Join hosts Bill Gates and Rosanna Snediker in Episode 5 of Beyond The Offer, where they speak with Lisa Watson, Director of Talent Acquisition at ASC Engineering Solutions. They discuss the challenges of building a recruiting function in a merged organization, adapting to market changes, new tools, and the evolving needs of candidates. Tune in for insights into corporate vs. agency recruiting, building relationships, and navigating today’s recruitment landscape.
Episode Transcript
Hello, social media followers, LinkedIn, Facebook, and everyone tuning into our show. Welcome to Beyond The Offer podcast. I am your host, Bill Gates joined by my co host and friend, Rosanna Snediker. Thank you for tuning in as we tackle the latest trends and challenges in talent acquisition and human resources.
We are very excited to have Lisa Watson as our guest today. Currently Lisa is the director of talent acquisition at ASC Engineering Solutions, which is a diversified building products organization. Lisa has over 13 years of talent acquisition and human resources experience. She has led talent acquisition at companies like Oracle, Centro, Sensian technologies, and currently ASC.
I’ve known her for, I believe, looking back since about 2014. And she’s definitely one of the uh, The best TA leaders in the business. We are thrilled to have you join, uh, Lisa, welcome to Beyond the Offer podcast. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. Absolutely. We appreciate you joining.
Well, so tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into HR, talent acquisition, you know, after graduating from college, you like most that just kind of fell into it, or was it always kind of a passion to, to move into the recruiting world? Yeah, so definitely kind of tripped and fell into it, much like most recruiters do.
Um,. So I was actually working in retail during school, had some exposure to H. R. while I was working at Nordstrom. Wasn’t sure which area of H. R. was interested in pursuing. Um,,. So I started my H. R. career as a coordinator with a P. E. backed tech company. Within a month, I was doing full cycle recruiting, and within a year, I was managing a team of recruiters.
So quite literally fell into it. Um, I stayed in the tech industry for a few years, then kind of went back to my roots in PE working for the firm that backed that company, where I started my career, um, stayed there for a bit. And then, you know, throughout my time in tech, I was faced with a lot of volatility.
Right. I was at a point in my career that I was looking for stability. I wanted some growth. I wanted to learn a different industry. I made a decision to move into manufacturing, wanted to work for a larger organization where I could also learn to recruit internationally. So I found my role, uh, with Sentient, which was a food flavoring manufacturer, bigger organization, had a global role while I was introduced to international recruiting.
I was there for a couple of years when ASC reached out to me with the opportunity to build something here from the ground up, and that’s kind of how I ended up where I am today. Great. Well, great background. And it sounds like you did jump right into it by managing a team pretty quickly, you know, coordinator to recruiter within a month.
I love it. Throw you right in and learn, right? Yes. Yes. Definitely sink or swim, which I feel like a lot of us have learned that way, which is good. So tell us a little bit more just about your current role with ASC and what that company does. Yeah, so AFC is essentially a solutions provider provider of precision engineered products.
So the products that we make basically help the world go around. So we manufacture building materials for basically anything that moves matter. Our customers range from fire protection to oil and gas to tech where products are actually being built into data centers. So I was brought to ASC as the first dedicated talent acquisition resource after a merger of both Smith Cooper and Anvil into one company now known as ASC.
Since I’ve been here, I’ve had the opportunity to build up the recruiting team, the function as a whole, the structure for recruiting and hiring across the enterprise and I manage a team of recruiters. I work very closely alongside our local HR teams on basically all things recruiting and hiring.
So I’ve been here for just over 3 years. At this point, it’s been, it’s been quite the ride. Three years has flown by. How is it like starting, you know, kind of building out TA within you know, two companies merging together and, you know, I know you guys, I believe do a good amount of acquisitions as well.
Um, I mean, you know, building out a TA function, not only with organizations coming together that have probably different cultures and ideas in terms of how they approach HR and whatnot. But how, how has that just ride been over the years? Yeah, it’s been interesting. So when I first came on board, I don’t think we fully knew exactly what we wanted to do in terms of recruiting.
