Rebel Podcast: Life and Work on Your Terms

Episode 54: The Fastest Recruiter Wins! with Mike Seidle

July 20, 2021 Kyle Roed / Mike Seidel Season 2 Episode 54
Rebel Podcast: Life and Work on Your Terms
Episode 54: The Fastest Recruiter Wins! with Mike Seidle
Rebel Human Resources Podcast +
Become a supporter of the show!
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Mike Seidle leads a team of seven as Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder at WorkHere. WorkHere reduces time-to-hire from weeks to days (or even less.) They screen unqualified and unengaged candidates with chat and SMS, so you don’t have to.

Mike attended Ball State University and Naval Nuclear Power School Served in US Navy Five-time startup entrepreneur: White River Technology Group, Indy Associates (first digital agency and seo agency in midwest), Professional Blog Service (first social media agency in midwest), Virtual Payment Systems (payment processing for law firms) and PivotCX. Served as Director of Development for DirectEmployers and as lead platform architect for National Labor Exchange and DirectTraffic products Developed international HR tech integration standards while serving on Board of Directors for the HR Open Standards Consortium 

https://workhere.com/
https://workhere.com/demo/

Mike’s Profile

linkedin.com/in/indymike

mikeseidle.com  (Mike Seidle)

Email
mikeseidle@gmail.com

Twitter


Did you know that podcasts are a great way to grow your personal and business brand voice?

Here’s the secret, we all want to feel connected to brands we buy from. What better way to humanize a brand than through sharing your story on a podcast.

Kitcaster is a podcast booking agency that specializes in developing real human connections through podcast appearances.

If you are an expert in your field, have a unique story to share, or an interesting point of view-- it’s time to explore the world of podcasting with Kitcaster.

You can expect a completely customized, concierge service from our staff of communication experts. Kitcaster is your secret weapon in podcasting for business. Your audience is waiting to hear from you.

Go to https://kitcaster.com/rebel to apply for a special offer for friends of this podcast.

Rebel HR is a podcast for HR professionals and leaders of people who are ready to make some disruption in the world of work.

Subscribe today on your favorite podcast player!  

We'll be discussing topics that are disruptive to the world of work and talk about new and different ways to approach solving those problems.

Follow Rebel HR Podcast at:

www.rebelhumanresources.com
https://twitter.com/rebelhrguy

The I.T. Career Podcast
Your ultimate guide to success in the I.T. industry. Helping you Grow your career!

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Rebel HR is a podcast for HR professionals and leaders of people who are ready to make some disruption in the world of work. Please connect to continue the conversation!

https://twitter.com/rebelhrguy
https://www.facebook.com/rebelhrpodcast
http://www.kyleroed.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-roed/

Mike Seidle:

We've actually done some research on how much time we really have after somebody applies to when we start seeing a drop off in the number of candidates that make it through the process. Believe it or not, 83 seconds is where we can actually measure a change in the number of people that make it through to the end of the process. This is the rebel HR podcast, the podcast where we talk to human resources, innovators, about innovation in the world of HR. If you are a people leader, or you're looking for a new way to think about how to help others be successful. This is the podcast for you. Rebel on HR rebels.

Kyle Roed:

Rebel HR listeners. Thanks for joining us again this week really excited for our guest today. Mike Seidel. He is the chief technology officer and co founder at work here. He leads a team of seven as the Chief Operating Officer work here reduces the time to hire from weeks to days or even less. They screen unqualified and unengaged candidates with chat and SMS. So you don't have to, we're excited to have you. I've got Patrick joining me as well. All right, Mike, thank you so much for joining us really excited for the conversation today. And why don't we just start off? Why don't you just tell us a little bit about what work here is and what's your mission? Yeah, so what we have at work here, and just so you know, we're in the middle of a rebrand the new company name is pivot cx and websites pivot cx.io. But we're chat based recruiting company, we really focus on helping companies move their recruiting process away from emails and phone calls into more of a chat driven SMS based recruiting flow. And the reason we do that is 93% of text messages get read within three minutes of when you send them. And we found that one of the best ways to improve recruiting performance is to send messages that people actually get. That's a novel idea. I've got an applicant tracking system, and I've tried to use their text feature, and it kind of sucks. So So what do you do to make sure that that to make sure that the feature is effective, and that, you know, candidates are opted in and having a good candidate experience through your system?

