Elyse Mayer (00:00:01):

Hello. Hi everyone across the globe. Thank you for joining us for this live discussion that's been much anticipated with General Motors and the Bersin Company on how GM saved 2 million plus on recruiting costs in six months. So in this discussion over the next 45 minutes, and we'll leave a healthy amount of time for q and a, because that's the good stuff to give you access to Janet and Eileen, but we'll be covering the vision, GM's use cases, results, some change management lesson learned, and a little bit about what's next. So please feel free to queue up any questions in the chat. We'll take those as they come and we can prompt Janet and Eileen at the end of the webinar. And, to answer a few questions that I know I'm gonna get off the bat before we jump in, the most important thing, we are recording this.

(00:00:55):

The recording will be sent to all of you as a follow up, and you should have also all received the formal burst in case study with General Motors, as well as a nice value add to that. So next thing is getting our amazing speakers Intro'd. I am Elyse Mayer, VP of Marketing at Paradox. I am the me moderator. Janet and Eileen are here to steal the show. and a little bit about paradox before we get started. Paradox paradox's conversational recruiting software that helps companies hire faster with fewer resources through automation. And I am super excited to be here with who I would call two friends of paradox, one of whom is a client, Eileen Kovalsky. So grateful you joined us. head of candidate experience at gm. Please share a little bit about yourself before we dive in.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:01:46):

Sure. Hi everybody. So Eileen Kovalsky, I've been in the talent acquisition space for 25 plus years with a strong focus on talent acquisition, delivery and operational excellence. So in my role today, I am very much focused on enabling our organization to do things faster, better, more efficiently, but also improving the experience of not only our candidates, which is often, a hot topic and a a big focus for companies, but also the experience for our recruiters and our hiring managers.

Elyse Mayer (00:02:21):

Awesome. And then Janet another great partner and of course super well-respected advisor from the Josh Bur company. We've worked deeply with you on telling some of our client stories and we've appreciated the partnership, but share a little bit about, your, your role as well.

Janet Mertens (00:02:38):

Sure. Hi everyone. Great to be here. Janet Mertens. as Elyse mentioned, I'm the vice President of research here at the Josh Bersin Company. I lead our research team and, and direct our research agenda at, Bersin. I lead our research in a number of areas myself, talent acquisition being being a big piece of, of my portfolio. Well as, you know, health and and wellbeing in organizations. HR transformation. I've been in HR, I'll, I'll do what Eileen did and say 20 plus years,  mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I've been inside HR in functional roles and leadership roles. I've consulted and I've been a researcher for, oh, almost the past decade now. So have really been studying the topic of talent and all things people, for a long time. Thrilled to be here today with my good friends, Eileen and Elyse.

Elyse Mayer (00:03:28):

Awesome. So that's the good stuff. I guess we're, we're off into the discussion. I tend to avoid kicking off webinars with a bunch of TA leaders and practitioners on challenges because I know you guys are all here for solutions, but because the, I think, challenges that GM faced, and their vision was so prominent, and then we have Janet here from the person company who is kind of leading research in this space. I actually would love to get Janet, your perspective as we kick off. What's standing out to you in the TA landscape right now? What are companies looking, you know, to do in terms of how, how to get ahead and, and what they're looking for in terms of solutions to, to these major challenges?

Janet Mertens (00:04:11):

Yeah. Well, it's, it is a really interesting <laugh> time to be talking about this. the last few years certainly have been constant change, I think in, TA and, we've had just a, a ton of pressures, right? Hitting the organization. We did a, a massive study of talent acquisition and sort of the, the future of talent acquisition,at person over the past year, year and a half, and have continued to, to study this topic. So I think there's probably two or three things I'd wanna kind of, spark our conversation with. Eileen touched on one, which is the experience piece. So as we looked at what are companies doing, what are they doing well or maybe not so well when it comes to talent acquisition, experience really bubbled up to the top, and it was, as you'd expect around candidate experience, there's just a, a, a ton of attention being, you know, kind of being, put on candidate experience, but it wasn't just candidate experience that sort of separated the, the, the trailblazers of the leading companies.

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Really we saw, a huge differentiation in, in those north star companies around paying attention to that recruiter experience. We're gonna talk about that today.paying attention to the hiring manager experience, the new hire experience, the virtual hire and, and onboarding experience. So it really was, kind of looking at experience in a holistic way. So that was one big piece. another kind of area of focus for some of the, the best companies in the world is around. And it's my, one of my favorite findings from our research was around the development of recruiters and the recruiting team, and really elevating that role into a strategic role. And we saw huge differences from, you know, companies lower in the maturity model through to the, to the kind of the, the more mature organizations where just a continuous investment in the development of recruiters.

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And we, you know, we kind of explore, the key skills or the future skills of, of recruiters as being things like business case, consultative skills, really, you know, collaboration, flexibility, even empathy, showed up as a, as a top skill for recruiting teams. So that's another piece, that I think companies are really doubling down on, this year. And then the other piece is brand, and it's always been a part of TA of course, to think about brand. But as we explore, and certainly Eileen's got, some great examples of this, as companies shift and industries are converging, there's been a real sense of needing to, find talent in pools and against competitors that you've never really competed with before. So the concept of the, you know, the EVP, the employee value proposition, the brand of the, the employer brand, and certainly the corporate brand, these have all really come back into play in a big way. And I think, organizations that are, that are doing well, are really thinking about this in a very authentic, very real way and, and being unafraid, to, to make big changes and to continue that journey.

