The Shortlist with Jerome Ternynck

Sam.

So good evening, good afternoon or good morning from wherever you're joining us and welcome to the shortlist. I'm Johnny Campbell from Social Talent and I'm thrilled this week to have with us Jerome Ternick, CEO and co founder, founder of Smart Recruiters on the show. I've been a huge fan and friend of Jerome for the last number of years. And Jerome, I can't believe. Is it true it's coming up to 10 years since Smart Recruiters is founded?

Yeah, we're getting there. We'll be celebrating later this year actually, our 10 year anniversary. Yeah, it's amazing how time flies and at the same time, you know, you're like, oh, the time flies. And then you look back and you're like, oh, there's a lot we. Like we did a lot.

But 10 years, well, thankfully you don't have to count the gray hairs. That's a plus. But yeah, yeah, I'm heading that way. You know, you're already getting started with Smart Recruiters. You know, that's my sense with your. You've always had an amazing ambition and vision, not just for a product, but for the market and the industry. That's why I'm so delighted to have you here on the show.

Thank you so much.

So Jerome, what I want to do is I'm going to jump in, we're going to have a chat about some news articles that are out there that I want to get your opinion on, having a discussion quick fire for a few minutes and I want to take into maybe a more structured chat around remote working COVID 19, how it affects hiring, what life looks like maybe a year, two years forward and get your opinion on that. And then we're going to wrap at about the 35, 40 minute mark to get your insight. You ready to go?

I'm ready to go.

We got a spinning screen but we look good. Awesome. So Niall, I'm going to ask you to bring up our first article that we want to discuss here today. And it's an article that talks about, you know, the hiring volume that is out there. So CNBC reported in the news that 60% of employers have reduced hiring, hiring in the last month due to coronavirus. So first of all, what are your thoughts on that? Is it true? Is it bigger, less? What are you hearing? What are you seeing?

I think it's consistent with what we're seeing in the platform. So we, you know, we power hiring for over a thousand enterprises and really kind of the average is a good 60% reduction. I think what those Numbers do not convey is that the world is actually split between freeze and frenzy. Right. Some organizations are hiring frenzy, like we need to hire 10,000 new people right now. And others are like in a complete freeze, no new hire whatsoever. And in between, you have the slower pace, but we're maintaining, you know, we're maintaining a level of hiring. So I think the 60% average doesn't necessarily do justice to the situation because I think some TA leaders are just putting lots in seats as quickly as they can, while others are sitting on a hiring freeze and thinking, how can I make the best use of this time?

Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. We look at averages versus the mode. The modal kind of number is probably a little bit different. As you say, there's two points. The average doesn't exist, perhaps in any company. Yeah. Of a company that's reduced 60% or 60% have reduced hiring. Again, just feels weird to me. But what you're saying, some people are going crazy and some people have shut off. That feels like more the truth. There's those two extremes. And so let's say, let's talk about the. The areas that are hiring, Right. So obviously people are looking at health care workers, but are you seeing some perhaps less obvious sectors that are hiring perhaps a little bit more than they would normally hire?

You know, some businesses are just benefiting from the remote work trend. I mean, you know, think about Slack or Zoom as a perfect example, right. Like, imagine what the head of TA at Zoom is going through right now. And delivery services have worked well. Trucking is still very, very high. And then some other businesses, like just a friend of mine, actually has a business that optimizes the way advertising is done by removing the need to actually shoot custom videos for every advert and instead reusing existing images and data to put together cheaper, more effective video advertising. Well, guess what? Nobody can shoot no new movie anywhere in the world right now. So their volume has gone like 500%. And so I think it's interesting because it's almost like an accelerated digital transformation. It's like the whole digitalization of the world of the enterprise is just being accelerated and feels almost like Covid is the chief Transformation Officer in many organizations right now. Forced and in a way for good reasons and mostly with good outcomes. Right. I think after this crisis, we'll look back and think, hey, actually the world today is better than it was when we started. Right. There's a lot of things that happen. Obviously we're now in a crisis, but I think we'll come out stronger as people.

So before I move on to our next article, Liz Holbrooke has just asked in the chat, she's asking if 60% of employers are freezing, can you relate that to how many jobs are available versus who is hiring? So let's say the job volume, which might normalize some of that data. What are your thoughts or data on that?

