Let’s be real, recruiting budgets are tight. And while TA leaders can dream about spending 6 figures on automation technology, that doesn’t really align with reality. Nicole Phommanorat (Director of Talent Acquisition at Salad and Go) is sharing how she’s built a time-saving automation strategy on a limited budget. Join Nicole to learn:
- Cheap (or free) ways to automate important tasks within the recruiting process.
- Which tools and platforms deliver on their cost, and which are worth skipping
- How to effectively convince leadership that a specific solution is worthy of investment.
Transcript:
Daniel Blaser (00:00): Hello everyone. My name is Daniel and I'm with Workstream, and I am so excited to be here today with Nicole Phommanorat to chat all about automation, and not just automation, but how you can embrace automation within recruiting, without breaking the bank, without spending all of your budget. So that's what we're going to chat about today. To kick things off, Nicole, I wanted to kind of set the scene. Can you talk a little bit about just your experience in the talent acquisition space, how long you've been in it, and kind of your current role? Nicole Phommanorat (00:34): Yes, of course. Thank you, Daniel. I've been in the TA space for about nine years now. Not to date myself, makes me sound a little bit old, but nine years I started off in operations, transitioned into training, and then I landed myself in TA and it's been really fun. I've been predominantly in the restaurant industry space. This stint with Salad and Go has given me the opportunity to also work in food production slash manufacturing, and it's been really fun to transition in there and get a new perspective on recruiting just in general. So yeah, nine years. Daniel Blaser (01:15): That's awesome. And Salad and Go, if I remember, is kind of in the southwest United States region right now. Is that kind of the hub? Nicole Phommanorat (01:23): Yes. So currently we're in four states. We're in Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, and then Texas. Daniel Blaser (01:30): Okay, nice. And just to kind of let everyone know, approximately how many hourly employees would you say are currently with Salad and Go across all the locations? Nicole Phommanorat (01:43): So that's a really good question. We've got about 2000 employees right now currently, that's across our 85 locations today and then our two food processing facilities. Daniel Blaser (01:56): Nice. Okay, cool. So Salad and Go. As you mentioned, there's a lot of growth there, a lot of expansion. Yeah. Can you just talk about a little bit more about those expansion efforts and then the subsequent hiring challenges that expansion leads to? Nicole Phommanorat (02:14): Yeah, definitely. So we are growing really fast. So we're currently at 85 stores right now. I started in May of last year and just through the last six months I've been a part of about 40 openings. That's a lot in six months. So I can tell you that in my previous restaurant groups, I didn't open that many stores in five, 10 years. So it's fast and furious, but it's really fun. And with that being that Fast and Furious, we have to hire and we have to stay on top of it and stay proactive in hiring. So it's a lot of discussions about where are we located, where are we opening, where can we find candidates, how do we engage those candidates, how do we keep a strong pipeline? But then also on the flip side of that is looking at production. I mean, we are vertically integrated, so we're getting all of our ingredients from our food processing facilities. So looking at forecasting on what is this store's volume going to be and how is that going to impact staffing at that level as far as food production pounds go. So it's been really fun and it's a lot of work, but it's something that's really doable as long as you're organized and you're keeping track of what you need on a proactive instead of reactive basis. Daniel Blaser (03:42): Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And that's an interesting challenge that you mentioned having to staff up these locations, but then also the food processing facilities at the same time, that's kind of a double-headed dragon or something. Definitely to have to tackle both of those. You, you've kind of set the stage as far as how quickly things are growing. How many roles are you personally trying to fill every month or you're somewhat involved in filling every month? Nicole Phommanorat (04:11): So I'm involved in filling basically anything that we can hire at Salad and Go. And on the store operations side, we're hiring about 220 people a month, and then also on our food processing facility side, it is averaging around 50. So just depending on what our opening schedule is, it can be more than that. It can be a little bit less, but anywhere between 250 to 300 total a month, we're going to over double in size this year. Daniel Blaser (04:46): Wow. Well, it was kind of some of that context that when we originally spoke I was like, oh, I think Nicole would be perfect for this topic because surely you're using automation to probably keep up with some of just the rush of things and the scale of everything that you're working on right now in talent acquisition. So anyway, with that context, that stage set, I think we can kind of shift over to the topic of the webinar, which is automation and obviously recruiting, hiring automation