Chris Hoyt, CXR 
But here’s the thing if you’ve ever seen Donald Sutherland he’s an amazing actor, but his eyebrows are like out of control. And so that those are my old man life goals is Donald Sutherland eyebrows.

Kim Collins, CXR 0:11
I get it just oddly specific.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:14
I think I just saw a movie with him in it and they were like, okay. You’re getting ready for the holidays.

Kim Collins, CXR 0:21
I am lots of lights, lots of gnomes. Lots of things happening.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:25
Lots of gnomes are everywhere. It seems they’re everywhere.

Kim Collins, CXR 0:27
From from our gnome to yours.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:31
Oh, let’s see what you did there. Okay, well, look so I invited you on this show, I don’t think you’ve ever been on the show. Where Believe it or not, three 345 episodes, which is a little crazy project of love this, you know, definitely not a revenue project. And certainly, it’s certainly a labor of love for us. But there’s a lot of fun. So, Kim, for those who don’t know you, we’ll jump right in. Because I’m not sure anybody doubted to hear our banter. But in case they did, why don’t you why don’t you give everybody a little bit of an escalator pitch around who is Kim Collins? And I think because you do a lot of work for us behind the scenes. And I think a lot of people don’t, don’t get to run into you don’t get don’t get to interact with you. So share who you are and what you do. And then we’ll jump in and talk about which which was your favorite podcast this year.

Kim Collins, CXR 1:20
Okay, I am Kim Collins, the shadow master I stay behind the scenes but I am CXR’s project manager been with them about three years been a fan for way longer. I basically handle memberships accounts and media events. Pretty much anything you can put a solid plan around my hands are in it. So and you know whatever else they need me to do on the side.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:48
I’d say that’s pretty accurate. Anything that we have a lot of things that needed a plan. And so you are the plan master?

Kim Collins, CXR 1:54
I do try to make the trains run.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:56
Yes, you do a good job. You keep the trains on time. You do a good job. So let me ask you, Kim, like I’ve mentioned before, we’ve done over 300 podcasts we did, I think 60 some odd this year, you’ve got a favorite, which is it

Kim Collins, CXR 2:09
It is actually the podcast back in August with Sarah white on working.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:18
I suspect I may know why it was one of your favorites. But do you want to share why you picked Sarah’s?

Kim Collins, CXR 2:26
There are a couple of reasons actually, I do a lot of these podcasts edits. And the ones that make me laugh are usually the ones that just stick with me the longest. And the virtual post generator killed me. I think I literally fell out of my chair. And then I immediately had to go try the virtual post generator.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:46
You did it?

Kim Collins, CXR 2:47
I did. I did. It was very interesting. I think I was with an Uber driver or something. And, you know, the world was all good, and sunshine and rainbows. But the other thing I love is, you know, #winewisdomandanchovies. That is like…

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:06
This is the market intelligence, the incredible amount of you know, recruiting wisdom that comes out of the podcast.

Kim Collins, CXR 3:15
You know, but for real about the insights that Sarah gave where they were very her foresight was great for the October layoffs, the fall layoffs and stuff that’s still going on internal mobility that she talked about. I mean, everything we all already know is, you know, cross train, mentor, coach, but yet we’re still missing the mark on it in places. So yeah, I enjoyed listening to it. And overall, there were a lot of aha moments and a whole lot of laughs during podcast.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:48
Yeah, who doesn’t like a nice wrap up, where we talked about the crying CEO. But anyway, if you want to hear more about that, obviously that’s to come. But yeah, I would agree. I’ve known Sarah a super long time. And it’s just been wonderful to just watch her career progression is a sharp lady and she’s doing some really good work. So I think you made a great choice.

Kim Collins, CXR 4:06
Thanks

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:07
All right, well, let’s listen to it. Here we go.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 4:09
Hmm, I want to know where that is.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 4:12
HR Tech its coming.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 4:14
Okay, great.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:15
So Gerry you popped in, we were having kind of an interesting conversation around and we love when you pop it of course, we have an interesting conversation around you. Everyone has seen the crying CEO by now. Right that went up last week, the most cringe worthy example, in my humble opinion of narcissism and quasi Okay, back pedal marketing recovery. I don’t know better, a better way to put it. But what we’re what we’re laughing at Sarah and I are laughing at so as a result of not laughing at that guy. Still we have last week, but we’re not laughing anymore. The result is this website called viralpostgenerator.com. And I think the way I understood is this, this guy, the crying CEO, because I’m not giving this company any press, but the crying CEO has fits this formulaic post we see on LinkedIn.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 5:11
And he’s not the only one right?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 5:13
No not at all. It’s maybe 1000s. Right? It’s ridiculous. But it’s one sentence paragraphs. And they’re just so like, cringy They’re so bad. So so this viral generator, say again,

