The Changing State of Talent Acquisition
The Changing State of Talent Acquisition cuts through the noise in the crowded world of recruitment marketing, employer branding, workforce intelligence, and AI.
Hosted by Graham Thornton, President of Consulting & Growth at Talivity, this podcast brings you unfiltered conversations with industry founders, practitioners, and the occasional contrarian who's actually doing the work – not just selling you on it.
We're not here to hype the next big thing. We're here to help you separate signal from noise, understand what's actually working (and what's just well-marketed), and make smarter, data-backed decisions about your talent strategy.
You'll hear from TA leaders navigating real hiring challenges, founders building solutions worth paying attention to, and experts who see around corners before the rest of us catch up.
Whether you're navigating the AI arms race, trying to figure out your tech stack, or just trying to hire better people faster – this is the podcast for people who care more about ROI than buzzwords.
The Changing State of Talent Acquisition
#61: State of the Industry – On The Trends That Will Shape Talent Acquisition in 2025
Welcome to the Changing State of Talent Acquisition, where your hosts, graham Thornton and Martin Credd, share their unfiltered takes on what's happening in the world of talent acquisition today. Each week brings new guests who share their stories on the tools, trends and technologies currently impacting the changing state of talent acquisition. Have feedback or want to join the show? Head on over to changestateio. And now on to this week's episode.
Speaker 2:All right, we're back with another episode, another season of the Changing State of Town Acquisition Podcast. Super excited to be back with you, Marty. What's new?
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, happy New Year. Busy, busy, busy, busy. We got a lot going on, a lot planned for the year. I'm excited about our little trend survey. I don't know if people have heard about that, but we think we can really raise the bar on trend surveys. We all see them. Some of them are better than others. Of course, obviously, you guys all know, if you've listened to the show, my background is in market research, so we see a real opportunity to level up and hopefully do something that's super impactful and not just. Here are the top trends, which seem to be the same year over year. So, on that note, if anyone wants to take our survey, you can go to changestateio slash survey Would really appreciate the help, as many responses we get will help us be able to slice and dice and give everyone really valuable insights everyone really valuable insights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't want to name names, but you know, I do find it amusing that some of the larger I don't know, we'll call them consulting firms we see a 2025 trend survey and it's hey, the top five trends are, you know, hr tech, you know, workforce planning, you know. And then you look at 2024 and it's hey, the top five trends are workforce planning, hr tech, skills-based hiring. It's the same five. And you know, quite literally, that was when you and I circled up and said, okay, yeah, enough is enough. Maybe we get something, you know, maybe we put something together that people would actually want to participate in and learn something from. So, you know, super excited about our study and, yeah, I would love, you know, would love love the support for anyone that hasn't hasn't taken the survey.
Speaker 2:Now, that said, I will say, like you know, it certainly trends season, right, and uh, so we always like starting the year by diving into, you know, the surveys that we do, like you know, perspectives that we do, like you know, on the future of TA, future of tenant acquisition, future of HR. And you know, we've got a couple guests, you know, coming up early on in the year that I'm pretty excited about and, you know, with that said, I thought it would be, you know, pretty interesting for us to start the year by talking about, you know, three articles, three studies, call it what you will three predictions to set the stage for 2025. So those are going to be Corn Fairy's 2025 Town Acquisition Trend Study.
Speaker 2:Love that one, steve Hunt, who I believe Steve used to work over at SAP Success Factors. Now he's ventured out on his own. He's written a couple books his insights on HR predictions, and then our good friend James Ellis and his always provocative take on employer branding. So, super excited to unpack what's changing, what's staying the same, where we might all be headed as an industry. So we've got a lot of stuff in the hopper. A lot of stuff in the hopper.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Well, let's dig in.