that's become more accessible. I feel like the last couple years, and this is obviously where work workstream has a vested interest, but budgets are finite and platforms and tools they add up pretty quickly. And also automation can introduce its own challenges. It's not just like the end all be all. So anyway, I'm excited to hear about kind of scrappy ways that you use automation and maybe on a tighter budget, and I think that that's a perspective that a lot of people will be able to identify with. So anyway, to kind of set the stage, I guess kick things off, what would you say is, do you have an overarching, we, we'll call it a philosophy about automation or a way that you think, okay, this is something that's worth automating versus this is maybe something that I don't want automate? Nicole Phommanorat (06:14): Yeah, definitely. So as far as the way I look at AI is it should be used to assist talent acquisition in predicting the best candidate for the roles. I want to use it to create efficiencies for my recruiters to be just faster. I mean, there's a lot of work that you do in recruiting that is time consuming. Things like sourcing, resume review, doing drip campaigns to engage candidates or re-engage candidates. You're always looking to make sure that you're improving diversity where you can and making sure that you're taking care of unconscious bias so you can use artificial intelligence to do all those things to create more time for the second major piece of talent acquisition, which is the human piece of it. So being able to get those things that are time consuming and consolidate those or speed those up any way that we can or even automate them in some cases is going to allow my team to be able to make more connections, build stronger relationships, and those are going to translate into hires. Daniel Blaser (07:26): Yeah, yeah, I really like that perspective. Now kind of a follow-up question is if you're trying to be budget friendly, that means you're prioritizing some solutions over others. Now, part of that prioritization is your philosophy that you just mentioned that kind of is an important ingredient to that, but then it's also just money and dollars and cents based on kind of what's out there right now. What have you prioritized as far as automation in your current role? Nicole Phommanorat (08:00): So what I've done is I've looked at what we're looking for in general. So in the space that we are, we're in the restaurant industry and then also food production, but we also have a support center that we're staffing for as well. So we're finding marketing people, IT people, finance and accounting people. So it's a little bit of everything. So you have that high volume entry level role that you're looking for, but then we also have SQL developers, data scientists, people at the executive level, and that takes a different type of sourcing and a different type of process in general. So we have to be a little bit of everything in order to be successful. While we're not necessarily a tech company, we are a company that does have that need in some capacity. We're not Google, we're a store selling salad, but we still have to be able to find those people in those niche areas when necessary. (09:10): So what we've done to prioritize some solutions over others is really break down what types of candidates we're looking at each level. So when you're talking about the hourly staffing at our store level and then our food processing facility level, we look at what does this person need in order to work for us? What experience, what background is it entry level? One thing that you can do with artificial intelligence that's kind of counterproductive is you can streamline and sort through so many candidates that you basically leave yourself with nothing as far as selection goes. So if you're using AI in a sense of trying to figure out the most qualified person, and when you look at the job description, it says you need to be able to run a drive-through, you need to be able to work cross-functionally, use a POS system. That doesn't mean that you have to have prior experience there, and when you put those nice to haves as your must haves, sometimes you can narrow down so much that it's not going to be conducive to you hiring 300 people a month. (10:26): So we like to make sure that we're not using AI to get so narrow that we're excluding people that could very well do a really great job. So at that level, we like to hire for attitude and train for skill. You can teach people to do pretty much anything as long as they have the right attitude. So not using it in the case of finding that perfect person, but using AI in the sense of what are we doing to make sure they're staying engaged? Are we making sure that there's automated touch points when they apply? Are we providing a chat bot maybe to help make them easier to get into our A TS system? Maybe there's an assessment that you would want to use to help see if their culture fit. Maybe it's autos scheduling because it's a high volume area. If they meet X, Y, Z as far as criteria goes, maybe they're automatically scheduled on the hiring manager's calendar to talk to them. (11:23): Things like that you can use at that level to speed things up and make process to process a little bit faster or a lot of bit faster depending on how busy your hiring managers are. And then at other levels of the organization where the job