Mike Seidle:

Yeah, so it all starts with how they apply for the job. And not all applicant tracking systems are created equal, I would say some are better than others. But with atss, we might say some are worse than others. But at the end of the day, what we do is try to hook up our software, to native jobs, native job applications on job boards, and then to the applicant tracking system to push the results of that initial engagement in, we also can hook up to an applicant tracking system too. But the whole idea is to do chat inside of an application that's designed for that. There's a real big difference between a really nice chat app and the UI you get in your applicant tracking system. And we've spent a lot of time making sure we have the right tools. So you can go quickly. And the tools are just very different for chatting versus the usual kinds of operations you're doing in ATMs. Sure. Sure.

Patrick Moran:

So I have a question on that when the receiver gets it, does it look like spam? Or does it look legit?

Mike Seidle:

That's a really good question. And the answer to that is, it usually looks pretty legit. I'll give you an idea of what the flow is like, you know, everybody advertises on job boards at some level. So we'll pick on a job board add on indeed, as an example, what the experience we really are shooting for is to make it so someone applies for a job. And within a few seconds, they get a message, hopefully one that is really engaging something to the effect of Patrick, you've applied for a great job as podcast host. Do you have time to talk now? And if you answered that text with a question that question with, you know, yes, we try to hook you right up to a human be that a recruiter or a professional chat agent, whatever the right mode is for that and get you into a conversation that really is focused on two things. One is confirming that you're qualified. And a lot of the things will typically be a phone screen, we try to get done via chat. reason we do that as a we can do it. And it's just very time efficient to do it that way. And then when the candidates fully qualified and ready for an interview, the idea is, let's hand that candidate off along with the conversation to the next person in the process. And that could be a hiring manager or that could be a recruiter or depending on, you know, who does the real interview.

Kyle Roed:

Interesting. So, you know, when I think if I were to reflect on my experience with those types of systems has been really clunky, you know, on my end, it's like, Okay, I'm trying to just see if this person has any interest, or has already taken another job, or I think the word in your literature was in, you know, engaged or not. So how do you address some of those kind of user experience issues on the side of human resources? Yeah,

Mike Seidle:

so engagement is a big thing. And in conversational recruiting, it's kind of everything. It all starts with the very first message you send, and is it the right one? Are we asking the candidate questions? Or are we just saying, Congratulations, you've applied for the job? Somebody will be contacting you soon, you know, we send unengaging content, we get no engagement. If we send engaging content, we ask questions, you know, it could be as simple as going you applied for podcast host is now a good time to talk. And if you say yes, instead of calling your instead of trying to switch modes to email or do something like that, we just answer with a text. Some pretty magical stuff happens just because we're already talking. And what we just did is told you in a single question that this is going to be a real conversation. And then I think what a lot of companies do with texting is they look at it and they go, this is a tool that I can use for alerts and notifications. Yeah, it works pretty good for that. There's also a school of thought is like, hey, let's put a chat bot on this. And really, right now, with the market being the way it is, it's a really good time to put your best experience right at the beginning and engage that candidate right away with a real person

Kyle Roed:

100% the chatbot thing? You know, it's interesting, and I've seen a lot of a lot of comments about it. And kind of the, you know, the AI and the ATMs and that kind of thing. I'm a little bit I'm leery to start to use it for that exact reason. It's the kind of personalization of the candidate experience. And then I feel like if you do have these inauthentic messages flying around, you know, people sniff that out in like two seconds, right? And they're like, Oh, this is, this is either spam, or it's a BS company. Or they're just jerks. And I don't want to work there. Because they don't think that I'm worth the time to talk to him. So we don't do it at my company. Patrick, what's your take on the AI in the chat bot kind of stuff?

Patrick Moran:

I haven't found it effective with the tracking system that I use. I've tried it just because I'm trying anything right now to talk to people, just like everybody, I hope. But if my initial email doesn't go through, I'm old school, and I pick up the phone and call them. And I know they're not gonna answer but at least it's male. You know, hopefully they listened to it. That's kind of where where my head's at with that stuff right now. And I'm not knocking. It's just who wants to use it in that regard. And to me, I'm just picking up a phone right now.