Speaker 2:Let's kick things off with. How about that Korn Ferry report? Ai focus. For sure, you know, I'd say you know, one of the things that Korn Ferry kind of emphasizes is you know, we'll call it. You know, progress over perfection, right In talent acquisition and, you know, really pushing companies to calculated risks to adopting AI. I think there's five key trends that they really highlighted. We'll lean right into AI. This is not going to be a shock, but growing pains in AI. Maybe it's the year or the year that reality really kicks in, as they might say. So 67% of respondents think that AI usage is going to be the top trend in 2025. And so you can do the math two out of three, two out of three people think that AI is going to dominate TA trends in 2025. But 40% of them are worried that we're just going to lose the personal touch, make that process, the recruitment process, impersonal. So I guess, hey, with that in mind, all right, what do you think, marty? What are we worried about with AI?
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know how snarky we want to be to start the year. Funny thing that just came to mind 40% of people are worried that it will make the process impersonal. In an industry where it's the norm for people to apply for jobs and just never hear back, or hear back like 90 days later, I mean I don't know if impersonality is the real big problem. I think most people would be thrilled to get a response from an AI quickly, rather than no response.
Speaker 2:I think that's a good point. Yeah, you know what's interesting is in the fall. You know we'll talk about the personal piece. You know we had our what one of our latest virtual networking sessions in our office and you know there was a round table going on on AI and recruitment and you know, I do think it was interesting because we had a couple leaders on there and you know they are all talking about using AI, for you know candidate sourcing there and you know they are all talking about using AI for you know candidate sourcing and you know really concerned that like hey, like AI isn't really good at closing out or finding or screening out the right people. You know, I almost wonder if there's a correlation there to you know the personal nature or you know how recruiters need to be involved in you know the candidate selection side, just in general. Where's the connection between is impersonal really the word that we're worried about, or the personal recruiter lens may be something that we need to be more focused on.
Speaker 2:I can phrase that question better, Marty, but what do you think?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, I don't know if we've already retired the funnel metaphor for recruiting, but let's use it. I mean, ai seems very important at the top of the funnel, sure, I think. Despite my scenario earlier, I do think that the question of whether it's impersonal or not is something we should think about is real. You and I we had a blog post about this idea that you can spit out some amazing content from chat GPT. But there's some spidey sense among intelligent people that maybe a person didn't write this and I don't even know what that means exactly. It feels a little odd. Is it bad? I'm not sure. Is it good? Maybe Is it something we need to get used to? Maybe we're still figuring that all out. I think the same things really apply to recruiting and again, given what I just said, how poor we are in general at reaching people at the top of the funnel and saying, hey, thanks for your application, or hey, we've decided not to move on with you because of this reason. Yeah, and.
Speaker 3:AI won't be perfect organization that. I just think that we should leverage AI as much as we can to actually provide that kind of custom experience to people that people expect in terms of consumer products and goods all the time. Just let them know you received that. Sure, have an AI say we've decided not to move on with your application for these three reasons in a nice way. Is it going to get some of them wrong? Are there some great catches that AA might screen out that a recruiter never saw? Probably. But if it delivers a pool of, say, the 10% that are really great and well-suited that the recruiter can then talk to, I mean I don't see a downside there. I think that's a win-win for both sides of the transaction. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I completely agree, and I almost think you know that probably dovetails nicely into one of the other highlights from Korn Ferry and that's you know, hey, like, where are we going to focus in 2025? You know, it's really on more critical skills. I think that's where the connection point is to you know, kind of what you just described, marty, right, it's like, hey, if we're, you know the critical skills are like, you know, sure, leadership is one, but like problem solving, communication skills, you know it's that type of stuff that is going to be more important as AI becomes more, you know, a larger stake in the process, right, and so you know whether it's critical thinking skills or problem you know solving skills around, boy, like something just feels off for how we're screening out certain candidates, you know, or how we're communicating, like I think that is where you know some of the tie-in, you know, probably comes into play, marty, you know it is. Ai is great.
