“Are We Punishing Real Candidates to Catch Fake Ones?” with Nathan Perrott

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Don’t Tell Me About Yourself Podcast. We are here live in Paris at Unleashed 2026 and we are sitting down with Nathan Perrott. Thank you so much for being here today. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So what brought you to Unleashed? I think this is probably my 10th year. We've been here as a vendor and doing talks. I remember when it was a tiny, tiny event compared to what it is now. So yeah, we've sort of grown with it, I think.

[00:00:28] And we're here in the masses today and yesterday. We all got in Monday and we've had a fantastic event. It is our flagship event in Europe. It's brilliant. That's amazing. And you did speak here this week. Yes, I did a very quick 15-minute session yesterday morning, which was really great, but it goes so fast. And anyone who knows me, and you'll get this now, I love to talk. So you're going to have to control the conversation.

[00:00:57] We asked the right person to come on the podcast. Yeah, yeah, we did. Absolutely. So people don't know you already. Can you talk to us about who you are, what industry you're in? Yeah, absolutely. So I work for a company called Radency. We're a talent acquisition platform. We've been in the market for a very long time. Our DNA has been in talent attraction, engagement, employer brand.

[00:01:20] And we very much care about the recruiter and employee experience, the hiring manager experience, but also the candidate experience. And so we commission our own research with job seekers to test our candidate experience facing tools like our natural language job search. And that gives us really, really valuable insights to take to our customers and say, look, we tested this and it works. And or we tested this and it didn't work. So therefore, we're not going to build it. Well, those are some of our favorite buzzwords, everything that you said in there, especially candidate experience.

[00:01:50] I'm like, oh, God, that's at least somebody saying it. I know. We often feel, you know, that can get lost in the mix with all this technology nowadays. It's there's technology put in to help with the candidate experience. And we love that. Yeah. But sometimes it's not landing as it should. No. And I think especially at the moment where it's very weighted to helping recruiters sift through the noise. I see a lot of employers making rash decisions that are putting up the wrong kind of friction.

[00:02:18] And you can't ignore the candidate experience because at some point it's going to come back around to be a candidate world. And the biggest challenge that we're helping employers with right now is how they're dealing with the volume of applications that are coming in, which are, of course, AI mediated and influenced by their range of tools that candidates are using to submit applications at scale. They're all seemingly looking the same. Right. Tell us more about that challenge, because we've heard that a lot. Yeah. Being here the past couple of days. What are what is Radency and what are you doing to help with that?

[00:02:48] Yeah. So first of all, it's kind of a two speed hiring market. So whilst our customers are seeing immense increases in application volumes, it's not necessarily true for all roles in all locations. Sure. You know, cybersecurity professionals, for example, very difficult to hire for, especially with the latest news that dropped yesterday. We have identified that the CV and this was what my talk was on yesterday.

[00:03:15] The CV is such a unreliable signal at the moment in the hiring process because it's optimized by AI. Sure. You know, candidates taking job description, optimizing the CV for that job description, job ad, and then embellishing it. And these CVs are then going in. And if there are AI tools in the process that are scoring CVs and CVs alone, those scores are all now the same. Right.

[00:03:39] And so what we're doing is helping organizations introduce screening capability in front of recruiters reviewing it. Yeah. So that we can help them understand fit based on qualifications, skills, background, and prioritize who they're spending time with to help them filter through that noise.

[00:03:58] And it's one of the most important things right now is how do you free up recruiter capacity that in turn then helps them not ghost candidates, provide feedback, have meaningful conversations, and then candidates, you know, feel like they're being listened to. Because trust is breaking on both sides right now. Candidates don't trust employers and employers don't trust candidate data. Yeah. Is there a common message that you find yourself sending over and over again about your industry or role? Yeah.

[00:04:27] Well, that's a loaded question. I've been in the industry 26 years this year. So you kind of see cycles. Sure. Different sort of topics maybe or different technologies, but it's a similar pattern. And I think that the hype is the biggest thing that I have conversations with customers about is you've really got to try and drill down into that. So a good example right now is this whole notion of fake and fraudulent candidates. Right. And it means so many different things to different people.

[00:04:56] Some people think a fraudulent candidate is someone using AI to optimize their CV. Yeah. And then on the other end of the scale, a bad actor who's pretending to be someone else, not who they say they are. Being catfish. Yeah. And, but they're not all the same and they don't all need the same solutions. Right. So you've got to be really careful what kind of friction you put into that part of the process and where and for which roles. Right. Because those bad actors are more prevalent in certain types of jobs in certain industries like big tech. Sure. Yes.

[00:05:25] And so if all of a sudden you go and put in this barrier to a genuine candidate who maybe has used AI to tidy up a CV, all of a sudden you've ruined the candidate experience. You've probably lost good candidates and, and you know, you don't meet your hiring goal. We talk about that so much. Yeah. Like what is the impact of what you're doing to prevent fake candidates on the real ones? Yeah. And I don't think enough companies are thinking about that because they're so concerned.

[00:05:53] And to your point, it's a vague candidate fraud. It's this big, vague, scary term and it's very fear inducing. And I think in some ways it's a little fear mongering. And I think some companies, it's a gold rush. They, they are creating a solution because they see a problem. Absolutely. Or creating the problem to solve. Right. We said it. Yeah. I love that. We were talking maybe about some challenges and things that we're facing. What's something that you're really excited about coming up?

[00:06:22] I'm really excited about how we're helping customers understand how they're being represented in AI assistance from an employer brand perspective, from how their jobs and they are discovered as an employer. Yeah. Um, because that's a minefield and I think it's starting to get on a lot of our customers' radar now about, okay, how am I being talked about in ChatGPT? How am I being cited? Because it's quite difficult to measure. Right.

[00:06:50] We've seen traffic increase by 500% to our customers' career sites from ChatGPT, Claude. Wow. ChatGPT tends to be the most prevalent, even above Google Gemini. Wow. Um, but that's just the traffic coming from links, let alone the citations and how that employer is being referenced, sometimes probably against competitors. Yeah. So we've built an AI visibility tool that helps us drill down into how that employer is being referenced,

[00:07:19] how they're controlling, contributing to the narrative. Yeah. In a world that's invisible to everyone apart from that candidate. Sure. And so we're, we're sort of doing research, we're providing guidance to the employer around the job occupation and the location to say, look, this is how you're being represented. Mm-hmm. Sentiment analysis here. Yeah. And this is what you might need to do. Yeah. To contribute to trying to change or maintain that narrative. So that, that's really exciting because that's kind of my world of.

[00:07:49] I love it. I want to hear more about this. I know. We've got to set up a longer time for that. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think a lot of companies aren't very intentional about that sometimes. And so to have a tool that's specifically built so they can measure their success, they can help to control the narrative of what's really happening. I think that's really important. It's so hard as a company, like you don't know what's being, we have a saying, I think we need to adjust it. We do need to adjust it. It needs to, it's a broader now. Yeah. But I just meant, I think we can add that GPT. Oh yeah.

[00:08:16] So we often say we hosted a panel about social media and employer brand. Right. And if you're not on there seeing what people are saying about you on TikTok, if you're not on there, then you don't know what people are saying. So if you're not doing TikTok, TikTok's doing you is kind of what you say. Yeah. And maybe we need to say that chat GPT. If you don't know what AI tools are saying about you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. To do that. So Radency helps with that. I love that. I do too. Yeah. So where can people find information about you and the company? Yeah. So radency.com is probably the best starting place.

[00:08:46] Our website sort of talks about our entire talent acquisition platform and our offering, our agentic capabilities and the agents that we've released this year. So I'm sure many more exciting things to come next year. Awesome. I'm always on LinkedIn. So people can hit me up on there. That's great. And then will we see you in Unleash 12 next year for you? A hundred percent. Are you going to be going to any of the state ones or is Paris your main go-to? Not this year. Next year, maybe Radency is out there.

[00:09:15] We're out there at all the events that happen out there as well. So Radency will be in Miami. Yeah. Okay. Well, Miami was a fun one. That's a tough one to miss. They're changing it up this year. Yeah. So we'll see your team there then for sure. Okay. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. All right. Happy interviewing everyone.