Kyle Roed:

I think you hit on something really critical, Patrick? And that's, I call them and they never answer. Right. And that's part of the challenge. That's kind of the wall we're trying to break through. Right. So Mike, how does your How does your tool kind of, you know, break down those barriers of people screen in a phone call? And what kind of tools can you leverage in the system to, to smooth that out? All right, we've,

Mike Seidle:

there's a lot there. But I'm going to start with kind of turning the clock back a little bit and telling a little story here about why our company got into doing chat and got into doing conversational recruiting. We originally started our company, we had this great idea we were going to build the next great job search app, it was going to be kind of Yelp for jobs. And you know, this was five years ago back when mobile apps were hot. And so what do you do you build a mobile app? Right? So we did that. And it totally didn't work very well. You know, we could get candidates into it. We could get them connected with the employer. But then the bad things happened when we sent the candidate over the employer, nobody engaged. Nobody called him back. That was so bad that we actually started doing a little bit of chat just to see what was wrong and why it wasn't working. And then we got this brilliant idea of let's build a chatbot. And I spent a half million dollars developing an AI powered chat bot. It was pretty good one and it does what most of the chatbot products out there do. And one day we looked at it and go this isn't really working that well. And we had three or four interns that were bored. So we go interns versus the chat bot, let's see what who went. And let's see who can get more interviews today that bot for the interns and the interns one by 300%. Wow. And so we go, Whoa, we got that there's something here, even though there's really you know, how much different Can it really be between a bot and a human and 160 characters, there's a big difference. And a lot of it has to do with how the human responds to things. You know, if you come at a chatbot with my mom has cancer and I really need a job. You know, the chat bots going to come back with All right, well, who Let's go, or it's going to come back and go What is your name? Real empathetic, right. And meanwhile, humans going to be Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. I'd love to help you. And that's the difference is really the empathy that the humans have. So we took that and it took actually COVID hitting for us to go Wait a minute, all we're going to do is this chat thing. When COVID hit last year, the rest of that Yelp for jobs thing, kinda on the vine in February, we lost 85% of our customers. And the 15% that stuck around were all companies that we were doing chat for as a service. So we just rebuilt our software brought it back to market in December. And we've now passed up 2019 and 2020 is revenue. Because what we're seeing out there is there's a real a candidates are hard to find, there's not a lot of talent out there that's available to hire, there's a very short window to hire the good ones. And the reason why texting works, so well starts with 93% of text messages are actually read within three minutes when you send them so not only they read the read quickly, you send me an email, it's got a 20% open rate, if it's the world's best email subject, you know, it's like your house is on fire, click now you know, open the readme Now that might get 20%. But as far as getting somebody to read recruiting email, it's going to be lower than that. And then phone calls everybody pre screened. So as we built our chat app, we really focused on how do we help recruiters get through pre screening. And it starts with the phone number that you're using to chat from. So we like to use local phone numbers apps, the market that you're recruiting in, so people feel like they can trust it, hey, you know, I'm looking for a job in Indianapolis, this is the correct area code for Indianapolis, that can help a lot. And then as you do start working with a candidate, we think being able to call them from the same phone number you're texting on really helps. And so in our chat system, there's a button that says call and you can click it and make a phone call through your browser on the same phone number you're chatting on. So we're really trying to find tools that help you get through to the candidate. candidate, really, they're not trying to ignore you, it's just that they don't know if the next call is going to be a car warranty, or a cemetery plot salesman or a collection agency, right?

Kyle Roed:

Yeah, I think I got three of those extended car warranty calls just in the last hour or so. And they're, what I'm hearing is, first of all, now I understand why you call it pivot cx it sounds like that's exactly. That's the origin story. So it is nice play on branding there. But what I'm hearing is you're trying to make it a frictionless experience, you know, where it's kind of a seamless, you know, hey, it's a text message, somebody looked at it, that means the phones in their hand, and then if you hit you have time for a call, all they have to do is hold it up to their ear. Right at a time that works for them.

Mike Seidle:

Yeah, it really helps. There's so many other little things, you know, scheduled messages and things like that. So many little features that can help with, you know, breaking the ice, make phone calls. But at the end of the day, a lot of the trick with conversational recruiting is that you're actually trying to have a conversation and part of successfully doing that is being respectful of the person that you're conversing with. And what we're finding is people are okay with you texting, if they're not, they will tell the system to stop sending messages, and we'll stop sending them like legally have to. But at the end of the day, that really does help because the candidates you are talking to want to talk to you. And if you're quick meaning they applied, we're talking right away, they still remember they actually applied for the job.

