Storytelling About Talroo With Thad Price

William Tincup: [00:00:00] This is William Tinkup, and you are listening to the Use Case Podcast. Today we have Thad Owen from Taoru, and we’ll be learning about the business case. For the use case for wise prospects and customers use TauRu that would you do us a favor and introduce both yourself and

Thad Price: TauRu. Thanks so much, William.

Great to be here and I’m really excited for the opportunity to tell our story. So I’m Thad Price. I’m CEO here at TauRu. Previously I was VP of product and I’ve been in the job board industry for almost 20 years. And today TauRu was focused on helping companies attract [00:01:00] frontline. Applicants and essential workers for their open recs through more of a talent matching platform that uses pardon the term programmatic plumbing.

William Tincup: Okay. So let’s define programmatic loving

Thad Price: programmatic

William Tincup: plumbing. Yeah. What is the what, cause now I’m curious I guess now I got to know what this term means.

Thad Price: In the job advertising world, there’s been a lot of movement in the last few years with building a programmatic job advertising platform.

And a lot of the recruitment advertising agencies leverage programmatic job advertising to help ensure that you’re reaching the right candidates at the right price. At the right time at the right place. And what we’ve seen in our business is that’s been very helpful for companies to be more efficient and advertising on Indeed and ZipRecruiter and other job boards.

And, when we think about our talent matching platform, the whole idea when we were thinking about building [00:02:00] Tauru. Was because when we started as a job board, so we started, we own and operate a job search engine, jobs2careers. com. And we, when we were going to market, what was challenging with that is we were one of many job search engines and one of many job boards.

And typically what happens in the industry is a lot of that buying is brand based. We were talking about this earlier, it’s the individual that spends a lot in brand, if we think about the origin story of Indeed many years ago, we think a monster career, but everything that happens, a lot of investment in brand to get to the gravitas that a lot of the businesses are in today.

And so when we started thinking about the Tauru. The thesis behind Tauru, it was, hey, could we open up a lot of our, a lot of our plumbing, a lot of our jobs to careers matching, and could we create a way that we can allow companies to reach the right candidate at the right time at the right place based on candidate profiles.

And be action oriented around [00:03:00] attracting candidates within our search and match, which is the towel rue product, right? And if you think about the agency products, you think of or you think about cast or you think of pando logic and some of the traditional programmatic systems today, all which we work with and that we’re partnered with, those systems are basically collapsing all of your job advertising.

Services into one platform, even what you do with Indeed, even what you do with ZipRecruiter. And our thought process was what if we can build that plumbing, right? That programmatic plumbing in our ecosystem that we’re powering in our talent matching platform. So we could still work with AppCast, Pando, Other recruitment marketing agencies that we work with, but allow us to be more effective at reaching the right candidates in the search that we’re powering in the match that we’re powering.

And so that was the power and the move behind a single destination, which was jobs to careers. com, a job search engine to this idea of TauRu as a [00:04:00] talent matching platform and be more effective at reaching right candidates at the right time, at the right place, based on downstream signals happening at the applicant tracking system.

William Tincup: What’s your, what’s your take on There’s programmatic in the way that we see it in the recruitment space versus programmatic in the way that ad tech people see it and

Thad Price: go ahead. Yeah, that’s a terrific question. So in, in the job advertising world, in the talent acquisition world today, programmatic is seen as a job distribution engine, right?

A way to ensure that you’re being more effective at, making rule based assumptions or bids on Indeed or on ZipRecruiter or other job boards, right? How we think about, when you think of like online advertising in general, programmatic is about rule based buying, right? It’s about right audience, right time, right place.

However, the thing that’s still a little different that hasn’t hit [00:05:00] talent acquisition today and job advertising today is this idea of audiences. And what I’d like to, what I’d like to share is that if you think about the idea of audiences today, if you go to, if you say, Hey, I want to advertise to find people that are looking to buy a home, right?

All of these companies have built audience groups of people that are in market to buy a house. And so realtors want to advertise. To that audience of homebuyers and

William Tincup: it’s more or less real time.

