Inclusive and Efficient Hiring Practices with Adam Bird, Cronofy

Candidiates are getting increasingly jaded with poor recruitment experiences. Long wait times to schedule, ghosting, and a lack of communication are placing a bigger burden on candidates than in previous years. 

In this HRchat conversation, we focus on the candidate experience and tech to streamline and simplify interview scheduling.

Joining Bill on the show is Adam Bird, CEO of Cronofy, an entrepreneur, software developer, and architect with a passion for using technology to solve business problems. Cronofy is an enterprise-ready scheduling platform used by 10,000s of companies around the world to power their scheduling.

Listen as Adam shares the secrets to creating a more seamless candidate experience and mastering the art of interview scheduling. 

Drawing from Cronofy's comprehensive Candidate Expectations Report, Adam reveals statistics that underscore the need for a technological overhaul in recruitment processes. Learn actionable strategies to improve time-to-interview, even amidst economic pressures and layoffs.

We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.

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Chapters

• 0:03 Streamlining Interview Scheduling for Candidates
• 13:19 Enhancing Recruitment Process With Video Technology
• 19:12 Improving Recruitment Process Efficiency and Inclusivity

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HRchat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazette.com. 

Bill Banham: 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the HRchat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, Bill Banham. As the increasingly competitive market makes it harder for candidates, job seekers are getting increasingly jaded with poor recruitment experiences. Long wait times to schedule, ghosting and a lack of communication are placing a larger mental burden on candidates than in previous years. Indeed, today's guest says there has been a dramatic shift from last year when it comes to time taken to schedule first interviews, as more candidates ready themselves for waits of a month or more. First impressions still matter, though, and they certainly last. It's taking longer for candidates to drop out of the recruitment processes, but their levels of dissatisfaction over communication could mean that they're carrying this resentment to their new roles. In turn, this has the knock-on effects on the quality of hire and their time to productivity.

Bill Banham: 1:30

In this episode, we focus on the candidate experience and tech to streamline and simplify interview scheduling. And joining me on the show today is the awesome, super cool Adam Bird, CEO over at Cronofy, the enterprise-ready scheduling system. Adam is an entrepreneur, software developer and architect with a passion for using technology to solve business problems. Adam, welcome to the show today. Thank you, bill. Lovely to be here. So, beyond my wee introduction just a moment ago. Adam, why don't you take a couple of minutes and tell the listeners all about yourself and the mission of the business?

Adam Bird: 2:08

Thank you, Bill.

Adam Bird: 2:09

Yes, so me relentlessly frustrated with technology and the way it's used, and I've set myself the task of trying to solve time, which is not an insignificant problem, and so really we spent the last 10 years at Cronofy; it's actually my third company so I've kind of been around the block a couple of times but we set ourselves the mission at Cronofy to really solve the way organizations manage, schedule and kind of allocate their time and providing infrastructure that allows people to do that.

Adam Bird: 2:47

So, and I kind of like to think of us as a kind of four-season Netflix epic. You know everything, you know all the good ones finish after four seasons and we're in season two, episode two, three right now. The first season was all around the kind of plumbing and infrastructure required to power scheduling in SaaS applications and we've, as part of that, we've ended up powering the scheduling for about 75 now applicant tracking systems. So I've ended up with a deep understanding of the interview scheduling problem space, and so season two is very much about okay. So we've solved the kind of underlying plumbing problems. But actually we realize there are so many gaps in the experience that candidates are receiving and recruiters the kind of power that recruiters have. So let's spend season two putting the power in the hands of the recruiters to give a great candidate experience and streamline that scheduling piece.

Bill Banham: 3:41

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HRchat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at HRGazette.com. And now back to the show. So I'm currently re-watching the Sopranos Adam, and I'm just putting it out there. There's six seasons, okay, and I would say that that's a very, very good show, and I'm just putting it out there there's six seasons okay, and I would say that's a very, very good show.

Adam Bird: 4:10

I'm just putting it out there. We actually recently re-watched the Sopranos and I think it had some dead times roundabout, sort of season four. I think you know it could have been yeah, it could have been punchier.

Bill Banham: 4:19

That's a good point. Cronofy recently released its fourth annual candidate expectations report. This year, the Cronofy team surveyed 12,000 candidates on their loves, hates and hopes in recruiting across the UK, France, Germany, the US, Spain, Canada and the Netherlands. Wow, this is pretty comprehensive. Can you share some of the key findings from the report please? 

