Surprising Workforce Shake-Up: Unveiling Unexpected Job Growth, Declined Hires, and Healthcare Hiring Hurdles

[00:00:00] What's going on people? Ryan Leary here from Work Defined. You're listening to the You Should Know podcast, a series of conversations that cover the most significant challenges leaders face in the world of work.

[00:00:13] Each month, Isems produces an easy-to-read report that breaks down the monthly confusion we call Labor Data. It's important, yes, but it's often boring and way too over-complicated for most people to understand.

[00:00:29] When you get to speak with people that are smarter than you and they can make sense of it all well, then the confusing data actually has value.

[00:00:39] So to our friends in town acquisition, HR, hiring, or just those that might need the hire in 2024, this is a great conversation for you to listen to so that you can understand the landscape and what you need to know as you embark on your next hire.

[00:00:59] Check out these stats. Job openings are up 35% month over month and 6% over January, 2023, the highest level seen in a year.

[00:01:10] Candidates in the 18 to 24 age range dominated the applicant pool in January accounting for 4 in 10 candidates, and health services saw the biggest spike 23% over last year.

[00:01:25] We'll make sense to all of this in our conversation with Raya Moss, Global Head of Workforce and Customer Insights and Jill Miller, VP of town acquisition at Isems.

[00:01:42] Just leave them take care of Brian Leary, you should know podcast, got Rhea and Jill from Isums on a day where we talk about data and insights and all kinds of fun stuff. So while we do some introductions first.

[00:01:55] Rhea, will you introduce yourself? Sure. Hi, I'm Rhea Moss. I am the Global Head of Workforce and Customer Intelligence at Isums. If you're not familiar with Isums, we are a talent acquisition software company.

[00:02:08] And I've been at Isums for seven years and roles and product and engineering and now customer success and customer experience, but the fun team that I lead looks at the data of our cumulative customer base and really just starts to try to weed out and figure out what's happening

[00:02:23] right now and research the labor pools, the talent market.

[00:02:27] And then we put out a few big reports a year that I know we're going to talk about today. So thank you for having me.

[00:02:32] And I like the subtle way that you corrected me on your name. Because I said Raya.

[00:02:39] 'Cause Texas.

[00:02:43] You said Rhea. Hi, I'm Raya.

[00:02:47] Very, very subtle.

[00:02:50] Well, I like it. He's been calling you Rhea for the last 10 years, but it's all good. Yeah, yeah, you know, if I know someone's name.

[00:02:58] And that's I feel like that's a success story. Just, just, I can remember who they are at this point. Jill tell us a little bit about yourself.

[00:03:07] Sure. Nice to see you. My name is Jill Miller. I'm the VP of talent acquisition here at Isums.

[00:03:13] Unlike Rhea, I have only been here a handful of months. So excited to bring not only my love of Isums, but also my love of all things hiring to to both this podcast and the organization. So.

[00:03:28] So that's the new car smell. I like it. That's very cool.

[00:03:31] Very new car smell over here. Okay. So we've got January and February data that we want to kind of talk through. So, when we start with some of the things that came, I know February just came out.

[00:03:43] Yes, I think I'm up this morning. You're getting it live breaking. Breaking news. Yeah, so what we look at really three key indicators in the market to get a sense of sort of supply and demand of talent.

[00:03:56] And then from the people side who's applying for jobs and then also from the company side, you know, who's hiring. You know, are they opening jobs or are they filling them? How long is it taking.

[00:04:06] And the three key indicators we look at are applications, openings and hires. And if you've ever seen an Isums Insights report, we have dubbed it lovingly the three line charts, a very creative name.

[00:04:16] But it's really those three key metrics plotting over time and seeing how they're changing relative to themselves. Just to give you a sense and we were we were literally on the edge of our seats looking at this data because everyone ending the year was like, okay, okay, it's slowed, everything slowed down.

[00:04:29] But what is January going to look like? And I don't know if anybody follows along at home, but jobs day was a huge surprise this month. So, from our side, we saw relative to the January before because it feels like even looking two or three years back is a whole different world

[00:04:45] than what it was just what we're living in today. So applications are up 13% which is really good news because we saw the end of the year a huge slowdown in applicant behavior.

[00:04:56] If you think of kind of the labor shortage when companies couldn't find people, that's a big relief that we're seeing openings is up 6% every year, which I do think is an interesting call out because if you depending on where you get your news source, it's either a really strong labor market

[00:05:11] right now, or it's very weak labor market right now, these can't find people. But what I think is really the most fascinating piece for this kind of headline chart of the report is that hires are actually down 5%.

[00:05:23] And me what we would usually see is when you see companies opening more jobs, they're filling them. I think there's a lot there to kind of unpack of, are they just showing face. I talked to a lot of our customers that say, it seems like all my competitors are so high.

