Transcript
Speaker: Hello, everyone.
Speaker: Welcome back to another episode of the Transform Recruiting Podcast.
Speaker: Per usual, I'm your host, Mr. Brad Owens.
Speaker: And with me today, I just got to say that I love this industry.
Speaker: This industry is as big as we think it is with as many thousands of customers, companies that do this.
Speaker: There really are some shared threads among all of us, and it's a much smaller world than you might anticipate.
Speaker: So I want to bring on my guest today.
Speaker: And I'm just now realizing that I didn't ask him how to say his last name.
Speaker: So I'm going to guess here and you can tell me how badly I did.
Speaker: Mr. Joel Legge.
Speaker: Do it.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Someone coached you perfectly.
Speaker: That was great.
Speaker: No, it's after how many names do we have to normally call when we're recruiting starting out?
Speaker: Like we get pretty good at guessing people's names.
Speaker: Welcome to the show, sir.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: Appreciate it.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: So before we get too far, I want to make sure everyone kind of understands where you're coming from.
Speaker: So if you could give them just a tiny little slice of what your career till now has been, could you just fill them in a little bit?
Speaker: No, glad to.
Speaker: Yeah, I like 90% of the folks right fell into the industry right out of college and in grad school.
Speaker: And I had a job in New York and fell in the industry in 97.
Speaker: So I've been involved for this is my 27th year.
Speaker: The industry started as a recruiter, moved into sales shockingly, right?
Speaker: Cut my teeth with an organization there and then was part of Hall Kenyon, which I think had a great influence on my career going forward.
Speaker: We were acquired by K force.
Speaker: So grew up there leading teams, regions, etc.
Speaker: And and then continued through a number of different firms that were public and private.
Speaker: Some were small, small as 30 million, others were larger.
Speaker: Most recently had been at Ronstadt Technologies and Ronstadt Group, which was around 28 billion.
Speaker: So the largest in the industry.
Speaker: And then this year joined a small private firm, really more West Coast based Red Oak Technologies as the president and CEO.
Speaker: So excited to be here.
Speaker: 27 years in the business.
Speaker: I feel like I have a diverse background in terms of what that has been, but it's been fun.
Speaker: And like you said, a lot of mutual connections where we've crossed paths with folks that have done so many different things over the years.
Speaker: Yeah, it really is a crazy incestuous community, but it's always fun.
Speaker: It kept us around for at least this long, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So one of the interesting things we were talking about before we went live here and something to kind of dovetail on, you've been doing this for, like you said, 27 years now, multiple different locations.
Speaker: You've had probably multiple different tech stacks, multiple different tools at your disposal.
Speaker: What do you feel like the role of technology has been on your career up until now?
Speaker: Well, I think with anything, it's to enable efficiency and effectiveness.
Speaker: I used to say, I used to get asked a lot, if you go around and do a town hall with teams, sales and recruiting teams, what makes a really successful salesperson or recruiter?
Speaker: One of the two things I would always mention is intellectual capacity.
Speaker: And some folks would say, you mean you have to be smart?
Speaker: And I said, well, I do believe you have to be smart, but you also have to be able to know how to leverage your tools.
Speaker: So if you're meeting with a customer for the second, third or fourth time and you're asking them about their tech stack and what they code in and what's their environment like, but you had it in your notes for the first time on your ATS or your CRM, you should be leveraging that, right?
Speaker: Because I've met with those CIOs that said, hey, I feel like I've repeated myself here with your person and that's not how we work, right?
Speaker: So I think in terms of my career, it's enabled me to
Speaker: be able to use those tools to build on it each step of the way.
Speaker: I certainly think in terms of data analysis and visualization and kind of where you're going, it's not just that look at what have we as a team, region, company, et cetera, done in the past, but also if we continue that trend, what does that look like?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And how do we make up the difference?
Speaker: And for me, one of the more exciting parts about that is setting the big goals.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: What's the VHAG?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And being able to use that data to our advantage to say, if we continue this, here's what we can do.
