Introduction: Welcome to Hire We Go!, the show dedicated to transforming talent acquisition. This is your go-to spot for exploring how to truly find, attract, and engage top talent, whether you’re a seasoned HR pro or just fascinated by the world of recruitment. On today’s episode, the show is thrilled to welcome Mike Wood from HR.com! Get ready as Mike shares his unique journey and what he’s seeing as the biggest challenges and opportunities in our industry.
Ashlie Collins: Hello and welcome to Hire We Go!, where we’re chatting all things talent acquisition transformation. Whether you’re an HR vet or someone who’s simply fascinated by how to find, attract, and engage talent, you are in the right place. I’m your host and Director of Solutions here at Joveo, Ashlie Collins, and joining us today is Mike Wood of HR.com. Thank you so much for joining us today, Mike. Why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit more about yourself and HR.com.
Mike Wood: Sure. So I’ve been at HR.com since February, so I’m relatively new to the team, but I’m a TA analyst and executive community leader of everything that we do. So I’m basically like a roving reporter slash looking at all the different players and who’s doing what. I also host a couple of podcasts. I host Totally Talent on HR.com and also My First Job on the Purple Acorn Network. I’ve long been a fan of Joveo and all the stuff that you do. And I write a weekly newsletter called The Wrap.
I’ve been in the industry for too long. I got my start in HR tech, believe it or not from children’s television. I came from children’s television into the HR tech field. And I started at a company called Workhuman, which is employee recognition. And then, worked on the vendor side of a couple big TA players like Jobvite and iCIMS and now at HR.com, but I love the community and I love all the people in it.
Ashlie Collins:
And just hanging on for the ride, right?
Mike Wood: Yeah
Ashlie Collins: Which I guess brings me to what I was really hoping to talk to you about. I think hiring in general has been absolutely crazy over the past couple of years from innovation and AI to COVID pandemics, all sorts of things. What do you feel is the most pressing issue that we’re facing today?
So it’s interesting that over the past, you know, 10 years, even the last five years, we’ve gotten tremendously better tools to do the recruiting job. But yet the actual time it takes and the amount of frustration it takes has gotten worse. So I think one, you know, of the biggest issues right out in the open is just too much clutter. You go on to LinkedIn as a job seeker and you see that a thousand people already applied for a job – are you going to apply for that job? And then on the the hiring team side it’s just really hard to find out if everybody who – you’re getting flooded with applicants now because it’s so easy to apply and you’re trying to find out are these the real people I need to be talking to do they have the right skills am I missing out on hidden talents so there’s just so much it’s it’s overwhelming. And then, you know, with the advances in AI, there’s a lack of trust between both the parties. I think that, um, as a candidate, when you’re applying, you’re wondering if the AI is going to kick you out before you even had a chance to open your mouth. And a lot of times when you get kicked out of applying for a job, you never hear why.
It’s so true. I feel like this concept of positive and negative friction is something that just keeps coming up over and over again in all of our conversations. You want to curate a really almost consumer-esque candidate experience for folks and get that targeting right on the top end so that you’ve got positive friction there, but you’re reducing negative friction as folks experience your organization. And it’s a bit of a minefield at the moment, knowing exactly what to do, where to introduce automation, where to actually lean in on the human touch so that you can address some of the, like ensuring people actually have the skills that they said they have. So it’s a new frontier, shall we say, in terms of figuring all of this out.
Mike Wood: Yeah, and we spent years talking about how we need the experience applying for a job to be easier. And that’s true. But now it’s too easy. Like if you just click a button, now there’s no safeguard in there between filtering out someone who’s just mass applying for jobs.
I don’t blame candidates for doing that because as a candidate, you’re, you’re waiting on communication nonstop. And so, and you’re worried. It’s not like you’re in a position of strength. You’re in a position of, of inherent weakness where you don’t have a job, you need a job and you’re just waiting to hear back. So I think, you know, if there’s one thing that I could tell, the hiring teams out there and the vendors out there its don’t forget about the candidate experience.
Don’t make your candidate do things that you would want to do, like seven rounds of interviews. Like, do you really need seven rounds of interviews? And I’ve found that, you know, companies that I’ve either worked for or talked with that have seven rounds of interviews, they have a hard time making decisions sometimes. And wow, I guess that goes all the way to their hiring processes. you know, you know, just, just the amount of hoops that we’re asking the candidates to go through.
Just show them some empathy too. And the biggest thing that I’ve, I’ve talked about for years and you know, no one’s figured out the exact formula for, how much you want to communicate to your candidates. But think about anything you do now.
If you order something from Amazon or you order, food from Door Dash, you know exactly where you are in the process. And so it’s like hiring is one of these only things that nobody has any idea where they are in the process.
Ashlie Collins: Yeah.
Mike Wood: And so increase empathy and communication, that’s, that’s my soapbox that I’ll stand on for now.
Ashlie Collins: And hopefully we haven’t stolen all your thunder in that. My final question for you today, if you did have a magic wand, what would you change about talent sourcing in 2025?
Mike Wood: Guess what? I do have a magic wand because you guys sent me one! So I have a magic wand and I was trying to convince my kids earlier with it that I could actually do magic. But like I would hide by light switch and I’d be like, boopity bopity boo. But they’re a little old. They knew I was full of it. You know, what I would just change is empathy. And I think on both sides, like, obviously the candidates are not going to have too much empathy for the hiring teams, but just know that they’re, they’re strapped. They’re down to a couple of people. They’re trying to get through everything. But the candidate market right now is really tough. So just have some empathy with what people are dealing with. And it’s so easy to fall into like I see these like LinkedIn influencers or whatever that are like I had a candidate do this and oh it’s awful – like just give people a break. It’s tough out there right now.
Ashlie Collins: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So maybe we should all spend a little bit more time talking about the recruiter experience as much as we talk about the candidate experience.
Mike Wood: Yeah, well, and it’s like, you know, if someone really cares about the candidate experience, it makes me think that they care about the employees that they’re hiring.
Ashlie Collins: Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time today, Mike. And thank you all so much for listening in and we’ll see you next time.
Mike Wood: Thank you, Ashlie.
Ashlie Collins: Thanks.
Conclusion: And that’s a wrap on another exciting session of Hire We Go! Today, Mike Wood from HR.com peeled back the layers on the most pressing issues in talent acquisition, from the overwhelming clutter in applications to the crucial need for more empathy and communication in the candidate experience. Mike’s insights reminded us that even with all our advanced tools, truly effective hiring comes down to making genuine connections and showing kindness. Big thanks to Mike for his fantastic insights, and thank you for tuning in!