Patrick Moran:

Right. You know, I have a question. I'm interested to hear your take with organizations right now. How especially large organizations that have such a process, and we lose them? So for organizations that have such a process, especially these large organizations, how much is it hurting them, having their HR recruiters checks, so many boxes, I think you spoke to this earlier, versus versus just picking up a phone. I mean, you check all these boxes, and after a week, and it's gone, they've already found a job. You know, what's your take on that?

Mike Seidle:

Oh, we see very close to a doubling of the number of interviews when you plug the chat process in and go fast versus the average process that was in place before we came in. So we're obviously getting a lot more people on the hook, that are getting through that interview stage. And the reason that happens is because like anything in marketing, there's a window of interest that that person has who's responded. And so you get them to apply on your ATMs or you get them to apply on your career website or or maybe a native apply on Indeed, the sooner that you reach out to that candidate, the more likely you are to catch them in that window of interest. We've actually done some research on how much time we really have after somebody applies when we start seeing a drop off in the number of candidates that make it through the process, believe it or not, 83 seconds is where we can actually measure a change in the number of people that make it through to the end of the process. Wow. And most of those are lost right at the first they're lost at the first message. They just never respond.

Kyle Roed:

And now word from our sponsors. When Molly Patrick and I tried to figure out how to start our own podcast, we didn't know where to start. Thankfully, we found buzzsprout buzzsprout makes it super easy for us to upload our episodes, track our listeners, and get listed on all the major podcast networks. Today's a great day to start your own podcast. I know that you're one of our listeners. So you've definitely got something to say. Whether you're looking for a new marketing channel, have a message you want to share with the world. Or just think it would be fun to have your own talk show. podcasting is an easy, inexpensive and fun way to expand your reach online. buzzsprout is hands down the easiest and best way to launch, promote and track your podcast. Your show can be online and listed in all the major podcast directories within minutes of finishing your recording. podcasting isn't that hard when you have the right partner, and the team it buzzsprout is passionate about helping you succeed, join over 100,000 podcasters already using buzzsprout to get their message out to the world. And now for listeners of revel HR, you can get a $20 amazon gift card sent to you from buzzsprout by clicking in the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. I think that's such a critical point. And the truth is I know that a number of HR people may disagree with this statement. But a lot of times getting that great candidate, you're just lucky, you are able to you happen to get the right resume at the right time for the right position, and it comes in and you're like, yes, this is it. This is the candidate that I wanted. And the truth is, it really has nothing to do with your, you know, exemplary recruiting strategy, it just has everything to do with that person happened to look at that link and got that email at that right time. But if you don't have a mechanism to speed that higher up as quickly as possible, that applicants gone just as quickly as they showed up. I mean, I've you know, the fastest hire wins, or I'm sitting on the phone, and I've got a candidate that I love. And I've been talking to for a week or two, and the hiring managers talk to him and they love them. And they're like, Alright, let's draft an offer. And they come back and I said, You know what? I had two competing offers, and you know, I appreciate it. But I already accepted this one. So you know, I love that you offered me but I I'm gone.

Mike Seidle:

You know when I put my recruiting hat on my favorite thing, my favorite thing to have happen of all is when you're able to make a hire, before all the competition even starts calling the candidate back from their original application. When we when you go that fast where you hire somebody, and then they've they're on the job for three or four days and they start getting calls on their cell phone from where they applied somewhere else two weeks ago. That's a great feeling. Because you know, you got it, right.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely, absolutely. And then you know, it. inertia is strong, right? I mean, somebody is already in, they've already got, you know, they've already done the orientation, they're starting to get to know the team, they started some training, you know, as much as that company that may be calling them may have been on the top of their list. You've got inertia in your favor, right, you know, so you gotta use every advantage you can, especially in this labor market, right?

Mike Seidle:

Absolutely. We it's really fun. We've been doing a lot. And this should be no surprise just because of demand. But we've been doing a lot with software developers, hiring software developers. And what has been amazing is how absolutely glacially slow. Most companies go with these super high demand positions that, you know, they're they're looking for very expensive candidates spending incredible amounts of money, just getting applications and cost more. And they go slow, engaging. And we're seeing where a lot of these developers, they're looking for a job because they had a bad day. And yeah, they're interested in changing jobs now and they go back to work tomorrow, maybe two, three days from now they're gonna patch it up with their boss or solve whatever the tech problem was, that's got him frustrated, and the window will close on hiring him.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. And then, you know, I'm just thinking about, it's even more perfect if you know, man had a really crappy day you go apply at lunch, and then you get a text message by three o'clock in the afternoon. And now the wheels are turning the right direction already.