Speaker: And somewhat of that old adage of, you know, what got you here won't get you there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I think that's how it's been more of an enabler for me.
Speaker: I know that's a really interesting perspective because of those points that you mentioned, a lot of those are at the how do we use technology to help lead and guide?
Speaker: there's not a whole lot in there for how does it actually help our sellers and our recruiters actually do their job better, more efficiently, and maybe potentially even make more money in the same amount of time.
Speaker: Because something interesting that we talked about before we jumped on is this idea of KPIs in the industry.
Speaker: How do you think KPIs have evolved, if at all?
Speaker: Yeah, I, and I did say this, and so I'll kind of share it for the audience here.
Speaker: And a few people have been at, you know,
Speaker: conferences in the past, and I've done some other podcasts where I've said this, which is when I started in 97 with a company then called CDI, which doesn't really exist in that form today.
Speaker: I started as a recruiter brand new in this industry and was essentially told 10 submittals a week.
Speaker: We expect four of those to be client interviews, and eventually you're getting one start a week.
Speaker: And that's core expectations for what we do.
Speaker: What's amazing in 2024,
Speaker: I would say many of the organizations I work with in the professional side, white collar, strong margins, right?
Speaker: 20 to $30 margins in this business.
Speaker: One quality new start a week on that contract side is absolutely hitting expectations.
Speaker: And if that is eight to 10 clients, ups, even unique individuals, that's hitting expectations.
Speaker: The difference is the tools we're paying for are tremendously different than they were in 97.
Speaker: right?
Speaker: And the technology that we have available.
Speaker: And it's almost of you've got to be, you got to keep up with the Joneses, right?
Speaker: It's somewhat of, I can drive a car that's a sedan that has, I have to roll down the windows from the 90s.
Speaker: I've got a manual station and it still gets me from point A to B and can probably still go zero to 60 really fast.
Speaker: But today the folks that we're recruiting, whereas LinkedIn recruiter,
Speaker: Where's my technology that's already going to match my candidates for me?
Speaker: Do you have an engagement platform that's going to connect with them and get them teed up to talk with me?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: What about when I start them?
Speaker: What kind of platform do we have?
Speaker: So there are these conversations today that's more of, well, are you driving the newest version or are you still on the 90s version?
Speaker: What's ironic about that is the profitability of the firms, the margin in the firms are fairly similar to what they were 27 years ago.
Speaker: So ultimately, you have to look at where do those costs come from?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Can they gain us actual efficiency in other areas of the business?
Speaker: Can we manage more candidates?
Speaker: Can we grow faster?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: All of those things are going to be part of, you know, is it just the cost of doing business today or how do we allocate that or how do we prioritize it going forward?
Speaker: So let's dig into that then, because we've now mentioned two sides of this.
Speaker: We've mentioned that the role that technology has kind of played and the way that you see it in your current day to day is more of the how do we lead?
Speaker: How do we predict?
Speaker: How do we develop our I think you call it the BHAG, the Bicariotis school, which is fantastic for technology because it can certainly help you forecast and you're not going to be able to forecast if you don't have any of the right data flowing through your system.
Speaker: And like, that's all really important stuff.
Speaker: So, yes, the role of technology is important because if our recruiters and our sellers use it, it will be very valuable for us as leaders to be able to look at those kinds of reports, those trends, those graphs, whatever we need.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But if that technology is not
Speaker: improving our recruiters and our sellers lives so much that they can actually be more efficient and make more than the one start a week or 10 subs a week or whatever it might be is it actually doing what we need it to yeah i think that you also have to look at and i think sometimes i default to and i think a lot of folks do default to the role of just sales and recruiter the way that we did it and i've shared this with some other folks too that once i moved over to a sales desk
Speaker: There was only a couple of ways to get a full of customers.
Speaker: Phone, we didn't really have emails.
Speaker: No one had the cell phones back then, right?
Speaker: Or you would walk into them and meet them in person or some user group or association.
