What is the fix for candidate ghosting?

[00:00:00] This complex financing talk is very exciting. Do I get my depot ever?

[00:00:06] But you already have a depot.

[00:00:08] No.

[00:00:09] Yes, you have the Vodafone Gigadepot.

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[00:00:22] Vodafone. Together we can.

[00:00:40] This is Steven Rothberg. I am one of your two co-hosts for this,

[00:00:44] the High Volume Hiring Podcast.

[00:00:46] It's episode 76.

[00:00:49] Regular viewers will notice a little bit of a difference here.

[00:00:53] My wife and I just moved.

[00:00:56] Today's our first day in our new house.

[00:00:58] And of course, snowstorm here in Minnesota.

[00:01:01] Power is out.

[00:01:03] So we're running off of Zoom and a hot spot.

[00:01:06] Fingers crossed that everything works out.

[00:01:08] I guess it's pretty suited because it is Halloween today.

[00:01:12] And so this was certainly a trick, not a treat.

[00:01:15] But speaking of treats, Jeanette Leeds, my co-host.

[00:01:19] She's all decked out.

[00:01:22] I am Jeanette Leeds, otherwise known today on Halloween as not Batgirl,

[00:01:27] but Batmom, as I was dubbed many years ago.

[00:01:30] So I have a cape and everything.

[00:01:32] So happy today to have Tad Price here because we are going to talk about ghosts

[00:01:37] and ghosting, which is so perfect because Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.

[00:01:42] So Tad, thrilled to have you here today.

[00:01:44] For those that don't know, Tad Price is the CEO of Austin-based Tal Rue.

[00:01:49] More than 20 years of experience in the online recruitment and job search vertical.

[00:01:54] And he is a recognized thought leader in the TA and HR space.

[00:01:59] So Tad, thrilled to have you here.

[00:02:01] Welcome on this fun, spooky Halloween.

[00:02:04] Great to be here.

[00:02:06] It's such a timely time to chat and share some wisdom about ghosts.

[00:02:10] And I think Stephen and I share our experience of over 20 years, probably in this industry.

[00:02:16] So hopefully a lot of insight to provide that'll be helpful for your listeners here.

[00:02:21] Fantastic.

[00:02:22] Well, maybe just give us like a quick more, a little bit more background on you, Tal Rue,

[00:02:28] and then we'll dive into ghosts.

[00:02:31] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:02:32] It's great to set the stage of a little bit more about Tal Rue and kind of our story.

[00:02:37] So about 10 years ago, we created Jobs Two Careers, which is one of the top job search engines online today.

[00:02:44] And about five or six years ago, we rebranded to Tal Rue.

[00:02:47] And the idea was to help companies find talent audiences wherever they may be online.

[00:02:51] And earlier this year, we launched a new product, Ready, Set, Hire, which is more of an SMB recruitment marketing tool to help companies combat ghosting and other ways in which, you know, we've seen technologies leverage to help ensure a good outcome from a recruitment marketing perspective,

[00:03:09] especially for small businesses that are looking to find their next great hire.

[00:03:14] Awesome.

[00:03:14] So maybe before we dig into the ghosting, the problem with it, what solutions are out there, Pat, maybe you can just sort of give us your definition of even what it is.

[00:03:26] Well, I think ghosting, if you think about it's been only the last few years, I feel that we've been hearing ghosting at the employer level.

[00:03:34] Yeah.

[00:03:34] Right.

[00:03:35] What we've been hearing is the job seekers have been ghosted for years, and it's a common concern and complaint by a lot of processes and how we think about candidates differently.

[00:03:45] Right.

[00:03:45] I think the adage is we should treat our candidates like our customers.

[00:03:49] Right.

[00:03:50] And ensure we're providing a dazzling experience through their process and finding the next job.

[00:03:56] But early on, ghosting was really being ghosted by the employer.

[00:04:00] Now we're hearing more about, of course, the job seekers ghosting and the employers.

[00:04:06] So it's quite different in our world.

[00:04:08] And I think there's a lot of things happening, I believe, that's probably created this conundrum in the space.

[00:04:15] But I think a lot of it is this experience that we've had over the years of ghosting job seekers and now ghosting employers.

[00:04:22] And so I think there's a lot of efficiency that the industry needs to really combat ghosting and how we think of not hearing back from a job or not hearing from an employer or not hearing back from a job seeker for an interview.

[00:04:36] So it's on both sides now.

[00:04:37] And I think that's the most interesting change that we're hearing more about over the last few years.

[00:04:43] That's interesting.

[00:04:44] I'm curious, you know, now moving into a bit of like, how can we fix it?

[00:04:49] But one thing that is coming to mind is when you were talking about ready, set, hire with small, you know, SMB versus obviously enterprise difference, right?

[00:04:58] Very different.

[00:04:59] Maybe you could address a bit like, how could we think about fixing it, but understanding that maybe different fixes depending on which type of organization?