Thad Price: It’s more. Yes, absolutely. It’s more real time. And in today’s world, programmatic job advertising isn’t there yet, right?

It’s, I’m still buying on indeed. I’m still buying on a job board. I want to be more effective. And believe it or not, that’s how we are different in that when we think of Tower as a talent matching platform. It really is that idea of real time based on apply signals reaching audiences. We have, we like to think of talent audiences [00:06:00] and talent audiences can be this market is in this group is in market for a warehouse job.

This talent audience is in market for a receptionist job. And so the idea of bringing audiences to this idea of job advertising, I think is something that’s unique and will be where this goes in the future. And so from our perspective is when we think about Tower and what towel room means is it really means bringing talent and recruiters together and providing a great match.

And that’s at the end of the day, when we think about the traditional. Programmatic systems. That’s what they’re missing. They’re not really controlling the match, right? The match between the candidate and the match between the candidate and the employer. They are controlling like bids, how much you’re spending.

But the match and the real time bid and the connection is what’s so powerful because at the end of the day, it’s about quality and it’s about cost per hire for talent acquisition [00:07:00] professionals and recruiting teams. So I’m

William Tincup: assuming everything we do, obviously with the market that we care about is mobile first, right?

That’s right. Okay. I’ll lead off with the my bias. I hate software categories, despise them, but I also know that HR and recruiting budgets are built in Excel. So where in the budget are, do we put programmatic plumbing? Like where do the, where does people carve budget out for you?

Thad Price: Yeah. So we would fit in job board and job board advertising. So when we think about job board advertising. It’s important for us to think about how to win in job board. Advertising is about being a more effective product than what’s in the market today. And we think by powering match, if you think of profiles, people bringing people together more effectively, focusing on quality, a match.

That’s what it’s all about to win more market share. So a great example is something that we’ve all been talking about for years in this [00:08:00] industry. And it’s one of the things that we’re, we’re looking at solving and investing pretty heavily in is when I say the power of match is when people apply to a job today, even on, very large job boards, job sites, we ask so many questions at time of apply that.

I have to answer over and over again as a job seeker, right? And, we’ve been talking as an industry about this idea of the black hole, right? I applied to a job and I never hear back for, I don’t know, since the beginning of folks applying online for a job. And I think one of the things that happens is if we think of talent acquisition teams, we think of human resources in general, we’re, it’s a nice industry.

It’s an industry of nice people, right? It’s hard to tell someone no. It’s hard to tell someone, I don’t think you’re quite a fit. And so what I think happens is because a lot of this because a lot of the qualification happens, [00:09:00] let’s call it during the apply process, And not before the search happens, I think what happens is we just are in this interesting cycle where people are applying to the jobs over and over again, that they’re not qualified for because they’re not reading job descriptions or whatever the case is.

Yeah.

William Tincup: It’s spray and pray, but it’s the opposite, right? Exactly. It’s candidate

Thad Price: spray and pray. Exactly. So what we could be doing is we could be surfacing the requirements of the jobs and normalizing all that data in the front of the process at search time. So at search time, if you can filter at search time, if you can, create great matching and ensure that you’re connecting mechanics to the right jobs, then what happens is you can drive higher quality applications, which should drive a lot more efficiency in the ecosystem.

And I, so I think everything that we’re doing is. Studying jobs, normalizing jobs, being able to surface the right types of features on an individual job to [00:10:00] job seekers to be more effective when the power of choice happens. And when I say the power of choice, it’s that when a job seekers at time of search, we’re powering searches or powering search and match when they’re looking to make a selection and engage with a job, we want to surface as much information at search time and filter.

As much as we can at search time so that the downstream experience is better for the employer, a lot more quality applicants. And then, of course, the other benefit of that is that for matching job seekers to the right jobs, then the applicants we are generating going to have a better experience. Because we have less of the black hole phenomenon that’s been hitting the industry

William Tincup: for years was several things that either the front end of the funnel is filled with a bunch of garbage and then recruiters get frustrated because they have to, find their way through the garbage or Again, the spray and pay on both sides, we’ve all had volume related problems.

And so I think one of the things I love [00:11:00] about this is it solves not necessarily quality of hire, quality of applicant. And like it knocks people out, whether, however you want to phrase that. And it brings okay, you’re, yeah, you’re going to have 20, 000 people apply to your job.

Check. Great. Your ego is stroked. But really, you’re only going to need to interact with a hundred of them because those are the only hundred that are qualified. And that’s manageable for most recruiters. Okay, out of a hundred, I’ll get to 20 that I really think are awesome. And I’ll get to five that I can pass over the hiring manager.

Great. Got it. Let’s do some by side stuff real quick. When when you demo and when your team demos Tauru what’s the aha moment or your favorite part of the demo?

Thad Price: I think probably when we dive into our insights product. A couple of things when we, that we provide, that’s pretty unique.

The first is when you look at our demo, when you look at the Toweroo ad platform, it looks a lot like, it looks a lot like a very simple version of Google AdWords, right? I’ve got my jobs. My [00:12:00] jobs have been synced directly from. The applicant tracking system that you’re using once the jobs have been synced from the applicant tracking system scraped synced into the system, then our team are.

Are you a talent acquisition leader can actually create campaigns and say, here are my here’s my campaign for sales in Austin. Here’s my campaign for customer service in Dallas, and you can set budgets and you can set target cost per application goals. Within each of those campaigns, once we sync the jobs, and of course, whenever a new job is open that fits those rules and those requirements in the applicant tracking system, our system will automatically load that job into the platform.

So the idea of ad hoc campaigns to focus on what’s important and what, what you’re missing from a higher perspective is really important. And then we’re essentially connected to the applicant tracking system. So we’re not asking you to use another system, right? Every, the candidates are going to be delivered [00:13:00] into the applicant tracking system.

So that’s the first thing it’s interesting when people like, Oh, I get it now, right? These jobs are ads. They’re integrated into our platform. The other thing that’s interesting is we have a job title. We call it smart job titles where if a job title from the applicant tracking system is a.

Applicant tracking style job title because of all of our data and because of our insights on job seekers, we can help you instantly optimize that job title and expand that job title based on job seeker behavior and what we’re seeing from search results. So that’s a benefit of having a search engine, right?

Empowering a search engine, empowering search and matches. We have access to behavior. So that’s interesting as well. The second thing that I would say in kind of the job sector, right? We think about. We think about the optimizing job titles. We also think about qualifying questions. You can add qualifying questions within your job families and your job campaigns.

And you can answer those questions. You have to answer those questions before [00:14:00] you interact with the job, which I think is really important going back to this idea of Hey, let’s try to actually get some information from a job seeker to try to connect them before they grow through this long process of answering all of these questions, applying for a job, and only to find out they’re not qualified.

So that’s the jobs area. The other area that I think is really interesting and we have reporting and analytics and that’s somewhat table stakes. And the last piece is our insights data. So that’s the aha moment where all of the behavior that’s happening, the searches, the rank, the top companies.

In some cases, prices, all of these things are available for talent acquisition leaders in our platform. We won in 2019, we run HR tech product of the year for that insights product. And so when you think about these other, when you think about systems today. They don’t, all of these systems are very different, right?

Indeed has their ecosystems. The procurator has their ecosystem. We have our ecosystem, but to be able to surface all of this data in this idea of talent [00:15:00] supply and what’s available and what do you need to be competitive? I think it’s very different and interesting. And that’s the aha moment. Cause when you think of when we work with Traditional programmatic systems, right?

That are using the bidding tools. A lot of this data isn’t available in those systems because they don’t necessarily power the search and match needed to be able to understand that supply side, unlike, in traditional advertising, you’ve got Google and others that have, they’re powering the match, they’re powering the ad serving similar to us.

So you, they have access to that supply side information. They care

William Tincup: about it because that’s what they sell. So there’s a different kind of the incentives are a bit different. And I know our market we’ll catch up. I feel strongly that we’ll, we’re, we’re a couple of years behind ad tech, we’ll get there.

And and so go ahead.

