We’ve Come Along Way

The Candidate Experience Podcast seeks to help improve the job candidate journey for all. In this episode Chuck Solomon and Todd Raphael discuss the candidate experience, diversity, remote work and more. Listen now or read the transcript below.

Chuck Solomon 0:00  

Hi, Todd, How are you this morning? 

Todd Raphael 0:02  

Great, how are you doing? 

Chuck Solomon 0:03  

I'm doing well. Please let my listeners know a little bit about the company you work for and and what you do for them.

Todd Raphael 0:13  

Sure, eightfold is a full lifecycle platform. So it takes artificial intelligence and embeds it power the whole lifecycle of an employee all the way from before. They're an employee career site, through screening, interviewing, all the way through succession planning, internal mobility, and retention. So really a full platform that gives companies intelligence, and I'm on the marketing team over at a photo I've been here about nine months. 

Chuck Solomon 0:51  

Gotcha. I've known you for a couple years, mostly from what during your time at ERE as the editor there and you've you've covered a couple of organizations that I worked for and certainly have sort of a pulse on hiring and talent acquisition community. Can you give a little bit about your sort of backstory, how you sort of got into your career term? 

Todd Raphael 1:13  

Yeah, I spent a couple years few years in the political world of Washington, DC and then came out to California working on a political campaign 1997. And I've spent Oh 20 almost a quarter century, two different media b2b media companies that cover this world of employment and human resources shared on a generalist publication publishing company called workforce, workforce calm, where I built a lot of the website, presence there and then a more talent acquisition centric, one called era which you mentioned, which is more career centric, but puts on conferences for the talent acquisition field. 

Chuck Solomon 1:58  

So you've you've gotten probably a good first hand view of the whole hiring process and the good, the bad, the ugly. What flaws Do you see in the in the current candidate experience currently? 

Todd Raphael 2:15  

Well, I think it's come a long way, particularly. Just the idea of giving people notice of where they are, if they didn't get a job is a lot better than it was sure on career websites, of course, are a ton better than they were a lot of money and energy and everything has gone into making them look good and feature videos and photos and value propositions about why it works, why you should work somewhere, all that so it's certainly come a long way in a decade, decade and a half. A couple things though. One is they tend to have a very one size fits all approach. So you go to a career site and you may not actually see something that applies to you specifically, they're they're not really really tailored, like the way on Amazon or something would be. And then another, a lot of those sites, as you know, tend to break down when you go search for a job, like you'll have this amazing career site and you go search. And first of all, sometimes it starts with some departments, which is to pick a department, you've no idea which department to pick, right beside ties that detail. Once you do a search, you often just don't get a job that fits you. And then you set up a job alert, you get a weekly email, but they don't tend to fit you either. So it tends to result in very high drop off rates and a lot of frustration, unfortunately. 

Chuck Solomon 3:40  

Yeah, I would agree, I think. I think there are flaws, but I think we've come a long way, especially in the last five to 10 years for sure. I guess on the on the flip side of flaws. I mean anything in particular what improvements that you've seen on in the candidate experience?

Todd Raphael 4:04  

Yeah, one thing our some of our customers have done, which has been really effective. For example, there's one called DexCom, which is a San Diego based company it's in the dialysis field. One thing some of our customers at least have done is have job candidates upload a resume to a career site could be a biography, or a CV or even a LinkedIn profile saved as a PDF. But anyhow, have that loaded up, we actually could be even like a chat bot having a little conversation and that pulls in the information from a candidate. And then the candidate once they load up that resume that bio, they have technology match their capabilities with the capabilities needed to do a job so the candidate sees, oh wow, I'm strong match for these one or two or three or whatever jobs and then you really see More transparently how you fit in and could fit into roles and then you're much more likely to apply once you get that confidence that you fit in, see where that is. And assuming that the candidate doesn't have to pick the department or decide what department in that case well, actually, not only Yeah, you're right back not to go beyond that actually, it's a really great way of seeing jobs in fields that maybe you haven't thought of where you know, where you have capabilities or the potential to do something but you haven't done that in the past that's actually really effective. You can see Oh, I'm you know, I'm good at on, you know, very detailed project management work or accounting or designing or whatever. And those skills can apply to some other job that I'm not doing now, but, um, are in another field, but really Take advantage of what I'm good at, like, you can see that where your potential lies and that's awesome. A great thing and yeah, again, some of our customers have found that very successful. 

Chuck Solomon 6:13  

Yeah, that's good to hear. It's, uh, end of August 2020. We still have a pandemic. Unfortunately, still hanging around here for the foreseeable future. What are you seeing virtual hiring wise, like out there?

