Hiring Redefined: Winning Talent in 2025’s Hardest Markets

It is my great honor and pleasure to introduce today, Brian, Christie, and Ryan. So come on up, go off mute, put your cameras on. You know the drill. Here they are. Um, for those of you who were with us last year for our talent branding and communications, you may remember Brian was our keynote afternoon speaker and he just brought the house down. So it's just such a wonderful treat to have him here. He's one of the smartest people I've had the pleasure. No, no, you are. And other things like your skills in tv, your books, everything. Taylor Swift, everything. Christie Christie, amazing. Uh, vp I'm gonna give you all a chance to go around and introduce yourself, but I'm so thrilled to have you here because you're living and breathing this role every day. And Ryan, so much you bring to me personally, like whenever I call upon you to ask questions. So this is going to be great. So without further ado, we're gonna start with you, Brian, just take a minute, introduce the audience to your greatness. And the question that I would like all of you to answer, what do you think is the biggest misconception about hiring in 2025 that we really need to debunk? Put it away. It's not real. Okay, let's go. Alright, so, uh, so I'm up first. My name is Brian. Uh, I'm the managing partner at the Rework Group. Uh, I like to think of myself as a modern talent acquisition and technology recruiting aficionado. I did write the book on this, it's called Talk Me, the Non-Technical Guide to Technology Recruiting. It was published about two years ago. And, um, I really focus on recruiting strategy to attract those, uh, those individuals that are the unfindable or unreachable AI engineers of today. Right? So I like to demystify complex technology concepts. I like to make everything as simple as I can for my candidates and for the recruiters that I get to mentor about mentorship. I do provide open office hours every Friday afternoon from 12 until 4:00 PM Eastern, where if you've got a question, ping me on LinkedIn and we will tackle that together. Uh, beyond that, I think that too, Jody's question about the biggest misconception that is taking place in the market today is that it is a employer's market. I think that, uh, candidates have heard that it's been beaten into them, it's beaten them down, but the reality of the, of the matter is it's still a market where if you want to go and grow and you want to achieve and you want to dream big and you wanna build fantastic organizations, there's a place for that recruiter. There's a place for that candidate and there's a place for that organization. That's my misconception that I want to put to bed. Excellent. Thank you so much for that. Okay, Kristy, you're next. I'm Kristy Spilker, vice President, head of Talent acquisition at Smile Brands. I've been recruiting for over 20 years now. Started on the agency side, moved over to the corporate side, and I was also, uh, past president for the Association of TA Professionals. And I'm a Lean six Sigma green belt, so I'm very close to process. I like to look at process and we'll talk about that a bit today as well. A misconception I think is happening in ta. You know, everywhere I go, every webinar, every um, in-person event I go to AI is the hot topic, and it should be, it's very exciting right now. I also think though it's not going to solve everything, we still, talent acquisition professionals are still so critical to this process and the strategy that we bring and just the way that we go about the recruiting process is still going to be critical. And so I think just that AI is going to solve everything is the misconception that I would put to build. Good one. Good one. Thank you, Ryan, you're up. Hello? Hello. Um, hello everyone. I'm Ryan Volter. My, uh, specialty is, I'm a coach trainer certification instructor and expert in all things talent attractions. So think recruitment marketing, candidate experience, employer brand, uh, with Rogue Hire, uh, which is a decision intelligence platform for healthcare recruiting. Uh, to answer the question, I think that there's kind of a fundamental misconception that TA is merely operational more so than transformational. And I think that there's a lot more gleaning insights into data us as TA professionals can gather, whether it's top of funnel data, down funnel data to make better, uh, more strategically informed decision making. Thank you. Thank you for that. And I just wanted to find out anybody here in healthcare recruiting, because if you are, think of your questions because Ryan is amazing in that. So I think we hit on it in our introductions. Let's talk about the elephant in the room, the AI elephant. And Christie, you said it very articulately, so I wanna start this one with you. Where do you think AI can or has delivered the biggest impact in talent acquisition and where does it fall short? So one of the things that you said as we started was it's not the answer to everything. Let's talk about both ends of that spectrum. Okay. And we're gonna go circle around to everyone else after. Sure. And it's a big question. We could probably take the whole call today to talk about it. So I'll just give you a couple of things that I think about here. Um, AI's doing a great job with