Video is the Medium of the Future with Maury Hanigan of SparcStart

What is your preferred method of learning? Well, in today's special podcast episode, recorded live from the floor of HR Tech, Maury Hanigan CEO of SparcStart proves that video reigns supreme. During their interesting conversation Maury shares her enthusiasm for the event and discusses hot topics such as artificial intelligence and automation in the HR Tech industry. The focus of the conversation then shifts to the power of video for increasing efficiency, and creating a more personalized candidate experience, which should always be the goal in today's challenging environment. 

This is a special mini series recorded with Oleeo at HR Tech 2023 with hosts Ryan Leary, Brian Fink, and Shally Steckerl.

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Transcript

Brian Fink: 0:07

Okay, so hey, my name is Brian, he is Ryan. We are powered by Oleeo today. We are part of RecruitingDaily's Sourcing School podcast. We are on the floor at HR Tech and we are joined by the one, the only, the CEO and founder... of Sparkstart. We are joined by Mari. What's going on? How are you?

Maury Hanigan: 0:24

I'm doing great. I have to admit, I love this show. Okay. Everybody else goes, oh, we gotta go back to Vegas. I'm going, I get to go to Vegas. I'm like a kid here. I love the energy. I love the pump. It's, you know, I'm in heaven here.

Ryan Leary: 0:39

I hate packing. I like it when I'm here. Okay. I like what I'm hearing.

Brian Fink: 0:45

Okay. I don't like that. I don't like the fact that, like, half the town smells like an ashtray.

Maury Hanigan: 0:50

That is true. That's a point. That's a negative, but...

Ryan Leary: 0:53

And if you're staying at Deluxor, your room also smells like an ashtray.

Maury Hanigan: 0:57

So... But it's

Brian Fink: 1:02

all the steps that I've gotten into today. So speaking of steps, Maury, you have been buzzing around this floor... Talking to individuals about what they're building, about what's coming next. What's been your big takeaway, right? Cause you, you are like the cheerleader, like you are feeling the energy in the room, you're pumping people up. What are you hearing? What are you feeling? What's the big topic on everybody's tip of their tongue?

Maury Hanigan: 1:25

A big piece, obviously everybody's talking about AI. But the, they're all kind of standing on the edge of the pool going... I know this is going to be a big deal to me, I'm not quite sure where, how, I know there are issues here, um, so, they don't want to miss the big thing, but they're not quite sure yet where it comes in. How to dive into the pool? Yeah, yeah, so there's a lot of dabbling going on, and, and the other piece obviously, everybody's been looking at automation, um, and, and that's got pros and cons, you know, they've got folks that are, Going through automated from step to step, but they've got fall off like crazy. Efficiency is the big thing among the employers here, is how they increase efficiency.

Brian Fink: 2:07

Okay, I think efficiency is a unique segue. Can you give us a 30, 000 foot view, uh, about what you do to increase efficiency of recruiters, sourcers, and the TA function?

Maury Hanigan: 2:18

A lot. Um, Sparkstart is essentially a video platform. So, we add human face, human voice to the process. And it connects people, like you guys, think about it, if you want a sports update, are you going to an article or are you going to video? If you want to know what's going on in politics, are you going to go look at a clip or are you going to go read something?

Brian Fink: 2:37

Mari, I am the worst use case for this because I always go to the written word.

Maury Hanigan: 2:42

See, you're the outlier, which proves the point. But the reality is, all of us go to video. You want to fix the leaky sink in your kitchen, you go look at YouTube how to do that, you don't go I change the oil in my car. Yeah, you're right, absolutely. Video is the way you do it because it communicates so much more. Or you pay for the person. You pick your subject. Or you pick your subject. That's what I do. Yeah, that will do it too. No luck with Tom. When you think of candidates, you know, they're the same way. They don't want to go read five paragraphs of text and 19 bullet points. And a huge thing is they want to know who their boss is going to be. So when they, you know, all these companies say, oh, our people are our greatest assets. Like, okay, when do the candidates get to actually meet your people? Oh, after we've skeeted it down to the people who are just going to have the hiring manager video. It's like, if this is such an asset to you, why are they all the way down the process after 98 percent of the candidates have left? Let's put them up front.

