Name: Decoding Candidate Expectations: Breaking Down Data from the 2025 Job Seeker Nation Report
Uploaded: 2025-05-13T19:30:05.643Z
Duration: 1 h 30 min
Description: Decoding Candidate Expectations: Breaking Down Data from the 2025 Job Seeker Nation Report

Transcript for "Decoding Candidate Expectations: Breaking Down Data from the 2025 Job Seeker Nation Report": Hello, and welcome to our JobSeeker Nation webinar, decoding candidate expectations, breaking down the data from the twenty twenty five job seeker nation reports. We're gonna give it just a second to to allow, attendees to filter in, and we'll do some introductions and some housekeeping. Alright. Welcome. Welcome. Hi. Thank you so much for joining us today for decoding candidate expectations, breaking down data from the twenty twenty five job seeker nation reports. During today's session today, we're gonna find out what's really going on in the mind of job seekers. What do they value most? What part of the search process is most important to them? And today is is bound to be full of some exciting information because we asked about 1,500 adults in The US workforce to share the truth about today's job search experiences, and we're gonna bring those answers straight to your screen. Okay. So I am welcomed today or I'm joined today, with a with a few panelists. Madeline Laurano, founder and chief analyst of Aptitude Research, Neil Lanane, a business leader in talent acquisition, leader at Progressive Insurance, and Allie Wehling, the selection and assessment strategy leader at Cisco. Thank you all for being with me today. Alrighty. Alrighty. Gonna dive right in. So, you know, market perceptions was something that was really interesting, that came out of of our findings. Some of the key results from the 2025 job seeker nation report revealed that job hunters are less optimistic about landing new roles in this market and are focused on building new skills to stay competitive. In fact, as you can see on your screen, 82% are worried about a white collar recession, and sixty six percent are burned out from job searching. Meanwhile, 89% agree that addressing skills gaps can improve their odds of moving into a new role in this year. And 81% believe it's important to get trained on new technologies like AI in order to secure a job this year. I think net net recruiters have a powerful opportunity to cut through the noise by clearly defining the skills needed for each role, using things like bay behavioral based interviewing to help validate skills and deliver a faster, more transparent, and human hiring experience. With that in mind, I'd love to sort of volley my first question over to Allie. How are your teams cutting through this noise, and what's helping them most? Absolutely. So right now, we know that candidates are tired. You reported that in the report, 66% are saying that they're burnt out. Job searches are long, and they're feeling a little bit unsure of who to trust in the process. And that's why recruiters have a big opportunity to stand out by providing clarity from the start. And one of the best ways to do that is by getting really clear on the actual skills that a role requires, not just copying and pasting a generic, job description. So when you open a rack, don't just dust off the last version that you used and call it good enough. I like to think about a job description as a bit of a social contract, between the candidate and an employer. It really sets expectations. It defines what the job is and what success looks like and what kind of person will thrive in the role. And when you get that right, it helps candidates to both self select in and self select out of the process early, which really saves everyone a lot of time and can help create a much better candidate experience for everyone who's involved. Absolutely. And, Madeline, what from your perspective, are these results consistent with with what you're seeing and hearing? Absolutely. I mean, it's been such a change since what we saw in the pandemic where I think job seekers were feeling very confident, where there was a lot of what we call psychological safety around the job search process. But I love Allie advice because it is about clarity, and I love this idea of a social contract in that job description because the more clarity that can be provided, the more we're giving candidates that that psychological safety. I think the other piece that's really stands out to me here is the AI piece too because there's this perception around AI causing fear with job, you know, job seekers, and they're not necessarily, interested in AI. And this, you know, this is showing 81% believe it's important to get trained in new technologies like AI. But I think that also speaks to their willingness to use AI during the recruitment process. I think we've come a long way. I mean, we've seen a huge shift just in, you know, kind of that fear around AI in the past year. But if we can also use AI to do exactly what Allie said, to provide that clarity, to provide communication, to be able to scale that to a lot of job seekers that don't know, you know, how long this process is gonna be, that don't have clear expectations around, you know, what what's gonna be in store for them, you know, in the next two weeks, two months, however long this is gonna take. So it's that combination, I think, of recruiters setting that expectation, but also I love just seeing that, you know, embracing AI in their own careers and their own skill journey, but also to embrace AI in you know, it implies they're embracing it in the recruitment process as well. I think the other piece that I call out here too is around skills. I mean, 89% here say they agree that addressing skill gaps can improve their odds of moving, you know, into a new role. And when we do research on skills, we so often look at it from the employer's perspective. We look at the benefits to employers for taking a skills based approach to hiring because they're able to provide, you know, better quality hires. They're able to really improve efficiency. This is really showing it from the job seekers perspective, and I think that's