E5
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[00:00:00] Andrew Hibel: To the HigherEdJobs podcast. I'm Andy Hibel. I'm the chief operating officer and a co-founder of HigherEdJobs.

[00:00:05] Kelly Cherwin: And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy here at HigherEdJobs.

[00:00:10] Andrew Hibel: We're joined today by Jeff Dickey Chasins the job board doctor who works with job boards and career websites, helping provide strategic guidance.

Jeff, thanks for being with us today.

[00:00:20] Jeff Dickey Chasins: Well, thanks for inviting me, Andy. I'm glad to be here.

[00:00:23] Andrew Hibel: We'd like to start by asking you about the work you do and what brought you to doing what you do.

[00:00:28] Jeff Dickey Chasins: Well, like many liberal arts majors, it was fairly random in terms of getting into the job board industry. I actually worked for a number of years in the publishing industry and also the software development industry.

And when I moved to my current location in Iowa, I was at loose ends and I saw an ad in the Des Moines Register for a marketing director for a company called Dice, which I thought was rather odd. And I walked in and became employee number nine of Dice. The world's largest, IT [00:01:00] focused job board. And that's how I got into the job board industry and worked there for a number of years, worked with some other job boards, and about 13 years ago, I started a consultancy, essentially, a business consultancy that I called job board doctor and I work with job boards all around the world to help them make more money, do a better job at the things that they want to do as a business and really, really enjoy it. In fact, I call myself a job board geek.

[00:01:28] Andrew Hibel: Which leads us to a new endeavor that you have gotten into a new podcast that I, I believe is called the job board geek.

Can you share a little bit about that?

[00:01:36] Jeff Dickey Chasins: Yeah. I started the job work geek before Christmas in conjunction with my co-host Stephen Rothberg, a college recruiter and job board geek is really focused on the nuts and bolts, uh, businesses that connect employers and candidates, which tend to be job boards. They also tend to be sites that wouldn't call themselves a job board, but essentially do the same thing.

Like a LinkedIn, for example. [00:02:00] But, uh, if you're interested in checking out the podcast, just go to Apple or Spotify or any of the other outlets and type in job board geek. And you'll be able to hear what I have to say about those things.

[00:02:10] Andrew Hibel: I assume you don't actually have to be a geek to listen.

[00:02:13] Jeff Dickey Chasins: You don't have to be a geek.

In fact, it may make you thankful that you're not a job work geek like me and some of the people that are on the show.

[00:02:22] Andrew Hibel: Well, thanks for sharing Jeff. I think simply starting with what people are referring to as The Great Resignation. Would you just try to take a shot at it and simply describe what you see as being the Great Resignation in the minds of Americans today.

[00:02:35] Jeff Dickey Chasins: As we went into the pandemic back in February of 2020, we were already looking at.

An employment market, where there was a lot of discontinuity where you had people that were maybe doing jobs that they didn't want to do, but that was what they felt they had to do other segments where there weren't enough people to supply the need. And the pandemic [00:03:00] unfortunately sort of locked everything in place for a while where people literally could not go to work for a lot of people.

Some people obviously kept going to work, but under very different circumstances, and what people are now calling the great resignation, I think is actually incredibly healthy. What a percentage of people that were in jobs that perhaps weren't enthusiastic about, or they didn't like, or they weren't being paid, what they thought they should be decided to make a change.

And this enforced lack of being able breaking out of the rat race involuntarily gave them a chance to think about doing something different. And I think some of the people that are referred to as part of the great resignation are people that would've been retiring anyway. And they just looked at everything and they said, you know what?

I can go ahead and do it right now. So you've got a percentage of people that did that. You've got another percentage of people, which I think is much larger that were essentially trapped willingly or unwillingly in low wage jobs, [00:04:00] particularly people in hospitality and leisure, but also you know, a whole range of people that were probably, or definitely not getting paid, what they should get for what they were doing.

And they decided, hey, you know what, I'm gonna go into another field. I'm gonna go work somewhere else. And then you have a percentage of people that have been under incredible stress in their jobs. And I'm thinking of people like school teachers, people that are working in the lower echelons of healthcare in terms of wages and the pandemic has accentuated all the things that they didn't like about their jobs and, or made their jobs essentially unbearable for 'em. And so they've jumped out of their positions as well and are going elsewhere. In my home state of Iowa. We're in an interesting situation where the governor is telling us, Hey, we need more educators and we want to pay you a bonus to come here and work.

