EP40: Eric Tagarel, Manager of Talent Acquisition and Programs for MCG Health
Podcast Transcript
James Mackey 0:00
Hello, and welcome to Talent Acquisition Trends & Strategy. I'm your host, James Mackey. And today we are joined by Eric Tagarel. Eric, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
Eric Tagarel 0:20
Great. Thanks for having me on.
James Mackey 0:22
Yeah, thanks for being here with us today. Before we jump into it, could you please share a little bit about your background with everybody?
Eric Tagarel 0:29
Sure. Hey, everybody, my name is Eric, I'm born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and moved out to Seattle. And that was where I reside. For the last 13 years, I've had some decent experience in the talent acquisition field working for AWS and Oracle, and Microsoft. And now I'm actually with a company called MCG health who is currently owned by Hearst Health or Hearst organization, I'm sure most of you know them by the magazines and newspapers that they own. I have about three people on my team now for talent acquisition, and with a company size of just over 400. So looking to continue to grow.
James Mackey 1:06
For sure. And so right now, I would consider like four or 500 people as a growth stage, sort of right? Or how would you define where you are in terms of the business lifecycle?
Eric Tagarel 1:18
I would say we're more like steady growth, we're very strategic about when we open roles based on you know, not extending ourselves too far. Obviously, the one thing that we hate to have to do is to bring out a bunch of people and then down the road going, we don't you know, too, we have too many now we have to let you know, lay anybody off. So we're very strategic about our thinking when it comes to that. So one of the great things that appealed to me about this organization was that it wasn't just going out there and hiring as many as you can. And then six months to a year later, I'm sorry, we have to let half of you go, you know, we don't like doing that.
James Mackey 1:52
Right. It's not the venture capital playbook. Right? I mean, honestly, it seems like most of the category leaders in tech, at least follow that strategy, right? It's like, they're so aggressive when it comes to growth and hiring. And a lot of the time they'll sacrifice every core metric like we were talking about finance earlier, right? Like all the core like revenue, and finance metrics, just to staff up and try to accelerate growth. But then it's like when the market turns they're aggressive in the other direction, right? Cut deep.
So yeah, from a cultural perspective, I feel like many times, it's better to work at companies that are a little bit more critical about growth. Well, I don't know if critical is the right word, but they're just kind of past that, like an earlier stage where there's all that volatility. You can learn a lot about those companies that do a lot of the cuts, it's like very high growth in terms of individuals as well. But yeah, I feel like, from a cultural perspective, there's just no comparison, right, like working at a stable company that's been around a little bit longer.
Eric Tagarel 2:58
Well, I mean, I'd look at the high growth companies a lot of times as their high growth for a temporary amount of time, and then eventually, there's no growth, you know, because they grew too fast, too much, and didn't have enough. You know, it's like I said, I know, it takes a lot of forethought, and a lot of critical thinking to look to the future. I mean, for example, we're right now just finishing up our budget meetings last week and looking for 2023.
And, what do we want to spend next year budget-wise on headcount? Obviously, that's big, you know, talent acquisition, that's who, you know, sounds good for me, most people don't really care. But, you want to take your time and think it through. Because it's not just a job, these are people's lives that you're messing with. I can't tell you how many times I've seen on LinkedIn this year, people who had their visas get transferred. And then before they even started, they were told, oops, sorry, we're pulling out your offer. And they have maybe a month to find another job and talk about stress. I'm sorry, that's way too stressful.
James Mackey 4:02
Yeah, I mean, that's it. People get, like, kind of tied into some of the big salaries at these companies. So let's say for a recruiter, right, you can make it. I'm just pulling numbers out of nowhere, but like a 115 K salary, but at a stable company, right? Or you got like a company, a very high growth company, that's like, Alright, we're gonna pay you one ad, right? Like something ridiculous where, you know, like, people are like, Oh my god, like I made it. And so you get that paycheck and you're really excited about that. But then like three months later, the market turns into the first to get cut. Because you're at such a high rate your rap rates are even more expensive than that when you take into consideration benefits and tax and all these types of things. Right.
So money matters a lot, I mean, that's why we're working right? I get it! But also you have to think about sustainability a little bit sometimes if it's a priority for you, and if you're gonna go for the biggest paycheck, then a lot of the times you are gonna have to trade that in for some level of stability. Right. That's a generalization, obviously, but it's just something for people who are listening in if you're recruiting, right? Like, you got to think about that, like, if you're working for a high growth company, and they're throwing money at you. It's just something to think about, as you're considering your options, right?
Eric Tagarel 5:27
Well, absolutely. I mean, you know, money is great. Trust me, as you said, that's what we are, that's why we work. That's why we log into our computers every day and or go to our desks if that's what you're doing, you know, but you know, at the end of the day, you have to stop and think about, okay, money would be great, but How stable is this? Am I going to have a job in six months?
I have to say, the great thing about working here is that there is stability, like I said, we don't rush into a decision to open up your headcount. Obviously, if somebody's leaving, that's something that we will definitely always backfill. I have never seen a no-op since I've been here and nobody's left, you know. And to be honest, something's really rare that I haven't seen in a long time is I think we've had three people retire at this company since I've been here, which is like, which is great. You know, it's not like, Oh, I don't want to move on to something else. I didn't like working here. It was, hey, I've hit that spot in my career where I'm done. I just want to, you know, sit on the beach with a book. And that's about all I want to do all day, you know, and as I said, it's rare to hear about retiring anymore.
James Mackey 6:34
Yeah, for sure. That's great. And I saw too, on your LinkedIn profile, you have experience working at Oracle, Microsoft, and some pretty big enterprise companies as well. So you have that experience under your belt, too.
Eric Tagarel 6:50
Yeah. Working with Oracle was definitely interesting. It was always really gung ho, I mean, I was working for Oracle Cloud, which was the cloud side of the business. And I started working there in the fall of 19. And I was managing the entire recruiting coordination team, which was about five people at that time and then expanded it to about 27 people worldwide, but it's on my left lash. But yeah, a lot of times, it was, like I was saying before, just go out and hire, you know, hire all these people, you know, and it wasn't a lot of strategy in how they were going to do it. It was just going higher, and you go bonkers for nine months out of the year. And then all of a sudden, we hit our hiring goals, we hit the top of the budget. So now we're on a hiring freeze, which I'm sure a lot of people have seen as candidates, you know, before, oh, Oracle's in a hiring freeze, and they're not hiring anymore. And for my team, it went from going 1000 miles an hour to going five miles an hour, so.
James Mackey 7:53
That's how it is in recruiting, right? It's like, we never get it like this, or maybe in your company because it sounds a little bit more established, mature. But I feel like, for most recruiters, it's like, alright, either we're stressed out completely because there's not a lot of hiring demand. And we're like, so worried about job security, too, then like this massive kind of whiplash where we're like in the other direction, and we have way too many wrecks on our plate. It's just, it's so few and far between it feels like when you get that sweet spot in the middle, right?
Eric Tagarel 8:24
Yeah, I mean, and it's hard to find that. I mean, we're not the best at it either. There are times where we go through a few months, where there's just nothing new coming in, we're just doing our backfills and replacement, you know, candidates and such like that. It can be slower and quieter. But then, we get other months where we get some extra money. Let's go ahead and open up a couple of new roles. So it is a roller coaster. Personally, I'm a very proactive person. And probably working in recruiting is probably the dumbest idea ever came up with because it's so reactive a lot of times, and I try to get an advantage anywhere I can and try to be proactive. But
James Mackey 9:10
Did you start out recruiting at Amazon?
Eric Tagarel 9:16
Yes, I did some work as an HR with Amazon when I first started back in 2015 is like forever ago now. But doing work authorization for the HR team. And then just got myself dabbling in recruiting coordination and really enjoyed working with the candidates. And I was lucky enough to work on the leadership team at AWS. And just, you know, really nice to be able to help out some really high caliber candidates that we had come into the company so
James Mackey 9:45
That was a great experience. So you have a lot of really cool experiences. So I'm excited to get your perspective on everything today. And so it sounds like you're also thinking about scaling your team currently, particularly as we head into Q4. What's the structure of your current Talent Acquisition team and how are you thinking about scaling out your org?
Eric Tagarel 10:12
Currently, I have two full-time recruiters on my team, I have a senior recruiter and a recruiter as well. And our contract recruiting coordinator, we're still trying to hash out the job duties of the recruiting coordinator, kind of get a more standardized process for them. Just the company has not had one before and as a former recruiting coordinator, of course, I'm going to go ahead and champion that all the way but you know, working on standardized processes for them so that they know what they're doing every day and day out. But, we're looking at a lot of our tech roles that are handled by, you know, an agency. So obviously, there's a premium that we're paying for those candidates, they do what they want to do, a lot of temp to hire.
At the end of the year, we're going to be spending a lot more money than it would cost us to get a technical recruiter on board. I think if the trends are continuing, we figured out it probably costs us three technical recruiters a year to go to the agencies, having to do temp to hire. So we do eventually want to hire a technical recruiter, three recruiters, and maybe even a fourth, if you know I'm in the middle of doing workforce planning for next year. See what each team is going to get approved for headcount-wise. And then, what is our expected attrition rate, because that's always going to have to figure in, you know, because we gotta do recruiting for that as well. And I try not to do too much recruiting as a manager, you want to focus on more of the project work, and especially when your manager gives you the proverbial hand slap and says, Eric, stop recruiting, you can let your team do that.
James Mackey 11:48
Yeah. Like the fastest way to get burnt out right? When you do 2 roles in one, right?
Eric Tagarel 11:54
It's fun, I want to try to do at least one at a time. So it kind of keeps, you know, breaks up some of the other stuff to do like, yeah, go talk to a bunch of people today.
James Mackey 12:03
Work out that muscle a little bit.
Eric Tagarel 12:08
I don't want to get rusty. Yeah.
James Mackey 12:09
I hear you know, it's scary to go hands-off. It's scary, right? Because it's like, just completely letting go of that skill set. I mean, I've been hands-off for a while now. I did it in the middle of COVID. Like the early days of COVID. I jumped backhand because I had to. Was brutal. But you know, they keep changing like Greenhouse, for instance, right? Just do this interface overhaul like, I went in there the other day, and I was like, What happened I can't find anything. Like, it happened so fast, and you just step out for like a year or two, and recruiting technology is just changing so fast.
Eric Tagarel 12:49
I know. When they changed the most recent interface that they changed up, we had a link on our Greenhouse page for our internal job board. And they push it all the way to the bottom. And I had so many emails, like questions from the entire company, like, Where's our internal job board? Where did it go? And I'm looking forward to and I'm like, I don't know. That's the worst thing to say. I hate saying that. As a manager, like, let me get back to you.
James Mackey 13:14
Right. That's when you want those questions to come via email. So you don't have to answer on the spot. Send questions through email, so I have 24 hours to figure things out. Please try.
Eric Tagarel 13:27
I tried to. I'm like, Please hold your questions. Please email me. I'm busy.
James Mackey 13:34
For sure. Hey, so one topic we haven't talked about on the show is just like the role description of a recruiting coordinator. So maybe we could slow down there. I know, that wasn't on the initial agenda. But I think it's a good value-add we can give to the community.
So how would you structure it right? What are the three outcomes you're trying to drive, the top outcomes you're trying to drive? And then what is the day-to-day? How are you building it out for your current recruiting coordinator? What have you seen work in the past as you scaled out teams for the function? What do you think?
Eric Tagarel 13:59
Yeah, I mean, the first thing I'm going to tell you about recruiting coordinators is that they are the frontline of candidate experience for any organization. They do a lot more than I think a lot of people understand or think that they do. It is not an easy job.
As a recruiting coordinator, you basically have three customers, if you want to say. You have your candidates, obviously, that you're working on, you have the recruiters that you're working with, and also the hiring managers and hiring team. So you have three different customers basically that you are trying to basically keep all in line at the same time. It takes a lot of skills and highly organizational skills. I mean, it's definitely one of the things that I look out for when I want to hire someone. And you know, obviously calendaring is huge. Thankfully, Greenhouse has connections to everyone's Microsoft Outlook. calendar. So we were able to piece that together. And it's easier than just emailing like we used to do in the old days. I don't know if the old days are like three years ago, but
James Mackey 15:10
This is how fast this stuff is evolving, right? Like, you step out for a minute, and then you think I don't know anything anymore.
Eric Tagarel 15:17
Yeah, I mean, so for us the most things, you know, I leave it up to the recruiter to decide if they want the recruiting coordinator to schedule their own phone screens, as I always like to do their initial phone screens with them. But I usually make sure that the hiring manager's phone screens and the interview loops are scheduled by the recruiting coordinator. I make sure that they are involved in the kickoff calls or the interview kickoff so that they can be introduced if anybody on the hiring team has any questions in regard to this universal scheduling. They know who to reach out to and have a point of contact, I think that's very, very important.
The day-to-day is honestly working with candidates on their schedules and making sure they marry them up to you know, the current calendars. And I think the one thing that has made the recruiting coordinator job easier is definitely the virtual world that we live in right now, where we do everything virtually through interviews, we don't have to have them come in and figure out play a giant game of Tetris and try to figure out how it's all going to fit back to back to back to back to back with no breaks, you know, from start to finish. And, I remember those times before, that were extremely difficult. And now we can spread them out over two or three days. You know, it makes it easier. But yeah, they're the lifeblood of recruiting. So if anybody tells you otherwise, they don't know what a recruiting coordinator does, hate to say.
James Mackey 16:40
I gotcha. Do you ever have a recruiting coordinator do the sourcing motions for recruiters or do you just segment that out as well? What do you think?
Eric Tagarel 16:50
I have it in the past if that's something that they're interested in doing if it's an interest of theirs. I would say recruiting coordination has three paths that can go in, obviously, recruiting is one of them, they can go on to continue moving on in their career in that other one program or project management is usually a good next step because honestly, a candidate is basically a project from start to finish, you know, so the program or project, you're managing a project every day. Or executive assisting.
I've seen a lot of recruiting coordinators go into being executive assistants, obviously, because of their skills with the calendar. Those executives owe me. So let them know their calendars really well, so they have no idea and I've seen some of them in my eyes just go cross-eyed. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, obviously, that's the main, the main career paths, but I mean, I only want to push it on them, if that's something that they're interested in, to kind of give them idea, you know, have them assist the recruiter with finding some good candidates, and I have done it in the past. And some of them found it really interesting. And some were like not for me. So it's okay. I'm good.
James Mackey 18:00
So what are your thoughts on the sourcing position? Like, I feel like the more talent coordinators you have, the fewer sourcers you likely need. Because your recruiters then have more time to do a full lifecycle. So do you have any advice on like, ratio breakdown of the team like full lifecycle recruiters, talent coordinators, sourcers?
Maybe that's a loaded question because it's obviously dependent upon the environment. But what do you think about the different roles within talent acquisition? And, how to think about ratios in terms of headcount?
Eric Tagarel 18:34
I think when it comes to a sourcing role, I think it's really going to depend on the volume of hiring that needs to be done. Obviously, you can only, you know, bog down and recruit with so many wrecks and some of the open jobs. And if it's just, you know, hey, they're supported. That's all they have to support that entire department, but they have, you know, 40,50 open roles, and then absolutely you know, a sorcerer is going to help them bring in some extra good candidates.
I think it's also good, if you start identifying hard-to-fill roles, I will tell you that we're lucky here at MCG. The vast majority of people apply on their own we posted on LinkedIn, or Indeed, we post our open roles and they just know MCG. You know, we used to be a company called Milliman care guidelines. So it's very well known to a lot of hospitals and doctor's offices and such like that using our products. And, overall, I think we have good word of mouth, but you know, other companies, you have to really go out there and find some good candidates.
I think, eventually, we're going to have to do that when I start bringing the technical recruiting in-house for here that we're probably going to possibly have a sourcing recruiter as well, to help bring in some really good candidates to find but I personally think that depends on the volume, you know, and identifying those hard to fill roles.
James Mackey 19:57
Yeah, you know, I feel like I haven't mastered the sourcing motion. Like we provide sourcers to our clients. If they want them, then we'll plug them into their talent acquisition motion. But when we've tried to build out sourcing teams at SecureVision, where it's like they're supporting our recruiters, we've never really gotten the ROI that we expect to get. And it ends up like the cost to value, like, it just doesn't usually add up. I mean, I don't know, maybe that's just because we're younger, we're with contractors all in, we're probably around 40 people. Maybe for like a 2000-person company, and had all that process built out, it'd be different. Like usually our clients that have sourcing partners, they're bigger, they're like, around 2000 employees, right? Like, usually we don't see that at like 500 employees. Usually, there are exceptions, right? But it's just interesting, right?
I've seen better success, just having full lifecycle recruiters like they're working on a lower volume amount of wrecks, and they're managing full lifecycles. And I almost liked the concept of having talent coordinators too for candidate experience. And then having recruited his work full lifecycle. I just feel like, first off, there are two points, you're not introducing a third contact to a candidate, there's that just adds another layer of like, just everybody has to be aligned, there are more meetings, right, there are more opportunities for shit to slip through the cracks, like just simplifying it to two people versus three, I feel like there's a lot of efficiency there.
And the recruiters they're speaking with the hiring managers, they understand the business outcomes better. They're typically more senior, like all of those translate into response rates and acceptance rates that I feel like are going to be stronger than segmenting outsourcing. It's like the difference between being a full lifecycle account executive, right? And the sales side and doing your own prospecting. Like, I'd rather if I was a salesperson, I want to manage end to end. And then I want help with getting proposals in place and getting agreements out. Like, maybe if it's technical, maybe like pre-sales, or, yeah, like technical sales support, right? You know, sales engineer, someone like that. But, like, pipeline management experience management, right? Like that. Typically, I think you see the best experiences when you have somebody seeing your managing and end, you know what I mean?
Eric Tagarel 22:37
I totally agree. And I think, you know, from my point of view, I think, especially, I think a sorcerer is definitely needed for roles, like I said, like hard to fill roles, or roles, where you're going to have a lot of passive candidates, people who are not actually looking or not on the job market, you know, they don't have the little thing on LinkedIn that says, Open to work, you know.
There's a couple of times, we've had to go back to the drawing board on a few roles and say, Okay, we got to source a little bit because either A, we're not finding what we need and the initial applications that we're getting in, or maybe we're getting to about the hiring manager phone screen, and not quite what they're looking for. And, we've sourced, and thankfully, because we don't have that high volume, our recruiters can do that on their own and, you know, prospect and stuff like that, which is great.
But I said like, for other organizations that are larger, higher volumes, I think that's definitely something that and it's a good answer, good introduction for someone to want to work their way up through the ranks in recruiting and say, Okay, well, I was a sourcing recruiter, now I'm a full lifecycle recruiter. Oh, now I'm a senior recruiter, you know, it's a great stepping stone for them. So if somebody wants to go from a talent coordinator to, you know, recruiting eventually.
James Mackey 23:50
I think the way I see it is like, you better have a very rock-solid process baked into tech, to ensure that nothing is slipping. Right? Like if you're, if you're gonna go with a sourcing role you really have to be very well organized and, you know, have all the right materials in place, a process in place to ensure that you keep your response rates or candidate experience everything to where it should be. Again, we have sourcing partners that are like, embedded with customers.
But we used to have a back office sourcing team that kind of went to whatever clients had the hardest to fill roles, or we were having trouble getting coverage. We would kind of plug that team in. And actually this year, we made the decision to not move forward with that motion anymore. Like we still have billable sourcing partners, but we don't have the back-office sourcing function anymore. That's like the ad hoc one. So yeah, I mean, it's curious. It's like a constantly evolving function at SecureVision. But again, yes, it's been hard to find the real ROI for us specifically.
Eric Tagarel 25:05
And I think recruiting overall it's always evolving, it's always changing. I can sit there and say something to you today, six months down the road, it could be completely different, our outlook, you know. So, it's always something that you just have to be prepared for anything to come at you. Anytime I open my laptop on Monday morning, I'm like, AND..you know, either it's going to be something crazy or something just like, okay, that's standard. It's normal, you know.
James Mackey 25:31
For sure. Hey, just high level, I know we wanted to talk a little bit about D&I and what metrics and how you're tackling that. But if we could just take a step back first,
Could you tell us about your tech stack? It sounds like you're using Greenhouse. Are you using tools like Gem and SeekOut? Are you using different job boards? What's your full stack from like, sourcing to offer, maybe even your HRS? What does it look like?
Eric Tagarel 25:59
So hrs definitely is Oracle. We're using HCM for that. Not a particular personal fan of it. But actually, to be honest, I just had a demo today with Workday. And I was like, Oh, this looks so pretty on screen, I can do so many. But we do use the Greenhouse as our main point for everything.
So when we post jobs, they go live, they go to LinkedIn, and they also go on Indeed, I do go directly to Indeed to work with a lot of the roles that they don't always transfer over very well through Indeed. But we actually end up getting most of our applicants through the Indeed postings. Anytime I post something there. I will tell you, my recruiters will message me, they're like, Did you update the role in Indeed? Because it gives you like salary ranges and benefits. And so when it goes out right away, it basically just kind of gives the basic shows, then you can link you to apply to our website. But if you go in and make sure you add things like the benefits that we offer, you know, if it is remote, and then the salary range as well. It's like, once you get that hit that salary range in there, you get a tonne of applications.
James Mackey 27:24
Okay, well, that's a secret you have to go in and like, manually edit it. We used it a few years ago. I invested in Indeed. I mean, at the time, it felt like a lot of money, but it really wasn't too much. But we were spending like three grand a month with them. And it was like they had their customer success team helping us customize our JDS and do all this stuff. For us, we did not hit at all. And I don't know if that's because it's more tech industry-focused. I don't know.
Eric Tagarel 27:57
Yeah, I mean, we do all that, we do everything there. So it's not just our tech roles. I mean, I just posted a role for a senior financial analyst this morning. And, I honestly think having the salary range, because I think it helps people kind of go, Maybe I'm not quite there yet, or Ooh, wow, you know, look, I'm right in their wheelhouse, you know, what they're looking for. But quality not is not always there. Unfortunately, that's kind of where the trait I mean, it's like that name thing in recruiting, you're gonna either get, you're gonna get quality and not a lot of applications. Are you getting a quantity and a tonne of applications? But you do get options and give us something to look through. And thankfully, I have some amazing recruiters who either go Oh, not fit for this one that, here's that one here. You know, we can check them for this wreck, they might actually be a better fit for that one, stuff like that.
James Mackey 28:59
So where do your hires come from? What would you say is your top source?
Eric Tagarel 29:06
I would definitely say Indeed. I mean, the most simple one to apply. I mean, we get some good ones with LinkedIn. There's a role that I'm recruiting for right now. It's a project manager for my team. I'm under the umbrella here at MCG. We are rebranded to people and culture so it's my team and talent acquisition, Human Resources team, we're all together and we're looking for a project manager. I will say though, that with that role, I got two really good ones out of LinkedIn that were my best ones. We're in the final stages with three candidates right now, and two of them actually reached out to me on LinkedIn so yay, thank you for the finals. Okay, good. I know, I'm good at my job. Thanks.
James Mackey 29:49
So are you using any database tools like SeekOut or email cadences or anything like that?
Eric Tagarel 29:57
No. It's pretty much just word of mouth. And I always tell my recruiters and I'm like, if you open something posted on LinkedIn, make a separate posting, you know, share it on your LinkedIn page with all of your connections. And I think LinkedIn has been a great resource, especially nowadays, people just reaching out and like me, you'd like something. And if it's you may not be connected, but all their connections, we'll see that they like that. Ooh, you know, it just, it ends up just being a whole broad network of people that, you know, will look at your job. So that is great.
James Mackey 30:28
I totally agree. And so let's get into D&I real quick. So what are the metrics? What I'd really love to talk about, like tactics, implementation, metrics, outcomes, just really diving into actionable things that people can take away from this convo.
Eric Tagarel 30:48
Absolutely. So the first thing that we do when it comes to D&I, we use a company called Textio. And basically, we run our job descriptions through them. So they basically look through and make sure we're being equal on both sides, not too masculine or not too feminine or anything like that. Making sure we're using the right words and we get a score at the end, I like to usually kind of track where we were to start, where we finished off after we ran it through. It's usually a pretty stark contrast, which means you have to kind of go back and look and say, Okay, maybe we need to work on writing our job descriptions in a more diverse way, which is fine. We learned that over time. So that's the first thing that we do.
James Mackey 31:32
Just real quick, the name of that tool so people can check it out?
Eric Tagarel 31:38
It's textio.com
James Mackey 31:43
Cool. Thank you. I just wanna make sure people got that.
Eric Tagarel 31:47
They are based here in Seattle, too. So I think they're actually next door. But yeah, it's a great tool that gives me some insight when, especially when going through the job descriptions, or even the job postings and going, Oh, okay, we missed the spot there, I can see where we could do that better. So me, for me, personally, I take that and, you know, we'll apply it to the next one. So just make sure that our other job postings and job descriptions are continually getting more diverse as we go along.
One of the things that we worked on, and that I think we got implemented was I worked with a company called diverse job boards.com. And they're actually owned by a company called Cerca. And what this company does is, they will take the jobs that you have posted on your website, basically, for us, it's an MCG Health website, and they will post it to diverse job boards all over the country. So you know, things for like that focus on veterans or African Americans or Asian Americans or anything, you know, Latinos, and the LGBTQ community, of course, after making sure that we're, you know, showing them number one, that we support diversity 100%. And our initial goal for that was, you know, that, hey, we only have at least 75% of our jobs posted. I came back to the CEO, and I said, Well, how about 100? Does that work for you? 100%, he's like, yes, that's just totally fine.
So anytime something new comes up, it does get posted. And they did pick it up. And they posted, basically, everywhere all over the country. So it's nice to see when it comes through the greenhouse as it is because we do have an implementation with them. And there'll be a little notation on there as a circle. So I know that came from a diverse job board. So we're having diverse candidates come through.
James Mackey 33:32
You know, what percentage of applicants are coming from that service?
Eric Tagarel 33:37
We're actually working on that right now, trying to realize we didn't have the most advanced package with Greenhouse. So even though there's data in there, we can't access all of it yet. So I'm in the process of actually negotiating with greenhouse too, for obviously, upgrading our contract, so that we can have access to all that data and provide that, which is why I'm really looking forward to that.
James Mackey 34:02
Yeah, for sure. We had a couple of our more recent guests we talked about, like Google, Business Intelligence package to kind of sit on top of Greenhouse or Tableau. There's just a game site, I think, as well. So there are some good tools, too, that some companies starting at around 500 employees are starting to look into to even extract more data. And some of them, some of them have, like data analysts working on it.
But I heard from one leader, you don't need the data analyst to start, like, just get it up and running. And you can pull some reports. And then like, as the team grows, you can actually have a full-time data analyst. But I also think the tech is getting better now to where it doesn't necessarily require a full-time person. But yeah, there are all sorts of interesting ways to pull better data. I mean, Greenhouse I think does a better job than a lot of the ATS providers, but there are definitely pretty cool tools out there. Like if I had an unlimited budget, I would have a team of data analysts working here.
Eric Tagarel 35:04
I do have an HR data analyst on the team and she and I connect on a weekly basis. And I always go to Shannon, I need something like she's the guru. And I'm like, Oh, you're the best, I love it. It's like, I just need something like, you know, we're looking for, she helps you with figuring out, you know, what our salaries are for a particular role, especially if it's a new role that we haven't recruited for in the past, you know, that we haven't documented and we're creating something new to kind of give me an idea of what you know, the, they just finished up doing an entire salary review. That took forever because the company that we're working with, took their sweet time signing the contract.
So it just got finished for 2022, which is basically just in time for us to do 2023. But yeah, we have one and she's amazing. And I told her about what the expert package looks like at Greenhouse, and I totally just made her probably month or year, whatever. So she's looking forward to having that bi integration, so she can create some more dashboards.
James Mackey 36:07
Oh, yeah. So you're gonna get a data tool stack on top?
Eric Tagarel 36:11
I think so. Yeah, that's the goal. We use HCM, obviously, for a lot of things, but I told them, whatever BI you're using, we can integrate that with the greenhouse. And so once we get an extra package, as long as they approve me for it, so I could spend some money.
James Mackey 36:29
Well, yeah, the Greenhouse extra pack, that's not going to cost too much. I think it's more the BI tools that can be kind of expensive, right? Greenhouse, I mean, that's not a huge increase in cost, right?
Eric Tagarel 36:40
Yeah, I was kind of hoping that we would get Workday because Greenhouses is an amazing integration with Workday. And basically, all my stuff goes into everything that we do in the greenhouse just automatically goes over there. And I can manipulate the data, however, I want to, you know, pull graphs and reports and everything, and I was looking forward to that. So hopefully, fingers crossed that the recruiting, recruiting fairy will say, Yes, we can have.
James Mackey 37:04
Fingers crossed as well, I hope it works out. Well, hey, look, we're actually coming up on time. So I think we're gonna have to call it if we go into any other topics. It's just going to be kind of rushed. So yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for joining me today on the show. And before we sign off, if people want to follow you online, engage with you. What's the best way to get in touch?
Eric Tagarel 37:31
The best way to get in touch is through my LinkedIn profile. It's open to everybody. So just go ahead and look me up. Happy to have chats with anybody about anything that maybe needs any insights into recruiting. Or if you're looking to work with MCG, happy to see if we have anything that might help you out.
James Mackey 37:49
Oh, for sure. That sounds really good. Thanks for joining me today.
Eric Tagarel 37:53
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it!
James Mackey 37:55
For sure. And for everybody else, thank you for joining us, and we'll talk to you next time. Take care.