Adam Godson  0:00  
everybody hey Joe. It's so good to see you.

Joe Shaker Jr.  0:03  
Good to see you, but it's been a little bit.

Adam Godson  0:06  
It has been it's it's been a snowy, snowy week where I where I've been so glad to see you. Staying warm at least that's good.

Joe Shaker Jr.  0:16  
Yeah, it's warming up finally here is that two weeks, two weeks ago and negative 32 Winchell was not fun.

Adam Godson  0:22  
Not at the joys of Chicago.

Joe Shaker Jr.  0:24  
I got Joy's right my dog would even walk outside and I don't blame him.

Adam Godson  0:30  
This is good. This is good. I'm looking forward to this. This is gonna be a good Good, good. Well, thanks everyone for joining me a few housekeeping things. Feel free to use the chat as you in the webinar. So we've got some folks that are going to be standing by to answer your questions the the inevitable I can't get audio kind of a kind of a thing. But then also I want your hardest gnarliest questions you can think of about career sites and strategy and things to be thinking about and I would love for it to stump Joe on one of these if I can. So please invite you to use the chat for questions for for me and Joe. as we as we get going. So we're hitting our obligatory couple of minutes so maybe we'll start Joe with with with introductions if we can. I don't even know if you need an introduction. The man the myth legend, but do that anyway. For anyone who doesn't know you. Joke tell us about yourself. Tell us about a little bit about shaker. Yeah,

Joe Shaker Jr.  1:33  
well first off, Adam. It's great to be here today. And we I appreciate the opportunity and very much looking forward to our quote unquote virtual fireside chat. I just wish we were both sitting around the fire with a nice cup. So we'll just have to envision that we're in person. But for those that don't know me, I'm Gil shaker president of shaker recruitment marketing. We're a full service recruitment advertising agency been in business for over 70 years. My grandfather started the company I'm third generation now leading the organization. We're based just outside of Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois, and very proud of our 200 plus employees are seven years in this amazing industry. And I'm building out not just great partnerships with clients and some of the names of which I've seen up in the attendees list and Hi Debbie, I see your chat. Good to see you as well as building over the years amazing partnerships, like with paradox and Adam and Aaron and team. So great to be here about the about the firm about myself, running the company. This is all that I've ever done. So I won't say how long I've been in the recruitment marketing industry. As I joke that everyone will know my exact age, but I can tell you I've ran ads and newspapers, placed ads digitally and honestly the conversation we're gonna talk today around about how to build brands and launch them on career sites. And I am the proud father of three I have a nine year old daughter a seven year old daughter and a five year old son.

Adam Godson  3:03  
That's awesome though Joe, thanks for that. And you know what I love about you is your care for your clients and how much and how close those relationships are and I can find everybody in the industry that knows you and nobody's got a bad where to set where to say so. Amazing. Thanks for joining us. Quick Intro for me. I'm Adam godson, I'm President and Chief Product Officer at paradox I've also been doing this a long time. It's all I know how to do is talent acquisition technology and so I'm gonna keep doing it. Because I because I love it spent time in the practitioner seat sort of my career as a recruiter, spent time in global recruitment process outsourcing, sort of learning all the nuts and bolts of, of talent acquisition. And then I spent the last four years at paradox driving strategy, product management, engineering, and those things here as well. So personally, I've got two boys, I split time between Scottsdale Arizona and Racine, Wisconsin. And so you can easily find me on an airplane somewhere between those two points or somewhere else but great to be with you. Thanks for joining us. I got

Joe Shaker Jr.  4:09  
interrupted you know me I'm interrupted a couple a couple of times today, but something that Adam will not say about himself. He is one of the smartest minds in the space. And I will say paradox has done a great job in their own talent acquisition efforts but and then recruiting you and putting you into the role as Chief Chief Product Officer as well as president is just speaks volumes but you are one of the smartest minds in space. I've always enjoyed working with you at paradox and even outside of paradox, but it's great to see you in your role and there's no doubt as paradox continues to revolutionize the space. It's through your team and obviously pretty good product in your mind. So he was well deserved the compliments that Adam paid me $5 And I paid Adam $5 So now we're good and we can get really going

Adam Godson  4:57  
nice nice. I was trying to figure out how to get the fire in the fireside chat here but I might actually make your face bigger Joe something maybe I thought I would never say is to make your face bigger, but maybe it gets you into a spot where we can see each other a little a little better in that. But maybe, Joe you know we've been doing this a long. You've been doing this a long time thinking about brands and a couple marketing those pieces. Tell me why career site why is this the most important part of the candidate experience?

Joe Shaker Jr.  5:31  
Yeah, it's a great question. I'm kind of how I always kind of relate just back when you look at recruitment marketing. I think you really have to look at it from the lens have three areas right to be successful. It's kind of if you don't mind the terminology like to use kind of create that trifecta for those horse racing fans out there to get them all three matched in working simultaneously. So they want to have the right message. We want to place it in the right places. And we want to have that right conversion. And so when you talk about specifically we're going to look around career sites, right? A lot of times people spend a lot of time and energy and saying Where should I go and where should we spend the money? But ultimately, right all that when you spend it right and we drive and it has to get driven somewhere and that front door is your career site. And if we have a situation where the crusade is not functioning well, doesn't tell the right story repels people versus pushing people through the funnel. You have a conversion issue that I know we're gonna talk a lot about today. And so why career sites are so important today. Is that it is that front door it is where the engagement We're driving to. And it's ultimately right where we want to get people pushing through the funnel, so that's microsites are fundamentally a part of it. And we always say it's the message with the media with the with that conversion. Yeah,