descriptions a little bit more specialized and what the candidate is going to need to have as far as qualifications go, if it's going to be a high volume resume, for example, if you hire somebody in, I know human resources, you'll probably have a ton of candidates that apply. Maybe not everybody's going to be qualified, so what can you do to weed those unqualified candidates out so you can screen faster and provide better resumes or candidates to the hiring manager in a quicker amount of time? So it just really depends. We get a little bit of everything and we have to make sure that we're not just optimizing our systems for that support center or that hourly hiring. So we have to have a really good balance of what's the one extreme where it's the hourly high level or high, I'm sorry, high volume recruiting where it's less need for super specialized people, more of an entry level role, and then that really niche data scientists that has to have all this amazing technological background that I have no idea about because I'm not an IT person. We have to be able to meet both those needs and balance that easily. And it's a challenge sometimes because not every tool is built for those two extremes. Daniel Blaser (13:05): Yeah. Yeah, I think that's great advice. Custom tailoring the automation options that you have to the specific needs a specific role. It also kind of sounds like what you're saying with I guess fine tuning the inputs so you're not excluding too many people and drying up your pipeline or whatever. Is it fair to say that it's easier to use AI to identify specific number of years of experience or specific titles or those kinds of things, but probably a lot, it's harder to use it to identify some of those traits that you mentioned. They have great customer service skills that seems like it's almost impossible to use automation for. Is that kind of true? Nicole Phommanorat (14:02): A little bit I would say. Yeah, but also I think that if you look at ai, there's a lot of different buckets that you can use it in. You can definitely use it in the screening process or sourcing process where you're trying to find that purple squirrel or the highest number of candidates that could be a production line worker, but then you can also use it to make your candidate experience better and also your candidate experience faster and the hiring managers experience better and faster as well. So you just got to figure out what do you want to work on first? Hopefully it's a little bit of everything at the same time and go from there. So there's definitely ways that you can make the candidate experience better and quicker and more streamlined. When you do that, you're saving time on the recruiter's end because the easier it is to apply, the more organic traffic you're going to have and the better you use AI for things like posting positions or optimizing a job description. So the keywords are there and it's gender neutral, it's inclusive, all of that is going to help strengthen your organic pipeline and provide candidates, which the more candidates you have, the more time you have to spend on things like interviewing and less time on looking for those candidates. So just depends on what your main focus is, but you need to use it. I think using artificial intelligence in every one of those areas is really important. If you're not, you're not balancing time in a way that's going to make you as successful as possible. Daniel Blaser (15:40): Yeah. So let's say, I know maybe this is counter to what you've sort of said where it really depends on the specific company and your specific needs and everything, but let's say someone watching this is they're like, I hear this, I know I need to include AI in more of my hiring process. Like, okay, but now where do I start or what do I prioritize over other? What would you recommend to somebody pointing 'em in a certain direction or something? Nicole Phommanorat (16:12): I always start with what do I have today as far as resources go to make things easier? So for example, when I started at Salad and Go, we started off as a mom and pop shop in 2013 and we pieced together a lot of systems because we were starting to grow really quick and we're currently using an a TS system that may or not may be or may not be scalable. If we're going to be at 500 plus units in the next few years, it is going to have to interact a little bit differently today than it's going to in a few years. So I looked at what systems do we have today and are we using those systems as much as we can? So have we optimized the usage of those systems? So the current a TS system that we were using in the case of Salad and Go, we weren't necessarily using it to its full capacity. (17:15): So I went in and I tried my best to learn what is this system capable of and where can I use the capacity to create better, more streamlined processes and make changes from there. So if you are using an a TS system, it could be work stream, it could be Workday, it could be workable, it could be, I don't know, talent Wre, it could be any of those. Chances are they have AI built into their platform and it's usually something you can toggle on or off to use if you want to. And depending on how you set up your system or your workflow or your recruiting process, it will work better if you may need to make some tweaks and some changes. So my suggestion is always to start with what you have and figure out