Speaker 2:I still, we use this analogy too often. You know it's a free, unpaid intern, you know, so it's more important that you have, you know, people that can critically think, people that know how to communicate, people that can solve problems, sort of owning or overseeing how AI is being used in your process, and I think that's probably where those two kind of marry up together. People are concerned about losing the personal touch. People really want to use AI a lot more. There's a large focus on hiring for critical skills, and I think those skills are going to be pretty key in helping companies adopt and implement AI in their processes.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:It reminds me of this idea of prompt engineer, which I don't know if that term is still being used, but the idea is that anyone could log into a chat GPT and ask a question, but, as we have firsthand experience ourselves, you get better at asking better questions to get better outputs out of an AI over time.
Speaker 3:Chat GPT, of course, is stands to reason that you would have people that would become subject matter experts in getting AI to find the right kinds of candidates or asking the right questions that maybe humans wouldn't necessarily think of to find the person that's going to be the best fit for the organization.
Speaker 3:I think one caution on that note for the industry is just that we're again, I'll be gentle, but we're, as an industry, this is the status quo can be. Hey, we just spent a million dollars on a new ATS. We kind of expect that we're just going to flip a switch and it's going to transform our recruitment function. Anyone who's implemented an ATS knows that really what you need is a paid consultant that's on staff full time for several months, if not a year, to customize and configure the ATS so that it actually does what you want it to do. And, using your unpaid intern analogy. If we do not expect a million-dollar piece of software to be something that you can just plug and play and deliver great results, why would we expect an unpaid intern to be able to do the same thing?
Speaker 2:That's pretty good. Yeah, I think that's fair. Maybe people see AI as just an easy lever to pull, and so we pull it a lot. Ai is more accessible, it's cheaper, it's easy, it's easy to use, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to use effectively. Yeah, I like that a lot. Yeah, and.
Speaker 3:I think this ties back to where we started the impersonal thing. Yeah, it can be impersonal if you just treat it like plug and play. If you want it to not be impersonal, you have to put the person in it, ie you, and spend time learning how to use the tool, become really good at instructing the AI to do exactly what you want, and I think that's where the human side actually comes in. Of course, at the end of the funnel too, but, like if we're actually talking about making the AI experience more personal, it needs to be directed by a person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. Well, you know a couple other ones that we'll call out. On Corn Ferry, you know people are focused on L&D. You know again, not a surprise, but I think at this point, like learning development is no longer optional. Two-thirds of employees will stay with companies that offer up-to-going opportunities. We do this a lot over at Change State. We pay to put our people through classes that are of interest to them, with the caveat that, hey, we're going to pay for you to learn how to build. You know build micro solutions or micro. You know tools using AI. You know you're going to come back to the team, the company and show everyone hey, here's what I learned and how we can apply it. Right, and you know I almost wonder.
Speaker 2:You know, I posit that. You know this interest in learning and development, this increased interest in upskilling. It's probably directly tied to people wanting to learn more about how to use AI. You know you go see. You know you go see your friend who's working at, you know, xyz company and like, oh, like, they're letting their company pop around using co-pilots to, you know interact and you know, rewrite their sales outreach email, like, oh, that's pretty cool, I would like to know how to do that too. And, like you know, people are either going to go you know, learn how to do that on their own, and you know and exit or, like you got an opportunity to, you know, help your employees stay, you know, by giving them a bit more training and development opportunities internally. Now I'd venture to guess that, boy, if we knew, you know, upscale and opportune these people are drawn towards, it's probably largely skewed or focused towards. All right, ai is coming. How can we better use it just as a whole?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you're right there. I mean, obviously you're closer to learning development than I am, but the obvious point that comes to mind is well, we all feel kind of insecure outside of our industry. Just, ai is coming. It's smarter than I am. If you spend any time on chat GBT, you can see it do something in 15 seconds that probably would have taken you a day and you have a worse output. So you know, I think that has direct implications for learning, not to say that we don't need to learn new skills in the future, but the reality is that will be AI's domain, and the question is how do we partner with AI in the context of learning and development, which I think is what you're saying?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Well, you know I'm not going to use this one as a throwaway, I don't think. You know. I just don't want to talk about hybrid offices, return to office. Like you know my opinions on remote work versus flexible work, I mean, like I think we're work versus flexible work. I mean like I think we're. You know we're in a unique spot change state we're. We're fully remote, right, and you know I wrote an article I don't even know where it's published at this point but, um, you know, on return to office and hey, like you know, for for smaller orgs, totally get it like it is very hard to hide.
