Praneeth Patlola: So we'll get started. I'll introduce myself first for anyone who is joining the panel and everyone else. First, my name is Praneeth Patlola. I am CEO and co-founder for WillHire direct sourcing and a talent pool solution. Enjoy doing HR tech for most part. Being a developer, most of my career then converted myself to, into HR tech.

Everybody knows in this group how that works, but real quick, we have an amazing panel today. The topic of interest is more curious to everyone, start with Mark Jones. Mark. Thanks for being here on the con panel. A little intro on Mark here. Mark is a executive VP at, Alexander Mann who just rebranded us VRMs, which is, looks amazing.

Mark and graduations on that. Mark has several years of experience and expertise in the talent acquisition industry from a workforce management, significantly driving the operations at AMS. In fact, he is one of the first employees are the longest standing employees within AMS for about more than 24 years, I guess.

Mark Jones: Yeah, Long time. 

Praneeth Patlola: And he also relocated recently in 2013. Is that right? Mark? Today to lead the contingent workforce operations for North America, leading the pathway for AMS. So a lot you could share in your recent experience, but love to hear that thanks for being here. And then we got Satish here who is the co-founder and CEO for GLIDER.ai which is, a technology platform in the assessment world, or talent curation world, which is more relevant to our topic to Satish is the HR tech fanatic like me. And then he has gone through his own iterations of building technology. He has worked with Oracle in the past and is also if I understood is a UC UC Berkeley alumni and IIT Kharagpur grad.

Thanks Satish for being here. Love to hear more your insights, Dan Sines, again CEO of Traitify, if I spell that right. And assessment and personality and visual based assessment platform which Dan also I was reading just before the session. He's also having a black belt in martial arts.

That's true. And he has some really nice articles if people like to Google him and he has some personal articles written down on medium. I just read which is very helpful and how to know, not just to know the POC, but just to know the whole ecosystem when you're going out for business. So thanks Dan.

Thanks for being here. Great panel. So really quick the topic, right? What's all this fuss about talent curation and if anyone has paid attention, I think talent curation as a keyword has taken a big buzzword for the past three or four years. Contingent staffing is slowly grooming up over a period of time, but Technically speaking, in a layman's term, how do you better assess candidates is again the core topic of talent curation or cracks of it.

One clarity, I like to bring to the group again, is talent curation, what we are referring to here and is more relevant to the contingent staffing world from contract management programs in doing that. So with that, I'll open the stage. Here goes my first question as such, you know, what does talent curation really means?

And Mark given your journey with AMS and from RPO expansion worldwide, all, and now leading that direct sourcing and talent curation effort. Maybe you can help us understand, like, what do you think? What is this talent curator really means for us? 

Mark Jones: Sure. Yeah. Thanks Praneeth. I mean, I mean, I think. There's so many different sort of definitions of what a talent pool really is.

And I think it was going to sort of go through the course of this this, this, this session in terms of technology plays a huge part in it. And, you know, how do you treat candidates? And ultimately there's the word curation. And then there's the word talent pool. You know, there's a staffing database you know, it means the many different things but I think from my perspective really this talent pool is really the creation and it's the, the, an area where you can put candidates.

But there are fundamental parts of an organization's talent acquisition strategy. And we'll talk about later, we'll talk about maybe later on in terms of where it fits into the recruitment life cycle. But really this is this is about a pool of candidates. You have to think really hard about how you're going to treat these candidates.

How are you going to assess these candidates? What is the criteria to enter into this pool? Which is where assessment comes in. And there was different ways of different technologies to help on that. How would you want to communicate to this candidates there in this pool. The importance of brand can link into that as well as I'm sure we're going to talk about as a, as well.

What messages are you going to say? So broadly speaking for me uh, a talent pool is a repository of candidates that are an integral part of an organization is talent acquisition, life cycle. And that you've really thought long and hard about how, why and what you're going to communicate to these individuals.

Praneeth Patlola: Awesome. And I'm want to extend that a little bit more on a very specific to the curation aspect of the talent pool there when we're thinking about talent curation, I know it's like widely used when it comes to direct sourcing as such. But what we also figured out to clarify what really that means in our world is when organizations are looking to source candidates directly or use a provider or a platform, which is equipped with the talent pool engagement and management talent curation is not just about a candidate is coming in. I just need to know how to talk to this person and what methodology I do use to curate this person who is in my applicant pool.

It is much beyond that. It includes the talent engagement building out the employee value propositions brand so that the recruitment marketing efforts that we need to do through the engagement of talent through the life cycle part of the talent life cycle within a CRM by itself or outside the messaging is also a key element is what we have observed.

And there is a lot to it, but I think that kind of speaks for like where that fits into it. But that goes to my next question where when it comes to talent curation and. Where does this really fit into direct sourcing? And we'll open up that connecting and this pretty much connects the whole topic together of when it comes to direct sourcing in, in my words of a definition when enterprises in today's world are engaging the talent directly, where for the past decade, or more than that, the HR technology has been enabling organizations on the HR side to really address that full-time direct tight space with our employer, branding, talent, CRM, recruitment, marketing all that is heavily engaged.