So job volumes, I think in average have about more than half, like a good 60% deep. But there are still jobs out there. I mean, we looked at the statistics yesterday. Actually in our leadership weekly leadership meeting last week, we created on the smart Recruiters platform, our customers created 9,000 new jobs.

Wow. New jobs.

9,000 new jobs. Net new jobs posted last week. So there's still a lot of hiring going on. Right. And it's just changed. And it's actually one thing that I've been saying on every opportunity, every podcast, and I'll just say it right now. If you're a recruiter and you're listening to us, please do me a favor, go to your ats, unpost the jobs that are on hold and answer to all those candidates that have applied and are waiting for your answer. Like this is the right thing. We could talk about pipelining and how you use this time to pipeline and build town communities and your CRM and all the stuff is a great time to be pipeline. But do not pipeline using jobs. This is unfair. Right now people need to know, is this job for real or is this job not for real? So go and post your jobs that are on hold.

Yeah, it's such great advice and so true. I know many TA leaders have opened up to me that they are leaving their jobs live even though the jobs are frozen because they want the candidates for some future time. And you're so right. It's not fair. There's a different way of doing that and different systems can support that. Now I'm going to ask not just jump on to our next news article. I think it relates to your comment about the kind of Chief Digitization officer being Covid. And I want to get your opinion on what kind of when this is over, whenever that is, or when it begins to kind of pass if you like. What does remote recruiting look like? What's different, do you think, on a macro scale between February 2020 and, let's say, February 2022, and what will be the impact of digitization or remote, what will that be on the world of recruiting, do you think are the key impacts?

Yeah, I think it accelerates several trends frankly, the first one is, yeah, it kind of doesn't matter where this candidate is based. Right. So location as a requirement, just pups goes away. For many jobs, obviously if you're a factory worker, you're going to show up at the factory.

Right?

But for many jobs, like actually do I really care. And that changes your talent attraction strategy. And we've seen this trend go on and on already for some time, but it's just going to accelerate it. And it accelerates it within a country, but actually within a region, within the world. Your next superstar data scientist might be a mom at home in Brazil, who knows, right? So what does that do to your sourcing strategy and to your marketing? So I think we're going to see big impact and vast amounts of untapped talent that, that we can see. I remember reading this case where this famous Stanford professor who had a very popular data science course at Stanford one day, opened up the course through the Internet and he opened then the final exam and thousands of people actually took the exam for this super high data science course at Stanford. And the best performing Stanford student was actually number 175. Right. And now you were, you think, huh, okay, so what am I reading on the resume? Stanford.

Yeah, yeah.

I want you, not Stanford. Okay, maybe. Right, but that's. This is not how the world works anymore. Right? People have skills and potential and capabilities that are not relating to. I went to Stanford, then I worked for McKinsey, then I did this. This is what we are. What we've been trained to watch is changing. So that's one. The second thing that's changing is I think we're going to have to work with the hiring manager and the managers with us. Like, we're finally going to have to do selection properly. The one thing that Covid has killed is a coffee machine. Right? It's like, so how was your candidate journey? It was good. Hello. Like, how do I make a decision on that? How many other people have interviewed, what were the questions you asked? Were you having a structured interview? Do you know what you're looking for? Have you evaluated this candidate or are you both playing golf and is that why we're hiring this person? Right. So I think we're just going to see a big step up in collaborative hiring and making better hiring decisions for the better, like structured interviews and hiring teams. Good collaboration, clear outcome, less bias. So some good trends here. Actually, like I said, I think the world on the other side looks actually a lot more professional, better than when we came in. It's Going to force some transformation.

I think the word I'd use to kind of summarize your first point is it's more equitable. I think to take your Stanford example, you aren't constrained as an employer for many jobs and let's be clear as you said it's not the blue collar jobs of a factory of retail per se but it's a lot of the professional office based jobs we used to call them. They are more open and I remember seeing a LinkedIn Talent Insights presentation last year or one of the use cases was let's look and see where would we hire XYZ developer. And they said well for New York there's not many but if we put the person in Baltimore we can find more. That's gone. You just go hang on a second. Let's just start with we don't need the location of Even if you just keep it within mainland U.S. the location is irrelevant. It's probably going to be more who work on a time zone where they can converse with their colleagues. Maybe that's the only criteria which I think to your point accelerates things that were happening maybe in the minority and organizations have to. Frozen drum there you're back there I.