Elyse Mayer (00:07:26):

Yeah, that's great. I feel like Eileen, that couldn't have tee'd up. Probably <laugh> the segue into General Motors and some of the major challenges you guys faced, and it just as a company with this, almost like a rebrand, right? Going from what everyone believes is an auto manufacturer into this tech innovator. So please would love for you to share what did GM's landscape look, look like when you were kind of getting into this, this next phase of, of innovation and what were the major challenges that were driving, kind of your new selection and thinking about talent acquisition differently?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:08:01):

Sure. so I'll, I'll use this word transformation, which I think is, it's probably overused, everybody's transforming. But we went from this place where we had multiple systems, nothing spoke to each other, to consolidating to Workday as our system of record, our gold source. And then we had to find a way to enable our teams to do things more efficiently, right? So we, we came a little bit of the way, around 2020 when, when we moved to Workday and, consolidated all of our multiple HRS systems and payroll systems and benefits, et cetera, into one platform. But then really had to take a look at, okay, how are we gonna enable our talent acquisition teams to attract the right talent to aid in GM's transformation? And, you know, some of you may or may not know, but GM has a very aggressive mission to get to an all electric future by 2035, where there's zero crashes, zero emission, zero congestion.

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And as we work together as an organization to transform the future of mobility, we know it's gonna take a diverse and innovative talent pool to bring our vision to life. And part of that was recruiting differently. The types of candidates that we recruited five years ago, 10 years ago are different from the ones that we will need today, tomorrow, and the day after. and so we built a, a unique acquisition strategy that was focused on the attraction and retaining of a workforce that's diverse, agile, capable of achieving better, safer, more sustainable. and so expanding the TA's tech stack was a critical pillar in that strategy. We were a hyper focused on ensuring that we weren't only improving efficiency, but also the experience, right? So a lot of it was driven on how can we enable our teams to do more and be more efficient so they, they truly can spend their time doing the things that are important.

Elyse Mayer (00:10:15):

Amazing. And I know that you had some benchmarks, I guess, of challenges, right? That, that you wanted to, to, to, to actually move the needle on. so Aiden, if you wanna pro progress those slides to kind of look at these numbers, I'd love to know Eileen, who was, I guess, tracking these, and this is kind of driven in, did you have kind of a vision on where you wanted to go with this, how you wanted to change it? just kind of talk about like what was actually driving this, who was measuring it, what might have been like a new KPI that, that you had in mind?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:10:52):

So a lot of this was around efficiency, to be honest. And improving the way, again, not to sound redundant, that our candidates experience, interacting and interviewing with General Motors. and so some of this driver was, and, we're very fortunate that, what I'm about to say, that we can actually say this. We don't necessarily have a candidate flow problem. I would say we have a candidate management problem. We have a tremendous amount of interest in General Motors. Again, I think we're very fortunate as a TA team to be able to say that. However, it was taking us five plus days to schedule interviews, and that that was, on a good day. I mean, I, I can say that in some cases it was taking in excess of 10 days to schedule interviews really complex, especially, when you get into some of those higher level positions where you're dealing with executives or travels involved.

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And it, it was just, leaving our wondering, are we ever actually going to get this thing on calendar? Also, to support that, we had only in two countries. So in the United States and in Canada, between 50 and 55 contract coordinators who were responsible for just scheduling.and so we had this disparity in work because in the United States and Canada, our recruiters didn't necessarily have to worry about the scheduling of a candidate, but in all of our other countries, the recruiters did. and so we really asked ourselves this question of like, how do we solve for both of those things? How do we reduce the amount of time and how do we ensure that we're bringing a better experience to our recruiters so they can do things that really add more value? and so this was a big driver for that, was like, how do we automate some of this scheduling to take, the monotonous, administrative tasks out of checking five or six different calendars and then validating with a candidate and then going back and then saying, oh, wait, this one doesn't have this time. Now wait, let's go back. And so it's a lot of back and forth, and it's, it's a lot of waste. And so that was a big driver for this, was how do we take that waste out of the process?

Elyse Mayer (00:13:09):

So automate was was always in your mind, like, I mean, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of businesses now that automation can be scary, right? Or, you know, like, just thinking about this, it feels like GM kind of got it. Like, you knew the end goal, you knew that this was gonna increase efficiency and improve experience, but just like, share a little bit more there, like GM's take on automation and wanting to, to go that route.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:13:33):

Yeah. So I think, I think everybody on the TA team was aligned, right? And so that part was easy in terms of let's take anything that can be automated and automated. and so that wasn't the hard part. The hard part, and we'll talk about this, I, I think a little bit later was getting everybody on board mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But, in terms of like, let's take the administrative out. I don't know one recruiter that would say, oh, no, I really like scheduling interviews. Like, don't take that away from me. They will give that up all day long.

Elyse Mayer (00:14:06):

That's so true. That's why I'm like, someone wants to give me automation on stuff I don't wanna do. Hand raise, like send it my way,

Eileen Kovalsky (00:14:12):

<laugh>. Exactly.

Elyse Mayer (00:14:15):

So I mean, Janet, you spent a ton of time digging into this story over a lot of calls with, with Eileen. anything that was like a wow factor or surprising in how GM was approaching TA technology as you started learning more about what Eileen and the team were doing?

Janet Mertens (00:14:33):

Yeah. Well, and it was such a great, it's, I mean, it really is such a great story and I would take it back for a second to our, sort of trailblazers, our north star star organizations as we did this research around, you know, what is, what does great look like in TA, now and in the future? And one of the things that I think GM does so well, and Eileen, you know, you've shared this, today, are what we found in our kind of our, in our research and in our conversations with dozens of, of, organizations,I think we talked to about 600 or so that we, we, surveyed what stood apart for those, those north star organizations like GM was this very intentional focus on what is the, the challenge that you are trying to solve.

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And I love that, you know, Eileen, you talk about it as, listen, we knew exactly how many times we were rescheduling, how long it was taking. We knew that this was a pain point for managers, for, for hiring managers, for recruiters, not to mention the candidate. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> very intentional focus, I think, on what are the human problems that, or the people challenges that we're trying to solve, and then being very deliberate in how you solve those. And I think that is, for me, that was such a, an important part of this story. And then the other piece, I think, and, and tied to that, let me go, let me finish that thought. tied to that is the use of technology in, in a smart way, right? So how do we solve this problem with technology? So it really becomes about, finding the solution that works for the problem at hand, as opposed to, you know, what we see in, in less mature organizations is kind of the application of technology without that very intentional design, for, for the human element.

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And then the other thing I think, Eileen, that I loved about the story, was that the focus on recruiters, right? And know your recruiting teams and really thinking about their experience and how do you make the seamless candidates and the candidate experience is of course, always top of mind, but as you kind of looked at this problem, you really looked at it from all perspectives and what were the personas right? That, that you really needed to, to address? And, and I think that comes through in a big way in that, you know, that automation and why that a hundred percent automation makes sense.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:16:59):

Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, we, you, you hit the nail on the head with not only the recruiter experience, but one of the systemic problems that we did have was not getting to schedules quick enough, and also the reschedules. And as you know, right, I said it a little bit earlier, the types of roles that we recruit for yesterday are very different from what we need tomorrow. And in, and those candidates are hot commodities on this market. They have very short shelf lives on the external market. And if we can't get them locked and loaded as quickly as possible, we lose them. Right? We lose the opportunity to engage them and, and share, our, excitement about what's happening here at General Motors and why we think they'd be such a great fit on our teams. And so we, we had to solve for that in terms of like, how do we get them here and how do we, give them a better experience in, in doing that?

(00:17:55):

I think the reschedule thing, look, that, that, that's an age old problem. Everybody's busy. And while we didn't necessarily solve for reschedules, I do have a really nice way of tracking it now, which I did not have before. So part of the, the benefit that I saw was that I can see, well, not me, my team, right? We can see every single interview that's scheduled, rescheduled, who initiated it, how long it took, et cetera, and really start looking at, you know, are there outliers, other conversations that need to be had to reinforce the importance of putting the candidate first.

Elyse Mayer (00:18:33):

And, and so I, I love this question that GM asked, and then we'll kind of give everyone on the call a look at like what we're talking about, like what the scheduling experience looks like with gm, with their assistant ev, which I love the play there on the branding ev for electric vehicles. that's always, that's always great, in terms of how, how you kind of move that brand forward, but it can be done. I think what's really interesting is that you can move from manual to automate and you can actually improve experience. We'll get to more of that change management, but talk a a little bit about the use cases. So as we show EV-e, on the next slide, kind of going through scheduling, GM hires so many different types of roles, and you've mentioned this a few times, Eileen, because scheduling and rescheduling was such a big problem, and GM doesn't interview all of your hourly staff. The use case for this initially was really on those highly skilled very com not that frontline workers and hourly workers are not competitive. That's just as competitive, but competitive in, in, in a slightly different way. So just maybe just kind of share what did ev do for your recruiters right out of the gate in terms of a use case?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:19:46):

Yeah, sure. So when we launched EV-e, we initially launched with the scheduling of only phone screens, right? So this was an immediate direct impact to recruiters. recruiters were responsible for scheduling their own phone screens with candidates, and everybody's busy, right? So it's, it's often very time consuming for recruiters to do that, trying to toggle conversations with hiring managers, screening candidates, you know, keeping their, their desk clean.and so we initially launched with phone screening, and it was almost immediate. We had like confetti going up in the air, right? Because the recruiters saw an immediate impact to their workload. I had one recruiter, reach out to somebody on my team, within days, I would say, within days, right? And she, she said, look, I was really skeptical of this. I'm gonna be totally honest. She goes, and I often, scream my candidates during the day.

(00:20:46):

And, and then I review new resume's that come in at night, and then I schedule, you know, put out emails and try and schedule phone screens, et cetera at night. And I'm trying to do that while I'm try, you know, driving my son to hockey or cooking dinner for my family. And she said to us, I went to go cook dinner, I stepped away from my desk for 45 minutes and I came back and I had 12 phone screen scheduled for the rest of the week. And I was like, I'm a believer, right? So the, the recruiter I, I would strongly suggest to anybody rolling something out new is, you know, obviously phase it and look at where you're gonna get, some buy-in. And so for the recruiters that was e that part was easy. I'll be totally honest. little bit more challenging for rolling things out with our hiring managers for interview scheduling, and I'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit later.

(00:21:37):

But the, the recruiters immediately were super excited about this globally, and we rolled this out globally. We did not just launch in the us.and so EV-e communicates in six different languages to our candidates, which is super cool. The, the other thing that they were really excited about, or the candidates were really excited about was that we kind of flipped the narrative and gave them the empowered them to be able to tell us, when are you available? Like, what works for you? Here's some times that work for our teams mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but, and you're seeing that here where the candidate is being asked, you know, here's three days and times, do any of these work? if you click no, these don't work. There's, I think there's a link in there that takes them to a calendar and they can suggest a different time, but we really flipped the narrative and gave the candidate the power to say, Hey, this is when I'm available. This works for me, this is great instead of...

(00:22:29):

This is when you have to talk to us.

Elyse Mayer (00:22:31):

There's such a human psychology, especially given, you know, if it's more mobile via, via text, and it's like, we're going to give you the options and you can choose instead of like, here's your interview time. Yeah. Like, take it or leave it. there's just a nice human psychology of like, this company is more flexible, they get it, et cetera. So I, I really love, like you, you bringing that up. One other thing I wanted to hit on too, but before we move on, is this idea of immediate value. And a lot of time, I mean, I'm in marketing, I implement a ton of technology, you're always so excited about it. You're like, yes, it's almost Go Live' tech's gonna come. And then it's like, a lot of the time it's like, womp womp, like pain, which I know you're gonna share some pain on change management, but there's this idea of time to value in technology where like, it works for you after go live. And I love that you bring this up because I think in recruiting tech so much, it's still so painful. Yeah. After you go live and there's like all these hoops recruiters have to jp through and all these things they have to learn. Where in this instance, you kind of got buy-in because you're like, focus on phone screens, let's get that done. And it worked. And then they're like, give me more. Like, is that an accurate, is an accurate assessment?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:23:46):

It's pretty accurate. <laugh>. you know, I think the other thing that was really, this, this really hit home, one of our recruiters shared that shared this with us that, and was an IT recruiter, and he said that his candidate was so impressed with the experience of selecting their time and date for an interview, that he, I'm not gonna say who the, the other company was, but he is like, this is a better process than X company and you all know the company. So, it was pretty nice to be, to get that type of a compliment to say like, wow, we all, we are able to compete with some of the most highly regarded technical companies in the world.

