Jack Coapman – HR Tech 2024 – Why People and Process Drive Recruitment Success

Connect with Jack:

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Connect with David:

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• GR8 People
• Salary.com Consulting practice
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 23
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 21

• “You don’t want to get days, weeks, months into a screening process with somebody only to find at the end that you’re never going to be able to align the dots when it comes to [the compensation] that candidate is seeking and what the organization wants to pay.”

Announcer: 0:01

The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data technology and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

 

David Turetsky: 0:38

Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky, and we are here live at the 2024 HR Technology Conference in beautiful Mandalay Bay, exposition center in Las Vegas, Nevada. I am with one of my best friends in the HR world, in the world, who is a fellow suffering New York Giants fan, none other than the great Jack Coapman from gr8 People!

 

Jack Coapman: 1:03

Why thank you for that kind introduction. And yes, a New York Giants fan, and I have the scars and the disappointing afternoons to prove for it.

 

David Turetsky: 1:12

But you know, you don't have the tattoo that has the broken heart with the Giants symbol.

 

Jack Coapman: 1:17

I do not have that.

 

David Turetsky: 1:17

I'm waiting for that Jack, and you are

 

Jack Coapman: 1:19

I'm still leaning on the Super Bowl years, and I remembering those fondly.

 

David Turetsky: 1:22

When were that?

 

Jack Coapman: 1:24

Let's see, it was many, many moons ago. Many, many moons ago.

 

David Turetsky: 1:28

Oh, not that many. It's not like the Rangers in 1994

 

Jack Coapman: 1:30

This is true, and hey, we've got a big game tonight. Who knows what's going to happen?

 

David Turetsky: 1:35

Okay, the people who are listening this know that the Cowboys beat the crap out of the Giants 56 to nothing or something, like a Penn State score over Kent State, but, you know, hopefully it doesn't happen that way.

 

Jack Coapman: 1:46

On any given day.

 

David Turetsky: 1:47

Yes,

 

Jack Coapman: 1:47

on any given day,

 

David Turetsky: 1:48

any given Thursday, now that it's on

 

Jack Coapman: 1:50

Thursday night. So good news is I have a red eye home tonight, back to Philadelphia, which should say something. Being a Giants fan in Philadelphia is not the easiest,

 

David Turetsky: 1:58

exactly

 

Jack Coapman: 1:58

place to be a Giants fan. But I think on this day, I think people have more despise for the Cowboys than they do for the Giants.

 

David Turetsky: 2:07

Yes. That's true. And they're probably loving the Giants because they gave them Saquon Barkley!

 

Jack Coapman: 2:12

So you had to go there too.

 

David Turetsky: 2:13

I did. It's on tape.

 

Jack Coapman: 2:15

I love, I love Barkley. I love what he's a Pennsylvania boy,

 

David Turetsky: 2:19

yes.

 

Jack Coapman: 2:20

Love what he did with Penn State.

 

David Turetsky: 2:22

Yep

 

Jack Coapman: 2:22

Wished we could have given him the showcase in the offensive line that he's gotten out.

 

David Turetsky: 2:28

Of course

 

Jack Coapman: 2:28

But it is what it is

 

David Turetsky: 2:29

and a quarterback, yep.

 

Jack Coapman: 2:31

So everybody's wondering, what does this have to do with recruiting and salaries and, everything?

 

David Turetsky: 2:35

Well, we're gonna, we're gonna tie it back to that, because it all does tie back to the Giants and and and having a good corporate culture, and having a good management and leadership style, and then being able to pay people what they deserve.

 

Jack Coapman: 2:48

Yes! There you go. There's always a linkage in there somewhere, right?

 

David Turetsky: 2:51

We can always bring it back to the shit storm that is the New York Giants. And if the if the Tisch family hears this, I apologize. If you have a job open in the compensation department, let me know!

 

Jack Coapman: 3:02

That's right, or the data science part?

 

David Turetsky: 3:05

Exactly. Yeah, we can help you with that too. But before we get started, what's one fun thing that no one knows about Jack Coapman?

 

Jack Coapman: 3:13

Well, we already disclosed the Giants.

 

David Turetsky: 3:15

Yeah, but that's not a secret. That's not a secret.

