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E378 Recruiting Community: The State of Candidate Experience
Chris Hoyt, CXR
So say that again Cliff, I think the cameras are on the screen.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 0:04
So I’m gonna, I’ll put it out there I say, you know, one of the statements that I took to the core of my being that I do, it doesn’t resonate with me, it doesn’t connect with me. And I absolutely hate it is when people say this is a war for talent. It’s not. This is an absolute unequivocal race to engage. And whoever engages first and best is going to set themselves up to create a winning organization. It really is all about engagement, and how we engage and how we are enabling the candidate and the recruiter to build a meaningful relationship. But there’s no war here, right? It’s about experience and engagement.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:45
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever been a fan of that. And I have I know that in my career, I have used that phrase. I’m sure we all have one point in time at
Gerry Crispin, CXR 0:55
McKinsey from 1997. That’s how far back all that shit goes. And and if you read the article that McKinsey wrote, most of the companies they talked about that were winning the war for talent, they the leaders either went to jail, or went out of business.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:20
I don’t even know how to respond to that.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 1:22
I don’t think you need to respond to that statement that Gerry just said stands on its own.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:27
Well, I guess on that note, are you guys you guys ready to go? Surely. All right, we’ll jump right in.
CXR Announcer 1:35
Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for Talent Acquisition and Talent Management. listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent. We’re glad you’re here.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:04
All right, how do you and hello, welcome back to another broadcast, where we are streaming live. I am your host, Matt Damon. For the next 20 minutes. We’re going to talk about what’s going on in the talent acquisition space. I’m gonna bring in my spirit animal Ben Affleck, then how are you?
Gerry Crispin, CXR 2:20
I’m just fine. You never know, ourselves.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:27
Just making some shit up today. It’s fun. Okay, we got we got some fun stuff to talk about today. The topic of candidate experience is certainly focus for us, we have an event coming up. You can always check that out. cxr.works/events Anybody who’s listening for members only we’ve got that set up. We are actually offering I think we’ve got two seats that are open. For the candidate experience of it. We’re going to be in St. Louis in September. If you’re interested, you want to attend to that you think your organization qualifies you you are passionate about candidate experience. And your org is leaning in on that work. And you’d like to attend less note, we’ll set up an interview. We’re going to mix it up a little bit and have a couple of guests that will be able to attend We’ll even feed you. There may even be wine. Will there be wine Gerry at the meeting?
Gerry Crispin, CXR 3:12
I would hope so.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:14
A little bit, a little bit of vino somewhere for anybody. But we are excited to bring in our guest first time on the show to come in from Phenom he’s going to talk a little bit about there’s a brand new report that has been published we’re gonna share a link to that so anybody can download that. But it’s definitely worth taking a look at. Cliff come on in from the break room. There you are out of the green room. Cliff. We’re glad you made it today. Thanks for joining us.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 3:37
Yeah, thanks for having me, Chris. And always great to see and speak with Gerry as well.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:42
That’s right. And and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Anybody else who wants to join the show,
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 3:46
However you guys want to, you know, label yourselves. We’re all
Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:49
We’re all about the labels up in here. Okay, so let’s do this cliff scuze me for almost like a whole nother celebrity name. So Cliff, for those who have not met you for those who do not know who you are the work that you do over at Phenom when we give you a second to sort of set the stage if you’ll give us sort of an escalator pitch. Give us a couple of minutes, a little bit of background and what you do today and why we should even pay attention to you today.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 4:13
