GenZ Bringing Parents to Interviews?

[00:00:00] This week on The Recruitment Flex, back from TA Tech feeling energized. Canada and the US economy seems to be headed in different directions. What's going on with LinkedIn engagement? Plus, would you bring your parents to an interview? TRF with my dad and Shelly starts right now.

[00:00:26] Welcome to The Recruitment Flex with Serge and Shelly. I'm Serge. And I'm Shelly. And we talk all things recruitment starting right now. Bonjour and welcome to The Recruitment Flex. Shelly, we're back from Washington DC. Couple days in. How you feeling? It's good to be on home turf.

[00:00:49] Yes, we've traveled a lot in the last I would say six weeks. I think we've been gone for those six weeks. So glad to be home. Glad to be back with the family. Glad to have some time to focus, be at my desk and actually get some work done.

[00:01:04] But last week was amazing. I had such a great time, Shelly. The event itself TA Tech. My god, that's the first time I've been and I love the concept. The Deal Center was so busy. And this was running at the same time as we were hosting an MC on stage with incredible speakers.

[00:01:24] I got the opportunity to listen to a lot of them, which in most cases we can't or we're usually running around different conference. That was fantastic. And the quality of people there, the level CEOs, VPs, like it was a good mix of people. It was great to see some of our friends. So what a great event.

[00:01:44] Kudos to TA Tech. Love doing it. And I gotta say, I love Washington DC. My neighbor asked me about it. He's like, I've never been. Is this a good city to go visit? I'm like, absolutely. You should go to Washington DC, especially if you like museums, history, anything like that. It's one of the rare places in North America with a ton of history.

[00:02:04] Mm hmm. Yeah, but you got a really special honor and it was a surprise. So to have the top 100 talent acquisition thought leaders and they've changed it this year to honor only 40. So 10 every quarter and they call it the TA Tech honors and they described it as the Nobel Prize of our industry.

[00:02:29] And to your surprise, you won. You were one of the top for the summer edition, which is not out yet. So we're being a little bit early, but congratulations, Shelley. Well, thank you. Thank you. It was truly a surprise. And he even said Peter Widdell, the CEO and founder of TA Tech made this statement that I'm going to embarrass somebody here. And I'm like, Oh, I wonder who it is.

[00:02:56] When he said that I knew it was you. No, because Beverly Collins, who is also in the audience. She's also the 10 honorees for the summer. So no, I didn't see it coming. I honestly was like, Oh, this ought to be good.

[00:03:14] Yeah. And when he said my name, I barely remember anything he said after that because I was just like, did this just happen? This just happened. So it was very special and I am just so grateful for such an incredible recognition. Surged to be in the two things I love, TA and technology. Wow.

[00:03:36] Yeah, well deserved. Congratulations. My heart felt full when you won. Thank you.

[00:03:44] Next year, I have to win, but I've got some work to get done, but I'll get there. I'll get. So a couple things from TA Tech I wanted to get on site any speakers that really blew you away anything that really was a highlight for you.

[00:03:59] Yeah, you know how we've been saying all along, like this was the first time we've had the opportunity to enjoy really learn from and listen to the speakers from any of the conferences. It's usually zipping in and out and hearing maybe 10 or 15 minutes of one because we got to be somewhere else.

[00:04:19] So this was truly the best of all worlds for me to be able to be present in the room and just be there to absorb. There were some incredible speakers and some really relevant topics and just the way the speakers were organized and how the topics really built on each other.

[00:04:40] The other thing I said to Peter was that what I noticed was it wasn't all AI. Like if you think about the last two conferences we went to, if we heard AI one more time, I was just going to be sick. Like enough already. So this was a really good variety. If you ask me what I enjoyed the most, Ben Eubanks, he has an incredible speaking style and I love always his subject matter because it's always rooted in data.

[00:05:09] He's a researcher, but man is he a good speaker. He takes really complex large amounts of data and he just boiled it all down for us so that we could make sense of it. And it's just the way he presents like each fact explains a much larger concept and you walk away with wow, no one's ever explained it to me like that. So round of applause for Ben. Fantastic.

