Engagement is Your Opportunity with Brandon Metcalf
How you attract, engage and retain candidates is your key to leading in the recruiting industry. Brandon Metcalf joins me today to discuss why and how you can remain relevant.
Find Brandon here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/metcalf/
[Transcribed from video above]
00:04.92
Brad Owens
Welcome in everybody to another episode of the transform recruiting podcast been actually a little while since I've recorded one I think I've recorded most of them before 2023 so hopefully I remember how to do this with me today is Mr. Brandon metcap Brandon thanks so much for being on man.
00:20.55
Brandon Metcalf
Hey Brad thanks for having me on vote. We'll get you back in the swing of things don't worry.
00:25.81
Brad Owens
Yeah, was like having a conversation. What's that I've been head down working ah all right? So let's give everyone just a little bit of kind of Brandon 1 on one so that they understand where you're coming from here so fill everyone in.
00:37.97
Brandon Metcalf
Like who I am.
00:41.24
Brad Owens
Yeah, you your background. Why would I want to talk to you about recruiting.
00:43.99
Brandon Metcalf
I mean that's a loaded question there brad but I can at least tell you my background so you know I came out of staffing and recruiting earlier in my career was with Kelly Services for a while and then I was with the company called cv partners. Um I eventually took over running technology for Cb partners to help us during the time that we wanted to scale. Um, and I basically changed everything in the company from hardware to infrastructure to it led me to changing our software because. What we had just was not enabling us to grow so I looked at everything in the market was not really pleased with anything I saw was frustrated with what I had at Kelly as well. So I was like I just built a better one on on salesforce um, so that started off building a product that eventually became a company called talent rover. Um, so we started to conceptualize and build it in 2009. We commercialized it at the end of 2011 scaled it to 8 8 ah 8 countries customers in 40 countries ranging from the adeco group all the way down to small. Smaller firms. Um, ended up selling the business to bullhorn and in March Two Thousand and eighteen um was a crazy ride and in 2017 ink magazine rate as as the ninth fastest growing software company in America which was pretty cool. Um, and then um after I sold I stayed with bullhorn for.
02:02.43
Brad Owens
Hey o.
02:09.12
Brandon Metcalf
Just a short period of time and then wanted to go out and do my next thing and ended up founding another company on salesforce called place which I still run and it's doing well and growing and all that is a b two b saas company. Um, but then. We started to get back into the recruiting bug. Um, so you know we started having conversations with folks at salesforce people in the industry and started collaborating with a lot of people um and decided there's an opportunity for us to re-enter the recruiting space um with a new type of product that we feel is very different from. What we've seen in the the market called assemble. Um, and we officially officially kicked it off what in in September of last year and it's been It's been a pretty insane sense. So it's it's it's a fun fun endeavor to go through again.
02:55.86
Brad Owens
Well I Yeah I have coming across you and getting to know you has been one of the fun parts about my job here. So I'm excited to know you and happy that we keep getting to have conversations like this because I like you was always the tech nerd at the recruiting Firm. So I I've. See a lot of my future in you hopefully? Ah, So yeah, we'll see ah so you have been around the technology landscape here for a while. Um since the theme of this podcast has always been the people ideas in tech that are transforming the industry.
03:18.67
Brandon Metcalf
Ah, hopefully it's a good future.
03:26.43
Brandon Metcalf
Yep.
03:34.55
Brad Owens
How have you seen technology change things What kind of impact. Do you feel like it's had and do you think it should be different than it is.
03:45.78
Brandon Metcalf
Yeah I mean I think recruiting has always been a little bit slower on the technology front than some of the other segments of of technology specifically if you look at what's happens in sales and marketing. They seem to always be on the cutting edge of everything especially like some of the cool stuff now that we're seeing with um. All the Ai tools are that are out there. There's just a lot of innovation. Um, and you know originally when when we looked at creating talent rover at a similar mindset It's like why? Why is everything we're doing so complicated so dated so difficult I mean I worked at Kelly and i'm. You know I'm in my early 40 s so this wasn't like a very long time ago. Um, but we had 1 screen that was green and we had to enter orders on a green screen. Um, and I was like okay this is but you know it's a while ago. Um, so fast forward to where we're at now. And all of this incredible innovation around. How do you engage with people. How do you connect with people. How do you move people through cycles and I see a lot of it from you know with place we do. We only saw the b two b saas companies right? So we get to engage with so many cool innovative companies that are building the the. Best greatest technology that's going to move saas into the next level and a lot of it is around sales and marketing and I saw a lot of things around just direct engagement of like how can I talk to someone how can I follow up with someone.
