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Michael Carrillo Talks!
I was recently interviewed by an independent journalist working on a story about leadership in the recruitment industry. Personally, I have always enjoyed the interview process because it helps me solidify my thoughts and reconsider strategy set months before. Below you will find an excerpt from that interview.
- Michael Carrillo
The past two years have seen some pretty troubling economic news— and the disappearance of several "niche" job sites, yet CPGjobs appears to be going strong. What is the key to your continued success?
Well, you've said something very interesting here in terms of classifying CPGjobs as a niche job site. Although it is true that we specifically do serve professionals working in CPG, we really don't consider ourselves to be a member of the "niche job site" category. This is true for two reasons.
Number one is that the consumer packaged goods industry incorporates many, many different industries like packaging, procurement, distribution and logistics, engineering, and many more...as well as the traditional marketing and brand management functions people tend to associated with consumer goods manufacturing. So to classify us as a "niche" job site I think is really limiting and we don't see ourselves in this way.
Number two, we really don't consider ourselves simply a "job site" or job board, but rather, a Consumer Packaged Goods Talent Network. What this means is that our business model incorporates the best use of job site technology in conjunction with the values of traditional recruiting. Simply put, we are a company of real people staying in touch with each other, understanding the needs of our customers on both the client and candidate side, and enabling conversation between all three legs of this stool.
In my mind, "niche job sites" are automated job boards with no connection to their candidates or to their clients. CPGjobs always has and always will maintain the human touch in our business interactions. In the office we lovingly refer to this as "going beyond the board."
CPGjobs serves all areas of the industry, but your client roster does include some of the largest, most successful multinational companies in the consumer packaged goods industry. What are you hearing about how these latter clients' needs are changing (or staying the same)?
Employers are looking for supplier-partners that understand their business and the various functional areas within their business. They need recruitment partners that are in touch with the candidates they serve. This has always been true, but with the massive cuts in most HR departments, it becomes even more critical. These organizations also need a partner that can perform multiple tasks on their behalf because they simply no longer have the resources to do many things internally.
At CPGjobs we extend our clients' reach into the CPG industry. We help them with employment branding for their company as a whole, in addition to helping them fill open positions.
Just one example of this would be the way we leverage our position in the CPG Community on LinkedIn through our large professional group, CPGpeople. There, we use the power of this huge professional network to brand our clients' organizations and employment brands, and reach into a robust community of passive and active candidates to recruit on behalf of those clients.
With so many highly-skilled CPG professionals now looking for work, how does CPGjobs help clients "sort through the noise?"
Well, first of course, is the fact that we live and breathe CPG. Clients that work with us are looking for skill sets specific to our industry, and we are very clear with our registered candidates that they must have CPG experience to be considered for positions listed on our site. This is part of our initial screening process and results in a candidate set that looks very different from the applicants our clients might receive from listing a position on Career Builder, for instance.
We also provide clients with a number of valuable tools that they can use in their hiring process. These tools include passive submissions to job postings, unlimited permission-based data mining of candidates through our People Search product, and outbound communications to candidates though our Network Access package of services.
Being able to fish in the right pond, so to speak is a huge percentage of the value we bring to clients. Our "pond" is the CPG industry and our "fish" are CPG experienced professionals. Our industry specificity is a huge factor in helping clients cut through the noise.
Social networking has not lost any of its buzz in recruiting. Are clients really utilizing social networks to their fullest? How is CPGjobs helping clients operate in this social space?
Unfortunately, the news from the real world is that clients are really not yet using social networking to its fullest...for a variety of reasons.
First, of course is the fact that using existing tools can be extremely time consuming— and time is something in very short supply in most HR departments right now. Further, the fact of the matter is that most clients' ATS systems have really not kept up with this particular recruiting trend and modifying such legacy systems to incorporate web 2.0 kinds of functionality is VERY time consuming and expensive. Many of our clients have incorporated blogging, tagging and sharing as part of their marketing strategy and in some cases even on their careers pages - but integration with candidate applications systems has tended to lag behind.
And finally, true metrics for the whole social networking piece are pretty underdeveloped and most client recruitment metrics are still based on more traditional passive hiring methods.
At CPGjobs we have developed a holistic approach to help our clients with social networking through our Network Access package of services. This includes but is not limited to LinkedIn and our CPGpeople group and sub-groups, @cpgjobs on Twitter, our job board CPGjoblist, personal outbound email communication, candidate job alerts and newsletters. We even still use the phone!
CPGjobs has always been actively involved in workplace diversity and inclusion. Recently, you assumed a position on the Board of the California Diversity Council (CADC). Can you explain why CPGjobs has been so active on diversity issues and how has this interest in diversity effected the business?
As a minority and women owned firm, CPGjobs has always been dedicated to workplace diversity. We want to walk the talk on diversity/full inclusion as we grow the business. You are never to small or too big for this. Three years ago we had the opportunity to seed a new organization for California— the California Diversity Council. As founding members, both Penny Sallberg and I felt that through this opportunity we could help shape a new and important organization from the ground up.
One unique aspect of the CADC is that we are seeking involvement and representation from both academia AND business and industry sectors. Our intention is that the fusion of emergent research in the area of diversity and real world business and community experience will offer a powerful engine for creating a “next level” conversation in California around these important topic areas for the good of all Californians.
Being active at this level continues to guide CPGjobs with diversity best practices.
What do you think will be the top 3 trends in the (employment) industry over the next several years?
Well first I really do think that we will see a trend towards less automation and more personal interaction. We already see this trend happening with the clients that we serve. What we hear from them is that they use us not simply because of our job board or position in online social communities, but because we have constant personal interaction with our candidate network. In other words, I think that the media we use to do the job of recruitment will actually become less important than the message.
Second, the quality of candidate pipelines will become more important (as opposed to the historically arduous task of sifting through lots of submissions for each job). For example, CPGjobs has one of the largest CPG specific candidate pipelines across multiple job categories; and we are growing at over 1,000 new registrants a week. These are people that we can reach out to on behalf of our clients. It is a very skill-set specific, active candidate network that will continue to develop over time.
And finally, social networking will continue to mature as a candidate access tool. We are seeing this increased interest now. Our clients are using us more and more to reach out to our networks on LinkedIn, Twitter and others in increasing numbers.
What kinds of changes do you anticipate clients will see at CPGjobs over the next 3 quarters?
You will continue to see a growing CPG Talent Network that is real, fluid and evolving. Clients will consider this to be their network, which they will be able to access themselves and through us. If I could wave a magic wand, its effect would be to help clients see that the activity of recruiting, and the efficacy of CPGjobs in particular, is not just about the jobs, but about developing an effective CPG professional pipeline.
Anything else?
Social Networking is not new to CPGjobs. For over 10 years our company has maintained a steadfast posture working one-on-one with our talent community. It has never been about "only the job" but about the community.
One of our goals continues to be reaching out to our network and being available for them to reach back to us. "Social Networking" is really just a fancy label for staying in touch.
Michael Carillo, President and Founder, CPGjobs