Am, I am the and I think this I had the case last year actually. So we, we have a data science team at SmartRecruiters and our chief scientist there is a surfer and he approached me and he said Jerome, would you mind if I move to Costa Rica? Like what happened if I move to Costa Rica, do you think I perform less? Does it create logistics problem? You might actually pay me less. That's probably. And I'd have higher standards of living. I'd be faithful to the business. I'd be surfing, I'd be happy, I'd be sticking around actually maybe we should put a team because Erica, does that really make a difference for you? And after it was over a beer you're right actually why not? And so I think beyond what happens in recruiting, the interesting question is what happens in the world? Like is Costa Rica the next Silicon Valley? If we are enabling digital work around the world, the distribution of wealth and work actually goes global. And I think the southern hemisphere in particular stands to gain a lot from this. I really don't see why you wouldn't be seeing in a safe, cheaper, good climate, nicer place to live rather than being packed in downtown Manhattan or somewhere and living in a cramped like why why? Right. So change the cities like just to.

Share with our audience, you know Jerome, your team is in a big team in San Francisco. And you know, the reality is, I imagine the salaries you would pay for. Not because people who live in San Francisco are better. It's just that the cost of living so high in San Francisco that everyone must earn more to have the same standard of living. But to your point, if you can now say, well, do the job in Costa Rica, do the job in Mexico, then it's, you know, it is a much more level playing field. It probably changes our city dynamics because people might go, hey, am I living in the city of San Francisco? Why be there at all? You know, maybe some people come for the tech jobs, but if you don't have to come there for the tech jobs anymore, maybe that changes a lot. I'm going to move on to our next article, which is a Wall Street Journal article. Nyla, if you want to fly on.

Here.

Making it more equitable. Several people have been talking about this idea of Ryan Dennett's talking about untapped talent on the comments there. So we are able to tap into talent that previously we just didn't tap into because people were expecting someone to be in the same office. Then, then how do you, how do you still bring them into your culture? So, so you get the example of an existing staff member who moves to Costa Rica. That's, that's easy, right? Because everyone knows that, that staff member. But what if we hire somebody brand new from Costa Rica and they've, they've never met the rest of the team. They, they haven't been in the office, absorbed the traditional ways. We, we basically try and imprint culture on somebody. You know, the Wall Street Journal talks about, you know, it's not just working remotely. That's, you know, working that's remotely. That's going to change. It's hiring. But onboarding, right. Have your thoughts about our experience on onboarding and what onboarding new talent from, from these untapped markets might look like?

Yeah, I think the, the onboarding actually becomes a very critical function, even more so than it, than it was before. And frankly, it's going to force us to be more professional about how we onboard tiles. Right. Because the idea that your onboarding is this is your desk, these are your colleagues, have a good first week. That's not onboarding. And actually the fact that we stay together might give us an easy pass out of like what proper onboarding should look like. Proper onboarding actually should be structured, should have outcomes, should have session, should have, you know, and then all these things can easily be done offline and Or I mean remotely, right online. And I think we're going to see more professional onboarding as a result of that. Now, will we be happy once a year to visit the office? Absolutely, yes. Will we be happy to attend President Club because we made our quota last year? Yeah, absolutely, yes. Right. But that's going to become less and less important, I think, for organization.

So Paul Berry is arguing on the chat there. We're forgetting about the traditional CEOs who can't get their heads around not having people they can see working in the office. So what do you think about that traditional CEO? Will she get her head around this new world of work? Will she be able to move remotely? Is Paul right that the CEOs won't do this, or do you think that they're just like us, they're getting used to this change that's being enforced upon us?

I hope they are, because that's their new reality.

Right.

And if you cannot convey your message other than in person, one on one, then I think you have a bigger problem. So I could. I feel good about leadership in a distance. I think, again, it forces the message to, to crystallize.

Right.

So we did a number of things at smartrecruiters when they started. So we have about 300 people spread around the world, frankly. Right. We have about half and half Europe, us. We have people in multiple countries. Luckily, everyone already has a laptop and we are fully laptop enabled. So when they started, we just sent everybody home and kind of continued to work. But then we created a new venue, the Smart Cafe, which is where we assembled. This has become our global office. And less than a week in, people are like, you know what? I think the Smart Cafe is here to stay. It's a zoom room with a nice background with our logo, whatever, and people hop in and, you know, there's the happy hour, but there's also the new product launch, there is the Q and A with the CEO, there is the town hall, there is the sales meeting. And there are more and more happenings in this venue that's a virtual venue. And I actually feel that we're connecting now a lot more than we have historically. Because otherwise you say like, oh, when are you coming next to San Francisco? Right. Or next month? Great, we'll talk about it then. Right.