Adam Godson  6:46  
I love it. I love it if you've done a lot like physical media over the years as well and those those pieces and actually broke that down a little bit in terms of the conversion part. Maybe we can talk about that as we go but maybe we'll jump into the to the message part. I don't know I'm a simple character. Isn't the message kind of always the same? This is the message just be like we have happy employees and you should work here click this button or why the message occurs. So

Joe Shaker Jr.  7:18  
I mean, you got to put it to like consumer advertising, right. The last thing you want to do is put a message out right that sends the wrong message quote, unquote, does false advertising. You know, my father has a great line. The key to recruitment is retention. And for you to be able to keep that retention, it starts not at the end of the funnel, it starts the beginning of the funnel with that messaging and with the brand. And so why Employer Branding, right is so important, why you want to spend the time the effort, the resources and the dollars and doing that and doing that right is to create doing the employer brand doing it right into an employment value proposition is gainst the core of the company on what it's like to work here and what it's like not to work here, who are the types of people that an organization is looking for, and who and the type of the organization the types of people that they're not looking forward. We would rather write we as I speak on behalf of my clients, but clients as well as job seekers would rather self select out at the start of the process versus going all the way through. And because you know what's ultimately going to happen. If someone accepts the job and they're they're accepting the job because they believe XY and Z of what you told them at the start with that messaging platform. Turns out not to be true. What are they going to do you know, if the consumer side which was everyone always talks about and knows, if you buy a product that you think is going to do X and does y what do you do? You return it right and you return it now? Happily, you can write reviews and get negative stars and we all know how that process. The same is true in recruiting. I want to say that is that simple, but it's true. They are going to go there and they're going to say this is not what you told me. This is where you're going to now can't return the product when I'm out right? They're immediately going to start that job search which is going to create a retention problem which ultimately right which is why that brand is important when where you tell it right the first place outside of obviously on to the some of the media options but isn't that person and that's the beauty where you can take that brand and bring it to life on the crusade is taking it and telling the true authentic way to the various different segments. That you're speaking, right? The sell. And it might be different to sales to different to marketing, the different to finance or the career site right will give you that flexibility to speak to each of those unique audiences and sell those value propositions so that we can hopefully convert them but then also retain them.

Adam Godson  9:33  
Yeah, I think it's interesting, Joe, because as you mentioned that about the career site is actually the authoritative source in some ways about somebody might have heard something from someone they know or they maybe saw review online or they don't know anything about your company. It's sort of the point that the spot really what does the company have to set? Right? This is their mouthpiece in the most public and obvious place to look of what it is like to work here why you should work here those things. It's up to us to tell those tell the stories

Joe Shaker Jr.  10:07  
and let them kind of create their own journey, right. I mean, that's the other thing too. I think we're a lobbyist crusade sometimes over the years right have been static, or a one way path. And that obviously also is not the case. And so that's true when you develop these just start going back to employer brand EVP build outs to it's not just a one message right. It's that segmentation. Whereas I also like to say personalization, and so giving them those unique value props, specifically speaking to them and how they want you know, in the area, which is of most interest to them, is also important and before it was hard to bring that to life and career sites, obviously in today's world, right they're not as static that are way more dynamic. And we can kind of get really down to the personalization of exactly what's looking for him or as they give us kind of little parameters of their interest and what they like based on what they're clicking, we can obviously start to feed in more information until that personalized story, which I know you're also going to share a little bit about today. Yeah,

Adam Godson  11:06  
I think I want to take a minute to look at some of the sites, some sites live and just talk through them. I think there's just nobody that I could think of that would be better than you to to do that with. Tell me about you mentioned media and like storytelling a couple times. They're like, like, how do we tell a story with a website? I think about stories that I read or watch or that he's like, like, how what are the best ways to do this in 2024 with the media we have available? Yeah.

Joe Shaker Jr.  11:34  
One of the things I always we always like to tell people, especially with the career site is it's not just your as I said earlier, your front door, but there's multiple doors of entry. Right? And so when we're talking a little bit about two and how we can kind of go through maybe the design process and how you kind of lay the architecture but it's also like building a home. Right? You lay the blueprint, right? How many bedrooms do you want? How many bathrooms how many floors, right when we build a career site, right? We want to decide how many really segments are we going to be speaking to how many different target audiences are going to be coming? Because ultimately, right we want to have a couple of different doors. Go back to the example like it right. There's no reason if we know based on media because Mises very targeted for the likes of using words like our friends at Indeed and LinkedIn. You know, they allow for capabilities and are really good at matching personas to specific audiences. And so we know also as marketers that IT person and so why in that scenario to the main page of the career site and then make them search righ t jobs, we know based on the jobs and based on the data from our partners on the media side, that this is an IT individual software developer enjoy what drive them to the page within the career site that speaks specifically to them again, creating that personalized experience, but that uniqueness and creating less friction, because the more obstacles or frictions we also need put in front of that process in that candidates journey. They're going to there's a potential bounce. And so we're getting to is where I think we can when you set up that site through the content in specific content geared to them, but then also that can experience in terms of making it kind of one click to apply.

Adam Godson  13:10  
I love it. I love it so much. Things have gotten so different in the last five years and it feels like we've changed crazy. What are some of the biggest advances that you've seen in the last five years things that you're you're excited about and maybe even what's coming up

Joe Shaker Jr.  13:24  
what I will say one of the advancements we're seeing around even technology right and I think the likes of paradox and others right are really starting to evolve that space forward. was gone are the days of just writing the ad and driving it into the ATS and saying it's no longer anyone's problem. We are really working like a marketing organization and taking that conversion post application to the selection to the hire, ultimately right to the employee into the Indian to employer offer stage. And so where I think kind of where I think technology is going and where our industry has evolved over the last kind of five years is in getting that not just application, but getting to the quality of application and how do we get through the selection process and doing it in a very efficient and time effective way. And so that ultimately, right? time is not wasted by the recruiting team. But also we're not losing candidates right in that pipelining process. And one of the things that was so hard before was you had a lot of people applying to jobs and you had just limited resources in terms of recruiting teams, there's only so much they can handle only so many racks for so many applications. They can they can review in any given period of time. And tech again, paradox obviously being one of those is helping us kind of create some efficiencies there in producing not just a better experience but then gallops it saving money and creating that better candidate experience.