And even the assessment tools like Traitify, Glider, several others, enabling them to use data driven methodologies, but that never has been applied on the contingent side. Majority of our industry is still kind of leaned in how we have been doing business for a very long time. But in the past three years, the dialogue has changed significantly.

It no longer a buzzword direct sourcing is becoming kind of more of a mainstream where talent can be attracted and engage. So when it comes to this direct sourcing topic, let's talk a little bit more. How does the talent curation fit into this direct sourcing modeling? And let's go around the table.

Mark. Maybe you can take a headache first. 

Mark Jones: Yeah. F for me it's, it's, it's the fundamental enabler of a direct sourcing model. And it really should be the first port of call for where an organization's go. And I think part of the success of any sort of talent curation has to be about having enough candidates in the pool.

And so that talent pool density is, I think, is really important. So you've got to have enough candidates in there but funding first and foremost, for me, it is. Organizations look at this in different ways. One way of looking at it is that this could be a home for your create deed workers for your alumni for your recent retired.

We worked for a large engineering organization that has had a large number of people that have retired. And they're using a ton of ports to sort of capture those individuals and bring them back in. And we've seen a real ramp up of that sort of this year as, as, as, as demand is, as has come in.

So, so for me, I think it's, it's the beginning of that process for excellence and can mean different things to organizations, some organizations we'll put all kinds of individuals in a ton of pool. Others will just put Reno referrals or pre IDs, but I think it's, I think it's that that initial starting point for a direct sourcing strategy and making sure that you've got enough tools and enough methodologies to make sure that you've got enough people in that talent pool. And then how we use it can, can vary this direct sourcing talent pool will never replace the full staffing sort of ecosystem, but it can have a place within it.

And normally that place is at the start of the process. In terms of before we go out to market, do we have anybody that's is sitting in that talent pool that wants to work for this organization and is registered and is pre-assessed. And then we we can pull them out to start with. 

Praneeth Patlola: Awesome. Awesome. And you know, Dan and Satish, maybe you can take that too forward when it comes to, like mark mentioned the tools and techniques and mechanisms and how to assess this candidate to also ensure that they are vetted on an ongoing basis or in a prior basis and making them ready. I know you both have been through your individual journeys of technology, assessment, innovation in applying that to make it really fast and easy.

So maybe you can share some science behind the, your journeys and how you're contributing in that curation funnel. Maybe Dan, you can go first. 

Dan Sines: Yeah, absolutely. I think first, just, I wanted to know from the Traitify side, we've predominantly worked directly with full-time work or with hourly workers. And so for us moving into this kind of direct sourcing world contingent world is newer and something.

We're definitely learning more about the thing that I've learned as we've been heading into it is that at the core, it's all the same. We need to find the right person for the right job to put them in the right position. I like to think of talent curation and in like a metaphor to art curation. So imagine you're setting up an art exhibit.

First, you need art, then you need quality art. Then you need art that matches what your exhibit is. And so there's kind of these three steps that you need to fill in from there that gathering of the art is building the talent pool, the finding the quality that's what my company predominantly does.

We're looking to find that quality fit. And then from there, it's that match basically of, does this make sense for the brand? Does it make sense for the company and the position? So what we do at Traitify is kind of a deeper form personality assessment, but it's done in a two minute interval. So it's a much faster, more fun and engaging way to measure personality that can be applied to roles where you're looking for contingent work or hourly work, and you need to move people through that process more quickly, but still find that kind of smarter degree of match on the other side.

Praneeth Patlola: That's awesome that summarizes everything. And I was reading through your research paper, which indicates how the science of visual, a visual signs of humans can enable. Like, what are you kind of a child's game when you are like three year old, maybe you played those games. How would, that is, enabling now into assessments to derive personalities, because nobody wants to take an MBT test, these dates, right.

With that Satish. I know for a, or you have gotten much deeper in terms of like enterprises, professional side and your platform has enabled within the direct sourcing ecosystem. I know you guys helped us a lot, but maybe you can go deeper into from an assessment point on a curation where you kind of add those points out there.

Satish Kumar: Sure Puneeth. So my journey is pretty much similar to Daniel in the way that I did just start from the full-time, but then I spent a lot of time on the contingent marketing side. And and coming from the engineering background, like you Praneeth, let me say that. I want to make sure that the definition is a little bit more tater of what, because, you know, there's so much confusion.

And some of the things Mark said that, the Hey entry point where in the fight, somebody said branding can be also used as a way to curate people. In my world, there are three things, Relevancy, Competency, and Intent. Competency, the part where I come into the picture, right? So when I even you say, Hey, the talent curation, I really mean that what are the characteristic of their, so it has to be scientific.

It has to be objective. It has to be standardized and it has to be repeatable. So there'll be understand what does talent curation mean? Right. If you, the, if we can check those boxes, I think, yes, there's a talent creation. We do it manually automated psychometric doesn't matter. This talent curation.

Coming back to Glider. I come from the other extreme than Daniel, where I totally believe that people should be able to do the real world tasks that we mimicked the first day of the job. And that evaluation is really key to make the right hire. Right. And, and in the context of direct sourcing, really though, if the candidates are sitting in your pool now, or sourcing from different channels, some of them are pointed out a returning employee or redeployment.