So I think initially the scope of my role was really just kind of to recruit some of the higher level, more difficult roles, look at potentially building out what recruiting should look like for ASC and it very quickly just kind of morphed into we actually need a full functioning recruiting team process and function across the enterprise.
So it definitely wasn’t, what my role is now is not what you know, it was anticipated to be at first. Sure. What have been kind of the toughest challenges that you’ve faced and how has kind of the job market affected the way you’ve you’ve managed those challenges In addition to the you know, the changes obviously internally?
Yeah, so I think you know year one here at ASC, Um the challenges that I face look very different than what they do now. Right? So my first year here, the biggest challenge was really navigating this organization that never had a dedicated recruiting resource. Right? So it was finding my place alongside the HR team, moving the larger organization away from things like agency usage, implementing a standardized process for interviewing and hiring.
And really just kind of finding my footing throughout that first year more recently. I think the things that, you know, we, we struggle with a bit in terms of our manufacturing workforce. So, some of our locations, um, of our manufacturing space. Okay, can I start over? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you’re good. So, what, yeah, what have some of the toughest challenges that.
Have been that you’ve faced in the, you know, your current role and, you know, how has the job market affected the way you’ve essentially managed those challenges as well? Yeah. So, um, year one here at ASC, My challenges were very different than, than what they are currently, right? So year one, my biggest challenge was sort of navigating an organization that had never had a dedicated recruiting resource, finding my place alongside the HR team, moving the larger organization away from, you know, things like agency usage, implementing a standardized process for interviewing and hiring, really just kind of finding my footing through that first year.
More recently, um, specifically with our manufacturing workforce, we’ve been met with market challenges due to some of the locations of our manufacturing and distribution sites. Some of our facilities are located in more remote or rural locations, so we struggle with, you know, just the sheer number or lack of people available.
Some of our distribution centers are located in business parks near companies like Amazon, Walmart. Et cetera. So we’re constantly fighting to keep up with the market. We run market analytics monthly to make sure we’re in line. We try to find creative solutions. For things that we may not have the resources to compete with some of these larger companies on. I think at the corn Sorry, no, go ahead.
Yeah. No, I was gonna say so how like. Do you approach the recruiting from a corporate perspective differently than Those actual plant facilities and whatnot, right? Obviously the ones in remote locations, you’re not going to have nearly as many individuals as you do in your Oak Brook location, say outside of Chicago, but like, how would you approach the recruiting and the field recruiting versus corporate?
Yeah, so the at the corporate level, we’ve got sort of a different set of challenges, right? I think most recently what we found sort of our largest need or what we’re hearing from the market is kind of the need for flexibility, right? So, we work in a hybrid model. We don’t necessarily find that we’re receiving much pushback on that model, but just on the idea that our employees have the autonomy to manage their own schedule, right?
Get their work done while maintaining a life outside of the office. Right. Um,. So I think that’s important to the people that, you know, we recruit and that sentiment kind of comes from the top, right? So our executive leadership team places an importance on getting to know employees as people that they are, not just the work that they do.
So we’re constantly evaluating the way that we approach the market with each position that we open. So it’s kind of a different set of challenges on the corporate side than it really is on the manufacturing side. Makes sense, yeah., yeah. And we, we hear that a lot too. I mean, we’ve got a full industrial recruiting team and I feel like the challenges of the remote locations and then, you know, being on site here, you’re not alone in that, that space.
So, um, as you mentioned, so you’ve been there for three years. So you joined, you know, August of 2021 right after you know, the pandemic had been going for about a year. The TA market has changed a lot, you know, in general over those past few years, how have you seen the landscape change? Like. Pre and post that time frame.
Yeah,. So since I’ve been in the manufacturing industry, the organizations that I’ve worked for have been sort of deemed essential. So both pre and post COVID, right? I think the biggest change that I’ve seen is again around this idea of flexibility. So I’ve seen the market go from, you know, pre COVID a full five day in office on site work week to then, you know, COVID hitting and switching to this fully remote model and then a mandatory return to office.