Adam Bird: 4:46

So our candidate expectation report really was born out of a gap we saw in the understanding of how candidates experience the recruitment process, and we wanted to create something that was some genuinely useful primary research for the market. So that's why we surveyed 12,000 candidates across a range of geographies. Now what's been interesting is also the kind of what's happened over time and so, because we're in our fourth year, we're able to start to seeing those trends. But a couple of headlines from the 2024 timeline is that you know well, over 40% of people have left the process because it took too long to schedule an interview. So you're getting close to recruitment teams losing half their candidates because they just couldn't get them through the process in time and generally they're going to be the better candidates. 50% of people are going to be less likely to recommend a company after a poor experience. And interestingly enough you get into the details of different geographies 12% of US candidates would vent on social media about that.

Bill Banham: 5:56

Okay, Adam, thanks for that. So, on the back of what you just mentioned there, a quick follow-up would be is scheduling getting slower?

Adam Bird: 6:04

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, scheduling is getting slower. If we look at sort of 2022, 2023 generally, only about sort of 28% of interviews took over a week to schedule. We move into 2024. It's over. It's 45%, which is shocking in terms of a candidate experience perspective. We're probably symptomatic of the strain that recruiters are under right now. You know, with kind of layoffs, economic slowdowns, recruitment teams are some of the first to feel the impact of that. So they're trying their best but they're actually giving a poorer candidate experience and they need help in making that process far, far quicker if they want to attract and retain the best candidates.

Bill Banham: 6:56

Okay, thank you. I want to now chat to you about some case studies, or use cases. If you don't mind, you can share some examples of recruiters, for example maybe end users too, but um, recruiters, certainly who are who are using Cronofy to improve the candidate experience. So, for example, I saw, I think, Wise and Agreena on your website. Tell us more yeah.

Adam Bird: 7:18

Wise is a really interesting one, and this really talks to how Cronofy thinks about the product compared to kind of other vendors on the market. So Wise are actually a co-customer with Smart Recruiters. So they use Smart Recruiters for their applicant tracking system and, as a kind of high-growth tech company very focused on efficiency, they were looking for ways to improve the process. They have this sort of product concept of creating irresistible experiences within their products. It's magic. This money transfer thing that they do should be magical, and they feel that same thing should apply to their candidate experience as well.

Adam Bird: 8:04

So the way you use Cronofy is from within Smart Recruiters. They want to schedule an interview, they click on the Cronofy button and the whole process happens. Now what we're doing that isn't possible with smart recruiters is you can do some quite complicated scheduling so recruiters can schedule on behalf of other people. They can kind of allow automatic rescheduling. And what Wise have done is they've lent into the Cronofy method, which is give the candidate live access to the interviewer's calendar, not a coordinator asking for times from the candidate, asking for times from the recruiter and then trying to work out all the time that information is degrading. I think it's like a half-life of information. We all know when someone asks for our availability and they don't come back to us for 24 hours, the chance of that availability being still accurate becomes smaller. And especially with candidates who are running multiple processes and probably have a job at the same time as well, there's lots of demands on their time. So what we've enabled Wise to do is securely share the availability of individual hiring managers or pools of hiring managers with candidates in real time, so candidates can pick a time and that information gets pushed straight back into Smart Recruiters. So, conceptually, the recruiter and the coordinators are not leaving smart recruiters. That is their tool, that's their system of record and that's the Cronofy principle. We are a component in other people's software rather than trying to be a destination that provides a full suite of management processes for the scheduling.

Adam Bird: 9:51

Now what this has meant for Wise is in just a few months after implementation they used to take about on average, a median time was about six days to schedule an interview. On average, a median time was about six days to schedule an interview. So they were just within that week and were pretty good. With the Cronofy approach, they're down to 90 minutes as their median time, which is phenomenal. They're now conducting the interview in the time it took them to schedule the interview in the first place, which means they've reduced their time to hire by a week, because all of that time spent scheduling is just dead time.

Adam Bird: 10:30

It's kind of time when nothing's happening in the interview process and when you're an organization like Wise, competitive, you're trying to hire people in. The tech space is incredibly competitive, despite the travails of the space. At the minute, they want access to the best candidates. So by thinking about this as oh how do we create an irresistible experience, how do we streamline that process and how do we put the power in the hands of recruiters to give candidates access to real-time availability? They've transformed the velocity of their recruitment process, of their recruitment process, and I think that, for me, is where we approach this problem from a very different perspective to other vendors on the market.