so important. It's saying that, you know, this is a win win for employers and it's a win win for candidates as well. They wanna be able to, you know, take action and improve, you know, the skills that they have, the skills that they wanna build for different roles. So I love I love seeing that. I think it's such a positive, you know, a positive place to be. I think that's fantastic. You know, so just so that our audience knows, Neil is having some technical difficulties. He is trying to join us, but we will keep moving forward in our in our content review today, and, and we will we will incorporate him as he's able to join us. But, you know, I think you both raised some really excellent points. And and I think the next logical question as we move forward is, you know, why employees leave or stay as we move forward. Great. Alright. So, alright. So a couple of key findings. You know, candidates are open to new opportunities despite worries about a stagnant market, and I think that is just frankly, it's so fascinating. And as you can see from some of the data that we share on the screen here, 85% of respondents indicated that they were open to other opportunities. And I think, for me, what that essentially says is that is that the loyalty of years past between an employee and an employer is is essentially dead. You know, we we went further and we looked at why people are motivated to actively look for a new job, and the results revealed that a pattern kind of a pattern emerged with the apprehension about stability and overall alignment with employers. And you can see this through the metrics on the screen. 32% decrease in compensation and pay cuts, 31% burnout in their current role, 26% stress about the economy, 21% concerns about layoffs or positions being eliminated, 20% concerns about employers' financial stability of the future. So, you know, this question really is to all of our panelists. How can we realistically convey that sense of reliability and stability that candidates are just frankly seeking? Yeah. I can start because I think I have a different take on on this, but I've been curious to hear what Allie, thinks about this too with her experience. You know, from from our research, I think, you know, when you see this statistic and we find the same thing in our research, it can feel overwhelming to employers, and there's almost becomes more of a gap between the employer and the job seeker or the employee to say, actually, we, you know, are on different pages and there's, you know, no alignment here. I think we actually need to flip that. And we need to say, okay. If employees or even job seekers are open to new opportunities, how can we lean into internal mobility? How can we look at, okay, how do we provide these opportunities internally to be able to think about creating less stress, creating less burnout, creating new opportunities, thinking about what we saw on the last slide with the opportunities for skills, you know, the opportunity to use AI, to develop into new roles within the organization. It doesn't have to be other opportunities outside your organization. It can be opportunities within your organization. We did research actually with Employ Inc a few years ago on internal mobility. I mean, this became this big buzz during the pandemic. And what we found in the research is that companies that were investing in internal mobility and providing exactly what Allie said, which is clear communication, not just treating them like external candidates, saw improvements in quality of hire, improvements in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and improvements in first year retention as well. I love that. I think that is such an excellent point. You know, I think we saw, especially, you know, with our last slide, we saw that our candidates or our employees are craving sort of that development and that, you know, ongoing development. And so I think the concept of internal mobility is such a great point. Allie, what about you? Yeah. First of all, just plus one, plus a hundred to everything Madeline said. I think, development and internal mobility is so important. Your internal candidates are probably going to be your your best candidate. Some of your best candidates that you can bring, on board. They have the historical knowledge, and they're they're gonna be quick to onboard. But shifting to external candidates, we're definitely seeing a shift from loyalty to self preservation, and it's completely understandable. Who can blame them? They're they're navigating the pay cuts and the burnout and the economic uncertainty. So to cut through that fear, and really communicate stability, we we have to think beyond compensation and look at things like transparency, consistency, trust, building those tenets, and starting there in the hiring process. So being clear about the realities of the role. I'm a huge fan of a realistic job preview, and the health of the business. Don't try and oversell your candidate. Your candidates are really smart. They can sniff out vague or inflated promises from a mile away. So instead, be real. What is the company's growth plan? How have you supported your employees through change? And to Madeline's point, what are you doing to invest in your employees' skills and long term success? You know, candidates are they're also looking for signals of alignment. Do your do their values match your values as an organization? Are your teams set up for sustainable work? How do how does the company treat their employees when things get hard? And then some small actions actions that aren't actually that small, that our recruiters or talent advisors can take, like providing prompt feedback, having honest answers, and then your interview teams providing visible insights into team culture. All of that can go a really long way in showing your candidates that you are a stable people first employer. Absolutely. I think that's such a great point. I think authenticity and transparency is is very easily readable by by each of us. And and I think too, you know, that opposite side of that coin as we think about, HR leaders, how they're preparing their