And then now we’ve kind of leveled out to where we’re at this sort of hybrid model of work, right? Um, I think I’ve also seen sort of a similar rollercoaster effect with things like compensation salaries on the job market as a whole. So, pre COVID, you know, we had a strong labor market with salaries that kind of reflected that and made sense and COVID hit and throughout sort of 2020 and 2021.
I almost felt like, it was sort of anything goes at that time, right? So I wasn’t batting an eye when I was speaking to entry level candidates that were demanding, you know, 6 figure salaries post COVID who pre COVID. Would have, you know, been at half of that. Um, I think now we’re at the point, you know, that the market has leveled out more or less in terms of compensation.
So we’re seeing, you know, a little bit less of that. Sure, yeah, the post COVID pre COVID roller coaster ride that recruiters went through was. Everyone had a, I think, different experience, but a lot of similarities at the same time. How about like new recruiting tools? Like, are there any out there that you’ve seen or used that is, you know, whether it’s an ATS, whether it’s a sourcing tool, um, you know, any, anything in that respect that has kind of increased your recruiting productivity on the corporate or the, the plant uh, side of the recruiting spectrum.
Yeah. So I think the introduction of tools like chat GPT and all things AI have helped tremendously, right? So my team and I use these tools to assist from anything from writing job descriptions to crafting emails and messaging to candidates to, you know, deciphering specific requirements, language, or terms associated with roles that maybe we aren’t necessarily familiar with.
Um, I’m currently in the process of evaluating new applicant tracking systems for ASC to use. And, you know, these systems have just come such a long way over the last few years in terms of their ability to make a recruiter’s life easier, right? The scheduling tools, the sourcing tool integration, the data and the reporting to the way that we get feedback utilizing these tools.
I mean, technology, it plays a huge role in how we work every single day. For the messaging in particular with, you know, Chat, GBT or these, any, any of these other ones out there, like, do you feel, I mean, for LinkedIn recruiter, for example, I don’t know, the messaging for me has always been, it’s, I don’t know, it’s usually not exactly saying what I exactly would want to say, but like, have you seen what, you know, these AI tools in general be a pretty effective way from a messaging standpoint in capturing, you know, what you’re trying to say to you know, candidates to get them engaged um, you know, with ASC and in the recruiting and interview process.
Yeah, I think they’re a good start, right? So they, they lay the groundwork for your message. They give you a nice templated message, but with each message that we send, we always make sure that, you know, we add that personalized touch, right? There’s always the people aspect of all things recruiting. And so I think using the tool as a good basis and a way to craft your message is probably the best way that my team uses it.
Well, I’ve noticed, noticed just, Chat GBT has just gotten I mean, better in the last, I mean, three or four months, too. I mean, it’s, it’s incredible the lack of detail you need to do that actually allows you to put, I mean, so it’s only, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s machine learning. Obviously, it’s only going to get better, um, from that standpoint,
just hopefully it doesn’t, you know, make our jobs obsolete. Yeah, I don’t think it will. I don’t think it will. There’s a human Like you said that personal touch, you know, especially when people are making a job move or considering a life changing event, you still need that people aspect of it. But for all like the day to day, I mean, putting together job descriptions, I completely agree, Bill, like using it even six months ago to now, like what it puts together,
I’m like, Oh, my gosh. And it does it so quickly, like, it’s, it’s great. So, well, let’s, let’s kind of shift gears. Well, not shift gears, but stay on the same topic. But flash forward 20 years from now. So 2044, which sounds crazy. Um,. How do you see the TA and HR landscape looking at that point? Obviously technology will be advanced, but anything else that you envision kind of moving forward or changing over the next 20 years for our industry?
Yeah, so I think just continuing kind of down that AI track, I think, you know, AI and technology will continue to evolve as a means to help recruiters. I’m not fully convinced it will ultimately replace us, right? Companies still need that human element of recruiting, the innate ability of a good recruiter to have an instinct that a candidate that Maybe doesn’t necessarily look like the best fit on paper will be the right candidate for a role, right?