Speaker 2:If you know you're a product marketer, uh, you're a program manager at at a chain state, like you know, or a startup, yeah, you're a program manager at a chain state or a startup. If you're not doing your job, it's going to be pretty easy for me to know, pretty easy to. You can't really hide, but if you're in a big company, boy, you can. And if you never come, if you have the world where you work for a company, you've never been in the office or met anyone, I don't know, like that's tough, that's tough. You know, we see this a lot. You know we've seen this with clients, we've seen this in industry.
Speaker 2:Like you know, wells Fargo, let people go, but you know I had a little plug in with just move their mouse every you know 10 remote call center employees. Then you ship them their computers and you know, two days later you see that they're in South Africa and like they've outsourced that job to someone else. These are real scenarios. So like, yeah, you know, I sympathize with you know hybrid and remote being, you know, a priority, that's what we are and I don't see any scenario where we, where we change, you know, but on the other side, like on some level, like you know, if you're an employer, you know you you probably want to know that your employees are working and like you know that's it's tough, you know it's tough, yeah well, you and I had a conversation offline about it, but maybe I'll bring it in here briefly.
Speaker 3:It's just that the hilarious part about this to me is that an organization of any size does not know whether the only way to tell whether their employees are actually working is to detect whether they have a mouse jiggler going on. I mean, we might have bigger problems than hybrid work if that's the status quo, I think, in the same way that somehow Elon Musk fired what 75% of Twitter's staff on day one and everyone thought that the platform was going to fall apart, and without weighing into the dirty, mucky water that is X now, I'll just say the numbers seem to suggest that that did not happen. The sky did not fall and I think it has more users than ever. So I don't know. It's just an interesting tidbit.
Speaker 3:It seems like what we should really be upset about as organizations that we have so much bloat that it's possible for someone to not do any work and fool you by working from home. What the implication seems to be is that it would be a better case to bring people back into the cubicles that we all hated. I mean, I didn't, but lots of people work in cubicles and we can all have unnecessary meetings and chat about around the water cooler and not get anything done. But at least we don't have a mouse jiggler going yet. So I don't know. I think it's a very interesting topic, but I think the general opinion that's being expressed in the public is kind of missing the point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and you know, I also think, like you know at some level, like a lot of the work that you've all you know done prior to change day too, is all like you know you get paid for doing a job, or you know finishing a project, and like talk about like, uh, you know a brand project, right. Like you know you get paid X dollars and it takes you Y hours. And like you know you're doing the work and like, when you're done, you're done. And like you know companies like that because they know that they're paying for a project to get done. And like you're paying for services that are clearly completed with a, with an output, right.
