How technology is helping universities overcome hiring challenges

[00:00:12] Welcome to episode 122 of the High Volume Hiring Podcast. I am Stephen Rothberg, one of your co-hosts, joined today by my other co-host, Jeanette Leeds. Jeanette, great to see you. Hello, great to see you as well. And I'm excited today because we have Michael Eng here. He is the founder of Job Elephant. But if you look on his LinkedIn profile, it also says you're a professional cat herder. So welcome, Michael.

[00:00:42] It was the most apt title. I'm a very, you know, practical person. And that is the title, I think, that sums up my job in a nutshell. I love it. Well, I know you also really are a true seasoned expert in recruiting advertising. And, you know, as we were talking earlier, like, you're known for leveraging tech and streamlining the hiring process, but like really in higher education.

[00:01:05] So I know today we're going to like dive in deep to talk about how tech is helping universities with hiring. So maybe you could just like take a step back, give us a little bit more on our listeners' background on you, Job Elephant, and then we'll get to the hard questions. Yes. Job Elephant, recruitment advertising agency, also power a bunch of different job boards in our space as well. Started in 2000. So this is our, what, 26th year?

[00:01:32] Six. You know, a small company based out of San Diego went all remote after the pandemic. So now we have people, I think, in nine different states across the country. And that's us in a nutshell. But we, well, I will say that the reason you asked about academia or higher education is that's really our sweet spot. We represent about a quarter of all the colleges and universities in the U.S.

[00:01:57] And also some other government, right? City, county, etc. Yeah, exactly. Public sector. Yeah, there's a marketing term called SLED, which stands for State Local Education and District, that nobody outside of marketing knows what means. So that's kind of us. It's like basically nonprofits, the NGOs, the, you know, quasi-governmental stuff.

[00:02:22] Nice. Well, I know just talking about like going back to like universities specifically, there's been lots of budget cuts. I'm curious, like, what are you seeing on the recruiting side? How universities are handling like the recruiting and recruiting strategies when they're, you know, how are they doing less with more? No. More with less? Less with more? I know. I'm going to have some more coffee. So, answer whatever you want.

[00:02:49] It's definitely going to be a more with less or else his clients will not be very happy. So let's get that very clear. Yeah, we rarely hear, oh, we're expanding and growing and, you know, that sort of thing. So we're very used to this. Again, having been around for a minute, you know, we've kind of seen some ebbs and flows in the economy, etc.

[00:03:11] Last year, our customers were down about 30% year over year in terms of the number of roles that they were recruiting for. Yeah. So that's significant. It's a big change. Right. Yeah. And that, you know, was because of government cuts to various parts.

[00:03:29] Strategy-wise, what changed? I mean, the obvious one is like shifting dollars away from DEI as there was the, you know, just change in the administration, things like that. But otherwise, you know, I think one of the areas of improvement for my clients would be to strategize, period.

[00:03:52] That's really one of the areas that a lot of folks, even in these down, like, like as in running a company, when you have a downturn, that's an opportunity to look around and say, oh, okay, what could we be doing differently? Absolutely. Absolutely. We don't have as much volume. So therefore, let's use that time to kind of rejigger things. And what are we focusing on?

[00:04:17] For those of us, and I am definitely in that camp too, as anybody who can see the video would agree, when we've been around for more of these cycles, you do see some of those trends. And, you know, like the treadmill stops, when you stop running on the treadmill and you jump off, that gives you that opportunity to say, maybe this is when we replace our ATS. Maybe this is when we restructure the hiring process. So that makes a ton of sense.

[00:04:42] Michael, one thing that I think would be really interesting for our audience to hear is sort of the breakdown in who universities hire. Because I think that the vast majority of people, when they think of universities hiring, they're thinking of professors. And certainly they do. Right. But give us an idea like high level, you know, for the roles that say Job Elephant is involved in, for every professor that you help a university hire, how many other people do you help them hire? Probably five.