talent acquisition teams to be able to speak to these things in the interview process, and the hiring team will speak to these things in the hiring process. It's such a great point. Let me give you one, comment to that. And it really, really sparked this in my mind, and then there's a comment that came in in our in our chat here. So I love these comments. Please keep them coming around culture. Because I think I've been attending a bunch of conferences over the past month, and culture's come up over and over and over again. It's almost like we're having this resurgence around this topic of culture. And so often TA is very separate from the culture conversation. It's something that HR or even organizational development will handle or even leadership will handle within a company. But culture really plays into everything that Allie's talking about because if you're thinking about this job description as a social contract or you're thinking about, you know, a realistic job preview, we're actually trying to show the culture of the company and incentivize employees and candidates to really, connect and align with something that isn't just around compensation. So I love the comment that came in around sure. I think it's so important, and I think TA has a really great opportunity to be able to drive this culture conversation and make it more transparent than it's been in the past. I think that's a really great point. So I think the next next logical place that we went to is is what workers value in in in the role. And so as you can see on your screen, you know, the key finding here was that candidates do still prefer flexible work arrangements. I know that is not shocking. But a poor interview and or hiring experience can really make or break the decisions associated with accepting a role. To me, I mean, just like, wow. You know, this data really illustrates the importance of of delivering a a positive, consistent experience from the interview all the way through onboarding. And and when we have the opportunity to showcase our company's culture and establish trust with within, you know, within the process through things like consistent communication. I mean, it can it can make all the difference in the world. You know, Madeline, you were just chatting a little bit about culture, but but what do you think the root cause of this disconnected experience is? It is a disconnect, and I well, first, I'd love to say that I I'd love that we're not seeing pay as number one for either of these two reasons for leaving, whether that's twelve months or, you know, within the first ninety days. So I think that's that's a good place to be because, you know, companies need to take this seriously. And and we're seeing you know, we're just talking about culture, and here we see it right here as the top reason for leaving a job in ninety days, and we're seeing career advancement in twelve months. There's misalignment, but I think for a lot of organizations, they think they're doing this work already, and they probably are. There's probably been some big investment in internal mobility or succession planning or career development. There's probably been some investment at some point in culture, but those investments have not aligned with what employees actually want and what they expect. And maybe it hasn't even, to Allie point, been communicated, in a way that's very clear. So I I think, there is a huge disconnect, but I also think that it doesn't necessarily mean companies aren't investing in these areas. It means they're not thinking about it through the employee lens, and they're also not communicating it or involving employees. You know, career development, internal mobility, it needs to involve the individual. It's not something that's just separate. And what we saw in the past is that companies would just set up an internal career site. They would promote it. They would market it internally, and then employees could find internal jobs. They wouldn't have to go to their manager, which is fantastic, but then they're treated like an external candidate through the rest of the process. There's no conversation. There's no AI to say, you know, how do you want to develop within this organization? What would you like to grow into? What skills would you like to, develop? Who would you like to connect with that has similar background or who has a career path that you admire and that you would strive to, you know, to, you know, take on yourself. The it's it's hasn't involved the employee. So I think we need to be clear and transparent about it, but I think it needs to be more collaborative than it has been in the past. The culture piece, you know, there's an old old case study that's still a very relevant one where Zappos, did a really ground up culture experiment where they involved every single employee in developing what their culture was. That typically doesn't happen, and that's a lot of work, but it doesn't need to, you know, be kind of that grassroots, but it needs to involve employees at some level in developing what that culture is. I could not agree more. I, you know, I I feel like there there are these themes about who originates culture and where does culture come from? Is it the top? Is it the middle? And I think, ultimately, culture is built from all of us. Right? It's it's how we interact with each other. It's how we set deliverables and timelines and expectations and communication in general. And so, you know, hearing hearing you say that, I think it just absolutely resonates and and such a great point. On on a similar vein, you know, Allie, what steps are your teams taking to ensure a consistent candidate experience throughout the hiring journey? Yeah. So, you know, I didn't know this was gonna turn into a culture webinar, but it's it it it's a natural segue. And every little decision is how you build your your organization's culture. So if you, you know I like to think that the candidate experience should mirror your employee experience. It should give you a preview into what that employee experience is gonna look like. So if the process is disorganized or slow or overly complex, if