Why Joe and the Juice Killed the CV in 2024 with Sebastian Jeppesen

I could not look myself in the mirror and fully automate a application process from start to offer letter and still work in Johanna Juice. So I think it's extremely important that we have this human in the loop. I think it's a big part of it. I think a lot of people will also agree with me that people hire people. We just leverage AI to make that decision more fair and less biased. So it's important for me that there's always a human in the loop.

Hi and welcome to the show. I'm Johnny Campbell, CEO and co founder of Social Talent and this week on the podcast I'm really excited to talk to Seb Yeppensen, who's the global head of recruitment with Joe and the Juice about why the CV is dead and how Joe and the juice killed the CV in 2024. Seb, you're really welcome to the show. Pleasure to have you. Wonder if you can maybe share a little bit with our audience about you, your role, the organization you work for, and maybe something personal about yourself as well.

Thanks Johnny, and thanks for having me. My name is Sebastian. I'm the, as you said, global head of recruitment at Joint Juice. So overall responsible for all entry level recruitment that we are doing in John de Juice. For those who don't know, Joiner Juice is a food and beverage company providing juice, coffee, sandwich and much more experiences for families around the globe. A fairly sized company. We are 24 years old, just above 5000 employees as of year to date. 2024. Myself I am based in Copenhagen where our. In Denmark. Copenhagen, where our atrium also is a father of three, where the most recent addition just came out around nine months ago. So a lot to handle as a.

Father of four boys, Seb, the job is the easy part of our lives. I imagine for you as well it's the raising of the young children that is the challenge. It's great to have you, Seb. I remember seeing Joe and the Juice for the first time in Denmark about 12, 13 years ago, coming across the brand and then the last few years of seeing the brand all over the us all over Europe. Real explosion in the last decade in terms of the markets you're in, Seb, which is phenomenal. So hopefully most of our audience today will be familiar with the brand. Very unique kind of Scandinavian vibe to that brand as well, which is. So Seb, you know you got rid of the CV last year, which is pretty amazing and something that I think a lot of folks listening might want to do but feel it's not possible in their Industry. But, but maybe if we can start with. Can you walk us through what was recruiting in the organization? Let's say pre 24. So let's say pre 24, what was the process but when you had the CV in the process. Walk me through how recruiting works in the organization, the structure, the setup and from an applicant perspective, how that user flow worked.

So I think prior to our implementation, it looked very familiar to anybody who's worked in TA or recruitment. We asked for cv, we asked for applications, we used that to determine which of the candidates we wanted to see for an interview. In John the Juice, our recruitment efforts are centralized. We are in 17 different markets having more or less a centralized hub for recruitment in all those markets, sort of feeding juicers candidates to the stores when they are needed. We get in the rough amounts of around 300,000 applications every year. We also did that prior to the implementation and obviously that's a lot of manual work. Recruiters came in Monday morning, screening CVs, cover letters, deciding who to call in for interviews, hosting interviews during the week and sort of resetting that schedule week on week. Tedious work for a lot of the recruiters. We have 25 of those around the, around the globe, especially in peak months, we're very busy in summer. So when everybody else is off Join the Juice is very busy where our recruiters are hiring on average, not uncommonly, between 2 and 300 people per month. So obviously that requires a lot of interviews that require even more CV screening. So it's more or less a process prior to our implementation.

And did you have any kind of knockout questions as well, Sam, to just like look at right to work, all that kind of stuff?

Sure. So yeah, now you're saying right to work. In both UK and US, obviously we need to identify or authenticate i9s and right to work permits across the globe. It's a normal question to be asked whether you're allowed to work or whether you're able to work full time. Are you above 18 years old and do you have a work permit for the market that you're applying to? So those are sort of the knockout questions before going into a application process with the CVs and the COVID letters.