what the capacity is and what works well for whatever you're hiring or whatever your industry is and go from there. (18:17): So that's number one. You need to use your systems and tools that you have today that you're already paying for to make sure that you're working at full capacity and you're using those resources. Then I would say, look at your vendors. Chances are you're using Indeed because Indeed's the number one hiring platform in the world. They have a ton of AI built into that platform. Whether you're somebody who's spending $300,000 a year in advertising there or more, or you're that scrappy person who's posting and getting charged by the day, $5 at a time, $10 at a time, they have resources available for you to use and the capacity to use their AI platforms to get information to make better decisions or use that information to change the way you're doing things. So just in Indeed's case, if you are a company and you use Indeed to post contact them and figure out who your rep is, there's somebody that works there that is responsible for your account, and that person can give you insight into things like market forecasting. (19:33): They can tell you what is the average person or what's the average wage or rate that somebody in this specific position is making right now in your market. So you can get help with compensation. There's analytics that they can provide to you to look at your job descriptions to see how can you optimize that. They'll give you tips and tricks on how to make your postings as efficient as possible for their platform, and they'll also let you know how to use their algorithm. So that can potentially change the cadence you're posting your jobs at. Maybe you're somebody who thinks, oh, I posted this. I'm always looking for team member at this specific location. I posted it like three months ago. It's fine. That's not necessarily the case because their algorithm's going to refresh or you're going to be at a different place on their job board based off of time. (20:25): The position on a job board for something that's two weeks old is a lot different, different than something that's say 90 days old. So if you don't know that you can't make the right decisions to optimize your organic traffic or your organic candidate flow and get candidates that are potentially, I don't want to say free, but not something you have to pay a lot extra for. So talking to your vendors and there's people in those areas on LinkedIn that you can use Glassdoor, any job board that you use, there's somebody that works there whose job it is to tell the company, Hey, this is the best way to use our platform. Also an opportunity for them to sell you something and say, Hey, this is what you're getting today, but if you do this, you invest this amount of money, you could get more. So hearing about those opportunities are also good because it might be worth spending that extra for more candidates or better visibility, better employment branding. (21:28): So look at your vendors and see what they have to offer you. A lot of information that is a lot of times free with, well, not free, you always got to pay for everything costs money, but it's like a perk if you're already paying for the posting, you have accessibility to these hundred things that you don't know about because you didn't ask. So that's really important as well. And I would say start there. I mean you can always go and do a hundred demos a week on all this awesome new age technology, but if you start there, you're going to put yourself on a really good path to figure out a month or two down the line, what could we add that would make it better or easier or what could make us more efficient? Daniel Blaser (22:14): Yeah, I think that's such great advice. I do think that there's a tendency, it's like the grass is always greener or you're kind of distracted by the shiny penny and there is a lot of cool capability out there, but like you said, the likelihood that everyone listening is already using their A TS or Indeed or any of the other platforms that they're already in, the fact that the likelihood that they're using those to their a hundred percent capability right now is probably pretty small because platforms are complex and people try to get things up and running and then they move on to the next thing. So I think that's just fantastic advice when it comes to, we'll say measuring ROI, let's say people listening to this, they heed your advice, they get started and they're spending more time in their att s indeed, wherever it may be. And then it comes time to say, okay, this is paying off the extra time and configuration and maybe a little extra money. How do you kind of think of automation ROI when it comes to talent acquisition? Nicole Phommanorat (23:25): That's a really good question, and before I answer that question, I think it's fair to climb up on my soapbox to make sure that the way your a TS system or whatever system you're using to pull data is set up in a way that your data's accurate. If it's not set up in a way where your data is accurate, it's garbage in, garbage out, and you can't rely on that to measure anything. So you need to make sure that whatever you're putting into practice, you are allowing that to create data that is in fact accurate and it's really easy to move things around or change things up in your a TS system and then the information you're getting isn't really a true