Great. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for coming to today's webinar. My name is Fiona Morton. I'm from PageUp, and I have over twenty plus years experience solving customer talent acquisition challenges through technology. And I'm currently also focused on building our network of innovative partners of which Tracy Parsons from Flockerede is one. And I'm joined by two fantastic people who have done some genuinely exciting things in this space. First of all, Jay Tracy, as I said, from Flockerty and Jay Kokorulu from Travel and Leisure Company, one of our fantastic customers. And today's session is focused on practical ideas and valuable insights for those that are trying to attract talent in this very interesting market. You will be in listen only mode. But if there's time for questions at the end, please feel free to put them in the chat, and we'll do our best to answer them. Right. Let's kick off. So before we dive into the specifics and have a conversation with these great people, let me introduce you to them properly. First of all, we've got Jacob Karulu, who is a talent acquisition and employer brand professional with more than twenty five years experience and over a decade specializing in employer brand, recruitment marketing, and vendor partnerships. He currently serves as manager at employer brand at Travel and Legend Company and has previously held recruiting and talent leadership roles at Walt Disney Company, JPMorgan, and Amazon. Jay is a fabulous cohost at Work and Wonder podcast. Please watch it. It is excellent. Where he explores career journeys, leadership lessons, and the role travel plays in shaping personal and professional growth. Outside of that, he is the founder and president of the Florida Rum Society, also something worth joining, and the and the late and the largest rum club in the United States. So thank us today. Thank you for for joining us today, and we're excited to share your journey, Jay. Thank you. Thrilled to be here. Great. And also joining us, we have the fabulous Tracy Parsons, who is pioneering force in recruitment marketing and the future of talent engagement with career defined by first of its kind innovation. So she's the lady to know, including placing the first recruiting banner banner ad on the Internet in nineteen ninety seven. And, yes, I do remember that. And launching the first social recruiting campaign on Myspace in two thousand and five. Tracy spent nearly three decades reshaping how people discover opportunity and how organizations earn the right to hire them. She doesn't just predict the future of talent, she builds it. She known she's known for a sharp commentary on labor trends, her ability to call out uncomfortable truths, so watch out today, And her unwavering commitment on building a more equitable, transparent, and empowering world of work, which is fantastic. Thank you for joining us, Tracy, as well. Excited to have you. Thank you so much, Fiona. No problem. Alright. So we have a wealth of experience here today. We've got technology and data, which we're going to share. We've got creators and influencers and real world practitioners. So let's get on to see some practical ideas on how we can create new strategies. Let's start by taking a little bit step back before we get into the conversation on the world, we're living in right now. So from candidates' perspective, it is noisier than ever. Inboxes are flooded. AI tools are generating applications at scale, and a single job posting can attract hundreds of AI assisted applications overnight. We had a client just this week tell us that for one very small role, they had over five thousand applicants constantly for those roles, which is ludicrous. Candidates are overwhelmed and tuning out, and the channels we've relied on to reach them, well, they're getting more crowded and more expensive, so we do need to be creative. Search itself has changed. So, typically, you would use SEO and use Google to find jobs or to find information about companies. Well, now we have generative engine optimization and answer engine optimization. It's a bit of a mouthful. Both of those are now employer brand conversations where whether you like it or not because AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are answering candidate questions before they even click a link to have a look to find you. And if your employer brand isn't showing up there in those AI engines, you are invisible. So you need to consider that. And marketers have rapidly adapted to this new reality, learning how to optimize AI discovery and to build trust through authentic voices. So to show up in feeds, communities rather than just waiting to be found. And that's exactly, how recruitment is headed. A survey done by Forbes recently said that eighty six percent of HR professionals agree recruitment is becoming more like marketing. And that means borrowing the marketing playbook. Marketers figured out years ago that people trust people more than brands. And the rise of influence marketing wasn't a gimmick, and it's a response to declining trust in brand message. Recruitment is hitting the same inflection point. Employee advocates advocates, micro influencers, and network creators. These are all new sourcing channels that we're gonna talk to today, and their talent isn't actually spending their time on job boards necessarily, but TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts. So you need to consider that as part of your strategy. So let's bring Tracy into the conversation. We know that the this environment is a tricky one, particularly in the US. Did you wanna give us your perspective on the the labor market and what you're seeing in in the US in particular, Tracy? It's thank you so much for asking, Fiona, because what we're seriously seeing is exactly what our marketing counterparts are seeing. We're seeing less people buying, less people and I know you just told One second. Somebody's calling me. We're live. We're live. What we're seeing like, what we're genuinely seeing is labor participation is at sixty two percent in the United States, which is the lowest it's ever been since the nineteen seventies. And this is according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because what everybody else is worried about, like, in the industry right now is wringing their hands over, oh my gosh. AI is gonna take all of our jobs. AI is gonna take our jobs. I'm like, you guys, our eyes off the ball. The real concern is job seekers are starting to opt out. And of the of those five thousand applications that you might be getting, some of them might be bots, some of them might not be real people. Some of them might be the same five thousand people that applied for that job yesterday. And one of the things that we're seeing is that labor participation is declining. There are, active job seekers and, actually, this is I should have updated this slide, Fiona. I'm very sorry. It's currently well, six months ago, according