Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Transform Recruiting Podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host, as always, Brad Owens.
Speaker: And with me today, well, before I get into that, before I get into who I have, the reason who I have is on this show is because the tagline for this show has always been the people, ideas, and tech that are transforming the recruiting industry.
Speaker: I feel like you have to kind of be in the industry for a while to truly understand how it's transforming because you only know one way otherwise.
Speaker: Well, the person I've got today has got some history in recruiting that you're going to hear about that I think brings a fantastic perspective for you to hear from today.
Speaker: So without further ado, I don't want to keep you in silence.
Speaker: So Mr. Chris Mader, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Appreciate you coming on.
Speaker: I'm excited to be here, Brad.
Speaker: Thanks for the opportunity to talk to you today.
Speaker: Well, I gave everyone just a little bit of an intro there of what they're about to expect from you.
Speaker: But why don't you fill everyone in on your background, kind of your perspective of where you're coming from?
Speaker: Sure thing.
Speaker: The short version of a long story is I've been in the staffing industry for 27 years.
Speaker: I started at a very small IT staffing firm in 1996 called New Boston Systems.
Speaker: That was rebranded to Sapphire Technologies that was later acquired by Ronstadt.
Speaker: So my total tenure at that company was 20 years.
Speaker: So I saw a company of 30 million grow to about 1.4 billion in the US.
Speaker: So that was quite an interesting ride.
Speaker: Upon leaving Ronstadt, I went to the locum tenant sector.
Speaker: So I helped the company grow from, I don't know, 150 million to 250 million before I left.
Speaker: I had a short stint at a $20 million IT and engineering firm with an old friend, Total Tech.
Speaker: And then my last staffing role, I was the chief revenue officer for a healthcare IT company, Optimum Healthcare IT.
Speaker: And we were exceeding probably $110, $120 million last year.
Speaker: So I've seen, you know, a few different professional sectors and staffing to say the least.
Speaker: And, you know, I was working at Ronstadt.
Speaker: I get to go to the Netherlands quite a bit and collaborate with my colleagues over there as well and have interaction with the board.
Speaker: So, yeah, really interesting career in staffing thus far.
Speaker: You have seen it.
Speaker: That's fantastic.
Speaker: So we obviously as an industry go through highs, lows.
Speaker: Everyone has a trough.
Speaker: There might be really hot industries.
Speaker: It might be really cold industries.
Speaker: But in and amongst all of that, there's always those underlying issues.
Speaker: There's a lot of things that are affecting the business.
Speaker: So for you, what do you feel like from your perspectives currently affecting the industry?
Speaker: What are those things that might be below the surface?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, there's always internal and external factors, right, when it comes to these staffing firms.
Speaker: And so, you know, the external factors, 2023 was a tough year in many sectors, some better than others.
Speaker: And there's some optimism for 2024, which is exciting.
Speaker: But I think the internal factors are the most interesting because to me, all the staffing companies I've worked for or collaborated with through the years, it always comes down to one thing, which is leadership.
Speaker: And, you know, do the employees that come in, the recruiters, the salespeople, the back office employees,
Speaker: Did the leader create a culture of psychological safety and growth and, you know, a good mix between strategy and execution, a good mix between humility and confidence?
Speaker: So when I think about staffing firms that succeed over the long haul, you know, one guy I worked for a long time ago, Dan Foley, who ran Ronstadt, now runs Curate Partners, used the Peter Drucker line of culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Speaker: So Dan was always very focused on culture.
Speaker: And as a result, I've always been focused on culture and I've always advised my clients to be focused on culture.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: So now you've got everyone sitting here thinking, oh, no, what's what's my culture?
Speaker: So if you were sitting in these leaders shoes and you now know, based on what you're doing now, probably the next best thing that they should be looking into doing, where would you point them?
Speaker: What would be their next step?
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's, you know, I'm a big.
Speaker: development guy, coaching, mentoring, developing, and I used the phrase psychological safety earlier.
Speaker: You know, my belief in leadership and management is, you know, people, nobody wants to be micromanaged in staffing, but everybody likes structure.
Speaker: So leaders should provide the proper expectations and structure for their employees, and then ultimately create a plan of, you know, coaching and development to develop their skills because nobody takes a job to leave a job, right?
Speaker: But if you look at SHRM and you look at the statistics and data around why people leave a job, 84% of people in the U.S. say, you know, my manager creates a lot of unnecessary stress for me.
Speaker: And 57% of people actually quit their job because of their boss.
Speaker: So, you know, if you're a CEO and owner of a staffing firm or a senior leader, you need to be focused on not just your minor league system of your
Speaker: individual contributors that are producing well, but who's the next level leaders and what are we doing to develop their skills?
