It’s always interesting to understand what other parts of the world are doing better, or worse when it comes to recruitment marketing and employer branding. Joining James Whitelock this week is Serge Boudreau, Vice president of business development at CareerBeacon and 1 half of the hosts at the Recruitment Flex podcast. Serge and James discuss the difference in strategies, tactics, methodology and tech in recruitment marketing in North America and Europe.
Episode Transcript:
00:01.91
ThinkinCircles
Welcome back everybody to The Marketing Rules Podcast. It’s my pleasure to welcome on board Serge Boudreau. Serge, the man, the legend. Thank you for joining me today. Now, you know I know, I follow your podcast and I follow you and Shelly’s work. However, for the people out there in Europe and UK who probably might not be as familiar with your work and background. Can you give us a little bit of history of how you started, and how you got to where you are today.
00:33.61
Serge Boudreau
James, thank you so much for having me! I thought I was internationally known, I thought I was internationally famous. But I think this is a good opportunity to give you a brief introduction. I am the vice president of business development and partnerships at a company called Career Beacon here in Canada. I am also the host of The Recruitment Flex. Number one HR podcast in Canada, we have around 260 episodes, been going on for 4 years. I’ve been in this space for around 20 years, both as a practitioner also as a leader but I’ve also spent a lot of time on the other side of the ledger, which is working with companies like Indeed and Workopolis, which was very famous here in Canada.
01:28.42
ThinkinCircles
Um, that’s quite a background ah, to be honest, you I mean this? ah you know you dropped a couple of big names in there which is ah which is good. Um, and yeah and you know what it was like before we get into the dog to what was it that you. got you into podcasting because I get fascinated by meeting other podcasters, right? and I always wonder what? Why is it what that drove you into that you know in in there in the first place.
01:53.59
Serge Boudreau
Well to be simple. It was. We started a podcast in May Twenty so think about when the pandemic hit in March um, I am a very social person I like to talk a lot I found that all my public speaking or anything that I was doing was had gone away. I knew nothing about podcasting, but I did listen to 1 podcast in the industry that really inspired me and that was Chad and cheese. Then after that I found podcasts like recruiting future which I know is very popular in the U K and across Europe. But reality, I wanted to figure out if I can do it and reading a lot on it before is like I think the average podcaster goes 6 episodes. Um, and I’m like I am going to beat that. And the first year we record around 30 and then start growing a little bit of an audience the second year was a little bit more than 30 years really when we saw a huge uptake and I’ve been addicted to podcasting ever since when did you start your podcast, James.
02:55.15
ThinkinCircles
Ah, started in late 2019 so just before the ah the pandemic hit so about six months or so 6 or four or six months before pandemic hit. Um, um, we’re on I think episode 130 or something like that. I mean, you’ve got a great work ethic and I know you guys are incredibly regular What I’ve found generally and ah this diff episode is not about recruit and podcasting right? This is we are going to talk about, but I’ve found that um just the just sheer workload is just getting the guest and it’s everything outside of the actual recording which is the bit that is that takes the effort, right? and I think most podcasters agree on it is this you know arranging it will do need all the admin right for podcasting is what takes time.
03:38.30
Serge Boudreau
That is by far the biggest challenge people starting a podcast. Don’t realize how much work there is behind it and as you get better. It gets a little bit more systemized, and you have a playbook, and you have contractors to help you out. But I’ve gotten. Down to what I think is an art as far as just I know exactly how long each episode is going to take me to edit and record and then release but it is a lot of works. But I tell you there’s nothing. That’s really been as good for my career as podcasting because the ability to talk to people that. Really, I wouldn’t have an opportunity, and this is a great way to bring them on really pick their brand get an idea of what’s going on in the industry. It’s given me ah a lot of knowledge to tell you the truth.
04:25.96
ThinkinCircles
And it’s a good way to just meet some interesting people, right? That’s all I was fine you know I mean it’s just a great way to just get to get under the skin of some real clever but clever people clever. It’s smart and I am an I ever will be basically. Um so.
04:28.30
Serge Boudreau
A hundred percent. Yeah, exactly.
04:41.20
ThinkinCircles
What we’re going to talk around a little bit today is we’re ah we’re both ah in the marketing space and the recruited marketing space. So, it would be I thought it would be a good idea to spend a few kinds of the next 20 minutes to half hour having a chat around some of the differences between the territories that we pretty much sit in. I’m going to lump all of Canada and North America all together. So, you those guys you’re that continent I’m going to take on Ku and Europe pretty much and it’d be good if we can just like explore the differences. What we do the same what we can learn from each other the stuff that we aren’t doing as well and stuff that we should be doing as well. Right? So, I think we would be good if we start right? beginning on the understanding of what recruitment marketing is when it comes to ah the Ta space and when it comes to ah you know people just knowing what they’re asking for and knowing what they want it to do right. I’m going to let you kick off with the understanding and then I’ll ship in for the for UK in Europe.
05:40.17
Serge Boudreau
Yeah, recruitment marketing is something that is not in a lot of practitioners vocabulary is still something new across the I think across the world, right? Ah recruitment marketing is all always happened. But. For us to name it and have it as a function I would say it’s the last ten to fifteen years where we’ve seen ah a really big difference and I think the difference has come because of the talent scarcity really the mismatch of the labour market has caused a lot of companies to consider. Hey just posting a job ad my job description on a job board randomly and getting hundreds of applicants those days are gone. You must be able to differentiate your company and show why this is the best place to work and I think recruitment marketing compared to say marketing is a little bit different. I think in marketing the goal is to sell as many widgets as possible as the goal in recruitment marketing is to pinpoint the right number of widgets, so you’re not overwhelmed with candidates that are not qualified. So, it’s a little bit more getting candidates to opt out then. In regular marketing is getting everyone to opt in right and this can be done through your message your channels very similar to a regular marketing practice of your distribution channels What your brand is how you’re going to market. But again, there’s a little bit of a difference and there’s not a lot of practitioners in recruitment marketing that came from marketing is my experience. A lot of practitioners in recruitment marketing are coming from the recruiter side I don’t know if you’ve seen that in your up in the U k.
07:14.77
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, we yeah, we’ve seen a little bit of that I think I know recruitment generally whether it’s we where we’re recruitment or staffing agency or whether you’re doing talent acquisition in-house. Most people describe it as you fall into it right? It’s not necessarily something you’re working towards. Think that there’s a little bit of recruiter marketing around and when we talk about recruit marketing, I’m bundling in employ branding and things in there as well right? and we were just yeah with yeah so that is it’s something that I don’t think anyone sets out probably to get into but and I don’t think over here. There are 1 or 2 practitioners from who have come from actual been actual recruiters. But at most come in who’ve maybe become um, have got like marketing degrees, and then moved into the into this space or where marketers were within an industry that is being recruited into where they’ve have had a contact and then moved into the theta space or moved into the recruitment agency. So, I think there’s more of I guess I’m going to put you know in the vertical market actual marketeers doing recruiter marketing in the Ku as opposed to recruiters who have moved into recruiter marketing. Um, and as for the understanding of what it is I think we’re even a bit we’re even slower behind you guys I think only probably in the last 5 years Is it really a thing I mean I’ve been doing this for you know over 10 years, but I think only now is it starting to become understood with ah the client base right? that this is something that can. Sit on top of just basically just of just sticking your jobs on a job board. There’s way more to it than that these days and only now is that you know is it coming and it’s starting to I guess go down the food chain of the size of businesses as well. So smaller businesses are now real understanding and again, but I don’t know if that’s the same for you guys that you’re seeing this has always been the purview of the big businesses to do this but now much more the Sem sized businesses is looking at doing more of this activity.
09:17.57
Serge Boudreau
Yeah, we’re seeing the same I think what we’re seeing is ah to your earlier point. We’re seeing a lot more marketers become recruitment marketers. But how it started was a lot of recruiters trying to muddle their way around and trying to figure it out. But yeah, to your point, we are seeing mid and smaller size companies really see the impact of recruitment marketing and what it means and what channels they should be going as everyone was just used to. Okay there’s a local job board that I can get candidates from I’m just going to put my plain old job description. They’ve realized that hey maybe I’m not that good. At this copywriting thing and they’re looking at external firms to help them, especially if they’re smaller medium size because the need is probably bigger for a mid to small size than it is for a larger company because a larger company. You’d think about just. Career pages of the largest companies here in in Canada say like a Scotia bank which is a very large bank here. They get thousands and thousands if not millions of visits to their career site but think about that small company. That’s maybe competing for the very same talent. They’re just not getting that natural attraction right? So, they must figure out a way to put themselves out there and really share their message, so people do consider them because they’re just not top of mind. So yeah, you’re right? We’re seeing a lot more of it and we’re seeing it even to companies with. Like start-ups. We’re starting tech start-ups are really focusing on employment branding understanding and recruitment marketing in general understanding that hey we got to compete against that telling against Google Meta or whatever the case is.
10:53.61
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, and I’m wondering if um if there’s a pull factor at both ends right? So, you’ve got the larger businesses that they’ve already got brand, and people are always going to want to have that on their on their on their cv also with the ah with the start-ups. They’re cool. They’re hip. They’re trendy. And people do want to work in that space because you’ve got the ah you’ve got the option to fly with them when they grow. It’s those people in the middle have been stuck there that arena’ aren’t the cool trendy start-ups aren’t they aren’t the big you know, financial brands. For instance, it’s the bits that stuck in the middle that require this more because they’ve the ones who are having the talent sucked out of them from either end I guess right because they’re just they they’re in a in the no man’s land a recruitment marketing. No man’s land. Basically, at that point. Um, yeah, so um.
11:38.95
Serge Boudreau
Um, yeah know what I agree I agree completely.
11:46.31
ThinkinCircles
And what about ah you know, ah, that’s touching on the adoption of this and bringing this in, but it would be good to just to think about you know over here I think you know the pandemic probably did recruit a marketing a world of good in the fact that a lot of people within remote, so you had to change a playbook.
11:50.21
Serge Boudreau
Yeah.