[00:05:08] I think you're right.

[00:05:09] You know, I think at the end of the day, when someone opens a rec, when someone posts a job, they are using that rec and that job posting as a vehicle to drive interest and intent.

[00:05:21] That's the idea of a job posting, right?

[00:05:22] It's copy.

[00:05:23] It's marketing copy to get someone interested in working for the company and also interested in the role and the position to create great opportunity for the company and create great opportunity for the job seeker.

[00:05:36] That's what it's all about.

[00:05:37] And so, you know, when you think of this idea of ghosting today and how we think about job postings, I think we have to think of the beginning of the process.

[00:05:46] And that is the job posting being this vehicle of intent is so important.

[00:05:52] And I was interviewing an HR leader a few years ago and they shared with me, you know what?

[00:05:57] I believe retaining a great employee starts with the job posting.

[00:06:02] I had never heard that before.

[00:06:03] It was very impressive to hear this.

[00:06:06] And I said, so tell me a little bit more about that.

[00:06:08] And she was in high volume hiring and she said, well, you know, I'm working staffing cinemas.

[00:06:14] And at night in the evenings, it's dark and our customer service representatives need to use a flashlight to walk upstairs to ensure that they could help provide service to the folks attending the movie at the cinema.

[00:06:29] And she said, if I didn't celebrate that, if the job posting lacked transparency of that, I would have a problem retaining that employee.

[00:06:39] And that was very profound for me thinking of this idea of transparency in the job posting, setting the right expectations, everything that we hear about in marketing and sales applied to candidates.

[00:06:51] And so to your point, when we think about small businesses and enterprise businesses, I think that from a small business perspective, we run into a situation where a lot of business owners are the chief everything officers.

[00:07:03] You know, they don't have time hiring is a byproduct, you know, they know they need to hire people, but it's an investment that takes time up front to train, to recruit all these things.

[00:07:13] And especially in this environment that we've been over the last few years, it's been tough, right?

[00:07:18] It's been tough for small businesses and that's different.

[00:07:22] So, however, what's important is time, right?

[00:07:25] The intent and the time it takes to connect to a candidate.

[00:07:29] And I think that's the same for enterprise businesses.

[00:07:32] And I think we're seeing the enterprise businesses adopt more technologies to help shorten the time to hire and using technologies to shorten the time to hire.

[00:07:43] And that's how we think about it from an SMB perspective is we need to figure out ways in which we can shorten the time to hire, keep employers and job seekers together, collaborating, knowing that, you know, it's important for this small business to grow their business through great collaboration and constant communication throughout the recruiting process.

[00:08:01] Hey, this is William Tenka, work to find.

[00:08:04] Hey, listen, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about Inside the C-Suite, the podcast.

[00:08:08] It's a look into the journey of how one goes from high school, college, whatever, all the way to the C-Suite, all the ups and downs, failures, successes, all that stuff.

[00:08:18] Give it a listen.

[00:08:19] Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:08:21] That's really interesting.

[00:08:22] And, you know, what I'm hearing is the story of like the cinema.

[00:08:26] That's not just a sort of a poorly written job description, the lack of transparency in the hiring process.

[00:08:32] That's going to lead to retention issues.

[00:08:34] It's also going to lead to the topic for today, right?

[00:08:38] The ghosting.

[00:08:38] Because if you're running the cinema and I come in and interview and all of a sudden I find out what you're hiring for is really quite different than your job posting, I'm going to be like, screw him.

[00:08:51] You know, he just wasted a bunch of my time.

[00:08:54] And if I don't ever get back to him, that's kind of his problem.

[00:08:58] You know, I could see a lot of candidates doing that.

[00:09:01] Hopefully I would be better mannered than that.

[00:09:02] But, you know, I can see the frustration, the anger.

[00:09:07] It's not just that interview that went bad.

[00:09:09] It's the other 30 that that candidate has had to experience.

[00:09:13] And the reality is they're looking for a job because they want to be able to buy food, medicine, put a roof over their heads, right?

[00:09:20] And especially in a high volume environment, most of those hires, it's not like they have this passion for our business and our industry.

[00:09:29] You know, hopefully some do.

[00:09:30] But the reality is most don't.

[00:09:33] So from Tal Rue's perspective with any of your brands, when you're talking to, say, somebody in TA in a high volume environment, how do you guide them to writing better job descriptions, to being more transparent so they don't end up in that having that problem to begin with?

[00:09:54] I think what we can do as an industry, whether it's, you know, our company or as an industry, is we can share data and we can be transparent in what it takes to hire.

[00:10:03] And in high volume hiring, a lot of it is based on pay.

[00:10:07] You know, pay is a driver of intent of ensuring that people are actually responding.

[00:10:14] And especially in a world that job seekers believe it's a numbers game.

[00:10:18] I mean, you ask any job seeker, they'll say today it's a numbers game.