05:17.30
Brandon Metcalf
So things like you know sales loft and outreach and all of those tools and salesforce has high velocity sales and um, that just allow you to talk to people in ways that we've never been able to talk all the stuff with chatbots now how you can engage with that. You know you look then at the recruiting space. And there just seems to be a void in that and I think there's an opportunity I think that's for me the probably the biggest opportunity in recruiting and this is for staffing or corporate recruiting of changing the dynamic of how you engage with your candidates how you find your candidates what talent pulls these candidates are coming from. How you get them to talk to you how you get them to follow up with you and how you really stay in touch with with hundreds or thousands of people. Um, so that you know who's available who could be available who has what interest and all that. But you're relevant and I I compare that a lot to what we see with sales cadences like if you think about. Going out and trying to find a sales prospect ah a client like all of the steps that you go through like we're going to email them and if they don't respond to the email that I'm going to do this and if that happens I'm going to do that if that doesn't happen I'm going to do this then I'm going to do this then I'm going to do that. You know that level of engagement at a candidate recruitment level I think is is a pretty fantastic opportunity to explore. Um, and I think there's other parts of them that that candidate journey that are really important like our our assemble product is simply an applicant tracking system where we take.
06:50.70
Brandon Metcalf
You know from the time you've identified a candidate to time you've placed a candidate all the different steps into it so that you can you can manage that and I can talk about that more in a bit but the big thing is like rethinking about the workflow of a recruiter's job of. Where do they spend most of their time. They don't spend most of their time on back office stuff. That's important you have back office teams doing that they don't even really spend most of their time moving the candidate through the applicant tracking system. Yes, there's interviews and followup and all of that where they spend all of their time is finding candidates for jobs. Um, so looking at what technology resources are available to to help with that and how do you engage with those tools I think that's going to be 1 of the biggest changes that I'm hoping that we see from 2 2023 and beyond.
07:39.66
Brad Owens
Because I'm with you I think the the phone and email that everyone has relied on for so long and almost trying to force the issue of creating relationships that way I feel like if we are truly trying to take a transactional business or sorry. A yeah, historically transactional business and make it Relationship-driven. We have to think about our systems of engagement and you know the the big kind of thoughts that I've been putting into this is how do we change the narrative from an applicant tracking system because.
08:09.49
Brandon Metcalf
Um, toler.
08:18.48
Brad Owens
I don't care about the tracking system I've and everyone listening to this has their own spreadsheet I guarantee it. Everyone's got their own tracking. Whatever how do we take this idea of an applicant tracking system and instead come up with this applicant engagement system because there's kind of 2 things that come out of that one. You have a better opportunity to build a relationship. Rather than just drag and drop any a candidate and sending them the congratulations email and then you've got the opportunity that now all of that data on all these different engagements if Ai truly is the future having that's going to be super important.
08:49.94
Brandon Metcalf
Yeah, yeah, oh and then also making it a real journey making it a journey for you know the recruiter who's doing the job to go out and find and place these people making it a journey for the candidate in in for the client. So when we were conceptualizing. Do we want to get back into a recruiting space because gosh knows there's there's a lot of other stuff I have going on so it was ah a pretty focused decision of does this make sense and is the opportunity. Really there we were looking at exactly that we were looking at you know atss are kind of a commodity. Um, you've got to have them. Yes, people use spreadsheets. But the reason why they use spreadsheets because the Ats is not flexible enough for them to complete the workflow that they want to do inside of the Ats itself. But then it's not just the ats the ats is 1 business process specific function that has to happen. And I think it's really important that you do have a flexible ats that people can use for all different types of job types industries and all that so that you can capture the data that you were talking about and that is not living in a spreadsheet on someone's computer and then you know you never get to see what's happening. Um, but I think it's it's one element that has to be combined with. The engagement layer of how do you connect with people. How do you find people I was on another podcast recently we were talking about this and it's like you know where do you go to find your candidates and what's your success rate worth with finding that. So if I'm doing outbound sales I'm going to know what my channels are and I'm going to know.
