Does the Indeed Whisperer think you're properly data-driven?

[00:00:09] Welcome to the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces podcast.

[00:00:13] I'm Stephen Rothberg, the founder of College of Crudder Job Search Site.

[00:00:17] At College of Crudder, we believe that every student and recent grad deserves a great career.

[00:00:23] And I'm Peter Zolman, founding principal of the aim group,

[00:00:26] the leading global business intelligence service for marketplaces and classified advertising companies.

[00:00:32] We consult with recruitment marketplaces companies and publish aim group recruitment intelligence

[00:00:38] and a free weekly digest.

[00:00:40] We also host the annual global recbos conference.

[00:00:44] This is the podcast for you to learn more about how to create, manage and work with general, niche,

[00:00:49] and aggregator job boards and recruitment marketplaces.

[00:00:53] Well Peter, it is great to be with you today, especially because we've got a guest who I think is going to really knock the socks off of listeners.

[00:01:05] He's somebody that I have known since I think 1862 might have been 1863 back in our 30th year.

[00:01:13] Yeah, exactly. It's been it's been a long time, our paths keep crossing and somehow he's forgiving enough that he's willing to talk to us.

[00:01:22] But Peter, you is excited as I am for this?

[00:01:26] I am looking forward to it because you have told me he is I'm taking away from your scripted intro, but you told me is the indeed whisperer.

[00:01:37] And I sure as heck want to find out more about that. You want to go ahead and introduce him?

[00:01:42] Yeah, yeah. So today's guest, as you said, is known as the indeed whisperer.

[00:01:48] He is Jim Durbin.

[00:01:50] His formal title is a director of recruitment marketing and he works for a recruitment process outsourcing company, RPO called PSG Global Solutions.

[00:02:01] They support staffing and recruiting companies.

[00:02:04] And he says he's been in the industry for over 20 years.

[00:02:08] So he doesn't say how much over, maybe he'll share that later.

[00:02:13] But Jim, aka the indeed whisperer, welcome to the inside job boards and recruitment marketplaces podcast.

[00:02:20] Thank you and the love of Stephen and Peter.

[00:02:23] Well we're glad to have you.

[00:02:24] Stephen kept telling me about this indeed whisperer guy. Tell us what that means.

[00:02:30] I'm a huge fan of branding.

[00:02:32] He used to be called the social media headhunter.

[00:02:34] I don't do that anymore.

[00:02:35] I decided to come up with something new. And five years ago, I shut down my marketing business and went inside to manage sorcerers.

[00:02:42] I started teaching him how to use indeed resume.

[00:02:44] Then they started giving indeed advertising.

[00:02:46] And over the last five years, I just know indeed so well.

[00:02:50] I used to make so much money off of them as a headhunter.

[00:02:53] Now they've throught all their iterations.

[00:02:55] I just, I feel like they're a little horse that I whispered down.

[00:02:58] So we started looking at our campaigns and looking at our numbers.

[00:03:02] And they're so unbelievable. I had to come up with something for it.

[00:03:06] Like nobody believed me until I show them and they want to know what my tricks are.

[00:03:09] And the question is, is it a parlor trick or is it just understanding how indeed works?

[00:03:13] So it's tongue and cheek.

[00:03:15] It's a little ridiculous to call yourself that.

[00:03:18] But I figured hey, you know what?

[00:03:20] Be bold. Makes me work harder.

[00:03:21] And I do understand the systems.

[00:03:23] And boy do we get some good results.

[00:03:25] So that's why we're brave enough to say it.

[00:03:27] Okay, so talk to us in the about indeed.

[00:03:29] What is it to write?

[00:03:31] What is it to wrong? How would you improve it?

[00:03:34] And one or two quick secrets to using indeed.

[00:03:41] Well, the first thing is what indeed does specifically.

[00:03:45] Obviously they're moving to their cost for application.

[00:03:47] The things they do write us are the biggest in the industry.

[00:03:49] They have a largest organic traffic.

[00:03:51] They spend a lot of money driving people to their site.

[00:03:54] They're model in the beginning.

[00:03:56] A superior, the paper-click model wins at the early stages.

[00:03:59] They've definitely taken advantage of that when they started scraping data and then started doing paper-click.

[00:04:04] That was just guaranteed win.

[00:04:06] If we can see from Google and Marketplace, the problem is they're so big now.

