TBA Member (00:00:00):

Record. All right. Hey everybody, and welcome to the TBA Member call. I love member calls because they're a way for everybody to get together, learn from each other remind ourselves that we do still exist outside of our little quarantine boxes but also just to, to, to learn and, and hear new voices and, and discuss a lot of things that are important and powerful for all of us. one of the things that I want to do is remind everybody that we are here to learn from each other, so no experts. We're here to, to uncover how everybody does it in their own world. So hopefully you've come with maybe a desire to add to the conversation, ask a question, and I'm, I'm excited today. Why am I excited? because I love, as one of the co-founders of, of Talent Brand Alliance to, to come in contact with a company that really gets it and wants to support community around talent branders, and wants to really invest and sees it as a long game. and, and that company one of several, one of several companies that I've come across over the years is Paradox. Paradox, actually was one of our first sponsors to the very first summit back in 2018. And, and we've been partners ever since to varying degrees and have loved the the spirit with which paradox has come to say, how can we support the community? How can we be part of this? And love today to introduce Joshua Secrest, VP of Marketing and client advocacy at Paradox. Josh, welcome.

Joshua Secrest (00:01:43):

Thank you so much for having me pumped to be here!

TBA Member (00:01:47):

And, and you're gonna talk about a lot of things. for those of you who weren't at Summit we talked through and discovered and got to experience some of what Olivia had to offer and how we provided feedback across the different days of the event at Summit. some people are very familiar with Paradox and Olivia, but somebody, some people aren't as familiar with what that might be. Hopefully it's a little bit of an intro, a little bit of an Orange Origin story. but also talking about some of the things that they can do, because the whole point is to make candidate experience human. we've, we're, we're in this battle between recruiting teams and leaders and hr around the disintermediation of, you know, what is a, what is a candidate experience and what is a, what is a recruiter experience, and how can we, how can we do a better job at that and automate the things that sometimes we're not as good at? I would love to, love to, to jump in with you as with, with that, as kind of the preface.

Joshua Secrest (00:02:45):

Yeah, I, I, I'm really excited for this call and, and really conversation. So I've got a, a bit that I can kind of run through my background, some really cool things that are happening in tech some, some great things that are happening within paradox. Maybe just to, to start, I think that was a good good starting point. And, you know, a lot of times, especially in the world of AI within the last, what, three years, we talk a lot of how new technologies helping us automate simplify speed up. and, and that's all true. I'm gonna say that those words a lot, it's easier, it's simpler, it's faster. but what that speed and simplicity ends up giving us back is ways to really showcase our warmth with candidates to spend more time with candidates at, at moments that actually have more value and, and, and, and return.

(00:03:35):

it allows for us to inject our brands and our voices allows for us to personalize experiences. We, we get some time back but we can then use that in really important, high, high impact ways and a lot of this new tech, and I think I don't say that to be like scary, right? It's new tech is really great and defined by being intuitive and easy to use in simple and commercial, and looks like the stuff that we use at home, the stuff that we in an Apple iPhone that you can open and know exactly how to use. so excited to be able to get into that and kind of wear these worlds of automation and actually personalized, warm candidate experiences and impactful talent brand moments really come together. So it'll be a, it'll be a fun one today.

(00:04:23):

I can't wait to hear all of your, your stories. I'm super passionate about the TA and talent space. before joining Paradox I was the head of global recruitment as well as talent strategy at McDonald's. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about our McDonald's transformation story. Give you a little bit of background on maybe how I approach some things and some things that they're, they're continuing to do to, to build. And prior to that led a lot of talent parts of the organization within Abercrombie Fitch with my last role leading global culture and talent acquisition there too. So hopefully you can kind of trade some, some stories. you know, Abercrombie Fitch is, I think one of the, the best at, at creating some really incredible candidate experiences and sort of white glove moments.

(00:05:09):

they think about every point in the process to make that unique for their candidates. McDonald's has to do that at scale. you've got huge candidate and customer overlap, so we could speed things up and do things at scale, but we wanted to really focus on how we were gonna personalize experiences and make sure that those who didn't get offers with us were still amazing customers. and wanted to, to return. is is kind of the overall, like big topics of conversation today that we're gonna go into. one is gonna be around this idea of automation and where we can simplify. think about that almost in the inverse. What are the things that are annoying, frustrating make you wanna not apply to a position? Because those are all damaging our talent brands as people go through it.

(00:05:55):

They may not be overt talent branding, but it's certainly a, a part that if you don't stick the landing on you're, you're hurting your brand in the process. similar to, you might have beautiful marketing for your your retail store or your brand but ultimately at the experience in store online is frustrating. you're still gonna lose them. we're gonna talk about personalized experiences and this idea that truly personalized white glove experiences now almost need and require automation to be able to be able to deliver. and I think that's a really interesting concept. And before tech wasn't maybe smart enough to do that in a way that that felt elevated. so I think that's, that's an important topic for us is where can we really personalize these moments? And I keep kind of calling it unique to you moments versus like, one size fits all moments. and how can we do that at scale? I think, oh,

TBA Member (00:06:48):

Go. I think just, just for you Josh, like, I think that's one of the areas of concern for some people because they, they, they understand like the big, the big drive are a lot of the, the discussions I've been hearing lately are how do we automate the things that we're not so good at, or the things that don't add as much value as we could, or we don't show up in the way that we need to or want to. And so I think that's the key is how can we, how can we personalize those moments? So I, that's, to me, that's the big question is how do we do it at scale and how do you answer that? How do you, how do you respond to that question? How, how can we be personal? Is it, is, is AI really personal or personable?

Joshua Secrest (00:07:30):

I'd say it really is. I don't think it was three years ago though. and I think that's a, a part of it is where we're at now, and I won't go too into the weeds, but where AI is with natural language processing. And so the ability to understand what you're saying and you not have to like hit the ping pong ball exactly as the AI requires you to, you don't have to just say yes, you can say yeah, or totally, that sounds great. And the intent is understood, allows for much warmer natural conversations. So that's one. Two is this idea of dynamic versus fixed. And we'll get into this cuz that sounds lofty, but really it just means how do we deliver things to that individual candidate as they come through using AI versus forcing the candidate to search and dig to ask the exact right question or to find the exact web website page that's hidden between 20 other website pages to get the answer to their question.