10:19.70
Brandon Metcalf
You know what? my response rate is what's my reply rate. What's my click-through rate all of these different marketing and sales tactics that you use when trying to find a prospect I think that's so relevant for trying to find candidates so you can identify what is my best talent pool where do I go to find these candidates and how do I keep that engaged and refreshed and. That's more like the top of the funnel to get candidates in and then you need the ats that's flexible and dynamic that can manage all of the different situations I was talking about and then you get to placement and then you move into the back office for that. It's just a new way of of thinking about technology for recruiting. That's not. New for some other industries like it's not new for b two b sas this is what we do all day long. It's like how how can we move the funnel faster and we're looking specifically at funnel conversion metrics and it's not just what a candidate gets into the Ats that we move it through It's like where am I touching these people where can I find them especially in. And this labor market that just continues to remain resilient regardless of what we're hearing on the news.
11:19.47
Brad Owens
And the well outside the text base. Yeah, ah so unfortunately, ah so you mentioned metrics we've all when we were growing up going through the recruiting system. It was always.
11:21.15
Brandon Metcalf
Yeah.
11:34.74
Brad Owens
Okay, this many calls will likely net me this many phone calls which will net me this many conversions which will net me this many interviews and possibly this many placements. We've always tracked those types of things I don't think those metrics and the accompanying thoughts and opinions have changed. To this new technology engagement landscape and I think to your point other industries have solved this long ago long long ago and I know that there's going to be a lot of firm owners that are going to listen to this and that we might even see while we're at Si in March by the way.
11:58.73
Brandon Metcalf
Yeah.
12:11.31
Brad Owens
Come see. It's I'm speaking there. Everyone come out to s I in March um, how do you think they should start approaching this idea that all right I've got these fresh out of college kids that if I give them a list of people and a phone they can just crush through that.
12:26.47
Brandon Metcalf
Yeah, so.
12:28.45
Brad Owens
Now all of a sudden I need to figure out a way to adapt the to the technology to do what we're talking about what are I mean you've seen a lot of implementations and after after purchase type things. What do you feel like are some of the best practices to start making this transition.
12:44.83
Brandon Metcalf
Yeah I've also ran a dusk I mean I was a recruiter making calls and and finding candidates and in you know both at Kelly and at Cv partners before I moved into tech and um I get it and there's a mindset of just get on the phone just style just I just dile and I applied that same to software.
12:46.32
Brad Owens
True.
13:01.49
Brandon Metcalf
Like when we were selling licenses for talent ro and we're selling licenses for place just go out the phone and dial and we did a lot of and analysis of is it working or is it not working. Um and we realized that we had a higher conversion rate at place when we didn't call people first. When we engaged with them in other ways when we were putting out content that they responded well to so then we went on this content journey of how can we share content with the audience in various different ways and test it to see what sticks to see what lands if you follow me on Linkedin I'm constantly putting out. Um, content and it's part of our overall strategy to give more than we're getting and that giving more than we're getting is actually driving a lot of inbound for that business I look at it the same way for recruitment like if you're going to call I don't think you should just stop calling people I think calls are still relevant. Um, but the messages that you're sending out. Are you testing? what? what lands or what doesn't land. Do you have different versions of the same email that you're sending out to see what are people responding to what's driving the type of candidate that you want in versus just spamming out a thousand or two thousand emails and hoping someone hope when someone lands and it's the spray and prey mentality that I think. So many other industries have moved around for now you hear a lot about account-based marketing you hear a lot about personalization. Those things are so critical in digital communication to get the person interested and get the person to trust you and get the person to realize that you're just not trying to make a quick sale.