 

Jack Coapman: 3:17

Well, I think what would be a surprise? So early on, I've always been a singer, whether it's on my own and such, but I sing in our church choir. I sing at family, you know, celebrations. I haven't done a Bar Mitzvah yet. That's not on

 

David Turetsky: 3:31

Bar Mitzvahs? the docket. I'd have to, I'd have to go out and find what songs to do at a Bar Mitzvah. Hava Nagila

 

Jack Coapman: 3:38

Yeah, I think I know the words to that! And you know what? I have had the opportunity to officiate a couple weddings for family, friends and the such, which has been just awesome to do. Just awesome to do.

 

David Turetsky: 3:50

So I'll post his phone number in the show notes. So if you need someone

 

Jack Coapman: 3:54

I am, I am certified in the state of Pennsylvania as an official wedding officiant. Yes

 

David Turetsky: 3:59

There you go! That's wonderful. That's news.

 

Jack Coapman: 4:01

Yep, it is

 

David Turetsky: 4:02

it's great news.

 

Jack Coapman: 4:02

It is.

 

David Turetsky: 4:03

So if we know anybody who's getting married, please call Jack Coapman at 215... So Jack, the first question I have to ask is, and this is one of the ones that I've been talking a lot about, especially in thought leadership and actually in presentations I've done very recently. The world of recruiting and compensation are really overlapping in a lot of ways now because they share a lot of data, they share a lot of processes, obviously they're so intertwined in the candidate experience and the employee experience. But from your perspective, where is where is it going? Where is the that relationship between recruiting and compensation going?

 

Jack Coapman: 4:49

Well, you know, the compensation question is always first and foremost, right? And I think you know, over time, what we've seen is that recruiting teams never really wanted to get into the compensation topic until farther on in the screening and selection process, right? They were the only ones that wanted to push that conversation farther back. The candidate wanted to understand what it was like their first or second question. So I think what's great is getting that information back up front for the benefit of the job seeker, to know that this is worth my time, to learn more about your organization as such, but it's also good for the for the recruiting team, because they've got so much on their hands right now. Why go through an entire process with them, with somebody, when there is an alignment, when there is not alignment, on what the candidates expecting and what the organization is willing to offer for the role, and everything you don't want to get, you know, X number of days, weeks, months, into a screening process with somebody only to find at the end that you're not you're never going to be able to align the dots when it comes to what that candidate is seeking and what the organization wants to pay.

 

David Turetsky: 5:49

Yeah. And so, taking it back to the Saquon Barkley conversation, you know, the he they had a number in mind. He had a number in mind, and they were never going to get together.

 

Jack Coapman: 5:56

They were never going to do that. Yeah, they were never going to do that.

 

David Turetsky: 5:59

And if, if take one had known right away what the number was, then it could have short circuited everything, and he could have had more conversations with other teams

 

Jack Coapman: 6:08

Well. And I think it also, I mean, it also, you're too funny. I mean, did everybody notice how he tied that all together, like it with a nice, neat bow? But I think what was also interesting with it, I mean, was that they had a lot of other options, right? If you're not going to spend money on Barkley or on somebody coming into the organization, where else you're going to put that money to use? And

 

David Turetsky: 6:28

Free agency.

 

Jack Coapman: 6:29

Yep, free agency. And, you know, you're going to invest that not in that person, but in the offensive line, in that case, to help with the next running back that's coming

 

David Turetsky: 6:37

Yup or the draft class, because, because way before that we had the draft issue.

 

Jack Coapman: 6:41

yep.

 

David Turetsky: 6:42

And you know where are we gonna go there? So sorry tying this back to the topic at hand!

 

Jack Coapman: 6:48

Game time is at 8:15 East Coast time, and my tailgate friends are already at the stadium, I think, enjoying,

 

David Turetsky: 6:54

wow

 

Jack Coapman: 6:55

some libations and food.

 

David Turetsky: 6:57

yes. And we're still here at the HR Tech conference.

 

Jack Coapman: 7:00

Yes, we're still here. I've got sore feet and knees to prove it.

 

David Turetsky: 7:03

Yes, yes,

 

Jack Coapman: 7:04

yep.

 

David Turetsky: 7:07

is going to be influenced by really regulation. Because, as we all know, pay transparency is now the law, and there are regulations in place that say that on postings, in many states, by the way, on postings, you need to make sure that you're telling people an accurate representation of what the hiring range might be.

 

Jack Coapman: 7:32

Yep

 

David Turetsky: 7:33

Jack. How does this affect the world of recruiting?

