Matt Vance: Hello, and thank you everyone for joining us. We have a painfully obvious topic today. What’s wrong with recruiting and hiring practices right now? hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off since the pandemic, many companies have also slowed hiring. This combination has created a surplus of talent for some roles and industries. Joining us today is an exceptionally talented, senior recruiter who was laid off. Six months ago with a depth of knowledge about hiring best practices. She has experienced the other side of recruiting while applying for countless jobs. So let’s welcome. Jamie Davis.

Jamie Davis: Hi guys. Good to be here.

Matt Vance: So good to have No, thanks for joining us Jamie and for everyone listening to a little context of how this conversation got started. So about 10 days ago, I saw a post on LinkedIn from Jamie, We’re not connected. The post was four hours old and had over 15,000 reactions just at that time. So Jamie tell us about the post. What were you talking about?

Jamie Davis: So I was talking about my experience being on the other side of the desk as it were and really, seeing a time in recruiting as a job searcher that I’ve never seen before. And so just kind of talking about, what I had experienced and also then reintroducing my skill set and what I am able to bring to a company, as far as talent acquisition goes, that post definitely has gotten a lot of attention and created great opportunities like this. So, I think it’s doing what it was meant to and really bringing this to the forefront of what’s going on in talent. Acquisition.

Matt Vance: And that’s crazy. And how many people have seen that post? Now it’s been a week and a half like what’s the reach?

Jamie Davis: So, at this point, that post has over 500,000 unique impressions, or views, and it’s at over 5,300 actual reactions and…

Matt Vance: Wow.

Jamie Davis: just for additional stats over 350 comments 350 reposts. It’s gotten a lot of attention.

Matt Vance: So it’s clear you are not alone. A lot of people desire to work right now and they’re resonating with your message about being frustrated. That’s me. It seems like it’s a very relatable topic for a lot of people that they can relate through your post.

Jamie Davis: Yeah, I think especially because since I guess probably Q4 of last year but especially, since the beginning of 2023 there have been a lot of layoffs, specifically in tech and specifically in talent acquisition and human resources. So it’s been interesting because there are a lot of really great and talented people in these spaces, who would run really excellent hiring processes, but are not working. And so it’s been interesting to see how companies seem to view talent acquisition as more of a service rather than a partnership. And it’s definitely led to some, I think breakdowns in the process for sure.

Matt Vance: Definitely, we know you’re a very experienced recruiter, you have a wealth of knowledge. You’ve had a lot of experience at different companies and now you’re also an experienced applicant with the past six months. So, give us some highlights of what this last six months has looked like with the job search.

Jamie Davis: Yeah, so I guess kind of from a stats perspective. I’ve applied to thousands of postings. I would say, I’m probably at around four to five. With plenty of, repeats of jobs that have been posted. I’ve had approximately 20 to 25 interviews. I made it to finals with two companies. One ghosted completely

Jamie Davis: The other,…

Matt Vance: Man.

Jamie Davis: I had been told that an offer was being drafted, and then didn’t find out for another probably five weeks that they had actually passed on me. And that’s, not including all the recruitment processes that I’ve been in, where there’s been a pretty huge amount of ghosting as well. So it definitely seems different than what I’m used to or how I run my recruitment desk and it’s hard. I think, in the community, especially kind of globally where this is happening to people, to not feel discouraged by getting rejection emails or just never hearing from a company. And yeah,…

00:05:00

Matt Vance: Don’t give feedback? Yeah.

Jamie Davis: I think feedback or at least closing the loop is important in some way. So it’s been interesting. But it’s part of the process and if you want a job you gotta be involved.

Matt Vance: So ghosting people was probably not one of your hiring practices.

Jamie Davis: No,…

Matt Vance: Is that right?

Jamie Davis: We all listen, everybody makes a mistake. We all drop the ball sometimes and forget to share feedback with a candidate. But if I got an email from someone saying, hey, Jimmy haven’t heard from you in a while. Just wanted to check in unless I was doing something, more pertinent or more important or in the agency World closer to the dollar. As soon as I was kind of done with the function, I was in the moment, I would answer that email and share whatever feedback I have or updates and no update update is still an update. So, better to be communicative than not but yeah, definitely something that I haven’t been used to

Matt Vance: No, it’s not even Halloween yet, but I would say a recruiter should never wear a ghost costume, but that is crazy. I am blown away that you’ve had to apply to literally thousands of jobs that are unreal.

