Are Your Recruiters Doing Valuable Tasks? With Greg Symons
With so many different tasks that recruiters need to accomplish, what should they really be focused on?
Find Greg here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gsymons/
[Transcribed from episode above]
00:05.64
Brad Owens
Hello recruiting family. This is Brad Oweens with the transform recruiting podcast got a good one for you today. We are digging in with Greg Simmons who's been all. Over this recruitment industry. So Greg thanks for jumping in man I appreciate you wanting to have a conversation so give everyone just a little bit of background on you because it's it's quite the background and I'd love for them to hear where you're coming from.
00:22.54
Greg Symons
Glad to be here. Brad thanks for having me.
00:33.39
Greg Symons
Yeah, definitely. It's ah it's an interesting one I started my career actually in the staffing and recruiting space and worked with a fortune 500 staffing company for the better part of eight or nine years or so and have really spent a lot of time on a desk. Understand the the nuances and I guess more importantly, the pain points that face recruiters on a day in and day out. Basis. Um, but back in 2015 I had the chance to be 1 of the the first employees at a company called talent Rover which. Really which ah kind of began my my journey down down the path of salesforce we were ah we had built a salesforce product to allow staffing and recruiting companies to manage their business and that was such a great time in my career. It was a very what I say romantic idea of a startup. We had the hair on fire hockey stick type growth was on a plane probably more often than I was at home and it was a really fun journey we we eventually sold that company to bullhorn in 2018 and have since continued to do a lot of really exciting stuff in the salesforce ecosystem by way of developing. So salesforce products for companies with our new company. Blueprint advisory and have also been fortunate to partner with salesforce to to really just help drive greater efficiencies for for your customers in the ah this the salesforce and the staffing your recruiting ecosystem. You could say that. Ah.
01:51.98
Brad Owens
There Sure is a lot going on right now who knows what's coming. But yeah, it's It's a lot of fun. Yeah I appreciate all the partnership up at till this point and into the future as Well. So you've seen it from a lot of different sides. What are you seeing out there. And the recruiting industry right Now. What are some of the things that we're facing.
02:12.35
Greg Symons
Yeah, you know it's a good question I think that ah what? what? the recruiting industry is facing I think is what a lot of people in the industry are facing right? There's a lot of unknowns in the world right now. But. Um, in spite of that and even you know when I started my career in staffing I started my current staff in 12009 which if you turn back the clock that was not a great time in the world to try to get people jobs. Ah so far, be it from me to. Go into that industry but ah but I made it out ah made it out alive and and 1 thing that I did notice on that is you know that the staffing and recruitment industry is a bit of a barometer of the economy at large I think that when when the economy is is really strong. You see a huge influx in your direct higher staffing. Right? because companies need to find ah different ways that they can attract and identify talent to fill their open role so that they can keep up with their growth but then in periods of ah of ambiguity or uncertainty you start to see a slight uptick with your your temp staffing right? You still have work that needs to be done. You still have customers. It's not like the world stops. Um, but the temp staffing space is able to kind of pick up some of the slack that your perm business might see a slight downturn for so when I think about staffing I think about what's facing them as I mentioned is what faces other companies and they're trying to make decisions on how to be more effective and efficient.
03:35.32
Greg Symons
How they are able to generate revenue and and manage their expenses and from you know what we're going to be talking a little bit about today technology is a great medium to increase revenue and reduce expenses by you know, really building on a platform that allows you to automate the administrative functions of your business. And ensure that the employees that you have working for. You are able to focus on more specific revenue generating activities whether it's a staffing company or or not right? That's something that that every company faces so interesting time for sure and I think the next twelve months are I hate to say interesting again I can't think of any other. Any good words to describe it right now. So we'll stick with that.
04:14.17
Brad Owens
Yeah, and I will lean into that interesting because when you think about the upsides to one of these and periods of ambiguity. We'll go with your term if you think about upsides if there are any.
04:27.42
Greg Symons
All right.
04:32.00
Brad Owens
Ah, one of the ones that I continually see in companies that come out of this come out of these periods and just ready to hit the ground running and blaze those organizations take these times when things may slow down when they don't have to focus on grow grow grow like you said hair on Fire. This is one of those times where it's a good point in your business to focus on something that will improve these automations to help people do the the right kinds of things that will help your business grow when it does turn around or if it turns around when it turns Around. Um, so. For you in your space and the conversations that you're having what are some of the the kind of big pain points that people are coming to you with like cheese if we could just solve for this like that you're seeing um you know multiple people need this type of technology to to fix.
