[Podcast] Industry Spotlight | Mike Thomson – Partner at Spark Recruiting: Leveraging Digital Platforms for Hiring Success

Mike Thomson [00:00:00]:
I always like to think of AI is a car on the highway going 150 miles an hour. Is it good? It depends who’s driving. If it’s someone that’s impaired, it’s devastating. If it’s a police officer going to safety, it’s a great thing. So AI is not good or bad. It depends.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:19]:
Hi, I’m Kortney Harmon, director of industry relations at Crelate. This is the industry spotlight, a series of the full desk Experience, a curlate original podcast. In this series, we will talk with top leaders and influencers who are shaping the talent industry, shining a light on popular trends, the latest news and the stories that laid the groundwork for their success. Welcome back to another episode of the full Desk Experience. Industry Spotlight welcome to another episode of the full Desk Experience. I’m your host, Kortney Harmon, and today I am thrilled to have Mike joining us. Mike is the partner at Spark recruiting and after my first conversation with Mike, I knew I had to have him on the podcast. He’s been revolutionizing the hiring process since 2021.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:13]:
Mike, you can correct me based on our conversation. He has a technical recruiting background with a true passion for humanizing recruiting. He really brings a unique perspective to our industry and I think you guys are going to find this approach really cutting edge, really kind of cutting through the noise, really recession proof and the idea of all the things coming to you with AI and so much more. So we’re going to be diving into Mike’s insights on the current challenges in our industry, innovative recruiting and sales strategies, and really the impact on AI and the future of work. Mike, thank, thank you so much for joining us on the show today and taking time out of your busy schedule.

Mike Thomson [00:01:56]:
Kortney, thank you so much. I’m also flattered that you think my schedule is busy, but I’m clear today, so this is great.

Kortney Harmon [00:02:01]:
I love it. I love it. Nonetheless, I know everybody’s busy, so do me a favor and tell our listeners a little about you and your journey, like what brought you into the industry and then a little bit more about spark recruiting.

Mike Thomson [00:02:13]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I love the industry story because those are, and the audience is everybody that’s kind of in the recruitment space. Nobody goes to school and thinks, God, I cannot wait to be a recruiter. Like it’s. Everybody has a story of how they got into it and mine’s not super exciting, but it’s random. So I actually studied finance and economics in university and graduated. Probably the best time to graduate with a finance degree was 2009. So a lot of finance drops in 2009, as you remember.

Mike Thomson [00:02:46]:
I couldn’t find work. And I was on LinkedIn, and a high school friend of mine that I’d known, we played hockey, they were growing up. He went to a very prestigious university around business and finance. And I saw that his title was recruiter, and I kind of shot him a note with a little bit of a jab saying, like, you went to this fancy university and you ended up in HR. And Brian wrote me back right away just because that’s what he does. And he goes, dude, it’s not HR. It’s much more sales. And let’s meet up, because I think we’re going to be hiring.

Mike Thomson [00:03:19]:
And I met him for a beer and got introduced to the agency model at that time as very entrepreneurial, sales focused, fast paced. And I thought, sure, I’ll try it, see where it goes until the finance market changes, and I can get my job in spreadsheet land in finance. And that was over 15 years ago. And Brian and I have worked together from that time through multiple companies to now. Spark is our agency that we created. We’re in our third year, so it’s been a journey. I mean, we’ve known each other since the age of 14. And, yeah, business partners are like a marriage.

Mike Thomson [00:03:53]:
And Brian and I know each other quite well.

Kortney Harmon [00:03:55]:
And look at you both being in HR together. No, I’m just kidding. Sorry.

Mike Thomson [00:03:58]:
Both of us in HR. Who would have thought?

Kortney Harmon [00:04:02]:
I love it. So talk to our listeners about the industry in which you serve. You and I talked about this the last time we had a conversation, but kind of. Who do you serve? Talk to me about the people that you’re talking to and what industries do you guys cover?

Mike Thomson [00:04:14]:
Yeah, absolutely. So my background’s always been in technology, most of its contract hiring, but the pandemic kind of put a full time flavor on us. So we do both full time and contract hiring in technology. And we like to say the domain is both technical and functional within tech. So functional is everything from product project analyst, strategy work, and then the technical is architecture, all the way down to operations. So those are the areas we focus in in the tech space, and it’s fun and dynamic. I also know nothing about tech. And if my mom or any of my family is listening, I can’t fix your iPhone.

Mike Thomson [00:04:52]:
I don’t know what’s going on with it. It happens all the time because they think I’m in technology. I don’t know how to do any of those things.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:00]:
I love that I’m tech support for my parents. I think it’s just the rite of passage. So I completely understand. So you and Brian, obviously you’re kind of going down this journey. You have a different view on the industry now. Okay, I guess I gotta back up one. You are in Toronto.

Mike Thomson [00:05:19]:
Yes.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:20]:
Do you just serve Toronto or do you do nationally or beyond? Do you do us? Do you do beyond? Talk to me about where you specifically staff and recruit from.