So I love that. So you gotta have this open virtual room that I guess it's open all day long. You might have some formal stuff on, you know, at different hours. But I can just go, I've got 30 minutes on my calendar. I'LL just see who's in the virtual room and someone's there, we can have a chat.

I love that ping, ping someone and say, just, I'll see you there. Right, let's grab a coffee, I'll see you there. And it's building. I love bridges that were untapped before, even informally. Like now we have, like on Thursday we have the French lunch, French speaking lunch. Well, I've never spoken with the French team that much. Right. And there we have a bunch of people who actually speak some French in the us, in Germany and so on who are like, yeah, let me join in. And it brought parents together. Like we have a kids day or kids afternoon and parents are getting together and yeah, it's actually building a lot more bridges than our offices were able to do in the past.

I agree with that. I think to take Paul's question on, there's so many benefits to this that I think if you were to say, can we come in CEOs before they have to go virtual to go virtual, I think it's because they've been forced when you get past. I spoke to a really smart psychologist last week and she was saying that, you know, her psychology background, she works in our sector and she was saying her psychology background has trained her that when you get to 30 to 45 days, people are going to develop a deep habit. And at that time we were probably 28 days into this and we crossed that barrier. Now, I think that's the key thing. This is normal. We're into month two for a lot of people. Some of us have made month three in APAC or more. I think that's what gets them over the line, Paul. It's the fact that this isn't a choice. The choice is to go back. But I think because they've been part of this experiment that's been forced upon us, I don't think they'll go back. And I'm not saying that the whole world will be completely remote. Some people will. I know someone in our team whose desk is an ironing board in her house because she's just no other space and she's got kids running around. It's like, I imagine she wants to get out of her house and go somewhere. So it's not that offices are dead, it's just that I think we flipped from offices maybe being the dominant place where you do your work in a professional environment to perhaps being more the niche place that you do your work. So I've got some questions here. So we've got Jen Carpenter. Hey, Jen. Jen, who's with IBM, is saying IBM is onboarding thousands remotely during shelter in place. Fortunately, 93% are telling us that they're getting the support they need from their supervisor. That is awesome. They are big numbers, Jen. And no doubt you guys are onboarding and I'm a little bit familiar with that. I believe that. If you don't mind me sharing, the team put in place a virtual onboarding process for the entire globe in 14 days. From we don't have it everywhere in the world to 14 days later. It's there. And then so again, the power of what can be done when you face an amazing crisis. 90%. I love that you're polling. That's amazing. They're the kind of stats you bring to a CEO to convince her this is here to stay.

I think this digital transformation is really one of the unintended but positive consequences of the crisis. And especially in ta, like in ta, we haven't had the time, literally have not had the time to do much for infrastructure processes, our learning, our best practice. Okay, well now we have the time, right? And so how are we going to use this time to actually transform ourselves? And now is the time to actually be bold and move mountains. And to your point, you think you cannot roll out a global onboarding remotely in 14 days, well, let me show you how it's done. Right? That's the attitude.

It's sharing those stories that convinces people that the problem has been solved by somebody else. And you can do the same. Knowing now that an organization like IBM do that, hopefully every other organization goes, okay, we can do the same. And it's not about money. Like this isn't about putting money behind the problem. It's kind of just will, sheer will to solve the problem and people find the solutions. So in hiring those, Jerome, just to kind of take a slight change in direction, you know, I go back to hiring and we talked about, you mentioned, you know, people are pipelining talent, perhaps not, not the best way that they're pipeline right now through live job ads. But what are the other changes, do you think, in terms of process? So you mentioned, obviously we'll hire people perhaps from different markets maybe which opens up, you know, Somebody's mentioned on the chat they brought in virtual interviewing is obviously going to become more the norm. What else do you see is going to be more the norm, but that perhaps could face a challenge for hiring teams, the way they're structured today.

I think it forces collaboration and it forces the use of technology. So if you have, you know, historically, you've been on an ATS for the last 15 years that nobody really uses, right? Candidates reluctantly apply, recruiters are complaining, managers refuse to get in there. Most of the process happens in email. That's not going to fly. That is absolutely not going to fly. And now is a good time to actually look at, hey, should I upgrade my ets, Right? I mean, at the end of the day, upgrading your ets, if you're a TA leader, it's like changing the car of the engine of a car, right? It's a lot easier if the car is parked. And so now is a good time to look at technology. And it may be that you're on an old ATS and you need to consolidate it, or it may be that you never rolled out good CRM and talent pipelining, or it may be that your referral program needs a revamp, or it may be, how are you going to drive efficiency and leverage this situation? And I think this is the one, the one thing that tier leaders can do right now is step up and actually be part of the solution for businesses as opposed to being a casualty and a victim to it. Oh, we're not hiring. We don't need you. Right now is actually the time for cheerleaders to step up and say, okay, now I'm actually going to use this time to prepare for when eventually you obviously are going to come back to me and say, hey, could you hire 1,000 people next month? Because business is back and that is important. And we're seeing a lot of that happening, actually. A lot of TA leaders stepping up. Okay, guys, I have 90 days. We need to get this done. I mean, this morning I was on the phone with a chro of a 70,000 employee company that's like, hey, we have this ATS. I'm not going to name them, but contract is up, end of September. Can we do it? 70,000 employees. We have four months. We need to get this done. This is our window.

Let's go.

Right. Two weeks ago, we actually at SmartRecruiters brought in H and M as a global customer. And we asked like, are you guys okay? And they say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, yeah, our business is paused right now. Now is the time. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Right? And I think that is what we need now. Now is a actually very interesting window of time for TA leaders to upgrade. It could be their test, it could be other things, but to upgrade. But in that, I would say take a CFO Perspective. Because if you come to the CFO and you say, well, I want to upgrade my ats because you know the other one's going to be nicer, that's not going to fly, right? So you come to the CFO and you say, hey boss, I have three systems now that have been piling my CRM, my etf. I want to consolidate this down to one, which is going to save us some money and maintenance. Two, my current system doesn't convert candidates well, so this one will do a much better job. Probably 50% increase in conversion. So I'll be spending, spending less money in advertising and sourcing. And three, we're finally going to be able to engage hiring managers, which means we can work remotely and my managers, my recruiters are going to be way more productive. So I reckon I probably start with 2/3 of the team I had when we, when this whole thing hit us. Can I go ahead? Right, and what is the CFO going to say? He's going to say, yeah, and by the way, thank you for coming to see me. Because, you know, otherwise if you have nothing to do, your name might be on the list. Right, Time to step up.

I love the analogy of the car as well, because this is a problem when we look at improving processes and systems. It's like there's never a good time because we're always so busy and we're not about to stop. I think it's going to speak to enterprises versus let's say the small to medium sized businesses. Small to medium sized business are just panicking right now. And maybe your environment is a little bit different, but the enterprises, enterprises look in views of decades, you know, and for most enterprises, you know, maybe if you're a travel business, maybe it's a little bit more harshly affected, but let's say 95% of enterprises can still go, okay, 2020 is not going to be a great year for us again, notwithstanding some sectors that are growing and doing well. But it's probably going to be fine. 2021, 2022. And when we look at, you know, in Ireland, my country, we went from 4% unemployment six weeks ago to 22% was announced yesterday. That's insane, right? But the reality is it'll go quickly, not back to 4, but it will.

Go quickly back to 12 and then.

It will go back to 4 eventually. Like we're going back to 4 and 5% unemployment at some point. What people don't know is in 24 months or five years. So now is the time to make sure you've got the right car, the right vehicle to do that with and you have time. You know, I've looked at some of our customers around implementing learning software. Always is the question around learning and enablement. We wholly believe in it. But when's the right time? We're so busy. We've seen a two to three fold increase in engagement on our platform. The last. Yeah, because they're not busy doing other things, just that they're more, more organized in their time, I think, and they're more willing to develop habits that are more virtually oriented and using systems to share and all those things. Now, Monica, sorry, Monica Jimenez has put in a comment there. She's with intel in Costa Rica and she's hiring for the US and she has been, I know Intel, a customer of ours, we work with them for many years and I was stunned. Only found out recently how many remote workers they already had before this, how much, how remote the business was. It was surprising me. But Monica's saying that she's been hiring this way for remote workers for years and actually her challenge is getting computers shipped in their new, their homes. I just try to engage with them like again, practical considerations. I guess that that makes sense. I didn't think about that as a challenge in this new virtual world. I forgot you got to get the hardware to them, you got to get their equipment, you know, when you, when, when you onboard somebody. So, so Vanessa Finn's also saying this is the new normal and this crisis created a necessity to bring the future of work to now. I, I love that point, Jerome. I think that. We lost me there and lost you for a second. You hear me okay?

Yeah, I'm okay.

Okay. So, so, so on tools, just, just. If I could take that topic for a second. What are you, what do you think are like, what are the five or six core tools that you think a hiring team should have in their arsenal going into this new accelerated new world, this future of work that arrived, that arrived yesterday unexpectedly. What are the kind of five or six core things you think that a team need to, need to have in place?

Yeah, they need to have a talent acquisition suite that helps them attract candidates and that managers love using and that makes recruiters productive. If you don't have that, this is your base. From there you can plug many other systems and many other things, but if you do not have that, if you're operating from your HRS and the candidate attraction part of it is not great. You have to plug in another CRM. The manager collaboration isn't really happening they reluctantly go in there or refuse to use it. And your recruiters therefore have to update the beast every week or it just doesn't work. So start with this. Like this always it's the very simple question I ask, like will this system help me find candidates? Will managers use it every week or every day with a smile on their face and will my recruiters have all their data and processes in one place? And unfortunately there are very, very few businesses and systems that can answer yes to those very simple questions. We cannot expect recruiters and TA leaders to perform and operate a high, high tech, high performance sales and marketing like function if we don't give them the technology. Like if we force them to run recruiting on workday or on SuccessFactors or on PeopleSoft or wherever they may be or if we don't let them upgrade the ATS that was designed in the late 90s.

Right.

So there is something there that you need to have the right infrastructure. You need to be set up for success.

I think that that's really smart around the. And this is not a plug for smart recruiters. Maybe others do this as well. But I do love the fact that you guys have a wider ecosystem of plug and play partners that plug and play really simply into the system so that you don't try and tell the world that if they want to recruit, they have to recruit the smart recruiters way. You're saying we'll give you an OS that plugs and plays with lots of different things. So we get that you're all different, you need different needs. We're going to partner with all the best providers so that it works seamlessly with our OS that drives your hiring. And I think that's if I'm looking at my core infrastructure. Platform like that that is future allows me to configure what I want. Yeah, that makes, that makes a whole heap of sense indeed. So we've got, we've got a couple of other questions coming in here and I wanted to get your thoughts on one thing that I've heard from a lot of large employers around hiring, maybe.

Not.

Year future and that's that they are going, are planning to task their TA teams to when, when, when they begin to kind of grow out of this and hire more. They're going to ask their teams to hire internal folks first and very few TA teams are set up to do that and very few systems are set up to find internal talent. They're brilliant at finding people maybe on LinkedIn or who apply to jobs. But what, what's your advice? Have you experienced working with a team that have crash problems?

Yeah, and I love that because, you know, this is exactly the kind of moment where TA can step up. Because historically in many environment TA is like, oh, you recruit externally and for internal, you know, whatever, we have a job. But a TA can say, hey guys, I want to lead redeployments and internal mobility. I want to be the partner here. You know why? Because I am the expert at finding the right people and making sure matching people to jobs and I have the infrastructure for it. So use your CRM to actually build the talent redeployment tools. Use your ATS to promote jobs internally. Use the matching tools you have in there to promote candidates or internal employees and make sure that no job is hired externally unless if you don't have someone internally. And I think that is a very good moment for TA leaders to step up and say, I own this, I'm going to make it work. And I guarantee you no one here is going to get fired that could have been redeployed somewhere else. That's a big mission. We're seeing a lot of that happening right now, like repurposing your CRM to build town communities of people who actually have been displaced or are being displaced and making sure that all the recruiters inside the company and frankly sometimes outside the company across portfolio companies or venture companies, across regions, across partners, how can you actually help that transition and make sure that you really do what's right, minimize the impact of layoffs and actually help people find a new role Quickly.

To closing from Anna vay and Anna was asking particularly around sales professionals. So her feeling is that sales professionals have been affected the most during this pandemic. Jerome, she's Keith, your thoughts on, you know, what will the future world of recruiting sales professionals look like with change? I mean, maybe if I can ask, do you also agree with her statement? Do you have data to support that sales professionals have been perhaps more affected than perhaps others?

Yeah, sales is being affected a lot. I don't know if more than others or less. But I think it's clear. Clearly one of those functions where you either deliver results or you're not needed. And if the times are hard and you cannot deliver results, then quickly, quickly income too, you're not needed. I think right now is actually a good time for companies to go after the best talent in their market. You know, we at Smart Recruiters, we're still hiring. Like literally. We just, just closed on the UK and we just announced a new rep In France we just have another person in sales. So we're still hiring in sales. I guess we're becoming more picky and we may have access to talent that we would have otherwise had a hard time convince.

Right.

But our competitors, most of the TA Suite vendor or TA Suite vendors, have announced layoffs, large layoffs. I made the choice and I think because the business has been stable to commit to the team to no layoffs. And on the contrary, we're actually leaning in using this moment to come out stronger than we came in. And so we're actually still hiring selectively the best salespeople. And I think that's an interesting way to look at sales. Hiring in crisis is like go get the people that make the difference in two years.

Yeah. And to your first point, maybe there's more opportunity because you don't just have to look in the proxy the area around. We willing to be free from wherever you are in the world. That might also help answer that. I'll wrap it a couple of comments before we before we jump to our final question, but maybe I'll get you to think about your piece of advice you'd like to give to add to our shortlist. But just to run through some comments again, Jen Carpenter from IBM saying it's so important to ask new joiners what they need. Needs are changing. Keep asking and listening. Never a better time in everything. Ask people. People are saying, what will we do? What do people want? Do you know what? You could just ask them. A great point. Michelle Kulkar is saying, I think how we work in the future will change. Remote working will be embraced more readily as lockdown is demonstrating clearly that people can be productive. Technology enables facial connection. I love that. Adam. Then Adam Nicol, who's with Ronstadt uk needs to be need to be measured here. People need to connect. Offices enable that more than any app. But more will work remotely and interview via video tech going forward. And employers won't look at you. You know the value of our office space. You know, we concluded we need an office space. We just don't think 100% of people are going to go back to it. There's a value and it's important to offer the ability for people to connect in real life. But probably because of social distancing which is likely to be here for some time and just maybe a different attitude. It won't be everybody. I think Adam's point is that you've got to enable both sides. Remote working isn't for everyone. So build for that. And finally Rob Kemp is saying, upgrade ATS and CRMs. Build relationships with candidates for when the jobs open back up. I think that's a hallelujah to what you've been saying all through this conversation, Jerome. So final words love to get. We're trying to compile our short list of of best advice from some of the best people in our industry, Jerome, and I'm keen to get yours. What has been you're just single out piece over the years for folks in ta. What is your advice, the best advice you think you can share with people out there today?

Very simple advice. Stop allowing yourself to be measured on faster and cheaper. As long as TA is measured by time to film and cost per hire, faster, cheaper, we're not never going to be able to be measured by the outcome that we produce. Nobody has ever been to a management meeting saying, oh, next year I think we should double our cost per hire, right? I ask, as a CEO, I ask, well, why not? Why not? What's in it for me? If I give you more money, do I get better people? Do I get more people on time? So to add value to te, let's change the way we measure ourselves. And in the hiring success methodology, we have a guide you can download online. I wrote a book that you can find on Amazon called Hiring Success, actually describes that. You actually recommend that you get measured on two new metrics, Hiring velocity, which is the percentage of jobs filled on time because your time to fill a 57 days. I actually don't care, start earlier. But if you tell me that 70%, you have a hiring velocity of 70%. I know that if I decide to invite Belgium on the day of the invasion, only 70% of the soldiers are going to be there because hiring velocity and business velocity are closely correlated. So as a CEO, I care about hiring velocity a lot. And second, measure the quality. And we never really measure quality of hire. It's like next year based on performance and so on. We introduced a net hiring score, which works like an NPS. So 90 days into the job, you ask the manager, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a fit is this new person for you? And interestingly, you ask the candidate as well, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a fit is this new job for you? You take the 9 and 10 minus the 1 to 5. Just like an NPS, you end up with a positive negative score that tells you are you hiring more great fits than poor ones. The first time we ran that survey was the big tech company here in Silicon Valley in 52% of cases, either the manager or the candidate or both said now we take this metric Back to the CEO. 52% of your hires are like not great, right? From straight mistakes all the way to yeah, I'm not sure about this one. What is that? What kind of business are you building? Right. And how much money would be prepared as a CEO to put on the table to change that and to get to a point where most people are yeah, best hire I've made in years. Yeah, perfect job. Gee, I'm so happy here. What's the value of that to CEOs? And I think we need to get to a point where CEOs invest in recruiting to get the best talent in their market just like they invest in marketing to get more customers. That would be my one piece of advice. Forget that you feel and cost per hire. Change the game and be a business partner.