05:23.53
Greg Symons
Yeah I think a big one is um is a way for these companies to reach a wider audience. Um at the end of the day staffing and recruiting especially whether it's the the staffing industry or a recruiting company a corporate HR recruiting rather.
05:31.94
Brad Owens
Ah.
05:40.80
Greg Symons
Um, it's a battle for eyeballs on the various job boards that exist your company's websites on Linkedin. Whatever it might be and so many companies are really starting to think about the new way of attracting talent to their business. Um, and again that applies to both staffing companies as well as as corporate hr um, but with that outreach with staffing companies. The staffing industry is unique because you serve 2 masters in a sense that you're trying to identify candidates. But you also need to have more specific and pointed outreach to customers or buyers of your services. And so I think that if you think if we consider your audiences being able to understand your audiences the pain points that each of them face and how to best position your brand and your messaging to them as wide. A um, ah, ah, ah, net as possible. Will really allow you to be more effective at than generating leads on both sides of the house and converting those leads into revenue-generating opportunities whether it be job orders or or viable candidates that you can then place or hire for your own business and in my view. I think that there's products out there salesforce obviously does a tremendous job of it. But so much of what these companies are craving is data and information on the people they're working with because once you have that you can really start to unlock so much power.
07:04.13
Greg Symons
With the information that you have and then the tools that you can then facilitate these engagements with and so many people are really starting to to grasp on to that and I think it's exciting. Um, because as a consumer of services in general everybody likes having a better experience right? And so why shouldn't people looking for a job.
07:18.80
Brad Owens
Her.
07:23.26
Greg Symons
Have the same experience as whether you're shopping on Amazon or or going into ah any type of e-commerce store like you want to have a great experience and staffing company should be able to leverage that so that's a big a big piece that we're hearing right now.
07:34.65
Brad Owens
So It's interesting that to bring that up. We were using the word interesting a whole bunch but it's it's why we're in this So The marketing side of things when you think about these gigantic organizations out there. We'll talk about like the apples the Ibms the. Huge organizations that everyone's really aware of the Coca -colas The people that are like household names. They have a whole lot of budget into this marketing side of things to start driving this demand. Where there may not have even been some demand like they kind of created this thing for people that that got all this hype and now people are lining up around the stores to get their iphones and everything I mean that kind of hype is created through these marketing efforts and at least in the firms that I've worked at.
08:09.59
Greg Symons
Is right.
08:25.35
Brad Owens
We put almost zero dollars into anything that was not just smile and dial and those aren't those types of experiences that everyone's been used to and that's not how things you know grow exponentially you have to have something that exists outside of just manual effort.
08:28.43
Greg Symons
Right.
08:43.21
Brad Owens
To to drive that interest in your business and to get people into those experiences that you're talking about like the Instagram experience like you just had a you were just surfing the web for shark week or whatever and something comes through on Instagram that talks about these exotic vacations where you can go swim with sharks.
08:48.85
Greg Symons
Right.
09:01.96
Brad Owens
That kind of stuff is happening for everyone. Why not for your job that runs your entire life. Sometimes it provides for your family like I agree with you that should be something that we focus on um and to you to your point of that data that I feel like is the new value for a recruiting firm and I want to get you thoughts on this.
09:03.19
Greg Symons
Ah, ah.
09:08.80
Greg Symons
Right? yep.
09:19.38
Greg Symons
We started.
09:21.22
Brad Owens
Because we started with our databases. We had our Ats that was the thing that was crazy valuable because it had everyone's contact information in it. We couldn't get that anywhere now we can so that kind of lost value then we went to those.
09:29.76
Greg Symons
Oh yeah.
09:37.75
Brad Owens
Relationships right? We had our recruiters and our sellers that had these relationships with clients and candidates that was fantastic for us because we were able to leverage that but those relationships are transient if our recruiters leave which in a lot of recruiters leave.
09:51.38
Greg Symons
Yep, like.
09:52.91
Brad Owens
We now don't have that value so retention was kind of that highly valuable thing but now I'm seeing it shift to all of this transactional data like you said people interacting with our brand and people making job changes inside our Ats so yeah, curious just get your thoughts where do you think that value is shifting and what can people do about it.