Sarah White, Aspect 43 5:32
They all saved puppies after feeding the homeless.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 5:34
That’s right. I stopped for and saved the puppy. I was late to my interview. Turns out the puppy was the company CEO and I got the job. You can do it. So Gerry, what we’ll do, I’m gonna pull up the viral post generator.com. And Gerry, I want I want you to play along with us before we before we jump in,

Gerry Crispin, CXR 5:54
I’m in, whatever.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 5:56
So what what you get to do, I’m gonna click Start over, you’re going to pick and I’m going to show you let me share it on the screen here so everybody can see what I’m doing here. All right, so this is the site. You’re going to pick. What did you What did you do today, Gerry?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 6:10
Oh, I talked to Roy Blahdy. About jobs for humanity and and what he’s doing to help people in Ukraine? Would that be a courage worthy kind of thing

Chris Hoyt, CXR 6:23
That’s perfect! All right. Let’s just say, Roy, how’s that? Yeah. And what was our what’s the inspirational advice? Chase your dreams?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 6:33
Yeah, I would say I would say, you know, no matter how bad it is, there’s, there’s a rainbow at the other side.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 6:46
I can’t wait. So what did you do today? Sorry about this. Right. Talk to Roy the inspirational advice. You’re getting his chase your dreams and why this doesn’t default on the high for cringable. I think that’s a miss. We’re gonna say write a post. Let’s see what it gives us. Guys. You guys can see that. Okay. Yeah. All right, here we go. They’re adding a secret viral ingredient. You gotta love this. And you know, Sarah, you’re next you’re going to do one and then we’ll get started. All right, here’s my LinkedIn post, ready for copy and paste how to be successful in life. leave home and talk to Roy. Find your own place to live and talk again, then you may chase your dreams. I talked in different places several times during my career, and it was key to my success. If you think well, how is this possible you will fail in business 100%. So to recap the secret of success. All you have to do is talk to Roy and follow me on LinkedIn, thoughts?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 7:44
I love I love it. If I had thought better, I would have said a story that says talk to Gerry. You know we can we can do that. Alright. Oh no, we don’t want to do that. Because there’s there’s too many people who actually would try to do that. That’s the problem.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 8:01
It’s how I got here.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:02
I feel like people are ready. Exactly.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 8:06
Sarah would say I talked to Gerry and the rest was the rest of my career was history.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 8:13
What did I do? Let’s say I worked out.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:16
Okay, I work now. This is Sarah’s and And what’s your inspirational advice?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 8:22
Follow your passion.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:23
Oh boy. Follow your passion again. There we go. Cringe level, are you ready?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 8:32
I am

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:32
All right. This is this is for you. Here we go. This is whoever did this. It’s so fun. It’s quite really because it fits that formulaic. You know one sentence paragraph craziness that we’re seeing all over LinkedIn lately. And poor LinkedIn to have to try to figure out how to police all that. Look at me. I literally worked out with my CEO yesterday, we worked together like it was a natural thing. For me. That’s a huge milestone in my career. When I tried to work with my previous boss, she simply told me to follow your passion and ran off rude. All CEOs in the world learn from my current boss and work out with your employees agree?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 9:11
100% actually did work out with my CEO today.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 9:16
That’s Oh my god. Well, that would be it would be you, right? Oh my god. Alright, so viral post generator.com free plug so much fun.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 9:26
Changes that every time. So you don’t always get the same, because those are the same one we use earlier and it came out completely different.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 9:34
And the hashtags. I’m sad mine didn’t have hashtags. But the one before it did. Yeah. All right. Are we ready to get this thing going?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 9:40
Sure.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 9:41
Let’s do it.