[00:05:37] I'm like crazy, but I'm being told to hold back, and that's where I'm kind of pushing companies to say, okay, just because I have openings out, are they actually filling them or is that building talent pipeline because we're waiting everyone seems like they're like on the starting blocks kind of waiting

[00:05:52] light again. And that, it really came out in the data to show that that is kind of what's happening right. But again, I also will call out it's down 5% the number of hires happening every year, that is not a huge amount.

[00:06:05] Right. And I like to say, it really depends where you get your news right because like didn't right now feels very full of, I've been unemployed for six months and I can't find anything.

[00:06:15] If you talk amongst SaaS companies or the tech sector. You hear hiring freeze hiring freeze hiring freeze and nobody's hiring, but that's not really showing up in kind of the overall market data.

[00:06:26] It's only a 5% decline.

[00:06:36] Yeah, I think my vantage point, I think, I think this data is exactly telling to what the market looks like so, you know, we see, we see one, I think we're hiring a new skills we're thinking creatively that requires us going to market early.

[00:06:50] So, I'm not surprised by seeing that uptick of job openings. I would love to drill down and even see where they are I have, I have my own thoughts I think they are really probably in new skills creative skills that, you know, we're just on a tuned to hiring

[00:07:05] Protestant or stuff like that.

[00:07:07] One step on the flipside thinking about the decrease in hires again not surprising. Most companies had a hard Q for different Q for. So we're just slow to rebound now in Q one.

[00:07:20] We know we're hiring it's just a matter of when do we pull the trigger and saying that was the time.

[00:07:26] So, I'm seeing that across the board again seeing that from our customers seeing that from peers in the industry, none of this is too surprising.

[00:07:34] Are we, are you all seeing this take effect effect in specific sectors or industries.

[00:07:39] Absolutely. I, I am going to giggle and ask have you seen the report yet because what I was talking about this slide.

[00:07:47] The third slide we actually looked at this, especially this hiring number, we looked at exactly this and we said okay that's fine but that's not across the board so to give you a sense for anybody listening that doesn't get a chance to view the chart.

[00:08:00] Retail hiring is down about 4% year over year healthcare is down about 5%.

[00:08:05] Finance down about 7% manufacturing.

[00:08:09] The biggest of what we looked at from an industry perspective down about 10%.

[00:08:13] And the one I will call out the other thing we look at is tech roles, not necessarily tech companies, and I know I kind of explain that a lot in people like we know we're a tech company.

[00:08:23] And it's not such thing as a tech company, you know if you think of the big tech companies right you've got an Uber that's actually a transportation company but Amazon is just technically a retail company.

[00:08:33] So we look at that talent pool and we say, regardless of what industry industry you were writing Java code in your skill is writing Java code and it can be industry agnostic so the largest decline we saw was actually in those tech hires, which is surprising.

[00:08:46] And those were down about 13% year over year.

[00:08:50] So, that's fantastic. So now let's talk a little bit about some of the trends that you've seen and across both reports of January's report and February's report because you got some things now that kind of kind of makes sense for both because March will be all of Q one.

[00:09:07] So we're willing, we're one report away from kind of locking up Q one. So what have you seen so far.

[00:09:13] January's report was a big one we actually supplemented it with some survey data to get a sense of the why we get asked that a lot. We, you know, we see a number spike them because why we say well it could be 10 things.

[00:09:23] So a few times a year we supplement with some large survey sets.

[00:09:26] And, and it was interesting because one of my favorite findings in the January report we actually saw show up in the data in the February report.

[00:09:33] Is this this strong disconnect that we're seeing right now between confidence in kind of the job market and the economy. The difference between how job seekers feel and how companies are acting and I kind of call that out right we know that apps was way up, but then

[00:09:48] hires wasn't one that I found particularly fascinating and I'm curious, Jill, your take on this to 87% of people in our survey said they are not concerned about being laid off in 2024.

[00:10:01] Yeah, that number took me aback in January.

[00:10:04] I actually talked about it a little bit it made me surprised.

[00:10:08] Because looking at the way the market is and what I think when you look at layoffs in 2023 I think as you know, hopefully we don't project many in 2024.

[00:10:18] So they are in niche, they're in specific spaces. So that I think is why we saw that the majority of individuals do feel confident in their roles. And I think even as we tied into now this, this February report.

[00:10:31] You know, you're looking at people increasing thing there, you know, we see applications up.

[00:10:36] People are looking for better, newer opportunities. They hunkered down last year in their roles. There wasn't as much mobility, a lot of applications, but not as much mobility.

[00:10:46] And now I think we're seeing that shift is again like that, but bigger, better roles, something new. Let me push my skillset a little further.

[00:10:54] That's my thought is connect those dots. So, Jill, yeah, I wanted to. I was going to ask that question next, are we overseeing this because we employees just don't care.

[00:11:06] They don't care if they're laid off because there are other opportunities or they're just not happy where they're at.

[00:11:11] And they're okay with being put into that situation, or, are they confident that their employers just not going to have to go through layoffs.

