2023 Recruiter Nation Report Findings With Terry Terhark of Employ

William Tincup: [00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup, and you’re listening to the Recruiting Daily podcast. Today, we have Terry on from Employ. We’ll be talking about the 2023 Recruiter Nation Report findings. So basically, I want to get Terry’s take on, uh, the recruiter, the report itself. And they, you know, they do research.

They’ve done research like this for a long time. But it’s nice to get a professional, someone, Terry’s been in the industry for a long time, but it’s gonna be really [00:01:00] wonderful just kind of get his take on what he sees in the research or the findings. So, Terry, would you do us a favor and, uh, introduce yourself?

Absolutely. William,

Terry Terhark: thanks so much. Uh, again, my name is Terry Tarhark. I’ve been in recruiting for about 30 years and certainly have watched it change over the years. Excited to share my perspectives of the Recruiter Nation report and what we see occurring within recruiting and talent acquisition today.

So, uh, excited to, to provide our perspectives.

William Tincup: Sure. So, all right, so let’s just start with the, the basics here. You’ve, you’ve been in the industry for a long time. You’ve seen these, you’ve probably, you’ve created, your teams have created research. So, uh, so you’ve, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve got the full spectrum.

What did, uh, what came out when you looked at the results the first time, probably in a draft mode, what stuck out to you?

Terry Terhark: Yeah, good, good question. And you’re right, you know, over the years, we’ve certainly seen, um, you know, [00:02:00] considerable research. The Recruiter Nation report is, you know, kind of our premier effort as it relates to research.

And, uh, it’s something that not only I, but our organization plays, pays considerable attention to, um, you know, I think that we saw a movement in terms of relief of pressure within the labor markets. Thank you. As we all know, you know, 21 and 22 were, you know, probably a run up, uh, in, in terms of, uh, the vibrancy of the labor markets, certainly than that I’ve seen over the last 30 years, uh, and we, and we saw some of that pressure kind of come back and there was a couple of, you know, kind of key statistics, uh, such as number of applications per posting, um, you know, just the, the, Uh, you know, stress and, and, and relief that recruiters have seen over the past year.

Uh, still tremendous pressure in certain segments, which is no surprise. [00:03:00] Um, but, you know, I, I think just, you know, if we look at year over year, kind of a general decline of the intense pressure that we saw in 21 and 22. Right.

William Tincup: You know, you’ve, I was about to, I was about to say, you, you’ve seen a lot of markets kind of come and go.

How do you. I mean, as I get asked the question, I’m sure you get asked the same question. How do you explain this talent market? You know, cause as it relates to like, normally when we have some type of, uh, you know, we have some type of, let’s say a recession, normally there’s a talent surplus, right? So they kind of go hand in hand.

Okay. All right. Well, you know, the economy bad, talent, you know, easier to get, easier to find, cheaper, you know, all the, all the things that some, some folks love. This one’s been just strange from the get go, like, are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession? Are we in a talent shortage? Are we not in a talent shortage?

Like, are the candidates different? So when you get [00:04:00] asked that question, which seems like a benign, easy question to answer, and I think in the years past it probably was for us, how do you answer, how do you respond to people?

Terry Terhark: Yeah, great question, William, and it’s one that, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out these labor markets.

Um, and, and I’ve, you know, told our clients and, and whomever I, you know, can yell to that this is the most awkward labor market that I’ve ever seen, certainly in, in my experience. And, you know, a couple things. That kind of stand out to me and, you know, certainly interrupt me if I go too long on this, but the number of open jobs is kind of a critical element.

You know, we saw open jobs go up 5. 8 percent last month. We’re at 9. 6 million open jobs. As you know, we were closer to 12 million for about a year. So the number of open jobs is, is critical in this equation around the, around the labor markets. Even with the Fed, uh, you know, raising interest rates, theoretically that should bring down the number of open [00:05:00] jobs, but it hasn’t.