Yeah, it’s a really good question. And I’ll try to answer that. I am I’m with thatPhenom. And I’ve been with you know, I’m now coming up on my eighth year I’m employee 21. Have now you know 15 1600 as well as we’ve grown. My first role with Phenom was I was the first executive in charge of service and deliveries to help build that organization out, you know, left that role to really work at a more strategic level. Just with my background. I’m a former Creative Director for Philly’s largest international ad agency at the time. And I’m a trained musician and pilot. I’m a technologist and engineer. So the my my varied background has really helped me understand you know where the problem was in this particular domain exist and connecting with clients at from the highest level down to the folks sitting at the front line, you know, delivering the services and experiences. And so, you know, why should anyone listen to me? Well, I think the big thing is where Phenom has come in this domain. And we’ve worked with really, you know, great competitors in this market that have rallied around the idea that experience is important. When we first really started 12 years ago, you had to convince people that anything other than a basic job advertisement was important. So candidate experience was not something we invented, but something we looked at the consumer space and said, Why did consumers run to Amazon and eBay and, and then to Shopify, and you know, some of these other, you know, big platforms from a consumer space, and it was experience. And so we incorporated that. And then we as a domain, all of our and I’ll say this, because Aaron made us is one of my favorite people in this business, who was the founder of Paradox says, It’s coopetition. Right? We are all working towards the same thing, we solve problems a little bit differently, but the importance of this domain cannot be understated. And the success that we’ve all had, in the last I’ll say, five years, there’s been a dramatic increase in the interest of delivering on experience has been important. So it really just boils down to our collective experience. Not mine, not just with Phenom, but just being in this domain and working with a lot of great partners and competing against a lot of great companies demonstrating the value.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 6:40
But I love that and I want to I do want to take a quick timeout to go down a little bit of a rabbit hole cliff, you might have the most cultured background we’ve ever seen on the show. I’m going to put you back in full screen real quick. We have we have a piano. Yeah, we have a chess board. We have the podcast, we certainly have some interesting art that’s going on back there, are you a renaissance man is that?
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 7:02
Here’s what I would say the art is my wife’s all the art in the house. She’s fine oil painter, she’s also a musician, I’m a music, I was a touring musician for 12 years. You know, in my early days, we still play with the house and my wife has, you know, again, coming up in a couple of weeks. You know, and here’s what I would say, I have a couple of real interest music is is I go very deep with music. I, you know, two years ago, or 2020 2021, I was an agent for a young guy by the name of Louis Knight who finished top seven, two years in a row on American Idol, did a tour with him during COVID, which was incredible. We did 32 cities, 7000 miles in three weeks, you know, all all while doing this job to so you know, I didn’t take time off from that. So I’m lucky. And I’m lucky in the sense that I’m given the opportunity to do some of these things, because they benefit. And here you want to talk about candidate experience. Right? So I’ll draw the parallel. I think this is important. It’s not just about the professional work that we do. It’s about everything about us holistically. And so my experience as a pilot and a musician, I owned a restaurant for all my time as a chef, so under restaurant for four years and was involved with that. All of those things play into who I am. And so it’s not just about my resume. It’s about how do we bring that out in the candidate experience with recruiters with sourcers and hiring managers, so that they understand the whole person, not just the slice of me, that might be the professional day to day, I think, in this domain, and I keep talking about it, but the technology that supports the work that we do. It’s important because again, not just Phenom, but all of us are trying to get to that. We’re trying to uncover the things that make the individual unique, stand out and contribute to the values and culture of an organization. And that’s the whole idea behind candidate experience. It’s not just you’re gonna have a great experience it is you have an opportunity to really represent who you are. So am I a renaissance man? I don’t know. That’s for others to decide. All I know is there are certain things that that define who I am, and, and help really help, you know, define my values as a human being and work is just a piece of that.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 9:26
All right. I feel more unaccomplished than I have felt in a long time. That’s a lot that’s a lot to digest live in really impressive. Wow.