you put your candidates through seven, eight, nine interviews with 10 interviewers or more, it's subliminally sending some messages that this is how decisions get made internally. Decisions are gonna be arduous. They're gonna be bureaucratic, and candidates are definitely going to pick up on that. Whereas on the flip side, if the process is really focused and if it's transparent and respectful of their time, that's going to show up too. They're going to see that we value clarity and efficiency, and really start to build their trust. So the way that we're doing that is we have invested in structured interviewing processes, and really start with alignment between the whole hiring team. So before interviews even begin, our recruiters, hiring managers, interviewers come together to make sure that they are fully calibrated on what skills we're looking for, how we are going to evaluate them, and really what good looks like with some behavioral indicators. And that type of prep work is going to help ensure that we're not just asking consistent questions, but we're also making consistent decisions throughout the process. I love that. If anyone on this webinar has been on a webinar have hosted before, I love a good audience poll, and this feels like the perfect pause for us to do a quick audience poll. So, what you see on your screen, where are you focusing efforts most to secure and retain your talent, offering flexible work arrangements, developing clear paths to career advancement, ensuring a consistent interview experience, or building trust through company culture? Or the last one is improving communication throughout the hiring process. I do love a good poll. I love a good poll too. I love the interview that, you know, comments that have been coming in and then hearing Allie talk about the structured interview because it's so important, and it's shocking how few companies do that. But there was a comment that came in around the interview on the last slide being important after twelve months for people leaving up to twelve months, but not necessarily for ninety days. But I think it speaks to the resentment that builds. If you go through that process and it just sits with you, it's gonna sit with you for much longer than just ninety days. It's gonna sit with you for that first year that you're working for that organization. A %. Okay. So as we're looking at these results, leading the pack brings us right to what wins our candidates over, and that is, is communication. So listen. Key finding. How to win our candidates over? Simple, communicative application processes win with workers. Absolutely. You know, I think interestingly, great communication and easy application process and a flexible interview scheduling process are all equally important contributors to a positive candidate experience. And the greatest impact on a candidate's impressions of a company is influenced by the ease of the application process and the strength of the interview conversations. We saw that right in the poll on the previous screen. Almost almost half of you, just about 40% of you indicated that that communication was was the the most important thing. So, Allie, I wanna get started with you when we look at some of this data. I know that your team uses Pillar, the AI interview intelligence platform that actually that employee recently acquired. And I'm curious from your perspective, how has pillar helped your team deliver a positive interview experience? Yeah. Absolutely. We we lean on technology to serve as the backbone for how we deliver a consistent and candidate centric interview experience. It allows us to help bring structure and clarity in every step of the process, and something we say internally a lot is, how can we make it really easy to follow and hard to deviate from? And technology can help us do that. And, specifically, Pillar helped us at Splunk to operationalize, alignment between or across every interviewer. So no matter who the candidate meets with, they're getting a fair, focused, consistent experience. You know, we we've all been in situations where an interviewer has to be subbed out last minute. They had a last minute conflict. They're out sick. Whatever the reason is, the can whoever the interviewer is, though, the candidate should have the same experience, and we should be coming to the same outcome. And this is really where structured and behavioral interviewing thrives. So instead of, relying on service level credentials, gut feel, questions you come up within the moment, We're going to be asking candidates to share their real examples of how they demonstrated skills that we really care about and things that are going to differentiate top performers from those who maybe won't thrive in the role. So this is really helping us to get deeper insight into their readiness, and it, you know, gives candidates a fair shot to showcase their capabilities, which is especially important for those who may have not come from traditional backgrounds, but they're actively upskilling. We wanna give them the opportunity to show that. So from the candidate's expect from their perspective, it really matters that we are structured and we are transparent across our process. It means fewer redundant questions for them. Hopefully, it means that we're driving a more efficient process, and giving them clear signals about what we value. And then on our side, it gives us a shared foundation to have, a a conversation in the debrief that we're all assessing the candidate in the same way and using the same criteria for what's important to us, and having really data driven decisions, that is, where we hopefully reduce some biases. Great. I love that. Madeline, some similar. I mean, what what jumps out to you about this data, and and do you see opportunities clear opportunities for these hiring teams? Absolutely. I mean, I think what jumps out to me first is that this doesn't change regardless of what market we're in. This is important, you know, if companies are struggling to find candidates, if there's, you know, job it's if it's kind of employer market, if it's a job seeker market, communication is