hireEZ’s Shannon Pritchett: Recruiting has become more competitive than ever

We take it back to May 2022 as UNLEASH editor Jon Kennard talks to hireEZ’s Shannon Pritchett about the ever-competitive nature of recruitment and how AI is playing an increasingly larger role. This interview was recorded at UNLEASH America 2022, in fabulous Las Vegas.  We join the conversation as Shannon sets the scene…

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Shannon Pritchett: A lot of the landscape that we find ourselves in now today [is] that recruiting has become more competitive than ever. So for a lot of our clients, the pain point we solve is outbound recruiting.

So we’d like to make it easier for our clients to be able to find identify talent, and not just any talent, good quality talent that is going to retain, stay in an organization and really drive change. And so that’s what our product does. And we’re glad that we can come here and solve that problem and get the word out that you can make outbound recruiting easy.

Jon Kennard: We see so many companies who’ve got an AI component to what they do. Do you think that reskilling is the other side of that coin, and they need to be put together in your people strategy, because one affects the other. So much, and in so many ways.

SP: Absolutely. I think heads of TA (talent acquisition), when we talk to them, that’s what they want to see AI used for. It’s the unknown, right? AI has been a proven concept, it helps streamline time, make teams more efficient, right?

But when it comes to hiring, how do you know that you’re bringing on the right person at the right job at the right time? That’s when AI can be really beneficial, right? For example, let’s say you’re 23 years old, you’re just a recent graduate, and you probably really don’t know what you want to do yet. Right? And your career might take a couple of different paths, right? That’s very common. So how do employers know that they’re bringing that person in, it’s gonna be the right person with that right job, that’s really gonna grow?

I think that’s what heads of TA are looking for really to have AI do is to say, hey, not only do I want the right person, but what’s the right person that’s going to stay, is going to drive change, is really going to make an impact into the organization.

I haven’t seen a company that can successfully do that. Yet. There are a lot of great companies that are here that are very close to solving that. And I think we’re about two, three years away from it, which is really going to help with retention, really going to help the economy, and I’m just so glad that AI is finally embraced and celebrated. Compliance is there. And now it’s something that we all can’t really, unfortunately live without.

JK: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a good thing. And like you say, there’s more compliance, more regulation, a better understanding, the whole industry is diversified. Apart from what you’re seeing, possibly in two, three years time, you’re solving these big talent problems, what are the other emerging trends that you think we’re going to see maybe based on conversations you’ve had here, or other conversations that hireEZ have had recently? What other emerging trends are you seeing in the space?

SP: Definitely internal mobility, right, so you have the great people now, how are you going to retain them? How are they going to move up within the organization? Also, I think a lot of difficulty that recruiting has had over the years has been that we are still focused on concepts that launched in the last recession, 2008. That’s when inbound was heavy, right? With job boards and the emergence of that came from very powerful, well known tools that everyone uses, like LinkedIn, Indeed, etc.

If you look at everyone’s toolbox today, what they’re using to find talent, identify talent, it’s LinkedIn and Indeed, and those tools haven’t really evolved in the past 15 years, yet that’s still the go-to product for many recruiters. And so that’s why our product is a little bit different is that we’re not inbound, we focus on outbound, we give the control, we give the proactiveness, we give the efficiency back to the recruiter.

The problem that I’m seeing is that it’s not just a mind shift of, okay, I need to be more proactive, I need to use better technology, it’s really with the post sale, how are TA teams going to structure and allow their teams to expand to use and adopt new technology? Are they going to give them the time to be able to experiment a little bit more?

Anytime you do outbound recruiting, and you take control of the search, it’s gonna take a little bit longer than typically inbound, but you’re gonna get better people. So it’s like you take one step back, take a giant leap forward. And that’s what we’re not seeing TA teams embrace right now is they’re so quick to purchase purchase purchase, but then they don’t know what to do after they’ve made so many good decisions in purchasing.

And so I think that will come with time as well. I’ve seen this problem happen back in 2008 with those tools launching; it takes everyone a while to break their habit and teach an old dog new tricks. But I think that’s one of the things that the TA team needs to look at [is] how does this fit into my tech stack? And then how are we going to adopt it, embrace it and really to drive ROI from that.

JK: I can’t leave you without talking about more explicitly the Great Resignation. It’s still quite a big issue, certainly in the US, and across the world. Are we seeing a way out of it? Can you predict the next step in terms of people maybe returning… ‘boomerang employees’, as we well know about? Those kinds of things? Where do you think it’s going?

SP: I don’t think boomerang is going to really happen. I’d be very surprised to see that happen. And what I mean by that [is] I think the pandemic reset a lot of people’s expectations, and they made the conscious decision to leave organizations that no longer match their values. So which maybe they did pre pandemic, so I don’t think you’ll see that…I do think you’ll see more people slow down hiring efforts. And I think you’ll see more people stick around at their jobs just because of the uncertain economy. And I think that refresh and reset is going to really be helpful when it comes to solving the Great Resignation problems.

I think one of the challenges that’s going to take a while to overcome will be salary expectations. Companies got really aggressive and started offering 25-50% higher salaries than normal. I think that’s why we’re seeing a lot of layoffs. So I think that’s gonna take a while for the expectations to really calm down a little bit with a lot of organizations. I think it will happen.

But at the end of the day, I think the candidates still gonna win, and that’s the most important part…

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