indication of what your performance is. So you really need to make sure that what you're getting is accurate. And I could probably talk about that for days, to be honest with you. (24:30): It's been a pain point in my time as a director of TA pretty much in any position and role that I've ever been in at a company. So it needs to be correct. And then measuring ROI compare and contrast, what are you looking at is how many hires did we get this month versus this year over year when we weren't using something? That could be it. I know that at Salad and Go, one thing that I did really early on is try to fix the reporting to make sure it was as accurate as possible because if I were to compare year over year, it looks like we are rock stars. I mean we hired thousands of people. It's amazing. Which I mean, don't get me wrong, my team is a bunch of rock stars. They're awesome, but it looks like there was a lot more done than there really was because they went from not everybody using the a TS to everybody using the A TS. (25:29): So when 50 people are hired in an A TS, but then everyone else is put into the HRIS system, it's not comparing apples to apples or oranges to oranges. So making sure that you're looking at the right data and comparing it obviously, and then just looking at what you have the capacity to see, so if it's that you're using. A good example is we went and we changed job descriptions, we changed some of the ads that we were using and we optimized them, we made them shorter. We talked to Indeed, we figured out how we can make them better, added more in as far as the culture piece to explain who we are, where we're going, all of that fun stuff. And then we loaded it with all the keywords that were necessary for us to gain organic traffic. We took that, plugged it in, and then we looked to see what were we using last month and what were our results, and then what are we using this month and what are results. (26:33): And then you can compare that quarter to quarter, year to year and look at that way. I would definitely say track your changes because you might find that your changes are counterproductive and it's not working and you need to switch it up and change. So that's super important. And I would also say anytime you're talking to a new vendor or you're looking to add any sort of new technology, ask for a trial, ask to try before you buy and see if it's worth it. I've definitely done that in certain cases and I find that this isn't working for my industry or this isn't working for what my needs are today or I didn't get the return that I needed to justify the spend here. And sometimes you're blown away and you're like, this is amazing. Sign me up yesterday. So getting that try before you buy opportunity is really important. That's also going to help you sell anything you want as far as spend wise to any leadership that you're going to need to get approval from. They want to see data, they want to see what they're going to get out of spending the money, which is important because if they didn't ask those questions, I'd be concerned. So making sure that you're able to try before you buy is going to be super helpful too. Daniel Blaser (27:57): Yeah, lots of great advice there. And to kind of go into a little bit more, you mentioned you've tried out some options and they just didn't seem worth it to you. Is there anything that specifically, we'll talk about kind of categories of AI right now. Everyone's talking about chat, GPT for example. Is there anything that you feel like is just, it's too early or it's just not there yet, but people are already starting to say, Hey, this is worth including in kind of your tech stack or whatever, but it's like it's just doesn't make sense to you as far as AI goes? Nicole Phommanorat (28:39): Yes, and my answer is going to be industry specific or I guess type of hiring specific because there are cases where in a different world it might be really great, but for the type of recruiting that I'm doing, it's not So for example, video interviewing, I hate video interviewing. I absolutely don't want it anywhere near me or my team. And when I say video interviewing, I'm not talking about, Hey, let's jump on this Zoom and chat face-to-face. I'm talking about as a screening process, putting in questions and saying answer these questions on video. I'm not a fan. Maybe in a world where you're doing a ton of tech recruiting, it's a position where you've got thousands of candidates for one or two roles that could be helpful in screening. But when you're working in an area where it's high volume hiring and it's a candidate's world, it is not a process that works for us as far as drop off goes. There's so much drop off with video interviewing that I can't justify it if I'm already struggling to fill positions and find organic traffic and then I'm spending money on top of that to get more traffic and then I say, Hey, do this video on my drop off like 60%, that's not going to work for me. (30:17): So we cut it out completely and that's just because it's not working for the type of candidate and the roles that we're filling, but it could work somewhere else. I've just never worked for a company where it could work somewhere else. But I'm sure somewhere in the world it exists where it's amazing. Or companies that are for video interviewing, they wouldn't exist anymore. So I hate it, but it could work so Daniel Blaser (30:44): Well. Oh, sorry. I