the number one factor, in this experience. And if, you know, when I think about what creates a positive candidate experience, you know, typically, that would be someone getting the job. That's, you know, what would create the best experience. That doesn't always happen, and we know that. So for the 90 what whatever percentage of people that are actually not gonna get the job, how can we create a fair human equitable experience so that they're leaving not saying, I have no idea what happened, but that was not fair. I wasn't I wasn't even considered. No one even looked at me. They're saying, that's too bad. I actually have some skills I wanna work on. It was clear to me what was happening in the process. Still a great company. And we talked a lot in our pre session about how candidates are customers for many, many industries. So that communication is extending far beyond recruitment here. It's extending into the full customer experience as well. And, you know, that that clear communication, I think, also doesn't have to be every single recruiter. You know, companies are dealing with a shortage of staff within their TA functions. Oh. We can use AI. We can use technology to scale that communication and provide a very human experience even using AI. That is such a great point. I think, you know and and we definitely did have this conversation. I think, you know, if we think about our candidates as as our brand ambassadors, right, when whatever interaction they have with the organization is an interaction and an experience that they translate in other areas and and points of their life. And so, you know, I often I hear, you know, recruiters or HR professionals say, well, how do I impact the organization? And this is a clear tie to how you impact the organization. So it's really important that you have those kind of fair and consistent processes. Yeah. I'm watching the the comments about employer brand and and it it not being something that that we necessarily spend a lot of time talking about, but it's so true. Okay. So, you know, up next, we wanted to ask workers their opinions on compensation. You know, earlier in our discussion, I think, Madeline, you mentioned, I'm I'm glad to see that's not in the top. I think we've seen that in the top of a lot of things. Right? You run an engagement survey. Folks talk about their comp. You run, interview process surveys, and we hear a lot about comp. Something that was interesting for us here and the key finding from our report this year is that candidates are increasingly ready to ask for more, and they're often seeing higher salaries than they expected. And so some of the data that you're seeing on the screen, 37% negotiated their salary, and that's up from 29% in 02/2017. So in other words, it has taken nearly a decade for this figure to rise by just eight percentage points. Another another interesting metric we found is that in 79% of negotiations, candidates report winning the higher pay. 80% of salary offers, for current or most recent roles met or exceeded the candidate's expectations. And then finally, 48% noticed increased salaries for job posting similar to their current role. I think here for me, it's interesting to see results that are so positive around salary while at the same time seeing earlier sentiments around a stagnant job market and the possibility of a white collar recession. I would say, just to be clear though, these two findings, I don't believe are necessarily contradictory. While job seekers may be receiving offers that meet or exceed their expectations, they may still believe that those salaries are falling short of what's needed to to match rising cost. So I just wanna call that piece out. For this one, Madeline, actually, I'd love to start with you. What trends are you seeing in the market or your organizations around salary, and then how are recruiters navigating these salary conversations with candidates and hiring teams? Yeah. Stephanie, I I had the same reaction you did. At first, I really I think about this because it does feel like, you know, a gap between what we talked about earlier with the, you know, lower confidence and a stagnant job market. But then to see that, you know, we're seeing job seekers and we're seeing compensation. We're seeing job seekers negotiate. We're seeing compensation being higher and salaries being higher than what, you know, they have been, and that's a very positive thing. I think, you know, one thing that jumps out to me is just that job seekers are so much more savvy than they used to be. I think about myself when I was in my twenties, and I switched a few jobs and switched a few, you know, career paths. And all I cared about was just what am I gonna, you know, be offered, and I wouldn't negotiate anything. I just was getting what I was given, and that was, you know, fine. Today, there's so much around transparency. We talk about pay transparency. There's information out there. There's, you know, job seekers know what they want. They experienced during COVID having much higher salaries than they had before COVID, and that's the behavior that we're still working off of. So I think, you know, job seekers are more savvy. I think employees are more savvy than they were before, certainly than when I was, you know, looking at different job opportunities. I think the other thing that stands out to me is around the negotiation. I think the role of the recruiter has changed quite a bit. The recruiter is not just a resource for the organization and for the employer. The recruiter is also a resource for candidates, and that's, you know, the impact that recruiters have had. It's very meaningful work. We don't say that enough. The work that recruiters do, it's so meaningful. It impacts your organization helping your company grow, and then you're helping individuals. There was a social media. There was a little buzz on social media a few years ago if anyone remembers this or paid attention to this, but there was a recruiter that posted on Twitter that, you know, candidate that she gave an offer to, didn't negotiate at all. And, actually, this candidate could have received a much