Mike Seidle:

Yeah, I we knew we were we kind of knew we were onto something with the text based recruiting the whole idea of doing this text based conversational recruiting. When we were doing a project, we were looking for SAP certified account auditors with a public trust or better clearance that had to work in the Pentagon so that like, we were simple squirrel, not not specific. Yeah. Not specific at all right? Yeah. All right. So we're doing that and we figured out how to get some ads in front of them. And so we started getting a little candidate flow. And I'll never forget this one because one of our chat agents, like started yelling, hey, might come over here. You got to see this. And so I got up and ran across the room and was watching the conversation. There was a guy that replied back to the advertisement said, I'm interested. And they started chatting and they go, he was asking questions and like, you know, can we call you later on? And he goes, Well, actually, you'll have to call me after five. I'm actually in the john and saw the ad. So the guy was texting us from the toilet about changing jobs. And the best part was, this guy was completely qualified and all of that. And you know, then you start realizing that speed really there, if he had, we had not got to him at that very moment, I don't think we ever would have had the captive audience there that we needed.

Kyle Roed:

That's it truly captive, truly, they're not moving, at least not for a little bit.

Mike Seidle:

But it was one of those moments where you go, Okay, wait a minute, we're going fast enough. We're catching people when they're in the moment, this is good. And then as we've took it in other industries, it's worked on everything from the next great forklift driver, manufacturing, we've done pretty well with that. Healthcare, do a ton of work with truck driver CDL. And one that's really been surprising, has been when we get into knowledge workers, like software developers, we did, you'll appreciate this podcast producers wants not as fun. But it all is really similar in that most people when they're applying for a job, they want a job right now. And if you kind of go for instant gratification in your communication, it can really change the game, you know, again, you see about a doubling of the number of candidates that come through just by going fast. And I think the hardest thing for us to measure is how many of the candidates are highly qualified versus, you know, like, what would we have missed? If we had waited two weeks, we just don't have a way to see that. But we're pretty sure that a lot of the really good candidates are the ones who get hired first.

Kyle Roed:

Well, and I think it's, that would be interesting to measure the candidate quality if you could, which is sometimes almost impossible. But if you start with a bigger funnel, and you've just got more applicants to choose from, eventually you'll be able to narrow it down to a better candidate than you would if you had a smaller funnel, right? Or you're gonna pay a whole lot of money to get the right people in the funnel. And you're gonna pay a 20 or 30% markup first year salary to an external recruiter, which it's not what we necessarily want to do. So, yeah, I

Mike Seidle:

think the biggest problem most HR, you know, if you go look at most recruiting organizations, and and the bigger the company is, the bigger the problem, this is as far as being a challenge. Most recruiters and hiring managers are able to just sit there and be ready to respond to the next candidate that applies or the next candidate that calls in, right. We're all really busy. We got meetings, you know, we've got meetings to do, we've got to get reports ready for bosses, we've got a lot of things to do that don't involve waiting for the next 160 character message to pop up. Right.

Kyle Roed:

Right. 100%? Yeah, I mean, I'm guilty of that. I mean, you know, there'll be times where I have a job posted, and I don't get to it for a day or two, because it's always it's critical, but it's not as urgent as something else that pops up throughout the day, sometimes, right. And, you know, the hiring managers have the exact same issue with their screening, screening resumes. So

Mike Seidle:

well, that's been a, that's been a huge driver for us. And one of the things that's really exciting about what we get to do is we get a chance to go help companies understand the opportunity that's there, you know, what you've got is you've got candidate flow, you're spending lots of money on indeed and zip recruiter, and everywhere else you're getting candidates from the challenge we have here is one where if hiring is really important, we need to start treating that like it is and you know, maybe the recruiter isn't the right person to be doing that initial engagement, initial chat, maybe we bring in some people that are they're paid differently, who are chat agents, and their job is to just, you know, we train them to ask a few questions early on in the process and, and do a pre screen. So when the recruiters get to that candidate, they know a they're qualified and that their credentials have been validated. And the recruiters can start warm with candidates that already had been through screening, instead of having to spend, you know, 70 80% of your time screening and 20 30%. spending your time chasing people that won't answer the phone.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I also see, one of the big challenges too, is if you're doing volume recruiting, and let's say you had, you know, I mean, in my opinion, if you have more than 10 open positions, and you've got somebody trying to manage, you know, double digit numbers of open positions, you know, you're just going to struggle, I mean, somebody's going to fall behind. So how do you handle each position as a kind of a bespoke position? So are there like, Are there different types of questions for different types of positions by company or do you have kind of a standard screening protocol? How do you approach that