[00:11:19] I think it's a bit of both. I mean, I see almost the same behavior that you saw post COVID, you know, right before we entered into that great as resignation, people stayed, they stayed in their goals because they were safe, they were safe and safe and stable.

[00:11:34] But that appetite or that desire to look elsewhere didn't didn't go away. So that's why I think we're seeing that kind of combination where people hunkered down last year we had high inflation, we had a volatile market.

[00:11:47] And now we're kind of coming through that a little bit better. And so that's why people are moving.

[00:11:52] I think some things also that, if you were with a company and they had a series of layoffs, you can't feel like, all right, I made it.

[00:12:03] I'm still here. Right, I made it through everybody done one, two, three cuts. I'm here.

[00:12:11] I have a term that I love that we use during COVID that I'm hearing being used a lot again, which is sheltering job. Yeah. And there was this notion and especially with certain generations that is not a Gen Z thing that is a millennial thing.

[00:12:25] There's a notion of there's a lot going on in the world at work in the economy.

[00:12:31] If you get home, I say this, say this as a snow day, when my kids are downstairs, if you hear them, you can all say, hello, that there's this notion of, I'm just, I can't take something new and finding a new job and onboarding to a new job is a lot of work.

[00:12:45] And I think we don't necessarily talk about that a lot. We talk about like, Oh, someone found a little bit more money or, you know, maybe the grass was greener over there, but it's a lot of work to interview to put yourself out there.

[00:12:57] And then to go learn it all again and reestablish yourself in a business. I think we saw a lot of that last year.

[00:13:04] I think we saw a lot of companies, you know, do things like playoffs, and even the survivors are like, well, is it am I safe, it's a.

[00:13:14] We're going to see a lot when we see like it's compensation season, right? It's annual review season that they holding out for their bonus or they holding out when people get their annual raise and the inflation numbers just came out again today.

[00:13:26] And they're not keeping up with inflation numbers. Right. Gone is the day, the day that.

[00:13:32] Can it's used always been for the most part, right? I'm going to overly, you know, generalize here for the most part, finding a new job look like this.

[00:13:38] Okay, I'm ready for my next challenge. I'm going to go to my company's career site. Maybe I share with my manager. I'm looking for the next opportunity and go see what's available in my company.

[00:13:46] I'm going to apply. If I don't get that role set the egg timer.

[00:13:50] One of our customers wants to study, they knew the exact number of days from when they didn't get an internal role, they had to retain that talent.

[00:13:57] And then if they didn't get that role, then, hey, guess what? You probably made them update the resume, so it's ready to go.

[00:14:04] And they would go look outside. Well, when we look at these peaks of application numbers coming up, it's not an internal job site.

[00:14:12] They're going straight outside first, right? And maybe this is, you know, we all have a little bit of scarring.

[00:14:17] We know how the sausage is made inside our own company a little too much.

[00:14:20] But it's, it's really fascinating that that trend is gone.

[00:14:23] I hear a lot of people, like, I'm not even going to go for the next thing here. I'm just ready for a new company.

[00:14:28] And that is going to cause resignation rights. I mean, they're back to where they were pre pandemic, but before the pandemic, they had been increasing nine years straight in a row.

[00:14:37] So, you know, our chief people officer, Laura talks a lot about this of like, it's good news, but it is not like rest and sit back and all as well.

[00:14:45] They're still pretty elevated resignation rates that we're seeing right now.

[00:14:49] So you mentioned a term earlier, talent pipeline.

[00:14:52] That when you talk to the employer branding folks, they love the idea of bringing in a pipeline, having just people that are there.

[00:15:00] putting content in front of them, getting people fall in love with the brand, etc. But doing that through, you know, job openings, you kind of you're playing with live ammunition with candidates because you know they think that that's a real job. Not just a weight, a mechanism for you to market to them.

[00:15:18] Correct. So I went to yours and Jill's because Jill's doing with something a different issue on the town pipeline side. What do you, if people are doing that, and using openings as a way to just build a pipeline.

[00:15:32] So that has, I mean, first, first of all, I just see that back firing with candidates but there probably is a positive spin on that. Tell me what you think when you're here, or you think about town.

[00:15:45] I think it depends how it's done. Right. I think what I get concerned about is those companies that are doing it getting ready for that green light because that's great you're going to have a lot of names and relatively recent resumes.

[00:15:57] And you're, you know, in your pool ready to use, but if they got a bad experience like this is where I'm like, I'm talking about Canada experience, Canada experience. Great news. You have more candidates. What does that actually mean you have more candidates who aren't getting the job.

[00:16:11] It doesn't mean you have more people getting the job. It means more likely you have more people that aren't getting the job. And so often we think of candidate experience. We think of the one person who got the role.

[00:16:20] And we don't think of the, you know, during COVID, maybe it was like 20 that didn't, but now maybe it's 30 or 40 or if you think things like tech roles.

[00:16:29] 60 candidates that are in there. That didn't get the job.

