When Candidates Become Customers

PREVIEW:

“I wish what we did a better job of is better tying that back to time horizons, right, of like, if you're seeing X in January, here's what you should expect to happen in September. You know, something along those lines, so that we could better change course based on that.” — Susan Vitale

INTRO:

You're listening to CX Confessions, brought to you by Khoros. In each episode, we’ll share the customer experience stories and insights you need — straight from the sharpest minds in CX — to better connect with your customers and create customers for life. Let's start the show.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Hello, and welcome back to today's episode of CX Confessions. I'm Katherine Calvert, Chief Marketing Officer for Khoros, and I am joined as always by my fabulous co-host, Mr. Spike Jones. How are you today, Spike?

SPIKE JONES:

You know, I'm actually on the East Coast, and it's beautiful out here. So I'm just happy to be here. I'm very excited about the chat we're going to have today. Been waiting for it for a long time, and I know it will not disappoint. It's going to be a good one. But it's good to see you again.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Good to see you too. Thank you for that introduction because I think you are in for a treat. We're going to have a conversation with a personal friend of mine, as well as an industry colleague. Spike, it is my pleasure to introduce you and our listeners to Susan Vitale, who is the Chief Marketing Officer for iCIMS.

iCIMS is one of the leading talent cloud companies. Now, what is that, right? They help companies to attract, engage, hire, and advance talent. I mean, my goodness, there is no hotter topic right now in the world of business than how to attract talent, how to keep talent, how to find the right people for the right gig.

Susan is an expert. She's been at iCIMS since 2005. She built her career there as a member of several of the teams both building out the marketing and success of that business as well as helping young professionals along the way and building professional communities, affinity around leadership. She's one of those, if you track Susan on LinkedIn, you can see she's not just one of the chief cheerleaders for iCIMS and its business, but also for the folks that currently work with her, who have worked for her. She is one of those leaders you look to as a person who understands that the heart of talent is relationships.

And so Susan has been recognized as a Stevie award winner for women in business. She's in the marketing Hall of Femme, and she's one of New Jersey businesses Best 50 Women in Business. Susan is also on the east coast with you, where iCIMS is headquartered. It is a huge pleasure to introduce Susan to our listeners and to you. I would love to dive right in.

How're you doing Susan?

SUSAN VITALE:

Hi. I'm fabulous after such a lovely introduction. I'm gonna listen to that anytime I'm having a little bit of a down day. Thank you, I’m delighted to be here.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

You call me anytime and I will tell you how fabulous you are, because I talk about it, I talk about it elsewhere. And we are both, Susan and I met a couple years ago now and we're both chief marketing officers and have been at this game for a long time. I was so excited when we finally got her on the show because she's someone whose opinion matters a lot to me on many dimensions.

Something we talk a lot about on this show is the transformation of the marketing industry from transactions and leads to relationships, and really thinking about it as a journey, the customer experience journey. And when you and I have talked, we talked about that CX journey through the lens of talent, so I would love to kick us off there.

When you talk about customer experiences, and I've heard you talk about it, you're talking about both the experience of the customers that use iCIMS, but also their customers, which is really the candidate.

So how do you think about CX and the candidate experience?

SUSAN VITALE:

Right. So as you mentioned, I've been here for a long time, and I’m proud to say that iCIMS is the leader in talent acquisition, and I share that not for bragging rights but really just to say like, we get to watch a lot of this and talk to some of the world's leading brands and learn from them and what they're doing right and where maybe they've stumbled as it relates to candidate experience. Internally at iCIMS we still personally market to and fill into enterprise buying committees. We’re filling into and building relationships with heads of talent and HR, IT. But we recognize that every company should be looking at their own candidates, both internal and external, mind you, as customers, and really make a concerted effort on those candidate experiences.

One thing that I think we really have to remember, and marketers do this generally, but we have to remember that candidates are just people. They're just getting these incredible B2B or B2C experiences every day when they're shopping or when they're doing anything, really.