Speaker: Because just because they were great on a staffing desk doesn't make them a great leader.
Speaker: We all know the competencies change when we step into a leadership role, right?
Speaker: The leader's job is to make their team better, not just get the work done.
Speaker: So it's, you know, leadership by definition is getting work done through other people.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, there you have it, everyone.
Speaker: If you're sitting there worried about
Speaker: Oh, my gosh, am I creating that kind of culture or not?
Speaker: There's your steps.
Speaker: Let's start there at least.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we have places that have.
Speaker: We'll just say good cultures there.
Speaker: There are places that are fantastic to work.
Speaker: They're growing.
Speaker: They're doing crazy amounts of business.
Speaker: What are they about to face?
Speaker: You already mentioned that, you know, twenty twenty three was what it was.
Speaker: We'll go with in the past and we all know what happens during holiday time in the recruiting industry.
Speaker: But twenty twenty four.
Speaker: What's your outlook?
Speaker: What are you feeling?
Speaker: Well, it's funny.
Speaker: So I'll even comment on the end of the year.
Speaker: I've always made the joke that, you know, it's hard to get people on the phone the week of Thanksgiving.
Speaker: It's hard to set client appointments in December with the holidays and getting clients to commit because they don't know their budgets.
Speaker: And I've always challenged my sales team and even the recruiting team to say, well, don't be afraid to ask the extra question.
Speaker: You know, like what if, you know, if a client says, hey, Chris, give me a call in January.
Speaker: I want to get my budget.
Speaker: I'll say, well, let's go ahead and pretend that the budget gets approved.
Speaker: what is that going to look like for you?
Speaker: Like, what could that mean for you?
Speaker: And the client usually says, well, we're going to hire X amount of people or these are the roles we're looking for.
Speaker: And I would then say, okay, well, proactively, let me start that search without a commitment.
Speaker: And I try to get ahead of it, right?
Speaker: I'm trying to win the business before the wreck comes out.
Speaker: I've always said that more than half of the business and staffing happens before the actual job order gets sent to anybody.
Speaker: So, you know, trying to pre-fill business, trying to pre-win business, get exclusivity on business prior to it getting approved.
Speaker: I always try to play that angle.
Speaker: And I agree with you there.
Speaker: I agree with you because when I when I was leading, so I led a firm for about 10 years and leading that firm.
Speaker: I always just tell people I'm like getting checks signed is the goal of our business, but our business is building relationships.
Speaker: But relationships around the holiday time is the best possible time to do that because people are literally a little slower.
Speaker: They are.
Speaker: it's probably a lot easier to build those relationships around that time.
Speaker: So I agree with you completely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm glad you said that because I'll segue on that point.
Speaker: So, you know, I started my own company, MTA consultancy about seven months ago, where I advise, I do consulting advisory work and executive coaching for a lot of staffing firms.
Speaker: And I talk about the algorithm for trust.
Speaker: I've created this kind of what I call the, I have a degree in mathematics.
Speaker: So, you know, forgive the math nerd comment, you know, algorithm for trust.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Algorithm for trust starts with two things.
Speaker: And this can be done with any human being, right?
Speaker: So whether it's a client, somebody in your personal life, somebody you want to build a relationship with, it starts with relationship.
Speaker: Like, do I like this person?
Speaker: Do I enjoy spending time with this person?
Speaker: You know, and just kind of building that rapport.
Speaker: The second component is competency.
Speaker: Do I see this person as somebody that's smart, somebody that can help me, somebody I want to spend my time with?
Speaker: Those are the first two pieces.
Speaker: If you can get a client to kind of like you and build that rapport and relationship, and then the competency level around
Speaker: hey, here's what I can bring to the table.
Speaker: It gets to the third step, which is ultimately trust, right?
Speaker: Or, you know, the intimacy of building trust.
Speaker: Intimacy is when a client really opens up the kimono and says, hey, like, I'm willing to tell you what my business problem actually is, Chris.
Speaker: I've talked to a lot of people about this, but here's my situation.
Speaker: And once you get that level of intimacy with a customer, the fourth component is mutual risk-taking, which is to say, okay, I now understand the problem.
Speaker: I have a solution for you, Mr. and Mrs. Customer.
Speaker: And let's take this risk together and I'm not going to let you fail.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So when I think about, you know, that when you talk about relationship, it really is what we're talking about here is trust.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Do I trust you?
Speaker: And most of the time in staffing engagements, I mean, even a single placement is a multiple of a thousand, you know, tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Never mind a national account where they're spending one hundred, two hundred, three hundred million a year with their vendors.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Or even a billion dollars, some of these companies.