Gerry Crispin, CXR 9:36
What I’ve what what I love about it too, though, is is it was only a few years ago where we really focused on people compartmentalizing those issues. And and that it was somehow you know, you didn’t want to share all of who you were. You wanted to focus in on the, quote, business side period, rather than the diversity that we all bring, you know, to the to the environment, and embracing all of that being willing to do that. And I, I just think, you know, we have made a shift, whether it was pre pandemic, or part of pandemic, whatever. But we are moving to that side where I do think we’re trying to bring our entire selves to work. And other things,
Chris Hoyt, CXR 10:24
I think, I think there was an effort, Jason Sidon who, who may have been the one who started to push an I’m going to get the Pro for personal, he was trying to push this term propersonal and God loves them, like, like yours before anybody was even thinking that way. And to your point, Gerry, we kept everything in buckets. And I remember being a very young recruiting leader and I wouldn’t get I would get a little irritated when you’d be on a conference call, and there’d be a baby crying, or there’d be some background noise that should have been there wasn’t strictly professional. And I think it’s a very different scenario right now Cliff, I don’t know if you have kids, but if they come running through the background, I don’t think anybody actually cares in 2023. Like it’s a, we are at a very different time. And I think that piece that Jason was pushing, we had a lull in that. But I think now to your point, you’re like, we’re back, like it is about the whole self, and the whole person. And I just, I love that direction. I just hope, I hope we hold on to it as as an industry of of hirers, right of the people who are making the hiring decisions.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 11:27
Yeah, I would agree, I think, and I do I have a four and seven year old, I had a third son, he was 26. He passed away in 2020, during COVID. You know, and that experience is also something that, you know, again, when you think about what happens in our personal lives and how it can transcend everything, you know, the loss of a child, my wife and I started a what is the right now at least this country’s only flight service dedicated to serving those that, you know, with mental health and addiction issues. I myself am a recovering alcoholic. I’m very open about I speak about it a lot to demystify the stigmatize what that means. And and I think, you know, these are things that when when you feel connected to an organization, as I feel to Phenom, as I feel to other organizations, being able to be myself, and not worry about negative judgment, I think is the most freeing thing that we can do for any human being. And so Gerry, when you talk about diversity, and then of course, you think of the equity and inclusion piece, that equity piece, you know, it’s treating everyone equal, regardless of their experience, and maybe, maybe, maybe just maybe learning from their experience. So this is all part and parcel to why I think a lot of these technologies that are being built the right way and, and hopefully being implemented the right way to bring these, I’ll say, this way, if we can use technology to make space for this kind of conversation, isn’t the world a better place?
Chris Hoyt, CXR 13:06
Yeah. 100% Yeah. 100%. I love that.
Gerry Crispin, CXR 13:10
You did say, though, that, you know, in building these technologies, you want to hope, if you will, that they’re being used in that way. And fundamentally, I think that this next level that I really want to see from vendors and suppliers, is being able to set some baseline standards for how you would use us. And and if you’re not able to, you know, to leap to that level, then you really can’t be a client. And and that’s, that’s a tough issue. I will say career crossroads is use that to turn down many people who might wanted to pay us because we didn’t think that they were ready. But I do believe that, that misuse of some of the technology in our field, and talent acquisition, TARS all of us, and we have some responsibility to ensure or at least, or empower, or at least in, you know, encourage our met our clients to to, you know, get beyond baseline.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 14:25
Yeah, I think that’s why it’s important. This organization six is really important because it’s bringing this group together to say, how do we help set the standard if you take it even further, and talk about the use of AI? There’s a lot around AI bias and fear of AI. And I think we’ve done a great job of extolling the benefits of AI as as a use case in recruitment and retention. But we haven’t satisfied enough. The you know, the legal challenge that is coming for that. And so So you’re right Gerry, like when I say hope that’s because we have work to do in this domain in order to educate. How do we ensure fairness and responsibility and accountability and these technologies?
Gerry Crispin, CXR 15:14
And I absolutely believe that doing that, collectively, as an industry as a profession, we should be able to move the needle and we need to do more of that.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 15:24
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, we’ll talk to us a little bit about, I think, to some of those points. Because now, that Cliff, I just felt like I could talk to you all day, about any number of things. And you’re going to have an opinion I want to hear about, but But talk to us a little bit about I mean, you guys at Phenom just did a report where you took in I think, fortune 500 organizations, you talked about attracting engagement, you released the state of experience rate of candidate experience report that has just come out, we’ll put a URL up here in a second. But can you talk to us a little bit about this? I’ll see if I can pull it up on the screen for those who may be watching.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 15:59
Yeah, sure. So so every year for the last seven years, we’ve looked at the fortune 500, because it’s just a really great group of companies leading the market in their various verticals or multiple verticals, how are they doing with candidate experience? So we’re using what is really an unbiased measurement? So there’s a number of calculations, we go through it in the report, as you as you have on the screen there. You know, what, what some of those aren’t, and the methodology behind it. But really, what we’re looking at is how well are you engaging, attracting and converting? You know, based on your digital experiences, so your career site? Are you using a chatbot things of that nature? And so, you know, we pick out elements that we know are going to be important, like responsive design, how well is your search working? You know, are you using AI in really smart ways? Are you pre filling things? Or are you removing unnecessary steps and challenges and clicks? You know, in the process, there’s a couple of things that I think really stand out. And I’d love to hear Gerry’s take on this, you know, in one of them is, while there was an 80 plus percent increase in the use of a chat bot, and intelligent chat bot that uses natural language processing conversational AI, still only 15% of fortune 500 companies are using it to help with recruiting and the numbers at least I’ll give you Phenom numbers, because we know obviously know ours really well are undeniable, you know when if you if you parse out frontline workers high volume from, you know, knowledge workers, because there’s slightly different use cases. But you know, frontline workers aren’t 70 plus percent willing to engage with a chatbot on a first visit to a career sites, the first thing they go to 41% of those people will become a lead, meaning they’re gonna leave some information behind that says, I’m interested in something, right? Why don’t you Why don’t you tell me more, and 71% will apply to a job. Those numbers are just crazy big for knowledge workers in the one to two visits, 60% are engaging with the chat bot, you know, 42% are leaving information behind and 58% are applying to jobs through a chatbot. So and if you draw that even farther, if you look at something like interview scheduling, where you can automate the process, right, I’ve applied for a job, I’ve done some screening, maybe I’ve somehow pre qualified for work, I’m going to get that first interview scheduled, you can go from first visit to scheduled interview in under three minutes. Now that in terms of automation, for everyone involved, that is a really great experience, you know, and then to get the subsequent communications after that they can be automated, they can be, you know, human intervened, depending on how the system is set up. And the use cases are different for each role. But But now you’re now you’re nurturing. So you haven’t just engaged, you’ve attracted, you’ve engaged, you’ve converted, and you’re nurturing all in a matter of minutes with a single tool. And the power of that, like it befuddles me that there are companies that have the budget and time, and it doesn’t take much to stand up a chatbot it really doesn’t like you look at us and, and some of the other competitors out there. Paradox is, I like their product, I’ll just say it out loud. You know, and we’re good competitors, like the way that we do things. It doesn’t take long to set this up, your return on investment happens very, very quickly. And so, why is the question?
Chris Hoyt, CXR 19:26
Well, that’s what I was gonna say, as you can see, because it seems like there’s two there’s two streams of argument here, right are two different issues as you’re talking about that. One is why wouldn’t you implement it? Right? Is that like, is it a cost issue? Is it a timing issue? Did the pandemic and the pandemic emergence issue and budgets not is that just put a pause on our evolution for tools like this? That should be helpful. I mean, there’s probably a number of reasons but I’m wondering one that does does the report out that or is it just kind of a thing we were scratching our heads going come on ta leaders you.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 20:01