[00:05:36] Yeah, I was talking to Ben after the fact that we've been messaging. He's going to come on the show again because he was in the show I think around a year ago and loved him as a guest and I think we need to bring him back. I'm like, can we just talk about your presentation? Because I took 20 pictures of the slides, which I usually don't do because the information was so new to me, but also so relevant in what we're doing. So Ben was amazing. Like you said, there were so many amazing speakers. They were all good prepared.

[00:06:06] And the content was fantastic. So if you are in the space, definitely go to TA Tech and for us, I think we killed it. I think we were great MCs, but I'm just going to toot my own horn. We had fun with it and I think we let it flow really naturally and we fill the gaps in. So I think we did what they wanted us to do, but you never know. But I think we did a good job, Shelley.

[00:06:29] Yeah, mission accomplished. Mission accomplished. Yeah, for sure. Did you want to jump into the news?

[00:06:37] Okay, so on the local front, Canada's economy added a flat 27,000 jobs in May while unemployment ticked up a bit of 6.2%. And what was interesting, some of the highlights is just the amount of full-time jobs declining.

[00:06:58] Our latest report here for May says that 36,000 full-time positions were lost and 18.2% of people were working part time because they couldn't find full-time jobs. And that's up 15% from a year ago. What are your thoughts on this latest report search?

[00:07:19] We've been talking about the job numbers. We pretty much talk about it every month and every month we're like, oh, the numbers are really good, but it wasn't matching what we were feeling on the streets and what we were seeing. Right?

[00:07:32] Probably in the last year, the numbers were great, but then we see these stories of long lineups of people looking for jobs at job fairs, talking just to our group of friends, how difficult it is to find a job. They're applying for hundreds, if not thousands of jobs and not hearing back.

[00:07:49] All of those factors together, I think this is now okay. Is it lining up what's really happening out there? Because if you look at it right now, approximately 1.4 million people were unemployed in May. So that was an increase of 28,000. So 2% from the previous month.

[00:08:07] There's definitely some challenges in the labor job market right now. But what's tough about this, we don't really see a breakdown of industry. So it's looking for, okay, what sectors are doing well? Is it hospitality? Is it retail? Is it nursing like health care? Sure. The job numbers are decent there. But what jobs are we losing and what jobs are we gaining is where we don't have a clear picture.

[00:08:33] I wondered that too. And so it's kind of half information. You know, the other thing I wondered. So you remember Ontario recently introduced some legislation around real jobs only. And so I'm thinking there may have been an inflated perception of how many full time jobs were on the market. But once they introduce penalties in this legislation for companies that were just testing the waters or building their talent pool,

[00:09:03] they decided we're just going to pull these jobs down. Not saying that's the way we count how many jobs were created. I know it's far fetched, but

[00:09:12] I agree. Public perception is a big part of what the labor and the job market looks like or how we feel about it. And if you're seeing a lot of jobs, you're like, okay, maybe the economy is not as bad. So if I go on Indeed or LinkedIn and I look at

[00:09:28] Okay, jobs as a sales rep and there's a thousand be like, okay, maybe I do have options right compared to if you go now and there's only 82 of those jobs. Your impression as job seeker like, oh, I might have to take those two part time jobs, like you said. But I want to jump into the US job. It's a little bit of a different story there. US added 272,000 jobs in May, exceeding forecast by about a thousand.

[00:09:58] The US has built a third. Economists are expecting a gain of around 185,000. And if we look at the jobless rate increase to 4%, the highest in over two years up from 3.9%. However, the unemployment rate remains near a five decade low. But here is the data that the US has that we don't have that gives us a clear picture.

[00:10:22] Care added 68,000 jobs. Government added 43,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality added 42,000 jobs. Scientific and technical service they added around 32,000 jobs retail 12,000 construction 21,000. So it really breaks down exactly where the jobs are going. And we are going into the season of a lot of part time work, right? A lot of retail, a lot of tourism, a lot of

[00:10:52] hospitality. But the other factor that I thought was interesting, and we don't have the data in Canada, the average hourly earnings increased by 4.1% from a year earlier, which we can still argue is it matching the rate of inflation that we're seeing out there? It feels like our economy in Canada is in way rougher shape than the US but maybe that's just a gut feeling. But these numbers seem to trend towards that. But

[00:11:21] it is what it is, my friend. Yeah, Shelley, what's our tip of the week?