Recruiters know the nuances of the team they’re hiring for, the manager they’re partnering with, the company that they’re working for. So I don’t believe we’ll get to a point where technology will be able to screen for these elements of the hiring process. But I do think, you know, it will continue to evolve.
And I do think it’s only going to better act as a tool and a mean for us to be better at our work. Yeah, for sure. It’s, it’s tough to kind of balance, you know, how do you keep the candidates engaged from a good process perspective and but also still provide, you know, provide enough of the whether it’s a screening tool and doing a personality assessment or having enough steps in the process where they’re meeting with enough individuals.
How much is too much? How much is too little? I think everybody constantly is trying to do that, you know, and evaluating accordingly, you know, because the threshold of, you know, each person’s uh, opinion on how many steps is too much is, you know, very, it differs depending on who you’re obviously talking about.
Um, You know,. But, uh, they’re all, they’re also evaluating the company just as much as we’re evaluating them too, which, you know, makes it, which makes it exciting, but kind of switching points. I noticed a lot of the, well, really within the last 10 to 15 years, just even when I’ve, from when I’ve started recruiting, I’m sure you have as well, data has become just so important in all aspects of not only business, but talent acquisition to evaluate productivity, KPIs, where you spend your time.
How have you guys, you know, whether it’s, you know, at ASC or in other past roles at Cencian and whatnot, how have you kind of, how do you use data in a way to where it becomes and you make your job and your team’s role, um, as effective as possible? Yeah,. So we rely on data in almost every aspect of our process, which is part of the reason why I’m evaluating new applicant tracking system so I can get better data, right?
So we utilize it as a tool to poke holes in our process. It’s a way to help us figure out where bottlenecks are. How we can move faster. It’s a mean for us to justify compensation for a particular role, perhaps with title change on a specific rec. Um,. Maybe we need to look at the level of a position that we’re looking for, given the data of a specific market and where our facilities are located.
Again, I mentioned, you know, our, our sites are often times in rural locations or in heavily populated locations. And so just understanding the data of a specific market and being able to bring that to the hiring team as a means to justify perhaps a pivot in process, um, is something that we use every day.
Yeah, it’s something I know we’ve, especially during the covid time frame, we Hirewell, as a whole, we were in the office a regular amount of time. And, well, actually, it was really 5 days a week was kind of the mandatory aspect of things. But, you know, with data, right? Like, as we became more remote and everyone was forced to do that.
You know, it’s like any sales job, same like, I’m sure you evaluate your recruiters from submissions to, you know, time to fill to, I mean, there’s a lot of different ways you can kind of evaluate performance, um, depending on what you do, but, um, you know, numbers obviously speak louder than, than words and in many ways, and production is, uh, you know, it’s pretty easy to look at production and see how um, somebody is doing just based off purely the, the weekly, monthly, yearly numbers.
Yeah, and like I said, being able to show the hiring managers the data around, you know, why we don’t have candidates or why it’s taking longer, you know, that’s so important to do because I think not all but some think you know, I’ve got an open rack fill it and it’s that easy and there’s you know a lot that goes into it, which is why we all have jobs. So. I’m at kind of two of that What to bring up do you find that I mean, i’m sure some hiring managers are more,
um, involved and wanting to see more of that data aspects of things. I’m sure on executive level searches, right? Like, you know, how many people you talk to and things like that, right? Or any role you’re not necessarily finding candidates. You mentioned some of the remote jobs to where there’s not nearly the abundance of candidates you’ll find.
But do you find that? You know, that is difficult to kind of provide and there’s too much of a manual process in, you know, providing like who you’ve talked to and the things that hiring managers want to want to see to make sure that they’re getting enough attention on the positions that they need filled?
Yeah. So I think it depends on the role and truthfully, I try not to get to that point. Right. So we’re doing things like. 30 day check ins where very quickly we’ll understand if we need to recalibrate on a roll, right? So I try not to get it to a point that we’re needing to do things like a full data dump of, you know, the rec from start to finish.