was going to say that goes back to what you were saying at the beginning of custom tailoring your process and that just isn't something that doesn't work and you, you've tried it in different processes and that's just not going to work. But maybe for someone else it would. So sorry, what were you going to say? Were you going to say something Nicole Phommanorat (31:00): Else? I was going to say the other thing that I'm not really a big fan of is at certain levels assessments I know be shocked. Assessments depending on the level of the role that you're recruiting. I don't know that assessments are always necessary and it creates a harder process to get candidates into your a TS system. So for example, hourly hiring. If I'm looking for somebody to work in one of our stores who's going to build salads every day and talk to my guests in the window and do things like that, why do I need to assess that? Why can't I have a hiring manager go through a standardized interview process where we're touching on culture? How is this person going to interact with the team? Why can't we invest time person to person to see if that person's qualified? Whereas if you're looking for somebody who's going to be a people leader or has some technical aspects to their job where you need to see what level are you in this specific area, for sure do an assessment. (32:20): But for where we are at Salad and Go, it just doesn't make sense to have that assessment tied to it for those certain levels. So I'm not a big fan of assessments. I don't care if it's 90 seconds and it's full of pictures and it's gamified and it's amazing. I just don't like 'em. And I also don't like the red, yellow, green. Why are you yellow? Why are you red? Why are you green? Does it mean that green is better than yellow? Maybe not necessarily. I don't know. So I'm just not a big fan of that as well. Daniel Blaser (32:54): Yeah, so it seems like the overarching of some of what you're saying is trying to identify those points of friction or removing some of that friction and some of these platforms, that's what they're doing. They position it as this is going to help or this is going to streamline, but in reality it's also adding friction, which is obviously counterintuitive. So that definitely makes sense. You kind of touched on this a little bit when we were talking about the ROI question, but could you give some advice for making the case maybe to leadership for when you do vet something and it is worth the time and the money to implement, how do you make the case to leadership and get that buy off on that investment? Nicole Phommanorat (33:42): So I would always say you need data to back up all the feel good things that you have about whatever the system is. So making sure that you can show in a measurable way, what are we buying? And that could be just through comparing this is how we did prior to using this, this is how we did while we trialed it and tried it before we invested. Sometimes you don't always get that chance or that opportunity. So maybe taking what did other companies do and what were their results in similar industries or areas. So maybe it's an a TS system that you're looking at, or maybe it's, I don't know, app cast or something like that where you want to see, well, what other restaurants or food processing facilities or manufacturing companies are using this and what do their results look like? And being able to provide that information, even providing testimonials or allowing or asking for conversations to be had with other people who are using that platform is super helpful too, because while, yeah, another restaurant maybe competition, there's still going to be able to tell me how it's working and what they like about it and what they don't. (35:13): So being able to provide that feedback also to leadership is going to be really helpful too. And then also making sure you go to that conversation armed with any questions that could pop up so you have that question answered. So I like to talk with my department leader and say, Hey, this is what I'm going to present. Where do you see they're going to poke holes in it and take that information and be proactive in making sure that I have an answer for that. I don't want the answer to ever be, I don't know, let me go ask and I'll let you know later. Because when is later going to be, is it a biweekly meeting? Is it a monthly meeting? They've got other stuff to talk about. So you're not going to be a priority forever because the world's moving really fast. So having all those answers the best you can before they're asked is going to be super important too if you're going to be selling anything to leadership. Daniel Blaser (36:14): Yeah, good advice there. Do you try to avoid, I'm trying to think of how to ask this question. If you kind of have some of the data and some of the expected performance or ways that this should impact your efforts, do you try to avoid making overt promises or based on where we're at, I bet we can hit this if we use this solution? Or do you feel like that's kind of necessary sometimes in order to get the support for the investment? Nicole Phommanorat (36:48): Are you asking making absolute promises? Daniel Blaser (36:51): Well, not an actual promise, but I guess a projection or whatever. Is that been something you've tried where I think given what this is capable of, we should be able to achieve X, Y, Z? Or do you kind