But then when it goes through their talent experience, when they're applying for jobs or what have you, they get this like 1990s, or this doth-like experience, and it's so disconnected. But the reality is this talent cycle is so much like a buying cycle. There's awareness, there's consideration, and the like. And we really see this as the pipeline that matters most, and so we also all need to really step up and deliver these dynamic consumer experiences on the candidate side as well.

SPIKE JONES:

I love how you're thinking about it. Because it's not a one-way street. Now more than ever, and I'm not going to talk about the Great Resignation which we can talk about that all day. But it's a two-way street and now you know, it's not only, oh, that's a great brand, I'm gonna go to work for them. It is now more than ever, it's that brand going, oh my gosh, the talent pool is not what it used to be, but I still want to go get great people, but I need to woo them with this experience. And that's exactly what you said, that experience is so important and for it to be seamless. Now more than ever, for sure.

And as someone who has a large team and is always looking for great people, I can definitely sympathize for sure. But when it comes to experience, I mean look, you know, you've been in this role for a while, and not even just in the past two years, that experience, and that customer experience, has changed. How has your mindset changed over the time that you've been there and even just especially in the past two years?

SUSAN VITALE:

Well, a few things. One is overall a lot of organizations have started really recognizing that they need to look internally, and if I compare this to B2B marketing and customer experience, sort of that old issue of everyone is putting all their energy on prospect or new logo or new customers and they put all their budget there and they spend all this attention there. And then frankly, they treat their customers pretty crappy. And those customers are being wooed by all these other competitors. And you know, in telecom there are so many examples, right? They can be made to feel like kings and queens by a competitor and they're not getting an even decent experience internally.

The same freaking thing happens with talent where externally people are reaching out to candidates who are employed elsewhere or pursuing whatever it might be, and they're made to feel really special. They're made to feel like they're going to change the world if they come to work for this company and they're being, you know, great benefit packages and you know, for the money and so on. And they really are getting courted.

Internally, if a candidate that same day who's getting wooed by these external recruiters were to apply for a job online within their own company, they probably go through this like really old school job board, they never hear back, it's a black hole. They feel like they might get in trouble for exploring these opportunities. And if they don't hear back or get the job, chances are they're out in 90 days.

So, long way of saying I think very similar to B2B, one of the things that's changed for me over the years, and hopefully the industry, is that we have to look at our existing customers or our existing talent as just as important if not more so than the new logos or new prospects or the new external candidates you can bring into the organization. There's so much cultural importance there and institutional knowledge that you certainly wouldn't want to lose. And as Katherine mentioned earlier, I'm such an advocate for that internally, that internal mobility, because I've grown my career here for so many years that I think people can just do such a better job of doing this right.

SPIKE JONES:

I get so angry even, this is a terrible example, but like when I go to a clothing brand that you know, I'm a member, and I've shopped there for years and I go to their website and I'm on a different computer, it goes, “New members, sign up to get your email, you get 50% off,” I'm like wait, what about me? I’m loyal.

SUSAN VITALE:

Yeah, for sure.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I mean, it's kind of rare. You're an example of something that you just don't see anymore. Somebody staying with a company for a long time. I do think that there has been a mindset shift that has gotten even harder to correct. Because we're not in offices. You can't throw your arm around someone and hang out or build relationships in the same kind of organic ways. How do you see companies building those, or making, I love that idea of wooing their own employees successfully.

SUSAN VITALE:

I think a lot of what the companies have already invested in and put time and energy toward can just be pointed inward. It is not starting from scratch. There's a lot of foundation to build upon there. And the other idea is really just taking some of these consumer-like experiences and pointing them at employees.

We acquired a company a couple years ago that we call Video Studio. It's these TikTok-like videos that employees can record and answer specific questions about, you know, what's it like a day-in-the-life here, or what are the kinds of benefits? How do you support DEI? Things like that. These are things you can share internally. It’s not hard at all. So I think that's important.

I think the other piece is frankly, just dignity and respect. I can't believe the fundamental — when candidates apply internally or raise their hand, how poor of an experience they're often met with. It's just bizarre. It's really strange to me that we would treat internal employees who have dedicated time and energy away from their families with anything but something great.

Now that said, I'm a huge proponent that employees need to take charge of their own careers. I've had a lot of hard conversations with my teams to say, I am not your guidance counselor. Someone has to figure out what it is they want to do next, or you know , and I'm here for spitballing and all of that, but I think oftentimes we have employees, all of us, who are expecting this really neat obvious path of, I do this for five minutes, then this for two years, then this for three months, and then I'm a zillionaire and all my happiness dreams are met. Like it obviously just doesn't work that way. And so there needs to be a little bit of give and take there.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

So I'm going to shift gears a little bit because we've been talking a lot about what you see as having been an expert on this space for a long time and the companies that you sell to, your day job is to be the Chief Marketing Officer for your business and to create and accelerate revenue opportunities. How has that changed? We touched — I love that metaphor you used at the beginning about buying committees, which has such a parallel to hiring, but how do you think about the buyer's journey and how it's changed in your journey with iCIMS?

SUSAN VITALE:

When we think about customer experience, I hope, and I'd imagine a lot of marketers and business leaders overall have hopefully moved away from this mindset of customer experience equals, was it a good service call? You know, or did you get your ticket resolved quickly? Kind of thing. To probably more of a digital experience and then pass that to this sort of ongoing loop that is 360 degrees. It requires lots of different touch points, personas, activities during all these different moments that matter for everybody involved. Primary users, decision makers, influencers. It's gotten a hell of a lot more complicated. It's tough to manage, particularly given not even just all of the people you need to interact with sort of at the customer side but even internally, there are so many different stakeholders to really figure out who owns this, who's responsible for this, who's accountable for that. It's gotten a lot more complicated and I fear because of that complication, everyone just spins and nothing really gets done.

And so there's an opportunity just to say, okay, here's the journey. Let's hone in on three really big moments that matter. And after that, the next three or whatever it might be, because it's almost impossible to go for all of it at once.

SPIKE JONES:

I really like how you've got access to all these best practices across all these different industries. I would love to pick your brain for hours and hours because I just hear bits and pieces about really and like, oh, that's a really cool thing, we should do something like that. Putting all that together, I'm sure there's a huge base of knowledge there for sure.

However, I'm sure there are things in your industry that you just don't necessarily agree with — that you think, you know what, that's not the way to do it. And I would love if you would tell our listeners one of those things that you just fundamentally disagree with, which is a commonly held practice in your industry.

SUSAN VITALE:

You know, I'm a contrarian in general.

SPIKE JONES:

Oh, I knew I liked you.

SUSAN VITALE:

Maybe because I’m in New Jersey, I don't know. Although, you know, I've also, I've had to swallow my pride plenty of times to say like, I was totally wrong on that, despite as stubborn as I am.

Maybe it's not a totally hard belief, per se, but I think on the marketing side, there are fundamental flaws to how organizations think about ROMI. And I'm super metrics oriented. I'm not running away from it by any stretch, but especially as we think about things like customer experience and candidate experience and brand — where I think there are some, some fundamental flaws are just really centered on time horizons. That there are things that we measure that should be within a three month, six month, twelve month, whatever it might be, cycle, but we're not necessarily building for the good for a longer term healthy customer experience business marketing machine, fill in the blank. So a lot of the ROI metrics I think and how they're calculated, the methodologies, I think need like 17 footnotes.

SPIKE JONES:

Fair.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Yeah, I love that one, Susan. I think, and for our listeners who are don't live in marketing, ROMI stands for return on marketing investment and so it's usually this measure of your program dollars against about how much pipeline you originated, or originated and influenced and, as you said, with 17 different asterisks because there's so many ways to measure and calculate, and time is one of them, and if you're talking about an enterprise sale or multi-year relationship, does six months really matter? In the term of, you know, in the sense of lifetime value. Yeah, that's a prickly one.

I remember the first time I heard the term I sat down to meet with somebody. I think I was getting an interview, and you can imagine it didn't go well, because the first thing was, so you're ROMI? And I looked at her and I said, oh, I'm sorry. My name is Katherine. True story.

So, so yeah, I have, I get a little allergic reaction to ROMI. But it is true. We have to measure. We have so much data, especially as marketers, we have so much data on our prospects, on our customers, on our programs, on our activities. It is a, we're awash in data. So we all always like to ask our leaders, what are the numbers that matter the most to you? What do you make sure you're tracking on a more regular basis?

SUSAN VITALE:

Ah, we certainly live in data as well, to the point where I think in the beginning, the problem was, we don't have access to any of this data or these beautiful dashboards, and then you get them all and you're like, okay, now what? Or is everybody even looking at the same phrase on the same day, you know?

So certainly, you know, I'm looking at pipeline and contribution data all day every day. Where I think we could probably do a better job is really rolling around in some of the sentiment and intent data. Less to say, let's report out on this on a monthly, and is it changing, you know, every month or quarter, but really to better understand how prospects and customers are approaching their process, how they're feeling about things. Really better understanding their own org dynamics and their tech stacks I think would certainly help.

We have a fairly large sales development team that reports in through marketing and man, as much as there are tons of data players out there, if we really just had one golden goose, like yep, here's the prospects org, here's who reports to who, here's what the buying dynamics are like, that would be game changing for us. Unfortunately, not so much despite me getting 47 cold calls about it a day from different vendors. But if we understand, here's what's important to them, here's who's driving this ship, man that would be magical.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I agree. I get the same emails. And you know, I always feel like I'm coming at it 17 ways to Sunday, trying to put a puzzle together, but I'm not exactly sure what the puzzle should look like. How do you get at that sentiment intent kind of data?

SUSAN VITALE:

Well, we use a lot of different tools. I think, I wish what we did a better job of — and maybe there's somebody out there who's listening who's really good at this who could reach out to me — is better tying that back to time horizons, right of like, if you're seeing X in January, here's what you should expect to happen in September. Something along those lines, so we could better change course, based on that. So much of this is as of today.

And going back to the kind of ROMI snark before around time horizons, like that matters. You know, what we're seeing today, it might already be too late. But if we could better kind of push that out or pull that forward by certain time periods, I think we'd be able to action on it more strategically for sure. That would be important.

And candidates too, right, going back to that, it’s the same thing. There’s now over time a lot of different technologies or services that will pop up and say if your candidates are doing X, they’re likely to stay or leave. And there's such cool opportunity there, right, like as much as I like to say the managers should know, don't let tech replace that, reality is, employees are uncomfortable telling their managers a lot of things. Managers can be green or just not great at their jobs to know how to ask the right questions to know if somebody's sniffing around.

And so there's really interesting tools out there that I think we can, again, take a lesson from what we've learned in B2B marketing and face it inward. We really see recruiting a lot like marketing. We actually just acquired, a week or two ago, a company called Candidate ID. It's intent data and marketing automation for talent. So we could start basically saying if somebody is doing X on the web, looking at this page, or that page serves them up this content. If someone’s starting to go to Glassdoor, what should we be doing differently? Really interesting. Taking marketing and facing it into talent.

SPIKE JONES:

So, our careers, not unlike our lives, are built on great successes, some things that we have to learn the hard way, trial and error. Can you share — and you alluded to this a little bit earlier — can you share a hard lesson in your career that you have learned along the way with our listeners?

SUSAN VITALE:

This was a tough one. I think, in some cases, one of my colleagues who is just an angel, had said you get more bees with honey, and I think, because I’m the cynical one in the room, but I just put it that way. You know, always having to be your true authentic self. You can't run away from who that is. And so I say that almost as a lead in because I think in a lot of circles you'll run in, I think a lot of people will still see certain functions like marketing or customer experience or customer success as junior to sales. Sort of serving as JV almost. That one's been hard for me because I strongly disagree with it. That's been tough.

SPIKE JONES:
I’m sure.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Sure. Boy, I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I'll save them for another show.

SUSAN VITALE:

A glass of wine on that one, Katherine.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

But I'll just expound on that for a second, or ask you to expound on it, Susan, because I empathize. Our listeners may not have walked out in our shoes the same way — or our high heels in the same way. Where have you seen it really come together, where does it feel like, you know, and did you see a turning point where marketing had the same degree of engagement or the same hand on the tiller, all kinds of sports metaphors.

SUSAN VITALE:

That you're sharing with somebody who was a cheerleader. And I'm actually, as much as I say what I just said, I've been very fortunate that in my time at iCIMS, by and large, we have been seen as an equal peer and not as the department that goes in and pretties something up. That has been fundamental. And so when I share that, it's even less of, you know, the company, you know, capital C and more of just, it's about the people. Certain colleagues and certain people you meet outside of the organization itself get it and others don't. And there have been some people I've worked with that have just been incredible partners and really understanding the value that marketing brings. And in our understanding of the business itself, not just you know, here are the leads, but others just I think everybody comes with their own baggage, right? Everybody comes with their own preconceived notions, and sometimes that clicks and sometimes it doesn't, depending on where you've worked before, or who your partners were before. You can't help but come in with jaded perspective. Right? And so I think it really does come down to who you're working with and the relationship you're able to build. And I always trust my gut on that one, because usually you can tell really early if someone's gonna get that or not, or if you're always going to be defending yourself and singing for your supper.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Yeah, so true. Does the wheelie fit in the overhead, or is it checked baggage?

Speaking of travel, it's time to wrap up and learn a little bit more about you. But before we move into that, thank you. This is so, I've so much to think about. I just even I wrote down so many thoughts around the buying committee and the candidate experience and B2B, B2C. We had another discussion with a colleague around B2P, which really I think gets back to the heart of what you just talked about, which is connection and authenticity and showing up the way that is best for both the candidate and the buyer of the software and the business ultimately, because when the right people are in the right seats, great things happen.

SUSAN VITALE:

Absolutely.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Speaking of the right people and great people, before we sign off, we love to get to know a little bit more about our guests. So it's time for quickfire confessions. This is our five questions to let us know a little bit more about you.

I will kick things off with the first question. Tell us your very first concert.

SUSAN VITALE:

My first concert was The Cranberries. Yeah, I went with my mom and my twin sister when I was in like fourth grade. A rager.

SPIKE JONES:

A rager. Oh yeah. You have to let it linger. That’s good. Good. How about your first job?

SUSAN VITALE:

Well, besides the small businesses I ran, and I had so many of them, I ran like a beaded bracelet stand in front of my house. My most successful was actually a milkshake business. I made really dynamite milkshakes and it was called Susie’s Sweet Shakes. That one I did well with. I built like a full blown marketing like business plan with my mom for that one.

SPIKE JONES:

Of course.

SUSAN VITALE:

But the first paying job —

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Wait a second your milkshake literally brought the boys to the yard.

SPIKE JONES:

Oh, I knew it. I was gonna say it.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

But in the completely safe for work context. That is incredible.

SUSAN VITALE:

One hundred percent true.

SPIKE JONES:

Nice.

SUSAN VITALE:

You got it. You got it.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

What's your first real, your first paying job? Your first salary job? I guess, what were you going to tell us?

SUSAN VITALE:

Well, the first job I got a paycheck for was I was a hostess at a restaurant. I worked in the restaurant industry for a while. I have such respect. I think everybody needs to do it in restaurant life.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

We hear that a lot from from the leaders we talked to on this show — a lot of people who got their start in service, whether it's in the restaurant industry or retail and there's something really formative about learning what it means to be in service to others and understand the customer experience from the frontline.