Mike Seidle:

we start with kind of the tracks And true, there's a process that we have that we adapt to the job title and to the company that we're working with. So, you know, we've kind of got a formula for the first message we sent out, it's been battle tested, and split tests, and multivariant tested and all that good stuff to the point that we think we got a pretty good one. And then, you know, each step along the way, we've kind of built based on, you know, our experience with lots of different companies. But what what really is important in all of it is that, you know, we focus on being engaging and pulling the candidate along in the process. And then being really, really transparent when a candidate is a qualified, my favorite one is, people that apply for some license position, don't have the license, instead of making them wait six weeks and sending them a vaguely worded letter that says, We're not going to hire you for reasons, we just tell them, well, you don't have a CDL license, you have to have that to be a truck driver at our company. You know, when you get that you're welcome to apply again. And it really is pretty remarkable how well ends up working and how happy people are just to know what's going on.

Kyle Roed:

Interesting. Yeah, and I think one of the approaches that I've certainly I'm guilty of is that, you know, those call them the dear john letters, or the john deere letters, depending on your approach. You know, it's like, we want it to be a great candidate experience, but we don't want to give them any information. Why? Because we're afraid, you know, if we give them too much, and then now there's, you know, there's a risk of lawsuit and you know, it's not fair. And you get, so, you know, you look at like these canned emails, it's like, thank you for applying at blank. We had many wonderful candidates, including yourself to screen at blank, this role has been filled, please apply for it. You know, it's just such a it's just like, such a formatted email. But I'm guilty. I mean, you know, it's almost like, at least you're communicating something is kind of the approach, right. But I think, you know, it candidates expect that transparency, and they, I have run into people, I live in a pretty small community, I've run into people who've been like, I applied, and I got your email. Gee, thanks. And I'm like, I'm sorry. I didn't even did I wasn't involved in that decision. But you know, it happens.

Mike Seidle:

those letters are so hard to write. Yeah. It's like, I'm trying to be nice about this. But how do I, what we what I think happens a lot of times is they become disconnected from the actual interview process and all the things that candidates going through. And in their mind, you know, we've they've waited for two months, I think they already know they're not getting the job, and then it's just an extra gut punch at the end. Sometimes. I don't know what the answer is. But I do know, if we're early in the recruiting process, and we've got a candidate that's clearly not, you know, doesn't meet the requirements for the job. And we're able to tell them that we do a little quality survey after every chat, then, even when rejected candidates, there's a 4.8 out of five star rating that we have right now. And a lot of that isn't because we're so good at chatting is just because we're communicating and actually given the candidate a little information about their job search. And we're, we're telling them right away instead of making them wait four to eight weeks, and they're not really telling them what happened.

Patrick Moran:

Right, right. You know, Mike, I'm curious on your take on what I've experienced a few times over the last couple of weeks, I'll interview a candidate. And I have mall setup on the hook to come in today to interview with the hiring manager. They'll email me this morning, because this did happen today. and say, You know what? I appreciate your time. But I already accepted another job yesterday, you know that they're not starting at that other job today. Like why wouldn't you still come in to learn more about this opportunity? Like, why do they just take the first thing and run? Because they got one offer? What's your opinion on that?

Mike Seidle:

