Recruiting Future: How TA can adopt a change mindset.

Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
AI is starting to devour the transactional tasks that once defined recruiting. To safeguard their future, TA teams must transform into advisors who shape hiring decisions with market insights and data driven recommendations. Has your team made the shift yet? Keep listening to find out the power of embracing a change mindset.

Matt Alder [00:00:26]:
You know, I’ve recently heard some crazy success stories when it comes to hiring with AI. FedEx is sending offers to candidates within 10 minutes, General Motors saved $2 million in recruiting costs in a year, Chipotle reduced time to hire by 75% and Nestle’s global recruiting team is saving 8,000 hours annually.

Matt Alder [00:00:48]:
The craziest thing?

Matt Alder [00:00:49]:
All of these companies did it by leveraging the same technology. Paradox Paradox is the leader in conversational hiring. Powered by conversational AI, Paradox can be your ats, CRM and career site or can help automate parts of the hiring process on top of Workday UKG and SAP. Their product suite is driven by a 24.7ai assistant who can handle up to 95% of the hiring process for deskless hiring teams or just automate specific time consuming tasks like screening, interview scheduling and onboarding to allow recruiters to focus on recruiting. Paradox has helped hundreds of the world’s top employers simplify hiring and save money while creating great candidate experiences in the process. Spend more time with people, not software. With Paradox you can find out more by going to Paradox AI.

Matt Alder [00:02:07]:
Hi there. Welcome to episode 689 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. The talent acquisition landscape is fundamentally transforming. AI and automation are eliminating repetitive tasks and creating space for recruiters to become true strategic partners. This shift demands that TA professionals evolve beyond transactional focused activities to provide consultative guidance backed by data and their unique expertise. So how can TA leaders successfully guide their teams through this transformation from transactional order takers to valued talent advisors My guest this week is Mike Aronson, Global Head of Talent Acquisition Operations at Johnson controls. With over 20 years of experience in talent acquisition evolution, Mike shares practical insights on leading transformational change and proactively planning for the future.

Mike Aronson [00:03:09]:
Hi Mike and welcome to the podcast.

Mike Aronson [00:03:13]:
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Matt Alder [00:03:13]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show.

Matt Alder [00:03:16]:
Can you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?

Mike Aronson [00:03:20]:
So I’m Mike Aronson. I lead global Talent Acquisition operations here at Johnson Controls. Johnson Controls is a building automations company. We focus on H Vac Fire Security systems, building Integrations, making healthier, more sustainable buildings, driving down carbon emission, really do some innovative work in the space. As relates to my role, my focus is on process tools, technology, employer branding. I’ve been in talent acquisition for a little over 20 years, specifically with Johnson Controls here for just over 15. We do about, about 25,000 hires a year. We have about 100,000 employees. So we, we stay pretty busy.

Matt Alder [00:04:06]:
Yeah, no, it’s, it sounds it and it’s been such an interesting 15 years for talent acquisition with, with lots of things going on.

Matt Alder [00:04:14]:
How have you seen it evolve and.

Matt Alder [00:04:16]:
What do you think the most significant shifts have been over that period of time?

Mike Aronson [00:04:21]:
Yeah, so looking at the last 15 years and probably more hyperfocused in the last 10, just the technology explosion that we’ve seen, there are more tools and resources and technology available both for employers and candidates than there have ever been. So in some ways it’s never been easier to find or at least identify potential candidates. But it’s also never been easier for candidates to get information on organizations understanding how the process works. And ultimately I think what that’s also led to, which is probably a long time coming, is that the power dynamic has shifted to a more evenly weighted candidate centric market. And so if you think about it in terms of just let’s expand the scope for 25, maybe even 30 years ago, how many more industries, how many more jobs are available today for candidates, which gives them more options, which gives them more leverage. And so I find that combining the technology tools and resources that are available out there today with the concept of an employee centric or candidate centric market really has changed the paradigm. And so a lot of the decisions that get made, a lot of the tools get you tools that get used are really focused on efficiency in the process and elevating candidates visibility to not only, you know, previously it was more of a, if they don’t want to work here, we’ll find somebody who does. And ultimately that’s shifted to show me why I should want to work at your company and ultimately what does it look like to work at your company? And so when you then trail, follow that trail, what you see in our industry is a very different approach to talent attraction. And you know, there’s other, you know, the evolution of employer branding and EVP is been a, you know, kind of spotted in there too. Data driven discussions and storytelling has changed. I mean, I don’t know that that’s unique. Any of this is really unique to talent acquisition. It’s really in the landscape of Business. But we, we obviously impact and have to, or feel the impact and need to embrace it in many, many ways.

Matt Alder [00:06:45]:
No, absolutely. And really, the, I suppose the last couple of years we’ve seen sort of quantum changes and leap forwards with, with, with technology and AI and automation. How does that lead to recruiting changing right now? What’s the, what’s the impact on some of the new US thinking on, on recruiters and their, and their role?

Mike Aronson [00:07:06]:
Yeah, I mean, look, any, anything that is being brought in, in theory should be in an attempt to create an efficiency for the recruiter, for the process, for the entirety of, of of the landscape. And so I think AI and automation has done a lot to remove repetitive tasks like scheduling interviews or generating job descriptions, you know, posting jobs, things along those lines. And it’s, it’s moving us closer. We’ve been in this shift to a talent advisory landscape for a long time and I think this has done a lot to push us closer to that. And so if you think about the recruiter desk, traditionally you’ve got, you’ve got recruiting efforts, but you’ve also got a lot of, you know, administrative tasks that basically document the process. And so if some of this automation and AI can remove, you know, some of those more menial tasks that are low value, it allows time and space for the recruiters to become more strategic. Now, that’s an easier said than done dynamic. Right? Those are different skills. And it also, in the broader context of, you know, hiring, that’s also what we’re seeing in this, in this dynamic, which is tools and technology are making it easier to do the seemingly, you know, simple task, repetitive tasks, redundant tasks. And what’s left is this opportunity for us to elevate our skill sets and to be much more consultative. Again, not unique to the recruiting industry, but that these are the dynamics that have to be embraced in, in, you know, or the world of business these days. And so, you know, the, the other obvious one is, you know, working remote and hybrid. You know, you kind of circle all that together and you’ve got this ecosystem of tools, technology and process that seemingly to be more efficient, allow you to get, you know, in front of people in a more human way, consult and do all of the things that I think for a long time we’ve wanted to do. You know, when, you know, for many years, you’re talking about like, we want a seat at the table, you know, why are all these things done? And we brought in after the fact and ultimately this gives us the ability to be at the table and now we need to know what to say, we need to know what to do. And the efficiencies that are created during this hyper accelerated time period have allowed us the time and space to be able to do that. And I think now we’re navigating well, what does that look like?

Matt Alder [00:09:41]:
Absolutely. And I want to dive into that in a second but I suppose before we do, because I think it’s a logical thing to talk about.

Mike Aronson [00:09:50]:
I know that a lot of your.

Matt Alder [00:09:51]:
Focus is on change management and these are some pretty big changes for recruiters and talent acquisition and people whose role may have been similar for a number of years. And we know that just as an industry we struggle with change sometimes. How can TA leaders really help their teams adapt to this kind of emerging new world?

Mike Aronson [00:10:12]:
Yeah, honestly that in my experience is one of a lot of what we just talked about is table stakes and in many ways easiest. You know, identifying technologies that will elevate efficiencies are, is an easy and even to some extent deploying them and implementing them, but getting utilization, getting people to change. And I think it’s, it’s really embracing not about change, more of change management, but more about a change mindset. And ultimately if you’re a recruiter and I’ve been a recruiter, I’ve been a recruiter at Johnson Controls. And so there’s been very few instances where I haven’t done at least the tasks that I’m looking to from an operational standpoint create an efficient process with, you know, in four. And so I always try to keep in mind who’s going to do this and how’s it going to impact them and what’s it going to look like for them and what are some of the pushback and what are we going to see? And what I’ve observed over the time is it’s change is hard. I mean it changes hard for anybody. And your current state is what you’re most comfortable in. And if you can embrace the idea that whatever the state we’re in today is always going to continue to evolve. So I have to be ready for whatever it is that change that’s coming next and be curious and ask questions like the idea that change is being done to somebody rather than for them is kind of a dynamic that you manage, you work against is if somebody views it as well, this is being done to me rather than being done for me. You have a different mindset with that and so kind of flipping the mindset helps to embrace the change. But at the end of the day you know, when I say be curious and ask questions, you’ve got to have a perspective, drive behaviors. And what I mean by that is if you lead your perception to drive the behaviors, you’re not. I’m not changing people’s perception of if they think a process is bad or clunky, that’s a perception and they have a right to feel that way. But if they take it and look at it from an approach of what are the different perspectives that went into decisions and why are we doing this and how will this help and what are we driving towards? It kind of opens their mind to, yeah, I get the bigger picture. And so I think I can get on board with that rather than this task used to be this way and now I have to do it that way. And it’s a lot for me to take in. And then when you kind of stack all the change on top of all the other change, it feels like a lot all at once. And so I think that’s where you get that resistance is just so much coming at me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know, you know, how to, to manage this. And so it’s really more about embracing the change, knowing that, you know, I always use this example, something doesn’t have to be broken for it to be fixed or done better. Right. If we use that mindset of said, I have a telephone, I don’t need email or I don’t need text messaging. Were we fixing something that was inherently broken? No, the phone still worked, just had a better way to do it. And this idea that, you know, automation is going to take over everything and AI is going to take over, there’s still got to be going to be a human element to what we do, at least as I understand it today. And so that doesn’t mean that there won’t be any manual tasks involved. You may still have to hit some buttons here and there. But the alternative was much more clunky, I guess is. Is kind of the, the driver of the change.

Matt Alder [00:13:44]:
Yeah, no, I get 100%. And talking about the, talking about what the change is to. You were talking about being true talent advisors and how that had been kind of coming for a while and this is really accelerating that. Tell us a little bit more about what does that look like in practice? Where is it that TA can add more strategic value to the business?

Mike Aronson [00:14:05]:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the way when I hear Talent Advisor, I think of the function of being beyond a transactional recruiter. Right. The difference between showing up to a You know, an intake session or a launch call with a hiring manager and saying, all right, I’ve got your requisition. What is it that you’re looking for compared to being an advisor and saying, here’s what we’ve got, here’s what, you know, you’re. This is what the market looks like for your position. This is what a couple profiles may look like that we already have in our applicant tracking system that, you know, I want to calibrate with you. This is what the process will look like. This is why it’s important for timely feedback and really setting the expectation. You know, I like to another example of comparing, you know, something that’s not necessarily intel and acquisition, but when you show up to meet with a financial advisor, they’re not taking your order. Like, where do you want to put your money? You know, how do you, you know all of that? They’re coming prepared with a strategy, a recommendation. We should show up in that same way. Because in the same respect, like, if I’m going to meet with the, the talent advisor, I’m not coming unprepared either. Right. I, I have to understand. And so hiring managers have to show up that way too. But we have to set the table for them to understand that I’m not back office support here. I’m not here to just, you know, take your order. I’m here to support you and guide you on this, in this process, on this journey so we can identify top talent. And so the things that kind of elevate those conversations or data fluency, like understanding how long is it going to take us to fill these positions? What is the history of it? Tell us. Informing the manager because you’re now building credibility. You know what you’re talking about. You know, we have influence, but we don’t have authority in this matter. Right. So we can influence the managers to understand what to expect and how. And that’s different than saying, you, you tell me what you want, I’ll send you candidates. You tell me when you want to interview them, I’ll, you tell me who you want to hire. We interview and talk to more candidates than any hiring manager will ever in their, probably in a month than they ever will in their career. And so why should we be discounted in that process of, well, they know how to do it. Just because you interview doesn’t mean that you know how to recruit. And so that’s also been, I think, brought to the forefront in these last, you know, 15 years is the importance of the skill set of recruiting and so it’s, it’s really a, an advisory approach is establishing the credibility that you need to get the trust of the manager. And if you do that right off the bat, you’re already on, you know, solid footing. But if you’re, you’re not establishing that, you know, you, you become more transactional and you’re at the mercy of and why this manager didn’t get back to me. And it’s a, what, what did you tell them on the front, front end? Like this is important. Like we, you know, going back to the concept of candidate centric market, candidates aren’t waiting for us. So if we’re going to drag our feet, we’re going to lose top talent and then we will get a reputation for that. And that’s not something that we ultimately can afford to do. You want to grab people while they’re interested, tell them the right story. And it also not just from a hiring manager standpoint, it’s also from a candidate standpoint, setting expectations with the candidates. And yes, they have leverage. But we should also illustrate what it is that we do that aligns with what they’re interested in. Ask the right questions, you know, gain the trust of the candidates. And so that’s how you build pipelines and ultimately are able to source in a much more meaningful way.

Matt Alder [00:17:57]:
Let’s talk about technology. So you work with Paradox. How’s Paradox and sort of other technologies that you use. What role has that played in the transformation that you’ve been going through? What kind of impact is making for you?

Mike Aronson [00:18:12]:
Yeah, so we use Paradox specifically and in my view we use them, you know, for a number of different reasons. But one of the key themes is, is understanding how our candidates engage with us. So Paradox, we use them for the conversational AI chat on our careers page. Candidates can ask questions. It’s very illuminating to see what kind of questions candidates ask. And so we can cater content based on what we’re not able to answer. And so that’s how you know, they’re engaging with us. We have some follow up questionnaires that help give more insight from a sourcing standpoint and screening standpoint. Then you know, when a candidate just fills out an application resume, private provides a resume, you only get so much. But if we ask more pointed questions because based on the role we’ll be able to get more information and so we can see how the candidate communicates in that respect. There’s no knockout questions, it’s all freeform text. And then lastly chat to apply, which is you can literally apply through the chatbot. And what that does for us in so many different ways is it’s, it reaffirms things that we already probably knew, but it also gives us insights. And one of the biggest insights that we had gotten, you know, pre go live, then post go live with Paradox was in our manufacturing plants there was a perception that, that population, production workers, assembly line workers didn’t engage with technology, that they only had resumes, they want to drop them off. And it was anecdotal, there was no data that proved that. And so when we went live with Paradox, Paradox gives us the like literally detailed insights of who engages most with the technology. And the most engaged job in North America is one of our manufacturing jobs. It’s an assembler. And so it gave us the ability to say with provable data, no, they do engage with technology so we can do more things. We can target them with text messaging campaigns, we can do things that you wouldn’t have thought of before because you had this preconceived notion. And so it really gives us insights into the way our candidates are engaging. The, the highest engaged country globally for that engaged with our chatbot is in India and it’s not even close. And it’s high, much higher level positions than an assembler. And so it’s like engineers and you know, things, you know, those types of very technical roles. And so we will target candidates in India differently because we know they’re going to see us in a different, you know, and engage with us in a different way. And so it really allows us to provide some level of customization to how the candidates because look, it’s not. Candidates are not a monolith. How they engage with us in different regions, countries and states is always going to be different. And if we do one size fits all, we’re going to be missing groups and things like that. So Paradox does an excellent job. They’re one of the many partners that we have that give us insights into candidates experience, how long it’s taken people to apply things along those lines. We work with a company called Smart Dreamers that creates an efficiency in our application process and a lot was able to increase our conversion rate from career site visitor from like 6 to 8% up to in the 40s. And that’s because we’ve made our application easier. I mean again, focusing on the candidates experience like you’re gonna get more applications, it’s an easy process to get through. And so Smart Dreamers has done that. And you know, programmatic job distribution with appcast and it really creates this ability to see a return on the investment. Right. Whenever we evaluate a tool, it’s going to be what will it give us and how will we know if it works? And then what are the measurements that we’re going to look at to determine that? And we’ve really tried to. Our tech stack has completely been overhauled in the last three years and all of our tools are really geared towards an efficient, effective process, both for the candidates and, you know, where we can with recruiters and hiring managers. And we don’t spend a lot of money on things that don’t work. And so really being patient, but also making decisions. Once we identify that, hey, this we can do something different here.

Matt Alder [00:22:31]:
A bit earlier in the conversation you were talking about humans and all the kind of the skills and expertise of recruiting. Where do you see the line being drawn kind of between humans and AI? What do you think the limitations of AI might be and which bits of that kind of human expertise are going to here for the. Here for the long haul?

Mike Aronson [00:22:53]:
A lot of. So right now at least AI does repetitive tasks really well. You know, it can write job descriptions and you know, you know, communication tools pretty good. I still think in our industry there’s a human element where. And that’s where that advisor capability needs to be elevated because the limitations are really in the nuance. Right. Hiring candidates, we’ll just say it like this. A lot of managers have this gut feel when they make a hiring decision. How do you replicate that in AI? And so I think we’re moving away from this idea that there’s a gut feel. But here’s the dynamic with as we get more and more, you know, emerged in AI, when candidates get savvy, more savvy, they’re going to look at a job description and they’re going to have some generative AI tool, create a resume that is catered to that job description and what’s left? Because if all you’re doing is matching key terms and things like that, they’re going to look like a fit. And so what’s left is I have to assess whether they have the skills to do this job. And that’s why moving towards skill based, you know, hiring may make it more difficult for AI to make, you know, any sort of decisions on skills. And so that’s where the human element really needs to come in is if you look at a job and say, here’s what I want as the previous or I prefer the previous experience to be, well, you can match that easily. But here are the skills that I need, customer focus, business acumen, things like that. Well, what does that look like? I don’t think AI, at least today, would be able to do that in a way that people would trust. And so that’s the limitation I see today. Now, I’m not going to say that that’s ever going to be. I mean, who knows? I mean, you know, think about 15 years ago if we were talking, having this conversation that we had tools that were automated and integrated and, you know, generative AI and you know, all of these things, we would have been like, that’s, you know, 100 years in the future. Like, that’s not. But so who knows what it looks like. But today the human role in our process is really an influencing and, you know, kind of navigating the nuance of hiring decisions.

Matt Alder [00:25:09]:
Absolutely.

Matt Alder [00:25:11]:
If you could give the TA leaders.

Matt Alder [00:25:13]:
Listing just one piece of advice for navigating change and transformation successfully, what would it be?

Mike Aronson [00:25:20]:
You have to embrace a change mindset. Because if you’ve been in any sort of leadership role in TA for any extended period of time, your role today is different as it’s ever been, and it’ll be as different as it will ever be ongoing. And so if you’re not willing to understand that this marketplace, again, not only just in talent acquisition, but across the board, is changing and you’re not adapting as you go, it’s going to be really challenging to succeed, you know, continuously. And so that, you know, embracing the change and what comes with that is, you know, the evaluation of new and different technologies. And the other recommendation I would make is let the experts be the experts. You know, when we partner with a, with like a paradox or smart dreamers, I don’t know their tool better than they do. And so if we start, we made a buying decision based on what we saw, and then we start, you know, designing and implementing, and then we start going off course and trying to kind of break what we ultimately saw. Then you’ve broken what you saw and it’s not going to be as efficient as what you thought it was going to be. And so a lot of times we will ask, you know, what are other clients doing or what would you recommend? And you know, I always try to start us simple and we can always get more complicated and complex, but it’s, it’s really hard to go the other way around where you start complex. You oftentimes aren’t even able to get it quite going the way you want to. And so let your partners really guide your journey with them. I mean, you’re still, you know, in the driver’s seat, but you saw something and you were like, I’m interested in that, we’re going to go with that. So let them. If they succeed, we succeed. And so at the end of the day, I think those dynamics where it’s embracing that change mindset and being willing to know that you don’t have to be the expert in everything anymore. And so let the partners that you pay money to, let them lead, let them guide you on that journey. And I think that that unlocks and look candidly, that’s been, I’ve learned that through not doing it that way, you know, and so we’ve had some pitfalls and some challenges, but you know, every opportunity is a learning opportunity. And I think that that is that change mindset. It’s like, hey, we’ll do it different next time. And it’s, we’ve seen some significant benefits in, in that.

Matt Alder [00:27:39]:
And as a final question for you, what does the future look like? I mean, as we’ve just said, it’s, it’s kind of impossible to predict it accurately. But where do you think we might be in, in say three years time?

Mike Aronson [00:27:49]:
I think a much more hyper personalized recruiting experience, leveraging AI both for candidates and employers. I mean, we’re already on that ride. I do think that talent acquisition will eventually, when you think about it from the advisory experience or advisory capabilities that we’re looking for, it’s not just about hiring externally, it’s hiring talent. And that can come internally. That could come, you know, in many different workforce planning, you know, things along those lines. And so I think what talent acquisition at some point will probably more be more of a blend of just overall talent. And that’s where the time and space becomes valuable because now we actually, we don’t have to worry about all these menial tasks along the way. We can come in and kind of pull it all together. Onboarding, internal mobility, you know, external attraction, things along those lines. And now you’ve got a more cohesive approach to talent and hiring, you know, predictive hiring, analytics. I mean, you know, I’m sure the data is going to continue to evolve and give us more and more insights. And then lastly, I would say that you know, more and more integrations and you know, fully integrated tech stacks where, you know, your one stop shop is your shop and yes, you have different places that are plugged in and integrated but ultimately everything is speaking to it. And I think we’re again on that track as well. But yeah, it’s something along those lines where we’re continuing to kind of come closer together with a more strategic approach to how we approach the hiring and talent market.

Matt Alder [00:29:27]:
Mike, thank you very much for talking to me.

Mike Aronson [00:29:30]:
Absolutely. I appreciate you having me and anytime.

Matt Alder [00:29:35]:
My thanks to Mike. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.

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