Hiring front-line workers, the staff who work directly with your customers, clients, patients or other consumers of your services or products, with recruiting and HR expert Thad Price.

Thad shares his experience, insights and best practices on how to hire essential front line workers for your small business.

Thad Price is CEO of Austin-based ReadySetHire and Talroo. ReadySetHire is the new product for small-to-medium sized businesses, franchisees, and recruiters seeking to hire frontline and essential workers. It’s powered by Talroo, the multi-award-winning talent matching platform for enterprises designed for sourcing essential and hourly workers.

Thad has more than 20 years of experience in the online recruitment and job search industry, is a recognized thought leader in the HR and talent acquisition space, and he genuinely believes that there is no industry that plays a more integral role in the economy.

Thad uses his cross-functional experience to turn client feedback into innovative products that continue Talroo’s mission of improving lives, one job seeker and one employer at a time. Prior to joining Talroo, he was a VP of Business Development at Job.com.

Hiring Front-Line Workers:

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run and grow your small business.

Resources:

Books mentioned in this episode:
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• It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff

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Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:16):

Welcome to this episode of the How of Business. This is Henry Lopez and my guest today is Thad Price. Thad, welcome to the show.

Thad Price (00:23):

Henry, great to be here. Thank you for the invite.

Henry Lopez (00:25):

Absolutely. Thad is going to share his experiences, his insights and best practices on how to hire frontline workers for your small business. By frontline workers, I mean those people that are usually interfacing with your clients or your customers. That frontline, if you will, of what you offer. And the challenges of course, that all of us face as small business owners. He’s got not just a hiring platform, but of course experience and insights on how we might be able to do that better. And so that’s what we’re going to chat about today on this episode, to get more information about how a business including the show notes page for this episode. And to learn more about my one-on-one and group coaching programs, please visit the how a business.com. I also encourage you to please subscribe to my show wherever you might be listening today so you don’t miss any future episodes.

Henry Lopez (01:19):

So let me tell you a bit more about Thad. Thad Price is the CEO of Austin Base. Ready, set, hire, and Talroo Ready. Set Hire is a new product for small to medium sized businesses. It’s not that new. It’s been around for a bit, but new in a way of what it offers, especially compared to other platforms. But it focuses on small to medium sized businesses, franchisees and recruiters seeking to hire frontline and essential workers. It’s powered by their platform. Talroo, which is a multi-award winning if I can get that out. Talent matching platform for enterprises designed for sourcing essential and hourly workers. So there’s a focus there that has more than 20 years of experience in the online recruiting and job search industry and is recognized as a thought leader in the HR and talent acquisition space. And he generally believes that there is no industry that plays a more integral role in the economy than small businesses and helping us hire those frontline workers. So once again, Thad Price, welcome to the show.

Thad Price (02:32):

Great to be here, great people grow, great companies and it’s been a passion of mine for many years. My entire bio summed up in one sentence.

Henry Lopez (02:41):

I love that. Glad you shared that. And you live in the Austin area, right?

Thad Price (02:46):

I do, yes. It’s beautiful here. Been here for about a little over 10 years now and it’s been an exciting city to watch it continue to grow and evolve.

Henry Lopez (02:58):

It’s amazing. Where did you grow up?

Thad Price (03:00):

On the east coast. So outside of northern Virginia on the Chesapeake Bay. Beautiful, beautiful, charming town. And so I hail from the East coast and in Virginia.

Henry Lopez (03:14):

Got it. I live in Florida now. Well I grew up in Florida, but I spent 31 years in the Dallas, Texas area, Dallas Fort Worth area rather. So obviously familiar with like you said, having gone to Austin to visit and seen its explosive growth. It is really a nice area to live. Traffic is an issue. I think that continues to be right.

Thad Price (03:35):

That is a fact. It has changed tremendously in over 10 years. The traffic with so many people moving here every day, it definitely is Pause.

Henry Lopez (03:49):

Yeah, it is just the highways haven’t kept up as part of the challenge that Austin has had as a lot of other medium-sized cities that have exploded like Austin has.

Thad Price (03:59):

That’s right. Great environment for folks looking to start their career. A lot of innovation, a lot of creative thought. And usually those ideas foster growth in cities and we’ve seen that across the US in many different cities over the years.

