You’re Losing Candidates and Customers with Daniel Birkholm

[00:00:03] Welcome back to the Dont Tell Me About Yourself Podcast. We are at the Shaker booth at Unleash America in Las Vegas. And today we are sitting with... Daniel Birkholm from Start. Daniel, can you tell us about your company? Sure. Yeah, so Start is a platform used by a lot of enterprises worldwide to measure hiring experience. So think of it as candidate experience measurements, hiring manager satisfaction, quality of hire measurements and stuff like that.

[00:00:32] So that's what we do. We love data. I mean, so that sounds... And we love data in the hiring space specifically. What kinds of metrics do you help companies with? Or what do you notice that your clients are most focused on from a metric or data standpoint? Yeah, so one of the things that Start is most famous for, that's basically bringing the NPS into the candidate experience game. So we call it CNPS, Candidate Net Promoter Score, right? So, make sure we tell everyone what I'm saying.

[00:01:00] Yeah, so the Net Promoter Score, and yeah, that's an NPS framework. So it's a scale from 0 to 10, taking the ones giving you 9 and 10, and the doctor ones giving you 0 to 6. And that would give you a score between 100% and minus 100%. And how is that measured? What goes into that measurement? Yeah, so basically, we trigger out these surveys going out to candidates after a recruitment process is done. Yeah.

[00:01:23] It can be, you know, and the recruitment process can end in many ways. You can get hired, you can get rejected, you can get rejected after screening, but you can also get rejected after an interview, after assessment. It can be that you overdraw yourself and stuff like that. So basically, we just help them, you know, a question could be how likely are you to recommend others to apply for this company based on your own experience? And then you rate that. See, we've worked with companies before that only think about the candidate experience for the people that got hired, right?

[00:01:53] But it's like, what is the candidate experience for the people that don't get hired? Do they leave feeling well evaluated? Are they going to continue to recommend your company anyway? And I just noticed that that is a downfall for some companies not to consider that as well. Exactly. I mean, as I told you just before, we are bringing this concept of healthy hiring to unleash. And the point about making hiring healthy, that is that most companies, they reject 95% of their candidates.

[00:02:22] So basically, the one you hire, that's 5%. Right. And ultimately, if you're making 95% of your candidates, let's say, disappointed, angry and detractors, ultimately, well, then your hiring is not that healthy. Right. Because then your brand would suffer of it, right? Yeah.

[00:02:41] So, you know, there's a little bit of a sustainability element into this where you can say that the more healthy your hiring is, the way you approach hiring is also creating, you know, organic sourcing of new candidates in the future. Yeah. And now I know myself, I have some ideas of why this might be important or how it might help companies.

[00:03:04] But are there any results that the companies and clients that you work with see when they do put the focus on some of what we're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. I think you need to have a conceptual buy-in of the fact that if you are pissing off people by the way you recruit, then probably it's not a good idea. And there are different kind of studies.

[00:03:27] I think it's like 50% of candidates that are unsatisfied after a hiring process, they are most likely not going to be a customer of yours in the upcoming period. And if they are super happy, then they're actually more willing to buy your products. Yeah, that's such a great point. We were talking to someone earlier that was making the point that the candidates are also your customers. 100%. And if you're not, if you're overlooking that, you're definitely missing something, you know, in the process. And it's super important. And then there is also just the hiring element to it, right?

[00:03:54] Which is, you can say that most candidates, they are interviewing for several companies. And a lot of the things that is making them choose you or between you and another company, that is maybe also what they feel during the hiring process. So, I mean, you know, your hiring experience is also ultimately impacting your quality of hiring. Yeah.

[00:04:15] And we have, in our social media following, we get a lot of comments and direct messages from people with horror stories of hiring and being ghosted and just really having a horrible experience. And I think of it a lot like, when I go out to dinner and I have a great meal, you know, I might tell people about it, right? But I'm not, you know, I'm not running to Yelp or Google to review it. But if I have a bad one, I'm like, everybody needs to stay away. And so the same kind of applies, right? 100%.

[00:04:44] In this instance as well. Yeah, yeah. So measuring that could have significant impacts for companies because you can't measure that. And that's actually also part of the business rationale of doing it, right? Because then what we have our customers with, that is to do that in a more closed environment where it's getting more nuanced. Because it can also very, you can also paint this picture of, yeah, I was rejected. So this is just an awful experience. And that's why the context is extremely important.

[00:05:09] Yeah, because you can be rejected for a company and like Lorna said, feel well evaluated, have a great experience. If this communication was there and you understand why, you can still walk away having a great experience. And then the company itself has somebody who might come back around someday, right? If they're missing skills or weren't the right fit at the time for the team that you have, you don't want to ostracize that person in case when you do have an opening that fits their skills, they upskill or the opening changes, right? That you have that person to come back to.

[00:05:39] So yeah, for sure. Is there one thing that talent leaders need to know in the year ahead? And what would that be? Only one thing? We got time. Well, I am actually surprised. And I know I have to say that because of the product that we are selling or the platform that I'm representing, but I'm really surprised by the lack of, let's say, outside-in perspective there is on recruitment.

[00:06:09] I think that a lot of TA leaders at the moment, they are super obsessed about, you know, how can we utilize AI? How can we implement AI? And how we do hiring? But they have not installed these kind of feedback loops, which basically ultimately is measuring the user experience of it. It's so focused on reducing cost per hire and time to hire and increasing efficiency and so on. But it's just hiring is ultimately about bringing in the right people to the company.

[00:06:35] And if that is done in an unhealthy way, well, yeah. So I think maybe a data-driven mindset is what I hope we'll see talent leaders have even more going forward. Facts over feelings. Facts over feelings. That's how it should be. Can you tell our listeners where they can find more information about you and your company? Start.com. That's an easy. That is nice and easy. Yeah.

[00:07:05] All right. It is. Well, thank you so much. And remember that Start is one of the only companies in the world having our own Spotify playlist that everyone has, right? You've got to check it out. No, but I mean, the songs that you like, they would be your Start playlist. Ah, now you get it. He's a jokester, everyone. He is a jokester. I mean, you went from so timid to like throwing jokes by the end of this episode. So way to overcome. Yeah, well done. De confinda. Yeah. Okay. All right.

[00:07:35] He's like, don't butcher my language anymore. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time today. And we hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you. Thank you for having me.