Adam Godson  14:47  
No, I love it. I love it. I have a couple more questions to ask you as we go. I actually want to take a quick look at a couple of sites. So these are these are some we go out live to the web and we'll we'll sniff around a little bit and I would love your feedback on some of these. These are sites that you know, at least one of us has had some sort of off with on that because it helps us to tell that that story but I would love to kind of just poke around and see what see what we can see. I want someone to give a thumbs up just to be sure that they can see my screen on the phone. Yes, I feel good. Okay.

Joe Shaker Jr.  15:19  
You and I and then this is going to be a really boring conversation right? If it's just okay,

Adam Godson  15:23  
I got the thumbs up that's great. I'm gonna do that actually felt good for my ego. So So, but this is an interesting one. You know, you had your team had lots to do with this one. Were opening a new luxury hotel in Las Vegas. Just cool brand but like competitive environment. And man, just this is one I remember the first time I visited I think I texted you. I was like Joe That's it was awesome. Yeah, tell me about like this banner this video like like what's happening here that to draw this out?

Joe Shaker Jr.  15:58  
Yeah, I mean, definitely to write one of the things we're gonna talk about storytelling, and kind of the activation of like bring that brand as we all know to in today's world, right? People like to see visualization. That said they're not reading but right, we need video. And we got to keep it brief, right? They're not going to spend, how do we tease them and kind of draw them through the site as they engage with it more versus us trying to force the conversation. And so one of the things right, from a design perspective, right is we're trying to kind of tease them show them kind of give him a little bit of limelight and then something to say drag them through the processes they want to obviously learn more or right and you're gonna see case in front here. Maybe they don't want to even watch videos or read but they want to get right to the job search and they can quickly and very easily can get in start interacting with ability to do keyword search are obviously using Morris, their personal assistant to help in that matching. And we'll say another thing too that you know, on their site was definitely from a brand perspective. You know, the family name right as well. No, right especially within the Miami Florida area. But it was new right to the Vegas market. And they obviously at the time of the site launching had no ring on there a small amount of employees that were working there. So we had to gear this up where they had to hire over the 6000 people over the three month time period. So definitely from a brand to we were also showing that there was a lot of interest in terms of helping educate on how we were taking what is known about felt blue, which is bringing it to that Vegas market and keeping them unique. Yeah, I

Adam Godson  17:32  
love I love that. There's actually sort of your just your flat I think they went with a really sophisticated brand, right like they got the bowtie logo like everything is clean, sophisticated, high end luxury hotel is what they're trying to communicate with. With everything here. We've got Morris who we can chat with we'll come back there a little bit. I loved your call out to have the, with the marketers called the CTA, right, the call to action. What what do we want someone to do? How do I just get right to it? Search bar high on the page right in the middle where I can search for anything here. So your visitor that's here to get stuff done. And get stuff done on that really easily. I love that from a design perspective.

Joe Shaker Jr.  18:18  
I would I would tell you to me you got to play obviously with Morris, who obviously is you know image to was aI generated. And so working in conjunction obviously with the creative team design team in AI This is a it was a specific persona, right that fell in blue that also matches you know, the persona, which they're looking for from an employee perspective and bringing it to life. But I mean, I think to their will for one of the first in market in the Vegas market, as you mentioned at the start is a very competitive market in terms of potential but also opportunities. And one of the things we knew right to get people in to Fountain Blue was not just relying on those active job seekers but pulling people passively and that might have already been employed in some of the other competition. And we know right, those individuals high in demand, are not going to spend a lot of time going through the process to do the search. But then also, once they say hey, raise their hand, I am interested in learning a little bit more, how do we push them through go back to that kind of not just application process, but the selection and the hire. And so I know we don't have time today to actually go through a whole applied process of which you know, definitely paradox came in not just the partner from the chat, but also for the actual ETS record, to kind of show like how we can make this selection efficiency process, very streamlined. And what does that do? You know, case in point we know out of the gates, it's all numbers. And so if you need a 20 applications to get to hire, we can get that number down to 10. That's gonna save significant amount of money. So it's less than wait that's gonna be at the top of the funnel. And so there's not just the potential loss of that very coveted applicant that we're trying to maintain throughout the process, but it also is a savings invest here saves and saves over here. Yeah,

Adam Godson  20:09  
no, I love that. I think this is a good example of both sides of that where I love the storytelling you're doing here with with employees too, and sort of getting to different images of of people and making the maker move. I think you mentioned here I can come over and ask Morris a question. Right? So be able to start my job search here and jump through there do the whole thing through conversational AI to do that. Or if I'm a searcher, I can jump in here to to jump right in and say you know what, I want to be a bartender and I want to make that happen. I can I can make that. Make that go also, you have to be able to do that. So I actually wrote a little bit of this, why not? We're here.

Joe Shaker Jr.  20:50  
Anyone I think definitely should. Yeah.

