Chris Hoyt, CXR 
I did. I did sort of I mean, we were in Costa Rica for almost a month, almost a full month over there.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 0:07
Well, welcome back to Texas. They say all the exs live in Texas, right?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:12
Well, that is, for the most part accurate for many, many people, I assume

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 0:18
What can I tell you?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:20
No, it was good. We had a little bit of trouble getting back after spending the night in Dallas, and then rented a car instead of a flight because all the flights were canceled and then just just drove back.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 0:30
Well, that’s better than my three extra days in Barcelona. So

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:35
I have been stuck in Barcelona before and I gotta I gotta be honest with you. I wasn’t mad about it.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 0:39
Oh, no, I, I was very frustrated because I wanted to get home. But the flip side of it was for people who have been tested positive with COVID Many people have had much worse experiences. I wasn’t isolated. I wasn’t required to stay in my hotel room or some isolation hotel somewhere at exorbitant expense. I could walk around outside I ate outside. I worked in my room when I was working in my room. And when I wasn’t working in my room, I was outdoor walking on La Rambla, which after three days gets a little old, frankly, but, you know, it was as things go, I was very fortunate. And I felt like I had a mild cold. So it was not like you know, the the COVID experiences that many people have, where they’re really, really sick. Yeah, mine was just mine was just a mild cold. And other than testing positive, I never would have known.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:54
Well, well, I’m glad you’re doing well. I’m glad you’re back.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 1:56
Yep, indeed.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:58
All right, I’m gonna I’m gonna, I’m gonna kick off the show. You’re ready to jump in anytime you want. All right.

Announcer 2:05
Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcasts 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 2:35
Alright, everybody, welcome to another episode of The CXR Podcast. I’m Chris Hoyt. This is season five, Episode something another. So we’re glad that you actually could join us. I’ve got a fun guest today. But let me remind you, we are usually streaming these live. So you can watch them on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and you can grab them and subscribe anywhere that you listen to your favorite podcasts. So just favorite head out to CXR.work/podcast. And if you haven’t already, go ahead and hit that subscribe button, check that out. And if you are joining us live, you’re able to drop a note in any of those streaming channels where there is a chat window, and you can now just contribute to the conversation, we may even pull again and you never know. But I want to kick off today, I’ve got a guy who’s been around for a little while he knows this space, as well as a few other spaces. So he’s going to be fun to bring in here. We’re going to talk a little bit about big recruiting report and kind of the stuff that goes on over at the AIM Group. Peter, how are you?

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 3:27
I am great. Thank you very much. It’s good to see you. It’s good to see you’re back in Texas. And yeah, life’s good. Indeed. And the world of recruitment is in what the eighth radical change in the last five years or so.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:49
I expected you to say the last five weeks because that’s kind of what it feels like to be.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 3:53
Yeah, there have been there been some rather substantial changes. You know, from the from the giant crash of March 2020, to the big rebound last year. And now it’s kind of everything’s changing again.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:13
Well Peter, I’ve known you for a while. But for those who don’t know you or know about you, why don’t you give us I like to call it an escalator pitch of who is Peters Zollman. And what does he do?

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 4:26
Am I going down the escalator or