And if we look at pre pandemic, the The high point of open jobs was around 6. 4 million. So, you know, kind of post pandemic being at, you know, 9 million, 9. 6 million, up to 12 million, almost double of what we’ve seen. So the big thing for me, at least the aha for me, has been the labor force participation rate.

So, you know, if we look at, you know, the last 10 years or so of labor force participation, meaning who, those who are available are actively working, that percentage has come down from September 19 of 63. 3 percent To September of 23 of 62. 6 percent doesn’t seem like a big number, but you’re talking, you know, seven tenths of a percentage point on what 300 million population, you know, probably 200 million people that are available to work.

So you’ve got a couple million people less in the labor markets, and that is what is continuing the pressure, [00:06:00] in my opinion. The other thing that I’ve seen, and definitely over the last year, William, is a dichotomy of where the pressure is located. Frontline hiring, meaning, you know, hospitality, retail, warehouse, etc.,

manufacturing, that, that is as pressured as it was 12 months ago. Has, has really not changed a lot. Companies are still very much struggling with trying to get the right talent into their organization and not seeing, The level of applicants or the quality of applicants they desire. Now, we have seen wholesale changes in technology and life sciences and other industries.

And I would say across the board, there’s been a malaise of disempowering. So companies have been super tight. on backfilling or opening new requisitions for exempt. So you have all these, you know, uh, uh, you know, people that are in the labor market that are looking for jobs that are exempt, uh, but you have all of [00:07:00] these jobs, uh, in, in frontline, and there’s a mismatch of where people are unemployed.

I think the number of unemployed people right now is 3. 8%. We’re at 6. 4 million people. If you just use that number against 9. 6 million jobs, not enough people to fill the jobs, but it’s complicated when there’s definitely a mismatch of people that are unemployed versus The, the jobs that are out there.

Does that make sense? Oh, a hundred

William Tincup: percent. And I wonder how candid behavior plays into this because, uh, when, when I look at the high volume or hourly market, however, however you want to phrase it, it’s, I also look at, you know, Gen Z and some millennials, they, they just, if the job doesn’t fit them to find that as you wish, they just rather not work or.

I think probably more appropriate, they’ll work differently. So instead of taking the job at Taco [00:08:00] Bell, for instance, they won’t take the job or they took the job. They, they went there for a couple of days, tried it, didn’t work out, don’t, they didn’t like it. And then they just, the, the, uh, um, now they’re an Uber driver.

So they’re creating the same revenue for themselves as they would have through kind of a traditional fast food job, but they’re doing it in a different way. So it’s like this collision of the gig economy and hourly and also candidate behavior just being like you and I grew up. You, you got a job, you stayed there,

Terry Terhark: you

William Tincup: fought through whatever, whatever stuff that was there.

And you’re just like, eh, there’s not a, the grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence. Like, yeah, you just took a job. You went there and it’s, that’s it. It’s no big deal. Uh, there, what I’m, I’m envious, I’ve said this before, I’m envious of Gen Z in the sense that they’re just unwilling to put up with what you and I would have just put up with normally.

So how do you, [00:09:00] how do you see

Terry Terhark: that playing out? No, I couldn’t agree more, William. I think that the, you know, kind of the gig economy and the ability for people to manage their own schedule, kind of, you know, somewhat manage the level of income that they’re able to generate week over week, you know, has changed this, you know, we have seen over the last couple of years, the level of ghosting and whether that’s ghosting of interviews or ghosting of actually showing up for work.

I mean, It’s, it’s, it’s not as bad as it was a year ago, but it is still very prevalent. I mean, you know, people that go to work, to your point, you know, they’ll, they’ll work for half a day and they’ll leave at lunchtime. And they’re just like, no, I’ve got to do this. There’s too many jobs out there that I can go find.

And I think that, that supply, you know, especially for frontline workers is, is, is so ample that, you know, they, they don’t I have to do the things that maybe you and I, uh, you know, did, did in the past. I’ve heard it,

William Tincup: I’ve heard it said like this, like we probably had a point in our lives, we thought of early [00:10:00] stage talent as just a faucet.