Speaker: So it's really about do I trust you?
Speaker: And so when I talk to salespeople and recruiters and leaders, I encourage the leaders to build that trust with their team.
Speaker: I encourage the salespeople, recruiters to build that trust with their candidates and their clients in that manner.
Speaker: I love that one.
Speaker: I want to see the actual formula.
Speaker: You've mentioned SHRM before.
Speaker: So this is probably one of the weirdest related topics that I've never gone into in those podcasts.
Speaker: But my very first podcast venture ever was
Speaker: was super successful in the iTunes business world for literally my title was called the culture coach.
Speaker: And I was talking to companies about building culture and about hiring and about small business hiring and that kind of thing.
Speaker: And as a part of that, I got to speak an engagement with Sherm.
Speaker: That's where the tie in comes from.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: And mine was a formula for the quality of hire.
Speaker: because that's been such a very, very difficult thing for people to quantify.
Speaker: So I came up with a formula for that.
Speaker: So fellow math nerd.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: No, that's fantastic.
Speaker: I appreciate you digging into that.
Speaker: Because I do think that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And on top of that too, so you talk about like, how do you measure quality, right?
Speaker: So I try to build out leadership scorecards, again, as a consultant for my staffing clients.
Speaker: A leadership scorecard can be measured things like the leadership competency,
Speaker: right?
Speaker: It could be how do they coach and develop their people?
Speaker: Do they have like a coaching tree where you can clearly see that the people they hire and train and develop are getting promoted or moving into lateral roles or diagonal roles within the organization?
Speaker: But I've always found an interesting stat when you talk to CEOs of staffing firms, they'll talk about attrition.
Speaker: And I'm like, I don't want to talk about attrition.
Speaker: I want to talk about voluntary attrition.
Speaker: Because if you're managing people up or out, that's okay.
Speaker: But if people are quitting, that's when we have a problem.
Speaker: So, you know, I really try to pin in on
Speaker: are people leaving you or are you making the choice, you know, with, with your staff members that maybe aren't making it?
Speaker: Are we managing them up and out?
Speaker: Or is it, you know, you're a victim of people are leaving you because there's an issue inside your business.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If I was able to develop a sales leader that went on to be, I don't know, a COO of another organization, like I'd be impressed with that.
Speaker: Like, good for you.
Speaker: Go for it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, and that's, you know, and we have a mutual friend, a gentleman I worked with at Ronstadt, Justin Priest.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And you think about these coaching trees, right?
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: I came from a very, very fortunate coaching tree.
Speaker: You know, I talk about new Boston systems and Sapphire technology.
Speaker: The people that came, the people that were above me, that trained and developed me were Dan Foley, Curate Partners, Bob Dickey, Medica's Healthcare Solutions, Tracy Fiat, Ron Stott, Greg Netland, you know, the Vidier NV chairman, Bruce Wiedeberg, now Healthcare IT Leader, COO.
Speaker: You know, it's like, I got to work with, Mark Eldridge at Alku, I got to work with so many people that,
Speaker: understood the playbook of hiring great people, spending time with them, developing their skills and not microing them, right?
Speaker: Really developing them so they could solve their own problems in real time with their customers and candidates, and then just winding them up every morning and letting them go do their job.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I'm making notes to myself here because there's other things we need to talk about.
Speaker: I can't forget to ask you this question, but that's amazing.
Speaker: I totally agree.
Speaker: I think we're on the exact same page from a coaching perspective.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's insane.
Speaker: There's not a lot of people that think that that way.
Speaker: So I appreciate it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So in your role right now with what you're doing with the sales sides of things, sales and recruiting, that's always been a an interesting nut to crack.
Speaker: And there's not a lot of us that have really figured out how to do that.
Speaker: So when you are helping coach these sales leaders and just for topic of conversation for the podcast, let's keep it on the recruiting leaders.
Speaker: What do you feel like some of the the large gaps are that they're facing?
Speaker: Well, interestingly, so I would say from a recruiting perspective, you know, the tools and technology, the top of the funnel, let's start with top of the funnel, because I think that's the biggest challenge.
Speaker: I think recruiting, once you get a candidate that's somewhat warm, the beauty of our industry is it hasn't really changed a whole heck of a lot, right?
Speaker: Because it's what we said earlier, it's about building the relationship and the rapport, having competency in whatever your
Speaker: whatever your business is, whether it's healthcare or IT or engineering or what have you, right?
Speaker: So I think the biggest challenge in recruiting is top of funnel.