CXR Announcer 9:43
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 10:00
So funny, I’m still laughing at that. So hola, bonjour. And hello watchers and listeners. I am Chris Hoyt President CareerXroads, and I’m the host of the recruiting community podcast, we come to you somewhat live each week with interviews, sometimes drinking quick catch ups, that are about 20 to 30 minutes in duration, and with industry leaders, personalities, analysts and friends to talk about what our community members are asking about. And that duration, believe it or not, is by design. So we know you’re busy. And we try to keep these to these sort of snackable episodes but but also engaging. So for instance, you can actually watch and listen to us live on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and of course CXR.works/podcast, where we stream and enable you to chime in with questions or just your favorite social profiles. So drop those in there, right so that you can connect with other listeners as well as our guests. So please also be sure to click on the subscribe and like button so that you’re reminded of upcoming shows because including this one, we have some fun and informative conversations ahead. Now, we don’t make any money from the show, we don’t pay guests to be on and you won’t find us spending half the show endorsing something. If some somebody or something is here, we’re talking about a solution or product it is because we find it interesting, and we think you might appreciate it, which is, in part what makes us a little bit different. Now, I want you to feel like you just sat down with us in the break room or that we’re right next to you on the treadmill. While you’re on the treadmill, we’re at the water station behind you but still including you in our conversation, even though you’re slightly winded and sweaty but but comfortable talking. So this is not dangerous. Anyway, we’re here, you’re here. And while you’re here, we’re going to jump right in. So today we’re going to welcome somebody that I have known for what I think is she’s going to correct me maybe but for maybe 15 years. This is somebody who is no stranger to what we do. She’s doing a great job sharing what she has been studying and learning with regards to talent acquisition and leadership. I want you to say hello to our good friend, Sarah White, Sarah welcome to the show.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 12:05
I think it is 15 years, I think 15 and 20 with Gerry.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 12:09
Yeah. Can you believe and speaking of Gerry. Gerry’s here for the show today, We’re going to let him in Gerry, how are you?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 12:14
Wonderful. Life is good.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 12:18
So Sarah, we’re excited to have you on you are you are the CEO, and Head of Research at aspect 43. But you weren’t always obviously, I think when I met you, you were a principal analyst all those years ago,

Sarah White, Aspect 43 12:33
I think we actually met one before that. So I run down. I actually used to be a practitioner, lead ta teams corporate. That’s when I met Gerry. And he made the site comment to me like, Hey, if you really want to go into other stuff, you should do cross training and other departments and learn business. And I don’t think he meant to go quit my job the next day, but I did. So I quit TA the next day and I went into operations and learning the business side of it fell into started a company around doing software evaluation selection focused on TA and on performance management software that was acquired near about two years later. And then I went into head of strategy for what is now clear company was HRM direct at the time, and I think that’s where we met at Kennedy.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 13:28
It was, Wow, great memory, it totally 100% I remember that.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 13:33
So right during just one of those two jobs, so either the company that I sold or as I was going in and then went in with Josh Parson to help really scale up the TA and start the TA practice. Madeline had been there for a while obviously everybody loves Madeline came in and helped continue to grow that and do some work with Josh and then started a company and you know have worked with about 400 vendors and about 1500 teams at this point. So just a couple

Chris Hoyt, CXR 14:10
I, I remember I was just starting to speak. And I remember you were I forget what the topic was. But I remember you were up talking. And it was, it was at the Kennedy conference, great memory. I couldn’t remember the name of it. And I came up after you. And I was like, that was really great. Thanks for sharing that, et cetera, et cetera. And that that’s how we met.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 14:28
Fun story about that conference. I was actually not supposed to keynote. The keynote got sick. They asked me if I could keynote the night before. So to pull that whole session together to do that, and it was my first major keynote. It was also the first time I ever had wine. And that was,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 14:46
In your life ever?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 14:48
Ever, ever in my life. I went to dinner with Jerry and I found out at that dinner that I had an anchovy allergy because he fed me Caesar salad for the first time and I was wine. And I was definitely I was like, you know, 2025 24 definitely not sold on wine.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 15:09
Yeah. I love the fact that I can touch others,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 15:16
That’s what you get with Gerry, you get wisdom, wine. Go quit your job. That’s your job. Well, look. So a couple things I want to talk about. Right? Because we try we try to keep these around 20 minutes. I think our I think our whatever that was viral pitch website threw us off a little bit. Anyway. We have met I want to jump right in. We’ve met with a few analysts and economists recently, right. And I think there’s there’s a lot of talk around in the space. More layoffs, right, or hiring freezes, or Oh, my gosh, this this recession, I’m using air quotes, because I gotta tell you, we’re hearing from some economists and analysts that the recession ahead is going to be mild. Now we’re hearing from others, it’s gonna it’s gonna be a shitstorm. So you said recently on Twitter, we better buckle up. So So what do you mean, what what is ahead for us? Is there something we should be watching out for? What are you seeing that we haven’t seen yet?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 16:19
I especially so those two things, regardless of what we look at the numbers, we have to remember, a lot of the numbers are backwards looking. And so we do you know a lot of our research we’re looking to what are you expecting to do in the next 12 months? Not what did you do in the last 12 months. And a lot of what we’re looking at as far as buyer behavior because we’re a little bit different from a lot of the analysts in that perspective. We look a lot at the behavior of work, and buyer behavior and trends versus best practices. And as we’re looking at all of these things, we we have a lot of reason to believe October is going to be kind of the month. There’s a lot of companies that are waiting for q3 financials to close, they want to make sure they don’t drop, or they’re doing the first round of layoffs right now, so that it’s not a 30% layoff round in October. It’s only a 10-15 because they did 15 Now, baby steps.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 18:49
Sounds like a real incentive to tell your clients to renew in September. 