sourcing, helping us identify candidates at scale with, in some cases, screening, depending on how deep you're talking about the screening process. Uh, candidate engagement with text messaging, uh, chat bots, engaging candidates, especially on our website, answering questions, getting them engaged and excited. Um, AI's doing a great job with recruitment automation and having the ability to send out more personalized communications at scale. All of those are great. And then another area too. Um, and obviously some of those things like interview scheduling and the things that recruiters really aren't excited about doing anyway, so that's great. Um, but another area, uh, that I think is, it comes to mind is things like co-pilot, Chachi, pt, Gemini, Claude. I mean, there's so many out there right now that we can leverage in different ways depending on what your organization's rules are. Um, and also tools like Google has a notebook, uh, LM too, that's really great. So you can learn a lot about areas that maybe would've taken you forever to Google, um, before, like for example, you know, Brian's got a ton of knowledge about tech recruiting that might take somebody who's new to tech recruiting a long time to learn. You can go through some websites into Google LM and have it create a podcast for you and learn while you're driving all about the different tech roles that you might need to recruit for. So I think in terms of helping us learn and training, recruiting teams, keeping us up to date, creating job descriptions through, um, things like Chachi, bt, or copilot, assessing data, predictive analytics, I think about those tools as well and the huge impact they're going to have on all of us. And where do you think it's falling short? Where do We still all of Us? Yeah, so I think there's a few areas. Um, we don't wanna over rely on ai. Um, there's nuance in communication with candidates and assessment. You still want to have that human in the loop and still have that human as a process and in a lot of these areas. Um, also with, you know, working with candidates through the process. A a recruiter who can talk to a candidate and say, Hey, what are you looking for? What are you excited about in your next role? And understand how to pull additional things outta that person to have a more strategic conversation when it comes time to making an offer. Making sure that we are considering the entire conversation we had with the candidate up to that point. I think there's just some things that AI is not going to in the, any time near future, have solves for where that recruiter can be more strategic. Um, so I just think of it in terms of the recruiting process and I don't think it's gonna solve for everything right now, though. It is going to give us a huge lift, and I'm very excited about it. Mm-hmm. Okay. Ryan, I'm gonna ask you to add anything to that, and I'm also gonna ask everybody listening if they have any of their own experiences that they wanna add to the chat in using AI in their current roles. Awesome. I loved everything Christie had to say. Uh, she's, she's point on. I've really seen AI unlock value in being able to, uh, tap into our existing talent pool. So we refer to this as candidate rediscovery. Ai and automation has made that incredibly easier to go and resurface missed candidates, silver medalists, those that have shown interest in our organizations, but are for a sense sitting in a digital filing cabinet. So I love that part. Uh, we could talk all afternoon about the administrative efficiencies, but one thing that I love about AI is, uh, note takers and, and transcription being able to record all my conversations and have easily Identifi. Brian, I think you were the first person who told me about the AI note-taking, and that seems like it was yesterday. It was so many years ago. Like, that's amazing. And I think that's, that's kind of a no-brainer for, uh, recruiting teams to, to tap into so they can be more engaged one-on-one in their conversations. Amazing. Falling short. Where's it falling short? Uh, a couple areas I think, and, and this might be, uh, just in healthcare, maybe other industries see this, but gaining leadership buy-in has been difficult. I think, you know, there's extensive governance processes required to onboard elements of ai, and often, at least in healthcare, TA doesn't have a seat at that table. So we do a lot of firefighting and course correcting. How do you get that seat in the table and share your voice and kind of mitigate any, any fears or avoid like lengthy 12 month long info security processes just to enable one, uh, plugin tool, right? Uh, so that's one area. I think it's falling short. Uh, the other area, I think the promise of AI to eliminate bias has been overstated. Uh, you know, without proper governance, AI can amplify existing biases in, in hiring. So I, I think that there needs to be a lot of, um, focus on that area and, uh, careful not to lose too much of that human element. That's interesting. And skipping ahead to my next question, but before I get to that, Brian, I'd love to hear your take on it. And also, I'd love to know, do you think that it's a help to the candidate experience? Because I hear a lot about it, but at the same time, is it a real benefit, uh, to the candidate experience or not so much just