Recruitment Tech Trends and Relationship Building with Gerry Crispin

Discover how HR tech trends are set to revolutionize the hiring process by 2025 with insights from the legendary Gerry Crispin, principal and co-founder of CareerXRoads. With over five decades of recruitment expertise, Gerry explores the exciting role of technology in enhancing real-time interviews and enabling candidates to shine. We promise you'll uncover how HR leaders are leveraging these advancements to align talent acquisition strategies with evolving skill demands. 

As the conversation unfolds, Gerry and Bill Banham discuss the emerging shift toward relationship recruiting, emphasizing the importance of long-term connections over immediate hires.

Delve deeper into the transformation of hiring practices through social media and networking as we examine how recruiters are balancing short-term needs with long-term talent cultivation. Hear about the challenges and triumphs in building a diverse candidate pool that reflects societal diversity, particularly as the landscape shifts in the United States. With a focus on elevating the candidate experience—even for those not immediately hired—Jerry's insights illuminate the path forward for recruiters committed to diversity and inclusion. Don't miss this opportunity to gain a comprehensive understanding of the future trends in recruitment from one of the field's most esteemed figures.

Chapters

• 0:03 Emerging HR Tech Trends for 2025
• 5:03 Enhancing Candidate Experience Through Relationships
• 16:33 Recruiter Diversity and Future Trends

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat 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 hrgazettecom and visit HRGazettecom.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, bill Bannam, and my guest this time is none other than Jerry Crispin, principal and co-founder over at CareerXRoads. Jerry describes himself as a lifelong student of hiring, with a passion for conversations about how every stakeholder in the recruiting process finds meaningful work that contributes to both employer and candidate decisions, supported by an organizational strategy for talent management that is fair and sustainable. Jerry, welcome to the HR Chat Show. It's an absolute pleasure to have you join me today.

Speaker 3: 1:07

And it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me, Bill.

Speaker 2: 1:10

So I can't believe. As we're recording this, we're approaching 800 official HR Chat episodes, supplemental stuff. But we've never had Jerry Crispin on the show before now and I'm glad that we are fixing this, because it's been on the show before now and I'm glad that we are fixing this. I've been a fan of you for a number of years. For those people out there who are perhaps less familiar, if there are any, can you maybe start by taking a minute or two and introducing yourself to our audience?

Speaker 3: 1:36

Well, obviously I've been around for a long time, but I've been actually engaged in some form of recruiting for over 50 years, so that gives you some sense of the fact that I'm passionate about this subject and I can't quite really leave. I started Crossroads about 30 years ago, as the internet was coming into play, wrote a bunch of books about the changes that would take place. I'm still waiting for some of them to become real and I view myself as a student of hiring from a lifelong perspective, and essentially I make a living as part of a community of talent acquisition leaders, numbering now maybe in about 100 different companies and fundamentally committed to helping each other succeed.

Speaker 4: 2:34

The HR Chat Podcast is one of the world's most popular shows, offering insights and tips from HR pros, business leaders, industry influencers and tech experts. World of Work. Topics covered include HR pros, business leaders, industry influencers and tech experts. World of Work. Topics covered include HR tech, ai, leadership, talent recruitment, employee engagement, wellness, dei and company culture. The show, produced by the award-winning HR Gazette, has released over 700 episodes so far, each offering fresh perspectives and tips to help you better understand the changing future of work. Check out the latest HR chat episodes on your podcast platform of choice and read the latest articles at hrgazettecom we have, uh, recruitment and HR royalty with us today, listeners.

Speaker 2: 3:20

Okay, so let's get into the conversation today by starting with a big one, if you don't mind, jerry. What are some emerging vendors, tech or trends that you believe HR leaders should be paying close attention to in the coming year?

Speaker 3: 3:34

I think there's one that I think is going to dominate during the course of 2025 anyway, and that is going to be a focus on ways that we can enhance, if you will interviews in real time on both sides.

