All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.
Transcript
The transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned to our weekly episodes. My name is Lydia, and with us today is Bonnie Dilber, who is the recruiting manager at Zapier. Welcome to the show, Bonnie.
Bonnie: Hi, thanks so much for having me.
Lydia: So, Bonnie, you've been with Zapier for a year now. Tell us about your experience growing in your role as a recruiter and some milestones that you've had at Zapier.
Bonnie: Sure, I started at Zapier back in November 2021. And it was a bit of a journey. I started as a senior recruiter, and it was my first time working in tech. I came from an education and nonprofit background, where I had been in management roles.
Six weeks after I came here, my manager shared that she had accepted a new role. And so, I ended up taking over managing the team with her departure. For a while, I held both roles of recruiting and trying to build the team. But I had a really great time helping to grow our recruiting team at Zapier dramatically last year. And then I have navigated all sorts of interesting challenges, just given the broader landscape and tech, and I hit my one-year anniversary a few months ago.
Lydia: How big has the team grown since you joined?
Bonnie: I think we had about 15 employees when I joined. And we're now at 40. But part of that was because a large chunk of the team had just left around the time I started. And so, we really were rebuilding the team. Lots of people started just a week or two after me. So, we have a new team to Zapier. We have a team that has a lot of great recruiting experience, and we've done some really awesome things together.
The Shifting Trends In the Recruitment Scene
Lydia: Great. And you've been a recruiter, as you said, for several years now. And you come from an education and recruitment background and moving into the tech scene. And so, the recruitment space itself has seen plenty of different trends affecting it. As a recruiter today in the tech scene, what are some shifts that you've seen during this time?
Bonnie: It's interesting. I think the biggest has been seeing how quickly things can shift from the employees having an advantage of being an employee's market to an employers' market and watching how different companies operate, where one day you see companies fighting aggressively to hire the best people.
And in those spaces, they are moving processes quickly. They're putting out great offers, really putting a lot of effort into recruiting people and getting people excited. And then you can quickly see when it shifts to employers feeling like they have power. And then suddenly, you see employees or applicants who are going just weeks without hearing from anyone, and interview processes are being dragged out.
And so, I think that has just been something interesting to see. But I've seen a lot more advocacy from candidates around the experiences they're having and what makes them so problematic. And I think social media has really enabled people to share the experiences they have. They're posting about it on LinkedIn, they're making TikTok videos about bad recruiting experiences, they're posting on Glassdoor, and they share leaving reviews about interview experiences on Glassdoor.
I think a lot of those things are also leading companies to have more accountability around negative recruiting experiences and practices. And it pushes us to up our game. Those are some of the evolutions that I've seen.
Lydia: And it's interesting when you say they know they've taken on these responses to the company because if they feel they've not been heard by the company and getting a response, they’ll go to social media, as you said.
Do you respond at all to these to these different types of feedback that you see on social media? What is your approach toward that?
Bonnie: Great question. So, at Zapier, we've had a couple of experiences that I feel really lucky for where people have actually said, posted about great experiences they've had getting rejected by us. Because at least they get responses really quickly. They get feedback and things like that.
But I've also seen people apply and keep getting rejected, that sort of thing. Usually, in those cases, we try to depend on the tone of it. We’ll usually follow up and say something like, “Hey, sorry that you're not having the experience that we would hope would. We’d love to follow up with you one on one. We'll send you a direct message,” or something along those lines. And then take it offline, but try to publicly show that we're aware and we want to address it and make it right and learn from it.
And so, right now, that's our approach there. And sometimes, if it really feels aggressive, which we haven't experienced a lot of, but every now and then, there might just be something that you leave alone and let them be upset and hope that it's not going to be too visible to people. Because sometimes, commenting or engaging will actually increase the visibility of that.
On Glassdoor, we do have a practice. We set aside time each week to have someone respond to people personally who leave reviews, positive or negative, to try to address any challenges that people might be having or thank people for taking the time to share positive feedback.
Aligning the Business Needs with Recruitment Strategies
Lydia: So, It's taken on almost treating the candidate as a customer, that sort of nature in recruitment today, right? And on that note, how have you aligned business needs with recruitment strategies at Zapier?