10:08.83
Greg Symons
Yeah, it's a really really good point right? and I I still think that technology is going to never replace human relationships right? and the the point that you just made the best recruiters staffing corporate or otherwise are relationship builders.
10:18.72
Brad Owens
A.
10:28.37
Greg Symons
Right? And they're able to maintain and build relationships and more importantly, trust with the candidates that they work with because you're giving as an applicant your career to the hands of somebody that boy you really hope they have your best interest in mind and aren't just trying to hit hit their their Kpis for for the week now with that being said.
10:41.38
Brad Owens
Right.
10:47.62
Greg Symons
Relationships can be curated um by a few different ways. But I think the best way to curate a relationship at least with an applicant is to show them relevant jobs in this case that that are truly representative of what they might be looking for and then just help facilitate and when you start to think about. Rolling the clock back a little bit your earlier comment about the database right? legacy databases by and large contact info first name last name email address phone number. Ah very binary right? what.
11:17.60
Brad Owens
A.
11:19.76
Greg Symons
I think is going to start to happen what we're already starting to see some more forward-thinking companies start to action on is less about contact information and more about engagement with their company. So what I mean to say by that is if I am working with you as an applicant Brad and you go on an interview for me. And you get an offer you complete your job. You get 5 out of 5 stars I now need to make sure that that data goes into your profile so it can influence how I prioritize getting you another job or if you go on to a job and you get extended and extended and extend that that should ramp up your prioritization if you are really good at. You have a great resume and you continue to get submitted to customers. But you don't get interviews or you go to interviews and pass. Well then that should also influence your ranking right? or it should treat as an opportunity to like Brad you're great on paper I like talking to you but what the heck man like are you just terrible at interviewing like what's the deal.
12:13.48
Brad Owens
Right.
12:15.93
Greg Symons
But that that data is really really valuable and there's a lot of information that happens through the course of a business's operations that really should impact. Um, the overall candidate profile in this space and you could also equate the same to your hiring managers and start to understand their trends and philosophies. But I think that. That data is it really should not be thought of as just your your database and your contact info should really be tangible human information that is being transacted on a daily basis.
12:43.64
Brad Owens
yes yes yes 1000000% Yes I think we talked about this at the um s a conference that we were both at the the mentality right now of matching.
12:54.75
Greg Symons
And.
12:56.33
Brad Owens
Is very much that hey we've got machine learning to be able to tell if these words come together. They can probably also do this so might be able to add some keywords to their profile to maybe help them come up on other searches but to your point this person that we may have sent out 20 times on different Interviews. Can't get the job done because yeah, their resume might match but they may not have the actual skills that these companies are looking for so to your point matching actions rather than words I think is how this future is going to go I agree with you I think that.
13:28.17
Greg Symons
Thank you.
13:31.62
Brad Owens
You know if I am a fantastic performer I should come up number 1 next on the whatever job you're searching for that I fit if I am a person that's been a okay performer but my current role wraps up in a week and I don't have my next one better be getting phone calls and and that kind of stuff we don't have built in right now. So my mind goes to how the reactions have been when I'm talking to organizations about this. They are like yep, totally agree how in the world. Do I start like what do I need to be doing.
13:51.92
Greg Symons
Yep.
14:07.51
Brad Owens
So in your experience. What have you seen people get good roi out of or what do you think would be a good ah roi to just start.
14:15.56
Greg Symons
Yeah, um, yeah, we're we're kind of ah we're we're getting to another big important piece here. Ah this idea of redeployment right? Um there's so much I remember in my my days as a recruiter we would have um. You know week long I don't remember we called them Blitz or whatever it might have been right and the the focus was to redeploy your candidates and so where you start is um, you start by by leveraging the technology that allows you to capture and manage this information first and foremost right. And I think that as as a staffing company exists they um and I've talked to a lot of ah lot of customers about this the the notion of of ah curating a process in which you you identify and place candidates for a hiring manager is um.
14:47.35
Brad Owens
Ah.
15:04.70
Greg Symons
It's been around since the beginning of of hiring right? But how each company does their own hiring and how each staffing company thinks about vetting and managing and during that process what they're doing is they're capturing information about these candidates and so I think the best way for these customers to start to even. Think about having an action plan or a strategy around this is to first kind of take take stock of your house take inventory of the systems that you're using the conversations that you're having with the people that you're working with and then capturing that information in a way that really should be organic if you're. Requiring the the people that are having the conversations to then get off a phone caller out of a meeting and spend 20 or 30 minutes uploading and like man. It's never going to happen. It's just never going to happen and so I think that and I kind of touched on this earlier. Um. And in times of uncertainty where you need to maximize revenue and reduce expenses technology should be a platform that can automate the administrative tasks for you and so if you're thinking about what's important to your business in terms of caption information on candidates you need to be using a technology that allows you to react to the market. And provide administrative workflow functionality. So that your people and your employees can really focus on what they need to do each day to move the needle forward and um and I think that's really important and the thing that's really tricky about that is we saw over the last few years um
16:33.23
Greg Symons
Uncertainty is always going to be there and so you need to be a building on a system and a technology that is going to be able to react to those changes so that you can update your business process or your update your workflows to react to changes in the market as well as react to the type of data that you might need to to capture. Ah, throughout that process and at the at the risk of being slightly longwinded. My last example of this very simply put is overnight during Covid companies. All of a sudden had to update their workflows to capture information about a candidate's health exposure to Covid Vaccine certificates. Whatever it might be. And for some companies that had the foresight to build on a product that allowed for that to be done with Clicks not code, no problem for other companies poof tough sled.
17:17.61
Brad Owens
Yeah, wait Greg are you saying that my excel spreadsheet with conditional formatting on who's coming up to an end is not going to work long term.
17:30.90
Greg Symons
You know it's probably better than the post it notes on the desk but ah, probably leaves a little bit more to be desired. Yeah.
17:37.45
Brad Owens
Ah, the amount of time I wasted keeping resumes in Manila Folders inside a filing cabinet like God I'm so glad technology exists Now. That's so incredible. Yeah I agree with you. Um, the platforms that. Are able to you say ah change business process and my mind goes to you know, actually making those changes on the platform if I have to do something like insert something new into the onboarding process because I'm recruiting for a different company.
18:01.74
Greg Symons
I.
18:10.88
Brad Owens
Or I need to have a different type of interview because this is a type of role that may not have existed a while back, but it's something that's related to what I already recruit for because I'm a niche specialist How in the World. Do I actually change what I'm working with to fit that and that's. Not where a lot of companies at least that I've interacted with have focused because they feel like all right. This has worked. This is great here's our process. We'll do something that covers 80% of it. Awesome here. You all go do this if we don't have something that fits. We'll even bring in a recruiting coordinator or someone else that can just manually do all this stuff. And that's worked for a while I feel like the volume that they need to be able to do to to your point to do more with less the volume that they need to get to that hits an absolute ceiling when we start thinking about these are all just going to be manual processes. So yeah.
18:49.97
Greg Symons
Um.
18:54.80
Greg Symons
Yeah.
19:05.77
Brad Owens
Feel like they're going to hit this ceiling if they haven't already felt this pain. They're going to very shortly. Um, so in having these conversations with people that are deep into it I'm noticing how much value a um. A very quickly adaptable platform brings to an organization. Um, that didn't plan on it but there is something new on the market Greg that I feel like fits this? Um, so why wasn't.
19:33.69
Greg Symons
And.
19:41.89
Brad Owens
This type of thing like assemble. Well I'll throw it out there. Why hasn't this type of thing existed before and what do you feel like it changes in the game.
19:43.33
Greg Symons
Yeah, why.
19:50.84
Greg Symons
yeah yeah I appreciate the plug of our our new you know, ah isv app that we built to to allow companies to really manage any recruiting process natively on salesforce um, it's a great question. Why didn't it exist. um well um I think that we've had the benefit of designing and thinking about what's next in recruiting because my team and I have spent so much time in recruiting. Um right? I've spent fifteen plus years now um with combining my experience in staffing and salesforce. My business partners are are the same and and what it came down to is when you start to solve problems for customers and you start hearing the same problems over and over again. You start to kind of create ah formulate an idea on how to address? ah larger issues at scale and we've had the benefit of being able to solve a lot of problems with with salesforce as the medium in which we we solve them and salesforce as a platform and as a technology makes us look really good right? because we can create a lot of really impactful business processes and automations ah very quickly for customers and it's it's really exciting to see the ah I don't know just the exhale of when you say oh yeah, it's really easy to just add a field or it's really easy to report on that and so.