So I love that. Jerome, I first heard this at your hiring success conference in Berlin a couple of years ago. I think that yourself or Rebecca who was sharing this on stage and showed a kind of. Not the amount of days but the accuracy on based on our prediction for example and NPS scores and you know how that that's speaking excel to the business rather than soft, fuzzy, irrelevant PowerPoint type information. And it I've used it. I've shown that slide to so many other talent leaders and said you need to talk to Jerome about this because this is, this is great thinking about methodologies. Now is the time if you're ever going to press reset on your metrics and KPIs, do it now. Jerome, it's been such a pleasure. You know I could talk to you for hours and we'll do it likewise, your insights are the audiences really love that. I'm sure you're open. If people want to reach out to you, your team, you're happy to help them with resources, ideas. And again as you mentioned the book just remind us again, if people are interested in the hiring success methodology, how can they find that information?

Yeah, they can find it on hiringsuccess.com the website there is the definitive guide to hiring success which is like a 200 page jewel that you can download for free. We actually just launched this week the hiring success Masterclass so you can actually get certified in hiring success, also free. And then you can go on Amazon to buy the hiring success book which really is written for CEOs and it's like, oh, you're a CEO, you want to hire great people. Here's how to do it. And it actually makes the case for why CEO should invest in recruiting. So it's a perfect birthday present for your CEO and I'm sure a good read for TA leaders as well.

Well, excellent learning is important to me. As you know. I'm actually going to be joining some of your colleagues on a webinar that your colleagues are promoting that's tomorrow and that's going to be at 9am Pacific time, which is I believe around 5pm Irish time, our British time. And if I was interested in joining, you can register by going to the Smart recruiters, our social websites where we have information on those. We've got a panel talking about why it's a good time for learning and development. So you're hungry for more information. You like what you hear tonight. We got more with with with various guests tomorrow evening. Jerome, unfortunately can't be with us on that but I hope to have you again. Jerome, it's been a pleasure and my friends stay safe and keep fighting the good fight, my friend.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

A pleasure. We'll see you again soon on the shortlist. Thanks for watching. Stage and showed a kind of. City not the amount of days but the accuracy on based on our prediction for example and NPS scores and you know how that that's speaking excel to the business rather than soft, fuzzy, irrelevant PowerPoint type information. And it I've used it I've shown that slide to so many other talent leaders and said you need to talk to Jerome about this because this is this is great thinking about methodologies. Now is the time if you're ever going to press reset on your metrics and KPIs, do it now. Jerome, it's been such a pleasure. I could talk to you for hours.

And we'll do it likewise.

Your insights are the audiences really love that. I'm sure you're open. If people want to reach out to you, your team, you're happy to help them with resources, ideas. And again as you mentioned the book just remind us again if people are interested in the hiring success methodology, how can they find that information?

Yeah they can. They can find it on hiring success.com the website. There is a definitive guide to hiring success which is like a 200 page jewel that you can download for free. We actually just launched this week the hiring Success masterclass so you can actually get certified in hiring success also free and then you can go on Amazon to buy the hiring success book which really is written for CEOs and it's like oh you're a CEO. You want to hire great people. Here's how to do it. And it actually makes the case for why CEO should invest in recruiting. So it's a perfect birthday present for your CEO and I'm sure a good read for TA leaders as well.

Well, excellent. Learning is important to me. As you know, I'm actually going to be joining some of your colleagues on a webinar that your colleagues are promoting. That's tomorrow. And that's going to be at 9:00am Pacific Time, which is, I believe, around 5:00pm Irish time, our British time. And if I was interested in joining, you can register by going to the Smart Recruiters, our social websites where we have information on those. We have a panel talking about why it's a good time for learning and development. So you're hungry for more information. You like what you hear tonight? We got more with with with various guests tomorrow evening. Jerome, unfortunately can't be with us on that, but I hope to have you again. Jerome, it's been a pleasure. And my friends, stay safe. And Steve, fighting. Keep fighting the good fight, my friend.

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

A pleasure. We'll see you again soon on the shortlist. Thanks for.