12:05.53
ThinkinCircles
Right? And how you were going to get in front of these guys. It wasn’t just ah, how you didn’t you could know you didn’t have too necessarily be local anymore. You could spread your net a lot wider which meant you had to think slightly more strategically, so I think adoption then ah, took off and with a slight.
12:13.64
Serge Boudreau
Um.
12:23.20
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, better understanding but and a change of direction on how to do it better I don’t know if that was something that you guys saw as well.
12:29.66
Serge Boudreau
Yeah, we saw the same. Ah, we saw the pandemic really change how people recruited how they went to market and how they looked at talent in general right? You think about a company that was used to competing against a company across the street and now you’re competing against company across the world. So, you’re messaging needs to change. But I’ll be completely frank I expected to for it to continue and we’ve seen a drawback in the last year of those companies that were really going for talent across the world or even in different markets locally that they’re drawing back to their local market and local talent. And I think that’s a shame James I think it’s a shame because a lot of companies if you think about how many people want to work remotely and how skilled and qualified. There is why limit yourself to just that local area. Sometimes it’s just like a postal code of. Instead of having a pool of millions. You have a pool of five hundred a thousand people in total what a disadvantage, but we did see that during the pandemic, but it’s really drawn back in the last I would say last six months to a year we’re starting to see just like overall remote job postings. I think here in Canada is down to 6 or 7% and that’s peak was around 30% so we’re seeing come back. How do I track that local talent. How do we get people to be interested to come into the office. Which was not a consideration during the start of the pandemic or throughout the course of the pandemic. Really.
13:55.45
ThinkinCircles
And is that just basic is that basically because obviously business owners and business leaders are now more fixated on people back in the office. There are these concerns Around. There are trust issues. There’s you know, effectiveness issues. They want people back in in there so they can Monitor. Everybody. And physically see that people are doing the work and that whole ah holiday period of remote holiday period is now fading away is it is it that mentality or is it something different.
14:27.35
Serge Boudreau
I would say it’s part of that mentality I think it’s quite complicated right? I think one of the driving factors to be completely and this might sound like a conspiracy theory. But I think one of the things that’s driving. It is commercial real estate I think commercial real estate in the city that I’m in. Um. Is quite a driving city but downtown vacancy rates for office towers is over fifty so I think a lot of business are getting a lot of pressure to bring their people in I do think what you mention is the reality as well. There’s a lot of CEOs that in generally if you think about. The age in um, where CEOs came from There are usually um boomers that are a little bit. They’ve always worked at an office, and this was such a big shift for them. And they do light the impact of when they walk in and going into their office. Everyone looks at them. They feel a sense of control that is hard to do remotely I think remote was a great equalizer when it came to a lot of things skill really shown right? It wasn’t the power dynamic shifted a little bit. But there’s way more comfort with people working in the office with CEOs right now. It’s going to be interesting because if you think about um the leaders or the people who have the money right? The people who are driving the decisions they’re generally in their late fifty s or they’re either boomers or late generation X. And, now we’re starting to see the shift of millennials taking over leadership positions I don’t know if it’s going to shift back. Um, that’s the interesting thing I think the next five to 10 years. We’re seeing a lot of highly skilled people really push back of going back in the office full time. But there’s really no choice for a lot of these companies and as the dynamic to power shift. We might see that change I don’t know it’s going to be an interesting 10 years, but I do think commercial real estate and then just the comfort level of doing something for 30 years of your career then it’s disrupted then you must go back. I can see that being a challenge for a lot of CEOs and executives.
16:33.49
ThinkinCircles
It’s a little similar here I think I think there are larger businesses downsizing. You know I think you know in London canary wharf. You know it’s pretty much empty most of the time now and I think some of those some of those bigger businesses and bigger banks are moving offices because they simply just don’t need the space anymore. Because ah, there’s a big push in the up for people to work four-day weeks there’s a big push to continue with the remote working I think it’s you know, just from my um, diversity in equity and accessibility point of view that it makes it just easier to for people to work that way. I am getting certain demographics of the ah of the workforce back into back into work. You know working moms etc. You know those kinds of things. There are big pushes ran out. So, I think it’s a bit more I was going to say liberal with a small l right over here when it comes to that working environment. So it’s interesting that you there’s a real push so I don’t know the figures the figures off the head and this most of this is anecdotal from our client, but I feels like there’s a bit of a shift over here towards you know a much more flexible working I think that’s how it’s going here. Um, which again when it comes to. Marketing your roles and marketing your business and your employ branding is a gold mine, right? You know its’s perfect is what people want people want to have the option if they’re going for this job to be able to you know work two days at home. Maybe we’ only work four days a week that thing finish and work between so school hours and those kinds of things all that stuff is now on the table and makes it a way easier to sell that vacancies and build out your and sell your company culture because if that’s what it is right.
18:11.83
Serge Boudreau
Oh, imagine the competitive advantage there is especially with the groups that you mention as well as far as accessibility. How much easier it is and it’s a workforce that’s been under underrepresented here in North America and Canada and the us I’m sure it’s the same in Europe is. Like this was talking about the great equalizer. This was a great equalizer for them as well and the other group that had a big impact and I think we’re seeing flexibility is women and women in the workforce and unfortunately women are still um, still carried the biggest burden when it comes to raising children. So ah, the ability for a flexible schedule and going into work when it’s not convenient but in in a way that they can work around the rest of childcare pickup. All those things anyways in Canada we saw a big drop off women in the workforce during the pandemic and we’re starting to see that shift. Again, with a lot more women coming back to the workforce because of the enhanced flexibility. So, if you’re an organization that is really looking at ah looking at all talent pools, right? like in the past we had maybe 2 3 talent pools that we all aggressively went after but with talent scarcity and just the. Overall, how we look at the labour market is like how we can get more women back in the workforce how we can get people with disabilities. How can we focus on diversity equity inclusion and even here in Canada. There’s been a big focus on getting people with criminal records back to work. This is all part of recruitment marketing, right? so.
19:43.35
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, exactly.
19:45.87
Serge Boudreau
I completely agree but I think the biggest thing is companies that offer flexibility will be the winners in the coming 1020 years.
19:54.97
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, I completely agree. Um and that takes us nicely into strategy and how the and how recruit marketing strategy is ah rolled out on both sides of the of the pond we know we’ve touched on that diversity and equity and accessibility, and those themes are now playing apart. Over here. If you know it’s continually the biggest theme as is getting people with criminal records and people may have, been you know had ah a tougher upbringing getting those kinds of ah those demographics. Onto the workforce and untapped again as the that female population as well. But when it comes to the strategy on how you go about it. How you roll out your recruit marketing your employer brand your eve. Um. You know without we can. We can just it him to hit the highlights. We don’t need to go too deep there you know is there something that you think that is being done well over in in Canada when it comes to the distress year around recruit marketing.
20:55.72
Serge Boudreau
Well, I want to flip it around I think there’s something that Europe and UK does a lot better than Canada and the us and I think that is career sites if you look at career sites and the experience of a candidate applying in Canada in the us is dramatically better in Europe.
21:03.90
ThinkinCircles
Um, now. Okay, okay.
21:14.72
Serge Boudreau
Ah, just going try ahead. Ah Bos Van da hat to on my ah on my podcast and he’s in Dutch and he’s very involved in career sites and I had the opportunity just to really dig in I didn’t understand language.
21:26.12
ThinkinCircles
Um, yeah.
21:28.50
Serge Boudreau
In most countries and I think that’s a unique player in Europe that we don’t have in Canada and North America as much. Obviously, there’s a French language but the biggest thing that I notice is in Canada around 95% of sites. You need to register before you start applying and the drop off rate on that is tremendous. It’s huge. As in Europe is completely flipped around where it’s maybe 5 % that you do need to register and the reason, I point this out is you can have the best messaging you can have the most attractive brand. But if a can it comes to apply and it’s a really pain in the ass process to apply. They start thinking about your company after they’re putting these types of roadblocks in the application process imagine working there. It’s probably way worse in amount of bureaucracy and everything that you must go through so it’s a big deterrent. So, I want to call out how you guys do that way better than North America um 1 thing in if we look at strategy and how we do channel distribution in North America compared to Europe and I would say us is way more advanced than most of the other parts of the world um have quite an active economy just if you look at how a vehement they are overall. They’re going to do a lot more but 1 of the things that they’ve really taken advantage of and I’m shocked that the rest of the world hasn’t is programmatic advertising if you think about programmatic advertising and the recruit in just a regular marketing space.
23:00.89
Serge Boudreau
It’s been 9098 around maybe a little bit maybe 2000 recruitment marketing programmatic advertising has really been since um I would say 2015 and the adoption in the us has been quite high with companies like upcast Jovi Pando logic. As in Canada it’s been low but part of the issue in Canada is there’s only 1 player when it comes to say job boards or job distribution. That’s indeed so programmatic doesn’t work as well. I was shocked to see that Europe there’s. Almost no adoption and if you think about efficiencies and the ability to get to the right candidates programmatic is probably the most cost-effective way of doing it.
23:42.86
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, it’s one of these things that just doesn’t come up in conversation I don’t think, and I think there’s possibly and of a couple of reasons one the market if we’re talking around advertising and job boards. It’s fragmented right? There are literally thousands upon thousands of boards and places you could potentially.
23:56.78
Serge Boudreau
Um, yes.
24:02.42
ThinkinCircles
Ah, whether it’s through affiliate marketing and there’s so many places where you could have your message. Um, and I don’t think there’s one ah that I can think of there’s one good tool that can manage all that right? you know So I think it’s sometimes it’s just easier to go direct. Basically.
24:05.70
Serge Boudreau
Will.
24:21.90
ThinkinCircles
Then it is necessarily just you know to then to try and figure out everywhere. You should be and do put the legwork in and settle that up. Um, ah, within the staffing agency space and the and the Ta space over here is just you know.
24:24.89
Serge Boudreau
Yeah.