 

Jack Coapman: 7:36

Well, it's really just another data element, and I think, once again, that trans that that that sense of transparency now kind of opens things up, right? So I think what, what, at least when the first one and nothing like a regulation to get people kind of focused on something, right?

 

David Turetsky: 7:51

exactly

 

Jack Coapman: 7:51

But I think if they if it's if it's done right, and you don't have, I think initially, when we and you correct me, if I'm wrong here, you're kind of the experts on this side. But I think what we started seeing is like, they'd have a role for a sales professional, and the salary range was 25 to $250,000 and it's kind of like, okay, well, where is it? Is it farther down? Is it farther up? And that wasn't really helpful to the organization, but that's probably the best that the organization could do in terms of saying, what the, what the, what the pay scale was going to be.

 

David Turetsky: 8:23

Well, very famously, there was an example that Netflix had posted a flight attendant job for 60,000 to$385,000 a year. You know, when people look and

 

Jack Coapman: 8:34

And I guess that's transparent to a certain extent?

 

David Turetsky: 8:37

Transparent, transparently foggy. Because if you were a flight attendant, you were looking at that, you were saying, Well, wait a minute, right now, my current role, I get probably 150 and it's a negotiated, sub-contract that's negotiated. What the hell are they doing?

 

Jack Coapman: 8:53

Yeah

 

David Turetsky: 8:53

And so that very famously was a very big mistake. And I don't know whether anybody got fired. And if you're a Netflix professional that in the compensation realm, please let me know. But, and if you need a job, let me know. But you know that that's just not compliant. And so we use that as an example, but it's a very good example to your point before that you're not helping anybody when you're being that opaque.

 

Jack Coapman: 9:18

right

 

David Turetsky: 9:19

And in fact, you're, you're violating the regulation, and you're gonna get fined for it.

 

Jack Coapman: 9:22

And I think people that was early on, right? And I think people have gotten certainly a little sharper on that, but, you know, it's still the fact that that is one element that I think that goes into a job seeker's mind when they're thinking about changing, and I think there's so much the more that needs to kind of come into play with that. It's like, you know, what is the role? Am I a good fit for that role, regardless of compensation. Am I really a good fit for that role from a skills, you know, standpoint, but also, is the culture right? Is it right for me? Do I have to be in the office? Do? I mean, there are so many things that go into, you know, not only the requirements on the company, but also what the job seeker wants, because anymore, you know, it's, it's not just about comp, that is absolutely an important part of it,

 

David Turetsky: 10:02

yeah

 

Jack Coapman: 10:03

Because that is the sustaining life for them. And you know, they've got to pay the bills and make sure they can do that. But at the end of the day, you can pay a lot of money and be really unhappy in your job for whatever reason. Your hiring manager, the work you're doing, the work you're not doing that you wish you could be doing.

 

David Turetsky: 10:18

There are a lot of movies on how miserable people are at their job. I've never been miserable at my job, so I've never known that, but

 

Jack Coapman: 10:24

that's why we're still working!

 

David Turetsky: 10:25

Yeah, I'm just kidding

 

Jack Coapman: 10:26

When we get tired of it

 

David Turetsky: 10:27

I was just kidding, by the way

 

Jack Coapman: 10:29

I thought you were serious!

 

David Turetsky: 10:30

No, no, no, I've been miserable sometimes. I love what I do now, but I've been miserable sometimes.

 

Jack Coapman: 10:35

There are, there are times when we're miserable, you know what? We get up in the morning and we go back to fix things

 

David Turetsky: 10:39

Absolutely!

 

Jack Coapman: 10:40

so that's the fun part of this

 

David Turetsky: 10:41

And, you know, and that's a that's a much more mature way of looking at it. Yeah, I wanted to know an

 

Jack Coapman: 10:45

interesting view. Can I ask you a question?

 

David Turetsky: 10:47

Of course, you may!

 

Jack Coapman: 10:48

So as I look at this from the recruiting standpoint, how do you look at it from the compensation side, as somebody that kind of lives and breathes in that compensation side, how do you think that? How do you think it effects kind of recruiting?

 

David Turetsky: 10:59

Well, to me, it is one of the best things to happen to the relationship between recruiters and comp that we've had for a long time, because now they have to actually talk. And now it's not just where I publish a range based on what compensation is given to me. Actually, there's got to be a conversation that we're having about, you know, okay, is this the relevant range? Do we need to go to the higher end of this range, or where should we be strategizing for hiring this kind of a role, and you become more of a consultant to the manager, between comp, the recruiter and manager, have a conversation about what's our strategy here? Because if all of your competitors are trying to hire the same position, you can now transparently see what they're putting as the hiring range and make a more strategic move.

