With more than 15+ years of executive experience in recruitment marketing and sales, Cindy Klein is presently the Senior Vice President of Sales for Talent.com, the fastest-growing global player in next-generation job search platforms. With more than 30 million jobs available in 78 countries and 29 languages, Talent.com’s proprietary technology matches job seekers with relevant job opportunities while its pay-per-click model helps recruiters easily adjust their job advertising campaigns based on performance. Cindy oversees the company’s North American market and ensures a global sales strategy and alignment. Previously she held positions with ZipRecruiter and Indeed.com.
Connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindymklein/
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because we are hiring so many people, so just in North America, we're hiring 155 people this year. And in Europe, it's a it's comparable. So we're gonna hire over about 300 people. So we're rotating the leaders within that committee. Got it. Don't worry, everyone's gonna get their fair share of
Kyle Roed:
the 155. I don't know how big the organization is. But that's a lot of interviews.
Cindy Klein:
Yeah, we're only 400 people right now. Double the organization in the next year.
Kyle Roed:
This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast where we talk to HR innovators about all things people leadership. If you're looking for places to find about new ways to think about the world of work, this is the podcast for you. Please subscribe, favorite podcast listening platform today. And leave us a review. Rebel on HR rebels. All right, rebel HR listeners, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm super excited for our guests. This is going to be a fun one this week. With us we have Cindy Klein, Cindy is a results driven customer focused professional with 20 plus years of sales, digital marketing and management experience. She is the Senior Vice President of sales@talent.com talent.com just completed around with 120 million in series B funding as well. So congratulations on that, Cindy, and welcome to the podcast.
Cindy Klein:
Thank you, Kyle, happy to be here.
Kyle Roed:
Well, we are so happy to have you today. Thank you so much for your patience, we had some tech issues before I hit record and you were just an absolute dream and super patient. So can't wait for the conversation today. But thank you in advance.
Cindy Klein:
I always patient because I'm normally the one that has the tech issues.
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely. And you know, it's a, it's a funny allegory for what we've all gone through over the last few years, right? It's like everything is going digital. And we're trying to figure out, you know, all the tech issues and myself not necessarily a digital native as it relates to these sorts of things and video calls. And in your role as doing a lot of recruiting as well as helping others recruit, I'm sure you have seen this, this kind of this change in the recruiting space. So over the last few years, what have been your observations for how we have all had to adapt into the new talent environment?
Cindy Klein:
Yeah, I think the biggest evolution has been the videos, I think with COVID really has shifted, and we've had to change the way of in person, you know, meetings, and I think that's a big piece number one is like, you know, it's always nice to meet in person. I know, I'm going to more meetings now more conferences, but that's number one. I think, also, you know, just the response time, when we're responding to candidates, it used to be it was acceptable to respond to them in a couple of days, 48 hours now, you know, candidates in this generation, the new generations, the millennials and other generations, Generation X they, they want responses in two hours or less. They expect immediate response. So I think, you know, that's tough.
Kyle Roed:
It is tough. You know, I think the key word there is is is candidate expectations. And, you know, it is it's just changed so much. As you look at that, do you feel like that is a product of just the talent scarcity that we're in right now? Or is this something that's broader than just the current kind of hiring environment?
Cindy Klein:
I think it's broader than the current hiring environment, I think we're going to see this, continue to scale it at the more extreme level, I think about my children, and how they want an immediate response. They'll be you know, on their phone, and they expect someone to respond to them in a text within minutes. And if I don't respond, they call me they'll call me until I respond. So I think that's the that is the next generation like there is they want immediate gratification, whatever they're doing, they want that gratification.
Kyle Roed:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm reflecting on myself here a little bit. And I'm thinking, let's see, last night, I was too lazy to cook. So I use DoorDash. And I hit the button, and it instantly popped up and says Your orders being ready. And then you know, and it had it like every step of the way. I'm getting these updates, and I'm getting these text messages. And it is truly like, it's that instant gratification. It just seems to be continually interwoven into into our society and subsequently our expectations. Right.