Adam Godson  20:52  
So then I get to my job this page, right? So this someone wants to look at my bartender jobs and I've got the pieces here. I can tell I've got some matching here that that is not necessarily just based on keyword because I get things like different different roles that aren't don't say the term bartender specifically. I think the other thing that I think I like that you've done here Joe is like some of the key information that's that's before you click in so things like this What's on call what's full time what what is maybe nightlife versus day life. So things you might want to know before you have to hit a hit a call to action on any of those things. I think that that makes a ton of sense. And then I think maybe we'll kind of take a look take a look at is once I hit View job. Then we go to an approximate boringly call the job detail page. Because it's the details of the job are but but I get I get into my frame. That's that's sophisticated. I think what you did here was cool like you'd have the call to action here. So you never lose it It floats with you. But I can look at the most the key things of my my job and you know there's a whole nother webinar that we could do on how to write job descriptions and what a job ads what that looks like. But the key thing is like like you know, what, am I qualified right like what language skills do I need some of the those things and then cool to have like the the pay transparency stuff here on some of those as well. So and then some of the roles say like a number or some of them say something else that depends on what that looks like. But the person knowing like, Am I qualified What do I need to know? on that? Which is super cool. So I think that's, that's a good example of that.

Joe Shaker Jr.  22:37  
Very much. So and I think that's the most important part and now you're integrating to actually apply process but notice, right, we're not jumping out and going into a whole different experience or a whole different environment, right? This is seamlessly integrated into the site. So you kind of take over from

Adam Godson  22:53  
That's right. I think, you know, lots of career sites have you kind of hop all over and then you start you load a different experience and then the UI gets weird, and you have a different experience. The goal here I think for the Fontainebleau is to make this like a conversation. And look, everybody has lawyers. So we're so Morris versus doing this, to be sure we pleased folks from that perspective. And then we're just going to start to have a conversation and be able to say that and I say like i Madam godson and and be able to be able to start to have that conversation and because, you know, as Joe mentioned, we will go through the entire thing, but I actually did the scene, the shortened version of this right maybe I'll scroll through to when I did it earlier, but I had the same kind of conversation and maybe we'll we can talk through that I mean my name testy testers and this time is a true a true industry legend test he is will be able to answer some some, some key questions. So what do you have this experience? What kind of hours can you work? What kind of shifts Do you want to work? Those kinds of things and be able to understand what that looks like. Be able to ask a candidate experience question here as well. So like what does that what does that look like from from, from your perspective, what could we have done better for the candidate experience after I did a reading? We did an inline assessment here as well. So if you're familiar with trader fi, which is a 92nd visual assessment that's used for oftentimes frontline roles is validated the Big Five assessment that we do the as the instructions say, the candidate comes and says, me or not me to a series of images, but they do it right here in line without ever leaving the page. One thing that's also cool is that they get a link, they get their results as well. So they're big five personality so for doing the assessment, we also get some information about me. scopes are some cool things to to look at as well and so I can view something and learn something new about myself as well. And then as an outcome the client can choose what kind of outcome they have. Some of our clients will say great, you're scheduled the interview right away so we can get the interview and the managers calendar. Fontainebleau is doing lots of hiring events. So they're they're sort of hosting these events. And so the outcome is that, you know, I pass this part of the experience and I can say, look, look, go go go pick an event, pick a date at a time that I'm not working in. It's great to have those events. Times where the the staff could could pay attention to an interview, probably not in the middle of evening service, but having those events where everyone can pay attention and interview so just

Joe Shaker Jr.  25:41  
I was gonna ask one question there if I could, I know you're supposed to ask the questions. We didn't rehearse the questions. Yeah, that's great. I know, there has always been this kind of rule of thumb that candidates apply to about 17 different jobs. Right. That's just the kind of general rule of thumb they say when someone starts looking for a job. They fly up to 17 different places. I'm curious, right in New York, definitely as the world is changes, we're talking as I'd mentioned earlier, I think you agree around the whole selection higher part of the funnel, right? We're trying to make that an easier process. I don't think anyone wants to play 17 jobs, right. No one likes to obviously apply to the jobs. It's not a fun process. But we feel like right one of the things I thought and kind of hypothet hypothesis out there was they're applying right just like leads right you want to get as many opportunities in the funnel but if we can get a candidate can say hey, we're moving you to like Case in point with phone blue here is doing moving into a hiring event or they get like you know, case burgers from McDonald's, and then you know, a scheduled interview that sometimes that same day, what's your thoughts like do you think they're still I'm leaving their McDonald's or Falun blow and applying to other places? We think they're gonna put a hole in their job search process because they you're moving them through and they're at least feel like they've they've got to the conversion leads to see if this turns ultimately to an offer.

Adam Godson  27:03  
Yeah, that's a great question, Joe. And it's interesting. We see some evidence of that in some of our data as well. What jobseekers want is certainty. They want to know if they're gonna get a job and especially frontline workers need to get often needed to get work fast. And so they don't want to apply to 17 jobs. They're just hedging their bets. So we see some of that in the data, for example, when someone begins their experience with a text code. So one other thing that you've done is helped us with short codes. Making signage you know, the thing is physical signage in a store. You can see the text Olivia signs at McDonald's. If you walk into the United States or many other places, you will have seen those. And we see three times the higher conversion from those than we do from any other source. Because they are able to move fast. The person knows they get there, and they they probably didn't apply to 17 other jobs, they wanted to work there. And they started with a text message because they were in the store or they saw something physically and and they were able to move fast through that that process. So I think I've said many times before that speed and candidate experience are the same thing in frontline hiring. So if you could make a person feel nice over a period of 30 days to have to get hired for this bartender job. That feels way too slow, no matter what they'd rather just get hired in two days from that perspective. Great. Yeah, love it. That's great.

