The Future of Hiring: Building a Smarter, Faster, and More Personalized Talent Experience

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's program with Achieve Engagement. I am so excited to come together as a community to keep unpacking new trends, insights, best practices, frameworks that we can then arm ourselves to make a bigger impact within the world of work and the cultures that we serve. My name is Zach Dahms, the president of Achieve Engagement, and as your community lead, I really appreciate you being here with us. If you haven't already, I would love to see what type of footprint we have going on. So add in the chat, maybe share a little bit about what you're working on, but share where you're calling in from. I'd love to see where you all are in the world. I'm in Denver, Colorado, and, uh, I'm just really excited to kind of learn with you all. I think it means a lot as a network to come together and unpack these things as a community. That's one of the more powerful aspects of these programs is, one, yes, we get to hear from some incredible leaders, thought leaders, authors, researchers, practitioners, people who are doing this work at the highest level, and that's what you're gonna get exposure to today. But on top of that, we also get to learn from each other, and we get to unpack these things as a, as a network. And what I, uh, like to say, we get to unlock the collective wisdom of the peer community. So as we go through this program, I really encourage you, let's make this the ultimate learning experience, and as we unpack different topics, put in the chat how you're approaching these things or even certain challenges and barriers and things that you're facing. This is an awesome opportunity for you to get some peer insight, some peer feedback, some coaching, some advisory, some perspective on the realities that you're facing. But in order to get that, you need to contribute to the conversation. So I would love to invite you to do that as we go through this conversation today. It's just continuously to engage with each other and post in the chat, post in the Q&A, and this will be an action-packed hour together. So that being said, let me see what's going on with some of you. What-- Who do we have in the room? Let's see. I got Virginia Beach in the house. We got Jamie in Connecticut. Let's see. What else we have? Chicago. Boca Restaurant Group. I'm coming to Chicago soon, Michelle. Maybe I gotta hit you up for some food. Sarah in Connecticut, workforce development at the library. That's awesome. Jennifer in Beaver Dam. I'm from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, so Beaver Dam is, is close to my hometown and heart. I see a director of administrative services. Awesome. Sharon, welcome in here from Nashville. We got a great group here. Montreal. Um, we're actually coming to Montreal, uh, I think in October, so stay on the lookout for that. Another Wisconsinite, Destiny in Green Bay. This is awesome. My Wisconsinites are in the room. Milwaukee's in the house. Yes. All right. Washington. Randy in Denver. This is great. Well, I'm super excited for this. Just a couple of different updates for all of you as we unpack this. One thing I did wanna share is we just started to launch and share our upcoming peer-to-peer experiences for the EX Leadership Network. This is where people leaders really come to continue leveling up. So stay on the lookout. If we're coming to your city, make sure to join us for some of these programs. This is just March and April. We have our People Leader series coming out, uh, starting March seventeenth. We're coming to LA on April second. We have our monthly masterminds every first Tuesday of the month. We kick out-- kick off with those programs. Chicago, Boston, and then Austin are all on the roadmap for April, and we're releasing probably, like, twelve more leadership exchanges in different cities around primarily North America. Uh, as mentioned, Montreal is on that list. So stay on the lookout for those. Leadership network members get priority access. We always have a wait list for these programs. There's only so many seats in a room we can fill. So if you want to check that out or just stay in the know, make sure to check our EX Leadership Network. That's where we get into some more of these mastermind peer-to-peer type programs. So super excited for that. Just wanted to share our upcoming schedule so you're aware of what's coming down the pipe. But really what we're here for is to unpack the future of hiring. And I'm excited for this because I feel like the hiring landscape in general is pretty, in a pretty big flux, and it's rapidly evolving. So how do we continuously kinda navigate these things with speed, efficiency? How do we meet candidate expectations? How do we do this in a way that continues to s- like, in a way where our recruiting strategies continues to support the employee experience and high-quality talent being brought into the organization? So we're very lucky to partner with Indeed for this program. If you can, just put in the chat, give them a shout-out, show them some love, uh, for helping bringing in some of their own expertise and research. And we have Aaron Pigeon, Senior Director of Product Management at Indeed, to share some of this research and insights. So Aaron, thank you so much for being here. And then also one of our co-hosts and partners at Crime at Achieve Engagement, Dan Schawbel, uh, Managing Partner at Workplace Intelligence. So we are very lucky today. Let me stop sharing. Dan, Aaron, thank you so much for being here with us. I'm excited to learn from the both of you. That being said, I'll, uh, Dan, I'll pass it over to you to get us kicked off. Thanks, Zach. I really appreciate it. Always a pleasure to share knowledge and insights and bring on some experts and thought leaders in the industry to dispel and explain some of the biggest trends. Obviously, how AI impacts and supports the recruiting function is extremely relevant right now. Uh, and our goal is to help you build smarter, faster, more personalized talent experience. And I'm joined today, as Zach said, with Aaron Pigeon, Senior Product Director at Indeed.And we're gonna be exploring more about how richer candidate data, AI-powered hiring tools, and shifting job seeker priorities are transforming recruiting strategies. Aaron, it's great to have you here. Thank you, Dan. It's, uh, it's great to be here as well. Thank you, Zach, for the, uh, the intro. This is such a wonderful diverse group of people. I was loving watching all the, the, the rolling, um, introduction list and seeing where everyone's from. We've got people from everywhere here, so it's very, very exciting to be here. So let's talk about the future of hiring. This is gonna be kind of a conversation. Um, we're definitely gonna have some, uh, some, some time to open up for questions a little bit too. So hopefully this gives you all a little, a little bit of food for thought. Um, let's talk a little bit more about this. So these are some themes that I'm sure that you all are, are hearing, um, just in your daily lives and from, you know, the folks you're working with and from, you know, your coworkers. Um, these are... I, I think these are things that are also, you know, maybe longstanding problems that w- that, that, that are, that are still part of this, but they definitely have been increased over the last couple of years I think. Uh, and I think the biggest dynamic that, that has