This is pure opinion. I don't have any real science here on this one. But a long time ago, when I was was in college, I sold cars to pay for college. And they were used once. So yes, I did the used car sales thing. I lost the ugly tie, something like that. But something stuck with me from that. I had this old finance manager and if you ever want to know who really sells cars, it's the finance guys. This whole finance manager told me one day that if I wanted to really make money selling cars, my job was to take people out of the market as fast as I could. And when you look at recruiting, I think it's the same thing. When somebody buys a car, they stop shopping, they're done. I got my car done. Don't want to hear about cars for three years, four years until the loan is paid off. No more. When it comes to recruiting. It's the same thing when people are searching for a job. You know, we're all recruiting people. Every Day, right? Well, it's what we do. But the job seeker, they look for a new job, you know, they get lots of jobs, it's every six months every, you know, year, if they are like most people, it's two, three years between job searches. And it's a painful process for them, the one thing they want is to end it, that's the one thing they want is they want to get a job and be done with the whole search, right. And I think we all forget that as recruiters, one of the things that we're really doing is trying to take the good candidates out of the market. So that's really something we should really remember is half of this is making those offers as soon as we reasonably can, so that the candidate goes, I got the job, because they do exactly what they did to you, Patrick, they come back and they tell you, you know, well, I accepted a job yesterday, even though you're gonna offer me twice the money, I'm going to take their offer, because it was yesterday.

Kyle Roed:

I love that analogy. It's so true. It's like not that I necessarily want to equate my business to a used car. But it is like, Hey, I got this used car, look at it, you know, it's shiny, you know, don't worry about that wreck, you know, everything's fixed, it's fine. You know, but you know, what's it gonna take to get you in this car today?

Mike Seidle:

You know, you can look at it that way. But I think it's when you look at that take him out of the market part, it really is about that person is on a mission to get new wheels, they are going to get a ride one way or the other. And Right, right, the first place that they find a car they like, and get through the financing process. That's the place that's going to actually sell the car. I think jobs don't work too much differently than that. In fact, there's a lot of similarities. How long do people own a car? How long do they stay in a job between before when they change? Is it something they do every day? How often do they do it? How many lots? Do they shop? How many interviews? do they do it? The numbers are very similar. So there that might not just be just an analogy, there might really be something to it. Right?

Kyle Roed:

And how much do they hate it?

Patrick Moran:

pile? That's a very good point. Because what I'm thinking about right now is the motivation on the candidates end right? For all recruiters, people that hire people. Think about this, what is the motivation? Why did I lose that great candidate? Were they truly looking for a job they really wanted? Which we thought this was? Or are they just trying to get out of a bad situation as fast as they can?

Kyle Roed:

I think that's a fair question. I think that's part of the challenge of that. Is it the quality candidate or is it the job FLIR?

Mike Seidle:

If you know, you know, there's that. But I'll submit a little little suggestion here. And that's that, you know, that there's only one way that we're ever going to find out the difference between the quality candidate and the job player. And that's to actually talk to that candidate. You could try to divine that from resumes and that kind of thing. But the best way to find out what somebody's situation is, is to just ask them.

Kyle Roed:

That's a great point. And I think it's one of those things that, you know, I caution, a lot of HR professionals on the, you know, focusing on that job hopping, you know, story that you may see in a resume, but a lot of times, that's the first kind of binary decision that's made when somebody looks at a resume is how long were they at the last company, and the last company before that, and the last company before that, you know, and if it's a lot of people, for a lot of people, it's if it's one year or less, I don't even I don't look at it anymore. For some, it's, you know, maybe a look at it, but it's a big, big red flag. But who knows, that person may have been in a seriously terrible work arrangement could have been some harassment issues in the workplace, you know, there could have been issues there the business could have shut down, could have been a layoff, you know, COVID, you know, for instance, so, you know, there's all these all these things you just don't know, by looking at a piece of paper, you do you have to have that interaction and whatever form that takes, right?

Mike Seidle:

Absolutely. And yet, the only way we're going to find out is actually engaging and talking. And it blows my mind that so many of us spend our time trying to figure out ways to not talk to the candidate. If we just try to avoid it, I mean, it's like, why why would we want to talk to the candidate? I mean, my gosh, they're just going to lie to us and not tell us the truth. And, you know, they're gonna fool us not not really talking to them, you're actually going to find out what they're made out of and how they think and, you know, are they really a good fit? Find out what the situation was, okay. Why did you have four jobs in the last five years? Then you find out, part of it was because they were going to school in one city and lives in another. You know, who knows? Right? All that stuff's not obvious looking at resumes. And I think all of us have sat in meetings, especially with hiring managers that don't interview lots of people, where they're trying to just read between every little line on the resume and it's a really incomplete story, and it's We're increasingly learning here. It's an inaccurate story in a lot of cases where the information that we're getting from, indeed, or zip recruiter or resume is inaccurate because the candidate didn't update it.