because everybody knows you're talking to an AI bot? AI in general. I, oh, Brian, sorry. No, No, no, no, no. Brian, You're gonna have to figure that out. No, Ryan, I'm sorry, Brian, go ahead. Brian to you, Brian, the answer the question is to you. Alright, so, so I want to, I want to answer this question, but I also want to piggyback on something that Ryan said, right? Like, and something that Christie pointed out is that AI is removing a lot of the friction when it comes to sourcing, right? Um, I disagree. I I agree with both of them about that, that I disagree with Ryan about the bias component. And I think that this is, I, I think bias is, is rampant. I think that we're all victims of it. I think that we all perpetrate it as I think that AI will try to clone your existing team if you say, Hey, we all went to Stanford, and, um, and we want people from Stanford, it means that you're hiring echoes. It means that you're not hiring evolution. It means diversity, creativity, and innovation are going to suffer, and they're gonna suffer at scale. Real talent acquisition isn't about building echo chambers, it's about creating that friction, and it's about expanding that worldview. So I think that I, I would, I would challenge the, the, the bias conversation that that is happening. Um, one of the things that I do think to the question that you poses, Jody, is that I think that soft skills are still soft and that AI can't read the room, and it doesn't know if a candidate has presence. It doesn't know about their emotional intelligence or their leadership potential. It doesn't have the ability to see the spark in somebody's eye when you light them up in person, uh, the, the giggle or the, or the noise they make on the phone when you talk about solving an intimate problem together, right? Um, I guess that's a way of saying it can't call bs. And then finally, uh, I, I want to bring this to Christie's point, and to bring it to your question, I think that it gives, that AI gives us the opportunity as recruiters to really consider whether somebody's making a career pivot. If it's something that looks like job hopping, if it was a sabbatical to care for, uh, a dependent parent, we know that's becoming more prevalent, that the middle generation is becoming the caregiver for elder care and the caregiver for, for youth, uh, oriented care. It could all be interpreted as a resume gap by ai. AI lacks that context and it lacks that empathy. And these are two things that recruiters, let me say this, two things that recruiters need to have in spades to be effective recruiters. And that's my answer to both your questions, Jody. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much. You see that the, uh, the emojis are flying when you say that. So I wanna talk about a question that I just saw from Tony, which is that it's underutilized in hiring public sector employees. Has anybody seen that? And does anybody have an answer to why that is and how to change that? I, I, I think that it's because of the adoption that is being forced upon people, is that when we think about the public sector, we, so, so let's just talk about the, the machine in the room, right, as if it's here is chat. GPT is not the most secure thing for a enterprise, right? It has to, it has to have very specific guardrails put on it. It has to be redacted from being a large language model to being a small language model. Without getting too technical, we default as organizations to using copilot inside of coding assessments like GitHub and inside of, uh, the Microsoft office suite, because they're Microsoft products, that's where it's having the most widespread adoption amongst government agencies, because that licensure has already been sold into the organization, and it can be turned on. However, the adverse is also true because it costs more per license to have a copilot license than it does to have a chat GPT license. So there's a, there's a financial hangover that, that is not, is, is not kosher. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Got it. Got it. Let me go back to you, Christie. Are you, um, how have you successfully mitigated bias in automatic screening? Or is that a concern of yours? Or have you run into that at all? And particularly even in job postings, like reducing the bias or every other kind of thing? Are you doing that or have you talk to me about that? Well, I'll start with job postings. There are actually great tools out there that will help you with your job postings in, uh, writing postings that are more inclusive. Mm-hmm. Uh, tools that will even like, highlight certain words and tell you, Hey, you may wanna change this and then train you, uh, because you're learning as you're going and like, you know, oh, I may wanna use these types of, of words going forward to represent what I'm saying, to be more inclusive. So lots of tools out there on the market, I would definitely say check those out. They're really good. I have used some of those before. Mm-hmm. Um, and then in terms of mitigating bias through the process, just always remembering that human in the loop. And if you are bringing AI in, if AI is screening, make sure you're running a lot of tests. Make sure a human is looking at, I would say every, every one for a while just to see if you're seeing any trends that