Speaker: And we all know the shortage.
Speaker: I mean, locum tendens is an example.
Speaker: We are currently short 40,000 providers in this country.
Speaker: In 10 years, we're going to be short 120,000 providers in this country.
Speaker: So, you know, massive challenge in recruiting.
Speaker: And what comes first, chicken or the egg, right?
Speaker: Do we want to get the job record of the person?
Speaker: You know, obviously both is the answer, right?
Speaker: I guess, can the chicken cook the egg?
Speaker: That would be amazing.
Speaker: But I'll tell you one thing about recruiting that I found fascinating.
Speaker: I did get to meet Fritz Goldsmedding, who was the founder of Ronstadt.
Speaker: So Fritz Goldsmedding is a gentleman who used to ride resumes on his bicycle around Amsterdam in 1965 and built a company that's now exceeding $30 billion in sales.
Speaker: And I met him.
Speaker: And he's one of the 150 richest people in the world.
Speaker: We talked about AI.
Speaker: We talked about technology and job boards.
Speaker: We talked about all the things that people in recruiting talk about.
Speaker: But what was interesting, I said, you know, silver bullet advice for it.
Speaker: It's like, what can you tell me as a staffing recruiting leader, you know, about the future of this industry?
Speaker: And here's what he told me.
Speaker: He said, Chris, in his Dutch accent, I won't try to do it.
Speaker: He goes, you know, nothing will ever change when it comes to the intuition of a good recruiter.
Speaker: He goes, that still matters.
Speaker: And that's always going to matter.
Speaker: And so I found it to be fascinating, right?
Speaker: So top of funnel activity.
Speaker: So how do you leverage technology in your system to generate leads?
Speaker: And so
Speaker: You know, I know in my previous businesses and recruiting, we had a 24-7 operation where recruiters would come in at the normal seven, eight, nine in the morning.
Speaker: They do their job through the day.
Speaker: And then we would outsource sourcing to India, Kuala Lumpur, other countries to do some sourcing for us.
Speaker: So we came in the morning, we already had some warm leads to call on or try to hunt down.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I think about, I think the biggest challenge of recruiting is just getting that candidate in the door because everybody,
Speaker: and their mother's calling them, right?
Speaker: There's 17, 18,000 staffing firms in this country.
Speaker: So when I talk to recruiting leaders, locum tenants as an example, I'll say, hey, how many locum tenants firms are there?
Speaker: You're like, I don't know.
Speaker: I'm like, about 200.
Speaker: How many nursing companies are there?
Speaker: About 600.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: There's 800 companies calling your candidates every day is how you have to look at it.
Speaker: So I then say, well, how are you different?
Speaker: And I'm a huge Simon Sinek guy.
Speaker: Start with why.
Speaker: People make decisions based on how they feel, not just the logic.
Speaker: So
Speaker: If you're calling a candidate, my advice has always been don't just spew your feature and benefits of the company.
Speaker: Tell me why I should work with you.
Speaker: Brad, why do I want to work with you if you're a recruiter at a certain company?
Speaker: And you want to elicit an emotional response from that person because you only have, I think the data is you have 27 seconds on a cold call to get somebody's attention.
Speaker: I was just about to ask you.
Speaker: So now this would be an awesome thought experiment because I used to do this in my recruiters as well.
Speaker: So you have the first 30 seconds of that phone call to make this person love and trust you.
Speaker: What do you say to them?
Speaker: Yeah, if I were to call you, so you'll laugh.
Speaker: This is a pitch I've used in recruiting.
Speaker: I actually would say, hey, Brad, Chris made a calling from XYZ Company.
Speaker: How are you doing today?
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Hey, I have a question for you.
Speaker: You like your boss?
Speaker: And people are like, what?
Speaker: I'm like, do you like your boss?
Speaker: Because I know statistically that 70% of people don't.
Speaker: So I know seven out of 10 times, they're gonna be like, well, actually I don't.
Speaker: And I'll say, you want a new one?
Speaker: And they're like, I'm sorry, who are you again?
Speaker: But I have their attention, right?
Speaker: So- You've done something different, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, everybody remembers Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, ABC always be closing.
Speaker: But what they don't remember, which I teach in my sales and recruiting classes is AIDA, attention, interest, decision, action.
Speaker: Attention, do I have it, right?
Speaker: Interest, are you interested?
Speaker: And once you get to that,
Speaker: then you can start to bake the relationship and you can start to schedule a call or a future firm commitment, you know, based on your sales process, um, to see if you can actually get to, you know, maybe building that relationship and potentially placing somebody, but like you have to get their interest.