[00:05:12] Okay. Wow. That's more than I was going to think. I was thinking two to threefold. So support staff, police, food, groundskeeping. Well, and don't forget the administrative layer too. Right. Yeah. Right. So the deans and so forth, which are the managers of faculty. Yeah.

[00:05:31] You know, and then, you know, and that was a big growth area, I would say in the last, well, in, you know, between 2010 and 2020, I would, in that period, the number of college administrators really ballooned for whatever reason. I'm sure there's, you know, people smarter than me that can figure that stuff out as far as why that happened. But there was a big growth in that.

[00:05:59] But as it relates to Job Elephant, we've also seen in that administration side of the house, that's where they tend to outsource a lot of their function to third-party executive recruiters as opposed to doing them in-house. Oh, okay. My running theory on that is that nobody wants to be responsible for hiring the next president.

[00:06:25] So when you're talking administration, you're talking essentially the C-suite in corporate speak. Right. You're not talking administration like an administrative assistant. No, no, no. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So these things can be political or whatever. And so they kind of like the idea of having an insulation layer of like, oh, well, it wasn't us. It was these guys. Yeah. Which may be. If there were corporate politics in a university, I never would have guessed.

[00:06:54] Oh, I would have. And it's probably worse than like other places. And I'll just, yeah. So, and the one reason I sort of noticed, I know there's just my background originally was campus recruiting on the corporate side and then was involved with a lot of career services. Actually, I forgot I coached for a while at like Columbia Business School. So I guess I was a little bit of career services as well.

[00:07:16] But there's a lot of people who bounce back and forth between corporate, at least on the career services side or career management or whatever, you know, the school's calling it. Which made me think like just about specialized talents, you know, when you're talking about, you know, the president. But, you know, one question I had, what strategies aside from going the executive recruiting route, you know, what strategies can you share for anyone that's listening for when you have to attract specialized talents?

[00:07:46] And then also to your point in a competitive market, right? Like it's, I think that could be interesting to hear about. Yeah, well, and Stephen won't be surprised to hear this, that this is where I see the future of like the niche association job boards. Yeah. So, you know, you've got programmatic that will cover maybe half the job, half of the job seekers out there. But for those specialized roles, they're passive candidates, right?

[00:08:14] They're, you know, not going to be on the LinkedIn's and Indeed's. Everybody's on LinkedIn. I understand that. But they're not actively utilizing that as a vehicle to kind of dovetail off what you asked earlier, Stephen, which was like the kinds of roles that we hire for. Well, a lot of colleges and universities have healthcare systems attached to them. Right. So all of a sudden now we're in that space. Right. Of trying to find a position in cardiology or something like that.

[00:08:43] That's where you have to have those associations. You have to go fishing where the fish are. And that's where that kind of really direct targeting goes. The other strategy that I've seen change that, Jeanette, to your point about what's been different with the recruiters, is that we're seeing a lot more recruiters become more active in terms of sourcing. So it's more of a push and a pull.

[00:09:08] So they're using our app tracker technology in order to track the ads and see where they need to really hone in on attracting talent. But then on the other hand side, this is where, okay, this is the first time we talk about AI in this conversation. For the record, it took us 10 minutes. That's a new record.

[00:09:30] But the tools within AI to assist those hiring managers that don't have the resources, don't have the time, don't have even the training to be, you know, a headhunter, if you will, with that background. They can now utilize AI to do a lot of those functions for them.

[00:09:53] And so that's how they're able to get that cardiologist or get that really super specialized role. Hey, it's Bob Pulver, host Q podcast. Human-centric AI, AI-driven transformation, hiring for skills and potential, dynamic workforce ecosystems, responsible innovation. These are some of the themes my expert guests and I chat about, and we certainly geek out on the details. Nothing too technical. I hope you check it out.

[00:10:21] So I'm going to take the opposite approach because I'm glad you talked about the specialized roles. Let's now talk about the more high-volume roles. Yeah, I guess we are the high-volume hiring managers, so let's do it. Hey, we're here to provide a complete and holistic picture. Talk with us about some examples of roles that are high-volume. I suspect some of the healthcare roles are definitely going to be in there, food service, whatever.

[00:10:49] I'm sure there are some that you know that I would never have thought of. And then also the tech that the universities are using to help with that. Okay, so, you know, some of the harder-to-fill roles, frankly, can be things like just groundskeepers. So think of a college campus. It's a giant park. Yeah. Okay, and so arborists and all these types of things are necessary for that.

[00:11:14] You also have constraints on supply in terms of folks are not applying for the roles anymore, potentially because of the involvement of customers and immigration actions that are going on around the country. So that's cutting off some of the supply there, if you will. Now, in terms of what technologies they're using, the technologies are always lacking in academia.

[00:11:42] And the reason for that is like a lot of quasi-governmental organizations, not a lot of money, not a lot of sophistication there, and not a lot of investment in their tools. So oftentimes they're utilizing the cheapest applicant tracking system that they can afford, or they're utilizing an applicant tracking system that kind of came along for free with their payroll processor or whatever that is.

[00:12:07] So there's not a lot of controls that they have to be able to be really running in a high-volume capacity. That said, the other big issue with any kind of bureaucratic process is the fact that they're completely balkanized. And what I mean by that is that college campuses oftentimes have the hiring down to the departmental level. So that means that like each individual department is responsible for hiring their own people.

[00:12:35] You know, the example I always use is one of my customers is University of California, Berkeley. There's like 900 some odd departments on campus. That's like 900 different HR managers. And all of them essentially small businesses. Right. And using at least three different applicant tracking systems because they've got one for different functions. I know.

[00:13:02] So I'm just thinking like, man, to go and you could just clean that up and streamline and just there's so much opportunity there to just make it better. But I want the red tape. Yes. I think, Jeanette, you're like mentally salivating. Let me add it. I am, but at the same time, I'm like the red tape. So, okay. So here, I'm just looking at the time. I'm going to ask you a last question. Go for it.

[00:13:26] So let's say, you know, for those listeners who are at universities and they're in the middle of this red tape, million departments, any tips, tricks, best practices? Like leave us on a high note of like, how can they cut through? What could they be doing? You know. What's the silver bullet, Michael? Exactly. What's the silver bullet? If they can't centralize, they can't do that. What can they do? Yeah.

[00:13:52] Again, I think from the top, it's stopping to actually analyze and set your, you know, key performance indicators, your KPIs, and really do a reset of fundamental talent acquisition, you know, goals. Like what is our actual time to hire and what is our cost for hire? Those types of metrics are not what are driving a lot of the decisions that are going on on college campuses.

[00:14:19] And I really wish our customers would step back and look at their processes and look at it from an outcomes perspective of like, okay, what's our goal? And then let's work backwards into let's eliminate any of the tech that is not playing nice or not letting us achieve that end goal that we want. That's awesome. And I'm assuming that you and your team help with those decisions, right? Yeah. To guide them through.

[00:14:46] Even if it's not something that you sell, you're going to be sharing like, hey, there are these other universities that we work with that do X, Y, and Z. You're doing A, B, and C. A is pretty darn good, but B and C, those should have gone out with the Stalin era. Yeah. Well, and, you know, Stephen, you've been in the space. I mean, ad agencies often in the past were order takers, you know, and then now we've really morphed in the last 10 years to be consultative.

[00:15:14] And so it's really talking to our cousins like, yeah, we could put that ad in full page ad in the newspaper, but it's not going to work. This is what you should be doing. Awesome. Yeah. Right. That's awesome. So, Michael, thank you so much. This was great eye-opening and lots of stuff to be done, even with red tape. Yes. Bottom line. Cheers, Michael. Thank you. Take care, everyone. Thanks, guys. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.