24:39.46
ThinkinCircles
Programmatic Average is never just a conversation which is which is which is which is strange right? and like I guess because you know because usually, I think it’s because it’s so niche right? You’re so targeted that I don’t think it comes up when it’s a slightly broader you know broader audiences, you’re after I think that that’s when programmatic probably works its best, but you know.
24:40.32
Serge Boudreau
Who.
24:50.39
Serge Boudreau
Um, yeah.
24:58.79
ThinkinCircles
If you are literally looking for a certain role to fill a certain role a certain engineer or something like that. There’s probably you know there’s a niche job ball for it over there. You may as well just go just go straight directly to them right and use that as your job board of choice. Um, yeah, which is ah but it’s an and it’s an interesting, an interesting point.
25:08.30
Serge Boudreau
Um, yeah.
25:10.83
Serge Boudreau
Boom.
25:18.54
ThinkinCircles
And when it comes to career sites, I think ah there was the whole candidate journey conversation blew up probably about ten years ago and there were lots of experts on how to do that and I think that really hit home at that point where you want to try and make the application process as easy as possible. You know that’s when this you know the apply with LinkedIn button. came out of nowhere and was on everything basically at that point and that has, and that philosophy has just stuck right? You don’t want to put up barriers and um, you know a lot a lot of businesses now do this whole like 3- or 4-part application process where you get the key information. You know off the applicant first.
25:39.30
Serge Boudreau
Um, yeah.
25:57.45
ThinkinCircles
And then take them on that journey for filling out the rest of their profile. Um which they can then pick up. But yeah, I think over here. We’re much around to give us give us some details, right? because what we want too then do is contact you back right? Give us all that So here we can just then email you we can just go to come through Blast you with emails right.
26:13.60
Serge Boudreau
Um, it.
26:17.12
ThinkinCircles
On our latest jobs. You know that whole registered to apply thing I think just fell away because it was just seen it was seen quite quickly as just that real barrier to getting people to apply and so that’s dead in the water I think over here.
26:28.48
Serge Boudreau
Yeah, I was curious too. If g japer had an impact on the ability to register to apply and gather all that information because obviously it’s you just keeping data and keeping user data is quite different. In Europe wit compared to North America and that’s the other factor too when they talk about technology and technology that we’re leveraging um I heard someone from Silicon Valley say that japer was the great equalizer for Europe right? It gave the opportunity for companies in Europe to catch up with what’s happening in the Us.
26:47.32
ThinkinCircles
Yeah.
27:05.63
Serge Boudreau
I like I’m not sure right like I don’t know enough but does that have an impact because that’s a big difference between North America and Europe right now is exactly that legislation or that that plan.
27:19.11
ThinkinCircles
It was interesting GDPR like was everywhere for that that couple of years running into it. Um, and it was seen as ah as a real chore of an exercise to try and bring everybody to make sure everybody was compliant. Um, but like a lot of things. Ah probably.
27:27.76
Serge Boudreau
There.
27:36.87
ThinkinCircles
Probably not as more so in the euk than it is in Europe. There’s never any way to enforce a lot of that anyway, right? So, the enforcing of it isn’t anywhere unless you and because the enforcers of these of this legislation only usually go after the big names, right? So, the smaller small businesses.
27:51.51
Serge Boudreau
Yeah.
27:55.60
ThinkinCircles
So most in most cases is literally you just must prove that you’re doing your best Basically in those situations you don’t necessarily have to do everything by the book. Um, and I think most people what they did is there’s ah, there’s a statement when you’re handing over your data to say Yeah, I agree for this to be used.
27:59.50
Serge Boudreau
Yeah, no care.
28:13.94
Serge Boudreau
Um.
28:14.17
ThinkinCircles
I Don’t want it for marketing. But I do agree for you to use this to for this. Some people went to extreme lengths and had literally reams of Tick boxes say yes, yes, no, no yes, yes for these kinds of ah for these things. Um, but I think that’s quickly fallen by say but a wayside and just ah, there’s just a simple statement on most science when you’re handing over you do that? Yes, you can use it to contact me about vacancies. Or they like or don’t apply for the vacancy, right? That’s the that’s it. They’ve just taken that taken out attitude to it. Most people will just hit that hit that box. Um, and rarely I’ve ever heard of anyone asking for their details to be removed and will hand it over all their information back I Just I Just don’t think it.
28:36.45
Serge Boudreau
Yeah, anything.
28:52.80
ThinkinCircles
And of happens it might happen in other industries but not in in the recruitment space. Is it. You know because you can’t get away from it. You got to hand over your details, right? Um, so you can’t you. Ah, there’s nothing. You can go to do about it. So, I think it was the chore. But it’s one of those things that quickly dropped off the drop off the map. We do it and.
28:59.11
Serge Boudreau
Yeah.
29:10.29
Serge Boudreau
Well, I’m glad you gave me that perspective because I always thought that was rule with an iron fist that if you cross anything you were in deep trouble, and it goes to like as.
29:10.43
ThinkinCircles
Don’t really worry about it too much anymore.
29:24.28
Serge Boudreau
We’re talking it talks a little bit about the cultural difference when we talk about register to apply or anything. It’s just it’s a little bit different in how we share our info and I think it’s different between Canada and the Us as well. But. Do you find there when it comes to cultural difference in recruiting in in North America and the us so like to give you an idea even the us and Canada is so different so in the us you really must focus on make more money grow your career It’s very focused on. Status, right? As in Canada it’s like great place to work. You’ll be able to pick up your kids at work at school on time. A lot of flexibility like it’s more work life balance and I’m curious in Europe are you seeing difference between each country because like I look at Ku from and. External perspective and I see it a little bit different than maybe Spain and other countries as Ku is more closely aligned to the us when it comes to work ethic and just the overall thought of work is there. Do you find a big cultural difference in in your messaging how you approach candidates.
30:24.51
ThinkinCircles
Um, yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:33.86
Serge Boudreau
Ah, between all these different areas.
30:36.61
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, I mean there are ah some subtle and not so subtle differences between those markets on the way that you try to find cultural fit for your workforce and your potential workforce. Um. I think from the u k I think we’re probably a little bit different from the Us and I think there’s much more. Um, there’s much more a focus on flexible working, right? and that and the benefits of working and um than they then there ever were ah that whole ethos around. You know.
30:59.36
Serge Boudreau
Clamp.
31:08.29
ThinkinCircles
Get your you’re going to be in this job. Get your promotion make more money I think that’s nowhere near as important as it used to be because you know the benefit of working at this business means you’ve got what this these working hours to do that thing, I think there’s I think you know that’s similar in in for instance in the Netherlands you know, but they’ve.
31:13.65
Serge Boudreau
Okay.
31:28.10
ThinkinCircles
has been a little bit ahead of the curve than we have when it comes to you know work life balance. You know that’s been one of their big things. Um the differences in some of the other parts of Europe you know is it the legislation has dumbed down some of that and um, unionization.
31:45.73
Serge Boudreau
Yeah.
31:47.53
ThinkinCircles
has doesn’t comes into play so you look at the likes of France where it’s highly unionized. You know that you know, um, when you’re working in that space. Ah it there’s a different mentality in a different way. You go out to the to the market. Um, so yeah, so there are subtle differences. I mean I can’t speak for it. I don’t know all the different how each I don’t always like in Poland for instance, something like that. But I know we are our neighbours. You know there’s these scuttle differences and, but it’s driven by internal factors right by unions I just culture. You know, ah the economy. You know if you look at Germany and the economy isn’t greatly at a minute.
32:11.79
Serge Boudreau
Um, yeah.
32:26.72
ThinkinCircles
So, you know people are just wanting to want a job necessarily the best job, right? So, I think there’s that mentality at moment.
32:34.99
Serge Boudreau
Unions is a very interesting point because there’s a mixture here in Canada and the us as you see countries like France obviously heavily unionized but is. Are unions attractive to job seekers overall in these countries is it if I’m in. Um if I’m in France as a job seeker would I prefer working for a union company or not a. Hearing candidates to make sure right? A lot of people do not want to work for a union as I don’t see the same in Europe but again, I’m judging from afar.
33:05.49
ThinkinCircles
Um, ah, will in in France because the unions hold so much power. Ah then you probably do want to be part of the allied nations, and you know the fact that that all the unions are joined up as well, right? There’s an ah they it’s quiet. You know it’s.
33:13.14
Serge Boudreau
Um, yeah.
33:16.70
Serge Boudreau
We.
33:21.42
ThinkinCircles
You can’t necessarily just put on an ah general strike but when one union goes on strike then the other ones are probably not too far behind um, and interesting I wouldn’t have normally said it was like that in the Ku would ah but there’s industries that are highly unionized and I think there is something in the pull factor. And the recruitment factor of being part of that larger group whether you are in healthcare whether young education in the frontline services. Those kinds of things are always those are things that usually are highly unionized, right? There are other unions for general workers and things like that. But I don’t think the general populace aren’t part of that.
33:51.00
Serge Boudreau
Move.
33:58.83
ThinkinCircles
Ah, you know that that thing, but I mean you have probably seen in the news that you know we’ve had strikes for the last couple of years with our healthcare workers. Our transport workers. Um, and there has been a knock- on effect that you know it started a slight ripple that one went one when started to strike then and the others started to.
34:04.49
Serge Boudreau
Um.
34:16.87
ThinkinCircles
Start to strike as well. But on the flip side if you were looking to get into healthcare at the minute would you want to because of all the issues that are going on if you want to, you’re just coming at a college, and you want to become a nurse and you were seeing that it’s Happening. You might go Well Actually it’s a pretty volatile industry. Probably not one that I necessarily want to go into. Don’t get paid a huge amount as because that’s what they’re striking around. So, I think um, it’s probably having a slightly counter ah counter effect to instead of drawing people in because your part of the union potentially pushing people away because it’s you know you? you know you’re going into a very tough job low pay. Um.
34:38.30
Serge Boudreau
Here.
34:56.16
ThinkinCircles
And potentially you’re going to have to strike to get what you did to get what you deserve. So, I’m wondering if there’s a push factor you know instead of a pull factor.