 

Jack Coapman: 11:50

Yeah

 

David Turetsky: 11:50

and that's not collusion. That's the law!

 

Jack Coapman: 11:52

That's the law.

 

David Turetsky: 11:53

So now all these companies have the ability to see what are my direct competitors actually paying for this job. So it becomes, it's not a whack a mole, or it's not a, you know, kind of chasing my tail, but at least it enables you to have those mature business conversations about what we can afford and what do we need.

 

Jack Coapman: 12:10

Yeah, and I don't know, I don't know when, when you know the conversation we're coming about, about mandating paid transparency, if they, if they really thought about that as competitive intel for the people that are out there looking right? So I thought that was an interesting byproduct of that, because you're right, you know, if you're opening up a new job, gosh, all you got to do is go to, you know, a job board, look at the posting a similar job, and you go, Okay, well, I need to pay this amount of money for this role. And, you know, yeah,

 

David Turetsky: 12:37

yeah, exactly. And now, some of the things that I've been talking to companies about around that are they say, Well, my state doesn't require it. And I say, Okay, well, are your competitors operating in other states? Yes, okay. Well, many of the companies I've been talking to and consulting with, I'm telling them choose one strategy across all your entities and post ranges if you are operating in states that post require posting, because otherwise you're going to have to have bifurcation strategies, and it's going to get very confusing to everybody. So post your ranges.

 

Jack Coapman: 13:09

Do you think the hesitancy on the part of those organizations not wanting to post that is that they just don't feel they need to share that, or they don't have the data to back it up, or they think it's going to put them in a competitive disadvantage?

 

David Turetsky: 13:20

So I think it goes back to even more earlier than that. It's very expensive to create all that data, it's very expensive to maintain all that data, and many organizations have the culture of not sharing, of not being transparent. And so transparency and implementing transparency is expensive, and it takes a ton of training, especially for stakeholders like managers and employees, and, you know, for candidates, we need to be transparent, and we also need to talk their language. You can't use midpoint regressions. We can't say, you know, market penetration. We can't say we target the 50th percentile of the market, yeah, what? What does that mean? I don't know

 

Jack Coapman: 14:02

None of that makes sense

 

David Turetsky: 14:03

even though that means middle so. So, so to me, companies that are not transparent, that have transparency forced on them because of market forces, are going to go into it very angrily, and they're going to do whatever the minimum is, and they're going to get a lot of pushback from internal stakeholders, and they're going to say, Oh, this has been a nightmare for us. Well, you didn't put in the work. So of course it's gonna be a nightmare. So I think it's gonna force most companies to become transparent.

 

Jack Coapman: 14:32

Yep, and you know, if it makes them better, it makes them better at their job, makes it better to attract talent, and opens up those conversations, all the better for it, right?

 

David Turetsky: 14:41

I think it's going to take a lot of of investment, and I think companies are going to be very wary of that investment, because we can't afford what we're doing now, and now this stuff is being forced on us. It's going to come from somewhere, and it's going to hurt.

 

Jack Coapman: 14:57

Yeah, yep.

 

Announcer: 15:00

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David Turetsky: 15:10

So let's talk a little bit about the recruiting tech and recruiting processes and how they've evolved. Because beyond pay transparency, we're we're here at the HR technology show, there's a lot of stuff being talked about, but mostly one thing,

 

Jack Coapman: 15:26

AI, yes, oh my goodness, it is. It is. I have never seen a two letter acronym take over a profession, an initiative in an or in in an industry like AI has!

 

David Turetsky: 15:44

Do you think it's overused?

 

Jack Coapman: 15:46

Well, I think there's probably a lot of AI powered solutions that have, have very little AI power behind them. But it is the buzz and it is what's, it's what's, it's what everybody wants to talk about.

 

David Turetsky: 16:00

Sure

 

Jack Coapman: 16:00

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether it's AI powered or a little mouse running around on a wheel powering it. If it

 

David Turetsky: 16:08

Whose name is AI!