Bonnie: We spend a lot of time with our executives. And we have a saying at Zapier that hiring is a team sport. And so, the relationship that recruiting has with the rest of the business is the best one I've experienced anywhere I've worked, where people are very supportive and very communicative. We're brought in on planning early. We know about any sort of major changes that are coming. And therefore, we are able to be real partners, and the business is willing to make investments in us. Part of that big growth that we saw last year was because we grew the company by about 35%. Last year. And so our team really needed to grow aggressively to get ahead of that.
And in turn, I think we are really strategic about working with our executives to map out how we're going to hire so that we can maximize the number of people that we're bringing in at any given time. And I think recruiting really needs to work in partnership with teams like learning and development to make sure that you actually have the capacity to onboard people quickly and get them up to speed so that they can add value.
You need to work with the business to figure out the interviewing capacity so that you're able to move as quickly as possible. And I think we just have a strong sense of partnership across the business, which helps us then move quickly and meet aggressive goals.
Lydia: I understand that Zapier is also all remote, and working from anywhere is a key proposition. It's front and center on your careers page. So, when did this come about? And how has this style of work been supported?
Bonnie: Zapier was actually founded to be remote from the start. They've never had offices. So, that's how it's always been. And it is interesting because I have noticed a real difference between a company that was built to be completely remote versus places where they tolerate remote work, where you have some people work remotely, but a lot of people don't.
In those cases, you often see people left out. Whereas here, because everyone is remote, all of the communication structures have to work so that people can access them from any location at any time. We do a lot of training around how to communicate, what channels to use, what asynchronous work needs to look like, how to bring people in on your work when you're not necessarily in meetings with them or able to walk next door, and show someone down the hall what your work looks like.
And so, we explicitly teach people how to operate in a remote environment and how to communicate effectively, and those sorts of things that I think help people be productive. We really leverage collaboration tools like Slack. We don't use email much. But we use a lot of slack.
Every week, we have everyone in the company write just an update on their goals, what they accomplished that week, and what their goals are for the next week. We also have a weekly all-hands meeting, where everyone comes on live together or across the whole business. You get updates from executives, they bring a meaty topic, and they have a completely open Q&A where we can ask anything we want from them.
So I think things like that are giving access, in a way that those in an office might have more easily because you can just go talk to someone that you run into at the watercooler. And so, we try to create more of those experiences.
Lydia: I've also noticed that the entire recruiting process is clearly defined on the career page. And that's great. So, what’s Zapier’s philosophy or perspective on transparency in the candidate experience?
Bonnie: One of our values is Zapier has defaulted transparency. And I think we really try to lean into it. We try to tell people as much as possible about what to expect and then adhere to it.
“I think the big rule that we want our team to keep in mind is that a candidate should never go more than seven days without an update.”
Even if it's just an update to let them know that we don't have any update yet, that we're still waiting on a decision, or something like that, they should hear from us weekly. I think things like that really make it clear to the recruiter and clear to the candidate. If it's been a week, and you haven't heard from us, you should reach out. it is perfectly acceptable to reach out to us.
That sort of thing makes it clear to recruiters what expectation they're being held to. And then, we have systems within our ATS that allow us to track where people are against those timelines. We think it's really important that people know what to expect in the process and have some understanding of why. And when someone is going through our recruitment process, each email that they receive along the way also brings more information.
We share what's going to happen in your next interview and some resources to prepare for it. We want people to feel empowered and positioned to bring their best selves and not be nervous as much as possible because they're wondering what to expect or have basic things that they can't figure out.
Develop the Mindset of Lifelong Learning for Recruiters
Lydia: We hear a lot about how recruitment today is challenged. You've got a shortage of talent, you've got changing economic landscape, and you don't know what's going to be, what a company is supposed to be faced with in the next half a year or the following year. And also, a big challenge is keeping up with the kinds of jobs that recruiters are recruiting for. And they have to evolve to a certain extent and learn by themselves as well.
From the education space moving into the tech scene, the learning curve is steep. So, how might recruiters, from your point of view, develop the mindset of lifelong learning?
Bonnie: Yeah, I love that question. Because I think we do a lot to support that here. And I wrote a blog post about this on Zapier's blog if anyone wants to go read it, but we currently have a lot of our recruiting team because recruiting is slowed down. We have them doing some projects for other teams across the business. And our recruiter who was recruiting for product roles is actually working with the product team now, in part because she learned so much along the way of recruiting for products. She learned to understand their work.
And she actually started taking courses on the side. We have an education budget here. So, she was able to use that to take classes to help her better understand product management. And so, she is now doing essentially an externship with them. She's spending a quarter working as a part of the product team. We have someone doing the same thing with the data team.