changed recently, right, is it's, it's, it's, uh, we, we've, we've moved from kind of a job seeker-f-friendly market to one that's a little bit, uh, a little bit more in favor of employers, right? There's, there's more supply than demand, if you wanna look at it that way. And, um, there's, there's a lot of changes, I think, in how job seekers are adapting right now. Yeah. And just to add on to that, it's obviously very competitive to get a job. There's more people than jobs right now for the first time in many years. So competition exists from the job seeker standpoint, but also the employer standpoint. There's still this underlying war for talent that exists, especially in certain sectors. Um, what do you think are the biggest causes of all these delays right now in most organizations? Um, I think it's... I think a lot of it is employers are just very overwhelmed. Um, you know, we are... You know, a lot of companies are dealing with leaner organizations than they were just, you know, even six to 12 months ago. Um, there's a lot more folks, I think, looking for work right now. Um, and I think one of the biggest things that we, that we're all seeing is there's a proliferation of tools that make it really, really easy to apply to, to jobs. Um, you know, I think Indeed was one of the first tools that allowed job seekers to do that. But we're seeing this get taken much farther with, um, apply bots and, you know, open AI tools and things like that. So I think that's also... that's there's more work and, you know, more competition for these roles. And the burden on that falls increasingly on a smaller hiring workforce or, or smaller hiring organizations right now. Great points. Yeah. I mean, obviously a flood more of applications per job with more competition and just a lot of like fatigue through this process a- you know, so many different tools. What tool do I use for what, and what's most effective, and all that experimentation. Really good points. Uh, what risk do you think companies face if they don't address these ef- inefficiencies quickly? Yeah. I think there's, I think there's two big risks, right? So you have like the, just the risk of losing out on the people you actually wanna hire. Um, the longer it takes for, you know, you to find that, that, that person that you really wanna hire in the, the, the pool of candidates that you have, uh, the longer it takes you to get back with them, the more likely they are to have moved on, right? The, the ones you actually wanna talk to are not the ones that are gonna sit around and be waiting for three, four weeks for you to, to, to find them, right? So I think that's like one of the biggest risks here. Like, you've got, you know, people that need to make decisions for their family and their, their financial future. And, um, there's a window where you can engage them, and you wanna be able to engage them as, as quickly as possible. And I think one of the things we see from both sides, right, is the sooner you, you're able to act, right, the more likely your chances of success are from a job seeker's perspective. The sooner you do apply to a job after it's open, the more likely you are to hear back. And I think similarly from the employer side, if you, you know, are able to respond to that candidate very quickly, like the same day or the same week that they apply, you've got a much better chance of getting that, like, really quick feedback loop and that quick conversation. So you don't wanna miss that window. And that's, I think, one of the things that is maybe a, a, a bigger challenge now than it has been in the past. And I think the second risk is you just said productivity loss. Like, if you have an open role in your company, that, that's work that's just not getting done, right? And we all feel that, and we all have to carry that burden if that's not happening. So I think those are the big, those are the big risks, I think, of not being able to efficiently address these, you know, the, the, these dynamics. And yeah. And it's a bit... it's a, a big issue on both ends of the spectrum, right? We're gonna be talking about matching later. You know, job seekers and employers, it creates inefficiencies a- a- and, and issues there. And the first point you made, I think is really important. I mean, I've been, I... You know, for 15 years, I kind of examined, you know, what's the biggest kind of hurdle or frustration that job seekers have, and it's, you know, the loop's never closed. Yeah. Like, they're just hanging out, you know, "When, when is this employer gonna let me know if I get another interview or, or a job?" And I've even talked to people and they say, "Yeah. I interviewed for like eight months and never heard back." So that closing of the loop, I still think is extremely important. And we'll talk about kind of the human versus AI, uh, contrast and, and how, uh, you know, they can work together to improve that, that process to close the loop. Um, just so everyone knows, like, you can ask questions during this conversation and presentation too, because there's a lot of content to get through, and we wanna just make sure that, you know, your questions are answered and we're, we're solving some of your problems. Uh, Anna McDonald says, "Didn't understand the second risk mentioned." So Aaron, do you wanna maybe summarize the second one about lost productivity? Yeah. I think the... what I'm, what I'm thinking here, Anna, is that if you're... if it takes you, say, like, you know, a month versus like three months to fill a role, right? That's three months where, you know, whatever that person is doing, that, that work isn't getting done or that work is having to be done by a smaller group of people, right? So your organization may not be operating as effectively, and you may be leaving impact on the table. Um, so I think that's, that's, I think, the risk that, that, um-... organizations are facing if you, if you can't fill roles quickly enough Right, and it's a squeeze on that team- Yeah ... because now they have to do the work of the person that where, where that position's unfilled. Exactly. Exactly. So there's a fun stat with this too. Um, 40% of job seekers are essentially just waiting to, to be, to be found, and, um, I think what that, that means here now i- is I think job seekers also see the tight marketplace. So if they don't have to leave, they're, they're not necessarily going to. So it's just there, there- certainly fewer job seekers, you know, in these roles, um, are out looking. Um, but they are being hunted, right? You're, you know... There, there are companies looking for these folks right now. Um, and, uh, so a lot of- a lot of job seekers are just... are, are, are sort of waiting to hear from employers because honestly it makes their life a lot easier right now. There's... Like, I think job seekers recognize there's a lot of work to, that goes into the market right now, and if, if they don't have to, they're, they're not out looking. So I think this is another one here I think we, we need to be thinking about as, you know, hiring organizations, what are the different tools that we can use to reach the, you know, to reach these job seekers. And I, I think, like, the, you know, sourcing tools are a very important part of this. I mean, you're, you're definitely seeing a lot of people spray and pray and use AI to be able to scale that now. I mean, I remember the last recession there was an article in The New York Post about this person applied to, like, 