 

Jack Coapman: 16:09

Whose name is AI, you know, at the end of the day, you've got to be able to prove the outputs and the outcomes from it. And if you can't improve cycle time, if you can't improve quality of talent, if you can't improve efficiency on the part of the recruiting team, I don't care what it is, right? And this is something that every organization has been focused on, shaving an hour off the recruiting time, an hour off the cost of and as such. But I think what's really important the context of today is, is that you've seen TA teams just absolutely get dismantled, and just, you know, you know,

 

David Turetsky: 16:40

Blown up

 

Jack Coapman: 16:41

Just just dismantled because of economy and COVID and all that kind of stuff, and now they just don't have time to do these things. So anytime you can use some type of a new technology to improve how I'm doing interviews, how I'm searching on people, how I'm matching on people, if you can help recruiters be much more efficient, they hopefully can keep up with the demands of the organization to fulfill what they've been hired to do, and that's to connect people with talent in the organization.

 

David Turetsky: 17:05

You know Jack, one of the strange things as I look around this show floor to your point, is I see a lot of point solutions that take on a piece of the process, like right behind us, there's a company that does scheduling of interviews. And you go a couple of steps further, and you get the AI bot that actually does the interviews and provides a summary of feedback, and what not.

 

Jack Coapman: 17:31

And another utility that will look at the outcome from the interview Yeah, and, and I think this has been something

 

David Turetsky: 17:35

Exactly that has, that has plagued, you know specifically, and I've been in TA for a couple decades now, so I think that's been something that's plagued there's always the new shiny toy. There's always the promise that this is going to be a game changer and everything. And I've had a number of conversations this week and in previous conversation with prospects and customers, that if you don't have the fundamentals right, if you don't have the fundamentals right, in terms of what your strategy is to attract talent to your brand.

 

Jack Coapman: 18:02

How you complement that organic traffic coming in

 

David Turetsky: 18:02

Right and discover new talent through your sourcing efforts, your hiring process, and then ultimately, kind of in between is your marketing aspect. You don't have the basics down, I don't care what kind of improvement you're going to have on one specific activity in that it's just not going to work because you don't have the basics down. But I think too many people many people. Was talking to somebody, a TA leader, the other day here, yesterday, the days are a blur here, but he was sharing that he came in with an idea in terms of exactly what he was looking for and what he wanted to accomplish with a TA team. He was walking out and he it was his eyes were glazed over, because there were so many different things that he saw in new shiny, you know, I've got grandchildren, believe that or not, I've got grandchildren. And they walk into a candy store and they they go speechless. It's the same thing with TA leaders going into this event, and that there's so many areas that they could but they missed the point. I think they miss the point, and this is certainly not a commentary, but they miss the point that you've got to get the basics down from a from a process of people in a technology perspective. But just, just to kind of give them a little benefit of the doubt, here you have hundreds, if not thousands of people screaming at you every day. As a you know, they're they're clients. We need this to get better. We need that to get better. We need more more candidates. We need better candidates. We need more experienced candidates. We need evergreen recs. We need this. We need that. And they're trying to balance everything, and trying to dot the i's and cross the T's, and then they come to this show, and you've got everybody screaming at you about, you know, how every process in the entirety from, you know, the publication of the rec, or actually, from the approval process of the rec, all the way through to the onboarding experience, and making sure that you don't drop the ball in the in that interim, in that honeymoon phase. So there are so many people screaming at this person, God, I just wouldn't want to be them and have to deal with all that

 

Jack Coapman: 20:02

Hey, not that these solutions are not worth it, because if they, you know, interview process has always been a challenge historically through the process, right and as such. But ultimately, what happens is, when you start trying to fix a problem with a third party solution coming in, and you do that for this part of the process, today, you do it for this part of the process tomorrow, you do it for another part of the process the day after that, all of a sudden, you've solved those problems, but you've created more,

 

David Turetsky: 20:27

oh, my god,

 

Jack Coapman: 20:27

opportunity, more challenges in terms of now you're delivering really inconsistent user experiences to people that are coming into the organization and people that are using these systems.

 

David Turetsky: 20:37

Yeah.

 

Jack Coapman: 20:37

And now that you look at their screen and they've got 27 tabs open, and they're working

 

David Turetsky: 20:42

200 notifications that are pushing them in different directions

 

Jack Coapman: 20:45

that's something that they end up live with, right? And, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's been interesting to see how far this industry and how far the TA profession has come, you know, and just the role that technology has played in it. But you still can't get by that this is still, regardless of where you can shave time off and automate tasks and everything, it is still a people business. You still have to talk. Recruiters got to talk to a job seeker, and recruiters got to talk to a hiring manager. A lot of things you can infer and learn through AI, sure, but it boils down to those conversations and convincing somebody to, you know, the role of a recruiter, leave that current job, come over to this opportunity. That's really where the that's really where the heart of it is, I think, and it will continue to be!