Cindy Klein:
Yeah. And I think you think about that with the candidate journey. What are we doing and what are employers doing to give that candidate that update throughout the process? We almost need that DoorDash or that Uber Eats experience. And throughout that process Like, where's your step in the process? Are you have you interviewed? Where's the next step for the second interview? And giving that them the text message to give them that information?
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So So what you're saying is, for that hiring manager that's complaining about all these open jobs, they can't wait for like 11 days to review those 20 resumes that are sitting in the inbox, is that what I'm hearing?
Cindy Klein:
You know, it's funny, because I worked with in my previous, previous past, I worked with large employers, and I would work with the HR team and talent acquisition team, and we will talk about, Oh, you haven't reviewed this candidate and 15 days, it's been sitting out there. And that was, that was okay, because those candidates would wait, but in this current great resignation, they're not waiting, you know, we need to take the opportunity right away.
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely. And I agree, 100%, I think it's such a, it's such a competitive advantage. If you can make this really kind of like that frictionless candidate experience, right, where it's like, immediate, some sort of immediate touch point upon, you know, applying for a job. And then and then a warm outreach within a few minutes or hours. And like, sometimes I've always said like, speed wins. Sometimes you'll get if you can get a candidate all the way through the process within a couple of days. And like, oh, my gosh, let's get him a job offer before the end of the week from like, they apply on Tuesday, let's get him a job offer before Friday. Like sometimes you can get them to accept the job and actually start a job before the other company that they apply for actually calls back. Exactly, even though that that job might pay them more. But at that point, you got them right. Like they're hooked.
Cindy Klein:
If you can get them to start within a two week timeframe from that time, you've gotten them committed to the experience the brand, but your journey. Yeah,
Kyle Roed:
absolutely. So what are you seeing? I know, you see, you have an interesting context here, where I know you're personally hiring, and your organization is helping others hire. So what are you seeing works as you think about kind of that that candidate experience? And what are some of the things that are that are working out there?
Cindy Klein:
No, I think, from from the customer side of things, and I'll talk about my so from the customer side of things I think working from home still is a very, it's a number one search on our site. Still, it has, of course, it was extremely high during COVID when COVID hit that was the number one search, it continues still to be a number one search just not the highest percentage. So that's really big. I think, you know, bonuses, anything included in bonuses and job descriptions, also very important. from a customer perspective, I think also benefits, putting those benefits right up front, what are those? And not even benefits, like health care benefits? I mean, perks, what are the perks of the company, putting those up front and in the job description. And I think from our perspective, when I'm as a hiring manager is getting in front of that customer and explaining what the true opportunity to work at a tech company to work at something that have a voice and really explaining your brand.
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely. And so I guess I you know, I have a question on that, you know, job description. You know, there's, I consider job descriptions like art, right? It's like everybody has an opinion, and nobody's Right. Like it's the, the eye or the eye of the beholder. But on a more technical side, is there a benefit from a search engine optimization standpoint of actually having some of those, like you said, bonuses and perks, and if it's a work from home position, like actually putting that in the narrative within the job description,
Cindy Klein:
yes, it actually gives you more weight on the search. So it's really important to have key words within your search description. So you know, you don't want to make them too heavy, because of course, then that will actually kick you out of the rankings, but you want to have those keywords. So work from home, if you're hiring, whatever your job title is, so let's say it's a CDL driver, you want to make sure that CDL driver, of course, is in your job title, as well as your job description. And if there's any license requirements for a specific job, you want to make sure those those are also included because that will help your overall rankings.
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely, yeah. So for any HR professionals that are are maybe struggling to get some some application flow or they're just they're not saying that, you know, I would strongly encourage it, you know, Google SEO and and job descriptions and take a little bit of a course there. That was something for me, you know, I didn't really under Stand the SEO and things like that. And you can tell you know, more recently, especially in this talent environment, you really do have to be able to stand out. And when people are searching, you can't necessarily rely on, you know, whatever site you're using, or your applicant tracking system to help get that exposure, you have to make sure it's easily searchable and and pops up. So
Cindy Klein:
absolutely, because not every site uses the same search criteria.