Speaker 2:And you know, I almost wonder, is, like you know it gets harder and harder, as, like you know jobs, you know the lines are blurred with what you know, with what your responsibilities even are sometimes Right, and I think that I don't know how many times we can use mouse jiggler.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, this year, like, but like, yeah, I mean, I. I think that's defining what someone's you know, quote, unquote job or responsibilities are is probably part of the problem, part of the challenge to part of the problem, right, you know, maybe five years ago, you and I talked about, you know, that podcast episode Bullshit Jobs, right, and like, just like boy, like we have a propensity to, like you know, create work for people, just to create work, not because it matters, like you know, it's just like hey, yep, you got a job, so we're going to find something for you to do. And thinking back two decades in my first company, first job yeah, I'm sure that was true we got to find something for Bob to do. And that's not the world that we're in right now, unfortunately. Well, I guess it is in some spots, but should it be? If we're trying to be more efficient, if there's not a job for you, maybe people are just going to end up being paid more for projects, for something with a finite endpoint to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, we're also worried rightly so, I think about AI taking all the jobs and what will people do for meaning and purpose? And when you were talking just on it, it made me think that maybe this transition has been going on for decades, you know, and maybe we'll see a sudden spike here with AI. But, like I imagine, there is a profound shift that occurred in workplaces. If you look 100 years ago, versus starting in like 70s and 80s, is it imaginable that our grandparents' generation would have just gotten paid six figures to go sit around in an office in a job where they could use a mouse jiggler to fool their boss? Maybe I'm naive, maybe it was like that, but I doubt it. I think that's a relatively recent invention, if you will. I don't know. I think we're just seeing acceleration of trends that have probably already been there for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was saying it yesterday and his dad, but I don't know. There's something cathartic about hey, it's really nice if I was selling widgets to know, hey, how much does it cost to build a widget and how much are you selling it for? Cool, I build a widget for a buck and I sell it for two. Like I make a dollar. And like, hey, like that's that's great, like and like it's a lot harder. And like today, like all right, what are we selling? We're selling uh, you know I'm not going to talk about our business, but like you know, it's a lot harder today in business in general, like when it's not like you know a clear, linear path to like hey, like, yep, I gotta go, you know got to go. You know I got to go buy the material. I got to, like I got to, you know, investment that I'm making like machines, blah blah, blah model is broken.
Speaker 3:It probably has been breaking for a while, as I was hinting at a moment ago. In a world where we have computers that can do most of that busy work that people just did, whether it was necessary or not, to justify their existence, it makes even less. It's impossible to ignore when you can have a computer do that for you in 10 seconds right, a week's worth of work in 10 seconds. So we're probably going to have to, whether we like it or not, and many people may go kicking and screaming think about new ways of compensating people. It doesn't mean there won't be jobs, but does it make sense anymore to pay someone by the hour rather than for some kind of very specific body of work that they complete? I don't know if the hourly model will be around for too much longer. At least I would hope not, because I don't particularly love it myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you know, I just you know we'll close with, like I think I saw, probably a tweet from, like Reid Hoffman. Like he said, you know I'm paraphrasing, for, obviously, but you know, in the next decade, you know, people are going to be using AI so much that, like, the cost of getting work done is going to decrease so substantially that, like you know, people are gonna have a lot more free time but, like, the most important skills are going to be, you know, those that can critically think and like recognize, you know, or properly feed or train ai algorithms. And you know the world's gonna look very different, you know, I think a world of work is going to look a lot different, you know. You know everyone says now, but I don't think things are going to move that much quickly, too quickly, but it's going to be a different world.
Speaker 3:I just want to have my cabin in the wood before that happens. So that's my only request to the universe.
Speaker 2:You and me both you and me both. I think we'll move on to another. We'll call it a prediction trend forecast. I really love well, it's the predictions coming out of Steve Hunt's article, I think it was. It's on LinkedIn, we'll share it in the notes but a guide to HR predictions, trends and forecasts. So, steve, he's written multiple books. Actually, he might even live in a cabin, marty, I have no idea. Never met Steve, but I know he lives somewhere a couple hours or an hour or so outside of Portland. So somewhere, maybe in a cabin, maybe close to a job Cabin, beach house cabin, something like that. Yeah, but multiple books in the TA space. Worked at SAP SuccessFactors as the chief expert on technology and was also their global VP of HCM research too. So I like his content quite a bit. I would say definitely follow Steve. And he wrote a guide that's probably just a lens more on HR predictions, trends and just some of his lessons for how you navigate what he's called the flood of annual forecasts or annual trends. And boy we agree, and maybe some irony that we're talking about him here.
Speaker 2:Still, too, like a lot of these trends, people are always repackaging. You know old problems, right, and so you know let's just talk about. You know, quiet quitting, right, okay, well, it's just retention of employees, right? Like you know whether people are quitting, or you know, doing it quietly, telling you like you know, at the end of the day, like, yeah, you want to recognize underperformers, poor performers, you know you want to focus on. You know, at the end of the day, like, yeah, you want to recognize underperformers, poor performers, you know you want to focus on, um, you know retention, right.
