Mike Seidle: Hello everyone. Hi, I'm Mike Seidel, CTO and co-founder here at PivotCX. And thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Pivot to First. Today I'm joined by David Bernstein, our VP of All Things Revenue, and returning our special guest today is Craig Fisher. He is the CEO of TalentNet Live and also author of a brand new book called Hiring Humans. Craig, welcome. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Thanks Mike, great to be here. Good to see you guys as always. Mike Seidle: So you've written a book, Hiring Humans, and in the Age of AI, help us understand the title. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, so I'll show the audience a picture of the book so that you'll be familiar with it when you go to Amazon to purchase the book. It's hiring humans, attract, convert, and retain top talent in the age of automation. And the idea here is really that, you know, we get a lot of talk about... you know, automating everything you do in recruitment. cutting costs because of that, but you're also sort of cutting the relationship factor with your candidates when you do that as well. Now, on the opposite side of that, a little bit of automation can go a long way to helping you actually communicate better, right? So both things are true and both things are in this book. I mean, I'm a huge fan of AI and automation and tools and tricks. And, but also I think that they're best used by people, right? That's what recruiting and hiring is all about. So the book's really about using the tools we have available with empathy towards the candidate experience. And so if you want to call it your playbook to hiring with kindness and empathy, it's a good one. David Bernstein: Stand in the shoes, right? Walk a mile, is that what they say? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: There David Bernstein: Yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: is actually a section called Job Seeker Shoes. David Bernstein: Oh, okay, there you go. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, I really go through exactly what you need to do to understand what it feels like from the outside as a candidate, you know, to apply to your company and all the communication that happens and all of the pauses that happen and all of the rough patches that you might go through trying to log in to an applicant tracking system to update your profile and all of those things, you really need to understand it at a visceral level to know how you're making your potential teammates feel. These are probably also potentially your customers. And you want them to be your friends and fans. I mean, the whole idea of a good candidate experience is that even if a candidate is rejected, they're still a fan of your brand and will refer people. So David Bernstein: One done right, one done well, right? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: when done well, that's exactly right. David Bernstein: Yeah. Mike Seidle: soon. David Bernstein: We talk about candidate experience or candidate journey, I've heard it's but we talk about it as if it's a singular thing and I like your point, right? It's really an incredible number of micro-experiences or touch points, right? That the sum total of which you might say is your candidate experience, right? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, it's not simple. I mean, it should be, right? It should be simpler, but a million things have to go right in order for it to be seamless. David Bernstein: Yeah, I was reading last week, Kevin Grossman just put out some initial findings from the latest research, and not only has candidate resentment gone up again, but unfortunately this year a tremendous number of our brothers and sisters in recruiting were also impacted by Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Mm-hmm. David Bernstein: having to be on the job market themselves, right? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: That's right. David Bernstein: And the vast number of recruiting professionals he spoke to, who they themselves had a poor candidate experience. by applying to be recruiters at other companies, right? And now being on the receiving end of a candidate experience, right? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, it's staggering. I mean, if you if you pay any attention to sort of what we call recruiter Twitter, which is now X or whatever, David Bernstein: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: recruiter Twitter is full of candidate experience stories of, you know, employers just no response. I mean, zero or really icky feeling rejection emails and you know, Marin Hogan posted an interesting thing on LinkedIn yesterday or the day before, I think it was Friday, about exactly this. And what she was saying was, A, she read my book and liked it, and then, B, but this should be a good debate. you know, can you respond to all of your candidates, even the ones who are serial applyers, and do you want to, and does anybody care? And I'm here to tell you that those candidates care, for sure. And, right, and you never Mike Seidle: Oh yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: know where your next referral is coming from. They may live next door to your next VP of Operations. Mike Seidle: So Craig, I'll share a little bit with you just from, you know, we have our chat, our software, and we have a lot of live conversations that happen very, very quickly. And we've seen over and over where candidates really appreciate fast feedback. They appreciate, even if you're saying no to them, just telling them, no, here's why. And you're welcome to apply again once you get this corrected. It's amazing. like how much happier they are, but so many employers, and maybe you can shed some light on this, why is it that a lot of employers feel like the best experience is one where you're still sending a vaguely worded email saying we're rejecting you for reasons? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: So in my experience and what I do for a living is consult with employers on this exact thing, right? And so Mike Seidle: Right. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: I apply to jobs for a living and tell employers where the holes are and how to fix them. And sometimes it's with their technology, sometimes it's with their process. Most of the time, it's because nobody is looking at the whole thing. Right? Everyone has their one job to do in the organization and nobody is connecting the dots. There's no Mike Seidle: Right. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: one person responsible for recruiting operations at that kind of level. There should be a candidate experience officer, but there's just not anyone that does that in most organizations. Mike Seidle: or at least somebody that does, you know, that's doing what you do for a living, except just checking it once in a while to make sure that it works and make sure that, you know, maybe, maybe the experience isn't absolutely horrible. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Well, you know, it's funny, it should be checked on a regular basis. And here's why. So I'll give you a for instance, right now, I'm rewriting all of the job descriptions for the world's largest bank. Mike Seidle: Okay, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: I can't, Mike Seidle: that Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: I can't say their Mike Seidle: sounds Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: name Mike Seidle: kind of not Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: by contract. Mike Seidle: fun. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Um, yes. Well, so we're writing, we're rewriting templates for the job families. Mike Seidle: Okay. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Okay, and they're, and no, it's not fun. They're David Bernstein: Yeah Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: very outdated and they're full of bias, right? Mike Seidle: Thank you. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: So the word drive was determined to be, you know, sort of non feminine friendly. And so if you can imagine a bunch of technical people writing job descriptions, they use drive and driven and. hard driving and words like that all the time. And so to go through all of the job families within this organization and to rewrite the templates for all of them is, it's a daunting task. So I had to create a syllabus of bias terms. And so that exists now. And then I had to train 1400 recruiters. how to write the little bits of space that we allowed them to write in Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: for the job updates with interesting marketing language that talks to the candidate first and not just stating exactly what you have to do to make it more interesting. And... The problem with this is that given no checks and balances, over time, all that bias and bad language will creep back into David Bernstein: back Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: those David Bernstein: in Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: jobs. David Bernstein: and running. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Somebody will change the template. Nobody is, and so you should audit even your job descriptions on a regular basis, not just your candidate experience, but the whole thing. Mike Seidle: That's a really, really interesting problem because a lot of the words like drive come from the culture of management and leadership Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: That's right. Mike Seidle: at a company. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah. Mike Seidle: And so, you know, I want driven people, I want people that are motivated, all that. That's coming from management. And here you are over in talent acquisition, you know, probably rightfully so, going, hey, wait a minute, these words, these aren't the right words to use with, you know, greater than half the population. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Well, yeah, when those job descriptions were written 20 years ago, or even five years ago, maybe a Mike Seidle: Sure. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: little different environment, but not today. So another problem with that is I had another customer, a big healthcare company called Davida, Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: who their jobs weren't coming up in search results. When you looked on Indeed, they were way down the list. Mike Seidle: Uh Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: And Mike Seidle: oh. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: we figured out the reason why is that their origin date looked like they were three years old. and that's because they were using an old template in their applicant Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: tracking system. They were just copying the template and when you do that you copy over JSON metadata Mike Seidle: Yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: that keeps it old. So even though they thought they were doing it right redoing it, it wasn't working. I had a large retailer I worked with same exact problem. When you fix that, you can save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in advertising costs because your jobs get seen. David Bernstein: These little nuances, right? Everything. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Well, bad candidate experience is you can't find the jobs in the first place. And Mike Seidle: at. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: so here's a tip for employers. Don't go searching for your exact job description title because that's unique to you. But job seekers aren't doing that. They're using the generic words. They're using Java Developer Dallas, Texas. So go search for that and see where you rank. Mike Seidle: That's David Bernstein: Reminded Mike Seidle: really David Bernstein: me, you Mike Seidle: good. David Bernstein: know, I'm sorry go on mine. Yeah Mike Seidle: I was going to say that's fantastic advice and it's interesting when you start thinking about candidate experience. It starts way, way before people are on your career site. You're talking about how they search, understand that. When I talk to our customers, I'm not sure I've seen a lot of the recruiters that are our customers that have really thought that deeply back to the very, very beginning. In your book, how much material do you have? can really help somebody understand what they really should be thinking about like that. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, I mean the whole thing is basically a case study in each chapter from a different major brand Mike Seidle: Okay. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: with a problem that they were having with visibility or candidate experience or, you know, their funnel wasn't working properly or they couldn't process people at the bottom. And then a checklist of, okay, here's your actionable takeaways from this. Here are the things that you should do. So every chapter has that. And if you look at some of the reviews from our peers that have been posted on LinkedIn and on Amazon, they all say what they love about this is that there is a checklist of action items in every chapter. David Bernstein: But they're more like categories, right? They're places to poke at and look into. There's not like a cookie cutter answer for every employer here, right? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: There is no cookie cutter answer for every employer, but the idea is look at the innovation that can happen, even at Stodgy legacy brands, when you just think outside the box a little bit, and to help you kind of get into that mindset, and to just understand the questions you should be asking. I mean, most... employers, most recruiters, most heads of talent acquisition can't tell you kind of up to the minute how many employees do we currently have? What's our monthly churn? So how many people do we have to hire in order to produce the products that we make or serve the customers that we serve? You have to know all the answers to those questions before you can even start to do recruitment marketing and right and employee brand who are you talking Mike Seidle: Absolutely. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: to who are you trying to attract and so there's There's a persona template in the book There's exactly how to figure out who your audience is and why you want to know more about them So you can have empathy for what they're experiencing So you made an interesting point Mike earlier about the speed of communication, which is one of the things that I love about SMS texting and pivot CX. I, you know, I'm a, I'm a customer also of pivot CX. I use shamelessly for marketing my conference, which is By the way, the TalentNet Live Conference, which will be David Bernstein: coming Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: in Dallas David Bernstein: up Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: on November 9th and 10th. Go to TalentNetLive.com for registration of that. And you should come join us because I'm going to have a lot of these books. And I'll be signing some of them, but also some of the top talent leaders in the world will be there speaking. A lot of our sort of recruitment echo chamber influencers and SMEs as well. And Pivot CX will be there. Mike Seidle: Absolutely. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: And if you're watching this, you may very well receive a text message from me soon saying, Hey, come join us in Dallas and read my book. Mike Seidle: So, I've got to ask, what was it that really prompted you to go, hey, it's time to write a new book? What were you seeing out there that just made you go, I've got to write one? David Bernstein: Yeah, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, David Bernstein: or not Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: so. David Bernstein: singing, right? Or yeah, lack of something, right? Mike Seidle: Hell. David Bernstein: Right, yeah, yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Well, I've had a dozen books in my head for 20 years. And that's the biggest problem for an author, is you want to write everything. You want to write all your stuff down. But then the thought of writing a dozen books is more daunting than the thought of writing just one. And that's where you want to dump everything. And so you can't do that. You have to. You have to come to a conclusion of, all right, this is what I want to say for, for this book. And yes, I've got a million other things I could, I could teach you and, and a zillion other stories that would be relevant. But we'll save that for something else. Right. And then you get into all the things that go along with writing a book and publishing a book. And you have to create communities and newsletters and sort of monthly get-togethers. So there's room for that other stuff to come along because you have to have kind of constant content to feed your community. Mike Seidle: You know, David Bernstein: payoff Mike Seidle: Craig, one David Bernstein: though. Mike Seidle: of the things... David Bernstein: I'm sorry. I know I was just gonna say the payoff from writing the book though. I mean you're There's a goal here, right? You want to talk a little about we're gonna know why this particular out of the 20 that were in your head Why this one now? Yeah Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, so interestingly, I did a lot of this sort of candidate experience consulting work, which includes recruitment marketing and employer branding and process improvement and technology. Many, starting in 2009, I owned a staffing firm from 2007 to 2011. Around 2009, I started getting asked to come teach these things that I was helping employers do, which was help you help yourself. It's easier for me to recruit for you if you look better when people go check you out. And so it's the whole idea of being in a candidate's peripheral vision on a regular basis. Like you said, Mike, it starts way before they right in social places and that started to become a thing right because LinkedIn was prevalent Facebook was really coming online Twitter was hot and so you had places where you could show up as an employer as a transparent and authentic great place to work and