are happening. And then conducting regular audits. Just always audit what is happening. Um, and depending on what your volume is, you may want to say, listen, if AI screens somebody out, we're going to put them in this bucket over here, but we're still going to go through every single one of those candidates. Again, depends on what your volume is. If you have super high volume, you may wanna address it in a different way. But I would say the biggest piece is human in the loop and don't just turn it on and then forget it. I like that human in the loop. Okay. I'm gonna move on to a different topic, but before I do, I'm going to ask anybody if they have any questions. Anybody in the audience have any questions about AI for our team or anybody have anything else that they wanna share on the topic of ai? Ryan? Brian Christie. I'm good. I just wanna say I, I agree with, uh, Brian's retort other than just wanted to clarify. Its AI without governance, uh, might open up the opportunity for, um, you know, amplifying bias in, in both ends. I've seen examples of that, so that's why I, I advocate for that, that oversight. Thank you. Okay. Let me keep going with you, Ryan, with an R. Let's talk about pipeline and hiring velocity. And this really does play into your healthcare. Uh, what strategies have you seen work best for building agile talent pipelines in competitive markets like healthcare? Yeah, there's, there's a lot out there. I think I like to lock on what, what I've come to, to kind of coach and educate healthcare ta, uh, on being kind of my big three. And kind of the gold standard for, for quality that I always preach, uh, from the rooftops is employee referrals. Uh, we have incredibly powerful benchmark data showing that successful organizations should aim for at least 30 to 35% at the minimum of their total hires coming in through referrals. That doesn't necessarily mean you always need like a high tech approach, right? You can have, uh, high touch teams of, you know, referral advocates and, and processes in place. But I think that's, uh, a, a big number, uh, one for sustainable pipeline and candidate advocacy. Uh, the others that that kind of come to mind are, uh, boomerang strategies, right? Kinda keeping that high touch relationship with your, your previous in employers and engaging them and have alumni groups and, uh, processes, especially like in healthcare where there's a lot of volatility. There's, uh, a lot of shift in, in, in careers and transitions. Most healthcare practitioners, you know, have four or five, uh, healthcare systems they work with in their career. Uh, and then the last one, uh, we talked a little bit about it before, but the, the candidate rediscovery piece, uh, you have such amazing data, uh, at your fingertips, and if you're not utilizing your existing databases, you're, you know, cutting yourself short. So finding ways to, to have high touch engagement and interaction with your silver medalists past applicants, and, uh, finding ways to, to keep that contact information, uh, fresh is, is key. That's wonderful. So those are, those are kind of my big three, but I mean, man, there's a, there's a whole list of recruitment marketing tactics out there. Christie. Are you using employee referral? Yes, we do. And I'm just curious to know like what specifically, and not, not just within your company, but what are their specific bonuses these days? Like how much money are they going for these days? Well, in the industry in general, I see it range a lot. I don't think there's really a standard. It, it can go from hundreds of dollars to many thousands of dollars depending on the role. And I'm speaking in the industry in general, yes, our company. Um, but you know, you can see employer referral bonuses get pretty hefty for some very hard to fill positions. Any other strategies that you are using to build agile talent pipelines? Oh, yes. This is a huge focus for us, uh, especially this year. Uh, we are, and in general, I would say, um, my focus area within the CRM is always how can we leverage our CRM to help us build and engage our talent pipelines? And so when I think about the CRM, and if you don't have a CRM, you could do this in your a TS as well, but just like Ryan said, those candidates that you've already engaged with, you've already paid to have those leads in your system and to have those candidates. And so how am I going to maximize that ROI? And for these candidates who applied to one position, who knows how long ago, it's great for them when you say, Hey, you know, we spoke to you six months ago, would love to talk to you again. Um, and they may still be looking. So I would say segmenting your talent pipelines, deciding what you want those pipelines to look like. Maybe that's by job, family or something else. Um, and then having a content plan, what's my content calendar? How am I going to get in touch with them? Um, maybe I'm doing two touch points a month, whatever that looks like for you. Do you have a newsletter you're sending them every month and some hot jobs or maybe some content from some leaders in your organization, maybe your CEO just did a podcast or who knows what that looks like? Getting that content in front of them on some type of cadence so that they're regularly hearing from you, but not too much. And then also having it to where your sourcers and your recruiters are going in there, rediscovering sourcing candidates and then reaching out to them as well. Phone call, text, whatever that may be. Putting those notes in there, making sure people aren't over contacted. Um, but really using that information. Maybe you have tags, maybe you know, key words, however you are doing it to understand, here are my silver medalists. Here are people that have interviewed, uh, with, uh, tech, now you even have the ability to say, these people are highly engaged, these people are less engaged. These went to my events. This one just went to an event last week. There's so many things to think about. Um, so I would just say, partner with your tech vendor, if you have a CRM, build out your strategy for the year, what those touch points should look like, and how your team is going to leverage that and make sure everybody is trained in how to do that. That's so great. And I have a question. Are you working with your marketing department as well? Because one of the things that you mentioned is your company podcasts or positioning the people within the organization is thought leaders. And that's what everybody wants to work for. Like the winning, you know, the winning company, the best, uh, the best brands and everything. Do you work with marketing or is it strictly an HR endeavor to Build your We do. And on my team, I also have a fabulous, uh, employer branding person who does a great job in helping us, uh, come up with content and create content in the materials that go out. And we do also partner with marketing on who's speaking where and what's happening in the organization so that we can put all of that in there. Oh, that's wonderful. That is wonderful. And what about, uh, strategy for, uh, uh, Ryan said the boomerang strategy that if somebody left and then six months later you want to reach out and say, oh, so was it as good as you thought it would be? Do you do that as well? Yes, we do. Um, I would say, you know, it's tough to do that on like a blanket strategy because you don't wanna reach out to somebody and say, Hey, you know, we'd love to have you come back right now, and you don't even have an opening for that person. Uh, that can get a little awkward. So, um, you know, you just want to be, uh, targeted in your approach. And then you may also want to have a campaign running for those boomerangs to stay in touch with them and stay top of mind and keep them looking at any openings in your organization. Love it. Love it, love it. Brian, I see your head is nodding. I smell the windows in your I'm, I'm I Loving, I'm loving. Go, go, go, go, go. I'm loving all this. One thing that I would come back to that Ryan talked about, and I like, I I think this is super important, is alumni groups, right? People are gonna talk about whether or not they had a good experience working for somebody, or they had a bad experience working for somebody. What are you doing to cultivate that relationship in such a way that even after they've left and even after they've said not negative things or positive things about you, that you still connect with them, that you still give them tools to make, make a better move? And so I think that like, you know, uh, this organization, everybody knows LinkedIn. LinkedIn has huge alumni networks, uh, that they distribute through their groups and what have you, and they use that as a first resort to bring back or to boomerang those individuals. I think that's something that's scalable, uh, depending upon the size of your organization, how many recruiters you have committed to it. One idea though, that I'd put out there is, I think, and, and this is to Christie's point, is that we don't do enough to cultivate the silver medalist relationship. And what I mean by that is, when I was at Twitter, or when I was at McAfee, or when I was at AWS or even now, what I do is I have my top 100 candidates list, uh, I call it my hot 100. I reach out to 25 of them each Friday morning, um, via a text message or via an email and just say, Hey, what's going on in your world? I offer them a little bit of positive advice. It, it is simply a form to reengage with them, right? And so you would be astonished as to how many people, and, and like, like Christie said, I don't have a role for everybody, right? Like, you know, if for instance, um, I'll give you somebody that I, that I, I, I won't, I won't, but well, so there's a candidate. There's a candidate, their name is Jeff Ma. And Jeff Ma is not leaving his job. Jeff Ma I tried to recruit 10 years ago to come work at Cabbage. And Jeff Ma has been at Twitter, and that may or may not be how I arrived at Twitter, because he said, you may or may not should come here. Uh, he's now at Microsoft and what have you. But this is, this is the kind of person that you cultivate a relationship with, and they bring you talent. They know they are your talent magnet. They are your North Star. And Jeff, if you're listening, I, I'd still love to recruit you and put you somewhere. What Brian is saying is so powerful. We're talking about, uh, cultures of screening in versus screening out. And I think so often our technologies are perfectly optimized to reject everyone, but that one perfect candidate. And if we kind of flip that mindset to incorporate some of these strategies, right? Whether it's, you know, rediscovery, ambassadorship, candidate advocacy, I think we open up a lot more doors to, uh, you know, find the, the right fit for, for everyone that, uh, you know, could be a good addition to our organization. I've seen a lot of healthcare organizations that, you know, may have dedicated sourcing teams and they've taken a specific person and given them a title of like swat sourcer, right? And their full, so their full purpose is to find homes for silver medalists or engage those ambassador groups and be connectors of, of talent to opportunity. So they're not given a specific wreck, right? Uh, their job is to, in a sense, be a matchmaker. And, uh, yeah, those type of cultures are, are, are thriving. I think that from what I'm hearing, it's just about the three of you have all said the same thing. It's about reaching out to people and making that human connection. And I just wanted to share a story because I'm sure each one of everybody here listening on the call gets a number of emails every day from people that you don't know, looking for jobs, looking to find out more about companies, and you may or may not have roles. And one day, uh, last month I got a, uh, a random email from somebody about a career opportunity within brand amx. Uh, and he was a photographer, and I always take the time to look at the work, and his work was stunning. It literally blew me away. And I wrote back and I said to him, I don't have any opportunities for you, but my daughter, who is a video editor, sends out these kinds of random emails all week long looking for a job. And you know, in her honor, I'm reaching back to you to say, don't be discouraged. I don't have an opportunity for you, but your work is amazing. Please keep going, doing what you're doing. And it's just that response just made his day. And you know what he said, have your daughter reach out to me, maybe I could help her. And that's the circle, and that's the power that everybody has to change a life every day. So it's just taking a minute to answer somebody, reach out to them. Brian, I love what you said about your top 100 people and you reach out to 25 every Friday. I love that. I love everybody. I love everybody. So, So the, so the, so the thing that I want to, I want to cultivate here, and, and this is on Ryan's comment and in your story, which is a beautiful story, is that we are people and we are trying to screen people in, despite what the news may say, there still is a talent shortage in all these areas in high volume. I mean, Ryan, is there a superfluous amount of nurses just looking to get hired by hospitals? There's more retiring that are graduating in the, the labor market right now. Absolutely. So why wouldn't you wanna make sure that they know that your hospital or that doctor's office is their next place that they can build their career and the careers of others? I'm very hesitant to use the word home because I don't like the family metaphor. I think it gets thrown around and gets weaponized. Um, so, uh, yeah, Love that. I'm gonna drop this in chat, but I wanted to just share a motto of one of the favorite healthcare systems I work with. They've kind of adopted this as a candidate advocacy model, but they, uh, use the motto connection and guidance, not rejection in silence. So think about that for a second. I just, I just love that motto, Brian. That makes me think of the two in Five Promise at Amazon. Everybody knows Amazon. Everybody loves their two day prime, right? We probably don't like paying for two Day Prime, but we like two Day Prime. We like pri, but okay, we like prime in the think household. Alright, so I, I bring this up is that the two in five Promise is that a candidate will hear within two days of a phone interview what their status is every time they walk through the, through the, the gate. And they'll hear within five days of an in-person interview what the outcome was of that, of that interview. Or if there are an offer being made, or if they're silver medalist or what the next step is. It's a two in five promise. You can Google a lot of it on, on Amazon. I think it's actually one of the things that they do really well. Awesome. Yeah, I mean there's, there's like the Amazon Promise, there's a lot of like metaphors that I hear out there around, you know, creating a, um, recruiting system using kind of like the, the Dominoes or Pizza Hut tracker, right? That you can kinda see step by step exactly where you are in a status. And lots of great aspirational things. I think for a lot of us in our industries, though. Uh, some of those aspirational things are just insurmountable and unscalable by the thousands of, of roles that we're filling. So a lot of times too, I think it's about customization, looking at your different profiles and finding what profiles can we give more of an automated experience, right? That might, uh, be your high volume roles where you can set up screens or interviews via, uh, an Olivia chat bot or short form. And then what roles, uh, deserve more of a high touch experience based on the, the preference and the profile. Uh, so I see a lot of systems kind of going that way, trying to figure out, uh, you know, what's the, the, the right experience for the right profile at the right time. Can I also look at it in terms of the process? So I mentioned my Lean six Sigma. I will write down the entire process, start to fi to finish, do a visual map of it, and then really, you know, look at the areas, come up with what those SLAs and metrics are of where you're hitting right now in each and every one of those areas. And understand where can we automate in certain places, maybe at the beginning of the funnel, maybe the middle of the funnel. Where do I wanna automate? And then where are those human touchpoint so important that if I automate over here, I can give my recruiters more time to talk to candidates. So I, I think that that's just really important too, is looking at the entire process and determining where that time should be spent and where you may want to bring in automation. I have a friend and what he does is he, when he tells people that he always gets back to everybody that they didn't get the job, he tells them why they didn't get the job and offers them an opportunity to coach them on how they could improve their resume or their interviewing skills. Any thoughts about that from anybody on the panel today? Because I know that that goes both ways. A lot of times there are legalities and people are very hesitant about that. So I'm just wondering because that blew me away. And I'm just wondering if you do that, if you promote that, if you're afraid of that. And by the way, anybody on the chat doing that or not doing that? You know, I think that, I think you said a very powerful word you said afraid. And I think that recruiters forget that we are in the no business. We like to think we're in the yes business that we, I mean, 'cause nothing feels better than to tell a candidate, yes, you've got the job, I'm gonna make you an offer, but we're in the no business because out of a hundred candidates, only one of them gets the job. Maybe two. Right? So Jody, my answer to that is I always try to give my candidates that made it to the final round that Congress has feedback, because I use that as a means to cultivate the relationship and to make sure they are in silver medalist territory. Somebody who got all the way to the end who went through four rounds of interviewing to ghost them. That's 'cause you are afraid of, of letting that person down. It's a bigger letdown. If you ghost them, you need to tell them you need to ghost them instead of coast them. I mean coast them instead of ghost them. Mm-hmm. And show them that direction. But for other candidates who've made it through like a first round or a second round, I just send them a hiring guide that I've made up that says, um, these are, these are 10 questions that you should prepare for, for next time. And, um, yeah, that's, that's it. So it's, it's kind of one or the other. I'm, I'm sorry to be rather indifferent. No, but also you give yourself time on Fridays, people can have calls with you. Does that also include candidates that may not have gotten their job? Well, that mainly my Friday calls are mainly for recruiters who are either out of work or looking, they've got a difficult search. Mm-hmm. Those are my open office hours. Yeah. Oh, got it. Mm-hmm. How about you Christie? Are you doing anything to, uh, let them down gently, help them in the future? Whenever possible? Whenever, you know, in, in my career, uh, for my teams, you know, have always given it when we are able to, um, or when we have information, we'll share it. Uh, sometimes it comes down to, you know, hey, uh, this wasn't the right fit because this schedule doesn't work. Like sometimes it's something super simple. Um, and so we always obviously wanna share that. If somebody has had an in-person interview, like Brian said, or even made it a certain stage of the interview process, I believe that should always be a pick up the phone and have a conversation. Uh, and again, that's where when you look at your process, you can figure out what can I automate if I'm logged down all day scheduling candidate interviews, I probably don't have a lot of time to do that. Wow. If I can automate all of my interview scheduling and that takes out three hours a day, now I have three hours, I can go talk to people more. So I, again, I think that's where process is important. That's amazing. And speaking of process, I'm looking at the time. I cannot believe that we are so far along. Uh, Zach, I invite you to pop back on camera, ask any questions. I also invite anybody that has questions for these amazing panelists to pop them into the chat. We will get to them. And I wanna flip gears to my last segment, which is all about, uh, metrics. So have they changed? Are we looking at new things these days? Christie, let me start with you. What kind of metrics are you using in 2025 to prove ROI and align with business goals? There are so many metrics, and I know too many. Are there Too many? There's so many. Maybe. Are There maybe too many? I think so, which Is actually part of my answer for you. Um, and there are so many metrics that go in different areas, right? You have your employer branding metrics and your pipeline conversion metrics, and then you're, how many, uh, people do I have going through the process and my web applicants? I mean, there's so many things. I think what's really important is to try to cut through that noise. So you may have a