Joe Shaker Jr.  28:32  
You brought up a good point to that phone blue, but even just in general to the whole topic of career sites, I think it's important to highlight to where you can get metrics. You mentioned data. And that's another thing that obviously has changed I think in the favor. Of us as marketers, as you as technology companies, but also ultimately, right for the clients and companies. They're on the claw like the data is now there, and it's no longer again, waiting for it to come out of ETs as we're ultimately right using self selected data, which you know, is 90% Well flawed, right? We're getting to a point where we get a pretty accurate, pretty good accuracy in terms of where candidates are, and then where are they are again in the pipelining and to the candidate journey. And so one of the things is we know someone's getting registered for an event, or submitted an application that's ultimately scheduled for an interview. That's quote unquote a qualified app doesn't necessarily mean it's going to turn into a hire, but it does send signals to ourselves and some teams as marketers, like, Hey, we're filling the funnel. And so if you needed 20 qualified applications to get to that higher, you're there right now, let's maybe pause for a minute. See how that plays out. You can always obviously start it up again. So the data is real. And then when you use that data to to make those real time decisions. There's some savings and efficiencies there as well for the recruiting team. Yeah,

Adam Godson  29:48  
no question. Obviously, you didn't see the question here, like, where did it come from? We're getting that data. We already know where that came from and wherever using that in the back end, to help decide that and I think some of our other pieces are being sure that we're guiding people to the right job. If John AR has 200 applicants, like he doesn't need 201 Can we get this person to another similar role which for which they're also qualified in real time as quickly as possible, which I think is a big big part of that as well.

Joe Shaker Jr.  30:19  
Oh, sorry. Is that Adam No, I mean, are you make your point right, that matching used to historically I mean, if you go back in time, match keywords to a candidate's put into the keywords that were in a job description, right. And we just hoped that they there was some sort of relevancy obviously, you guys take that a little bit further now? That yes, you're obviously we're still using the keyword searches from the candidates and using the job descriptions. But how is paradox helped make those matches even that much better? Yeah, I

think both it's both the matches and being able to understand the answers to question So what does this person looking for? Through the through the assessment, some of their personality types, what personality What job would they be a good fit for? And then be sure we can get them in to raise their hand for that job as well. And I think the other part that's changed is is some of the funnel management in the middle to understand in real time, what date you know how many applicants there are, we have a feature we called Canada volume optimizer, that helps to volume that or optimize the volume for different different roles. And so if certain jobs have way more applicants than they need, people aren't gonna get hired, we can start to let people know that there's going to be other other roles that might also be a good fit, and it probably doesn't need to be number one on the career site as well. So being sure that we can get people to the right job that has the both the need and the qualified candidates. Awesome. Yeah, I love it. I love going through career sites. It's huge. Oh, this is this is this is one and we're getting close on time and we're gonna be here all day and I definitely want to get the questions from the group as well. So can I do can I do a shameless plug because I mean, we all know in the world of TA and recruitment marketing, we're going to be in Vegas whether it be HR tech or and being Sherm conferences or something. Unleash. I'm going to tell everyone I highly recommend from Blue Las Vegas. Yes, I'm biased, but it is one of the best hotels on the strip. So great rooms, great, great employees, as well as amazing selections of the stay family Las Vegas. Love it. Love it. Yes. The next triple figure there's Yeah, we'll have a guy that'll be that'd be great. I'm gonna jump to another one just because I think this is this fun. I'm gonna jump over to US Cellular so US Cellular is a is a company I think I'm gonna give a shout out to Omar and the team at Job pixel as well. Some vertical video which is which is a new trend of some of the some some employees doing some user generated content here. I love the carousel to be able to see different videos in that as well. So I think you have all probably been asked at some point and like how do I do you know more tick tock like content, but using the vertical video in the site? As well super cool embedding of that, while still leaving space for an intelligent chat. I think being able to have both those things in the site is a super interesting thing that they've done here a couple of things I want to ask you about Joe that I thought that I thought were cool. And again just me me surfing want to ask you some things sort of the career choices sort of thing this other information tell me what why is this section like this important to let people know what kinds of things exist? Yeah, so especially when you think you're a sailor right initially on top of brand new thing, obviously sailors communications technology, but even from here you take a look at finance or click on human resource or marketing. There's a lot of other roles right that honestly for a large corporation like USA there is hiring. And so when we are doing those marketing again, they're not just more entry points. But the quick kind of rule of thumb right off the top is they're not just a telecom engineering IT company, right. There's a lot of other roles and a lot of different persona groups. And so speaking to those audiences, when we market to them and giving them the same experience as if it was from a telecommunications or it kind of process. Yeah, love it, love it. You gotta get letting people get into sort of the area that matters to them, right like not want to be in those different areas. So look at that some depth of, of content. And then I really liked this candidate experience section that is sort of what to expect. I think that's the as we as we look at Job Seeker behavior. One of the reasons I come to the career site is to understand what the process is going to be like, Tell me tell me why this is important. This goes back to as I start at the start of the call right around Employer Branding, but marfo that authenticity and just being up forefront at the start. This is what it's going to take, you know, in this scenario, right resign from the Apply process. It's always a question on what is it going to be how many steps and so us Sylar, I think, was definitely kind of proactive in this and same here it is. Don't even even need to ask the question we're laying out from the beginning to all the way through to obviously the background check and what you're going to have to do and the steps you're going to have to go through and hopefully right it meets with their expectations. And their willingness, but some for some potential employees. They may say no, I don't want to go through that many steps. Again, right. We I'd rather learn that now versus halfway through this process. Where they say this is too much I'm out. Yeah, well, I think the other part that I thought was interesting that your job is just behavioral interviewing, coaching almost right like what is up for the STAR method? Man I used to teach interviewing classes 15 years ago, to people about how to how to use star and how to answer interview questions. I love that on the site and some resume tips to help people that make the most resume tips on how to I love Mrs. USA. They always just go above and beyond. So even for organizations that may say at the top, this isn't a process for me or for individuals right that get unfortunately get deselected out, just telling them how they can ideas and tips and ideas better themselves. That's the that's the USI live brand in how they just invest people for them as well as individuals that are not going to actually be working in the organization. Yeah, I love that too. And that'd be able to come to come and ask a question, right? So like when there's something you didn't get telling you in natural language. Tell me about the culture, right like the connection I think just a question and anything I might come up with. Tell me what what's the status of application? What are the things that I might want to know about being able to get that answer from tailor their assistant, again, personalized to the brand that fits the brand, as well and getting the answer to any question I might want there as well. Just right, and I think the other is that the call to action floats with me here as well my my search and apply pieces is always coming with me so I can get there whenever I whenever I want. And Julie I mean you're seeing to Adam obviously the video and I agree with you on the snippets and obviously your friends at jump pixel have done a great job too. But you know, again, phone company, cellular company, right used to kind of seeing images and videos that way. So again, taking the consumer experience of their brand and brand to life on the employer side, which I think there's such a blend between the two. But it also this is giving I know is one of the questions that came up to that I've seen through the chatter, you know, instead of just reading the job description people can actually see what is it like to work that job and so that day of the life so yes, I mean not to say that the bullying of a job description you know, is it completely gone and removed from it? No, they're still there for those that want to read it but a lot of people want to get that glimpse get their real tiling what made glass door glass door right get up behind the scenes footage of what it's like to the company. Well, let us say they're also at the forefront portrayed and show that message and a little bit more and let their ambassadors and their employees put on the career site when it also isn't just creating a good user experience on the site. It then can be utilized right in activation on their brand. And you know those employees are going to be your ambassador and put out to their networks and we all know what has not changed in 70 years. And I know I'm not gonna surprise a lot of people. I have not been doing recruitment marketing for 70 years, just my firm knows. But what we know is that stay true over the seven years that employee referrals are always a top source of hire. Right? And that's always stayed consistent across the board. And so these types of assets that can be portrayed on the career site and then re utilized in the activation onto social platforms onto job boards. To kind of help on those were for referrals also helps at the top of funnel so it's not just conversion. It's also awareness as well as interest in terms of driving applications. Yeah, no,