Speaker: I mean, there's, there's another phrase I use 10% difference, a hundred percent better.
Speaker: Like you have to say something a little bit different.
Speaker: These people are getting the same calls, the same emails from everybody.
Speaker: So why are you different?
Speaker: I really liked that one.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I'm not going to get into strategy.
Speaker: I'm not a recruiter anymore.
Speaker: I got to keep that in mind.
Speaker: I'm not recruited.
Speaker: I just get so nerdy about this stuff.
Speaker: I couldn't talk about it enough on my day job.
Speaker: So I literally started a podcast to be able to talk about it.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: It's just insane.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so I want to keep an eye on time cause I want to respect your time and respect our listeners time here, but, um, tell us a little bit about what you are currently doing and how people can find you because this should have given them just a little teeny tiny bit of excitement to want to get in touch with you.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
Speaker: So yeah, my, my company's, uh, called MTA consultancy.
Speaker: And when I started my firm, you have to come up with a, with a name, right?
Speaker: So you can incorporate in the state and
Speaker: I got to be honest with you, it took me about five minutes.
Speaker: My college baseball coach's name is Boyd Coffey, and we lost him to cancer a few years ago.
Speaker: But when I went to college at Rollins College in Florida, he was my baseball coach.
Speaker: He had a big wooden sign over his desk that said, make the adjustment.
Speaker: And I asked coach, I'm like, coach, what does that mean?
Speaker: And he's like, Chris, you know, and he was kind of a good old boy from the South in Tennessee.
Speaker: And I wouldn't say like the most sophisticated guy, but man, he was a humble, quiet, soft-spoken, but strong man.
Speaker: And when he spoke, you listened and make the adjustment.
Speaker: I learned through my four years of college was anything in my life that wasn't going well, it was up to me and make the adjustment, right?
Speaker: If I wasn't effectively communicating with my pitching staff as a catcher, he'd be like, you know, Chris, you're going to make the adjustment, how you talk to the seniors, you know?
Speaker: And so I learned it was on me.
Speaker: And this is an, this is an extension essentially of emotional intelligence, locus of control, these concepts where the outcomes in your life are based on what you do or what you don't do.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: What I started to do in my coaching business, I learned that most of the people I coach, it's about behavior change.
Speaker: There's definitely some skills that need to be developed, but a lot of times they have to change their behaviors.
Speaker: So make the adjustment, MTA consultancy is, you know, make the adjustment after my college baseball coach.
Speaker: But I really talk about the one or two behaviors that a recruiter, a salesperson, a leader wants to change in order to be more effective in their role.
Speaker: And so I do these deep dives with them and
Speaker: Sure, I can do 360 reviews, but I do one-on-one coaching and I really get to know the exact problem that that exact individual is challenged with and build that personal connection through the algorithm for trust we talked about earlier.
Speaker: And then really start to dig in and diagnose, like, what's the one issue?
Speaker: What's the one behavior you want to get better at?
Speaker: Because it actually takes three to six months minimum to change your behavior.
Speaker: We say it takes like 21 days to make or break a habit.
Speaker: It takes like six months to change your behavior and you need a coach or somebody, your manager,
Speaker: You know, a coach, somebody that's guiding you through that process, holding you accountable to the behavior changes you want to make.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: So where can they find you?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: MTAConsultancy.com is our website.
Speaker: And obviously you can find me on LinkedIn, Chris Mader, M-A-D-E-R, or MTAConsultancy also has our LinkedIn page as well.
Speaker: I'll make sure to include all of that in the description for this episode.
Speaker: So, I mean, this is a lot of fun to talk to you.
Speaker: I really appreciate your perspective.
Speaker: I really appreciate the kind of experience that you bring to it.
Speaker: And even nice little tidbits for our recruiting leaders now to go out and have some conversations with their people.
Speaker: So thank you so much for taking the time out.
Speaker: No, it really is great to be here today, Brad.
Speaker: Thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: No, you're very, very welcome.
Speaker: And for everyone still listening, thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker: I hope that one was valuable for you.
Speaker: I know that I now know the next question you're going to ask someone when you call them, if they like their boss or not.
Speaker: That's a good play to your strengths.
Speaker: Play to the, what is it?
Speaker: Play the statistics, right?
Speaker: Well, perfect.
Speaker: All right, everyone.
Speaker: If you want more episodes like this, they are at transformrecruiting.com.
Speaker: If you've got anyone to suggest or if you yourself are interested in coming and having a conversation and nerding out about recruiting, you can send an email to hello at bradowens.com.
Speaker: Until next time, I hope you all have a fantastic week.
Speaker: Talk soon.