7,000 jobs and didn't even get one interview. So it's just, it's the desperation, it's the AI, you know, applications and trying to submit and, and being kind of, kind of desperate because you need, you know, money to support yourself or your family. That- that's really happened right now. Um, and that just... That's not good for anyone, right? Mm-hmm. So I, I think that that's a, a really, really key point. Uh, how do you think- Yeah ... the shift, uh, and change of roles impacts recruiters and talent acquisition teams? So as more, as more people recognize that these tools for, you know, what we call sourcing exist, and, um, I think a lot... You know, we're seeing more job seekers want to, to take advantage of them. And so I think it's like... In some ways I think it's better for both sides too, right? Because if you have... You know, i- if, if your company's out looking for, for people, that, that, that takes a lot of the work off a job seeker. And so, um, you know, someone who's faced with the like, you know, the, the two options which are I can apply to 10, 20 jobs a day and there's a lot of work and there's, you know, a lot of hours associated with this. And as we've, you know, noted the probability of success even just hearing back is relatively low. Uh, it's a lot of time. So if you h- if you have a role where you can stay, um, I think increasingly we're seeing job seekers kind of rely on these tools. And so that changes the role I think of, you know, hiring organizations too, which is you've gotta be more out there. You've gotta be, um, be much more proactive about finding the people in, you know, in your competitor companies or in different industries, right, that could potentially be interested in, in filling those. You've gotta be a little bit more creative about finding these people and engaging with them. Um, but that strategy I think is, is quite successful, um, right now, and I think this is where you'll see, you know, world-class hiring organizations succeed where, where others may not. We did a whole study on active versus passive job seekers many years ago, but I don't think it's really changed in terms of, uh, the overall conclusion and result is employers would prefer passive candidates because of... Part of it is the perception of kind of value and has skills and, you know, you know, they're more employable because they already have a job. But I think, I think the idea that you're getting to is really important about, hey, like you gotta, you gotta be more active. You can't just sit back and like hope people apply for jobs, you know? And I, I think that's really important. Of course, like, people will be applying for the jobs, but it might not even be the right people. And so being active I think is a better way to source the people that at least you think would be a, a, a good fit for the position. And again, it's like despite the economic downturn and employers having more power right now, there's still positions that are really hard to fill that are really important to fill. What do... Where do you think employers make mistakes here when trying to engage these passive, uh, this passive talent for these roles? I think the biggest mistake is, um, not being creative and personalized in the outreach. Um, if you turn it around and you put yourself in, you know, the, the situation that many of you find yourselves in every day, you can tell when a job seeker is applying to your job and they put effort into it versus the ones that don't. Or you can tell what the low effort applies are. And I think similarly, job seekers can also tell when there's a low effort outreach. If you're just copying and pasting the same template and sending it to everyone, um, that is... It, it might work and, you know, you know, the numbers game, it might work for you. But I think the biggest... You know, I think one of the biggest differentiators that, um, that you can have right now is being hyper-personalized with those outreaches. Um, like it should be, you know... You should be trying to help this person understand exactly, like, how they can see themselves in your organization. And so templates don't do a great job of this. So again, this is one of those things where I think, you know, um, recruiters and, and hiring organizations can differentiate themselves by just the amount of personalization and thought and care that they can put into this. And I think we see that when a, when, you know, when, when we do this, um, your chances of hearing back are so much better. Yeah. And that's gonna get into what we're gonna talk about in a bit about the human connection and that being the differentiator in the world where AI is making everything efficient and scalable. Uh, the human factor can't be as scale... It can't be scaled as much. We have a really good question here regarding the use of AI by candidates. What can organizations do to discourage candidates from using AI during video interviews? We saw... You know, there's like... There's some videos that have gone viral where someone's being interviewed via video from their home and they just pull up like, you know, ChatGPT or, or whatnot, and then they're like, "This person asked me about this mathematical formula or something," and, and there's like this, this delay, and then you hear ... You see the recruiter saying, uh, like, "Why'd it take you so long to come up with a response?" I- this is a really, really good question. My, my take on this is that I think you should be expecting your candidates to be using AI, and you should be structuring your interview process around that expectation. This is harder. This is much harder. This is like, you know, this is why I think the AI is really disruptive in classrooms right now is because our entire teaching methodology is based on students not having access to a super smart person they can just ask questions to, right? That's the whole point. So we have to redesign, I think, our systems around this. So if you're asking a question, um, that is designed for, you know, maybe someone to use AI, you can ask them, "Hey, show your work. How are you using the AI to answer this question?" Um, you can pivot the question based on, you know, "Hey, well, what if this, what if this thing was different? How would you do that?" Right? You can see whether or not a person is able to, uh, you know, actually think along with the AI and use it as a tool for this versus when they're just relying on it for answers. So I think one of the biggest things about, you know, that we're gonna learn about AI over the next couple of years is that, um, you know, it is going to enable and reward, um, deep thought and subject matter expertise from folks who can use it effectively, and I think it is going to highlight, um, and the same in people who don't do that. Just like when you can tell that, hey, um, I can tell this LinkedIn post was written by OpenAI because it has a very specific, you know, tone. People are going to be able to tell when that's happening. So I think the key thing here, honestly, it's, it's, it's, it's a maybe, maybe a difficult thing to do, but I, I would structure your, your interview process to expect it and to ask candidates to show their work. I like it. I think that makes a lot of sense because their work is their work. I mean, it's attached to their reputation and, and you can evaluate them based on that. All right, I think we're ready for the Indeed flywheel. Yeah. So I thought this would be fun because, um, this is