35:02.44
Serge Boudreau
Well, I think what it created is a little bit of a different market as well. If you think about going into nursing a lot of nurses or new to the feel, go work for companies that you travel right? So, a travel nurse you think about you’re going in different markets at different time. The. Pay is completely different. So obviously if you’re young and flexible. Yeah, you’re going to do that. Not even bough Ter about unions right here in candida anyways, I don’t know it might be different in and Europe and the Ku but we’re seeing a whole new subset of workers that are independent.
35:28.88
ThinkinCircles
Are.
35:40.30
Serge Boudreau
And we talk about like how the world will work has changed in the last couple of years I think that’s the biggest one is like the gig economy and the gig I’m going to give it a broad, so these are contractors but exactly to that point of: if I’m coming into a sector and it’s very challenging, low pay union strife all these things like what are my options. Yeah, I’ll travel to Canada or travel to Australia be a nurse for a year make double the amount of money I have that flexibility. So, I think the next five to 10 years is going to be interesting how the division of labour goes right? A lot of people want to work for themselves, and I think that’s like honestly, I think that’s going to be the norm in 20 years from now that we’re going to see people being contractors a lot more than just that security of working for an employer because you think about our parents like my dad worked for the same company for 3040 years I believe so that’s just not the norm anymore. That’s not the expectation so people are just thinking of work in a different way. So, when we talk about attracting people. Ah. There are ways that we can do it now that we couldn’t it’s opened a whole new economy a whole new way of working.
36:51.95
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, yeah, it amazes me why some businesses never have ah, adopted that star like I know when we reach out to businesses who are saying look. We’re advertising this this this row. It’s like well have you considered doing it instead of it being a permanent full-time role. What about splitting it what about doing a bit more with it. Yeah, I mean you know, opening yourself up to a but you know a bigger candidate base basically instead of just pinning yourself down because that can be something of that that that word full-time and permanent might be just you know whether it was you know you know a fixed term contract or something like that. Roles that would never normally have been thought of like that right? where but yeah, I think we’re I think would be interesting and see how that how that how that works out. Yeah, and that influence of the gig economy on the wider workforce would be interesting and I think the businesses that. Do go down that route are probably going to find themselves getting way better quality and effective candidates and they probably would have if they were just holding themselves back. Um, and it’s Interesting. We talk around money and things that because I wanted to finish off on talking around investment in recruiter marketing because. What have we seen over the last couple of years that as the understanding has ah got better as the adoption has got better investment has grown as well where people realizing right? Well, we need to we can We want to do all this, but we want to put some money into its’re going to put budget behind it as Well. So, with that might include we’re going to have someone internally working as we’re going to outsource this to a business-like like think in circles or whatever you know, have you seen the just an increase in investment and money being put into that space. So
38:35.67
Serge Boudreau
Um, ah hundred percent I think we have seen I think that’s been the most interesting thing in this space in the last couple of years it’s just well I would last five years is the investment and it’s investments across every step of the way, right? like if we talk about recruitment and marketing. There’s. Five six different levers and if you think about employment brand and companies are taking it seriously because they know what the impact is channel distribution how you’re spending money how you’re going to the market. We’ve seen a big lift leveraging recruitment marketing tools as well. Which wasn’t really a thing. Five years ago, here we’re starting to see large investments. We’re seeing what companies in the recruitment marketing space ah getting bought like candidate id in the u k is the perfect example of a company that is exactly in recruitment marketing. So, to your point, I would say a lot of companies that I’ve worked with that had almost no budget or their recruitment marketing budget was a hundred percent just job board spend as we’re starting to see budgets spread across multiple channels. And both in tools but also where your ads and how you appear but also really um, I would say typical marketing things like how your copy looks all those things there never used to be any type of investment and we’re starting to see everyone up their game because they have to it’s Its force right? It’s there’s no choice in this labour market that if you’re not trying to stand out. You’re just going to be left behind and the cost of not having those roles filled a lot of business of realizes is a lot higher than spending money in recruitment marketing and getting the right talent for your roles.
40:16.30
ThinkinCircles
So, ah on that point interesting enough over here What we’ve seen ah that the spend increase is by recruitment agencies and starving agencies. They were the first ones to really start to spend a lot more money on recruiter marketing as opposed to the clients that they’re working for you know who could be struggling obviously to find roles who are then using recruitment agencies to them. But the agencies have got their own. We’ve seen agencies of all variant size. Very small have their own internal recruitment marketeers, right? And it’s now a space that is really growing.
40:49.72
Serge Boudreau
That’s interesting because it’s the opposite here. Um I would say staffing firms recruitment agencies are by far the worst recruitment marketers in Canada when it comes to a when you look at competing against Ta Internal Ta teams and. How they’re recruiting. It’s the worst I’ve and I see a lot of them. Well, they’re not spending money on it here. No, I get that.
41:09.85
ThinkinCircles
I went I didn’t say we didn’t say there were any good I said they were just spending money on it I didn’t say that I teas but no I did.
41:21.13
Serge Boudreau
But yeah, no, there is no investment from staffing the recruitment firms unless that I’m missing a big part of the industry, but I am not seeing it and I’m still seeing even the worst job ads the worst career sites are coming from staffing and recruitment agencies and I just don’t get it. And you’re right I’ve been noticing that in u k with companies like yourself. There’s a big emphasis on doze. But I think overall, and I might be wrong staffing and recruitment agencies is bigger in the u k than it is in Canada it might be like the Us. but it’s not as big and I see it first-hand when I’m working when I was working as a practitioner, and I was dealing with trying to recruit and in different markets. There was an endless list of people reaching out to me from the Ku from staffing agencies and you don’t. See that as much in Canada obviously there’s a driving market for recruitment and staffing agencies here but nowhere near what it is in u k.
42:20.42
ThinkinCircles
I mean in in the yeah up there’s ah, there’s a figure that usually gets flung around where there’s something close to 30000 recruitment agencies in the up with employing around about 150000 people in the in the in the space and it’s about you know, 0.05% of the workforces or something is in is in is in recruitment. Um, ah, um, ah, but that’s including 1-man businesses all the way up to the huge the huge businesses. Ah, which I think ah you know it’s crazy I mean it’s such a flooded market. But obviously, a market where someone can quite easily can easily start their own recruitment agency work out their bedroom work out their little office and way into the how many 6 figures per year and have a good life because that’s it that is the space in the market for it. You know, um and I maybe that’s way, most cases you just what you just steal your old Firm’s database basically and can and crack on that’s usually what happened, but I don’t know I mean I know in the and I don’t think there’s that many in the Us right? I wouldn’t imagine I think the us is a much you know there’s ah, there’s the less players on and in that space, right? And probably much more well-known players. That’s a thing I think that’s like my observation.
43:35.42
Serge Boudreau
Yeah, I think you’re right? and it’s the same in Canada. There’s a lot less obviously population is lower, but I would be shocked if there’s 10000 in all of Canada compared to 300000 right and how much should you say thirty thousand thirty yeah there’s probably not even.
43:49.74
ThinkinCircles
yeah, thirty thousand yeah thirty Thousand recruits yeah, um surge it’s been an absolute pleasure talking with you today. We will obviously include all your details in the show notes and anybody who hasn’t listened to the recruitment flex.
43:55.25
Serge Boudreau
5000 in Canada would be my best guest.
44:06.86
ThinkinCircles
And needs to go listen to Surgeon Shelley it is a great listen um way more intellectual than the thinkers are than this po podcast are yeah, it’s you have what? yeah know? Yeah, you’re a master at your art ah Serge and I love listening to you guys Um. We’ll include a detail in the show notes and ah, but for now, thank you very much.
Social media can seem quite complicated, which is why I have put together a list of 6 things you can focus on in order to grow your small recruitment business using social media.
1 Determine your goals
It’s difficult to design a strategy without deciding what you want to achieve, so this is where you should start.
Would you like to attract candidates?
Are you looking to engage clients?
Do you hope to generate leads?
Would you simply like to build a community on social media?
Don’t set 20 aims because it will be too much to focus on. Decide on 3-5, then set a timeline, and share them with your team. Even if you have a small office of 5 people, when everyone knows what the goals are, they’re much easier to work towards and achieve.
2 Define your audience
You’ve set out help people, but you can’t help everyone, so you must decide whom it will be.
Who are your ideal candidates?
What field do they work in?
How old are they?
How do they get their information?
On what platforms do they connect with people professionally?
Once you have identified who you’re marketing to, even if you’re not currently actively creating content or designing campaigns, you’ll start making more informed choices about how you’re attracting, how you’re engaging, and with whom.
3 Have a professional website
Once you’ve attracted and engaged your audience, you need to direct your client or candidate to a location (your website) where they can discover what your business has to offer and find out additional information.
No matter the size of your business, it’s important to make a good impression because a bad website can leave people with a sour taste, or simply confused. Which is why it must be as good and straight-forward as you can get it. For some, your website is likely the first interaction a potential lead will have with your business. Even if you have a brick and mortar location, people are likely to look you up online before they actually stop by. So, your website has to be aesthetic and fit for purpose to entice people to explore further and reach out.
These are some things to consider:
Is it functional?
Is it compatible with various screen sizes?
Is it simply for a candidate to find your contact information?
Is it easy for a visitor to identify the services your business offers?
Of course, there are many more things to consider in order to have a great website, but those four essentials should get you started on the right foot.
4 Be consistent
People have many misconceptions about marketing, but truth is that consistency is what gets results.
Sure, flashy ad campaigns help, a bright and shiny new website doesn’t hurt, and on-brand imagery for your social media accounts is essential, but people won’t know about it unless you put in the time (consistently) to promote it.
The secret to growing your small business with marketing is to pick something, and stick with it.
The more consistent you are about your marketing efforts, the faster you’ll get a good feel for what works and what doesn’t. And when you know what works, you can keep improving upon it to grow your small business.
5 Try new things
There are new things popping up everyday from TikTok and Reels, to new information on how Google ranks your website. Use this to your advantage as new platforms are more likely to boost newcomers, and old (established) platforms are likely to boost users implementing their newest features.
