Recruiting Tech Stacks with Lauren Jones
With tons of options in the market for recruiting technology stacks, how are you supposed to make informed purchasing decisions? Lauren Jones offers her advice on today's episode.
Find Lauren here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/goatleader/
00:05.15
Brad Owens
Welcome everyone in to a new episode of the transform recruiting podcast I'm your host brad owe wins and I am excited to bring you today's guest excited. It might be an understatement. Ah, because if you're anywhere in the recruiting industry and you're somewhere close to Linkedin. You've likely heard of Lauren Jones so Lauren, thank you so much for coming on I mean come on how many followers you up to now just on Linkedin alone.
00:25.40
Lauren Jones
Oh my gosh I'm so tickled pink to be here. Thank you Thank you so much? Brett oh my goodness I try not to. Make it about followership. But I think we're we've we've surpassed forty k I know that I did a big big announcement saying thank you for to the 40 k so but yeah, trying to be meaningful.
00:37.49
Brad Owens
We'll say a bunch. Yeah.
00:45.52
Brad Owens
Unbelievable I Love it So tell me where all of this influence and information in your head comes from like what's your background. What have you been doing.
00:56.80
Lauren Jones
Oh my gosh I I grew up in staffing literally like fresh out of school. Um, my mom Mema It was my grandmother. It was a good Southern woman. She raised me.
01:04.59
Brad Owens
Love it.
01:08.85
Lauren Jones
And um I was fresh out of school. It was a music I was a professional musician right? So during the nighttime I'm musicianing um and doing all of those things and I was like yeah that's probably not going to cut it from an income perspective. So um, mom Mima said well I was a Kelly girl. Why don't you be a killi girl. And so I signed up for Kellyley's services and kind of the rest is history. You know and the the industry sucked me in and I was hooked right? Away. Um I loved the idea of learning something new every day so I have a little bit of you know, add just say.
01:46.81
Lauren Jones
I mean I want to be busy I want to be doing something I want to be learning something and I don't think that there's a day in this industry where I haven't been gifted. Um some lesson that you know can be impactful in your life and and I mean where else can you have 1 sales day and you are.
02:05.96
Lauren Jones
Helping distribute wine helping with oncology machinery helping build a tesla and then helping distribute an iphone and that's just a regular sales day I mean you get to be a part of all of those little things and it's just so cool.
02:20.19
Brad Owens
Yeah, and I had a similar experience when I started because my boss at that point had said yeah, you're going to get a mini mba in like six months like what are you talking about then I realized how much you have to know about all these industries and the people that you're recruiting and if you're all over the place in some small niche you get to know a lot about. All of these different companies. So I'm with you I was hooked.
02:42.31
Lauren Jones
Yeah, yeah I was hooked instantly. I Loved the idea of being able to make an impact in um, my husband has always said you know I I am a little bit envious. Um that you help other people help their families. You know it's not Philanthropic. We're a for Profit. We're a for profit industry but there's something really meaningful about being able to you know help someone pivot in their career or do a career change Altogether those are the most exciting challenges for me. Although I'm not a recruiter anymore and that's where.
03:01.30
Brad Owens
Sure.
03:17.77
Lauren Jones
You know I started in the industry you know from the bottom up worked my way all the way up. Um, and my career took a pivot about a decade ago when I built my first tech stack for a large work and enterprise organization and from there I was absolutely hooked. Um. The idea that I could leverage technology to do more with less or the idea that I could leverage technology to I've always been I'm an empath and so keeping my team super connected and you know everything really close was and to leverage technology to do that. Ah, that's where you know that's where I I was hooked again. Oh.
03:57.13
Brad Owens
What a good space to be hooked when it comes to tech because like I I know that you're going to feel the same way because I've already read some of the things you've been putting out there but right now I feel like it's a fantastic time to be any tech that's around this recruiting or talent industry space because. Everyone starting to get hit with more and more of these pain points of oh my gosh onboard it gosh it takes freaking forever or filling out all this paperwork man. It takes freaking forever I can order a car from my phone but I can't find a job and sign up for what I need and get all my background check stuff done remotely like it's just a nightmare right Now. So.