Jamie Davis: Yeah, when I calculated that which was around the first big LinkedIn post that I had shared which I guess last time I checked has over 1.5 million unique views. I was just kind of going through LinkedIn. I knew that they showed 10 jobs a page and I had to go back 12 pages and that was a month and a half two months in and I’ve kept that cadence pretty high still so it’s been a lot of sending applications for sure.

Matt Vance: And I’m sure other people can relate to that are listening today. So let’s talk a little bit about what could be improved so that we’re not alone. There are a lot of people that are applying to lots of jobs and lots of recruiters that are also dealing with getting an abnormal flood of applicants. So let’s talk about your top. Let’s say five recommendations that companies can do differently to improve the applicant experience in today’s kind of unique labor market.

Jamie Davis: Yeah, and I mean, shout out to all of these recruiters who are dealing with postings that have a thousand applicants within 24 hours. It’s a lot but there are ways to make the process better. I think for everyone I would say things first

Jamie Davis: A must is having accurate consistent legally compliant job postings preferably including what the recruiting or hiring process is. Looks like kind of just a little outline in there and true. Good faith, salary range. I’m sure you guys have seen this. We all have some things, as you know, you’re making 50 to 500k a year and that’s just not there. there’s no world in which that range is, a real expectation. And I think that’s really important. I would also say making the application process easy and accessible as a recruiter, I’ve only had one position where I’ve really used cover letters to make a decision, and that was for one role in particular. So, no cover letters, do not require references in an application. You should not be reaching out to references until you’re prepared to make an offer.

Jamie Davis: Optimize your ATS workday. I do not have applicants filling out information that’s in their resume. That takes a lot of time. It can also be very ableist, especially in a world where people have disabilities and it can be harder for them to get through these applications. I’d say another big thing for me, is a quick and timely interview process with no more than four to five rounds at a push for a full-time role and two to three.

Jamie Davis: For contract roles and also ensuring that the cadence between them is quick. So you’re not waiting over a week for the next round to be scheduled. That’s something that recruiters have to set expectations with their hiring teams which is another one of my kind of quick tips of these little things that can have a huge return on investment. I would say My fourth is sending rejection and update emails.

Jamie Davis: When you’re doing this, use the company’s talent at Insert Company Ideally don’t use your personal email because one you will definitely get people asking why they were in moved forward and for an application, you don’t have time to give that feedback, but also it can get people thinking that they are gonna be selected for an interview. If they see, they’re being connected with an actual person at the company, and the biggest one in this kind of sending updates Do not reject candidates who have been in the interview process in any capacity, certainly not at a final. If they’ve had interviews, give feedback. If they have made it to a final and do not give feedback. This is an opportunity to create. Even if you don’t hire this person and ambassador for your company. When people have bad experiences, they share them. When people have good experiences, they share them close to the loop. It’s really important. And then the fifth and probably one of

00:10:00

Jamie Davis: The most important not that these all are coaching and training hiring teams before interviews, begin including the legal compliance pieces, really have those clear expectations regarding interview feedback and ideally at least one interviewer backup for each round if possible. Obviously, you can’t really have one for a CEO or a VP who doesn’t have a counterpart, but making sure that the hiring team on your end is completely Ready to go. You’re not gonna have candidates, be ghosted on an interview, or have to reschedule them a thousand times or worry about, an interviewer asking a question that maybe could get the company in some legal hot water, I think that is huge. And something that is a part of the recruiters responsibilities truly, but all of these kinds of five points to say there are some really easy and quick ways.

Jamie Davis: To create a much better experience. That isn’t just only for the candidate, but it’s for the hiring team, too. Hiring managers don’t want to wait two months to hire people. And, if you can turn candidates, you don’t select integrated ambassadors, you’re just going to get more great talent out of that. So, little things that will have a huge impact and return on your time. That can be, really kind of I don’t know, changing for people.

Matt Vance: Thank you so much. I think those are really great tips. So on one side, we have some really simple things that we can implement very easily. Just avoiding redundancy is not asking for the same thing over and over and making your hiring process very accessible. especially people using phones these days that need to be very accessible on mobile devices.