14:35.52
Brandon Metcalf
Which has always been something that has plagued the staffing industry where sometimes you can come across that your all you care about is making a placement versus helping me find the job that I'm going to Love. Um, and I think leveraging technology in that way changes the script and I think there's ways you can do it effectively without spending a fortune. Being efficient with your resources so you don't need to hire a whole extra team of people to do this to get them to deliver better results than you've ever seen before. But I think it is changing the perception of how do you engage with people. And what is that engagement process like throughout the entire lifecycle even after someone's been placed and no longer working on an assignment or they've left where you place the mother a different company. How do you engage with those people when we were winning the global deal with the Decco. You know a decco place. What 1000000 people a day. Um. A lot of placements. Well if you just look at that database. How do you mine that database and how do you engage with the people in that database to constantly be on on the top of your radar to know who you are to know what you're due to know why they should talk to you. Um, without just constantly calling them and and spamming them for jobs because that may not be what they're interested in so you know if I was running a firm or doing corporate recruiting. These are exactly the things I'd be thinking about, especially you know with 2023 and potential 2024 who knows what the economic landscape is going to be.
16:01.73
Brandon Metcalf
Is there a way that you can simplify these things using tech to speed up the process to make it more efficient to make it where you need you know not to hire another 25 people to do this but you can use technology to drive it and that's why we're excited about building assemble. Um, because we're leaning in on Salesforce to do that. We're leaning out on like who you go to for the best sales focused software I mean Salesforce is kind of set to stage for that. So now. How do we? How do we help Salesforce reinvent that if you will to become specific for recruiting. Um, and that's what. That's where we're making our bet I think this is what changes This is what evolves the industry again by and really focusing on engagement in quality of engagement just like so many other industries use Salesforce to do.
16:51.84
Brad Owens
Sure and I I'll double up on all of that I feel like if I am a firmon or most of the I've had these conversations and there's not a ton of people that I feel like are truly letting it sink in so here's what I'll I'll tell the folks listening. Think about how you or your recruiters are going throughout their day if there is ever a time where they are copy paststing multiple email addresses or if they're sending out an email to more than I don't know 5 people and it all has the exact same text in it or if. Hopefully they're never sending out that email where they just change the person's name and then go and they leave in the hashtag hashtag name which I did before I'm guilty but see how many times you feel you feel yourself doing that see how many times you feel yourself just going with the. I've got a new position open on Linkedin and that's the only kind of content you're putting out just pay attention to it and start realizing that the data that's coming out right now about why people are trying to find new jobs has nothing to do with the job description that you're putting out there. All of this. Top reasons for a job change right now are coming down to do I share the same sorts of values. Do I get the kind of life that I want outside of work like it really has nothing to do with that actual job in the job description. So think about that as you're pushing out your content and look at these companies that have.
18:18.71
Brad Owens
That sit atop the best place to work The best place to work list are filled with companies that are doing here's what it's like to work here here's this amazing value here's what kind of value we put out into your life those the types of things the last podcast that I ever ran My tagline was the best companies don't hire.
18:19.30
Brandon Metcalf
Now.
18:37.33
Brad Owens
They attract that I feel like is exactly what we're talking about this whole engagement model.
18:39.98
Brandon Metcalf
Yeah, a lot of it applies to like so that's for permanent placement and internal hiring and all that and you know a lot of that is still applies to temporary staffing as well. Like how do you remove the friction. How do you make it easy like if you compare traditional temp staffing to like gig work with like upwork and all of that.
18:48.21
Brad Owens
Very much. So.
18:59.70
Brandon Metcalf
Like how do you simplify the experience. How do you make it so a temp worker which there's a lot of temp workers but like to be temp workers. That's the lifestyle that they like and there's also people that are just doing it in a room until they find whatever else they want to do? How do you remove all the pain points of. Being able to see what opportunities are available for you to know that they're available. Um for for them to be able to understand what the culture of the company that they're going to be placed in even for a short period of time is going to be like like if we do continue to head down a tougher path with the economy and hiring eventually slows down Guess what temp staffing goes up. It's the nature of staffing. So How do you attract those people that are looking for temp jobs to come to your staffing firm and say I want to work with you guys find me a job. How can I trust that you're going to have me placed. How can I trust that when that placement rolls off, you're going to have me placed again. And how do you make it so stupid simple for me to just focus on doing a really good job at the assignment that I'm working on versus doing all the administrative things that you know I may have to do if you're not sophisticated enough on your technology those things matter and those things often can come out of premium too like your clients when they figure out that. This is the level of service that you provide to your candidates and this is the quality of candidates you're going to get the benefit to to you that these candidates are only focused on your job versus all this other stuff then all of a sudden you're you're a premium type firm and you can you know potentially have a.
