The Changing State of Talent Acquisition – Details, episodes & analysis

#60: On the Frontline – How AI is Shaping the Future of High Volume Recruiting

 This week we welcome Sean Behr to the podcast. Sean is a successful entrepreneur spanning multiple industries, including e-commerce, advertising and automotive. Before joining Fountain as an investor and CEO, Sean held a number of founding and senior leadership roles at STRATIM, Adap.tv, and Shopping.com. He is also an active investor and advisor for numerous early stage companies, including Nana, AntHill, and Kinectic Eye, among others.

Topics include: the unique challenges and opportunities of frontline recruiting, the limitations of applying recruiting tactics and technologies designed for corporate roles to frontline roles, how the labor market is forcing organizations to consider new approaches to frontline recruiting, technological innovation in recruiting as an agent for (and impediment to) change, the increasing demands for efficiency in HR/TA, strategy vs. technology, task-based automation vs. goal-based automation, and the iterative nature of advances in artificial intelligence

Sean Behr
CEO, Fountain

LinkedIn

Change State is thrilled to introduce a new recurring “mini” feature on the Changing State of Talent Acquisition podcast. In “Change State Method and Practices”, we’ll periodically share practical tips, frameworks, tools, and strategies we rely on to help our clients build world-class talent brands and recruitment marketing strategies.

What is Methods & Practices?

 We launched the podcast five years ago with a focus on education: how do we engage with, promote, and elevate the most interesting voices in our industry? This has led to fascinating conversations with nearly 60 leaders in and around the talent acquisition space. As our listener base has grown, some questions keep popping up from our fans: What is Change State, anyway? How do we help clients? How can I take a similar approach in my organization?

Methods & Practices is one part of our answer. Staying true to our educational mission, these mini episodes provide a quick “behind the scenes” look at our approaches to solving common problems in the TA space. And while we love the opportunity to partner with new clients, we created these, like all of our episodes, to be helpful whether you ever become a Change State Client.

 Have a topic or guest suggestion? We love to hear from our fans! Shoot us an email at podcast@changestate.io 

Topics include:

The definition of employer brand, how an employer brand differs from an employee value proposition, perception vs. reality in branding, the connection between a consumer or master brand and an employer brand, key dimensions of strong employer brands, stakeholder groups involved with an EVP project, and the top considerations when designing an employee survey.

This week we welcome Jay Denton to the podcast. An expert in labor market analytics, Jay spent time at Bell Partners and Axiometrics before joining LaborIQ as Chief Analytics Officer.

 Topics include: the current status of the labor market, layoffs vs. new job creation, inflation, skills-based hiring and industry switching, pay equity, approaches to setting compensation for remote roles, employees as “free agents,” and how generational demographic shifts are impacting the labor market

Jay Denton

Chief Analytics Officer, LaborIQ

LinkedIn

This week we welcome Adam Godson to the podcast. An HR technology veteran, Adam spent more than eight years at Cielo Talent before assuming his current role as President & Chief Product Officer at Paradox, a conversational AI platform for talent.

Topics include: the growth of quick apply frameworks, the challenges of communicating an EVP in a quick apply context, how quick apply frameworks help and hinder recruiters, job seeker traffic and job board incentives, SMS and high volume recruiting, interview scheduling and the importance of speed-to-candidate, “human” touchpoints as an indicator of value, ChatGPT, how large language models will affect the future of recruiting

Adam Godson

President & Chief Product Officer, Paradox

LinkedIn

Twitter

This week we welcome Becky Chung to the podcast. Passionate about HR, organizational design, and workforce development, Becky honed her skills in a range of industries, including health care, financial services, and software, before assuming her current role as Vice President of Talent Development at Cielo Talent.

Topics include: skills-based recruiting, workforce development, the role of compensation in job hopping, how upskilling can support employee retention efforts, the impact of technology and innovation on the durability of skills, how the current talent shortage is shifting productivity and growth expectations, immigration policy and the labor market, the effect of remote work on organizational culture, work-life balance and employee productivity, control vs. trust in performance management, the importance of diversity of thought in building high-performing teams, how authenticity during the hiring process leads to better outcomes, and the ROI of employee upskilling investments.