Elyse Mayer (00:24:27):

Yeah. That's, that's amazing. Janet, any, any thoughts on the time to value or on tech or any of that? Or were you going in a different direction? Yeah,

Janet Mertens (00:24:37):

No. Well, I think it's, I mean, I think it's, it's also time to value for the candidates. And, and I, you know, you've got that bullet point there in the middle, which is the, the candidate questions 24 7, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the, the on-demand communication piece mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and that ability to, just have kind of constant communication. And we see that all the time as just a, a, a such a critical part of, candidate experiences, transparent, clear, you know, real time on demand conversation.and it, it's, it's really essential for, you know, for especially for, for today's talent in the market that we're in. And I think that the, the, the, ability for EV-e to just be able to be so responsive to candidates, is, is is such an important part of this story.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:25:27):

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I don't know if you have this, stat in the deck, Elyse, I can't remember who was in there, but one of the things that was pretty astounding for us was that, you know, we shared earlier it was five plus days, to get something scheduled. We're down to like 28 minutes or something,

Elyse Mayer (00:25:46):

Which is, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna drop some stats after, after this plays in, in terms of how EV's on the career site. But yes, I mean, I was trying to do the math on the increase and I couldn't, I couldn't even do the math on like five days down to 29 minutes. Yeah. Because it's so much faster.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:26:03):

Yeah. It's pretty incredible.

Elyse Mayer (00:26:05):

And that's time to, like, first, is that still phone screen? Is that still time

(00:26:11):

That's time to interview. Awesome.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:26:14):

Yeah. So it, I mean, it's pretty efficient, right? You, you move a candidate in your ATS to schedule, and immediately the candidate gets an interaction from EV-e to say, Hey, hey, I'm EV-e General Motors chat bot. I wanna schedule you for an interview. So it's, I mean, if everybody is sitting at their computer or has their phone in their pocket, I mean, an interview can take seconds to schedule, which is pretty cool.

Elyse Mayer (00:26:44):

And yes, I think this is the stat right here. So, as we kind of move into, so again, EV-e sits on the career site, the 24 7 questions. And again, most people I guess some people, if they're really don't like their job, are browsing for new jobs during the, during the workday <laugh>, but most people are looking after our hours, right? So, like I always say, it's like, do most career sites actually respond to candidates? No. Right. If they don't get the answer they need, if they don't seem the job that they want, they're gonna drop off EV-e's there to Janet's point 24 7. Yeah. and then the, the scheduling and, and the rescheduling. So here's some unbelievable numbers. I know that most of these were within six months, which I think is amazing. I know after go live, EV-e had already scheduled an interview for a recruiter, like within the first hour.

(00:27:33):

Mm-hmm. I love that, just in terms of speed after go live. But I think the headline here, right, is the 2 million in cost savings. TA is a lot of the times looked at as a cost center. And I think seeing this type of savings, like, give me some more color on that. Sure. Was this a goal? Did you have a business case? Not that you have to get into to the nitty gritty detail, but just kind of share, like, was, was this, was this an end goal in terms of cost savings and, and, and, and what, what was that internal discussion?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:28:05):

So obviously everybody wants to see cost savings, right? <laugh>, I think there's different ways to calculate it. and I, I couldn't, I, I, I'm not even gonna begin to go into how we came up with that number, but, again, when we realized automation was gonna solve for a lot of our problems, we said, okay, well, we have a team of X number of contracts, recruiting coordinators, that all they do is schedule interviews. And so obviously those roles became redundant. It was part of our strategy with that once we're up and running and we're seeing the value that we can, release some of those contract heads. And so we brought that team down by like 75% or some crazy number like that. So some of this was headcount driven, contract headcount driven, but it still spends, and some of it was time. So I've talked about our coordinator team that only existed in the US and Canada in every other country that we support.

(00:29:00):

Recruiters had to schedule their own phone screens and their own interviews.and so a lot of our international hiring managers, you know, may be responsible for multiple countries. And so trying to coordinate multiple time zones with a candidate is often very cumbersome if you've never done that. And so those recruiters were super excited about this because they had no scheduling support at all prior. And so any, they were very much welcoming and supportive of any support they would get. But this, in terms of time saved, not only gave those international recruiters time back for, for scheduling their phone screens, but also scheduling all their own interviews.

Elyse Mayer (00:29:43):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I think that that's, everyone always wants the, the dollar saved, which is super important, especially in, you know, kind of the economic situation as we're in now. But the time saving also can equate to dollar saved, right? Like, if you can actually give recruiters back more time, you actually might not have to hire another headcount. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like, they might be able to do some of that work. There's also this prop, it's, it's hard to track, but there's also probably this, like, do you feel like recruiters feel invested in from gm? Like, talk a little bit maybe about the sentiment of the recruiting team feeling supported, feeling like they don't have to do admin work. Like, did you get any of, and I know that we're actually sharing this anecdote that you shared earlier about this recruiter that was like, oh my God, this is unbelievable. You know, I have time freed up at night when I was doing this. But any other kind of maybe squishier like in in less quantifiable feedback or like sentiment that you got from, from recruiters in terms of that support?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:30:46):

Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, let's be honest, right there, not everything is rainbows and butterflies, even with all the best technology, right? There are still days you're like, oh my God, you know, my job is crazy. I don't wanna do this, et cetera. I think as we trans transformed as an organization, there was a concerted effort to invest in talent acquisition. And so, you know, focusing on our TA tech stack and even up-skilling our recruiters, giving them extra, you know, access to specialized training platforms and investing in them with a completely revamped live training program, you on a regular basis was huge. I think, you know, everybody is very, I think, appreciative and excited about the investment that GM has made in talent acquisition. Again, has it been an easy road? Definitely not. We, every day we're, we're still fighting over obstacles, but every day it gets better and we have more great things to share, and more ways to share out, like, this is why this adds value, or this is how else you can use this, or this is, you know, how you would articulate the value of this tool to your hiring manager to help them understand the way that we're now working within talent acquisition.

Elyse Mayer (00:32:06):

Well, that's a great segue. And Janet, I know you dove a ton into change management. I had a ton of questions, so I'd love to, to hear some of your questions again for Eileen, but let's talk about the obstacles. <laugh>, you know, it's not always, it's not always easy and simple and everything we are talking about here is innovative, it's new, it's automation, it's global teams that you're rolling this out for, right? Like, this is not easy. So, I mean, I guess Janet, to keep it more high level, and then we'll get into kind of Eileen's vision for this and how she approached change management. But have you seen any companies just totally get this right? Or why do you feel like it's so painful, especially in TA and HR when it comes to change management and technology?

Janet Mertens (00:32:54):

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the TA tech stack is a thing to behold in, in every company, right? It's, and it has been additive in the past few years, especially. And I think what companies, what we hear that companies are, are generally grappling with, is sort of this unwieldy, you know, disconnected multiple, solutions, not always knit together in the right way. And certainly, you know, more things are getting ... all the time. And so I do think there is some, you know, learned, well learned and well, earned, hesitation when it comes to new tech in ta and, and is this going to make my life easier? Is this going to be, something that, that ultimately, makes things more complex or makes things simpler? And, and I think, so I think we see that natural, as I say, hesitation across organizations, especially when it comes to TA tech, because it is, it is quite a stack now.

(00:33:55):

And then we think about the last couple of years with virtual hiring, tools and, and, virtual onboarding tools. And so just so much has been added. and I think, you know, at gm and Eileen, you're gonna share more about this, but I, when we talked this was, and, and I think there's a question actually right around this topic. it, this was a real, you know, it was a real, hill for, for some of your, you know, for some of the business to, to embrace this new technology. And I think you had some great lessons, but you also did some, some things really well right from the get-go that I think were, were allowed you to be as successful as you were. So, love to hear, you know, Eileen, your kind of take, and I know I've got some Sure. Some thoughts, as, as you share more.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:34:40):

Yeah. So while recruiter adoption was immediate, and we had lots of smiles, I will say it was definitely an uphill battle with our hiring managers. And when you think about, you know, GM being an old organization that hasn't had technology like this in the past, most of our hiring managers didn't see a problem with how interviews were scheduled before. That's all they knew, and that's how it had been done forever. and so some of the getting over the hurdle was helping them understand why we needed to change the way we were doing things. The other thing is, you know, GM went from being all on site to remote during covid and now we have a hybrid way of working where not everybody is in an office every day. And calendars become very cumbersome. I'm sure everybody on this call has the same problem that I have, and you probably have where you're double and triple booked and things just pop on calendar nonstop.

(00:35:37):

One of the big challenges that we faced very early on was that EV-e can only read for your busy an intensive, calendar invite comes, shows us busy. And so EV-e will not schedule over that time mm-hmm. <affirmative>. and so we at a, it's still exists today, right? It gets better every day. But we, we have this systemic problem here where I know I'm not gonna go to that meeting, but I'm gonna keep it on my calendar as tentative just in case something ends early, I might want to jp into it. and so that was creating, obviously some roadblocks for us trying to really help our organization understand the functionality of the tool and why for security purposes, ev can't read your calendar and determine if you need to go to that particular meeting or not, or look at a color code.

(00:36:27):

I mean, we've had tons of suggestions and questions from the business, all great, but unfortunately just, you know, some of them not doable. Some of it is just behavior changes, and that's, that's a marathon. We're not gonna get there tomorrow. So we just continue to talk about the importance of doing this and the emphasis on the candidate experience and, and things like that. But, that was definitely, I think we very much underestimated how much of a change this was going to be for our hiring managers, and that is a lesson that we now take to every single project that we're going out. We, we should have started socializing this and talking about the impact, or how it was gonna impact their day-to-day and how it was gonna impact the way that we schedule interviews, probably the day we signed the contract, instead of a week or two before go live. because it's, it's still, I mean, we're a year in and we're still, you know, having those conversations every single day.

Janet Mertens (00:37:26):

Eileen, can I, can I, jump in and, and ask about, the sort of top down, bottom up approaches and, and I know you did a little bit of both, you learned some lessons along the way, and so let's talk about the, the recruiters take, you know, being your ambassadors Yeah. Versus the top down.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:37:44):

Yeah. So when we initially rolled this out, we had a couple of, snippets that went out on like all HR calls and some posts on like leader, SharePoints and things like that to talk about what was coming. But we really were relying very much on our recruiters to be the messenger, which in hindsight and retrospect, we, we kind of set our recruiters up to fail a little bit, because they were the only ones fighting that battle. And so we had to very quickly realign with our HR leadership and our business leaders to say, we need your help here. We need this to come from both the top down and the bottom up. and again, this is a lesson that we took away that we now have a really strong change management program in place that, we start working on the day that we say, okay, this project is, is getting ready to kick off and we're planning for it.

(00:38:34):

That's when we bring change management in and we're starting to think about what do we need to do? What's the impact? How do we communicate this? How do we socialize it? What do they need to know? What do they need to know again, what do they need to know again? and so we really, we had to go back and almost renegotiate with the up to say, we need your buy-in here. We need your support, we need you to help, and kind of disseminate down to your teams the importance of doing things differently. Now.

