00:00 - Mark Gibson: Out of all the restaurants, Taco Bell has got to be my favorite. The Grilled Cheese Burrito, add jalapeños, every time. 00:08 - Sean MacMillan: That's the one. Alright. I gotta go with white fish. I gotta go with grilled white fish, trying to keep it healthy on the menu there. Exact opposite, that's alright! 00:23 - Mark: I'm Mark Gibson, I lead HR Tech for Flynn Group. We operate a lot of franchises, restaurants—we're at close to 3,000 now. Also some Planet Fitness. Mostly in the US, but also in Australia and New Zealand. 00:40 - Sean: I'm Sean MacMillan, VP of HR for Captain D's. We have over 500 restaurants, mostly in the Southeast. 00:46 - Mark: So for us, the majority of our hiring is frontline in the stores, up through the GM level. However, we also do have about 500 or 600 corporate-level employees as well. Finding the ability to recruit for both of those is always an interesting challenge for us. But as far as the frontline, that's been our biggest piece. Needing to save the GMs as much time as possible has been our biggest challenge that we've finally kind of closed that gap and solved for. 01:20 - Sean: Same for us. We're hiring for three main roles: Guest Specialists (crew members), hourly managers (shift leaders), and General Managers. A lot of the time we look for internal development for those GM roles, so we're looking to bolster that up. 01:40 - Mark: Are you having success with that?01:42 - Sean: We're working on it. It's a focus for us... once we can have the feeder roles to the GM be from in those stores, it's huge for us. It's multi-faceted because you have to find the right people, then find the development, and fine-tune that development for what you're looking for. 02:08 - Mark: Automating everything that we can on the front end—bringing in candidates and getting them all the way through the interview phase into the offer really without needing any human touch has been massive for us. We want our operators, from the GM level and above, to be actual operators. Looking at their P&L, seeing how their store is performing. Being able to take away a big chunk of their time—which was just trying to get candidates, figure out in their crazy schedule when they're going to interview anybody—has been the biggest change for us that we've solved for. 02:48 - Sean: I think the automation for us... we added in some assessment pieces. I think that did two things for the GM. Because they do a dual role—they have to run the restaurant with that skill set, and then we're asking them to have an HR mindset and be spotting talent. As much as we can take off their plate with automation, and assessment results with objective measures, helped us a bit. It allowed them a little bit of development on what to look for outside of their traditional interview questions. 03:41 - Mark: Do you think the quality of hires has gone up since implementing those assessments? 03:45 - Sean: I do. Especially for management roles... Of course, turnover has reduced as a result of that, but also we've seen a faster development speed for those folks we've identified for the next step. 04:10 - Mark: The assessment piece is something we've toyed around with. What level do we have that at? I think for the most part, the Assistant Manager level and above is where we've seen the value there. But I agree, the quality of hire you're able to get without having to make the GMs be experts at talent acquisition is great. 04:36 - Sean: There will always be pieces of this that are human and an art to hiring the right person. But using the assessment to create consistency is leading the way in getting higher quality hires. 04:58 - Mark: The other piece we are really focusing on now is... now we're getting more candidates, faster hires. There's still a missing piece for us: now they've started, and there's still a turnover issue quickly. We're finding out maybe the job wasn't presented exactly the way it is in reality, or the hours aren't what they thought. The next piece is how do we make sure if there's a disconnect in their first week of work, how do we fix that fast enough to not lose them right away? 05:56 - Sean: Same for us. Having that screening process where you can put in a quick application to say "This is what I'm looking for, this is what the company wants." It gave the candidate an opportunity to say, "Okay, is this right for me too?" You can put it right in there. It helps narrow down what you're looking for... so it looks like the brochure when you get in there. 06:38 - Mark: We focus on... we've saved the GMs thousands of hours in administrative tasks. With that, we have focused on their development, because even at the GM level, that's typically someone's first management role. We focus on building their competencies there. We don't have to worry about retention as much at the hourly level because stability at the GM level—having that be a high performer—trickles down the whole way. 07:23 - Sean: We found that the time that automation saves them not only helps them prep for that interview time... but they have a little more time for that onboarding process. Let's get you acclimated here. Welcome to the team, let's meet some people. The leadership component starts there by saving them some time on the admin pieces. 08:30 - Mark: Yeah, they get to focus on the cultural fit. 08:34 - Sean: Yeah. "This is what the team looks like here, and if you want to be successful and like us as much as we like you already, this is what it's going to be like." 08:54 - Mark: For me—and I don't want this to be a scary thought—but I think AI has gotten to a point where it can legitimately do some things better than we can do. Even when you look at unconscious bias, there are ways now with AI that will just look at the data and pull out a completely unbiased view of what that candidate looks like. For us, one of the things we struggle with with a multi-brand is most people working at a Taco Bell have no idea they work for Flynn. The next phase I see helping us is having an assistant that's looking for that person at Taco Bell who isn't getting enough hours, and can match them with another Flynn brand where we have an opening. Now they start to be ingrained in the entire ecosystem. That leads them down the road of the Flynn culture. 10:24 - Sean: You've been in the industry for a while and have seen these watershed moments with HR tech and AI. What do you think is different right now? 10:41 - Mark: I think this time it's a little different because it touches everybody in the TA process. Whereas some of the things we did in the past—upgrading sites or TA strategies—AI has the opportunity to change all of that for everybody on a continual basis. We're going to have to continue to innovate and see what it looks like six months from now when the business changes. We have that ability to do that faster than before. We have the tools to keep on top of it.11:30 - Sean: From my perspective, what's different about AI now is it's a general acceptance that this is reality and it's not an option. It's where the world is going, and you must hop on the bus. This is the way we do it now. The days of "see if it works or not" are over when it comes to AI. This is working. You have to utilize that because you will be left out quicker than you could ever be left out before. Your field has to adapt, everybody in the process has to adapt. 12:56 - Mark: What is the biggest opportunity you see in the Talent Acquisition space? 13:07 - Sean: The speed at which we can surface information to leaders that they would never be able to do on their own. We can surface things like turnover data... so many times a manager doesn't even know there's an issue with an employee until it's way too late. They can't focus on fixing the problems. If we can surface this information so fast because there is an agent getting survey data and conducting that analysis for you—the GM can take the time to actually have the personal touchpoint with that employee before they are out the door. There's nothing we can do as humans to get faster than what AI can do in that space. 14:27 - Mark: I think not just in the TA industry, but in all industries, it's moving so fast. What gets me nervous is I want to make sure we have the fundamentals right. AI is only as good as what you feed into it. If you don't have your job analysis right, or you don't have what you're looking for to feed into that process... that adoption just to rush to do something faster without fundamentally having what you're looking for to have it serve you—I worry that those fundamentals have to be in place first for us to really maximize what AI can give you. 15:20 - Mark: The smartest thing I hear candidates ask me are all around culture fit. We are finally getting away from judging everything based on a resume, a piece of paper, or what we see on a company profile website. I love that I'm getting more from candidates now about if that culture fit is really there. That's the biggest green flag for me. 15:58 - Sean: I love it when I know somebody is going to be a good cultural fit. I love it when we get feedback during the interview. If somebody is bold enough to say that something should have been better, or they don't understand, or we could do better at something. One time a candidate told me I was using too many big words and needed to make it more understandable. I thought, you know what, I'm not going to have to guess what this person is thinking, and they won't have to guess what we're thinking. I knew they'd be a cultural fit at that point.16:34 - Mark: Thanks Sean. 16:35 - Sean: Yeah man, pleasure.