Speaker 3: 3:54

So I think, from a candidate point of view, you're going to see increasing applications that help the candidate perform at their best, applications that help the candidate perform at their best, although many recruiters and recruiting leaders are going to be very concerned that they're cheating, but the fact of the matter is you cannot change. It's like atomic bombs they're going to be built no matter what happens. So, on the other hand, what that means is, I think recruiters and recruiting leaders need to embrace the kinds of technologies that allow for them to focus and dig deep within the interview space and, maybe in real time, be advised that they're getting off target, that they're not focusing on the skills that they said in advance that they're getting off target. They're not focusing on the skills that they said in advance that they wanted to better understand if those candidates had them. So I'm just a fan of the fact that that's emerging and I do think we should be paying attention to those apps that are coming out that way.

Speaker 2: 5:03

Joe, you've previously said that HR leaders are now finally dictating the direction of tech, instead of adapting to what vendors can offer. Thank goodness we're in 2025. One would think so what practical steps can HR leaders take to ensure that they effectively define their vision and influence technology development?

Speaker 3: 5:24

Well, we need to cautiously adjust that statement. There are leaders in TA who have a vision beyond simply trying to put a body in a seat and fundamentally want to impact how stakeholders are treated, from the candidate to the hiring manager to whatever. So they're committed to a much more holistic approach to how we involve recruiting, and what I see happening is more of the more progressive technology. Leaders are listening, are listening and through either conferences and or their own advisory councils, et cetera, they're listening more closely and adjusting their technology to meet the real solutions that no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 6:35

Let's now talk about relationship recruiting and its evolution, if you don't mind. You have previously predicted a shift towards relationship recruiting driven by social media and networking. The question here for you is how can organizations better measure the impact of referral programs and other relationship-based hiring methods? Hiring methods.

Speaker 3: 6:55

Well, they're going to have to do a better job in terms of that prediction, if you will, and that measurement skill.

Speaker 3: 7:10

So we tend to only measure standards related to a formal program, and many, many companies in the US, in EMEA, in Australia, et cetera are using different kinds of referral programs that can help you do that. However, we're not measuring the degree to which a sourcer is going to a team or the hiring manager, identifying people that the hiring manager might know in other companies, reaching out to those individuals and finding referrals, if you will. Who's getting credit for that? It's not getting credit as a referral and fundamentally so we're going to have to take a closer look at how relationships are impacting. Relationships are impacting not only the quality of what comes in but also the diversity of what comes in, and both of those issues can be managed, but I don't see that we're spending much time, energy or effort doing so. So we have expectations and we have certain myths about referral hires, but fundamentally we're not doing the due diligence to study that within the confines of our companies.

Speaker 5: 8:32

The ad you're about to hear is complete BS.

Speaker 4: 8:35

Really BS, huh.

Speaker 5: 8:37

Yeah, before Skillable. Did you know that learners only retain about 20% of audio and video training? That is BS. I know it's all BS, but Skillable has you covered with hands-on learning labs that boost knowledge retention and skill recall. Find out more at skillablecom.

Speaker 2: 9:07

Okay, Kind of a follow-up question, I guess around that is, what can recruiters do better?

Speaker 3: 9:11

to leverage social media to build authentic relationships, with the fact that they've got to put a body in a seat within the next two weeks, versus looking out around the business for the next X number of months and even a couple of years, if they're solid within their organization. How they could build a better pool of talent downstream by spending time, energy and effort building relationships with individuals and helping them in their current job, as opposed to trying to extricate them from that job. So timing, a better understanding of how a life cycle of a job works for a given set of candidates there's a whole host of things that I think we could upskill recruiters on that would allow them to build relationships for the long term, but we also have to have a job that allows for that as well.

Speaker 3: 10:16

So it's not just what the recruiters do. It's going to be what their employers are going to incentivize them to do. If you're stuck with 28 jobs that you have to fill in the next few weeks, you're not. You have no time to be able to pivot around thinking about where the next mechanical engineer is that you would like to hire with two years experience, who today has zero years of experience and is just graduating from college. So you're not going to be spending much time developing relationships from that longer term approach If your job is not designed to give you that luxury okay.

Speaker 2: 11:03

So what I'm hearing there is ideally, uh, you have a, you have a position where you can rely on the, the farming approach, um, but the reality is often, when you're, when you're new in a role or depending on, uh you know, if you're sourcing for high churn roles, that kind of thing, you've got to take the hunting approach. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 3: 11:22

oh yeah, without a doubt. Look, relationships aren't built in a day, I don't care what you think or anybody thinks. They're built over time and you need the time to be able to think for the future as opposed to trying to get somebody to move today. Otherwise, you know you're not going to build a relationship.

Speaker 2: 11:44

Jerry, you mentioned at the top of this conversation that you've had a few years' experience in the relationship. Jerry, you mentioned at the top of this conversation that you've had a few years experience in the industry. From what you've seen, what are some examples of companies that are successfully transforming their candidate experience, and what lessons can others take from them? What are those amazing standout use cases?

Speaker 3: 12:03

Well, they're growing. We've got a growing group who, fundamentally, are putting on seatbelts. That's the way I would describe it. At this point.

Speaker 3: 12:13

There's a lot, there's a lot of use cases that we could describe of people who are doing really interesting things that engage the candidate, make them feel good. But we tend to think about that as the person that they hire. But we tend to think about that as the person that they hire, as opposed to all those people that they didn't hire this time and, fundamentally, when we talk about increasing the candidate experience, we're not talking in general about those people that you hire. They're usually pretty damn happy, thank God for the job. But how about those silver medalists? How well did we inform or provide them with feedback that allows for them to feel that they got something out of being second, if you will? How about all those people who invested potentially hours studying and wanting and believing that they had what it takes to compete for a job, but who were not even allowed to go forward and with no information, from a respectful point of view, saying I'm so sorry, but we're not going forward for these reasons. Sorry, but we're not going forward for these reasons.

Speaker 3: 13:30

So the companies that have been putting on the seatbelts are setting expectations about what comes next.

Speaker 3: 13:33

When somebody does, in fact, express interest, acknowledges that kind of interest is definitely going to focus in on closure for all those folks who do not go forward, and doing so in a way that is customized to the type of candidate that you're operating with. And there are lots of special circumstances with silver medalists who would have been hired if the person you selected said no. Those individuals need the kind of treatment that has value. And then how about the folks who were referred? Do we handle them differently because they were referred, and what are we doing to the person who referred them in terms of keeping them engaged in relation to helping our company identify quality candidates that we might be hiring, not just now but in the future? So there's a whole host of possibilities for how we can improve and elevate, if you will, the candidate experience to make the future of hiring a little bit less daunting in terms of replacing all, over and over again, the candidates that we're looking for excellent, and that takes us towards the end of this particular conversation already.

Speaker 2: 15:12

Uh, before we do wrap up for today, how can our listeners connect with you? And also, you're a man who goes to lots of industry events. Uh, what, what events are coming up for you?

Speaker 3: 15:23

um ere, unleash hr tech, um a number of uh specific meetings that we have. We have, obviously, we have uh. We have four or five actually uh meetings during the course of the year of our members. They're limited to under 50 people. Uh always, and have been for the last 20 years, because we have a different kind of approach to how we want that to take place.

Speaker 3: 15:52

Everyone comes expecting to participate, so it's a different kind of commitment, if you will, to how we deal with face-to-face and build relationships, which is really the key issue. I would say that there's one other area in 2025 that, in the United States specifically, we're going to have to address and that has to do with our understanding of and our commitment to, diversity in terms of being part of how we hire, of being part of how we hire. A recruiter takes enormous pride in not only being able to create a slate of qualified candidates for the hiring manager, but their ability to include within that slate the diversity that exists in our society, and I think that's true of every recruiter in every society, and obviously there are differences there in terms of the restrictions that they're under and the pressures that they feel, and right now in the United States. That is going to be a major issue in 2025.

Speaker 2: 17:09

Excellent. Well, that just leads me to say for today Jerry Crispin, you legend of the industry, Thank you very much for your time today. Thank you.

Speaker 3: 17:16

Appreciate being here.

Speaker 1: 17:22

Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.