Sarah White, Aspect 43 19:00
I think it might be just might be

Gerry Crispin, CXR 19:01
At our at our next corporate meeting, I’m going to make a suggestion that we offer some incentives early for early renewal.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 19:12
So earnings. So So Sarah, the earnings, I think it was was at Lowe’s and target. And I think there was another big one on the news this morning, that no big surprises, but some earnings were lower than expected. And so that that does sort of align with what you’ve said is that organization will be preparing but it’s kind of it’s kind of their own ask you this, because Gerry and I were just looking we did it, we did a survey. In the last, I don’t know, we’ve had it up for maybe two months, three months, where our members go in to these categories. And they select these are all of the systems I’m using with this extensive list to check which ones you’re using, right? In the areas of ATS in the areas of CRM in the areas of you know, internal mobility, and you know, like all of these different pieces, right, that come together to make a puzzle. And we get this really cool, sort of lay of the landscape of what technology is being used. But we noticed as we scroll through the results of that survey that had been up, one pie chart, just one was was all black. And one answer had been given for it across all of the organizations and the answer was unknown. And that was around coaching and mentoring platforms.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 20:26
Yes

Chris Hoyt, CXR 20:27
Which now I just want to tell you, we had Robin Erickson on two years ago. And Robin said, If you Gerry, you probably remember this Robin straight up said, if you are aren’t already investing in internal mobility, or coaching platforms, you’re already behind, you’re gonna want to do this for when we come out of and at the time, we were still dealing with the instant ramifications or someone else ramifications of George Floyd murder George Ford, right, a lot of social injustice at work, right. And that was top of mind for everybody. Pandemic was just kind of just starting to hit everybody’s ready to get crazy. And she’s like, you’re gonna have to invest in this. But so we’re seeing from our members not quite yet in that area. What are you seeing?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 21:10
Yeah, and I think when we survey so we do our big research study called insights at work, because of the shifts that are happening in the market, we’re actually double serving this year. So we’re moving it from being a q2 survey into being a q4. So we’ll have another one. But the data we have is very, very recent. And we found that for talent management buyers, we actually look at, I think, 87 categories of technology from ta through core for those buyers, and these are double validated people with signing approval. 50% of companies right now will either be buying or replacing coaching and mentoring tools in the next 12 months. It’s one of our highest areas. But you’re right, only 17% of companies still have it. And that’s

Chris Hoyt, CXR 22:02
Or if they’ve got one the employees don’t know. Right? 

Sarah White, Aspect 43 22:05
The other thing is, so we have something called uncertainty rates. And it is about 33% So 33% of talent management, these are people with signatory, like decision makers do not even know what coaching and mentoring technology means. This and we don’t understand why there’s any value. And our like I said, our research is over 1000 companies we have from SMB, to I think our largest had 450,000 employees, it is validated to represent all industries, all walks of life. To get to that point in the question. You’ve had to go through three screening questions to vet you out. And so like, of all the people that should notice them.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 22:59
t’s important to me because you are asking talent management, whereas we’re asking talent acquisition folks, so they are even more uncertain about what the hell’s going on in organization after somebody’s hired, I find that absolutely fascinating.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 23:16
Now, what’s really interesting, I think you guys might find crazy is when we because we break it up like they have to validate I’m a TA buyer. I’m a talent management buyer or employer HR. One of the biggest gap areas for TA buyers is actually in talent mobility. They don’t understand why they should like it’s it was shockingly high. It is at 60% 60% of people did not understand why or what value of internal mobility or hiring internal talent would have for them.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 24:00
I understand that though. Because as as people come up through the ranks of talent acquisition, right, they’re not there. We’re only just now seeing dedicated teams Internal recruiting, right? So it’s never been on the radar of a lot of TA leaders to recruit internally, let alone give a shit. What happens to somebody after the onboarding is done?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 24:19
No.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 24:19
Well, it’s there’s also all those restrictions that have been built over, over centuries, preventing people from being recruited internally, for open positions, they have to advocate for themselves, and often have to be in a position for a year or two years in order to do it. So those are those are obsolete ideas that need to be changed in in obviously the largest.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 24:45
You know what would be interesting, Gerry, to your point is, if if we could do a pre and post of how many ta leaders years ago versus today, are held accountable to any internal mobility metrics?