Like we just turn on the faucet and people show up and then, and then we just kind of turn off the faucet when we don’t need them. And now candidates are viewing companies. Like that. They just turn on the faucet when they want a job or a gig or whatever, and then they just turn off the faucet. So it’s, it’s, it’s a weird way of looking at how things have been commoditized.

We’ve probably historically either underestimated or Undervalued or maybe even commoditized, the early stage talent, now they’re doing the same thing to

Terry Terhark: corporations. There’s no question that jobs are commoditized, particularly at the frontline level. One of the things that I wanted to talk about is, you know, candidate behavior.

So 21 and 22, you know, most companies who have had that mentality, like you mentioned, If I can just turn on the faucet, I can get, you know, a nice supply of candidates very easily. I’m a good payer. I’m a good brand, etc. You know, really had [00:11:00] to change the way that they approached it because of all the pressure that we saw in 21 and 22.

Now that we’ve seen that pressure back off a little bit, I’ve heard from so many companies that, all right, we’re back to an employer market. I think it’s a little bit of fool’s gold, William, and it’s much that, you know, all the numbers that I’ve seen. is that we are going to see the labor market challenges through 2030, uh, and largely because of the labor force participation rate that we won’t see it start to come back up until around that time.

So I just urge companies to, you know, not take away the things that they did to improve candidate experience, to improve the speed of their, of their process. And, you know, even if I look at some of the results of the questions in the Recruiter Nation survey, Absolutely kind of reiterated or emphasized that candidate experience is still kind of the, uh, the holy grail of, of what we seek for in, in recruiting and talent acquisition.

Let me get your

William Tincup: [00:12:00] take on this that, uh, I was talking to somebody that’s in the hourly market the other day and their bit was, Hey, listen, I, I, uh, you know, I’ll apply to several jobs. And, uh, it’s, it’s usually the people that get back to me with a quality response, the fastest that I go with. No question. And I was like, explain that, like, you know, take me into that world because I’m unfamiliar with this.

He’s just like, you know what? It kind of shows, it kind of shows me how, not just how they treat talent, but how they’re, they’re modernized. Like it’s, it’s really, it was fascinating because I was like, well, okay, explain it. He’s like, if they can explain, if they can get back to me and it happens fast. And it happens in a quality way, so it’s personalized, but it’s, you know, personalized in such a way, like, hey, thank you for your resume, or thank you for uploading your thing, you know, this, that, and the other, here’s what we’d like to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, take them to the next step.

He, it, it, what he was saying to me is, he’s like, it’s, it’s a tell. [00:13:00] Into the organization, like, are they actually modern or not? If they’re not, it takes them three weeks to respond. And it’s like, I’d never, I’d never, I mean, corporate like corporate candidates. Yeah, of course they George, they, they judge, they judge companies, especially people that work in HR and talent.

We judge that stuff because that’s what we do. So of course we’re judging, but I’ve never heard a. An hourly candidate, this is a 24 year old, I’ve never heard of an hourly candidate judging a company based on speed and quality.

Terry Terhark: I, um, yeah, I, yeah, appreciate you sharing that story. It’s interesting. But I would, um, I mean that kind of aligns with everything that, that I’ve heard and that we’re seeing and what we’re telling our client.

So, you know, we still tell, you know, customers today at speed of process, meaning your recruiting process. is the ultimate leveraging point. If you’re not speedy, you will lose [00:14:00] candidates. The other thing that I think is really important here, when you talk about this 24 year old William, is that everything we do in, in our life today is served up to us immediately.

You know, if we have a question, if we want to order food or whatever it may be, we get instant gratification from that. Expectation of the talent, especially the younger talent is the exact same thing. If you do not get back to them, then you will lose them.

William Tincup: Yeah. It’s funny because I’ve told people from the stage like, Hey, listen, I’ll hold up my phone and I’ll go, listen, if I text someone, I expect that they’re going to text me

Terry Terhark: back.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

William Tincup: If I Facebook message or, you know, WhatsApp or whatever, if I send you a message, I expect something back. You know, even if it’s, Hey, can’t respond to this until Tuesday. That’s cool. But like, like bringing that over to the recruiting market and to recruiters and maybe even hiring managers in particular is, has been [00:15:00] historically a challenge.

For

Terry Terhark: sure. I think that, you know, the number one complaint of candidates today is not hearing anything. And you know, you’ve, uh, maybe not been around as much as I have, but that’s been the number one complaint for 20 years. You know, hundred percent. You know, candidates never hearing back on, on the disposition of, you know, their application.

You know, I think. You know, we live in a world where technology does enable us to do the things that candidates want and whether, and, you know, I tell this to our recruiters all, all the time, you know, when you’re dealing with a hiring manager, even if you don’t have an update, call them and tell them you don’t have an update.

Same thing for candidates. Even if you don’t have a kind of a final disposition, just keeping in touch with them. And we have the tools to do it and whether it’s text or email or. You know, something from, uh, our ATS to be able to update them. We can clearly do it. Um, you know, I would urge companies to [00:16:00] continue to improve upon how quickly they’re getting back to these candidates.

That will save them so much headache down the road. So,

William Tincup: how do you, you know, you’ve dealt with recruiters for, uh, forever. So how do you take research that’s like this? So y’all built great research, some action items, here’s what’s going on, which everyone wants to know, like what’s around the corner. So I think y’all have done a great job, uh, with, uh, with the, with the report.

I can hear, you know, it’s a mirror of sorts. Here’s what we’ve, here’s what we’ve been asked. Here’s what’s going to come back as answered. Here’s some things that you should do. How do you get recruiters to action those things? Like, like sometimes this happens with research. Research will tell you all the answers, but for whatever reason, I mean, recruiters are busy.

Hiring managers, you know, it’s not their job. They’re busy as well. So how do we get it in the, not just in the hands, but how do we get them to action the things that we learn?

Terry Terhark: So, yeah, it’s a deep question, William. Yeah, I don’t think there’s any kind of one [00:17:00] specific thing that you need to do, but I’ve certainly found in dealing with recruiters, you know, not only recently, but over the years, just that kind of reinforcing the data that we’re seeing.

And from the research and providing them, you know, kind of the answer around that, you know, the number one challenge that recruiters face based upon the Recruiter Nation survey, not enough qualified candidates, number two, number two is competition, um, and, and what I’ve kind of read into that is that, you know, the competition, you know, has continued to raise wages and that’s why we’ve seen inflation over the last couple of years.

And, you know, it really is kind of sitting with the recruiter. And providing them the resources to allow them to make good decisions. So we, the one thing that I would say is different today than, you know, what has been over the last several years is the amount of data that we are providing to recruiters and whether it’s compensation data, whether it’s supply and demand data.[00:18:00]

You know, whether it’s specific information around that particular position and the challenges of recruiting, but really informing their hiring managers of what we’re seeing in the market and what is realistic and what is not realistic. Like, we have the tools today and it’s always the recruiter’s, you know, kind of first response to a hiring manager.

Like, you know, tight market, you know, not enough candidates, but when you actually come to the hiring manager with. you know, real data that shows them what they’re requesting and what’s available to them. You start to have a little bit, you know, kind of more informed conversation. So, you know, I guess my response would be, you know, how do we equip the recruiters with the data that allows them to do their job, and then continuing to reinforce what are the solutions that we’re bringing to bear.

In a tight market. So, uh, you know, taking advantage of the technology, taking advantage of the data that we now have access to that we didn’t before. [00:19:00] So a

William Tincup: couple of questions that come from that. One is your take on. Hiring manager training. So one of the, you know, you got all kinds of different takes on this.

Uh, hiring managers, uh, should be the, we should take recruiters out of it and just work with hiring managers cause they know the job. Okay. That’s pretty extreme. Uh, you should do more training with hiring managers because it isn’t their job. They don’t know necessarily how to recruit. They know the job.

They know the company, they know the team, they know the projects, whatever, but they don’t know how to actually recruit and ask good interview questions, this, that, and the other. So like, what’s your take? What do you see, especially in this market? What should we do with hiring managers? What’s your, I know it’s situational based on a company or industry and stuff like that, but in general, what advice would you give to folks?