I got a little bit Twitter famous for my views on it and started getting asked to speak about that. That became kind of a lifestyle business and evolved into me having this consultancy where I literally fix these recruiting problems for big brands. Then Allegious Global Solutions asked me to come build out consultancy like that for them for some of their tip of the spear. product offerings that weren't actually an RPO, but the consulting piece, right? And a lot of companies are wanting to do that. And then a few years ago, when COVID started, spring of 2020, Allegious decided they were scaling back and they weren't going to pursue new business and RPO for a while. And so they gave a lot of us an opportunity to. have a golden ticket and I took advantage of it. They asked me to contract back, but I said, no, I think I'm gonna be busy. And since then, I've gotten to do all of these amazing projects with these huge brands. And so this is really just culminating me having, several really cool case studies that I could share that just fit naturally into what I was trying to communicate. Mike Seidle: Well Craig, one of the things I've always liked, you know, I went to TalentNet last year and I got to meet a lot of your customers. One of the things I've always really respected about you is your customers speak super highly of what you do for them. And, you know, I've never seen anything quite like candidate experience where it's so easy to say what a good candidate experience is and so hard to deliver it. And having it, you know, having some expertise helping you probably makes a huge difference. been really positive about that. And you know, I see, you know, when I see what you're doing out there, you know, we look at our tool as something that's really all about delivering a better candidate experience, hence the CX up there. But we're really looking at candidate experience really as the future. We see, you know, and I love the name of your book, Hiring Humans. you know, if you're really trying to hire humans, you've got to treat them right. So, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah. Mike Seidle: really, really hats off for the book. Question for you about that. And I hear, I heard that you've actually been listed as a best seller on Amazon now. You released what, Friday last week? Or was it Thursday? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Technically Thursday, but by Friday I was on the bestseller list for multiple categories. And so it's sort of easy to be kind of best new release or top new release, top selling new release, that sort of thing. But I actually became bestseller on a few of these lists and they included like technology, architecture. other things where my book actually fits in because there's a lot of tech and data stuff in the Mike Seidle: Oh, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: books. Mike Seidle: absolutely. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: But yeah, but then also in human resources books, so you kind of jump in and out almost on an hourly basis of some of these lists because you know people are still buying other books. But I've got a screenshot of all the ones that I made the made the top spot on. Mike Seidle: Well, congrats on the success. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Thank David Bernstein: So, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: you. David Bernstein: yeah. Right, yes, yay, right? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah. David Bernstein: No small feat, and certainly a lot of juicy stories in there, I'm sure. Any particular hacks or stories that you want to particularly call out? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Well, they're okay. I'll give you a hack right now SEO is a Common theme of mine if you want to show up in somebody's peripheral vision as an employer Put your name all over the place put your name on every image of Your website and name it this my company XYZ is currently hiring Java developers in Dallas, Texas I mean, David Bernstein: You Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: you David Bernstein: mean Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: want to come David Bernstein: like Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: up David Bernstein: in Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: high David Bernstein: the alt tags you mean and things like that? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: and see. And the title of the image. I mean, David Bernstein: Yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: if you have access to your career site and you can control any of those things, yes, the alt tags, the descriptions, the actual title of the image,.jpg or.png. David Bernstein: Hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: And years ago, I started doing that. And so when you go search for you know, employer brand strategy, Dallas, Texas, a million pictures of Craig Fisher pop up. And David Bernstein: It's not Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: that's David Bernstein: quince Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: by, David Bernstein: against them, right? Yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: yeah, that's by design. And I've sort of started doing the same thing with this Hiring Humans books. All of the images have, are titled Hiring Human book, best seller, Craig Fisher, candidate experience and things like that. And so by the way, you can go to hiring-humans.com. to get some of that. But I think my SEO hacks will be in the next book. Because the next book is going to be for job seekers, but also employers and recruiters will like it. But it's how to get noticed and how to get in people's frame of vision. And so you asked about a story, Dave. One of the stories in the book years ago, when Foursquare was really at its peak, very popular and kind of early on. This is 2008, 2009, something like that. And Foursquare, for those of you who don't know, is a location-based app where you could check into places and become the mayor even if you checked in there on a most regular basis. And you