Gerry Crispin, CXR 24:58
I think that’d be really interesting, particularly, you know, ours is a, you know, is a, not a unique set, but a set of companies, employers that are very large. So they all hire large numbers of people. And and because of that, are much more likely to think about internal mobility as an option but but in terms of executing on it, the question is, who’s the champion who’s supposed to be doing this?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 25:30
You know, nobody has to this point. And what’s funny, is the number one issue for the very first time because we also survey CEOs, hiring managers kind of down a different path. The number one issue for them, for the very first time ever was retention. above inflation, above cost above anything else, I’ve been running the survey for 10 years. And for the very first time ever, retention has taken over this year. And yet, when we get into the HR teams, ta talent management core HR, there’s such a disconnect on the tools that we know support, retention, and support the bigger corporate goals. And they’re both interest and desire in them. And what’s very interesting in our research, and again, this goes across every single company size, there’s a sticking point with people with a VP title. Above VP below VP, almost very consistent in their responses across the board. VP, has a very unique perspective on all of it, on the issues at their company, at that how bad the economy is, or if they’re at risk is the only group during the pandemic that didn’t take pay cuts. As a whole, it was the only group that like was diving in, we went through all sorts of different validations. But the we could not find any correlation with this group, other than they all happen to be kind of the VPS. They’re the you know, less at risk, they also are the most risk adverse to new tech. And they’re more likely to think their tech is working perfectly fine when everyone else The organization said, That’s not

Gerry Crispin, CXR 27:20
Are you speaking at HR tech?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 27:22
I’m not.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 27:24
Never mind, we do. We you and I have a history about that. But that’s another, that’s a whole long Now

Chris Hoyt, CXR 27:29
Calm down.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 27:30
But no, I but the conversation we’re having right now, you should be, you should be speaking on that issue, because I think it’s a counter intuitive to some of the other conversations that are being had. And I think it’s a very useful one for people to consider. And I’d love to see you do some more speaking on this issue. 

Sarah White, Aspect 43 27:55
And I think we’re gonna, like I said, you know, we’ve been using it, we we spend a lot of time working with vendors. So we don’t make any money off of practitioners. Everything that we do for the market, we do at no cost. It’s all you know, we have a membership, that basically puts in money to pool together to sponsor our research. So it can go to the market for free. And then, you know, we work with the individual, different vendors in the space. And one of the biggest lessons we’ve had to do is like, stop trying to upsell and jump over everybody else and go just to the VP because they’re the first ones that are gonna say no, right? So we have to get all of this. And so when we do the next round of this in q4, we definitely are going to see if there was a correlation. Or if there was, this is something that just over the two years of the pandemic happened to be a fluke, because it was true for both pandemic years, which was the first year we started looking at kind of the VP in comparison to the other roles, versus it just being VP and up. We separated them from the CHR Oh, specifically.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 28:59
Well, and that’s that’s not the only thing. Aspect 43 Does either. I mean, you’ve just published pretty recently this guide to talent acquisition technology. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 29:12
Yeah, so we do four or five big reports a year, the guide to talent acquisition technology is designed to be a, what guide, not a who or how. And so there’s so much on the market. So what we wanted to do was really pull together the landscape, like, Here’s what a tech stack and TA looks like today, not that you have to have all of it, this is kind of what it is. And then we went through and defined every single one of the 34 categories. There’s a lot of people, as we know, from our research, they just don’t know what the stuff is. And so if they don’t know what it is, it’s very hard to go buy. And so it’s, it’s kind of fascinating for me being kind of a student of the industry and having come in very early. You know, it starts off with a little bit of a history, like, how did we even get to this point of what TA is, where did we start at? How did we get here? What do today’s ta departments look like? What are the roles? Who are the people in them? How are they who are the different stakeholders, and then a whole section on the business impact, like the true ROI so that you can go build your own business case, to support wanting to get this? And it’s how all of these things, not traditional recruiting metrics. But how do these tie back into business schools? How does this affect retention? How does it affect engagement? How is it affecting customer satisfaction? Like, what are the numbers and the metrics that connect these all together, so you can hand this over mean, they’re not going to read it, 90 pages, but they can hand it over to an executive or pull blurb out that a more senior person can do. And then obviously, of the tech stack, and a full definition of all of those. And we’re getting that, you know, workforce management we have is publishing next week. Very similar type of thing and employee experience. And, you know, trying to cover a little bit of everything. I know these are getting used in at least eight universities as part of curriculum starting in fall, which is kind of a pain. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 31:07
Real quick, real quick. So for those who are listening, not watching, we’ve got a URL set up. So you can grab that it cxr.works/aspect.43 I just threw it in the chat also. And if you’ve got questions, if you’re here live with us, just drop them in the chat. And we’ll throw those out. So sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to get that out there.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 31:25
These are all entirely free. So we do ask an email, just so we know. That email only gets used to send that to you, it does not get shared with anybody else. None of our clients ever see that. No sponsor will ever see that. That is completely not used you don’t join a newsletter list. Like it really is just