[00:10:21] I've got to apply to a lot of jobs to hear back.

[00:10:24] And the jobs probably that you want to hear back from are the ones that are probably paying significantly more than the other jobs you've applied for or the jobs that are close proximity to where you live.

[00:10:36] And from that perspective, that becomes really important for, you know, for job seekers.

[00:10:42] And so, you know, I think from our perspective, we provide data.

[00:10:45] We provide data around what's important for job titles, what a job needs to be successful.

[00:10:49] We celebrate meaningful benefits just in our job search engine.

[00:10:55] You know, we surface pay, you know, even if it's not provided by – if it's provided in the job description, we have a system that will study that pay in the job description.

[00:11:05] And, you know, for lack of a better word, pluck the pay out of the job description and surface it early in the process for job seekers.

[00:11:12] And we have other ways in which we do that to help ensure that when people are interacting with a job, they know what's in it for them.

[00:11:20] And that helps set expectations is what's important.

[00:11:22] On the ready, set, hire front, on the SMB front, we provide AI-generated templates that small businesses can use to kind of jumpstart that process.

[00:11:32] And then as we walk through the job posting process, we suggest screening questions.

[00:11:38] We suggest pay.

[00:11:39] We'll estimate pay to be – to actually ensure that you're getting the applicants that you need to be successful all through that process when you're creating a wreck in the ready, set, hire experience.

[00:11:49] You know, a lot more flexibility in that experience than, of course, the enterprise experience.

[00:11:53] But our goal is to help them be great recruitment marketers.

[00:11:56] And as much as we, you know, I think as an industry, we may not spend as much time talking about it, the job posting is still all-powerful in many cases.

[00:12:07] It is that copy that gets people excited and interested in being a part of your goals as a business.

[00:12:14] And I think we can't underestimate the power of it.

[00:12:17] We can't underestimate the power of transparency and ensuring that, you know, you're putting your best foot forward to attract the right candidates.

[00:12:23] Before we turn out the lights and take whatever is left in the candy bowl in because the kids in the neighborhood are done, do you have a last question before we –

[00:12:33] I do.

[00:12:33] I do.

[00:12:34] Before the 600 trick-or-treaters descend on my house.

[00:12:37] No joke.

[00:12:38] I will publish the stats talking about data.

[00:12:40] That in itself is scary.

[00:12:42] That is scary.

[00:12:44] I will have three years of data after that.

[00:12:46] Check my LinkedIn profile.

[00:12:47] But, okay, so just back to ghosting.

[00:12:50] So, we were talking, you know, the job posting and the elements that go into that advertisement and transparency.

[00:12:57] And I agree 100%, right?

[00:12:58] Like, if someone doesn't know what they're getting themselves into, like, you need to know.

[00:13:02] We spend so much time at work regardless of, you know, the type of job.

[00:13:06] So, transparency, authenticity, talked about pay.

[00:13:10] Are there any other levers or specifics within, you know, the job posting description or something that you would recommend to our listeners to be thinking about to minimize this posting?

[00:13:22] Speed to candidate.

[00:13:24] That is the number one.

[00:13:25] You know, when you think about the funnel, right?

[00:13:28] The all-powerful recruitment advertising funnel.

[00:13:30] It's like discovery.

[00:13:31] Discovery is I'm looking for a job.

[00:13:33] Then I'm reading an all-powerful job posting, a job ad.

[00:13:36] And then I'm applying.

[00:13:38] And then once I apply, speed is everything.

[00:13:41] You've got to be quick to connect with the candidates.

[00:13:44] And candidates will celebrate the speed in which you connect with them.

[00:13:48] And the longer you wait, the less ROI that you're going to be able to drive from whatever recruitment marketing strategy you're deploying.

[00:13:57] So well said.

[00:13:58] If I'm a candidate and I interview with you today and you don't get that back to me for three weeks, I have probably been working someplace else for at least two weeks.

[00:14:08] I'm thinking three days.

[00:14:09] Like, forget it.

[00:14:10] Right, right.

[00:14:11] Yeah.

[00:14:11] It's like three hours.

[00:14:13] Awesome.

[00:14:14] Three days.

[00:14:14] Okay.

[00:14:15] Three weeks.

[00:14:16] You deserve to be ghosted.

[00:14:19] That's right.

[00:14:20] So well, Thad, thank you so much.

[00:14:23] I appreciate the perseverance that you and Jeanette had with my power outage, which we still have.

[00:14:29] Happy Halloween.

[00:14:30] If there are any Reese's Peanut Butter Cups left over at either of your homes, I can give you my home address.

[00:14:39] Great.

[00:14:40] Love it.

[00:14:41] Thank you so much for the invite.

[00:14:42] Great to be here.

[00:14:43] Happy Halloween.

[00:14:44] Yes, thanks for being here today.

[00:14:45] Happy Halloween, everyone.

[00:14:47] Until next time.

[00:14:49] Bye.