Matt Vance: And, I love how you said, just don’t ask for references till you actually need them. And sometimes they forget what they ask for and then they ask for them again. And it’s like, I already provided that right? And that can be frustrating as an applicant,…

Jamie Davis: Yeah.

Matt Vance: But then there’s also, maybe some things that may take some more time, really standardizing your procedures so that it’s the same and so that you just go through that process as the recruiter or as those people doing the interviews. And then making those expectations very clear to those who are putting in their applications or being interviewed of what the whole process is gonna look like so that they have an expectation on the timeline on if they should be expecting a response back or feedback. And I think like you said, providing that feedback is very helpful when they’ve at least done an interview. So

Jamie Davis: Yeah, I think expectation setting is a really huge part of this on the candidate side and on the hiring side, if in my last position, I kind of built out and created a full Talent, Acquisition Infrastructure PlayBook supporting documentation all of it for my last employer and the expectation. Then we had to when we were implementing this reset with hiring managers in hiring teams is at a push you get 48 hours to submit feedback. We really want it within 24 because it holds up the hiring process. It holds up sharing information with candidates. But I think a lot of recruiting, yeah, it’s about setting expectations and really trying to kind of keep to them. We all have the best of intentions, I think, but sometimes things happen and, I as a candidate would much rather, get a no update update email from a

Jamie Davis: Murder than not hear anything or have to chase them. So just, little things that can make the process better especially as someone on the other side. It’s definitely a different market out there and this is coming from someone who when I was employed, I would tell candidates all the time how much I hated looking for a job too. I get it and that could not be more true now, but I think it’s important to consider, the impact that all of these things have, especially when I’ll never kind of get that’s one of my big sticking points as a recruiter is you have an opportunity with every person you speak with to create, either a great ambassador for your company or one that is not going to be so helpful with your company’s reputation especially with hiring.

00:15:00

Matt Vance: That brings me to my next question, that perspective that you’re sharing. And I wanted to say, I think the perspective you have by being on both sides is gonna help you be a better recruiter and has helped you be a better recruiter and maybe some have not had that experience where they’ve gone months, experiencing some negative interactions through that process. Tell me from your experience. How does a better applicant experience affect a company upon either hiring or passing on a candidate so that you touched on it, but I’d love to hear more

Jamie Davis: Yeah. No. I actually think something that a lot of people don’t consider is that having a really concise candidate experience and also positive candidate experience also does help with retention. Ultimately, if you’re creating a great experience for candidates for employees or hiring teams, That’s one thing that somebody can’t look at and say this is a reason I should leave. Hey listen, like I got through but I didn’t have a great experience getting in.

Jamie Davis: That’s something that, people don’t think about the effect that, candidate experience has on attrition and also, being able to refill, roles should someone leave battles or, if you’re considering having candidates boomerang back, I’m not sure if you guys have seen it, but Meta has posted a handful of TA roles. And it’s honestly surprising that they would post them considering they could just call Can’t you employees laid off.

Matt Vance: just,

Jamie Davis: 

Jamie Davis: And also objectively, it would look better if they were wanting to boomerang people back. So even that is, companies that have had layoffs. If you had good people, which I’m sure a lot of great people were laid off. Call them first. You don’t post the role.

Matt Vance: Yeah.

Jamie Davis: If you just went through a huge round of layoffs in the spring so I think there is a lot about the hiring process that has an impact on the full employee life cycle. That is not considered enough.

Matt Vance: I think you bring up a great point. Boomerang employees, statistically, are more engaged, because they’ve gone somewhere else, they’ve seen what it’s like and they know the difference. They’ve lived that comparison and Aaron Ian. And the book was inspired to talk a little bit more about that in depth. So I love that you brought that up. I wanted to hit on that you mentioned. Jamie was the effect that your applicant experience has on everyone who’s not hired. So years ago, Virgin Mobile, they did a research study. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but they surveyed a whole bunch of their applicants that were not hired and found a couple key things about 20%. Of the people who’d apply for jobs were customers of theirs. And they also found that there was a percentage of the people that were customers upon not receiving the job.

Matt Vance: Terminated their service with Virgin Mobile. And so they saw there was an actual revenue impact on the inferior experience. They were providing to job applicants with their bottom line. And so sometimes, you can’t connect the dots that specifically. But I’ve seen this and when I was over employee experience at a large manufacturing company, we very much engineered our application experience around the people who did not get the job, because we were averaging about a hundred applications per post. So we knew, 99% of those people weren’t getting the job. We wanted to keep them engaged in case they wanted to apply again,…

Jamie Davis: Yeah.