Brian Fink: 3:30

Okay, so lean into that a little bit for me. Um, tell me, why, I mean, should they just be meeting with the manager or should they also be meeting with the team? Is there a difference here? What's going

Maury Hanigan: 3:42

on? Candidates, first and foremost, um, Ben Eubanks of Lighthouse Research Advisory did a whole study on this. The video that candidates want to see is of their boss. First thing. They don't want to see the, you know, random employee testimonial. You know, sort of, Anna in the San Diego office who, you know, has an interesting story. If you're going to work in Milwaukee, you kind of don't care about Anna. You know, maybe a lovely woman, but let's get real. You want to see your local... Right. You want to know who the people you're going to work for, who you're going to work with. You want a sense of that, and video conveys all of that in a way that text

Brian Fink: 4:19

can't. You know, I don't know if this guy's on your radar, but there's a gentleman, his name is Joey Coleman. And Joey Coleman wrote two books. He wrote Never Lose a Customer Again and Never Lose an Employee Again. And he actually went through and does the, and never lose an employee again, he went through and did the study over eight years about the power of personalized video to welcome an individual to a company. So I can only extrapolate from that, that there's power in meeting that individual before you ever interview for the role.

Maury Hanigan: 4:50

And video does it in a way, you can't have a hiring manager go out and introduce themselves to, you know, 8, 000 applicants. But you can send a 20 second clip that gives the candidates a sense of who this person is. And it's as easy as doing an email, if you've got the platform to do it. Sure, sure.

Ryan Leary: 5:08

And if they, if, once, I think once the hiring managers, and we've, we've done this, well, back when I was in, in corporate, we would do the same thing. Once they get used to it, it's easy. Like flip it on, make sure they have this setup or they don't need the big lights and all that stuff, but make sure they have the setup. They can hit record, go they're comfortable with it. And it goes, I mean, I, I use, what's the, um, loom? Loom? I use Loom all the time, mainly because I'm just too lazy to type the whole thing, the whole thing up. But it

Maury Hanigan: 5:39

works. It works. You can communicate more faster with video. I think it makes people

Ryan Leary: 5:43

uncomfortable, at least on the marketing side. They're kind of like, why are you on

Maury Hanigan: 5:46

video? Why are you staring at me? You know The reality is, we're all doing Zoom calls. We've gotten used to how we look on video. We've gotten used to how we sound on video. Like we're over it. You look like you look and you sound like you sound. Can care

Ryan Leary: 6:00

less anymore. Right. You just do it,

Maury Hanigan: 6:02

you care less. You know where the camera is on your device and you just go for it. Don't worry about your chin,

Ryan Leary: 6:07

just talk. So, you've been at this for a long time. 10 years. 10 years. So, how has this changed from when you started till now? What has been the big change? Or has

Maury Hanigan: 6:20

it changed? Big change has been adoption and people getting comfortable with video. I mean, we used to have large enterprise organizations that go, oh, we're a very buttoned up, formal organization. We have to have everything. and so forth. And with COVID, they had people on video with unmade beds behind them, right? They got over that. They got over this deep. The other thing that's happened is videos become so persuasive and so pervasive that candidates are used to like their friends holding up their phone and going, Hey, I'm at the Wolf Alice concert and it's great. And that's credible to them, right? It's not professionally produced or any of that, but it's real from somebody they trust. And, and employers are starting to understand when they can replicate that. Not that it has to be shaky video or bad audio, um, because with phones you can do incredible stuff now. But in on your headquarters building, or video of people writing on a whiteboard, because that's so unique. You know, it's like, oh in our company, we write on whiteboards. Fancy. We've got giggle reels at Sparkstart, um, where, what I think is a lot of companies, they'll ask very predictable questions of employees. You know, like, what's a typical day? And we've spliced together, you know, all these people going, oh, there is no typical day. Every day is different. Yeah. Um, and what's the best thing about this company?

Brian Fink: 7:45

Some people. Life here is a fire drill.

Maury Hanigan: 7:47

Yeah. It's a fire drill. It's chaotic. Yeah. Right. It's, you know, you get, you ask generic questions, you get generic answers. So. When you let people talk. The other thing I've been on a rant about lately is when you script people They, you know, their voices go flat because they're not professional actors and they can't do it But we just... We'd

Brian Fink: 8:07

love it if you would come to our company. There are things that we do here

Maury Hanigan: 8:11

Well, you know, it's worse than that. We just had one. We actually I reached out to somebody and said pull this thing down Um, they did a video, um, on their intern program. And their intern program was focused on diversity, so it was essentially all black, you know, students. And somebody handed them a script and said, read this. And it sounded like you didn't even trust these, you know, students or students being graduates to even explain what they liked about their own job and their own experience. What does that say to a bunch of diverse kids? Like, you can't even talk. You know, some white person handed them a script and said, here's how you feel, read this. Seriously? Yeah,

Brian Fink: 8:47

this definitely has repercussions. Um, about those repercussions, I'm curious, is there, is there a, uh, lifespan of the video, or does the video, where does it sit?

Maury Hanigan: 8:57

It depends where you want it to sit. I mean, in SparkStart, we host them so that you can pull them up and put them anywhere. Um, we actually just released a product where we put an automatic two year expiration date, which you can override. If you've got a great video from your CEO, That you just want to use, great. But you don't want to be out there saying, hey, we just won the 2018, you know, Employer of the Year Award.

Ryan Leary: 9:22

Yeah, don't, don't date it. Yeah, if you're gonna keep it evergreen, don't, don't date it. Don't make it your Tinder photo from 10 years ago.

Maury Hanigan: 9:29

Yeah, we originally on the platform had a one year sun setting rule, all the videos just disappeared in a year, because fashion changes, hairstyles change. You don't want stuff out there that's 5, 10 years old. Um, we've lightened up on that a little bit to let people keep them for a while, but, um, it should be top of mind. You know, you should have video that's talking about here are the new markets we're going into, here's the new products we're doing, here's our financial results, like, all the things that you want candidates to know about your organization today, you ought to have a really short, quick

Brian Fink: 10:00

clip to tell them about. Personalized. Okay. Alright. Maury, um, we're talking about... The attraction, uh, angle. Tell me a little bit about how this converts into creating a better candidate experience.

Maury Hanigan: 10:15

First of all, the candidates will watch the video. So they become a better informed candidate. So they make a better decision to opt in or opt out. So that helps everybody all the way around, right? Nobody wants either unqualified or uninterested candidates. That's just a waste of time for everybody in the system. So

Brian Fink: 10:30

video makes sure that they're, they're interested and educated on the role. And then the recruiter comes in and makes sure they're qualified for the role after this has taken place. Right.

Maury Hanigan: 10:39

Let me give you a great example. We were working for one of the financial services firms, and they were hiring experienced wealth management people, but they insisted on putting them through six months of their own training. And so, a lot of experienced people who already had clients and a book of business didn't want to do that. So they'd get all these applications, they'd do a phone screen. And only a quarter of the people said that they were willing to, you know, continue because they wouldn't give it up. So they put a video in there where they said, you're going to spend six months in classroom. Um, and so people didn't apply. But what happened is the, the pass along rate after the phone screen went up like a thousand

Brian Fink: 11:15

percent. That's fascinating. That's fascinating. Well, Ryan and I have really appreciated you stopping by and, uh, sharing with us a little bit about what you and your team are doing, about the candidate experience, about how important it is. Uh, if you've got time today, stop by the Oleeo booth. We are broadcasting live for Sourcing School. We are excited that we had Maury on the show. Maury, thank you so much. We look forward to seeing you again

Maury Hanigan: 11:37

soon. Always