So hopefully we would have caught that before any of that happens. But there are some hiring managers that You know, right up front, weekly, they like to see those numbers. They like to understand how many people we’ve sourced weekly, how many phone screens we’ve had, how many interviews are scheduled, things like that.
Um,. So I think it just depends on, you know, the hiring manager, but I, I try not to let it get to a point where we need to provide that information that level of data and I have it in my back pocket if I need it. Have it ready to go when you need it. Um, so. You talked earlier about kind of falling into recruiting which I think a lot of us have for any of our listeners that are either You know looking to getting into recruiting right out of college or maybe looking to do a career change a lot of folks, you know move from different skill sets into recruiting.
What advice would you give them? And, you know, if you were hiring someone on your team entry level, like, what would you be looking for them to have from a skill set that they could potentially transfer over into a recruiting role? Yeah,. So a couple things, right? I think when you’re first starting off your career, if you’re looking at something like recruiting, there’s a couple of different worlds that live within recruiting, right?
So I think first, talk to recruiters on, on the corporate side, talk to recruiters on the agency side. They’re two completely different worlds. I think my best advice that I can give is it’s something like recruiting is very black and white. There’s no gray area. You either love it and you thrive with it, or it’s just not for you.
And personally, I’ve found that there’s really no in between. Um,. Some of the best recruiters that I’ve worked with have been um, introverted, passionate people that truly enjoy, you know, finding a home for a candidate, making a difference in their life. That’s the level of passion that I think you have to have to operate within recruiting because it’s, it’s sometimes a thankless job, right?
Where the first one’s looked at when hiring isn’t happening fast enough, We’re also the first ones looked at when business is getting tough and hiring slows down. So you have to really be willing to kind of roll with the punches, so to speak and if you’re not passionate about it, I think it might get challenging.
Yeah, that’s such a good point. And it’s, it’s funny you say the black and white thing. I mean, I think you either do love it or hate it. But once you actually get into recruiting too, there is so much gray area in what we do as well that you need to be able to actually manage the, the lack of clarity in black and white, right?
You know, a hiring manager tells you Hey, Lisa, I can’t really tell you exactly why we don’t like this person, but you know, it’s going to be a no, right? And it’s like, okay, where do we go back to the drawing board and, uh, finding the person when they haven’t given you any sort of data or tangible, evidence why they didn’t necessarily work.
Right. So you’re, you’re dead on the black and white thing. You either do love it and hate it. And I think a lot of those agencies. That’s why a lot of them hire right out of school and Ro and I started at a place called Tech Systems and, you know, they hire right out of college, do a great job training you and building you up and, understanding the basics, but there’s a bit, there’s a high sense of turnover because it is pretty black and white if you like it or hate it.
You know, yeah, I think so many people think like, Oh, I can talk to people and this will be a fun job and then they get in and realize, you know, you either thrive and you love the chaos or it is complete nightmare for you. So, and there’s so many different sides like corporate and agency so different too but on the agency side as well there’s executive recruiting there’s kind of contingency recruiting there’s staffing, which is just you know obviously you’re more of an hourly side of the equation too, which, which all provide different
um, likes and dislikes. Um, you know,. Some people like the longer executive process. Some people prefer the quick hiring in a week. Right. But each of them have their own pros and cons you get into them as well. So, um, . But switching kind of gears to like, um, in regard to, you just kind of advice, obviously you’d give them, what’s one of the, best pieces of advice that somebody has given you from either a past manager or mentor?
What’s something that’s you know, kind of come from a leader that you’ve worked with in the past that’s really resonated with you and stuck with you? Yeah. So., Early in my career, I had a mentor tell me to build relationships, not just connections and express me the importance of being resilient. Right. So I personally try to never burn any bridges.
You just don’t know when you might need help or when you’ll be able to help someone. I’m sure you guys understand the value of relationship building. I’ve had candidates reach out to me that I’ve worked with, you know, 10, 12 years ago, that if I’ve got something for them, I’ll try my best to help them.
