GUEST BIO:

Travis Kessel is the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Jet, acquired by Walmart ECommerce. His initial job as an accountant motivated him to move from Virginia to Chicago, where he landed his first recruiting job. Shortly after, he confidently opened his own staffing agency only to be shut down two months later by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers. After one more short stint as a recruiter at another agency, Travis became the Vice President of recruiting at Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm.At Edelman, Travis learned a new side of recruiting and started to place companies with candidates that paralleled their brand. Craving a tech focused company, Travis left Edelman to work at Jet, which was previously acquired by Wal-Mart E-commerce. As The Senior Director of Talent Acquisition, Travis focuses on the systems of the hiring process and the future of acquisition as it meets advancements in artificial intelligence.

SHOW SUMMARY:

Today’s guest is Travis Kessel, the Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at Jet, owned by Walmart E-commerce. Travis connects candidates with the right job, spending his days building new companies or extending branches of established corporations. As a talent acquisitions expert, he has used marketing and psychology to become one of the best recruiters in his field.In this episode, Travis explains the do’s and don’ts of applying for a job, how to get noticed amongst hundreds of other applicants and the new technology that is automating the recruiting process.

This is the Lean Commerce Podcast.

TOPICS:

What is the process you look at for e-commerce talent acquisition?

1:00 The process is similar to how we move people through to hire, such as collecting resumes, assessing them, phone screens, outside vendor tests and then an offer.

1:58 Artificial intelligence is creating a streamlined process that allows us to bring on new talent and Travis is looking forward to the future of AI in talent acquisition.

What kinds of roles do you usually recruit for?

2:33 My team is broken into three main areas: category management (retail),technology, and business/customer care (supply chain, marketing, customer care, high level positions).

3:36 My favorite part of my job as a talent recruiter is the variation in my responsibility,where one day I am building a company from nothing and the next I am scaling part of the world’s largest company.

5:11 One of the largest challenges in hiring is that a director at one company has a different role than a director at another company which means hiring for each position involve two totally different people.How has your career brought you to this point?

6:20 I started in accounting, and admittedly was terrible at it. I found myself in Chicago where I started as a recruiter and then started my own staffing industry two months prior to the Lehman Brothers collapsed. This forced me to work for another recruiting company where I was later laid off.

9:27 I moved to Vice President of Recruiting at Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, where I first started to understand branding as it is related to talent acquisition.

10:15 I decided to move from Edelman to Jet, where I wanted a company involved intech, scaled quickly and had the opportunity for him to put a mark on the company in a unique way.

What is currently happening in the top of funnel resume attraction space?

17:33 We have a big focus on building our brand in a way that it seems you can only do when you are face to face with somebody. We’ve found that our story resonate best when other people tell it, so I look at interesting acquisitions to bring people into our funnel and have them apply.

18:40 One time we built out an RV with technology on it that was true to Jet, placed it in a college campus and then let people experience the brand through interacting with it through VR, etc.

How will AI be used in top of funnel resume screening?

22:45 I think it’s the future of recruiting because AI can