Chris Hoyt, CXR 31:46
No one is gonna call me or email me about my Car Warranty.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 31:49
No one’s reason one of the reasons I love you.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 31:54
No one is trying to sell you.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 31:56
So it’s interesting. So having if you’re you’re pushing all that information on you gathering all that you got to see some cool stuff going on. I just like giving an example. I had a call this morning Sarah with founder of SHIELD i shield.ai. And you’ve probably heard of this for those who don’t know, and they’re, they’re Bootstrap, right. So they’re I think they’re having their big coming out party and HR tech, or, you know, are on the floor out on the market floor. But they are, I guess marketing themselves as the Grammarly for inclusiveness, right? So they analyze both text and multimedia for biases. And I think they do job descriptions, marketing, content, communications, it works in Slack and Teams. And within I think a handful of ATS as already. So these guys are kind of interesting. Like I said, they got their big lunch that’s coming up. But I want to ask you, because I saw that sort of like, oh, I need some more information about that. But I guess I’d really like to hear your opinion of like, who’s making some sort of killer updates, or strides or deliveries from a tech standpoint? Who should the leaders and watchers really be paying attention to or seek out if they’re at an hr tag or an unleashed or something like who should they be going to talk to going to look for

Sarah White, Aspect 43 33:10
I think I’m, I think those type of products, there’s about five or six of them that are coming on the market, we had one actually we run a small bootstrap companies each spring. And so we had one in our accelerator that’s gone on to do some really cool stuff. And it was actually a group of college kids that had built it. And so we I think we’re going to see probably over the next year, a big group, you know, probably 10 or 12 of these type of products emerge. And as you know, they’re quickly acquired by the larger vendors, which is fantastic. And what we’re hoping to see, I’m always hesitant to say go see this type of tool. And the reason is that the same tool does not work for everybody’s tech stack because they don’t work with all cultures, everything else. But I think as far as the types of trends that we’re seeing, we’re finally seeing some stuff emerging around talent mobility, that makes it actually usable. Right, it’s not just like the like, Hey, here’s your internal job board, but it actually creates it with more of an employee experience and gives access to the recruiters. And so I think that there’s that type of stuff that’s going to be really valuable. The other stuff that I think is emerging and kind of has blown my mind is the stuff that is coming out the new stuff that’s coming around out around contingent workforce management, which I know we’ve been talking about forever. But a fiver actually acquired a company last year, that’s doing it right. And they’re coming into the US this year. And it’s really amazing. And it’s not just, you know, kind of the traditional contingent was focused more on your like long term contractors, your temp employees, this is focused on more how a lot of companies are doing work with these freelancers, with these kind of gig workers where they’re coming in, like, hey, I need a logo design, we need this, even the largest companies are doing that. And to date, Quinn, SA, none of the tech out there manages those people, like we’ve been looking for nine months, we’ve been looking at everything as part of workforce management, and that that has been a group and we finally got connected up with them just last week. And so I think we’re going to start seeing things like Upwork, and Fiver death, moving far more into the corporate world than they traditionally have.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 35:31
This is why I love talking to you. Because last year when the when that stuff hit the news, I bought me some Fiver stock at a pretty good price. I’m not gonna I’m not gonna lie. But I now I’ve just been sitting here going, Okay, where is it? Hello.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 35:44
There’s one. There’s one key issue that I think needs watching though. And that is when you move into the large companies from a contingent point of view, that tendency is that others besides human resources get involved and we look at risk management issues, we look at the cost of benefits. So you tend to see decisions on the part of large companies of moving towards contingency in order to in order to eliminate the benefits of people around that issue. And so fundamentally, a lot of people who would not choose to be a contingent worker, are lose their jobs in relation to that. And fundamentally, there needs to be education, policy and some degree of security, that has nothing to do with technology.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 36:47
I think one of the things that really made me excited about this particular product that I saw, like I said, I’m not pitching anybody’s names. But one of the things that I did see is they actually built it in partnership with enterprise companies, in partnership with their legal compliance and procurement teams, as well as HR. And so it actually goes through and monitors all of the people that you are having worked through this, and it will flag them if they’re actually misclassified, and should be a full time employee.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 37:23
 I like that, too, because that becomes the choke point. Right?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 37:28
Right.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 37:28
It’s the choke point that screws things up when you know, you try something, it’s a great idea. And then you realize you’re you’re going counter to our societal norms, you’re going counter to some of the legislation that exists out there.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 37:41
Well, this gets us it’s interesting, because there’s two, there’s two issues, I think we see that keep coming up. It’s this one. And then we had a, we had a guest on recently where we talked about job sharing, which is an interesting push too