(00:08:28):

we are all well intended to be able to cater to unique individuals that are coming to our jobs. but it's harder than maybe we give it credit for sometimes for them to be able to really seek out some of that information. So I think that's another place where AI's gonna be able to help supplement this. and I've got a couple examples of just where that, that customization comes in. And then the, maybe the, the last piece that we're gonna cover, cuz I think it kind of folds in there, is not only are we making things just easier and simpler, right? And taking out some of the frustrations, we're gonna, we're gonna add a layer of hierarchy of needs, right? That we're now personalizing to you, you're different than I am, and we're gonna have different questions, but then we also have different brands and we need to make sure that our voice and not just our branding opponents and not just our, our EVPs, but our, our voice and our people are coming through in ways that really move candidates throughout the process and make it stickier, make them wanna work for you more, make them wanna come to the interview more.

(00:09:28):

And, and I think there's some really neat configurable ways to do that with tech that I think all of us would be proud of. You know, a lot of this isn't just about being fast, it's about being simplifying things so that you can add some, some components back that really add personalization, warmth in your brands into the, to the mix. So I'll, I'll give you a little bit on this from a, a, a competitive advantage, and then we're gonna build from it because I think part one is this, this idea of simplify and, and strip and make sure that you've got a really well-oiled machine that then you can be able to, to layer on so that you're building a competitive advantage. And so I'm gonna walk through my experience at McDonald's. some of the things the amazing team out there is doing.

(00:10:11):

I think they've, they've been innovators in the space over the last five years. Continue to keep adding onto it. I'm gonna show you some of their, their career site that's just rolling out. If you're not in restaurant hiring, obviously this, this may not be the exact process or branding that you'd use. I'm gonna talk a little bit about high volume and hourly, but also oversaw the corporate recruiting team there as well as, as I did it at Abercrombie. So we'll draw some, some, some tie-ins kind of regardless of the industry that you're in. But the big piece there is, think about the scale for McDonald's, right? It's 37,000 restaurants. It's 120 countries hiring a couple million people per year. and it was a team that was pretty understaffed in, in in constantly plagued through under staffing. So joining joining McDonald's, you really kind of had this, what was, you know, my first day, and I think you all would kind of like geek out with me on this, I got to sit with our chief people officer who had direction from our CEO about, Hey, we have a multi-billion dollar staff understaffing issue, right?

(00:11:15):

And, and this, this kind of wheel of, you know, this vicious cycle. I'm sure each of you kind of have within your, your organizations. But you know, for us as we're looking at restaurants, an understaffed restaurant meant that you probably had to spread your, your staff pretty thin. You know, maybe they weren't getting the shifts that they wanted to, or they were having to work ex, you know extra hard on the shifts that they were in. that remaining staff then increased turnover. So now you're in kind of an even bigger hole. Your restaurants are having slower ticket times by minute by hour. Think of that as how fast they're going through your drive through. You might even have to close the store a little bit early because you don't have the staffs. People are, are more and more kind of tying recruitment to, to this understaffing.

(00:11:56):

You then have maybe poor customer experiences that's hurting your return rates, and ultimately you're impacting your revenue. So this is an interesting one as I think so many of us sit, you know, and I think within the recruiting space, within the talent branding space where, how, how what a pivotal moment where so many of our organizations are tying what we do to the bottom line and the top line. and so we got to see this really directly and it meant that we wanted to go out and solve this in a huge way. So how do you not just get 10% better, because that's not gonna fix a multi-billion dollar issue. We had to get three X better, five x better. we had to totally change the way that we were gonna be branding and thinking about hiring kind of every step of the process.

(00:12:39):

So the first part was this idea around, you know, what are those frustrating moments in a candidate process? I think this is a really cool one to be able to map. You know, for us, within sort of a thinking about hiring a couple million people per year, we were actually first noticing that we actually had a lot of interested applicants at the front end, you know, tens of millions, but ultimately they weren't making their way through the process. We had a, like a login and a password for most of our restaurants. And we were seeing that we were dropping 60% of our candidates at that point. so just even before they even started to apply some of that clunkiness that that's starting to come in making them wait to hear back from you, you know, a lot of 35 to 40% of our applicants were coming in sort of after hours.

(00:13:21):

So they were waiting 10 hours for a manager to get back. And then our shift in, in breakfast, because it's delicious it was really busy, right? So you typically wouldn't be able to get back to a candidate until nine or 10. and so that waiting, we were starting to see drop off because other employers were able to get back faster. And then you have that kind of pain, and I think everybody experiences this, or as coordinators on their team that experience that like manual back and forth scheduling. we were seeing just the, the days and, and hours kind of tick by and we were losing about 50% through manual scheduling. And then this idea of like life getting in the way by not sending reminders or allowing for easy no shame rescheduling we were losing about 15% of candidates because people didn't wanna ask to, to reschedule because of the ways that we were implementing that.

(00:14:12):

So we had all this interest, but essentially by the time it came to actually like having the person start day one, we had all these different hurdles for them to jump through. It wasn't simple, it was frustrating, and frankly, it didn't mirror our restaurant, right? I mean, like, you love McDo for those who love McDonald's, right? It's, you know, it's, it's, it's fast hot food and it's, and it's easy and it's repeatable. and we weren't hearing that within our process, and it was, it was such a delight to kind of work across our teams to say like, how do we make our customer and candidate experience feel really synonymous? so that was a, a, a neat kind of prompt for us as we chatted with our owner operators and, and you know, kind of as, as all of you do with kind of your teams, Hey, what are the problems?

(00:14:56):

What are pain points? And where can, where can we win? What can be the differentiators? the three that we wanted to really uncover and focus on was this like speed. You know, if we could be faster than the KFC across the street when someone applies to both of our jobs we'll win. And when we started to define what speed was, and I like how this translates into corporate hiring as well, we were measuring, right, not just how fast it took them to apply, how fast it took us to be able to vet them, to schedule them to get them in for an interview, to get an offer in their hands, to get them onboarded, to then start to get them actually there on day one and then to get them productive. So each one of those things we wanted to be faster at.

