Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Transform Recruiting Podcast.
Speaker: As always, I'm your host, Brad Owens.
Speaker: I feel like you're getting tired of me saying that I have a good one for you today, but I promise I really do have a good one for you today because we're going to have a lot of fun.
Speaker: I bring on some of the guests that have the deepest experience in the industry, that have some of the most influence in the industry, and have seen a good amount of things to show all of you all that might be early in your recruiting journey exactly how you should be approaching things.
Speaker: Got one of those today.
Speaker: So I want to introduce you to Mr. Dwayne Edwards.
Speaker: Dwayne, welcome on the show, sir.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: It's a pleasure.
Speaker: This is what I've heard great things about this podcast, so to finally be a part of it, I'm excited.
Speaker: I appreciate that.
Speaker: I'm glad the word's positive.
Speaker: So let's give everyone just a little bit of an update on you and kind of what your background is, where you came from, where you are now, and then we'll get into it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Now, I've been in the industry now for a little over 25 years.
Speaker: Started with...
Speaker: Very significant company, privately held tech systems.
Speaker: Prior to that, it was Aerotech, Maxim Group, and Data Services.
Speaker: I was being able to be a part of that and see that growth, which was pretty phenomenal, all in the Chicago market.
Speaker: After that, I joined K-Force, a publicly traded company.
Speaker: Again, first time I saw a very unique approach to the market, which was the first national recruiting center to be able to go to their location and see a floor of
Speaker: hundreds and hundreds of recruiters all broken out in certain verticals and sectors.
Speaker: It was impressive.
Speaker: Then from there, I followed our president of national recruiting, who became the North America CEO of Ronstadt, joined them three years ago.
Speaker: And it's been a significant run in a sense of kind of going full circle because they're a very large, significant player out there.
Speaker: But again,
Speaker: you know, there's so much opportunity out there that no one just has the market to themselves.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's always options for others, right?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Well, that's fantastic.
Speaker: So we were gabbing before I actually hit the record button, some of which I regret, but some of the things that we were talking about is how the world of recruiting has really changed.
Speaker: And COVID was obviously a big part of that.
Speaker: So you had mentioned one of the transitions that you're seeing.
Speaker: potentially because of COVID.
Speaker: And you mentioned the transaction world.
Speaker: It's so significant.
Speaker: It's become very transactional, meaning that, you know, people are not investing the time to really get to know their candidates or possible candidates or even the candidates that are currently working for them.
Speaker: And what I mean by that is that, you know,
Speaker: You can have a client that really kind of looking for X, Y, Z, and you have recruiting trying to nail down just those skill sets and they feel like that's an effective candidate instead of kind of peeling back the layers.
Speaker: And, you know, I always say find out a little bit about their past.
Speaker: their future and their presence and leverage that.
Speaker: But if you're not really making the connection, the client's going to see that you're not really vetting the proper candidates.
Speaker: And then I'm always asking my candidates when I'm on calls with account managers and I'm always bringing the recruiters and I tell them before every call, everybody have a great question.
Speaker: Know what your great questions are.
Speaker: Because when I say team, any question, if we hear crickets, it's not a way you want to impress your clients.
Speaker: So with that said, I always like to said, like I told you earlier, Brad, is that
Speaker: I'll say, Mr. Manager, you know, I'm not here to steal your thunder, but what are your top three questions you're going to be asking in vetting the proper candidate?
Speaker: Because I want to make sure we take that and weave that into our process.
Speaker: Because, you know, if you don't, you get candidates, they've gone through the cycle, they're getting thumbs down.
Speaker: And then you're realizing that, well, we're asking this, this, this.
Speaker: And it's like, we need to have that information up front.
Speaker: And I'm always like, anybody else that's part of that process of interviewing,
Speaker: your project manager your developer i'd like to interact with them as well because i want to find out what they're going to be focusing on because i think we've all been there where you've got a great candidate and suddenly you know robbie gave him the thumbs down well who's robbie so for me i'm always like find out as much as you can about their past
Speaker: what they're currently doing and their challenges and why are they looking, you know, what's driving them.
Speaker: And then let's present that as we get in front of our clients.
Speaker: That's perfect.
Speaker: So I'm going to be the, uh,
Speaker: The voice of technology.
Speaker: And I'm doing this on purpose just to get your reaction.
Speaker: Let's see kind of where this takes the conversation.
Speaker: So you mentioned a simple process to us, at least a simple process of gathering requirements the right way so that you can ask the right questions, bring the right candidates with the right qualities.
Speaker: So if we were to look at what might be out there from
Speaker: whether it's LinkedIn or Indeed or Monster, they have this feature of here are the pre-qualification questions that you have to answer.
Speaker: And I'm using air quotes.
Speaker: We can't see it.
Speaker: But I'm using air quotes of answer.
Speaker: They can just check the box and say they answered it.
Speaker: But if we're trying to put all this new tech out there, like Upwork and all the others that are trying to do recruiting as a platform as a service kind of thing, why then wouldn't those work or why wouldn't those be a better option?
Speaker: Well, again, we've all seen that point when you're on a website and it says, you know, check if you're not a robot.
Speaker: I mean, it still falls into that category of you're not having that engagement of understanding exactly what that client has or that consultant has been exposed to.
Speaker: Give an example, if you have somebody working at Northern Trust, I mean, I automatically want to make sure I understand what was the biggest challenge
Speaker: For you coming on site, well, Dwayne, you know, they let people go.
Speaker: My bandwidth was short.
Speaker: I didn't have a lot of individuals I could reference for information.
Speaker: So I had to kind of think on my feet.
Speaker: OK, great.
Speaker: So you're a multitasker.
Speaker: That's not going to be in your qualification of check the box.
Speaker: No, it absolutely won't.
Speaker: So to me, it's just, again, understanding what's driving someone and their passion for, you know, why they're looking for their next opportunity.
Speaker: And then, you know, diving a little deeper besides checking the box and going, oh, this is a good fit candidate.
Speaker: And I'm not saying that's not going to work.
Speaker: But again, I think, too, as firms, if you're not doing that personally, you're not really understanding what type of candidate you're placing on your client's site.
Speaker: And then I could go into the whole history of you've got to keep in touch with these individuals.
Speaker: They have all the answers to the test.
Speaker: You ingratiate yourself.
Speaker: I share with our consultants, you know, these are my goals.
Speaker: This is what I'm trying to achieve.
Speaker: Dwayne, oh, my God, you know, I'm a part of the business line leader call.
Speaker: Have you met so and so and so?
Speaker: I haven't, you know.
Speaker: You really should should meet them.
Speaker: But that's just ingratiating yourself.
Speaker: That's not putting anybody in an awkward situation to give you information they shouldn't be sharing.
Speaker: But I want to know what our consultants are doing.
Speaker: And then they appreciate that kind of, I guess, team effort, because, you know.
Speaker: To me, I just I know I'm getting redundant, but it's really building that relationship with these individuals.
Speaker: It completely is.
Speaker: Is there anything that you've come across or that you've seen your team trying to use recently that is almost like a not a replacement for building a relationship, but something that they've been using that's helping them do that?
Speaker: Well, there's certain tools that we've provided our delivery teams.
Speaker: And again, they're effective, but we've never said not to pick up that phone and make sure that you're having that, you know, personal dialogue with them because, you know, sometimes you can have a,
Speaker: salesperson out there that is really trending well they're in a program their headcount's being built up and then you know they're they're serving the requirements over delivery and delivery's doing their job but still we don't know what they're doing on a day-to-day basis
Speaker: But I think, you know, as a large organization, we have a lot of great tools, but we're still not getting it right from the block and tackle of you got to talk to people, make sure you're understanding what their skill set is and what their their value is to our potential clients.
Speaker: And there's so much to that, too.
Speaker: The way that I kept looking at it when I was still in the recruiting world was about the gravity of the decision that this candidate is potentially about to make.
Speaker: You can think of the two or three biggest things you could ever do in your life.
Speaker: Top two, it's probably going to be a house purchase or home purchase.
Speaker: Being able to provide for your family and to pay for that house is a big part of that.
Speaker: And I personally haven't seen the type of adoption of the recruiting as a service that, hey, I totally trust this AI algorithm to match me with the perfect job.
Speaker: People don't want to put that big a part of their life into technology's hands.
Speaker: They want to put it into a trusted relationship.
Speaker: I shared with you that I do it biannually.
Speaker: It's a CIO slash CTO CISO supper club.
Speaker: And it's probably about 20, 25 guests.
Speaker: And there's no agenda.
Speaker: There's no PowerPoints.
Speaker: It's bringing them together and letting them talk about what the challenges they're up against at that level, because everything flows downstream.
Speaker: And, you know, AI is such a big topic right now.
Speaker: But you're exactly right.
Speaker: You can't take out the human factor of making that one on one dialogue.
Speaker: It just can't be replicated.
Speaker: You can get all the tools and say, hey, this looks like a sound candidate.
Speaker: and invest in those tools but you still need the individuals like you and i interacting with those uh those potential candidates and i think even the candidates too i mean i've seen a lot of uh c-level people you know sitting on the sidelines right now this year
Speaker: And they want to make sure I'm talking to someone.
Speaker: But they even say, I'll go on and they'll send me a link, tell it to fill out.
Speaker: And they feel like that's going to really kind of encapsulate who I am.
Speaker: You know, they feel kind of secondary.
Speaker: And again, I'm talking about C-level individuals that know the power of I need to be in front of someone to make that type of connection.
Speaker: So what's your reaction to those that are probably sitting here thinking, Oh geez, here's these crotchety old sales guys.
Speaker: Well, you know what?
Speaker: It's again, you've got to find that hybrid.
Speaker: I mean, I think with COVID, you had to find out that, hey, we don't need to be in the office five days a week.
Speaker: You know, we can find a middle ground.
Speaker: And I think, too, there's a little bit of old school in this approach, but there's also some great technology.
Speaker: But if you can find that hybrid where you're just not leaning on one or the other, that's where I think you can be the most effective.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: I like that you said the hybrid word because I agree.
Speaker: I feel like the thing that you mentioned earlier about the suggestions that I can give like, hey, this looks like it could be a good candidate.
Speaker: This looks like it could be a good match.
Speaker: This looks like it could be the right next step.
Speaker: It's got to be.
Speaker: I call it human in the loop.
Speaker: So yes, I can happen, but there has to be a human in the loop because at some point the relationship is going to need to be created.
Speaker: And I think too, is that, you know, I always say, you know, what, what's your why?
Speaker: Why are you here?
Speaker: I mean, if you're just here to put people to work, put, you know, butts in seats, I mean, that's only going to last so long.
Speaker: But if you really start to form out
Speaker: good solid relationships i mean i take this this supper club that i have none of them were cios ctos some of them were people i got their first jobs you know either a direct placement or a contracting where they worked with me for you know six or seven months and then transitioned as a you know project manager i mean it's i always looked at it like the long game you know it's like what do i want to be building
Speaker: And not that I had this, you know, so clear vision, but I just knew from building a foundation that it's going to serve me well.
Speaker: And it has because it was one way there was there was one table I went to and I guess they were sharing stories of how they met me.
Speaker: And I even forgot that I got him his job or her first job.
Speaker: And that to me is real pride in what you're doing.
Speaker: And I'm not saying it doesn't exist today, but I just think the way everything is so fast, so quick, that's where that transactional, not in a negative way, but that's kind of like where technology is driving us.
Speaker: And that may not be the most effective way.
Speaker: What would be, in your opinion, the most effective way then?
Speaker: You know, it's taken that hybrid approach.
Speaker: I mean, I always like to tell my individuals that I work with on my team, even my salespeople, delivery teams, talk to me, share with me three interesting people you met with this week.
Speaker: And, you know, sometimes they just start quoting a resume.
Speaker: I'm like, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: You just tell them, you know, it doesn't have to be business related, but, you know, what potential candidates did you talk to that you really resonated with?
Speaker: And that's to my point that sometimes they're not focused on that human aspect of who they're talking to, but they're really focused in on their technology skills and where they can fit in with our clients, which is great.
Speaker: You know, that's a steam to the engine of what we do.
Speaker: But, you know, that's where I'm always even with our salespeople.
Speaker: You know, I've had, you know, 20 meetings.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, that's impressive.
Speaker: You know, share with me your top three meetings and why they were so, you know, impressive to you.
Speaker: And then you find out, you know, there's little meat on the bone.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, okay, well, you know, we need to dig into that area.
Speaker: And it's the same with recruiting.
Speaker: I mean, we've all heard the term, I got a rock star.
Speaker: I got a rock star.
Speaker: I'm like, okay, well, rock me, you know, tell me why.
Speaker: Tell me something that's not on there already.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think I mentioned this.
Speaker: I always like to find out, you know,
Speaker: about their past.
Speaker: I saw you were working at XYZ company.
Speaker: You were there for seven years.
Speaker: You know, why did you make the decision to move on?
Speaker: And it's interesting to hear what you're going to hear from them.
Speaker: They can be a personal reason.
Speaker: You know, my parents were, you know, their health.
Speaker: I wanted to be closer to them, had to make a decision.
Speaker: And then, you know, you're here at this company now, you know, let's go through the plus delta of what it is you like about it and what you'd like to, you know, change about it.
Speaker: Because I'll tell you, when I find that out and I'll have a consultant or even a full time employee tell me the things that they want to have addressed, I always say, have you had that sit down with your direct report, what you just shared with me?
Speaker: And like, well, you know, like, look, do yourself a favor.
Speaker: If you're going to make a decision like this, which is an important one, have this conversation because you know what?
Speaker: There may be change.
Speaker: And there's so many times someone comes back to me, says, Dwayne, I had that conversation with them.
Speaker: They're going to make some changes.
Speaker: I'm not I'm not moving forward with other opportunities.
Speaker: I'm like, great.
Speaker: That's fantastic.
Speaker: You know, instead of being like, hey, if I can pull this guy or this person, I can place him over here.
Speaker: But to me, it still comes back to good coaching.
Speaker: So on the good coaching, I was just about to ask you about how you would start coaching your leaders in the organization.
Speaker: So we've got potential people who are listening to this, who have firms of all varied sizes.
Speaker: We've even got internal recruiting leaders that listen to the podcast that come to me and ask questions.
Speaker: So if you were to sit in front of a group of, you know,
Speaker: fellow recruiters, recruiting leaders, and you were about to give them their takeaways to go back to their teams and say, okay, here are two different changes we're gonna do in our business today to start moving things in a more positive direction.
Speaker: What two things do you think that people should be focused on?
Speaker: I'll give you an example.
Speaker: When I came on to Ronstadt, where we've been a vendor for Walgreens for a decade and 150 billable people on the solution side and contingent labor side.
Speaker: I'd never dealt with Walgreens.
Speaker: It sits in my backyard here in Chicago.
Speaker: And I said, well, what can I do to kind of maybe add value?
Speaker: And I said, I want to meet every consultant.
Speaker: I want to take the time to understand their skill set.
Speaker: I want to understand, are they being challenged in that skill set?
Speaker: I want to understand who they're working with.
Speaker: What is that kind of intricate team that they're on?
Speaker: Because sometimes, as you know, I got hired by Ralph.
Speaker: I never see Ralph.
Speaker: Well, who are you working with?
Speaker: I'm Susan and Jane.
Speaker: What are their titles?
Speaker: But for me, it's still, again, it's looking at your current base of valued resources that you may not be valuing by having in-depth conversations.
Speaker: Because when you do that, I tell you, I'm going into the sales mode, but, you know, you'll find out so many leads if they're willing to share with you, if you just, you know, take the time to ingratiate yourself.
Speaker: So I'm always challenging our teams, you know,
Speaker: They know good people.
Speaker: They refer good people.
Speaker: Are they happy with our service that we're providing them?
Speaker: Or are they just sitting on a site under our banner, getting a paycheck and, you know, don't feel like they're part of a team?
Speaker: Or they're on a site and that client's really ingratiated themselves that treats them like a full-time employee.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I'm all about like, you know, let's take our hard work.
Speaker: Let's go back into that as a delivery team because you'll have someone, you know, I've got 35 billable people.
Speaker: And I'm like, who's your top three people?
Speaker: I'm working on these recs, Dwayne.
Speaker: I don't spend a lot of time with my current consultants.
Speaker: Why would you not spend quality time with your consultants?
Speaker: Because that gets back to that, you know, I'm looking for the next job to fill.
Speaker: And to me, I always like going back to that plethora of talent that we've already worked really hard for and build that relationship with them.
Speaker: But to me, I find out that there's not a lot of that.
Speaker: Some of the smaller firms, you know, have a cousin that owns his own firm.
Speaker: He lives and dies by it.
Speaker: And, you know, that keeps his existence.
Speaker: And, you know, he's never going to be, you know, the largest firm out there, but he's going to be a stabilizer because he invests in the people that he's got currently working for.
Speaker: You know, to your point right there, one of the things I always used to bring back to my teams and what I shared with recruiters is, you know, once the check is signed, I used to always say, check is signed out of mind.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I just give them that, what's that next step?
Speaker: Because they're not going away.
Speaker: They're going to work.
Speaker: Yes, but they are still your person out there.
Speaker: They will come back to you for the next job.
Speaker: So I always used to like, check us out.
Speaker: It's funny you say that.
Speaker: I said, you know, I guess my contact information is on my LinkedIn, but I probably still get at least...
Speaker: eight to 12 emails of people that either i've worked with in the past placed in the past or you know that that natural connection and and to me sometimes i want to go hey i'm i'm i'm
Speaker: Let me pass you on to one of our lead IT recruiters.
Speaker: But there's just this instinctive of like, hey, here's my Ronstadt email.
Speaker: Send me your updated resume.
Speaker: Let's have a quick conversation.
Speaker: It's just instinctively that I can't punt the ball, you know?
Speaker: And, you know, it's time consuming.
Speaker: It's time consuming.
Speaker: But I've learned that, man, you do something like that.
Speaker: It may be eight months down the road.
Speaker: It comes full circle.
Speaker: I mean, I had a gentleman
Speaker: who heads up the talent acquisition for Option Clearing Corp.
Speaker: And I've known this gentleman since his Northern Trust days, first Midwest Bank.
Speaker: He said, hey, Dwayne, I'm gonna send you a real good guy.
Speaker: And he gave it to me.
Speaker: I talked to him.
Speaker: I sent him to our direct placement, real senior guy.
Speaker: Dwayne, this guy's awesome.
Speaker: Full circle comes around three months later, we're hiring him internally through our rebranding of Ronstadt Digital.
Speaker: And I'm like, you just never know
Speaker: how this circle of influence can happen.
Speaker: If you take the time to meet someone and understand what they're, you know, really looking for.
Speaker: So I pride myself in that.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: And I'm going to take, as a takeaway myself, I'm going to go back through, I don't know, my LinkedIn today and be like, who haven't I talked to in like six months?
Speaker: I've got to get back on people's radars because I'm still bad at it.
Speaker: I can't keep up with everybody.
Speaker: Oh, brother.
Speaker: I mean, I, I, I don't, I'm addicted to that.
Speaker: I mean, when it comes like Friday, I'll probably kick out 75.
Speaker: Hey, have a great weekend.
Speaker: It's just that simple.
Speaker: And it's amazing how you kind of get that volley of dialogue.
Speaker: And then suddenly, hey, Dwayne, let's let's set something up.
Speaker: You know, I'm looking at possibly thinking about my next opportunity.
Speaker: And again, I'm not there fishing to try to pull people.
Speaker: But to me, that's just such an easy thing to do.
Speaker: And then when it suddenly starts to get onto your texting, it's even better.
Speaker: I mean, it's such a circle of influence that I've seen just serve me so well.
Speaker: Where the hell do you find the time?
Speaker: You know, no kids.
Speaker: That'll work.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: Well, I appreciate you sharing just a little bit of your time, at least with us.
Speaker: I know the audience is going to take a ton away from this.
Speaker: I promise not to let our relationship go cold and I will keep following up because I feel like the audience is going to have a lot to learn from you.
Speaker: Anything else you want to leave everyone with?
Speaker: Where can they find more about you?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: You can reach me on LinkedIn.
Speaker: I always encourage people to reach out to me.
Speaker: I always like making that connection because
Speaker: I guess since I've been doing this so long, you just see things come full circle that you just couldn't anticipate.
Speaker: But, you know, I always like building relationships.
Speaker: That's what I love doing.
Speaker: Fantastic.
Speaker: All right, everyone.
Speaker: So you heard it again on this podcast.
Speaker: I feel like we have to wrap this up the same way the past 10 times.
Speaker: Relationships are going to be the thing that will help you transform recruiting.
Speaker: Yes, there is tech that will help.
Speaker: Yes, there are tools that will make things a little faster.
Speaker: But relationships transform recruiting.
Speaker: You heard it directly from Dwayne today and from all the other guests we've talked to over the past five or six weeks.
Speaker: So thanks so much for listening.
Speaker: Really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to listen to this.
Speaker: You can find more at transformrecruiting.com.
Speaker: If you've got any questions for me, it's hello at bradowens.com.
Speaker: Until next time, have a fantastic rest of your week and we'll talk soon.