Speaker 4: 11:12

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HRchat Podcast. If you love listening to World of Work shows and reading the latest business trends, we'd recommend checking out our friends at HR Review. And now back to the show.

Bill Banham: 11:26

Shameless plug for another episode. Now, listeners, please check out my conversation with Jerome from Smart Recruiters Lovely chap, it was quite some time ago, but worth a listen, so check that out on the HRchat feed as well, okay, so, um, I understand that Cronofy recently launched an api product. Uh, that, um, that's currently focused on telehealth and there's a there's a video component to this, so I'd love you to tell me more about that api and, as part of your answer, tell me, tell me more and share why video in the recruitment process is important and how does video interviewing open companies up to a more global talent pool, which is something that we've been talking a lot about on this show for many years? The pandemic changed everything. I worry that many ceos are sort of, uh, drilling back down again on, at least, say, the same time zone again, but why should they, when you can interview folks, get a feel for them on video and have a much bigger talent pool? Tell us more.

Adam Bird: 12:28

So video conferencing as part of the Cronofy service is super important because, especially when it comes to recruitment, because really what that does is gives a lot of flexibility to both hiring managers and candidates in terms of interviewing with lots of people. There isn't that kind of time of visiting a site which allows more chances of finding times for hiring managers and interviewers to meet candidates, more chances for candidates who, frankly, can't necessarily afford or can't necessarily take the time out or that have dependents to look after from an interview process. They don't have to kind of it's not an epic process to turn up for an interview. So the use of video in interviews I think is real. It opens up the possibility of very, very diverse set of candidates to be available to hiring managers. So immediately you're increasing your pool if you kind of embrace that process but also if you want to experiment with different types of interview sequences.

Adam Bird: 13:44

So what we've seen primarily in the tech sector but increasingly in other sectors, is this kind of multi-part interview. So rather than having a panel where you have three people on the panel all interviewing at the same time. You have three interviews with three different people as part of that kind of interview stage available in some kind of sequence, such that the candidate wasn't kicking their heels for two hours while waiting for the next person to be free and meeting rooms to be free. So suddenly that kind of if you like, that jigsaw puzzle that you can do becomes something you can do dynamically, and this is something that, again, we do very well at Cronofy, where we see a lot of companies kind of have these. It's always a spreadsheet, these spreadsheets that are used to kind of like okay, well, I've given three interviews to Bill, two to Jenny and, and Sarah hasn't had any. But Sarah hasn't gotten any availability but she can do next week. So I'm going to mark all this in my spreadsheet.

Adam Bird: 14:52

What we've done and what video allows you to do as well in this process is to start to make that completely flexible, because interviewers need an hour, that's it. They don't need all the ramp up either side, they don't need to be sort of co-located. There's no dependencies on other people being available. So I think the use of video has given more power and more flexibility to candidates, therefore increasing the candidate pool that a company can go after, but actually has also given more creative opportunities to recruiters and hiring managers and enable them to get people through the process more quickly.

Bill Banham: 15:34

Quick follow up on that one. Adam, what would you say to candidates who are, for whatever reason, um less keen to go on camera? Would you say you know what? It's 2024. If you want the job, you've got to be prepared for the, for the?

Adam Bird: 15:49

There can be an issue with candidates being reticent about being on camera. I think a lot of that in my reading of it, and my sons have just been through. They've just left university and they've been going through this process and these kind of, if you like, video interviews that aren't live. They are brutal, and this idea that you're just talking to the screen that for me that should get in the sea. That is not something that should be part of any process at all. That's completely unfair and shows a complete lack of respect for the candidate. My personal opinion, but I think it really.

Adam Bird: 16:30

I think saying that, though making sweeping statements about these kinds of processes is dangerous. I think there are certain roles where the candidate has to expect to be on camera. You know, if that's part of the job, they can't not interview over Zoom. I think there are other roles where you can see a situation where their personal circumstances may make it really difficult for them to be on camera. They may not feel they've got a space to actually have an interview, and actually going to an office or going to a place to have an interview frees them from their dependence and concerns that they have about putting the best version of themselves forward. So it really depends on the role, it depends on the circumstances, it depends on kind of what you're hiring for okay, that would make sense to me and I think I agree with you.