 

David Turetsky: 21:27

Well, I mean, at the end of the day, as long as we're still hiring people, and you're hiring into an organization of people, people have got to be involved.

 

Jack Coapman: 21:36

yeah

 

David Turetsky: 21:36

And, you know, until the AI overlords take over everything, and then they tell us how we're working for them.

 

Jack Coapman: 21:43

And there's specific places that that works just perfectly, right? If you're in a in a high volume field based hiring mode, and you know, you don't have to really get

 

David Turetsky: 21:49

Yeah. into the interesting intrinsic, you know, skill sets of somebody, and you're looking for somebody to fill a shift into

 

Jack Coapman: 21:55

But you can do the majority of that online if such you can do the majority of that online together. Now, you hope they show up for their first day, obviously! staffing and putting something in a position is important. But when you start looking at more of the, you know, more of the skills based people that are coming in, you know, in the organization, that are adding value at a maybe a little higher, you know, role and comp level, right?

 

David Turetsky: 22:19

Right

 

Jack Coapman: 22:19

It's still that people, it's still that

 

David Turetsky: 22:21

higher touch,

 

Jack Coapman: 22:22

higher touch, to get them into the organization and to keep them there.

 

David Turetsky: 22:24

Yes, right, exactly, well, and where I've seen lots of failures in a phenomenal, phenomenal recruiting process, is that gap between the moment I say, Yeah, I accept the job, and the moment that they they start on that first day.

 

Jack Coapman: 22:38

Yep

 

David Turetsky: 22:38

You know that onboarding experience gets absolutely obliterated when you know you ghost them. You know you ghost that candidate who is not an employee yet, right? And they're like, Oh my God, you are so interested in getting me on board. And you know, I haven't heard from you. Where do I even go for my first day? You know, who the hell am I reporting to?

 

Jack Coapman: 22:59

And it's not an it's not a difficult it's not a difficult problem to solve, right? You have, you know, you've got tools out there that are automating marketing, message, ourselves, continuous, ourselves, included, right? And so, unfortunately, sometimes we think about those, the candidate marketing ending it Okay, they've been hired. You know, I don't need to do anything, and that's somebody else's responsibility when, he or she shows up to work in the first day. It's so easy to set up a mini campaign that's, oh, here's the message, messages I want to deliver when they have accepted the job up until the point in time that they are on site for the first day. It's, it's not, you know, I think some people think that there's that there's the technology has not advanced to a point to be able to do that. That technology has been around forever! Organizations have just decided not to use it and not to leverage it for those specific use cases.

 

David Turetsky: 23:47

Right, right? You know, it's kind of like the general manager not calling Saquon with an offer,

 

Jack Coapman: 23:55

Back to the Giants, geeze

 

David Turetsky: 23:57

but I'm gonna leave it alone. Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com/HRDLconsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. I want to ask you, is there anything that shocked you in a positive way coming here? Anything you saw that was actually, ooh, that's actually pretty cool. I'm interested in that!

 

Jack Coapman: 24:38

I have not, and it's probably a bad answer to give, because I haven't had a chance to kind of walk around. So these have been an opportunity to kind of see, you know, the overall theme. And I think, I think still, you know, every other booth, you know, I can, you know, circle around here, right? And it's either AI or skills, AI or skills, AI or skills. I love to see the advancing I love to see the startup organizations that are taking a real creative approach, but more and more they start sounding they all start sounding alike.

 

David Turetsky: 25:05

For sure

 

Jack Coapman: 25:06

I haven't seen anything that has really jumped out. Because, again, I think my mind is thinking about the basics, and how do you make sure you're connecting the dots? And that is still that process of attracting people, sourcing, engaging and ultimately hiring those people.

 

David Turetsky: 25:20

And so I think the other, the other flip side of that coin, which is, you know, what's disappointed you? I guess it's that right then, that we're, we're leaning too heavily into the AI messaging and not not connecting it back to the people processes? No, okay, I'll leave it at that. Answered everything I needed.

 

Jack Coapman: 25:40

Yeah, and I haven't, you know, and then, shame on me. I haven't. Usually, I spend a lot of time kind of walking the show and everything. But I haven't, you know, being here for so long, being in this space for so long, there's a lot of the old guard that is here. You know, it continues to amaze me, the investment that organizations make to get their name out there with, you know, you've got booths that are, you know, 10 foot booths. You got other ones that are an acre wide. And, yes, you know, so it's kind of interesting to see that. But, you know, just this show has really changed over the years, that it's not just a technology, because you can't talk about technology without connecting to get to the people and processes of the organization. So it's been, you know, I think that's been good. I think what would what I've appreciated is just the advances overall, the entire, the entire water level continues to rise, in terms of the the maturity of TA professionals in my side, and the maturity the technology that's helping them solve those big, hairy problems.

 

David Turetsky: 26:34

When you come here next year, what do you wish you see more of, though?

 

Jack Coapman: 26:38

In the next show?

 

David Turetsky: 26:39

Yeah, well, you know, let's just take, put your hat on, you know, put your, your all knowing, all seeing, hat on, and say, you know, what would next year's HR technology be for the HR, for the recruiting, for the at professional, for the TA, professional?

 

Jack Coapman: 26:54

um, I love, you know, from the format of the show. I love when you've got stages within the event that you can go over and listen to a case study, and I know they've got one or two of them around here, so I really enjoy that. I think that you know, just the format that show I would. I would love this event to be in Philadelphia, that way I didn't have to travel across the country, but I don't think that will ever happen!

 

David Turetsky: 27:18

Here's our plug for Philadelphia Convention Center or Javits.

 

Jack Coapman: 27:24

Or Javits! I could take the train up there. That would be easy, but

 

David Turetsky: 27:27

Then we could see a Ranger game!

 

Jack Coapman: 27:28

No, I think it's tough. I think, I think the, you know, the team here does a phenomenal job, and this is a Herculean effort in terms of organizing, you know, all of the people and everything here. I don't know, that's a great question. I haven't really thought about what more you know, certainly you want to see more content. You want to see more specific. You want to see less commercials on the on the stage, then, then that, maybe that's out there and the such. But I think hearing from practitioners, you know anymore, it's not about what you've implemented, it's it's what the outcome has been from that. And I think if you've, if the if more of the conversations were focused on, well, what did you achieve by implementing X, Y, Z, or what did you cost savings? What was the impact on the cycle It's and sometimes that's really tough to prove out, especially in a mature in a mature space that you know you talk about implementing a new ATS. Well, I've had an ATS for 20 years. And you know, quite honestly, from from tracking an applicant, there's not a lot of new things that are going in. I think all the growth in my space has been everything outside of the tracking the applicant. How do I or, you know, the core applicant tracking, not so much attracting them to the brand or the marketing side? I think those are the fun things that are out there today.

 

David Turetsky: 28:41

I almost don't care about savings and I don't care about the positives. Tell me the true freaking story. What worked? What didn't work? What did you have to do to overcome it? Because no business is perfect enough to be able to implement a technology and everything be rosy. All right, what are the missteps you had? What are the problems you faced? How did you overcome them? Are you still dealing with problems? What's not perfect and what's perfect? No technology in this entire hallway is ever going to be perfect for every single company. And so it would be great to hear stories that were real, that I could believe in, that enabled me to be able to say, Oh, crap, I've had that problem too. How did they solve it? Oh, they solved it that way. That's really cool. I learned something today.

 

Jack Coapman: 29:26

No, I agree. And I think the, I think the big differentiator for organizations is not just, you know, there's a lot of organizations that, you know, pride themselves on the logo slide and they love us, kind of a slide as such. But the true testament, I think, of the technology that organizations are delivering, and of that partnership is, are they staying with you for more than just that initial contract period? When things get rough, do you have a a model in place that you can have an open, transparent conversation about what's working, what's not working? And you can sit on the same side of a desk and solve those problems together. I think too often, like we hear, and I'm sure competitors do you know, they will come in and say, We don't like our ATS, we don't like our CRM because of this. And they'll right, you know, litany and knowing the space, your system can do that right, your system can do that. Why aren't you leveraging that from your existing system? And I hear time and time again, Dave, it wasn't configured properly in the first place. It's like, then, shame on you, shame on you for letting that happen. And why not go back in and work with that vendor to try to fix it? So I don't know. It's just, you know, the more things change, sometimes the more things stay the same in our space.