While at the same time, the, uh, Senate president is denouncing educators or a [00:05:00] secret agenda with books and mask mandates and whatnot. So you can see for certain people that are out there working, they would just say, Hey, too much, I'm gonna do something else. So that's a rather long winded answer to your question, Andy.

But that's the way I look at the great resignation. It's sort of a restructuring of parts of the labor market. And I think it's a wake up call for employers. As one of my colleagues on Twitter has said, essentially, if you're, if you're not a very good employer, you're gonna have a lot of trouble getting people to work for you much more than you used to.

And the answer is become a better employer, become an employer where people actually want to work at your business.

[00:05:40] Andrew Hibel: I think when we hear the shorthand, the great resignation, we all kind of have our own perception of exactly what that means. I think you offered a much more robust and a better understanding of what's really behind that general feeling that Americans are having right now.

Because one of the things we thought was interesting is we look deeper into it. [00:06:00] According to SHRM, it looks like 2021 saw an average of 3.9 million people per month quit their jobs, which let's be honest. I believe it was like a third of the workforce. Quit their jobs in 2021. That's a lot of people.

However, I was shocked to learn that in 2019, before the pandemic 3.5 million people per month quit their jobs, which makes us a little over a 10% increase in 2021 over 2019, 2021 was the high water mark. So when you look at statistically, yes, people are quitting their jobs and turnover has been something that's been very, very much an endemic within employment for quite some time now.

I believe the statistic has been tracked by the bureau of labor statistics for, uh, about 20 years. In all, but three years it's been more than 2 million people per month quitting their jobs. So when you're looking at it, turnover has been something that's been part of us, but it's different. Now. I think going to some of those highlights and drilling down deeper is really important.

[00:07:00] Obviously we kind of talked about, you did a great job of laying out how specifically people are coming to it. Why do you think it resonates so much now with Americans when they hear it? And it's just like, yes, of course. Beyond the pandemic and thinking about pre pandemic, why do you think that this is now resonating?

[00:07:20] Jeff Dickey Chasins: Well, I don't know the exact number, but I've seen numerous articles that have basically said real wages for most people have not increased in the past 30 years. And as part of the problem with the shrinking of the middle class in the United States is there has been a redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper 1%.

It's that's not a fantasm. That's a fact. Sometimes you have a large dislocation event, like the great recession or like, uh, the depression, or like the pandemic where it stops people in their tracks. And [00:08:00] there's sort of like the, the old thing of, uh, frog that's in water. That's being turned up very, very gradually.

You don't realize what's going on and then suddenly, oh my gosh, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go crazy. And the frog is everyone in the US. Some of us are saying, Hey, you know what? I'm still okay with what I do. I like what I do, but a decent percentage of people are like, you know, it's time to make a change.

There's nothing like a good life and death pandemic to make you look at the mirror and say, is this really what I wanna do for the rest of my life? You know, I used to work in the hospitality industry. I was a chef and those jobs in hospitality were horrible. They've always been horrible and they've always been low paying and it's an industry that's always depended on a steady stream of people that are willing to take low paying hard, dangerous jobs, regardless. And I think right now we're starting to hit the wall on some of those industries that depend on these types of employees, where most employees are saying, Hey, you know what? I would [00:09:00] rather do a remote job and get paid 15 or $20 an hour and work holidays in the back of a kitchen for $7.50.

You can say that this problem has been around for a while, but I think that the pandemic was essentially the jarring event that sort of shook everyone up. And it's also put incredible stress on everyone, whether or not you were personally affected by COVID or your family was affected, uh, whether you stayed home or whether you kept going to work.

It's just another level of stress and it's very sudden, and it doesn't let up. And you know, when people get stressed, they, at some point have to react. They have to do something. And in the employment world, that's what we're seeing. We're seeing people sort of doing things that are changing the dynamics for many industries.

[00:09:44] Kelly Cherwin: Jeff, I wanted go back to what you were saying about this being a wake up call, which I think is a great way to put it. Like you just said, it's a wake up call for a lot of job seekers or employees realizing this is not the career path, this is not what they wanna do, but I also think it's a wake up call for employers.