(00:15:36):

but we, what we really found was all so many of those are important, but there were a couple key touch points. One, the application had to be super fast and easy. two, as soon as you know, they're qualified, get them scheduled because they'll stop applying for other jobs. And then three, get them in for the interview within 48 hours. so just some kind of interesting learnings. we wanted to return time back to our hiring managers. so for us, this is managers and restaurants for some of you and corporate, right? That's like, how do you get your recruiters just more time. so much of that time was absorbed in, like posting the jobs reviewing candidates that are coming through, and then the scheduling back and forth and then super pertinent to this audience.

(00:16:19):

great, let's move fast, but let's measure how we're doing from a candidate experience based on the candidates who don't get a job offer. That was gonna be our metric of success. and so we wanted to be getting kind of these five star ratings from even those candidates that that didn't go through. so I was fortunate to be able to, to meet the, the leadership team at Paradox. we were able to kind of co-create together, as you know, some of our clients that are on this call have been able to do with us super configurable solution that we'll get into heavily. it's very mobile first conversational ai and I'll kind of dig into that. But think of it as just like if you didn't have to download apps and technology and you could just text and answer questions via text and schedule via text and accept your job offer via text all on your mobile device, what would that feel like?

(00:17:12):

How much lighter would that be versus passwords and logins and app downloads. so we really tried to simplify that, that process and saw a lot of just like big huge wins from a result standpoint. So you know, for any of you that are kind of on this path of transformation you know, this is a, a great metric. Again, this is the hourly hourly group. and, but you know, we were going from three days to three minutes from an application to scheduling our applications, were probably taking 20 minutes. And then it was taking us roughly three days to that ping pong back and forth to schedule since we were qualifying as soon as someone, someone applied and then scheduling them. And the way to think about that was by the time they went through the drive through, they should be able to do a quick QR code or text number be able to get you know, answer the questions that got them screened and they have an interview time set up before they even grab their food.

(00:18:06):

I mean, that was a game game-changer for us. And again, it, it kept people from applying to 12 different jobs cuz they were excited about coming to our interview. we doubled applications with a 99% candidate satisfaction score. Again, that's across all candidates, not just those that got offers. improve time to hire from 14 days to less than two and return about four to five hours per restaurant manager. So just a lot of really interesting results. Again, back to this, we needed to solve a multi-billion dollar problem. We got to do that from our, our, our TA and HR chairs. and we've, we were able to actually do that before covid rolled out, which allowed for us to really be in strategic positioning to be able to, to help support the business even during a really tough time.

(00:18:53):

and what you're now seeing from the McDonald's team is really cool is because they've been able to do so much on the, the way we're they're hiring, they're now really focused on some of their talent branding initiatives, some of the retention initiatives because they've kind of moved on from do we have enough applicants? Do we have enough people interviewing? Do we have enough people getting hired? You know, now they're being able to kind of move into these areas of, of really retention branding, bringing in great, you know, benefits and rewards packages. so this, this kind of idea that this next gen candidate experience isn't just inserting our brands, it's really personalized in the hyper personalized way, eliminating this weighting, being super transparent being, you know, reducing or eliminating bias being fun. I'm sure it's all the content you all talk about consistently, but it was really neat to be able to see this you know, kind of come to life for us at, at McDonald's.

(00:19:49):

I'm just gonna do a really quick overview of, so what, you know, kind of what that solution was, and then we'll get, get into hopefully some of the questions that are, are being asked. And I wanted to be able to show you just some of this tech. so you can start to brainstorm on like, oh, how would you use it? what problems would that solve? Where is this clunky? again, this isn't for the purpose of this isn't to, to say, oh, you should use paradox. It's more to say, Hey, this is something that we're really inspired by as we're talking to recruiting teams. you know, these are some of the solutions that we've come up with. It's able, it allows for you to maybe compare what's out in the market to what you're using in ways for you to continue to innovate with your teams.

(00:20:28):

Our goal in, and this is the paradox, right? We're a tech company, but we really want you and your teams spending time with people, not technology. So where can we automate? Where can we give you an assistant to take all of that that work, you know, kind of off your plate? Some of that stuff that's, that's either boring or redundant so that you can be spending your time in these like high value situations as you kind of goes through. I mean, a big piece of as you interact with Olivia or you see paradox, I mean, so much of this is gonna feel lightweight and it's intended to do that. Let's meet client candidates where they are. they're on their phones in the high volume space. I mean, a lot of them actually don't even own, a lot of people don't even own computers.

(00:21:14):

So to be able to do this all via text or if it's global, to be able to do that through WeChat, like all these different ways to be able, or WhatsApp a lot of these different ways to be able to communicate using mobile devices. So to kind of think of this as like, hey, if we could have Siri or Alexa almost take on our hiring work, what would we have them do? How would we have them, have them help us? And that's really where we see Olivia being able to, you know, help our teams and, and start to transform how we work. And taking on a lot of that, that hiring. and, and just, we're so fortunate to be able to work with a, a ton of really amazing companies from some really innovative leaders out at Dollar General. Disney, Lowe's Unilever, Nestle Amazon so work with really large organizations doing a lot of hiring corporate teams that are in hyper growth mode and franchisees that may own two to three restaurants. So we kind of run the gamut of being able to support these teams. we're just really passionate about these really warm, personalized candidate experiences to help help hiring teams.

(00:22:31):

so I wanna, I'm gonna start with some of the automating and simplifying key steps. So what I would ask of you in the, the chat, so we can kind of be running through this, is where are the biggest frustration points or challenges, maybe where you're seeing drop off within your applicant flow or where they're feeling frustrated during your application? Love to hear those. as we go through. Hopefully I can cover a couple of the things that, that we're doing to approach it. for me, I always found major pains in scheduling and that initial apply process, feeling fairly redundant.

TBA Member (00:23:04):

Hey, Josh, are you looking for, are you looking for some, some, some participation from the audience? some things to throw out there or where, where there, where there are gaps?