a l- this is a little bit of inside baseball from us. This is how we are thinking about both sides of the marketplace. So as, as you all know, right, and Indeed is, you know... We're a, we're a talent marketplace, right? So we have job seeker experiences, we have employer experiences. And I know that definitely there's frustration on both sides when sometimes it feels like, hey, like, job seekers don't understand why we're doing this thing because, you know, we have... You know, for example, we, you know, a while back we stopped showing, like, um, job posting dates, uh, for a while, and job seekers rep- you know, weren't, weren't happy about this. But there's a reason that we were doing that, right? And so these are... This flywheel I think kind of helps people understand, like, you know, how we are thinking about a lot of the decisions that we make. And so, um, I wanted to share that here. So the, the, you know, the, the, the right half of the flywheel here i- is kind of the, I guess the, the, the jobs to the, the job seeker experience piece. This is kind of classic Indeed, right? For the first ten years, all we did was get jobs on Indeed, give job seekers an easy way to search, find those jobs and apply to those jobs, right? And that created, you know, a, a, a sort of flywheel effect where we were able to get lots of job seekers on Indeed because that was, um, that was where all the jobs were. Um, and then we started real- you know, focusing on the other side of the marketplace more, because that's only half of the marketplace. So we started building tools for employers. We started building, uh, Indeed Apply. We started trying to build sourcing tools and automations on top of this, and now we're, you know, layering AI on top of all this. Um, and we have a pay-for-performance philosophy that, you know, go- you know, governs everything here. So basically we see all these things feeding each other. So if we're able to get lots of jobs on Indeed, we're able to give job seekers a great experience, we can match them effectively to jobs, more job seekers will show up. Uh, that results in better, higher quality candidates for employers. That provides a better employer experience. Employers want to put more jobs on Indeed. This is a virtuous cycle, and we have to be... We are constantly investing in each of these areas because we believe that if any one of these things is missing, uh, or deficient, that it hurts the overall thing. So this is, this is basically how we think about the entire marketplace internally, and I'm... You know, my, my product area is very much on the job seeker side, but I can't do my job without, uh, making sure that the, the work that we are doing empowers and accelerates the employer experiences too, right? It's not a, we can't, you know, we can't think of these things in isolation. So I thought this would be an interesting, uh, thing to share with you all. Interesting. We have a question from Kathy. Has anyone experienced a shortage of applications the past several months? Where for the past three plus years we rarely needed to do sponsored postings, we are having to consider it more and more. Our Indeed rep is wonderful and explained the new algorithms and product options. Hmm. Probably depends on the role. I mean, there's... I'm sure there's a lot of variables. Yeah. Kathy, I think without understanding the specifics that it would be hard for me to, to, to generalize here. Yeah. I think we're definitely seeing some areas where, um, employers are seeing more applications, and we're definitely seeing some areas where job, where employers are seeing less, right? I think it depends a little bit on, like, do you have the... You know, i- is, is your... If it's a, you know, a very competitive industry and, um, maybe job seekers are, are staying put in roles longer, and I think this gets back to the, um, the- Job hugging ... a little bit ago. Yeah, job hugging- Yeah ... and about just, like, being able to maybe be pro- more proactive about your sourcing tools as well. So I would definitely encourage you to chat with your rep, uh, about that. I... It, it sounds like you have a good, you know, relationship with them, so they can probably give you some better specific advice. Excellent. Well, I, I think the Indeed flywheel makes a lot of sense, and it just shows that everything's connected. Like, it can't just be that employers are able to, you know, reign supreme on, on the Indeed platform. You also need job seekers to have a good experience too. Yep. And so with that, I think we can talk a little bit about the, you know, the efficiency of our, our matching process, right? So the, the job seeker profile is where... That's the area that I work in, so I lead our, our profile products. Um, so the idea here, right, is that, you know, we contribute to this flywheel by making sure that we deeply understand job seekers. We gotta get job seekers on Indeed, um, and we wanna be able to understand them. Why do we need to understand them?It's because we are constantly behind the scenes trying to make matches. So when a job seeker runs a search, right, we are behind the scenes. We're actually matching jobs to them, and increasingly we are using, um, different recommendations, you know, AI systems to more deeply match on, you know, the, the, you know, the experience and qualifications that job seekers have and give us so that we can surface more relevant matches to them. And I think this is also one of the ways that we are accelerating sourcing as well, right? We try to help employers and sourcers find these, you know, high-quality candidates based on, you know, the, these job seeker profiles. Um, lots of profiles include, you know, resume, but it also includes a lot of other things that aren't necessarily in resumes either. We have a lot of job seeker preferences, things that they, they won't put on a resume and they probably don't share with employers, right? But it can inform how we are matching them to, to jobs and I think those are the things that I think that, that allow us to make really powerful matches, and that's how we do a better job of connecting both sides of the marketplace here. So it lets us do it, you know, faster, um, and, you know, we're, we're doing a lot of work behind the scenes to try to, to screen out lower quality matches, right? We are not matching job seekers to jobs that they are totally unqualified for, that they're not interested in, right? So these are all... This is sort of the foundational piece, and this is, this is the, uh, this is the area that, that my day-to-day work is in. I mean, candidate matching is, is really what this is all about, right? And job seekers who provide more data are more likely through Indeed's, I guess, algorithm to be able to avoid the jobs that they're not qualified for, which would, if they apply for jobs they're not qualified for, it's gonna waste the employer's time, recruiter's time, and focus more on the roles that they're qualified for that might, you know, better align with what they wanna do now or in the future. So I think that makes a lot of sense, and that's where I think you would agree the personalization comes from. So do you wanna explain a little bit more about the whole personalization that a job seeker would get using Indeed in this way? Yeah, absolutely. So when we say personalization, right, this is... there's a lot of different dimensions to this. But if you think about it, like, as we're trying to understand what a job