[00:04:09] They're like 19,000 people.

[00:04:11] Billions and billions of dollars.

[00:04:13] I don't think they necessarily know who they are.

[00:04:15] On the one hand, they want to fix the hiring process.

[00:04:18] They still want to grow in sales.

[00:04:19] They want to change the way we do things.

[00:04:21] And they don't communicate it well.

[00:04:24] For better or worse, a lot of us are dependent on them.

[00:04:27] And when they make big decisions and don't don't necessarily clear about that and not communicating to us,

[00:04:33] it can be devastating for your budget.

[00:04:36] And then you just shut it and you go elsewhere.

[00:04:38] So that's the biggest issue.

[00:04:40] One of the things I love about indeed is they have reduced their mission to a great, simple statement.

[00:04:48] We help people find jobs.

[00:04:51] And that pervades everything they do.

[00:04:54] I noticed just the other day, a new Marketplace report,

[00:04:59] that they put out a manifesto maybe too strong,

[00:05:04] but it put out a manifesto that says in the next five years they want to have the time it takes to find an employee.

[00:05:15] Not through indeed, just find an employee and double the efficiency in recruitment and finding and all talent acquisition and all that stuff.

[00:05:27] Primarily through automation and AI, but I will turn it over to Steve to ask you about what your ideas on our on job board sources.

[00:05:41] Yeah, so you know one thing about indeed is we have a college or career.

[00:05:47] We've been working with them almost since the day they launched.

[00:05:50] So I'm not a by any stretch of the imagination and anti indeed person.

[00:05:58] I like a lot of what they do.

[00:06:01] No organization is perfect of course, but Jim, I'm sure that you would agree that for his dominant is indeed is

[00:06:10] and that the generally they're really good results that employers get from there that there are other job boards out there.

[00:06:19] And so when your team is looking at what job boards to use, aside from indeed, what are you guys using and why?

[00:06:30] It's a great question because I'm obsessed with I do like indeed and some people think I don't because I call them out for things but the challenges I don't like anybody owning everything.

[00:06:39] But I do their sites gone down in a gracious break and you can't if your stock is in one source they raise their price, it should can't do anything.

[00:06:47] And you're never going to make changes if you're doing on that cheap traffic.

[00:06:50] So I'm obsessed with making sure that if something goes wrong, I have split my tax tax.

[00:06:55] So my deal source is no more than 50% from indeed.

[00:06:59] And then the next biggest player is the recruiter you should be getting 10, 15% of your stuff.

[00:07:04] Of course it depends if you're looking for developers or engineers or warehouse workers, but especially for high volume which is what I primarily work in.

[00:07:11] I went 15% 20% from Zipper career and I went 10% from my database and from my career site.

[00:07:17] We're staffing firms so career sites and I can have a lot of traffic.

[00:07:20] But I want to drive some stuff from Google for jobs from that so I have to set that up.

[00:07:24] And then there's the rest of the constellation is social media and other job boards and the challenge with those is we do integrations.

[00:07:32] Because I want that click to turn into an apply.

[00:07:34] I don't want to send traffic to my website and lose 70% of it, which is apparently good.

[00:07:40] Apparently 98% or 92% are losing.

[00:07:42] I lose 66% and lose me.

[00:07:46] I lose me up at 9.

[00:07:47] So I split that 50 indeed 1520 zipper cruder and then I'm using them.

[00:07:52] You guys so Kelly from Broadbane, Kelly Robinson?

[00:07:55] Oh yeah.

[00:07:56] I'm going to try to call job splice.

[00:07:58] And so you can use programmatic like your app cash or pando, your rate and see or something like that which will cover 10,000 job boards.

[00:08:05] Jobs splice lets me connect to all those job boards like a manual programmatic for me.

[00:08:10] So I can pick town.com and it's in another and run campaigns that are integrated into my system without just driving traffic.

[00:08:17] So for us I don't like to drive traffic unless it's an applicant.

[00:08:21] So when I split that up and what something goes wrong, I get immediately poured over to another place that's already there.

[00:08:28] Everybody's good.

[00:08:29] And I did lose 50% of my traffic for three days because my integration was down.

[00:08:33] Fair enough, pay per click duration, pay per application and pay per hire.

[00:08:41] Which do you like?

[00:08:44] Which do you think is going to be the dominant method in the future?

[00:08:50] And how does that impact quality?

[00:08:53] It's a timeline.

[00:08:54] You start with duration, so for the rest of the crowd, to raise you pretty simple.

[00:08:58] That's 30 days at pay $299 a month.

[00:09:00] I put a job up in people apply and that work great in the beginning.

[00:09:04] The problem with this is that there's so many applications that go through that you're really only looking at the first applications in the last once.

[00:09:10] It's just luck because you're not paying attention to the middle one because they're too many.

[00:09:14] And if you have the job up and you want to do it longer than 30 days now you have to refresh it.

[00:09:19] And eventually everybody's refreshing their jobs and the standing is become ridiculous.

[00:09:23] So we move into paper click, which is a great model because instead of say 300 bucks for 30 days,

[00:09:28] here's two cents a click. Five people click on it.

[00:09:31] That person comes to your website.

[00:09:33] You get a higher for 30 bucks.

[00:09:35] And if you need 10, you just do 10x, 10 hires for 30 bucks.

[00:09:39] And the first days of paper click, it's fantastic deal for people who have their stuff together.

[00:09:44] Over time those clicks get more expensive.

[00:09:47] And when you don't have a growing population like we are facing, now you move into the third stage,

[00:09:52] which is per application where you have to start thinking about terms of quality.

[00:09:56] The great thing about paper click is that everybody clicks and everybody's happy.

[00:10:00] And if 10% of the people are there, you get your higher.

[00:10:03] On application, you have to improve your conversions.

[00:10:06] And you have to improve a quality of both the clients, the employers,

[00:10:09] and the candidates because you have a lot less applicants at a lot higher cost.

[00:10:15] But it's going to all go to application regardless of what,

[00:10:19] in-who it's going because that's the smart thing to do along term.

[00:10:22] Yeah, I agree.

[00:10:23] I do think that the industry both from the customer side,

[00:10:27] whether it's a staffing company, a direct employer or another job board,

[00:10:31] buying traffic, as well as from the vendor side at the job order group and mark and place that's selling that traffic

[00:10:37] that we're all moving eventually to more of a paper applicant model right now.

[00:10:42] It's, I think it's pretty heavily dominated in the US by by duration based in paper click

[00:10:47] and overseas.

[00:10:48] It's still mostly dirt duration based.

[00:10:51] We'll be back right after this break.

[00:10:58] Do you love news about LinkedIn, indeed, Google and just about every other recruitment company out there?

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[00:11:07] Where the Chad and G's podcast.

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[00:11:20] We out.

[00:11:25] Welcome back to the inside jaw boards and recruitment market places podcast.

[00:11:30] I'm wondering what your thoughts are about moving towards that paper applicant basis.

[00:11:39] And the, you know, what do you think that's going to do to the advertisers budgets and their campaign strategies?

[00:11:49] Well, a lot of the job boards are currently doing that.

[00:11:51] And there's a skilled trade job board that we do that where they charge just $8 for applicant.

[00:11:56] And then one of the raised the price because if you only have 1,000 applicants coming to your website,

[00:12:01] you've got to parcel it out to different people.

[00:12:03] So you just raise your prices.

[00:12:04] You don't care where the prices are as long as you sell everyone.

[00:12:08] So those CPAs continue to go up.

[00:12:10] But the problem is, is that quality issue.

[00:12:13] How do you, with high volume, it's different than enterprises, different than small business?

[00:12:17] I don't see how you can manage a cost for application unless you have

[00:12:21] Absolutely clarity into everything from the first click all the way to the higher.

[00:12:26] And a lot of companies, I'm saying no companies have a perfect record of that.

[00:12:30] So how are you possibly going to figure out what that application is?

[00:12:33] So there's a lot of pain that come from that.

[00:12:35] And probably going to force some good changes because the whole point of the,

[00:12:40] of doing it that of doing the paper click is cost.

[00:12:43] If cost gets high enough that I can start paying individual recruiters to sit and talk to people,

[00:12:48] I don't need the application anymore.

[00:12:50] So I'll see PC was was a way to cut cost.

[00:12:53] Long term, it's cheaper to do that than having individuals doing that than having individuals doing that.

[00:12:56] The work paper application.

[00:12:58] Our models aren't set for that or agencies aren't set for that.

[00:13:02] There's going to be a lot of pain, but ultimately it'll be better for everybody involved.

[00:13:05] Yeah, and speaking of a lot of pain is a lot of, there's a lot of pain in the marketplace right now that,

[00:13:12] you know, during in the fall indeed announced that in during 2023,

[00:13:18] not as of January 1st, but at some point in 2023, all of the advertising that it will be selling

[00:13:24] will be on a paper application basis.

[00:13:28] But then it sounds to me and Jim, I think you're probably a big enough indeed customer that you're hearing more details from them than perhaps a lot of listeners are.

[00:13:38] From what I've been able to gather what indeed is talking about are when it hosts the application page.

[00:13:46] When the candidate sees the posting on indeed clicks the apply button completes the form,

[00:13:51] that's an application and the employer or staff in company RPO, whatever is going to pay for that application.

[00:13:59] But for the employers that require the candidate to apply on the ATS, which many do.

[00:14:05] It's not a completed application on the ATS that you're playing paying for your paying for the click to the ATS.

[00:14:13] And a college recruiter and some other sites we refer to as an apply click.

[00:14:18] Is that what you're hearing or are you hearing different things?

[00:14:22] So I'm hearing a little different and again, I don't think it must have perfect knowledge unless we're at indeed.

[00:14:28] First of all, it's a live already if you go and try to start a small business and sign in for an adet account, you're going to get application pricing.

[00:14:35] Yes, their goal is to drive it there, you're sitting there and you pick which applicant you want the ones you enter, you're the one you're paying for because you're inside their system.

[00:14:44] But a larger company, the enterprise can't do that because we're not going to send all of our time inside the indeed application which is what they're looking for.

[00:14:52] So for them, they'll switch and they'll have some type of integration for CPS it's called cost.

[00:14:58] Possible applies start, which would be did they get into your application because we also the third party cookies are going away for Google.

[00:15:05] So on site analytics are going to matter a lot for people, I don't think we have a good understanding of that in our industry.

[00:15:11] But the CPS is going to be some type of integration where if I can bulk up low the candidates, I didn't like and mark them as not applicants then I get credits back.

[00:15:21] So companies will be incentive for cost reasons to build their integrations out so you can mark yes or no, which means you have to mark yes or no on everything that you do.

[00:15:32] And then they'll judge you on speed how often you do it, the same kinds of jobs.

[00:15:37] It will all go into that algorithm to determine what your pay is which it's going to be dependent.

[00:15:42] That's the hardest part they're going to set it by application and do they get it right.

[00:15:46] It really takes away people like me who do a good job with campaigns.

[00:15:50] It kind of standardizes the field it's like salary bands.

[00:15:54] So in general we should see less, but there are some people that have extreme pain and then the question for the rest of us is always.

[00:16:02] Oh, somebody's always coming with something that's supposed to stop us from saving money will see how whispering I am at that point.

[00:16:10] The deep cryer I make turn into the indeed cryer.

[00:16:14] Well, you're the whisper and the cryer.

[00:16:18] One quick story and then I'm going to ask you about ultimate, ultimately whether we'll ever get the cost per higher.

[00:16:28] At the aim group we use a lot of freelance writers and analysts and in order to see whether they can follow instructions and whether they can write.

[00:16:43] We require don't click the apply button instead send an email with a cover letter and include your resume in the body of the email to.

[00:16:59] And let me tell you the number of people who don't read that far into the into the head is staggering number two.

[00:17:08] You know the number of people who just apply and are done with it.

[00:17:12] Number two, you know what will indeed say when we want to require people to write a resume, a write a cover letter and incorporate their resume.

[00:17:25] And last but not least they require a range salary range.

[00:17:31] Well we recently posted an ad and depending on where you are in the world and depending on who you are and the experience.

[00:17:43] We'll pay anywhere from 20 to 60 dollars an hour, which is you know no range at all number one and number two everyone who comes in is going to want to get the 60 dollars an hour.

[00:18:00] Which is absurd because they're you know you almost have to be the purple squirrel to get the 60 to get to the 60 dollars an hour.

[00:18:10] So we face some challenges within deed.

[00:18:14] We've used zip recruiter and I like them pretty well too, but we'll see over the next six months to two years how it evolves.

[00:18:25] Eventually will cost per higher come to pass because for me although we don't technically hire anybody there.

[00:18:38] They're independent contractors but even so eventually will cost per higher come to pass Mr. Durbin.

