SHRM24 Conversations Erin CEO Mike Stafiej

Mike Stafiej is the CEO of employee referral platform ERIN. We sat down with him at SHRM 24 in Chicago.

AI Transcript

So tell the audience what his ERIN app.

Yeah, so ERIN is an employee referral platform. We help businesses engage employees to participate in recruitment, and what that means is we're taking the 40-year-old paper policy of refer somebody and we'll give you a thousand bucks. Automating all of that and then creating an experience around it so that the employees can constantly be involved and it kind of creates a flywheel of just a snowball effect. So typically we work with businesses of at least a thousand employees or more all the way up to a couple hundred thousand employees. What we're trying to do is get them from 10% hire from referrals to 30% hire from referrals. When we do that, there's three things that were really driving home. One is cost per hire, the second is time to fill, and then the third is retention and decreasing turnover.

Beyond using ERIN app, what are some of the things companies need to do for referrals to be successful at it? Yeah,

I mean, look, we we're tech that makes it easier to administrate, easier to engage with, but the reality is that most people struggle with just pure communication. I mean, grab any random employee, say, Hey, what is our referral bonus? They're not going to nip. So figuring out ways to make that communication happen better, and nobody wants another email saying there's another job open. So what we see effective is a lot of putting posters in break rooms, having a very easy place to go and learn about the policy, to participate dedicated URLs. Those are the things that matter because if people can't get in there and figure it out easily, they're never going to do anything. This is their side hustle. So they don't care about talent acquisition, but they do care about a thousand dollars. So that's the gap that people need to close. Tech just makes it a lot easier. Right.

Yeah, I remember I interviewed a guy, HR director, I remember years ago, and he had put around the office TVs with little commercials, almost playing about referrals. I thought that was a pretty cool idea, but communication is right. You have to really explain it to employees, make it easier for them to know how to do it

Mean. Yeah, you got, again, this is their side hustle within New York, so they have no idea what's going on. You need to market it constantly to them through parties, make it part of your initiative, make it part of the company wide announcements. Those are the things that close gap.

You guys have a new product this week, can tell us about it.

So today, hot off the press, I didn't even look at the press release yet, so I hope it's out there. Otherwise, we're ahead of ourselves, but this won't air in time. We'll be fine. So the new products recognition product, so we have employee referrals. We do have an internal mobility that people use, and then now we have a full recognition product that can actually be used standalone. The cool thing about that is it really buys into the message of the full life cycle of how employees participate in talent acquisition. It's refer your friends, bring 'em in. So new hires feed the machine, and then you have growing your career internally to help people develop and stay with the organization. And then recognition, which closes the gap on the other side, which is helping retain people so that they don't leave. And when that all happens together, it's a giant snowball effect. The more that people are recognized and enjoy being there, the more they're going to refer their friends. The more they refer to their friends, the more people come in that then enjoy being recognized and staying there. So we're really excited to have both sides of the problem, fix new hires and turning off the spigot to get a retention to the right place. So

What's your new recognition look like for the employee? You mean an actual use case? What

Happens? Yeah, so remember, they're already in our platform doing things. So they're in there looking at jobs. They can see how much you can earn. They can track their bonuses, fun stuff like that. The new product, it's a little bit more of a social aspect. They can engage with each other. So peer-to-peer reward system, think of it as like a wall, just any social media wall where you can see those interactions. You could insert GIF and stuff like that. It's fun as they do that. There's a point system behind it where they earn points by participating and then they can use those points to give those rewards to each other. And then some of the customers have the option to check out with digital gift cards. They could do a swag store, non-monetary rewards. Obviously we're heavy on bonuses. We have direct integrations with payroll, so if they want to create rewards and bonuses in the recognition side that do get paid out through payroll, we can do that super easy as well. So think of it as it's just a gamified, like, Hey, you're so close to earning that next reward. Can we get you in? It's a cool system.

Let's talk numbers a bit. When it comes to payouts for employees, what are the highs and lows within your customer base?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, so look, healthcare's on fire in a lot of ways. We see nurse physicians paying up to $10,000. We see cyber security with secret clearance positions paying $20,000 sometimes. But these are very specific hires, so imagine the recruiter fee to go find that person. On average, we see about a thousand to 1500. It's gone up and down a little bit over the years, and we do average 'em out, but it's pretty consistent. People bought 'em out of at 500 at the lowest, a thousand's, very common, and then up to 5,000 on more specialized roles. So just within, we're talking about healthcare, think of it as anybody, you'll give it a thousand dollars for any hire nurses, we're going to give you $5,000. Doctors would give you $10,000. So yeah, about that thousand to $1,500 range.

What's the overall average for the industry as far as just percentage of employee referrals? There are hires in the market.

Yeah, I mean, if you're over 10,000 employees, I could almost guarantee that you're at eight to 12% hires from referrals today. Some people are worse, some people are better. Really, obviously it depends on the situation. It depends on who you're hiring, how you're hiring them. Obviously you're going to have communication hurdles for manufacturing because the employees are not on, computers, are not engaging with tech versus something like an office job. But yeah, it's eight to 12%. And then from there, what we want to get you is to 30, 35%. And we've done it.

Clients in that range down

Times. Yeah, that's the magic, right? We just, we're two years in with a customer and they're kind of like our poster child just because just lined up so perfectly. We have people that have done better than them, but they started at 3% higher from referrals, 3%. They brought in a full-time person to manage it. They got them to 9%. So they tripled that. That's pretty good plateau From there, they bring in ERIN , they're now at 35% hires from referrals to 75% engagement of their workforce,

Which is pretty, that's pretty impressive. Definitely. What's your favorite feature of the product?