21:19.14
Greg Symons
We started to kind of hear these these issues that customers came up with and issues that I faced as a recruiter were like okay we need to create a way to allow these companies to to react to their business and also to bring this more ah more full circle. Ah, we talked about earlier the the candidate experience. The customer experience. Why not the recruiting experience and very specifically what I mean by that is why couldn't we go and create a product that allows for a company to create the exact recruiting experience that they need to create for maybe ah, a hard to please hiring manager. Right? And it doesn't matter if it's temp job or perm job or corporate hr if you have a customer that wants things done or needs to have things done in a certain way. We wanted to go and design a product that would allow you to do that in terms of whatever stages need to be followed, whatever actions needed to occur at each stage and um I can't say why it didn't exist before. Um, but I can tell you why we built it and that's that's why we built is we built it because we've heard the problems before we've been in the industry I think that we've got a pretty good handle on how salesforce works and um and it's been really exciting to see how customers have been able to to use the assemble ats. Um, on top of Salesforce right? And that's an important delineation is we think that there's tremendous value in companies partnering first and foremost with salesforce and extending the functionality of that platform with purpose build products to manage either recruitment process. Their resume parsing search and match customer onboarding.
22:46.77
Greg Symons
Time in attendance you name it. There's so much more value and more specialists on the market now that there's ever been that if we can be really good at managing the Ats process Salesforce can continue to be best in class at at everything that Salesforce can do and companies can leverage the app exchange to fill in the gaps. You really can create a pretty interesting tech stack that offers differentiation for your Business. Yep.
23:08.95
Brad Owens
Yep yep, it's a reason I came to salesforce in the first place I knew they had the tools to be able to solve this so I wanted to be there helping them. Um the leaders that are listening in right now the recruiting leaders the sea level execs that are saying yeah this all sounds cool. This sounds great but I have no idea where to start.
23:27.14
Greg Symons
Yep, you can call me at 1 800 now I just ah now I think what what you start on is um I think there's different leadership styles right? I think the most important thing you can do is you can you can listen to the people who are doing the jobs right? You can.
23:27.19
Brad Owens
What what would you suggest so now. Ah.
23:44.71
Greg Symons
Sit ah for a day in a bullpen or Zoom call or whatever it might be just listen to your recruiters because they will tell you point blank what's going great and what's not going so great and I think if you start there and you start to take stock of some of these things. Um. It might not be the exact 8020 year old but you'll start to see some gaps pretty quickly and pretty apparently as well. Um, and once you start to take stock of that. Um, yeah I think that the the recruiting industry. It's such a tightknit industry and it's an industry that every single company faces. A lot of the same issues. Start talking to your network start talking to other people that are starting to feel the pain or trying to solve these problems and and also I was joking with the one 800 number. But I mean they can talk to you and me Brad like we field a lot of calls from customers that they just need as soundboard and. Have a client that I'm working with and she very frankly said I want to work with you. So I don't have any light bulb moments six months after the project starts. It's like great lean on your network lean on professionals and and take time to to think about you know what incremental changes you can do to have really positive impacts on your business and um.
24:44.20
Brad Owens
Ah.
24:55.18
Greg Symons
And it's It's fun and exciting. So I enjoy those conversations.
24:58.90
Brad Owens
Yeah, and 1 thing I'll add on top of that is pay attention to where the data that these people are working with exists where it needs to move to and what they are doing to create those. Ah.
25:06.56
Greg Symons
Yeah, yeah.
25:16.11
Greg Symons
See.
25:16.24
Brad Owens
Kind of copy paste moments because that to our point of Rome earlier if it exists over here in excel spreadsheet and then they need to move it over here to this engine which they need to then pump it through this thing that's way too much time. That's what's causing. Yeah, that's taking them away from the phones from the relationship building from trust building. So yeah, that.
25:30.50
Greg Symons
It's too much. Yeah.
25:35.90
Brad Owens
Pay attention to the what we call swivel cheering all right? Well I'm going to trust everyone to be able to find us if they want some more so go to the show notes. Check it out I will link directly to everything Greg's got you will be able to find him and. Talk to him more if you want to continue the conversation. Greg thank you so much for being a part of this man I feel like we could do this for 9 hours so let's let's do it again if we want recurring conversations. We should do it? Um, but yeah, that is today our episode of the transform recruiting podcast. Thank you all so much for listening in I hope you got some value out of this one.
25:52.13
Greg Symons
Thanks brad.
26:08.87
Brad Owens
Let us know what you liked you can email me at hello@bradowins.com we'll be happy to forward it on to Greg as well if you want more about this podcast. It's transform recruiting dot com. Thank you all so much we will see you on the next one.