[00:16:33] When you go to reach back out to them in three months because you actually are hard. Is it for me once?

[00:16:38] Yeah, well, even beyond just the experience. It's just not ethical.

[00:16:44] It's just not a good practice. It's not so much that they're like, they're fake jobs. I think it's things like where historically they may open a job and hire five or 10 people to it.

[00:17:00] They may be opening that job and hiring one, if they find them.

[00:17:04] It becomes down to intent, right? Correct. If, if you know that you're not hiring for that job right then at that particular moment.

[00:17:13] That seems, it seems, it seems like someone could say it's unethical. If you know that you're not hiring. It's just an ad.

[00:17:21] Jill, Jill's about to explode.

[00:17:23] Jill's like, I do this every day. Stop it.

[00:17:32] I do the ethical version.

[00:17:34] I don't think we're, you know, I don't think any company is opening roles saying, "Oh, this is fun. Let me just do this for actual work."

[00:17:41] I think, you know, in reality we're trying to, the workforce is moving. It's evolving. The skill sets are evolving.

[00:17:48] What that means is even from a practitioner of talent acquisition, my market knowledge may be a little light in places.

[00:17:56] So especially in the world of AI, as we're building out, you know, what are the teams that are going to take to make AI something that can work?

[00:18:04] That's a new skill set for most of us to know how to hunt. So that's what some of these are about, is yeah, we may not hire tomorrow,

[00:18:13] but in reality, we set those expectations early anyway. Candidate experience for me is critical.

[00:18:20] You know, I love the way that you were talking about. It's not the one that we hire. It's the 60. We didn't.

[00:18:25] You know, those numbers, numbers, you know, sometimes are a little bit larger, but I am a believer in the basics and having a good experience for all candidates helps us go back over and over and over again.

[00:18:37] And I mean, I think I can, you know, I'm going to need all five finger, or all 10 fingers and all 10 toes to count the number of times I've gone back and found those candidates.

[00:18:46] So I think ethics really isn't it. I think it's exploration, understanding the new markets. And I think it is also waiting for the business to feel comfortable with actually pulling the trigger on some of these hires.

[00:18:59] You know, we hear, you know, every single hiring manager under the sun says, I need this role now, yesterday, yesterday.

[00:19:07] Yes, you know, oh, when's an entire class Monday. Oh, can you get them to start for then.

[00:19:11] You know, sure, that's the thought class, but you know, the business side of that says we need to slow a bit a little bit. This one's phased for now. And so it's just balancing those two pieces.

[00:19:24] I mean, what have you done is this side side, what have you just told candidates that.

[00:19:31] I mean, not you. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it you, but what if the advice to customers or the advice to people in their job description, when they post it on Indeed or other places, right, they say, this is not, this is not a position that we're hiring for today.

[00:19:48] We just know this skill is critical in the future. If you want to join our database so that when we're hiring for this, you're the first that we reach out to like that's a different job description.

[00:20:00] That's not even a job description. It's like talent community 2.0 is what you're talking out there. It's like, you know, it's the beginning of evergreen racks kind of coming back.

[00:20:09] You know, whatever. Hey, we know this is going to be important. We just don't know when to three or three your card and early, and we'll just keep communicating.

[00:20:18] I think there's space for that.

[00:20:21] I have, you know, I think it's a little anecdotal, but my philosophy on those, those types, it only makes sense if it makes sense for that market.

[00:20:28] So I wouldn't go and hire or I wouldn't go and open a talent community necessarily for an entry level sales role.

[00:20:35] They're not going to go out there and have some good proposals aren't thinking long term, they're looking more just now, just in time, but there are places where that would make sense.

[00:20:42] And I can actually share a personal experience of mine when I joined I so I actually had a very similar experience.

[00:20:47] I was really starting to dip their toe into data. There was a job description posted.

[00:20:53] I don't even to be honest, I remember what it was, but it was close enough to what I kind of wanted to do.

[00:20:58] And I remember my first interview, they said, look, we're figuring out what this role is and we're finding who are the talent who are the kinds of people? What skills do they have? How do they complement the team we already have?

[00:21:10] And I interviewed a couple of times. I think it's a funny story during my final interview with all Smith, our CTO.

[00:21:17] He tried to get me to apply for a different job. They had opened and I was dead convinced that he didn't like me for the role I was in the final round for.

[00:21:26] And it was the opposite. He was like, we were just we were trying to find people who had these skill sets.

[00:21:31] And we're slotting them into places in our business and you fit multiple place places at the time.

[00:21:35] But I think it wasn't written on that job break, but it was very clear from my experience from day one of it may be this job, the job may be different.

[00:21:43] I don't know if it's going to be this level. I don't know exactly where it's going to sit in our org, but there's a super cross functional team that needs somebody to come in and set a direction for it.

[00:21:51] I think that's been done for a very long time. It's been talked about differently right now.

