware of transform, it’s one of the best industry conferences out there and I recently got back from Transform 2025. While I was there, I asked a range of people what they thought TA should be doing to make a measurable impact in 2025. Here is a selection of the answers. Get ready to hear from Daniel Chait, CEO at Greenhouse, Allyn Bailey, Senior Director of Brand Experiences and Communications at Smart Recruiters, Mike Stafiej, CEO at Erin, Jocelyn King, CEO at Virgill HR, John Baldino, President at Humareso and Adria Ferrier, CEO at Elayne.
Matt Alder [00:03:09]:
Hi Daniel. Welcome back to the podcast.
Daniel Chait [00:03:10]:
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Matt Alder [00:03:11]:
How’s Transform been for you?
Daniel Chait [00:03:13]:
It’s drinking from a fire hose. You know this environment. Everyone’s Here you’ve got customers, you’ve got partners, vendors, industry folks. And so the buzz is very palpable. There’s a lot to talk about and it’s great.
Matt Alder [00:03:23]:
Yeah. And what are the main topics that are coming, coming up time and time again?
Daniel Chait [00:03:27]:
I mean, the industry is undergoing so much change that, that I think more than anything is what’s on everyone’s mind. Whether it’s changes in the job seeker market and you know, the waves of candid applications that everyone’s dealing with. Changes in the way people are spending money and technology and budgets, of course, AI So everyone’s trying to figure out, like, what are the changes that matter and how do they impact me? And it’s just a lot to process.
Matt Alder [00:03:48]:
Anything that you’ve kind of seen around that surprised you or particularly bit of.
Daniel Chait [00:03:52]:
Interest, you know, I mean, I think the thing that here more than anything is the boundaries between what the different categories are, which used to be really clear are, you know, are starting to be blurred. And so you see vendors kind of like moving out of what you think of their box and you think, you know, they’re this, but they’re trying to be that. And so I think that’s a big trend I’m seeing this year is people trying to step outside their box. And I think I have a lot of empathy for the customers who are trying to figure it all out.
Matt Alder [00:04:23]:
It’s hard coming to customers, the sort of the, you know, the people running talent acquisition teams, very disruptive, as you say, confusing time with all this kind of information out here. I do feel sorry for anyone kind of wandering around trying to work out exactly how this industry works now. What is it that you feel people in that position need to do to really kind of make an impact on their business this year?
Daniel Chait [00:04:46]:
When I think about how do you make impact on your business, to me, it’s got to come down to dollars and cents. And I think as I talk to TA leaders, they’re so focused on what they’re trying to deliver of making that hire, filling that seat, you know, getting that hiring manager off my back, that they don’t often have the opportunity to step back and think about the answer to this question of no, what does this actually mean for my business? So for me, how do you impact dollars and cents, either adding revenue, reducing cost, or reducing risk? And so the things you can do in talent acquisition, you can spend less money on tools, you can reduce your sourcing budgets and reuse candidates you already have, you can tighten the interview loop or you can Drive more revenue. You can hire better people. You can hire your sales reps 10% faster or reduce hiring mistakes where you have a mis hire and have to redo it. I talked to a customer recently who had almost 10% of their hires that didn’t make it six months. And so, you know, when you have eight and a half percent of the people you hire that are out the door in six months, you got to go rehire them. It’s hugely expensive, their business. And you think about what it costs to buy a tool like Greenhouse that is nothing compared to the cost of rehiring 10% of your workforce. And so for them, the answer was, how do we improve our selection process and how do we target the right candidates so that we’re more successful on the back end? So I think those are the things that then directly address the thing that the CFO cares about, which is not, oh, I like to use my tool, or are we cool enough with AI, but like, are you mattering to the dollars and cents of the business?
Matt Alder [00:06:14]:
Absolutely. And just doubling down on what you just said there, because I was talking to, spoken to a couple of practitioners today. The biggest thing for them at the moment is quality of hire. As you say, people are going to kind of come and add value to the business and stay. How can technology help with that? You sort of mentioned a few things there, but can you just kind of expand on how technology can support that, that kind of objective?