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[00:12:08] Chat GPT can help you, but AI will not fix it. So grab that low hanging fruit and the smallest thing you can do to enhance your employer brand is take your job postings please I beg of you for God sakes just take your job postings run them through chat GPT and ask it to write this job so it's appealing.

[00:12:33] It's concise and someone would actually want to do this work. That is my tip of the week. Not a bad tip.

[00:12:42] We still see a lot of crappy job ads out there. I was just looking through a site the other day and I was like, Oh my god, this is not getting better. But it is I'm amazed. I am absolutely amazed that it's not getting better by now.

[00:12:59] Because even when you go to post a job on LinkedIn or indeed, they've got a little AI magic wand that says hey try this. But no people are just like meh.

[00:13:11] No, I'm just gonna copy and paste it. See how I'll just copy and paste it. This is the approved lingo. I think they're afraid to do anything outside of this is the approved job ad.

[00:13:24] And I can't touch it or I'll get fired. Whatever. Good point. Shelly let's jump into recruiting insights brought to you by our friends at Mitova. Shelly, are you tired of the same old outsourcing woes?

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[00:14:28] Look them up at Mitova.com and let's get the fiesta started. All right, Shelly, talking about LinkedIn. I read an interesting article actually just this morning. Greg Savage who is well known in the recruitment community.

[00:14:43] I think he's been around for every space in Australia and he had a very compelling article talking about the changes that have been happening to LinkedIn.

[00:14:52] So this is not going to apply to everyone, but we all know a big part of being a recruiter is creating a brand on LinkedIn, especially when you're going to be reaching out to candidates if they know who you are. Content in this world is key.

[00:15:07] Sales and recruiting are two of those professions that you have to leverage, right? You have to build your own personal brand.

[00:15:16] And what Greg was talking about this article, I thought was really interesting because I noticed this end content that I've been sharing or content we've been sharing on the recruitment flex LinkedIn page. There's been a dramatic difference in the level engagements that we used to get.

[00:15:30] So Greg has 321,000 followers, big audience, and he experienced a drop to about 40% of the previous engagement levels over six months. My initial thought was maybe his content is just shittier, right? Maybe it's not as good.

[00:15:49] But if you look in aggregate of posting every day, you're going to have some good, some bad. He dug in a little bit deeper to get an idea of, okay, what is working? Overall, he's seeing impressions were down 30 to 40%. Follower growth down 35 to 45%. Engagement down 70 to 80%.

[00:16:08] So engagement is comments or likes. And then he dug in deeper to see like what is showing up on my feed compared to what was showing up on my feed before. So right now, sponsored content and ads is almost 50% of what is showing up in the feeds.

[00:16:26] Preferred content creators was almost 24%. Other content creators, 18%. AI generated content by LinkedIn 6% and organic company page content around 1.5%. LinkedIn seems to favor specific content. If you're talking about AI, there's a higher likelihood that you're going to get more engagement, which is just so stupid overall.

[00:16:55] Like people that are using AI to write their content are seeing a higher engagement, which seems absolutely crazy. The one that I thought you might like because I know it drives you crazy sometimes is posts with selfies have up to 50% less reach.

[00:17:13] And I thought this one was interesting because just looking at our content on a recruitment flex, like we posted the picture of me and you in Washington. I think we posted one when we're in Toronto and those are the highest engagements.

[00:17:27] Like it's usually doubled what we usually get. So the other one, personal stories. Actually, this one is probably your favorite one. Personal stories have a short lifespan seeing a severe drop in reach after 24 hours.

[00:17:44] So if you're talking about your journey, which seemed to be seemed to be really big for a while and was driving me crazy. I'm like, OK, there's a limit to what I want to know about you. That's just me though. I'm not judging. Do whatever you want.

