Hiring at Scale & Speed

Announcer: Welcome to the Recruiting Community Podcast, the go-to channel for talent acquisition leaders and practitioners. This show is brought to you by CXR, a trusted community of thousands connecting the best minds in the industry to explore topics like attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent. Hosted by Chris Hoyt and Jerry Crispin.

We are thrilled to have you join the conversation.

Chris Hoyt: All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Recruiting Community Podcast. I am Chris Hoyt, your host for the next 20 minutes. We do this weekly, bringing insights from TA leaders in the form of a conversation. As you may have noticed, once again, we are not in the studio. This week we’re actually at our friends’ spot here at Shaker Recruitment Marketing. They’ve been gracious enough to give us a place to sit and have some conversations with some pretty impressive leaders.

I happen to have one of those impressive leaders sitting here with me. Want to do a quick intro?

Mike Chonko: Sure. I’m Mike Chonko. I’m the Director of Talent Acquisition at Rosendin Electric. I’m responsible for all talent attraction, engagement, and hiring for Rosendin nationally.

Chris Hoyt: I love all the things.

Mike Chonko: All of the things. All the things. Everything, everywhere, all at once.

Chris Hoyt: Exactly. So, we’re at the UNLEASH event—day whatever—it’s a bit of a blur. Vegas, after all. I think it’s day three?

Mike Chonko: Yes, three.

Chris Hoyt: Have you seen anything that stands out? Any trends you’re noticing?

Mike Chonko: This AI thing is a big, consistent theme. It’s the new frontier.

Chris Hoyt: Yeah, everybody’s talking about it.

Mike Chonko: One of the things that intrigues me is voice AI on the front end to interview candidates. I’ve heard a lot of presentations. It’s interesting because maybe I’m a little old school, but candidate engagement—actually getting on the phone, not just texting or emailing—is really important to me. I’m curious how this will play out from a candidate experience standpoint. It sounds exciting—24/7 availability, that first-pass efficiency—but will candidates be okay with it? That’s what I want to dig into more before I embrace it.

Chris Hoyt: I think it’s great that you’re prioritizing the candidate experience. Sure, this tech might save money and time, but how does it feel to the candidate?

Mike Chonko: Exactly. Rosendin is growing fast, especially in the data center space. With each new project, we might need 35 to 40 highly skilled, experienced construction project managers. And thousands of electricians. We’re an IBEW partner—they’re doing a great job attracting talent—but when we go to a small town in West Texas, they need help. Once we get folks on the phone, we can’t lose them.

So I’m wondering: If we have a 50% fall-off rate with AI, are we actually getting more candidates, or are we losing the ones our team could have engaged and hired? That’s what I need to dig into.

Chris Hoyt: Totally get it. I used to oversee all occupational hiring at a telecom company—union shop. And I always wondered how the union would respond to technology used for selection, assessment, and attraction. Are you having those conversations?

Mike Chonko: We’re working with our locals. We talk to superintendents and local reps. My team will ask, “Do you need help?” If they say no, we back off. But for big projects, they sometimes don’t believe the numbers we’re predicting. Then—boom—we need hundreds of workers. So we supplement what they find. We organize and hire quickly. It’s this constant ebb and flow.

We’re sharing how we go to market. We don’t want to compete—we want to complement. I came here to gather information and will take it back to leadership to ensure everyone’s on board.

Chris Hoyt: Craft recruiting, indeed. When you’re told, “Hey, we need 900 service techs in five months,” that comes out of nowhere.

Mike Chonko: Exactly. Our business leaders are great—they give us heads up. But then the timeline changes. Instead of 10 months, we have three. And they’ll say, “If you find people, hire them early.” That’s huge. We don’t have to wait for just-in-time. We’ll put them on another project if needed. My recruiters love that—it lets them be proactive.

Chris Hoyt: Is there a tactic or approach you think other TA leaders might be overlooking, especially when selecting partners—AI-related or not?

Mike Chonko: Everyone talks about candidate experience, but many still take the path of least resistance. We talked to younger hires who said if they click “apply” and it redirects to a different site, they back out. They just keep scrolling. That was eye-opening. We solved that with Joveo, and our click-through rates jumped—from 1-2% up to 15-25%. Lower costs, more applicants.

Chris Hoyt: That’s huge. Any shifts in attraction strategy or philosophy lately?

Mike Chonko: Definitely. We’ve built a solid relationship with our marketing team. We’ve defined responsibilities: TA handles job postings; marketing owns the brand. When they send out news about a new project, we piggyback with job links. That collaboration didn’t happen at past companies—it was more of a turf war. Now, we have shared senior leadership, aligned goals, and quick decision-making. It’s a partnership built on trust and respect.

Chris Hoyt: That kind of mutual trust is key to success.

Mike Chonko: It really is.

Chris Hoyt: All right, we ask everyone this as we wrap up. If you were going to write a book about where your head is today—what would the title be?

Mike Chonko: I’d call it: “I Was Running at a Good Clip on the Treadmill and AI Just Maxed It Out.”

I’m maxed out trying to keep up. If you’re not constantly moving forward in recruiting, you’re flying off the treadmill. And you’ll end up on a YouTube fail reel.

Chris Hoyt: That’s so good. Who gets the first signed copy?

Mike Chonko: My wife.

Chris Hoyt: Smart man. Mike, thank you so much. We know you’re busy. We really appreciate you joining us.

Mike Chonko: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Chris Hoyt: If you want to catch past episodes or see what’s coming up next, head to cxr.works/podcast. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for joining us.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Recruiting Community Podcast, where talent acquisition leaders connect, learn, and grow together. Be sure to visit cxr.works/podcast to explore past episodes, see what’s coming up next, and find out how you can join the conversation. Whether you’ve got insights to share or want to be a guest on the show, we’d love to hear from you. If you’re interested in learning more about becoming a member of the CXR community, visit us at www.cxr.works.

We’ll catch you in the next episode.