of try to not overly commit there? Nicole Phommanorat (37:13): I think you need to read the room when I say that because depending on who your leaders are, they respond to things differently. (37:26): So in the organization I'm in today, candor is literally one of our core values. It's something that's extremely important to who we are. Accountability is really important. Collaboration, no silos. So there that provides a better place where I can say, this is what I think we're going to get out of it, and here's why. This is my projection and this is all the data that tells me why I'm thinking that this is going to happen. And that's taken very well. I've never been in a situation with salad and go where nobody wanted to hear me out. Like I said, candor is super important. We want to be as honest as possible and as frank as possible, but we want to do it in a way that's respectful in all of that. On the flip side, I've also worked for companies where that's not always the case and you can't give a projection necessarily. (38:31): So you need to be able to read the room and know who you're talking and who you're presenting to and tailor your approach to sell whatever it is to what they're going to find value in hearing. And for some people it might not be a whole lot of metrics. It might just be like, Hey, it worked for this company, it worked for that company, it worked for that company. And then it might be that they love data and they just want to poke holes in everything, which is awesome. And maybe it's that approach. So figuring out what they want to hear and using, maybe it's your leader or using a peer of yours within the organization to figure out what's going to help me, what information do I need to provide in order to make sure that they're hearing what the story I'm trying to tell. Daniel Blaser (39:27): Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm looking at my list of questions and I have one more I definitely wanted to get in, if that's okay. You talked a little bit towards the beginning about how automation can be really valuable for candidate experience and improving that experience. Is there something that you've done at Salad and Go that you feel like has done that it's kind of maybe added a little bit more of the human touch or a better candidate experience, but still at scale? Nicole Phommanorat (40:02): Yes. So we've used our A TS to Max capacity as far as what we're able to do and still maintain the quality of reporting we need to be accurate. And in those changes we've been able to provide a better candidate experience. And that's from anything to is the process of applying easy? Is it quick and fast? It takes less than five minutes to apply. Now we don't have the dreaded upload your resume and then type in where you work the last 20 years. We don't have that. Our resume systems, if you put in your resume, it's going to parse in and things like that. So all of those things we've optimized. We've also added in where we can automatic messaging. So if you do apply, you get a message that says, Hey, we got your application. Thanks for applying. This is what next steps are. (41:02): In the meantime, check out all of these news articles that tell you about how awesome we are that's there. And then we set the stage for them knowing what to expect. And if they don't hear from us, where do you let us know contact information to somebody who's a real person, which is awesome. That actually answers. So we've done that as well. And then beyond that, every candidate that we have who applies, they get an answer, whether it's yes or they know if we're going to proceed with their candidacy. It's not just this black hole that people will fall into and they never hear back from the company. We do a really great job of making sure that every candidate is seen as a potential guest for our stores and make sure that everyone's treated with respect and dignity. And I think that goes a long way when people have that human touch and people know that, Hey, you're important to me. It really does go a long way, and we've used AI to make that easier and to touch more people in a way that makes it faster and more effective. Daniel Blaser (42:10): Yeah, I really like the phrasing that every candidate is a potential guest. That is a really good way to kind of reframe it or think about it. Yeah. That's cool. Nicole, you've shared so much great advice and experience with everyone watching this. I just want to say thank you so much, and I wanted to give you one last opportunity if there's a final takeaway or just one final point that you wanted to leave everyone watching with. Yeah, feel free to share right now. Nicole Phommanorat (42:43): Yeah, I would say that take a deep dive into what you have and what's available to you and what your vendors can offer. Because when you hear ai, it sounds kind of expensive, but it doesn't always have to be. So be scrappy and see what you have available and what resources you have, the potential to reach out and grab very quickly and easily and implement those first and then figure out what are some more nice to haves. So there's a lot of things that could be potentially free or very inexpensive that you already have the ability to use. So try to use those first. Daniel Blaser (43:21): Awesome. That's great advice. Well, thanks again, and for everyone watching, thanks for watching. Nicole Phommanorat (43:27): Thank you. Bye. |