The, really the idea here is to be able to proactively go out and build that pool of candidates right now. I will also say that there are two parts here. There are always some evergreen jobs, right? For that is fast moving high velocity, high volume jobs. The idea's traditional with that. Hey, have this privileges, pool of candidates.

Whereas some low volume or a sporadic job category with a lesser impact, maybe you can take a reactive approach of vetting candidates to save some money. That's open. Have I answered what definition of where this fit in the deck? 

Praneeth Patlola: That totally makes sense. And I'm glad you brought that up past to that pre-vetted talent pool, which can be assessed for regular roles.

And and I think Mark was also resonating on the same. It's like you would have a list of pool, which could be a previous contractors or previous former employees, auditor network, or a new network, which is a form through the newer sourcing approach, often new or referrals or an online recruitment marketing efforts.

But how do you vet them through the process and how do you prevent them if it is a repeated role? So you can impact really the time to hire, which is the key metric in any of our contingent staffing programs or for that matter in talent acquisition in general. And that key for that is like, how do you prove it now?

That kind of also challenging. Because there is also a cost of transaction and because of the cost of volume of the transaction increases the larger cost and how to do that. What that brings to me too, is how do you do that? Is that a one fit a one size fits all model really relevant because there is tests in Glider.

There is a model in Traitify and there are a number of other tools organizations are already using. And those tools could be an test, could be generalized or those curation models could be generalized. Does it really matter to use a generalized model? How much would it matter? Can you kind of, each of us can take a stab at that.

Mark, Satish, Daniel, anyone can go, 

Satish Kumar: I can try that. So I mean, the standard answer is of course a one size fits all is not the approach, but there are a few examples in some subtle job category. Let's you know, blue collar jobs or light industrial jobs where maybe the subsegment, the talent pool will do just fine because imagine a worker or you're looking for a job you're looking for a candidate for warehouse worker meat cutter, maybe seasonal food picker, right.

It requires many the physical ability to be able to do the job, right. And the criteria is, are they available? Right. However, even in those categories, we should ideally assist the candidates based on the listening ability to follow the instruction. Maybe see a few little things attention to detail and maybe a few more human traits.

So, there are a few examples where depending on which company, what do they do, which category there could be pretty much segmentation would work, but beyond that still, I would like to have them pre-vetted through automated assessment engine to avoid the bias. In the process. 

Praneeth Patlola: Awesome. Awesome. Dan, Mark, you guys want to take hit that one size fits all model again?

Mark Jones: Yeah. I'm not sure that. There is that one size fits all. I think you hit something pretty thanks really important and that's time to hire. And one of the benefits of a creation done on board is if you've got people in that's unimportant and the subsections of that talent pool can really help that speed to hire.

So some examples in terms of how we've broken down talent pool, it could be based on geography. It could be based on skill set. You know, we have had even had some examples of organizations that have hired graphic designers and actually they want to actually see their portfolio or us to have pre-vetted that the portfolio is, is, is, is relevant for the organization.

So I, I think what's really important is understanding what's important to the organization. What does the organization wants to have in a talent pool? What are they trying to use it for? So yeah. Is it going to be used for project managers on the east coast, for example. Okay, great. If that's what you're going to use then there's, I think at this point you can have some element of vetting and qualification based on that criteria.

But the chances are to get the best out of the talent pool. There should be multiple segments. There should be multiple elements. I think that's what comes back to what is that organization trying to drive? Because like anything, it should be a living thing. The technology helps with the, the, the productivity helps with how you create it, how you communicate to the individuals.

But first and foremost, I think, comes back to what is the organization trying to achieve? And what would you want the talent pool to do? 

Praneeth Patlola: No, that totally makes sense. And you know, you bought four points around that, like the segmentation, which is like light industrial is a hot topic in our arena, especially when we are looking at how differently can be done, because you cannot expect a complete assessment to be rolled out for a person to go through, especially for contingent jobs, because they're fast moving, especially in light industrial in doing that.

And in order to achieve what I call us like Uberised model for enterprise light, industrial assessments play and accommodation plays such a key role because you're building a very good local, curated talent. And within that, you're qualifying those attributes from a skill competency, location wise, how fast it can come in and availability, which is one of those key criteria.

I know Dan, I think you guys have done some amazing work with the AMS in terms of. Having that automated funnel of curation through that test, which is like the two minutes test, which I think is like more relevant to that particular category. The way I see it. 

Dan Sines: Yeah. So, I mean, I would say there's not a one size fits all that's going to work across everything, but the more you can make the data universal across to everyone and then sub segment the data needed for that client. I think the better results you can get from there, and the more useful that talent pool will be down the road for other roles, other needs, et cetera.

What we've done with AMS is that actually we've launched a platform called hourly and it's focused on high volume roles where across the board, they're taking our assessment as part of a chat experience, a conversational experience that's giving a similar flow for every candidate. But of course the constellation of unique traits that you're looking for that company, that job, that role are completely different.

But having that universal kind of data set allows you to scale that better across the larger client portfolio. Yep. 