It’s important to really out that, but I will tell because I think it’s really experiential. And again, I think Gerry can contribute some feedback here. From what I see, it’s falls down to really two things, leaders that I’ve heard this from a lot of leaders, and I’ll call them legacy leaders really experienced individuals in their thing, but not experienced with technology, have this mental barrier that, that this stuff doesn’t work, right, I used the Chatbot on X site, and I had a bad experience, so it just doesn’t work. So there’s that there’s sort of just the legacy way of thinking that it doesn’t, I know that it doesn’t work, even though the data says that it does. The second is just a perception that the the investment in not in budget, but in time is is going to be too long for us to yield yield a beneficial return. And what I say to that is times gonna pass regardless, and if you’re not doing is today, if you look at the fortune 500 companies that are using chat technologies, their time to hire their quality of hire, their analytics around their and intelligence around their ta organization is much stronger, faster, deeper, better, like it’s just unequivocal the the the evolution that this particular technology can break
Chris Hoyt, CXR 21:26
Cliff, let me ask you, because I mean, we do a monthly open mic with heads of talent. And it’s open to to our membership body, you got 100 plus companies, we typically get 25 to 30 folks on that call every month talking about whatever and an organic did the the agenda sort of organically evolves, it’s 45 minutes a month. And one of the issues that continues to sort of like a revolving door comeback, and we talked about it at one of our recent meetings is change management. So the idea that just flipping a switch, whether it’s on a you know, a chat bot or an RPO or an ATS, but just turning it on will fix the issue. It seems to me this was kind of the second piece I was getting to earlier. So turning this on seems like a no brainer. To me. The data says the numbers don’t lie. This is beneficial for your organization. It’s lead gen out the wazoo. It, you know, but But what you’ve got on the back end of that as well, how do I manage it? What do I have to do differently? In order to reap the rewards of that? I can’t just turn it on and say, Well, gosh, Cliff, it didn’t work. And so we’re not going to renew or I’m not going to invest in that going forward. But like I think there’s a huge component here that gets missed on several elements within TA and that’s the change management aspect.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 22:38
Yeah, I would agree, I think looking at the change management pieces, and that sort of that second piece that’s going to take too long, it’s too much stuff. And this is where I think we’ve done a really good job in this domain of understanding, it’s a crawl, walk, run, you’re not going to turn on 100 automations. On day one, right? That’s just not going to happen. For a lot of our clients, what they turn on first is let’s just start with job matching. Right? Let’s start with that level of personalization, where you’re having a conversation, remember, a chatbot is a 24/7. recruiter, it never is down. Right? So it’s always there that and I will say this, the piece that a lot of clients don’t think about is the opportunity to engage culture and brand through a chatbot conversations, not just answering, here’s a list of benefits we have, or here’s the hours or work or here’s a bunch of jobs. It’s like, here’s why this work is important to us, here’s how you can play a part in that your skills, you know, your values, here’s how we contribute to that. So what we’re seeing across the board is not just the talent acquisition, you know, the recruiters talent marketers are getting involved in the marketing side of the business is getting them saying, Let’s bind and align our core culture and brand messaging value into every response. So I’m going to match you with a job and I’m gonna tell you why this job is important to our organization, and why you might actually be a really good fit to that, like, come on into the conversation. So that piece of it is absolutely a piece that takes discipline, and takes time. But it’s not something let’s let’s just put it this way, you know, when automobiles were invented, and the horse and carriage trade, looked at it as a fad and said it’s too expensive, and let’s not do it. And they and they went on and bought a new factory and started building more carriages. And in a matter of a decade, we’re done. It became a novelty in a decade. So you can ignore these technologies at your peril. Because it will be at your peril. And all of a sudden your TA organization. It’s not that the tool isn’t being used. It’s that you haven’t set up your organization to be innovative. And that’s the biggest challenge in all of these new technologies is that many organizations are not set up for innovation. That’s the first thing in a conversation that we need to talk about. What’s your tolerance for change? What’s the most recent thing that you’ve innovated on or changing organization? How did that go? Because that, and I was just interviewed, I think it was, you know, some publication, we were talking about this, that, to me is the biggest barrier you have, you have organizations that are ready for innovation, understand change management, you have those that aren’t, both are good candidates, but the ones that aren’t, that’s where you start the conversation. Like, here’s how you bring in this technology, here’s how you explain it, defend it, configure it, all of the, you know, all of the, you know, adjectives or pronouns to describe what it needs to be, it’s not about what the technology can do. It’s about how to teach your organization and get them ready for future innovation.
Gerry Crispin, CXR 25:51
I think I think there’s one piece that we have a lot of work still to do. And I agree with all of what’s been said, Change management is a key issue. But one perspective that keeps being missed is the perspective of the employee and the candidate in relation to whether they’re seeing what we’re seeing, because we keep on talking about what we see. And the data we’re collecting, about, about how people are using this are using that yet, we’re not, we’re not making the linkage to the change in attitudes, and behaviors of the candidate as or employee as a result of what we are seeing, because we’re not talking to them. And what I want to know, for example, is whether or not the experience that we keep talking about the candidates experience, converts, converts, really, to a perception on my part, that this process is fairer for me, helps me to be more competitive, either with this job, or since 99% of us are going to not go forward with the next job that I might be applying for. And, and so if we’re engaging, truly engaging the candidate, about how they perceive the experience, we’re now gaining insights, if you will, on what that data actually means and infers for how I’m going to behave in the future, toward you, towards your, towards you as a customer, you know, the candidate who does not go forward who stops buying the product of that company that didn’t, didn’t have a real good relationship with him or her, we’re not measuring that cost. And I think if we when we start doing that those legacy ta leaders and HR leaders, and and, you know, company leaders are going to see that linkage, and I think become much more amenable, if you will, to then setting up the kind of change management that they really need to.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 28:15
Yeah, I You couldn’t have said it better. I mean, we always have to the lens has to be from the inside out. And too often it’s outside in and and I’ll put it this way. It’s the difference between attraction versus promotion. Promotion is just what you’re talking about, we’re great. We have we have all this data that says we’re great, right? Attraction is saying, you know, come join us and be a part of something, you know, you know, bigger than yourself. But being able to contribute, you know, attraction is, you know, why we want you here versus telling you, you need to be here. So that is a mantra, I just could not agree more that measuring how well we’re attracting how well we’re delivering these things, in terms of experience comes down to the talking to the individuals involved.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 29:06
I think some of lots of what you have in your report is very supportive of and and added value, if you will, to some of the kind of data that the talent board develops in a different way. And I know that Phenom has always been a strong supporter of the talent board. I think the combination of information that’s coming in from different directions, I think, can be used to be even more influential, if you will, in helping those legacy folks go, you know, we need we need to do something a little different.
So well, let’s touch on that because one of the differences in the way that the candidate experience delivers their information and in the way that this report from Phenom comes up. There’s rankings. There’s only there’s listings. There’s a lot there’s lots of data points in here. And I like it like some of these look like a little bit of a punch in the face. And then others are like, oh, and I want to go check some of these out, I’m gonna pull it back up. But Cliff, I know we’re coming up on time. But can you walk us through? Maybe? Let me see if I can turn that on again. There we go. Can you walk us through sort of maybe what we’re looking at? And sort of a bit of methodology, a bit of history behind that? What why the choice to out the the Fortune companies and how you guys came to do that?
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 30:25
Yeah, well, here’s, you know, for, again, fortune 500. Is is easy, because it’s, you know, it is the 500 companies that globally, everybody’s looking at, we actually do a version of this for the Euro 100, as well. You know, these are leading companies, they’re leading in their vertical, they’re leading in a marketplace, there, they are attracting at least by brand, a wide swath of the available talents. And so our report is saying, How are you treating that talent? How are you also treating your own brand in representing that experience? And so when you break down, you know, attraction, engagement and conversion, and then the AI piece, these are three big buckets that are easy for anyone to understand. Right? So are you are from attraction perspective, is the is how candidates and applicants getting to you beneficial to their experience? Again, this is all from the candidates perspective, you know, from an engagement once they’re there, are you doing things that are engaging? Are you do you have good content? Do you have good navigation or using good tools? Like, I’ll give you an example of something that isn’t measured in this report, but we’re going to start measuring it is way CAD compliance, so your accessibility compliance, that plays into diversity, equity inclusion in a really big way, you know, persons with disabilities are a huge audience. And and so are you doing the right thing in order to deliver the same experience to them as you would to an able bodied person? So you look at that engagement? And you’re looking at those things? You know, the conversion is a very simple thing. How many steps are you putting between the person and applying for a job? It’s really that simple, right? And for a lot of ATS is they have that, that login that you got to go through first. And the mobile experience is horrendous on
Chris Hoyt, CXR 32:21
It blows my mind, and 2023.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 32:23
I don’t I don’t understand it. But look, that’s you know, that’s why as a domain, to Gerry’s point, as a domain, we can solve these problems, right, but we have to expose them first, like, you’re not doing right by your cat. I mean, I had one client, that it was six clicks, to get to apply. And it took seven minutes to get there. Now who’s going to go through that? Right? And they’re wondering why that they have a conversion, their attraction was through the roof, they’re gonna get a million people a month hitting their career site, and they convert 3% 3%. So all their marketing is doing a great job, you know, everything they say, you know, again, the attraction piece doing awesome, but once they get there, it’s falling completely flat, because they’re not managing the experience not managing the technology. So the AI piece is really simple. When you talk about AI, is it being leveraged away? Where the human is at the center of the purpose of the artificial intelligence machinery? Is it there to make that experience, hyper personalized, so that every visit every click, it’s learning more, as long as the candidate applicant is willingly you know, participating in that? And most do, by the way? 1.3%? Don’t? If anybody wants to know who do does it, who turns off cookies, and personalization just browses privately? It’s 1.3%. You know, so AI is being used in a really big way. But I think to Gerry’s point, are we really measuring the effectiveness of that engagement? And that’s one of the things we look at on, you know, through our tool. It’s Clickstream data, it’s behavioral data collection, how they’re engaging with the technology, what is working and what isn’t? And are you making that adjustment? Because I’ll tell you, our algorithms, which we started using 12 years ago, are vastly different today than they were 12 years ago, vastly, like if they don’t even look like they’re the same thing. And this is us as a domain, looking at this and saying, the need for innovation and change is constant. And so measuring ourselves against that, you know, and things like even NPS score, which is built into most platforms now, you know, as a simple way of just measuring, you know, you got the 100,000 foot view, you know, if you’re at a 2.6 out of five, you got problems, you know, and you better be paying attention to how you’re delivering things so So even something as simple as that literally can be implemented in an hour, you can implement an NPS score, you know, a survey system, super simple, right? A lot of what you see here, it doesn’t even require the client to buy Phenom or to buy Paradox. We’re just talking about improving search, improving navigability of a site, you know, making sure that content is rotated, and up to date. These are things that organizations can do without even buying new technology. So, again, it’s really just confusing. And I get awestruck at the lack of pay attention to just the basics, let alone bringing in something like a really cool conversational Chatbot.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 35:28
Yeah, yeah. Well, I agree. So for those who may be listening and not watching, you can get the report that we’ve had up on the screen. And that Klinsmann talking about its CXR.work/Phenom experience. And it’s P H. E N. O M, Phenom experience. And that’ll get you directed over the report. So you can grab it. I gotta take cliffs. So we do this. We do this at the end of every one of our podcast show. And we’re just so grateful to have you on. But if you we ask this question every time if you were going to write a book about the state of things today, based on what we’ve talked about, what what do you think you would title that book?
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 36:05
Yeah. innovate or die?
Chris Hoyt, CXR 36:12
And I can’t I can’t like live free or die. But yeah, like little liberty there. Okay, so then Cliff, who would you give present company excluded? Who would you give the first signed copy to?
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 36:25
The first sign copy would have to go to my children, Undoubtedly, you know, and why is not for the reason that you might think it’s because this is the world they’re growing up in at four and seven years old, if they don’t understand change, management and innovation, and you know, just what we started, you know, for those of us that are old enough to know, you know, back in the 80s, you know, started really with this computer and technology age. It is only if you look at generative AI, the speed at which innovation is happening is unprecedented. And that’s not going to unless we turn the electricity off, it’s not going to stop. So this is this is this is the change that’s in front of us. This is what we have to teach our children. And so I would hope that that lesson would be born on my kids first.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 37:15
I love that the only adoption we’re seeing happened faster is just to show your disdain for Elon Musk is just downloading threats. I think we’ve seen
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 37:27
One quick thing about threads, threads will will that all that’s just hype. Threads is not in the long run. It’s not going to be Twitter, not by a longshot.
Speaker 3 37:35
Now that well, well, we’ll see. There’s there’s an argument there and you’ve got Is it Blue Sky? I think you’ve got Blue Sky right around the corner. You guys we’ll see. We’ll see who who’s gonna win. It’s a it’s a fun fight to watch everybody
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 37:48
is is counted Elon Musk out how many times in his career? I just say don’t. The guy’s one of the smartest, most, you know, brilliant people on the planet. Whether you like him or not. That’s irrelevant denied.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 38:01
If you replace people with replace people with manchild, I would agree with you. Innovative manchild unlimited resources. Yeah. All right, Cliff, well, thank you so much for being on the show. We’re super grateful of your time. We really, really appreciate it. And we hope you have a great, great remainder of your summer.
Clifford Jurkiewicz, Phenom 38:22
Yes, thank you, everyone. Thank you, Chris.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 38:24
Thanks, everybody. And we’ll see everybody next week. And again, if you’re interested in coming out to the candidate experience meeting that we’ve got coming up at September you just inform us or email us at info@CXR.works and we’ll set up an interview and see if you qualify. Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time on the show.
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