Joshua Secrest (00:23:13):

Yes, please. Yeah, in the, in the chat. And then if you're able to summarize those for me.

TBA Member (00:23:18):

Yep. Scheduling and so much ghosting.

Joshua Secrest (00:23:21):

So much ghosting. That's good. so I think the scheduling piece, I'm gonna be able to, to show you here. I think it's, it's pretty neat. so first off would be what could a re-envisioned screening process look like? if you threw out forms, if you threw out passwords, really shouldn't it just be as, as simple as being able to text in the role you're applying for, you know, answering the key questions and being able to, to see if you are meeting the, the main qualifications. Even within this, obviously you're seeing this for more of like an hourly role, but being able to quickly update or upload your resume into this. So just really easy like lightweight screening, you get into scheduling then, and this can be simple if you need to really move fast, it might be a one to one scheduling if you're just scheduling with the recruiter, or it could even be complex scheduling.

(00:24:21):

So a lot of us have interview processes at a final round where someone has to maybe do a group interview or go through four different interviews so Olivia can actually take on all of that work so that there isn't all this back and forth. think of it as like almost Aly on steroids, right? Like being able to do really complex scheduling or really super hyper, hyper fast scheduling. So I'm glad that one came up. we're also able to do offers straight off the phone, you know, what you're seeing here. just a really quick use case of being able to do something that's more simplistic. So again, this might be more in a retail space or a hospitality space to be able to to send a quick message as well as even being able to do onboarding all kind of through this, this process.

(00:25:09):

To your point on ghosting, right? If you can create this seamless experience, they're not moving to different different platforms. You're not bouncing them around you're not asking them the same, you're not asking them to fill out their name 20 times, right? Like we've heard. then you're gonna have them stick throughout the process. The other piece is you're eliminating a lot of the waiting that's typically associated with this, where all that waiting either leads to frustration, momentum dying down, or competitors starting to swoop in to be able to like go after those, those folks. so the next piece that I'd love for you to, so this is another participation component. what is your frustration with current career sites? what makes a great career site and what makes a bad career site?

TBA Member (00:26:04):

Well, I'll speak up. What makes a bad career site is one size fits all approach or a not enough ways to offer up content in the ways that people want to consume it.

Joshua Secrest (00:26:18):

Ok, yeah. Yeah. I

TBA Member (00:26:23):

So another gotta, sorry, we got another, another response from the chat. Taylor. a shared ui ux makes a, makes a poor website experience.

Joshua Secrest (00:26:32):

Yeah, you can just be a clunker of a website, pretty poor navigation. you can't find your jobs easily that are relevant to you. It takes a lot of searching the content's there, but it's buried. so I think this is where this idea of I think you just said it well, right? This like, it was one size fits all, you know, and we were trying to cram all this information in there to be really in you know, inclusive so that anybody could come to your website and be able to find the information they needed. The problem is it's information overload and a lot of its most important information for somebody what might be their primary reason for choosing you ends up getting pretty buried. So how do you start to change that throughout the full process? How do you change that through a career site?

(00:27:17):

so this is kinda an interesting example. so we launched this is experience assistant. So think of this as sort of the next gen career site. this can be even either an overlay or a fully built website for you. And the idea is instead of making them go search, what if as they're chatting, you're getting to, like, you're serving up the content that's relevant for them. So for this example, we've got different different answers to questions from our associates and employees who are able to answer those questions. But if they have questions on benefits, why have them go and search through like a a benefits page, finding exactly what they they wanna find versus being able to serve this up to them. you can see that there's ways to be able to, to highlight some unique parts about your culture.

(00:28:03):

Enzo has a kickball team that they, they highlight. so lots of different ways to be able to have multimedia pulled up for them. So that might be a pdf that might be a, a video from your CEO that might be a document on tips and tricks for the interviewing process, but serve it up to them. And what you end up having is this really dynamic career site experience that's personalized for every single individual. Everyone's gonna have a different experience as they go to your website so that they're really pulling up the things that are most important to them. McDonald's has been one of the, the first companies to be able to launch this. and it's really just an amazing piece so you can see someone interacting with this, this new McDonald's site. and it starts to populate and have almost these like TikTok and Instagram moments too.

(00:28:53):

You can, you can like, or interact with some of this content. for this it's about being able to find some of the tuition reimbursement or accessibility. so just different ways to be able to bring these, these unique experiences to the forefront. As you can imagine, someone who's looking for a manager role at McDonald's is gonna have a different path than maybe someone who's just looking for a crew position, and they're gonna have a different path than the the director of marketing that's gonna come. but this makes everything super flexible so that each one of those people can end up having a really cool experience. the other piece is how are we thinking about being really inclusive? I think this is a, just a good example of making sure everybody feels welcome. So not only are they getting the content that they're most excited about, or most is most important to them, they can also speak in the language that's most important that they're most comfortable in.

(00:29:48):

And then on the back end, our managers have it translated back to them so that they can then see it in English or whatever the language would be. so this is an example of being able to see that in Spanish or if you're in a country where you'd be hiring a Ukrainian population being able to do that or Arabic. so I think this just keeps going to tech is getting more interesting, more sophisticated, but it's not heavy. All they have to ask is, Hey, do you speak this language? And now all of a sudden I can do my full application within that language. The one I feel most comfortable with one of our clients, US Express who's really a, a leader in innovation and in recruiting within trucking. there was just an amazing article even in Wall Street Journal where they talk about how inclusive this has been, even post the higher process, you know, the, the thought and care that that organization did, and this is particularly for their Hispanic population to be able to allow for, you know, this during the app apply process, was it like a game changer for that population?

(00:30:51):

So I just, I love that warmth. Yeah, go.

TBA Member (00:30:53):

Ahead. Hey Josh, I'm curious. So as I think about this, as someone who's worked in like multiple global environments, how is this a, is this, is this something that you turn on and off? Is this populated answers that have to get translated ahead of time? How does that process work?