Terry Terhark: Yeah, I mean, I would certainly say, William, over the past couple of years that the amount of hiring manager training, you know, has been Less than, than what it should be. Um, you know, where I have seen that, where [00:20:00] companies do invest in hiring manager training, educating them about the market, educating them about how to sell a position, you know, how to recruit, you know, and I’m one who believes very strongly that the role of the recruiter will never go away.

Um, you know, we hear all about ai, it’s gonna replace the role of the recruiter. And, you know, I’ve always believed and still believe today that. Recruiting is a blend of art and science, and, you know, I’ve always been fascinated by how most hiring managers feel they’re experts in recruiting, even though they may only do it once or twice a year, you know, I think that it is absolutely the role of the recruiter to constantly train the manager around what they’re seeing in the market and what the realities are of the position is that they’re looking for.

You know, I have seen progress in interview training where, you know, a good portion of that interview training is around the market conditions. You know, most hiring managers don’t [00:21:00] understand the need for speed. You know, it’s still fascinated by companies that’ll do, they’ll interview 12 candidates and they’ll, they’ll interview them with 12 hiring managers in a company.

And it just ultimately kills the process. Now, I do think we’ve seen really positive movement on that in the last couple of years, just because the market necessitated that, that companies, you know, candidates were getting multiple offers and, you know, they could sign on bonuses, cars, that’s crazy. Yeah.

Like, you know, uh, uh, flexible work arrangements, et cetera. So companies were kind of forced just out of necessity to get more competitive in the recruitment process. But as soon as, you know, there’s a little bit of a slowdown, and this is particularly on the exempt side or professional hiring, You know, companies go back to behavior that, um, you know, isn’t suited for what I consider to be ideal recruitment.

William Tincup: So a couple, a couple of things. One of the things that we sped past and, uh, I know you want to get to [00:22:00] is automation. So things like with the tools that are, you said data earlier, like we’re sitting on all this wonderful data that will make recruiters smarter about all the things they want to do, but we’re also sitting on all kinds of automation that can take some of those lower value tasks out of their way.

And let them focus on the real human part of recruiting. So they can actually be, I mean, again, you’ve dealt with a lot of recruiters through the years, you know, a great recruiter and a great recruiter is just, you know, a human being that just loves having that conversation, loves kind of being a candidate advocate, you know, like they’re just good at it.

Like you just know that they’re good at what they do because they love it so much. So, but they’ve been mired, especially in the last decade or so with a bunch of. Task, I’d say, even things that take away from their schedule, uh, and their time’s been sucked away. So they get less and less time to actually talk to candidates.

So what do you see there? What do you see kind of, how do you see that playing [00:23:00] out with more and more automation? Again, taking the lower value, I’m not talking about taking the higher value stuff, but the lower value stuff kind of out of their hands, if you will. It’s being done. They don’t necessarily need to do it.

Terry Terhark: Yeah, I mean, I could talk on this for days, William. You’ve kind of opened up one of my passions and, you know, I, I talk to recruiters every single day and, you know, um, what they like, what they don’t like, what they’re seeing and all that, you know, I, I, You know, very much determined that a good recruiter always has a level of empathy.

And, you know, part of, you know, their drive is to be able to put the right person in the right job. And if that’s convincing the hiring manager, convincing the candidate to take a look, you know, you know, being able to be that intermediary who actually facilitates that process, that is what will never be replaced by machine learning or automation.

You know, I, I And, you know, having access to, [00:24:00] you know, all the clients that we do, you know, there are great technologies out there, and there’s new technologies that are coming out every day, and whether that’s around texting, whether it’s around automated interview scheduling, whether it’s around, um, ranking candidates, you know, all those types of things, I think we’re still very, very early on how automation and technology impacts the role of the recruiter.

Um, you know, we still see most recruiters who are handling administrative tasks, um, but we are moving in the right direction. Um, I don’t think most recruiters fear their job that’s going to be replaced by a computer. Um, but, you know, I do think there’s so much more room for us to be able to improve kind of the experience of the recruiter as it relates to how they’re interacting with the hiring manager.

Yes, we’ve made really good progress on texting. You know, it’s probably the. One of the single things that I see as, as benefiting the recruiter being able to access that candidate [00:25:00] immediately, get, you know, kind of instant feedback, whether that’s with the manager or with, with the candidate. Uh, we have, we are seeing some really good interview scheduling tools.

We’re seeing some very good assessments. Um, and, but there’s so much more that we can do to, you know, be able to make it more efficient or more productive for the recruiter and for the organization.

William Tincup: Well, you, you mentioned scheduling. Uh, you and I grew up in a world where there was a person, or Sally or whatever, that was their job.

They worked with all these multiple schedules, hiring manager, the team, the recruiter, sourcer, the candidate, you know, all these, all these different talent. And it was through email or calling or all this kind of, now you just got a bot, goes and looks at everybody’s calendar, comes back and says, okay, Tuesday, three o’clock, here’s a Zoom link.

Terry Terhark: Although you, you probably will not be surprised at how many people are still doing manual interview scheduling. It is very, very large. Oh, my [00:26:00] God. You just, you just broke me. I’m like, no,

William Tincup: surely, surely everyone has moved to a bot. Oh, my God.

Terry Terhark: I guess it’s in single digits. I guess it’s in single digits. But moving in the right direction,

William Tincup: for sure.

Alright, your last thing, your favorite advice, and this is because you deal with the C suite as they look at talent. So because, you know, you, you can talk to all day long to recruiters and hiring managers and all the folks that work in talent, HR, et cetera, but your favorite advice when you’re alone with a CEO, president, someone on the board, et cetera, and you’re trying to get them to think about talent differently.

What do you, what’s, what’s some of the things that you say to those folks?

Terry Terhark: Yeah, again, it’s hard to kind of single it down to one, one point, William, but, you know, if, if there was anything that I would tell kind of a C suite is that pay attention to the speed of your process, because that will dictate or tell you, uh, you know, the quality of your process.

Oh, [00:27:00] I like that. Yeah, so the outcomes, you know, are, in my opinion, are driven largely, you know, by how efficient or how speedy you are in your process. You know, I. I do counsel C suites on a regular basis and I tell them do not be fooled by this kind of economic, uh, situation we’ve been in for the last year.

You know, we are not, we are not out of the woods in terms of the pressure on the labor markets. Finding the right talent is going to be as difficult as it has been, uh, in the next five years. Keep the, keep the foot on the accelerator. It’s so common for companies to reduce their recruiting team or reduce their investments in recruiting.

When they see a general slowdown, I get it. I’ve managed budgets, but

William Tincup: this is the time to actually double down and get your process

Terry Terhark: right. 100%.

William Tincup: Yeah. 100%. I’d say the same thing. I, it’s a mixture of quality and speed and I say, but usually I go to look at the rest of their business. They’re in [00:28:00] a, you know, consumer market.

I’m like, okay, so listen, you’re, you, this is how you treat your customers, right? Yeah. Okay. Your employees are just like your customers. Your candidates are just like your customers. So how do you measure quality and speed over in that market? And the other thing that I, at least I’ve been in the last year, I’ve been kind of trying to, you know, demystify for them is, listen, we used to think in terms of employer driven market and candidate driven market.

Those are, those are no longer, those no longer exist in my opinion. It’s just a candidate driven market. Whether or not we’re in, whether or not we’re in an up economy or down economy or whatever economy, it’s a candidate driven market, proceed

Terry Terhark: as such. I love it. And if all companies kind of, you know, thought that way and acted that way, uh, then we would achieve kind of the holy grail.

William Tincup: Job’s Mike walks off stage. Thank you so much for carving out a time for the audience, Terry. I appreciate

Terry Terhark: you. Thank you [00:29:00] so much, William. Really appreciate the opportunity.

William Tincup: Absolutely. And thanks for everyone listening until next time.