And if I don’t, I’ll do my best to get them a connection that can help because I never know when I might need them. Um,. And then I think on the resiliency piece, so I’ve been through lots of turmoil throughout my career, right? I started in tech pretty volatile during that time. Um, I’ve been through acquisitions.
I’ve been through layoffs. I’ve had position eliminations, my role relocated. So I’ve had to develop a thick skin in order to be able to bounce back from these situations, right? And try to see the bright side of things, because truly in the end, I have landed on my feet in a better position than I was before.
But I think, you know, if I didn’t build up that resiliency, I don’t think I could do it. You know,. That, that first round of, of layoffs on the recruiting side, it was tough, it was tough. For sure. Yeah. Well, and you talked a bit about, you know, the different industries you’ve been in. You’ve been in tech, advertising, you know, manufacturing, SaaS companies, PE.
How do the different industries affect how you go to acquire and retain talent? And is it a similar approach to recruiting or do you really have to kind of shift your approach depending on the industry that you’re working for? I don’t know if it’s necessarily the industry that changes. I think my audience has changed, right?
So people place importance or value different things, depending on not just the industry that they’re in, but sort of the phase of life that they’re in as well, right? So bottom line, we’re all sort of in the people business, which I think is industry agnostic, right? At the moment, I work in an industrial manufacturing company.
This industry tends to lend itself to a more mature candidate, right? So these folks are looking for things like flexibility. They have families to tend to outside of work. They’re driving their daughters or their sons to college. They’re coaching their baseball game. So they value that flexibility and time off to spend with the family, right?
When I was in the tech industry, I worked with people that were just at a different point in their career. You know, they were newer to their careers. They valued different things. So the benefits and the things that I talked to with candidates um, in in that area were very different from sort of the things that I speak to with the candidates that I’m working with today, regardless of industry.
Sure. Yeah, industry is always interesting because it’s, yes, it’s well said. It’s really more about, you know, the types of jobs that you’re trying to fill. Is it, you know, more of a developer versus, you know, an, you know, an engineer on, on the, like, more mechanical engineer. You’re right. It is. They do have different wants generally or stereotypically, and they are at different points in their life.
So. You have to kind of not only cater that from a messaging perspective, but under that, understand that and make sure you’re asking those things up front. Um, you know,. Prior to talking to them about a particular job, right? If it’s 5 days in the actual facility, and they have nothing, no interest in working in the off or, you know, now, granted, I don’t know how a mechanical engineer probably couldn’t be physically in a particular location, but, um.
You know,. Knowing those things obviously up front, it gives you only more of an advantage to, to pitch them the right job that that’s the right fit for them, or they won’t think you’re actually listening to what they have to say. So, but, uh, well, we’d like to wrap up with our unfiltered HR question segment, which is when we ask
you know, really kind of more of our guests, uh, less formal or hypothetical and more uncomfortable question. But, um,. So I’ll ask you a bit more on the hypothetical side, Lisa. Um, so. If you were to start your own company, um, and you were the CEO of say, let’s say a 200 person employee organization, um, benefits is always a, uh, fancy area, or it’s a, it’s a way to engage with individuals outside of just your regular comp, but what benefits if you were that CEO, would you prioritize to make sure you can retain and acquire new talent?
So large 401k match a hundred percent paid medical and unlimited PTO. I mean, there’s so many, obviously benefits that you can kind of offer from a company perspective that you see. Um,. What would you prioritize in the benefit space if you were the CEO? Yeah, so good question. I think a couple of things. So the overarching, I guess, theme that I think I would place value on is flexibility, right? So I would try and foster a culture of accountability and trust, all adults here. I would love to trust that you know, my employees will get the job done while also living a life where they feel fulfilled outside of work. So definitely some sort of hybrid work model with flexibility where needed.
I would love to be able to do something like 100 percent paid medical. Um,. But I think recently what, what I’ve noticed is more important to people are things like family planning and parental leave. So a generous amount of assistance with family planning, coupled with enough time for, you know, both mom and dad to be home and acclimate to life with their new baby would be standard benefits for my company.
Um,. And then I think the last thing, that most people, you know, would would want to feel that their work matters and what they’re doing makes a difference, right? So placing importance on things like philanthropy, maybe it’s, you know, company matching charitable donations, paid volunteer days, things of that nature, just giving my employees the space to to do what’s important to them and knowing that they’re the company that they work for supports them.
Yeah, no good answer. Do you notice like throughout all the roles that you’ve had in companies you’ve worked with, I’m sure each of them offer different kind of benefits, right? From paid mental, paid leave, parental leave, whatever, right? Like, I think kind of in the tech space, stereotypically, you’re getting a lot more of those benefits.
Benefits on one end, but you know, they level out in comp or something, you know, in, in other areas, have you noticed, like, you know, when you’ve changed some of these organizations you’ve worked with when they’ve changed a certain benefit offering that it’s reduced, like the amount of people that you can actually attract to that organization?
Oh, absolutely. Or added. You know, or if it’s more highly attractive now that you can kind of bring up in that recruiting process. Yep. Absolutely. I’ve lost candidates based on the fact that, you know, the company that I was working for at the time, maybe, maybe didn’t have quite a robust, um, you know, parental leave program or 401k match, but this person had you know, two and three offers in hand at the time that I was interviewing them and company B had a better benefits program.
And so I’ve definitely lost candidates due to the lack of you know, a robust benefits program. Um, I’ve also seen the difference in benefits. So even just with with ASC from when I started to where we’re at now, our benefits have just evolved over time, which has made it tremendously easier for us to gain talent
um, you know, when we’ve got a strong benefits package on our side. Absolutely. Yeah. When do you share, like,. Do you share those on the first step? Or when you’re talking to candidates, how quickly are you getting them that information? Yeah. So if, if they ask a little bit about it on, you know, my, my screen with them, I’ll give them just sort of a high level overview, right?
Just the key talking points, but then once they’re really in the process and they’re going through, you know, longer interviews, um, I’ll send them our total benefits guide so that they can actually take a look at the breakdown, what the costs will be in the different offerings that we have. Yeah, I like that.
I like the overview because we obviously are tied to our clients. Some clients share it with us right on the front end, some on the back end. But like you said, you know, sometimes that can make or break an offer if it doesn’t align with what they’re looking for. So it’s definitely very interesting to see when you kind of share that in the process, too.
And we’ve worked with that actually a lot. Of I mean, I’m sure this is, I don’t know if this is experience with ASC, but you know, when two companies come together and the benefits just overall isn’t very organized, right? Like, and, and we’ve dealt with, you know, they’ve added their, you know, place to first CHRO and they’ve got
you know, they’re 401k in one document and they got their medical costs in another. It’s not like altogether, obviously working very closely with a broker and putting it all in a, an organized fashion. So you’re not sending multiple documents accordingly. And so they’re requesting all of this information is so important.
I think to that process, because nothing’s going to be apples to apples, right? You know,. There’s always going to be discrepancies and 3% match to 6% 401k match to, you know, Hey, we have this deductible on the medical side, but the cost is higher. So there’s always going to be certainly discrepancies.
But the more you’ve obviously, and the quicker you’ve ironed that out to better understand what those costs will be, you know, make it easier to understand what those candidates will need to expect from a salary or, you know. Uh, bonus and LTI perspective as well. But it is always interesting to see how and where to insert that in the process.
Because if your benefits aren’t that great, you insert it too early on, how many do you lose, you know, on the back end, um, based on those things. So it’s, it’s, it’s smart to strategically think of when to, to address those. Absolutely. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a great conversation, but this is all we have time for today.
So thank you everyone for tuning into this week’s episode. Today, we have the opportunity to sit down with Lisa Watson and we discussed her career, the future of recruiting, how data impacts talent acquisition, and different industries in corporate recruiting. We will be back again next month with a new special guest.
And just a quick reminder for everyone and how you can follow and support our Beyond The Offer podcast you can find all of our content on Hirewell social media platforms, which you can find through Hirewell.com. Take care everyone and thank you for tuning in. Thanks Lisa. Thanks Lisa. Bye guys.