Todd Raphael 6:34  

It's funny. When so it's kind of rewind to January February before this all started. I, I had previously worked for an all all remote or distributed company era for 15 years and so a lot of for whatever reason, a lot of people I knew who also worked remotely all all remote companies and became Very common among wealth certainly era, but also like other companies I knew and people need to hire people, sight unseen, never meet them. And that became like, very normal and like not a big deal. But to most people who didn't work for distributed companies who were going to an office every day in commuting. That sounded really weird. Like you've never met them, you never shook their hand and looked him in the face. And that sounded very strange. And it still sounds strange. I think when the pandemic started in, in now, after a few months ago, I think that's become very common to hire people with the hiring freeze is going away, to hire people without having met them in person. And it doesn't sound strange to a lot of folks anymore. And you know, April really is is pretty agnostic. To we have we help companies with virtual hiring pretty nice. toward whether they're met them in person or not it, um, it works either way, but, but in general, I've noticed that everyone's become just like a lot more comfortable with. Hey, I've never met them. Now, that's not such a big deal anymore. I don't know if you've, if you've noticed that sea change or not. 

Chuck Solomon 8:19  

Yeah, I think you're spot on with that we're sort of folks are getting used to this. myself. I've worked for the past. I'm not sure more than five years close to 10 years out of a home office. So would you know, so there wasn't much of a of a change for me, and I know, it was a huge change. The whole work from home thing, I think, probably the bigger thing was the fact that, people's kids were home and they couldn't go anywhere. They are sort of on lockdown and stuff. So and then everyone's at home. So you know, everyone's crammed together. So there's a lot of stresses there. I am actively looking for a new opportunity myself. And everything, you know, all the companies that I've been talking to, everything's a switch to remote, remote interviewing. Everything's on on zoom or some different form of video and stuff. But, you know, the last position I got, actually, they hired me over video as well. So, that was, that was in early 2019. So like, it was it's no big deal.

Todd Raphael 9:42  

We did an extremely informal just unscientific look at the people we'd hired without ever meeting them in person and with meeting them in person seeing what worked out better than the people we had not met. Or generally more, you know, worked out better, wasn't scientific. It's not not making the point that you shouldn't meet someone that's definitely not the point only that perhaps it's a agnostic.

Chuck Solomon 10:15  

Yeah, I think that's probably gonna, you know, with a lot of the companies were there, especially the tech companies in California basically said, you know, you can work from home permanently or at least through into, you know, 2020 there, they're going to have to, you know, there's no, there's no opportunity to bring people in to interview they're just going to do it over video. So I, I think that's probably a probably a good thing from the pandemic that we've all learned that we can do a lot of the things that we can be more productive, and, frankly, it's, it's great to, you know, be able to wear shorts. I couldn't know if I was going to do office, I wouldn't go in with shorts, so

Todd Raphael 11:00  

But when it's you know, 108.

Chuck Solomon 11:07  

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So great. So there seems to be a and I think this is a good thing, a greater focus currently on diversity hiring at large, medium, small companies. You know, what are you seeing with regards to diversity hiring?

Todd Raphael 11:26  

Well, one thing is that you're going back to that.I mentioned the resume, some of our customers are finding it valuable to do the resume upload candidates uploading the resume, seeing how they they fit in, they're getting higher, lower drop off rates, higher click to apply rates. That's actually a diversity issue. I'm sure you've read that study, originally was a study of Hewlett Packard and then it was written up in Harvard Business Review and elsewhere that that women are much more much less likely to apply. For a job if they don't have all the capabilities listed in the job description and men are more likely to go Yeah, go for it anyhow. Right And actually, so when you show a candidate, hey, here are the capabilities you have currently and here's how they fit in which jobs they fit in. People are much more likely to apply for a job and not drop off. All you have to do at that point is just hit click to apply once you've seen how you fit so that's, that definitely helps address diversity. Also, some of our customers have found it valuable to anonymize information, like gender race in and then send hiring managers anonymized like people's initials instead of their name as an example of information, just to make sure there's no unconscious bias based on someone's background in any way. Those have been very valuable some of our customers.

Chuck Solomon 13:05  

Yeah, I think it's, um, and I'm actually trying to get some Chief Diversity Officers to interview I have a couple that had sort of raised their hands and they have we haven't scheduled yet, but they sort of get their perspective on things. I know. I know, for me, I've actually, in a couple of conversations I've had with companies that I'm pursuing, I've asked sort of, you know, some of these were closer to the unfortunate death of George Floyd. But I asked the question of like, what is the what is the company's stance on this? Have they made a public statement? And you know, some of them have said, you know, we haven't made a public statement. We've made internal statements. We're trying to figure out what to do about this sort of thing. And then there's been some that there's There's been silence and silence, I guess that says something. So you have to say something. 

Todd Raphael 14:07  

And you say, in trying to figure out what to do also makes me think of another thing that I've seen some of our customers do. really well which your or, you know, analytics, you know, you have, you know, other companies are looking at their population saying, you know what, maybe we have a diversity problem, maybe we're, maybe our homogeneity is is not right, or maybe it's just, it's for the wrong, it's just not. There's some there's an inequity, but we don't know where it is. And if you look, if companies have the right analytics to see where in the process people are falling out, like are people with disabilities falling out at the top of the funnel or the the on site interview if there is one or the virtual interview and so on. So if you can kind of see where you have like a large drop off Between the number of people who were in the process of one point and the number of people who are in the process, after that of whatever diversity category, maybe gender, and so on. That's something that can be very valuable.

Chuck Solomon 15:16  

I know for when I have my my job seeker hat on and I'm looking at AI companies I, you know, I look at the imagery. A lot of companies, especially smaller companies have their board and their leadership team on their websites. And I, I'm a person that looks at that stuff. Maybe I'm weird that way. I don't know. But I imagine other people look at that stuff too. And if it's a, you know, a bunch of white men, I sort of start to question that like, what kind of, you know, company is this how open are they to sort of diversity on all sorts of levels and My advice to those companies is to remove that page and start working on your diversity. So then you can put up a page that has all your leadership that sort of represents what, you know what our greater society looks like. 

Todd Raphael 16:15  

Yeah, I would say just to to add to that is, if there is a way you can tailor make your tailor your information, whether it's your website, or even your communications to the candidate that can be really valuable. So for example, let's say you're a veteran. I'm a veteran might be super, super interested in what the company is doing with veterans topics, are they you know, participating in the organization operation gratitude, or they there's an event called carry the load, which is in May, so are they is the company doing something like that like volunteering, carry the load? So if you have those kinds of things, and you're a veteran actually very, very powerful to demonstrate either on the career side or in communications like monthly emails to to candidates in your pipeline. So not just you know, diversity as a whole, but can you can you tailor make your information to whether it's veterans or women are it candidates and whatnot that can be very effective?

Chuck Solomon 17:25  

Yeah, I totally agree. I think you touch on it's marketing really, and what companies are doing, especially for people that haven't hit the Apply button is his market to them. And the more you know about the candidates and what, what you offer, the more alignment that you can have and realize that it's not a one size fits all for everyone. People are interested in things, the more you can diversify on on your marketing, you know, the better, the better. The results that you that you'll get. And I'm just reminded of some of the companies that, you know, they still send us an email saying, you know, I applied for a job a month ago, and they they send these auto emails for jobs that I'm not even remotely qualified for. Yeah. I'm like, how did that? How did how does that work? Like, you know, I didn't sign up for that I applied for a marketing type role. You're sending me jobs as a data scientist. So, so awesome. Do you have any tips that you could offer HR leaders on what they could do to improve their company's candidate experience? 

Todd Raphael 18:45  

Yeah, I mean, I think being specific would be good sounds. That sounds kind of like not so novel advice. But when you look at a lot of whether it's just a website, career site, whether it's even other advertisements On Glassdoor job ads on job boards and everywhere else on emails. You don't really get I have trouble getting a sense of what it's like to work there. I see a lot of generalities like we are giving people your great experiences and we're flexible and just things like that in it. I have very little sense of what is the day like there. When I look at the videos I like I can I hear employees talking about how wonderful it is to work there. And and that's good. But sometimes I kind of wonder like, what's it like? Is it competitive? Is it collaborative? What's like the atmosphere like even if it's a virtual atmosphere, there's still an atmosphere I have trouble getting the sense of specifics and details about the kind of places they are to work at so companies can be more specific in detail. That's great if you can give people a sense of who they'd be working with, that would be great. Maybe and this is more controversial, you can maybe give them a way to contact people they'd be working with that could be cool. I know that that risks the recruiter or the manager being bombarded. But nonetheless, that is something a few companies have done is give people the chance to contact people who they'd be working with. But the minimum of these show some of the people you work with, and that kind of gets to some of the tailor tailor tailored stuff that we were talking about, like who similar to you, you veteran, or whatever you are, might you be working with us some of the same background as you got stuff would be really valuable I think. And again, if you can show more, more people, what they how they fit into jobs at a company that would be very valuable and definitely increase rates of application.

Chuck Solomon 21:03  

Good stuff there Todd! If people wanted to get ahold of you How could they do so?

Todd Raphael 21:11  

The easiest way would be to find me on LinkedIn and my name is Todd Raphel you can hunt me down on LinkedIn, shoot me a note, there would probably be the easiest way rather than me rattle off email addresses here. But um, and then we can get in touch.

Chuck Solomon 21:30  

Excellent. And is your company hiring?

Todd Raphael 21:35  

Yeah, that's a good question. We are hiring indeed. Yeah, we're, we're growing and we were in a fortunate situation where when this this all hit recession, everything Eightfold is fortunately the full lifecycle so I'm not just on the front end of the tunnel vision, but we're equally involved in things like succession planning and interest. Turn on mobility we've actually helped some of our customers, for example, even with redeployment, so avoiding layoffs, how can you take hundreds of people who would have been laid off and find use technology to find how their capabilities can meet match jobs that are open internally, rather than them being laid off? Can they do something else at the company that maybe you hadn't thought of? And they hadn't been? So we've been doing that. So that kind of stuff, talent, talent management part, as well as the hiring those two things that combined have helped us and situation like this. We're not just ta centric. So yeah, we're hiring both in the US as well as overseas. 

Chuck Solomon 22:41  

Great. Todd, thanks for your time today.

Todd Raphael 22:45  

Thank you.

*Please note that the transcription of this podcast was done via an artificial intelligence service. While AI gets most of it right, there maybe some errors. Refer to the original audio version for any discrepancies.