And so, I just share that to say that I think our recruiters really try to understand the business that they're recruiting for, and the roles that we're recruiting for, as well as what kind of projects people do to the point that they are able to become part of that team, if given the opportunity.
“It's really important that people understand that they get to know the work, what a day in the life of the roles that recruiting for looks like, and what some of the key challenges that those teams are facing so that they can really paint a strong and a realistic picture.”
We have a really strong employee retention here. And I think part of it is that we tried to be transparent with people about what to expect working here and not paint a rosy picture just to get them to accept an offer. We want them to really understand what's great here and what's going to be hard here. And that starts with recruiters working on learning the business that they’re recruiting for.
The Future Recruitment Trends to Look Out for
Lydia: So, we've seen multiple trends over the past couple of years. What would you say are three recruitment trends that anyone, especially professionals in the tech space, should look up for?
Bonnie: Good question. I think one thing that we're just seeing a lot of is candidates expecting much stronger communication and much quicker processes. The days of people being willing to sit around in a process for three months are gone. And I think if companies have bad trends, then it's really going to start hitting their employer brand negatively and could affect them in other ways.
I've even seen people say, “I don't want to use this product anymore because I had such a bad recruiting experience with the company.” So, having a bad recruitment process could, in fact, affect your business in a lot of ways. There are just going to be higher expectations for companies because their work is so much more visible. I think one thing that we'll probably see a lot more of as people monetize their networks is you can have 100,000 followers pretty easily because anyone can build robust networks in the world of remote work and social media. And have a lot of reach and a lot of access.
We'll start seeing less of people hiring maybe an agency to run something and more of using and paying people for their networks. Whether it's more robust employee referral programs to drive people in or even leveraging more outside referrals, things like that. I think we'll probably see more and more of that, as it just becomes easier to leverage that where you have, and because the younger generations are very, they value authenticity.
“I think Gen Zs don't want to be marketed to. They don't want to be sold to. They want to hear from someone working at your company, that person’s voice.”
There's a lot more to them than a recruiter's voice. And we'll just see more and more of those sorts of authentic practices, as opposed to these formal and rigid processes. Those are some of the evolutions that I expect to see.
Ways to Approach Talent Retention
Lydia: It's interesting because all these evolutions in the recruitment space, as you said, also lead to their transition as an employee eventually, then you've got to retain them, and keep them interested in the company, keep them always remembering that original proposition that was made. So, what are some ways that you've approached talent retention?
Bonnie: I think it's so important because what used to be called job hopping used to be a new job every two years now. I think it's like, “If you say that your job is six months, you're fine. You can move on.” And there is a tendency among younger generations to move around quickly.
And so, companies have to put a lot more effort into retaining talent now than they did a few years ago, where you could expect a new hire to stay for two or three years. So, I think one of the biggest things is making sure that the promises that you make are that you live up to them and that your culture is what you say it is.
I think money and benefits really are kings in this space. And just because things are getting so much more expensive, people will leave for a raise if you're not able to meet that.
“I do think companies have very strong compensation benefits plans, and increasing compensation rapidly for your high performers is just going to be like critical to retaining people. And if you're not able to increase compensation, then having other programs that are going to make it hard for people to leave, like, great benefits, flexibility, and remote work.”
You have to offer some of those things to stand out. Because we are just seeing the workforce is less loyal to the actual company. And they know that they can find good culture in lots of places. And so, they would go to the employer that is going to also take care of them and their family.
Challenges In Employer Branding Today
Lydia: On that note comes the employer brand. So, you need to put that out. You need to allow your candidates to be able to see all these different ways in which you add value to their careers. What might be the three biggest hurdles for employer branding today in tandem with what you said earlier - the changing expectations, etc., and also the disruptive environments that we've seen recently?
Bonnie: I think one of the challenges for employer brand is that your brand is harder to control today than it was 20, 30 years ago. Because your brand is being formed by people creating content where they talk about your products, whether you want them to or not. Or talk about their experience, going through your recruitment process, whether you want them to or not. And so, what you have on your website or on your LinkedIn page matters a lot less than what is on all of these anonymous sites, where people are going on and talking about companies and mostly sharing really negative things about their experiences.
All of that stuff is out there. And so, I think one of the hurdles is understanding what your narrative is. And that's part of why it's important that you have a really happy workforce and that you have great processes because if you don't, people are going to find out about it. And it's going to be very public and shared widely, and it can damage a lot of the work that you do more intentionally to build your brand.