Henry Lopez (04:18):

A lot of diversity. Also a foodie town. And so I’m a big, one of the things, there’s two things that I can’t get here in Florida, at least a part of Florida where I live. Good get it and good barbecue, at least Texas style barbecue. And so my favorite in Austin, I mean but you can’t get in there, at least I’ve never been able to get in there, is you can

Thad Price (04:39):

Order it online, you can actually order it online, you order

Henry Lopez (04:42):

It online and then go pick it up. Is that how that works?

Thad Price (04:45):

That’s right. You can schedule it. So if you know you’re coming to Austin, you can do that. That’s a hack to, for Franklin’s barbecue,

Henry Lopez (04:51):

That is a big hack. So blacks is my go-to What’s your favorite barbecue in town or one of them?

Thad Price (04:57):

Mine would be LA Barbecue. I think it’s terrific. There aren’t a lot of barbecue joints that have great sides and terrific barbecue and that’s hard to find. And I think the barbecue is probably one of my favorites. If you haven’t tried it, it’s terrific.

Henry Lopez (05:17):

Okay, I will try it next time I’m in town. Thanks for that recommendation. Alright. This show is not about food, it’s not about travel, it’s about hiring the right people. So let’s get right into it. We’re talking about hiring frontline workers. It’s where you have expertise, it’s in part where your platform already set higher focuses. So let’s talk about some of those common challenges that you’re seeing here the small business owners are facing. What’s the first one that comes to mind? That

Thad Price (05:43):

The first one that comes to mind is how powerful the AI-powered job advertisement is. If you think of the idea of building a job post, many small business owners haven’t been in talent acquisition before or human resources. And so when we think about the art and science of crafting a job description, there’s a lot that goes into it. It’s copy, right? You’re attracting an audience to come and work for your business. And so that’s more of a marketing more process. And so the first thing that I would say is job postings need to be improved and need to provide transparency in what you can really expect in the role pay-wise, just work experience, what a day looks like and then what they’re truly looking for and what a great candidate looks like that you’re looking to hire. And if we think about the all AI-powered job ad and the job description, that’s what starts the entire application process and the entire recruitment process in so many ways. So that’s the first thing that I would say that’s very important that we have to spend more time refining is the AI-powered job posting.

Henry Lopez (06:54):

Such a big point. I’m glad you start here because I’ve talked about this often. I share this with my clients, me being an older guy, I come from the world that has long since passed us where the attitude and the approach was here are the requirements that you have to have now you Mr. Mrs. Candidate must sell me on why I must hire you. The job posting has shifted understandably in part, while that’s still a component of it in me as the prospective employer selling, I think you used the word copy appropriately on why should someone consider joining my team. And that’s a major shift that I’ve seen having been around hiring and employees for a long time.

Thad Price (07:43):

Huge shift. And one of the major reasons is because of, especially when you think of frontline hiring, you’re competing with gig marketplaces that didn’t exist years ago where you can turn on an app, you can deliver for DoorDash, you can deliver for Instacart or you can drive for Uber. And in that world you have this idea of complete flexibility to work when you want to work. And when you look at the amount of money that you can make in these marketplaces in different cities, it’s not far off from what you could potentially work in a frontline position. And you get ultimate flexibility to work when you want to work. So what you really have to do is to share why you’re an employer of excellence, why it’s important for you where someone can go and grow with a company and ensure that your job posting reflects that and why people like working for you.

Thad Price (08:41):

This isn’t a transactional experience. You should sell the opportunity, not as you see it today, but the opportunity of where it can exist tomorrow for the candidate that will intrigue them. They’ll find it interesting because it’ll look different than the other jobs that are out there and behind the scenes when you think of who you’re competing with for talent, you’re competing with this ultimate app, many that you can actually turn on and off when you want to work, but the downside of that is this transactional income. So you really can’t grow your career compared to potentially breaking into a great company and providing a lot of value and working your way up with more responsibility and higher pay. And so we have to think about that. It’s transactional employment versus a career and that’s what ultimately we need to do to get people excited about your job posting and excited about coming to work for your company.

Henry Lopez (09:49):

Yeah, that makes sense that even if it’s a frontline working at my fast food restaurant, it may not be a career per se, but it’s an opportunity for skills development. It’s an opportunity for those other components. That transactional job that’s more pure trading dollars for hours probably cannot provide you is what you’re saying. And that has to be communicated in the job posting as much as possible, succinctly, because I can’t write a novel. It’s copy and it’s got to get to the point. It’s got to communicate enough of that attraction to say, that’s interesting, let me explore more on behalf of the potential candidate.