to the the stat, it was twenty eight percent of people are active searching for a job, which means they're going to job boards, which means that seventy two percent aren't. Gartner Gartner came out last week or I'm sorry, last month and said it's eleven percent. Wow. Eleven percent of people are actively looking, which means that eighty nine percent of people are not actively looking. They're not going to Indeed. They're not scrolling job words. They're scrolling where they're scrolling. And when you couple those two things okay. Labor participation is declining. The number of active job seekers is declining. And then when you layer on that third statistic of the goose egg of zero, that's where trust sits with job seekers right now about the experience that we are running through. So where that data comes from is that there are, tens of millions of conversations happening on the Internet from job seekers on Reddit, on X, public social medias, comments, blogs, forums. They're talking about what it's like looking for a job. They're talking about what it's like applying for a job, getting an interview, getting an offer. They're having all these conversations publicly on the Internet. And when we went in and measured that with, some friends at SmartRecruiters, we found that net sentiment was zero In these conversations. That's not right. No. That's bad. Right? So so they're burned out. They're not participating, and there may be a future, and they're finding a new way to pay their bills. So this is this is one of the things that I think that we need to be starting to really understand, and the reckoning isn't going to be AI taking our jobs. It's going to be the fact that we may not have any candidates to market to. Yep. I think that's a a really fair point. I mean, I think you have the the statistic of eighty nine now that is passive, so they're not actively looking. And we kind of view that in three different ways how to reach the that particular audience. I think the first is they are there are people that know your brand. So those those ones you should really maximize. There's about seventy percent of those that come to your career site, and they don't engage with it. They don't stay. In fact, sometimes it's because there's no way to express your interest or there's no way to convert them. But you need to maximize those. So those people already know who you are, and they recognize your brand. And if they have the right skills, they should be harnessing that. The second area, is people who've already engaged with you. So they may not be fit right today, or they may not have accepted the role. They're in your CRM. So candidate rediscovery of who who you already know is is also vitally important. But that third group that you were talking about just now is where they maybe never heard of your brand. They are hardest to engage. You know? They they they are looking in different places like Reddit, TikTok, podcast, you name it, or in a community Facebook group. And they aren't reachable to you because you don't know how to harness them. So tell me a little bit around how do you reach or reach that audience in particular. If you're, you know, you're not coming through a job board like that passive audience we just talked about, how how would you do that? Well and is that for me, Fiona? Because I have some Yeah. Absolutely. Definitely try to get one for you. A hundred I'll just check. Second. You've got the the the key is is that you've gotta be in their feed. Right? And one of the ways that you can do that is with your own employees in those groups talking about what it's like to work there. It's like having external influencers who are part of those groups talking about where they might choose to work, who they're recommending. So, like, there's there's two different buckets when we talk about this. It's it's referrals, which is your own people referring people, and then there's recommendations, which is other people that they may trust in there. And this is old as time. Right? Like, we've been we've been referring people to places where we don't work since the fourteen hundreds. Like, you'd be around walking around town and, hey. You know, Sue needs to hire somebody at the mercantile. Who do you know? And that's how like, this is the recommendation engine of the modern age, and we've gotta make sure that we are being represented where our people are spending time. We've gotta meet them where they are. And knowing where they are is the first step, and then finding those voices to tell that story is the next step. Yep. So so talk me through, a little bit around that sort of hidden audience, Trace. Yeah. And, yeah, I'll I'll throw it to you. And then, Jay, I might bring you into the conversation as well. Yeah. And the reality is all the things that we're talking about right here is people believe people. Right? And even if you have one of the most recognizable brand names in the world like, I remember having a conversation with the recruiting team at Tiffany and Company, you know, the diamond people. Yes. And they're like, we can't find people who wanna work at Tiffany. And I was like, but everybody knows Tiffany. And they were like, everybody aspires to our brand to wear our brand, and they don't necessarily think to work for our brand or work with our brand. So there you can have consumer awareness that's not translated to to recruitment and employer brand awareness. So those are things that we really, really focus on. And at the end of the day, it's like I was talking about the fourteen hundreds. People believe people. And when you talk about the creator economy and when you talk about influencers, the question always is, is Kim Kardashian or mister Beast posting my job? And, of course, they're not posting your job. Like, that would be insane. Right? I don't go to mister Beast for career advice. I don't go to Kim Kardashian for career advice. And one of the things that we see over and over again in our data and in the global data around influencers is influencers come in all shape and sizes. Right? There are influencers out there who have a thousand followers, and those followers are so engaged to the tune of eighteen percent. Right? So those nano influencers, people who have one thousand to ten thousand followers, they have an eighteen percent engagement rate. And if you guys are ever looking at your employer brand engagement rate and seeing, like, three percent, it's because people believe people. Right? But when we get into that next tier up, micro influencers who are, like, ten thousand to a hundred thousand followers, it's still at a four x of what our employer brand reaches. So, like, it's it's important to have people out there telling your brand story that don't necessarily work with you. That way, you can stop the scroll. And then mid tier influencers have about an eight percent engagement rate, still high. And then the Kim Kardashians and the MrBeasts, they have a five percent engagement