Matt Vance: But we didn’t want them to poison the talent pool here. So we gave every person a pillow that interviewed us a nice gift because it was, something that we made. We also proactively asked for feedback.

Jamie Davis: Yeah.

Matt Vance: Directly on Glassdoor allows you to leave a rating and review of the interview experience. So for everyone, listening, If you’ve ever had a positive or negative interviewing experience, you can rate specifically that element of experience on the company’s page on glass door. So I wanted to add that little tid that it really matters for those people. And since we have so many people applying right now, that should be considered way more than it typically is because of the flood of talent that’s out there applying right now.

00:20:00

Jamie Davis: Yeah, I am actually interacting on LinkedIn. Post a couple of days ago, I think we’ve all seen this. There are recruiter influencers on LinkedIn, which I don’t know that I would call myself based on views, but this recruiter works for one of the big defense contractors and said that, she used obviously industry specific phrasing, but the chief screens all of the candidates who apply to her jobs. there is a debate on, whether a screening, phone call, or application review. I prefer to be as specific as possible. So she meant application review for sure, but was having a discussion about this and how

Jamie Davis: There’s no possible way for a recruiter to reach out with specific feedback to every applicant. That’s what the automated emails are for. Another little tip, don’t schedule them during working hours during the week. I got one, it was Saturday going into Sunday at 12:32 am. I know that you weren’t looking at my resume? Then there’s no way. So schedule them,…

Matt Vance: Yeah.

Jamie Davis: if you’re during, a block of us working hours. But, I think that that’s something that on the applicant side means a little bit of a temperature, check and expectation reset. You’re almost never going to get tailored feedback if you don’t make it past the Any round past that you should be getting specific feedback for if you’re removed from the process or no longer under consideration. But yeah, I think companies are going to start seeing more and more that a negative process on the candidate’s side can really have an impact on their bottom line. And you don’t know who people know or what positions are going to end up in. During lockdown, I had been interviewing with a

Jamie Davis: Large California-based tool supply company had gotten a finals and was told that, unfortunately, I didn’t get the role, but was specifically told that it was because they found someone who had more corporate kind of generalist experience than I did. The only problem with that was, I knew the person who they hired. We worked together and she had less experience than I did. But her significant other worked at the company.

Jamie Davis: Be honest with the feedback to a point. Obviously, there are certain things you don’t necessarily want to put in an email but

Jamie Davis: it was not like we were coming out of the same company and I knew this person personally and it really did affect my opinion of the company and I was reached out to I think a year after that and was very transparent with the recruiter who reached out and said Listen I appreciate the outreach but I had a really negative candidate experience at the end with you guys and I would just advise that maybe you don’t take that route again. So there’s a lot that you can lose by having, not experience, a focused process and there’s so much more to gain. It can be the deciding factor and why somebody takes a role. This is your first impression as a company to this candidate. I think there’s a

Jamie Davis: A real, thought in kind of the working world that accompanies doing you some big favor by hiring you and they’re getting something out of it, you’re providing a service, they’re paying you for it but you need to be happy with them too. And I think as younger generations are getting more into power positions that are shifting. I think we’re seeing, especially with loads of startups, how these companies are really trying to make, not only the company, a great place to work, but the candidate experience better as well.

Matt Vance: Yeah, I love how you touch on it, it’s not just about the person you’re hiring it, but that one is honestly huge. Make sure their applicant experience is really good because they’re gonna work for you. And then to all those who don’t they can become ambassadors for you. They can become a word of mouth either positive or negative and so, just be nice. Be honest, be open, set the proper expectations so that everyone leaves feeling good. You can be on both sides and wish that for the other person. So thank you so much. Jamie, your wealth of information is amazing, so helpful to recruiters and I think so motivational for those who are looking for a job. So, if you’re looking to hire an expert recruiter with in-depth knowledge of the applicant experience, connect with Jamie on LinkedIn, and to keep your company culture, insights current and fresh, make sure to follow the culture. Profit podcasts. Thanks for listening, Thanks for joining it.

00:25:00

Jamie Davis: Thanks guys.