Daniel Chait [00:06:38]:
Yeah, I mean, there’s a bunch of ways and, and more coming. But really, I would say firstly not to skip this part. It actually starts not with technology, but with process. And more than anything else, as an organization, getting that process right, starting from the design of the job and the intake meeting to the, you know, determine the criteria with the hiring manager and setting the process up correctly, by far, that’s the most important thing, because technology can automate it, it can make it more efficient, it can make it more scalable. But what it can’t do is if you’re aiming in the wrong direction, you know, you’re going to get there faster with technology. But, you know, so to me, it’s more about making sure that you’ve got the right process from there again. So you just go through the hiring funnel. You think, okay, at the top of funnel, we can use technology to understand where are we getting candidates from and which of those sources are identifying better performers in our interview process or better hiring. It’s often counterintuitive. People have certain ideas in their mind of where the quote, a Players are. It turns out that’s not always true. In the middle of the funnel, you can deliver a winning candidate experience. So one of the big differentiators in getting top talent is like, well, they often have a lot of choices and why are they going to choose to work at your company, not someone else’s? Well, along the way, what are their experience? Are they having a useful. Is it moving fast? Can you give them predictability? And there’s a lot of technology that can help make that process better. And then at the end of the funnel, are you giving them an offer that is compelling, that is fair, and there’s a lot of technology that you can use to make sure that you’re doing that well. So the choices are abundant. But the first thing to do is to clarify in your mind, like, what are you trying to get done and how are you going to do it from a process standpoint.
Matt Alder [00:08:21]:
As a final question, obviously, as ever.
Matt Alder [00:08:24]:
As we’d expect, all talk is of.
Matt Alder [00:08:26]:
AI at this kind of event and indeed everywhere at the moment, cutting kind of through the hype. What do you. What are you kind of most excited about in terms of what I might be able to deliver in, you know, in a couple of years time?
Daniel Chait [00:08:40]:
Yeah. Well, you talk about cutting through the hype. So, you know, we started Greenhouse in 2012. We’ve been through a million hype cycles. I remember when the future of recruiting was social, mobile, local. I remember when the future of recruiting was big data. I remember when the future of recruiting was blockchain. Right? And on and on, and we sat here year after year and being like, nope, nope, nope. And just it’s hype. AI is real. And so this is the one where we’re saying, no, no, no, this is going to have tremendous impact on everyone’s job, on all of the technology, on how we consume and pay for software. It’s a revolution in so many ways that we’re just now starting to understand. And so at Greenhouse, we’re taking that very seriously. It’s a transformative impact, both internally as a company, how we work, how our employees get their jobs done, and in the products and offerings that we’re delivering to the market. So we’ve already rolled out a bunch of that. If you’re creating a job in Greenhouse today, you are assisted by AI to write the job description, to build the scorecards, to write the interviews. If you’re hiring someone in Greenhouse today, you’re assisted by AI to analyze and do the roundup and think about where that candidate’s trying Strong and weak. We’re using it to automate a lot of the grunt work, whether it’s scheduling, interviews, chasing, hiring manager feedback, even things like running reports. And we’re literally just at the beginning of this journey. So it’s tremendously exciting and it’s really hard to do. Right. There’s so much to your point. There’s not only so much hype, but in reality, I can’t think of a time since the 1990s where technology has been changing so, so fast. And so by the time you make a plan and you roll something out, there’s 10 more new technologies that you could even be looking at. So it’s incredibly exciting, but difficult time to navigate.
Matt Alder [00:10:28]:
Hi, Allyn. Amazing to talk to you as ever. So how’s Transform been for you?
Allyn Bailey [00:10:34]:
You know, Transform. This is my first time at Transform, and I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been rich in conversation. I probably. Everybody told me I was going to have deeper conversations here, and I was kind of like, whatever, right. But that has really proved to be the case. I now, I would also say that the content has been really interesting. I don’t know, there seems to be a different flavor to it. I have. I can’t quite pinpoint how it feels different, but it feels different. But that’s interesting. I like something a little bit different, a little spicy. Add a little.
Matt Alder [00:11:07]:
Yeah, I think it’s because of the kind of a mix of attendees. So you have your practitioners, you have your vendors, but you also have, like, investors and things like that. And I think everyone’s kind of. Everyone’s sort of on their data, on their numbers in this maybe is a.