Praneeth Patlola: Now that kind of also touched, like, I think most of us touch also one important item, like the bias like when you're building talent curation, that is two sides of innovation. One is the technology enablement, which enables you to assess candidates faster in a more data driven approach.

But there is also a human element. And I think Mark, you have already experienced, and you probably have practiced this on a day to day and organization. There that is still a human component into, in addition to the automation. And why do we do this? How do we stay out of bias? Because diversity being such a hot topic of conversation now become a hot topic in in in our industry from a contingent staffing point of view, people are now thinking about how do we build diverse talent pools also?

How do we not stay, how do you avoid conscious or unconscious bias through this process? And we do have to apply part of that curation process. Again, anyone can take a stab at is like, you know, what patterns are you seeing any best practices? How is diversity or a bias handled within the curation process?

Dan Sines: I could start here. I think you know, in general with bias and diversity as so much, attention is put on the last step in the process. When people talk about this, that final selection of the candidate, and at that point, you are so far past the issue of bias. It, it starts way back at the beginning.

And if you don't get a diverse talent pool from day one, it's impossible to end up with a diverse employee set at the end. We need to start at the beginning and work bit by bit through every step of your funnel to make sure that you are not passively just avoiding this, but instead, actively trying to solve for it.

Satish Kumar: Can I have the deck? 

Praneeth Patlola: Yep. Go for it. 

Satish Kumar: Praneeth, This is my favorite question. So let me start from that. And, and, and rightly as Danielle said, it has to start from the top of the funnel. And, you know, like humans, are biased. Like you, don't know it well the answer is automate the curation period. Right now you have to take the data driven approach in the hiring decision to find the fitment and capability for the job.

Let me just paint a picture in I in a system where you invite candidates to perform some simulated tasks that is representative of the, of the job they're going to do after joining the company. Right. And they can truly showcase the capability, but once candidates perform the task system, auto scores stack ranks them on predefined criteria, but this is still a blind test for hiring managers.

So they don't get to see the, the the personally identifiable data of the candidates who they are. They're not everything is blind for them. They decide just based on the, the auto score criteria, predefined that is relevant for the job. And then the cup of shortlist few of them. Once shortlist only then you reveal who they are.

Imagine this world the, the, the decision-making is so much clear and, and without any bias. So plus system has to work together to, to really, to to bring the DNI initiative at the organization. And the Glider will do it very well by the way. 

Praneeth Patlola: Awesome. Awesome. Great. While we are talking about the buyers, one of the key things, which as a pattern and a challenge, which everybody pulls us in buyers, recruiting is the HR tech industry has transformed into more of a video, heavy recruiting and, you know, living in a video world like we are today, and with LinkedIn and several other channels, people are transforming themselves into a no resume world as a topic, which always comes in.

And which means you are looking at people, which means you are making decisions on people's voice, people's profile as such and who, what and everything. There's always a challenge. And to bring a balance between this growing modern tech and option. So we, I always believe that we have to rewrite what we are doing in terms of the conscious or unconscious bias.

And we need to the topic a little more heavily because we're trying to do a patchwork everywhere we go on. How to anonymize our data when we can, but I think this is beyond anonymity. This is more of a practice we have to within, within organizations, within staffing companies, recruiters, within hiring managers, within the curation, I think from a curation point of view, how do you create an unbiased curation process is like really important because part of the curation process is employer branding, which we barely touched in this session, maybe some other day, which is critical component of it.

Right. And so I'll I'll open up. We have last two minutes if I see that. Right. So, in terms of, at a higher level, when it comes to the topic of curation or direct sourcing each of us can take a stab at this. Where do you see this going in 2021? And from correlating to talent curation, what are you seeing as a patterns?

What do you predict in 2021?

Mark Jones: I think it's is going to have to go from strength to strength in terms of organizations of all types shapes and sizes small and mid market. Looking to take advantage of this really actually from the, the, the speed and the quality speed, and quality is always going to be a huge, important part of, of, of any talent pool.

And you've touched upon brand as well for anything. We, can't not just say that if you're branding this and most organizations are then your, the people in your talent pool are your brand champions, and they might even be consumers, as well as the brand brands are massively important part of this as well.

And I think that will become more of a trend over the rest of this year. 

Praneeth Patlola: Awesome. Awesome. 

Satish Kumar: So, based on what I've been interacting with hundreds of staffing companies, you know, I can see a very big commitment to quality. I mean, a time to fill like always been the high priority, always, but, and from Glider perspective, we want to bring quality at the forefront as well, at least at par with time to fill and operationally, that has been a challenge for the organization, given the fast moving nature of the convenient market.

But this year I can see that that it based on, on, on adopting the quality and talent curation process and making it a very much standardized process in the operation. 

Dan Sines: That's awesome. Yeah, I completely agree. I think that, you know, the quest for quality is going to be the biggest theme of 2021, just as more and more people enter these talent pools, just due to the nature of the pandemic as well.

You're going to need to do more sifting through that and more curating to find the right quality to fill the role. And if you're doing that, the ROI on the other side will kind of remove any of the costs that's associated with it. 

Praneeth Patlola: Awesome. I know we are on time. If I got that right, right on 1130, central time and maybe we should talk, but really awesome insights.

