The Secret to Matching Better Candidates
Does your candidate matching engine only match based on keywords? There's a better way that will save your recruiters hours and hours of time. I'll tell you the secret in this episode.
[Transcribed from video above]
Hello everybody welcome back to another episode of the transform recruiting podcast I'm your host Brad Owens and I've got a short little one for you today as ah, more of a thought of thought experiment for you. So I believe that as an industry we are handling candidate matching. Incorrectly so that's my thesis and then I'll I'll walk you through my arguments. So let's get a state of the union for candidate matching right now there are millions of dollars going into. Ai and matching engines and all of this and what they're essentially matching on is keywords so you can look at every single applicant tracking system that's out there right now and what they're going to match on are keywords. And related keywords now everyone's saying that we've got ai intelligent matching built into ours what they're doing is at a high level if we need to search for an account manager. That's who we're trying to find and if we put account manager in our job description and all those related things. And then we try and find someone for that say like find a matching candidate for this account manager the lower level I wouldn't say lower level the less feature rich matching engines if you put in account manager they'll look for everything that has account in it and.
01:36.97
Brad Owens
Manager in it. So think about the other people that have a account in their title people like account ins accounting managers. Ah, if your search engine will come up with accountants when you're looking for an account manager. You've got a problem that's matching on words. That's the majority of them out there now. The intelligent ones will be able to filter out those accountants because they can understand that hey the accountants isn't really an account manager. We know that based on all of our history with looking for these certain types of resumes so we're not going to show you the accountants good. That's awesome. However, now this is the big but and I've done an experiment on this that I want to walk you through so all of these matching engines can be tricked and I'll tell you about an experiment so about four years ago I wanted to run an experiment of I wonder if I can trick all of these applicant tracking systems. And subsequently tricked. The recruiters that are using them. So I chose I think it was the end number was like 20 different jobs and what I did is I took those jobs all from different industries all different types I found the job descriptions I copied them out I put them on a. Word document and once I paste it in the job description I highlighted all that text I made it white so it was white text on a white background and then I made it 8 point font. So it wouldn't take up a whole bunch of room and for the resume I put the most random stuff like I was on sesame street and i.
03:13.60
Brad Owens
Ah, was a puppeteer on there and I put the most random stuff that was not related to any kind of job and I submitted my application with that for those 20 jobs now think about what happened on the backend when I did that every single applicant tracking system. Would show me as a 100 % match for every job I applied for now for thinking about our recruiter's workflow. They are opening up their email to see who has been messaging them back and forth first thing in the morning next thing they're going to do is open up their app tracking system to see how many candidates have applied. Whether over the weekend or overnight and they're going to start reaching out to those that have a high match score they're just if they're using their time wisely. They're going to start there. That's what we all hope they would do so those that well I guess not what we'd hope what they do but what they it will end up doing. Right? Like they're not going to open up every single resume look at it all spend the 5 minutes they need to to realize if this is a good match or not especially if they're brand new the industry which most of our recruiters are they're typically under eighteen months of experience so when they open up their applicate tracking system they're going to see all these 100 % matches my resume included and they're going to start reaching out to those people whether sending them an email sending them that form email of dragging them to the next stage of saying yes we want to interview this person so they'll so kick off that automation that'll say reach out to with an email to this person say you like their resume and then send them the scheduling link so they can get scheduled.
04:42.85
Brad Owens
Ideally, that's what would happen what you'll find is the exact same thing that I found when applying for all these jobs every single job all 20 jobs I got a reply to and a request for an interview. All 20 jobs. Because I was a 100 % match for their job on paper. So do you see the problem with this matching job description to resume is complete garbage garbage. It does not work if you are trying to. Place your very first time interacting with this candidate. So the very first time you ever meet them and you're trying to place them based on their resume garbage doesn't work when I ran a recruiting firm I went back and looked at our previous year's placements and the average resume fit or candidate fit. Score that we had based on this matching engine that was included was 15% 15% good fit for a job and that was every single placement we made over the year that should tell you something that should tell you that these matching scores do not make sense so I submit for your consideration. The matching engine of the future. It's not a matching engine of the future. It's just a different way to look at it. So here's my proposal. Let's take a page out of our marketing friends playbook. Our marketing friends are able to look at our behavior as a consumer.
06:20.87
Brad Owens
And say how likely is this person to purchase this next thing and then submits that thing into whether it's an ad or our suggested email or whatever might be. We're able to hit these consumers with the exact thing that they are looking for that will likely be a good fit for them now. How do they do that. They do that based on our behavior. So if I come to oh goodness let's find a ah good example here if I come to bed bath and me on's website and I start searching for pots and pans. This website has learned from me that one I'm interested. Because I came to their website and I clicked. That's that's enough that shows that I'm an interested and motivated buyer then I so narrow that down to frying pans. Okay, now they know that I'm an interested consumer looking to buy some pans and I need some frying pans. And then I start filtering down based on that maybe different sizes different brands. Whatever it might be now if I click on kaphalon or le cruse or lodge or whatever I'm going to so even tell them even more. So the next time some amazing product comes out from kaphalon or Lecreay or whatever it might be I'm going to see that whether it's in my email because I sign up for something or the next time I go to their website or whatever it might be that is how they can target me with specific things to know with relative certainty.
07:50.35
Brad Owens
That I am a match for that product. That's already happening that is how marketers do their job That's how they drive these automated completely automated marketing campaigns and journeys to get sales. Let's contrast that with what could be possible in recruiting. Think about all the possible indicators that a candidate or a client could give you before you even get on the phone with them. They could give you interest in your services through a website click through an ad engagement through an application. Ah, through a message on Linkedin or whatever it might be for my idea of a matching engine I believe that every one of those said increase something that I call a candidate motivation score.
08:44.50
Brad Owens
If a candidate Motivation Score is something we can use to sort our applications by that I believe will be the ideal matching engine if I am a recruiter and I come to my desk in the morning to look at all the resumes of the people that came in overnight. Or the ones that came in over the weekend and I want to know how to sort this list to make sure I'm reaching out to the right people first I really don't care if they're a good fit on paper I don't they could be terrible at writing a resume. They might not even have a resume what I care about. Is this this candidate going to be able to hold a conversation. Are they going to be have the right attitude the right aptitude to do this job. Are they motivated. They're not going to ghost me. They're going to show up on time. They're going to show up to this interview. They're going to return my phone calls return the client's phone calls be responsive to emails. I want to see their motivation score. So I want to sort my list by that then I know I'm getting the right kind of calls out at the right time then I know the beginning of my morning is not going to be wasted on people that aren't going to call me back now where this can even come in more handy. Is if you've already got history with this candidate or talent. If this person has worked with you before. Let's choose a staffing example, let's say they are a forklift operator if they are a forklift operator and have gone out on one assignment for you and have done a good job. You now know that that person.
10:16.30
Brad Owens
Will fit a job description that includes forklift operator now you're matching engines that you have in all these apping and track it systems will totally work. So the best use of the current applicant tracking system matching engines is for folks, you already have a relationship with how many times have you started a search. From your database I bet you it's not often I would bet you if you talk to your recruiters talk to your branches if you talk to anyone that's run a search for a new job I bet you they've either gone to Linkedin because your applicant tracking system data is worthless to them or they've posted the job. And just are waiting for things to come back in. They do the post and pray I can put money on that. Come back to me if I owe you some money because that's not how they run their searches but I can put pretty good money on that that will work if they search their database first now. Here's where the big problem comes with typical matching engines if I search within my own database for a job that I just got in to see who we might already have as a fit. They could be a 100 % word for word match to this job. Let's take our forklift operator. If I get a brand new Forklift operator job in and I search my database for forklift operators I might find everyone that's in there as a forklift operator. Great now. How do I know who should I should call first in this list they could be completely stale to us because we haven't worked it with them in 2 years even though they're a perfect fit.
11:52.49
Brad Owens
They could be making crazy amounts of money they could have gotten a full-time job. We would have absolutely no idea but we would call them because they're a hundred percent fit match in our current world of a matching engine now if you had that exact same group but you could sort them by our favorite motivation score here. You can see here's the last time they've been on your website. You can start grading them based on here's how responsive they are to emails lately here's how well they've done at their previous jobs. Now. You've got something you can sort your list by. So. All of the matching engines that you've got will work for searching your database for those that have done that job for you. But you still have nothing to sort your list by I submit that you should be able to search by motivation score the same way you should when people apply to your jobs. So what do we get with our motivation score. Well one we solved the issue of how do we know this is the right person to reach out to how are we making sure that our recruiters are spending their time wisely. How do we make sure that we're tracking the right information. Don't really care about the words on the resume those change they could switch things around tomorrow. They could completely change their Linkedin profile tomorrow. It doesn't matter if we know their motivation and how likely they are to pick up the phone or respond to an email or show up and not ghost us those are the people we want to get in front of so I submit for the matching engine in the future.
13:23.44
Brad Owens
That actions speak louder than words and that we should be doubling down on a candidate motivation score and not a match. Score let's talk to all of our marketing friends and figure out how they're doing what they call a propensity to buy. Be able to put the right things in front of the right people and not waste their marketing dollars on those that aren't going to reply. They've solved this many many years ago we haven't as a talent industry. So I submit that actions speak louder than words our current matching engines are broken. We can do better have some ideas. Anyone wants to toss this around and actually get a product out. There. Let me know. Ah but I submit that matching engines are broken. We can do way better with that I'll let you all go just as a fun little thought experiment for today. I am Brad Owens from the transform recruiting podcast if you want more like this visit transformrec recruiting dot com send me an email with your thoughts at hello at bradowwins.com love to have conversations with people that enjoy recruiting as much as I do with that I will see you on the next one.