EP029 - What is quiet hiring and how to hire passive candidates with Austin Chan of RemoteGoGo
About the episode
This episode focuses on the shiny new trend: quiet hiring. It is always hard to find people not actively looking for a job. How can we connect employers, recruiters, and headhunters? How to find candidates passively? To discuss, I have Austin Chan, founder of RemoteGoGo, which helps recruiters and companies to find passive candidates.
About the guest
Austin is a software engineer turned solopreneur and founder at RemoteGoGo, an online platform aggregating recruitment agencies and individual recruiters. He helps remote-first companies hire undiscovered passive candidates globally and help recruiters or staffing agencies get clients.
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
Quotes from the show
The future of your company is really shaped by the people you hire. When your employee fit with or contribute to your culture, they are likely to make better decisions and have better productivity. They are also likely to stay with your company longer. The more you invest in hiring, the more you can save on recruitment with lower retention costs.
Companies need to invest in a transparent work culture to reach passive candidates. With transparency, candidates would feel like they are already working for that company just by looking at their blog or checking their public documents on company culture. So when a job opens up, it will be easier to reach passive candidates - they would be most likely to say yes to an offer because they already understand the company and its values.
Quiet hiring is essentially just about when an organization acquires a new skill without hiring a new employee but helping their existing ones to upskill. Either through learning or restructuring internally.
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Welcome everyone, yet another day to talk about the future of work and the future of leadership. Today's topic is all about recruitment and hiring. We will talk about what passive candidates mean, maybe about the controversial term of quiet hiring and how to find people to join your company remotely. To discuss, I have Austin Chan from RemoteGoGo. Hey Austin, it's lovely to have you here.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Love to talk to you.
So can you tell me a little bit more about what RemoteGoGo is and pretty much what was your remote journey to found RemoteGoGo.
Yeah, sure. So let me share a bit about myself. I'm a solo entrepreneur and a founder at Remote Gogos. So basically I help remote first companies hire and discover passive candidate globally. And at the same times I help with recruit or staffing agency to get clients. By the way, I'm also a lead software engineer at the logistics startup where we operate in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore. So a bit about my story, how I started everything. So while I enjoy software developments and working in the companies I'm working with right now there are always some things in my mind. Like, am I going to work in the same company for next 30 years or am I going to switch companies every few years? Is that what I'm going to do for the rest of my life? So there is a lifestyle I want to live, but I'm not confident in being to live the lifestyle I always want to be which is freedom. I cherish freedom a lot. In fact, I make, I mostly make my lifestyle decisions based on freedom. What I'm going to buy? Am I going to buy this and buy that? What am I going to invest? Yeah, for all this is basically just to do anything, any at anywhere, at any time I want, but it's very inspiring to me, this lifestyle one. But everyone actually tell me that lifestyle is not possible. So just go get a high paying jobs.
It is possible. Everyone is doing that right now. Yeah. I mean, at least that's most of the people that I know. So, and what are building with RemoteGoGo? So it's, it's also job board, shall we say? Or should I name it or box it like that?
Yeah, it is, it is kind of mix and match, so people are kind of confused cause it's kind like a job board. So I will say I'm more like a aggregators of recruiters or recruitment agencies. So that's what I do. So let's share a little bit about how remote recruitment agency works and how normal job board works. So, yeah, I think the job boards, when they want to hire us, they just pay and then advertise their jobs in the job boards. It is cost effective and it's able to reach large pools of talents.
Yeah, it's a simple business.
Yes, exactly. But there's a downside, like sometimes it's just take times for companies to filter qualified applicants cuz there's too much and also there is a high chance of underqualified applicant. So I have some experiences using job boards as well, not particular remote job boards. So like back then when our companies want to hire us we first, we started by approaching the job boards. We pay upfront fees, but did not get the result even after one month. What happened is we don't get too much applicant, even if it does they are underqualified for our senior roles. So then the next thing we do is we approach the recruitment agencies. So what's good about recruitment agency is they already have a networks of contacts have a good relationship with top tier candidates, and I believe they are the fastest to fill a role.
They usually filter out the applicants. So, I view recruitment agencies, sorry to jump in. They view recruitment agencies usually as a time saver first for for filter out hundred applicants on one job and 90% of them are not qualified. And the more junior the role is, the more the higher of this percentage will become, I guess. And recruitment agencies are really great to actually helping with the filtering and only put credible candidates in front of you, which you can invite in interview.
Yes, exactly. So they do all the filterings. They're able to fill their roles like really fast. So right now, let's go back to remote works and RemoteGoGo I do a bit differently. So the problems of recruitment in terms of remote works, the problem of recruitment agencies, mostly they focus on local talents, right? And most companies, they want to reach their candidate globally. Said, don't want to just like, limit, like look for one recruitment agency, but they're just focused on certain countries. Recruitment companies, we want to really reach to global candidates like hire globally. So what I do in RemoteGoGo is aggregate all the recruiters, individual recruiters, and the agency into this single platform. So right now when company want to hire a submit job post, I connect them to all these recruiters and agencies. So now they can access the best local talents from everywhere with the help from recruiters. So that's what I do.
Nice, nice. And, and what is passive candidates? So you talk a lot at least on on RemoteGoGo site and also everywhere else that there are passive candidates. And can you explain what that means to you?
So basically they are potentials, talents candidate that is not actively looking for new jobs. Most of the time they're satisfied and comfortables with their current jobs. However, they are not completely against changing roles for the right positions at the right time. If there is a better offers and better opportunity come to them, they will be smart enough to accept them. And for passive candidate there are often those within demand skills and experience making them really attractive to employers and companies. And according to one of the LinkedIn report, 70% of global workforce are actually passive candidate, which means they're not looking for jobs. Only 30% of the workforce are actively looking for jobs. So I'm looking at the problem at a different, Perspective, I'm trying to help the companies to reach this 70% of passive candidates.
And is it through recruitment agencies or again, obviously you are two is connecting employers to recruitment agencies, so it's kinda like easier to understand, but who can reach the passive candidates? Head hunters and recruiters only.
Of course. No. But I mean, they are one of the best to do that like, and also for companies to outsource this work, to recruiters save them a lot of time cause if candidate is not actively looking for a job you can tell that it's hard to look for them. It's hard to gain their attention. So yes, recruiters and head hunter is really good at sourcing this candidate, finding this candidate. So this is what the best, so that's why one of the goal is to connect them cuz they are the best person to find this passive candidate.
And so how does it work? So the employer registers to your site and then uploads the job spec, shall we say, or just connects directly to the recruiter and deals with them.
Yeah. And for a companies or employer, just like it just exactly like you're dealing with a job board. Basically you share your job as in the difference is you don't pay to do so. So I mean, you don't have to pay your upfront payment. You don't have to pay $300 to share job posts. You just share and then your job for the employer, the job ad will just immediately share to the recruiters that partner with me and these recruiters are the one to find the candidate for the role. Right now, recruiters get the role what kind of position to fill. They have the candidates or they will find the candidates. Once they have the candidate, all they need is just share the candidate profile to the employers. So that's how it works. So you can think of this like for employers, it just similar like a job board.
It's a nice concept. I never actually heard such concepts before. We cannot really because I'm super curious about it we cannot not mentioning that you're calling from Kuala Lumpur. So, and the reason for that is that I'm curious to learn because most of the time when we are talking about remote work it's usually all about American and the European job market. I've been talking or talk to others who, for example try to leverage the Africa market for remote jobs. But I never actually, I don't have any kind of concepts on what's going on in remote work in terms of Asia, except of course the, the destinations for remote workers. But that's it. How Asian companies do you think, or how do you see the picture? You probably have more insights than anyone else. What do you think how the Asian companies approach remote work now? Are they open to do it? Are they supporting it? Are they transparent about it?
Yeah, I mean everyone actually, I believe it is same from everyone in the world. Most people actually, I think more and more people right now is actually very open to remote work. So even for me, the companies that I'm trying to target is mainly like what you say like the American company, US Company, or Europe companies. Cause most of the time first they're able to pay much higher salary compared to in Asia. So for the companies at the moment, I'm mainly try to target Americans or Europe companies while I'm trying to build and connect with the recruiters in Southeast Asias at the moment.
The audience might not notice, but we are recording this episode at the early of, of January 2023. And I always ask the same question from everyone, when, when this is the time of the year how do you see the future? How do you see the future like at least three things. Future of the remote work in general and the future of RemoteGoGo and your personal story as well.
I believe, at least right now hybrid works and work from home already quite common in a lot of places. About fully remotes. I believe it going to be slowly normalized along with technology to solve the problems of losing human touch. I think this kind of technology will solve that and also will make the fully remote going to normalize along the way. But I believe there's still a lot of work to be done to educate companies on how to properly manage a remote first working environment. And I believe for companies, I think really have to like start with why that you want to go with remote work cultures because it is, it's not that. Cuz I'm not here to say like, everyone should go remote work, right? So really have company have to find, start with why they want to do that. Maybe you believe productive working enrollment is not coming from nine to five. Everyone productive. Our difference is d. Maybe you want to reduce unnecessary costs of owning properties. Instead invest that on peoples maybe you want hire the best candidate possible in the world and not limiting in certain cities. So, yeah. And then I think it's important to really evaluate like assess your company culture. What's your missions, your core values what kind of mindset you're looking for. The future of your company is really shaped by the peoples who hired you days.
Sure.
When your employee fit with or contribute to your cultures, they're likely to make better decisions. They're likely to stay with your company longer. Better collaborate with the team members. They're likely to alive with company values and mission. And also companies able to create a more productive environment able to maintain the brands and reputation . Manage to reduce the recruitment costs and also lower the turnover rates. So yeah, that's pretty much, that's how I feel about future work and what kind of work to be done in order to really make this movement for the future of work. .
Yes. And how do you see, thanks for sharing. This is amazing.
Yeah. I just started remote Google, not long cause like what I told you just now, and even you mentioned that you never seen some company doing the same thing that we're doing in a very unique ways. It's more like a experiment right now. For right now I'm trying to basically experiment with the recruitment agency, individual recruiters. Cause one of the goal actually for me is to help individual recruiters able to like find the opportunity themselves instead of just working for agency as well. Like me, I want to work for myself, so I want to create an opportunity for them to work on themselves as well.
There is also a growing trend around quiet things at workplace. There, there was the, the quiet quitting, there's also what I heard, that quiet firing is a thing, and now there's a term called quiet hiring. Personally, I think these terms are super controversial. Most of it to me it's a little bit more buzzwords. So maybe they don't have any kind of meaning. But they actually still describe something that is prevalent right now in the workflow force. And what do you think of that? Why everything is silent now in the workplace and what silent hiring means to you?
Yeah, so quiet hiring Yeah. Is is a terms that, I mean, is suddenly become a hot topic. So in the past few months, They are majorly off from big companies for cost cutting, hiring freeze happens. Everyone stopped hiring for cost cutting. Famous remote job bought RemoteOK by Pieter levels. Money revenue went from hundred 40 thousands at peak down to 36,000 is more than 70% deductions.
Wow. I didn't know.
So yeah, recently Quiet hirings started to become hot topics. It's exactly opposite of the quiet quitting. But before I explain what is quiet hiring, let me share you what happens in our company even way before this started become a hot topic. A few few months back big recessions all economies went down everywhere globally. Our company business affected as well. Couple of projects put on hold. So we only focus on projects that really beneficial and make profits. And because of this, some of our team members suddenly don't have to work on their project anymore. But instead of laying off, we decided to move people around. We are moving engineers from one project to another project. The project that we are focusing right now yeah, they are still engineered, but the responsibility is now different. They were from developing web application right now to maintaining server from front end to backend. In some other cases, our product managers and few others together right now created a separate growth marketing team to double down the assisting project that I'm talking about to prove the profit. So the result of it, they're more happy because of learning new skills and also increased development process and they contribute to the company in a whole different way that we couldn't imagine. Even before this, we already had peoples that already successfully switch role within the organizations from web engineer to iOS and then to now product managers. So basically that's quite hiring. Quiet hiring is essentially just when an organization or acquire a new skill without actually hiring a new up, a new full-time employees.
And according to that, because there are two ways either you hiring internally from one role to another, which is what we did or you hire a short term contractors. And personally, I think hiring internally is much better because there are peoples who already understand the core values. Fit well in the organizations and then know exactly how the company operates. Yeah, so nothing special, nothing controversial, quiet hiring. It is what it is, is basically just mean you hiring internally from one department to another department or switching roles. So, yeah.
Love it. This is so easy to, because some people explain quiet hiring as it is a simply just restructuring people sorry people within teams and or just, or actual teams as well within the company, but it's a little bit more so it's actually gaining, and as you said, it's so easy to understand, it's gaining new skills for the company without actually hiring new people with those skills. But, you know, building on the capital that they already have in the internal staff. And yes, it saves a lot of time. So when you hear a hire hiring spree, it's super hard. That's what I also teach by the way that you need invest a lot in the hiring of a manager or a, or a leader because if you hire someone who's not fit to the role, not just skill-wise but also culture-wise they will leave within half or within a year. But they're the leader, so they're another junior designer or something. They're the leader, meaning that there will be an empty space within the company, not for a month or two, but for a year maybe. And when, you know, it's all, the worst thing that can happen to you is when not just when the leader leaves, but also when you need to have a fast hiring spree for leadership, it's you can only just, sorry to say, but like fuck it up. So it's, there is no other way you need to hire it really slowly the more senior, the role you have. So yeah. Thanks for sharing on quiet hiring.
And what are the challenges of passive hiring? How do you find people passively?
So one of the biggest challenge, I mean the biggest challenge here to hire passive candidate is these potential candidates is they don't even know there's a job posted online, even though it is a great opportunity with competitive salaries much better benefits and benefits and much better career growth. They don't know. Just the fact that because they don't actively searching job online. So recruiting active and passive candidate take a very different strategies for active candidate with active job seekers. They already have tons of remote job work out there already doing amazing job for helping these 30% of active job seekers. So I'm here to help the companies to address the other 70%. So first, let's talk about how to hire active job seekers. Employers usually pace and advertise their open roles on job boards or even create their own career page. Just hoping it's spread far and wide waiting candidate apply for the positions. So with this methods company actually playing passive site. They, after they submit their job posts. All they do is just passively waiting and the candidate is the one who actively looking for this job. While I mean to hire passive candidate is actually kind of reverse process is a totally different strategies. The company have to find a candidate and reach out to them through cold calls emails or networking platform. So how do they locate these passive candidates? They can find a candidate that share projects online on blogs or company blogs on mediums. For example, if you looking for engineers you can go for GitHub. Yeah. Hacker ranks. For sales and marketers you can go for medium, twitter, linkedin, et cetera. For designer, you can go for dribblers and behance. So as you can see to hire passive candidate company have to be proactive. They have become the active one while the job is the passive one, where they're don't actually looking for the job.
And recruiters do have a huge saying on that, by the way. So when that's why I'm always saying that the recruitment agency helps not just with the filtering, but also seeking out, their job is to proactively seek, head hunt people for the role. So, I can see why connecting employers with recruitment agencies can be a really great business model, by the way, because recruitment agencies usually target the 30% of active job seekers that you say. Meaning they already have a budget, so they already spending some time and some money on like the, the usual job boards. And I don't know how much a job that is right now, but around, I don't know, $300 or something, or you can buy a package or something. So it's a sizeable. Once you have like enough jobs putting out there, it's a sizable amount of money. So I, I think it's a win-win for everyone, right? Connecting the recruitment agency and for the, for the employee as well. Especially if there is no upfront fee. So there's a lot to be done by the recruitment agency, right? But what can a company can do when it comes to attracting passive candidates?
Yeah. I believe that you, first of all, you have to stand out as a company. You have to stand out as a company build your brands and reputations to get the candidate attention. And I believe Buffer is a great example.
Yes.
Recently I did some reviews on the company and post it in LinkedIn. I think they did really good jobs, in fact, perfect jobs not only the transparent to candidate, they also transparent to us. They're also transparent, was the visitor of their site.
Yes. They're transparent about anything. They're transparent about the salaries, everything, and how they operate, which is truly inspiring, by the way.
Yeah, exactly like what you say. They're transparent about the salary. They show everyone's salary on their page. They show their revenue on their page. Also their blog explained details on how that works, how it's life working in their company. I almost feel like I'm working in their companies by reading and their blog. I know they works four days a week. What kind of tools they're used to work and for collaborations, how their team collaborate. Yeah. Time zone agnostic. So with all this, they already built a strong trust relationship even before candidate joined the company. So the idea here is to build up your brand and reputation by continuously sharing details on how its like working in your companies, the cultures, the value, the project you're working on. Software engineer like us, like me do, attracted by the project that company working on. So we will join the companies based on the project that we are possible going to build. And another things is, I believe companies should have more exposures from conference talks and events, whether it's online or offline. Again, this related on how you stand out as a company. But this conference and event are another place for you to share your company missions and what you're working on. And lastly, to encourage passive candidate to join you I think you should encourage, I mean, company can encourage their current employees to refer their friends share to their network and communities. So I believe employee referrers can be a great way to attract candidates who may not be actively looking for jobs.
Yes. And I truly loved how you phrased it by the way that that when you looked buffer was an example but it, I think it's true for, or it should be true for everyone. When you are looking at the company as an external outsider you, just by looking at the transparency, you immediately feel that you are working there. And and you can imagine yourself by working within that culture. You can put yourself in there because everything is transparent, obviously. And when you can do do so, it makes everything so much easier. Especially if you're, you know, actively looking of course. But but when you're passively hiring someone, imagine the situation that you're reaching out to someone, Hey, do you want to work for, let's say buffer? Everyone will say, of course, yes. I already know how they operate. Everything is transparent. Everything is clear. Even just by reading their blogs, I feel that I'm working there. So it's easier to say yes to these kind of stuff. Amazing. Again, I wish the very, very best for Remotegogo, And for you for this year. Is there anything that you, that you want to share on this show and also how people can find you and also Remotegogo.
Yeah, you can find me you can find me on LinkedIn. So it's for my name, Austin Chang or you can browse my website at remotegogo.com or if you want to email me for us any question, if you want to post any job you want to partner with me, you can email me at austin@remotegogo.com.
Love it. Thank you for being a guest on the show. It was amazing. Thank you for sharing all these great. Yeah, thanks for having me. Love to talk with you.