20:27.10
Brandon Metcalf
Higher bill rate than than what you had before.
20:29.72
Brad Owens
Yep, just finished talking about this if anyone wants to go in depth on that. Go check out Colin Mooney's episode. We just went through right? Yeah, we just finished talking about the the experience and how it just needs to be completely changed if that's the kind of firm you're trying to go for it could be completely different.
20:33.49
Brandon Metcalf
Now Collins a rock star.
20:44.41
Brandon Metcalf
Yeah, and then you have the flip side too If the if the economic climate continues to toughen then all of a sudden yeah temp jobs go up but now everyone's trying to find jobs.
20:46.22
Brad Owens
Ah.
20:53.76
Brad Owens
Yeah.
20:55.87
Brandon Metcalf
So How do you engage with your clients and how do you make that meaningful and how do you do the same thing we were just talking about on the candidate side with the client side to drive clients wanting to work with you because if I'm a hiring manager and I need a person to come in I Want the best person I can but I want to do as little work as I can do because obviously if I'm hiring for that person I need work to be done. So I'm usually working more on myself or my team is so how do you remove the friction from them and it's it's the same type of thing like what's the engagement. How do you stay consistently on top of mine like we're finally switching back into an economic climate where you know I think it was easy To. Or easier. It's never really easy but easier to get clients to give you jobs to work on now because because no one could find the talent Now you're going to have so many agencies competing for all the jobs that are available because there's fewer of them and then you're also going to have other agencies competing for te. How do you stand Out. How do you make sure that that client really realizes. You're the firm that they should be partnering with and it's going to go back to how it was many many years ago. Um and such that's a challenging environment.
21:59.96
Brad Owens
Yeah, and how do you not lump yourself into the commodity buy of or grudge by I've heard it put of I don't care just get me a candidate as fast as you can right.
22:10.88
Brandon Metcalf
For as cheap as I can and how do you change that dynamic like I want a bill rate of I want a markup of you know 25%. It's like you can't run a healthy firm on a 25% markup but with te unless you're massive. Um, so how do you How do you position and I think technology. Um. Is is the biggest thing and I also think the other thing we haven't talked about with technology especially for the the younger generation coming into these roles. They expect it like they expect the digital first easy everything online this should be stupid. Simple. It should work like Instagram or Tiktok or whatever should just I don't have to think about it knows what I'm doing. Um, and I would imagine that many of them are going to choose the firms that they feel they get that from versus wait you want me to do this in excel or in paper or what like that that won't work.
22:58.39
Brad Owens
Yep yep, totally with you totally agree I feel like we're going to have to do ah parts 2 through 100 of this at some point because I feel like we can talk about this forever. Ah, but I appreciate you coming on at least sharing some sort of insight you mentioned Linkedin other than Linkedin any other places you want people to go to find out more about you.
23:13.78
Brandon Metcalf
I mean Linkedin is the primer I'm constantly on there I love commenting and sharing I try to give as much as I get on Linkedin. Um, so that's your best bet to find me I have a Twitter but I haven't looked at Twitter in a very long time and now it's intentional I don't look at Twitter with all of the stuff that's going on. So um, Linkedin is is where to find although I'll be at I'll be an s I as well. So we'll be there.
23:32.20
Brad Owens
Yep, that's where everyone's gonna end up perfect all right? Everyone come see us all at s essay I think everyone that I've talked to so far is gonna be there. Yeah I think everyone will be ah so yeah, big party at S I all right brainon I really appreciate. It's ah love all of our conversations. You've got such great insight I appreciate just sharing it with the audience and I'll turn you loose and everyone if you want more episodes like this. It's at transform recruiting dot com or you can email me with ideas. Hello at bradowins.com I'll see you all next time.