seeker, what a job seeker actually wants beyond, say, like, a search term. So many job seekers come to Indeed, and actually, you know, one of the most, I think probably the single most common search term is actually a, a, a blank search query and a location. It's not giving us a whole lot, right? So we really do need to do a lot of work to deeply... What does a job seeker mean when they want this? What are they actually looking for? And that's how we personalize things. Uh, and that's done based on, you know, job seeker behavior. It's based on, um, understanding, like, preferences and, you know, uh, what kind of shifts do I, do I actually want to work? Uh, what industries do I want to work in? What, what pay ranges am I looking for? Um, you know, what, what kind of commute do I want, right? So we are, you know, getting a lot more information about job seekers that allows us to kind of match much more richly on this. And I think one of the ways that that's really relevant, I think, to you all is that the clearer that you all are about some of these things, the easier it is for us to, to bring matches to you. So for example, if, you know, you're hiring for a, you know, a, a nursing role that, you know, requires, say, like, an, you know, an overnight shift, um, that's one of those things that a lot of job seekers don't, don't want to, to do, right? And so being very upfront about that prevents us from putting job seekers in front of you who, you know, don't want that, that kind of role. Um, so that's one thing we wanna be... You know, I think one of the best things that you can do here is to make sure that you're very transparent upfront about some of these things. So the more information you can provide about, like, schedule, the, you know, the, the, the nature of the work, the location of the work, um, scheduling. These are all things that are really, really, really important to job seekers and help us do a... You know, because we're collecting that same information and preferences from job seekers, it allows us to screen a lot of the stuff out that, you know, maybe comes up during an interview instead. Excellent. There's a- another question about AI during job interviews. Is there a way for organizations to discourage candidates from using it? Um, k- I'm not seeing the question. Um, I'll just take a guess. Uh, uh, there probably are. My, my belief is that it is better to embrace these technologies and- Yeah ... use them proactively than to try to ban them. I do not think that banning them or preventing people from using them, uh, i- is going to be a long-term effective strategy. And I think also you can use this to your advantage too, right? Because I think if you get someone in the role, they're also going to be using these tools whether you probably want them to or, or not. And so again, I think being very direct about, you know, assessing how candidates use these tools in the interview process is actually going to serve you much more effectively because I think you should also just be... You should be assuming that your people are using these tools, whether you're asking them to or not. Yeah. And I read an article, uh, yesterday in Fortune about how, like, a good chunk of employers, e- especially larger ones, are saying if you're not using AI in the workplace, you'll lose your job. So really putting pressure on people to adopt the tools and actively use it in their workflow. So to say that people can't use it in interviews or in the recruiting process and then forcing them to use AI at work doesn't really work, you know? Yeah. So I 100% agree with you. And this isn't going away, you know? The whole economy is kind of focused on AI now, so it's probably better to just embrace it. And honestly, if the applicant doesn't, as you were saying earlier, if they don't have a good portfolio of work, if they don't have any, you know, any sort of kind of credibility aspects to their, uh, application resume, Indeed profile, you'll figure that out, you know? Yep. Exactly And, and just to add on to this about AI, because obviously it's such a big topic, what role does AI play in balancing speed with maintaining candidate quality? Uh, AI is just helping everything move faster, I think, in many ways. Um, and I think that's-- some of that is good, right? We do all want to move faster. We want to do more things with less time and with less drudgery, right? Um, but, um, it's still not making decisions for us in that way. Like, one of the things that I think is just, I find very interesting is like, um, at the end of the day, this is still a human process. And so I think like, you know, the way that we, I think, balance these tools is making sure that we still have human oversight over them, right? Yes. You all still need to be exercising your judgment about this 'cause you're ultimately accountable for the folks that join your organization and how they perform, right? And we can't outsource that to AI, right? So you're using these tools to help you, I think, accelerate things, but one of the things that I think we can do a-as leaders is be very clear, is try to become clearer about, like, you know, our decision-making process and the dimensions that we are making decisions along, and then using AI to help us accelerate, you know, decisions along those lines. So I think again, I think AI is going to reward organizations that move fast and think, you know, clearly. Um, and it is going to... I think it is going to, uh, it is gonna hurt organizations that are, that are not able to be very clear about what their objectives are and how they make decisions internally. Makes sense. All right. Um, so I think let's jump in. We've got some, some more, some more data here. So these are, um, sourced from some, um, just internal tools and, um, resources that we have. But, um, we see that, you know, um, generally speaking, there's a positive sense for AI tools right now within hiring organizations. Um, hiring managers generally feel positive about the, the opportunities for using AI to screen candidates, which I, I think makes sense, right? It's one of the things that it's, it's, it's quite good for. Um, and I think we're also seeing a high level of trust that, um, AI can, you know, find the right candidates for them, where we can go and say, "Hey, here's out of the, you know, the, the, the thousands of potential matches, here are some, some ones that are, that are a good fit." Um, and we're also seeing, I think this one is probably the most surprising to me is that w-- um, there's a high level of, you know, trust that, um, you know, AI can screen and evaluate candidates fairly. And I, I will again caveat this. This, I think this is true if and only if your hiring, um, methodologies and decision-making process is clear. If it's not clear, I, I think perhaps maybe this would be different. So, um, I thought these were some interesting, you know, interesting stats that just give you a little bit of a sense of how some of your, you know, peers in the industry might be thinking about these tools. Right. Yeah, I mean, tho-those stats line up perfectly to our research as well, I think. I think recruiters are excited about it. There's much more trust than there were if you did th-these stats years ago, not as much trust. I mean, it's... It'll probably be one hundred percent in, by next year, right? Yes. Exactly, exactly. And so one of the questions I think that we hear, right, is: How do we actually, you know, use these tools to actually free us up to spend more time with candidates, right? And I really like this question because I think it's my-- the, the most optimistic scenario for me for all of these tools is that it will help us bring hiring back to humans. Hiring is inherently, I think, a human-centric, uh, function, and the sooner that we can get people talking to people on both sides, the more effective I think our decisions and, and, and hiring processes are always going to be. And so I think the, the optimistic scenario here for us is that AI really helps us focus more on this and less on the drudgery and the process of the finding the candidates and the evaluating them and the screening them and where, you know, I think what we all-- what we're aspiring to build, right, are systems where we can actually just k-- you know, deeply understand on both sides what, what the desire is and then help make those matches, and then we can basically go straight to talking to people, right? 'Cause again, I don't think, I don't think the systems are gonna... We're not gonna-- I don't think we're gonna outsource our decision-making to these systems, right? Because then these systems are-- these systems are not-- OpenAI is not accountable to you for how your people perform, right? It's never going to be. So ultimately, we still have the decision, you know, making authority and the, the, the, the responsibility for that. And so I think the optimistic scenario really for me is like this helps us get rid of all the, the cruft and the layers that have built up in these systems over time and really just get, get people talking to people. You can't say the machine should get fired because they hired the wrong person. Exactly. At the end of the day, a human has to say, "I hired this person w-with the help of technology." Exactly. So I, I think the accountability aspect is gonna continue to be really important in the human ver-versus AI conversation. I agree. I agree. And I think you can also like inject a little bit of humor into this too, right? You can imagine like, uh, you know, a world where that far off from this, but you know, a world where job seekers' resumes are written by AI, AI, and you know, job descriptions are written by AI. Job seekers have agents that are running around looking for jobs for them and automatically applying. Employers have agents that are running around looking at all the candidates and assessing them and running around finding candidates out there. And you can just imagine this world where like, you know, my agent's talking to your agent, and it'll figure out like, you know, whether or not we're a fit, right? And I think that's kind of a humorous like worldview but, you know, even if that ends up being somewhat true, but again, it kinda gets-- it, it really just underscores the fact that we need, that we need human judgment here, and we need actua-- you know, we need to actually figure out how to get people connected to each other, which is the whole point of these whole processes anyway. So I think even as these tools change some of the workflows and-You know, automate more things. Yeah. Again, I, I think the, the optimistic scenario here is that it's actually just frees us all up to have, you know, spend more time talking to each other, which is, which is actually great. Excellent. Now let's... I think we should dive into smart screening. I think a lot of people will be very impressed with this. All right. I love this. So smart screening is this thing that we were talking about, this ability to identify, engage quality candidates that are, you know, checking the boxes that you've defined as a hiring organization. Um, so this is super important, right? Because this is, I think is what we're talking about in terms of taking a lot of that, that, that drudgery and that burden off of finding people. So if we can do this automatically, right? You can spend more of your time, you know, looking at and engaging with the folks that have high potential for your organization. Can you explain how smart screening identifies candidate engagement and quality? Yes. Um, so we take a couple of things. We're taking, first of all, the job seeker's resume, which is, you know, usually, um, yeah, resume. We all understand what a resume is. We're also taking a lot of other profile information that probably isn't visible to you as an employer. Things like, you know, job seeker pay preferences, right? We, we see a lot of those. Those don't get shared, but we do, we, you know, we can understand what a job seeker's preferences are. We under- we also have access to, you know, other preferences. And what we're doing is we're, we're looking against all this stuff. We're trying to get a holistic picture of what this job seeker is in terms of what they've done and what they like to do in the future. And then what we're try- doing is we're trying to match that up against everything that you've specified as an employer. And I think like, you know, what we can do is take all that information that you've said, "Hey, we- here's my job description." Um, but we may also have, I think in many cases, we have maybe some inside information too. It's the stuff, hey, you're not putting this in your job description, but like, we may understand some of those things, and we're actually able to, to just do a much better job of just like screening out people that, you know, may not end up being a good fit. And so I think this part is again, um, I think it's important and, um, the more specific that we are here, the better, right? I know it's a lot of work to put together screener questions. I know it's a, you know, it's a lot of work to be, to surface like the actual hiring criteria. Um, but this process is super important because the more detailed it is, the deeper we can go with all of your candidates and help you understand exactly who's a fit and why. Yeah. Which, which overall helps you focus more on the strategic human relationship-driven work. What about the smart screening workflow and ATS integration? Can you explain that more? Yeah. This is something... I think, think about this as automating a lot of the early steps of this, this funnel, right? There's a long funnel, a long process here for, for hiring. Um, these tools can automate a lot of this. So this is the things like just understanding basic information about a job seeker. You can think of screener questions, right? It's, you know, this is a really, you know, kind of, um, rudimentary form of this kind of thing. But you could imagine maybe a world where screener questions are, you know, automatically generated based on the hiring criteria that you've specified. So if you're asking for five years of experience in, uh, you know, a particular, you know, a particular area and we know the job seeker has it, I mean, yeah, we can check the box and ask him, but more likely we should ask something that's more interesting than that or more nuanced than that. Okay, great, you have five years of experience in nursing. Great. Like, what was the context of this? Were you working in a, you know, uh, a nursing home? Were you working in an ER? Um, were you doing, you know, outpatient stuff? What, what, what was the actual nature of your experience, right? We shouldn't just limit ourselves to the specific things that are being asked. So we can get really smart about what questions we are asking job seekers to make sure that we're actually getting the relevant information and going deep in areas. Um, and then we can