rate. Again, it's still higher than a branded employer brand engagement rate. And if anybody out there is seeing more than three percent, please drop it in the comments because I wanna shout you out and congratulate you specifically. It's hard to get people's intent attention. Like, think how fast you yourself scroll past branded posts. Yeah. Minutes, seconds, milliseconds. I I sprained this thumb once with Yep. I'm so I think using those internal and external influences become vital. And Yeah. And Jay, let let's loop you in here because you're a real advocate and championing employer brand at travel and leisure. From your perspective, where would you start to tap into to these influences? Talk a little bit around what you've done here. Yeah. It's I mean so first of all, shout out to Tracy for setting up some of this stuff to make it easy out of the box. But we we have used both the Flockey tool as what where they're where we're using influencers outside the space. But where we're seeing actually some really great engagement on an early pilot, actually, first adopter is utilizing our own employees, which I know we talked about a little bit at the top, to be those influencers for us. So not so much as, like, a referral program, which I think is great. We still have that as one of our chief sources. Right? But how do we use the voices that maybe aren't the recruit recruiter voices? We use some of those. But the people that have great networks or great connections or are visible and are open to sharing why they love working for the organization. Right? So we're almost utilizing our own people, or we are. We are utilizing our own people to be those influencers for us and share their stories, which are very human. They're not scripted. Right? They're they're they're off the cuff. They're UGC. And that's the kind of things that do make you take your thumb for a rest because you wanna hear what the person has to say. And we're seeing some some great earliest success in in in this program that that we're doing amongst other things, but that's the one that that Yeah. That popped to mind. But you didn't start you're not when you started to look, you know, how do you create that sort of influencing network to to to to get your brand out there, You you've not started with loads of people. Maybe talk us through, you know, how have you applied some of of those strategies that Tracy was talking about in your business specifically? You started you started smaller and and look for specific types of people. Maybe talk to the audience around how you chose those those ambassadors effectively in instances. Yeah. Perfect. I think, you know, it's a it's a little bit of I mean, in my role in employer brand, I spend a decent amount of time weekly making sure that our brand is represented correctly. And from that, it's Visunda, let's be honest, the LinkedIn and the other places of the world to ensure that our voice is unified and coming from one place. So I'm looking for those people who who are already representing the brand, whether they know it or not, right, representing us as an employer of choice, talking about their successes, championing themselves or their teams. Right? So I'm on the hunt for those type of individuals, and I'm also looking for a mix that represents a cross section of the org. Right? So we have a lot of sales and marketing people. We have a lot of resort ops people that fall under the travel and leisure umbrella. So I'm looking for those that are that are that are trumpeting why they love being in those places and the successes that them and them teams have had. And then I'm, like, with sort of like a grassroots one at a time, reaching out to them directly and being like, hey. Listen. I know that everyone is tapped and busy in their worlds, but we'd love for you to almost more formally but you're already doing it. So why not add a coded URL to the career site that will give you search results for jobs that you're talking about. Right? So so I you know, it's a it's a one at a time thing. It's finding those that you that are willing to give five, ten minutes. It's not that much of time a week to to help, you know, bring the right talent to the to the community, to our internal work place by using their communities. And if you think about it, right, at least what I found is that people in the talent acquisition space, their their networks are very talent acquisition heavy because those like, that's where they've lived, and that's who they've worked with. And it's also very employee focused because they're people that they've connected with that then they've hired. Right? All great. But the person that's been in sales for twenty five years has a full sales, you know, sales community that they've connected with in a sales network that those are the people that we want to get our name and our brand and, hopefully, our jobs in front of because those are the people that we want to apply and hopefully hire. Yeah. And and they're representing your brand, as you said, anyway. So so, you know, why not why not pick those that that that's have that network and maximize that network? And and it's really cost effective way of doing it. And you've had some great results so far, and and maybe could share some of the early kind of conversion rates. Yeah. I mean, we we were I actually just just was talking about it this morning. So by design utilizing this this program, I don't know if this will come on the screen, but it's called Linkity. So I'll shout out to Linkity for you, Tracy. But but we have ten we've invited ten associates. It's about a fifty fifty mix between people who are in the, I'll say, talent acquisition HR space and then those that are outside of that space, which is which is what we we love to focus. I'll tell you our top our top link getter is is outside of that space. She sits in the marketing space. But we are seeing, because I looked at the numbers this morning, twenty eight percent click through. So if you go back to the slide where it's like the engagement that we're getting, right, by utilizing these people, I think, yeah, we're higher than we're higher than any of those, which is great because we I mean, these people probably sit in the nano influencer space. I don't think we have anyone with more than ten thousand followers. But but, yeah, we are we're doing to that twenty seven, twenty eight percent conversion. Someone just said that they might be hearing an echo, so I'm gonna throw some headphones on just so that we don't have that. No worries. Thanks, Jay. And I think one of the magical things that Jay was talking about that really resonated with us and our team is that he's finding these these nano influencers within his own organization that are in the field. Right? And if you go back to the thesis of people believe people, you build networks. We've all built networks. Right? And we're all look. Nobody gets into talent acquisition without a healthy dose of wanting to help people. Like, we we're the helpers in this space. And one of the things that I've always found is missing if you have employees out there actively talking about how much they love their job in marketing, in developing software, in sales. If they're out there talking about how much they love their job and how much your company has contributed to their success, there is a missing element of tying that back to jobs. Right? We don't wanna make the we don't wanna make the candidate who just watched that amazing video of somebody who's having an amazing day at travel and leisure and then not tie it back to jobs. Right? Which is why this Yeah. Which is why this platform really works for travel and leisure. Yeah. That's fantastic. So, really, there's an opportunity to to harness the brand through through your organization and ensure that the the content awareness is is a shared responsibility. So it's not just like, yeah, I sit in an employer brand of my own, and now I have to to get the word out. I I can share that word, and I can I can I can reach that audience really and the right audience? It's the targeted audience, and I think that's really important. And I think and I think hopefully, the echo's gone. But I think that something that that, at least, I found because, right, you're reaching out to these people that there's a chance you don't even know. Right? Because we have a nineteen thousand person organizations. I know that there's a lot of big organizations that are probably listening on this call. And so you reach out to these people, and you'll find that they are excited and motivated because they want to they want their opportunity to tell the story of why they love working there. Right? So it's yeah. I was I was hesitant at first to think, am I asking people to do extra work? But they're already doing it. They just don't don't don't really tie it that way, but they should. Yeah. And they are. That's fantastic. So, Tracy, one question before we move on. In your from your perspective and seeing others in this space, is there any particular best practice? You know, you showed us some of the numbers in in terms of In the earlier slide around engagement, but but is there any other best practices you wanna raise in terms of of, you know, finding brand ambassadors, you know, finding influencers? Any any other piece of advice on this specific? And and it's something our team does. Like, I think when we first started working with Jay, we sent him a list. I was like, go check these people out. Right? These are these are this is something. You can you can if you can find a candidate on the Internet, you can find an employee in your own company that can be an an influencer, the internal influencer. Right? And that's one of the things, like, you we are all sourcers or we have all sat around sourcers. It's just a sourcing exercise. So make sure you're looking for the the people in your company that have a great following, that are posting frequently. Like, who who's following them? Are they engaging in their community? Are they talking about what it's like to work there? Ask people to raise their hands. Right? Hey. Who's out there on Instagram or TikTok already talking about what it's like to work here? Right? And you can put that message out there, and people will raise their hand. They want to raise their hand because they're already doing this. And I think one of the other things that Jay has done remarkably and some of our other customers have done remarkably, there's just let them do it. Jay, I don't know if you can speak to, like, your brand guidelines and how you train your ambassadors, but most of the time, I'm just seeing this really organic content showing up from travel and leisure creators, from our us other customer creators that are inside the business. And it's not it doesn't feel scripted. It doesn't feel, you know, brand guideline heavy. It feels like you are out there trusting your people within your organization to share the story of the brand. So, Jay, do you have any Yeah. That's so and it's it's such a it's such a hard line to walk. It is. Right? Because you want you want it to feel genuine, but you also want it to stay within the brand the brand that you as an employer brand leader has built have built for probably years. Right? Yes. So I you know, what what I find, at least from my perspective right? So I gave them a a light toolbox. Right? I gave them some social tiles that are I mean, I'm very lucky that I work in a brand that has some beautiful scenery as we look at Positano Yes. Italy. Right? So but some some lightly branded social tiles that are now hiring travel and leisure careers that they can use. They don't have to use them. Some social starter or caption starters, right, like, things that you can think about. But I really would like, I wanna make it as out of the box as possible, but I also, like, don't feel like you have to use that. So it's been a good mix. And I will say something you mentioned a while ago that or a minute ago, Tracy, is we are and it's probably no surprise. Right? A lot of this is heavily done on on LinkedIn. But I will say that I have had the opportunity to have a few people that are utilizing it on Instagram as well, where I think it does feel even more UGC, and they're able to put the link in their in their what's the one across the top? The stories and and showcase their resort or location or whatever. And that's about right now, I think that's sitting at about twenty five percent of our click throughs. So, again, it's a smaller number, but it's also a smaller number of people playing in that space. But I was I was very excited about the the results that we were seeing from that as well. Yeah. And it's a great place to get people. Right? And and when you think about, like, all of the things we're talking about, it really does boil down to authentic storytelling. Right? Like, this is anybody again, the reason that we are putting this power into the hands of actual people is because people believe people and because they're really authentic. And, like, even our Flockey creators, they'll get they'll get data points about travel and leisure. They'll get data points about our customers, and they'll weave those in. But they're gonna weave it in in their own unique way because if it stops sounding like them, it's gonna be a swipe. Right? So it's really important to come to the market with authentic, real true employer branding. Yeah. That that's that's spot on. And we're gonna talk a little bit around some of the things Jay's been doing in a minute in that space. I mean, with the the content creation and the driving of awareness, you you're really also sending people to a destination too. So they're not only promoting your jobs and influencing your brand, you know, that you're trying to get them to to come to your career site. So let's talk a little little bit about that around how do we capture that audience once we've we've promoted who we are and and get them to tap into the network. We want us to to take them somewhere. And I think the career site is a little bit of a bridge on that because that's where you can capture them. So everything that you've created or can be reused as well, like, from a content perspective. But we know that a lot of those candidates and when you're promoting those jobs through Linkity are going to your career site, and that's where they're looking at those roles. So it's really important that when you get there, the journey doesn't stop. And if that particular role isn't ready for them now or isn't the right fit, we need to try and capture them in that one or two minutes that we've got their attention. Because we know they go there, and we know from earlier statistics that a lot of those people are invisible, the idea is you capture as minimal amount of information around them if they don't go on to apply for a job. So having call to actions, having ways to promote them to join your community so you can continue the comfort conversation and influencing them becomes vital. Tracy, I'm throwing to you a little bit before we go on to some of the user generated content that that Jay was talking about. But what has Floquity seen in terms of career site journey? So how you've you you get people there and convert them. Maybe share some of your expertise there. Yeah. So a lot of times, one of our creators will be out there, and they'll be talking about a job family. Right? So a lot of times, our creators don't name drop the brands. They just they're talking to other software engineers and salespeople and and nurses, and they're out there talking about their work and their profession jointly. So sometimes they'll just be like, hey. There's some new jobs in our industry over in my LinkedIn bio, and then they drive directly to the job on the career site. One of the things that we're seeing that is incredibly unique to this experience is that our creator driven traffic is spending three times longer on the career site than any other channel that is driving them there. So it's it's making your career site even stickier when it's coming from a human and external voice in a place that they're already hanging out. And the the traffic that we are driving from Flockity and probably even Linkity, what Jay's using and Linkity as well, is very net new. So they may have never been to your career site before. And so when Fiona talks about it's time to capture that lead, they got there. Somebody that they trust recommended them to your career site. Now they're spending not one to two minutes on it. They're spending up to six to seven minutes on your career site really shopping and learning about who you are. So make sure that you've got that opportunity to capture them because this is very, very top of the funnel traffic that we're driving. Yeah. Absolutely. But they are converting. Like, they are really and that's the that's the thing that we've been gobsmacked by too is that, in very specific roles, specifically around sales, technology, corporate roles, we're converting from click to application at around thirteen percent. Yeah. That's brilliant. Yeah. I think it's important to to realize as well when when they come and you capture them, some of them will convert on immediately because there's opportunities. But others, it becomes part of your pipeline. You've already, you know, used your network to influence to bring people there, to fill that top of the funnel and prior even to the top of the funnel we were talking about before. It's that untapped market. And and they may not quite be ready to work with you. So we don't wanna lose that engagement, and and you don't wanna ignore those individuals that have already shown interest. So you need to keep reinforcing them, nurturing them, and and using that in specific segmented ways. And, again, you can continue that personalized journey with other blog content, with other information specific to that group, whether it be sales, whether it be technology. It's not a kind of a weekly dump. It's a targeted nurture strategy. And we know that pays off because once you get that engagement, you you capture that talent, you convert them. And when they're in your talent community or pipelines, they're not necessarily always ready for a job today, but they will be in the future. And rediscovering them, that talent that you already have, you know, we know that that is more effective. You only need four applications to review in that community versus seventy four from a job board. So you're getting efficiencies. Not only are you getting cost effective ways of driving people to your your brand using your own voice, your your own people's voice very authentically, you're then being able to reuse that in cost effective ways and and and reuse that talent when the the time is right. Tracy, do you have any specific stories around keeping people warm? Like, any advice around that before I go to to talk to Joe about user generated content? Yeah. The the key is is if you know somebody came to you from an influencer, whether it's internal or external, you need to start treating them like you know them because they're gonna start feeling like they know you. Right? That is that is one of those nurture tips and tricks. And every everything that you should be sending into your CRM should have some level of personalization into it. Right? So if you know that this person came to you from TikTok, then you could have nurture strategies that talk about that and then drive them to some of the content that you have on TikTok. Right? Encourage them to be in the platform that you're in and you're creating content in. And if a creator brought them there, particularly, like, an an an employee creator, like Jay's working with the with the Linkity solution, this is where a referral. Right? And it's not necessarily like a traditional referral program. They're not they're not being, you know, maybe compensated on the referral or maybe they are. But this is a referral. We have to treat them special. This is somebody that knows somebody that knows us. And I think that when you get people nurturing and you understand where your traffic is coming from and you understand their motivations, you can start feeding more into that. That niche the niche roles. I think, Jay, you mentioned earlier that you, you had picked sort of sales and certain role types. Was that because there was a large number of those that you go or they're hard to fill? Just curious actually on that point before we move. It's it's a little bit yes. I mean, it's we're we're focused on the roles where we have the most needs. Right? Like, we don't hire, I don't know, a finance auditor because we have, like, three of them. Right? So, you know, that's not a role that we would necessarily look at. But, you know, we look at sort of overarching from a corporate standpoint. Right? So all the corporate roles, and we represent those as a bucket and have a few people that represent those and then are focused on sort of our bigger groups, our sales and marketing group and our resort operations group to and you'll find that, like, some of those resort operations roles, like, those are those are, you know, traditionally hourly roles where where having this influencer marketing in a non LinkedIn place can be, you know, widely successful as opposed to to to some of the other roles specifically. Yeah. No. That's great. So so we've kind of talked a little bit then around having specialist role. Not not as per specialist roles, but groups of roles that that work better in this space, particularly where it creates that network effect and creating communities of talent. So it could be, as you say, sales. It could be software engineers. It could be resort hospitality professionals. It could be nurses. And and I think the key thing is is you're not using generic, just come work for us messaging. You're using their authentic messaging. And research has shown that consistently people trust someone like me rather than trust a CEO or a corporate brand, which means they all have credible voices. I'm going to to to talk we're gonna talk a little bit around how do you get more credible voices through content in in two seconds with Jay around user generated content. But, Tracy, from your perspective, like, how how are you matching or how are you advising clients to match creators to clients, and what does that look like, to get those authentic voices? Well, a lot of times so one of the things that people often forget is that the creator is kind of the hero in the story. Right? They're the ones that hold that trust. They're the someone like me. And so what we what we encourage our customers to do and anybody in the market, if you're looking to partner with an influencer or a creator, it's about finding that creator and that influencer who's aligned with your brand, which is why within our product, the creator chooses what they share. Right? They know their audience. That's why we trust them to to share what their audience is interested in. Right? And we give them just like we give Jay data around his click throughs and where his traffic is coming from. We give that same thing to our creators. Right? So our creators see, oh, I have more sales professionals in my network than I thought. Look at look at all the traffic that I'm driving. I have that more follower. But they really have a deep relationship with their followers because they're engaging with them. They're having conversations. They're in the comment section, having discussions with people that are following them because they are someone like me. So the creator chooses the brand. And the brand can have an opinion on creators, and we allow that. I mean, that's totally fine. But just like our creators, our creators will tell us when we have a new customer that they're like, I will I am so excited to share this brand. I can't wait to share this brand. And then if it's not something that they wanna share, they won't share it. They're not gonna they're not gonna cash in their own network and their own community for something that's not gonna work for their community. Because creators are just like us. They're helpers. Right? They wanna help their community better. Yep. Yes. And, Jay, I know you've been looking at alternative strategies or ways in which to to utilize your communities and how you continue to reach out using different techniques to you know, not just always a polished corporate video or, you know, techniques to actually reach that audience. So maybe you could talk us through some of these generated content that you have or where you've been showing up in alternative ways and building on on that influencer strategy. Yeah. No. Thank you. You know? And it's right? It's finding your own balance. It's finding the you know, what works the best for you and your organization. I think that gone are the days where every video needs to be edited to the hilts and everything needs to be scripted because we've said it a bunch of times. Right? People trust people who are like them and the and their voices being their own voices. Right? So we do a number of different things. Right? We utilize, you know, social media vertical vertical phone phones phone sized videos and and and let the let you know, ask a question, let them answer, and that's like, it is what it is. Right? No no no multiple takes. No editing pieces out. No hard cuts. And I think that that, you know, helps tell our story very authentically from the from the lens of the people working here. We do do you know, we partner with our social media team. So this is the brand social media team who you know? So if they're doing a event or a shoot, like, we go with them. We are we're we're right by their side, and they're shooting stuff to sell vacations. But we're pulling the front desk person that checked us in at the resort that they're shooting at to have a conversation with them about why they love working for her. And so we're able to, you know, kill two birds with one stone and capture that content. We have you know, we do have some YouTube videos that are a little bit more polished and utilizing b roll. But at the end of the day, the interviews, we have our our day in the life series and our memories start with series. Again, we're sitting down with people who have been identified by their leadership as, you know, as having true authentic stories of the company and and having them share their stories and why they love it. And then we're utilizing that on our career site, on our job postings, in social media across all the places so that, you know, we're trying to find the places that people are. Some other things, and I know it's on the it's on the slide in front of us. Right? We you know, a little bit backstory. We decided two years ago that we were moving our corporate headquarters from, if you know the Orlando area over by SeaWorld to right downtown in downtown Orlando and literally across the street from the Kia Center where the Orlando Magic play. And while anyone who's in talent acquisition or HR or employer brand knows that we don't have the budget to sponsor someone like an NBA team. However, we have partnered with the other team that plays in the Kia Center, our Orlando Solar Bears, which is a minor minor league hockey team who have we were able to get a much small a much smaller budget to partner with them. But but through partnering with them, right, we were supporting our low where where we where we are now. Right? We're across the street. We were reaching a a a job seeker who once again was passive. They're not going to a minor league hockey game thinking, oh, I should find a job. But at the same time, right, it's in front of them during the timeouts, and it's on the digital screens or whatever. And so they are, you know, they they are a captive audience. And I and it it has been actually really successful. I won't say that it's translated in a massive amount of hires, but it's been