Mark Daniel Satish glad to be on this panel. I have having you guys here on this panel and thanks a lot for sharing your amazing insights. And I think we will continue this dialogue all through this year from a curation point of view, which is the most important topic in the transformation or industry is going through on the contingent side, specially.

And and I think we'll collaborate your loop, probably help understand this topic better because there's all this confusion around this topic, which is the most confused topic is like, what does this mean to the US like, what is talent curation even mean? I don't know what that is. Right. So I think 

Satish Kumar: Is there a Q/A now, or that's separate. And you said 

Praneeth Patlola: I don't think there is a Q/A plan for this one. It's 30 minutes if I understood that right from Jan. 

Satish Kumar: Yeah. 

Praneeth Patlola: YOu could take questions from anyone who is chatting here. I don't think anybody is able to get on the video.

Yeah. Okay. That is a question from Brian McGregor. We could take a, what about user experience? How do you, how do you keep pool the talent engaged and interested? 

Dan Sines: There's something we do at Traitify is once we have kind of that insight into the personality of the individual, we then curate the content coming back to them based on their personality.

So trying to really personalize any of that communication can be a way I think, to really keep them hooked, keep them interested and provide real value back to them, which is really important for your brand. 

Praneeth Patlola: Awesome. Awesome. 

Satish Kumar: Yeah. Definitely the candidate experience is one of the key aspects in this whole process because unless you get that, you know, you can't get the candidate to take the assessment or, you know, answer a question.

So we try to simulate there for the professional category, whatever they do on the local machine, simulate the same experience in the cloud, and that makes them feel home and continue to work on it. 

Mark Jones: I would just say don't ignore them. Don't forget about that. 

Praneeth Patlola: Okay. Yep. Great. And just to go deeper in the how do you keep them interested is one of the key things or engaged couple of practices that I've seen through our own implementations is a multiple way.

We call it a talent blueprint, engagement, like in typical talent CRM world. When a talent engagement is bringing a, you're bringing talent into a pool and marking it as a private talent. You could use a personalized to communications. You can use a non-personalized or focused communications. Like in yesterday, a customer was asking, can we embed a content here, very specific to a specific talent pipeline and engage them through an automated or a content visitor engagement.

That is also a key pattern we are seeing from a more, how do you create a personalized communication impact from content that you can share or referral campaigns, which is a very popularly used techniques to keep the talent pool acting within the ecosystem and also announcements around like keeping them up to date of what's coming out.

Any strategies, which are changing any new hiring plans, which are changing within the contingent site or any changes with keep them engaged through the process. But in reality, highest amount of engagement, we have seen withsite, or any changes to keep the technology in place within the talent pools from a point where you're engaging the talent pool is truly the matching jobs that which you're engaging that is the highest point of communication is what we have seen the adoption for subscribing into matching jobs to keep talent warm and engaged is pretty high.

When you look at any metric in any talent pool today any other questions from the audience? You can just fate for a few more minutes for them to hop in and share more questions, but it looks like we have a little more time here. 

Well, looks like we have another question from Judo Romo for the highly technical contingent roles. How do we validate foundational competence in such a short period of time? We find video and CV to claim competence where the candidate really only has awareness of the technology. 

Satish Kumar: You want me to take that? Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. So okay. I think that is where the design of the evaluation comes into the picture.

Right. And, and, typically if recruiters are trying to do that on their own, right. It's very hard. I mean, they are not for the, especially for the technology though, right. They're not technical people, but let me first say that, you know, most of the recruiters are well-intentioned hard-working people, but they need tools and training to do the work effectively.

Right. And that is where the two leg lighter that comes in the picture sort of where we can want with their hiring manager actually figure it out. What is the calibration, the talent did the need. And that bar was set by the hiring manager was in the case is not valid by the recruiter. Anyway, how can we take that input and transform into very much real world tasks, which, if the candidate performs, it shows their competitor, their capability on the kinds of technology that they're going to do.

So did you see a sort of matchmaking of expectation of what hiring manager needs versus what we can do? And technology can really enable give them the super power to be able to do the task in a highly automated fashion. How it works. There is one more it can be semi-automated as well.

What if we give the power in the hand? The Cooper, to do the vetting, but in a guided way, in that let's I know that this is a job requirement and if they just upload the job requirement or few key criteria and system starts guiding recruiters, what to ask candidate or various technology.

Now, basically we are empowering a recruiter to do their job for technical roles, to the best of both worlds that they will engage with the system is guiding them. So either it can be highly automated or semi-automated to the system. Like the, we explain the process. 

Praneeth Patlola: I think the key competent and there in the question also as peculiar is the short period of time.

Right. And when it comes to like doing it in a short period of time, I think the key element there. The length of the test and also the quality of the test questions that you are providing so that when a new applicant is coming in or a pre-qualifying any complicated, how fast can they do? Is it really built?

We just like that one size fits all model won't work. So sometimes you have to come up with a customized curation models, which enables you to ask that questions in the right format, in the most relevant format, categorizing them whether they are low level basic or advanced in really going into that compare understanding of the competency to different levels as such a base.