Bill Banham: 17:24

The um, the one where a candidate is expected just to look into a camera and hit record. You're not building up any um, any rapport with the interviewer. You know, there's I, I see, I see that as um. It's quite an unfair process. For sure a lot of people would find that particular skill set quite, quite difficult, you know, just to talk out of camera. It's one thing doing what you and I are doing right now. This is an audio and only podcast, of course, but uh, Adam and I've got the camera, the cameras on where we can feed off each other's body language. That's, that's one art form.

Adam Bird: 18:00

It's quite a different thing when it's just you talking into a camera, right, yeah, like you say, it's completely one sided and it's and it basically there's a whole power dynamic and what you've done is just turn the power dynamic up to 11 between the two people, and I guess that speaks volumes about the company and the way they think of their employees. And if, as a candidate, you're comfortable with that, then that's okay, but that's certainly not the way I would expect to to do things.

Bill Banham: 18:34

I'd now like to chat to you a bit about managing transparency and privacy within the recruitment process. Here, maybe we can focus on building a trustworthy employer brand and how that requires being open with candidates. Yet maintaining that trust while safeguarding sensitive information is absolutely crucial. Adam. How can recruiters and hiring managers better protect privacy without sacrificing transparency?

Adam Bird: 19:06

So privacy and transparency are really important areas from a recruitment perspective. There is the legal aspect GDPR, oh, the California one which escapes me right now, but anyway, that one that there are lots of, yeah, there is with very good reason. There's lots of, lots of concerns over sharing of data and we should not be sharing personal data, especially, especially candidate data, because these people we've got access to some very sensitive information about candidates when they're going through our recruitment process. So it's absolutely beholden on the company and the recruiters to protect that but also make sure that we're not sharing that within the organization. That is kind of the principle of least privilege, but there's some practical things that recruiters can do to protect that. So one thing we kind of enable is two versions of a calendar invite, so one that goes to the interview team, the other that goes to the candidate, and that way you're kind of limiting the information that's being shared to just the kind of internal people links to and many ways don't share any personal candidate information other than you know. You maybe don't even need to do that. Share any personal candidate information in the calendar invite, just provide links to the recruitment system, the ATS, to the candidate profile, because that means that information stays in the applicant tracking system. It's gated through security and whatever permission scheme is within the ATS. But having a link like that in the candidate invite looks a bit rubbish.

Adam Bird: 20:48

And back to the candidate experience piece. That's no use to them knowing that this is a URL into a link, into a system they haven't got access to. What they want to know is how can they best prepare? So there's an opportunity for a kind of a candidate value proposition piece around. Here's how you prepare. Here's what to expect from the interview. Here are some of the questions we're likely to ask. This is if you haven't got Zoom, download it here. Those kinds of things can be tailored and provide a tailored invite to the candidate. So you're actually providing a better candidate experience whilst also protecting against data leaks.

Adam Bird: 21:29

But also you need to think about your recruitment system and one thing we see, especially with pools of interviewers. So it might be that, in order to go through a kind of recruitment process, a lot of companies will have, like subject matter experts, there'll be, like craft interviewers, various names for them. So there'll be the hiring manager, which should have access to the candidate, and there'll be one from a pool of 20 people who have the skills to interview for that position. You shouldn't be forced to give all of those 20 people access to that candidate information. It should only be the person who ends up interviewing.

Adam Bird: 22:06

So this is again something we've done with. Our integration with Smart Recruiters is basically, once the interview is created, we tell Smart Recruiters who the interviewers are, so therefore, they're actually involved in the interview and get access to the candidate information, and this is all back to. This is your candidate's first peek behind the covers of what it's like, peek behind the curtain, of what it's like how you treat them, how you treat employees, and so anything you can do to show respect for their data is only gonna make for a better candidate experience.

Bill Banham: 22:43

Very good. Now I want to talk about something which is dear to my heart. That's supporting neurodiverse candidates and ways to hire inclusively. Your team recently asked 1100 neurodiverse candidates worldwide to share their struggles in interviewing. Perhaps you can now talk to us about ways to avoid unintentionally alienating a pretty big pool of high quality neurodiverse candidates. I'll give an example Richard Branson. There you go. He did okay for himself. And steps one can take to create a more inclusive recruitment process.

Adam Bird: 23:24

With our candidate expectation report for the first time, we actually specifically asked the candidates we were interviewing whether they were neurodiverse. So we asked them the same set of questions, but it enabled us to provide an additional filter over those responses so we could essentially compare and contrast. And what was really interesting was actually everything held in terms of how candidates experienced the process. But there were certain things which were just like dialed up more for neurodiverse candidates. So one question we asked was around what is the kind of psychological impact of a long process not hearing things, that communication piece?

Adam Bird: 24:14

Now, across the board, 38% said it increased their stress levels, whereas among neurodiverse candidates it was 56%. Also, how many people left the process because of delays in scheduling interviews? Across the board, the average was 42%. For neurodiverse, again, it was 56%. In many ways, my reading of this data is neurodiverse candidates are actually no different. They want the same things, but they feel it more. Same things, but they feel it more. And so therefore, if, if you want to create a more equitable, fairer, more open hiring process, just do the basics, just make the process a good process, and what you'll see is, everyone will have a better experience of that. Everyone will feel wanted in that process, feel treated like an individual and therefore are more likely to choose you as the employer if they get through that process and they're more likely to say nice things about you on glass door, etc.

Bill Banham: 25:19

Okay, yes, very good, we are already coming towards the end of this particular conversation. Adam, just a couple more questions for you before we do wrap up. Uh, next one. It's quite a big question. I'll give it a go. Uh, in your opinion, what is the future for workforce automation? And, uh, what else is going to get scheduled away over the next couple of years?

Adam Bird: 25:43

What's the future of automation? I think is a really interesting one. I think you can't have a conversation like this without mentioning AI, and the problem is, I'm old enough to have seen a few AI dawns and dusks over the time and I think we're fundamentally still at the point where it's a misnomer. It is not intelligent. It's a system for improving processes, for doing things faster, that humans collating information, predicting what's next, making things simple, information the predicting what's next making things simple and in many ways, what we do at Cronofy with calendars is about removing the administration burden from people who really shouldn't be doing admin, and I think that's what any kind of automation piece, especially in recruitment, needs to kind of bear that in mind.

Adam Bird: 26:49

So in my experience, recruiters didn't get into recruitment to do admin. They are people, people. They want to see people succeed. That's what drives them and increasingly they're kind of having to fight with technology in order to do that job. So successful future and use of technology for kind of workforce automation is to take all the boring stuff out of the way, not this idea that we can somehow automate the entire interview process.

Adam Bird: 27:25

It's just a complete fantasy in my view of where we are right now, what we want to do is, and what candidates want as well. Candidates want to be treated like individuals. They want a human touch. They want to feel that the employer values them in that process Because if they do, they're more likely to choose you. So the future of automation needs to be anything that can be kind of any admin, anything we can do to streamline that process, to free up the recruiter to do what they do best, which is to engage with candidates to help them understand the role, make sure that the right fit for the company you know the recruiter kind of sits between the two. Their job is to find the candidates that are going to fit and make sure those candidates that are a good fit get through the process as quickly as possible and choose that company. That's what automation needs to be, not replace the process. But that's a soapbox I can happily stand on for a while.

Bill Banham: 28:22

This is good. I can tell you've been in this space a long time. You're passionate about this. This is good. This is good. This is good content. Unfortunately, though, we are pretty much out of time Before we do wrap up. How can our listeners connect with you? So maybe you might want to share your email address, perhaps your LinkedIn, instagram, all the other socials and, of course, how can they learn more about all the cool things happening over at Cronofy?

Adam Bird: 28:49

So, in terms of contacting me, I'm a bit of a social media curmudgeon. Uh, I'm, I I'm on linkedin, so Adam Bird, Cronofy, linkedin. Um, in terms of the company again linkedin there's lots of content. Uh, we share there around our learnings from the recruitment process and learnings from our customers, learning, learning from the Canada Expectations Report, our website, Cronofy.com. And see us at a conference. You know, we've got HR Tech in Vegas coming up in a few weeks. We've got Unleash in Paris. We're sponsoring the Smart Recruiters Hiring Success event. So, yeah, we're. Hopefully you can't avoid us if you're interested in this problem space.

Bill Banham: 29:30

Will you be in Vegas for HR Tech? Okay, then I will see you there. Sir, I've got my tickets booked. How awesome. That sounds good to me. But for now, listeners, that just leaves me to say, Adam, you're a gentleman, you know your stuff, you're passionate about this. Thank you very much for being my guest today. Absolute pleasure. Thanks for your time. Bill Listeners, as always on social media, and visit HRGazette.com.