Joshua Secrest (00:31:11):

Yeah, so there are a couple different pieces that for the candidate experience, Olivia speaks over a hundred different languages. And so that piece is automatically translating. And so what you're gonna learn though is what are some of the, the key questions, right? That your population's gonna have. So if you don't have an answer to one of those, then you're able to, you know, upload that, that content to it. And so Olivia's gonna get smarter and smarter as we go in partnership with the team. Now, on the back end, one of the decisions you're gonna need to make is, hey, if we have a global team, what languages do those global teams speak on the back end? And that'd be something that our team would help configure.

TBA Member (00:31:50):

Okay. Cause that's the part, the part with languages, right? Is how do you set yourself up for success and how do you let it run itself? Cause normally that's the delay is, okay, we know what we want to say, now we need to get it translated, and then once we got it translated, then we need to get it vetted because you can't use Google Translate to do all these things. So it's understanding the colloquial terminology and all those things. So I was just curious. I could just see the project management headaches forming in my imagination.

Joshua Secrest (00:32:19):

Well, and that's, that's a big piece here on like how how AI is getting better and smarter. And, and to your point though too, where, where do you use it and how do you use it? especially within the language piece, if this is something where it's some of the basic screening questions you know, that's something that's been easier to roll out some of the backend is making sure that like we have all the detail language components for the teams that that you'd need.

TBA Member (00:32:47):

Okay, cool.

Joshua Secrest (00:32:49):

this is another one where I, I got just really fascinated by this idea of reciprocity within the candidate experience process, right? Like, what are we, what are we giving back to someone who's spending 10 minutes or three hours going through our interview process and how are we getting information through that? And so we acquired an organization trade. I it's the world's fastest assessment kind of follows. Think of it as like modern dating technology, right? Like swipe left, swipe right, or this is it for, for this it's me, it's not me. You can go through a pretty almost two minute quick assessment. we're finding that it's reducing turnover and increasing retention and then also gives you a full personality report. So I just like this as an example of, you know, what's something that if your process is fast and clean and easy are you able to have something like a Tradify as a part of it that's gonna give you that much more information but also give something back to the, the candidate.

(00:33:54):

So I, I love this. This is a full report that they end up getting. so think of someone applying to a Burger King now, being able to get this like personality guide that also has tips and tricks for them for the interview and ways for them to you know, get some feedback that they probably weren't getting before by just getting that. so one, we see people fill this out at a 96% rate, you don't have drop off. And then we're actually seeing that people are showing up for interviews at a higher frequency having taken this versus not having taken this because they feel invested in within the process. So I just thought that's a, a cool thing is you're kind of thinking about, hey, what, what do we put into our process? and where can we give back? And what kind of coaching is gonna be there?

(00:34:38):

and then I think so many of us have started to inject this, but I think where are, where are the pressure points or pain points and what are candidates saying about us and how are they feeling throughout the process? So just super quick, easy ways to survey, get a pulse check. you know, if you don't already have this in your, your process definitely get this in. But what we've seen is being able to do this in a mobile way is gonna get and, and, and be a conversation you're gonna get way higher response rates than sending emails into a black hole.

(00:35:14):

some other just kind of neat ideas here are, you know, as you're going through some of these, like the q and a with candidates, how are you injecting your brand? And so again, conversation and, and where this conversational AI is going is it's making it really easy. Maybe after the apply process, think about this before the interview or before a final round interview to be able to have these conversations where you're, you're giving some more information super easily. Not a big clunky email, but kind of a seamless, hey, check out this video. I really love, like, hey, here's some interview tips. here's something about, you know, the story of our brand. Hey, we talked about you know, this seemed to be something that was interesting to you be able to, to send that. we're just seeing that it's super bite sized digestible and, and keeps people really engaged throughout it. But I mean, what a cool thing for our profession to be able to have these little personalized moments that can kind of be, choose your own adventure, right? You've injected some of these different ways to insert your brand and your culture. so just kinda like, like the configurability of this, and this doesn't take someone who's really knowledgeable and and tech to, to be able to do this is recruiting leaders, recruiting managers that are able to do all this.

(00:36:32):

So I'll do just a quick pause to see, this is one, unlike dress code, you can obviously see you can do movies or PDFs. Okay. And so then we can go into brand, but I'll, I'll give a quick pause. Is there any questions that we wanted to go through on personalized experiences?

TBA Member (00:36:53):

I'm curious, are there any ways in which clients have used this that surprised y'all?

Joshua Secrest (00:37:00):

Hmm. the, the piece that I think we're just so excited by is the desire to have employee made and created content. I think we're just like all kind of going to this place where overproduced one, it's, it's not sustainable. And two, like I think people just wanna hear directly from our employees and pretty unscripted ways. so I think we've just been really inspired by that that desire. I think the other piece is, and you'll see a little bit of this, but like adding some fun back into the process. I think we've always wanted to do that, right? But it's like sometimes if you have a long, long process inserting a movie or inserting quis here and there, you know, just make the process longer. And so you get into this place where you're stripping things down.

(00:37:56):

I think this era of being able to move really fast and seamlessly is now allowing for us to put these like, smile factor moments in. So maybe the example of this is like, I mean, it sounds silly, but like people are building and having a ton of fun with it, like their own gifts to be able to put and insert within the process of their employees. And it's a way for them to show fun and diversity and welcoming. and, and, and just a little bit of that attitude within that I think is, is really unique. So I, I thought that's both of those were warming because obviously we're partnered with some pretty large large clients that are, are starting to, to do this. And I think it, it's not just this heavily produced stuff, it's, it's whimsical moments, it's fun moments, it's smile factor, it's a lot around inclusivity. and it's a lot about just like showing personality that I think we've just been really proud of.

TBA Member (00:38:53):

Yep. I get it. That's kind of what I was looking for, cuz I'd say it's those, those little moments that kind of surprise you. Those are the things that inspire you to think differently about your whole process.

Joshua Secrest (00:39:02):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and we'll go into this, a little bit of this then at like, at scale, you know, this is you know, what if, what would you do if you could throw you know gifts or images or small little videos into a conversational experience? Like what's the smile factor, the wink factor that you'd have that, that exemplifies your brand. so just some like, just cool little cool little moments. you know, what videos would you end up adding that makes that like really dynamic for you and at what stage is it actually most relevant? we've, because we have this conversational experience, and, and you'll notice that I've, I've never called Olivia a chatbot. I think we're well past what a chatbot was three or four years ago. Again, kind of this, this thing where you're kind of playing ping pong back and forth, and if you don't answer the right way, it goes off the table.