Speaker: But back in the 90s, I mean, going back in time, right?
Speaker: We walked to school both ways.
Speaker: 1900s, yeah.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: People picked up their phone.
Speaker: They do not today, not in the same way that they picked them up 27 years ago or over time.
Speaker: So I also think that there's technologies that hasn't just improved it, but totally changed it.
Speaker: We evaluated a company and an organization I was with in the past, acquired that company and they did creative marketing and digital.
Speaker: We sat down with their team and said, tell me about your sales process.
Speaker: As they walk through their sales process from their initial outreach to the customer, which by the way, was about content, which is about how they got the customer to actually engage on that content.
Speaker: They let us know that their salespeople didn't pick up the phone to call the customer until they had had their customer engage their own content three different times.
Speaker: And typically at this point, they were asking for help.
Speaker: In 1997, I didn't have anybody asking for help, right?
Speaker: We were calling them and trying to get an opportunity to meet with them to understand their wound and challenge and how could we actually be a good partner to them.
Speaker: So I do think some of the technology changes today are the sales cycle isn't the same.
Speaker: What kind of tools do you have that can generate a marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead?
Speaker: How does that actually turn into customers, right?
Speaker: All of the focus and effort we put around SEO in the past and that actually from a sales channel perspective, the tools we didn't have.
Speaker: the hub spots of the world, et cetera, that allow you to nurture and stay in touch with them.
Speaker: I think that's one of the things that we have to look at that should make us more effective, right?
Speaker: And even better at it, right?
Speaker: If you think about how many prior customers we've worked with, all these organizations have been around for a while, what kind of campaign do you have to stay in touch with them?
Speaker: in a positive way that's not just I'm trying to sell you something.
Speaker: And in the same way, I think you say on the recruiting side, how many times do we think about what the redeployment rate is, right?
Speaker: I'm sure that's talked about a lot is, you know, I know punk edge over a census, I used to have the average was marked 7%.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: 7 to 10%, still not great.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: When 90% of the candidates would finish an assignment and actually not have a brand new assignment with you, that that's a massive area of improvement.
Speaker: So I would say as technology continues to improve,
Speaker: I'm off a little track here, but I would say that those areas we should continue to see better improvement on.
Speaker: And I do think some of the technology tools have helped there.
Speaker: And we've started to see those numbers climb into double digits and even more so.
Speaker: Again, where companies focus on that, they start to see that improvement.
Speaker: I agree with that, and I'd be curious to get your take on kind of what I'm seeing in the industry as well, because a lot of the metrics that at least when I was leading one of the yes, we all had our standard KPIs of how many starts, how many stuff, like what are actual numbers that are going out the door?
Speaker: What I at least found and what I'm picking up on people using technology the most for is if we instead don't look at like those end whole number KPIs and instead look more at ratios, technology should be helping with ratios.
Speaker: So things like submission to interview and then submission to hire, like we should be if we have a good matching engine and a better matching engine, we should be able to get higher submission interview ratios.
Speaker: If we are then presenting those better candidates that get more interviews, we should, in theory, get more submission to hire.
Speaker: And if we're truly using technology to kind of impact things, I don't know that we're putting enough stock in those ratio numbers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I agree.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I think that the ratios are a great way to look at.
Speaker: You've got to have some constants with that, though, I think.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: What's the constant to tell me that I now improved that process and I did this, but here's what I did in the past and it was X. Now it's Y. It's so much better.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I wish I had some of the ratios going back when we talked about the recruiting side.
Speaker: You know, I think.
Speaker: In the early 2000s, I was still at an organization that had recruiters bringing candidates into their desk, interviewing them at the desk.
Speaker: If they were extremely happy with the talent person, the culture, they would bring a salesperson over to talk with.
Speaker: This is 2003, 2004.
Speaker: To talk with them, to say, this is the salesperson who will be helping you to identify your next opportunity.
Speaker: So I'm going to write up a summary for them, et cetera.
Speaker: And then when that was done, it would go into a binder.
Speaker: I mean, again, th is is 20 years ago.
Speaker: And the salespeople would go out with the binder.
Speaker: The binder had talent.
Speaker: It was essentially like walking out into your customer with a Rolodex of here's what I have in the warehouse.
Speaker: And when the manager would set up looking for C++ or C Sharp or whatever it might be, you would flip to it and say, here are the available people that we have.
Speaker: I just met this individual yesterday.
Speaker: I think what was different about those ratio was when you as a salesperson and or a recruiter who's talking to a client can personally speak to meeting them,
Speaker: having a relationship with them, how they interacted with you and what you thought of their skill sets is so different than where we are today.
Speaker: It's almost of back.
Speaker: I would, I would akin it to some of the executive recruiters I've talked with, right?
Speaker: They want that, you know, if you're a hydrogen struggles, right?
Speaker: DHR, et cetera, right?
Speaker: They want that high level connection so they can go to the board or the CEO and say, I've met with this individual.
Speaker: This individual fits your profile, what you're looking for in that.
Speaker: It's not just we have a great system and it's sourced us all the best candidates and we identified the top three.
Speaker: So I do think there's a I know this started with ratios, but part of the art of recruiting is still the art of recruiting and still the ability to speak on the behalf of a candidate.
Speaker: And that's not something you can do when someone just slides you a piece of paper.
Speaker: I think the underlying term that I'm hearing from you and from what keeps coming up on these conversations that I'm having is this sort of talent matching world that we're in and the placement world.
Speaker: It's built on trust.
Speaker: Like it 100% is built on trust.
Speaker: If you can even say little things like to your point of I've literally met this person, I have talked to them and I know they're a good fit because and you've also listened to your customer when they say here's what would be a good fit and you can spit that back to them like those are the things that build trust.
Speaker: That is why every single time I'm on a panel or I'm doing some sort of speaking engagement, everyone's like, yeah, but AI is going to replace the recruiter.
Speaker: Bull crap.
Speaker: You can't replace that trust building.
Speaker: It's going to take forever.
Speaker: Not to say that it can't happen, but it'll take forever for AI and other tools to be able to build that kind of trust.
Speaker: So when we think about what's working, why does old school keep winning?
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: I have another example.
Speaker: So I went to small firm, right?
Speaker: We're just under 50 million, 27, 28 people internally made a hire or hire it, right?
Speaker: We're hiring sales folks.
Speaker: So I went to HR, Hey, can I get our LinkedIn recruiter license?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I want to put a post out there.
Speaker: So we do within the first 24 hours, I think we had over a hundred candidates.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: In the requirements, right?
Speaker: Expectations that they had an industry experience and staffing and we're in this geographic market.
Speaker: 98 out of the hundred did not have either of those two.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I saved a template in LinkedIn.
Speaker: It's the first time I'd done it.
Speaker: And I personally wrote back every person that was on there.
Speaker: I'm sure there was a more efficient way to do it and said, not moving forward.
Speaker: And here's why, but I really appreciate your interest in Red Oak.
Speaker: Generally do.
Speaker: I think to a person, everyone wrote back, thank you so much for personally responding to me.
Speaker: And
Speaker: But yet at the same point, I know a lot of people out there are saying, I've got a tool.
Speaker: You can put it in and then every candidate who applies gets an automatic reply from you saying, well, look at your resume.
Speaker: Thanks so much for applying to XYZ company.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's efficient, but the candidates feel like, yeah, that's kind of automatic today, right?
Speaker: Like I should get the bounce back email, but actually hearing from somebody and knowing it's a live person makes a big difference.
Speaker: I think it's winning just because I don't know what your last experience was with a chat bot, but usually it results in me asking someone to call me.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: I mean, if they can resolve it on the chat bot, it's awesome.
Speaker: Like it's really cool, but they missed my trash last week.
Speaker: I had to get on the chat box for waste management and figure it out.
