20 Recruiters Making 150,000 Hires with Shay Johnson

Chad Sowash (0:00)

Dude, it turns out that Winston, Smart Recruiters' first AI hiring sidekick, is taking all the grunt work out of Recruiters' Day.

Things like candidate screening, scheduling, all the admin garbage no one actually wants to touch. Winston can do it all.

Joel Cheesman (0:17)

Man, you know I'm a fan of using new tech that takes the boring, repetitive crap out of a Recruiters' Day and allows them to have more time to connect with hiring managers and candidates.

Chad Sowash (0:29)

Yep, Winston is doing the heavy lifting while Recruiters kick back and do the actual hiring stuff. You know, like talking to people.

Joel Cheesman (0:37)

I really dig that Smart Recruiters is evolving out of the legacy ATS model and embracing cleaner processes using AI. With most ATS providers, it's like, hey, 2003 called and it wants its 30-minute application process back.

Chad Sowash (0:53)

No doubt. It sounds like Rebecca and the team are using Winston to go with Smart Recruiters into the future, while the ATS vendors are basically on an AOL dial-up modem with a dashboard.

Joel Cheesman (1:05)

With Smart Recruiters, Winston does the grind and the recruiters get the glory.

Chad Sowash (1:11)

For more information on superhuman hiring with Winston, visit smartrecruiters.com. That's smartrecruiters.com.

Joel Cheesman (1:19)

Start using Winston today or I guess you can stick with...

Shay Johnson (1:25)

Now we return you to our regular scheduled program, In Progress.

SPEAKER_4 (1:29)

Hide your kids, lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for The Chad & Cheese Podcast.

Chad Sowash (1:56)

Let's do this. We are The Chad & Cheese Podcast. Talking today with Shay Johnson of Compass Group. He's the VP of HR Partnerships. Shay, welcome.

Shay Johnson (2:06)

Thanks guys. Happy to be here.

Joel Cheesman (2:07)

Glad to have you. Again. Second time on the show.

Chad Sowash (2:11)

Yeah. Three more and you get a velvet jacket with our faces on.

Joel Cheesman (2:14)

Flush.

Chad Sowash (2:16)

Aren't you lucky?

Joel Cheesman (2:17)

Nobody wants that.

Chad Sowash (2:19)

Yeah. North Carolina might be a little warm, the velvet. But hey, we could do that. So for our listeners who didn't catch our last interview, what should they know about you and Compass Group?

Shay Johnson (2:29)

Yeah. So a little bit about me. VP of Strategic HR Partnerships. I spent the first 10 years of my career all with Compass, by the way. I've been there since I got out of college.

Spent it in TA, mostly focused on our technology partnerships, and implementations, and strategy. So now I do that across all of HR for Compass Group. And for those of you that don't know, Compass Group is the largest contract, food service, and facilities management company in the world. So about 300,000 employees in the US, about 600,000 globally.

Chad Sowash (3:01)

So when I go to a Colts game, and I get my extra long dog, it's usually a Compass employee who's serving it too.

Shay Johnson (3:08)

For sure. And sometimes we control the pricing, and sometimes we don't.

Chad Sowash (3:13)

I think that's a monopoly, Chad. I think that's called a monopoly.

Joel Cheesman (3:16)

So 10 years, nothing's changed in that time in town acquisition. So it's been easy. Literally.

So much has changed. Just over the last six months to a year to 18 months. For you, especially with Compass Group, there's a lot going on. How many hires are you guys making a year? How many applications are you receiving in a year? Let's just start with that base.

Shay Johnson (3:39)

Yeah. I mean, from a hiring volume perspective, it ranges, obviously, just given what kind of year it's going to be and what kind of business, but anywhere between 160,000 and 200,000, if you're going all in, front line, salary, professional, everything like that, seasonal, doesn't count like our temp labor and gig. But from an application standpoint, that's where it's really interesting because it used to be really hard to get, you just wanted anybody with a pulse to apply. And now we're in the overwhelming stage, right, of I think this past year, we had over 7 million applicants.

So, yeah, reverse engineer that.

Chad Sowash (4:13)

All real humans, I'm sure. All unique, real human beings.

Shay Johnson (4:16)

Exactly.

Joel Cheesman (4:17)

We'll get into that.

Shay Johnson (4:18)

Okay, sorry.

Chad Sowash (4:18)

I'm so excited.

Joel Cheesman (4:19)

So knowing that, what has changed in the last 10 years, especially here at the AI sessions, how are you guys using new technology to manage all of that?