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely. So I'm curious to understand a little bit more about the business model of of talent.com. So as you go to, to market and as you you know, help HR professionals solve this challenge. What is your what is your differentiator? What is the kind of the, the secret sauce of talent?
Cindy Klein:
Yeah, so we are actually a performance based model. So we really work, you know, work with you to develop a budget, and it's Pay Per Click advertising. So it's not a fixed cost pay per click, we decide we work with you based on your actual category and devise a budget. And we we have over 2000 partners we work with as well. So we can build an advertising strategy to to get you to all the sources you need. And we optimize to a cost per application or cost per hire.
Kyle Roed:
Got it? Got it. Okay, perfect. And believe me, I think a lot of us could use some use. So I want to shift a little bit to maybe away from your customer profile, and what you're seeing right there to your kind of your personal journey and how you approach recruiting personally. So before we hit record, you mentioned you have what something like 50 open positions right now that you're hiring for with all this exciting funding?
Cindy Klein:
For you, yeah, well over 50 this year.
Kyle Roed:
So as as you approach that, and and hiring for your team, what are some of those things that you are strategically thinking about in response to the great resignation? What you're seeing within the talent.com? You know, customer base? How are you approaching the challenge of firing? 50? Because that's a lot.
Cindy Klein:
It is, I think about actually keeps me up every night. But I think, you know, I look at it a couple different ways. I think employee referrals. So one of the things as we develop, you know, every company has an employee referral program, but I think that's an area that we should all be reconsidering that program, and how do we expand on that program? Because, of course, your internal people are your strongest advocates of your brand. So that's number one, I think we need to reevaluate that program. Secondly, within our culture, what can we do within our culture to express that and getting candidates in? And then thirdly, I think we need to also look at how are we advertising our jobs? And are they are they easily read? And what is the response time and really understand? Are we doing everything to make it as simple for the candidate as it can be? Because right now, I feel like we have too many steps in the process. So we might right now we currently have four interviews throughout the process. And it takes maybe two to three weeks to get that process through depending on the level of the position, we need to shorten that process.
Kyle Roed:
So how do you approach the challenge of, you know, reducing kind of the the number of interviews and, you know, really kind of streamlining a process, but also kind of balancing that, you know, the risk of selection error, or maybe not vetting a candidate enough? How do you how do you approach that?
Cindy Klein:
Yeah, so we've actually started committee, doing committee interviews, which I've never been a fan of in the past, but I'm finding that they're becoming better. So we started this about a month ago, to actually kind of cut down the number of interviews. Also, for the candidate, I don't feel it's necessary to have five interviews throughout the process. So we've developed a committee and because we're a global organization, we're picking basically key leaders within the teams, the appropriate teams across the globe. So one in our Europe team, one in the US team and one in our Canadian team. So they're really because then they get a real understanding of the entire organization.
Kyle Roed:
Okay. What about the managers that feel left out? I mean, I'm the best. I'm the best picker talent in this company. And you don't want my opinion like, you know,
Cindy Klein:
that that's true. Kyle, it happens on a regular basis. Everyone, always there's always someone that always feels like they're being left out. Well, I think what we what we're doing right now is we're rotating that so we're rotating be amongst the team because we are hiring so many people. So just in North America, we're hiring 155 people this year. And in Europe, it's a it's comparable. So we're gonna hire over about 300 people. So we're rotating the leaders within that committee. Got it? Don't worry, everyone's gonna get their fair share of
Kyle Roed:
255. I don't know how big the organization is. But yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot of interviews.
Cindy Klein:
Yeah, we're only 400 people right now. Double the organization in the next year.
Kyle Roed:
It's so fascinating. And, you know, we didn't really dive into your background here in the intro, but you know, you've seen, you've seen the world of recruiting for a number of years spent some time at att, indeed, and zip recruiter. And now you're at talent.com. And and so I'm curious if you've seen the, over the years, have you seen this shift away from maybe what I would call a, a drawn out interview process, or an interview process that was almost intentionally slow and methodical into more organizations trying to maybe make this just a little bit more efficient?
Cindy Klein:
I have. So both of them both, when I was at Indeed, and zip, we were not very high growth mode, which of course, they're still they still are. And I think, with both of those organizations, when I got there, they were as much smaller organization and have, of course, gotten much larger. So I think I was doing interviews, maybe many during every day of every day, I was spending a good portion of my day doing interviews, so we had to streamline that process. So I think it's really important for every organization to really look at how many interviews your leaders are doing per day, and how much time does that take away from their other responsibilities? And how does how does the candidate experience go along with the amount of resources that is taking away to?
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely, that's such an important point. And I, I'm sure every HR professional that's listening has heard this, it's like, you know, the hiring manager that's like, I'm just tired of doing interviews. Yeah. Not to is like, that's all I do. And yeah, you know, I think about, you know, it's almost like there's two different, there's two different, I don't know, customers, so to speak, you think about that, well, you've got like, you've got like the hiring manager experience, like the person that actually has the vacancy needs that person on their team. And then you've got the candidate experience. And then you've got HR in the middle. And I, you know, I think, as we've had this conversation, and as I reflect on our own processes, within the companies that I've worked at, you know, it's almost like HR is like the, we're the owner of that process, right? So we really, we really own both sets of those experiences. And don't we just want both of those experiences to be good, right? It's not it's not it. It's not an and or it's, it's, you know, it's both of those experiences being good, right?
Cindy Klein:
Yeah. And I think the key to is your applicant tracking system has to be solid. And I think, How many times is one of the biggest challenges when we take it from the candidate experience on the site? So we work with tons of our customers, and we start going down the path of how long does it take for them to apply to a job? And as you know, some, some pre qualifier questions and different things can take 30 minutes, 45 minutes? Do you really want a candidate spending 45 minutes? What is the drop off rate for every step in the process?
Kyle Roed:
Yeah, absolutely. And I will admit, this full disclosure, I did not have an applicant tracking system until like, a few years ago. And, you know, I had I had like, like, I had managers like with their own individual zip accounts. And like, doing their best right, now that, you know, we, we got there, we're, we're doing better. But yeah, just the ability for self for you to take a little web snippet, put it on a website, and then all somebody has to do is go to that, you know, just click, one click apply, correct. auto populate all the data, don't make them reenter the data, right? Like, why do they need to reapply once they've already click the one click apply, all you really need is an email and a name and a resume. Right? Like quit doing all the silly application stuff.
Cindy Klein:
It was funny because my husband is actively starting to look for a job and he's just like, I don't understand why I have to click on this site and then go to then I have that and it's been 45 minutes here and then I go to GE site or whatever, you know, whatever organization I'm going to, and I have to spend an hour I submit the same information. It's just he's like, can you fix this? I'm like, I can't personally fix this. It's just an HR
Kyle Roed:
Yeah, get on the phone Cindy, and call the HR manager this job I'm apply for just give them You know, give him hell, right? Like,
Cindy Klein:
but then then I have to take a step back. And I'm saying from a candidate, I can see his perspective, like, he doesn't understand that this is just the reality many times because, you know, some organizations can't do the one click apply for various reasons. So the less steps that a candidate has to take, the less frustration they have in the whole experience, as well. And the more likely they're going to apply for the job.
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I'll go back to I'll go back to the DoorDash example. And the way I think about it's like, okay, so I'm, I'm already lazy enough that I don't want to cook dinner, right, which is, you know, it was a Monday, whatever. And then, and then I'm also just lazy enough where I'm like, you know, I know, I could pick up the phone and say, This DoorDash fee, and probably, you know, convinced him to, you know, like, do that, but I'm too lazy to do that, too. Right? And it's like an all I have to do is mindlessly hit this button, and then I can, you know, I can get food. It's like, oh, pay the $4 delivery fee, or whatever it is, you know, it's like it is where we're at that point in, in our society where we just want it to be easy. And if you make it hard for a candidate, even if they even if they are mildly interested in your company, they might not be that interested, right? Like, we're not all Google and talent.com. And, you know, and Apple, and, you know, sometimes we just we need to make it so easy that it's, it's it is mindless. And I know, a hiring manager probably like well, that I don't want to lazy applicant. Well, you know, the truth is they just want it to be easy. And if they don't know who you are, it doesn't matter. Right?
Cindy Klein:
Correct. And you have to think about the generations to come. The generations that are coming up, and that will be graduating and the you know, the younger generations, they won't even type now they just want to voice everything. How are we going to handle those generations that want to voice text everything into an applicant tracking system, it's really something to think about for the future.
Kyle Roed:
You know, the other way to think about that is this isn't, this isn't about like a laziness thing. Or like people who are unmotivated, you know, this, I've had candidates who have actually actually said, you know, the fact that it was so that I got hired so quickly makes me feel like this company moves quickly. And I like that, you know, I want to work for a company that is like, innovative and cutting edge and moves quickly. And it's like, exciting and like focuses on the candidate, because that's probably how much they're gonna focus on the employee when I work there, right? It's like, it's all part of that whole lifecycle kind of that onboarding, free boarding, like, you know, candidate experience.
Cindy Klein:
Yeah, they feel good about the company, they feel like, they're not going to be like, not think a lot about me, they're gonna care about me that, you know, it's not always about the salary anymore. You know, the years ago, I think it was very much about how much are you going to pay me? What are your like health benefits? And those were like, the key factors? 401k? It's not, it's not always about those things anymore. It's about the culture of the organization. What am I going to get out of this? You know, it's that personal touch that you need to make with every potential candidate? It's, you know, what are you giving me to make me feel good about coming to work every day?
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I don't see that changing.
Cindy Klein:
I don't know about you. No, definitely not. It
Kyle Roed:
will take we're going back.
Cindy Klein:
I don't think we're going back. So the way it was 15 years ago, 10 years ago?
Kyle Roed:
Well, I think about it, this is, you know, it's kind of similar context, not directly related to recruiting, but it's like, you know, if the average time that someone stays at a company is three to five years, which is pretty close, right? Depending on industry, etc. And you have a six year vesting schedule on a 401k. That benefit might not mean anything to them, correct? Yeah. Because they don't, they're like, I'm not staying here for 60, I want to be here for three years, I want to, and then I want to go take the learnings and go do something new. And, you know, a huge insight that I've had over the last few years is, you know, if we aren't intentional about who we hire, and kind of how we design jobs and what you know, what we actually need for the job. And we assume that people are going to stay for 20 years, like the math just doesn't work out. Like that's not the prevailing trend. We got to be a little bit more a little bit more open minded to how we design jobs and how we hire people and and yeah, it's it's, it's I think everything is getting quicker, including stop cycling.
Cindy Klein:
Yeah, I think everything is moving quicker. And I think we just need to think about how are we going to take the next generations And how are we going to evolve in the HR space? Absolutely, it's gonna be tough, it's gonna be tough because we don't, the HR space doesn't change as fast as some of the other spaces do.
Kyle Roed:
Well, that is, you know what, that's a perfect setup, I promise it and ask you to say that because that's why we exist. Rebel HR, right? It's like, okay, what can we do differently? Like, how do we fix this? And how do we, you know, how do we speed this up, so that we're not left in the dust by the rest of the organization? And then we become the bottleneck for success? Right? I mean, we're kind of seeing that right now, as it relates to trying to get people hired and then keeping them in the organization. Right.
Cindy Klein:
Yeah. And I think I think to not be the bottleneck, I think the challenge here is that HR, you know, sometimes can be the bottleneck. And I think that's where they, the HR team has to be the leader of the organization. And the ones that provide the recommendations to the hiring managers of these are the things we're going to do to get to the candidates versus the hiring managers always coming to HR and saying these are I need these people, can you take help me? And I think that's kind of a shift in how most dynamics work in organizations, or at least in our organization is us as, as the hiring manager saying, we need this, we need this. And then it's kind of the opposite.