[00:18:46] I don't think it can go that far and the reason is just need to look at Google and Facebook.

[00:18:50] What the changes that are happening from them so we're just like a little cousin of marketing what it comes to these things CPC and CPA or models that make sense.

[00:18:59] CPH is a process that changes so the idea that a company would ever take responsibility for another higher.

[00:19:06] That's that's not it's like I don't see how a model like that works now there may be hybrid people who.

[00:19:12] Like if indeed started its own flex hire like it did before that really took off if indeed changed to a staffing firm they would do it.

[00:19:19] But job boards and program advertising all that those models don't work for cost per higher.

[00:19:25] And then they're not going to get to that point long term because you have to share all of your data.

[00:19:32] We don't know what a good hire is right now we can't define quality internally yet how repost we're going to put that in the recruiting process.

[00:19:40] Most people don't know their true cost per higher like they don't count six managers they don't count the hours of those people take prepping and doing the interviews for that.

[00:19:48] That's a true cost they're not putting in their tech stuff or engineering those are all put in different silos so.

[00:19:54] Being able to come up with a true cost per higher would acquire us to have such good knowledge of the data.

[00:19:59] I don't see it ever happening.

[00:20:01] I try it they're going to crash and burn pretty hard because they're they're.

[00:20:05] Guessing that number like the salary transparency guessing that numbers very dangerous.

[00:20:10] I imagine there'll be a lot of lawsuits about the salary transparency I'm not a big fan of it but I'm much prefer indeed doing it.

[00:20:17] Then government doing it and I think companies should do it because it's the right things to do it scares me when government does it because they it's never known the consequences.

[00:20:26] But if you don't put the number in Peter they'll put it in there for you based on what they've seen before.

[00:20:32] Now you have a problem of titles you've got a problem of regions.

[00:20:36] We all loved free trade for 30 years but we don't realize that free labor is part of that why should I pay you differently because you're in San Francisco when I get the same thing up like put someone to mold.

[00:20:47] I mean that's those are big questions and I think they'll be decided by politics instead of our models.

[00:20:53] But I mean it's good at least we're talking about it finally yeah and Jim I agree I think the it's not that paper higher.

[00:21:02] I want to exist it does exist and it has existed for a long time that's called executive recruiters.

[00:21:10] And that doesn't scale well from most organizations because for most for most roles in most organizations because the costs are just so high.

[00:21:21] Our code does cost for higher yeah yeah but it's the whole it's the whole should be.

[00:21:27] It's not just the advertising right and it's you know there's there's no free lunch and if you want to.

[00:21:34] But you know if you want to essentially outsource a huge amount of of the recruiting function and save yourself a lot of money.

[00:21:41] Great you know call Jim he works for company that is more than happy to help you with that.

[00:21:49] But Jim thank you thank you so much for joining us today sharing a little bit of your wisdom about indeed that the job board market different payment models for for the listeners who want to learn more about you.

[00:22:06] How should how should they reach you linked in the best way I spend most of my time on that I've shuttered my blogs.

[00:22:13] And I'm going to Twitter account but we'll see how that goes I wouldn't send people there until.

[00:22:17] Let's see what happens in a couple of months right let's wait let's see if it works or doesn't.

[00:22:23] That'll be an extra but linked in just look for Jim Durbin are search the indeed whisper you'll pull up a bunch of podcasts for the listeners that that it is it's Durbin DUR.

[00:22:33] B. I.n. Peter any closing words I hope they can find him on LinkedIn I'm sure there's more than one Jim Durbin but they're probably most most of them probably spell it with an A.

[00:22:42] So D. R. I.n. and STVN have a good day thank you so much guys.

[00:22:52] Inside job boards and recruitment marketplaces is a co-production of Evergreen podcast college recruiter and the aim group.

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[00:23:11] and recruitment marketplaces special thanks to our producer and engineer Ian Douglas.

[00:23:17] I'm your host Peter's element of the aim group the leading global consultancy in the field of marketplaces and classified advertising

[00:23:25] Find out more about our reports on recruitment marketplaces job boards and classifies including our new recruitment marketplaces annual at

[00:23:35] Amru.com slash report I'm your host Stephen Rothberg of job search site college recruiter each year we help more than 12 million candidates find great new jobs

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[00:23:57] You can reach me at Steven at college recruiter dot com how much do you understand the

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