Adam Godson  38:24  
I love that, that Jody will talk about assets for a second things like your videos and your imagery and those things such that your creative team does such an amazing job with and I think this would offset the authenticity right of being sort of low fidelity sort of self recorded kind of kind of things that that give it that authenticity. One thing that is changing a lot is is based on quite frameworks and so indeed apply and zip apply and see couple of others that have done that a job boards. One of the things that we started to notice at paradox is that some candidates were skipping the the process entirely or the career site entirely, and so they would go directly from indeed and I think that's a fantastic candidate experience they would answer the questions that you might need to know are you a team can't be worked these hours, can you live up to this amount of weight on a day to get zapped in to the applicant tracking systems? And so for paradox for us, it was about like, Okay, how do we take this great content, the videos, the imagery, the stories that you tell, and make that longitudinal to the process and so instead of being a transaction here at the front, where we look at it and then apply if we apply on a deed it's now we look at it, but we got to send it to him and that's where we paradox of use text messaging. So we text you the video. After you've applied to say that you made a great choice coming to work here, and we text you the interview tips the candidate right before the interview, because you know, when the interview is scheduled, it's picking that experience and making it longitudinal rather than transactional has been really interesting in the last year really, as well.

Joe Shaker Jr.  40:06  
Great. And that's also like we said earlier, right? It's removing friction. And so again, sometimes too, and I think you have to embrace we all know technology. And so sometimes even when you build out these think granted bias gorgeous sites. If the candidate has given us the signals through marketing or through things we're seeing even on job sites, that they are ready to apply. In some cases, we're not even driving them to the main page of the career site, or to one of these sub landing pages like USA or has with human resources like they've already told us. They're ready to apply. They saw the job. So take them ready. Get out of the way. Yeah, exactly. Make them read ago.

Adam Godson  40:43  
Yeah, exactly. Get out of the way. Let them convert I love that. I love that so much. Cool. Well, I'm going to transition to maybe the last site we'll look at and I would love to look at 20 more with you, but we'll do that another time. Is this is McDonald's restaurants site so so being able to find your job combo I think Joe you talked about connecting the business to the the employer value proposition, you know, if you recover McDonald's, right, I love I love that connection from from that standpoint. And that sort of that interactivity here as well. And I think again, beautiful use of sort of embedded video and being able to have that right there as well. And then being able to say a little bit about Olivia and Olivia is role in this and this is the expectation setting of of what to expect. What I wanted to share on this site is some of the things around personalization, and so be able to start my my job combo here as well. And of course, I get my little legal message so that other lawyers are happy. But I can say things like do you help pay for college? A question that somebody might might ask for Olivia and then when I start to get here, they start to get content in both video and document that sort of tell some of that story that we can we can look for that first to build a page that's based on some things about me and so I can say some things maybe about tell me about diversity things that I might want to know these are things that typically you might search for right on maybe the other couple sites we visited you had you had navigation that would go there. We certainly could look for this. So these assets exist, of a being able to take to us and drive us to the individual and being able to maybe find one that I that I like and favorite that and let you know that some some social media like capability. And then, of course the purpose of a career site. You know, can you help me find a job and be able to do that with a job search as well and get some of those things in it to be that'd be able to do that will be a little geolocation here. On that

Joe Shaker Jr.  43:06  
did not and this is to me I like this this example you're showing today is what based on what you're putting in versus you can hit reset and start another one you're gonna see a whole different experience so Exactly. Which go ahead and advisors per se is like kind of the McDonald's way right and bringing their feel good moments to the candidate side of the house and creating that uniqueness and personalization for

Adam Godson  43:28  
them. Yeah, exactly. Be able to even be able to do that as well to be able to find the things that are that are there so I can now I can see the different jobs either or the ones that are closest to my house and I can come in here and find the role that I'm looking for understand the different things that exist here between we go to the college pieces, other parts of that description, and I can then hit Apply now and be able to jump into the experience where I can then apply for the job much like we did with Fountain Blue earlier and be able to get scheduled for that for that interview, or whatever the next step is right after that as well. So being able to jump in on that. And so, so I was there I love about that as a signal that gives us then for downstream and so now I know some things about this person they care about diversity they care about they care about potentially paying for college and now we've got some signals on that as well.

