People don’t buy products. They buy solutions.
When I first started helping Paradox clients map their solutions over five years ago, we didn’t have the fully fleshed-out product suite we have now. In those fledgling years, things were loose.
As a result, we usually ended up co-designing tech solutions together with our clients. A bunch of people would gather together in the same room for a few days of solutioning: chatting, whiteboarding, huddling, debating, and listening. What problems does the client need to solve? What is their stomach for change? How can we work with our engineers to actually build what they need?
Nowadays, our product suite is much more defined — but that collaborative spirit remains at the heart of our solutioning. Because after now implementing hundreds of different tech solutions across my career, it’s clear that the tech isn't really the lynchpin for effective change management.
The blueprint for success starts with people.
Combatting the number one barrier to change: fear.
Change management is all about balancing two fears: the fear of change, and the fear of what happens if things stay the same. Typically, when I come into the picture, clients are already curious about change. They realize there’s a problem and they want to do something differently.
But clients’ appetite for change varies wildly, and that hunger is often stunted by the unknown. Most TA professionals are new to AI — this kind of change can feel foreign, complicated, and scary. The number one fear we often see from clients is that their personal, people-oriented experiences will be replaced by cold automation. Given that hypothetical, it’s understandable that there’d be hesitancy to blow current processes up. No matter how capable a new technology is, they need to be able to trust that people will actually like it.
The best way I’ve found to fight this fear is through direct partnership. Through conversation. Through cooperative strategy. Because the right partnership fosters attitudes that don’t just tolerate change, but embrace it. Energy is infectious; we know that if we come in with a positive mindset, the client will take that momentum and run with it.
And oftentimes, discomfort of change is actually just a reflection of poor past experiences. A lot of our clients have tried change before — great change management is about learning from those experiences to implement and scale a better solution.
Of course, it helps when you have seven years of data to back you up.
Data brings the conversation back to the concrete — to the real. It makes change less unknown. At Paradox, we’re fortunate to have seen clients succeed across different industries. In solutioning sessions, we can contextualize those success metrics towards the specific use case that we’re working on.
Let’s say a new restaurant client is struggling with their time to hire — we’ve seen some organizations take up to 45 days to hire some of their hourly roles. This is a common theme amongst our new clients. In fact, the two most common problems our clients look for us to solve revolve around time:
- How do we give our hiring teams back more time in their day?
- How do we speed up the time it takes for candidates to apply and get scheduled for interviews?
My team can come in with various metrics explaining how other restaurants reduced their time to hire. For the above example, we could explain how McDonald’s created a solution that reduces their time to hire by 60% and returns restaurant managers 5 hours every week.
Now, not every client’s unique solution will look like McDonald’s. But data provides a great jumping off point. A backbone that demonstrates that change isn’t something to fear — it’s something to welcome.
Granted, not everyone will be shown a graph and immediately become a believer. But change is about partnership. And it’s always helpful to be partnered with people who can quantitatively speak to which solutions work.
The case for being bold.
You shouldn’t be afraid to change something that’s not working.
Often in solutioning sessions, we’ll see clients welcome change with subtlety. They’ll change some things, but maybe only one or two small parts of the process. And even though the status quo hasn’t been working for their organization, they’re afraid that if they change their process, things will get worse.
But we’ve actually seen quite the opposite: The clients that are the most bold — the most fearless — are the ones that are the most successful.
We recently had a hospitality client that owns 1,000+ locations voice some hesitancy to change too much. An incredibly human-centric business through and through, they literally talked with every candidate, and were afraid that technology would make their hospitality business less hospitable. But thanks to a few internal champions at the company, this client decided to test a conversational AI solution in a few locations. The data couldn’t be ignored.
- 36-minute average time to schedule.
- 4-day average from initial engagement to offer.
- 91% onboarding completion rate.
The client quickly accelerated and integrated conversational software into all of their locations. They now streamline all of their hiring operations, from interview to onboarding, with automation.
This story is not an outlier. Redefining more of your hiring process usually correlates with better results.
Because there’s a reason that what hasn’t been working hasn’t been working, right? Part of our solutioning involves challenging clients to think in perspectives that they’re unfamiliar with. Many clients have never taken a candidate-first approach to hiring. Many recruiters have never focused on their hiring managers’ day-to-day.
The clients that are the most bold — the most fearless — are the ones that are the most successful.
But when you shift your focus, it opens you up to possibilities you could never have imagined.
Of course, we’re with you every step of the way — and we’re never going to be pushing AI where it shouldn’t go. We’re very intentional with where in the hiring process we apply AI. We can automate a lot of the process or a little bit. It’s all specific to each individual client, how they’re hiring now, and their ultimate appetite for change.
Personally, I’m not of the opinion that you should change things just to change them. But again, when things aren’t working, you shouldn’t be afraid of asking yourself why.
Change is happening.
Change is happening regardless of whether you take the next step. Candidate expectations are changing, AI capabilities continue to evolve, and hiring is in the midst of an industry-agnostic transformation. Problems in antiquated hiring processes need to be addressed sooner rather than later.
Adding new technology alone isn’t going to solve any issues. I learned very early on that successful change management always starts with people. No matter how good a technology is, you need people to develop a strategy that can scale implementation and buy-in across the organization.
And when you do it right, the results are incredible. We’ve seen it countless times. When you put the trust in your team, in the partnerships that you make, and sure, you have great technology, you have endless possibilities for what you can accomplish.