Allyn Bailey [00:11:19]:
Great way to describe it. A lot more numbers, a lot more stats, a lot more specifics.
Matt Alder [00:11:25]:
So I’ve got one question, which I’m asking everyone. So what is it that you think tier leaders need to do in 2025 or the rest of 2025 to have a measurable impact on their business?
Allyn Bailey [00:11:36]:
So this is going to. Again, I’m going to have a dramatic answer to this. I would expect nothing less, nothing less from me. Here’s my dramatic answer. You need to throw away everything that you know and you have to start all over again. So if you think this is about shopping for new tech that has AI built in it. Yeah, kinda. If you think this is about reimagining the roles that you have in your organization, yeah, you’re gonna need to do that. And if you think this is. Is about redesigning how hiring even happens top to bottom, bingo. That’s what you have to do right now we are at a moment where you can buy tech to exponentially increase your efficiency for a moment, but it will not get you over the line. And where your business leaders, where your CEOs, where your CEOs or your CFOs are imagining you’re supposed to be, they’re listening to all these newscasts. They’re talking, they’re hearing about the fact that the world is going to be revolutionized by AI. They can reduce their workforces, they can create more efficiency, there’s going to be better intelligence, better strategy, all of this stuff. None of that is wrong. However, in the TA space in particular. It. It’s not just going to be a quick up and replace. It is we people who have tried to put elements in, add little trickles here and there, are now finding it’s not far enough, it’s not fast enough, it’s not big enough. And we don’t get to the real answer to answer all those big new use cases until we get really comfortable with saying maybe the last hundred years of hiring is not. How would you have to hire going forward?
Matt Alder [00:13:19]:
If you were kind of back working for a big corporate and a talent from function, how would you do that? What would you do?
Allyn Bailey [00:13:26]:
I would be having more design sessions you could possibly imagine. And I would be having them with, not my TA team. I would be having them with. I’d be having them with potential candidates. I’d be having them with business leaders, I’d be having them with technology leaders in a variety of different industries. And I’d be trying to dive into the question of what’s possible? What do you really need? What are the things we’re really trying to do? And then working backwards from there to try and very quickly figure out a strategy to get me there and to align it because it’s going I. If I’m in a big space like that, I know I’m going to have to figure out do I need recruiters anymore. If I do, are they still recruiters? What do they look like? I don’t know. I don’t think I need sourcers anymore. I’m sorry if that’s shocking to anybody. Sorry if that’s the case. Do I tran like, do I transition? Do I need more administrative people? Or wait a minute, maybe I don’t need any of that. I need something completely different we haven’t even imagined yet. But I have to do the work to figure out what that new experience or process is that needs to be designed. So that’s what I’d be doing, and I’d be doing it fast. I wouldn’t be sitting around and having leisurely conversations in the lunchroom. This is a. You need to get people together quickly, breaking the mold, asking tough questions, arguing with each other, and then get a strawman together of a plan, something you think might work and start testing on the edges.
Matt Alder [00:15:02]:
Final question. How much change do you think is going to happen in the next six months?
Allyn Bailey [00:15:07]:
Not as much as I want, obviously. Never. Never for me. Never as much as I want. I think the biggest change that’s going to happen in the next six months is we’re all going to open our eyes and realize that it’s not just about features and functionality, that there’s an entire new set of Rails that has to exist. So here I’ll use this great example. I’m going to be talking about this a lot coming up, but I’ll have tease this up. I think we’re going to learn things like what is my chatbot built on? And if it’s built on nlp, that’s not going to get me to agentic anytime soon. Oh, crap. Well, what does that mean? Right. So I think these are. Those are the sorts of things people are going to start figuring out and that’s going to overturn the apple cart.
Mike Stafiej [00:15:59]:
My name is Mike Stafiej. I’m the CEO and founder of Erin, which is an employee referral platform. We help engage employees to participate in the referral process and automate everything.
Matt Alder [00:16:09]:
We’re at Transform. How’s the event been from your perspective? What’s been the most interesting thing you’ve seen or conversation you’ve had?