Janet Mertens (00:39:08):

I love that. You know, and it's, and it reminds me too, so when we talk to companies, who are thinking about, or have introduced new tech, especially in TA, the, what we're also starting to see, and I think you guys did a little bit of this too at GM and are certainly doing it now, is this co-creation, right? How do we design this together so that it truly is solving the problems that, you know, as you, as you, the business articulates more, you, the recruiter articulates them. And I think that also helps to, soften the, the path over, right? And, and help with that adoption. and I know you guys are doing this now at GM where you are taking this sort of approach to all of your other TA or other HR initiatives, and I love that.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:39:53):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's critical for the recruiters that are on the ground every day to obviously weigh in and share, like, these are the challenges I have and here's why what you're thinking isn't working. But also we've started on, on other projects bringing in individuals from the business to say, this is what we're thinking about, like, pulse, check this for us. Does this make sense? Does this solve your problem? Does this process align with how you think you might be able to work once this is rolled out again, is it a hundred percent perfect? No, but we've, we've really embraced the fact that the, I would say the change management was our biggest lesson learned on this project, and we've taken those learnings and applied them to every other project within talent acquisition. So, you know, silver lining. That's

Elyse Mayer (00:40:40):

Okay. And so you mentioned if you were to go back the day you signed the contract, you would've started communicating this. Is there any other major lesson, like if you could do it all over, I know we had had another conversation about almost boiling the ocean and trying to shove the old way into the new text. Yeah. So did you wanna talk a little bit about that? But like, one other major thing, if you could do it all over, what stands out?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:41:04):

I, I think, so I think it's a combination of both socializing in early and also the boil, the ocean common, right? We did try to accommodate a lot of requests of this is how we schedule here, and this is how we interview here and this is how we do it here. And while we were able to take probably, I think it was like 14 or 15 different scheduling processes down to like four or five, I think four or five is still probably too many. and so future, if I had to do this again, I would probably align on the process and start talking about the process ahead of time, even before there was potentially a contract signed, right? Like we knew that, that there were things that we wanted to benefit from, from implementing this tool. and hindsight being 2020, we should have mapped out what we wanted our future state process to look like before we even started having conversations about this.

Elyse Mayer (00:42:05):

Yeah. And I know you, you mentioned as well that just thinking about kind of the people at your organization, like for gm, there's a ton of lifers, right? Where they've only known it this way mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So would you approach it based on maybe different type of personas like recruiters versus hiring managers versus kind of like old guard or new guard, like any like learnings there on like the type of people that your business employees?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:42:30):

Yeah, sure. So, so when I joined gm, this actually, this project had just kicked off, right? I think it was like two or three weeks into design when I joined the organization. and what I noticed, and again, would I change this in the, in a future project? Absolutely. the, everybody on the, the team from the GM side was either IT or talent acquisition. There was nobody from the business. There was nobody that, was at least there to be ears to hear about what, what was going to change and what the functionality of the tool was and what the impact was. If I were gonna do this all over again, I would absolutely insist that we have functional leaders or, you know, individual hiring managers that would directly receive the benefit of a better process from this technology involved in this project. just so that they can be our champions out in the field.

Janet Mertens (00:43:30):

Elyse, you know, I'm, I'm reminded as, as Eileen as you're talking, I'm reminded of another organization that we've talked to, a quick-serve restaurant, who really did approach this with that kind of mentality of yeah, let's, you know, let's get the kind of the, the business, in this case the owner operators of the organization and, whether it was focus groups or working groups, get a coalition going to help design to, you know, to to be ambassadors, to be those champions, as the, you know, as the rollout happened and it, and it served them so, so well. And I think a big lesson there and what we see with organizations is, again, going back to that, being unafraid to, and, and sort of being bold, that it doesn't have to be perfect in that first moment and, and that you can learn with the, you know, with the business, with the users, to, to kind of refine. And I think that's a, you know, that's a big shift for organizations and, and,I think GM did that really well here.

Elyse Mayer (00:44:30):

Yeah, I mean, Eileen said it best, it's a marathon. I mean, change management is not like you put a plan in Google Drive, write a spreadsheet of like, check marks, and you check it all off, and like, change management goes perfectly. It's just like this living, breathing thing that happens over months and sometimes even, I mean, Eileen, you guys have now been a client for over a year. I, I was gonna kind of share, I was gonna ask what would you grade yourself? Like, how far along are you, are you over 50% where you feel like you've gotten past some big obstacles? Like what grade would you give your, like what grade would you give yourselves now at this point a year in?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:45:04):

Yeah, I think, gosh, that's like a loaded question. Elyse. <laugh>, you know, we're probably not, you're

Elyse Mayer (00:45:11):

Like, 'I ran it so an A'

Eileen Kovalsky (00:45:13):

<laugh>. We're, we're, we're definitely not an A, but we're not an F, you know, we're probably like a high C if on that scale. I think, you know, there's, we continue to evolve how we leverage the tool, and with that, we have to continue to evolve the discussion that we're having and making sure that we're involving the right people and, and making sure that everybody understands and like talking about the why, like what, what's the impact? Why is this gonna help us? Why are we doing this? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. so I'd say we still have a ways to go, but EV every day is better. you know, I, I think we have, we watch the usage and we watch the percentage of, interviews that are scheduled manually versus automated. And so we can see an upward trend, which is again, we're, we're trending in the right direction

Elyse Mayer (00:46:00):

Yeah. Up and to the right.