I've had people laugh at me when I tell them we do employee referrals. They're like, what? It's like a Google form. The nuances behind it are often lost on the surface. And what I mean by that is automating every single part of the written policy could be very hard. And I'm talking things like, did they work here before? Well, if they worked here 12 months ago, it's okay, I'll pay you a bonus. But if they worked here nine months ago, we're not going to pay you a bonus. Or maybe a hiring manager is eligible for referral bonuses unless they're referring to a job that they're the hiring manager of. So there's a lot of weird rules you have to pull together to truly automate this. We're doing this with organizations that are over a hundred thousand people. So you're getting literally tens of thousands of bonuses paid every year.

Everything has to be perfect. So we've done this all along, but what we've now done is brought that into the UI to give our customers control on it, meaning they can go in there and they can basically see every rule we've ever written, and then there's dropdowns so they can build their own, and it allows them to now think like, oh shit, we didn't even know we needed that. Right? So now they can do some pretty cool stuff, and that's all in the ui and they have full control on it. So it's, well, not a very sexy feature on the surface. It's super powerful.

Is AI going to play a part in this at all?

Yeah. Yeah. I had a guy yell at me earlier for seeing AI

For all. It seems like a pretty simple use case for a software. Does it need ai?

Well, no, that's a good point. What it needs is, is a way for employees to find what they're looking for faster. So you have to remove all friction in the process. So what we are launching this summer AI slash machine learning, but mixed in with natural language processing. So if I'm a security guard, I should be able to say, Hey, I want to security guard job that's within 20 miles of a major city that pays 20 bucks an hour, and then find the job. So that's where you can leverage things like natural language processing to turn it in from something that a human would say into a result, and then matching based on data in that job and for that person as well. So that's where we're leveraging it, and it's exciting. I mean, think about, again, large organizations. Your average person's not used to looking for work, a job within the organization. They don't want to deal with a dozen dropdowns and how to specify something and get to get somewhere. They just want to see what they want and then show them a result. That's what we're releasing.

Good stuff, Mike. Tell the audience where to go to learn more.

Aaron app.com. E-R-I-N-A-P p.com and find us on LinkedIn.

Awesome. Thanks.

Cool, man. Nice. Appreciate it, man. That's a wrap.

SHRM 24 Conversations: Jennifer Dulski, CEO, Rising Team

In my latest SHM 24 conversation, we'll talk to Jennifer Dulski, the founder of Team Performance Software Rising Team. They recently raised $8 million in funding and we'll find out more about this new HR tech startup.

Welcome to Tech the podcast where recruiting and technology intersect. Each month you'll hear from vendors shaping the recruiting world along with recruiters who will tell you how they use technology to hire talent. Now here's your host, the Mad Scientist of online recruiting, Chris Russell.

AI Transccript

Alright, broadcasting live from the GP booth at SHRM 24 in Chicago. And my guest today is Jennifer Dulsky. She's the CEO of a company called Rising Team. Just got $8 million in funding. We're going to talk about that, but Rising Team provides the industry leading team performance platform. Its software enables companies to increase employee engagement and retention, scale talent development and improve culture and connection. Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Great. So congrats on the funding round $8 million, I think I was back in early June.

That's right. It it's led by Zeal Capital Partners and other existing investors came back into people like Peterson Ventures, female Founders Fund and Roble Ventures. Yeah,

So it's tough marketing HR fund, HR tech funding. So congrats on that, but what's the origin story of the company? Let's start there.

So I've spent most of my background working at big tech companies. I've worked at Facebook and Google and Yahoo and I helped to lead change.org for five years and I am basically building the tool I wish I had had as a leader of teams, which is the case for many founders. I was lucky to have executive coaches and be sent to amazing trainings, but I always felt like I was being taught to fish and then I had to go back to the lake, which was my team with the binder on how to fish instead of a fishing pole. So rising team essentially builds tools that equip managers to bring to life the things they learn about driving high performing teams with their teams on their own without an outside facilitator.

In the press release it says, lemme find the phrase here, leaders in hybrid and distributed workplace. So is this more of a remote first type of product?

Absolutely not. I'd say we have customers that range from large Fortune 500 companies to nonprofits and government agencies and schools. Some people do it in person, some people do use it remote and hybrid. Essentially it's software that equips managers to run these interactive, deeply connecting sessions with their teams. And it is true that it's especially helpful for teams that don't work together in person. It's also true that sometimes even teams that work together in person are not very intentional about doing things like that, so it helps them too.

Give me an example. One of these sessions, walk it through.

So we have three different types of what we call kits. The first are development kits, which are on the skills of high performing teams. So you take a topic like psychological safety and we create a kit that does everything an outside facilitator would do. So it starts with learning goals and some ground rules and then a warmup activity and then an exercise The team does, it's all software guided so anybody can lead it. You just kind of follow the steps and the team does it synchronously, whether they're in person or remote and on a device. So they're on either a laptop or a phone and they're entering data. So for instance, in psychological safety, you might create a user manual where you're talking about things like what times of day do you prefer to work and how do you like to receive your constructive feedback? And the teams are connecting and gaining insights about each other. The benefit of having it go into software is that we then also can filter it into an AI coach that knows everything about your team. So that's the other core part of the product.

Okay. So why is this the right time for a product like this in the market and also for the funding as well?

Yeah, so there's a few key factors. One is, as you said, hybrid and distributed work. So more than ever companies we're now at 75% of all tele workable jobs are hybrid. So people need that deeper connection with their teams. The second is that managers are more burned out and overwhelmed than they've ever been. Gartner says 75% of managers say they're completely overwhelmed. And so companies don't really have tools that scale to the frontline manager level. Usually when they do leadership

Development, this is a manager tool then

It's a team tool. So unlike, it's actually a really good point because usually the way we train managers is in groups of managers. We put them in cohorts together and we don't give them anything to bring back with their teams. Instead, we train managers by giving them this software and having them facilitate a session with their whole team. Two key benefits, one is they learn it better by practicing it themselves, and two, the team is involved so they feel more valued.

Who do you sell this to? Is it HR or is it some other aspect?