[00:21:56] Yeah, it's that's the thing that we're both scratching out. We're all scratching out is there's elasticity to this for candidates and for companies that they've got to know that there's elasticity psych.

[00:22:09] Okay, what we're looking for is this raw talent that has these things is. Now, kid, it's kind of know that and then know that, okay, that's not that's real or not.

[00:22:20] But once I get in there that will kind of figure it out. Again, it kind of reminds me of in the 60s.

[00:22:28] And I asked general dynamics, all the different defense contractors, they hired people back then. Man, sorry.

[00:22:38] They just hired really, really smart dudes. Like this was their hiring strategy because it talks to people that did this back then.

[00:22:47] They're like, our strategy was this, we went to Yale, and we hired the smartest people, we could get out of Yale. They didn't have a job. I mean, they didn't have a title.

[00:22:57] We could get out of it in a place. We said smart people can figure it out.

[00:23:02] I mean, we I've seen you at several of them. We went to a lot of events and the industry last year and big buzzword that was coming around right as skills based hiring is that not really what it is. I mean, you were case the skill is just intelligence.

[00:23:15] To think that that is kind of the underlying foundation of this notion of skills based hiring is finding talent and figuring out how they fit instead of really carving out I have this role that needs to have these three experiences and

[00:23:29] the person we're back doing was Raya and Raya did these seven tasks. So this new person needs to do these seven tasks and more now we're seeing, well, we could have somebody over here take this task because this person brings this skill and being fluid and I think things like labor shortages really caused companies to have to think like that and be creative.

[00:23:50] No longer the days of don't worry. They'll just all come to us eventually. We will find that unicorn.

[00:23:56] And Jill, you know, I'm sure you were asked to do that a lot in the last couple of years. Right. The talent didn't just come to you. You know, you didn't just open the door and say, we're hiring and, you know, open the access the next day and here's 50 perfect candidates.

[00:24:09] It's like a false it. Yeah, no, it's the positive purple spotted, you know, squirrels and, you know, magic unicorns and all that.

[00:24:17] It's never opened. Never open. So, let's go. Let's go back to the report. No, we've got the new one that came out.

[00:24:27] What's the difference January to February.

[00:24:30] What are you seeing? Where's the difference? Where's the growth? What do we need to be concerned about?

[00:24:35] I would just say the big the kind of the big headline difference is that in in so January's report is looking at December data.

[00:24:43] Everything slowed way down. I mean, immensely slowed down.

[00:24:48] And the question we kept asking is, OK, it's that time of year, though. So we were really looking at.

[00:24:54] Is it that time of year or was this I mean, this feels like a lifetime ago, January was the longest year of my life.

[00:25:02] But if we think about it, we were all going, OK, is this what we've all been waiting for? Is this that, you know, the other shoe falling and really what I would say from looking at the February report is that wasn't the case, you know, the candidates are back.

[00:25:16] It's the highest amount of candidates that we've seen in our time series that we're looking at here.

[00:25:22] Job openings are back. I think it does show a positive outlook from job seekers, but I do think from companies as well.

[00:25:29] They're continuing to open those jobs on the highest level, the highest level of job openings in the last year.

[00:25:34] We don't see the only only one only statistic that's down is actual hires actual hires.

[00:25:40] I'm going to be curious to see what that looks like in the next.

[00:25:43] Because everyone had a little bit of a slow January. So that's why you're seeing.

[00:25:49] So applicants of are openings up and an actual hires was actual hires are down.

[00:25:58] They're up significantly from December. I mean, that would be extremely concerning.

[00:26:02] Just December is always kind of we are through it. That's not when I'm looking for a job and as a hiring manager,

[00:26:09] Gilbert's referencing ice and hiring managers and I'm not going to take offense.

[00:26:15] But you know, as a hiring manager, you go like it's December 15.

[00:26:19] Let's talk about this next year. It's what we see generally speaking.

[00:26:22] So like I said, hires is up month over month, but year over year, it's down about 5%.

[00:26:27] Right.

[00:26:28] So.

[00:26:30] Does the election.

[00:26:34] I know, I know I'm doing it's like dynamite is 20 years old, you know, if I don't know if you're ever had dynamite to figure.

[00:26:43] It's got kind of a moist feel to it. Like it could blow up right then.

[00:26:48] Yeah, my uncle had a bunch of old dynamite who's a Vietnam pilot and so we're at his house one day.

[00:26:59] And he's he's literally got dynamite in his garage.

[00:27:02] I'm like, what is this box? He's all it's dynamite. I'm like, how long has it been sitting here in your garage?

[00:27:08] That's 30 years.

[00:27:10] Yeah. I got somewhere on the mat. You're good. So he goes here. I mean, he literally pulls out a piece of dynamite and puts it in my hands.

[00:27:18] I'm like, I could this is this this could end? Not so good for me right here.

[00:27:23] What am I doing? One of them. No fingers. I know the election is doing with life.

[00:27:29] Emma and dynamite. I totally get it. We're not going to get political, but the angst of any election.