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:30
I suppose that depends on your pitch.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 4:32
You’ve seen you’ve seen the video of the guy the escalator gets stuck and he can’t figure out how to get off right. I’m not thinking those happen.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:39
I think 90% Sure he was drunk in that video.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 4:42
Maybe anyway. We at the AIM Group have focused on marketplaces almost 25 years now, which is crazy. We started with classifieds. They were a huge category for newspapers. Release classified intelligence report. Now it’s known as aim group market replace report. When we started, the Monster Board was a big thing. Now, the Monster Board has morphed into monster.com. And indeed is the big thing among job boards. But there are, oh, probably 100,000 or more others all around the world. And we focus on them. We don’t call them job boards anymore, but recruitment marketplaces.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 5:30
Nice. And so it’s kind of interesting, though, because if you were to head out to the AIM Group site, you I think you all publish reports on not just recruitment, you also do automotive, you do real estate. I mean, you’ve got a couple of different areas in there where you’ve really got some expertise. And you’re and you’re cranking out some interesting stuff. Yeah.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 5:51
We focus on what used to be called classifieds in the newspapers, recruitment, automotive, real estate. And the general goods category are the horizontals, which I refer to as the stuffed category, the Craigslist category, I got stuff I want to buy, I got stuff I want to sell. But recruitment is really a big focus for us. Because it’s so important. You know, buying a car is important to people, but jobs change lives. And every time I do a presentation somewhere, I’d say to all the, you know, the executives, the CEOs of the recruitment marketplaces, never forget. You’re changing people’s lives. Yeah. And, and finding a job, quitting a job, helping people find a job. I mean, indeed, has a brilliant slogan, when they say I help people find jobs, or we help people find jobs. Because it changes everybody’s life when you get a better job, or when you get laid off all of those things. And right now, all of that’s going on. in abundance, sadly, and, and not so sadly.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 7:09
But you know, what, I think your team if I mean, literally, if I were to head out to your site today, as of the time that you know, we’re sort of broadcasting this recording it, your latest updates are about I think the top headline was programmatic tools for third party JP, so for job boards, but then your very next item is literally is literally talking about Ukraine, Russia and marketplace impact coverage. So when you’re talking about changing lives, I mean, you guys really are paying attention around the globe, to sort of what’s happening. Yeah?

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 7:40
Yeah, we, we have, we have clients on every continent except Antarctica. And we’ve got people working for us on every continent except Antarctica. I find it astonishing. I have three people working for me or for us, in Africa, one in Australia, four or five in Asia. I was talking I was on the phone this morning with our analyst in he’s in bang He’s in no, he’s outside, outside Delhi, about an hour outside Delhi. So we’ve got people and we’ve been doing this now for 25 years, which just, I mean, I had hair, you know, and it was black. And now it’s transparent, pretty much so

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:31
I’m not too far behind yet.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 8:33
And, and we do, by the way, the only we do a recruitment marketplaces conference. This year’s is in Amsterdam. I got to talk to you about getting the hat over there or getting you over there or wanting you to speak. But that’s another conversation. Obviously. It’s in September in Amsterdam, and we get people again, from all around the world to 300 Recruitment marketplaces.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 9:03
I love that and that’s rec buzz, right?

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 9:06
It’s called rec buzz Rec. Buzz. And it’s, it’s great fun and, God it’s great fun to be back in person and human. You know, in human. I mean, this, this is a lot of fun doing this podcast, but being able to shake people’s hands, sometimes fist bump because some people don’t want to Jake doing all of the in person things that you do and the networking and sharing a beverage and having lunch and seeing speakers in person and then walking up to them and asking them a question. It’s much different than virtual.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 9:52
Yeah, yeah, we we’ve just started a couple of our meetings are coming back live. We kicked one off a little while ago. We got another one coming up in October and I have to tell you, people are so excited to reconnect live, I mean, we’re doing a dinner here in Austin, we’ve got the whole team coming in to Austin, we’re kind of like our version of an off site. And so we’re going to do a little dinner with any of our members that might be in the area. And we’ve got members driving three or four hours to get to sit down with somebody live and have a dinner in person again, I call it a bit,

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 10:25
I call it GTFO some syndrome, get the flip out. People, people want to get the flip out, they just and and, and it’s great. I mean, it’s really, it’s really good to be able to do it again. It’s great to reconnect in person, we had our autos conference in Barcelona, and we had we had hoped for, you know, 150, maybe 200. Just getting back to it. After two years, we had close to 300 people from all around the world, India and South Africa, and and all points in B and Asia and all points in between anyway, you want to know about trends at recruitment marketplaces?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 11:12
Well, yeah, but I want to talk a little bit, a little bit about the 2022 Recruitment report that you do an annual recruitment for. And it’s not a small one Peter