Mike Stafiej [00:16:17]:
I think generically, Transform is kind of in a league of its own. Right. I mean, it’s just a really well done show. Right. And it’s for better or for worse. I mean, there’s a lot of different topics that are covered as well. Overall, it’s a great show. It looks like it’s gotten bigger this year. The caliber of attendees is always pretty strong.
Matt Alder [00:16:36]:
And you won the Smart Recruiters Poker Tournament?
Mike Stafiej [00:16:39]:
Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to brag, but I did win the Smart Recruiters Poker Tournament. I’ll tell you, you can be impressed with my poker skills, but I get lucky early on and then I was able to ride that out to the end.
Matt Alder [00:16:51]:
Well, it’s the first time I’ve ever played and I was. I was delighted to make it into the second hour.
Mike Stafiej [00:16:56]:
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people did it.
Matt Alder [00:16:58]:
Yeah, it was. It was good fun, kind of Moving back to talent acquisition. So what do you think the, from, from what you’re seeing, the conversations that you’re having, lots of tier leaders listening to the podcast, what do you think the, the kind of, the most impactful thing or what is it that TA teams need, TA leaders need to do this year to have a kind of a measurable impact on their business?
Mike Stafiej [00:17:22]:
Obviously, we’re, we’re tech product, right? We’re in the HR tech, tech stack. So I’m going to lean towards that. But I think in my observation, I was never in talent acquisition, right. So when we started the company, we started working closely with our customers and the TA leaders. One thing became very clear. There are people that look, there are people in this space that look very strategically at the KPIs. They have what numbers matter. There are people that do not look at that and they don’t care and they just accept like it is what it is, there’s nothing we can do. And then the category that we’re always looking for are the people that look at the numbers. They know it matters and they’re looking for a way to change that. Right. So the, I mean, technology changes are always very difficult for customers, but the ones, especially in the last couple years, that are almost throwing out their entire tech stacks, building it for the funnel they want, right? What is our main objective? Do we need to hire faster? Do we need to have a better candidate experience because people are dropping off? Do we need to lower our cost per hire? Do we need to stop spending money on job boards, Spend that elsewhere? So I think it’s quite literally where do you stand compared to where you want to be and then what are you actually going to do about it? And there’s a lot of options, right? There’s some people, like, for us, obviously, we work with the ones that care about referrals, others might care about volume and in getting through the hundreds of thousands of applicants they have in a more efficient manner. Right? So it’s not always about the KPI is related to the candidates. It’s also about their team. Right. I mean, how many recruiters do you need if you’re sourcing from. Indeed, you’re getting 50 to 60 applicants per hire. And how many recruiters do you need to get through that? Right? Is there another way to do that? Can AI lower that, that workload or is there other places you want to source from? Like, so there’s a lot of different ways you can, you can adjust that. But yeah, I mean, execution is everything. And, and if you don’t actually understand those metrics and you’re a TA leader, you’ll look really good when you write them down. People like, like your CFO will like you more when you, when you say, hey, here’s where we are, here’s where we can now get better and more efficient and save money.
Matt Alder [00:19:32]:
What would your advice be on the technology front? Because walking around the, you know, walk around the show here, there’s, there’s obviously huge amount of people exhibiting various different types of technology. They’re all talking about AI. How do you cut through the noise to really know what you need?
Mike Stafiej [00:19:49]:
Yeah, it’s a good question and I’m actually, I’m going to answer it a little bit differently. Anytime I’ve seen somebody adopt new technology and be successful with it, and definitely for our customers, there’s always at least one person that’s going to really go all in on it. Like they’re going to sponsor it internally. They’re going to say, hey, this does help us achieve this objective and I’m going to stake my social capital on it and saying it’s right. So, I mean, by the best tech in the world, if you can’t actually execute, then you got nothing. So having at least one person on your team that owns it and can, can really believe in it and be passionate helps. So then from there it’s, and this is why these shows are good because maybe you don’t know what you’re passionate about or you don’t know what there is. And then you get all this talk of AI and whatnot. And it’s, it’s also, it’s difficult because we’re coming into times where the more common topic is more with less. And I mean, AI will displace jobs, like there’s no question about it. And can you repurpose those people or not? Is another question. But I think when you’re looking at it, it’s not just is that good tech, it’s also how does it work for us? Do I want more machines than humans or if I add more machines than I can use the humans for other things? Right. So it’s definitely. There’s a lot of variables. Right. But I think it all relates to the other answer, which is what KPI matters the most and then what products are saying, this is the KPI we help you with, right.