As someone who started his career in hospitality, I worked in bars and restaurants and ran nightclubs and bars. I never found the CV valuable. Like there was never a thing. You go, oh, that's what I'm looking for. You'd meet someone, you'd have a conversation with them, you'd have understand a bit about their Ability and skills. There was a couple of core things you're looking for, like in the, in the call of the old days. Right. Pre 24. What. What would a recruiter even look for on a cv? I actually, you know, we all use this process. Right. But for something like this, what would you even look for, apart from perhaps experience in a similar environment?

Yeah, and. And I think that that was more or less it. Right. So. So what we're currently asking is knockout questions and also did back then we were looking for in the cv, so we were looking to see if they were previously engaged in another job or in school, did they have any work experience. If they worked in, you know, McDonald's or similar food and beverage chain where, you know, speed was up to marks, then you would be put in front of the pile. So that was. That was actually it. That was all we looked for. And usually that was presented in the first line of the CV or the COVID letter and then we didn't really look at the rest.

So in the kind of modern age, Seb. Right. We hear a lot about candidates using AI to superpower their application process. Have you seen that 300,000 application volume be consistent or have you noticed any trends of it going up in the last year or two with the advent of things like AI in the candidates can. In the hands of candidates.

Sure. So I think our candidate pool is increasing year on year, but that's mainly down to our expansion. So we are going into quite a heavy growth spurt over the next four years and by that extent, obviously need more of a talent pool than we did before. I think we have, with our implementation of AI, I think we've took a place in the system, in the ecosystem of talent acquisitions and recruitment of sort of. I don't want to call myself a front runner, but a company our size, it's unusual to implement something this larger, this fairly quickly. And I think that has given us a reputation that people want to ensue.

What was the catalyst, what was the moment that made you say we need to change this and break this CV application process?

That's a good question. I came into this position as a global head of recruitment roughly two years ago. Prior to that, I've actually, I was sitting in the fire as a head of HR for the eu. Very hands on, very operational. And coming out of that, I had an epiphany. I saw that the way that we were doing things left a lot of room for bias, led a lot of room for unfair process. We strive to be a people centric company and I at that stage couldn't say that we provided a best in class candidate experience. Combined with that I saw a, a study that Virgin Mobile did on how much a bad recruitment experience costed them on loss of revenue year on year. Not that we have their size but our consumer brand like ours, there is a large overlap in the people that are applying with us and who are also guests at our stores and I had the genuine fear that, that we gave a bad recruitment experience to 95% of our applicants that has invested time, effort into creating an application with us and then just receiving a rejection without a fair review.

I know Graham well who was in Virgin running TA at the time that they made those changes and Brian and Dave from PH Creative who helped them with the initiative to try and highlight the potential cost of this, our lost revenue and then got the business case to make the change. It's well known if somebody, if you haven't heard listening to that case, they should check that Virginia Virgin Mobile or actually it was a Virgin on the TV side in the, in the uk. That case study from PH Creative from, from a number of years ago. I think it's a really good example of how you can align business goals with recruiting goals as well. So Seb, talk to me now about what is the fast forward year, what is the current process for applying to Joe the Juice, how is it different? And then we, then we'll get into how did you set this up?

Sure it's different in the way that we are now not asking for CVs, we're not asking for cover letters, we're only asking basic information. We need to know their name, we need to know their phone number, we need to know their email. We're still asking these knockout questions. It's fairly essential for us that our employees can work full time and obviously that they have a valid work permit in the market that they're applying in. When they fill out that information that takes 10, 15 seconds, they are thrown straight into our AI powered chat function through Shapirai where they are being asked five open ended behavioral questions sort of gawk their values, their virtues, what are their adherences like, can they mirror themselves or can they, you know, see themselves working for Journey Jews and can do they to some extent at least agree in the, in the company virtues that.

That we have and how long does that process typically take an applicant to complete?

We can see on average on group level it takes around 20 minutes. That's obviously then somebody is using 40, somebody's using seven. I think if you're blasting through it, it takes five minutes regardless, it probably takes a shorter amount of time than correcting your cover letter to fit that exact employer that you're applying for. And we're getting a much better view of the candidate that's sitting on the other side.

What is the data that your team then see from the other side and maybe what are the kind of volumes you're dealing with?