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 11:22
Not that I want to show it off. And that’s the preview edition that you can love that graphic, by the way, love that graphic. We have a cartoonist or artists who just does these for us, and they’re marvelous. You can download the preview edition for free. I’m not I don’t want to do a sales pitch really. But you can download it’s 100. The whole report is 154 some odd pages, some of which nobody will care about because it’s things like the top three verticals in Zimbabwe recruitment marketplaces in Zimbabwe, we go from A to Z. Yeah, um, but we do have the top 15 Recruitment marketplaces by revenue around the world, top 15 Recruitment marketplaces by traffic around the world. You You can even guess the number one. Yes. by a wide margin, Indeed. Shocker. But, you know, but we have, you know, and, and a lot of it is qualitative as well. So we have three, great comm three, three great recruitment companies to watch, for example, one is a company called Talking job where you take you download an app on your phone, the AI asks you six to six to nine questions. You respond, they’re all transcribed and sent to the company that’s doing the hiring, and sorted and AI guide. And then people get jobs. We talked to a company that said they’re hiring about 10 people that would attend 10% of their people that way, college recruiter, you know, Steven Rothberg, and Faith. Yeah, well, we had an interesting, we had an interesting article about what they’re doing in global, not global, international programmatic. And it’s fascinating how they’ve evolved from this little, I don’t want to say dinky, because Steve with will slap me but from this little college recruiter site in the US two unknowable programmatic entity we have. And the main thing though we focus on are the trends and the trends we’re seeing. About 1012 years ago, I wrote an article that said, in 10 years, if you’re just a job board, you won’t be around anymore. And the fact is, I was smart back then I’m not sure I am anymore, but I was smart back then. A job board that’s just a job board is pretty much irrelevant right now. A job board right now has to have all sorts of tools and technologies, and bells and whistles that aren’t really bells and whistles, but the basic people find jobs and find employees and help people find jobs. You have to have more than just posting pray. You have to have high quality search and matching not just, you know, not just the keyword matching from 10 years ago, have quite high quality search and matching. When we’re looking for people we use, we tend to use zip recruiter. Indeed or LinkedIn And oh my gosh, they really do a very good job of pointing out candidates to us that match our criteria and are open to joining us and so forth. You can’t just throw you know, a job posting on a website anymore and hope people respond. job boards, job boards are switching also from cost per, you know, duration based posting, you know, post for 30 days, or slots, they’re switching to cost per click, that’s not so new cost per apply. That’s even not so new. But cost per valuable and valid apply. That’s a lot tougher to determine cost per hires, turning them more into a recruiter mode. Cost Per hire is very difficult, because how do you prove the person came through this or that recruitment marketplace? But there are ways and they do that. So it’s an of course AI, and more and more recruitment marketplaces internationally are incorporating their own ATS as opposed to incorporating into someone else’s ATS. At this point, incorporating into an ATS is almost table stakes. But many of the recruitment marketplaces we work with have built in their own ATS.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 16:41
Well, I think I think that just it is no different this year than last year than five years ago. You know, when when everybody was saying this is you know, job boards are dead, this is the year job boards die, it really is just I think a matter of just evolving, like they must change to survive like any other business, right?

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 17:00
The interesting thing is that everybody has been saying job boards are going to die for as long as I can remember. And they aren’t going to die. People still need an Iranian No, in a rocky prospect said to me about 17 or 18 years ago, that he said, no matter what happens, people are always going to have to find a job or find employees, they’re going to have to find a house or find a place to live. They’re going to have to find a car or sell a car and buy stuff and sell stuff. The only question is how. And I saw him recently, and I told him if I had to pay him $1 For every time I quoted him, I’d be paying a million bucks. But the reality is, it’s right, it’s true. The people are still always going to need to find a job, need to find employees. And the question becomes, how do they do that? And we won’t call them job boards in five years, probably. But they’re going to be pretty integral in finding the right people finding the right jobs. Now, one of the things that’s that’s a big new trend is using social communities, like on Slack, or GitHub just dropped their job board actually. But then those social communities incorporating recruiting elements without turning them into a job board. And the and the recruiting elements are, are very important, because you find people have a like minded community, who may not be looking for a job, but say, Oh, my friend, Bob, or Shirley, or hey, did you see this one, and it’s a network effect.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 19:03
I do think it’s inch and slacks a really great example. There are some interesting technologies that have have begun to incorporate these recruiting touch points. So I think it’s interesting that you bring that up. But I also think what’s kind of fascinating, at least to me, is the AI component of that as well, we’re seeing that delivered more and more within platforms to recommend roles, especially for internal mobility, where people are giving that a hard look in the new report that’s come out. And I know I know, you don’t want to sell it. I just I just think it’s super great. And oh,

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 19:32
I definitely want to sell it.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 19:37
I think it’s a good call out like nobody, nobody pays to be on the podcast. We certainly don’t take any compensation or any quid pro quo. So I just we say it’s cool. It’s because we think it’s pretty cool. But are you seeing any in the new report that you guys put out? Are you seeing anything in there because I know there is a section in there on AI trends, but but from a selection and recommendation standpoint in that technology.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 20:00
Um, hmmmm, We don’t do selection and recommendation except in a consulting capacity. And frankly, on that one, we wouldn’t even try to do selection and recommendation.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 20:13
No, sorry, Peter, I met within the board within sort of the job board technology arena. So services that are actually utilizing AI more to help with candidates, not selection of candidates, but candidates looking for jobs, like matching people to those roles.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 20:30
Oh, absolutely. I mean, the, the quality recruitment sites are using AI more and more, I think some of it really is not true AI, it’s more high end, you know, Boolean matching, and that sort of thing. But a lot of it is and the reality is, as your search and match algorithms get better and better. And they trainee they trained, they’re trained better and better. By definition, AI is when it trains itself, as opposed to when people train the technology. But those are hairs that I don’t know, we have, I don’t know that we have to split that hair. The The reality is that there’s a lot of very, very good AI out there. Certainly Pandologic. Certainly, Pandora, certainly a bunch of I don’t want to call out 20 companies, or I shouldn’t call out one or two, probably. But there’s a lot of AI out there that is really, ultimately making a difference for employers and job seekers or employees to improve their status in life.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 21:51
Yeah, yeah, we’ve been doing, we’ve been leaning in on the issue of transparency, and certainly around ethics and AI and, and within that recruiting umbrella. So it’s always interesting to me to kind of hear how services may be using something a little more than advanced Boolean right, but to not just do recommendations there. But to sort of connect people to those particular roles. We do like what we’re hearing from an internal mobility standpoint, and some of the AI in that space. But I’m really interested in seeing some people do some innovative stuff, the likes of indeed, right are the are the big boards to sort of incorporate that technology. But I really like to see some transparency around how they’re doing that. And then information that’s being collected and used in that regard. Does that make sense?

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 22:39
It absolutely makes sense. It’s difficult, to a degree for them to explain exactly what they’re doing. Because by definition, it evolves. It’s a lot of them must be very, very, very, very careful with data protection, especially. I mean, every recruitment marketplace in the world needs to be careful with data protection, right. But in Europe, especially. And in California, especially, there are serious consequences about data protection, and anybody who operates internationally or globally has to follow the most stringent rules. So data protection is a problem or an issue. And we did a we did a great article a couple of years ago about how the all the dots were matching, and the graphic was just incredible. And I went, it was it was what I call a five foot 10 inch graphic, it was just a little over my head. You know, it’s all it’s, it’s all you evolving, and will most probably continue to evolve as long as I’m around. As long as you’re around. As long as Jerry is around. God bless him. You know, until he takes off his hat. It’s it’s, it’s it’s going and it’s going to get better and better over the next three, four or 510 years. But job boards won’t go away. I mean, they have evolved into recruitment marketplaces. But as long as people need a job and as long as employers need people to come to work for them, there’s going to be an intermediary, whether that turns out to be a job board, whether it’s a recruitment marketplace, whether it’s a community that leads to finding jobs in any way, shape, or form. They’re going to be around. Yeah,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 24:53
Yeah. Well, I agree with you and I think it I just I think there’s a lot of there’s a there’s an opportunity here for convergence of some of the He’s, which will be kind of interesting. But your 150 some odd page report that has come out. I think folks can get that at AIM. group.com. But you address I think you mentioned you talk about when we were talking earlier Facebook or meta, whatever the hell they want to be called this week. It’s got some details in there from recruit, which is obviously parent company For indeed, I’m sure you do some deep stuff in there. Is there anything from programmatic ads or AI standpoint that you’d want to call out in that report that people should sort of check out because I do think it’s worth a look, if you’re a recruiting leader, in order to help keep you updated on the space?