dashboard that gives you everything that you need, so maybe you're, you're looking at that on some cadence, but then also look at your goals as an organization for the year. Maybe your organization is standing up a new, uh, support center where you're going to have to go hire a ton of people. You may need to look at different metrics based upon that to be able to enable that goal. Um, maybe you're looking at your offer accept ratio and you think, gosh, I need to double my hiring. I'm only, whenever I make an offer, I'm only converting X percent of them, let's say 30%. If I could convert 50%, I could go hire so many more people with the same resources and everything that I have today. So now I'm going to be hyperfocused on my offer except ratio, and I'm going to look at all the metrics that influence my hi, my offer, accept ratio while I'm still looking at everything else. I'm gonna be really hyperfocused on that and maybe looking at it every day. So I would just say, um, you know, connected to your organizational goals and, and what is important to you as a company. Mm-hmm. Ryan, any thoughts on metrics? Oh, that's metrics is our wheelhouse. Uh, I'd like, I, I agree with everything. I've never heard anyone say that before. So, But to, to go a, a, a layer deeper in that, to really achieve kind of what, like Christie's talking about, I think you need to dissect your entire process and understand what's happening each step of the way. Aspirationally, if we look at, you know, time to fill or time to source, as you know, end goals, how do we improve that? Uh, there's so many micro processes and steps and handoffs that go from the talent attraction to, to the hire if you're not measuring every step of the way. And most importantly, if you don't have anything to compare it to, you know, what's, what's good? What's the benchmark time between, uh, uh, an interview to a, a hiring manager handoff, right? How do you know what in your process to optimize or, or improve? So I think one, yeah, the measurement piece to having, you know, goals that you want to look at in the micro process to help achieve those, those bigger goals. Like, like time to fill. Mm-hmm. Um, I think the other is, uh, you know, especially on like the top of the funnel, I think trying to solve things like optimize my, my indeed or programmatic job advertising by number of hires, I think is, um, kind of aiming at a moving target, right? I, I see a lot more healthcare organizations and others talking about focusing more on, uh, the quality of candidates. So focusing in on conversion rates and cost per quality and looking at, you know, waste those that didn't even make it past an initial screen versus trying to, to hold our recruitment marketing vendors or solutions to, you know, an anecdotal cost per hire, uh mm-hmm. Type of metric. Those would be my two. Thank you. Thank you for that. Brian. Metrics, are they your wheelhouse? Me? The only metric that I am obsessed with is submittal to final interview. Like I am obsessed with that number. It has guided me my entire career. Um, I don't handle budgets for Indeed or for LinkedIn or anything of that nature. Never have, probably never will. I just look at introduction to hire and I look at that and I try to keep that ratio as tight as I possibly can. Amazing. That's amazing. Well, listen, we are two minutes away from closing. Apologies if I did not get to your questions in the chat, but feel free to engage with everybody on the panel. I think they have already left their LinkedIn emails to you, but feel free to type them in the chat. And I wanna leave you with one question. What is the one bold bet TA leaders can make now to stay ahead in the next two to three years? And Brian, I'm gonna kick it off with you. Bold bet. Bold bet. Bold bet. Go smaller. Go with smaller teams. Ask your teams to deliver more. Don't go with big teams where people can hide. Go with smaller teams. Thank you, Christie. Bet on your people. Invest in your people. Train your teams. Train yourself. Get out there to that Google lm I mentioned. Get out there to Chachi pt. Start asking questions. How do I become a more strategic recruiter? What are the top skills I should be focusing on in the next two years as AI becomes more prevalent? Learn about ai. Don't just think of it as, oh, it's gonna take my job away. It may one day if you don't learn about it. So take the time to learn about it and you're gonna be just fine. Amazing. Ryan, bring it home. I'm gonna double down what I mentioned at the onset, but invest in AI governance now. Position yourself as, as leaders in AI adoption rather than waiting for other departments to take the lead or set the standard. Get a Say goodbye to everybody. I love that. Thank you so much. Uh, thank you everybody, the four Jody, for facilitating to the three of you for bringing your expertise to our network and to everyone attending for dedicating some time outta your day to grow and sharpen your craft. I really encourage you to connect with these leaders. I share their LinkedIns in the chat there. Follow them, reach out to them. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to share some more of their insights if you have additional questions. But thank you so much everyone. I appreciate it.

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