The, there is also another level of challenge, which does assessments also bring into our industry, especially in a fast moving contingent roles candidates, have those reluctance on time. When they have given option in the water of talent and they have two or three options available, they'll probably go for the easiest option.

You won't go the toughest option, but the key there has been that's where your employer branding and employer value proposition really comes into impact is why that employer branding plays a key role to take that investment of 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes test, and the candidate is not viable in doing that.

A couple of other alternative mechanisms again, is based on how the process is set up, whether it's a mandated curation process of assessment or a non-bank mandated, which is where the rec the curation team can still pick up the phone and still have that guided a question or a checklist to walk through and confirm that, or even kind of bring an SME into a interview process very early on.

And there are marketplaces today in the market who provide the interviewers is on demand. Like, we came across one partner in our ecosystem was techie who provides interviews on demand. But again, those are expensive when you invest into it. So as long as you see the high value in those transactions, you can always invest in great deal of the time.

And in a very short time compete. We got some really amazing, good questions coming our way. Here. 

One question Carol is asking is you mentioned embedding of embedding content in the talent pool. Can you give an example, an ideas of content. Great. It looks like it's come to me. So, very specific example, there is one customer, we have been working with who indicated they have a very strong engineering group who have generate content about what their infrastructure is, generate content, about their internal engineering process, open source contributions that they're making.

And they really wanted to leverage that content and transition that into the talent pool today, there is no direct mechanism to communicate to the talent pool, to really engage that talent saying that, which is more relevant, which is why segmenting that talent pool into segmentation, whether they are tech non-tech or anything else is very important and leveraging this content, which is produced by the organization internally, or which is already used in any promotion.

The second use case we just recently solved for a light industrial based customer is they're actually making changes to the plant and with COVID changes, they have to. Produce a lot of content to make people understand at a larger scale, because they were not able to finish trainings as in bulk, as they used to be because of the number of people which are allowed into the training rooms.

So, in order to do that, what they have done is they created a mechanism to set the right expectation into the talent pool so that they know what's coming to them. What other policies they are rolling out, for a particular site? What other changes, any changes they are doing. And they're also sharing through that.

Any other specifics about trainings that are rolling out, which candidates are expected to have in coming to? So those are some contents which we have seen as a pattern organizations that are training. Anyone else has more insights, feel free to add that. 

Mark Jones: Yeah, I think sometimes the overarching strategy of an organization.

And again, this comes back to something that we haven't really touched upon, which I think is important and it's the buy-in of the organization to this whole concept. And so if you've got an organization where you've got a Head of TA or a Head of HR or whatever it is who wants to share that information and this touches upon brand as well as such on the type of talent that you're curating.

I think the organizations that you're working with that content can be really rich and really powerful in terms of where are they going? Why should someone wants to be part of the talent pool or because they're doing something that is going to be revolutionary in their industry, but that's a really, it's a really good source of content.

And that becomes part of the whole buy-in program. 

Praneeth Patlola: Absolutely. And that's engaging and promoting your employer value proposition to keep that engaged, but also making them make you as a choice, go to imply within your talent pool, although they have more options. 

Satish Kumar: So presented at one more point that, for me, any reason to reach out to candidate, we should explore that to keep it engaged, right?

Absolutely. We have to borrow a concept of drip marketing from the marketers that really applies here. Find a reason to reach out to them and be. 

Praneeth Patlola: Absolutely. And so there is also another question very specific to assessments, which kind of indirectly address 

Mandeep asks many, a times talent, especially senior talent are not too keen in taking up an assessment.

How do we ease them towards taking an assessment? And I think it goes to what's the same theory of why should you have to give a reason to Senior or any kind of talent, why they should take a test, create a reasoning around that, create an employment value proposition around that and make that interesting enough for them to invest into that and will always be a challenge, especially because a lot of talent in the market, we are always going and especially in tech talent side, we always have a challenge.

Satish and Dan, maybe you can share more insights on that. 

Satish Kumar: I have, I've entertained this question almost every time when I talked with the recruitment team. Right. So let me start from the very beginning that. For any kind of talent, right? If there is unfair advantage, why would I let it go? If there are other means, right?

But if we look at the talent pool, there are top 5% of the pool, which is like the height in a high demand. And really for them, why will they take assessments? Right. But if you did keep that part aside, let's talk 90% plus talent pool. I think depending depending on the branding of your company, what you stand for, it really resonates with them. They will go through the process. That's number one. Number two is that it is their chance to showcase who they are. Can they do the job? And I know if you buy anything, you have to test it out. Not that now, what did that that, that, that label of Yeah, they want to put in, right? So that is always a balance between how long do you want to assess versus how deep you want to assess?

And we have a balancing act in game later itself, but I did design the assessments too much. I'm not testing everything, testing the key teams to keep it short. Right. And, and you know what, now we advise the clients that he makes sure that you keep the test short, but as a part of that in return, if you can reduce one of your interview uh, steps that will help overall.

So there's benefit from both sides that, okay, we are asking you to take assessment, asking you to spend some time, but in return, we will skip the one interview step that make the overall process faster and brings a skill at the same day. 

Dan Sines: Yeah, I think I can add to this as well. Obviously I have very similar feelings.