[00:27:37] But he's always there. Do you think that that had plays any part for anyone?

[00:27:43] Whether or not it's candidates or the company do you think that plays for anyone that angst around the election?

[00:27:50] I like my fingers. So I'm going to I'm going to slightly deviate from your question.

[00:27:54] I will say there are many, many things right now that are sort of hanging in the balance.

[00:28:00] The only thing I will say to an election is that we know elections have impacts on the economy.

[00:28:06] I'll speak to the economic outlook and the stock markets. I think you cannot argue that those things do not have direct effects on hiring.

[00:28:14] A company is not doing well. When their stock is down, they would be the CEO would be fired for opening the floodgates of hiring.

[00:28:21] So I think that kind of thing is at play. But I think there's also still some really big post Covid settling happening happening.

[00:28:29] I mean, I would love it. If 2024 is the year that like nobody says the word return to office again, but I don't think we're done with it.

[00:28:36] I think that is still huge. Oh, no. Actually, it's interesting. One of the survey stats. I'll pull back to the report, go full circle here.

[00:28:43] A part of people said that they would consider looking for a new job if their company announced they must return to office full time.

[00:28:50] We saw the same thing last report, and I looked at it last week. It was, and it targeted high performers and women and people of color.

[00:29:00] If you want that talent to stay, you can't have a strenuous strict ROC. Where's it ROC? Return RTC. Return to RTO. You can't have that.

[00:29:14] If you're trying to keep that towel, I just throw out letters.

[00:29:17] See nine or four. Return to office. If you have a really, really harsh strategy, you're just not going to be able.

[00:29:26] So we were debating like, is the office be talent? At one point, if you have that strict strategy, do you end up with just being in C talent at the office?

[00:29:37] Well, and it also tied to age as well. In age. Yeah. It tied to the age, but we did.

[00:29:46] And I went away thinking, and I thought about it over the last night. Didn't just sit there and think about it, but you know, comes into my mind.

[00:29:54] I'm not that lame, but it actually potentially is be talent.

[00:30:00] Share your questions in the office. And I don't think that's true for, we'll say the experienced population. I think there are a lot of the experienced workers want to be in the office still.

[00:30:14] For the newer inexperienced talent those five years ish into the yeah you're you're going to get a lot of the people that just want to play the game, come in, collect a paycheck and can work hard, not that they're bad.

[00:30:28] They want to work hard, but they're they're not I don't think based on what we're seeing the trends, they're not as ambitious as some of the others.

[00:30:38] So I'll throw a little dynamite there, go back to full circle. We actually do a big report every year, we call it the class of report and we look at the last three graduating classes of college and we survey them we look at their behaviors of how they're applying

[00:30:53] for jobs, how they interact with career sites, how they, you know what they prefer. And interestingly enough, Gen Z wants a more traditional workplace experience. It's millennials who are me right now it's funny, actually, I don't know, we do go back to the office.

[00:31:10] Two days a week it is ready listening very snowy Tuesday morning people so they give you bagels and cream cheese, but what I would say is they are a group of people people just especially the last few years of college graduates but even you know this whole generation

[00:31:11] they're a group of people who are really candidly robbed of some very, you know, coming of age experiences, things like proms,

[00:31:39] in person, college, that was defining years of becoming an adult and they're looking for joining the workforce and joining a company. They want to be physically in the office is not because they want to physically walk into a cubicle.

[00:31:56] It is because they want to learn, they want to be included. It's a tough job to enter a job remotely where you're trying to gain the skills I think of how I learned when I first way back when started my first job in New York City and

[00:32:08] my boss would just grab me walking the meetings and say, You know what, come with me to this one listen and how much I learned by just being in that room, I had no value to add yet, but I was there, that doesn't happen so much on zoom and I think this generation knows that

[00:32:23] what it is because they're trying to figure out how they want to go back to an office, and they're looking for human connection, right, and they're finding in the office, it is the overworked, my cup is running over millennials like me that are trying to figure out, you know some human has to be on the front porch so the bus driver will open the door in one kid has to get

[00:32:42] out of there, I think that's the most important thing. You know, you're seeing and you have to know, when you go back to an office, you have to do that and they just have to go back to an office, and you have to make me go back to an office, that's a lot.

[00:32:57] But the really truly sort of entry level talent is actually saying that they want that traditional, like everybody else got is the words I keep getting heard right everybody else got this when they started their career, why don't we

[00:33:09] go back to the office?

[00:33:10] So all right, I mean, I don't know, if you look at this, you're seeing that across the board, you're seeing entry level talent roles, they're not even saying hybrid anymore, they're saying in the office five days a week, and people aren't even blinking twice, they're applying, they're excited to apply.

[00:33:29] And so as Joe was mentioning from the very report, more than two thirds of candidates right now or under the age of 34. Yeah.