Mike Thomson [00:05:29]:
We’re in North America, so we do probably I’d say 60 40. 60% of our work’s in Canada and 40% is in the US today. I see the US continuing to grow. It’s a bigger market. And I think the biggest difference between canadian and american clients is what we do is very different. So when we tell clients what we do, the same question comes from both clients and Canada. The US is who else is doing this? And the canadian clients are asking this question because they don’t want to be the first. They want validation that, oh, this bank’s doing it, this insurance company.

Mike Thomson [00:06:07]:
Cool. Let’s talk more. In the US, that same question. They want the secret that nobody else has. So same question, handled differently in different markets. Our american clients are saying, can we have industry exclusivity? Which I was like, sure, if you can guarantee spend, but we would never give that. So it’s just very different markets. So we find more growth is going to be happening in the US as we further mature.

Kortney Harmon [00:06:32]:
Interesting, very interesting. On the two sides of that same coin. Okay, so let’s talk challenges. Obviously from when you started to now, the world of COVID to whatever we’re facing economically today. What do you see as the biggest challenging facing our industry? So think staffing and recruiting only. What is the biggest challenge that you’re seeing? And maybe it’s different in Canada versus the US. Kind of give me your perspective on the US as an industry.

Mike Thomson [00:07:00]:
I think it’s the same problem. It’s just technology and the pandemic have exponentially grown it. And the problem I see is inauthenticity. And what that means is whenever you’re looking at a resume, there is always this sense of, did they really do this? Or are they fabricating what they’re saying? Right. Everybody always does. What’s happening now? With the AI and the rise of remote work where people are doing multiple contracts, multiple jobs, there’s less trust in the resume. And the problem is that is the only documentation today that the hiring process uses to validate candidacy. So the biggest challenge facing recruiting is technology has brought out inefficiencies that have always been there, but now they’re way bigger and way easier.

Kortney Harmon [00:07:54]:
You’re not wrong. You know, I was in the tech space whenever I ran a desk as well. So it was like, I was like you. I kind of learned on the fly what a.net developer was doing, what Azure was doing on the backside. I like, made one of my developers on staff be like, give me the lowdown on SharePoint, front office versus back office and a whiteboard. And I was like, all right, I think I’m qualified to do a tech screen now, which I totally wasn’t, but it was like I was the first checkbox of that process. But then you had, we did tech screens with every single one of our people to help validate. I’m like, go ask him the right questions.

Kortney Harmon [00:08:29]:
He passed my screening, but can he pass yours? And that was our only true way to understand if what they were saying was valid. We worked with Microsoft. It was top of the top of candidacy, so you didn’t want to put a bad foot forward. So I love that. I love that perspective now. Okay, that’s a challenge. What is your agency, what are you doing to combat that? I mean, it’s obviously an issue. You’re seeing it.

Kortney Harmon [00:08:54]:
It’s only going to get worse, I think, because as I go into my email daily, I’m getting more spam. I live in a very small town in a middle of a cornfield in Ohio, and now recruiters are like, or people are saying, oh, my gosh, my parents got married in your town by this restaurant, which is totally fabricated. AI did a very crappy job of telling them what was actually in my town. So it’s junk, it’s spam, but you’re missing the mark and actually getting lost in the shuffle more. So what is your agency doing differently when you’re talking to candidates and clients?

Mike Thomson [00:09:25]:
We’re trying to rebuild trust, and I think trust has been lost because of the fact that AI makes it super easy. To your point, what you just said of telling fake stories that appear real. Right. And candidates and job descriptions are all generated by AI for the most part. And if they haven’t, they will be. So you have two robots speaking to each other and there’s no trust when the individual is there. So as a recruiting agency, what we’re trying to do is, hey, trust us. We’ll screen for you, we’ll do the notes, we’ll do everything that way.

Mike Thomson [00:09:57]:
What I’ve unlocked is I’m never going to be as technical or able to assess fit for you than you will be. So what we do is we provide our clients with more relevant, real information right up front in the application process before they decide if they want to spend time. Because this is what happens in tech all the time. And text. I’m using tech as a example, but it’s not unique to tech is you see a resume, they look amazing on paper. You get in an interview within three minutes. Not a fit. But what do you have to do? You have to drag it out another 27 minutes because you booked a 30 minutes interview and you have to go through the motions.

Mike Thomson [00:10:40]:
That, to me, is a huge time suck and could have been avoided. How could it be avoided? Get better, more real information earlier on before you decide if you want to invest that time. And that’s what we do. That’s part of our humanizing hiring mission.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:56]:
Okay, so let’s get into, how are you doing that? Like, how are you being any different than any other agency? Give me the sauce. I need it, Mike.

Mike Thomson [00:11:04]:
Yeah, I’ll give it to you. So first thing we did is we invested in a full creative, in house studio. So we have a creative director, we have editors, we have videographers on staff to be able to leverage content in a way that differentiates us. So it’s not just something we use, it’s something we do. And as an example for our candidate video application product, which is really popular now, is, Kortney, you need to hire. You need to hire a project manager for a migration project. Common in tech space. But not all migration project managers are created the same.

Mike Thomson [00:11:39]:
There is no objectively best candidate stop for anybody. There’s a best candidate for you. So what we do is, Kortney, what are the three things that you really care about for this role in success? We come up with and workshop what those three things are. We then create a candidate video application. So we, as an agency, we go out and do our recruit. We vet candidates. We probably vet our top ten. And then our candidates go through candidate video application.