Sarah White, Aspect 43 37:55
Well, as part of our workforce management report, obviously, like totally geek out on like the historical part of this stuff. So one of the things that I found really fascinating is I think, historically, we’ve always thought that people that wanted to work part time or do job sharing, or if they were working part time, it was because they were like hoping to get a full time job somewhere. And that only 38% of them. Not our research but large. I think it was I don’t I won’t quote because I’m not remembering who it was. But it was a very large study, only 38% of them actually wanted to go full time that right. You know, it’s it’s a very small percent, which means there’s a huge number of people, you know, when my kids are younger, if I had the choice, I would have taken a part time job over full time on any day. Like without question, that wouldn’t be less valuable to the organization because I could probably do in 30 hours a week what other people couldn’t right and so I think people you know, especially when you’re given I have a part time employee who needed to go part time following some family stuff. And in her part time time, she was able to produce almost what our full time people were. Right she was

Gerry Crispin, CXR 39:08
if you look at Starbucks, for example, they have a number of policies that focus in on on giving benefits at a much lower level of work, and providing help for people to go to school as part of their job. And the reality of that is that they’re they know who is doing a good job as a barista at Starbucks. And it tends to be those who really want a part time job so that they can do other things. And long term will leave.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 39:38
I still, I think everybody forgets about Buccee’s always talking about Starbucks, and nobody’s talking about

Sarah White, Aspect 43 39:46
We don’t have a Buccee’s We also do Palmers here, that was quite a shock when I moved. But

Chris Hoyt, CXR 39:53
I want to I want to kind of I want to keep us on track. I want to ask you, before we before we let you out of here. And again, it’s anybody who wants to get the tech report, the guide to talent acquisition at CXR.works/aspect 43, that’ll take you right over to Sarah’s company’s site to grab that. But Sarah, let me ask you, if you were going to write a book about the state of this the landscape of today, right, the State of the State of the Union for us, as it were what what would you title that book today?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 40:22
Buy some beans

Chris Hoyt, CXR 40:24
Buy some beans?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 40:28
No, I I don’t think inflation is coming to an end anytime soon. I think we’re gonna see some temporary relief. And then, you know, obviously, with the stuff that has just been passed, I think we’re gonna see a little bit more inflation coming. Not my opinion. That’s the nonpartisan groups that are studying all of this. I think the other thing is that, you know, layoffs are coming, right. I mean, we’re starting to get the very tip of the iceberg of what is to come probably going to see the worst of it October / November timeframe, which is never a good time for layoffs to happen. And I think, as a culture, there’s a lot of people at work that have never gone through this. I mean, I I’ve gone through more layoffs, and I can count, you know, anybody that was in work in the 2000s, you know, layoffs, were just like, Oh, you got another layoff? Cool. Okay, next one, right, it was just such a normal thing. We’ve gotten so used to not having that be the case, like not even every once in a while. And when we did see it with COVID, there was a safety net there at a very different level, and everybody knew it was more of a temporary thing, and then everything was going to come back. And and I think that what we’re already seeing on LinkedIn is a lot of people freaking out a lot of people very angry, a lot of people not understanding that. Unfortunately, layoffs tend to be part of the natural cycle work, which I’m not saying it’s right, but it just is true. And so you’ve got a lot of people that don’t have that context of understanding, because they’ve been on kind of the like, the markets been up, Everything’s been great the last 10 or 12 years. And then on the flip side, you know, we’re going to have those layoffs happening, which is probably going to trigger some stock stuff. In October end of October, of course, traditionally not a great month for stocks anyway, it’s usually kind of a rough month, and then we’re going to go right into that a week later with the election. Which no matter what happens, I think with this election this year, people are going to be unhappy. You know, 

Gerry Crispin, CXR 42:51
At least half of them.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 42:53
Or it will be a mix right? Like so some are gonna be good, some are not and so I think, you know, October November are going to be a little bit of a perfect storm. And get off social media. Like it’s only like a echo chamber of quite honestly like cringe and hate and a lot of times, especially as things get rough. It is you know, people get it used to be so good. And then the other thing is like, be smart, right? If you’re at the store, buy a little bit extra, like it doesn’t hurt to have a full pantry. You know, and be prepared, prepare yourself save a little bit of extra money, like be cautious with your stuff because if your company doesn’t lay off the worst thing is you have a little bit extra money and savings you have a little bit more debt paid off and you have a couple extra cans of beans.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 43:45
Alright, so buy some beans. Let me ask you who gets the first signed copy?

Sarah White, Aspect 43 43:50
Well, Gerry obviously

Chris Hoyt, CXR 43:53
Gerry always gets the first signed copy

Sarah White, Aspect 43 43:58
When he was like quit your job and go into operations and get some business experience. He also should have been like and buy some beans because twenty two year old Mom.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 44:12
Now I now I’ve been telling folks that if you change your job with 10 plus years of experience, you need to negotiate not more money, you need to negotiate the fact that if in fact that you know, the shit hits the fan, you and you are released, you need to be released against a policy of 10 years or more experience, not one year. Right? Because that costs, that’s a cost to you, that’s going to really hurt.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 44:39
Now new trend is fighting for your exit, which, which is always fun in the interview.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 44:44
Yeah. 100% like severance packages. I mean, it’s no different than prenups. Right, like prenups, 20 years ago was unheard of, unless you were like, wealthy, right? Maybe they weren’t, maybe we were just super broken dumb when we got married at 21. So could be

Chris Hoyt, CXR 45:01
I have nothing creative or constructive to contribute to that.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 45:05
Where now it’s, you know, as more and more people I know, it’s just become the norm so that if, if something goes south happens, there’s not the fighting, there’s not the stress, there’s not all it’s just like it’s done. I don’t need any additional distraction away from my work, my kids, my family, my other life priorities. And I think the exit package is going to become, I don’t know, within the next six months or a year, we’re going to have a lot of the kind of negotiating power that we did in the last year. But you know, I do think that over the next 12 months, people are going to understand why and pre negotiating a severance is going to be very vital part of that,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 45:53
If they don’t already.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 45:54
Well, I, to my knowledge, I don’t think most people think about it. And most people find it too awkward to even ask when they get to that point. And that’s when I tell them, you need to be awkward about that. But by and large, you need to be able to think that through otherwise you got to own it.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 46:10
Look, I’ll tell you who you talk to about this. You talk to Laurie Ruderman. Go read a book that never got there you go. I literally have a write off screen. Sarah I want to thank you so much for coming in and give us your time. We really, really appreciate it. And then I hope you would get your Summer Stage time and Mike time to talk because your insights are just great. And you know, we always love we’re gonna have you back. We always love to see and talk to you.

Sarah White, Aspect 43 46:39
Absolutely. Thanks guys so much. And hope to see you in Paris. Chris, you got it.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 46:45
All right. So we’re we’re gonna I’m gonna push both you over into the green room. Here we go. And then hang out there for a little while. Don’t go anywhere. I just want to share a couple things. Quick shout out, though. I hope I say it right, Tova, Tracy and Cory, a couple of the folks that were jumping in live and dropping some comments and some questions in there. Thanks for doing that. I want to share with you really quickly what we’ve got coming up or what’s ahead with the CXR community, obviously Sarah White today on the podcast, we have a lecture series, we do it month to month if you haven’t seen it already. For our members, it’s a super exciting time we do a professional that comes in once a month, talks about topics that our TA leaders have selected and told us is super important, or folks have weighed in on and so we’ve got time management coming up. And that’s available for all of our members. Coming up on the 23rd of August we have bringing back Athena carp, we’re going to talk about recruiting or excuse me, we’re going to talk about the future of work initiative piece that she’s involved in. And then in addition to that, we have a diversity slates topic from the community forums that kind of blew up and got turned into an event or meeting. So we’ve got that coming up also on August 24. And again on August 24. We’ve got a solutions spotlight for find them. Pretty interesting new tool that we’re getting some eyes on. And then lastly, we’re going to round out. We’re going to round out August unless something else pops up with a remote collaboration with Line Morkbak, and she’s going to be and she’s going to be on here on the show talking to us about that neat tips, tricks and resources for getting the most and staying coordinated through all of that. And then I guess at that point, I’m just going to say look, check it out. CXR.works/events, join the community see if you qualify with over 100 Other companies and nearly 5000 recruiting leaders and professionals you can head to CXR.works and actually see what you’re missing. And of course connect with us with that I just want to say thank you everybody and we will see you next week

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