Jan Jedlinski: Welcome back on stage everyone. Thank you so much for joining. I'm super excited for this session with David, Lauren Robert and Maurice, we will talk about the future staffing agency tech stack. So I'm handing over to David's to run the sessions. Don't forget to ask questions enjoy the session guys, and talk to you later.

David Francis: Thanks, Jan, I think first and foremost, just like to say, I think the you know, overall the, the, all the sessions I've seen so far have been phenomenal, so the bar has been set quite high, so, but happy to say we've got, I think a pretty good a dream team here.

Go today. My name is David Francis. I'm a research director with talent tech labs and uh, by kind of main goal for the other topic today talking about the staffing tech stack of the future. And the limited time we have, I think there's kind of two areas I want to hit. One is you know, hopefully some tactical takeaways that you can use to implement in your business today.

So it's not just kind of, you know, ivory tower in the sky stuff that, you know, you can't really take action on, but hopefully we'll give you some tactical recommendations that you can you know, take back and implement your business. And then also kind of some, you know, more or less hand grenades of, of thoughts, you know, thinking about what the future could look like and, you know, potentially what some transformative technologies are are, are going to look like as well. So, with that, we're a little bit limited on time. So we'll just jump, jump right in and start asking questions and maybe, you know, each of you guys can kinda introduce yourselves as we as, uh, as you start answering questions here. So first question I wanna ask is essentially, what are they going to be the highest impact areas of technology for the next one to five years and, you know, specifically, you know, what are the tools and technologies that, you know, staffing companies should be investing in to, to position themselves for success you know, over the next one to five years. And I think any to any extent that you can, you know, maybe tailor the, your, your thoughts around, you know, maybe Smalling, smaller staffing operators versus mid-size versus, you know, kind of larger global players. It would be helpful.

So, why don't we kick off with Lauren? Why don't we kick off?

Lauren Jones: Yeah, ladies, ladies first. So, you know, I work with small midsize and large firms and you know, there, there are differences in, in, you know, what they're pointing towards in 2021. If you look at the data, right, there's a lot of focus on self-service.

There's a ton of focus on automation. But what's being automated is going to be different for the small meeting of a medium and large wellness and you know, diversity and inclusion non-biased type of searching mechanisms are going to continue to be a part of the conversation. And as we continue this work from home, the full wellness and any technology focused on ensuring the wellness of an end user or an employee is going to be really, really important.

And I have to say, you know, with self-service comes, you know, on demand shift management, this putting the candidate in control of their future is, is like the root of the desire here and kind of the passion behind why I think this has been so successful. And dare I say, VMS and MSP are poised for significant disruption.

As we move into 2021 and, and looking for betterment of that overall process, because I think it's a little, it's very, it's got a lot of friction and I think it's poised to, for some, for some improvement and the training and upskilling, that's kind of a no-brainer because you know, our, our workforce our workforce needs it.

They're asking for it, they're crying for it. And all of this technology. Can't come without an adoption plan. So if there's anything that you're going to take away here, guys is we're small, medium, large, no matter what the size, if you don't have a good business process, change management and adoption plan, then it's all just pretty jewelry sitting in your drawer.

David Francis: All right. Any other follow-up thoughts from Maurice or Robert?

Lauren Jones: Did I say it? All the words.

David Francis: I was going to say, you must cover those pretty pretty comprehensive.

Robert Mann: I think Maurice you want to go first, I think that definitely has some things to add. Yeah, absolutely.

Maurice Fuller: Well, I would pick up from where Lauren left off, where she was talking about you know, change process and a plan. I think that's imperative for staffing firms to really have a vision for where they're headed and have a roadmap.

And also I think as staffing firms evolve into technology firms, they need to have. That same kind of mindset around innovation and a process internally for adopting innovation. I think currently a lot of staffing firms sort of think about technology as something that you do occasionally. Like you add some technology, but it's really a continuous thing. And, and if you look at how technology firms operated, they're continuously improving every facet of their business and they have a process that drives that innovation. So first and foremost, I think it's the core of the DNA of the future staffing firm is, is in this innovation process and the agile process.

And then that will lead to the process improvements and the technology that will, take them into the future.

David Francis: I guess there's a, there's a, I was going to say just a real quick flavor of this, which is thinking about you, you kind of hinted at it. I think Maurice and Lauren basically thinking about like digitizing your existing process that you have now.

So you've got some processes manual and you want to digitize it versus thinking about, you know, essentially creating something either an entirely new business model. Or, or, you know, kind of rethinking or reinvisioning, you know, what that process looks like to just be more effective in the future. Yeah.

Lauren Jones: Yeah. You're not going to take old analog processes and digitize them. You're just, you're just not, that'd be silliness.

Robert Mann: Yeah. So Lauren talks, Lauren talk about this every week or every time we talk, which is pretty frequently. And I, so I sell technology to the staffing space. And my favorite thing, David is one of the company that used to work for, we had a slide in our our pitch deck.

That was the Domino's pizza slide. And Domino's went from being a takeout pizza place to a technology company that served pizza. And that is what I recommend to people. It's like, how do you be a technology company that does staffing as opposed to a staffing company? And, and work traditionally, we love being brute force and it's a great that the great, you know, very great industry sources of great purpose, but we're just always traditionally very brute force.

And so that, that is definitely on the menu on the menu too. I did there but the one thing to the highlight too for new to, for technology companies is think about what say like, and I said this to you the other day. Do you ever think about what sales. SAS sales companies are doing, how are they operating?

What technologies are they using and then figure out, and it might be hard for smaller operations. Cause they're expensive. I remember talking to a 10 person firm. I was sure they wanted to buy outreach.io, which is like a thousand dollars a user. So it's not doable for on a small scale unless you're buying a bulk, but there is a lot of value in looking at what the SAS or the sales organizations that.

Really big are doing and then figuring out how it can work for you or like planning for it. You may not be able to purchase it now, but you can start to plan for it and implement manual things that can kind of help and get you there. And so you can actually scale or grow or get, get some funding to do that.

So, yeah. I wanna highlight that.

Lauren Jones: That's such a great point, Robert, because there is a way to take your tech stack and have each investment sort of pay for the next, right. Get the one with the lowest hanging fruit that has the opportunity to generate revenue for your organization, you know, implement that and then move and then plan for it.

And so on and so forth, there's a really easy way to execute on a technical buying roadmap. If, again, if you choose the ones that have the lowest hanging fruit from a revenue generating perspective.

Maurice Fuller: Yeah. And just to build on what you were saying, Lauren, I think it's. Really distinguishing from a financial point of view where you're going to get the highest ROI.

And because there's so many opportunities now, there's never been more opportunities than there are today to invest in technology and to improve the financial results. So it's really looking at all the opportunities and, and sorting the top ones to the top and focusing on that. But then there's also this, like, which ones do you do first?

Cause sometimes you're laying a foundation of technology that, that you can then build on. So it's, it's also just, it's also sequencing the technology in the right order, which is part, I think that's the art of it as it, and too often we're distracted by. You know, what, whatever the latest thing is that we're seeing, or the vendor that we're talking to, it's seeing the big picture, looking at all of the opportunities and then prioritizing them based on strategy and based on financial impact.

Lauren Jones: Are you so right? It's so easy to see the shiny, shiny object. Oh, I need a bot. Well, if you don't know how to teach the bot about your know your, your, your good flow and business, you know, you're good workflow and business process, or just teaching it bad things. Hmm. So, yeah, you can totally get caught, caught up in that.

And I think a challenge to every technology out there and what every business, small, medium, or large needs to identify before they invest is what is the metric for success? How will I know if it has been adopted and how will I know what the tangible ROI is and if your technical, you know, offering can't answer that and give you a metric, then think twice.

Maurice Fuller: Yeah. And you know, on metrics, one of the things I'm really interested in is, are what are the metrics for the future staffing firms, as technology, as we become technology firms, what are the metrics that we're going to start paying attention to? And what are the metrics that will become less important to, to staffing firms?

So, so, And the way we measure success, I think is going to mirror increasingly you know, e-commerce companies, for example, as opposed to traditional staffing firms,

Lauren Jones: I think it's going to be more focused on results. And less focused on how we got there, you know, whereas before it was, it was more, you know, activity, activity, activity, activity, and, and, and yes, activity does equal results.

There is a, you know, just sort of a basic formula to getting results, but I think we're going to concentrate a little bit less on that. And, and look more to the end result. We don't really care how you got there. We just want you to get there.

Robert Mann: I'll jump in and say that, that from the panel before the remote work panel, when you move remote, it's all about results.

And, and having the manager, like number one, I, I lived in Miami and I hated driving. I don't like driving. So I've worked for both the last four years and I've been super productive. But you know, the one thing that it's very easy to see is, is the activity is the results. Right? You can see that and you have to have the right tool in place to see that.

And, and then the metrics Maurice. So your point is it has to be. Updated because they might, they might be different. They might, you know, you might not be you know, making a hundred calls. You might be on LinkedIn, right? You might need to be able to track the activity on LinkedIn and track the activity on different platforms.

You know, how many times did you like, you know, Lauren and I love to talk about social selling. So how are you engaging on that social media platform? And these are, and again, this goes back to my original point. These are all things that really successful salespeople do. And recruiting is obviously a sales job and we might, we might be moving out of that as we get to more on demand platforms, but we're not there yet, even though we got, we got sped up five years, we're still not to the point where it's, it's still a sales job at the end of the day.

So we can still use those, those mindsets and Matrix.

Lauren Jones: And that's why every business, small, medium, and large they're. What do I say every time, Robert, there is no transformation without integration in order to see all of this beautiful action activity that you good users or out there achieving on a daily basis, you gotta be integrated.

You gotta be able to see it. And, and, I'll probably never stop saying that.

Robert Mann: All right. By the way, we haven't let David answers questions. We just rambled on. So.

David Francis: Totally cool. I'm ready. You guys are supposed to be the ones bringing the wisdom and I just disagree

Robert Mann: if you're wrong. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Is that a good, natural breaking point for that, for that topic?

How to serve.

David Francis: I think that's great. A couple of, a couple of just you know, quick, quick, quick, maybe you know, big picture, tactical things to I, I call out you know, one note and decided we're going to get into later kind of this, you know, the online staffing model or the digitization of kind of how you deliver you know, staff, but you know, we call the, you know, all those kinds of platforms, deployment systems, and they seem to actually work really well for smaller operators.

And there's a, there's a big implementation kind of component to making those things work. And you know, one thing we've seen kind of almost counterintuitively is that, you know, even though big companies have some of the, you know, the, in the spotlight use cases, the smaller companies that have, that have adopted that have basically been able to kind of monopolize their own local market and they can, you know, more easily kind of, make the technology work kind of company-wide cause it's just a small organization and so easy to get kind of internal buy-in and whatnot.

So that's been, been a really great area of success. And I think as you're kind of a mid size and growing company you know, part of the focus needs to shift from kind of, you know, just, just posting on say job boards and the like to kind of nurturing your own internal communities. One of the technologies that support that is a, you know, candidate, relationship management.

So you're basically trying to build your own kind of internal communities of applicants you know, apply some recruitment marketing, keep those folks engaged in play at that kind of right opportunity. There's some interesting work around assessments. And I think for the, the, the large kind of global players, you know, what's going to move the needle here, you know, one, there's some maybe existential threats to the business to consider.

Just how is, you know, how our kind of candidate preference is going to change and the, what is a staffing firm kind of, of the future look like? But you know, some, some more, I guess, uh, maybe, you know, tactical things you can, you can kind of, set up, you know, I think for, for proactive sourcing, There's the with advances and kind of AI, and this is specifically conversational AI.

I think there's a world where most of, you know, the kind of just top funnel, pure kind of candidate sourcing and initial engagement is handled by some form of a bot. And, you know, all the kind of higher value added uh, activity is going to be handled by, you know, a recruiter, which I don't think is going to go away.

And I think in the future, that's going to differentiate essentially the winners and the losers is who does that, you know, that last mile. The best.

Robert Mann: Yeah. Cool.

We'll go ahead and reset. And that I'll jump in.

Maurice Fuller: Yeah. So yeah, I think you know, sort of to get back to your original question on for small, medium, large, I think for if you're a smaller firm, I think you're going to see the best traction from automation.

And digital marketing. And then also, we think mobile apps will be like the, the, really the, the finding shift in our industry during this, those decades. And especially in the light industrial and clerical space, moving into healthcare and then moving on, ultimately moving into our entire industry.

And then on the conversational systems and bots uh, to your point, that is going to be a huge change. And we're seeing for the first time, we're seeing some really significant breakthroughs in that area where virtual recruiters can engage with, with candidates effectively and replace large parts of what recruiters are doing.

So, yeah. That that is going to transform our industry as well, where they are, the bots are taking over more and more of, of, of the work. So, so, uh, mid-level uh, mobile conversational systems hyper automation, again, but the big firms they're, they're investing everywhere in every trend that exists from AI.

Data engagement, autonomous staffing every trend they're there, they're investing in. So I think you know, you're right. It depends on what size that you're at in terms of what investments make the most sense and where you'll get the most ROI.

Robert Mann: So thanks, David. So there were some good questions in the in the chat.

So first someone asks all the best tech stacks. Or what are the best tech stacks? Extra small, medium, large. That's a very big question guys. Yeah, me Lauren and Maurice and, or go to talent tech labs and talk to those guys. Those guys have a lot of it, but you could talk to us and we can help you based on your size and what you're trying to do.

And then there was someone who asked, what do you do if you don't, if you can't afford a tech stack and there's a lot of free tools. So again, reach out to Laura and myself,Maurice

Lauren Jones: And look there, there's a really great way for Young's smaller agencies to get in and try something that's in beta to try, you know, to try and get engaged with a startup when they're, you know, trying to iron out some of the wrinkles and the technology that is an amazing way for, you know, a scrappy young firm to partner with a scrappy on technology to, to help figure it out together.

And, and so. Have to be expensive. It really doesn't. And there's a big misnomer out there that my tech stack is going to cost me, you know, thousands upon thousands of dollars a month. And it really doesn't have to, if A), you partner with the right technologies and B) you have a roadmap that makes sense and helps each technology pay for the next it, it can be done.

Can be done.

Maurice Fuller: Yeah, I agree partner up with Laura and myself, Robert, and we'll set you straight and help you put together a tech stack and the, and the roadmap. I agree with Lauren super important.

David Francis: Yeah, I suspect at some point the, the, the, the, the the beginnings of this are starting to happen already, just kind of organically via everybody's kind of separate needs to, to kind of integrate different systems, but like, in the coding world, they have this concept of an actual, like tech stack where it's like, you've got your backend.

Is this, your front end is this, and you know, your, your, your database. So you've got like these kind of establish. Kind of, technologies that just naturally work together really well. And you know, what's, what's probably going to happen in the next few years is some of this is happening through like, like ecosystems, like Bullhorns ecosystem or the way that Salesforce has an ecosystem.

Essentially ecosystems of technologies that work together really well. What hasn't happened is they haven't really ever been sold. You know, which is probably the next evolution, you know,

Robert Mann: You hear about that a lot.

Lauren Jones: How many times I've said to Bullhorn it's like AT&T you know, make it cheaper if it's a bundle and because it makes sense, but you're seeing, you know, the Here Fish and, and now they've got Bullhorn One and, you know, there's so much happening on the Bullhorn side.

And I do try and when I'm building a stack, stay with a core uh, core. You know, central system of truth that integrates well with everything else around it, whether you were in Salesforce, you know, whether you go PaaS or SaaS, and then that's where the conversation is evolving now, too. It's not just about, about stacking software as a service.

It's about platform as a service and yeah. What type of configurability and scalability do I have if I go that direction, kind of the red pill, blue pill conversation. So the more technology that people have, the more they want and we need to be prepared.

Maurice Fuller: Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, also when you think about it, you know, if you look at what an ATS was 10, 15 years ago versus today, you know what you're buying today and an ATS is really already a bundle of all kinds of things that used to exist outside of the ATS that had been brought in as services that you now get as part of that package.

And you will see more and more of that bundling.

Lauren Jones: Yeah. Agreed. I a hundred percent agree with you.

David Francis: All right. Cool. So I think, yeah, it's a good time. We've got we've, we've answered the first question. Let's talk about uh, high impact areas of automation. So, you know, automations happening across multiple industries in the staffing industry is no exception.

Question is, you know, most staffing companies have realized there's some value to this. And so, you know, looking at processes that can be automated, you know, what is going to be the highest impact. From an, from an ROI perspective. I think Bob, just Robert, given your your expertise, to hear from you let's get your thoughts here first.

Robert Mann: So high-impact automation. Well you gotta, you gotta start with your database, right. And making the most out of your database, which is figuring out who you're engaged with and who you're not engaged with. I think that's a good place to start. So like most value. Is that second I'll try to steal.

I'm going to steal all of your talking points. Second. The second one is some, some kind of autoresponder that keeps people in the loop, whether that's, if they applied, like you can't have someone hit your ATS and not get something from you, that is a terrible experience. You can't submit somebody to a job, to a client and then let them fall into a black hole.

You cannot do that. You need, you can use automation for those. These are the high end. These are the, and these are the things that we were talking about for the last three years. With the census and the, and the here fishes of the world. So, I love those. And then I'll, I'll say the last one of high impact that maybe this is more enterprise and I'm going to just kind of plug this is being able to move data with clicks and not code.

So getting, getting involved with more of these citizen, automators where you, where you can plug in your, your general ledger or your payroll system very easily from the you know, from the ATS or from whatever system. We, you know, Patrick, this is kind of answering your question, Patrick through a question in about tightly integrated or not.

I think, I think the answer is still more tightly integrated and not you know, be all being in the same system if I'm answering your question correctly. But I think that there has to be a way to move data that doesn't require your team or the technology team to build end points. So, anyway, sorry. Yeah,

David Francis: There's a, there's a, there's a pretty huge kind of revolution going on right now with the kind of broad term for the category is called no-code tools.

And it's basically you know, automation, builders and citizen developers are basically people that work at your company that know your own internal processes, but aren't developers. And you can give them one of these no, no code platforms and they can basically do. You know, automations

Lauren Jones: It's more technical conversions. There's RPA happening. There's so much going on to make that easier and, and get bots involved in some of that administrative work. And you know, from my perspective, look focus people on revenue and relationships and focus automation on the administrative and the repetitive tasks that really detoured us traditionally from revenue generating activity.

Robert's a hundred percent right. You spent. At any given point, you're spending average dollar amount on a candidate that comes into your database. Don't let that be wasted money. And I, I get upset when I see databases that got ha that have millions of people in them. And there's this really dismal redeployment rate.

And that's your bread and butter right there. You spent all of that time, all of those resources and all of that money. And so let's focus your automation on making the most of that

Robert Mann: Redeployment. Talking to people that

Lauren Jones: Relationship for goodness sake. Yes. Yes.

Maurice Fuller: So yeah, I agree with everything Robert and Lauren have said on, on the automation side When, when I go into a staffing firm and I, sit down, virtually, sit down with a recruiter or people that are involved in the staffing processes.

I'm astonished at how manually intensive our business is today. It's, it's, there's so many steps involved in so many things that people have to do. And when you, when you look at the process, there are so many opportunities for audit automation. I recently sat down with a group again, virtually and within 20 minutes we had come up with 50 different opportunities to automate their various processes.

And I'm quite confident if we had continued on, we would have come up with 200 ideas. So when you have 200 opportunities for automation, where do you start? Well, I think. You know, to Lauren's point, you align that with the, the finances of the business, you know, what's going to drive profitability. And so you see that in two areas primarily one is as a front end of hiring.

So how can we use automation to make more placements and speed up the whole placement process through, as Robert was saying, like through engagement, Staying in touch with candidates, all of those kinds of things are going to lead to more placements. The second part is retention. So how can we use automation to retain better?

And, and, and raise employee satisfaction, drive more referrals. And then certainly like this integration with VMs, like Lauren was mentioning earlier disruption in there, lots of friction. We can automate that connection between our systems and their systems and streamline. So again, I think it's.

It's starting with hundreds of ideas, prioritizing based on strategic importance. And also where are you going to get the financial results? And then. You know, one by one systematically automating through various tools that are now available.

Lauren Jones: Right and it doesn't have to be, you're a hundred percent.

Right. And it doesn't have to be overly complex. And I think that's what businesses walk into this going, oh my gosh, do I have to bring in, you know, these million dollar consultants to do this giant white boarding exercise? It is as simple as here's where I am. Here's where I want to go. Here are the resources I have.

Here's how much time I have to get there. And, and really just doing a gap analysis of, you know, and those are the questions you have to ask yourself, and it doesn't have to be overly complex. And then I see a question here at me is Bullhorn bundling. Some of the yes, Bullhorn is bundling today. So you want to ask them about it.

Maurice Fuller: Yeah, that's a really good point is the word bot is kind of scary, but really the typical bot is just a few steps, but they're very powerful and they save a lot of time and they can be programmed by mere mortal people within. And

Robert Mann: Then please, please, don't create 200 automations at one time, please, for the love of all things.

But yeah, you're right. Sorry I cut you off. But most things are are one or two steps, right? That's what we would say. Sorry, I'm Maurice. I didn't mean to cut you off. Yeah.

David Francis: Cool. Okay. What does sure a little bit I want to jump into the, the, the, the whole just kind of a digital offering model, basically mobile phone apps, what the feature that looks like you know, we think there's a lot of potential there real quick.

Just one to answer a question, somebody had a question about uh, diversity and inclusion hiring and basically, you know, players trying to drive by diversity. On the corporate side, we've actually done quite a bit of work around this, on the corporate side, what seems to be moving the needle is a couple of things.

One just doing using tools to benchmark, and sometimes you need to use like a, like a machine learning tool, like a, like an eight fold or a higher choice, something to basically infer things like gender ethnicity. But just the, just knowing like what your kind of hiring funnel looks like.

Second thing that, you know, we've seen, it's been pretty effective is there's this category of tools called job post optimization. And it's basically, they just rewrite some of your job description to remove non-inclusive language and add inclusive language. It tends to only work in kind of like a larger hiring context but for the organizations which are typically bigger that use those that's moved the needle.

And the last point I would say is I think staffing companies historically the workforce is, is I think maybe over-indexed To, you know, diverse hires. And so I think to the extent you could just shine a light on that into your, you know, the companies that you staff to and say, Hey, like, look, this, this part of your supply chain actually is incredibly diverse.

You know, think that'd actually be a good way to just elevate the the industry.

Robert Mann: I saw that with David and I am not an expert on that, so I'm glad you are, or you have some research.

David Francis: Cool. All right. So let's I think the last thing just for um, based on time here, so yeah, let's talk about basically digital apps.

What does the future look like? You know, you know, adoption is there's a lot of pilots going on right now. What does the future look like is every company is every staffing company going to have their own app. Uh, and if they do it, you know, is this something that they should build themselves or, you know, licensed by get your guys' thoughts on it?

Maurice Fuller: Yeah. So every year we do a report on a top 10 staffing technology trends for the year and mobile. Is one of those top 10 trends. And I personally think it's one, one of the most important transit. It will be the, one of the defining trends of this decade. When we look back, we see this transition of all the staffing firms on a mobile apps.

That's what we'll think about is is, um, how we made that transformation. And what's interesting about mobile apps is it enables. New capabilities, like what we call autonomy staffing, where placements are made without recruiter involvement or recruiter list staffing. As some people refer to it it's dramatically speeds up the staffing process and it significantly improves that experience for candidates and employees and even for our clients.

And these mobile apps are going to become very, very powerful as phones become better 5g, et cetera. It's, it's simply one of the most important things that every staffing firm needs to have on their radar or start investing in now. And, um, I would also say um, that it's, it's, it's definitely one of those, those high impact areas that will transform staffing.

Lauren Jones: I agree. I agree. And I disagree. This is where that question that we prepared for of what's one of the unpopular views you have, that people will argue with you about. And that's, I think that we have to. I agree with you that this app is such a great opportunity to put the power and the candidates hand, it's all about candidate experience, but I also think, you know, with great power comes great responsibility.

Remember the average candidate signs up the average commercial candidate signs up with four to six agencies. That means we're going to require them to download four to six apps. And so I think we have to be really careful mindful of what that interface looks like. And then secondarily, you know, I sit right next to the Silicon valley. So I have actually serviced against the blue crew jobs and service against the window lows. And I'll tell you what, the one thing we have that I don't know that they're ever going to have is when stuff goes sys sideways, we are there, we are onsite. We are there to fix it. We're there to make it better.

And so there is this beautiful balance. I know we can reach with this human, you know, connection and, and. You know, maintaining the humanity of a very human industry and leveraging technology to make us better, faster, stronger. So it's this Dane, you know, it's this fine line that we in the industry have to walk.

And so I want us to be mindful of that as we're putting our apps together, remember that your, your average candidate is going to do this a number of times. So how do we make it as easy as possible?

Robert Mann: I agree with, I think the human part of it is, is key. Like I'm, I'm a big fan of this idea of a human based economy, everything focused on the human.

Right. And it's nice because I work in an industry that's really focused on the human. So yeah, so definitely mobile and definitely need to find the balance and figure out what that is. I would say right buyer, you said that you asked buy or build David Unless you have a team that's going to keep you on track of the newest technologies I would recommend.

And, you know, I would say buy, not build. So you're

Lauren Jones: Not, you're in staffing. You're not a software company.

Maurice Fuller: Well, unless, unless you're like like one of the top 10 largest staffing firms in the world, and you can put a 30 person team or 50 person team behind it, it's going to be very difficult to keep up with the leaders in this field.

So a lot of people start off thinking, oh, this is the mobile app. We can quickly create it. It's much more complex than you could possibly imagine.

Robert Mann: Every situation where I've talked to like, so take an ATS. For example, guys, I've talked to like three or four companies. Oh, we're going to we're, we're a bunch of Salesforce, developers.

We staff, Salesforce, architects, et cetera. We're going to build our ATS through Salesforce three years later, it's live. You know, we are a top five company we're going to build it. We have a lot of money. Two, three years later it's live. So there's, there's just, and that these guys are talented people.

It's just a lot of work, right? Yeah. And a lot of luck, a lot of work and a lot of money.

Lauren Jones: Yeah, a lot of money, a lot of time and a lot of effort. And if you're prepared for that and have the funding for it, go for it. Yeah.

Maurice Fuller: Yeah. I want to build on something Lauren said with the number of apps that candidates and employees will have on their phone.

I mean, there's some limit, I mean, is it going to be five or 10? That might be one of the limiting factors. Like you have Lyft and Uber. People have two apps on their phone, but does it make sense for candidates to have five or 10? I'm not so sure. And I think this alone as we get more and more efficiencies out of mobile and automation might play a role in consolidating our industry around a smaller number of very, very technologically savvy staffing firms.

Robert Mann: I would, I would add that. Something Sue said in the last panel about remote work one, because you're remote and you're on a phone. You need to have a really strong brand so that you, you, you are the app that they want to use. Right. And also taking the Amazon approach and just having killer customer service and really answering questions in a, in a highly timely manner or immediately.

So that's what all technology should do. So, I mean, if you're going to, if you're going to provide a mobile app, you need to differentiate yourself. And then that brand also has to be highly focused on customer service, sorry or learner , Murice.

Maurice Fuller: No, those are great points

Lauren Jones: and I you're you're you're you're spot on.

Maurice Fuller: Yep.

David Francis: I think the, I was going to say the only other kind of, a couple of points I would make here is uh, even, even in the case where you're, you're a global brand you know, building is particularly hard, I'd say the, the, your litmus test should be, are we going to be, you know, the, the top one or two vendor like looking at your technology that you're building, like, can we be the top one or two in the industry building internally and if not, and then, you know, are we willing to invest the resources on an ongoing basis to make sure that we, you know, maintain that position?

And if the answer to that is no, then you know, your, your, your life would better. Buying a tool. The, the other thing I'll say, I guess there's a, there there's two kind of questions around one on adoption. It seems like one of the challenges here, I agree. This is going to be the future. That the biggest, it seems, you know, challenge to date has actually been kind of internal adoption and client adoption.

So, you know, I think. Buying one of these systems is great, but then make sure that you have a roadmap to actually, you know, get this in place, get your recruiters using it. Uh, and actually deploying candidates and, you know, to the extent that's possible, get your, your clients using it too. And then how kind of the overall ecosystem evolves?

I agree with the point. So there's like 19,000 staffing companies in the US if they've each got an app, like that's you know, from a candidate experience perspective you know, that's, that's, that's going to be impossible to manage. There's, there's two futures. There's either one where, you know, a handful of really big dominant players, you know, have their own branded app.

And that takes over the world. Like, you know,

Yeah. The Adeccos, True Blues you know, get kind of like dominant market penetration. The, the industry is fragmented enough. I don't think that's probably what's going to happen. There is probably going to be some, you know, agnostic vendor that basically creates some kind of a platform. You know, multiple companies can participate in and they, they use that technology, you know, essentially a marketplace, but they're, they're using, you know, that is as as delivery and, you know, candidates still go there and we'll be basically be able to select staffing suppliers.

Lauren Jones: That's what Australia is doing. And I th I think I am watching that one closely. Cause I think we're going to see this, this immense participation because they've made it easy.

Robert Mann: And, and, and maybe it's I'm, I'm going to be joking here, but maybe it's the group that has the best memes and then John Leonard entertaining.

Yeah. It's actually, you're probably to be fair. You're probably a painting and work. Yeah.

Lauren Jones: Right.

Maurice Fuller: What I'm seeing is that these mobile apps are making staffing firms along with robotic process automation, much more productive you know, in terms of productivity, per recruiter, productivity per sales rep, and we might wind up in a situation where we have like sort of an oversupply of capacity because we can scale chatbots and we can scale virtual recruiters. And so we may not need again, as many staffing firms as we have today because we basically scale not by adding human beings, but we scale by setting up our services in the cloud.

Lauren Jones: Yeah.

David Francis: With that just based on time. I think we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna end with that thought. Maurice, Robert, Lauren. Thanks Everyone has to be here.

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