Welcome to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. A show about innovations, technology and leaders in the recruitment industry brought to you by Talkpush, the leading recruitment automation platform.

Max: Hello and welcome to the recruitment hackers podcast today. I'm honored to have on our show, the Executive Vice President at Cielo Sally Hunter. Welcome to the show, Sally. 

Sally: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Max: Sally, what does an Executive Vice President do? Or rather what do you do at Cielo? You've explained to me you're managing your customers.

Sally: So I'm responsible for all of our clients and client delivery across the near region and also some of our global customers. So that is operational delivery and performance, but also how we manage those contracts, continuous improvement, innovation, and really drive the thinking with the customers that we partner with.

Max: Okay. And, Cielo I think anybody in the recruitment industry should know, what you do, but perhaps shed some light on what's happened to this company? I believe they've had a change of ownership recently. 

Sally: Sure, no problem. We're the leading pure play RPO business globally. And you’re right with private equity banks, and secured a new banker, at the start of 2019.

So we are now backed by Primera, and that is a good match to our global footprint. So over the course of both organic and inorganic growth, we're now in every continent and supporting clients across all of those geographies and that's with hub locations in places like Manila, Singapore, Dubai, London, Budapest, Buenos Aires…

So it's really about us being able to be where our customers need us to be, but also being able to leverage a tech infrastructure and a platform that gives us world flex and scale across those hubs, because inevitably we still have a lot of team members that are high proximity to apply it.

So they are in the wrong site or near site and providing that support as well as what comes from the sensor. 

Max: Right. Well, right now you don't know where they are. They’re in front of their computer somewhere. And you're hoping it's close to their customer and maybe they all move to Costa Rica or something.

Sally: Yeah. And it's a great point. You know, we flipped to homeworking pretty much overnight. And that's been a really interesting dynamic for all of us that we've been driving those virtual conversations, for years. So often customers really want to see recruiters, but actually it doesn't add value to what they're delivering and they're not necessarily spending time with stakeholders in a way that an onsite role should be. 

So what's really interesting coming through COVID is that actually accelerates those conversations to make sure that people are where we can access the best talent, not necessarily high proximity to the customer from a present team perspective.

Shame on us If we don't take advantage of that and shift the model. 

Max: That's absolutely how I feel that on one hand, the governments and  the travel regulators made it difficult for people to travel. And as a response, borders are kind of melting. As a response we can hire everywhere in the world and now it doesn't seem like that's such a stretch of the imagination. 

I service a lot of the call center and the BPO industry at Talkpush and I think we're seeing a lot of activity that may not even have happened, in a different context, even though the economy is suffering, there's a lot of work being sent offshore.

Are you seeing similar shifts in the labor and demand of global markets as a response to this 2020 crisis? 

Sally: Yes we are. And it's been really interesting to observe and partner with our customers through this. So we work with Amazon web services, a great example.

So Amazon web services pivoted to virtual almost immediately and obviously had a huge growth in demand because we're all relying on that digital infrastructure. 

Max: 10% 

Sally: Exactly. What’s interesting is that a lot of the talent is coming from cross border. So, what we have to solve for, with them is how we find these really capable individuals, but potentially  we can't relocate them yet.

That, and to your point earlier that may not even be necessary. To relocate them. So can we just function with an entirely virtual team wherever that talent happens to be? So that's been really interesting to see that. So actually, when you think about the way a recruiter’s life has changed, that candidate control and and relationship management is so important because these individuals are going to take a long time to be able to ultimately relocate and also to make the decision to change jobs.

Because what we're seeing in candidate sentiment is that often during these times, people have reluctance to leave a current role because they feel there's an uncertainty in the world. So you know that we're managing through that, but it hasn't changed the fact that the demand for talent is extremely high.

And I think all of our customers have acknowledged in many cases, pivoted for good. That they are going to have a much higher proportion of home and virtual working and even needs to be in the same country. 

Max: And a bigger talent pool to choose from if they're not limited  by searching close to the office.

I also agree that like right now, we're in early September, those who still have a job are probably holding onto it quite dearly. And so, there's not as much movement, for us, you know, we target HR executives. They’re our buyers and people are just, nobody's moving, everybody's keeping their job.

It's hard to like start new conversations in a way, you feeling that too? On the sales side?

Sally: It's been really interesting. So we had a very quiet period for about the first three months. What we are now seeing, I think you made, this point earlier is that there are so many reasons to start talking to outsourcing partners about how you build back. So, those conversations and those sales opportunities are really starting to bubble up now. I think what is fascinating is are there organizations that are reluctant but interested? But may not ultimately make a decision to outsource versus those that really have a compelling set of reasons and also emotionally  can get comfortable with the idea of outsourcing? So it's definitely picking up, which has been really exciting for us, but it's also trying to navigate, what is a real business commitment and strategic drive to work with a partner versus a situation where I think we'll see a lot of hybrid blended solutions.

So what we're finding is some organizations that intuitively want in house are embracing outsourcing for some parts of the process or some role types, just to try and kind of understand how they're going to build out and leverage this kind of a solution. 

Max: When you've been in the industry long enough, starting with Kelly services before and then working on helping a contingent and ...