Attract Dream Hires and Cut Hiring Costs by a 60-Fold Reduction (🇬🇧) Per Tjernberg, CEO & Co-Founder Pipelabs

per Tjernberg: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] More one.

Wilma Eriksson: Mm.

per Tjernberg: So.[00:02:00]

Um, also

from so, so.[00:03:00]

Wilma Eriksson: Maintenance on the sauce and leverage modern marketing tools and techniques for successful talent acquisition. Uh.

per Tjernberg: The internet.[00:04:00]

Wilma Eriksson: Hi, and warmly welcome to Fail and Grow a podcast show with me Wilma. I'm one of the co-founders to VQ CPQ, who is the easiest CPQ to implement, to use, and to buy, of course connected to the rest of your ecosystem. And. Grow is powered by,

okay and Fail. Grow is a podcast show about opex, operational excellence, everything that's smooth, and your sale and operation, and increases your revenue and profit. And today [00:05:00] I am thrilled to say that I have an exciting person who reached out to me at LinkedIn and said, hi, will my listen to fail and grow?

I wanna join 'cause I have a lot to say and a lot to talk about when it comes to talent acquisition. So, hi Hanberg. You are warmly welcome to Fail and Grow. It's an honor to have you here.

per Tjernberg: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

Wilma Eriksson: And since December, you have co-founded and you run a company called Pipe Labs. And if I have con understood it correctly, you have already a long list of customers.

That is very amazing when thinking about what kind of economy environment we are in. You have companies from 12 employees. To 350,000 employees and what you do if I'm going to try to brag for you to help companies to become rock stars, to attract the right type of talent, has I under, have I understood correctly?

per Tjernberg: Absolutely. So what, what we do, we have mapped out 30 [00:06:00] odd processes that all impact your own ability to be successful when it comes to talent acquisition. And we try to make them understandable because no one wants to hear about our 30 processes, like when it comes to attract relevant candidates or talent, selecting the right one and doing both of these things with process and cost control.

So that's what we help companies build capabilities around.

Wilma Eriksson: Awesome. I'm very happy that you reached out, and today we are gonna dig deep into how to leverage, we said, modern marketing tools and techniques for successful talent acquisition. But let's come back to that later on. And first of all, I wanna know, if you were to meet up in real life, uh, what would you like to have in your afterward drink?

per Tjernberg: A whisky sour. A whiskey sour.

Wilma Eriksson: Good choice. Good choice. And I always ask, uh, my guests, uh, what is your favorite and funniest [00:07:00] work related backup that you wanna share?

per Tjernberg: I think it's funny. My co-founder thinks it's less funny, and it's quite recent actually. I, I, I totally messed up a tender. So, so we had a long conversation with that particular client and I sent over with Tender, uh, for, for a project, and we've had awesome communication beforehand. We did a couple of workshops.

We started understanding what we could do, but then after they got on actual tender. There was a lack of communication and anybody who's ever worked in sales knows that then, then like the, the warning alarm sounds that, okay, what is happening here? Are we losing it or are we not? So I followed up a couple of times and finally we came to the same table and they asked like, this feels so good.

We really wanna move forward. But uh, the cost per deliverable is a bit too high. And I go, that's not per deliverable. It's for the whole project that contains about 30 deliverables.[00:08:00]

I, I kinda lost out on the big deal in favor for a much smaller one. And as I said, my co-founder wasn't overjoyed with that particular fuck up.

Wilma Eriksson: They signed

per Tjernberg: very quickly. We used to dig digital, private thing, so I, I, honest to God, maybe. 30 seconds after my mouth said these terrible words I give go bing bong, tender, sign by home. Home.

Wilma Eriksson: You get a bit overexcited and maybe that's why you are customer is, is long already. But I guess this exactly, you, you learn something from this. I,

per Tjernberg: I did indeed. I did indeed.

Wilma Eriksson: Okay. Thank you for sharing. It was indeed funny, at least for me, but I can see from a, from a cofounder perspective, uh, we have another feeling coming up, right?

per Tjernberg: Yeah. And I, okay. I waited to tell him until [00:09:00] everything was done and then we had, uh, uh, a couple of beers on a Friday and then I told him when he was already one and a half beer in just to like soften the blow.