 

David Turetsky: 30:40

Oh, and they certainly do. And, you know, you could learn a lesson a lot of times from the mistakes that you've made in other organizations or even other implementations. Doesn't mean you're gonna not make them the next time you're gonna fall into. It's like me with getting married, you know, I keep falling into that same trap and make the same mistake. But Jack, I think it's one of the things I appreciate about talking to you, is, since you've had that multi decade experience, not only in the technology side, but on a process side, you've seen lots of business cycles. You've seen recessions, you've seen booms, you've seen a pandemic, at least one.

 

Jack Coapman: 31:22

We've all seen that!

 

David Turetsky: 31:23

Yes, we have. And the world of recruiting has changed significantly, not just because of technology, but because of the times and because of demographics and other things. And so that's why I love listening to you, because you've got not just the background, but you got the stories that actually prove it, so

 

Jack Coapman: 31:41

and the battle scars to prove it.

 

David Turetsky: 31:43

Yeah

 

Jack Coapman: 31:43

It's been, it's been interesting. But I think, I

 

David Turetsky: 31:44

Right

 

Jack Coapman: 31:44

You had those other industries or think the more I think people get, all, you know, uptight with really sporadic changes, or intermittent change in the organizations that couldn't hire fast enough! process. And, you know, the the the labor market is such that it goes down, it goes up, it goes down, it comes up. And that's

 

David Turetsky: 31:58

exactly just the nature of it. And you need the kind of the you need the fortitude to get through that from a business perspective, and organizations need the fortitude to make the

 

Jack Coapman: 32:05

Right? Logistics, healthcare, they just couldn't right decisions in their own organization, but not compromise what the future looks like. I think when we got into the pandemic, I think we had, I divided into three different types of people conversation we were having, those that, you know, hit the pause button on hiring, because they just couldn't hire right? You think about the restaurants, you think about the hospitality side, right? They just couldn't hire anybody. and they needed help in terms of doing that. But then you had the third category of people that go we know, we know we're going to get through this. This is the time for me and us as an organization to look at the people, the process and the tech stack and the platform that we got in place here, and make sure that when we come out of this, that we're stronger than when we went into it.

 

David Turetsky: 32:57

Right

 

Jack Coapman: 32:57

And I think those were the thoughtful conversations that organizations had to be prepared. And when they came out, they may not have come out with anything new, but they had better awareness in terms of what was working, wasn't working. And maybe they might have made some, you know, tweaking the process here, tweaking, right? Or whatever the case may be, but those, I think, were the organizations that recognize that this is not a long term thing. It's not something I'm gonna have to deal with for the rest of my life, right, but I think those are the organizations. So it was a very interesting time

 

David Turetsky: 33:26

And resiliency and

 

Jack Coapman: 33:27

oh yeah

 

David Turetsky: 33:27

we don't, we don't have to spend too much more time on that, but, but the resiliency of companies to get through a global pandemic come out on the other side should show them that, hey, listen, we just changed our business model significantly, and everybody had to in some way, shape or form. And we came out the other side and we were okay

 

Jack Coapman: 33:49

yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 33:50

And now we can use that as a lesson. And if there is ever, God forbid, there's another one, you know, we're gonna have to remember that.

 

Jack Coapman: 33:58

Yep, good times. Good times.

 

David Turetsky: 34:00

Well. And if the Giants go two and two after tonight's game, it'll be better time.

 

Jack Coapman: 34:05

It'll be a it'll be a fun ride home. A flight home, I should say, if the flight leaves, hopefully.

 

David Turetsky: 34:18

Yes, well, Jack, I pray that that's true. I pray the Giants go more like eight and six or, sorry, eight and no nine and eight rather than eight and nine. Or

 

Jack Coapman: 34:30

let's, let's hope we're somewhere in that, in that area code at the end of the season. So yeah

 

David Turetsky: 34:36

Jack, it's always a pleasure to talk to you.

 

Jack Coapman: 34:38

Always good to chat with you.

 

David Turetsky: 34:39

Thank you. And for everybody listening. Jack Coapman, GR8 People, available for Bar Mitzvahs, weddings as an officiant and just a really great guy.

 

Jack Coapman: 34:51

Thank you, sir.

 

David Turetsky: 34:51

Thank you. Take care. Stay safe.

 

Announcer: 34:54

That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe. And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week, and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe.