On this episode of Brains Byte Back, Jon Puckett begins by sharing that his experience working in the video industry in the 1990s led him to become the CEO of Cadient, a talent acquisition team focused on streamlining the hourly hiring process for companies of all sizes.
His primary role was to open new locations, which involved hiring and training staff. He sought career opportunities elsewhere as the video industry began to phase out. That’s when he heard of a company that offered solutions to the hiring processes. Jon knew his experience would be valuable and reached out to learn more. It was during the interview with the company that he discovered that one of their newest clients was the second-largest video chain company at the time. Seen as the perfect fit with his direct experience, it opened a door for Jon to become their account manager. Because the talent acquisition industry was seeing a demand in the hourly hiring process, it didn’t take long for him to be launched into a new role focused on support and customer experience. One that led him to recently becoming the CEO of Cadient.
Jon responds to host Erick Espinosa’s question about how Cadient is looking to change the talent acquisition field by confirming that the goal is to simplify a process that is historically hard. By using technology to offer a range of solutions, including texting, which has been proven to reduce time to hire, as well as analytics tools for HR leaders to understand if their process is working. Many of which have been proven to reduce turnover.
This includes the hospitality and leisure industry, which saw a turnover rate of 79% in 2023. Jon says that while they work mainly with retail, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, and government agencies, they aren’t exclusive to those sectors.
Cadient offers a range of services to their clients to assist with the hiring process but stresses that their smart tenure product greatly assists in identifying applicants who are likely to remain on the job, reducing turnover and saving money for the company in the long run. A combination of all these data points creates an elevated hiring process that locates the right hire.
You can listen to the episode below, or on Spotify, Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Breaker,, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, Listen Notes, PodBean, and Radio Public.
Find out more about Jon Puckett here.
Find out more about Cadient here.
Connect with Brains Byte Back host Erick Espinosa here.
TRANSCRIPT:
Jon Puckett:
Hi, my name is John Puckett. I am the CEO at Cadient.
Erick Espinosa:
John, thank you for joining us on this episode of Brains Byte Back. I wanted to start the conversation by getting some insight into your journey. I understand that you started in the video industry and now run a talent acquisition company. Can you tell us more about your career journey and how you gravitated toward the talent acquisition field?
Jon Puckett:
Sure, yeah, I actually started in the video industry back in the 90s. Date myself a little bit here. And I worked in various roles at one of the large national video chains. But my primary role there, for most of my time was new store openings, which included everything from the build-out to actually hiring and training of the staff. Upon kind of the consolidation and the downfall of the video industry, I decided to look for other opportunities. And I heard about this company in Portland, that had a product or solution that assisted hourly hiring managers with their processes. And I, you know, being familiar with the struggles that I dealt with, I thought that was an interesting opportunity to learn more about the company. So ended up getting an interview and during the interview process, learned that they had landed actually a new client with the second-largest video chain in the nation at the time. And they ultimately hired me as an account manager for that account. I was only in that role for about six months. And I had to kind of recognize that there was an opportunity where we needed to develop an actual support organization, in this really rapidly growing business at the time. And so I ended up moving into a role where I helped develop a support team, which ultimately evolved into a customer success organization years later. And, you know, since then, I’ve had various roles within the organization mostly focused on customer success in operations primarily. And then, you know, after the basis vectors acquisition operation approached me about the opportunity. And, you know, I was very willing to utilize my experience. In, years we’ve been working with this solution and take on this new role to really try to grow the Cadient organization again.
Erick Espinosa:
So, for the young people out there who don’t know what videos are, yeah, there are these brick-type items that would play videos such as YouTube or TikTok.
Jon Puckett:
Yeah. Yeah. I dated myself there haha.
Erick Espinosa:
How has it been? I imagine this has been the last five months, you’ve been in this role as the CEO. What did you do that was so instrumental? What caught their attention in terms of you trying to make the company move forward that they actually brought you on as the CEO?
Jon Puckett:
We’ve had a lot of success on the customer success side of the business and then my additional experience in the operations area, I think, just lended to with all the changes that were happening during the acquisition to me being the right fit for taking on this role.
Erick Espinosa:
Congratulations.
Jon Puckett:
Yeah. Thank you.
Erick Espinosa:
It must be exciting.
Jon Puckett:
It is. It is.
Erick Espinosa:
So what are some of the key challenges going forward in this role that you’re looking to solve? Provide solutions for people in the talent acquisition field?
Jon Puckett:
Well, I’ll start by saying I ultimately hiring hourly hiring specifically is hard. And our goal is to simplify it. So we offer many different features that you know, with standard within our solution, that even though we offer both a centralized hiring option, we primarily do focus on companies with large distributed hourly hiring needs. So we offer things like quick apply applicant pooling, which allows locations to share applicant and candidates within a specific mile radius. We have texting solutions, which is really proven to reduce time to hire, especially when just compared to email communications today. We provide analytic tools that help HR leaders understand how their processes are working, and you know what they need to do differently or adjust and change. But one of the biggest challenges is, you know, attrition in the hourly hiring, market is alarming. And Cadient’s ATS is enriched with a new product, newer product called smart 10 year technology, which actually precedes candidate longevity. And thereby, sort of it will reduce turnover while mitigating bias from the application process.
Erick Espinosa:
Do you work with companies of different sizes? I imagine small, large.
Jon Puckett:
Yes, we we work with small market companies, mid market and enterprise.
Erick Espinosa:
What would you say would be the industry that you work with most closely? I imagine it’s industries that have mostly higher turnover rates.
Jon Puckett:
Yeah, I mean, we’re not exclusively working with but we do work pretty heavily with retail, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, and government agencies.
Erick Espinosa:
I see hospitality has one of the highest I saw a number here it says average turnover rate. This is a numbers for 2023. And it said 79% for leisure and hospitality. Which seems to be pretty high.
Jon Puckett:
Yeah, it’s a huge problem, and one that we’re definitely looking to try to help and address.
Erick Espinosa:
So how does the application work in terms of trying to find really good quality applicants for these people. In the mix there’s all these people, there’s all these applications coming in. How do you identify which ones are actually worth worth looking into?
Jon Puckett:
So you know, we offer tools like availability, matching employee referral solutions, recruitment marketing, job board integrations, we offer career site branding, and consulting, realistic job video previews. As I mentioned before applicant pooling, and then obviously, our tenure, smart tenure product. Also, you know, again, helps identify applicants that are likely to remain on the job, thus reducing turnover, saving customers lots of money. But it’s a combination of all these different things that really help us identify the best quality candidates for our customers. And it does take multiple different data points, to really make sure you’re getting the right hire.
Erick Espinosa:
Well, I imagine it’s very technology driven in order for you to provide those metrics. And I was chatting with you a little bit earlier about this, because I wanted to see whether or not AI is used in your technology, to help these companies or guide these companies or provide any kind of help in the process. But you mentioned that you have a different term for it specifically.
Jon Puckett:
Yeah, we prefer to call it augmented intelligence, and simply because we’re not removing the human aspect of the hiring process. But rather, we’re augmenting it with some new technology to assist hiring managers.
Erick Espinosa:
I think that’s super important. I think there’s a lot of people that feel that there’s that disconnect, especially with HR hiring processes. AI is stepping in to help make it more efficient, but at the same time, we don’t want to lose that human aspect human connection that’s needed in the process.
Jon Puckett:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, smart tenure is, is a tool that uses augmented intelligence machine learning to really help identify those and create a model that uses characteristics of the company’s best employees for a particular job. So through algorithms specific to the industry and the job positions, it can automatically and instantaneously evaluate the applicants and then display a ranking of those applicants and the ATS to give those hiring managers just another data point that they can use in selecting the right candidates. And, you know, we think that that’s critical, and the challenges that a lot of companies are facing today with attrition, but we’re also working on additional products to add to our smart tool lineup that are gonna continue to evolve as well.
Erick Espinosa:
When you get clients that approach you about the software, what are the main questions that come to mind? Are there any key concerns that they have maybe hesitations in using the technology at first that they may find a little bit intimidating?
Jon Puckett:
I mean, I think that some of the main points that we hear is because we’re focused on distributed hourly hiring, it’s got to be an intuitive product, it’s easy for the field managers to use, and able to provide information and analytics back to them, which we have analytics tools available to the hiring manager as well, to understand. Again, how are things working? How is my hiring going. And so, it’s really that ease of use that because it’s a distributed hiring tool, where you’ve got managers across the entire nation, that are trying to utilize this tool to help their specific locations to ensure they get the right hires.
Erick Espinosa:
So you’ve worked very closely on the client service side. Is there a memorable moment or connection or something that you did for a client that kind of sticks out? That made you feel kind of proud?
Jon Puckett:
Now, that’s a good question. I won’t say specific names, but again, we work with a lot of large retailers, and something that, you know, it’s only a specific thing that we did, but feedback that we’ve received, from a national large retailer is that, you know, what we do on the hourly distributed hiring side of their business is unmatched by what else anything else they’ve seen in the market. And they have been with us for many years, but also have indicated that they have no intention of leaving, even though they’ve looked at other solutions. There’s nothing that provides what they need specific to their business and how they need to operate in a retail setting where turnover is high. Getting quality applicants is a challenge. And just knowing that we, that that’s how they feel about what we provide, has gives me a lot of pride in what Cadient is doing.
Erick Espinosa:
That has to be one of the most rewarding things on the job. Right?
Jon Puckett:
Yeah, it’s always great to hear those stories. It really is. And it’s, it’s great to know that what you’re doing is, is actually changing things for the better.
Erick Espinosa:
So what’s in the pipeline Cadient in the near future? Are there any big plans? Are there any big changes, any shifts, any new technology, any anything that we should know about?
Jon Puckett:
You know, I, as I mentioned, I think you know, there you’re gonna see definitely additional development in our smart tool lineup. And I think that we’re going to continue to utilize opportunities to use that augmented intelligence to try to continue to address challenges that we we feel our customers are going to be facing or are facing today. So definitely more to come in that area.
Erick Espinosa:
Amazing. John, thank you again, so much for joining us. That was great insight. I really appreciate hearing more about you know this industry because we don’t hear much about it.
Jon Puckett:
I really appreciate you having me on today. It’s been great and wonderful experience.
Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.