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 25:38
There, you know, I think we have a pretty good qualitative overview. I don’t think we have deep dive, I mean, in 150 pages, you have deep dive, or 70, pages, 60 pages, 80 pages. Of of qualitative use of qualitative, you have a lot of deep dive. But I don’t think we have a deep deep dive into AI, into programmatic into those kinds of things. But we cover the field grow broadly. And for people, the great thing about our reports is even even the really, really super smart people who get our reports will say to us, yeah, I read every word, or I found two or three really interesting things in there. And to me, you know, if you find two or three really interesting things that teach you something, give you a direction that you need to go, help you understand AI better, or help you understand programmatic better, or help you understand some of the challenges better, you know, that’s well worth the money and the time, and I’m not sure which is more valuable, but the money or the time. And by the way, as, as you and I discussed if if any of your readers, your viewers, your audience wants to use the code CXR15 they get 15% off. So brings the price down from $1500, to whatever that is about $1350 or something CXR15. And there’s a money back guarantee, because some it, you know, I used to be proud of the fact that nobody ever asked for their money back. But in the past few years, we’ve probably had three or four people buy our reports and say, it didn’t really have what I was looking for. And I said we’ll send your money back. And who wants an unhappy customer? You know? Nobody, the cost to us is about $5-$10 worth of, you know, processing fees and time. Who cares? You know, so if somebody buys it, and they go that this wasn’t for me, just let us know. And we’ll give them their money back graciously. I used to say, gladly, no, I’m not giving money back gladly, but I’ll give you a grudge. And, you know, you saw the report, obviously you’ve found it worth spending 20 some odd minutes with me. So I, you know, I think it’s a great value. It’s global. So for people who are just interested in the US, but even there, you know, we’ve got Facebook, we’ve got a little bit about Craigslist, and how their, their their revenue has gone up and down on it’s all on based on their job ads, and that sort of thing. So it’s worth it. Now,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 28:51
I really do think it’s worth the time for folks to check out if you’re listening to us and not watching. We got it scrolling across the bottom and it’s AIMGroup.com And the code, Peter and that team has been so generous with his CXR 15, so it’s awfully nice to do that, Peter, we appreciate it.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 29:08
You know? We’re happy to do it. Because number one, you guys are good friends. Number two, you guys are really good resources to your audience. I still haven’t convinced Gerry to let me into any of your colloquium meetings. But I’m working on it. But your audience and every time I see you or Gerry speaking somewhere, I learned something which is hard, because I follow the space pretty closely. So

Chris Hoyt, CXR 29:37
Good stuff. Well, we’re gonna have to talk about Amsterdam itself. Sounds like something we need to get on the calendar.

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 29:41
We will absolutely talk about Amsterdam shortly after we’re done.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 29:48
Up works for me. Peter, thank you so much for your time hang out for just a second in the greenroom will ya?

Peter Zollman, AIM Group 29:53
Will do.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 29:53
Thanks. All right. I just want to thank everybody for joining us again for another show. If you have not done it already, head over to CXR.works/podcasts, you can check out this episode as well as upcoming episodes. And you can see a full library recordings we actually do put in the transcripts of the notes just takes a day or so for those to get processed and show up in there. But the shows up almost immediately after we filmed them on the site. You can find a live chat there when we go live. So if you wanna watch the show, you can do it there too. And if you are a CXR member, or alumni, I’d strongly encourage you check out cxr.works/events. And those are all of the upcoming meetings that we’ve got going on, whether it be monthly Lecture Series, or whether we’ve got one of our member meetings or our alumni meetings, my own alumni, where it’s slipping for a minute, but you can check those out. We open those up to all members and lifetime alumni. So we’re happy to do that. And until next time, we’ll see you guys online.

Announcer 30:46
Thanks for listening to the CXR channel. Please subscribe to CXR on your favorite podcast resource and leave us a review while you’re at it. Learn more about CXR on our website CXR.works facebook.com and twitter.com/CareerXroads and on Instagram @career X roads. We’ll catch you next time.