Podcast: Fetcher CEO Andres Blank Discusses Recruiting Automation

Recruiting Automation

Transcript

Mark:

Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer.  

Mark:

This week, I talk with Andres Blank, co-founder and CEO of Fetcher. Their platform’s meant to make hiring less painful so that employers can focus their time on attracting candidates and helping with development of their workforce. And our discussion’s brought to you by Criteria. Finding and retaining great talent is a challenge. Fortunately, Criteria can help. Their assessments let you make better talent decisions by identifying high profile candidates and help predict job performance by evaluating skills and abilities that lead to success. Learn more at www.criteriacorp.com. That’s www.criteriacorp.com.

Mark:

We’re also sponsored by Indeed. You’re the hiring expert for your company and what you really need is help putting together your shortlist of quality candidates. You need a hiring partner who helps make your life easier. You need Indeed. Get started right now with a free $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com/hcm. That’s indeed.com/hcm. And now, Andres Blank, CEO of Fetcher. Welcome.

Mark:

So Andre, what is Fetcher? What’s unique about it?

Andres:

Sure. So what we’ve seen in the job market is that the best people are usually not applying to job posts. The best people are usually already employed in other companies, but open to new opportunity, is what we call the passive candidate. And it’s usually where recruiters are spending their time trying to find these passive candidates, because it’s probably the most scalable way of finding talent, but it’s also very time consuming. Because when you’re talking to these passive talent, you really have to reach out to, in some cases, a multiple dozen and hundreds of people just to get to one hire and it’s something that has traditionally been very time-consuming with tools like LinkedIn and the newer generations that have come after that. That they’re all still are very cumbersome because you have to go in and you have to do a lot of searches to find people and then send a lot of these messages.

Andres:

And we really wanted to think about, is there a way that we can automate this and do it differently? And what we did that was different is that we use a lot of the same technology that these companies use to try to search and filter people. But on the backend, we also have people in our side looking at the data and correcting the data to make sure that the results are better. So from the client’s view, they are really able to automate that process. So what would usually take you, using LinkedIn or something, like 10 hours to email 100 people with Fetcher could take you less than that. And the one hour, you can email more than a hundred people,

Mark:

But isn’t it a pretty crowded space? It seems like a lot of people are looking at passive candidates and how to get at them. What’s the landscape you’re operating in?

Andres:

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I remember when we were really excited and we looked at the landscape and you look at the websites and they all sound the same. They’ll say, Hey, we find the best people for you. And it was something that was really nerve-racking. And what we realized is that when we started talking to the clients and we explained about the human in the loop, it really changes for them because they have already tried automated systems before. And with no success, they still had to spend a lot of time correcting all these searches. But when there is a human, it feels that it could be more trustworthy and that really opens up, and people to give it a try. That’s how it was initially. And as you’ve been longer and longer in the market, word of mouth really helps, right? Because, definitely, recruiters like to talk and the better experience here ever until they’re with a client, the easier it is to break through. But I agree. It is a crowded market.

Mark:

Let’s step back from finder directly for a minute. What’s your view of the hiring world right now? What’s going on out in the market?

Andres:

I guess there’s a couple of things. One is a trend that I’ve seen since we started the company, which is that recruiting has just become more competitive as the economy has gotten bigger. Demand for knowledgeable people has increased with the economy and the supply of people, not necessarily. So it’s just become more competitive. And what I’ve seen in my experience is that recruiters are usually people-people. What they really want to do is just be talking to their colleagues. They want to be talking to candidates and what their job has become has been a little bit more like a programmer, in which they’re really just hatching together a bunch of different tools, putting in a lot of different things and trying to find people. And a lot of our job is really like casting a net.

Andres:

The part that they really enjoyed has become diminished. And I’ve seen that a big appetite since we started for people to really try to automate. That’s something, for me, that has been really exciting is that recruiters are not happy with the status quo because it’s really hard to get time, but they haven’t been able to found a solution. And there is a willingness to try, which for me has been a really exciting to see. And it’s been kind of like a slow adoption. It’s easier to get companies that have less of a process in place to come in and try to automate something that is very core versus two other companies that have existing processes in place. And then what’s happened in the last year, is that things just really accelerated, why?

Andres:

Because hiring froze for a few months, this made companies have to lay off a lot of the recruiting teams. And what we saw at the beginning of the pandemic was that you would have like leader teams. And it was in some cases, the senior people, and they were like, “look, we don’t have the time to search for people. So we’re really willing to start thinking about how to automate,” so I think that as that affected our world, our landscape, which is the top of the funnel, finding people, I believe it’s also affecting the other areas of recruiting that are not necessarily the top of the funnel, but I think what’s really curious is that top of the funnel is very sacred, right? Usually there’s like a big team, there’s sourcers, or recruiters already have a lot of licenses.

Andres:

But then, we see how that the slate has been wipe more clean, and there’s this willingness to change, not only in the smaller companies, but now in the larger companies as well. I do see this as a big change and it’s not going to stop because the demand for jobs is now also increasing really rapidly as well.

Mark:

And where do you think it’s all going over the next, say three to five years? Where do you think hiring has gone?

Andres:

It’s hard for me, at least from a macroeconomics perspective, understand if the demand is just going to keep going up the way it is. I would say that it looks like, at least for this year, there’s going to be a lot of demand. But what I can say from a process point of view, I believe that recruiters are actually probably going to go back to doing the type of job that they used to do before, which is more being able to have more of these conversations and less of the situation in which they’re spending a lot of time doing repetitive tasks.

Andres:

I think that the reality is that there are a lot of really great tools of the newer generation that is enabling more automation. I do see that after this big layoffs of people, there’s also like a newer generation in charge of a lot of these companies. And they’re really rethinking the stack. So I do see that, maybe not in the next three years, if things are going to change. But I think that the pace where we’re going is that we are going to go back to this world where you wake up and you have your calendar filled with meetings and not really a calendar filled with task of how to find these people.

Mark:

Right. Well, Andre, thanks very much, thanks for coming here.

Andres:

Thank you Mark, I appreciate you having me.

Mark:

My guest today has been Andres Blank co-founder and CEO of Fetcher. You can find them at fetcher.ai.

And this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report, a publication of recruiting daily. This edition is brought to you by Criteria, they’re scientifically validated assessments, help you make better talent decisions by identifying high potential candidates. The result? Increased revenue, reduced turnover and better quality of hire. Visit criCeriacorp.com to see how criteria can help you unlock the potential in your candidate pool. That’s www.criteriacorp.com.

And we’re also brought to you by Indeed. It’s tools like Indeed Instant Match and Indeed’s skills tests, reduce hiring time by 27% on average. So give them a try and get a $75 credit at indeed.com/hcm. That’s indeed.com/hcm. That offers valid through June 30th, by the way, the terms and conditions apply.

PeopleTech is a part of Evergreen Podcasts, to see all of their programs, visit www.evergreenpodcasts.com.

 And to keep up with HR technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.

Image: iStock

Previous articleOutmatch Acquires High-Volume Hiring Platform Harver
Next articleDespite Hype, Most Large Employers Aren’t Using AI