04:32.70
Lauren Jones
It is ha.
04:33.91
Brad Owens
Not to lead you down any path but I'm curious to get your perspective on the the industry as a whole looking at these macro things that are happening to the industry. What are you seeing.
04:43.95
Lauren Jones
Yeah I I see really confused buyers and that that was the whole impetus behind impetus behind opening my firm is you know 2019? We have just over five billion dollars and and Vc funding going towards hr tech we've surpassed $17000000000 you know in that short short span of time. And so when you think about the barrage of you know, technology coming at business owners. They're just business owners. They simply want to grow their agencies. They simply want to create meaningful experiences for the candidates and clients you know that they that they touch and to be. Confused by all of this information out there and there's you know quote unquote fake news. You know out there as it pertains to technology. There's good and bad tech. There's tech that works well together tech that doesn't and so as a just ah, a business owner. You know I saw. As a consumer 3 areas of opportunity and and that was part of why I opened my firm is as a consumer I found it time consuming and frustrating and um, not fulfilling. You know going through this buying process and I was like there's got to be a better way to shepherd clients through this and and that's exactly what we do is we we help businesses and help owners. We shepherd them through this process and we help them understand from a true requirements perspective.
06:17.31
Lauren Jones
As opposed to what shiny widget is out there. What do I think I need what is everybody else getting really determining what the business needs and then making an educated buying decision from there and so you know starting in 20 we did almost a demo a day we Continue. Um. To do a wild number of demos to stay on top of the ever-changing Hr Tech market and staffing and recruiting Tech Market I Wish They'd make them one in the same. But that's okay, we'll get past that. Ah, but yeah, it was I think.
06:47.20
Brad Owens
I.
06:54.90
Lauren Jones
The the market has shifted and changed and that so much Tech is coming in. There's going to continue to be consolidation. So we're going to continue to see you know big firms. Not just from an agency perspective but from a software Perspective. We're going to continue to see consolidation on the agency side and on the software side. Um. I Think we're going to be left with like some primary players Salesforce being one of them that are going to come out of the you know the other side with some major market share and and I think it's going to be through a combination of organic and and and consumed growth.
07:30.49
Brad Owens
Sure So this could be a fun thought process then so let's take ah your primary potential buyer. So let's think of a couple different demographics here. How big is this firm. You could do monetarily or butts and seats your your.
07:31.43
Lauren Jones
Required gross. Okay.
07:47.93
Brad Owens
Your choice.
07:49.26
Lauren Jones
Oh we are four strong. Um, so yeah I started out a solop preneur so I was sitting here with a headset on. You know my first year just banging it out. Um, at my first year I replaced my corporate income signed my first million dollar deal and signed my first partnership. Our second year we doubled revenue um and we we doubled revenue I started adding team members. So as we come into our third year which will be March you know we're now going to be 4 members strong and looking at. Now. We've been able to really get our pillars of strength down which are build change adopt. It will help you build your tech stack intelligently. We'll help you with business process change management so you don't take your old system and jam it into your news system and try and make it like your old system and then we'll help you with. You know what I believe is the the achilles heel of all of this and that is training an adoption because there is hundreds of millions upon millions of dollars being spent on this and yet um very little usage and so yeah there and lies the rub.
08:50.87
Brad Owens
Okay, yep, agreed. So yeah, you're interfacing with all these different organizations then so let's think about your ideal buyer when you picture them when you picture their firm. What's their size.
09:02.68
Lauren Jones
Um, oh my goodness. So I get the question all the time and our ideal buyer is someone that has a technology problem regardless of their size and doesn't know how to solve for that.
09:13.57
Brad Owens
Here.
09:16.72
Lauren Jones
And so we've helped startups. We've helped mid-size firms. It's probably where we have the majority of our customers probably sit in that 20000000 to hundred million dollars hundred and twenty five million dollars window that's probably the majority of our 22 customers that we have right now. Um.
09:31.10
Brad Owens
Makes sense majority of the market so makes sense.
09:35.58
Lauren Jones
Yeah, yeah, and then you know we have some ancillary enterprise and then we have I I Love a good startup. Um, they you know the energy. It's the energy is wild the desire to to be amazing is is awesome and so you know we love helping the the staffing startup.
09:50.73
Brad Owens
Love that. So there are kind of 2 main questions that these buyers are likely going to be coming up with they're they're going to hit some sort of roadblock they're going to hit some sort of pain point. But when you come in what are you seeing as the answers to the 2 questions of why should they change. And why now.
10:11.68
Lauren Jones
Um, I think you know was really surprised I did a masterclass this um this this fall and you know we went through what I believe is sort of the foundation of the whole thing which is your mission your vision and your values and you would be floored. As to how many organizations are coming to the table not having materialized any of that not having put any thought or energy behind your mission your vision or your values. Why That's so important is because it really tells us you know how you want each of these end users. What you want their experience to be like and that therein helps Influence. You know what technology we're going to purchase and so the agencies that aren't doing the work of of that foundational type of thing are at a disadvantage so you know when we are coming In. We really want to understand who you are. And what you want what you want the world to experience when they engage with your brand because that will influence technology believe it or not and so we do a 4 our-part Discovery You know we want to understand every every sort of nuance and and while we won't understand every single Nuance. You know we really want to holistically understand how you want to influence the candidate experience and the client experience and we want to know what's happening in your front office in your back office. Um, and then we want to understand where you want to go where do you envision yourself being and then we simply bridge the gap and that whether that's through.
11:41.66
Lauren Jones
And so we are a little bit different in that I believe that the answer isn't or we believe the answer isn't always technology. Sometimes you have a really garbage process and we just have to rethink what that might be and you know throwing technology throwing automation on top of an already crappy process is only going to make it crappier faster. So you know there's this There's this misperception you know on the buying side and I think that's just because everything's coming at them that oh if I buy this? Oh well, it's going to fix my candidate problem well may make your candidate problem worse. We really have to determine if we have good processes and so that's. That's really where we start is understanding who you want to be where you want to go and then what's happening today and what part piece of that you want to make better so that we can come in and you know essentially do a gap analysis and determine process or technology.
12:33.33
Brad Owens
Which is perfect and I can guarantee that you're finding a whole lot of process things where you're going. What.
12:39.57
Lauren Jones
What you did I'm sorry what? yes we get a lot of that. There's a lot of incredulity in and in our initial calls see yes course.
12:50.96
Brad Owens
There's so many I mean like you in this position. It's amazing that I get to see behind the curtain of so many different organizations that are doing this and the amount of times that I'm like oh there's just a spreadsheet at the end of that like everything is a spreadsheet.
13:02.80
Lauren Jones
Right? Yes, it well exactly it's it's mystifying to me that you know you have these large agencies that are run with these you know, big giant spreadsheets and nothing.
13:06.85
Brad Owens
Come on.
13:19.49
Brad Owens
Yeah.
13:21.12
Lauren Jones
And nothing else if there was one tool I could remove from everybody. It would be excel just take it away.
13:27.48
Brad Owens
Ditto I would love that let's actually maybe since there's a lot of people that might be listening that are like oh crap I'm using one of those excel sheets. Let's think about the why in my opinion and I'll give you time to think about it in my opinion I feel like you have all of this data.
13:36.88
Lauren Jones
Just make.
13:44.36
Brad Owens
We're not talking contact info. We're not talking salary info. Whatever it might be. We're talking transaction data. We're talking forecast data. We're talking the ability to report on what your pipeline actually is and what it could be based on all the past information that you've got in your system that is why I feel like it's super important for these firms that are dealing with these multiple transactions. Ah day an hour potentially to get that all in 1 system that can start doing something with that. You can start making predictions. We have all this amazing technology that can do something with that. It's not just a system of record. So what do you think.
14:08.36
Lauren Jones
Yeah.
14:15.60
Lauren Jones
My goodness. Yes I agree with you wholeheartedly I think you know big data here's the good news is I think my my co-host Rob just put out a ah. Ah, Linkedin post you know talking about this desire for more reporting which means that agencies are looking at data now. That's fantastic, right? before they they maybe weren't looking at it or we're making you know, really good intelligent hypotheses and educated guests. Um, and so we're seeing this desire for more reporting. That's a great first step people want the data now. It's what do you do with it and that's you know, being able to normalize the data in a way that's meaningful for each of your end users and therein lies the hill that we have to climb and and and so being able to normalize data for each person that's consuming. It.
15:00.55
Brad Owens
Yes.
15:09.73
Lauren Jones
That's why excel spreadsheets don't work and that's why you have so many of them because each end user is creating it from their vantage point and so having meaningful technology that will again allow you to normalize that for each.
15:15.81
Brad Owens
Her.
15:25.67
Lauren Jones
End user is where the difference will be made and that's where we'll be more proactive. You know I look at functionalities. We're super users and you know Aviante Laxo ah job diva bullhorn. Um, temp works we. We like all of we are at truly agnostic salesforce. Um, and we want to be able to help them understand that your one source of truth is literally what you put in and then how you how you get it out of there and. You know I love seeing these light bulb moments where people are like okay so the data that I put in right here is what's going to influence this report and how I look at it and that's why what? you're saying you know having getting everybody in one system instead of you know my. My sort of tagline is there is no transformation without integration and the reason that I'm so passionate about that is when you have everything coming into one central nervous system. You have the opportunity to then take all of that data from every end user's vantage point and do something that's more proactive because up into this point in our industry. We are very reactive always have been so I'm hoping that you know these really cool analytics tools. The the barrage of them that we have have coming to the market are going to allow us and I think you know kubenineteen's doing it insight squared did it. Ah the data cloud and salesforce does it.
16:55.59
Lauren Jones
I Mean there's so much cool data to be able to use. But there's so much data that you can misuse So it's understanding the difference.
16:59.53
Brad Owens
Now It's really true and I the big start to my whole man. This industry could do a lot better was really getting a sense of that application Black Box. Where you you apply into something and you hear absolutely nothing I used to hear that constantly and this was back early. Two thousand s really early when I started thinking about this and I went okay Wait. So I as a candidate I Want to see this data but I as a recruiter I don't really. Care about the you know the individual I care about the macro like where's everything where should I be focusing where should put my time as a leader I care about where all my people are putting their time as a client I'm going to care about how many are in the pipeline who do you have next? How many can I see next week I Completely agree that there's a lot of people that need a lot of different things but it all comes from the same source of data.
17:52.41
Lauren Jones
Right? correct.
17:53.44
Brad Owens
It's just how it's interpreted for that different person. So I agree with you. There comes this problem though next on people's mind they go. Okay, great I need everything in this one system I've got people that have been working this one particular way for years and but you mentioned earlier on in in our discussion that change management is.
18:06.59
Lauren Jones
Thank you? so.
18:12.33
Brad Owens
Likely one of the big things that you have to go through what's kind of that first step to get everyone on board to say this is where we're going to be working from.
18:19.97
Lauren Jones
I have this template for our change management and it all starts with town hall and you know I have businesses that are like I've already had a town hall. We already asked them. We already did this thing and I'm like no let's have a true town hall where we're really really listening. To people and we're we're asking 1 simple question from everybody's vantage point. What's in your way. That's it. That's our town hall question. What's in your way and then we're going to take all of that information. Even if you've already chosen what technology you're going to buy I would just encourage you to have this town hall.
18:56.69
Brad Owens
Hearts and minds.
18:57.58
Lauren Jones
As Anc hearts and minds if people feel like they're part of the solution psychology one. Oh one says I'm going to be more excited about it because it's my idea and so have the town hall. Yes, it may be time consuming. Yes, it may take them out of revenue generating activity for an hour
19:07.59
Brad Owens
Um.
19:16.30
Lauren Jones
But you're going to be okay and you'll be much better off if you have the attitude adjustment in the beginning in ah in the going the positive way meaning I'm excited about this because I got to vocalize or say my concerns and then the company did something on my behalf. Whether or not that end user agrees with what the technology is they're going to be excited that you're doing something about what they said and so every change management exercise starts with this town hall discussion and then we we have we like the lead time of eight weeks it gives us four weeks and I give I give Matt credit for this all the time Matt Fisher a cto from ah from bullhorn and he said at gige two years ago he said digital marketing is a core competency will be the difference maker for businesses and I'll take that one step further further and say digital marketing as a core competency internally and externally. Because if you do it really well internally remembering that your recruiters and your salespeople and your managers are so are consumers and consume information the way that they do externally you're going to be 10 steps ahead of the next guy who's just. Push pumping out information saying this is when it's changing login here's your new logins you know and doing all the ivory tower stuff. You're engaging them. You're collectively saying we heard you and we want to do something about it and we have eight weeks to campaign and get them excited about what's coming and then we have four weeks to train your.
20:43.97
Lauren Jones
You know your change champions or s ah your smeeze or whatever you know, whatever you want to call them and then go ah go live a fun go live where we have you know Hootin and hollerin and excitement about all of the new things to come and and there's a lot to be said for internal marketing.
21:01.64
Brad Owens
Yeah, glad that you said the internal marketing piece as well as external because that's I agree with you I have seen 2 or 3 different large scale changes that unfortunately were seen as more of a lift and replace which but you know but maybe not just.
21:02.46
Lauren Jones
Combined with change management.
21:20.98
Brad Owens
Taking your problems from 1 system and moving into another doesn't really solve your problem. Um, and I've seen a lot of those as a well we'll just take the process as we have it and then we'll switch it once we get in there. You're losing the fundamental value of this new piece of whatever technology that you're getting into if you approach it that way. So. Yeah I agree with you and it and it sometimes does take a external perspective. It takes a a if you don't mind I might have a suggestion to offer here. So those that are able to go into this process. What's that famous famous thing that with the beginner's mind. That's. Probably 1 of the biggest pieces of advice to those listening go into this with a beginner's mind. There's a lot that has changed to your point at the very beginning of this conversation. It's changing incredibly quickly. There are people that can help.
22:08.60
Lauren Jones
Yeah, yeah, yeah I have a ton of empathy for our staffing agency business owners I Really do and I think that's why we're so passionate about helping them is because you know I without additional resources. I Don't know that I you know I'm coming in as just a business owner I probably have a different type of degree I probably have a different type of experience and building an overarching tech stack probably isn't among the things that you know I count as my skill set amongst my skill Set. So I. You know, calling in the experts and this is what we coach smaller agencies on is is knowing what you can outsource and knowing what you can't This is one of those things that you can't.
22:50.95
Brad Owens
Yep, and let's set this passion free. Then if people want more information they they like what they hear they want to come find you where should they go there. You go.
22:54.41
Lauren Jones
Go to Linkedin of course I am the guy I am the goat leader on on Linkedin. You see the little goat by my name. Um, that that's where it all started is with my blog goat leadership and and that was you know, kind of first post that went viral was everything I learned a business I learned from goats. Um, ah which you know for an introvert it was kind of funny. But yeah, so that's that's that you can find me on Linkedin.
23:13.52
Brad Owens
15
23:25.52
Lauren Jones
Um, you can find us at www.leaveconsulting.com or Lauren Jones@leapconsulting.com but the point is just find me.
23:31.44
Brad Owens
Yeah, well I'll make sure to point everyone that direction and thank you so much for taking time out for those of you listening if you want to hear some more perspectives on what's going on in the industry transform recruiting dot com's where you want to go if you've got any questions for me. It's hello at Bratowns.com. Thank you so much again to Lauren Jones for coming out and and spending just a couple minutes with us. And I hope to see you all on the next episode. We'll see you.
23:52.47
Lauren Jones
Thanks so much.