Joe Shaker Jr.  44:21  
I was gonna ask you and I'm so as you're looking at this right, and I think they're getting some comments too about that dynamic pneus of this type of site, but kind of a question that you asked me at the start I'm gonna kind of bring to you a at the end here but like, what big changes do you see in career pages and can't experience and interview process over the next five years? I know you asked me about recruitment marketing general. But as I'm looking at the site, seeing all this kind of revolutionize and change. I'm kind of curious, your thoughts here and then the impact, right? I mean, everyone hears the word AI. And so I know in your answer, you're going to talk about five years AI has worked into it. What's your thoughts on how that's going to be utilized how it's going to be harnessed and any feedback for the group is you know, when you hear that to legal starts to kind of stiff up a little bit. So how do we how do we help navigate that? Yeah, no,

Adam Godson  45:12  
I love that it where the world is going is clearly in personalization. And so how do I make this personal to meet in some of our point of view on this is through chat. We can make this much like it's, it was years ago, where you wanted a job and you said, well tell me about you. What do you do, what are you about and then I find you the right job in many ways the search experience has gotten it backwards is where people have asked candidates to go to their career page and then using their language, search for something browse listings and find one that they think well, I don't know maybe I'm a systems analyst for maybe I'm a project manager three. I don't I don't know. It's so in this example, it's being able to end their mcdonnell's doesn't have it on but there's some where you can upload your resume and so we upload a resume, recommend jobs for me, or let me ask you questions and recommend some jobs for me and be able to find the right the right job for me as we do that. And so you don't

Joe Shaker Jr.  46:09  
even have the candidate even typing search into what kind of job you do the matching.

Adam Godson  46:15  
Yep, just dragging a resume, LinkedIn, whatever you have from that standpoint, and then and then recommend the right the right jobs. And then downstream, it's how do we personalize the parts of the process, right. And so how do you send me the right content? At the right time? Send me the interview tips before the interview, send me the value proposition things and I'm making the decision after the interview and be able to have that and do that based on the job and that type of type of individual that might be going for that that job. And then again, I think the medium are changing too. So this entire chat experience can be done via SMS, WhatsApp, and being able to do that as well. And certainly the quick apply frameworks have made that different as well. And if we don't communicate well out of the quick apply frameworks, they are they do a great job of improving throughput because they they're ticking down friction and all of that, but we also have to finish the job in that we if we don't get to the next step and all we'll have is more candidates stuck in inboxes. And so you know when when we get an application from indeed apply, or zip apply, we will send out a message saying, Hey, I'm Olivia, you just applied on indeed. Giving them the context of how we know each other. And we'd like to schedule an interview with you and can use to be able to get that that conversion. So yeah, tons of new things come in that we're super excited about. That that are gonna change the way that people search for jobs. All for the better, and friction is better.

Joe Shaker Jr.  47:49  
Creating that better experience. I grew up Yeah, for

Adam Godson  47:51  
sure. For sure. I love looking at some subgroup pages with you with you, Joe and I want to flip the questions before too long. I do have one more for you though, because the world has changed a lot and then things are new new situations. You're a TA later leader today, you walked into a new job, and you sit down and you're like, my site's kind of ugly. I don't have a well defined proposition. Where do you start? What do

Joe Shaker Jr.  48:19  
you gotta start if you don't have the well defined proposition? I mean, it matters for the career site but also matters, obviously for you and your strategy out in terms of bringing in applications you got to start with and get to that employment value prompt to figure out why you it sets the stage for everything you know, the first place you go once after you launch your EVP internally, because that's the other thing you don't go right to your career site. Once you design your new message, you want to watch that internally to make sure obviously, obviously, everyone's aligned and bought in and terms of where we're going to market and then you bring it to life on the storyboard. I think a lot of times companies sometimes go wrong at first is they struggle build a career site and then say, you know, let's do the maths of unity. But we get so annoyed in partnership right with your marketing teams, marketing agencies recruitment nonrecurring it takes a village, but that's where I would definitely start in gearing up in putting in the right tracking in place. And so definitely where you can streamline that awesome. Well, we want to make sure that once you launch that site, everything can be tracked. And then like I said earlier, when you get to the actual career site conversation, you know it's a broad term, it's a broad statement, but let's lay the blueprint. So start with an audit, right? Look at kind of the space look at competitively right, what not just why what they're doing but so you can understand where you can take your message that you now know, and how am I going to differentiate that so I'm gonna win. And so you can build them that site to meet your needs. And so a lot of things to that customization and it gives a big component to be able to bring it to life, and then you go to build. So that's how it would be my recommendations.

Adam Godson  49:59  
I love it. How would you recommend working with internal marketing function of a company versus an agency or how does all that dynamic work?