would get coupons and free stuff from those venues if you were the mayor. So... I took this concept and I said, this is interesting. I can hack Foursquare and connect with the people that are checking into the place that I want to be seen or found and find them on Twitter because they generally will tweet their post because that was one of the features of Foursquare when they check in somewhere. And so I could find them and I could connect with them and I could build big lists of them. And so I did. And At one point I was recruiting for Verizon and I said, you know what? Uh, I think there are a bunch of engineers that check into the Starbucks across the street from AT&T on a regular basis because I found them. And so I went to the Starbucks across the street from AT&T for a week straight and posted every day. checking in because I'd already connected with these people. I am sitting in the back corner of this Starbucks if you're looking for a new job. I'm hiring for Mike Seidle: Hehehe Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Verizon. David Bernstein: Ha ha ha! Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: And I missed have interviewed 80 people in one week from hacking Foursquare. So AT&T called me later and said, Mike Seidle: I'm sure. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: let's talk about this. David Bernstein: Decent Assist or we want to, yeah, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: No, no, we'd like David Bernstein: can Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: to hire David Bernstein: we use Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: you to help David Bernstein: it? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: us. David Bernstein: Right. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: track telling David Bernstein: That's Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: you David Bernstein: a Mike Seidle: Can David Bernstein: great Mike Seidle: you do David Bernstein: story. Mike Seidle: that David Bernstein: Yeah, Mike Seidle: to David Bernstein: right. Mike Seidle: Verizon for us, please? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Hehehe Mike Seidle: Oh, wow. You know, it's really funny. Before we were Pivot CX, before we wrote our new software, we had an app that was really a step. off of what you were doing. We were doing a lot of geofence recruitment marketing where we were geofencing the Starbucks across the street and advertising to the people that were there. And honestly, it was a great way to get notice for the employers. And then Cambridge Analytica happened and it became increasingly harder to get results off of geofence. But, you know, recruiting people, you've got to get in front of them. You have to. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: You know, there's another story in this book. I did a project for Ross Dress for Less. They decided to... bring all of their recruiting in-house. They were using too many vendors to recruit for their warehouses. They had a warehouse Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in a tiny little town, but that tiny little town had 96 other warehouses in it. So Amazon, Walmart, you name it, had giant facilities that they were trying to compete with. And poor David Bernstein: So the city Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Ross David Bernstein: was called Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Dressforless, David Bernstein: Distributionville Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: yeah. David Bernstein: or something? Is that the Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yes. David Bernstein: distribution center-ville? Yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: I never got to go there. I wanted to. I wanted to go check it out, but I never got to go. But we did the same thing, Mike. Mike Seidle: Oh yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: We did geofencing, but the thing that worked the best was actually we found the restaurant near one of the biggest competitors that all of their people went to and we bought the menus. and redid the menus and put an ad for Ross Dress for Less's warehouse in the menu saying we're hiring. Mike Seidle: and Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: That's exactly right, QR code and everything. Mike Seidle: Oh, perfect. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah. Mike Seidle: That's amazing. You know, I think we all, it's so easy to forget with all the technology that we're actually trying to reach humans and they do very human things like eat lunch. And it's so easy to leave all of that out when you're thinking about recruiting. You know, it's all job boards and I think a lot of times people think recruitment marketing is just all this big digital stuff and honestly there's a really powerful level of it that's just good old-fashioned kind of grassroots marketing. David Bernstein: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, David Bernstein: Yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: guerrilla marketing, right, Mike Seidle: Absolutely. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: is widely overlooked a lot of the time. It doesn't all have to be digital. Bus stop ads work amazingly well. Right. I mean, hang a flyer in the CVS. David Bernstein: remember a story where the train station, the local transport in the Bay Area here, it's called BART, but the BART station across from where I was working, it was PeopleSoft at the time, but I bought, I basically did ads on the back of the BART tickets, right? So everybody getting, as they came out, they were right, anyway, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: genius. David Bernstein: right there at the station that was right across the street from our office, right? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, David Bernstein: So, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: that's good. Mike Seidle: You know, David Bernstein: and with a branded Mike Seidle: and David Bernstein: URL, right? Mike Seidle: now, now we have, you know, now the thing that's great about these kind of ads, you know, you brought up QR codes and all of that. Now it's so easy just to QR code it, have an instant engagement via text, and actually, you know, start that relationship with that person off on the right foot. You know, a few years ago, it would have been a link to a web form, and somebody Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: That's Mike Seidle: might Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: right. Mike Seidle: call you back later in the day, and the speed that we can do things now is just so much faster. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: I'm a big fan of that process because there are so many easy ways where you could get someone to see, text hire me to this number Mike Seidle: Absolutely. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: for your next job. And I love that functionality with PivotCX. So David, you just reminded me of another funny story. when the 49ers got their new stadium. David Bernstein: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: What town is that in? David Bernstein: Well, Santa Clara officially, but Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Santa David Bernstein: yes, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Clara. David Bernstein: the Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah. David Bernstein: new San Francisco 49ers Stadium, yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, Santa Clara. So C.A. Technologies, I was a talent leader at C.A. Technologies, had a an office in Santa Clara and. Skyrise and overlooking that new stadium and. We're looking out, there's a balcony out there, very high up. And so we're looking out over the stadium and the CIO says to me, Craig, what do you think it costs to advertise in there? And I looked in there and I could see all the stadium seats and I looked at the building and I looked back in there and I said, why don't you just put a banner on this building? David Bernstein: Right. Just a Mike Seidle: problem David Bernstein: drop Mike Seidle: solved. David Bernstein: of that, right? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: done. That's what we did. David Bernstein: Wow, clever. So you know, though, it seems to me, and I'm interested in your take on this, no team tries to create a poor candidate experience. We already know that. But we know that people are so busy, right? I think teams are so busy that the unintended consequence, then, is a lot of fall off, including, then, how you take care of it. the candidates at every point along the way. It's all you can do to try to keep up with the few that you're gonna move forward with, right? It's that kind of, you know, habitarial wheel where you're just trying to run fast just to keep basics moving. But Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: That's it. David Bernstein: how does a team then, well, maybe the question is this way. Who are the, what roles, or how are you seeing teams effectively? Because they are so busy, right? Carrying 30 recs each and everybody's trying to just get the work done. What are you seeing that they're doing to try to... also think forward and think peripherally and think proactively and all these other great ideas that you're talking about, right? Because no one would argue against them likely, and yet getting to do them or thinking through them or it takes time and people, yeah? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Right. David Bernstein: Are you seeing anything particular that folks are doing to try to tackle the Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah. David Bernstein: overwork to overburden kind of challenge? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, and I'll say that let's not let's not blame anyone in particular, right? Candidate bad candidate experience is inherited. Right. You you walk into that you walk into whatever legacy ATS somebody signed a contract for years ago. Most of the time. And so you're not creating bad candidate experience most of the time it's inherited and you're just fighting to tread water enough to fix any little bit of it. What I see a lot of is companies not putting someone directly in charge of watching advertising costs and source of hire and right applicant tracking system experience and all those little things that go into it, right? It's the job of a multiple different teams. So you've got HRIS, you've got, you know, maybe somebody that has the relationship with a marketing agency or, and, but it's. It's disparate. A lot of times, if they do have that person, that marketing agency, recruitment marketing agency liaison, it falls on that person, but they're not super good at data or they're not, I mean, they're usually creative. or maybe they don't have Mike Seidle: Yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: recruiting experience. And so sometimes it gets put on to whoever is a good recruiter and they have to stretch and cover that as well. And so that's not optimal either. Mike Seidle: You know, one of the things that has struck me since I've launched this, you know, we launched PivotCX is how, uh, how qualitative things are in recruiting. Even though we can get the great data and quantify things and everything, a lot of times you don't need to get to the point where you have all the reports that say, Hey, we've got a problem right here. It can be as simple sometimes as just look for yourself and realize, Hey, this is just broken. It doesn't feel right. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: That's it. Apply to your own jobs. I mean, on a regular basis, apply to your own jobs. And you're never going to know. Like, you don't know something's wrong with your own website until somebody tells you most of the time. Nine times out of 10, Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: a customer is complaining that they can't do X, Y or Z on your website or a friend or your mother. Right. But. Because you can't look every day. It's difficult and things just break. Mike Seidle: They do. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Software, Mike Seidle: They Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: yeah, Mike Seidle: really Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: software Mike Seidle: do. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: breaks, processes David Bernstein: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: break. People turn over in organizations and things get dropped. So, right, you Mike Seidle: Not Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: have Mike Seidle: to Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: to... Mike Seidle: mention people change things when you're not looking. David Bernstein: Oh yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Oh, absolutely. And there are in enterprise companies, right? There are land grabs left and right. It's Mike Seidle: oh yeah Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: right in marketing decided that you can't do that anymore. Right. Mike Seidle: Well, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: And Mike Seidle: sometimes Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: so Mike Seidle: they're not even intentional. Sometimes Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: yeah. Mike Seidle: it's just, hey, we're changing out our brand and we brought in this new thing and all of a sudden it doesn't work. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Or one time I was trying to implement a jobvite at a technology company and we're halfway through the CRM implementation. And our ATS vendor, SAP, comes along and says, what are you doing? You've got all these credits from us and we've got a CRM. And I'm Mike Seidle: Ha Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: like, Mike Seidle: ha Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: yeah, Mike Seidle: ha. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: I don't want your CRM. But the relationship was, well, We're a Microsoft partner and an SAP partner, and we're going to use these things. And so I had to implement two CRMs at the same time, because somebody just made a dumb decision. That was fun. Mike Seidle: That is how it goes sometimes, for Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah. Mike Seidle: sure. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Team structure though, Mike, back to that point is important. And if you're a talent leader, you need to look at your team structure and see, look, is it a really good recruiter with the help of a coordinator that can kind of look at this stuff? Or do you have the budget to put someone in charge of all of these multiple things? And if you need a list of those multiple things that need to be looked after, let me know. David Bernstein: Yeah, you know, we've done something and we haven't been as consistent about it, but and I'm wondering if the idea so I do your feedback here, but Mike and I have been doing hackathons here at pivot CX talk about right business agility and how do we kind of so we take people out of their daily element and we hyper focus for a day on, you know, some known issues that we know are problematic, but how do we do some deeper dive? So I'm wondering if that kind of concept. might apply in recruiting as well. If a recruiting leader could take their team, a virtual off-site, I don't know, you don't want any Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Mm-hmm. David Bernstein: thoughts on like a hackathon style idea or any version Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Oh, David Bernstein: of that? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Mike Seidle: Thanks for watching! Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: You've seen me talk about this before, David. Empathy mapping, right? David Bernstein: Ah, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: To understand David Bernstein: empathy. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: your to understand your candidate and what they're going through David Bernstein: Can you say more? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: is David Bernstein: What do you mean? What does that look like? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: so an empty map is where you draw four quadrants on a board and do it with an X. OK, and so you've got up here. Your candidates in the middle, right? So up here is what they see, what they hear, what they do, and what they say. These are your quadrants. David Bernstein: Mm-hmm. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: And so who are their influences? What's their routine like? What's the first thing they do when they get up in the morning? Is it look at their phone? Do they sleep with their phone? Is that a good place to advertise at the time of day that you think they probably get up? Right? Do they have kids? with their parents? Do they coach soccer or play soccer? What are their dreams and hopes and what are the barriers for them to get there? Do they care more about a community service for their organization and giving back than they do about their salary? Is their job title more important as a prestige thing? When you can understand some of these things, then you can start to apply what's good about your company to your job descriptions and your advertising and your social posts and what you're suggesting to your employee community to talk to about with their friends, right? In the elevator. or online, we'd love to have more people like you in the organization. Tell the world what's great about what you really like about this. If you've got some advocates. David Bernstein: It's a persona, Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: And so that's David Bernstein: mapping Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: one David Bernstein: that. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: kind of yeah, that's one kind of. And so when you do the exercise, you give your you draw it on a whiteboard and you give your recruiters multicolored sticky notes and sharpies. and say, fill in these quadrants, right? You're going to write and fill in these quadrants. And then it looks really cool. And it's just a great exercise. And so that's a sort of hackathon to understand your candidate better. And I 100% agree also, Dave, that yes, you could have everybody apply to a job once a month. And let's talk about the feedback and how do we fix it. Mike Seidle: We've had really good luck with when we do the hackathon kind of thing where we go in and go, hey, we're all going to do one thing and then we're going to come back, meet real quick, go through what happened. So everybody apply for a job, let's see what happened. And then let's start working on how do we fix it. And you end up, it's amazing what happens when you take people out of the day to day. And I think that's the power of that hackathon model. It's that you get everybody, including people that maybe don't really look at the frontline, you know, candidate experience, you get some of the recruiters, maybe get a hiring manager so they can see what these candidates are going through. And the input is just amazing because it's not the normal, you know, it's not just the normal stuff you hear every day. You know, with me, it's, you know, my software developers are always hacking on our software. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Mm-hmm. Mike Seidle: But when I open it up and, you know, we get our marketing team, we get our client success team and all that looking at things, I hear something completely different from these people. Completely different. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: When you're doing an exercise like renewing your company's core values or your employer value proposition or employee value proposition, depending on who you're talking to, you should interview a cross-section of the people in your company. And you should do it in two different ways, one-on-one, because you get some candid answers that way, but then also in a group setting where you can let people kind of vent. and you get really wild answers that way as well. But if you don't ask the questions, you'd never know. You'd never Mike Seidle: That's Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: hear, Mike Seidle: right. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: yeah, what's the worst thing about working here? Mike Seidle: Yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: That's a good question to ask. David Bernstein: No sacred cows, Mike Seidle: Are David Bernstein: right? Mike Seidle: you? David Bernstein: Challenge everything, yeah? You know? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, by the David Bernstein: You Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: way, David Bernstein: know? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: I'm really good at hackathons if you guys want to include me in on one of yours. Ha ha ha. Mike Seidle: Oh, that David Bernstein: Yeah. Mike Seidle: might be really fun. That might be really fun, Craig. That might be something that we take you up on pretty quickly. Well, so, the book. Let's let everybody know where they can get it. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Hiring-Humans.com. Mike Seidle: and then if they want to get a hold of Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: And Mike Seidle: you Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: on Amazon. Yeah. Mike Seidle: always that but also if they want to get a hold of you know that you've got if you're out there and you're looking at your candidate experience you're looking at the supply process ago hey i want to get somebody to look at this that can really help me with it how they get a hold of you correct Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, so because of my extensive SEO background, you can really just Google Craig Fisher recruiting, and you'll find lots of stuff about me, but the best way is to connect with me on LinkedIn and... easy to find there as well. I'm at Fish Dogs also on Twitter and Instagram. I am more than happy to connect with you there. Also on TikTok, you can easily find me there. And I share tips about all this stuff across all these channels on a regular basis. And also I'm fun to hang out with online. David Bernstein: and in person. Mike Seidle: All right, well with that, I think we've covered everything that we were planning on covering today. Anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn't bring up today. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Well, if you need talent operations consulting or marketing consulting, talentnetlive.com is my website and talentnetlive.com slash events. You can sign up for the next conference which is in November. We'd love to see you there in historic Grapevine, Texas at the Palace Theater. It looks like the Muppet Show Theater. David Bernstein: Yeah. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: It's Mike Seidle: Oh Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: got... Mike Seidle: really? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah, big poofy curtains and balconies and David Bernstein: Red velvet. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: red velvet. Mike Seidle: Does it come with two crusty old guys up Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: We're going Mike Seidle: in the Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: to Mike Seidle: balcony Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: work that Mike Seidle: there? Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: out. We're going to work out a bit for that. Mike Seidle: Oh, you have to. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Yeah. And Main Street in Grapevine is kind of an historic place. And it's dotted with wine tasting rooms and. bars and taprooms and restaurants and it's just fantastic fun to hang out and we'll be decorated for Christmas by the time our event rolls around and Mike Seidle: Oh Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Grapevine Mike Seidle: wow. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: has dubbed itself the Christmas capital of Texas so it's going to be festive. Mike Seidle: Sounds great. Can't wait. Well Craig, David, thanks for joining me today and have a great afternoon. Craig Fisher TalentNet Media: Thanks guys. Mike Seidle: And.