Janet Mertens (00:46:02):

Eileen, that just, and it, it's, so, it's such a great way, because I know we're almost out of time, but I, I think it just ties so nicely back to you again, what we saw in those sort of north star companies who are, who are getting this right with, with talent acquisition and even in our other research, you know, whether it's health and wellbeing or, or employee experience, that word continuous is so important, right? This journey is never really done. none of these are, a one and done walk away, set it and forget it all. There's all the, you know, all those phrases and, and none of them apply. This is an ongoing, process. It's, you know, there's always opportunities to improve, to change the business. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if we've learned anything, I think over the past couple of years, is that disruptions never stop and things never stop changing. And, and I think that is where, you know, sort of HR is moving in these organizations is really being that kind of continue taking that continuous pulse, watching, the trends, listening to employees, listening to users, and I think that's, that's a huge part of this for sure.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:47:04):

Yeah.

Elyse Mayer (00:47:05):

Yeah, definitely. And too, to your point, Janet, we, I, we have a ton of questions like over 10, and I know, like, I get just real frustrated when I have a question and I don't get it answered. So I wanna make sure we can prompt these. So we, we're gonna talk a little bit about what's next, but I think what's some of what's next is, I know that Eileen, you're thinking about kind of expanding this into new roles. I know that you're, that change management is kind of continuous here, but you do plan on using conversational and automation broader across gm. do you wanna share anything about that before we go into questions, just so we can hit on this? Sure.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:47:45):

Yeah. So I'll kind of, I guess wrap up with this statement, right? That everything we did was focused on the experience for the candidate, for the recruiter, for the hiring manager. Our goal was to, you know, break down some of the tensions of our recruiting process and take as much waste out. it takes stress off the recruiter and the coordinator to schedule or, or coordinate all these ad admin administrative tasks.we're taking the pressure off the hiring manager of having to, you know, look at their calendar and get back to a recruiter and then go, oh, no, that doesn't work. And so having to, you know, constantly go back and forth with when am I available, when is my interview team available, et cetera. and it's really empowering the candidate to select a time that works best for them. And so once was what was once a burdensome, burdensome, and arduous process, is now a, a much more seamless experience. Again, not perfect work in progress, but really what we did was no different than some of the food delivery apps that we all use, right? Food delivery always existed. they just made it easier and, and improved the experience for their customers. And so we're doing the same thing.

Elyse Mayer (00:49:00):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Great. Janet, I don't know if there's anything you wanna round just wrap up in terms of this type of technology, any light bulbs before we get into some of the 10 plus questions that some of the attendees have asked? Yeah.

Janet Mertens (00:49:13):

No, I mean, I think, I think Eileen said it really well, and, and this is, you know, this is technology that's going to be with us. And, and I think that there really is an appetite for, again, the, the benefits around kind of that transparency, constant communication, ease of use, simplicity, all of those things make this a, a really important part of, of the talent acquisition kind of tech stack now going forward. So I do think, you know, I think the lightweight solution that, that kind of, integration, the seamless experience, those are all pieces that are at the heart of, of where, you know, where leading organizations are going. So I, I would leave it there and say let's, let's hit those questions.

Elyse Mayer (00:49:55):

Okay. a lot of these are digging into the GM story, of course, but Janet, if you have any opinions, please, please share. So, let's see. One of the questions was, and I can share a little bit about this too, but this was from Christina. She asked about, you mentioned with, Workday and being fully integrated. So Eileen, can you share just a little bit more about the recruiter experience and like where they're working, how easy that is, learning a different system mm-hmm. <affirmative>, just how, how simple that was with, with the Workday integration?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:50:27):

Sure. So, primarily the recruiters are working in Workday, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because of the automation, or the integration, the recruiter will move the candidate to phone screen as an example. and in the integration that will trigger the paradox tool to launch, EV-e and EV-e will go out to that candidate and say, Hey, we'd love to schedule a 30 minute phone screen with you. Here's some dates and times. so I would say majority of the time the recruiters are working in Workday, we try to prevent them from having to go into multiple systems, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, and have everything all in one place. Now, the benefit of them going into the Paradox tool is they can see what's pending. I mean, they could see a little bit more detail than they would normally see in Workday. And so they do go into the paradox tool to look at, okay, how many candidates maybe didn't respond, or didn't take action, do I wanna relaunch that? Do I wanna just cancel it out? Am I gonna move on? Etcetera. But for the most part, they are working, they're, all of this is happening through the integration and work with Workday.

Elyse Mayer (00:51:35):

Great. Yeah. And, and just from a product standpoint, Paradox does have a very strong integration with Workday. There's a browser extension where you can actually just work out from what, whatever browser if Workday's open, and then as well as like step in status. So to Eileen's point, most recruiters, they don't wanna learn another system, but there is a level of detail if you do wanna get in Paradox for, for some more of the, the, the technical, interviews. So there was a few questions on digging a little bit deeper into the rescheduling given. I don't think you shared the stat, Eileen, I think you, you guys were at like a 68% reschedule rate. So a few people were just asking, has the rescheduling amongst hiring managers and teams decreased? And how did that actually, how is that actually solved? Who's doing the rescheduling now?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:52:22):

Yeah. so I'll say this, I don't think Paradox is gonna solve our rescheduling problem, right? That's not a, a Paradox problem to solve, that's a GM behavioral issue and any company, because I think the number that I'm stating is not uncommon. I think rescheduling is a systemic problem acro with any talent acquisition team because everybody's busy. so do we see pockets of improvement? Absolutely. Where the tool is helping us is being able to accurately report and kind of dig into the details of, all right, do we have a problem with one particular hiring manager or one particular plant, or one particular, you know, functional area where the, the reschedules are just through the roof. And then it's allowing us to go back and have these really robust discussions with not only our TA leads, but also bringing in, our business leaders and sometimes even our HR leaders to help us have those conversations to say, all right, this is what we're seeing here, and here's, here's the, the benefit of reducing the amount of time we're scheduling, right?