As long as you consistently put effort into those few marketing tactics I identified earlier, you should also give yourself the freedom to try new things.
As a small business, you’re agile. You have a close team who can get things done quickly. So, when you’ve got a handle on the basics and your marketing efforts are starting to deliver the growth you’re looking for, don’t be afraid to try out some new things, too. This will keep the platforms’ algorithms and your followers on their toes and excited about your content.
Every business is different — what works well for some companies, doesn’t work for others. The only way you can what works for your business is to let yourself try new things, and be comfortable in the knowledge that when something doesn’t work you can try something else.
6 Focus on what you have time for
The crux of marketing a small business, as I’ve already mentioned, is making time to put in the work. If you’re like many other small businesses, you’re short-staffed, and most people on your team wear many hats. No one has time to learn how to set up a complex Google Ads campaign, or figure out the inner workings of Instagram Reels.
Take whatever time you have, whether it’s 5 hours a month or 5 hours a week, and put it to the tactics that will deliver the greatest results. For example, if you’ve set aside 5 hours a month for your marketing efforts, building out a complex email workflow is not the best use of your time. It’s a great marketing tactic, and it would do a lot to help you nurture leads who are already in your system, but firstly, you might not even finish the workflow in 5 hours, and secondly, it’s not going to deliver the best return on your investment.
There are a lots of lead generation tricks and marketing tactics available to small and midsize businesses, such as:
Blogging
Email marketing
Testing and optimising your website for lead generation
Social media marketing
Paid advertising
Conversational marketing (that you can automate using chatbots)
Event marketing
There are many other things aside form these, but you don’t have time for everything, so think back to your small business goals.
How did you want to grow your small business?
Which one of these tactics will best help you get there?
Identify the tactics that are most aligned with your goals and your target client or customer, and start there. It’s not worth spreading yourself thin, choose one or two tactics you know align with your goals, and focus your efforts there until you start to see results.
Marketing a small business is no joke. You’re already busy with your actual job, and now you’re adding on a consistent marketing workload on top of it. Your team is stretched thin. If you’re not sure you want to handle marketing too, talk to the ThinkinCircles team. We’d love to help!
etting up your new recruitment agency is one of the most exciting and terrifying times of running a business, but what can you do to get it right from the start? Joining James this week is Bobby Banerjee, Director Of Learning at Elev8. Bobby and I pool our knowledge to discuss how to make sure your new recruitment business is on the right track from the start.
Episode Transcript:
00:01.21
ThinkinCircles
Welcome back everybody to the Marketing Rules Podcast and it’s my pleasure today to be joined by Bobby Banerjee. Bobby, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
00:10.60
Bobby Banerjee
Likewise. Great too great to be on.
00:19.63
ThinkinCircles
For those who don’t know you, could you give yourself a little bit of an introduction, tell us a little bit about your background and what you do today.
00:27.27
Bobby Banerjee
Yeah, absolutely. So, I started off as a recruiter myself just over ten years ago working for S3 in Birmingham so had the trials and tribulations of being a brand-new consultant in the world of the world of tech recruitment. Three, well I say that, three and a half, two and a half successful years my first year was an absolute nightmare. Um tore most of my hair around I think I did 2 deals in my first-year um and ah so most have but ah, most places probably wouldn’t behind me now but over the last seven or eight years I’ve been helping young recruiters. Essentially try and now perform the market by you know by doing a lot of training and coaching with them that looks at the humanist areas of recruitment because we forget that we’re working with humans, and it’s how do we? How would we react to certain things and using empathy-based learning I guess if you want to give it a fancy title. Um, to be able to be to be able to um, kind of get success from people. That’s the that’s the plan. You know it’s trying to get people to think about things from that that viewpoint and just remember that they were.
01:26.11
ThinkinCircles
Putting the consultant backing consultant right.
01:39.57
Bobby Banerjee
They were a candidate looking for a job at 1 point and they’ve had they’ve been people with buying power. So how do you use that that that self that self-k knowledge to then-to-then kind of impart what you do on others.
01:49.53
ThinkinCircles
I Think it’s one of those things that a lot of recruiters are now kind of paying more attention to, right? You know I was kind of I always made this joke around. You know, recruitment consultants didn’t really do much consulting. You know that was you know that that consulting part was kind of left out and I know that’s become more and more important because. As this kind of fight over good Candidates. You want to kind of be able to build those relationships and take people on that journey with you and not necessarily just sell the role but sell everything that goes around with kind of being ah just an empathetic recruiter which ah we don’t have the. Best reputations of in this in in this space right.
02:28.86
Bobby Banerjee
Well, yeah, I mean what I love about the industry is that you can be absolutely anyone and make a success of yourself. It doesn’t matter about your socioeconomic background. It doesn’t matter about creed colour race gender you can make it you could make yourself a successful you can make yourself a success in recruitment The other problem is that absolutely anyone can join so it doesn’t matter what your behavioural issues are that you can that you can make a success by having some really poor attitudes and therefore people remember those things I mean dare I dare I start using it as a marketing tool but you know it’s those things around. What has happened in our industry over certain you know, however, many years our car bought the status is it’s something that we’re 5 times more likely to rant about something that we are to rave about something so along those lines and so we then therefore are more likely to take to Twitter LinkedIn
03:15.97
ThinkinCircles
Something on that.
03:26.72
Bobby Banerjee
Facebook Google and if you ever do a search around why recruiters are and let it autofill. You should see some of the results.
03:34.54
ThinkinCircles
Ah, ah, um, yeah, I yeah, that sounds dangerous. To be honest, you know I mean and slightly probably slightly depressing as well. Um, but today what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to kind of. We’re going to tune into that a little bit right because I thought what a good idea would be is if we talk to some of the businesses out there. They are probably you’ve you know you kind of. The types of business you work with the types of business that think in circles work with who are either just starting up have just started up maybe a year or so old and some of the things that between us we think are important that sometimes can get dropped off the radar because you know you are incredibly busy. Your time and resource short but things that in the long term to medium term can really kind of play out to make you a better business, right? and more successful business. So, I think that’s a great place to kind of start and um. And you know you kick us off right? What is kind of some of the things just off the top. What we should be considering.
04:30.30
Bobby Banerjee
Yeah, so well like I say um so I started I started up myself a couple of years ago and there’s a lot of things that you can think about whilst I guess being in the business and being on the working on the business at the same time. So, I guess I’d want to split it up in the exact same way because even as a trainer I found myself working in the business a lot rather than on and therefore by strategy my plan of action my go- to market kind of you know, kind of Playbook had gone out the window at of various points. So, I guess from the first point of. The first port of call is having a plan and have ah you know have a have a one-year three-year five-year plan and be able to hold yourself and help and get someone else to help you be accountable to it whether it’s a coach whether it’s someone that you trust whether is someone that you. That you value as a mentor figure. Whatever that looks like have ah have a plan that someone else can be accountable to but then I guess we’ve got to talk about the stuff that’s in the business as well. So, what generally tends to happen is people rely on their old networks people are out on restrictive covenants.
05:25.95
ThinkinCircles
Yeah.
05:38.61
Bobby Banerjee
So, you’re building something from either scratch or on a knowledge base that is a little bit lower than you’d like to like to be and so what people seem to forget in the world of recruitment that your first six months whether it’s as a business owner or as a rookie recruiter. Is essentially one massive marketing exercise and that’s so saying that just because I’m on I’m on a marketing rules podcast. But if you think about. But if you think about what you’re doing now what you’re trying to do is get your name out in the marketplace and whether that is. You know whether that is as a good recruiter whether it is a good person whether it is as a knowledgeable person in your marketplace or you’re doing at the boat is trying to get those things and you know what jobs will come in as a by-product of doing that well. So, it’s about your outreach so it’s about the LinkedIn Outreach it’s a bit it’s about the I guess the emails. The how do we build up a great database of people that are really bought into us and I wish I could say that’s all sales. But unfortunately, James I guess that’s all marketing because you’re a b testing. On the messaging that you put out to people because you are you are checking out different types of emails to see whether they fit you’re looking at things from a hopefully from an empathetic perspective and realizing what would make me respond to those to those messages whether I was a candidate or a client.
06:55.75
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, yeah.
07:00.19
Bobby Banerjee
And so, if I take the candidate side to start off with because every good business starts with having some great candidates to speak to because again, it’s not like you can just like most businesses without a without a product offering what can you do? So, if you are going to engage with people. The first thing that you want to think about is in this market. What is going to make people want to move what is going to make people want to move away from the relative safety of their current job where they’re safe. They’re settled. They’ve got training. They’ve got coaching. They’ve got everything that they need and a progression plan. To be able to go to the relative uncertainty of a new job where they could be last in first out or you see the is it Leo the acronym. Um, you know you have those things you don’t have all the same benefits. You potentially don’t have all those increased circumstances. And so, you kind of think about what is going to make someone going to move from that situation. Once you once you understand that the outreach can become a lot easier to deal with, I mean from your perspective. What are you seeing kind of people do or not do that could be easy fixes.
08:08.14
ThinkinCircles
So um, I’m going to kind of pick up some of the kind of points that you made as well. So okay, so with a plan, right? You know the amount of Business. You don’t do that right? that we see who kind of start off their business amount of and you know what it’s more of a thought exercise doing ah a business plan than it is anything Else. You don’t have to even stick to it. Right? Most businesses don’t stick to it. It’s about actually putting something pen to paper and doing that So Anyone who’s listening who’s maybe a recruiter or just about to start their own business or has even done it over the last kind of couple of years and hasn’t written a plan. It’s still always worth doing because it’s just it’s says kind of philosophical exercise so you can kind of. Put your brain into a slightly different space and take it out of working in the business to working on the business which is the great point that you kind of Made. So do it and even if you don’t ever look at it Again. It’s just an exercise to go through the other things that we’re kind of I guess that we we’re kind of we’re seeing is um. Is it just kind of just bad communication from our from agencies, right? And that’s always the kind of thing that is kind of seems to be a bit not necessarily umbriferous. It’s nowhere near as bad as it was right? but and when I talk about bad communication. It’s just easy that constitutes of no communication, right? as well.
09:22.41
Bobby Banerjee
Yeah.
09:25.10
ThinkinCircles
You know that is one of the things that and we have every kind of tool at our disposal in the currently within the recruitment space to communicate with people whether it is you know podcasts whether it is YouTube whether it’s live streaming. Whether it’s WhatsApp groups whether it’s other communities whether it’s slack if you’re in any it space whether it’s Discord whether it’s red. There are all these places where you can communicate with people why you know? Ah so last year you know.
09:46.96
Bobby Banerjee
I mean you even forgot TikTok and Instagram.
09:54.21
ThinkinCircles
You know, but all there all these places, right? where you can have you have a touch point right? and you know, and I speak a lot about this when it comes to kind of building your brand. You know every place you’ve got a touch point is a point is a point is a touch point with your brand, right? and everyone who has any interaction with is kind of has that interaction with your brand but has the potential of being. We all want them to be either refer as advocates and in in in the recurred space. Go potentially become a client and potentially become a candidate as Well. So, there’s all of that but people just not getting that thinking. That’s such a big job to do and it’s better to you know ghost people.
10:18.65
Bobby Banerjee
Yeah, totally.
10:28.83
ThinkinCircles
And worry about those consequences as opposed to try and keep in contact with people. So
10:32.87
Bobby Banerjee
Yeah, and just and I think it’s also important to remember that we’ve all ghost to people before you know it’s not. You know it’s okay to have done it. It’s what you’ve learned from the experience and why you. And almost kind of doing a bit of a post-mortem on it thinking why you did it and most and from the research that I do because I speak to lots of recruits, I guess I 12 trained over twelve hundred maybe thirteen hundred now um you know, essentially, we try to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. Or something that we think is going to be more uncomfortable than it. But you know in you know, yeah in invariably turns out to be and so we’ve got to frame it and in a way that maybe isn’t uncomfortable. Maybe if yeah if that person hasn’t got the job. That’s okay, you know it’s okay that people don’t get jobs. You are going to be placing less than.
11:17.70
ThinkinCircles
M.
11:24.58
Bobby Banerjee
10 to 15% of all people that you put forward to interview and that’s not that’s not a stat. That’s that I’ve cut that’s kind of come up with you just look at it from a general perspective if you’re working 2 or 3 jobs. You’re probably sending 7 or 8 candidates to interview of which maybe 1 maybe two get and get a job. Yeah, that’s just the cold fact ah of the world of a recruitment. So, what happens to all those conversations that you’ve had with people that have already gone through this amazing process with you and then didn’t get the job what we generally tend to do is leave them out in the cold or just I’ll just give them. Oh, I didn’t you know you weren’t quite work quite right for us whereas that person can therefore be a good advocate of your service because what we generally tend to do, and you’ll tell me about I’m sure you’re a better exponent of net promoter scores and this that and the other than I am but. Ah, net promoter score is usually done on satisfaction from usually people who have gone through the service but it’s looking at those people that haven’t had the full service and have still had an amazing experience. They’re the ones that become your biggest advocates in the marketplace. So how are you going to speak to all those people that maybe you didn’t place and go well actually I’m sorry that we weren’t able to place you and, in all honesty, the feedback that I’ve got from the client isn’t enough to help you so what I’m going to do is I’m going to find you other opportunities based on the fact that.
12:50.99
Bobby Banerjee
You know, since you were good for this company. You’re bound to be great for another couple of companies.
12:56.19
ThinkinCircles
So, the usual response that kind of comes from that is oh we’ve because we’ve got so many people applying, we’ve got so many kinds of so much coming in that we just can’t handle it. Ah which isn’t an excuse these days right? because there’s ways of the ways of automating that kind of response. So
13:09.22
Bobby Banerjee
I mean I stopped recruiting well in in in earnest on a desk five years five years ago and even then, there was all the technology at your disposal to be able to even if it was off a job board. You can green.
13:11.97
ThinkinCircles
You know so.
13:27.30
Bobby Banerjee
Amber and red people based on the based on the job board that you used and send messages out to those people who were all in red and you can easily base it based on whether you know I guess there were. People who didn’t have the right to work in the Ku or didn’t have the right skill set and you can actually just nit-pick and send little emails just say look on this occasion you weren’t quite right because we are looking for a Ku citizen but I’d love to keep in touch and the amount of people that would come back to me and just say oh my god this is the first email that I’ve had of this in months. And that makes and that makes you just think oh my god is common courtesy and common sense just two of the things that are missing from our day-to-day job because we’re just so in the moment that we forget to apply little things that maybe what that took ah an extra three four minutes out of my day. But it can have a blessing impact on your brand.
14:16.27
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, yeah, and that’s the interesting thing as well isn’t it because you know without getting kind of to hit up in in how branding works, but you know your all those little outreaches affects your personal brand and the and the larger brand of the business that you’re either. You know, cultivating. All that you work for and all of it can have on all of it can have a positive negative or passive effect, right? And that’s what you want to get over and to come to your point about Net Promoter Score if anybody’s kind of listening and not heard of naps. It’s worth kind of It’s a very simple kind of formula for understanding. Um, ah. If someone was a kind of an advocate of your business. Basically, you’ll all have received, and you all have tried to score someone or something a product or services from 1 to 10 you know and that’s how to refer us to a friend or colleague. Yeah, exactly, and that and that and that can be and that can be adapted in the recruitment space.
15:00.50
Bobby Banerjee
Yeah, and on 1 to 10 how likely are you to buy this product service yet all that kind of stuff.
15:12.81
ThinkinCircles
And is being to be used within the recruitment space and I think and ah probably to kind of I think once you go down that route you then suddenly think well, and Naps has its kind of limitations. You start kind of branching out to other and other those kind of advocacy scores but it’s a good place to start to understand. And it’s very simple and it’s quick and easy to roll out right.
15:32.77
Bobby Banerjee
Yeah, totally and the thing is what I what I noticed when we started out started the process off at s 3 the issues that usually face are people don’t realize what a good score is people have a limit on what they’re going to give um you know somewhat you know it’s a bit like the old. Football analogy of people could score a hat trick but in in the newspapers. They’ll still only be given an 8 out of 10 because that’s the most that they’ll ever give and so there’s those little dynamics that you must navigate, and people don’t really realize that it’s only a 9 or 10 out of 10 that is seen as a as a true positive.
15:55.58
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, yeah.
16:05.29
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, it’s not yeah, you can look at you can Google it but it’s 9 and 10 of the kind of advocates and then then basically you either get the passive and then you get the kind of negatives ones at the bottom and you miners see the with the scores together you minus and.
16:07.51
Bobby Banerjee
Because a 7 or is it a 7 or 8 or a six seven or eight that is a yeah. Um, exactly pass it and yeah, the point I was coming up. Yeah, the point that I was going to come on to be the fact that if you know if you scored seventy or eighty percent in any other walk of life that would be steamered as excellent.
16:21.95
ThinkinCircles
Um, to play score and that and that’s what gives you us complete.
16:32.67
Bobby Banerjee
And so that’s why people potentially give those give those scores out because they think that is excellence in in university if you get 70 that’s a first that’s a first-class degree. So obviously we then need to educate people what that that service needs to look like to be a 9 or 10 to these people to then be able to give those scores out. Therefore, you know brings us back nicely onto the service and what is the service that you are offering what we’re not very good at with our candidates and our client is showcasing the lifecycle from start to finish. They don’t know the work that gets done by recruiters to be able to find people their role. Or be able to find ah candidates for a company because people don’t realize that the yes, there’s a lot of technology being used and but there is a Boolean search and we do look at how many keywords come up on a Boolean search but we’re also there working with candidates who invariably because. Both’re not very good as British people of selling ourselves. We don’t write very good CVS, but we miss things off or we try and write 15 years’ worth of experience and in ah in a paragraph or conversely six months in 3 pages and so. And so, it’s and unfortunately, I wouldn’t say anything in between because it seems to be doesn’t seem to be that that it seems very polar in how people do things and so if we’re having to have conversations to get this information out of people to understand what skillets they’ve had that they might not have necessarily talked about.
18:05.29
Bobby Banerjee
And so, mm.
18:05.54
ThinkinCircles
Its’s it’s a crazy thing, right? that we’re still there right after all this time, right? You know that you know we have these conversations about kind of the cv being dead or not and we’re still having trouble. We are writing them you know, and I mean it’s kind of you know we haven’t cracked the first bit you know, um. But you know from your perspective and the businesses that you kind of you work with, right? you know for the ones who are kind of in their earlier stages. Let’s say because I know you kind of coach kind of you know people coming into the space or people are new into space or new in you know.
18:21.91
Bobby Banerjee
Yet.
18:37.32
ThinkinCircles
What does that kind of you know if you’re kind of coaching someone. Ah, you know what that looks like so you if you say look first six months you these are the things you need to kind of concentrate on in la mean how does that how does that look.
18:48.44
Bobby Banerjee
But yeah, it looks to be optimist. It looks really bespoke so we look at you. So, want to work with a newish business. Um, we look at it and go like I say what’s the plan first and foremost understand what the plan is and how we can then. Help create stuff around the plan, and it can be. It can fall into several different things and it’s looking as if you know a lot of people end up getting again that that a stereotype of the fact that people think that they need to do absolutely everything in the business when they first start one. You know they need to be. You know they need to be the salesperson need to be the office manager they need to be the painter and decorator they need to be the marketing the marketing specialist and then we get all this tech to try and help us on our way, but the problem is what we’ve got up. There isn’t quite ready to use the tech like.
19:29.58
ThinkinCircles
Um, yep.
19:41.14
Bobby Banerjee
I could try and create a marketing platform using canvas am I going to no because I’m not a marketer and I don’t know enough about it and so it’s working with it. So, what I end up doing is work with companies to look at what can be what can be taken by them. What’s in their strengths. It’s almost like doing a bit of a Swot analysis with people and going.
19:57.96
ThinkinCircles
Right.
20:00.43
Bobby Banerjee
Where do you see your strengths and weaknesses and what can be done with those weaknesses and what can we do to keep building on those strengths because if you’re a Bd person but doesn’t like candidate acquisition. There’s stuff for that. You know you can outsource a lot of that. If like me, you’re not very good at marketing There are so many there are so many good things that you can do whether it’s using someone like selves, or you know there’s freelancers via fevered and Upwork or whatever. Whatever you do just have a think about if I was charging myself out what I would charge would I be looking for and would I be doing the task. That I’m doing for that money.
20:36.58
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, it’s a great point, right? You know? Um I talk about this a lot as well in some of the kind of presentations as you know as start-ups which we you know which hat you are wearing today right? is it your you know admin hat your accountancy hat your marketing hat you know, and you can’t wear them all because you just look stupid. Right? So, you can only really want wear 1 or 2 hats at any 1 time and even then, you still look a bit stupid from a man who’s wearing a hat, right? now you know I mean it is it is you know you’ve got a kind of church concentrate on would pull to your strengths. The obvious thing is like no one you know when you’re starting busy. You don’t do your own accounts right? You’re crazy if you want to do that.
21:09.40
Bobby Banerjee
In.
21:12.65
ThinkinCircles
Because you’re not an accountant that’s not what you do So the fact that you know as you kind of eloquently put it. You need to kind of outsource. Basically, what you don’t want to do and as recruitment has become more and more complex. You know, ah probably for the for the better to a certain extent. You need to be at a kind of. Move off or move out. Ah you know, take those hats, and give them to someone else do on your behalf. Basically, whether that is the marketing whether it is the kind of whatever else you know, probably not going to do your own I T that kind of stuff right? All that kind of stuff. It’s yeah obvious.
21:34.84
Bobby Banerjee
Um, yeah.
21:42.52
Bobby Banerjee
Absolutely like yeah there are some good There are some good places to go. There are some great growth partners out there. Um I’ve been working with a growth partner myself in what they do for me is get rid of you know, kind of find the right corm you know because oh my god how many hours can that take for someone. Especially in recruitment and that’s because recruitment crams. There are hundreds of them and all of them do Evers a slightly of different things and you know it’s looking at those aspects for me, you were 100 % right it was accounting but you know I’m not you know I’d like to think I’m quite good at maths but accounting. Not a chance. So why not get either some technology or the help of someone that can do that. Luckily my kind of growth partner helps me with that because he then takes all that stuff found founds tech, I’ve now just got an apt where I just must put all my receipts down. He’s going to have a go because I still have those receipts to do. Um, but it just makes your life so much easier because then it means I can get into training coaching consulting.
22:47.73
ThinkinCircles
But I think the thing that holds some businesses back and recruiters back at this point is because they’re going to. They’re thinking. Well, it will cost money, right? Well, you know that’s that you can’t really start new businesses on a shoestring right? You need a bit of, but you need backing you can do it for Ah, you know on a shoestring. But. You’re probably then that’s your mindset moving forward, right? If you’re going to try and you’re going to be tight with a business whereas. I mean one of the things I’ve learned is you know, spend money where you need to spend money right? that is kind of that. That’s kind of my ethos with ah with my business and what we try and kind of.
23:09.40
Bobby Banerjee
Um.
23:22.17
ThinkinCircles
You know, ah expect from our from our clients is you know you need to spend money to you know and I’m going to say to make money because that’s just that just crass. But there are certain areas where you need to kind of have a budget for because it’s going to make your life a damn site easier if you try and do it on a shoestring then it kind of just all falls a bit flat.
23:36.93
Bobby Banerjee
I think I think what? what we generally tend to fall in the trap of is cost versus value and I’ve again I’ve had to learn that the hard way because I tried to so for example for a cram, I just tried to use excel for the first year yeah
23:42.23
ThinkinCircles
Exactly.
23:56.43
Bobby Banerjee
Exactly what a stupid move that was especially when there are such amazing free crams out there for fledgling businesses. So then realize hang on that helps and then you know and that was because I was just too busy thinking about the cost because I had a business partner at the time, but I just thought cost. Because I wanted to make sure that the bottom line was as profitable as it could be but then I realized that the amount of time that I’ve spent sequencing. Um you know, creating mass emails that make sense to people. Um, you know, fortunate that the person that I’ve hired has now started off a brand-new ah brand new kind of email campaign where we can drip feed. Bits and pieces of exciting news each week or business development tips and it’s like you know all these weird, wonderful things that can then hopefully build business so of the off the medium to longer term sure you look at your short term and go right? Where am I where’s my next where’s my next deal where’s my next meal coming from. But. That comes from but you’ve got to have a look at your short-term goals as well as your medium to long-term goals and don’t just stray off the off the medium to long term because you know but I’ll be honest, 1 of my media to long-term goals was to be part of a networking group and that’s how we met and.
25:04.53
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, exactly.
25:07.80
Bobby Banerjee
And so, for me, you know that was a really big thing because you know in most networking Groups. You must pay some money which is fine, but it’s the Knowledge. It’s the Expertise. It’s the I hate using the word exposure, but it is great to have access to lots of different people and. And so, it’s how do you view your short to medium term goals and the money that you spend to make those things happen.
25:29.59
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, Bobby, there’s some absolutely great tips. Um, hopefully if you’ve been listening to this. There’s enough to kind of take away if you are kind of starting around business. Um Bobby as always. We are going to include all your details in the show notes if anybody wants. No map you or your business they can kind of reach out. Um, but for now it’s been absolute pleasure. Thank you very much.
The Marketing Rules Podcast, “The voice of Recruitment Marketing”
Setting up your new recruitment agency is one of the most exciting and terrifying times of running a business, but what can you do to get it right from the start? Joining James this week is Bobby Banerjee, Director Of Learning at Elev8. Bobby and I pool our knowledge to discuss how to make sure your new recruitment business is on the right track from the start.
For any business moving into a new territory and key marketing consideration is whether to translate your collateral into the local language. Joining James Whitelock this week is Evan Kramer, founder of Motion Point. Evan discusses the advantages, from a marketing perspective, of translating not just your website but all your marketing output into the local language.
Episode Transcript:
00:01.62
ThinkinCircles
Welcome back, everybody to the Marketing Rules Podcast, it is a pleasure to be joined by Evan Kramer, CEO at Motion Point. Evan it’s a pleasure to have you on the podcast. For those of us who kind aren’t aware of you in your work, maybe you could give us a brief introduction of yourself, a bit about your background, a little bit also about Motion Point, though we will cover some of that as we carry on through the podcast.
00:26.70
Evan Kramer
Thanks for having me this morning, this afternoon, depending on where you are in the world. But that’s what I do as we support a lot of global website translation for brands all over the world. A little bit about myself, really a digital marketing veteran over the last twenty-five years, I came up through digital marketing through many different technology and internet start-ups and growth companies mostly venture-backed working as a chief marketing officer for several brands, helping launch on an online automotive company an online real estate company home security business. So, over the course of my career have had a lot of those types of experiences and success selling companies in the. Sold selling a company to direct TV to an education technology company a marketing technology company and that has now landed me into Motion Point as my third time as a CEO with a couple successful ventures behind me. Joined Motion Point in September of last year and Motion Point is really fits what I do a lot because it’s about how you get more out of marketing globally or through translated experiences and that type of technology innovation. Do you need to support that. We’ve been around for over 20 years we are, private equity back company where we do a website translation that is managed for you. On a concierge platform so where we really fit is where companies especially marketing teams that don’t have internal localisation resources want to provide a translated experience ah experience and need an enterprise solution. We provide that experience on our platform. We do continuous monitoring. Of the origin site content and anytime content is updated whether it’s a blog whether it’s a home page whether it’s an image we’re detecting it in real time we’re getting it translated the way that our client wants it translated whether it’s through a linguist or we’re now using Ai. To begin to do that translation so we could talk a little bit about how Ai is disrupting and innovating in our category, but we do everything end to end from the technology platform to the translation itself and then all the professional services that come with it, so we support. Ah, some of the top global brands in the world and a lot of the us based companies that want to provide either a Spanish experience or French-Canadian experience. So, a little bit about myself and Motion Point.
03:22.10
ThinkinCircles
Yeah, well thank you for that. It’s, translation is one of those bug bearers of the marketing industry, right? It’s ah it’s one of those things that, we tend to work with businesses when they’re opening into a new territory and at some point, you have that conversation. Do we need to translate the website. Do we need to have a separate website in and in in in the in the and host language. How do we go about that and it always you just your brain starts to whirl around because you think we’ve got this website. It’s got God knows how many pages it’s got years and years of articles and blogs I mean it just sounds like an absolute. Nightmare trying to translate that. So being able to offload that onto someone else is probably the like the is ah and not using Google translate which is notoriously terrible right.
04:02.68
Evan Kramer
Death. A lot of the times over the last twenty years a lot of that has been managed by scope. So, a client would say I only have so much budget. So, I can only translate so much of my website. Some of that website is where the core traffic may go for that website. and there’s always a lot of complex decisions around website translation because it’s simple and straightforward from a return on a marketing investment if you are a transactional business, right? If you’re an e-commerce company and. You’re translating and the more you translate the more sales you get I mean that’s probably the most straightforward investment you can make in translation. But if you’re a b two b company or an informational site or publisher. what the return is I’m going to get and so I think a lot of that has been managed by scope. over time and understanding really where those benefits are, and one of the benefits of Motion Point is that because we’re concierge we can provide that experience without the internal investment. It may take to get it done and so you can understand what that return might be before you. Make that next level investment. go yeah.
05:24.30
ThinkinCircles
How is it you go about it because there is theirs, I guess there’s a couple of lines of thought when ah, translating online content is if it’s your website. Do you have a separate website. That’s in German that’s dot. D or something like that or do you have the.com site and then you have your little flags up in the corner. Do you detect it by I P Address What is it your how it is, you go about it and what is it you see is there A preferred method is there a better method.
05:57.64
Evan Kramer
Yeah, so there is ah, really 2 ways at the end of the day to translate a website one is through proxying the site which is what we do where we literally on a separate server will mirror the origin site. , and we can be based on the client’s recommendation on how they want the URL structure whether they want it as a subdomain, or a subdirectory set up that structure and so that we will have a mirrored site. , and those pages managed the other way to do it is within your own CMS. Where you can set up your own pages and bring in that content through an ape or connector or you could proxy through the browser where you cache the translation in in JavaScript. So, there’s really sort of 2 ways to go about, setting up your website translation. the one on the one side if you’re using your CMS if you’re using, sort of the client-side experience. You’ve got to have resources to manage that frontend framework whereas if you use a proxy. my team’s resources can manage that framework. So, if. If we’re queuing it after we bring in and ah simplified Chinese onto a Spanish origin site. the amount of ah characters and pixels are going to change and could break functionality. We would detect that we would fix that if that was within your own.
07:27.70
Evan Kramer
CMS experience your own frontend Framework You would have to have resources internally to manage that or wouldn’t get fixed.
07:35.46
ThinkinCircles
I mean, you make a good point there because that’s one of the things that might be that some businesses just don’t consider that the change in characters is going to change potentially change formatting. ah what the other things that businesses should probably need to take into consideration before they go down this route around translation.
07:57.90
Evan Kramer
I think that there’s first quality is the biggest area. that you need to consider. There are really 3 levels of quality of translation. There’s good enough and the good enough is really coming along with. Machine training. back in 162 when Google launched Google translate it really was the first normal machine model that was used and now with chat got and open-air you now have a large language model that can be used and so that will get you part of the way there. and you can say is that good enough. Ah, the second level is human translation using linguists and then the third level is what we call in the industry trans creation and what transcreation is not. Is taking a bit further from literal translation and localising it for that. ah, language experience so making it sound and lingo in that language. So those are the 3 levels the thing about so quality is number 1, as terms of dimension number 2 is speed. how quickly you need it translated. we manage. you can probably figure out who those customers are but some of the largest telecommunications companies in the world and when there is an iPhone release right? The day that that iPhone release happens.
09:24.13
Evan Kramer
We need to have everything translated. So, the speed for that is very important. but if you are, writing an article. and you may not necessarily need that translated for weeks or months depending on. Yeah, when you get to it so the.
09:43.24
Evan Kramer
When that is and I think the biggest area to consider is the total cost of ownership. if you are going to make this investment. Ah, how much do you invest in in this short term versus long term and a lot of reasons. Why. Ah, companies come to us is typically a managed outsource solution is about 20% The cost of doing it yourself now doing yourself. You have a lot of control. You build it into your workflows you have systems, but you’ve got to hire dedicated resources and you’ve got to really build that acumen internally. So, sort of cost of ownership is a big factor. So, speed quality cost of ownership. Those are a lot of the dimensions. the other the other factor that’s sort of evolved over time is the complexity of your front-end Framework. There’s a lot of large enterprise customers that have built their own CMS for. From Homegrown some of them are using out of the box Enterprise CMSs like Sitecore and then you’ve got companies on the word presses and drupels in the World. So, it also depends on the type of front-end Framework you’re using and how that works and plays with translation.
10:55.87
ThinkinCircles
You touched on this slightly at the start is what’s the data around. Ah the reasons to translate with regards to your marketing activity your sales activity you were. Return.
11:13.69
Evan Kramer
All the research that that we have and validated through our customers is I believe it’s about 70% Maybe a little bit higher of people in the world that prefer to have. Language in their ah first language experience, right? So, if you are a Spanish speaking ah person that that over 70% of those want a Spanish experience no matter where you live in the world and so really trying to Understand. who your demographics are who are your customer segments. And go from there. So, the biggest reason ah to translate is that there isn’t unlike the Euro which has become or bitcoin which is now becoming more of a universal currency. Ah, we don’t yet at the point where we have a universal language and so that that is truly an important factor here.
12:10.79
ThinkinCircles
That all makes sense and, what about ah, offsite What about things like social media and advertising and things like that is that an area that ah Motion Point gets involved with and what other how does that work is that again Advantageous is it work is it too much trouble. What’s the data around that process.
12:38.12
Evan Kramer
I think it’s all web content. So, the website is one of the more complex I would say after that you’ve got video and images that can be complex depending on how the, the content is embedded whether it’s subtitles. or dubbing for video whether the images have embedded text or whether they’re not embedded text. when you get to social media, I think that it depends on the strategy of the marketing team. A lot of times there might be where you want a. some comment or post to stand out or the response to that post to stand out so they’re selective about what gets translated, email is straightforward. We do a lot of email marketing where whether it’s operational emails or marketing campaign emails either. Getting the template translated or just connecting a feed to get the text translated itself. and then I think an area 2 other areas that you mentioned 1 is the digital advertising side. that is probably. A little bit more straightforward as well because it’s more planned right? Usually, advertising isn’t as real time so you’re spending time developing copy getting that copy translated. so there’s not at this point sort of a real time need in a lot of areas for that digital advertising.
14:08.93
Evan Kramer
But where there is a lot of real-time need is in the customer support side of the business. So, when you think about or even sales with online chat. online chat is now being integrated into things like Salesforce where you can instead of having multilingual customer service or sales reps on the one side. Ah, you could have the translation coming in and doing, an asynchronous flow of translation back and forth between two non-native speaking folks so that’s so across the Omni Channel spectrum is really where we focus and all of those. can be well supported like I said website translation the most vast and complex. and then images and video probably next.
14:55.10
ThinkinCircles
Do you get much involved in like real time voice translation like universal translators it because that’s another thing that we see pop up on the writer or and have conversations about on occasion?
15:04.24
Evan Kramer
We don’t get as involved in that when we work with video. We’re doing more subtitling There are a lot of companies that specialise especially in the entertainment industry in in the voiceover. There’s there was a big announcement I believe it was. I don’t know if it was late last year or very early this year where YouTube is supporting a multilingual through a lot of their toolset and so the, the supply of translation in the YouTube channel which is the largest video channel in the world is really growing so the ability to do. Ah, dubbing and subtitling in YouTube so you’re going to see a lot more and more YouTube videos TikTok videos. really become translated be able to select the language that you want to know.
15:54.69
ThinkinCircles
With that offsite translation through social advertising whatever is I guess the stats and the data points towards that you’re going to get much. You’re going to get higher engagement rate higher open rates if it’s in that if it’s in that local language right.
16:10.63
Evan Kramer
Yeah, especially on a website one of the big things as a marketer for websites is engagement, right? and so the bounce rate is very critical, and we talk about attention span and it’s. Directly inverse inversely correlated to time, right? So as time goes on in 2024 next year, I would bet the average attention span and declines further for individuals and so as a marketer you need to do everything you can to capture that attention. Ah, very quickly and so if you have a flicker on your screen or if the page isn’t loading or if it’s not translating your preferred language or the quality isn’t very good. You’re going to lose that opportunity and you spend a lot of time to get eyeballs to where you want it to make sure those eyeballs engage in what in what you’re presenting.
17:05.70
ThinkinCircles
You touched us just at the start. Ah on AI and how that is changing the or it is making inroads into the translation space. talk to us a little bit about how that is it competition. You work alongside it. How does it how it works now in in translation.
17:23.22
Evan Kramer
Yeah, so the biggest disruption in our industry. I mean it’s disrupting or innovating on a lot of different spectrums, right? So, you talk about website where you can talk about audio you can talk about video so let’s. Stick with the content format. within websites, the biggest sort of innovation happening with Ai is the ability to no longer must rely on a sending content directly to a linguist to get human quality translation and so if you were to take. Let’s say 3 chapters of text and send them to and send them through ai send them through neural machine training. you can get a certain level of quality across those 3 chapters of text and now where the industry is trying to understand how we measure. That quality so that we can provide signals and feedback to the customer client so that they can decide is that good enough for my customer or do I want to send it to post editing to a human linguist to improve the quality and so what that does is it. It creates more empowerment. on the workflow but it also reduces the cost of translation because now you don’t have to send everything to a linguist to get human quality. You try to send as much through technology as you possibly can and then probably that last mile you now translate now on the 1 hand it makes.
18:56.32
Evan Kramer
From a revenue standpoint if you’re thinking about a business side of it. The revenue I generate per word. Let’s say is going to go down but the amount of volume of scope will increase because now the customer can afford translating more where maybe they didn’t translate their blogs previously now can. translate blogs. So, there’s a balance between the 2, so I do think that quality estimation is a big area and then I think the next frontier on the content side is really going to be on that transcript the amount of localisation. And needed to optimise the experience. So just because you have ah translation literal and I like to use the example of a Chevy nova, right? and in Chevy Nova in in Spanish is nova don’t go right? and so how do you sell a car that doesn’t go. Right? So, so the literal translation in a lot of languages needs to be localised. and so, using Ai to identify hey is this good enough for that localised experience and is this good enough for search engine optimisation. and so being able to identify those areas so on ah on ah on a text world I think it’s more of innovation that’s driving whereas, but you think in the audio and visual space. It is much more disruptive because where you might have to use talent to do a voiceover, you can now use auto Ai Generated voice or Ai Generated ah people? or avatars to do things and so, you don’t need an actual human translator on the other end of the phone. When you can have sort of an ai bot doing it. So, I think on that side of the fence on translation. I’d be a lot more worried about the disruption but on the content side. It’s really about quality and estimating quality.
21:00.87
ThinkinCircles
I Know as a marketeer quality always appeals, I’m mortified if in English, we see something that’s incorrectly spelled or grammatically incorrect why you would want then then translate something and that you just get the same result but in Spanish or in…
21:16.22
ThinkinCircles
And Mandarin or something else right? I mean you’d be. You’d be absolutely mortified. this has been fascinating Evan is an area that I don’t think gets enough coverage within the marketing space and I’m sure a lot of the audience ah will want to know more. So as always. We’ll include all your details in the show notes if anybody wants to get in contact or know more about you and your business than they can but Evan Kramer for now. Thank you very much.
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