[vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”middle” css=”.vc_custom_1572916912699{margin-top: 2em !important;margin-bottom: 2em !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 2em !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}” el_class=”alignwide”][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1572916865920{margin-right: 1em !important;margin-left: 1em !important;padding-top: 1em !important;padding-right: 2em !important;padding-bottom: 1em !important;padding-left: 2em !important;background-color: #d5e6f0 !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”21833″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_circle_2″ css=”.vc_custom_1551281861175{margin-bottom: 2em !important;}” el_class=”max–150″]
Jared Bazzell
Manager of Talent Acquisition, CDW
[/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1551281676618{margin-right: 1em !important;margin-left: 1em !important;padding-top: 1em !important;padding-bottom: 1em !important;}”]When asked what excites him most about his job, Jared Bazzell, manager of talent acquisition at CDW, a Fortune 200 technology company, quickly responded, “Driving process and optimization.”
Jared sets out each day to improve the recruitment experience—both for internal team members and candidates. “We know at CDW that if we want to continue to do great things, we have to continuously drive innovation,” he says.
We recently sat down with Jared to learn about his perspective on technology and innovation, then future role of the recruiter and more. [/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner]
Pursuing innovation in talent acquisition
While the U.S.-based CDW talent team uses technology at every turn, things were different for their Canadian counterparts. The Canadian talent department’s technology needed improvement, so Jared led the charge to overhaul their technology systems and improve their talent acquisition process. This major initiative included the introduction of a mobile-optimized career site, ensuring all technology could support French-language needs and much more.
But, Jared’s work didn’t stop in Canada. He led the U.S.-based campus recruiting team to improve candidate engagement, using Yello’s recruitment events technology to enable candidates to pre-register for all upcoming career fairs. Across 50 campuses, the CDW team reaches talent before the event, helping to gain a leg up on the competition by sharing information about CDW with candidates and reviewing resumes of top talent.
Sharing technology insights
Between optimizing talent acquisition processes in two countries, Jared recently spoke at the Social Recruiting Strategies Conference. At the February event, Jared shared how CDW uses data to drive productivity. His session demonstrated how the company has leveraged sophisticated recruitment marketing technologies to support and advance its data-driven approach, and ultimately, improve overall recruitment results. Jared showed how his team improved application completion rates, grew its talent base, personalized the candidate experience and more.
Jared will also be speaking at the 10th Annual Yello Conference, STRIVE 2019, offering insights to help campus recruiting teams set the course for their college recruiting strategy.
Advancing tech to drive student engagement
This year, Jared will continue to explore forward-thinking ways to leverage technology in talent acquisition, especially in campus recruiting. While CDW is a Fortune 200, global organization, many students are not familiar with the company. To attract top student talent who may be unfamiliar, CDW plans to pursue strategic ad placements to encourage students to meet CDW on campus. The goal is to drive candidates to learn more about CDW at the career fair or attend the company’s on-campus event. The advertisements are a creative avenue CDW will explore to put their employer brand directly in front of students and drive young talent to engage with their organization.
Recruiters bring personalization
When asked what he sees as the biggest challenges facing the talent acquisition industry, Jared approaches the question from a technology perspective. He notes that there are so many different providers, it can be difficult to determine which is the right fit. But even with the continued growth of technology, Jared expects recruiters will continue to focus on the candidate experience. The automation of recruitment functions, like candidate scheduling and screening, won’t lead to a change in the need for recruiters. “Recruiters bring the personalization you can’t get with AI,” he says.
Jared believes recruiters of the future will be focused on candidate engagement and one-to-one interaction. When candidates have multiple offers, the ability to truly engage a candidate is a key differentiator, making the candidate experience an ongoing priority for the CDW team.