Joe Shaker Jr.  50:08  
Yeah, I think it's always important right? That you know, you want marketing have a seat at the table. My opinion in our space, right? We know TA is and I'm talking about our clients, our clients know, the town acquisition, employment recruitment, marketing better than anybody. But there's no doubt Case in point like you've seen in the example with McDonald's. You see, if you want to see the cursor and you experience like fumble it's a very similar experience that you're gonna see from a consumer side. So you can't do that without having partnerships, right with the marketing team. Give us those brand guidelines, but the brand guidelines are not your employer brand guidelines. Right. Where they go to market from a brand perspective is different from an employment perspective. Yeah, that uniqueness is what sets us apart but to do it without them right I think is a mistake for them to control it right. Ultimately, they don't know our space league as well as we do. Is awesome mistake but doing it as a co op is the best in our skin our perspective.

Adam Godson  51:03  
Yeah, I love that. I love that good partnership. And I think you know, getting them involved in the beginning helps any potential problems down the line when you ask for assets and they think they're to do that that that makes a ton of sense to me. Joe, what are you most excited about? Maybe we'll we'll wrap up if anyone has any questions, please throw in the chat. We'd love to get to them as we go but what what what are you most excited about about the future of recruiter sites?

Joe Shaker Jr.  51:33  
I'm most excited about around them is the data transparency. I mean, really, I mean, to be able to because I mean, I think it's yourself being one of the leaders in that space to kind of help take the data out. But that's what allows us to make those decisions to change in the career side too. And that's the other thing I would say. And we always use the word flexibility flexibility in your media plan flexibility in the creative and flexibility to personally because it's got to change on a dime. In doesn't change by gut reaction. It changed by what data is telling us. I'm hearing a scene a question to you and about Omar like what about landing pages like landing pages are great, right but landing pages are kind of our are built because there's a quick need and the site cannot address to it or adapt to it. So we're gonna go create a landing page here. So ideal world is we don't want to have 20 different landing pages out there floating. It's a bad customer experience, candidate experience customer experience. It creates tracking issue potentially, but what we want is a site right that can be flexible to add those pages. So we I'm hearing you were you're saying like something pops up. We all know in the world of talent acquisition workforce planning can be planned to some degree but there's going to be changes. As soon as that site's launched. We need to be able to evolve. And so being able to create additional pages to the site that evolves to address those needs and take down stuff that's no longer that's needed, based on business objective changing as well as what Dan is telling us is not needed, is kind of is the better route to go. So the old days I really had to create them is if the current solution or the partnership that you got doesn't allow for to for the site to evolve would be the reason why to create on but that kind of that flexibility. And that transparency to data is ultimately kind of one of the things that just excites me in terms of workspaces going in. Yes, we use the buzzwords AI, but like to your point I agree with you. It's going to be easier for candidates to search for jobs. That's a that's good for all of us. It's gonna be easier for our recruiters to efficiently you guys were leading that charge right in terms of creating efficiencies and getting to those right candidates, providing that assessment, providing that scheduling and pushing them through the funnel. And that ultimately, right it's going to produce better results for organizations in their town acquisition efforts. It's going to be less expensive. It's going to be easier, you're going to have shorter time to fill and I think ultimately to you're going to have higher retention rates because the right people are going to get through the right people that are obviously you're going to stay.

Adam Godson  53:55  
Yeah, well, that makes sense. And I think the as that friction reduces it gets more competitive, right? So if you're if McDonald's gonna be fast, Taco Bell, it's gotta be fast. The rest of the same talent, right like from that and so it gets worse. But actually we create a lot of net good in the world by like reducing that friction. It shouldn't take three weeks to find a job that frontline worker and it shouldn't take, you know, three months to find a job in every time I see the time to hire things. I think our industry is not doing enough. And I think there's a real hope with that as well. Then you mentioned a couple times, Joe, I think a couple things I put out there I think some AI landing pages are coming from from that standpoint to be able to use AI with some prompts like make me a landing page that does this. I think that's that's on the way. And then I think overall career sites are going to get simpler, where in many ways, partly because of an SEO era. That's that that has existed. We made 200 Page career sites and we wanted to get every little bit of SEO juice that we thought we could get out of that and it became a maintenance nightmare. I think I've seen in the future, a lot of really dynamic sub 10 Page career sites where you've got some very specific content, but the rest of it in our interactive experiences like the McDonald's site, and some others that that you know, got a personalized but based on that sort of sort of chat idea. I think that's where it's headed. I

Joe Shaker Jr.  55:23  
agree don't overcomplicate it and I also always say right, but for those candidates that want to have the ability to read 20 3040 different pieces of content, then they can keep digging and going deeper into sites. The site should be built from either an architecture or from a technology perspective, that as they give you more signals that they want more give it to them. But as soon as they give you that signal that they're ready to convert, like a typical marketing company should convert them. And then when you convert him, you know, that's where again, a pull up paradox is. Don't make that process complicated. Don't leave the beautiful, the beautiful, the brand, keep that experience, right the same as if they were on the career site. And you guys done a remarkable job of allowing that to happen. Yeah,

Adam Godson  56:05  
love it. Love it. Speaker remarkable jobs show like thank you for a great conversation. You're one of the best in the business. Appreciate talking to you. Thanks for the amazing knowledge drops. Appreciate you your your business and great conversation. Awesome to spend a Friday together so I thank you for for spending time with us as well. hope you learn something feel free to reach out to contact Joe contact me. We'd love to help any way we can. Hey,

Joe Shaker Jr.  56:34  
thank you all for attending. My last question. What do you think going in for the Superbowl?

Adam Godson  56:39  
I'm gonna say I I'm gonna say ravens I think ravens good did the

Joe Shaker Jr.  56:44  
Ravens alright you're gonna rooms I'm gonna go Detroit. So we'll try. Loser loser rose a drink at Fountain Blue, Las Vegas.

Adam Godson  56:53  
Let's do it. I love it.

Joe Shaker Jr.  56:58  
Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you all.

Adam Godson  57:01  
Good to see it. Thank you all cheers.

Joe Shaker Jr.  57:02  
Cheers.