Nevertheless, I think it comes down to experience and ROI is the two things that can kind of get talent leaders onboard from the experience side. It needs to be something that's enjoyable and interesting enough that they will be willing to take it themselves. If you can get that talent team to feel that way, so will your candidates on the other side too often, we're willing to give candidates things that we would never do ourselves. So for us, that's obviously a key feature. We always focus on everything we do around building. And then from the next side, it's ROI you know, this should generate better people for the positions for you. And that turns into real dollars. You know, we are able to show that we're able to cut time time to fill or time to hire in half and most cases for clients or more we're able to reduce attrition by, you know, 30% or better. And so those numbers really turn into real, meaningful dollars on the other side. And most people in the senior side of talent are looking at those dollars. 

Praneeth Patlola: Yeah, absolutely. And it's also the core related to the KPIs, right? Or whether it's a direct sourcing program or a supply program, your KPIs of hit rates or your KPIs of time to respond, time to submit all these are correlated.

If you don't have to submit 300 submissions to make two placements, very bad number to be in, and you probably wouldn't be in that program anymore. After the next time someone looks at that number. Right. So how do you increase your hit rates? How do you increase your conversion rates of the candidates you're submitting and curation and building a stronger curation process, whether it's convincing the candidate to take a test and giving a value prop of why, because they are enabling thing.

You take this test and you get high model and reducing the time to hire all these metrics are co-related to each other. And there is no one model of growing one. Interesting question, Lynn Martin as asked here, Contingent hiring success is very dependent on adoption within the culture and fit for the role.

What ways can you set up contingent hires for success during the sourcing process? So it looks like the question is geared to guys, how do you assess or nurture the talent for culture and a fit for the role for a better sourcing process of success for candidate? 

Dan Sines: This is very much a personality question. I mean, this is kind of the key to what we do. You know, finding that personality fit is essential, even for the contingent worker, because they have to blend in with the rest of that workforce. And if they don't fit in there you're, you're going to see real problems as far as performance productivity and long-term commitment.

Praneeth Patlola: And I, I like to add a little more to that. So one of our new partners who we just onboarded with us, we're integrated does a personality assessment using a different mechanism of color theory tests, and a part of that, what they are also in enabling is that it's like a benchmark where you call it as a team benchmarking or an ideal fit model.

What does an ideal fit model is? If there is a team. Of with a set of people whom you're already hired, whether they're full-time or contract, technically your overarching company cultural definition is different. What does that one particular sales, marketing a call center technology team has a different set of a culture in build within those team itself.

So how do you gauge that as you build up that ideal case model and create, this is the ideal case model for this particular team and use the data and the data driven and data science mechanisms to use assessments. Part of that questionnaire are part of the technology assessments to do cognitive and personality alignment.

So that kind of tells you also, how do you really prepare the talent from a cultural point of view, from a contingent side and conversion

There is another, question here. I don't know if the question is right here, Jim Cohen asks, how are you using a realistic job profiles, good and bad aspects of a job in front of an assessment.

Satish Kumar: I can take that. Yep. So I think the, the underlying question there as well, is that how good the job profiles are? All job descriptions are, and I know Mark, and any of the specific, I can bet with you that this is a problem. And maybe in handyman it will write 20 lines or maybe just copy paste from somewhere.

I, even the Coopers, they do that very well. And maybe they're just always they have less time to do the job, but ultimately you get a quality that is not representative of what the real job needs and in that discovery process. As we worked with the hiring manager, our team more to the hiring manager and saying, Hey, here's a job requisition.

Tell me what are the key things you're looking for? Because you have to ask question on that, right. And that gets them to think, well, maybe I don't need that. And when we actually create the assessment and they say, this is what you want. No, no. I missed this one as well. So now there is a lot of things that are not needed.

And by the way, there is a missing thing as well. And when it comes to live interview, they do those parts, but there's so much, on-call unconsciously doing that part. Don't realize it. And it's just yet another word, we get the out, but that calibration is very much key to making sure that we have the right expectation, what they're evaluating for and what the expected outcome act on. It has to be actionable. 

Mark Jones: I think it's the teachers is an important point. As well in this, and that's the ROI in terms of the quality and you can measure it, that person that was placed on that job description and that assessment, are they still in the assignment? Are they leaving early? You know, are they getting good results?

They're getting good feedback from that, you know, from what they're doing. So again, I that's it. And then in terms of the, it flows through all of the processes and the job descriptions, the assessment, and then the ROI at the back-end of it in terms of do they stay and are they good people that an organization would have back.

Dan Sines: We have a dynamic benchmarking process, or we're constantly adjusting that fit for the role for this very reason, because in most cases, the job profile or job description are just not covering it initially. And so if you kind of set it and forget it at that point, you're probably assessing people on something that's actually not relevant for the role.

Praneeth Patlola: Yes. Yes, indeed. And one practice, part of the direct sourcing operational practice, which we had to embed as a mandate and almost through the onboarding process for any enterprise has been job scrubbing model. So when all the vendor management systems, how have capabilities of job templates already predefined.

So there is an exercise and maybe some things slipped through the implementation process that somebody didn't pay attention or build a right job descriptions in a more candidate friendly format, because many, a times the job descriptions, practices take the job description, revamp them to make it candidate friendly program manager to doesn't mean anything to anybody in this world.

Right. So, programmer analyst also does mean anything in when it comes to developer. Like, what does that really mean? What do you want me to do? And that is so important when it comes to contingent roles very specifically, because when you transition that into recruitment marketing, right. All into any candidate promote a candidate attraction effort that feels there.

So part of any of this, either you correct it from a first incense, from what categories that you're going after for curation are part of your sourcing effort, scrub that create a template of a library and keep doing that. And I think we ourselves have created about like if the number is about more than 1500 job title libraries that we have to come up with very specifically for each category, each role, every time when we touch a customer, because there is no way you can actually engage a talent pool with one line of job descriptions.

Mark Jones: Yeah. I say my favorite job profile is same as last time. 

Satish Kumar: One more thing on this topic, especially in the convenient hiring. Because it being a multi-party system, there is a, the enterprise, the MSP that is staffing it into what happens there that it's more of a more complexity because of that, right?

The, the, the information get lost in between interpretation gets lost in between, right? And I put that there is this open secret that the quality threshold is always higher for outside candidate than for internal employee. How to balance out how to calibrate, to make sure that we are actually assessing  the level that the organization really required.

Praneeth Patlola: Yep. And one also key component. Why job descriptions are so important of this funnel of curation with the AI matching engines or the matching capabilities. That's part of the, now the regularized, I don't call it. It's no longer, it's a future. It's like now if you don't practice it, you're falling behind.

If you're not having a matching engine to assess your candidate scores, if you're already falling behind, when you're matching engine as good as your data, which means if you have a bad job description and in my analysis for nine months of a search for a better job parser in this world, I can tell that our industry hasn't got to a mature level of having a better job parsing, but the only way to fight that battle is to really pay attention, to having a better job description because you're scoring and everything beyond that process totally fails in an automation, if you don't have the right description. 

Okay. So I know we have four minutes. We'll take this last question. 

How accurate are the AI matching? Is it really effective? And a couple of more questions coming in. How do you get the AI to pick a resume, use words in the description? I think, this is bigger, longer topic in itself. I'll, I'll take a stab at it and maybe each of us can kind of do that closing note on that.

So in our experience even in this field matching engines, whether you're talking about sovereigns, parsing and matching, which is the most vitally popularly used, and they are the leaders in the space or any others correlated each one of them has a different mechanism. Parsing data. And the matching engine is very generalized because they're setting up a huge amount of database and data clusters and data science, which is kind of, again, regular data out there, unless you customize it for your own needs, unless you create a customized, the matching engine on top of the industry matching engines, you will not be successful to create the right matches.

So that kind of act the, your activation really depends on how much effort are you putting in customizing your matches at a job level are in a pool of a job because today the tools are enabling you to customize your matches. Your AI matching does the default, but then you add customization to it really.

And that's really effect you and we have seen that effect. Candidate engagement, because you're only sending that highly customized to match, match match matches to the candidate, which enables your engagement in doing that. And I think the next question kind of as addressing all the three questions, which is about structure of the data and everything else, I'll leave it to Mark, Daniel and Satish to close that off.

Mark Jones: So I think from that, from from a user of the AI it's it for me, actually, I look at it in slightly different way in terms of you need to have the right structure with the right technology AI to make this an efficient process. Because one of the other things we haven't really spoken about here is the cost of doing all of this and the AI, the way that this systems help us from a recruitment perspective that means that we can do this in a very cost-effective way.

And I don't need to have 10 people doing it. I can have one or even less. So, so it's massively important. 

Satish Kumar: Yeah. There's one point that, you know as Brendan said, you have to train the model for your work vertical for your need. Otherwise the matches won't be accurate. Right? And, and even if you're talking to matching it, just make sure that what they have claimed in the resume is matching against the JD.

Now, can they do it that separate a story events, assessment, come in the picture. 

Dan Sines: I think the only thing I would add is that AI is not AI. It's not actually thinking in this capacity, it's following a series of things that it's been taught to do. And so whatever you put into the other side of that is going to dictate the quality you get out the output of it, but just constantly think about that at this point.

We're not quite to the level of true intelligence. So when we get to that point, it might change. 

Praneeth Patlola: Absolutely. And that's what I keep advocating. AI is an overused word in HR technology industry and the group and industry. We are still at a machine learning stage. We are not matured into AI where a system can make all your decisions yet.

We'll get there very soon, but we are still at a machine learning stage, customizing that to your own needs and building on top of it. It's going to be very crucial. So always look for the customization with that. I think we pretty much reached to the end of the session. Thanks a lot. Mark, Dan, and Satish for being an amazing panel and sharing all your insights.

Thanks all the participants for patiently listening through and also an absolutely amazing conversations and questions. I wish we could do this all day long. Maybe do this in-person some day, but really appreciate everybody's time and kudos to Jan and the team to really organize the world's largest staffing summit ever online.

Thanks a lot, everyone. And, you know, enjoy your rest of the sessions. Right? Bye-bye.

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