great in in getting our name and our brand and our our message out to an audience. I think there was some stat this was a few years ago that was job seeker has to see or interact with your Tracy's not in, so I'm close. Right? I think it's three or four times before they actually apply. It's higher, I think, now. It's even higher. Now? Alright. Yeah. Seventeen. Yes. They Seventeen. So if they see us on the end boards of the hockey game and they see us on the digital signage and, you know, all the other things, right, we we are able to potentially get in front of them more. So I I think that that's been a really great partnership. And once again, we're supporting our local our local hockey team and our local community in the downtown Orlando area. And I think that it's just been a great partnership, and you'll find, like, that that come to them with ideas. Because right now, we do a career fair game where you buy a ticket. So we're the we're the the title sponsor of the annual Solar Bears career fair game. You buy a ticket to the game. You get to come two hours beforehand, and all the town acquisition teams from their corporate sponsors are there to do a career fair. Standard career fair style. Right? Yeah. And then we do a panel with some of the higher end leaders, and we lead the panel as the as the as the the presenting sponsor for it. But, again, it's a really and then they get to go to the game afterwards. So it's a win win for everyone. I don't wanna talk too much because I wanna make sure we have time for questions, but I will call out the podcast. And it was it was an idea that myself and my cohost Jessica Badlam, who is a director of sales recruitment for the organization here came up with. And we wanted we we think, at least from our perspective, that we have a powerful story to tell because travel is just so ingrained in the world. Right? And so how do we, as an organization, the hospitality and travel organization, you know, layer those stories together? So we're able to through our podcast Work and Wander, we're able to, you know, interview people across the organizations in a multitude of different roles, hear about their career stories, offer offer career tips and tricks, but then we're also able to talk about, like, how travel has impacted their lives, whether it's personal or professional. Right? And who doesn't love hearing about, you know, everyone's travel bucket lists or their best trip that they've ever had. Right? Because it inspires you to then be like, oh, I never thought of gorilla trekking in South Africa, which was a recent episode. Someone did that, and I was like, oh, okay. So, you know, those are some of the things that we're doing that I that I think are low cost and potentially have have a impact. If if it doesn't drive the actual hire, it's driving the, you know, the knowledge of you as a creative employer of choice. That's fantastic. Well, everybody, if you do if you if you can't find on Spotify or Apple, have a come and listen to to Jay's podcast and reach out to us if you can't find it because it's awesome. Thank you, Jay. That's great. Great great great great advice around cost effective ways of user generated content. We might before we wrap up, we'll just touch on some measurements. And then if there are any questions, I know we're quite quite close to time, but we we can see if there's any particular questions. Feel free to add them now if you want to ask Jay or Tracy any specifics. But I just wanted to touch on measurements and and how do we measure what we're doing in this space. So we've invested in content and creative challenge channels with built of audience. And someone wants to ask us, you know, is it working? How do I know it's working? How do I how am I getting the conversion? And I would say traditional metrics that you would usually measure aren't necessarily giving you the full picture. And so what we put here on the screen, is is how we how we we look at those measures. So I might throw quickly to Jay and then to Tracy around his thoughts on how he's been measuring some of these strategies. And then and, Tracy, maybe you can add in some commentary. Yeah. I think, you know, there there's no perfect way. I won't pretend that recruitment metrics are all about applicants to higher ratios like they used to be. Right? But I think it's about impact. So I go back to some of the it's one of the the stats that we were just saying. Like, seventeen times, you gotta you gotta you gotta have someone touch your brand before you get them to apply. Right? So I'm looking for for some volume of interactions and knowing that it might not translate to a hire, and that's okay. Right? I want I want there to be engagement with the brand. And whether it's the Fiona mentioned it, the talent network form where I'm capturing just a little bit of your information, then I'm give sending you with a quarterly recruitment newsletter, whatever it is that might respark you. But I but that's what I'm focused on right now because I think that, you know, in this market, eleven percent of people are looking for jobs. Right? Like, I I need more than eleven percent of people applying to my job. So so, you know, that's that's that's the overarching thing. Yes. Do we wanna see the down funnel results? Of course, we do. Of course. But I don't know that that's the driving factor. Yep. Makes sense. And, Tracy, any thoughts on from your perspective around how to measure the the ROI? If someone says, hey. I want to I want to to get this process going with with influencers, and I want to tap into that audience. You know? What's your advice around ROI or how you measure? Yeah. We we really do measure this as as a top of the funnel awareness thing. So just like Jay was talking about, like, you've gotta be where people are just like he's with the sun bears, which, by the way, great mascot name. Solar bears. The solar bears. Solar bears. Excuse me. Because it's a polar bear that's in the sun, and he has on solar bear. Love that. Love it. But it's it's around making sure that people know that you exist because, again, they have to know you exist. If they don't know you exist, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, oh my god. Is x y z company? Other than me, and I will occasionally wake up and say, is Beyonce hiring? And she's not. So, like, I'm just kinda stuck there. But we wanna see like, we want to introduce your jobs and your organization to new people. So we wanna look at net new visitors. We also wanna look at how long they spend interacting with us. What content are they consuming? What are they engaging with? Are they are they saving this page? Are they opting into our talent community? What are they consuming, and how long are they staying is really what we're looking for. Because if you they don't know you exist, you're never gonna get them in the first place. Yep. Absolutely. I think being able to see is not a linear journey. We know that. It's not. And we saw at the beginning, it's like a in a fit sixty million infinity loops to to to nurture individuals. And, you know, having that constant visibility on your website, having the constant content, having that nurture metrics. And and and and also actually showing up. I'll just touch on the end before we kind of wrap up and throw to questions. We do have a couple come in. You know, it is important that you you you show you're showing up in every possible channel, not just your your influence network, but but content that you're getting out is being prioritized, especially now with Gemini and ChatGPT. You know, you want the real content to be resonating and up there. So it's important to measure so that you can change and be agile with your strategy, and and that's what we do. So last question before I throw. I do have one question here to share before we wrap. But if anybody's kind of watching today and they're relying on, say, I say more traditional ways of finding talent where we just all they do is job boards or they have a limited budget or they're unsure of what to do. What's your one piece of advice you want to share with them to make the first move? I'll start first with you, Tracy, and then throw it to Jay. Yeah. I your first activity is finding internal influencers. The lowest hanging fruit are the people that already work inside your four walls. And if you ever need help identifying who those people are, you drop into my LinkedIn DMs, and I will tell you how to do this. Like, this is you go find them, because the people who are gonna tell the best story about your brand are the people that already work with you. As you expand that and you start testing the waters and what that term delivers, then it's a smart move to go external. Right? We've we've kind of worked out kinks with our own people so we know how to brief and instruct external people. And you just start by sourcing them. You find your own people. Great. And, Jay, any final words of wisdom before I throw out the questions? So find find those people and then put a phone in front of them that I mean, and that say, why do you love working here? Like, that's it can be that it can be that simple, and it can be forty five seconds and get get it out in front of the world. However And I know that everyone has different rules around who and what can do that, but figure it out and and get that in front of them and do it with the next person and the next person. And soon, you'll see a trend of people sharing why they love working there. Yeah. I love that. Start small. Well, thank you both for joining me today. It's been fantastically, fantastic to have you and have a have a conversation about such an interesting topic. We do have a couple of questions. I'll just throw to one, and this one came in from somebody who works in a a state government and said, do you think this will work for government employees? So I'll I'll throw it to you, Tracy, while Jay's thinking. But that that was the first question. So, obviously, some people on the line that work in the government sector. We have a massive government con we have a massive government contractor that's already using Flockey, and it works. There you go. And they have a lot people Yeah. It's really dependent on the type of it's really dependent on the types of jobs. Right? So I will be very clear with everybody. We have struggled with Flockity of finding frontline hourly influencers who are speaking positively about the job. So, like, if you're working in retail and you're working in food service, it's very hard to find people on the Internet talking about how much they love working in retail and food service, which is kind of a requirement to be part of our influencer community. Right? Like, you have to actually like your job and be talking about how to get better at your job. So but we like I said, large government contractor, they're getting a lot of nice traffic from us that's net new, that's never been to their career site before. They're staying around long. So I think it could work, but I'd like to learn a little bit more. So if you wanna hit me up on LinkedIn, that's where I'm at. Excellent. I think we're nearly nearly at time. Maybe one last question. What what would you say to be aware of, Tracy, like, in terms of any potential errors or things where it could go wrong? Like, where people have come and said, oh, this isn't gonna work or objections to it where you've had to sort of say, no. This is fine. Have you had any of those in terms of starting to work with with creators and influencers? Absolutely. Absolutely. The the number one question we get is, what if they say something mean about us? And I was like, okay. Why would they do that? So first of all, why would they do that if they were gonna say something mean? They wouldn't pick to promote your job. Yeah. That is never gonna happen. And then we get questions about, like, what about the comment section? We've not seen a negative comment in the two years that we've been doing this for our creators. People are genuinely happy to see jobs that they can do in a new place. Right? So, and the other one that I get all the time, like, oh, we could never we could never get somebody. Like, we could never get this through. We're we're just so risk averse. We have banks. We have government contractors. The reasons this is not risk averse is because there is limited risk. These are professional creators. These are professional helpers out there. They they're not interested in causing you problems, and they've been vetted by our team, and they're continuously vetted. We did have one creator have a typo in somebody's, brand name, and we found it instantaneously. And we reached out the creator, and we said, hey. Can you update this thing here? They did it within ten minutes, and it was down, and it was fixed. So they care, and we care, and our customers care. So it's this kind of triangle of goodness, so to speak. But, yeah, we get the what if they say something bad? I'm like, why would they do that? You haven't experienced that yet, have you, Jay? No. Jay, have you experienced this? Never. No. Yeah. Why would they say anything mean about you? Exactly. Exactly. There's nothing there's nothing I mean to say. Yeah. Exactly. Well, I think we're pretty much out of time. If after today, you reflect and you want to ask some further questions, all of us are available on variety of different channels, including LinkedIn or just direct message. You heard the message today. The talent you need is out there, and they're not necessarily looking. So use your communities, use your user generated content, Get them to engage with your brand and and get them to to register interest for learning more, and you will start a journey of cost effectively, getting great talent into your business. And let give it a go. Thank you very much, Tracy and Jay. It's been a pleasure speaking with you, and have a good late afternoon, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye.