SIA Executive Forum 2023 Key Takeaways
Brad Owens spends a few minutes talking about his key takeaways from the 2023 SIA Executive Forum 2023 in Miami, FL.
What's up everybody welcome back to another episode of the transformer creating podcast I'm your host Brad Owens back from a few weeks of travel and in those weeks of travel I attended the s I a executive forum. So staff and industry analyst executive forum. And while there I had the pleasure of being on on stage I was able to talk a little bit about platforms with a whole panel I got to attend a number of different things and and from that I wanted to kind of give you my takeaways of what I was seeing while there in the themes that I saw there were 4 and we'll get into just a little bit of all these I wanted this to be ah, a quick little recap episode if any buddy has been listening to this for a long time. You know that quick is not my specialty but I'm going to work on it. Ah so the 4 things digitization candidate experience enabling remote work and automation.
00:59.93
Brad Owens
So digitization candidate experience enabling remote work and automation. So let's dig into those so digitization I had an interesting discussion following the keynote ah Barry was talking about a couple of different things there to Barry not Barry why I'm I saying Barry anyway, after the keynote. Ah, we were talking about digitization and everyone's like oh we've heard about this for years and years and yes, you have you absolutely have the problem is or I guess the reason that you've been hearing about this for years and years is digitization and what is digitization changes when I started recruiting. We had. Fax machines that we had certain clients that wanted to be faxed resumes right? and then we air quotes digitized to email and then we started sending out emails back and forth. That's fine and then we digitized to from phone calls with candidates to maybe Skype calls then we had to. Digitized to text messages right? So what is digitization always changes I think the key theme of what they were trying to say with digitization being one of these main takeaways is make sure you're focused on using the right technologies to enable your job right? That's it plain and simple using the right technologies to enable what I think. Number 2 theme is candidate experience because when it comes down to it. The experiences that both are I mean candidates. Yes, and clients are demanding is completely different right now this is something I was talking about on stage. Ah that I want to make sure that people really truly understand.
02:29.83
Brad Owens
Most of what I saw there was built around make your recruiters lives easier automate this make this stuff super simple that means absolutely nothing that is how you run your business. You could do it on a Google spreadsheet and with phone and email right? You could now. Think there are better ways to do it but you could the thing that truly matters are what are we delivering to our candidates. What are we delivering to our clients right? if we want to fill a staffing position. We have to give a better experience for our candidates. That's just going to be the way that we're going to win if we need to fill a high profile role. And we've got clients that are really picky. We have to have a better client experience. They're demanding that right now think about why think about right now if you were to pick up your Amazon your cell phone and go to Amazon.com and I was to pick up mine and go to Amazon.com what we would see is completely different. Because we shop differently because we're different people who have different hobbies in different parts of the world right? We're going to have a different experience how is your experience different for your clients how is your experience different for your candidates it's probably not. I have been in a number of different offices here recently part of the travel that I was doing and seeing the ways that a lot of different recruiters are working right now it is the exact same over and over and over again because honestly, that's what we've trained since day 1 right? That's how we've trained our brand new recruiters hey make this call say this line. You'll get.
04:01.40
Brad Owens
Enough placements eventually to make some money That's how we've always done it with butts and seats. We shouldn't be doing that anymore and that was very very clear through watching some of these presentations. Um, when when I think back to what the major disruptions are in a lot of different industries over the past couple years I'll just rattle off a few so we have zillow zillow was a big one that came and destroyed the typical real estate process. Why because they had transparency into the process. They made it easier to find the information they were looking for. And they didn't have to get bogged down by some kind of gatekeeper real estate agent. That's one to uber we didn't have insight into where these people were going to be when they were going to pick us up of a typical cab and we didn't have availability everywhere we wanted it to be because it wasn't where we needed to be. Enter uber and all of a sudden. We know exactly where the drivers are where they're going to be what their name is what time they're going to pick you up. They can pick you up at your exact destination tailored to you again more transparency and ease of use disrupted it same thing with the Domino's pizza tracker ah, up until Domino's came out with this you you ordered your pizza now we're making it now it's getting boxed now it's on the road to you. It'll be here then it was just call hey your pizza will be there around an hour and you just crossed your fingers and hope it worked right.
05:33.15
Brad Owens
It's not the case anymore we have better experiences. We have the ability to provide the transparency to our clients to our candidates we have the ability to tailor our approaches specifically for that person. That's what they're expecting That's what we have to give them That's what they're getting everywhere else. Why should it be any different. With your organization I think the firms that solve for that are going to be the ones that are going to win going forward because ultimately that's what it comes down to is the experience that your candidates are getting that'll get you more referrals the experience that your clients are getting that'll get you more referrals and trust that's what they're going for right now. That's why we say candidate experience is so important. I would add on client experience as well. It's going to be important going forward enabling remote work that to me is important for your recruiters? Yes, but what I took away from enabling remote work is this specific scenario I've been in. Close to 20 plus offices over the last few weeks and here's what I've seen if I am a recruiter working on a fantastic I don't know I t security position in Miami Florida my coworker sits in Seattle Washington with amazing it security candidates the position that I as a recruiter in filling in Miami could be remote however I have no idea what candidates my coworker in Seattle may have for me and I have no insight into that they have no insight into the job I'm working on a Miami. There's nothing.
07:07.78
Brad Owens
So I think when we think about enabling remote work I think placing across geographies if your recruiters currently don't have the ability to fill a position in another state because they have the ideal candidate you are missing money. Plan is simple. You are I've seen top. Tier firms like top 10 firms that are missing out on this I literally sat in an office and I have to tell you this story because it still blows my mind I was sitting in an office that had someone with 8 years of experience in it their ah rvp on the west side of a city. Someone walked in the door saying hey I'm a forklift driver I am looking for my next job my next role and this person said all right? Where do you work? The candidate said you know I work over here I live kind of in this area. The person without. Getting to beats at I'm sorry we don't place positions in the we don't place any roles in that part of the the city. He said oh well, any any idea who would yeah you can probably call this other office that we've got that's over there that they might be able to help you. Oh my gosh. Are you kidding me? you had an active. Outgoing candidate who's already got a forklift certification who's ready to go and you had to say well maybe call them. They might be able to help you oh my gosh they didn't even have insight into the other half of the city like the other side of the city limits. They couldn't fill a position over there that just to me blows me away.
08:36.76
Brad Owens
So when I'm thinking about enabling remote work I think being able to place across geographies for remote work of your talent your recruiters likely are already be able to work remotely unless there's some part of your system that just purely doesn't allow for it I would say enabling remote work of your talent. That's something we're not set up for and then lastly automation pretty self-explanatory what of your process still needs to be automated and what's holding you back from that I heard a lot of integration issues. So does this 1 thing talk with another thing. And I heard a lot of highly manual processes that just still need to be updated. A lot of the excuses that I heard were it's too difficult where this particular process is so different everywhere else. It just doesn't make sense to automate it mostly It's just I heard a lot of short-sighted answers. Around automation. 1 thing that I kept picking up on is everyone taking more of an all or nothing approach or all or nothing excuse to automating I would say that in the typical process or in the I'll say in the typical firm. How about this in the typical firm. We've employed these amazing human beings that we call our recruiting coordinators. They essentially handle all of the admin stuff all of the admin work the onboarding the chasing for scheduling whatever it might be so that our sellers can go do what they do best sell and recruit we don't unfortunately.
10:09.45
Brad Owens
Need that type of person anymore. A lot of the things that they were doing can be Automated. Um I would say instead of automating I would say digitized because it's not exactly automated when you say hey go here and schedule your interview but it's something that could be handled for you. So I Guess in a way it's. And it depends on what you used to talk about automated I'm not go about hairs here. So I would say Automation. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the Good. Dont want the perfect be the enemy of the good when you think about automating something think about what 80% of this entire process. Could you automate with Just. Ah, simple little automation. Yes, there's going to be 20% that you can't but I could hazard a pretty good guess that 80% of this could be handled by a simple automation whether it's a email follow up whether it's a notification that goes out whether it's a text message before an interview say good luck simple things like that.
11:08.30
Brad Owens
I think the largest impact you can have through automation for your business's bottom line and I'll say this specifically for staffing is around contract starts and ends that's gonna be the biggest thing for your bottom line. There are. Gigantic top 10 firms that are missing out on redeployment automation case in point if you have someone who is working a potential contract. That's a two month contract the typical process would be the recruiter finds that talent they put them out on the job. And over two months they kind of forget about them at the end of that two months a couple things could happen with this candidate one. They could come back to you hopefully because they had a good experience and say all right finish up this contract and need a new contract and hopefully you can reengage them and try and find something new. The second thing that I've seen happen is in that intervening two months someone else reaches out to them as in another firm and gets them another gig for when they wrap up, you just lost out on that candidate potentially forever. They're going somewhere else or 3 that person might get hired full time or converted after that two months because the company knows that they're not going to have to pay a conversion fee if they do something that's able to go around your contract. Those are 3 big things that I've seen but a simple automation of looking at a all right.
12:31.90
Brad Owens
Know a lot of you are working in Google sheets. Anyway I don't think this is the right way to do it but I will tell you the easiest thing for you to do in your sphere is put a conditional formatting on your Google sheet if someone is within two weeks of ending their current assignment assignment. You should highlight that row with their name on it red and you should have one of your recruiters set every single day look at your reds call them that means that person's about to wrap up. They are already a proven candidate. They are already someone that has been working there someone that has not been terminated. They are ready to go for a new assignment. They're already. Onboarded. They've already got the drug test all that kind of stuff bla blah blah done you have the ability to do that today based on just free tools that are out there on the internet you could have a free Gmail account make yourself a Google sheet and you could have this ready to go so that there's no excuse for missing out a redeployment revenue in my mind. Absolutely none. I think there are far better ways to do it than a spreadsheet. We could talk about that later but look deal with what you got right? If you're at the point where Google spreadsheets working for you more power to you go make that money right? I just think there's better ways we could talk about that later, but those are my 4 key takeaways digitization candidate experience enabling remote work specifically for talent. And then automation in your process. So digitization. Yes, you're going to hear about it forever just make sure you're using the right things candidate experience think about what your experience is when you are loading up Amazon loading up Netflix seeing that ad that follows you across all of Facebook are you enabling that for both your.
14:04.92
Brad Owens
Ah, talent and clients enabling remote work. Are you able to place talent across geographic locations and are you recruiters aware of that and for automation do the 80% that you can automate 80% of your process will still change your entire experience try to enable just some. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and with that I will sign off for this quick recap episode of Sa and Miami thank you to everyone that came up and said hi I know that there were a bunch of people that said they were going to come check out the podcast. So hopefully you enjoyed this episode of my recap. And'd love to talk to you more about what went down there if you want to come on and and chat about your experience I'd love to hear that you can email me at helloat Braddowins.com you can find more episodes of this at the transform oop I'm not going to say the transformrecruding dot com it' should just transformercruding.com and I will sign off I will talk to you all hopefully next week and see you then.