PODCAST 61: Change the Job Process to Find the Right Candidate w/ Shireen Jaffer

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Shireen Jaffer, CEO at Edvo. Edvo helps people get the best jobs AND finds jobs they may need in the future.

She explains how nightmarish the job process used to be and how Edvo strives to change the job search narrative.

If you missed episode 60, check it out here: PODCAST 60: Effectively Giving and Receiving Constructive Feedback w/

What You’ll Learn

  • The inspiration behind Edvo
  • How Edvo finds candidates
  • Why unemployment rates are low
  • The “science” behind why people leave companies after 6 months

Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast

Show Agenda and Timestamps

  1. Show Introduction [00:09]
  2. About Edvo: An Introduction [02:22]
  3. Finding Great Candidates [07:37]
  4. The Real Reason for Low Unemployment [21:56]
  5. How to Keep Your Best Talent [33:10]
  6. Sam’s Corner [43:55]

Show Introduction

Sam Jacobs: Hey folks, it’s Sam Jacobs. Welcome to the Sales Hacker podcast. We’ve got Shireen Jaffer the founder and CEO of a company called Edvo. Edvo is really interesting because it’s a talent business that flips the script, and so Edvo represents candidates as they look for jobs. Almost like a talent agency.

So it’s really, really interesting and we dive deep into the business, and we talk a lot about sort of the state of the talent market and what candidates need to do to find the right job and also what companies need to do.

We’d like to thank our sponsors. We’ve got two sponsors on the show for you today. Conga is the leading end-to-end digital document transformation suite. With Conga, you can simplify documents, automate contracts, and execute e-signatures so you can focus on accelerating sales cycles and closing business faster.

Our second sponsor is Outreach, the leading sales engagement platform that enables sales reps to humanize their communications at scale, from automating the soul-sucking manual work that eats up selling time to providing action-oriented tips on what communications are working best. Outreach has your back.

About Edvo: An Introduction

Sam Jacobs: Why don’t you tell us what is Edvo, and just give us a little bit of an overview of the company.

Shireen Jaffer: We took a hard look at this recruiting industry about a year ago and we recognized that all of the solutions in the recruiting space for so long have been for companies and helping companies fill roles. And it’s never really been about helping people get jobs.

And one of the stats that we found… was the fact that today on average it takes 36 days for a company to fill that entry and mid-level role, but for that person to get that same entry and mid-level job, they are on average on the job search for six months.

​​So, for Edvo, we said, “Hey, we want to bridge that gap and create this candidate-centered recruiting solution where we’re their talent agent.” So just like an athlete has an agent that represents her, him and is incentivized to find them the right opportunities where they’ll do their best work, at Edvo we get to understand our candidates on a deep level.

Understand how they work. Understand where they’ll thrive. Understand what their lifestyle requirements are so that we can navigate them to opportunities in our network where they can truly be set up for success. That’s Edvo.

Finding Great Candidates

Sam Jacobs: How do you go out and find the candidates, and how do you make sure that the people that Edvo’s representing are great people?

Shireen Jaffer:

  1. Job Boards – We’re on all of the major job boards like every other external staffing solution. So all staffing agencies advertise today on job boards.
  2. Community Partnerships – Think about the best slack communities, Facebook groups that are full of incredibly invested people that care about their jobs, they care about their industry, and we’re building partnerships with those groups so that when they’re on the job search, they use Edvo as their first stop.
  3. Publisher Partnerships We love to partner with some of the best blogs out there, podcasts, the listeners of that content are of course high quality candidates as well.
  4. University Partnerships – Some of our best candidates also are from the alumni programs, or soon to be graduates or recent grads with graduation right around the corner.

RELATED: How To Hire Sales Reps: 5 Traits That Go Beyond A Resume

The Real Reason for Low Unemployment

Sam Jacobs: You’re working in an organization and a company that is built around the hiring market and built around matching great candidates to great companies. What’s your take on the current economy that the fact that unemployment’s at an all time low?

Shireen Jaffer: With the unemployment being so low, one of the things that we’ve recognized is it’s not low because people love their jobs, and everyone is thriving and everyone’s getting paid what they should get paid, and everyone’s helping their companies grow. That’s not why unemployment is low.

A lot of what we’re seeing from the conversations we’re having, the data we’ve looked into, is people at this point are settling for jobs. More than 80% are open to new opportunities. Six million people switch jobs every single month in the U.S.

So there’s a lot of bouncing happening. There’s a lot of settling happening, and a lot of people right now in their roles are not necessarily happy with where they are.

Sam Jacobs: Do you think that there’s some education that’s required to tell people what is the reality of the work that they should expect so they’re not disillusioned within the first six months, for example?

Shireen Jaffer: Absolutely and I think it’s a miscommunication between companies and people. It’s kind of on both sides where candidates look at a job description because that’s really all there is today to learn about what a company does, unless they’re networking in and talking to people in the role today, and really getting a deep understanding what the role is actually about. The majority of people have just the job description so they use that. And then the companies are using this one page resume to understand if this person has these skills and behaviors that they want.

How to Keep Your Best Talent

Sam Jacobs: How do you advise companies to build a program that not just acquires great people, but keeps them around?

Shireen Jaffer: The best thing you can do to retain your top talent is, one, understand what your top talent even looks like, right? What are the attributes, the behaviors, the skill sets?

Two, when you’re interviewing for that top talent or someone who can grow into it, it needs to be a team wide effort. It’s not just up to the recruiter to identify that person, and then the hiring manager to identify that person, and then it’s done.

It needs to be a team wide effort that’s collaborative because that will be good for both the company and the candidate. The candidate will also get a better idea of what it means to truly succeed in that company.

RELATED: Here’s How to Hire a VP of Sales That Will Last Longer than 19 Months

Sam’s Corner

Sam Jacobs: Hey, folks, Sam Jacobs, it’s Sam’s corner. Really interesting conversation with Shireen Jaffer the founder and CEO of Edvo, and this is a new model I think we may see more and more of. Edvo is an agent that represents you the sale professional and tries to get you a better deal, the right company, the right fit in much the same way that sports agents represent athletes.

What We Learned

  • The inspiration behind Edvo
  • How Edvo finds candidates
  • Why unemployment rates are low
  • The “science” behind why people leave companies after 6 months

Don’t miss episode 62

Of course we want to thank our sponsors. Conga is the leading end-to-end digital document transformation suite. With Conga you can simplify documents, automate contracts, and execute esignatures. Our second sponsor is Outreach. Outreach is the leading sales engagement platform.

If you want to reach out to me with feedback, you can reach me on LinkedIn.

This has been the Sales Hacker Podcast. Thanks for listening, I’ll talk to you next time.

Join Us Today

Insider access to the GTM network and the best minds in tech.

Join Us Today

Insider access to the GTM network and the best minds in tech.

Trending Now

You may also like...