also screen for stuff that's probably important. Like if, if we know that, you know, this, this, this job seeker is very interested in remote work and this is an on, you know, a, an onsite role, um, you know, we have, uh, we have the ability to do some screening there as well. So I think in that part we can talk a little bit more about, um, uh, the smart screening. Uh, this is kind of like a little bit more of a, you know, detail on, on how we do things. So again, starting with the intent, evaluating things based on your criteria, um, and this allows you to essentially automate a little bit more of these workflows and early outreaches for you. Yeah. How does eliminating additional tools or dashboards impact recruiter adoption? That's a good question. I don't have data on this. I think, um, my sense is that the more parts of the workflow that you can eliminate, the faster organizations can move. And when, when, uh, smart screening was designed, uh, does it work inside a existing ATS system? Parts of it can. I think this is something that we are do- A lot of the special stuff that we're doing here is inside the Indeed ATS right now. Um, we would like to figure out how to, how to broaden this out, but right now I think it's, it is much easier for us to control the stuff inside our Indeed ATS. So a lot of the special stuff that's happening here is, is being kind of piloted in small batches and scaling inside of Indeed right now. Is it allows everything to talk to each other, right? Exactly. Exactly, yes. We just- That makes sense ... we can, we can change a workflow tomorrow if needed. A- and I think as you all know, ATS workflows are very difficult to change, and so I think, um, that can be, that can be a bit of a challenge. But once we figure, once we, once we crack the problem, we will definitely be thinking about how to scale it too. Excellent. All right. Um, so another interesting data point is that more than half of hiring managers have encountered a fake application or maybe, maybe a bot. Um, and definitely this is something that I think people are, are very concerned about, rightfully so.Um, this has a lot of implications for the process, right? We have, um, you know, seen that this, this just slows down the process and it reduces trust. Um, this is very similar, I think, to the job seeker experience of running across fake jobs, right? Which is, um, a, a... you know, not common, but it is a very real problem and it is a very real perception risk for, for job seekers too. And I think this is the, the other side of this, right? Is, you know, job seekers are also using bots and, um, you know, these kinds of tools to apply to jobs and, and, you know, we want to make sure that, um, everyone on Indeed is, like, a, a real human, and that's on both sides. And so this is, this is an avenue I think where we all have to, to, to work to improve trust and, and reduce the impact of, of bad actors in the system. I agree. I mean, I remember I was speaking to a room of people in the staffing industry, and they brought this to my attention that there's so many fake applicants or people who apply for jobs and then, like, hire people in other countries to do those jobs, especially in a remote work environment. Yeah, I mean, I could see... I, you know, I could definitely see this continuing to be a trend and getting around this is, is really important- Yep ... because, because it's just gonna increase the workload, but there's gonna be no positive outcome at the end of the day. Agreed. Uh, can you explain how bot migration technology can verify candidate authenticity? Um, how... Sorry, can you repeat the question? How bot migration technology can verify candidate authenticity. Bot migration technology. Um, I think that, um... Let's see here. What do you mean by bot? Like when a- when applicants apply for jobs with an employer that use smart screening, uh, h- uh, you know, they have the adoption to identify, you know, verification so the employers know that they're human and they actually are who they say they are. Yeah. Okay, I see what you're saying. Um, one of the things that we are trying to do is to, again, verify a job seeker. This gets back to the point I made about verifying the humans on our platform. So we're working on things that, um, can verify that you are who you say you are and that you are the, um, you know, that you have the experience that you said you had. So those are, those are the, some of the things that we're, that we're piloting here. And I think also just basic things like rate limiting, you know, numbers of applies is also something that, that, that we already do. Makes sense. All right. And then, um, sourcing assistant here. So this is available. This is another, um, set of, of details about, uh, about smart sourcing here. Um, should we move on? I know we've got more stuff to cover here. I think we've done a little bit. I've done, uh- I know there's a lot. It's so much pot- so much good material. Yeah. Yeah. Do we wanna go into this or do you wanna... Do, would you like to, to move forward? Uh, I think... I, I mean, I, I do think that there's a lot of value here if you wanna talk about- Yeah. Totally ... because we've mentioned several times about AI and, you know, being so key to identifying passive talent earlier on. Yeah. Uh, how does it do that differently than traditional sourcing? Yeah, absolutely. So the biggest thing that this is doing is this is going out and doing the legwork for you. This is the difference between, like, having, you know, doing prospecting as a, as a sales rep and having, you know, warm leads to call. So really what we're doing here is we're going out and seeing if we can get job seekers interested for you so that by the time you see someone, they're already ready to talk to you. It's a huge, it is a, a huge time saver and a, and a, you know, a, a way to really, really scale the, the work that your hiring organizations are doing. Um, this is also, um, this is part of how we are doing some of these rele- these recommendations. So this is part of how we are going out and finding these candidates, right? We have stuff that we understand about job seekers from their background here, and then we also have a, a deep understanding of, um, what we call well-being factors, which are things that job seekers care about, right? So, um, these are really important dimensions for finding the right fit and making sure that, um, we are putting the right folks in front of you. So this is a, the little bit of insight in the job seeker side of how we are going about and finding these candidates for you. Makes sense. Really, really important stuff. Again, using that type of data to make those matches. Definitely. Definitely. Okay. And then finally, I think this is one of the most interesting pieces here, um, for me. This is a, you know, we talked a little bit about earlier about making sure that we have, you know, that putting people back in the mix. I think this is a, this is a little bit of a glimpse of, of the end result of this, right? If we get really good at understanding what, um, you're looking for and what we understand that job seekers have about you, we can skip a lot of the preamble. We can just say, "Hey, you guys are a match. You should talk." And I think this is just... this to me is so exciting and so powerful, and this is kind of... this is... if we do all this well, this is the kind of thing that we can start doing. And I'm, I'm just, I just could not be more excited