SUSAN VITALE:

For sure. And staying cool under pressure. I mean, so many transferable skills there that I think people sometimes sweep under the rug that are just, I mean, phenomenal.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Well, maybe that's it, but if there was another profession you could attempt, aside from the one you do today, what would it be?

SUSAN VITALE:

When I was in elementary school, I had to put down what I wanted to be, and it's still the same thing. It's actually two things: a CEO or an author. So look for both in a theater near you at some point. I gotta stay true to my fifth-grade self.

SPIKE JONES:

Nice.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I believe. I totally believe.

SPIKE JONES:

How about your current favorite app on your phone?

SUSAN VITALE:

You know what I'm on a lot is Slate, for news. I'm on that like 100 times a day. Yeah, I love Late.

SPIKE JONES:

Good, tried and true.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Last and final question. What is your biggest indulgence?

SUSAN VITALE:

Oh, travel. I have a three year old and she's just the light of my life, but to go on a beach and just like have, have a fun drink on a beach and just read a book quietly. It’s just heaven for me.

SPIKE JONES:

Amen.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I love that. The best. Well, I hope you have, I hope you have that in the plans for summer as we look ahead, but it has been a delight as I knew it would be. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your own stories and perspectives with us with our audience. You are one of the greats, Susan, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

SUSAN VITALE:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

SPIKE JONES:

You know, one of the things I love that she talked about is comparing that buyer's journey to the employee journey and how they're so similar. Contextualizing like that, it really makes me think way differently about how we, not even recruit, but as we as we talk to people that are applying for our company, too, as we're going out in the world of software company and trying to sell, I mean, she's right. There are a lot of similarities for sure.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I think that metaphor works in so many ways. It was almost like, through the looking glass as a B2B marketer. I talk a lot about buying committees and decision makers and who's influencing, who's the catalyst. And what was really stunning to me is of course that's exactly what happens, both as a hiring manager, you've got a bunch of people interviewing this candidate. That's your buying committee internally. But then even the candidate probably has a buying committee. They're talking to their former colleagues, or checking Glassdoor and talking to their friends or parents about the opportunity. We all have people we turn to and sources of information to help us make these decisions and the way that we represent ourselves and share those stories, it's not just one-to-one, we have to be thinking about everybody who could be touching these really important decisions. I just love that idea.

One comment she made that really made me have a checkup from the neck up was this notion of are we taking —

SPIKE JONES:

Oh, just another one I'm gonna take. Thanks for that.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Gave me a real checkup from the neck up is the question of do we treat our own teammates as well as we treat our candidates? And she used the words dignity and respect. And that really gave me pause and I thought about you know, the kits we send out to new hires, do we send out something as nice to our own employees, instead of family, hold back, family first, when we think about the opportunities for growth, and compensation and development opportunities. That's, I think, a really powerful idea that it can be so easy to take for granted that well I just, I need this person to do what they're doing, and they seem fine, and move on.

SPIKE JONES:

Yeah, I mean, you took the words out of my mouth. That was my favorite takeaway as well. And it makes me even think about our customers. Like we're so excited to get that new logo, but what about these amazing logos that we already have, you know, how we're treating those people on a day to day — you are as important as a new logo. For sure. So definitely, that was my favorite.

KHOROS:

Your customers expect to be understood — their likes and dislikes, their history with your brand, and their communication preferences. But so many companies struggle to connect the dots of the interaction across their own teams and channels and its creating customer experience challenges and disasters. That's where Khoros can help. Khoros is the award-winning customer engagement platform built to turn those siloed interactions with your customer into enterprise value. Khoros works with more than 2,000 of the world's leading brands and powers more than 500 million digital interactions every day. Khoros is the award-winning platform for digital-first customer engagement. Ready to create human connection across the digital customer experience to create customers for life? Learn more at Khoros.com.

Thanks for listening to CX Confessions, brought to you by Khoros. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure the hit subscribe in your favorite podcast player and give us a rating. See you next time.