(00:40:00):

you know, this is a, a smart, warm assistant that's being able to take someone all the way through the hiring process. And so we're seeing a lot of our brands be able to, and a lot of our clients kind of just have a ton of fun with, you know, what's that personality? so not just like, hey, what's what's, what's the icon that's showing up in the chat, but what's, what's the personality? how do we wanna represent ourselves? How do we wanna represent ourselves regionally that might be different? you know, how we represent ourselves in one country might be different than another country. you know, how can we have some fun brand tie-ins and, and play with that so you can just kinda see everybody's kind of customizing and, and having some, some fun with this. but I think ways to be able to tie your brand in.

(00:40:43):

And so I just like how configurable this is. Again, this isn't heavy configuration. This is, this is pretty simple, lightweight stuff that you're able to do to inject you into your brand. And then I think we're just really proud of where people are are taking this in terms of like, it's, it's not just this like standard pat response, there's character that's put in so that the conversation is going down. Yes, you're getting the pertinent information, but you're also speaking in the way that your brand speaks and you're asking questions in that way. I mean, I love this Wendy's example of you know, just really having some kind of fun clips within the experience. if you haven't been on Hot Topics career site, I think they have a ton of fun with it from asking about like musical preferences within the interview process.

(00:41:33):

So just really I think ways that make people pay attention through the candidate experience, get to know you get to see, they get to see you having some fun at de stresses what can be otherwise a stressful process. And I think this is relevant across even senior executives to, you know, hourly workforce, to be able to have information that's personalized that's at their fingertips, that has some fun and, and has some personality to it. and, and this, this idea of kind of this conversational layer or kind of conversational seamless experience has been delivering that in, in some really unique ways.

TBA Member (00:42:20):

Now question how much, how much in here is done by how much in here is done by the individual clients and where does Paradox step in or provide some ideas or guidance?

Joshua Secrest (00:42:35):

Yeah, it's a partnership. I mean, a lot of the creative content is the, the clients themselves. I mean, we get to work with some of the best talent branders out there and they keep kind of pushing the envelope of what we can do and where they want their voice to be and who they want their you know, this avatar or personality to be. but we're always there and, and, and, and happy to help whether that's you know, securing some of the images or being able to, you know, give some guidance on best practices on that.

TBA Member (00:43:08):

Cool. Thank you for sharing. Jenny Angus is also in the, in the chat sharing Hi Jenny, about how they're they, they kept theirs named Olivia, but almost named her Reggie Reggie for Regis, I guess. but, but yeah, that's just understanding how, what works, right? And if y'all have data around what happens when you personalize it and what does that do with how people relate to this personality?

Joshua Secrest (00:43:36):

Yeah, I, I think the, the the data would say if you the engagements stay the same between like an Olivia versus like just a specific like we don't have data that would say going cartoon versus a human image is different or better or worse. So that's one where i, I kind of get a lot of confidence from that data because then it allows for you to really do what your brand would want more personality, the better. as you can imagine what's what's great is we kind of run our numbers is, you know, the number of emojis that candidates send back right. We're getting millions of smiley faces and thumbs up and like, when's the last time you've kind of like seen that in a candidate experience? And so we even encourage that that type of language from the, the employer side as well.

(00:44:30):

Well so we're I'd say the big tips are keep it short right? Don't, don't overdo it with content, especially at that first initial stage. So especially in like an hourly hiring situation, keep it to five or seven initial screening questions after you have someone scheduled. Then start to inject some of these branding components. don't be afraid to have fun. include emojis, include the language that's happening, tell a joke you know, give some personality because it ends up like, again, it just de-stresses and it keeps it a lot stickier. and then I think just the, the piece of where you're able to add some of this content that's high value. So whether it's assessments or prepping for the interview or reasons to be excited about accepting a role at Regis. I think all of those are really pertinent and it's just, it's about mapping it and kind of doing some ab testing at, you know, what's the right point where people are reading it and digesting it and, and how's that contributing to your offer acceptance rate?

TBA Member (00:45:35):

Yeah, I think one of the, one of the cool things that I learned from part of the information that y'all shared at Summit was all the times that candidates have thanked Olivia. So like the versions of thank you. So you think about all the thanks that we get in our recruiting process, right? Sometimes it feels pretty thankless. but to, but to, to understand that this way of interacting and engaging with candidates is generating literally millions of thank yous and emojis and all of those things for, for the process. That was one of the coolest things that I, that I took away.

Joshua Secrest (00:46:14):

Yeah, there's, there's a warmth that seems to be re reciprocated back from the, the candidates and, and I think it's, it's it's not quite what you'd think when you'd say, oh, well someone's talking with, with, you know, something that's, that's not human, that's, that's ai. And so I think being able to see that, and I think people getting lost in it and feeling well taken care of is <laugh> such a, such a wonderful, wonderful sign. And I think we're continuing to, to build into the product to be able to continue to deliver even more and more of those moments and experiences.

TBA Member (00:46:48):

I'm sorry, I'm laughing because Deb A. is, is putting something in there. So Deb that's, and she says, she says our Lucy gets told she is pretty and she is asked if she is single which is, which leads to a whole other list of HR questions.

Joshua Secrest (00:47:09):

Well, we've got a, we've got an awesome, awesome crowd on here with I mean Jenny is obviously innovating a ton and, and, and really pushing kind of where we can take conversational AI out at Regis and just has had a ton of success you know getting those into those salons. And then the partnership with, with Lowe's and, and Deb, I mean like, holy smokes. I mean, they've got so many cool ideas with where this can go and how this can make things really, really easy.

Deb Andrychuk (00:47:40):

Hey Josh.

Joshua Secrest (00:47:41):

Hi Deb,

Deb Andrychuk (00:47:42):

How are you?

Joshua Secrest (00:47:43):

I'm so good. Good to see you.

Deb Andrychuk (00:47:45):

Good to see you too. We are, we're really loving it. you know, now that we've rolled Lucy, so for everyone on the call, we named our Olivia Lucy after Lucius Lowes and she has her own personality and she's just a stock photo, but we, you know, we put a vest on her and she really just kind of looks like the girl next door. And so she gets hit on a lot. we, we ask her all kinds of really fun questions like, like what kind of, I think we asked her what kind of food she liked and she told us like bananas and stuff like that. It was hysterical. But I think what's really cool about her is that she, she really does behave like a human being and when she's g when she's being hit on, she just gently guides the person right back to, okay, now let's talk about what position you're interested at Lowe's. And I'm like, wow, that's awesome. I mean, it's just like, you know what we would have to do in real life, right? Unfortunately, I love that. But yeah, it's it's, it's for the only, there she is. She's so cute.

Joshua Secrest (00:48:53):

Hey, you all did a great job with her. Yeah,

Deb Andrychuk (00:48:56):

That's a great, you said that she's my daughter

Joshua Secrest (00:48:59):

<laugh>, I like that piece on, on, we were talking about intent, right? Like how, how smart now this technology is starting to be where it's even picking up on something like that and then having the, the tact and the language to be able to, to steer back I think is pretty sophisticated.

Deb Andrychuk (00:49:19):

Yeah, it's amazing. It really is. It's it's been a game changer for us and I mean, you know, the stats from, you know, we were, it was taking us weeks to get folks in for interview and I mean, what, what was taking 14 days, you know, now takes us, you know, less than 15 minutes in some cases less than a couple of minutes. So it's, it's pretty impressive. And you know, now that, now that we've rolled it out, we're just really focused on change management because, you know, it is a huge shift for the field. and you know, just making sure you're open up those calendars and, you know, make sure you're doing all the things you're supposed to do. So it's kind of fun. It's taken all the heat off of me this year, so I owe you a case of wine

Joshua Secrest (00:50:03):

<laugh>. We'll do that together. That's great. Are there any other questions or any other comments that we can, we can get from the crowded, we've got a lot of like super users here on the, the call too. Hey.

TBA Member (00:50:17):

Yeah, I kinda even threw it out there because we, I thought it would be good for it to have questions for you potentially, but also questions for Deb or Jenny being, you know, being gracious with their time just to say, Hey, you know, how is, how has this been rolled out? I will, I will also admit that there are, there, the, the implementation is frustrating for some because there are a lot of things that they have to define that they're not used to defining. so I know somebody else is going through the process. Deb.

Jenny Cotie Kangas (00:50:44):

Yeah, I was gonna say Brian, I can jump in on that one too cuz most recently okay, and Josh, sorry, this is Jenny Cody Kaga. we recently took Olivia that we had like co-developed with Paradox for Corp or for our franchisees. and we reconfigured her for corporate, so to replace our legacy isam system. And so that like journey and that co-creation part from like a change management, I know Josh Doesn the call it, like, there was a couple times where I called her, he'd be like, oh my gosh, it's so much harder. I thought it was gonna be easier. I only have seven people instead of like 6,000 franchisees to like support. Like I, but the change management piece of that, of like asking these questions and really looking at that looking at the journey and figuring out like, okay, you're the Lego like master builder right now.

(00:51:33):

You get to build whatever you want. And most of us aren't used to having to do that or being able to do that. And so the bridge of like, I guess enabling the human center design part was a lot heavier than I thought it was gonna be for my own internal company. But like now we've got, you know, Olivia's working on the corporate side and we're seeing incredible success too. So it's, I think one of the amazing things that Paradox does with their technology is like, it's important to note, I don't know how Deb's Deb's side has it, but for us we have 700 different instances of Olivia. So this is Lego blocks of technology, just how will and Brian's eyes, eyes kind of perk up. Because what we learned in the discovery process is one size fits all. Tech didn't work for our franchisees.

(00:52:21):

And so how did we overcome that? We partnered with Paradox and we built up really easy to understand like Legos or dulo and then taught the franchisees how to put it together. And so now we've got 700 plus different instances of this, like across all these different brands and our turnaround time too, of like bringing this to life, probably thinking like in your head, like how long would that take to build mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we rock two day turnaround time with like a custom instances of the technology. And so it's all come from like asking that what if I know it's, it's insane. It totally checks your design.

TBA Member (00:52:52):

I'm, I'm over here doing the math in my head, so just 1400 days. Got it.

Jenny Cotie Kangas (00:52:55):

Yeah. Well, no, yeah, that's, that's, yeah. No, we gosh, Josh, when did we go live with all of our franchisees? Do you remember? No, I don't even have the, gosh, I think it was last week, three months ago. Four. Yeah. And we, like Brian, we don't mandate this, right? Like we have to, it's franchise, so they have to opt in, they have to sign a contract for it, even though we pay for it at Regis. And we got, I think it was like 80% of our franchisees are on right now. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in what, less than six months I think Josh. Yeah. Yeah. And so like that change management aspect is like, you don't see numbers like that. And that's what McDonald's had too, is like this crazy adoption. And so I think that proves just how needed and like, important this technology is, is like, there aren't, like, I mean, and that's one of the great things of why our candidates like it. Candidates aren't, their needs aren't one size fits all, right? So like, the journeys that we have for these roles can't be either. And so it's a really different way of looking at this, but paradox has made it super, super freaking easy to become that co-creator and like to build it yourself. So I'll stop model email

TBA Member (00:54:06):

<laugh>. So I have a question. No, it's, it's great. But I have a question. So one of the first thoughts that I had as we were going through this, cause I was looking at, I was looking at the, this, this lovely swath of logos, right? And I was like, okay, so high volume and then, and then certain level of skillsets. And, and so for me, the flip side of that is how do you handle what's your most complex, what's your highest level skill set? How, where have you found the sweet spot? Okay, does this apply for everybody or we've noticed that at a certain level, you know, it starts to break down because expectations don't line up. What, and that's open for, for anybody, right? Who's got experience with, yeah. Olivia, I'm curious to know.

Joshua Secrest (00:54:48):

Yeah. It, it really follows kind of two different use cases. So in hourly and take maybe a distribution center. cause I think they're, they're really kind of pushing boundaries here as they're competing with like the Amazon's or Amazon's even using Olivia. but they're automating a hundred percent of the process utilizing auto like automation and conversational ai. So I mean, that's, that's one side of the extreme, right? You're getting screened you're not even, you're bypassing the schedule. You're getting screened and essentially they're qualifying you, giving you an offer, getting you set up for your background checks and getting you like scheduled essentially for your first day at work. So that's one, one end of the spectrum. You, you dial that back probably one notch for retail and restaurants. So they're automating about 90 to 95%. The 5% or 10% that they're not doing is typically they want to meet the person that one time before extending the offer.

(00:55:42):

So it's that face to face interview. Okay, so now go into like a corporate space and you're probably gonna do about 60, 50 to 60% of the automation. So the automation that's gonna happen there, the core part of it is that scheduling, I think we're seeing that being one of like the, the the biggest pieces that's gonna list lift four to five hours off of your recruiters is that like back and forth, either one to one scheduling or the complex interview scheduling for, for your roles. They're then also doing anything that's like candidate q and a being able to send this like candidate messaging. they're doing some, some some screening as a part of it, but you still obviously have the recruiter in that role. And it's all about how do you take the administrative tasks off so that recruiter can be spending time getting that candidate excited about the role focused on the interviews, getting more interviews within their day ushering them through sort of a, a more complex offering offer experience.

(00:56:41):

so it's maybe just a, a different way of how you're using it, 100% automated or almost all automated. And the other is like, and this is a, a Jenny Cody Kaus term kind of your Ironman suit for your recruiters. And that's been particularly fun and interesting in this world where some of the most sought after people in re in recruiting are recruiters, right? and, and we've kind of seen just how many jobs there are. And so one way about this is, you know, if you're a recruiter, would you rather join a company that's gonna give you almost your own personal assistant that gets all this like recruiting work done for you? That seems pretty appealing. The other piece from the the hiring side, from the the company side you know, what a great way to be able to make your team that much more efficient, to be able to like see more candidates by adding, adding someone that's adding an assistant for each of your recruiters to, to do some of that automation. so it's been, it has been really cool to be able to see how corporate and hard to fill roles even at, at executive levels are leveraging this. and it's, it's creating kind of more elegant experiences and this like Ironman suit for recruiters

TBA Member (00:57:52):

Is there, so last question before we close out cuz we're at time, but when you, is there, is there a rip cord for people who are just like, I just gotta talk to a human? like and how does that work?

Joshua Secrest (00:58:05):

Yeah, so you'd still have access to essentially your, your backend system. and so different companies will have different ways of being able to, to get in contact with those people. So one might be alerted straight away and others might come in then the next day and the, there's gonna be a follow up kind of conversation that happens.

Deb Andrychuk (00:58:28):

Yeah, I was gonna say, I think it's funny that we have had people who have missed their interviews and so then they, instead of reaching out to the hiring manager that they were supposed to meet with, they've actually reached out to Lucy, oh my god, Lucy, I missed my interview, what do I do? So hilarious.

Joshua Secrest (00:58:49):

I love that.

Jenny Cotie Kangas (00:58:50):

I think

Deb Andrychuk (00:58:51):

To choose Israel,

Jenny Cotie Kangas (00:58:52):

Yeah, build that connection with the candidate is so incredibly important. And I think Josh hit on this a little bit earlier, but we're seeing psychological safety being a lot, like a lot higher with an ai. And so what does that mean? If I've got psychological safety and I'm asking the sharp questions in order to get feedback, right, I'm probably gonna get actual feedback on how could, how what works, what doesn't, what could we change? Because it's those people who say no, especially in the corporate world, right? Yep. Why did they say no? Like how could we sharpen this? How can we get it right? The way that you sharpen your process is by asking how we got it wrong. And so like being able to build that into your journey too, and like taking that feedback and that doesn't, I, I truly believe it Josh shows is like, I don't think that's just for talent acquisition either.

(00:59:41):

I think it's like a, I think Olivia's a phenomenal listening agent for figuring out like, do we have our talent brand? Right? Right. Because talent brand is ultimately a mirror of our people. And if we don't have that authentically built out, right? Like how do we, how do we know how we check that? But also how do you get the story Olivia can help harness the story and then be able to bring it to the top. So it's that real kind of view versus the performative one that's on a wall. So it's it's pretty incredible.

Audience Member (01:00:09):

And at a conversational level too. I mean, you, you can't, you can't get your EVP messaging and employer brand to be that consistent even with human recruiters, right? though they're great at that connection, you know, building that relationship, right? But at that onsite, at the beginning of the hiring process where it really matters for your EVP and your employer brand to shine through this is a very consistent, yet still conversational way to, to get it out there and get them interacting with your, your brand voice. It's really cool.

TBA Member (01:00:47):

I'm also now going down the route of thinking about psychological safety and how you ask those questions internally and thinking about not just retention, although that's the one of the biggest drivers, but also the building and activation of your, your employer or talent brand. So how you could leverage it internally so you can point this solution, this intelligence at any group of people, right? So obviously when they're coming in, you know, what their motivation is for responding and for going through the process. Cause they want the job, but also for the people who have the job, they want to, they want to be a part of the direction that the company's moving and how the story's told and all those things. So I'm already over here going, how could, how could I apply Olivia? How could I go send Olivia to cut some of my work out? but that's, that's me, that's my, I I see a lot of opportunity there. Josh, thank you so much for sharing really appreciate all the, all the insights. Deb, Jenny, thank you so much for joining and sharing some

Audience Member (01:01:47):

Thanks, Kevin, Jenny,

TBA Member (01:01:47):

Your parts of the story because if we, we don't have that flip side and understand, it's like, what is it gonna mean? Oh, it's, it's a, it's a chat bot, right? So sorry I used the C word. Yes. It's like, it's something that people assume because they don't understand and they haven't seen it rolled out and they don't, haven't heard about the process. So invaluable experience. Rachel, thank you for pulling everything together, Josh, thank you for sharing. Have a great rest of your day and we'll see everybody in the community.

Audience Member (01:02:13):

Awesome. Thanks all.

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