(00:53:28):

It's gonna improve the candidate experience. We're gonna get the candidates in the door a bit faster. you know, they're gonna, even if they don't get the job, they're gonna walk away and tell their friend like, wow, this was so great. Like, I didn't get the job, or I didn't take the job, but like, this is a great experience. You should go interview with gm. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.and so tho those things happen, right? We've all been candidates, you talked to your friends. and so again, what paradox was a able to empower us to do was really dig into the data to say, you know, here's where we have issues and here's where we need to have conversations.

Elyse Mayer (00:54:01):

Yeah, I think that's a great point. we say that that a lot as well, especially for brands like gm. having a great experience for candidates you don't hire is honestly just as important as the ones that you do because angry people are more likely to, to write a review, right? Like, yeah. The, like that's the things that just populate Glassdoor. And so if you can actually standardize that high touch personal experience, it felt simple. I felt like I was responded to those people, hopefully Boomerang for a different role. and there's just a great brand experience. I think that that's a really strong point, point to that.

Janet Mertens (00:54:38):

And I would, and, and Elyse, I would jump on top of that and say, you know, and candidates are concerned, right? And, and I think there's a piece there to, to pay attention to as well. We've talked to, you know, airlines and, and other, consumer product companies who recognize that every candidate they have, and we talk about this in the, in the research, you know, that corporate brand and employer brand, they're very meshed now, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and so when you think about those candidates who, who apply and don't, you know, they're, they're silver medalists or they don't, you know, they don't get to, the job. They are also thinking about your, your organization as a, as a corporation, as a brand. And, and I think that's a, an important piece of this as well.

Elyse Mayer (00:55:17):

Yeah, for sure. So this is an interesting one, I think, Janet, you'll have some thoughts on this too. This is less about the product and scheduling, but Frank had asked, this was something on the building of the skills of recruiters. So Janet, you touched that on as a theme in the research. Eileen, you even talked about this. If you free them up from admin work, there's, there's value there, right? To actually expand their, their skillset. How, how might you guys rationalize the building of skills and upskilling of recruiters with, again, a lot of the layoffs that are happening right now in terms of, you know, big, big tech industry, et cetera. So, you know, some businesses are thinking about growing recruiters, but a lot are being laid off. Any thoughts there?

Janet Mertens (00:56:01):

Yeah, I mean, I can start Eileen in, and I'm sure you've got thoughts from GM as well. Listen, recruiters have been through every up and down possible. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in the last,c ouple of years. We've gone from, you know, shortages, global shortages of recruiters. It was the most, I think at one point there was a stat from LinkedIn saying that there were more recruiter jobs than data scientist jobs, for LinkedIn. There were, you know, I talked to TA, heads of TA who said, forget about the 3000 open recs that I can't hire for. I can't find the recruiters. I need to hire those people. So, you know, we've gone from that extreme right through to, and recruiter burnout happened. you know, we, we saw PA patterns and trends around that, and then right through to, you know, loss and attrition, 30%, you know, loss in, in recruiting teams.

(00:56:51):

Certainly, you know, broad, layoffs in in industries, like tech. So it's really been a kinda a, a journey a, a rollercoaster. And I think what I've been hearing, you know, among our north star companies, and Jim, I think I'd love to hear this story too cause I know you guys have done the same, is using those opportunities in those downtimes of those hiring, you know, the, the periods of hiring freezing where we've seen that happen in the last little while to actually, use those chances to, to upskill, to cross train, to, you know, Scotia-bank shared this incredible example of how when they hit their first hiring freeze in, in one of the first cycles of the pandemic, actually took the recruiting team and put them into the business and built relationships. you know, the recruiters came back with better knowledge of the business that they served with relationships with, you know, consulting skills and business case and, and you know, it's just, it was, it was an investment in the company and in their recruiting team to use that opportunity, to do sort of on the job training to cross train to, to, to find internal mobility paths for recruiters.

(00:58:07):

And I think that's such a great example of, of, of making the most of that period.

Eileen Kovalsky (00:58:13):

Yeah, I mean, I think those are amazing points, right? And one of the, one of the pillars of our strategy was investing in our recruiters, not only giving them a, a state-of-the-art tech stack, but also investing from in them from a developmental perspective. Again, I talked a little bit about, you know, an external platform that we purchased to upskill our recruiters, as well as our internal training team doing some live, like learn and lead sessions on a regular basis. But we wouldn't have been able to free up the time for them to invest in themselves if we didn't take some of this administrative burden off their plates. So we were really thoughtful about when we rolled out all of these new things and, you know, wanted to make sure that as our recruiters found time, because this, the technology was being adopted and it was being used that they knew that, you know, for us, a priority was for them to invest in themselves. And so this, you know, it, it was a great way for them to free up the time to, to make that investment.

Elyse Mayer (00:59:25):

Love that. We're have, we have, we have one minute. actually one just came in that was really interesting. From the time you rolled out automated interview scheduling for recruiters, how long did you wait to actually roll it out to hiring managers?

Eileen Kovalsky (00:59:40):

So we went live with phone screening, I wanna say like November of 2021. And I think we started rolling out interview, scheduling in January of 2022 in, in pocket. So we didn't roll it out all at once. We, it wasn't a big bang, but mm-hmm <affirmative>, it was about two or three months ahead of time where the recruiters really got started to get comfortable with the process and saw the benefit. and then we slowly started rolling out interview scheduling.

Elyse Mayer (01:00:12):

Got it. there were a few that we didn't get to. If anyone wants to email or connect with any of us on LinkedIn, I'm sure we'd be happy to, to answer. Thank you all so much. The hour kind of flew by. I love chatting with Janet and Eileen. again, please let us know if you didn't get the case study and we will follow up the recording. Janet, Eileen, so amazing to talk to you guys. I'm sure you'll continue speaking and thank you for being such great advocates and, and sharing this story. We appreciate the time.

Janet Mertens (01:00:41):

Thank you. Thanks everyone.

Elyse Mayer (01:00:43):

Bye.

Janet Mertens (01:00:44):

Bye. Bye.