[00:33:36] Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you, where is that age? Where are you seeing the biggest uptick? Where's the most activity? 18 to 24 is by far right now, the biggest I mean 42% of job applicants right now are between the ages of 18 to 24.

[00:33:50] It is the biggest group that is out there looking.

[00:33:54] It I say to our customers when we're consulting with them, I say, it's a great time to hire entry level. It's a pretty tough time to find someone with 15 years experience.

[00:34:02] Right.

[00:34:03] I think some of that is sweet for go ahead.

[00:34:04] No, I was going to say, but that lines up with most companies goals right now. I mean, most companies are investing in those those simple, high performing entry level talents.

[00:34:14] I mean, so it lines up beautifully. I'm excited when I saw that on the, when I saw that on the insights reports. I was writing, I was like, yes, exactly. That's the market that I'm looking to have, you know, I'm looking to find so it's amazing that it's starting to line up.

[00:34:33] Right now, the, the headline I'm giving them is higher gen Z retained millennials. If you're, if you're whole, you know, external brand that you're trying to put out is attracting millennials good luck right now.

[00:34:47] The ones you have, because you need them to knowledge transfer to all of that new talent. Right.

[00:34:53] One thing that we forget is that when we went to offices, especially coming to our first job, first couple of jobs. That was our social network for social media, like it was the stuff in the office, the water cooler and all that other stuff and going into meetings and stuff like that.

[00:35:09] There's also the stuff that happened after work.

[00:35:11] Yeah.

[00:35:12] So what's work done, it's like, oh, we're all going to this bar, we're all going to a game. We're all going to this that.

[00:35:17] But I, I didn't know the other, and it was like, human connection. There's something that was good and some of us bad. Got it. But we, you know, I could see them yearning for, for that. I could see them being robbed and in wanting that.

[00:35:30] And I mean, I'll throw a little bit of a slight conspiracy theory, there's no data at all behind this one, but it is fascinating. If you think about it, that when we saw remote and hybrid work become the norm we saw resignation rates go way up.

[00:35:44] And I think about every time I've ever quit a job, I did not care about telling HR or my boss. I didn't give two pennies. It was the people I eat lunch with every day. It was my friends who, you know, I had coffee within the mornings, or I went to happy hour with after work, those were people that I remember just being like, oh my gosh, like I feel horrible.

[00:36:07] That was the emotion around resigning me. That was a sticking factor around times I didn't resign.

[00:36:14] And I think that when we all went home and, like I said, when none of us, I don't think our good zoom socializers, I don't do a good enough job of calling someone to just say, hey, I'm pretty sure if I just right now did a level by calling someone just said,

[00:36:26] yeah, I don't want to check in how you are. They would probably be freaking out to see my name popping up. Yeah. But if I stopped by their desk and just said, how was your weekend? That's normal. And I think that human connection, we're still figuring out how to do that.

[00:36:40] I don't, you know, if anybody knows a company that's doing this fantastically. Please definitely did know, because I don't know of that. And I think that when we saw this sort of depersonalization behind the screen at home, and then we saw resignation rates, peak in my head, are we really surprised by this.

[00:36:58] It was easier. Does it does it for any of us. Is that loyalty? Are we really talking about loyalty? Both sides.

[00:37:07] I can't be a culture right. Remember when culture used to be what's your culture? We have a ping pong table. You know you joke, right? We have vehicles. Right? That was.

[00:37:17] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that so the loyalty, the loyalty question, I think that's always struggled, right? After we'll say, after pensions gone, all that stuff.

[00:37:33] That loyalty really has struggled, and it was just a light was, was shined on showing on that when this happened right now.

[00:37:42] Well, technically loyalty goes back to free agency and sports. Prior to free agency and sports. I've actually studied this. So, yeah, you know, I don't doubt that you did so prior to free agency and sports.

[00:37:58] Companies were loyal to employees. Employees were loyal to companies. Once they saw that free agency that management or ownership wasn't loyal to players and players weren't loyal to the teams, then it then that actual cultural

[00:38:13] phenomenon actually bled over into work. So, so what what I'm what I'm discussing is so we've had a problem with loyalty since free agency and sports check with COVID.

[00:38:27] I think there's another wave of loyalty of zoom related loyalty. So zoom. I don't know what I'm blaming. Zoom.

[00:38:37] It's a great company. Zoom seems a fantastic, I don't stop. Doesn't matter. Here's the deal.

[00:38:42] That was actually kind of a disclaimer. Yeah.

[00:38:47] I bet.

[00:38:49] So, no, it's not zoom's fault. It's it's the activities that happen to a conference call technology that I think is the next level or could be the next level of loyalty shift from a company.

[00:39:02] Can I really loyal to that person that we just talked to over this thing.

[00:39:07] It's important to think about what employees have been through in the last four years and that's happening statement.

[00:39:13] But then can we be surprised if we've lost loyalty right? We saw huge amounts of layoffs in almost all spaces. We saw unemployment.

[00:39:22] I mean, record breaking high levels of unemployment. We saw.