Mike Thomson [00:12:07]:
So they log into our tool. You pop up on screen, it’s already pre recorded. Hey, I’m Kortney. Thanks for showing interest in this role. You ask them a question that you care about, they have 30 seconds to digest. It’s not supposed to be an interview. It’s supposed to be an information gathering. So we don’t want to stress people out.

Mike Thomson [00:12:23]:
30 seconds is a lifetime. You normally get a few seconds in an interview. Think of what you say, then the recording starts for your response, and we can alter the time. We generally recommend about a minute to 90 seconds per response. To keep them concise, they do that three times. Now, as a hiring manager, when you engage with Spark, you get a short list of candidates, not just resumes and my notes and their LinkedIn. You also get this video that’s four minutes long. That tells you really, the things you care about, about the candidate.

Mike Thomson [00:12:53]:
And it’s not generic stuff without, like, tell me about your project manager or anything that they can chat GBT. It’s all about how they work, why they did what they did, how they did what they did, what their motivation and what their logic is, because that will tell you more about a candidate than what they’ve done, what they’ve done. We can figure that out through LinkedIn or through resume. So that is our candidate video application that we use to bring our candidates in front of our clients to humanize time.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:23]:
And you do that with, you said, like, your top ten. Yeah, I love that. So, and me as a recruiter, I don’t have to take any more time because I went in, I did this one time, and then they’re able to go do this at their convenience. So they can do that now. Does it take a lot of time? I know with a podcast. So I’m going to ask you the obvious question. People are going to be like, well, I don’t have all these people on staff. I don’t have the time to do that.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:46]:
Like, I can just hear everyone and listening, saying these things in their head. What kind of time does that take? And what kind of turnaround is that for your team to go submit to clients?

Mike Thomson [00:13:55]:
It’s less than 24 hours. The thing is, before we built out the studio, our MVP product was exactly how we’re filming this podcast on streamyard is. I hopped in with them live and asked them the three questions and let them respond. And then I cut it off. And then I would send that link because it’s hosted online. I sent that link to the hiring manager with it, so you don’t need the polish. I mean, we’re doing it to defend this, as we’re the first agency that’s doing it and we want to double down on the investment. But you as an agency, if you want to do this, it’s easy.

Mike Thomson [00:14:30]:
Just jump on like you’re doing a video or zoom call and record it and keep it brief, and then you can create those links to send to your client. They will thank you. Because the thing about hiring that I believe and love your thoughts on it, too, Kortney, is fit is something we can’t objectively say. If I’m looking to hire somebody, I can tell you what experience I would like them to have and you can give me ten candidates that have that experience. I won’t be able to tell you which ones I like until I know more information about who they are and how they work. On paper, I can tell you who looks interesting and then I’m going to want to chat with them and I will tell you, this one’s not a fit. This one is. And fit is one of those things from a candidate perspective, it’s hard for them to see.

Mike Thomson [00:15:17]:
To get us feedback is like, what do you mean I’m not a fit? Like, I have everything you want. And it’s kind of like when you’re dating, it’s like on paper they’re perfect. They’re just not that into you, like, you know. So for us, fit is something that we don’t run away from. We lean into and say, it’s okay for you not to know what you’re looking for until you see it. Let us help you see it before an interview and then you can let me know what fits better. And I use the term c not because it’s like visually, but to hear how they work, why they work. And I’ll tell you a story about how this came to light.

Mike Thomson [00:15:52]:
This whole candidate video application process is I was doing a recruit for a startup client of mine and they were looking for a vp. And like anybody that has recruited for startups, for some reason, they always want someone that has started experience. They don’t want someone that comes from big company. They want them to have worked in a startup. And I was interviewing this candidate, this woman, and she had spent ten years in corporate, in an enterprise. I thought she was great, that she was good on paper. And I said to her in my interview call with her, I said, I think your experience is good. They’re not going to see it because you haven’t worked in startup.

Mike Thomson [00:16:26]:
So why, like help me understand why you want to work in startup. And her response, she said to me, she said, mike, this is going to be embarrassing, but I’m a single mom and my daughter is 13 and she’s showing signs of being very entrepreneurial and wanting to go down that path. Me as a parent, I don’t have that experience. I don’t have the ability to guide her in that journey. So I want that experience. I want to work in a startup. I want to soak it up. I want to learn as much as I can so I can be a better parenthood.

Mike Thomson [00:16:56]:
And I paused and I said, and then she apologized again. And I said, like, you don’t need to apologize. You told me more about yourself in that story than any resume or any interview response could ever give. Never apologize for that. I know your motivations. I know a lot about your character. I know so much about you that I think you were the perfect candidate to do this job. Now, the unfortunate part is I retold this story to my client at the time, and it was immediately met with, let’s see, some startup candidates.

Mike Thomson [00:17:28]:
And the problem is, she didn’t get the opportunity to tell that story. And if the hiring manager would have seen that and heard that, it definitely would have changed things. So in that moment, I was like, it’s not about me retelling people’s story. It’s about me giving people the opportunity to tell their own story and make their case. I need to get out of the way. My job is to give people access to each other and get out of the way and let them connect.