So my team on the other side gets several different insights, but the main one is the score. So all candidates are getting a score of 0 to 100 and to what extent they would be a good addition to joint use. And then further, they're getting a, what Zapier calls a talent insights profile, which is mainly a quick overview of their personality profile based on the check function that they just delivered. So what are they good at? What are their challenges? And my favorite feature is recommended interview questions, which really drills into some of the challenges that they might have. Because we know what they're good at, so we don't need to ask them that, but we know and we also know what the challenges were and we are getting tailored questions to investigate that.

And then I guess what kind of volume do the recruiters that engage with? Because I think you mentioned that the AI isn't auto scheduling an interview. There's a big belief in Joe of the Juice around having that people element in it. So maybe talk me through what the process is. Why continue with people? Because I think other organizations hiring the space have completely automated that process, even all the way up to offer letters. So walk me through why Jones use do it differently and what that is like.

I think it's fairly, it's fairly simple for us and it's never, it's never even been on the drawing board to, to fully automate this process. So in Join the Juice we strive to become the first truly global people centric food and beverage company. It's a long and crooked line, but it's our vision. In John the Juice, I could not look myself in the mirror and fully automate a application process from start to offer letter and still work in Join the Juice. So I think it's extremely important that we have this human in the loop. I think it's a big part of it. I think a lot of people also agree with me that people hire people. We just leverage AI to make that decision more fair and less biased. So it's important for me that there's always a human in the loop and these recruiters are, you know, armed to the teeth. With tools and insights into their own bias and their general company bias and how you work around that or at least how you try to work around that.

Love that. So the candidates go forward then to an interview with typically the recruiter and, or in some markets you have regional managers who perhaps might do the interviewing for their stores, is that correct?

Yeah. So we are obviously spread fairly widely across, like geographically fairly widely. So let's take us as an example. Our centralized hub is in New York, but they also hire for Miami, Washington, San Diego and so on, so forth. So we can't be present in our markets even though we would like to. So a first online screening is handled by the recruiter team in New York. And then going from a long list to a short list, they are sending forward a handful of applicants to the, as you said, district manager or market manager, state manager in this case, to host the final interview and make the final decision on who to hire.

How long on average now would you expect it to take for a candidate who logs on? You know, it's, we're recording today on a Monday, let's say, when might I have a job offer?

I think we, we recently did a calculation on time to hire and after implementing Sapien, we've actually reduced that with 33% from 18 days to 12 days. So from application to job offer, 12 days on average. Wow.

Wow. It's a big drop. And in terms of other data you captured, you capture kind of NPS feedback from candidates or anything else or what other data can you share? Me have been big eye openers for you.

Yeah. So we can see that all candidates find it extremely engaging to, to, to sort of do this, this chat interview. I think it speaks a lot to the generation that we're hiring now. They like to do things on their own time. They don't like to be told when to do it. And right now we can offer a first recruitment, first interview, recruitment experience 365, 247 they can essentially apply, apply three in the morning, Saturday night if they want to and get their first interview there, get some personal feedback as well. So all applicants that are completing the chat interview is getting coaching chips back based on their behavioral traits, based on their pros and cons. So we basically give personal feedback to 300,000 applicants each year. Which is why we can also see that 91% of the people that are applying with us are actually leaving an interview process with us feeling more self aware than they did before going into it. And that's also without having an interview. We can Then say that our candidate Sapia call it heaviness score is 9 out of 10 so people to leave a review when they're done with with their application and we can see that they are scoring 9 out of 10 on this and roughly 60% of them also leave a voluntary comment letting us know for the most sake that they really enjoyed the experience.

Wow. In your kind of old CV driven experience did you take any scores or MPS's or ratings from candidates?

No, not, not, not, not, not this meticulously so I can't say that we improved by X but I can, I can just, I can see in, in the, in the feedback that we're getting back that this is a best in class candidate experience and I'm sure that if we had an NPS score prior it wouldn't be this high.

One of reminds me Siemens this year or sorry Last year in 2024 launch a similar tool for professional hiring where they use kind of seven strengths and again the candidates all complete this strengths assessment. But get to your point personalized feedback. They get a report that goes in, here's your strengths, here's your analysis. So you're not just getting an application and then it's a black hole and you get a yes. No, you're getting real valuable insights in terms of your strengths, weaknesses, how to perform an interview or job as it might suit you. Which I think is a real win, isn't it that extra benefit to a consumer organization.

Yeah, and I think that's sort of what, that's more or less what sold it to my CEO. It always comes from a retention piece as well. So trying to hire the right candidates for them to stay longer in grow obviously that's always going to be sort of a finger in the air to determine how many people are we going to keep in place by doing this. That can only be a best guess. But I could promise him that we gave a better class candidate experience and that's actually what showed it to him. That's why he said yes, go ahead, let's do this and let's, let's again underline that we are a people centric company.

What's been the recruiter feedback on that score for example, like how accurate is that recommended score? And have you got great satisfaction from recruiters going, you know what, when some, when it, when the system says this is a high scoring person, it is. Have you got that evidence yet?

I think that's actually too early to say. So we're doing, we're coming up on our 12 month mark from our go live date. And I think that's also what Sapien usually says that they need of data before being able to actually give us some correct numbers on what is right fit or what is right add to the role. And that's actually been one of the major challenges for me and that's actually been the change management piece in this convincing our recruiters, not our candidates, but our recruiters that this is a fantastic idea. And that's looking in hindsight something that I would probably prepared a little bit more on rolling this out.

That's a good lesson. I wonder maybe if you could continue with other lessons you learned around. I guess when you went into this process, what you thought you'd be doing and what you ended up doing or decisions you made or even how to select a vendor or how to build your criteria. Can you share some insights for other leaders who are thinking, you know, I'd love to apply something like this to, you know, volume retail hiring, but it could also be professional hiring similar to what Siemens have done as well. What were some of the top lessons you learned?

I think I confirmed my belief that I needed to choose in proper due diligence before choosing a vendor. It takes a long time, but I think that that would be one of the lessons at least to make sure to do that. Because if you are entering into a partnership like this, it should be a lifetime partnership. It should be something where you share the energy while you share the virtues and values with the that you are linking up with. Because this can save you an immense amount of time, money, productivity, happiness, so to speak as well make your life a lot easier. So make the right, right choice the first time. And then I think coming back to the change management piece is something that I underestimated how hard would be. And a learning for that is that just because I think it's a fantastic idea, doesn't necessarily think that everybody else thinks it's a fantastic ide. Change in general is hard to implement, especially in our organization, our science. And I think I underestimated that. This is affecting a lot of people and I came in with the assumption that everybody obviously off the bat understood that this is going to make their life easier, this is going to improve their decision making and essentially improve their own performance in the company because they will be choosing the right candidates, that's staying for longer and that reflects positively back on them. I think the combination of change and then also a change with artificial intelligence I think is sort of a true factor. So one thing is that I wanted to totally alter the flow in the way that they were usually working. People don't necessarily like to be told to change the way that they are going about that day. And then also leveraging it with AI, I think was a, a big learning for me that that should have taken more due diligence. I should have used more time on really sitting down one on one, maybe even traveling around saying this is what we're going to do. What do you think about that? Do you have any comments to it before we're doing this? Instead of just saying yes, here's the solution. Don't you think it's amazing?

Was it a big bang roll out or did you pilot it? Did you do it in phases?

So we did it in phases. So we did three regions in three quarters, which meant that we obviously rolled out 17 markets in nine months, which is also fairly, fairly effective. But the reason why I wanted to do that is why I wanted to start in the markets that would be less effective of it if it turned out to be a bad investment. So the markets that hired fewer people. So I didn't want to fully trust the system that I didn't know going into especially London and New York in peak season. So we waited until the other side of summer to implement those.

And when you were selecting vendors, seb, and without mentioning any names of any vendors, what were some of the criteria that you used to rule out other vendors that perhaps anyone listening to this who's thinking of selecting a vendor for a similar solution might want to think of? They can. For example, I imagine I'm guessing there might be a language requirement that's supported or you might want to find somebody who's done a similar scale before. So what were some of the reasons why you knocked out other vendors?

I think we, we came from the perspective that it needed to be invented for and tailored to volume hiring. It was important for us because our amount of applications are only going to increase year on year. We expect to have a thousand stores by 2028. We have 395 now. So that's quite, quite a growth that we're going into over the next four years. So it needed to be something that could support our both supporters on a S is scenario, but also as on a to be scenario, again, a lifetime partnership. Then for me, when I'm working with external partners, it's important that our values align, that we have a good chemistry. And I think that came down to a lot of it actually because obviously there are other vendors out there offering the same package in a different wrapping. But it was important for me that was a good synergy and that I felt like that they were also choosing me and not only the other way around.

Love that. And I guess going forward, do you see any more opportunities for further kind of enhancement of the process, further reduction in bias, further efficiencies and maybe that you see it in other places. And if so, what do you think? What are you considering?

Seth so I think going into 25, one of our, you know, one of our plans, one of our okrs, is to really anchor this across the globe. So really ensure that it's being used to full effect, that it's being giving us the correct data. And by that I mean that we are now beginning to feedback lever data to sepia so they can actually see when we're hiring the people that we're hiring who stay in for longer enrolled. Because right now we're hiring from a, you know, in lack of better words, a generic juice DNA. So we are looking for 10 competencies within these juicers or within these applicants that are applying. They don't need to have them all at 100%, but they need to have them in different weightings and that's also what's giving them the score. In the end, those term competencies are the same and it's the same weighting across all markets because we had to start from somewhere. So I think one of the main goals for 25 is really to tailor it per market going into and finishing out the year strong by really hiring for retention, assessing for retention. So seeing what personality profiles and what waiting is it actually that's staying for longer. What personality profiles is it that then end up taking managerial roles within the company and begin screening for that? That's one leg. The other leg is beginning to actually look for a to develop a leadership model as well. So begin to screen for store managers and district managers, hiring them externally and using leveraging the value and purpose set of, of that model.

Seb, I love what you've done. I really thank you for sharing with us on the podcast today. You know, I personally have as a recruiter, recruiting 25 years CV gives you very little value. And in the modern age, you know, when CVS are being drafted by AI for more than 60% of candidates in most surveys, it's not even. It's being written by something that is designed to make stuff up and I think we can be even less reliant upon it. So coming up with smarter ways to get, for example, straight to the behavior interview questions straight to the examples is really clever keeping the human in the loop to make sure that we're validating that and that we have a good kind of experience as well. We show that human touch is commendable. I expect many people will want to reach out and ask you questions. How did you do it? What vendors did you choose and look for? If somebody wants to reach out to you to ask you direct questions said what's the best way to reach you?

LinkedIn I would say to not share my personal phone number or or email. Then I think then, then I think that's the best best way to go about it. And I'll since this has has come out and and sort of went viral it it I have been hard to get to the bottom of my inbox but I'll I'll do my best and I'll try to to share our learnings on on why the CV is dead and why actually in this in the past probably 30 years has never really been probably alive to fully assist the people that are behind it.

Seb, as a company and a team that's embracing innovation and tech, I'm dying to see what to do next. So maybe we'll come back and have you on the show again in a year or so to see what the next evolution of this is, what the next step forward as you lead hopefully other organizations in terms of what can be done with AI technology innovation to both improve CL experience and to provide a more efficient and faster hiring process. Seb, thanks for joining us here today. Been pleasure to have you on and thanks for sharing your story.

Thanks for having me. Jenny, love to come back.

Thank you and thank you for listening. We'll be back again next week with another new episode. Don't forget to subscribe whether you listen to us on Apple, Spotify, wherever you consume this podcast. And we'll be back next week with another exciting show, another great leader sharing their insights on hiring excellence. Sam.