And alongside that, there's both a risk and a real benefit to leveraging your people and asking them to engage more authentically. I think it used to be that businesses would architect the messages that people were putting out. Now, again, everyone can talk on social media or wherever they want about their experiences at work. And in an ideal world, you should allow that to happen. Because I think that authenticity sells, and that is what people respond to.
At the same time, there's a risk in allowing that, and some companies respond by not allowing people to talk about work on social media or not allowing people to post on social media during the work day, and those sorts of things tend to happen.
And for me, that's ultimately a mistake because it's going to happen one way or another. Your best bet is to figure out how to leverage your employees for your benefit. But again, there is a risk of having a lot of that messaging out there that you can't really control.
I think those are some of the challenges that companies need to think through and have a strategy around.
The Impact of Automation Tools In Recruitment
Lydia: Let's speak a little bit about automation tools for hiring. So, there are plenty of tools out there to automate the hiring process, which remains until today, quite a challenging process in and of itself. And Manatal is one of those tools that is used for hiring that automates and uses AI to facilitate or ease the hiring process.
So, how might technology help in ensuring successful hiring practices?
Bonnie: Good question. I don't know how a company would hire at a large scale without a strong tech stack to support their hiring work. Unless you're hiring just one or two roles, a strong Applicant Tracking System is a-must that allows you to know where people are in the process and make sure that people are getting the right communication at the right times that scheduling for interviews is really easy.
It is critical that you have a tech stack that allows for that. And I think having strong reporting tools also allows you to then see where you're falling short so that you can improve your process. Again, if you're hiring at any sort of scale, where you have a lot of people, I think you need hard data to tell you where pain points that you can resolve may be at.
And I do think there's so much about the process that can be automated. I don't think should ever be automated is having an actual human review every application and make a decision. There are a lot of rumors out there about the Applicant Tracking Systems that are rejecting people. I've never used that kind of system before. And anywhere I've worked, we've always had a recruiter look and make that decision. And I think that it's really important that people take the time to apply to your company, and they deserve a human response.
However, automating things like reminders about interviews, messaging, and the onboarding process is really important as it will help people be successful in the process so that your recruiters are not trying to keep track of 20 different people and 20 different places and manually sending emails and updating spreadsheets and things like that. I have recruited in that way before, and it just opens the door for so many mistakes and bad experiences for candidates.
Lydia: So Bonnie, you've taken us through quite a journey you had in recruitment, moving from one industry to the next. And also, look into the different trends that you've seen, at least over the past couple of years, and the different ways in which you engage with candidates. I think that's a very critical piece for any recruiters out there.
So, from your perspective, what advice would you give someone who's starting out in recruitment today?
Bonnie: Great question. I think for anyone starting in recruitment, lean into relationships, get to know your hiring managers and really understand what it is that they're looking for, and build trust with them so that they're able to give you honest feedback.
And the person who is terrible for the job that you're interviewing for recruiting for right now could be the dream candidate for a role that you're going to get tomorrow. So, keep that in mind, and think about how you can establish relationships with people. Even if it's not going to be beneficial right now, it is still worth just having a broad network and group of people that you can tap into.
And then develop organizational systems. I think people underestimate how much information and data, as well as how much there is to stay on top of to be a really good recruiter. organization and the strong systems to manage everything that you're doing are really critical. And a lot of people that I actually see struggling in recruiting because they're people, and they love talking to people, but they can't keep up with everything else behind the scenes that needs to be done to manage a process. So, in your career, figuring those things out is important.
Lydia: Thank you very much for your time and insights. It's been a real pleasure having you with us today. I'm sure the audience will also want to know where they can connect with you and where they can find you and your company and maybe read some points from your blog, as you’ve mentioned earlier, and find out a little bit about Zapier.
Bonnie: Absolutely. So, I am very active on LinkedIn, and I also have TikTok. Both of them are just my name - Bonnie Dilber. Feel free to follow me on either of those as well as visit zapier.com. If you want to check out jobs with us and our blog. I've written a few blog posts, but there's lots of great content there. If you're interested in looking for a job with us, you can check there as well.
Lydia: Thank you so much, Bonnie. And we have been in conversation with Bonnie Dilber, Recruiting Manager at Zapier. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels and stay tuned for more weekly episodes from All-In recruitment. Thank you.
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