Speaker 2:And you know, uh, I think you use the phrase you know, old wine and new bottles, uh, quite a bit, I like that. Yeah, I like that too. So, you know, pay attention to, you know, the repackaging of old problems. You know, in new bottles, uh, love that quite a bit. You know, I think the other one that you know probably stood out, there was, like you know, moch, you know, it's just pay attention to it what he's called a slow adoption of hr tech and, like moche, most hr tech predictions take years, even decades, to material materialize, and so one of his examples is just cloud-based HR systems. But rapid adoption, especially for something like generative AI, is just going to be rare. Now I'll pause and let you respond to that one in particular, marty, before I go too deep, into the weeds.
Speaker 3:I wasn't that familiar with Steve Hunt, but I'm liking what I'm seeing here based on this trend report. I mean it's kind of an appeal to common sense. Like, yes, we all it's fun to look at trend reports, but if you're really like an HR executive, so detached from your business where you're like boy, I better look on the internet and see what I should be focused on this year. Like you know, maybe that's not the best thing. So I think what Steve is saying a lot of this is just like use common sense, don't get blindsided by rebrands, essentially of old concepts. Yes, you know we can talk about quiet quitting, but really, why are we losing people, regardless of how we're losing them or the method in which they inform us of this is where you should be focused. In which they inform us of this is where you should be focused. Yeah, we should try to get Steve on the podcast, even if you're out there. Consider it an open invitation. I'd love to chat with that guy.
Speaker 2:a little more. We will reach out to Steve and see if we can get him to join for sure. Yeah, I'll just kind of call out some. What I'll call is practical suggestions. This is one that I think everyone should read. It's the stuff that we do every day, you know. Start with your current challenges. Right, you know diversity. Diversify your data sources. You know this is one you know, marty, you know I talk about. Even with our trends survey. I, like you know, disclaimer. Like you, should not make business decisions after reading our report. You shouldn't make business decisions after reading a Gartner report. You should give varied perspectives. Again, we think our TA transport is going to be great, but that doesn't mean someone should pick it up and read it and say you know what?
Speaker 2:Applicant fraud is a growing concern. Yeah, we saw that happen once. We need to revamp our whole application process to make sure that we're checking out where people are, that applicants are actually real. Again, diversify your sources. And then the other piece is I love this challenge the data and ignore irrelevant trends. There's going to be a lot of stuff that doesn't necessarily add add value, right, you know. And so you know. Know what problems you're trying to solve. You know, know what challenges you're trying to solve, talk to more than just one vendor, talk to more. You know, dig into more than one data source. You know and you know, just know, that, like you know, there's gonna be a lot of trends that are out there that are just not going to be unique or helpful to your organization.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. I mean I think that I'm a market researcher, so let me just underscore that point. I mean trends. We often see the numbers, like 65% of people said that the AI is the top priority for next year. Okay, but what that also means is 35% of people said it's not a top priority for the next year. And I think it's easy, if you're not used to looking at data or if you're just being presented a infographic style statistic, to think boy, I'm really missing the boat here. Fair to ask the question am I missing the boat? But also keep in mind that three to four out of 10 people are also quote unquote missing the boat, and maybe you're right where you're supposed to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I mean, you know I still love my favorite book, how to Lie with Statistics, and like I screenshot. You know examples almost every day. You know across. You know Twitter and you know where else right, wherever else I'm. You know reading and like, hey, like at the end of the day, like a lot of folks are, you know, in these data reports, you know we're aligned with statistics, right, and so challenge the data. You know, fully agree with you on that, steve. You know, challenge the data. And then you know let's pivot to.