Wilma Eriksson: Oh, you sneaky one. Well, thank you for sharing. And of jumping, uh, jumping forward to, uh, to today's topic.

And we had a, as always, a quick and brief, uh, preset before we started the recording. And, uh, you told me a little bit that Wilma, you would be amazed of how, uh, the tools of, uh, talent acquisition, how poor they are. And we decided upon that. It's a really interesting. Topic to understand how we can use market automation or whatever marketing tool and techniques, techniques for, for increase this.

Uh, so okay. Enlighten us. What do you feel is the, is the problem here and what can one do about it?

per Tjernberg: Honest to God, I think the, the, [00:10:00] the, the actual definition of the problem, it's, it's, it's, it can come across as a bit harsh and I don't mean to be. But it is at least our way of understanding it. So a lot of TA functions are mainly driven by generalists within HR that happen to become a recruiter and.

The skillset that MA follows along with that. And you get, you have recruiters that have learned amazing amounts of understanding marketing, understanding KPIs, understanding analytics, understanding, understanding everything. But they're quite few and far between. Uh, and in the role as a recruiter today, which is kind of like why we started this company because I said we identified 30 odd processes that all quite heavily impact your actual result within talent acquisition.

And we're asking people to be. At least serviceable across all these fields, which is really hard. So you need to be a good, as good a, a copywriter as you are an [00:11:00] analyst when it comes to, to ta data. You need to be as good when it comes to sourcing people, using creative ways as interviewing and loads of much, many more skill sets that are quite contradictory.

And it's really, really hard. To find all of these skillset in one person, but that's more or less like where the, the, the recruiter job is at. We have a certain level of specialization, but it's quite, uh, limited and most people work as what we call 360 recruiters. So you do everything. And I think that like the, the, the ability to use tool sets or the ability to even understand what tools you could use is quite.

It's a function of the form, uh, when it comes to these people not having the level of insight. Now, for my own, I I, I just started like understanding proper attribution, proper retargeting, [00:12:00] even proper like demand and how to calculate it. Demand capture, how does dark social work? And I, I've only scratched the surface and I know that my skillset is.

Nothing in compared to you pros. But now I understand enough like the, the dun dun effect. I know enough to understand how little I understand.

Wilma Eriksson: Mm-hmm.

per Tjernberg: And my take is kind of like, then there's too many recruiters out there that they haven't really understood how little they know. So they think that the tools that they use, that they are high quality and high performing, but they're not.

Wilma Eriksson: And if we should start focusing with the tools. Yeah. Uh, and be a bit harsh. What do they like?

per Tjernberg: So they, they get a part of the job done, but they never deliver the amount of data needed for deeper insight. [00:13:00] Uh, they usually lack a lot of, uh, cus ability to customize them. And even when we see tools that are more heavily lenient on the kind of things that we see within the marketing tools, they're still a bit dumbed down.

So you, you take a, a certain, uh, a certain function and then you make it easier to understand, easier to apply, and you take away the deeper understanding that comes with it. I think that kind of limited the iteration possible, so you can't really grow in the role or the, it does the thing, but not especially well, and it's really hard to scale them.

Uh, the scalability within most of the tool sets that are used are, is extremely limited. Uh, the lack a very, a wide set of functions that I think that if, if I were to give you the kind of tools or the equivalent of using them. You would be like, why doesn't it do this and this and this and this and [00:14:00] this.

That's really important for me to reach productivity and efficiency in my work. Um, but since a lot of the people doesn't even understand that those features are possible.

Wilma Eriksson: And as in talent acquisition people, right?

per Tjernberg: Yeah, exactly. For us. Sorry. So talent acquisition, not that nerd. Yes,

Wilma Eriksson: you are. Yeah.

per Tjernberg: Uh, so, so when, when we got started and.

We brought on a co-founder that's a more marketing guy, and I started to understand, uh, it was like just opening a door of amazing possibilities. So for us now applying certain tool sets that are more commonly used on the marketing side, either B2B or B2C, uh, within a market that is kind of similar, but business to candidate is something completely different than B2B or B2C.

So you have other to

Wilma Eriksson: say is different.

per Tjernberg: Um, it's an almost always on market. If I have an [00:15:00] interesting enough opportunity, you're prob probably gonna listen, right? Mm-hmm. So it's about getting that. I mean, when I, way back when, when I used to do reach outs manually, usually just calling people, call calls, um, on the candidate side.

They didn't really wanna speak to me. Oh, no, I'm not interested. My best like tagline was, oh, it's too bad. I was just calling about the Java, CEO for Apple. And then you got a quick laugh, and then you usually got to be able to continue the conversation.

Wilma Eriksson: Mm-hmm.

per Tjernberg: But most people are open to, at least at listening, if you reach them in a, in, in a, in a way that makes sense.

If they feel approached by humans, if they don't feel. Intimidated or even put off by the way that you approach them. Uh, you, you, you, you're gonna get that, that conversation going for almost all people, like about 80% of any given talent pool is usually open for that conversation. Um, [00:16:00] so it's an always on market as long as you're able to come across with, uh, messaging or purpose.

Uh, but then you look at, okay, how is that done today? Look at any job ad. We are, this is a long list of things you maybe need to do. Contact us. I mean, if you were to apply that same thinking into your like B2B things that, like you wouldn't have any clients, no one would speak to you. No, that's true. Um, and, and we've all have some like relation to, uh, job advert, right?

We kind of know how to read them. We kind of know how they look like now. Like recruiting is one of the few areas where everybody involved actually kind of hates it. Like hiring managers hate it. Candidates hate it, recruiters hate it. And yet we go, yeah, let's do that more. And again, I usually tell people like, go to the subreddit recruiter, help recruiter, or recruiting help.

Where people are, [00:17:00] they, they absolutely despise it. I applied, I didn't hear anything back. Now I've been at five interviews and no one like the way that, that we as a profession treat people both internally and externally. Like it wouldn't be possible for sales to work in the same way or for marketing or like when was the last time a salesperson got away with, oh, we don't have any clients.

Better start selling now. But that's a reality when you look at it from the TA side of things. So there's a lot of improvements to be made.

Wilma Eriksson: Okay. So if we're switching to the, to the opposite side, how do successful companies actually use, uh, maybe the, the wrong tools or tools that are for something else, sales or marketing or how, how do I implement that together with.

HR tools or TA touch or, or do you, don't you do that? Or how [00:18:00] do, how to do this? There?

per Tjernberg: There's one specific tool set that, or tool in a toolbox that you can't really replace outside of like the TA HR world, and that is applicant tracking systems ATSs. Besides that, there's usually better ways of going about things.

So, uh, for example, uh. You have company A, they have successfully implemented an a TS. Uh, they have a career page on that career page. They have a long listing of jobs. And then you have to click it and then you have to read this boring copy that doesn't engage at all. And then you click apply, and then you need to fill out a form, and then you need to upload your cv, which contains the same information.

Just fill in using the form, and then you need to add a cover letter, and then you need to do something else. And then you can send in your application, it goes away. You don't know what happens until they get back to you. No transparency in the process. [00:19:00] The. It can be more or less terrible. And, but that's quite a usual case, especially now, like, uh, uh, even though we, we see a lot of traffic, of course coming from, um, mobiles or tablets.

I don't know about you. I don't have a CV on my mobile. So then you look at the thing and then you go, oh shit, I need to upload my c

Wilma Eriksson: Can you swear on this pod? It's an after work podcast. You can do whatever you want

per Tjernberg: more or less. Awesome. So like you don't have your CD on your cell phone, right? So then you look at the thing and go like, oh, this could actually be a interesting opportunity for me.

I'm gonna fill it out later on your way home, on the subway, on a Friday. Oh no, you waited after work and then you forget about it. On the company side of that things that, that's a lost opportunity. A marketer would know how many people does that? They would have strategies in place to retarget them later on, and [00:20:00] you would probably not need to upload, I don't know, a photo of your last credit card bill to be able to buy or whatever it might be like those hindrances wouldn't be in place because you've optimized the process going like, yeah, this is shit, but take it away and this hinders the flow and this doesn't really.

We're conductive for the kind of buying process that we need to have in place so that if that's like the nor normal case, and then you have a different case where it might be that, uh, you have an a TS, uh, if you have a career page, it doesn't, it isn't called career, but it's called culture or something like that, because that's one of the main reasons for candidates to go to a career page, either to understand more about the company and the people or to do that and apply.

But you have it there. It's called culture. Uh, and instead you maybe, uh, you, you, your, you have your CEO be a part of a couple of podcasts, maybe record a webinar, um, write something reoccurring on LinkedIn [00:21:00] or whatever it might be. Constantly driving traffic to a digital landing page that, of course, measure everything where you can just click to apply.

You don't need a cd. Actually, I'm fine with just you entering your. Name and email because then I can mail you saying, yeah, can you get back to me with the CV before we get the process started if needed. We get much more analytics on a that kind of webpage. We can redesign it to move away from the traditional form of we are, you are, this is what we'll do.

We can work with content that is much more inventive. We can do so much more, but just using it a separate landing page, treating it like an ad, because the function of an ad is usually two things. Telling the world that you have a need for a new person that knows a certain set of skills and get candidates.

So if we can make sure that the world knows that we have a need in more efficient ways, using better tools, [00:22:00] and we can still get the candidates. In a much less resistant journey. Just click here to apply and then we'll take care of you. That is a better version of it. So I'd say if you compare company A, the traditional way that is using HR tool sets or ta tool sets.

B is using marketing tool sets and marketing, like thinking, treating them as humans. Very radical, but like trying to map out a process that is quite similar, if not. I don't think that you can directly copy it, but more like an e-commerce buyer's journey.

Wilma Eriksson: If, if one were to, um, adopt to what I would say more than, more than one.

The new, yeah, the new way. Uh, what kind of effect on the results could you expect, uh, when doing this? Uh, more than just being more data driven. Obviously you, you become more data driven, but can we see an increase of, I dunno, [00:23:00] candidates or. Do you say win rates with candidates? Everyone now listen, knows that I haven't hired that much.

So, um, so sorry for, for showing my sales on wrongs and shortcomings here, but

per Tjernberg: I use win rates, yes, it is a common KPI, no, within the key is fair, uh, but I think it's a very relevant one to be perfectly honest with you. Um. So the effect that you see when you start working in the the latter examples, you're gonna see the cost per recruitment drives way down.

You're gonna see a cost increase in the marketing budget or content budget or whatever else budget, but it's still on the whole a lot cheaper. You're gonna see more qualified candidates or rather relevant candidates because if you use the proper understanding of the talent pool or the market size, or where they are or their interest, you're gonna be much more predictive in terms of which people you're gonna attract into that.

Um, you're gonna see less first [00:24:00] stage interviews per successful hire. Which means that using the traditional way, a lot of hiring managers are meeting candidates that for some reason or another isn't relevant for the job, and we believe that it's better to interview three great candidates for one position than I know eight candidates in total.

Three that wasn't interested by what you're offering, two that didn't have the acquired skillset and so on and so forth. Fewer first stage screenings in comparison to successful hires. Uh, you're gonna see shorter process times. Uh, you're gonna quite drastically increase both the hiring managers and the candidates MPS score.

It's a nicer experience all around, more or less. Um, so certainly, I mean, we've seen some quite radical. Uh, decreases in cost [00:25:00] per hire. We see companies going from 6,000 euro to under a hundred euro.

Wilma Eriksson: I was just going to say, please give us some numbers here, but you, you read my thoughts. Thank you. You read my mind.

per Tjernberg: Yeah. So, so, so if, if you thinking of, oh, how much is cost per hire? If you say 4,000 to 6,000 euro, you are more or less always correct. Even if the company themselves doesn't calculate it or they don't have control over their own direct, indirect costs, that's a good span to, to understand that where most people are.

Um, and that's driven by a very, very high production cost. It's very inefficient in terms of processes, tool sets, um, ways of working.

Wilma Eriksson: What kind of skillset do you need to have in place? To being able to move to this kind of, uh, new way, modern way, other way to attract talents.

per Tjernberg: Um, there's a lot to be said about [00:26:00] enabling the hiring manager.

I, I, I've never met a candidate who went like, oh, please, can I have another meeting with a recruiter? I don't wanna meet my manager or the team, or whatever it might be. Uh, there's, there might be out there, but I've never met them. Uh, um, so like engaging the people that should have the biggest interest in being successful.

Um, not to seldom. HRTA is more of a, I go there and I order a new hire, get this done for me. And that's seldom a good way of doing it. Uh, I honestly believe that you need. Marketing knowledge or market knowledge, perhaps like, like an understanding of the market and an understanding of the most efficient way to speak to that market.

Um, yeah. And then you need a good TA person to be able to co coordinate everything.

[00:27:00] Several of these things are commodities today.

Wilma Eriksson: Uh, what do I forget to ask about that you feel is very important talking about this topic? How we can use, uh, marketing tools to, to increase the, what I would say the candidate experience of your company and ensuring that you hire the right ones in the most efficient way.

per Tjernberg: Um, I've spoken to marketing professionals over the.

And I'm always like struck by their lack of understanding how poor our tool set and insights actually are. So I think that everybody that listens to that, do your TA person, uh, uh, a service and go have lunch with them. Explain how you can understand the client market, the B2B market, the B2C market. Tell them what you know, what kind of tools you use and how that could be applicable in the candidate [00:28:00] journey as well.

Because any improvement is gonna be a big improvement.

Wilma Eriksson: Would you actually recommend the TA persons using a marketing tool or

per Tjernberg: not on their own? Let's '

Wilma Eriksson: em out there. It's gonna go crazy.

per Tjernberg: Put the laptop down and back away from the automation tool.

Wilma Eriksson: Well, we, I think we were talking about sales. We have all sent out too many emails with the wrong, wrong content to wrong people when starting, using marketing automation tool. Wow. That can go

per Tjernberg: really

Wilma Eriksson: wild.

per Tjernberg: Uh, so, so the reason for, for me saying that is, um.

When I did that before, I like started speaking to actual professionals, people who know how to calculate the data and understand them and yada yada. It felt a bit cool. Oh, [00:29:00] look at me being all proactive and doing things that I don't really understand. That's awesome. Right? But you're not gonna get the full effect.

So like, it's better to experiment and try it out than not doing it. But if you can. Grab someone from marketing a performance marketer, someone who understands SEO or, or use chef DPT for all intents and purposes, like use something that teaches you a bit more on how to apply it and what you can expect from it.

And, uh, who the people I believe might be listening to this podcast more than my youthful like stage, which is very TA focused.

Wilma Eriksson: Mm-hmm.

per Tjernberg: Go talk to a TA person and just show them what you know. I. You know, a lot of stuff that's really relevant to the work that they're doing, but maybe they don't understand what they don't under, don't know, let's say.

Wilma Eriksson: Right. Okay. Thank you so much for contributing. And who do you, yourself get most inspired by? When you wanna get even nerdier [00:30:00] about this? Who do you, I mean, do you listen to podcasts, read the book, reach out to someone? Oh.

per Tjernberg: Right now and, and for quite some time, um, I follow like Chris Walker's, uh, content Slave. I think he's, uh, everything they've done at Refined Labs with the restructuring of the company using the vault, uh, everything they stand for. I think it's super, super interesting and, uh, something that we are company, uh, quite inspired by.

Like we do a lot of free knowledge based content that is, that we navigate. Everything is ungated. Uh, and that strategy is 100% influenced from from him.

Wilma Eriksson: Mm-hmm. Good. Okay. Now I shall try to share the audio and you are going to wing an answer to a random business related question from an earlier podcasts.

So gimme one second.[00:31:00]

Okay, here it comes.[00:32:00]

per Tjernberg: What would you do? To improve the experience after you, a new customer comes into your company, what would you do to make that a real positive experience? Um, that's my question.

We're, we're looking into this right now. Um, we're a new company. We're trying shit out, understanding what works and whatnot. So now, uh, we we're looking at like engaging a person that's really good in design thinking to kind of like break that experience now and try to understand how we can improve it.

Because I think the, that, that are classic onboarding meetings or startup meetings or whatever you wanna call it. It's like any other meeting. There are no fun and like the start of a business relationship should be the most fun you ever had. That's before any problems shows up, right? You've already, you've done the sales.

Nothing has gone bad yet. Hopefully that should be a really, [00:33:00] really fun experience. But I don't have any answers because we're like, we're just looking at it, but we're driven by some sort of smallish, obsessive obsession about it should be much more interesting and fun than interactive than it's today. I dunno if that's a good answer because the answer I can give you.

Wilma Eriksson: Uh, it's, it's, it's a perfect s uh, answer. It's your answer. And I would really, uh, recommend start deliver for everyone who has these questions. They have a great community with a lot of answers and, um, ongoing certifications and stuff like that. That is of course, maybe if you're going a bit further, but they are.

They're really good. I know them since before I trust them. And Lincoln Murphy, they, they cooperate with them, so I recommend them and maybe it's a perfect fit then to shake them out and see what, if they can contribute with your, in your, uh, journey. Absolutely. Great. And, uh, a tricky question might be, but you can answer in any level you, you prefer.

What are your main challenges in [00:34:00] your business right now and problem that you're addressing? And obviously, uh, custom implementation is one of them, but maybe another one.

per Tjernberg: Uh, we, we've done a lot of work the last two months or so, uh, rethinking about how we speak about our products because people believe that we're a recruitment agency or that they can buy candidates from us, or some even think that we're a source firm.

So we're having, uh, some, we, we are having to do more explanation that then is, is optimal. Uh, so, so we are re trying, like how do we frame our products? How do we make them understandable for people who are not within the TA space because they are quite TA heavy. Uh, like when we speak about sourcing, it's something completely different than when a, a sourcer speak about sources from the procurement side.

So we share some nomenclature, but we don't share the same meaning. So we're having a bit of an issue reaching across outside of our own community and. As things are right now, our primary stakeholders on [00:35:00] our client side is usually board directors, investors see something owes, which means that they don't have that much in depth insight into the TA space, which means that we are having a bit of a disconnect there.

So that's something that we're doing a lot of work around.

Wilma Eriksson: Interesting. Looking forward to follow your journey. I'm sure it'll be successful. Let's hope. Let's hope, I'm sure of it. So who else would you like me to invite to the podcast? Maybe someone you wanna listen to yourself.

per Tjernberg: Judi Vost. She just released a trend thing. 30 Questions for 2030. That has a lot of interesting stuff in it. Uh, I think she would be an excellent guest just because of the, like the, the trend thing that she's doing and looking at.

Wilma Eriksson: Sounds really interesting. I don't know about her since before, so I have to [00:36:00] look it up for sure.

And if you, uh, know, she please, uh, connect us and, uh, which is warmly welcome to Failing group. Nice. And if someone were to get in contact with you, how do they do?

per Tjernberg: Easiest s is actually on LinkedIn. Um, that's, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a recruiter by trade. That's where we spend most of our time and that's also where we do a lot of like stuff around the company.

Um, so reach out on LinkedIn.

Wilma Eriksson: Great. And then my favorite part, uh. In the podcast is to be a surprised, but what kind of after work song you prefer to listen to, maybe when you close that next big deal with, uh, a better offering for both of you? Which song are we listening to than with that which, uh, whiskey Sour in Your Hand?

per Tjernberg: As I mentioned when I said the Whiskey Sour, I'm basic Bruce Princeton, [00:37:00] born in the USA, love that.

Wilma Eriksson: Why not epic choice? Uh, per, I'm so glad that you reached out. Thank you so much. I've learned a lot. I'm sure the community has as well. And yeah, good luck with your business, looking for following your journey.

And, uh, cheers. Have a great weekend.

per Tjernberg: Thanks for having me. Have a great weekend.

Wilma Eriksson: Bye

per Tjernberg: bye.

Wilma Eriksson: F.[00:38:00]

per Tjernberg: Oh, so.

Uh, pipelines. Uh, when was the last time you did something radically different in your recruitment process that led to unexpected, but great results?

‍