[00:39:27] Like, I mean, you don't have to talk about the pandemic itself, but like we've all just been through a lot. We've seen so many huge ups and downs and back up and back down and just so many external factors at play that I think all of those things.

[00:39:40] I mean, you know, go full circle again back to return to office. You saw, you know, go home. Please work from there. Just kidding. Come back. Just this like.

[00:39:48] Right. And as an employee, what do I control? We as people are struggling. I think as a society with what do we control after everything we've been through and sort of this notion of, you know, I feel, especially in this job market that people, if they don't like what a company is doing

[00:40:05] or they feel like they're not a human to the company that they won't, they won't stay. So who pushes who pushes that first. So now we've got an egg, right. We can.

[00:40:16] We can do that. I'm actually thinking of Stephen right. He had a joke years ago that he named his dog stay. So I hear stay here. Stay here.

[00:40:25] Yeah. So, like who makes that first move first? Do companies make that move and say, hey, we're going to be loyal to you or is it employees? Like, again, it is chicken and egg. Who's going to make the loyalty play first?

[00:40:38] I think it comes back to trust. I don't think there's a play. I think it has to live out. Right.

[00:40:44] I agree with that. I think it's just something that's going to happen.

[00:40:48] It can't be words, right. That's what we care now. That's, so the opt. So the optimist on this call or on this side. I am not one of those people. I'm over here on the darkness.

[00:41:02] I don't think that that happens. I don't think it happens at all actually.

[00:41:05] And we may see things like the gig economy really ramp up. And again, you know, maybe you're not even loyal that you spend your whole week with a company.

[00:41:13] I I would bet more money on that than else. Joe, I did have one question before we lend. And it was about the hiring of 18 to 24 year olds.

[00:41:24] You know, they used to be college recruiting or university recruiting. We called it a lot of different things. I always just thought of it as a table and a place and he stood behind the table.

[00:41:33] Yeah, wait for a long time. Would you like a peppermint? We have a peppermint. There's a bowl of pepper mints. It's like really you're Princeton. That's going to get somebody that's going to peppermint radio.

[00:41:48] What do we need to do? What are your customer would advise you to giving your customers and also yourself? You're going to be hiring a lot of these 18 to 24 year old yourself.

[00:41:56] What do you got to do differently at that level?

[00:42:00] You need to be able to understand this audience again. I think we've, I think we've taken them for granted for a long time. You know, I used to sell that pen at that table at Princeton.

[00:42:13] You said, but that's why I think that's how I started in recruitment and.

[00:42:18] You know, it wasn't about the pen and it wasn't about it. It was about building those relationships and understanding their viewpoints and their needs and I think they had to go back to that.

[00:42:26] I have to understand what my how my role fits in their future ecosystem and their growth and their development. I think when we can do that and when we can articulate that.

[00:42:36] That's when they buy in test and it is a trust thing like to go back to all these big buzz words that we're building. It is a trust thing. It is a brand awareness thing. It is a sharing of my culture.

[00:42:46] It is a hey, this is a cool office. Yeah, we have an Xbox kind of thing like it's all these pieces having to come back into the puzzle, because I think over the last few years we've systematically just kept pulling random pieces out of the puzzle and say, it's still kind of looks

[00:43:01] all right. But in reality, it's all got to come back in. And when we're focusing on this talent, they're craving community. They're craving authenticity. All these pieces have to come back in. And we have to build them to build an environment they'll be excited to be a part of.

[00:43:17] And I will shamelessly plug the ICIMS class with 2023 report every time I present it to one of our customers when we're doing consulting engagements. They're shocked. I say things like, yeah, this is great that you have Snapchat, but what how are, what are you telling them about the financial benefits your company offers I'm not talking salary and people's eyes always over and I say, you know, that's the number one thing they're looking for.

[00:43:37] And so I will say that report. I know Jill was actually found this out recently Jill used to use our reports before she was an employee at ICIMS. I got.

[00:43:47] So I am old school, I print everything behind me are filing cabinets full of old ICIM reports because even before I work for ICIMS, I love this data. I have always loved the monthly reports. I've loved all of the insights work because it is so telling.

[00:44:03] And it's when you look at, you know, it's a great data point to pull out and when you're thinking about how was this market evolving. It's fantastic. I think I'll use it forever. It was just just.

[00:44:14] It's amazing. I want to pull out some of the old ones though are you and see kind of like how how telling are they now.

[00:44:21] Maybe watch the old videos. I'll allow that.

[00:44:23] I'll tell you why you pulled them out. I'll come up. We'll have bagels and look at reports. I would love it.

[00:44:29] I don't reach it. It was literally that's kindling to me. That's how we start fires down here.

[00:44:35] Thank you both for cutting out time and educating our audience. Appreciate you both.

[00:44:41] And thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you for having us. Thank you.

[00:44:45] [Music]

[00:44:59] [MUSIC PLAYING]