Thad Price: I think you’re right. If you think of who today goes and says, I want to buy an [00:16:00] ad on Yahoo. Yeah. I have a lot of people, but no one, they have a lot of people. A lot of people go to Yahoo a day, but no one says, I want to go buy an ad on Yahoo. And what happens today is that’s actually what still happens when they, when people buy job advertising, they’re like, I want to buy an ad on insert job board.

And, but that’s not what happens. And it’s about the audiences is about, they say, I want people in market to buy a home. I’m not really Yes. Concerned where it comes from, but I want people in market to buy a home.

William Tincup: They might have a price. They might have a ceiling in which they don’t want the traffic if it goes above that, but they want people again, prequalifying.

Okay. So if you could script questions for prospects to ask. Of your sales team and, Tauru, what would those questions be? Like what do you want people to be asking Tauru?

Thad Price: Yeah, I want, I, so when we engage with prospects and customers, one of the things that we have a lot of conversation around is your cost per hire.

How are you measuring cost per hire? What is your cost per [00:17:00] hire? What does that experience look like? And, we embed that into our sales process and how we think about it is recruiting is more like sales, right? There’s, it’s a contact sport. Timing is everything. Speed is everything.

Speed to Canada is everything. And so from our standpoint, the biggest need when we’re engaging with prospects and potential customers is have a conversation about what your goals were not trying to be in a situation where we’re trying to align with your goals. We’re not trying. I know it takes time to get some of that really important information from.

Customer prospect, but we’re truly trying to partner and by partnering around a cost per hire goal or by partnering around even a cost per interview goal, something that helps us really understand what you’re gauging is what’s so important in trying to think of the way that we can help and we can provide this additional talent pool, that’s outside the other, the current talent pools you may be working with.

I

William Tincup: love that. [00:18:00] Okay. Last question. It’s it’s about your latest and greatest, your favorite. Success stories, customer success stories without mentioning names is that’s not really the important part. The important part is the story. Like what you, maybe they were skeptical to start with, and then you got them in, you got them on board and then boom, life changed.

So take us into a couple of those. If you can.

Thad Price: Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing, as I said earlier about cost per hire, we like to think of cost per hire and many customer conversations with our north star, where we’re going, where we need to optimize, we want to be partners. And what we, in some cases, what we typically find is that sometimes it’s hard to, it’s hard to understand cost per hire.

In many cases, sometimes that information is not on the front lines. It’s within A different leadership a different, leadership segment, so to speak, if we’re working in more of a decentralized hiring process. But that is truly what we’re looking to optimize around. And a great example is that we have a staffing firm [00:19:00] that we’ve worked with for Or for a fair amount of time, terrific partner of ours.

And what’s interesting about that staffing firm is lifetime value of a candidate is very important for them, right? Because they’re looking to put the candidate on assignment. And as they put the candidate on assignment, they’re generating revenue from billings, essentially from that candidate and having.

A good ROI a terrific ROI for a staffing firm is so important to continue having that customer renew and continue having that customer to, to create a raving fan and we’ve been very fortunate to have, a lot of customers like that where the LTV the lifetime value of a candidate on assignment continues to pay off and so that’s been a great story as well.

One of the other stories we have a number on our on our. Home page. You can check out under customer stories is, is it’s all about hires for us and you’ll see this time and time again in a lot of the conversations and a lot of the case studies. It’s you know, we’re hiring people [00:20:00] because of tower.

It’s about hires. It’s not about applicants, right? It’s about outcomes. It’s about outcomes for. For job seekers. And it’s of course about outcomes for employers because great people truly grow great companies and you need to think about your talent as not a cost center, but as a profit center and the companies that think about talent as a profit center are the ones that change the game.

They try new ways to find new talent pools. And they’re the ones in my opinion, that will constantly be on the leading edge of any business or any sector.

William Tincup: Drops, Mike walks off stage and thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I absolutely love what y’all do and just appreciate your time.

Thad Price: Thank you so much. Really appreciate the invite. Absolutely.

William Tincup: Absolutely. And thanks everyone for listening to the podcast until next time. [00:21:00]