higher salary had she the woman, had she negotiated. And the recruiter didn't say that she had helped the candidate. She was just commenting and just it was just commentary. This recruiter was dragged through the mud on social media by other recruiters saying, why didn't you help this person? Why didn't you, in the interview process, in the offer process, help this person to negotiate a little bit more? So you could see the behavior of recruiters really has shifted to be able to be a resource for job seekers and candidates where that, you know, may not have been the case ten years ago. It's such an interesting point. I'm watching the the chat, and I'm seeing lots of comments about pay transparency laws and social media allowing or empowering folks to to learn the negotiation piece. And I think all of those things are true. And and I think too as we think about preparing our recruitment teams and our HR teams, you know, something we've done internally is is implemented financial acumen training to understand the full total rewards package and how you talk about it because it is so much more than a base salary. There is a bonus component, potentially an equity component, benefits, etcetera. And so that you know, that's one of the things that we implemented and have seen such great success because now our recruiters have the ability to navigate challenging conversations, have a really productive negotiation conversation, and really hire the best talent for for the roles because that's what we're trying to do at the end of the day. Right? Connect people with really meaningful career opportunities. Okay. So as we move forward, we wanted to talk to our candidates a little bit about the percept, perspectives on AI. And so, you know, the key finding here is that there is no replacement for human interaction. Technology can give recruiters a helping hand, but we shouldn't be using it ethically to to replace, the human connection. This sort of is an opportunity for us to augment and enhance it. And some of those metrics that we saw in the report is that 31% are using AI to support their job search, an increase of seven percentage points from last year. 58% trust HR pros more than AI to guide them through the hiring journey. Woo woo. 61% see a potential for AI to help reduce bias during the process. And then, ultimately, I think, you know, as I look at all of this data, what we're really seeing is that AI is a part of the conversation is everywhere that we look, and and that's for a good reason. AI powered technology creates unprecedented efficiency gains while also kind of promoting equity and enhancing consistency, reducing administrative burden, accelerating time to hire, reducing ramp times. There's, you know, there's so many benefits here. I would be really curious, Allie, what have you found to be the key in balancing the use of AI powered, interview intelligence and the human touch? Yeah. It it comes down to balance and knowing where AI should support and where humans should lead, and always remembering that humans need to be in the loop at at some point. That's not negotiable. So and we know that there's a lot of hype right now in AI and hiring. And while it absolutely can drive efficiencies and fairness, it definitely does not belong in every step of the process. There are endless vendors who are constantly innovating, and there's a lot of great products out there and a lot of products that just are may not be necessary or may not provide the value that you really are looking to have. So I just encourage everyone to continue to really think critically about where you are adding value, what the outcome is that you're hoping to accomplish, and how you are going to measure that to know whether or not, the implementation of the AI system is is getting the value is driving the value that you're looking for. And always keeping in mind where it could potentially be risking or eroding the candidate experience. Because we know, again, AI tools are really powerful for consistency and structure and speed. They can help you flag patterns for feedback draft job descriptions, or draw relevant questions. They can even help highlight potential biases in how candidates are being evaluated in the process. But AI cannot build trust. It can't show empathy. It's not going to adapt dynamically to a candidate's unique story. That's all where our recruiters are going to continue to shine. They need to lean into that human element. And, you know, we've found that the effective approach is treating AI like the copilot, not a driver. So letting it handle repeatable administrative parts of the process and then letting our our recruiters spend more time on, candidates, value more high touch valuable parts of the process for candidates. So it's personalized conversations, thoughtful coaching, and and a sense that they have seen more than just a resume. That really helps us to balance creating experience that's scalable as well as deeply human. And we also look at this from the candidate side. So I spoke, about how recruiters are using it, but we have to think about how candidates are using AI and how we are going to communicate our guidelines or our philosophy. So we know that organizations can do nothing. They can give no guidance to candidates. It's probably going to leave a number of people confused or frustrated. There's gonna they're going to get conflicting messaging. You can also choose to do nothing or excuse me. You can choose to, fully ban, the use of AI. So telling Canvas you absolutely can't use it at all from the application through the interview process. And the trouble there is we don't have highly reliable systems that will detect AI usage. There are some good ones out in the market, but the error rate is pretty high. Yeah. And so if you're trying to ban AI from candidate use, and your that your system for detecting it has high error rates, there's still a lot of risk involved in in when you're going to approach candidates with the topic. And then the approach that we've taken is embrace and coach your candidates on appropriate uses. AI should enhance but not replace their skills. So using it to polish up their resume but not make up new, experiences or, data points that just are are not part of their real history. I love that. I'm I before, Ali, I have a a similar question for you, but I just saw this comment in the chat that I keep rolling back to that I just wanted to call attention to. And, it's, an individual wrote, our team's mantra on AI and automation is that, is to integrate them in areas where human interaction doesn't provide value. Integrate it to make more room for hospitality. I just think that's such a lovely way to phrase it. Right? Sitting there trying to figure out, you know, how to do a really complex panel interview with a number of executives. Maybe not the best use of a recruiter or recruiting coordinator's time. And it it allows them to to sort of, develop more of that human connection and really dig into that behavioral based, interviewing questions so that you can experientially vet whether or not a person has has had the experiences that they mentioned. I am curious, Madeline. How do hiring teams and executive teams start establishing an AI forward culture? This is this is all new. Some of it's unprecedented. You know, we're flying the plane and fixing it. So so how do they do that from from from your vantage point? It's interesting because I've seen a huge shift from last year to this year. I'd I'd be Allie, I'd be curious to hear what you think about this. I'd love to hear in the comments too. But last year, we saw a real slowdown. Any provider that had AI, hiring teams, and HR teams were saying, let's push pause. We don't know if we want to invest in this provider. We don't know what our company will think internally. There's too many cooks in the kitchen. We've got work councils. There was a real hesitancy around anything AI. I've seen an overnight shift this year of companies and hiring teams and HR teams now saying, CEO says AI is the way to go. Give us what you got. And that has been a huge shift, but there's not a lot of guidance around what providers are using AI responsibly, how should companies be using AI responsibly. We're sort of in this wild wild west of what is AI, who has AI, how should we be using it. So I love Allie advice because it's really there's value that humans have in this process. We are not replacing the recruiter. Nobody should be thinking that way, and we hear all these agents and all this buzz around agents. You know, that should not there should be no replacement for the human because that value and that trust that she was talking about comes from recruiters doing what they know how to do. And, you know, so I think in whatever solution companies are looking at, there at any stage that you're using AI, there has to be the opportunity for a human to step in at any point and be able to communicate with a candidate, to engage. The other piece I'll say around AI, and this to me is, like, the holy grail. AI cannot make a decision on who you're hiring. If you are in any way looking at any provider to and who's telling you that you don't have to make any more decisions anymore on who you're hiring, run for the hills because ethically, and, you know, when you're thinking about all these regulations coming out, you have to make the decision. Humans have to make the decision. AI cannot make the decision. So, you know, I think that's definitely an important consideration. What Allie brings up around, and I'd love to see the chat on this too, around candidate fraud right now is such a big topic. This is also an overnight topic. This is what everyone cares about. I mean, we talked about it on our prep call too. But we absolutely have to think about AI not just from the employer perspective, but now how are candidates using it. A lot of providers are looking at building solutions to detect candidate fraud, something I'm definitely paying attention to, but, this is definitely, a two sided conversation. It is a two sided conversation, and it's polarizing, and it's multiple layers. And so what better way to pause us than an audience poll? Alright. So, you know, I think the discussion is is around AI is fantastic. How do you feel about adopting AI to support the hiring process? Excited, very excited, somewhat excited, neutral, somewhat cautious, very cautious. Really excited to see, the results of this one. Okay. We're pretty even spread. We're gonna give it just one more minute before we move forward. I think, overall, about half of half of us are saying that we're somewhat or very excited about, about adopting AI to support the hiring process. So that's a little promising. Somewhat cautious. We're seeing that that take a rise. You know, I think no matter where you fall in the the the spectrum here, I think your reaction to it is is absolutely valid. I think, you know, I I think, we need to find, protocols and ways and processes that work for our own unique cultures. Okay. Alright. So let's move forward. Alright. So I just wanna I wanna thank you both for for this really important discussion today. I do want us to preserve a good amount of time for audience questions. We've been super active in the chat. And I want to get started on the heels of our last discussion points. How have both of you experienced candidate fraud, and how do you combat it? That is a hot topic right now. It is definitely something we are actively talking about, and starting to coach candidates or excuse me. Coach our resumes on my goodness. I can't talk right now. Coach our recruiters on about when they are looking at candidate profiles and their resumes, some, flags that they should be looking out for. And just to be clear, a single red flag does not should not disqualify someone from a process, but starting to look at things how it how it builds up together. For so for example, if a candidate just created their, their LinkedIn profile six months ago and they don't have that many, contacts, but they've been in the industry for ten or fifteen years, it might be a little bit odd to someone who has had LinkedIn since they were in college. But if you work in some industries, if you work in government or other industries where LinkedIn is not that prevalent but the candidate is making a shift, that is completely normal for them. So something to look into, but, again, not necessarily something that should disqualify a candidate. You wouldn't wanna look at look for some other, insights about the candidate to make sure that they are really who they say they're they are. And this is also where, again, behavioral interviewing, I'm gonna go back to it, is really, really important. So using behavioral interview questions and assessments to really determine whether or not the candidate has the skill that they have. Avoiding those surface level questions and making sure that you are really probing deeper and deeper and getting, getting the answers that will make you confident that the candidate can demonstrate the behaviors that you're looking for in the future. So if they say, you know, well, we implemented x y z project product. Well, what was your role specifically? Go deep in there. They say our you know, the outcomes were and then give the high level answer. You gotta dig in deeper into, well, what were the outcomes? How did you measure them? Don't just take a question at the service level and move on. There's usually probably two, three, or four probing questions that you can use after every core question that'll really dig into the candidate's experience. Great. We have quite a few questions in here. Actually, Allie, with respect yeah. I think you mentioned, in one of your responses earlier about, interview transcription. And so we have quite a few questions in here about the use of that for your team and how it supported creating efficiency and how you leverage it internally. So we we are not using interview transcription right now, at the organization, but it does provide a lot of value in terms of if you are recording and transcribing, your interviews. It allows your interviewers to be more present and not have to spend so much time, multitasking by listening to a candidate, taking notes, and preparing what that next probing question is going to be. It also can help with some compliance concerns. If you have a candidate who said you know, who's frustrated about the outcome of a of an interview, it avoids that he said, she said. We can go to the transcript, and we can see what actually happened in the interview. And it'd be really valuable to make sure that we're having a a data driven and, consistent, experience for everyone. Great. Great. One comment, Stephanie. Can I I just see a question that came in on we did a report on interview intelligence, and recording and transcribing interviews was, like, a big part of that? There's a question about and a comment about recording. For a lot of organizations, there's gonna be concern around the recording piece because of two way consent, with recording. You can the nice thing about a lot of these solutions like Pillar, which is, you know, part of Employ, is you can turn the recording piece off of it. So there's a lot of value you can get from the intelligence of transcribing an interview, where you don't have to, hit that record button. Right. There's a lot of flexibility there. Oh, great. Thank you very much for that. Switching gears a little bit, somebody here has asked, how are you upscaling your recruiters to help them navigate salary conversations now that there is more visibility? Madeline, you know, from a from a what you're seeing at a macro level, do do you have any, you know, actionable insights that our audience could leverage? Yeah. So to recruiters in salary negotiation conversations. Yeah. I mean, I think, it's it's interesting because I think for some recruiters that sort of just been a passion for that they've been kind of taking on. I do think overall the topic of skilling for recruiters has been something we haven't talked about enough. I think there needs to be, you know, more resources, again, more investment into recruiting teams and TA teams and giving them resources they need to be able to, you know, think about new skills or be able to rethink a lot of these processes that we've had in place for a long time. And I think that, is is investment a lot of organizations haven't made. We've seen, like, not to continue with this, passion around recruiters, but we we did a survey a few years ago, and we found 72% of recruiters don't believe that executives at their organization understand the work that they do, and how valuable it is to their organization. This is you know, companies need to understand how vital this role is and then invest in their recruiting teams because this is the first contact with not only the candidates that might be working for your organization, but customers that will continue to be customers for years and years and years. Mhmm. So this is you know, organizations need to do a better job around our TA teams. Absolutely. We did get a question, with respect to the logistics about the report and when it was run. I will take this one. So this report is based on a nationwide online survey conducted by Zogby Analytics. It was conducted in March of twenty twenty five on behalf of Employ Inc. And I did mention at the start, but the survey includes responses from, 1,500 plus US adults capturing a really diverse range of individuals who are currently employed full time, part time, or are actively seeking work. So a nice broad swath. Just wanna give a last call for any questions with respect to today's data, any insights that we can, garner from our expert panel. Okay. We have a couple of questions about laws. I I would encourage our audience to engage with their, their their internal, counsel or outside counsel, whatever you leverage, versus, us asking our panelists. Alright. Great. Well, I do wanna thank everyone for joining us today. We truly, truly appreciate the time that you took to spend with us and review the results. Today's session is recorded, and we will be distributing it to all registered attendees, within the next, you know, twenty four hours or so. If you do have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. And on behalf of Employ Inc, thank you so much for, for for spending your afternoon with us.