Speaker 2:You know one final one we don't want to gloss over. You know employer brand near and dear to your heart. You know your good friend. You know, Mr James Ellis, you know I'll. You know I'll lead by saying like hey, mr James Ellis, I'll lead by saying hey. In the Korn Ferry report one of their trends was like hey, your EVP is finally VIP. So almost 50% of HR pros are prioritizing cultural values to attract and retain talent. Strong EVPs are important and they better align to the employee experience and be showcased during recruitment. So on one side, korn Ferry says, oh boy, this is something to pay attention to. Yeah, James Ellis had a little bit more of a provocative take. I think he said hey, my big prediction is I think employer branding is going to become a quote bad word in 2025. So you know the question is. So the question to you, marty do we need to rebrand right? Do we need to change how we're thinking about employer brand? Like, tell me, tell me, wax poetic on your thoughts here.
Speaker 3:James Ellis is always. I would call him a provocateur and I think that he would actually really take that as a compliment. At least I think he would. You know he's always got interesting takes. I always enjoy reading what James has to write and I don't necessarily disagree with him on this point.
Speaker 3:I mean, we've all been talking about this stuff for such a long time. Part of my struggle getting into this and we've talked at length on the podcast about this is like what's this thing called employer brand? At length on the podcast about this is like what's this thing called employer brand? Most people in the organization don't know about it. It's kind of new. How does it relate to our master brand?
Speaker 3:Obviously, this is what we spend lots of time with our clients talking about these questions, and it's always been our point of view that the employer brand is really just another face of the master brand of the organization that has different faces. Usually you're thinking about the consumer facing face, but there's employer facing faces. You could even talk about the perceptions that a company has to its vendors. That'd be another example. I don't think anyone's talking about vendor brand, but it's just a point that there are lots of different faces to it.
Speaker 3:So to have carved this out as an industry and say, no, no, we've got our own separate thing called employer brand, always seemed a little bit off to me, I suppose. Now I don't know if that makes it a bad or a dirty word. I do think people are probably just tired of hearing about EVPs and employer brand. I mean, I love doing this stuff and I'm kind of tired of it. So, yeah, I think you know, ironically, we need a rebrand of employer brand. That's kind of what James is saying, and I'm not sure I disagree, but we should have him on to ask him what his ideas are. How would he rebrand?
Speaker 2:it? Yeah, I mean, I guess my question would be like do we just change the approach for how we approach employer brand projects? Why does it feel like a dirty word, I think?
Speaker 3:it feels like a dirty word because he kind of walks you through the history of it a little bit, which was enlightening to me because obviously I've only been in this space for five years. But like, oh, it was like a novel concept that an organization should have to even provide a reason why someone should work for them. You know, the power balance probably 50, 80 years ago was completely inverted and it was just like you should be, this is a privilege to come, have a chance to work for us and you know, come and find out was kind of the attitude. Then we got into this employer branding area where there's this novel idea, that boy, maybe we should tell people why they should work here, and I think he's arguing that we have been in that era for some time.
Speaker 3:The problem is and you know this is preaching to the choir I love to hear James talk about it is that people just focused on tactics and it became kind of slimy. And I think this is where the dirtiness of it comes in. It's squeaky clean If you look at somebody's career side and they all have the same tired copy. I mean, we've gone on and on about it. I won't dwell on it, but everything just feels a bit corporate, sterile, lacking in personality, lacking in uniqueness, lacking in distinctiveness, and people are tired and there's been a lot of bait and switch. People have treated brand like a trick. You need to pull over someone to get them to work for you, rather than hey, let's just be honest and get really honest, but to the core of what makes us special and if that sounds good to you, come on board.
Speaker 3:I don't know that was a rambling response, but I think the dirtiness relates, at least to me, for the sense that people have where it's just exploitative. It's no different than any other marketing. You know brands that have real resonance and they're authentic and that's why you choose to have relationships with them, and you know the slimy ads that are bait and switch billboard advertising, and there's a distinct difference in terms of how you feel about that marketing, and I think our industry has been a lot more towards the used car salesman side of that spectrum, unfortunately. Hopefully it's changing, though. I think that's what James is at least hoping or expecting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do wonder if there's. I just don't know how. You know how we best as an industry, you know, educate you know leaders on the importance of a brand, like how you define, manage or promote your employer brand. I think you know one of our you know questions in our you know study is around.