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, you know, I think one, maybe one question I'm curious to get your perspective on is we talked about, you know, a lot of things that we that we could do, and I don't think anybody that's listening to this is going to disagree that you know, speeding up the time to fill improving the candidate experience, improving the hiring manager experience, making sure you have a great selection panel so that you get the right person. Nobody's going to disagree with that. But how can we differentiate ourselves as a collective group like, like, what are the things that you've seen work? As it relates to some of these organizations that are really trying to stand out against the crowd?
Cindy Klein:
I'm differentiating yourselves at from an HR perspective, or as a
Kyle Roed:
organism, HR as an employer. Yeah, I should go to market.
Cindy Klein:
Yeah, I think as an HR or even employer perspective, I think it's about uniqueness, as well as when I say benefits, and I don't really mean benefits as health benefits. I think it's unique benefits. So what are you offering to that candidate? That is outside of financial? So for example, are there additional, like volunteer days? And what do those volunteer days mean? And what are those additional days off? Or are there things in the office are offering? If they have to go back to an office and in the office is a whole different topic? You know, are we doing a combination of work from home versus you know, and that's, you know, that hybrid role? I think, what are you doing that's unique, to allow that employee to feel like they want to work for you? So, you know, do you, you know, my husband used to work in the beverage industry. And so when he was in the beverage industry, a huge perk was, of course getting beverages and having an allowance. So is there an allowance or gift baskets? If you're working from home? Are you getting some kind of gift basket on a quarterly basis of food or food gift cards? Because you're working from home?
Kyle Roed:
Interesting, interested? Okay. Yeah. For employees
Cindy Klein:
that are working from home, making them part of an organization?
Kyle Roed:
Data? Okay, perfect. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, we've seen, there's definitely been some other offerings out there in the market, there's definitely some, some folks doing some interesting thing. You know, I've been asked more in the last year or two about, you know, our corporate social responsibility pledge, and what are we doing to go green? And how are we reducing carbon footprint? You know, it's, what are we doing for diversity, equity and inclusion as an organization? Yeah. So it's some of those things that I do. I would agree, like candidates are looking for that. So if you don't have an answer for it, you better get one. But then anyway, you can actually differentiate yourself as you as you do recruitment, marketing. You know, it's that much more, more critical. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Cindy, this has been a wonderful conversation. And, you know, I feel like we're just kind of getting warmed up and starting to dig through it. But we are going to shift gears and go into the rebel HR flash round. So are you ready? Yes, sir. All right, perfect. Question number one. What are you reading right now?
Cindy Klein:
So I'm reading dare to lead by Brene Brown.
Kyle Roed:
Awesome. I was just looking I think, yep, that's on my bookshelf. That's, that's on my next to read less. So
Cindy Klein:
it's one Am I it's great. I, I read it, many, many while back many years ago and I'm rereading it because it's one of my favorites.
Kyle Roed:
Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, question number two, who should we be listening to?
Cindy Klein:
So I listened to a couple podcasts regularly. Of course, I listened to the daily by New York Times and then a bit of optimism. So which is always positive and gives you some different perspective. And then I have quite a few parenting ones.
Kyle Roed:
I get it. I get it.
Cindy Klein:
You need those?
Kyle Roed:
The middle schoolers, right? Yeah, middle schoolers. You
Cindy Klein:
guys are tough years parents.
Kyle Roed:
Those are tough years. All right. Last question here. How can our listeners connect with you,
Cindy Klein:
you can connect with me on LinkedIn at Cindy M Klein.
Kyle Roed:
Perfect. And we will have all that information in the show notes. Cindy, just really appreciate the time here today. And thanks for giving us some things to think about as we continually try to improve human resources. So thank you.
Cindy Klein:
Thank you very much.
Kyle Roed:
All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast on Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcaster is the author's and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we know animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe
