Thank you!

Hung Lee (00:00):

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to episode three of Champions of Talent. This is an amazing webinar series where we are gonna center the conversation on recruiters, recruiters, folks. we do a job that I think is so important, but often it is something that is misunderstood and underestimated by the rest of the business. so I'm really pleased to be introducing this, this, conversation, with you, because it's important for us to understand exactly how, recruiter experience is and how we can improve it. without having a great recruiter experience, I put it to you that if it's impossible, to deliver great candidate experience, it's impossible to deliver great recruiting. So, welcome everybody, this webinar. A couple of things just to check. I wanna make sure that everything is okay in terms of audio and video.

(00:59):

You should be looking at a slide right now, which says, champions of talent, empowering recruiters and elevating recruiter experience. If you don't see that, please let us know. and you should be able to hear my voice okay. As well. I suppose, if you can hear me and then please do also let us know in the chat. You should have some sort of ability to communicate with us, either on chat on the q and a. Okay, cool. Yeah. Chat is disabled. I apologize, folks. You're gonna, you can have to use the q and a as the, the chat function. Feel free to blast through that. thank you, Bianca. I appreciate, appreciate you letting you know Okay. Looks that people can hear and see everything, okay. Which is great. Okay, let's do some introductions. I'm very pleased to be introducing our guests today. so my name for African people who, dunno, my name's Hung Lee. I curate the, recruiting newsletter, recruiting brain food, and I'll be your host today. and I'm very pleased to be having a conversation with, our friends from Pfizer. so why don't we quickly introduce ourselves here, Mitzy as you've appeared on screen First, why don't you introduce yourself, who are you and what it is you do?

Mitzy Bueno (02:12):

Hi, everyone, my name is Misty Bueno. I am the senior manager for candidate experience, supporting North America sales. So my team and I do all of the North America sales recruitment, um, for all of our therapeutic areas.

Hung Lee (02:28):

Fantastic. And we have Va rie here as well. Valerie, would you like to introduce yourself? Who are you, what it is you do?

Valerie Suschin (02:34):

Absolutely. It's nice to meet everyone. My name is Valerie Suschin, and I am the candidate experience lead for Pfizer enabling functions, enabling functions, comprises kind of all the functions that enable the business to run, essentially. So legal, compliance, corporate affairs people experience digital, finance and global business services. I've been at Pfizer for 10 years, and I, I love what I do, and so happy to be here with all of you today.

Hung Lee (03:01):

Fantastic. And the fact that you've been there 10 years, Valerie, I don't mean to age anybody here, but it, it, it's, it's really great to have that tenure because you can observe how the function has changed over time. and we'll be looking forward to, to get your kind of perspective on that. You know, how has, how, how has the recruiting department been, thought of within the organization. How, how has that changed and how has that improved, for both, the recruiter and the candidates? okay, great. folks, we're gonna move on and show you a short video. the reason for this is because we know that recruiters are super important. paradox, our hosts for this event know that recruiters are super important, but to the extent that they've actually put together, I think one of the, the best, doc entary style videos I've seen, that describe our business. I think it's rare to see sort of this type of commitment. but it's, it's important for us, I think, to observe it. it's only about 90 seconds long, but it's, kinda a short film, that I think you'll, you'll enjoy.

Video Player (04:14):

You wake up a champion of talent. This is your walk up music. This is your red carpet. This is your arena. It beckons you with the same persistent call. Find me the ones who can't be found. The hidden gems and unseen successes, the people who will create the future. You could let someone else do it, but you won't, you could crumble under the weight of a million unread res es, yet you persist because you know the truth. It's not a war for talent, it's a celebration, a coronation nation. Finding the future of work isn't a burden. We'd like to extend you the offer, but a blessing. And you are at the center of it all, the person behind the people, the champion of talent, and we are the champion of you.

Hung Lee (06:00):

What do you think of that, everybody? let me know what your thoughts are with regards to that, to that, film in particular, like what moments in that, in that story, did you feel that resonated most to you? I'll be, I'll be honest, I think that checking the phone in bed, is probably the thing that kind of just really hit home. Say, yes, this is what I do. so, so yeah, let us know in the, q and a if, what your thoughts are on this. And by the way, the reason why I think this, this movie works so well, and it's so kind of connected to the, the experience that we have at day to day is because the recruiters at Paradox are the ones that, are the ones that contributed to writing the script on this.

(06:49):

so you can see the actor, all of the people on screen were actors. but you can see, the, one of the paradox recruiters, Erin, I think she is, , basically coaching, the actor in terms of how, how to, how to perform the role. so yeah, I, I get it, the client offer, that's, that's the hardest one, but I think in this case, she managed to close it. So that was, one of the positives. Okay, great. let's, let's, let's move on to think about, sort of how we can improve the recruiter experience. What are the things that really are, you know, these key challenges? These are some stats, I think, that are industry, why this is a aggregated from Paradox's, customer base. and we can see there's certain things that are still, you know, I guess strains, constraints in terms of how our day to day works, average time to hire.

(07:47):

What is our main challenge sourcing candidates? and I think maybe 2021, 2022, was we, we saw the spike, didn't we, of candidates, simply ghosting, us, when we, when we had them in process, or we initially thought they were, , you know, motivated for the role. these are the, the only some of the challenges, I think we've only listed three here, but the, the recruiting job has not got any easier, over these last, several years. So, so yeah, really, a really, really tough kind of experience, for most of us, , overall. Well, yes, I think, the lady there can agree with us gonna test, okay, folks. basically we know that technology can help. so I just wanted to quickly give an overview as to our host today, which is Paradox ai.

(08:45):

one of the, the, the, the amazing kind of tools that paradox are able to offer, is conversational AI assistant. and you can see what this, , product does is essentially allow you, to have conversations at scale at the very early stage of interacting with candidates. you can see the animation on the, the right hand side of the screen, basically. if a can, this is from a candidate perspective, they're involved in some sort of, sort of application flow. This is the sort of dialogue that they might expect. it's basically 24/7. This is a conversation that a h an recruiter would traditionally have to have to make, but here they can basically go through, a short assessment, get some knockout interview questions, yes, no, whether they want to get involved in process and in fact even book themselves in, for a suitable time to do, a h an to h an interview.

(09:43):

So you can see, I think, immediately that this thing is gonna have a tremendous impact in terms of productivity. okay. Let's talk about Pfizer, because Pfizer are one of those organizations that has implemented Paradox. But before we go into it, guys, I wanted to just get a view as to what it looked like pre-implementation. How was the organization structured in terms of the recruiting team? What were the stress points? why did it make sense for something like Paradox to come in at that, sort of, at that juncture, Valerie, I wonder whether you could give this one a shot?

Valerie Suschin (10:21):

Sure, happy to. So, prior to us implementing this, it was really on us to email a candidate. We would go through the list and, and figure out who we wanted to move forward for phone screens, and then it would be a back and forth email exchange of introducing ourselves, and then asking what the availability was, and then having to go and sync up with their calendars, and then send an email back of what availability looked like. And then, you know, by then, by the time the emails kind of wrapped up and finished, sometimes that time spot was no longer even available because another meeting came into place or something happened. while we're trying to hold as much as we can for phone screens, a lot of times the calendars didn't sync up. So, that it, you know, and I think it wasn't even something that we realized of, we realized it was taking a lot of time, but I don't think we realized how much time was saved, until we actually implemented it, of, oh my gosh, this has saved us countless hours of, of the back and forth email of taking the time to have to write an email and lets us dive right into getting that interview scheduled so then we can start to, bring candidates in front of managers much quicker.

(11:33):

So, I think that's, the realization happens after, I think we already, once we implemented it,

Hung Lee (11:40):

You, you know what, Valerie, it's one of those like, hidden problems, isn't it? because you wonder how many of them are in the recruiting flow that we just ass e that this is how it always was, therefore always has to be, we don't realize that actually this like, sucks up 20, 30% of our time doing what I call interview logistics, right? Like, you're not even at times should not even ha qualifying candidates. You're just literally trying to match up calendars, and you're ferrying emails backwards and forwards, because of course, you don't want the candidate directly emailing the hiring manager. so we have to be the interface for this. so yeah, it'd be interested to know how many people have a solution. I do think it's still a minority, I mean Paradox, but this type of solution is still pretty much a minority play, I would think.

(12:28):

The vast majority of recruiters are, I believe, is still, wrestling with this by themselves. you know, I'd be interested to know folks, like, do you have some sort of solution to help you with interview logistics? , it would be, it would be good to know what the, the adoption curve is in terms of this type of thing. okay. So with regards to, , the kind of improvements, you, you talked about that just a little bit, Valerie, in fact, let's stay with you for, for a bit. how did you measure that? How did, did you, do you have n bers to give us some ideas to, you know, what time was saved as sort of post-implementation?

Valerie Suschin (13:09):

So I know, I believe there's some stats that, that we have, even potentially on the slide. I don't know, you know, the n bers until we actually see them, but

Hung Lee (13:18):

Here we go. Let me just, lemme just interrupt you. Apparently this is from candidates is it 96.4% satisfaction? So I guess the candidate will, after that interview assessment, will have, a way to rate, their experience. And it looks like the, the satisfaction rate is super high. Now what's what's fascinating about this is that it's kind of counterintuitive, isn't it? Because there's a lot of, there's sometimes a feeling that people say, you know what, this is overly automated. Candidates wanna speak to a h an being, et cetera, et cetera. But increasingly it seems that actually they wanna speak to a h an being later on in the process. But when it talks to organizing, they just wanna get it done.

Valerie Suschin (14:00):

Yeah. And I, I've had so many candidates, candidates come to me and say, that was such a cool process, it was so easy to set up. I, I love this technology and this like, kind of cutting edge system that you're using to schedule interviews. That was awesome. So, I've had, you know, real time feedback delivered, not just, not just from the after sets of looking at the amount of time saved, but I think candidates are also finding it much easier for them to be able to get on our calendars quicker. and, yeah, it's just, it's just saved so much time and I think it's just made everyone's experience better to allow us to work on more meaningful work.

Hung Lee (14:43):

Yeah. Go ahead Mitzy, go ahead. Sorry.

Mitzy Bueno (14:45):

I was just gonna say, I think that 96%, satisfaction rate is very accurate. I think, you know, just when, even the first couple of weeks that we started using this product, it was very much a call out on those phone screens, like, what's this technology like? you know, it's the first time I've ever seen it, and it's also been the most efficient, like, scheduling process for a recruiter, recruiter screen that I've ever gone through has like a candidate. that was like almost every single phone screen during that first, those first few months, it was a call out because it was a brand new, a brand new tool.

Hung Lee (15:21):

So, so folks, there's a really interesting point Mitzy made, and I think Valerieue made it as well. The, the novelty factor is still there. so candidates are not used to this, but they obviously love it, because it gets them through a process that would otherwise, I mean, if you imagine doing a phone call, just imagine you're on the phone, you might be on the move, you don't even have access to your calendar. So when you a recruiter's telling you, Hey, are you free to do it at this time of day or whatever, like, how are you supposed to know? You're gonna say, yeah, kinda. but you don't really know. Whereas here, it's all SMS driven. You can figure it out, you can manage it in your own time. I believe you can kind of leave the experience and come back to it.

(16:01):

So you don't even, you don't even need to necessarily stay in the conversation, right? So imagine you are a candidate, you're catching the bus or something, or you're, you, you're in a supermarket shopping, you can kind of answer one or two questions as you're in queue, but then you need to go pay your groceries. You can actually then complete when you're at home or some other place. and you can, you can interrupt your own experience there without having to, you know, be rude to a h an recruiter. So don't underestimate how important that is for a candidate. Doesn't surprise me that satisfaction rate is as high as it is. Mitzy tell me about your satisfaction rate. I mean, sort of when you implemented this, like how did this feel for the team? How did it feel for your own workflow? Was it like obvious there was a difference? and if so, sort of, you know, what else did you, so how did that impact, you know, the other work that you were able to do?

Mitzy Bueno (16:57):

No, I mean, very honestly, like, I loved it from the day I used. It's probably to this day, one of my favorite tools that we have implemented in the last couple of years. And, you know, Valerie, Valeriewill back me up on this. We've been implementing a lot of technology into our recruiting process. so Olivia, I mean, for us is now a couple of years old and, you know, a couple of, you know, there's been you innovative technology since then. It's still, I will very honestly say one of my favorite products. but I mean, for, for me, it's like, you know, I would send out an email to candidates saying like, Hey, we wanna talk to you 10, 15 minutes of your time, and I would have on a Tuesday maybe, and, you know, Friday afternoon, I'm still trying to get them on the calendar for next week. This, you know, for me was very much, you know, I'm sending that email out, or I guess I'm moving them in the system, Olivia's taking care of everything, and then just sending me back those calendar appointments. So, I mean, it has literally taken days, or it's literally saved days of time for me. Mm-hmm.

Valerie Suschin (17:59):

<affirmative> and hiring managers are happy too, because we're able to get, screens completed much quicker because we're getting them scheduled faster and we're just helping to increase, you know, that time to fill, or just getting, getting the interview scheduled. Because we all know right now the talent market is so, so hot and, and we, we don't wanna lose a candidate because we were too busy trying to schedule them, and then they received an offer from another company. So it's, it's really, time is of the essence, and this saves so much of it,

Hung Lee (18:30):

You know, what that juggling, cause again, it's not just one candidate, it's multiple candidates, it's multiple roles, multiple hiring managers, that entire sort of web of logistics, it's, it's not something a h an being should ever do in my opinion, but it takes a super h an effort to be on top of all of that. but this kind of tool looks like you can completely remove the error rate also, like how, how many times did you forget potentially to follow up on a candidate or, you know, you forget to chase this hiring manager who, you know, doesn't keep their calendar updated, et cetera. so, so there's lots of things I think can just, make sure those gaps are filled. and particularly the final stop there, super relevant, the time from the request to interview schedule means that you can then predict the workflow.

(19:16):

you can predict how many candidates you need in process, and manage your own sort of, manage your own, , workflow, for recruiters, which again, is an underestimated problem. you, you squeeze recruiters or squeeze anybody too much, you end up in a position where your performance will degrade over time. you know, people can, can operate, if you are, if you're asking your people to operate at a hundred percent every single day as a week, with no slack, there's no question that that will degrade over time. You need to create some sort of space. and tooling like this, I think makes a huge difference. And by the way, Mitty, having used the tool for two years and still not being sufficiently impressed by anything else since then, I think it's a very good measure of how good the impact paradox has been because, I think you're right, you do kind of immediately in your gut feel this is helping.

(20:13):

and you don't need necessarily the stats to let you know. okay. Let's, let's skip on to the next, slide there, Joe. Let's see what's going on. Yeah, sure. This is just reiterating what we're saying, the time saved, we should talk about this. How has that changed your, kind of approached candidates and, and in fact, sometimes when recruiters get more efficient, there, there's an annoying sort of, outcome whereby we just simply get fied with more recs to work on. You know, it's like, oh, it seems like you can handle 20 res, that's great. Mitty, here's another 40. , is, is that generally what happened that has just basically the vol e of res increased, for the recruiting team at Pfizer? Or is it a case where you thought, you know what, we need to spend more time doing some other stuff that we really need to do, to be more strategic to improve sort of the kinda experience. We know, for instance, with regards to DE and ib, it requires more work, requires more effort. how have you managed to make use of the additional time saved?

Mitzy Bueno (21:24):

No, it's definitely, go ahead. No, it's definitely been both. I mean, I think that, you know, year over year vol e across, you know, north America and globally recruitment has, has increased. but, you know, because we are saving time on those admin tasks, you know, one for better or for worse, we're able to carry more res. But we're also able to dedicate more time in terms of doing things like sourcing in terms of, you know, being able to, to provide more of that client service back to our managers rather than say, you know, wasting two hours a day just scheduling. I think that this tool has also helped, the managers be able to contract down their candidates and, you know, start that scheduling process rather than coming back to us and say like, Hey, I need, this person's not replying. Like, this person's not engaging. Can you track them down for us?

Hung Lee (22:20):

Yeah. Yeah. That's again, fetching carrying us the, I had a shiver when you said that, you know, the request to go chase somebody. It's like, no, we don't wanna do this. so, Valerie, go, going to you on this, you know, seeing how the, is it, is it possible for you to give us some sort of sense as to the kind of atmosphere change, if you like, within the TA team over this period of time? And, you know, paradox is one example in terms of the pre and post implementation, but just during the, the course of your time with the business, where have you seen the recruiting work starting to shift? you know, has it gone from one place to another? Has it stayed broadly the same?

Valerie Suschin (23:05):

Yeah, I think, you know, in, in, in doing recruiting work for so many years, this is an ever evolving type of function where we need to kind of be where the candidate's going to be. We also need to figure out all these things that are listed on the slide are so integral. and, and if we're not ahead of the game, other companies are going to to be, and we need, we need to kind of be where the cutting edge of talent is. We need to make sure that we are focusing on the strategy, focusing on, on the sourcing, finding the best candidates who wanna be at Pfizer. You know, it's, it's something where, especially, you know, going through having this technology, especially going through the pandemic where things were so extremely busy and, and everyone was shifting because every, I mean, most of roles, unless you were, you know, kind of on the front lines of, of c or if you were a scientist in the lab or on the manufacturing floor, you know, they all kind of shifted to this new type of of work, and it was, and were, and it was almost like the work date and end because you were now working from home.

(24:14):

So, there was a lot more things that were, I think, coming to light on what we could do better, what was expected of us, and really what candidates needed from us at the time too. I mean, we were all going through something that was so tra atizing to the whole world. So it was kind of like having this quicker technology, getting in front of candidates faster. Everything was moving quicker. So I think that's where we saw the shift is, is kind of over the last few years, specifically, also with a lot of de and I efforts is coming into, kind of more of the spotlight, which are so important, but so many things changed at one time. So I think, having the technology to support the changes were, were key. But, you know, from what I saw, it was the candidate experience shifted, you know, from what it always maybe should have been to where it needs to or where it's getting to of candidate care, because recruiters from a full life cycle are asked to do so much that the candidate care needs to be at the top of the list.

(25:17):

just an example of, you know, just something that I feel has added more, more ti where technology has helped us add more time is getting back to candidates to, you know, as a recruiter, I think that one of the hardest things we have to do is decline a candidate, especially, you know, top talent that we work with that we were excited about, only usually there's only one opening for a role. We're gonna have to let some candidates down and letting them down in a very, you know, careful and empathetic way is so key. And you can't do that if you don't have, if you're tied up with so many like, other tasks. So I will say, I had a, I received an email last week from a candidate that said, that's the nicest decline notification I've ever received. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to pursue other opportunities at Pfizer. So, I think that is, that's, that's where it hits home of, of where everything just comes to light and bridges together on why it's so important to be able to provide a candidate experience and not be tied up with tasks that aren't as meaningful. So,

Hung Lee (26:21):

You know what, I think that's so true. You know, again, we as recruiters here, we all know that the, the work we do is, is generally disrespected from the, the wider general population, right? I mean, if you, if you did a search on Google recruiters, are, everyone's done this? and just look at the, the predictive, responses. It's like, you know, a pretty not safe for work type stuff. You, you know, <laugh>, it's, , we're pretty much lamb lambasted. but I think the vast majority of the reason for this is simply time constraint. You know, recruiters aren't bad people. We're not bad people, we're not, you know, we're just normal people, but we just simply have like, so little time that sometimes we don't have the ability or the bandwidth to give due care, on sensitive moments, like rejecting someone from a job, for instance.

(27:11):

or, you know, when you're qualifying candidates, it's quite hard to say no to somebody who, you know, you've assessed that's not gonna move forward. how are we actually treating that situation? but as you mentioned, Valerie, our kind, the expectations post covid has changed the world a little bit in the sense that we recognize that, you know, we need to put more h anity into the world we do. and just, remembering something that Miy said, it sounds like maybe the implementation of, of, of par of paradox was kind of in that covid moment, or wasn't it? If you're saying two years or so ago. So can you give us a bit of a timeline? So, remind me again, COVID hit us what, end of beginning of thousand 20. so what kind of calls the organization to think, you know, what, we need to have something like paradox in, in our business?

Mitzy Bueno (28:02):

So, I mean, I think one of the things is obviously, you know, we, we have the, our covid line, at Pfizer, and that really meant that we had to staff up, you know, across our labs, across our manufacturing. You know, I think we, we staffed up across our, our sales and commercial functions and, you know, obviously to support all of the new staff across enabling functions, which Valerie, so it's, you know, we saw this influx of, you know, new positions that we started to recruit on. And, you know, if we're, if we're bus and all of the talent was mostly coming in externally, so, you know, we are using this brand new technology, it quick, very quickly became like, we cannot in any way, shape or form go back to chasing down eight candidates per role because, you know, we have 30 roles to recruit on at any given point of time. so, you know, that's 250 candidates that we could potentially be chasing down, you know, that period of a month. so, you know, this tool very, very quickly became, this is, you know, the new standard of work. And like, this is, there's no way, shape, or form, we're going back to doing it manually.

Hung Lee (29:18):

The, I can see mi you'd be very good, union representative, the very strong life, but I think you're absolutely correct. Once you've seen the innovation, you've seen the, you know, the, the, the obvious, the obvious improvement, it's, it's almost impossible to accept, that you go back to a more inefficient process. So sound, actually, the covid with the, with Pfizer's unique kind of position, , caused a, a huge spike of, , recruitment requirements. That's when the product came in and really helped alleviated that. So in some respects, it was kind of covid related, that paradox. Maybe, maybe, there were, were already in conversation with Pfizer, but the decision was made, you know, what, we need to actually get this done because there's, there's more than just profit involved here. We actually need these people in. we need to get the, the, the, we need to get the vaccine produced and delivered and distributed. So we're an interesting story.

(30:27):

Oh, and yeah, efficiencies, right? So, oh, so that's the end of the slide deck. Cool. Well, we can actually start having a different type of conversation now that the slide deck is over. folks, we we're gonna be open for questions, so if you have any questions that you wanna ask, either Valerie or Mitzi, please do use the quick q and a feature, and populate down there. And we're gonna get to them in a sec. We've got plenty of time to get to those. So make sure, that you spend, , you think about, the questions that you wanna ask about how, Pfizer has used technology to automate their process. Valerie and Mitzy, I wanna talk about sort of how you sort of, the concept of recruitment changed within Pfizer because, your, your, neither of you are called recruiters or talent acquisitions. So, can you explain to us sort of what the, what the normal feature is, is now and, and why you made the change and, and how, how has that impacted the how you, how you operate as a, as a group?

Valerie Suschin (31:34):

Yeah, so I mean, so we changed our, you know, our HR function is now people experience, and our talent acquisition is now candidate experience. We do have recruit a candidate experience recruiter, you know, so there, there's still the, kind of the, the recruiter name that's tagged a along to that. But it really kind of just, that shift puts a, I think, a different mindset into everything that is meaningful about what we do. It was always meaningful before, but now it, it's also, I think, will help candidates also realize that this is about them, this is about their experience, as much as it is about, you know, ensuring that they're the right fit for Pfizer. But, it just, I think, just puts a different type of feeling in everyone's minds, about what this really means. It's, it puts a, the people aspect into it, it makes it more h an, even though now h an resources is now people experience, but it does, it just, I feel like makes it, you know, a little bit more personal.

(32:37):

and, I think we're, you know, we're all so empathetic to, to what candidates go through. Everybody at Pfizer has been a candidate at one point, and in every company everybody has to interview for a role. So it's, you know, we, we always need to be in that mindset of, you know what, not only are we going through as recruiters, because then I'm so happy we have this session because it is about also our experience and making it better, but it's all about doing that so that we, we can make the experiences better for candidates and for hiring managers. We're kind of that liaison to do that. But, I think it was just, changing the name to really what it is. It's, it's the candidate experience. So,

Hung Lee (33:19):

You know what, I, I think most of us would agree that the, the term h an resources is, is not great. you know, cuz you know, the, the thought of of of people as hu as resources, I think people that might be, beginning to be uncomfortable with, particularly in this pandemic era, you know, we, we need to, we're we're thinking much more of, of h anity first centering the h an into it. so the term people experience, I think is, is, is very, very important. and, in terms of how it was created and, and how it was received, like, can you tell, take us a little bit through that process. Was it, was it simply say, Hey, listen, you know, tomorrow we're gonna be called this? Or was there some sort of like, a consultation process? Was there any kind of redefinition of job roles? Sometimes when things like this occur, it's like, okay, we need to actually do re job design and what have you, how did it actually kind of go from idea to implementation, within the, within the business? I guess,

Mitzy Bueno (34:23):

I mean, I guess one thing to note is, you know, before we were a candidate experience, we were actually global talent solutions. So it's, it's kind of been a journey from, you know, being talent acquisition to where we are right now. I don't necessarily think that there's been, you know, a huge transformation in what we do day to day, because we were always really focused on being talent partners back to the business. You know, that was really, you know, a priority. well, I, I've been here just slightly less time than Valerie. I've been at Pfizer for about eight years, so I've definitely seen that transition as well. You know, going from having, you know, some of that more process support, back to the business to really focus, being focused on, on providing more of that strategic, sourcing support, making sure that, you know, the candidates that we're speaking to, you know, really are a fit for Pfizer, both in terms of functioning, in terms of culture. so I mean, it's, it's been a journey for us, in, you know, people experience and Canada experience overall. And it's been, I think that Valeries mentioned it a couple of times, really reflective of the work that we, you know, have been historically expected, and, you know, have been trying to, to provide back to the business

Hung Lee (35:45):

How is the, the, the new terminology, received externally. So for instance, when you're hiring new people coming into the, the, the, the candidate experience team, how do, how, how do other people who receive it? I mean, it's, it's kind still quite, quite novel, I think, in the industry, as a whole. So I'd be interested to know whether what your thoughts are on some of the newer folks that have joined the, joined the group.

Valerie Suschin (36:13):

I think, you know, I think being such a big company, we're always in some type of change mode. so, it's just, I think we've all just adapt to, to changing cultures and changing and really kind of always being in this state of movement. But, I think it's been received very well. You know, I I I I've heard very positive, feedback from, from the changes. So

Hung Lee (36:40):

No, it's, it'll be interesting cause I do think that time acquisition as a term also needs to be kind of retired. it, it's, it's, it's one of those where, you know, the role is evolving to such a, such a point. we saw actually, a couple of slides earlier, you know, that we need to be doing more in terms of workforce diversification. we need to provide more strategic input to the business. we need to use things, we need to use talent intelligence. We just talked a great deal about automation. You know, some look at other processes that might need to be automated. All of those things that need to be done by the function. and it's not just about, you know, looking at more candidates and more res es. there's, there's other things that we need, to do.

(37:28):

And, the, the, the name I think does make an impact, particularly when we're talking with the, the other parts of the, the business. , let's go to some of these questions here. We've got a couple of them that have, come in from, kind of anonymous attendees. that's okay. There's no reason why you, need to tell us who you are, but let's just deal with these as we go. the first one's interesting. It's like, okay, do you see a tool like this helping you win over top candidates, over hiring competitors? So is it actually something that you feel has, you know, helped you in the quote unquote war for talent? You've got a high demand, let's say highly skilled, high in demand type person. Do you think something like Olivia, helps, , Pfizer beat the competition there? And if so, why do you think that is?

Valerie Suschin (38:16):

I'd say it would, it speeds up the process, which could help kind of get them in front of, candidates faster. I also think it, it also speaks to, our commitment to technology. you know, you sometimes you see, you know, this, candidates see tech as, you know, more actual tech based companies or, or where they wanna be. But if we're, if we're now evolving into, a company that is using, the top of the line, state of the art, cutting edge technology, I think it may, it probably creates more of an excitement of, okay, this is, this is where I wanna be. They're, they're ahead of the game. So, hopefully that's, that's, I think that's, that's maybe helped as well be just based on the feedback that I've received of, wow, I've never had, I've never seen this before. I absolutely love your scheduling process. This is just, you know, something that's so innovative. So I, I think that's really where, where, where that might help. you know, I work in, I support digital, so, you know, so that, that may be kind of my experience of seeing that more as well, because everyone who works in digital wants that as well. But I think I, I would think that it would just kind of also carry over into, all candidates really wanting a better and easier experience with technology.

Hung Lee (39:32):

You know, what you said that, that, that message about, you know, I'm so impressed with the scheduling. I would actually screen cap that and frame it. <laugh>, that's kind of funny. I think calendar is no, scheduling is a pain as well. It's, it's not just, it is not a mystery. It's like a horrible experience. So if they've gone through it and it's actually smooth, it's great. But I think you're actually right there about it is two elements here. N ber one, the implement, the experience of the digital experience is a, a new thing for these candidates. It's gonna tell us it's an employer branding aspect to that. if you go through a process, that is a low five process, that's inefficient, that's all kinds of stuff. It's not only problematic cause it's inefficient, it's problematic cause it's what, what it's signaling, you know, does it mean when I go into the organization, it's still, you know, with fax machine, you know, how, how, how, up to date is this organization, how committed to the future, is it, how future proof is it?

(40:28):

These, these things are on candidates minds, particularly the top talent. So I think it has a candidate experience, , impact. And of course we talked about the efficiency side. I forget where I read the, the stat, but there was the, one of the big consultancies did a survey about this, and it was like, by far away, the n ber one, thing that annoyed, , candidates was speed of process. it was simply too long, too onerous to get through a recruiting flow. and, and that was the most annoying thing. It was simply too challenging. So anything that can kind of make that go faster, I think it definitely helps. okay, let's go to the next question here. Let me just say done on this, , okay, anonymous again, does great candidate experience equal great recruiter experience? Where do they overlap? You know what, I think it kind of goes the other way also, but Mitzi, I wonder whether you give this a go. does great candidate experience equal great recruiter experience? In other words, you've given a candidate great experience. Does that make you feel great? what are your thoughts?

Mitzy Bueno (41:36):

No, I mean, I, I, we, we mentioned it a couple of times, but I mean, you know, we get that feedback back from the candidate, you know, either at the start of the process, oh, this is a really innovative tool, or at the end of it, like, you know, I, I understand I'm not getting the role, but you know, we really appreciate your support, you know, our ability to be a little bit more, present in the process rather than, you know, working on bundling res es and, you know, doing ad administrative, you know, tasks allows a recruiter to, you know, be able to, one, get that positive feedback, which, you know, when I get an offer accepted or I get like a, like, this is a great experience for me even though I didn't get the job email. Like, that's rewarding in and of itself. But, you know, being able to see, you know, I'm actually contributing in a more strategic way, in a more impactful way, rather than, you know, doing an admin task, you know, just typing up an email to a candidate, doing very basic admin level work for a recruiter. It, I think that that's the piece that's definitely much more rewarding.

Hung Lee (42:42):

Great response, Mitzy, it's not only the feedback aspect, which is important because yes, I think everyone does agree. You know, you've helped the candidate get a job or you've got a great message back from a candidate that, you know, you had to, reject. Those things are inva, are sort of really Valerieidating to, to, to, to the work you do. And, you know, it's, it's a great compliment for you. but it's also the releasing some of the other stuff that's really quite depressing, like copy and pasting, for instance. I mean, how many times I think there's a limit to how many times a h an being can copy and paste during the day, that causes that person to then be demoralized. and a lot of the rejection emails, let's face it, they're carbon copied in some way.

(43:26):

If you don't have a machine giving you some mail merge, you're gonna be copy and pasting that. but you know what, if you have some of the tool that's gonna help you interact with candidates doing, the necessary, communication, that doesn't necessarily require, you know, a h an being typing it out, that's gonna make a, a huge difference. so really good point. we've got another question coming through, , in a direct message actually. So here's one, it's a little bit more future thinking. what is the current biggest challenge in the job that still needs a solution? Maybe? So we, this goes back to one of the early points you made, Valerie, where, you know, the scheduling side, you know, wasn't a perceived problem back in the day. It was like, yes, this is the job. do, do you, or Mitzy, have you got any thoughts as to what are the aspects that we currently accept as just part of the job that you think, you know, what, someone's gonna actually create a tool that's gonna sort this out?

Mitzy Bueno (44:26):

So I, we have a couple of work streams going on internally, and I think think that one of the, the one of the issues that we picked up on was actually something that you mentioned Hung in terms of, you know, candidates are not, you know, they feel like the process is taking too long or they may feel like, you know, too much time is going on in between, hearing back from a recruiter, hearing back from a manager, getting updates. So, I think that, that that's an actual solution that, you know, is currently being worked on internally at Pfizer. So that, you know, going back to our candidate experience name, you know, whether it's, you know, here's an update for you, here's where you're at in the status, you know, you're not moving forward. You know, those are updates that a candidate can be able to get more frequently, like, have more frequent touchpoints. you know, and, and it's still in the works for us, but it's something that we want to, you know, provide a solution for, for that community experience journey. Mm-hmm.

Valerie Suschin (45:31):

<affirmative>, I was gonna say, and it's always, so it's like when you get an email from a candidate that asks for a follow up, that's, that there's that point of, like, you wish you got to them first before they had to ask you. So I think that's something that we as recruiters, because you know, we're, we're always trying to, you know, make sure that we're ahead of the game and when we get just inundated with tasks that falls behind, it's almost like you feel that, oh, I failed, you know, in that, in that sense. But then you, you kind of recover, but you wanna make, you wanna, you wanna not get to that point.

Hung Lee (46:03):

I'm prepared to say it's a fail, I think you have failed in some way to get that message. It feels terrible. cause you've gonna have to have the conversation anyway with this person, right? You can't ignore it. but the, the fact that they had to chase you suddenly makes you, it diminishes you in relationship with the, with the candidate. and as you say, if you could only just preempt it, but you didn't have the time. so I think that is definitely something that we need to look at. It's, it's the gaps going to your point, Mitty, it's the, like, no information is information, right? But they need to be told that, you know, most of the experience that we have as job seekers, you go through a process, and you know, we get notified, but then if there's a day, two days, three days a week or something, naturally we're gonna think what's going on?

(46:53):

Because we've had experiences where we've been ghosted and you know, we've literally been dropped. It's like, what is, what is the status there? So some way in which I could discover the status, or some way in which the organization could let me know without, again, a h an person needing to do it, because that's just effort that's gonna, be onerous. that would be ideal. I dunno whether you guys have, or whether this is a part of the implementation. Don't tell me stuff I don't need to know. But there's been some interesting technologies where, you know, we're moving a lot more to the self-serve aspect where you can say, you know what, it is onerous to keep the, the candidate up to date with our information. Just sending out, why don't we create a space where the candidate can come in and just, you know, get up to date information as to status.

(47:39):

and then he or she doesn't even have to interrogate anybody or send a message. Cause they can, we can, you know, create that status right there, you know, kind of similar to a covid code, you know, it's like here, back in the day when we were buying that type of stuff, it's like, right, all you need to do is check your status of things and you, you know what to do. So I dunno whether that's part of the, the vision of how, the new implementation is, but it's an idea of, you know, trying to, to, to plug that, information gap, which is, which is the, thing that I think noise, candidates more than anything.

Mitzy Bueno (48:15):

I mean, I know that as a candidate, I'd probably love that too.

Hung Lee (48:19):

Well, you two are so well tenured, so loyal to Pfizer, it's probably like your experience of being a job seeker is probably well outdated now. so not to say you should leave Pfizer at any time, <laugh>, but, the next time you investigate, it'd be worthwhile you doc enting the journey and seeing how that changed. I mean, I'm the same way. I've not a, I haven't applied for jobs for a long time. so the stuff I'm hearing is from, you know, people I speak to, like you guys and everyone else that I, I interact with. but you know, it's probably worthwhile, like going through a process like this just to see how it's, has it substantially improved? Is it, is it obvious when a company has implemented technology to improve it? And how has that changed your perception of brand? you know, those are things that I think are very interesting to know about.

(49:11):

And in fact, you know, as we see market term turmoil in different sectors, going on and so on, sadly enough there are like recruiters on the market, more so now than they have been earlier this year. So, you know, a lot of those folks probably will be going through, recruiting processes as well. So, you know, I wonder whether we could advise them to keep an eye out also in terms of just monitoring, you know, what is the experience like or has it not changed majority of the time? Are we still sort of sending in applications not getting any response? are we still kind of, waiting weeks and weeks for, progress and what have you? Anyway, folks, we're coming to the end of this, , amazing conversation. So thank you all for watching. I hope you've enjoyed it. we're gonna keep going with the champions of talent series.

(49:59):

I think we've got at least one more before the end of this, this, this year. please do if you've enjoyed the video, do share that. I think it's great marketing for our industry. I think more people, needs to be aware of to sort of work we do. and, if, I don't about you guys, but I think it's a really good representation of, of, of tells our story as to what we do in one 92nd. I think it's a really good piece of content. and make sure that you kind of connect with our good friends here, Valerie and Mitzy. I'm sure they'll be delighted to interact with you going forward. So thank you all for watching everybody, and we'll see you next time.

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