[00:17:58] It's your content. But those folks are not seeing the same engagement that they did. But one last point here. So he did a study of 40 large content creators showed that 36 experienced a reach decline between 35% and 55% to manage to maintain the same reach to saw an increase in reach.

[00:18:21] Jelly, do you care? Is this important to you? What's your thoughts around this? I have a couple of things and I have to admit I did not study his study.

[00:18:31] OK, but the very first thing that comes to mind is, first of all, what we know is they don't get paid. Right. You don't earn any sort of income by being a creator on LinkedIn. You are doing it for other reasons.

[00:18:48] Then I immediately went to thinking, hold on a minute. How much did you pay? Like what scares me is that anyone would depend on this channel. They have never disclosed what their algorithms are for deciding what gets shown other than things like the personal stories.

[00:19:06] You're right. It just turns my stomach. The stories of my struggle, my victories, like the humble bragging. And yeah, so thank you very much for burying those after 24 hours because it just doesn't belong on there.

[00:19:19] I wonder if you're not paying to have your content boosted, do you get what you pay for? If you're trying to use this media channel to boost your brand and your selfies are dropping by 50 percent or the engagement being down 70 to 80 percent, try boosting it. Oh, I disagree.

[00:19:43] If I see a boosted post, first thing I think is. But how do you know it doesn't stay boosted? Yes, it does. It's loaded on the top. Yes, I can see where companies I rarely see personal creators boost the posting.

[00:20:02] And I think for a personal content creator, I think it would have the negative effect. They might get way more visibility and engagement because you're hitting, but just comes across douchey if you're spending to boost your posts on LinkedIn. Unless you're a business.

[00:20:18] Interesting. Yeah, we've created this whole subculture of content creators that only survive on and live on LinkedIn as their preferred channel. And they are making no money from it. And they're not paying either. You are subject to whoever owns the train tracks doing whatever they want.

[00:20:41] You have no control over it to get relevant audience reach. Certainly not that I'm giving advice, but be super clear about what you're doing, how much you're investing on a channel that you've got no control over. Yeah, and I think they're all like that.

[00:21:00] And a lot of business were created off the back of Facebook advertising. And then when Facebook changes its algorithm, what worked in the past doesn't work anymore. You can never rely. And I think you nailed it when you talk about who owns the train tracks.

[00:21:17] You're very much at the mercy. But here's what I think about it. And I was reading a story about a content creator called Alex Hermosy. When I say content creator, he's a business owner as well, like 100 million big name and Instagram.

[00:21:32] And he was interviewing a lady that was making a million dollars a year, and she had 5,800 followers in total on Instagram. But she was so targeted that she would have, say, maybe 10 posts view and one of them would convert into a sale.

[00:21:48] So it really depends what you want to do, how you target. I think vanity metrics, they don't matter. Like we focus on those vanity, how many followers, how much engagement that you have.

[00:22:01] But even you're speaking to 10 people and we should know, Shelley, we spoke in the void for 400 episodes. Maybe we had 30 people listening, but we just put out the best we could. And it created that they're targeted into something that I really like. I really like recruitment.

[00:22:22] I've come to like them. It's taken a year, but more people have come to listen. So stop thinking about vanity metrics. No one cares. And honestly, it's not a driver for your revenue. If you do it right and you know your ship, you're going to do well.

[00:22:35] But I thought it was interesting because I know a lot of recruiters rely on this, right? This is a big source of putting their brand out there. It's part of their marketing strategy. It is. I get it.

[00:22:47] And so if your marketing strategy is anchored on something that's free, OK, get what you pay for. OK, boomer. Serious. What makes you think LinkedIn is a not-for-profit? They're not. They own everything. They're relying on your content. Like you are the product in one way. Yes. Yes.

[00:23:09] Actually not in one way. You are the product. 100 percent. Shelley, I'm really interested. Next recruiting insight. Get your thoughts around this one. This particular article is around Gen Z getting their first job. Yeah. Right. So let's go back 10 years ago.

[00:23:30] How many times would we see someone show up to an interview and have their parents with them? I can tell you, I will never forget a job fair that I was at back in like the mid-05, 06 timeframe.

[00:23:49] And this guy's mom came up to me and we were at one of these job fairs and demanded that I give her an explanation as to why her son had not been hired as a heavy haul truck driver.

[00:24:04] Because after all, what's so hard about a steering wheel and a gas pedal? Then literally she demanded and he stood behind her with his tail between his legs and a baseball cap on and sweatpants. His mother berated me and demanded that I explain this.

[00:24:22] So that was a rarity. That was one of those stories that in your recruiting career you're just like, I can't believe this happened. But the trend now with Gen Z is it's actually super common.

[00:24:36] Seventy percent of Gen Z have asked their parents for help in finding a job. 16% of parents admit that they have submitted job applications on behalf of their children. And 25% of Gen Zs have brought their parents along to the job interview.

[00:24:58] The old term I think was called helicopter parents, but this is just next level. Man, this is more than some guy with his mom shaking her finger at me. You buy that? I don't buy it. I know I've seen this and I've seen the numbers be 19%, 25%.

[00:25:19] I'm like, that would be one out of four interviews you're doing with Gen Z that their parents are showing up to an interview. And we're very connected with a lot of recruiters. Like I haven't heard one story of this. I'm like your story is an interesting one.

[00:25:36] I've never had a parent show up to an interview. Again, I've been hired campus or anything like that. And that might be the situation here. But do you believe that 25%? That seems ridiculous. I was shocked. I absolutely was.

[00:25:53] Do you know so much of our circle is not new grad hiring or campus recruitment? I would certainly put it out there to our audience. If you're in the campus recruitment program, tell us, does this number feel right to you?

[00:26:06] Does it feel like one in four is showing up with their mom and dad? I would believe it. I really would. I wouldn't think it'd be one in four. OK. But the other numbers, I believe 70% of Gen Zers have asked their parents for help in finding a job.

[00:26:24] You helped her, right? Absolutely. That makes sense. Sixteen percent have had parents submit job applications for them. I believe that one. Yeah, I would think it's higher. I think that that would be 25%. Yeah. And then parents writing their resume. Oh, absolutely. I believe that one.

[00:26:43] I think that number should be way higher than 10%. But it causes a little bit of concern for me, Shelley, as far as what the expectations of these people coming into the workforce and how they're going to be perceived.

[00:26:55] Bringing a parent to an interview or even a virtual interview because there's a lot of data around that as well that parents you could see them on camera or you could see them on the side. And I'm not shocked.

[00:27:09] But if you are a parent listening to this and doing this, my God, your kid is going to have a really tough life because imagine as an employer, someone walks in with their parent. I'm like, are they going to bring them to work every day?

[00:27:24] Because I might hire that person instead. Maybe it makes more sense. They have more experience. But I am very scared for the next generation of work. If this is the case, is it just the first interview that you do this?

[00:27:38] Can you imagine managing someone and you have a performance discussion and the mom calls and berates you? I do not want to get involved in that at all. Yeah, doesn't surprise me. I mean, we have parents getting involved to a level that we've never seen before.

[00:28:03] You know, when I think of this generation of kids being raised and how involved their parents are, I remember reading a study years ago that talked about the fact that the tables were supposed to turn where parents would start turning to their kids for advice on how to search for a great mortgage.

[00:28:26] That relationship and the bond as to who's leading who would become blurred where your kids just become that part of your life, which is fascinating if you look at just the Canadian culture.

[00:28:39] But if you look at other cultures around the world, it's really not that uncommon that you just stay in each other's lives generationally. The grandparents live there and they're looking after the kids. Living full time with both sides. No thank you. I'll pass on that.

[00:29:01] All right, Shelley, what's her last recruiting insight? So HC, a Human Capital Association magazine had a study of Fortune 500s revealing the shortcomings in candidate matching process.

[00:29:18] The study that was cited, one of them being Phenom, releasing its eighth annual state of candidate experience and benchmark reports, finding that Fortune 500 companies, what are their methods in terms of attracting, engaging and converting talent?

[00:29:36] Some of the things that were pointed out as alarming is a gap in leveraging data driven insights and any sort of personalized approach where 89% of the organizations did not ask candidates about their skills to match them with relevant job openings. You seem you seem not surprised.

[00:29:59] Well, it's a tough question right when you ask like what's your skills? Not surprising, but I think that will change for sure.

[00:30:07] But you know, I think the assumption is that a Fortune 500 has a sophisticated applicant tracking system that would have all the bells and whistles to do things whether it's a chat bot or some sort of candidate relationship management tool, which we know that's what Phenom is.

[00:30:27] Right. It's or is meant to be, sorry I have I must admit don't anybody quote me on that because I have never test driven the full system.

[00:30:36] But I know what it is marketed to be is a candidate relationship management tool. So if you have like a Phenom on the front end and you're a Fortune 500, it assumes you've got the technology in place and you're not using it or you're just not aware.

[00:30:53] That this technology exists because candidate relationship management is not about you applied for a job once and never heard back.

[00:31:03] The whole notion is that you start to funnel people in for when they're ready to make a change and then you will have them be able to notify them and continue to manage them as you would manage a customer.

[00:31:16] Yeah, I'm surprised by this Shelley because every Fortune 500 company that I worked or I partnered or I sold to had extremely sophisticated talent acquisition structure technology process across the board like things that I never imagined.

[00:31:35] I learned a lot of working with these large companies of how in depth they went. We all know that a lot of them are leveraging workday success factor UKG all of the big HRS but majority of them are layering over a Phenom or a different tool on top of it that makes the experience quite a bit better.

[00:31:55] So reading this and like I you know what here was my gut feeling on it and call me cynical. This was just Phenom trying to say hey if you don't have us you need to buy us because you're missing the boat and this is not been my experience.

[00:32:12] There was actually data that supports that because it was revealed that 97% of Fortune 500 companies have some type of candid matching tool involving either AI keyword matching whatever it is the majority knock out questions yeah or going down that road.

[00:32:30] Yeah, I don't know if this means anything. I think it's just a sales pitch by female. I'm glad you said that. I feel like I did all this reading and research just to finally come to the conclusion that there this is a veiled advertisement for Phenom.

[00:32:48] Well the thing is when I read the article I'm like okay this is really interesting then when I started taking the bullet points and putting it all together as far as our talking points I'm like I don't know fabricated a little bit then you look at the source.

[00:33:03] Yeah, Wade. That's a really good work. Yeah, it was not fabricated. It's an actual study. Yes. We're not making this shit up. It's an actual study but yeah ask who commissioned the study.

[00:33:15] Yeah, there are studies then there are studies and this is like all right who commissioned this exactly to your point. Yeah. Shelley another week of the recruitment flex.

[00:33:25] I do want to make one mention of our friend of the show somebody who's been on as a co-host sat in for me a few times has a huge milestone that she is celebrating tonight and it's five years in business.

[00:33:42] Kim Wilkinson founder visionary and a great friend of both of ours and her company Verve Recruitment Group are celebrating their five years anniversary tonight so congratulations Kim talk about making it through some of the most remarkable times economically and being such a huge success so congratulations Kim.

[00:34:04] Thank you for bringing that up. Yes, congratulations. You know how much we love Kim. She's been a great co-host but also a great friend and someone in the industry we look up to so five years very successful business kudos can't wait to see you and the team tonight.

[00:34:20] Yeah, so on that note, thank you so much for joining. We had fun and look forward to seeing you again. Au revoir.

[00:34:37] Shelley let's face it texting candidates is the easiest way to hire quicker today, but your cell phone doesn't connect to your ATS you're sharing your personal number with strangers. It's pretty scary right Shelley and it's not even legally compliant.

[00:34:53] This is where our friends at rec text come in. They've created simple yet powerful text recruiting software that works with your ATS plus it's designed by recruiters for recruiters, so you know it works to learn more and book a demo visit www REC TXT.com

[00:35:14] Do you love news about LinkedIn, indeed Google and just about every other recruitment tech company out there. Hell yeah, I'm Chad. I'm cheese. We're the Chad and cheese podcast. All the latest recruiting news and insights are on our show dripping in snark and attitude. Subscribe today wherever you listen to your podcasts. We out.