And I [00:10:00] was reading an article the other day that said, how do we go from burnout to demoralization in such a quick time and how leaders need to address this because obviously we've identified the problem and we can't just pretend there's no problem. Leaders can't just hope that things are going to get better.

So do you have any suggestions on how leaders in higher ed can address this situation of poor morale and people quitting and people not wanting to accept jobs and HR having, you know, a hard time with people not showing up for interviews and things like.

[00:10:32] Jeff Dickey Chasins: I was reading a really interesting analysis of this.

And I can't remember the author, but one of the things that she said really resonated with me, which is there are a lot of sort of superficial or not, not so superficial markers for how you can show respect or not show respect. But she said, the ultimate thing is that if you're an employer, you need to show respect for the people that you employ.

And if you don't respect. What the employee takes away [00:11:00] is I'm being humiliated by my boss. And that humiliation will turn into anger will turn into, I'm gonna leave this job or will turn into things that they do on the job that are, you know, obviously not in the interest of the company. And it's such a simple thing as an employer to show respect for people, but employees are not stupid.

You can say, I respect you. I think you're great. But if I underpay. That's a form of humiliation. If I say misogynistic things in the workplace, or if I tolerate that kind of behavior, that's a form of humiliation. You have to be sort of a, a full person as an employer and say, I'm human, you're human. I respect you.

I, I appreciate the things you do. And here are some ways I'm going to underline that you have to sort of walk the walk all the way through everything you do for the employees. I think the employers that do. Tend to have very, very low turnover. And I've seen this over and over again. I was talking to someone the other day that said we don't have any [00:12:00] turnover when we have turnovers, when someone retires and the reason they don't have turnovers that their employer treats the employees incredibly well and really values them.

And you can say, well, how can a company like Walmart, for example, a super huge company, how can they build that kind of loyalty among employees? And I would say pay them a living wage. You know, when you have a company where I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 or 50% of the employees are on various types of food support systems and income support systems.

That's, that's not legit pay people, a living wage, give them the opportunity to have input into their own work area, their own workspace, make them feel like they have a voice. Those are just some basic things. And if I was an employer, I mean, I am an employer, but I am the employee. So it's kind of hard for me to get into a big discussion about employee rights with myself.

But if I, you know, if I, if I was an employer and I had a lot [00:13:00] of employees when bad things happened, that's when I would double down on doing good things for my employees. Because I don't want to take a chance, uh, losing them and losing the ability for the organization to do what they do. Thank you. I,

[00:13:13] Kelly Cherwin: I think you summarized it really well. There all the points that you said, and not only pay, but the point of listening and, and having your employees have their voice respected, I think is huge. Like you said, it's simple, but hopefully employers realize that these simple tasks do need to be implemented in the workplace.

[00:13:31] Jeff Dickey Chasins: It's simple, but it's not easy. I used to be the manager of a publishing company. And I had about 150 employees under me. And it was very, very challenging. We were a very progressive firm. We did a lot of the things that I was just talking about, but in invariably, you end up in these situations where things happen and you just sort of have to try to have a clear idea of what the company's values are, what the mission is and what's fair.

[00:13:59] Andrew Hibel: [00:14:00] I think the rubric that you put out there to show compassion. Is a pretty great place to put your head space in as an employer. I think it's also been interesting on the one hand, you definitely have the pay, but we've seen universities who are under staffed in food service by thousands of people asking their employees who are outside of food service to come help the staffing levels in some places are so low and not having adequate team to do what the job is, there's still people coming to eat in the residence. You need people there. If you don't have the wage and you don't have the staffing, you're gonna run into trouble at the end of the day. What's your advice to employers in, in higher education, because there's kind of a dichotomy here. If you are working in a financial aid office and you can do something over Zoom with your students, you pivot, you stay at home, you make it through the pandemic, but residence hall that stayed open through the pandemic and now [00:15:00] as the pandemics lingering effects stay with us. You had to feed the kids who are in the halls. How do you do that as an employer's perspective with tapping into the compassion or those who lack compassion? What are they thinking?

[00:15:13] Jeff Dickey Chasins: That's a great question, Andy and I actually, I have easy access to seeing this.

I live in a small college town and a lot of my friends work at this college and some of them work in food service here. And I will say from my experience, just from this one, college is that they've been very, very focused on working with their employees to be flexible on their schedules. That's one form of respect is to say, you know, hey, you know what?

I need to stay home. My kid's sick with COVID. Fine. You know, we'll bring someone else in. You could work this shit instead of being rigid and bound by rules or bound too tightly by rules. So I think showing flexibility on the part of the employer is really, really important. I think being willing to pay as much as you [00:16:00] possibly can is important.

One of the other benefits that they offer their food service staff is three meals, which is not an insignificant side benefit for people that are working in food service, which are probably not the highest paid jobs in the world. And then one of the things that academic institutions can offer people in hospitality and in the residence services that is very difficult for the private sector to offer is good benefits and benefits are really, really important.

Number of friends here that have worked in hospitality in the school have been forever grateful to the college because the college put their kids through college. And these are people that didn't go to college themselves, and they were able to put their kids through college. And that's the kind of benefit that will make you an employer of first choice in whatever community you operate in.

[00:16:53] Kelly Cherwin: I love that the word that you keep using is respect. And I think that is huge because I think as employees, we all want to [00:17:00] be treated fairly. And as you were saying, there's a lot of ways that employers can show respect through compensation, flexibility. If someone needs to stay home because their child is sick, what it comes around to is I think staff and faculty being happy on campus will result in higher student success.

So, I don't know exactly what my question was, but I just love the fact that you keep talking about the word respect, but I think is huge. So sorry, Andy. I didn't really go anywhere

[00:17:29] Andrew Hibel: I think that's, I think that's a, I think that's a great place to kind of get into this topic. We're talking about an employer, employee relationship.

One of the articles I read in Slate recently was talking about how the irony just makes me chuckle, how employers are getting upset now, because candidates are ghosting them. After literally years of employers ghosting candidates, now we have what's happening in reverse and employers are not liking it.

They're thinking it's [00:18:00] unprofessional. It's not decent and there seems to be a few different schools of thought. First of all, there was a lot of people prior to this who just said, employers, ghosting you is just part of the process. And now some people are saying, well, good, it's good to see employers get it.

I think I come out on this thinking, well, God, wouldn't it be great if 2022 would be the year that ghosting in the job search process just disappears. If what you're trying to do is build a relationship based on trust. Do you really want to have the Genesis of that relationship be built on this process where you're just not gonna offer any sort of decency back for somebody who works in this space so intimately, where are employers on this are employers better than they worked 10 years ago in trying to get back to candidates on some sort of communication and. More than anything else. The respect respecting that these are people applying for their jobs who have put some effort into it and getting back to them is the decent and the right thing to do.

[00:18:57] Jeff Dickey Chasins: I would say no, [00:19:00] nothing's changed. I shouldn't say nothing's changed. It's changed a little bit, but I've been conducting surveys of job seekers for years. And the number one thing that they complain about always is what's called the black hole. I applied for a job. I never heard anything back. I applied for a job.

I never heard anything back. And if you're a job board operator, you know that what happening there is the employer is just not responding. The, uh, candidates tend to blame the job. Upwards have this, the various plot to keep all the employers from communicating with me. But actually the employers are just not responding.

So that's their historical behavior. So employers are human, just like candidates. It takes very long time in my experience for humans to change their behavior. And it usually takes a lot of reinforcement for humans to change their behavior. And I think what we're seeing right now is employers in certain categories are getting [00:20:00] a lot of reinforcement to be more communicative, to be more willing to work with candidates that perhaps don't fill every single last requirement of a job, but instead are focused on what does a candidate bring to this job with particular skills and employers that don't change their behavior are running the risk of going out of existence.

Now with academic institutions, you know, that's not gonna happen. They, they tend to have their own sort of, I, I started to say inertia, but that's not quite the right term. They carry on whether the people that are doing the hiring or doing a good job or a bad job. But I think what you find is that institutions that pay attention to communicating to candidates, get better candidates.

Institutions that are willing to communicate with candidates, tend to find candidates that come in with an open mind about working with the institution to do the best job they [00:21:00] possibly can. Like you said, Andy, if you've had a bad experience during the hiring process, even if you accept the job, you may come in with a chip on your shoulder.

And if I'm an employer, I don't want that. I, I want you to come in, ready to do the best job you possibly can. I think we're gonna come out of this with a percentage of employers that have changed their behavior, but I am also totally convinced that we'll come out of this with a percentage of employers.

That'll keep on doing the same old thing that they've always done. And some of them will survive. Some of them will fail, but I think if I was doing the hiring for an academic institution, I would be doing my absolute best at this point to try to communicate with candidates so I can get the absolute best people I can.

Because if I don't, I may not have enough candidates to fill those jobs. And, and I may suddenly have to be putting new requirements on people that are already stressed from COVID and stressed from all the other [00:22:00] things you're doing. And, and now you're saying, well, I want you to take on this responsibility, cuz I can't find anyone to do it.

Then you go into what I call the death spiral of non retention. People start leaving and they don't want to come back.

[00:22:12] Kelly Cherwin: As you're talking there, I was gonna say how you're stressing the importance of employers communicating to job seekers. But I also think that employers have. Make sure they're retaining those good employees, because I think we all know that I think the latest stat was like, it costs two and a half times someone salary to replace that person.

So I do, I do agree with you that I think some employers are gonna realize that they have to change. I think some employers are gonna realize too late that they probably should have changed and they lost some really good valuable employees. But yeah. Instead of just, if someone gives their two week notice the employer, can't just say, sorry, didn't work out. They have to do something to actually address. What was the issue? Why are they leaving? Are they overburdened? Are they underpaid? Like what is the issue? I think that's a huge thing that employers need to realize. They have to find out what the problem is before they can resolve it.

[00:22:58] Jeff Dickey Chasins: And I would say that in [00:23:00] my experience, most employers pay far too little attention to why people leave. They usually don't pay attention to it until it becomes a crisis in our state government. We have a, a crisis right now of, of sexual harassment and, and the reason people are now paying attention to it is that the state is paid out millions and millions and millions of dollars to victims that have successfully litigated against the state.

The same thing happens to universities and you don't want to be that school that has a harassment problem that shows up in the newspaper. Instead, why don't you just be a place where that sort of behavior is not tolerating and that people feel like they can talk about it. It seems to me that it's always easier to avoid creating problems than it is to solve 'em afterwards.

And I think getting back to your original comment, uh, with employers, that one of the best things you can do is have a thorough exit interview process that, and, and really look at the information and communicate it up in the [00:24:00] organization as to why. Why people are leaving or why are they staying.

[00:24:03] Andrew Hibel: Coming back to the idea that you want somebody to be excited about starting their new job, enthused and ready to do the best job they possibly can.

I think one of the parts that colleges and universities could really look at is understanding the process that their new employees just went through has been a very challenging, stressful. And at times demoralizing process, I think having some empathy, understanding that your new. Was just a candidate is, is so important.

So one of the things that we try to do is to bring some stress release to the part of being a candidate. And what we've asked certain guests to do is add to our Spotify playlist. Music's a great way to, to blow off some steam and to motivate yourself if there's one Jeff Dick Chase's choice song that is on the must listen to for a job seeker.

What's that song and why.

[00:24:56] Jeff Dickey Chasins: This is a great question and I'm really torn [00:25:00] between two songs, but I have to only give you one, is that what you said? It's two, if you want. Okay. So the, the first one that comes to mind is a song by the clash, the English punk band called career opportunities. And it was written at the height of, uh, big depression in England.

And it's very sardonic, but it has some good things to say, but I guess I'll have to also include the very first song from the very first album by really. Songwriter and performer, Elva Costello called welcome to the working week. And it's, , it's a, it's a wonderful way to start an album, but it's also a wonderful way to sort of think about, you know, I'm stuck in this job.

I'm doing stuff I don't want to do. And nonetheless, I gotta do it.

[00:25:44] Andrew Hibel: Those are both excellent. Um, we, we look forward to continuing a conversation with you and I hope the next time we have you back that we can have you go across the pond with the songs you. And maybe talk about some American artists who can contribute to it.

Although those [00:26:00] are two great songs. So thanks. Thanks for joining us, Jeff.

[00:26:05] Jeff Dickey Chasins: Thanks for having me.