about the opportunity for this to bring us back to the, the human connection. Yeah. H- can you explain how inter- this, uh, on-demand interviewing can happen so, like, quickly? Like, how does, how does that, how does the system work and, and, uh, what types of outcomes do you expect or have you seen? Yeah. I think this is basically, if you think about it this way, if you have someone, if you've outlined your hiring criteria in detail and we have someone that fits those criteria, instead of having you read a resume and then having to reach out to them, schedule an interview and all these things, we could eventually, we could, we could do instead is just say, "Great. There's a match here. You have-- You log into your dashboard today, we've got three people for you to talk to. We've scheduled them, they're on your calendar, and you just go talk to them," right? That saves you s- a lot of, of work from just having to do some of those set- setup and those logistics yourself. Very cool. And then kind of circling back to the human connection. Yep. This allows you... Yep, yep, you spend more of your time talking to the people you want to hire and less of your time reading resumes from folks you don't wanna hire. Which is great. So that's it. Perfect, and we have some really good questions. We've had a lot of great questions. Uh, how do job seekers use bots to apply? There's a lot of different ways that this can happen. Um- I mean, honestly, I don't even know how to do that. I mean, I'm sure if you do- if you ask AI how to do it, there's a, there's a route. You can go to ChatGPT now and essentially effectively do it. If you're technical, Cloud Code will be able to do something, script something up for you very quickly. But there are actually tools out there. If you just go search for them, um, you can find them. They're on, you know, if you're technical and you go, go to GitHub and download stuff people have already done, but there are also tools out there that, that are just sort of ready to use. So these are definitely things that exist, uh, if, if you go looking for them. Wow. Okay, this is a long question, so I'm gonna go slow. "A friend of mine is applying for many jobs she's qualified for through the local community college. She was told to a- adjust keywords for each job," which makes sense. "The amount of work and time is discouraging for the majority of candidates who don't have help or good advice during the application process. Is there a gap between qualified job applicants and those candidates who are tech-savvy enough to work the application process?" It's a good question. Oh, this is a... Yeah, this is a great question, Cindy. I am super excited about some of the things that we are working on inside the job seeker space to address this, um, the, the term that we use internally is resume tailoring. Um, we... You know, you- you're supposed to tailor your resume for specific, you know, for specific jobs and pull the keywords out, which is exactly the advice that, that, that your, your friend is getting. Um, this is not easy, um, but, uh, there are AI tools actually that were going to be very, very helpful for this. We are piloting some stuff internally, um, you know, a- and with job seekers, you know, at, at, at small scales right now. Um, but the... These tools are definitely coming, and I think at some point in the very near future, um, it will be much, much easier to tailor and personalize a resume for an application, um, without having to like, you know, edit a, you know, a, a, you know, a file in Microsoft Word and output a PDF and then upload it. You'll be able to do it in the apply itself. Um, so I'm really optimistic about these tools because I think it will help job seekers who want to put in the effort, uh, to do so and help themselves stand out more effectively. And we're getting a lot of questions. We'll do two final questions and then wrap up. How does that sound, Aaron? Sounds good to me. Let's do it. These are great questions, though. How do, how do AI... Hold on one second. There's so many questions coming in. Uh, how do AI and DE&I practices work together? How do we ensure the technology is inclusive in its approach? And this, we were gonna touch upon this earlier about, like, hiring biases, and that's been, you know, something that people have been talking about for many years now. Yeah. This is a great question. This is, this is a huge, um, topic that is... we're constantly discussing this internally. Um, we have a responsible AI team that, um, evaluates all of Indeed's AI systems across outputs, um, that look at things, um, like, you know, demographics and, um, just make sure that there's, you know, equal and representative impact. So we, we do a lot of work on this internally, uh, and we have a lot of policies and guardrails that are designed to protect, um, people and, and, you know, make sure that these things are safe and aligned internally. Um, and also again, you know, Indeed's not making decisions on behalf of em- employers here too. So yeah, these, these systems do have, um, a lot of potential, but we also do need to make sure that checks and balances are built into the system. And I, I'd also encourage you as an organization to make sure that you have your own checks and balances built in, uh, as well. Excellent, and I totally agree. You know, Indeed likes to use the word smart. We talked about this earlier. Uh, what's the difference between Smart Screening and Smart Sourcing? I know Smart Sourcing we use to specifically search for what we're looking for as an employer. Does Smart Screening screen applicants who apply and they're filtered by score or something? That's exactly it. Smart Sourcing's going out and finding people for you. Smart Screening is working through the, the, the job seekers who have already applied to your roles or job seekers maybe who applied to other roles for you. That's exactly it. So there, there's your... Stephanie, that's, that's... there's your validation right there. Well, this has been great. I mean, I, you know, I al- I always feel like I learn something from these webinars as well, even having been doing this for a long time and kind of a junkie in this, this area. But Aaron, it's, it's been a pleasure. You shared so much great knowledge. I hope everyone took at least one thing from today. Obviously, there's a lot more information that you can get, um, on the Smart, uh, it's, this, all the Smart tools, but Str- Smart Screening. You can go, uh, to the website for more information. And yeah, I mean, any other questions, connect with Aaron on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn. Go to Indeed's website, indeed.com/employer/smartscreening, smartsourcing, and, um, and that's about it. Any, any final comments, Aaron? We got through this in time. Thank you so much. Yeah. Good job. You see how some people are being like, "I, well, I got another meeting soon." And I'm like- Yeah ... "We're gonna get through this." Yeah. I've always ended on time- Always on time ... for 15 years, so. No, we covered a lot of ground. I super appreciate the opportunity to come talk with you, Dan, and, uh, thank you Zach for giving us this forum. Um, I really hope this was helpful to you all. Would love to hear feedback. Um, thank you for giving us the opportunity to, to chat with you all today. Thanks, Achieve Engagement community, and Zach, I know you're at least listening in right now, so we appreciate it. Have a good day, everyone. All right.