Becky Chung

Vice President, Talent Development 

Cielo Talent

LinkedIn

Co-hosts Graham and Marty return for The Changing State of Talent Acquisition Season 3 debut. They share how the agency business has evolved in the past year and discuss key trends that will shape the talent acquisition landscape in 2023 and beyond.

Topics include:

 Skills-based hiring, how automation can improve the hiring process, approaches to measuring the ROI of an employer brand, how strong employer brands create efficiencies in recruiting, the rising importance of retention in a tight labor market, and how organizations are utilizing AI to make layoff decisions

 Articles Referenced

AI Is Starting To Pick Who Gets Laid Off
Aptitude Research: 2023 HR Technology Trends and Predictions

This week we welcome Chandan Golla to the podcast. Chandan is Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer for Included.ai, a DEI-first people analytics platform. Prior to co-founding Included.ai, Chandan spent more than 20 years delivering compelling experiences powered by data, having led product teams at eBay, OneTrust, and Integris Software.

Topics include: the “touchy feely” nature of DEI efforts historically, DEI as a catalyst for the HR data revolution, closing the gap between DEI awareness and small actions that improve outcomes, the backwards-looking nature of most dashboards, the value of “live” DEI data, the challenge of setting realistic DEI goals, corporate accountability and the public sharing of DEI metrics, the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in supporting DEI initiatives, how AI uncovers hidden DEI insights, the use of segmentation to deliver tailored benefits and services to underrepresented sub-groups, and the connection between segmentation and intersectionality.

This week we welcome Adam Jackson to the podcast. Adam is a serial entrepreneur (Dr. On Demand, DriverSide.com, MarketSquare.com), startup advisor, and technology investor (Cambrian Asset Management). Adam’s most recent venture, Braintrust, is the first and largest decentralized talent network completely controlled by its users.

Topics include: the distinction between user-owned networks and corporate-owned networks, the concept of a “rake” as it relates to talent networks, why middlemen tend to extract an increasing amount of value over time, the case of DoorDash and stolen driver tips, how blockchain tokens help keep rakes low (or negative), the role of governments in regulating the gig economy, the historical purpose of corporations and the coming “unbundling” of labor, how elastic workforces benefit employers and workers alike, the likelihood of finding job security in the gig economy, the question of who “owns” a freelancer’s work history, and how the Braintrust token serves as both an incentive mechanism and a governance system for the Braintrust network.

This week we welcome Delfina Stabile and Xavi Martinez Salcedo to the podcast. Delfina began her career in Buenos Aires, where she worked as a Recruiting Analyst for Michael Page, before joining Uber—first out of Mexico City, and currently out of San Francisco, where she serves as Talent Attraction Manager. Prior to joining Uber, where he currently serves as Head of Global Strategic Initiatives, Talent Attraction, Xavi served as Program Manager, Executive Search and Talent Management for Philips and Manager of People Technology for TomTom.

Topics include: how the labor shortage is intensifying the war for tech talent, what matters to tech talent beyond salary, the importance of closing the feedback loop when conducting employee surveys, the tradeoffs associated with different organizational structures and the employer brand function, strategies for bridge building between employer branding and consumer branding teams, the importance of creating action plans prior to launching employee engagement surveys, how connecting an employer’s EVP to the company’s broader mission creates a stronger brand, how to measure ROI of employer brand initiatives, the value of discovering what doesn’t work, talent acquisition as a cost center vs. revenue creator, and how organizations are navigating the post-COVID return to office.

This week we welcome Amit Parmar to the podcast. With more than 16 years of experience in technology and human capital management, Amit spent time at IBM, Deloitte, and Unisys before founding Cliquify, an AI-powered content marketing platform that drives equity in recruitment.

Topics include: the fourth industrial revolution, how AI makes the current revolution more “sophisticated” than previous industrial revolutions, the plummeting cost of data analysis and processing, how automation stands to eliminate (and create) jobs, the likelihood of universal basic income becoming a reality in our lifetime, the concept of employees as “customers” of HR, time versus money as “currencies” in talent attraction, the question of where employer brand sits (and should sit) within an organization, how the labor shortage has elevated the stature of talent acquisition and employer brand, NPS as a measure of employee “stickiness”, how employee referral bonuses can cloud the meaning of NPS scores, and how employee referral programs can impede diversity and inclusion efforts.