Kortney Harmon [00:17:55]:
I love that. And it gives you a flavor. Like, it gives you a taste. It gives you that first three minutes of the conversation to be like, okay, yes or no? Or like, yes, I want more. So I love that. All right, I know the cat is going to be the question, and this is not a sponsorship to anybody. Are you using a certain program? How are you doing this? I know people are going to be like, how am I going to save time? How is he doing this? What? Can you give me the nuances of kind of that process or a tool that you might be using?

Mike Thomson [00:18:23]:
My interview is a great tool.

Kortney Harmon [00:18:25]:
Okay.

Mike Thomson [00:18:26]:
It’s a white label one that you can leverage, and it has the capabilities to do it. There’s also a lot more that are coming online that a lot of organizations use them to hire. Funny enough, they hire more entry level staff, and they use it as an interview process to replace that high volume interview stuff. But you can leverage that tool and customize it and make it your own for your agency. It’s rare, but it’s a huge differentiator. And if you do use it and have success, I want to cut.

Kortney Harmon [00:18:58]:
That’s fair. We’ll put it in the show notes as well. I guess we’ll have to reach out as a partner here. I love that.

Mike Thomson [00:19:04]:
No, I think everybody should. If you’re not using it, it’s a game changer. And please, please do. It’ll help your client, it’ll help your candidates. It’ll help you stand out as an agency. It’s a huge differentiator.

Kortney Harmon [00:19:15]:
Before we started the recording before I flubbed up the recording, we talked and you said, oh, we were using this same platform differently. So I wanted, like, flip to the other side. Well, I guess you were doing live. You were doing live job description postings. Talk to me about that. That’s not something I’ve seen. You know, you’ve seen some people put a video up about a job on their social. Talk to me about your experience with what that looked like for your client, what their return was.

Kortney Harmon [00:19:43]:
How did you differentiate? Kind of. Walk me through that whole process.

Mike Thomson [00:19:47]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I talked to you about the candidate video application. Our other product is a video job description. And we find there’s a big opportunity to humanize the job description, because ultimately what we know is people don’t work for companies, they work for bosses, and they make a decision on who they’re working for, not the company they’re working at, especially now with remote work and more less in the office time. So we saw an opportunity on the talent attraction side to create a better lure and a better hook, because job descriptions all read the same. So we experimented with a bunch of different things, and the first iteration of that was a live job description on LinkedIn. So what we did is anybody can create an event on LinkedIn. We created an event with the hiring manager that needed to hire, and we set it a week out.

Mike Thomson [00:20:34]:
And during that week, we were recruiting, but the recruit wasn’t, are you interested in this job? Our recruit was, hey, we’re hosting a video job description with your potential next boss. Would you be interested in attending to learn more about the job to see if it might be something you want to apply to? And what we do is we would invite potential candidates to attend this live discussion. And the discussion was 20 minutes in duration. It was me with the hiring manager interviewing them about, tell me about the job. Tell me about the team. Tell me about yourself. What would success look like in the role? And what this allowed for is candidates could actually ask questions real time while the interview is going on. So if you were candidates were on the fence or unsure or just wanted more information that wasn’t on the job description, or there was too much on the job description, you’re trying to simplify it.

Mike Thomson [00:21:24]:
It was a perfect opportunity to allow that exchange to be happening.

Kortney Harmon [00:21:27]:
So that was first iteration. What did you learn from that iteration, and what have you adapted to from that? Because, I mean, that sounds amazing, especially when you’re convincing a client to say, the return of you taking the time to do this is going to equal this. I think probably the hardest part, and correct me if I’m wrong, was getting their buy in to dedicate that time. Well, I don’t want to be on camera or I don’t have the time to do it. I’m sure you got some pushback.

Mike Thomson [00:21:53]:
Yeah, a little bit. But surprisingly, not as much because one thing I know about my clients is they hate writing job description. And it was like, well, how about we just talk about it, right? Like, that’s what the trend was like. Sure, that sounds great. So it was met. There was some, like, I don’t know. I’m not sure. But, like, immediately when they did it, they didn’t regret it.

Mike Thomson [00:22:12]:
Some of the things we learned through that experience, one is candidates that were passive didn’t want to say they were attending an event that was a live job description.

Kortney Harmon [00:22:22]:
Okay.

Mike Thomson [00:22:23]:
So they would then, in turn, watch the event after. But it’s 20 minutes, and 20 minutes was a long time to commit to learning about a job. So that was, one, was the feedback was they didn’t want everybody to know they were looking for a job. And then secondly, they didn’t want to watch 20 minutes afterwards. The feedback that we got that was positive was, I want to work for Kortney, not this job. Sounds cool, is I want to work for Kortney, I’m in, or I had no idea this is what the job actually was. I’m very interested. So we got more buy in earlier on in the process than candidates just applying for a job because it was one of ten they applied for that day to see what happened.