Yeah, so we tend to go in through functional or divisional leaders at companies like CIOs or CMOs or a head of a division. Sometimes we go in directly through HR too, especially at very large companies. There's always a partnership with HR though. Even if we go in through, say a VP of engineering, they're bringing their HR partner with them to help make sure they believe in the tool and they'll help them implement it and so forth. Honestly though, we try to make it as easy as possible. We do all the leader training and so forth. So once they are bought in, there's very little work on their side to do.

Oh, team performance. Can you put it in the bucket of performance management as sort of a HR technology?

It's not performance management. So we don't do yet at least performance reviews, it's more team performance in the sense that the better your team understands each other and can resolve conflict and feels psychologically safe and so forth, the better they will perform. And we have a lot of data about, we move right now things like employee engagement, ENPS manager effectiveness scores between 20 and 80%.

What was your first customer experience? Tell me about that.

Our first customer is actually the bank of Hawaii. They were really interested and interestingly they work a lot in person, they're hybrid, but they do work a lot in person. But they wanted something that they could scale out to their whole organization. So originally they had been doing things mainly for senior leadership and they wanted something to scale and we tend to use a pilot approach. So they started with a pilot and then they saw the results from the pilot and then they rolled out to their entire organization. And we also built them some custom kits. So we have a lot of in-house pre-made ready kits for people to use, but they also wanted things on their own leadership principles and their own operating excellence principles. And so we made them interactive workshops based on their content too.

Do you have a favorite feature of the product?

My favorite feature is our new AI coach. We call it rd. So it's AI with RT for rising team in the middle. We are trying to be clever there, but it's essentially, again, I wish I had had this tool because my team, for example, we've done dozens and dozens of these sessions together. My team has told me so much about themselves, but I can't always remember everything they told me. Now I have an AI coach who's available to me 24 7, who remembers everything my team ever told them. So I can ask it questions like Susan is feeling burned out, how do I support her? And it will give me specific answers just to Susan, like Susan likes only working on two to three things at a time. Help her with her to-do list, or Susan likes running in the middle of the day, remind her to take a break. And then it gives me a completely different answer for other people on my team.

They almost getting to employee engagement there helps the managers to just stay in touch with that employee.

Exactly. Much better managers. The other thing is it's available to every team member too, not just the managers. So this is why I say it's team performance. An individual contributor can also say, how do I tell my manager, I think this meeting is a waste of my time. And it will give you specific answers tied to the preferences of that manager.

What's your biggest challenge right now?

Well, it's a tough market out there, right? Everybody has a lot of priorities and so our goal is to help people understand why this is a priority and I

You'll do some educating in the market, right? For these

A little bit. And what I tend to, it's basically time pressure is the biggest hurdle. So people say, we're so busy we don't have time. Rising team only takes three to four hours per quarter. So it's less than 1% of people's time to see the kind of results we're talking about. And that's why I try,

You're not in it every day. Then as

You're not, you might use the AI tool every day, and we also have mini kits that take 10 to 15 minutes. So you might use those once a week and your team meetings. But to get the results of engagement boost and manager effectiveness boost, you only need to run two to three sessions a quarter, and that's less than 1% of your time. And I tell people, if you don't have 1% of your time to invest in understanding your team, it's no wonder they don't feel valued by you. Sounds

Like it would make the managers better too. Better perceived by

13. Much better. And the favorite story I use to talk about this is from Maverick. Did you see Top Gun Maverick? Yep. Yeah. So you know this scene where he takes them to the beach to play flag football and the Admiral comes over and he says, what are you doing playing games? We have this critically important mission and Maverick says, you told me to make them a team, sir, there's your team. You just can't. No matter how important your goals and mission, you can't set aside caring for and understanding for your team. That's why people quit. They don't have managers that care about them. And so we tell you in just a few hours a quarter, you can guarantee your team will stay and feel valued by you.

Very cool. Well Jennifer, thanks for your time today. Tells the audience where to go learn more about your company.

It's rising team.com.

Awesome, thanks. Thank you.

SHRM 24 Conversations: Workleap's CPO

Recorded live at SHRM24 in Chicago, Kahina Ouerdane, Chief People Officer for Montreal based Workleap. Kahina has been mastering the art of managing people for more than a decade, previously at PwC as a consultant, and now at Workleap.

Kahina and I covered a range of topics around her role, the employee experience and onboarding.

RecTech Media travel sponsored by our friends at Jobcase.com

SHRM24: Conversations with isolved

AI Transcript

Alright, podcasting live from the GP booth at SHRM 24 in Chicago. Today I've got Yutaka Takagi, principal product evangelist from the HCM platform isolved.

Hey Chris, nice to meet you. Really enjoying our presence here this year. It'ss always great to connect. We call our customers and HR users, people heroes, right? It's always great to connect with people, heroes, the people who are making really the magic of connecting employees with their employers. Employee needs, with employer needs every day, just loving hearing the stories.

Nice. So I don't think I've had, I saw my show before, so just tell the audience what you guys do first.

Yeah, so we're a comprehensive human capital management solution provider, but we go beyond your typical hire to retire solutions. One aspect that's a little different from us is that we don't necessarily require that you get our core HR or payroll up and running. You can kind of modularly pick what parts of the solution suite you want. So if you want recruiting, you want talent management or you want that core HR and the workforce management aspects, we can kind of pick and choose. The other aspect of it is that we offer a whole suite of services as well. So HR augmentation services help really strategize on what's going on with supporting things like as I'll say, as sort of fundamental as policies, handbooks to more strategic thinking around how do we design our job boards and our job descriptions, how do we design our performance processes? So we offer a whole suite of services, HR services, benefit services, et cetera, to support our customers as well. And again, that can be somewhat modular. You don't necessarily have to have our people cloud suite to leverage some of our services and really aim to serve our small midsize organizations generally here in the United Sates.

That's definitely our sweet spot is I'll say between 50 and 500 employees tends to be our sweet spot across really, but across really all industries across the United States and certainly all 50 states.

Nice. Now, is employee experience your core, would you say, as a product or…?

Yeah, I think that's really what we really focus on in terms of how do we find value in an HCM, really that connection between what does the employee want and need out of work in their lives and what does the employer need out of that employee at that time? Is it a certain set of skills? There's certainly the conversation around skills-based talent management skills-based hiring, certainly one of the things that trends that we see, or is it a set of credentials or whatever the case might be, really aligning what the employee wants and needs out of work with, what does the employer need out of them Now as part of that is getting the right person hired, advertising the right jobs. I mean, these are some of the talent acquisitions that certainly is your area of expertise, but also then getting them paid correctly, making sure they're scheduled correctly, making sure we measure that talent. And then in those spaces between work, how do we ensure that we're engaging those employees through things like employee resource groups and other communities that they can have so that employees feel more connected with the work and the workplace. Okay.

How's the company? How many employees? Give me some background.

Sure. The organization has been actually around since the mid eighties. We started right after the COBRA Act, consolidated omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986 was passed. And so that really was the genesis of our organization, started as an organization called infinisource, providing employer services around COBRA and benefit continuation. Then we've kind of continued on from there and built up to this full suite HCM technology platform along with the set of services that I mentioned earlier. We have about 2,500 or so employees and we serve over 170,000 organizations, over 7 million employees tracked and managed through our human capital management system.

Very cool. Very cool. How would you define the employee experience? Can you talk about that?

Yeah, it's everything about what the employee finds in their connection to the employer. So every single touch point there around when they first start to look for a job at your organization, whether that's in an active outreach program or they're coming to your website, so all the perception that they gather about that. Now, certainly when we think about employee, if I put that in air quotes there, it begins at the point of hire when they get hired and start onboarding and really start acclimating to the culture of the organization. I think one of the things that we see in some of the data points around employee expectations and where some things are maybe falling off a little bit or there's a little gap today, some of the things we see are things like employees don't necessarily know what workplace norms are. I think we see some of that in some of the data because I think there's definitely a bit of a generational gap.

When you look at some of the Gen Z workforce in particular, they entered the workforce just as the pandemic was getting started, working from home was what they got hired into perhaps or very early on into their careers, and now maybe there's a return to office or hybrid arrangements and employees don't really know what's what those expectations are. And so I think that's one of the things we see in the employee experience are how do we establish those norms? What does it mean to be back in the office? What does hybrid work mean? We saw this actually in the Harris poll, did published a thing a couple of weeks ago around, they call it quiet vacationing, right? This idea that a lot of folks are taking vacations or PTO without filing PTO, right? They're just kind of going somewhere else and working. So I think one of those things is around that. What are those expectations? What does taking time off look like and what should that mean when you take time off? I think those are some of the fundamental things around employee experience that are a part of, I think some of the gaps that we're seeing.

So what are some of the use cases for isolved when it comes to the employees brand? Give me a couple of specific examples of how you work with an employee and with your touch points there. Sure.

I think from an onboarding perspective, again, that's kind of really where we want to begin, right? Again, certainly through the talent acquisition process, setting expectations appropriately, but once they accept that offer, I think the table stakes around onboarding or let's getting the paperwork part of it out of the way. But again, establishing those communication points, establishing learning early on, we know that that's one of the key parts of value that employees see and the really expectations that they have of the employer that you're going to provide learning opportunities for them. And so really inserting learning right upfront and throughout the employee life cycle, that's certainly a key component of what we call learning grow in the iSolve suite. Another part of that is an engagement management part of iSolved, which is really provides a space for employees to communicate with one another in a very sort of modern social platform. They can earn reward points for participating in conversations, giving kudos to each other, et cetera. And those rewards points could be turned into maybe company swag or gift cards, things like that. Again, just as a part of the rewards and recognition component of what some of our customers are trying to do. So those are some of the things that we see being effective for our customers in helping to create that culture, help create communication transparency and establish those norms for those employees.

So you haven't mentioned the word AI yet. Is that coming from myself or talk to me about how you think AI is going to affect the future of the employee experience maybe?

Yeah, the joke I always give is that this is the year 2024, and so I'm contractually obligated to talk about ai, but what absolutely, there's AI throughout the suite, right? So again, in the town acquisition end, certainly things I'm sure you're familiar with, job description, creation, candidate matching against their profiles as they submit a resume, some of those things that just help reduce the administrative burden on recruiters as they field dozens, hundreds of resumes. That's part of the suite today. Conversational assistance, we released a plug into Microsoft Teams last year that allows conversational feed feedback to happen. So employees can say, just in teams, start querying the isol bot, if you will, and ask about, Hey, what does my time off look like? What are my pay statements look like? But now we're expanding that this year, taking it out of teams, the teams part's going to stay, but also building it into the isop platform.

So right directly in that employee self-service experience, employees will be able to ask those questions and then take it to the next level, which is what we call always on hr, where we'll be able to upload policies, handbooks, any sort of documentation. Generative AI engine will read and understand what those policies state, so that when employees come in with those questions anytime of day through the isol, they'll be able to ask, we just found out we're pregnant, what are my parental leave rights? And then the gen AI engine through the conversational assistant will give them that answer right back. So those are some of the things we're working on.

So you're a product evangelist, I want to talk about that a bit. What's your biggest challenge in that role right now?

I think it's always trying to keep up with what there's, I'll say the three components are what's happening in the business world and then the economy at large. The macro picture of it, what's happening from a technology perspective is the second part, right? AI is definitely one of those things that it's hard to keep up with. There's a lot of moving pieces, whether you're talking about recommendation engines or generative AI or there's so many layers to the technology that we have. And the third is really, if I'm quite honest, the communication part of it is something that I'm personally always working on is how do I articulate what we do around those issues that our customers are facing every day? And so that's my job is to figure that out and to help articulate that to the market. How often do you

Talk to your customers personally?

Yeah, we do actually a road show here at isolved…We call it People Heroes Tour, where we invite our customers, so not industry analysts, not consultants, but our customers. We go out to where they are. Quite honestly, so far in my relatively short time here at the organization, I've done six or seven of those places just outside of Philadelphia, new Haven, Connecticut, Dubuque, Iowa. So we're not asking them to come to the city center necessarily, right? We want to go to where they are and we invite them to spend a morning with us. We share some of our research, we ask them to chat with one another to network. We feed 'em a little bit of lunch and we get feedback there. So we do that about once every other week or so, and we do that throughout the year. So this year I think we're doing about 30 of those throughout the country. Nice.

Yeah. Your customers almost give you a lot of feedback about the product. What's one thing they told you to do that you actually implemented?

Yeah, I think one of the big things is the user experience. One of the things that we did four or five years ago is we rebranded our organization. If you come to our website, you'll see the pink color everywhere. So that was a big effort, big lift. And so as part of that rebrand, obviously that changes a little bit of the user experience and the user interface of the solution. Key thing that we did as a part of that was releasing a mobile app. And so that was definitely sort of the, I'll say low hanging fruit that we hadn't done that We implemented, I think 2022 or 2 23 to put an actual app rather than just a web app out there so that we have a one place that our customers can tell their employees, go download the app, get access to all the things that they do in isof. And so that was one of the things that we did was around that user experience and user interface part of it to provide some value to our customers.

Cool. You guys hiring at all?

Absolutely. We're always hiring. So isolvedhcm.com is our website. You'll find a whole host of roles, particularly we're always hiring in our customer facing roles, so whether that's the sales side or our customer support, customer account management, those tend to be areas that we're always hiring in.

Awesome. Well, great to meet you and thanks for your time today. Thanks.

Sedonna Lyons, Quick Supply Company

Today, I've got an HR generalist with me, our first practitioner on the show this week. Her name is Edna Lyon. She's from Quick Supply Company based in Iowa, and they are in mining and construction, I think, right? She said. So we're going to talk to her a bit about what she's up to. She's also an isolved customer. So we'll talk about that. But how's the show going so far? Is it your first SHRM or no?

It is my first SHRM, and I'm actually sponsored by isolved because I'm part of their people hero community. Oh,

Great. Okay. So let's start there. What modules do you use and how long you been with them? You have some details. So

I've been with the company since 2022. We are a mining and construction, so we hire for blasters, CDL drivers warehouse, some inside some outside sales, but it's mainly going to be those blasters Just

In Iowa or elsewhere?

No, we are in 15 states. So we are from North Carolina, and then we have some construction side of the business that are all the way over in Oregon and Utah. So we are kind of coast to coast.

Okay. Do you yourself do any recruiting at all, or

I do not, and I prefer not to if I'm a hundred percent honest.

What do your recruiters tell you about hiring outlets? What are the biggest challenges? They say

The biggest challenge is finding those niche positions. So blasters, they have to be licensed, so there's a lot of competition. So it's just trying to take from others, but be the better option. So it's like a fine line balance, but there's not a whole lot of blasters out there. So within the company, we are looking to kind of grow our own so that way we can help them become licensed so that way they can kind of have a career

Path. Do you have in-house training for them?

Yes. We have a whole safety team that devotes towards training for CDL drivers for blasters, and then they also are that main team for any safety deeds.

Other than iSolved, what's your HR tech stack in terms of other software do you use?

So we mainly use iSolved for our system. So we use iSolved for applicant tracking for the recruiting side. We do have one in-house recruiter who manages that. And then we use the onboarding module, which will give the employees a better user experience. We went from DocuSign and now we're using the onboarding module. And it's nice for me because it actually builds them into our HRIS system for payroll, and it kind of takes that burden off of me. But then we use payroll and we're constantly looking at other items that we might be needing. So when I started in 2022, we had paper time sheets, so we added that as well. So we have the timekeeping piece, but we're constantly growing, so our needs are constantly growing as well. So every year we're kind of looking at our roadmap, seeing what we need, what our employees need, and kind of figuring out what's going to be the best solution for them,

Get a favorite feature?

Oh, workflows. So when I started, we didn't have workflows initiated, but it's kind of been nice to get those up and running. So that means the employee can actually update their address in the system and it notifies us, and then we can approve or deny. Typically we approve, but we call them to make sure like, Hey, are you the one actually doing this change? We do like that safety feature, therefore they approve or deny. They can also update their taxes within the systems, so that's super nice. And then they can update their own beneficiaries, dependents, things like that.

Are you a power user of isolved?

What do you mean by power user?

Well, are you always in it every day?

I am in all the isolved platforms. I'm in the ATS system, I'm in the payroll system, even though I'm not the recruiter, I do help the recruiter with the onboarding piece. So I am in there weekly to kind of figure out who's in the pipeline, and then I have a whiteboard that I just kind of jot those names down and kind of keep track on them. And then once they're through onto the onboarding piece, I'm the one that connects with them to say, Hey, you're missing something. I can see it looks like you didn't complete your taxes. Are you having any issues? Kind of help troubleshoot. I'm also the main point of contact for all the employees if they're having any issues with login, things like that. So I'm kind of the one person that can assist with that for the

How's the support for my Sims? I mean, isolved. Do you get good support on that end?

Yep, good support. We do have a touch base, I believe every three months with our,

Can you call them or do you use it all? Yep,

You can call them. They actually updated their phone system so you can get the specific department you're looking for now. So that's very helpful. So if I want to talk to somebody about taxes, I can just call them and say, Hey, something's going on with the taxes. Can you help me out? If I want something, some assistance on the timekeeping piece, like, Hey, we're adding this new code, but it's not GL mapping correctly, can you assist with that? They can do stuff on the backend that we can't see, and that kind of helps us out.

Any advice for a potential isolved customer about using the platform? Since you're a power user,

Learn the system in and out. So they're going to give you the system, they're going to give you some training, but really, really know the system that's really going to be your best. They do have university that gives you documents for training, so you don't always have to ask, you can look it up and find it yourself, but really knowing the ins and outs of the system is going to be their best.

SHRM24' Adam Posner Talks Recruiting & Podcasting

Conversational Transcript

Alright, broadcasting live from the GP booth at SHRM 24 in the fishbowl, as they call it Now, I guess today I've got Adam Posner, founder of managing director of NHP Talent Group, a boutique NYC based staffing agency with expertise in marketing, media and advertising. He's also the host of the Pozcast where he interviews top experts, entrepreneurs and thought leaders from the world of entrepreneurship, TA and personal growth and other world-class, amazing humans on their insights into their own career journey. So Adam, great to meet you man.

Chris, thank you so much for having me on. I mean, I feel like I'm in a glass case of emotion. I feel like we have a captive room here and we are the fish in the fishbowl. And thank you to GP for having us here and thanks for having me

On. Definitely, man. Got a chance to meet you last night at the House of Blues there. Did you guys go after that or what'd you guys do?

We did. We went to go to another party, but the Uber delays caused us to get there late. So we got to the party when everything was over and Chris, we were hangry, we were hungry, we needed to eat. And my dude chat over there with the great people of Fountain who brought me out to this event had earmarked one of the best burger places in Chicago and it did not discipline. I'm still thinking, I'm actually go back there today if my flight gets canceled.

Let's talk about recruiting and podcasting, all that stuff. But had you come a recruiter, first of all,

I think that there's very few natural born recruiters that come out of school or whatever and say, when I grow up, I want to be a recruiter. That's really not the way it works. People fall into this profession, they fall into one way or another. And my story make a long story, long born and raised in New Yorker, spent the first 15 years of my career working in marketing, media and advertising. I was an account guy, strategy guy. I worked at internal, at ad agencies. I worked at different brands like American Express at SiriusXM. And about nine years ago I found myself working at VaynerMedia for the great Gary V, for anybody out there who's familiar with him and pretty much a household name. And I ended up losing my job. I thought it was my forever job, Chris, and it wasn't, the grass was not greener on the other side. And that happens. Your expectations are one thing, but reality isn't. And it wasn't the right fit. It wasn't the right place. The company wasn't mature as far as an organizational standpoint. And I'll be honest with you. Were

You were recruiting there?

No, I was a strategist. I was an account lead and I got let go and I was 35 at the time and I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I knew I didn't want to keep doing what I was doing. And on my way out, Gary said to me, stop focusing on the things that you suck at and double down on your strengths. And while I'm there on the day I was getting fired in my kind of debriefing exit interview, we talked about my strengths, what I'm good at, what I'm not so good at. And I talked about him. I'm a good communicator, I actually do know this industry well. And he said, what else do you ever think about doing anything else? And I was like, you know what? My buddy does recruiting and finance. And before I could even finish my sentence, Gary, he goes, you would be a great recruiter.

And I went off on my journey of first saying, wait a minute, I'm really going to change careers at 35. I've been doing this for 15 years. And I thought about the money and I thought about, hey, we just moved to a house, expenses kids and all that kind of fun stuff. And I ate a big piece of humble pie and I said, all right, I'm going to do this. And I didn't just jump into recruiting, I reached out to every recruiter I ever worked with before, some I didn't know, and I asked them for their time, tell me about the industry, tell 'em what I'm getting into. And I went through the process and luckily for me, I got interviewed by a great agency called Onward Search. I didn't want to smile and dial and I got taught by a great mentor, the art and science of recruiting. And here we are nine years later.

Remember your first hire?

I do remember my first hire, but it's actually my first hire was the first fire. This is a good one. Everyone knows in recruiting, especially agency recruiting is guaranteed periods, right? It's a period of a probation period where candy has to stay in and if they get let go, the fee is returned or replacement. So 88 days into a 90 day guarantee, I get a call from the client, they say, listen, unfortunately we're going to have to call him John Doe, let him go. And I say, why is it his performance? They go, no, we suspect he's using drugs in the workplace. So what do you think? My first question was

Which drugs?

Exactly we're in the ad industry. Everyone's smoking weed. It's a creative industry, so they wouldn't tell me that. So I thought it was kind of a BS excuse, but what I did learn is an early lesson, the hard way that these deals are not done until the guarantee period's over and the money clears and it's at the bank. And I'm glad I got that first lesson right? I'm glad I got that first punch in the face early because that set me up to manage expectations with the client, with the candidate and myself moving forward for future deals.

Let's go on to the podcast for a second. How long have you been doing that?

Five and a half years. I think we've recorded almost close to 400 episodes. We get into that 400 point new episode every Friday, having missed a week something I really, you know how it's with podcast man, you have milestones and goals and things. For me, that's the biggest one. It's not the number of downloads because I think that's relative on your industry. And listen, we're not the Kelsey Brothers, we're not the Kardashians, we're not Barstool Sports. That's not our show. But for me, my metric is audience engagement. Yes, downloads to a certain point, but within my niche. But for me it's consistency. The fact that I have not missed a new episode every Friday since November 19th, 2017 is like, it's kind like my, alright, good job me. And that's only important to me.

How do you think podcasting has helped you become be a recruiter in that aspect?

Well, I think that because we're recruiters, we're natural conversational. This is what we do all day long. And I think you take that any good recruiter, their number one characteristic is curiosity. And that applies to podcasting as well. I'm curious in what you're going to say next. I'm curious about learning your story. I'm curious about hearing your why and your mission and my job as a recruiter and a podcast is to pull that out and then frame it up to the right audience. Am I framing it up to the hiring manager and I framing that up to my audiences listening on a podcast?

So you recruiting media, advertising, marketing and NYC, what's that right now? How's the market there?

Well, it's been interesting. It's been a crazy couple of years. We saw early in the beginning of the pandemic, there's a lot of companies that had a huge influx of government funding and they binge hired, that's what they did. It's great for their numbers. There's business coming in and then the economy kind of recalibrated, right? Loans started to become due, interest rates went up. All these economic conditions caused last in first out, and a lot of people got let go. A lot of people got let go. And the first people to let go in any organization during a downturn are recruiters. So if a company doesn't need internal recruiters, they don't need external recruiters. But there is a little bit of a silver lining there that happens on these cycles where companies let go of their internal recruiters and they're not ready to make a full-time hire. And that's as an opportunity for an external recruiter to come in on a contract basis. And that's where we're seeing a lot of these opportunities now where it's a lower risk, it's a lower commitment, and they could bring in an external recruiter for a lower overhead.

You got any sourcing stories over the years?

Yeah, I mean there's always kind of interesting ones there and I think it comes down to sourcing and being creative with your sourcing. I loved tapping into my network. It's so funny. My wife says all the time, she's like, I could tell you four things I need from the grocery store. Two minutes before you're going and you won't remember any of them by the time you get to the grocery store. But in your crazy recruiter brain of yours, you could remember somebody that you met six years ago at a conference who said, you should meet somebody and then you go find that candidate one way or another. You figure out who that person was and you're a crazy investigator. So I think that's a skillset that you have. But as far as stories, I think that it's kind of those boomerang moments where I spoke to a candidate six or seven years ago and somehow they come up in your memory, they come up on your LinkedIn and you see them and you think about it. I think Chris would be great for that job. And it's just because you made that relationship and that connection and you remembered it, you have the ability to kind of go back. I mean, I met a candidate came up to me once at a Mets game and he goes, do you remember you placed me, I had a candidate.

I remember my first thank you, like a written thank you letter for a candidate. And that kind of made me feel kind of, that was cool. She sent me a thank you card. That's why we do what we do in recruiting. Yes, there's money on the table to be made, but we wouldn't be in this business. We didn't care about people.

How about the most creative subject line you ever used to reach out to somebody that's with that do?

I mean, I have a 15 year experience in marketing and media. I literally ran email marketing for SiriusXM and I AB test subject lines a bit. And I think you have to be careful too, depending on the role, depending on the title which you're going for. Sometimes I will try a money motivator in there. Sometimes I'll try an opportunity motivator and I always personalize. That's kind of it. But from a creative subject, my partner Kevin, who I work with a lot, he's kind of the king of the creative one. So I pick up some fun things from him. I don't know him off the top of my head, but he's got some creative ones there that are, it's the hook, it's get your attention. You just want to get their attention to open the email. Same thing with the interview process. The resume's job is to get you the interview, the email subject line's job is to get you to open the email, to click on the job description to reach out to me. And once you start to think about that from a process standpoint and focus on the desired action of each step in the process, you'll become a better recruiter. That's a good question.

Do you use any tools for sourcing beyond LinkedIn or the usuals or any particular

Yeah, yeah. I use, so we'll talk about tools two different ways. A CRM tool, I use a platform called Inters Celler. It's fantastic. How is that? I've heard of it. Yeah. Inters Seller is great. They're owned by Greenhouse. I got acquired by Greenhouse. They're our sponsor. They're our core sponsor. And I'm not just saying that because I used them first before they were a sponsor

For my recruiting practice. I use them for my recruiting practice and they're an email scraping tool. They script the email from the LinkedIn, they pull it into a CRM and then I have a multi-stage drip campaigns, which I use for the outreach. It's a fantastic tool. On the other side of the house, I use chat GPTA lot in a few different ways. I've used this from a sourcing perspective where I take a client's job description and I use it to synthesize talking points when I'm talking to a candidate. And I'll also use it for bullying searches.

Explain that more.

Yeah, absolutely. So I have a few prompts that I use that I've worked on and honed and I keep them in a save draft or I'll take a job description that comes in. And generally speaking, the prompts are either from this job description, what are 10 questions I should ask a candidate on a screening call. I will also ask Chad GBT to take that job description and synthesize it down to a one paragraph add and use a certain tone of who I'm looking for. And I'll customize it a bit with different characteristics and tone and definitions within the chat. GPT prompt. There's a lot you could do, and I urge every recruiter out there to experiment because this tool is here. It's fantastic. And if you don't at least embrace it a little bit, you're going to get left behind.

Do you worry about AI taking away recruiter jobs? What's your stance on that?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it comes down to using AI as a tool and not a crutch. And I think there's going to be a lot of functions that AI is certainly going to take over from our day-to-day job. So the trick is either if you're working within an organization, how do you make yourself invaluable where you are the one that's pushing AI forward to make your job faster, more efficient, and the processes that can be automated so you have more time to focus on the human part, whether it be with the candidates, whether it be with the hiring managers, for example. There are some great video tools out there and audio recording tools where you're able to record a candidate screening call, isolate those key points and either put it into text or clip it up. So that goes to the hiring manager and now you're not playing the telephone game. Now you're hearing directly what Chris said to Adam on that call, and here's what my notes are on top of that, or example Chris said this, this is spot on what we're looking for. You gave me a great example here and here's why I think he'd be great for it. And then the hiring manager could listen to that clip directly

Got any advice for somebody who wants to be a new recruiter?

Yeah, and I say don't. It's a rough industry and I think there's two sides of it. One, embrace the tech, know how to use it, understand that this is a rollercoaster of an industry and mind your mental health. This is one of the toughest positions because if you're an agency recruiter like I am, we are selling on all fronts. I'm selling the candidate, I'm selling the client, I'm selling the company I'm selling all the time. And with sales comes rejections. And if you can't handle rejections, you're in the wrong industry.

Ttell us where to go Learn more, man.

Yes, you can check out the recruiting practice at NHP Talent Group and you can also check out our Web3 practice, probably nothing talent. I have a new job board up there on NHP Talent Group. Check out thepozcast.com

There you go, folks.

That's how we do it.

SHRM24: Compliance Talk with VirgilHR's Jocelyn King

Jocelyn King, SHRM-SCP is the CEO and Founder of VirgilHR, a SaaS solution that empowers HR professionals to make smart, compliant employment and labor law decisions in real-time. We discussed a lot around compliance particularly as it pertains to recruiting.

HR has been the passion and focus of Jocelyn’s entire career as she’s supported high-growth technology start-ups and public companies throughout her tenure. She defines herself as a true HR generalist and has touched on all aspects of HR in her more senior roles. Jocelyn has strong expertise in creating and executing HR strategy, managing employee relations for multi-state and global organizations, developing a diverse and high-performing work culture, owning organization development and change management, and crafting the total reward, talent development, and talent acquisition strategies.

In addition to HR, what has also remained consistent in her career has been technology. Jocelyn has worked for technology companies most of her career and, as an HR executive, has had the privilege of supporting executives and departments in all functions across the organizations. In her role as CEO for VirgilHR, she’s displayed proven success in building a venture-backed technology company from the ground up. She has held previous roles as the Vice President of People, North America for Ocado Group, as well as Vice President of People for Cybrary, a Series-C start up. She’s spent a majority of her career working with a range of tech companies from Pre-Seed to Post-IPO.

SHRM24 Interviews: G-P's Head of HR Laura Maffucci Talks AI & More

Laura Maffucci is G-P’s Head of HR, and she leads the company’s global workforce, talent, and employee experience. She operates from a people-first mindset and strongly believes that diversity of thought is paramount for a healthy workspace. We chatted about AI in HR and their new AI powered onboarding tool.

Laura previously held leadership positions in the Global Total Rewards team at G-P, from Sr. Director to VP. Before this, she led Total Rewards & HRIS at Progress, a tech company focused on products to develop, deploy and manage high-impact applications. Prior to Progress, she held roles of increasing responsibility with Ocean Spray Cranberries, where she was awarded HR Award for Innovation and Creativity (2016). Her tenure at Ocean Spray Cranberries was preceded by roles with an emphasis on compensation and HR practices.

In her 20+ year career in HR, Laura has spoken on global and national platforms about compensation, employee well-being and mental health. She’s a staunch advocate for the employee experience and creating a culture of inclusivity. Laura is passionate about the future of work, normalizing the value of work everywhere, and enabling employees across the globe to be their best selves and add value wherever they go and whatever they do.

Recorded live from the G-P booth in Chicago at SHRM24.

RecTech Media Travel Sponsored by Jobcase

Hackajob Adds On Demand Tech Staffing

Hackajob, the reverse tech hiring platform recently launched a new on demand hiring solution for tech workers…joining me now to talk about it is their Head of Growth, Luke Coleman.

TOPICS DISCUSSED

1. What motivated hackajob to launch the on-demand contract-based hiring solution?

2. Can you walk us through how the on-demand works?

3. In a recent announcement, you mentioned that 60% of your global tech talent pool is interested in temporary opportunities. How did you gather this data, and what does it say about the changing preferences of tech professionals?

4. What are the key benefits for employers using hackajob on-demand compared to traditional hiring methods or other freelance platforms?

5. How does hackajob ensure the quality and reliability of the freelancers and contract talent in your marketplace?

6. Can you share some examples or success stories of companies that have already started using hackajob on-demand?

7. How do you see the future of tech hiring evolving?

Qualifi's Recruiter of the Month; Kathleen Armbruster

Welcome to a new monthly series on the podcast. I am teaming up with the team at Qualifi, a hiring platform that helps recruiters screen, score, schedule, and interview talent before they go cold.

Each month they pick a recruiter of the month and for June that recruiter is… Kathleen Armbruster  Currently serving as the Director of Talent Acquisition at consulting firm called Studio Science, Kathleen has significantly contributed to the evolution of recruiting practices within the company. Her innovative recruitment strategies have notably included the integration of all functional groups to foster a culture of accountability and efficiency, which has significantly sped up the hiring process. 

Read More on Qualifi.hr about Kathleen.

TOPICS DISCUSSED

• What's been your career path into recruiting?

• Set the stage: what types of roles do you currently recruit for, how big is the company, how many hires per year?

• What recruitment strategies have you been implementing to speed up hiring but also to make sure its fair and equitable?

• Lets talk tech: what kind of HR tech stack do you have in place?

• What’s one thing you see other companies doing wrong when it comes to recruiting and what advice would you give them?

• Are you hiring on your team at all?

Do you know great talent acquisition pro? Nominate them here.

State of People Analytics

Madeline Laurano founder of Aptitude Research recently partnered with HireRoad (a people analytics platform) for the latest insights on the state of people analytics and what it means for your business…she joins me now on the show to discuss…

TOPICS

1. What prompted this study between Aptitude Research and HireRoad?

2. What was the knowledge gap in the industry that you wanted to uncover?

3. Talk me through your survey process — format, audiences surveyed, titles, and number of respondents.

4. What, in your opinion, were the biggest takeaways from this study?

5. What surprised you the most in terms of respondent feedback?

6. The study revealed that only 1 in 3 companies are using people data in their recruitment process. What’s their reasoning?

7. What are the consequences of not using people data in recruitment?

8. Of those companies that are leveraging people analytics in their hiring process, how exactly are they using it?

9. What’s the ROI for companies using people analytics in recruitment, versus those who aren’t?

10. How is HireRoad making it easier for hiring teams to leverage people analytics?

11. The survey revealed that many companies think people analytics are only for enterprise-level companies with big teams and big budgets. How is HireRoad making this data feasible for smaller companies?

12. What’s your advice to companies not yet leaning into people analytics as part of their recruitment process?

13. https://hireroad.com/