Thad Price (10:26):

Exactly. And it may not be for this particular instance when you’re looking to apply for the job, you may just want to generate income at that particular point, but you have to be thinking, all right, I’m competing with this other business that exists today that didn’t exist probably 10 years ago at the level that it exists today. And I can provide a way through networking, career development skills, all these things. And if you aren’t as a business thinking about providing those, you need to because people are looking for those, people are looking for ways in which they can grow either through income pay or either through just experience and of course skills.

Henry Lopez (11:17):

So that seems to speak to, and I get it that, and again because generalizing here, our frontline workers tend to be younger people, certainly younger than me, and so they are of this different generation that is looking for something different in their employment. As I’ve always put it. There’s a lot of talk about when people don’t want to work or whatever the case might be. I don’t see it that way. I mean sometimes I’ll get in my soapbox and complain, but really what they figured out is that what we were willing to sacrifice in previous generations to give ourselves to a corporation and believe that that corporation was going to take care of us for life, they saw the fallacy in that by and large, they saw that that doesn’t pay off. They don’t want to wait until they’re 65 to be able to enjoy the flexibility that life affords them, right? They want to have a balance more. So do you agree with that or am I off in that understanding?

Thad Price (12:20):

Totally agree. Number one, when you survey job seekers, number one focus is pay. Of course people, people want to be paid for their value. Number two is flexibility. And what I will say is coming out of the pandemic, flexibility was a close number two to number one, and it shifted substantially. And I think that’s because of all the life changes and experiences that happened across different families and the juggling of priorities and responsibilities that had to happen during the pandemic.

Henry Lopez (13:01):

And of course we saw it in corporations who let us work from home. Now we’re seeing a retraction of that or that struggle between the two. But if I look at it from a small business owner’s perspective, the challenge that I’ve always had with that flexibility is if I’ve got frontline workers, well there’s a schedule that I have to support and to fill to serve those customers. So how are you seeing people juggle that need to have a certain amount of people on staff at a certain time of the day on the weekends, and yet in a prospective employee who wants flexibility

Thad Price (13:41):

First, I think you have to look at the individual industry and treat each industry differently based on what the expectations are. And I think that’s really important to think about it. A lot of times what happens is people get hung up on this idea of flexibility and they’re like, I can’t provide flexibility. And then when you peel back the onion a little bit, you can provide flexibility when you look at it through the lens of your industry or the lens of the role. And what you should be looking at is how is this different than maybe my competitors in my area? So a great example, one thing that I encourage small businesses to do is build simple competitor battle cards. If you think about it in sales, right? We build battle cards of how to sell against potential competitors. The same thing can work for recruiting.

Thad Price (14:32):

If you think about in your area, who you’ve heard, who your competitors are, who you typically find talent from, what you’ll see is there’ll be a common thread of reasons why they’ve either decided to work for a competitor or they’re coming to you from a competitor and you can research this on Glassdoor as well for your competitors and build this playbook of strategy around what can I provide that my industry isn’t providing and my area isn’t provided? And that becomes, that’s an interesting way to think about it. And so instead of just thinking I’ve got to provide ultimate flexibility, no, you need to just think about it in your world, in your industry and what you’re serving and how you can provide flexibility and showcase that. And you may already be providing a framework around that today, but you’re not celebrating it enough in your recruitment process.

Thad Price (15:32):

A lot of companies, when you dig into it and you really start understanding how their scheduling shifts, they are providing flexibility as it relates to their industry and as it relates to their job, but they’re not celebrating that as much as they should be. So I always say it’s about transparency. I think the other key to this is when you think about scheduling and shifts is if you’re not having conversations with your team around why we need the shift covered and why it’s important, then you may not be successful at connecting the dots for the job seeker and for your team member. And I stress team member because I think what typically happens in a lot of small businesses is we think of our employees as family, and I think that’s wrong. I think it’s a team, and when you come at it from a team perspective, everyone wants to win and everyone’s on the same page together. When you come at it from a family perspective, it’s harder to me, right? It’s harder to hold people accountable. It’s harder to know that, hey, what’s good for the team is good for everything. And I typically see that small businesses fall in that idea of like, it’s a family, it’s not a family, it’s a team.

Henry Lopez (16:47):

Yeah, no, well said. I love that because I also have always challenged that, and I’ve always actually said, especially for managers as I’m training managers, is we want to be friendly with our staff obviously, but we’re not there to make friends. This is a team that’s working together to accomplish a certain goal, namely to serve our customers. But I’d love that because I think the other thing that happens to that is people read through that we’re not really a family. You might pretend it is and it might sound good, but that’s not really what’s happening here.

Thad Price (17:23):

You’re right. You’re right.

Henry Lopez (17:24):

Absolutely it is. We are exchanging value, right? You as an employee are bringing me your value, your time, your effort. I’m compensating you and giving you certain benefits, and it’s an exchange of value to accomplish a common goal, which is to serve our customer typically.

Thad Price (17:43):

Makes sense. Surrounded with transparency and communication.

Henry Lopez (17:47):

Yes. Yep.

Henry Lopez (17:52):

This is Henry Lopez briefly pausing this episode to invite you to join me for one of my next live online workshops. During these interactive workshops, I cover a specific topic that will help you with starting and growing your small business. Just visit the how of business.com to learn more and to register. If you need help creating an effective business plan, for example, to start your first small business, then my next business plan workshop may be just what you need or perhaps you need help completing your financial projections for your new business. Well, I have a workshop for that too. And if you’re already operating your business, then you can probably benefit from learning how to better manage the cash in your business by attending my cashflow management online workshop. These are just a few of the workshops that I currently offer, and I keep these workshops to a small number of participants so that we have the time to answer all of your questions. Whether it’s getting started with your first business or growing and exiting your existing small business, I can help you get there with one of my online workshops. To find out more and to register for a live online workshop, please visit the how of business.com. Take that next step today towards finally realizing your business ownership dreams. I look forward to having you join me for my next workshop,

Henry Lopez (19:12):

The competitive battle cards. I love the idea because I think that we often, we think of competition as it relates to who are we competing with for our customers money or share, but not our employees. It’s interesting how sometimes I’ll ask someone I’m working with, have you done any research lately on what even pay rates say or comparable benefits are, and usually they haven’t. It’s something that I guess we just don’t think about. Is it partly because we’re hanging onto that old school thinking of, well, here’s a job, somebody’s going to want it. Why is it that we’re so lax in thinking of it that way, do you think?

Thad Price (19:52):

I think so much of recruiting is reactive and we’re not proactive about how we think about the strategy. If you think of the experience today of recruiting, and it’s one of the things where our goal with Ready, set Hire is to take the guesswork out of everything in recruiting, to help provide guidance along the way because it’s hard for small businesses when you haven’t necessarily worked that muscle before, right? You’re opening up a new business, you haven’t necessarily recruited, you haven’t been in talent acquisition. And so much of talent acquisition and recruiting is the proactive experience. And by being proactive and focusing on best practices around the strategy of acquiring the right talent, instead of, I need to fill this role now, let me post a job and see what applicants I get. And that’s what typically happens. And what’s interesting in this world today is if you post a job and you create a job, you’re going to get applicants.

Thad Price (20:50):

But there’s a whole best practice process that you need to follow in order to ensure that you can attract the qualified applicants and the qualified candidates and you don’t lose them to your competitors. And that process is what’s so important to get right. Posting a job and having a great job, ATD is one piece of it, but there are all of these things kind of postly that happens when a candidate says, I want to come work for you, that you need to make sure you get right. And I think it’s this whole kind of reactive nature of business versus the proactive nature of business, treating candidates more like consumers and ensuring that the level of service that you’re providing to your customers, that’s the same level of service that you’re providing to your applicants. And if you think of how small businesses have embraced loyalty programs and other ways in which to connect with your customers on a customer service basis, we haven’t quite nailed that as it relates to the applicants and the companies that want to come work for your business. But those applicants could also be your customers, and that’s why they’re so important for you in many ways, and so important to get it right, get the entire process right.

Henry Lopez (22:10):

Yeah, that makes sense. Really what you’re speaking to is about a mindset shift. Like you said, most of us as small business owners, we get that job posting up. We look for somebody when we’re desperate, when somebody just walked out or where we were short. And so the hiring process gets impacted by that stress, if you will. And it’s interesting how we wouldn’t treat bringing on a new client or seeking a new customer that way, but yet here we are taking this approach to a critical team member as everybody is, and yet we’re willing to take this shortcut approach to it as the way that you’re explaining it is what it makes me think of

Thad Price (22:55):

In the enterprise world. We build talent communities, so enterprise companies build talent communities, communities of people that may not be ready to apply right now, but the brand want to come work for you, and you nurture the relationship with that talent community in the enterprise world. I think that when you think of small business and customers, small businesses nurture the relationship with prospects before they even become customers. If you think of brick and mortar, there are a lot of people that will enter your store or your location before they buy something, and we still treat them with respect. We still provide them great customer service when they ask questions before they say, I want to buy, and they can sign up and learn more about your company and your brand and your products. When someone applies for a job, we get an applicant, and we’re lucky as an industry if we follow up with the applicant in a couple days, we’re lucky as an industry, imagine if, imagine treating our applicants like our customer service, email address or customer service desk. Could you imagine your business responding to a customer service request four days later? That’s what happens when folks apply for a job and that’s why you lose talent. So this whole mind shift, you’re right around this proactive nature of talent and talent as a strategic resource for us as opposed to this, oh, I am reactive. I need to hire someone. I’m pulling my hair out, someone left. Let’s go try to find and post a job and try to get someone in. That’s a very, and then I’m

Henry Lopez (24:52):

Frustrated why I’m not getting any good applicants and oh my God, nobody wants to work. And so it’s a downward spiral from there.

Thad Price (24:58):

Exactly. And without the process on the back end to ensure that you’ve got the right qualifying questions, you can automate scheduling to make it easy for you because you’re the chief, everything officer, as a small business owner, all of those things need to happen. And if that happens, this magical process happens, then you can hire the right candidate. And that’s what it’s all about. Great people grow great companies. The key is getting great people in your business

Henry Lopez (25:29):

And nurturing and fostering people to know about this being a great place to work so that when it is a fit mutually, they’re already there nurtured to some degree if possible, if that’s possible for my business. Yeah. This process that you keep speaking to, my question was going to be, so give me an example of where people make a mistake, but I think this follow-up point is a key one. So let’s just explore that a little bit more for a moment because you’re absolutely right that, and what I have found here again recently is that job candidates have options, many more options perhaps than they did in the past, including something completely different like in the gig economy as you mentioned. So that responsiveness is critical. So is that I’m assuming part of what your platform helps people do?

Thad Price (26:29):

Yes, absolutely. So when we think about Ready, set, hire, and focusing in this idea of taking the guesswork out of hiring and recruiting, really the idea was could we create a product and a platform that would act as a recruiting assistant? All the steps in the recruiting process that need to happen timely, they need to happen timely in order to attract and ensure that you have interviews, which is ultimately what a business wants. The art in science of posting a job is just so we can all get time on our calendars with the right people and hopefully get them to our business, close them and get them part of our business. And so what we were looking to do is take the entire recruiting process, insert technology and best practices into that process to make it easy so we can provide a way that we can fill your calendar with the right interviews for the job ad that you’re advertising and for who you’re looking to hire.

Thad Price (27:34):

And so that’s what we do. So an example is we go use generative AI to create a job posting for you. You provide a little bit more information about the job posting, we create the job posting. You can provide your branding because your company is unique, you’ve spent a lot of money building a great small business, and your branding is important. So you can upload your header image like you would use on any of the meta platforms or Google. Once you’ve customized your job ad, we will walk you through a few screening slash knockout questions that we would suggest automatically based on the role that you’re hiring for, we’ll give you a checklist of all the things that you’re missing that you need to add to your job ad to be effective. Once you’ve determined your knockout questions, we allow you to indicate which knockout questions are required for you or required to hire this person.

Thad Price (28:28):

Once you do that, then essentially the job ad goes live in our system and we have kind of a chat bot like experience. So when job seekers apply for a job, your job, they’ll immediately be walked through a few of these knockout questions so that you’re spending the right time with the right candidates. Now, the other really interesting thing is you can sync your calendar if you’re using Outlook or if you’re using Gmail. And so if the candidate passes your knockout questions and passes your knockout questions as qualified, we surface the available times in your calendar automatically in the chat experience where the job seeker can immediately select a time to connect with you, and your calendar will immediately be synced with an interview for the candidate. And the whole idea is taking out, if you think of all the steps of the process that has to happen, the ping pong that happens with interview scheduling, this idea of screening, why am I talking to this candidate? This candidate isn’t necessarily qualified. All these steps in the process, at the end of the day, we want to fill your calendar up full of interviews and that you can make the right decision for your business and hire the right candidate. And that’s what our platform provides for small businesses.

Henry Lopez (29:50):

That chatbot, I’m assuming, is an AI powered chatbot that’s interacting when that person applies. Is that true or is that another way you’re using AI to facilitate this?

Thad Price (30:01):

We’re not using AI specifically in the chatbot experience today, largely because we want questions answered that the employer has indicated.

Henry Lopez (30:12):

So that’s a team of people then that you have that are actually responding and interacting with that candidate at that point,

Thad Price (30:18):

Not a team of people. It’s automatic. So we’re asking questions. It’s not AI driven at this

Henry Lopez (30:26):

Point. Yeah, understood. So it follows it through a flow then, but what it creates is that impression of immediate responsiveness to the candidate, right?

Thad Price (30:37):

That’s right. That’s right. Sets the expectation that you’re engaged, you’re applying to this job, we need a little bit more information, we need these knockout questions answered to ensure that you’re a great fit. And then through syncing of calendars, then that’s when we serve up the available slots on your calendar directly in the chatbot experience

Henry Lopez (30:59):

Compared to the other major platforms that are out there, how are you getting that posting out to be as visible as possible to prospective employees?

Thad Price (31:09):

Well, that’s a great question. That’s our history, right? So when we think of the idea of Talroo Ready, set Hire is a product built by Talroo. And the HU idea with Ready Set Hire is we’re bringing the power of Tatau RU to every business. And Tatau RU is one of the top purveyors of talent today through our system, our platform for enterprise companies. So when we work with companies like Chipotle or UPS or Amazon or others, they turn to us as one of their sources of candidates because of our massive reach and the over billion job searches that the Tau RU technology is powering every month. So Ready, set, hire is now that platform that then has the direct connection into this vast talent marketplace that is Tau RU that we’ve built over the last 10 years.

Henry Lopez (32:13):

And how is Talroo building that, I don’t know, connection with prospective employees, has that happened over time?

Thad Price (32:25):

Definitely happened over time. So if we think about our origin story, we started with a job board, and today we operate jobs to careers.com, which is one of the top job search destinations online today. Similar, the experience@jobstwocareers.com is what you would find on Indeed and what you would find probably on ZipRecruiter or in other job sites, CareerBuilder and whatnot. So Jobs two careers was the origin of our business as we started moving up market and we started looking at, Hey, how can we go beyond Jobs two careers? That’s when we rebranded to Talroo and the whole idea of Talroo is we can open up our job search engine and allow other job boards to use in other areas to leverage our search and match technology outside of Jobs two careers. So this journey from jobs to careers to Talroo, and now this new product with Ready Set Hire allows us to really connect to that scale that we’ve built over the last 10 years through Talroo. So we had this history of candidate activity because we were a job board originally, and then moved into more platform software products to help tap into this large access of candidates that we have through Jobs to careers and other places, other sites where our technology is powered. And so the idea of Talroo is can we help turn the internet into a help wanted sign and allow our technology to be integrated on many different websites? And today, Talroo is integrated in many different websites.

Henry Lopez (34:09):

So give me the summary on why should I consider posting on Ready, Set, Hire my job posting as opposed to instead of, or in addition to Indeed or ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn jobs, why should I just post it on your site?

Thad Price (34:29):

Value creation, saving time, providing quality candidates, value creation for you and for your business. When you think of the tools and the way in which we help you create this strategy that we were sharing earlier, we said, Hey, hiring is kind of reactive. All the best practices that we’ve learned over the years are now available for small businesses. And we’ve built that in the workflow of Ready, set, hire. And so the idea is for you to save time if you’re to save money, and for you to provide and provide a way in which you can access great candidates. So it’s value creation for the business and it’s value creation for the job seeker because they’re looking for a job.

Henry Lopez (35:15):

There’s a free trial that I can check out at the website, correct?

Thad Price (35:20):

That’s right. It’s free trial. You can log on, try us before getting started, and we’d love to have you as a customer.

Henry Lopez (35:29):

And what’s the website?

Thad Price (35:31):

Readysethire.com.

Henry Lopez (35:33):

And how do you make money on this? How do you monetize it? How does your business make money on this?

Thad Price (35:40):

Yeah, so after the free trial, when you do enter the free trial, we have a process where it requires a credit card for the free trial. And then after that free trial, you can cancel or you can continue if it’s working for you, hopefully that you, hopefully you continue and you continue using Ready, Set, Hire for your hiring needs and for your recruiting needs and become a customer. If not, you can cancel and we appreciate you checking us out. So how we make money is those customers that want to continue using Ready, Set, Hire for recruiting and to find the right applicants for their business.

Henry Lopez (36:17):

And is the model similar to, for example, and indeed I put money behind a posting to get it seen more. Is it a similar model to that or is it just a subscription model? How does it work

Thad Price (36:30):

From similar model? Similar model where you put money, you have different levels within your account and that will enable you to source and get access to candidates somewhat of a subscription as well. So it’s quasi subscription and of course job sponsorship.

Henry Lopez (36:50):

Got it, got it. Okay. Excellent. Alright, I want to come back to a couple other things that I want to get your thoughts on. Specifically what comes to mind that we haven’t touched on yet is ghosting, which has become such a challenge, people just not showing up for a scheduled interview, for example. So just what are your thoughts specifically initially, rather as to why do you think that’s happening more? It’s definitely happening more so now than let’s say even pre Covid, and I’ve got some thoughts on it, but why is it happening?

Thad Price (37:21):

So why is ghosting happened? I’ve reflected a lot on this over the last few years and what I can say is it’s the level of demand that we’re seeing for frontline workers. There are a lot of jobs available, there are a lot more opportunities available than we’ve ever seen. And so I think from that perspective, it’s a perfect storm. I think we’ve got this area where we aren’t responding to candidates. I not immediately, but quickly, number one. Number two is that there’s just more jobs available and there’s a lot more choice. And so we’ve got that going on. And probably number three is there are a lot of tools out there that make it a lot easier to apply. And as an industry, we’ve got to go in with eyes wide open with that because that is, we’re probably not talking enough about that as an industry.

Henry Lopez (38:18):

It seems to me like one point there that I want to explore makes most sense to me. We have applied all of this technology, we’ve disconnected it from being a personal situation, it’s all done online, it’s all you submit it and then maybe you hear from them. That makes it easier for me than if I’m the applicant to not have any reservations or any hesitation to just not show up because I don’t have a connection with you or your business. Do you see that approach then of having that immediate interaction through the bot and that immediate response that perhaps creates a deeper connection earlier in the process?

Thad Price (39:10):

I think so. I think we are a gift to get society and I think if you’re able to provide instant feedback to a candidate that will, whether it’s AI or not, or whether it’s a chat bot experience or not, it will help candidates feel like they’re part of the process versus simply submitting a form and hope to hear back. So I think there’s that. I also think that people are applying to whatever, and that’s a failure on the job seeker part. They need to be very structured in how they apply. They shouldn’t just apply to anything, right? They should apply for jobs and have a tailored experience when they’re applying for jobs. That’s a whole other education side of it with job seekers, I feel as well. The other thing is there’s been so much, as I said earlier, there’s so much more demand now and wages have increased so much where a lot of folks are, especially small businesses, if you think of a small business versus an enterprise business, enterprise businesses have the ability to pay a lot more from a wage perspective.

Thad Price (40:29):

And I think that’s the other thing that is putting pressure on recruiting for small businesses is this transparency around wage. And that’s one of the things that we did with Ready set Hire is when you create a job in post a job within Ready, set, hire, we give you a salary slash wage graph of what you probably need to pay in your location to be successful using all of our data. That’s really important. You may be thinking about, Hey, I can hire a delivery driver for $12 an hour in a city, and that’s what you’ve been hiring for the last three or four years, and then all of a sudden it needs to be 18 to be successful, you need that realization and you need a data service to somewhat wake you up to say, Hey, I need to pay 18 to be competitive. That may be a reason why I’m not getting applicants to my jobs is because I’m not paying well and people aren’t showing up. They’re doing their research.

Henry Lopez (41:26):

Yeah, no, that’s a great point. So other those things, using the technology like your platform with those knockout questions, what else comes to mind that can help me with reducing ghosting?

Thad Price (41:42):

The follow up, what you can expect, a simple, even if you’re, for instance, if you have an email address that’s set up for hiring, have an autoresponder sent. So when a candidate responds to you that you are immediately following up with a simple autoresponder, hi, thanks for your application. Great to hear from you. We’re excited about reviewing your application. See if you’re a fit for our role. By the way, check out our Instagram page or here’s more information about our company. Share a little bit more about you and about why your company is important, and that will go a long way. Imagine if you are submitting your application, you’re the only one that immediately gives a response, even if it is an autoresponder, at least you care and care enough to set up an autoresponder that, hey, you want someone to learn about your business.

Thad Price (42:39):

The other thing that I would say is a hack, a recruiting hack that I would provide to small businesses is don’t underestimate the power of your customer list. To me, that is an enormous treasure trove when you’re thinking about recruiting and you’re thinking about launching a job ad. So an example is with our platform, you can create a link once you’ve built your job ad you can create a link and you could go into Ready, Set, Hire, grab a link for your job ad, send an email out to your customer list your loyalty list and say, Hey, if you know anyone Phil’s burgers is hiring and go here and forward to your friends or something like that, you can write some really great copy to help leverage your customer list and your loyalty list. Absolutely. That’s an immediate opportunity because think about it, people that know your brand that buy from you would probably want to come work for you or would recommend you to someone or

Henry Lopez (43:46):

Recommend it. Yeah, because there’s a subset of those people that are your fans and they love the fact that they can say, oh, I know so-and-so’s looking for a job. This would be a great place for him to work.

Thad Price (43:58):

Right, I know.

Henry Lopez (43:59):

And they’re selling it for you too, right?

Thad Price (44:01):

Exactly. They’re

Henry Lopez (44:02):

Setting it up.

Thad Price (44:03):

Exactly. So don’t underestimate the power of your customer list for recruiting.

Henry Lopez (44:07):

Yeah, I agree. It is an interesting, it’s another mindset shift. I think that even I had to overcome thinking that those are two separate things. We don’t combine those two things for whatever reason. I don’t know. I don’t know where that came from, but that has kind of been a mentality instead of using it. And also it’s an opportunity to communicate to your fan base, Hey, because of you, thank you. We keep growing. We need more help.

Thad Price (44:34):

Right? Simple principle of treat your applicants and candidates like your customers, love it, and treat your customers like your applicants and candidates.

Henry Lopez (44:43):

That applies to how to properly format a job posting of, again, it’s that shift in mindset from moment one. The mindset I used to have certainly is you have to convince me why I should even give you an interview for all kinds of good reasons and obvious reasons that has shifted. Now I have to sell, and probably that’s the way it should have been, that potential candidate as to why they should consider joining my team.

Thad Price (45:15):

Absolutely.

Henry Lopez (45:16):

Alright, is there anything else we didn’t touch on that you thought, well, I hope he asks me about this, or anything else that we didn’t talk about as it relates to ready, set, hire?

Thad Price (45:26):

No. Henry, I could go on for this and talent acquisition and helping small businesses hire for hours, so thank you for the opportunity. This has been terrific.

Henry Lopez (45:34):

Absolutely. I’m always looking for a book recommendation. Is there a book that comes to mind that you would recommend?

Thad Price (45:39):

I would recommend an amazing book. It’s Your Ship and the reason why I would recommend it, it’s been around for a number of years, but I love it because there’s this idea of listen aggressively. I think we can solve a lot of our problems by listening to our team members and listening to our customers. There’s so many great stories here about turning the worst ship into the best ship, and I think we can all learn from this.

Henry Lopez (46:19):

Yeah. Excellent. Thanks for that recommendation. I’ll have it on the show notes page for this episode at the how of business.com. Alright, let’s wrap it up. What’s one thing that you want us to take away from this conversation that we’ve had about hiring frontline workers using a platform like yours? What’s one thing you want us to take away?

Thad Price (46:40):

It’s all about process, and it’s about treating your candidates like your customers and ensuring that you have that process ensures that you’ll be more successful. There’ll be less ghosting, and you’ll set the right expectations and create a remarkable experience for your candidates.

Henry Lopez (47:00):

And tell us where you want us to go online to learn more, and also for that free trial

Thad Price (47:06):

Ready set hire.com.

Henry Lopez (47:08):

Excellent. Dad, great conversation. Like you said, we could talk about this for hours. It’s such an important topic, such an appropriate topic for us as small business owners. Thanks for taking the time for sharing, providing your insights. Appreciate you being with me today.

Thad Price (47:22):

Thank you so much, Henry. Have a terrific day.

Henry Lopez (47:25):

This is Henry Lopez, and thanks for joining me on this episode of The How Business. My guest today, again is Thad Price. I release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find the show anywhere you listen to podcasts, including the How of Business, YouTube channel, and my website, the how of business.com. Thanks again for listening.