Mike Thomson [00:23:04]:
So ones that were in, and I’m going to tell you stat that’s scary, is when we did this, we have had today zero cases of candidate ghosting in our system. No. If they’ve watched a video. Yeah. If they’ve watched the video of a client and they’ve gone through the candidate video application process, zero cases of candidate ghosting, which is insane. And we’ve been doing it for a few years, so it’s wild. So what we learned from the first iteration was they love learning about the job from their potential boss. Check.

Mike Thomson [00:23:35]:
They don’t want to let everybody know they’re looking for a job. Okay. And three, they like short form content. So what we do is now we host that interview style in a virtual studio or live, and we have our studio team condense it down to a two minute video commercial. And then we then share that with candidates to recruit. So rather than saying, like, hey, I have this job, here’s the job description. Let me know if you’re interested. It’s like, hey, check out Kortney.

Mike Thomson [00:24:04]:
She’s hiring. If you think you’d work well with her, let’s chat. So we’re using that as a way to generate interest, leading with not the job, the hiring manager. And our studio does a pretty cool job of slicing it up into two minutes with b roll footage and emphasis and making it entertaining as possible. So we took the concept of the live and then condensed it to short form content.

Kortney Harmon [00:24:25]:
I love and I’m thinking, for the people that don’t have a producer in a studio like you, this still can be done. It still can be concise. It can still be on a teams meeting or done in some way. It might not be the fancy, all kinds of b roll fun stuff, but I can see where this is probably making a difference.

Mike Thomson [00:24:43]:
If you can make a TikTok or an Instagram reel, you can make a candidate. You can make a joke. It doesn’t have to be super sophisticated. People are just. They just want to hear from people. They’re sick of reading the same stuff that they see in job descriptions.

Kortney Harmon [00:24:56]:
And you’re not wrong. People quit. People, not companies. They want to work for people, not companies. And some do. But I love that. I know. Another question that I had the first time we talked Washington.

Kortney Harmon [00:25:09]:
Mike, that’s a lot. If you have, how many open jobs are you doing this for all of your clients? How do you sort through all the stuff? How do you have time for all the things in a day? Talk to me about how you decide who gets this type of, I want to say a service, how are you managing it all?

Mike Thomson [00:25:29]:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think the market dictates that. I mean, I always like to think our industry is exactly like real estate. Right? Like, do you need to stage every home beautifully? No. If it’s a hot market and things are fine, you don’t need to do it. Right. But if you know a job’s going to be challenging, if you know it’s niche or if you know it’s the seniority level justifies it. We use a video commercial.

Mike Thomson [00:25:53]:
It’s part of our process. We don’t charge more for it. It’s just what we need to do as agents to get the best person possible. So if you’re using, you should know the market before you take a job on it. Like, this one’s going to be tough. I know this is a competitive market. We need a differentiator. We need this.

Mike Thomson [00:26:09]:
And it doesn’t take time. I mean, with every role that you work on with the client, generally, the process, correct me wrong, is you do a conversation with them, right? Like you have a conversation with, just record it. You don’t have to ask for more time. Record the call, ask if you can record it, and then you can create the, whatever collateral you need from that. So you learn to start combining what you’re already doing in your process. Because how it works as an agent, I talk to you, Kortney, you tell me about what you need and then you send me a job description. I have a conversation, I have the job description. What I then do is I go to market and I say, I call Brian.

Mike Thomson [00:26:47]:
I’m like, brian, I just spoke with Kortney. She’s great. You’re going to love her. She’s looking for these things. Let me send you the job description. You’re doing it anyway. We’re just doing it better. And you can do it better too, because rather than, hey, take my word for it, get out of the way and let Kortney speak to Brian through video.

Mike Thomson [00:27:06]:
So it doesn’t need to be overly complicated. I think what you need to realize is as a broker, you don’t need to be involved as much as you are. You need to provide access and that’s it. You don’t need to be the master salesperson where you feel like you’re slinging roles to candidates. It’s like, don’t oversell it, just get out of the way.

Kortney Harmon [00:27:27]:
I love it. Okay, so two more questions around this whole process that have sparked my brain as you’re talking.

Mike Thomson [00:27:34]:
I like how you said, I saw you did spark there. I see what you said. I know you did there intentional, maybe it’s good.

Kortney Harmon [00:27:39]:
So you said 0% ghosting. So have you learned anything else in this process like stats that are standing out since you’re doing things differently, you’ve seen an increase, a decrease, anything in any of the stats that you’ve seen. You maybe have more clients coming to you to be like, hey, I want this. Kind of give me the insights of after you’ve been doing this for x number of time, you’ve learned these lessons beyond changing your process.

Mike Thomson [00:28:05]:
Yeah, there’s two that I’ll talk about. The main stat on the candidate video application process. Like, everybody always talks about time saving as a measure of, like, why you do things to make things more efficient. And then we talked about enhancing the experience as well. I think time savings is one because it’s easier to quantify. What we know is in tech recruiting, for every hire, it’s anywhere between four to eight interviews for every hire. What is necessary? When we introduced the candidate video application process, we are less than one in two. We just did a campaign with, and I’m talking about contract hiring.

Mike Thomson [00:28:40]:
We just did a campaign with a client of ours that needed to hire a lot of PM’s. There was 20 project managers they needed to hire for a major technical project. What we did is we sent them 25 videos of candidates that met the requirements. So they need to hire 20. We sent them 25 candidates with videos. They decided they wanted to interview 22 and hire 20. So from a stat perspective, it’s insane. If you go back to that other example, to hire 20, they would have needed to interview at least 60, 80 candidates.

Mike Thomson [00:29:16]:
We drastically reduce that time. So that has been a major, major thing we’ve seen is the number of interviews necessary is drastically reduced. And the reason being is they have more information upfront. They’re going into the interviews, not with, hey, Kortney, why don’t you go ahead and tell me about yourself? They already have that. They say, hey, Kortney, when you talked about your approach to migrating this to that, where did that come from? That’s how the interview starts. So you have more information. You know what you want to speak about. That has been a game changer for us on that side.

Mike Thomson [00:29:50]:
So that’s been the major stat there.

Kortney Harmon [00:29:51]:
So not only has your time to fill has decreased drastically, but your ratios from submissions to placement is dang near getting one to one after this process. Okay, you have me sold so far.

Mike Thomson [00:30:06]:
Correct on the attraction side, as we know, because there’s a lot more spam, there’s a lot more automated emails. The response you get from candidates when you go to market is low. LinkedIn instead of benchmark, I think around 10% was kind of what the response rate is. When we use a video job description to reach out to people, our response rate is 80%. Now 80% doesn’t mean that they’re interested, but our response rate and engagement from the talent is 80%. And the reason being is they appreciate the video, they appreciate a human element and they feel more likely to respond versus, I have 20 of these emails today for these jobs. Like, they just don’t, they become immune to that. So on the attraction side and your ability to stand out in the market drastically increases when you can humanize it.

Mike Thomson [00:30:54]:
And then on the other side, when you’re working with your clients and submitting, you’re reducing the time to hire and reducing the interview time, both from your ability to set it up and their ability to actually conduct interviews. So those have been the two leading metrics. We’ve seen that support. We’re going to continue to evolve.

Kortney Harmon [00:31:09]:
These things I love. Correct me if I’m wrong, so you’re using this in email, these videos in email, LinkedIn outreaches. And are you using them on social as well? Like, do you have that permission? And do you find that benefit from just posting on social as well?

Mike Thomson [00:31:23]:
Yeah, I mean, it’s some, I think for us, probably similar to other recruiters. Like when was the last time you posted a job and candidates magically apply? I mean, I think what it does is it showcases our brand in terms of how we do things. So we, we post it to socials for marketing purposes, but by no means has candidates come through that and, and like, wanted to apply, but we get a lot of engagement. Like, that’s really cool, that’s interesting. But we get the most when we direct, micro target the audience and send the content to them is the way you get the best response.

Kortney Harmon [00:31:55]:
Sales has been really difficult, and I’m not quite sure if it’s the same for your market and Canada as it is here, but I’m sure you’ve seen over the past six to twelve months, sales has been really difficult. People have tightened their belts. They’re not putting an emphasis or they’re just saying, hey, I can do it on my own based on budgets. I have some clients that are saying that they’re down 15% to 30% on average, depending on the industry. It all varies. How has this played a part in your sales process and differentiating you getting new clients? Because I’m sure not many people have worked like this. You briefly touched on this in the beginning, Canada versus us market. Has this helped you get new clients because you’re doing things differently?

Mike Thomson [00:32:37]:
Definitely. I mean, I think as an agency, you know, first of all, there is, you know, a record number of new agencies that were launched during the pandemic. Right. A lot of people in talent acquisition were unfortunately let go and they start agencies because you need a phone line and a webpage and now you’re an agency, so there’s zero barriers to entry. So we’re facing increased competition. And let’s face it, as much as the Val, it’s good to have a value proposition. It’s still a relationship sale. So what I say is, does this process get us new clients? No.

Mike Thomson [00:33:12]:
I’ve been doing this 15 years. Nobody has ever called me back once. Like, if you’re waiting for the client, a prospect to call you back, they never will. But what this does is it’s intrigued them enough to want to learn more and have a conversation. And once someone has experienced it, now our ability to leverage that and kind of slowly grow has been helpful. So I think it’s helped to have a differentiator because the other differentiators in the industry that we hear is, and you’ve probably heard them too, is we value relationships, which I don’t really know what that even means. We specialize in a specific domain and it’s like, cool. Getting a slice of the market is awesome, but you’re still not an engineer or whatever you claim to be, or it’s some sort of size.

Mike Thomson [00:33:58]:
We are huge, we are massive, we have scale. We have 40 offices across North America. We can support you everywhere. So those are the three main value props I hear from competitors and different recruitment agencies. So anything you can offer that’s different, I think is just met with interest, and then it’s on you to deliver on that.

Kortney Harmon [00:34:18]:
I’ve heard we’ve been in business for 35 years and they’re still doing business like they did 35 years ago. So, yeah, I love it. All right, so obviously we talked AI. How do you anticipate AI automations impacting the recruiting process? And do you think what you’re doing is going to help you be ahead of the curve of this AI revolution? Do you think it’s going to fit? Well, like, how do you feel that you’re going to have to adapt this current process today as AI continues to evolve?

Mike Thomson [00:34:53]:
So I always like to think of AI is a car on the highway going 150 miles an hour. Is it good? It depends who’s driving. If it’s someone that’s impaired, it’s devastating. If it’s a police officer going to safety, it’s a great thing. So AI is not good or bad. It depends. And I think if you’re using AI in a broken and efficient process, like the recruitment process is today, it’s terrible. And I’ll tell you, the stat I’ve seen to do that is normally when people put a posting up and everybody applies to a job, what we know, I think there’s a report that two to 4% of those that actually apply are qualifying, are good candidates, which is slow.

Mike Thomson [00:35:33]:
Now, what’s happening with AI is that number of good candidates that are applying to jobs is 20%. So what happened? Did all of a sudden people just get better and more qualified, or are they appearing that way on paper? So that’s AI. AI is getting better at writing good applications that stick and appear good. So that’s creating a time suck on talent acquisition teams to sort through that 20% on paper like script to still get to that 2% that actually is the qualified embedded ones you want to. So AI is just kind of further breaking the process where I think it could be valuable and like, this is my future where like, I think it could be really cool and like, it’s kind of controversial is I’m really fascinated with the study of how AI can be leveraged to see, like, not what people are saying, but how people are saying it. And I think right now, when you meet someone or interview someone, AI can transcribe this conversation and run analytics on it so it can take all, everything to this podcast into text and do it. It’s really good at the what. But I think a future where I can say Mike’s passionate based on the, you know, the micro expressions in his face or how he’s doing this, or, you know, really kind of start pulling out how people are talking versus just what they’re saying, I think could be great.

Mike Thomson [00:37:02]:
It could be a great tool for authenticity, for people to be, you know, kind of who they are versus what they’re just saying. And there is some studying going on on this, this micro facial expression with AI. And the science is still very, very new, but I think that is a field that I’m fascinated in with the use of AI.

Kortney Harmon [00:37:23]:
How do you feel like your video interviewing process and your candidate video process, do you think it’ll stand out amongst the noise that the candidates and the clients are continuing to see? My gut tells me that, that you’re going to stand out from the noise, the noise of the applications. I just talked to an old coworker yesterday, said he applied for a job. There was 25,000 applicants. They stopped it and then they reopened it. I’m like, well, you can’t tell me that there was no qualified people. So are you using AI to vet those 25,000 and you didn’t come up with the people that you should have talked to? I mean, I don’t know how you assess 25,000 that quickly anyway, but I mean, it’s. It’s impacting us on the recruiting and hiring side. It’s impacting people that are applying.

Kortney Harmon [00:38:08]:
So I would assume your video process, I think, would stand the test of this beginning iteration of us driving this car on the freeway 110 miles an hour.

Mike Thomson [00:38:17]:
I think so. And that’s my aim, is like, what we’re doing right now, we didn’t build a system that could scale. I think you want to build something that’s breaking the norm and you have to think about it like, not to scale, but I think AI can help us scale this. Like I shared with you, our candidate video process, we only send to the top ten people that we vetted. So do I see a scenario where, like, everybody could potentially do this and AI could play a role in kind of not only transcribing what they say, but also looking at how they say it to match up some variables there potentially? I also think AI can play a factor in the entire employment journey, you know, understanding why someone was hired and tracking them through their performance to actually see what skills matter actually for performance on the job, instead of just taking someone’s word on it. So I think AI can help not only with the application process and the assessment, but also in terms of the skills and experiences that actually lead to success on the client side. So I think there’s a lot of very encouraging, exciting things, but how it’s being used right now is terrible. Like you mentioned, 25,000 applicants.

Mike Thomson [00:39:27]:
Do you know there’s a tool, and I can’t quote right now, that will apply to 100 jobs in less than five minutes for candidates?

Kortney Harmon [00:39:34]:
That’s crazy. I heard about this.

Mike Thomson [00:39:36]:
It’s insane.

Kortney Harmon [00:39:36]:
Yes. My big talk in all of my conferences right now is the use of the word engagement. You mentioned you played hockey. I played division one softball. I was a pitcher. We always had a word every year, a word to help us refocus, regain our commitment to the year. And I propose that this year is the word of engagement because it’s so easy to get lost in this thing and the screen and say, you know what, I don’t want to write that email. Or you know what, it’s just easier if AI does it for me.

Kortney Harmon [00:40:06]:
And we are becoming less and less humanized as, like you would say, in every aspect of our lives. And I really think that’s something that we need to get back to. I do have a question for you. You mentioned the short term, essentially, like, okay, here’s where we are. You know, with recent, you know, I don’t want to say recent. With our economic uncertainties in general, how do you go about balancing those, like, short term demands but long term growth strategies as a partner of a firm? Like, people are, like, thinking, like, I can only be so many places at once. Yep, this is not scalable, but I know I need to do it, but yet I need this. How do you balance all of that? It just sounds like a lot.

Kortney Harmon [00:40:46]:
And with so many people and trying to guide your agency in the right direction. How do you find that balance between short term, long term growth?

Mike Thomson [00:40:54]:
Yeah, it’s, you know, if you have the answer, tell me, because it’s one of those things that it’s. It’s tough. The real answer is like, I think everybody thinks with the long term too much and not about what’s right in front of you. I think, you know, in order for there to be a long term, you have to execute in the short term. So you talked about a word that you talked about engagement. The word at Spark for this year was focused. You know, that’s our word is like, we need to focus, folks, on what we’re good at, focus on what you’re doing in this moment and execute. So to me, that’s like, you don’t know.

Mike Thomson [00:41:27]:
Like, I don’t know what the long term is going to look like at Spark. I have no idea. Like, if someone’s like, where do you see it in five years? It’s like, I don’t know. But we’re going to continue to experiment and innovate and figure it out along the way. But we will grow. I just don’t know what it’s going to look like. So I know that’s not a great answer.

Kortney Harmon [00:41:43]:
No, but I love that you said we’re focusing on what we’re good at, and sometimes we lose sight of that. A lot of the training in this industry, honestly, Mike, is really like, okay, you didn’t get business. Have you NPC’d a candidate lately? Oh, you know what, I forgot about that. Or like all the things that were back to the basics. When everything gets busy and crazy, we have to get back to the basics, back to the stuff that made us good in the beginning when we had the hustle, when we were starting our firms and agencies. Now we’re just trying to figure out how to scale and what’s future. But you hit the nail on the head. I really like that, that you’re focusing on what you guys do well.

Kortney Harmon [00:42:18]:
And I think that’s important.

Mike Thomson [00:42:20]:
There’s a book that I read that talks about things that never change. Like all books talk about innovation. What’s changed? New stuff. And this book was, let me tell you about the ten things that have never changed over the history of time. And these things remain the same. And we talk about that at Spark is like when you’re talking about recruiting, we talk about introducing video applications and video job descriptions and this innovation and this creativity. But what never changes is the ability to make a great match between a candidate and a client. And if what you’re doing doesn’t help you get better at that, then don’t do it.

Kortney Harmon [00:42:57]:
I love that. I think that’s great. Do you have any other last pieces of advice to our listeners, whether they’re operations leaders trying to figure out what processes look like? Any other pieces of advice that you would say, hey, must do or must focus on going into the rest of 2024 and into 2025?

Mike Thomson [00:43:15]:
Yeah, I think like LinkedIn and the content is riddled with advice in terms of what you should do. I think if you’re listening to this, you probably know what you need to do, and you don’t need to hear from me what you should do. You know what you need to do. Trust yourself and just do it. And if it doesn’t work, then do something else. There is no right answer. It’s like I always go back to, you know, I’m big into fitness, and people talk about, like, what’s the shortcut? You know what the most boring fitness book ever is? Is do the same thing every day and you’re going to get fit eventually. Maybe that is the worst fitness book.

Mike Thomson [00:43:52]:
You give us one. That is the reality. If you want to grow your business, try to sell your stuff to the right people as often as you can for as long as you can, and you might get there. Not guaranteed, but you might get there. I mean, that’s bad advice, and I’m sorry. It’s not, like, sexy or cool, but, like, it’s just, you know, the path to success is boring. It’s consistency. It’s the same thing that you already know you should be doing.

Kortney Harmon [00:44:16]:
I love it. And oftentimes, we want the magic pill, we want the shortcut, we want the. And that’s not the reality of the situation. If you talk to any successful leader in this industry, that’s not how they got there.

Mike Thomson [00:44:28]:
It’s boring. It’s boring. It’s like, you talk to someone, they’re like, how did you get there? It’s like, well, I cold called people for ten years, and eventually some people picked up the phone and said, yes, the end. Right?

Kortney Harmon [00:44:39]:
I made 100 calls a day for nine months, and the business just rolled in. Wow. I don’t want to do that.

Mike Thomson [00:44:44]:
Yeah.

Kortney Harmon [00:44:44]:
What’s next?

Mike Thomson [00:44:45]:
What did you tell them, though? Like, what was it exactly like? Tell me exactly. Your script. It’s like, you know, people say that fish don’t just jump in the boat, but they do. But you got to be out on the lake fishing for it to happen. Get out there. Like action creates opportunity. Don’t wait and try to perfect it. Just do some stuff and opportunities will happen.

Kortney Harmon [00:45:04]:
I love it. Mike, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciated this conversation and I love it. I can’t wait for our listeners to hear some of the innovative things that you and your organization are doing. So thank you so much for taking the time out of your day.

Mike Thomson [00:45:18]:
Thank you for having me. This was great. Had a fun time.

Kortney Harmon [00:45:21]:
And for all of those listening, hopefully you gain some valuable insights on our ever changing landscape. Maybe an innovative approach to humanizing your hiring process, leveraging certain digital platforms, and truly being inspiring not only to your candidates, but your clients. As Mike and his team would say, focus. As I would say, truly. Just try to engage with people. Until next time, this is Kortney Harmon signing off for the full desk experience. Have a wonderful day. I’m Kortney Harmon with Crelate.

Kortney Harmon [00:45:53]:
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Industry Spotlight, a new series from the full desk experience. New episodes will be dropping monthly. Be sure you’re subscribed to our podcast so you can catch the next industry spotlight episode and all episodes of the full desk experience here or wherever you listen.