Speaker 2:You know obstacles in defining, managing and promoting your employer brand and you know you'll probably yell at me later for my interpretation of data, but I would say like, hey, securing budget and you know, is the largest obstacle, at least the way I interpret the data, marty, you'll tell me I'm wrong. When you're done with it period, it's the largest you know obstacle that an organization really faces. Right, it's securing budget and, like you know, I think you know brand leaders, you know, I think that's a problem, right, and and if you have trouble getting budget for brand type initiatives, you know, I almost wonder, like, is that just a reflection on you know not understanding how to you know, prove your you know, prove why an employer brand exists, prove why you're investing in your brand period. Call it an employer brand, call it what you will is important. Again, you should tell me I'm wrong, because I like to hear it.
Speaker 3:No, I don't think you're wrong. I mean, I do often think you're wrong, but not on this program. You know it is incumbent upon employer brand managers, directors, those sort of mid-level people to help leadership understand what employer brand is. I mean, on the one hand, I want to say the CEO should get it because it's super important and a profound concept, even though it's kind of gotten a bad rap maybe for overuse. But like, yeah, you do have to do it.
Speaker 3:So if I see securing budget is one of the biggest obstacles or the biggest obstacle, well, why is that? Historically, we may have had a kind of sarcastic response to that and say, well, the organization is just lame and they don't see the value. No, maybe it's an organization that's for 20 years has been told how important an employer brand is and every year the budget increases so you can buy more tactic based approaches to employer brand and we never really see a result and no one knows why the hell people work here. You know that could also be a reason why it's hard to see your budget and if that's why, I can't necessarily disagree with it. Um, so again, I think it does tie back to the sliminess of the industry, the dirtiness of some of the tactics, why would we want to invest in it?
Speaker 3:And I think James made another interesting point, which is that if it's all about tactics and the latest shiniest new bells and whistles that you can put on your career site or the newest greatest enhanced employer brand profile whatever that is that XYZ vendor is selling you're going to lose because you probably don't have the biggest war chest. So do you really want it to be a spending war is kind of the question he poses to people, and most of us don't work for Fortune. You know top 10 revenue companies in the world, right, and the irony, of course, is those companies don't actually need to spend the money because they have such strong brands that people know about them. So I don't know. There's an interesting paradox there, I suppose. Yes, it's going to cost money, but I don't think you need a lot of money to do effective employer branding. You can make up for a lot of the lack of budget through smarts, critical thinking and elbow grease, and I'm just not sure a lot of teams are equipped to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to leave that one and I think that's going to be the logical place for us to end. We'll certainly see if we get James back on to share some additional thoughts on that Same thing with Steve. And hey, hopefully we get some folks from Corn Fairy on here as well soon, because you know, I think all three articles you know reports, predictions or whatever you want to label them, you know three of the better, you know sort of attention getters that you know I think we saw, you know, to start the year and super excited to you know, challenge everyone. To, you know, think a little bit differently. And you know, don't just accept that. Hey, like someone says, hey, the biggest trend is HR technology, like that doesn't mean anything. Um, you know, it just doesn't like. And you know, maybe we'll be a little bit more vocal, um, this year. I'm like, you know it just doesn't mean anything. And so, you know, let's get some practical examples of you know, the biggest trend in business for 2025 is making money.
Speaker 3:That means about as much as that.
Speaker 2:Growth, growth. Well, I think that's a good place to put another pin in it, marty, but super excited for everything that we have going this year. We got a lot of fresh content. Fresh, everything coming everyone's way. So, um, don't forget to, you know, share the episode with your broader network and, uh, we'll catch you take our survey, don't forget change state survey yeah, all right.
Speaker 2:All right, everyone. Have a good one. Take care, mart, marty, all right. Thanks for tuning in. As always, head on over to changestateio or shoot us a note on all the social media. We'd love to hear from you and we'll check you guys next week.