Kyle Roed:

Yeah, I've heard that a million times the I don't specifically know which program it is. But one of the programs literally changes your resume format, into their format. And I've had it where it, you know, it completely removes critical information from somebody whose resume if I didn't call them and, like, at one point I was, I called somebody because I was like, you know, their last job title looks really interesting. I can't even tell what their next their job title. So I just call it because I was just curious. Turns out, wow, this is a really great candidate, I need to get them in front of somebody today, to have a conversation. But had I just gone off of this weirdly formatted, you know, resume, I would have completely, completely missed this person. So

Mike Seidle:

actually, there's a number that we've found, and it's 13.1% of the profiles that get sent to us are inaccurate in some way. So almost, you know, over a 10th of the people that apply for a job, doesn't matter what channel they're coming through, are coming with incorrect information. And a lot of times a human being will do just what you did Kyle, and they'll look at it and go, Okay, this guy wouldn't have applied for this truck driver position if he couldn't drive a truck legally. Right. It says on his resume, his CDL license is expired. Do I a screen them out? Or do I be give them a call and double check? Right? And, you know, what's the right answer is we want to double check it, because we might have a good candidate. And so often with all the automation that we have, between our applicant tracking systems and, and sourcing tools, and, you know, chatbots, and all that good stuff, we miss out on the fact that they're making bad decisions because they have bad data.

Patrick Moran:

Right? You know, I'm hearing two awesome takeaways for our listeners in this in what you're saying right now is one, HR departments, if you listening, if you're recruiters, you got to try to train those biases, that your hiring managers are looking at those resumes, screening them out, without even looking at the big picture. Yeah, train to that. Secondly, if you get those canned resumes, where a vendor or you know, some sort of job board will reformat it to their format, but you're looking at it, like I was saying, and you think there's a story there, but you don't quite know. Bet it out. Don't just discard it, call the candidate say, Hey, you know what, this is a really choppy resume, I'm missing information, will you send me directly your normal resume, and I want to understand your story. And then the resume itself will probably tell you a better story. And then you talk to the kid on the phone, and their story will match up. And then it might be the best candidate you have. So if you takeaways for us nerds out there?

Mike Seidle:

Yeah, I'd make one little addition to what you said, Patrick, I'd recommend you to text him. That way, they get the message a little quicker. And we're likely to actually call you back. You know, if you go, Hey, this is Patrick and I got your application. And I'm really curious, do you actually have the license that you need to have for this job? Can you call me, you'll be amazed how quickly people will call you back? Because they actually want the job. except for that one guy that is just I don't know why I applied. But I can't help you with him.

Kyle Roed:

Well said, All right. Well, it's been just a great conversation. And I think a ton of takeaways. I mean, there's you know, I'm just trying to figure out Okay, which one of these tips Am I going to put in the show notes? I don't know yet. I'll just I'll put as many as I can. But we're gonna shift gears, we're gonna go to the rebel HR flash round. So a series of three questions to round off the interview here. So question number one, what is your favorite people book? My favorite people book? What do you mean by people book, a book that gives you insight towards human behavior? You know, maybe it's a book that just kind of shaped your worldview and how you interact with others. Someone those lines?

Mike Seidle:

Oh, boy, that is a really tough one. Gonna get the buzzer on this one. I just don't have a good answer for you. All right. No

Kyle Roed:

worries, no worries. We'll go with question number two, Who should we be listening to?

Mike Seidle:

That would depend on about what but I think the most important thing is to listen to the guy upstairs and pay attention to, you know, the things that really are important. It's, I think we all forget a lot that there are bigger things in life than pursuing financial success and pursuing, you know, the next great automobile or whatever your thing is. And sometimes our place in the world has more to do with how we treat people around us and how we do good. And so I think that's probably the most important thing you can do.

Kyle Roed:

Got it. Love that answer. Alright, last question. How can our listeners connect with you?

Mike Seidle:

That's pretty easy. Pivot. cx.io is the website and I'm on LinkedIn, Mike Seidel. there's not very many People with my name so I'm pretty easy to find love to talk about recruiting challenges and how to overcome them.

Kyle Roed:

Perfect. Sounds good. And we will have all that information in the show notes. Mike. It's been an absolutely wonderful conversation. Thank you again for joining us here. I'm going to be checking out my text messages here any minute.

Mike Seidle:

Thank you guys. I really appreciate it.

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, Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast Are those the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe

(Cont.) Episode 54: The Fastest Recruiter Wins! with Mike Seidle