Matt Alder [00:21:23]:
As a final question, if we were back here in two years time, what would we be talking about? What’s going to change? What do you think is going to happen?
Mike Stafiej [00:21:31]:
I mean, I’m really tired of presenters saying, how is AI going to affect recruiting? AI is already affecting recruiting. Like, let’s just look and see how it’s affecting it and let’s stop asking the question and start sharing the data. So I think definitely in two years you’re going to have that trend. Less questions about like, hey, here’s this mythical thing that, that few people actually understand on how it works and how to embrace it. And the conversation is going to be more like, hey, this is now the new world, we’re not guessing anymore. This is how it has impacted the industry and then this is how we’re moving forward from there. The interesting thing is going to be in tech in general, like the niche solutions are not going to be products. I mean, Aaron’s a niche solution, Right. I need to make referrals. Great, so let’s buy. Aaron. We’re going to be coming quickly into a situation where that golden era of startups with niche solutions will go away because you’re going to have AI solving problems in a much more custom manner, much more cost effectively. So it’s not going to be, oh, AI helps the candidate experience. AI is going to help the candidate experience. And we had this super specific problem with our super specific tech stack and AI solved that as well. So there is no vendor to buy in that situation. Right? Yeah, it’s going to be interesting.
Jocelyn King [00:22:55]:
My name is Jocelyn King and I’m the CEO and founder of a company called Virgill HR. We have an employment and labor law compliance tech platform that we offer to HR professionals to help them stay compliant.
Matt Alder [00:23:07]:
And how’s Transform been for you?
Jocelyn King [00:23:08]:
Fantastic. I love this conference. It’s my favorite and what I really like about it is that the conversations that you’re listening to in these different sessions are very progressive. They’re more high level strategy or thought leadership. And so I really enjoy that because you kind of hear about the latest and greatest here and as a vendor myself, it’s also nice because there are a lot of decision makers that come because they’re just, you know, at a higher level.
Matt Alder [00:23:37]:
Absolutely. And the one question I’m asking everyone is obviously it’s a, it’s a kind of a crazy time out there, very disruptive for lots of reasons. We have AI and new technology everywhere and I think for, for all the practitioners listening, it’s, it’s kind of, obviously.
Matt Alder [00:23:53]:
A very confusing time.
Matt Alder [00:23:54]:
But more than ever before, they’re being asked to make an impact on their, on their business. From your perspective, what would your advice be in terms of how talent Teams HR teams can kind of make that measurable impact on their business and really kind of illustrate their value to the organization.
Jocelyn King [00:24:11]:
Yeah, I think that that’s something that HR just historically has a lot of challenges with, is showing the ROI in some of their initiatives or strategies or programs. And so I think there’s more of a movement now in figuring out how to actually showcase that to the CFO and the CEO or CEO to validate what HR is doing. Very selfishly, I think a lot about compliance. So I think I’d speak to that in this situation. You know, employers are spending tons of money. The average settlement award is a quarter million dollars a year. You can have two employees or you know, 100,000 employees. That’s the average. So it puts some small companies out of business and more than one in 10 employers is getting sued every year. So if we can put together the right policies and best practices and procedures from a compliance perspective, whether it’s in talent acquisition and the questions you’re asking in the interview process or the job postings, all the way to termination and ensuring that you’re following all the state and local laws, you’ll start to see a really measurable return, whether it’s in the amount of time that you’re saving using a tool like ours, for example, not going to lawyers as often, not getting sued, having better employee engagement because you’re following through on the laws that are benefiting them. So compliance is a huge piece.
Matt Alder [00:25:28]:
Yeah, absolutely. And as a kind of final question.
Matt Alder [00:25:30]:
How do you see sort of things.
Matt Alder [00:25:32]:
Developing over the next year or so? You know, in your, in your kind of area, is there, is technology going to drive things forward? Is there going to be more awareness of compliance? Is compliance going to change? What’s, what was your kind of predictions for the next 12 months?
Jocelyn King [00:25:45]:
Yeah, I think we’re going to see a lot on the AI front. It’s really difficult because you do want to be careful about using open source information to train an AI bot. Like it’s just there are hallucinations, it’s not always accurate. And so we for example, have trained our AI bot using our own proprietary database to keep the data clean. So I think we’re going to see more and more on the AI front and I also believe we’ll see quite a bit on the self service side as well, both on the employee side, but also on the HR side too.
Matt Alder [00:26:16]:
Hi John, how are you?
John Baldino [00:26:18]:
I’m well, Matt. Good to see you.
Matt Alder [00:26:19]:
Good to see you as ever. I think we were sitting here this time last year, weren’t we? I think we were just very quickly tell people what you do, who you are, what you do.
John Baldino [00:26:29]:
Sure. John Baldino, president of Humoriso, which is an HR consulting firm. Tip to tail, transactional to transformative HR work for companies across the country, mostly us.
Matt Alder [00:26:41]:
And how are you finding transform this time around?
John Baldino [00:26:43]:
It’s great. This is one of the favorites for me. And yeah, I mean there’s so many good people genuinely like good conversations and it’s. I think transform doesn’t. Nice job of making space for us to have good conversations as well. Right. It’s not over packed.
Matt Alder [00:27:02]:
And what’s the most interesting conversation you’ve.
Matt Alder [00:27:03]:
Had or thing that you found out or thing that you’ve seen that sort of really stood out for you?
John Baldino [00:27:06]:
Well, the things that I found out I probably can’t repeat. So that’s number one, the things you.
Matt Alder [00:27:11]:
Can repeat in public, shall we say? Yeah.
John Baldino [00:27:15]:
Really interesting to hear from a couple of technology partner vendors that are here and their, I’m going to say, nervousness about how to be innovative moving forward. Because you and I both know if you walk around any conference floor where there’s vendors, there’s this AI thing that is everywhere, slapped up on everything and what when everybody has it, then the playing field feels level.
Matt Alder [00:27:54]:
It’s a really interesting point because particularly where people are tapping into all the big kind of public models and things like that. And it’s almost like, yeah, what do they do to innovate? What is it that they’ve got about their business that isn’t replicable by other people?
John Baldino [00:28:07]:
Right, right. And so to hear them say we’re trying to make sure our messaging about not just AI, but as a whole what we do will be beneficial to an organization, that’s a good thing in.
Matt Alder [00:28:21]:
A world where everyone has AI and it’s no longer a selling point. You know, I suppose there’ll be a little bit of time over the next year or so where it’s like the right kind of AI or the right kind of thing, but. But ultimately that will become table stakes as well. So. So yeah, that’s. It’s. Yeah, I think it’s a really, it’s a really good point. And there are so many companies here who are not doing that.
John Baldino [00:28:43]:
Yes, that’s all I’ll say.
Matt Alder [00:28:44]:
Yes, exactly. No, not naming names. So the question that I’ve been asking everyone is if we kind of sort of move over to the kind of practitioner side of the fence, incredibly disruptive time economically, politically, job markets, all these sort of things and obviously with technology and all the noise and all that sort of stuff, I know it kind of leaves a lot of people quite confused, but ultimately we’re at a time where they need to make more of an impact on their business probably than ever before. What would your advice be to, you know, practitioners in terms of how they can really move the needle in their company in 2025?
John Baldino [00:29:24]:
I love this question, by the way. I think it’s a good one. You actually I thought about this, right, to think how would it be different this year than a couple of years ago or five years ago. Right. What I think is for any TA team this year, they really should be thoughtful about the inventory of people. And what I mean by that is we’re in a really interesting spot where there are certain types of industries that are reducing their workforce and it is putting people into our candidate pools that may not have been there six to 12 months ago. And how do I know how to screen for, ask good questions of these candidates so that I can see how, what they know how to do, the aptitudes behind it will impact our organization. Can I think that creatively, as a talent acquisition practitioner to see some of that creatively? Because I think that’s going to be a set apart for some companies to bring in that different approach of thought, of overlapping skill sets perhaps, but it had been applied in a different way. What will that now look like to bring you here?
Matt Alder [00:30:46]:
Yeah, I think that’s really interesting because there is such an opportunity there to get some brilliant people into your business who bring that lens of looking at things differently or you know, as well to really kind of drive it forward. So yeah. And any advice on how to do that?
John Baldino [00:31:00]:
First I would say what is your TA process? Start with the human part first. How have you invested in the humans that are on your TA team? How have we taught them to think critically, to know how to ask a question, hear the answer and then have a follow up that makes sense. I think some of that sounds very basic, but I want to be fair. We’ve got some 24, 25 year olds that are sitting in a recruiter position that haven’t. They don’t have a long work history. We have to help them understand how to ask. It’s not necessarily going to come natural for those individuals. And then the other thing I would say is on the technology side side, does the, the gates that you have in your tech stack, is it. Are those gates keeping people out that we need to start letting in? What, what are those pieces that have Become, oh, if, if I see someone was a business owner on a resume, I automatically knock them out or do you know what I mean? Things that, that are, that you’re like, we have to get rid of some of these things. We’ve got to open it up a little, little bit more so that we have the potential of having some of that diversity of background with the skill sets that are necessary to make it further in the process.
Adria Ferrier [00:32:22]:
My name is Adria Ferrier. I’m the CEO and co founder of Elayne. We are an AI co pilot for estate and financial wellness.
Matt Alder [00:32:31]:
Now it’s really interesting because I think when I kind of first heard about your business I was, I thought, I don’t really quite understand that and I don’t quite understand its relevance to sort of hr. But then having spoken to you, I can completely get that now. So take everyone listening through the kind of journey that I went on in terms of, you know, what you do and how it kind of works in this sector.
Jocelyn King [00:32:52]:
Yeah.
Adria Ferrier [00:32:52]:
I mean it, this business was born from a personal experience and so I, I come from the investing world and you know, we’re really, I was really into my career, loved it. Although my, my mom was sick and she passed away and that’s when this whole monster like monstrous process starts where you are dragged away. You have to do all of this admin during the workday and there’s really no support system. And my HR leaders in my company were amazing but nothing existed to help me like guide me through the process, do stuff for me that wasn’t, you know, for example, learn to fax. I feel like that’s completely unnecessary these days.
Matt Alder [00:33:36]:
Yes, yeah, yeah. And I don’t find the fax machine anywhere these days.
Jocelyn King [00:33:40]:
Yeah.
Adria Ferrier [00:33:40]:
And so I think, I think having structures in place and tools in place to help people through the really tough times in their lives, it just increases company loyalty and it really, I think it’s a really great way for employers to show that they care about their people.
Matt Alder [00:34:02]:
How’s AI enabled? What does the AI do in this kind of process?
Adria Ferrier [00:34:05]:
Oh my God, it’s super cool. So the reason this doesn’t exist is because it’s so manual currently. So our AI will go through, it will pull out information so you can take photos of documents, you can connect accounts and it will pull out information and cross reference everything so it will tell you if you have an asset in your will, for example, that lists a beneficiary that is not what is on your bank account. And so it will pull out those little things and help you update in the planning part and then post loss again. So much of it can be done by bots, so you don’t have to stay on the phone and fill out paperwork over and over. Like we can do that for you.
Matt Alder [00:34:52]:
And the question I’m asking everyone is how, you know, talent leaders can make a measurable impact on their business this year. How do you relate sort of that question to, to what you’re offering? Where does it kind of fit into the hr, the HR world?
Adria Ferrier [00:35:05]:
You know, I think as I’ve, as I’ve been talking to a lot of people, the pandemic, it was five years ago, but it also feels like it was yesterday. Right? And a lot of people still have that lingering anxiety and, and want to, want to apply themselves to work, but, but, you know, have a lot on their plates. And so I think, I think just tools like this to make them more comfortable and make them feel like their families are also taken care of just helps, just helps people be more engaged and, you know, it’s one less call they have to make during the day or one less thing they have to worry about. And that’s really what we’re trying to do.
Matt Alder [00:35:45]:
My thanks to Daniel, Elin, Mike, Jocelyn, John and Adria. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
The post Ep 690: How Can TA Make A Measurable Impact? appeared first on The Recruiting Future Podcast.