Speaker: And it was really frustrating because eventually it's like, can you just have someone call me?
Speaker: Can I just talk to customer service about this?
Speaker: The technology should enable it to be better, but I think sometimes it's just, it's been a funnel and it's just elongated that process.
Speaker: Do you think that, I mean, we've got bias, right?
Speaker: We're the old recruiting guys.
Speaker: Like we've been doing it a while.
Speaker: We were doing it when that kind of,
Speaker: hand held touch really worked in the industry.
Speaker: Do you think that there is a part of the demographics out there that doesn't want someone to call them?
Speaker: I think there is, right?
Speaker: I think that I know when we've put
Speaker: talent out at a client site, and I go back to when I was working with IBM and working with them directly, I would often ask the individuals then, how do you like to be communicated
Speaker: You know, I'm on site here multiple times a week.
Speaker: Would you rather than just stop by your desk?
Speaker: Would you rather that I don't stop by your desk?
Speaker: Would you rather that I at this time email you?
Speaker: Would you want me to call you like once a month?
Speaker: What would you like?
Speaker: And it was a bell curve of sorts, right?
Speaker: Kind of that middle was like, hey, anytime you're by, just stop by.
Speaker: It'd be great to see.
Speaker: Others, let's just do a lunch once a quarter.
Speaker: Outside of that, I'm busy.
Speaker: I'm doing my stuff.
Speaker: And then there'd be this small group, right?
Speaker: Five, 10% said, just don't call me.
Speaker: Like, I am fine with it, right?
Speaker: Like, don't worry about it.
Speaker: And so I think it's part of how do people want to be communicated with?
Speaker: I think that's one of the things of, you know, we do have a portion of the population that would just prefer to text.
Speaker: I mean, it was years ago, but I was working with somebody who I grew up, grown up with the industry with, and he made the comment, I think it was like 2015.
Speaker: He said, well, that was a first.
Speaker: I said, what was the first?
Speaker: He said, I made a placement through text.
Speaker: I said, I'm kind of concerned.
Speaker: Like, are you sure?
Speaker: He goes, it's somebody I've worked with in the past.
Speaker: but I'd reached out with him on email.
Speaker: He's just texted me.
Speaker: We went back and forth over the job.
Speaker: I'd known the candidate.
Speaker: So that was a very different thing, but we essentially set everything up, got him in front of the client, confirmed with him and everything was placed by via text because that's how the candidate wanted to work.
Speaker: So I do think that there's this customization effect that technology should enable us to do that.
Speaker: And I think that's a great thing.
Speaker: I mean, I don't want to make this commercial for some of the tools out there on AI, but
Speaker: Converse AI, I know Tim Robbins pretty well, right?
Speaker: He's a monster, I was at Ronstad, right?
Speaker: So we've started in NO and got their tool.
Speaker: I was always really intrigued with this tool, that here to find out that there's an automated recruiter, Jamie, that every candidate you have in a web apply gets a call.
Speaker: And I think they get 70% of them on the phone.
Speaker: I don't know all the data, but these interview calls last six to 26 minutes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I know SIA just did a thing where Converse AI was on there and did some demos, et cetera.
Speaker: Some of my recruiting leaders came in and they're like, wow, there are certainly candidates that are going to say automated call.
Speaker: I don't want that.
Speaker: Automated recruiter.
Speaker: I don't want that.
Speaker: But some of them are going to say, hey, if this gives me access to better opportunities, and to be very honest, if I go back to that black box, if I applied to a job on Indeed or LinkedIn or wherever, one of these websites, and it goes to you and within five to 10 minutes, I get a call and it says,
Speaker: Hey, I saw you apply for this position with Brad Owens.
Speaker: Would you have a few minutes to talk to me about your application?
Speaker: I actually feel good about that, that somebody actually saw my content and said, Hey, I'd like to talk with you.
Speaker: I get that it's a virtual recruiter, but these are very good back and forth conversations.
Speaker: So I do think going back to the point, there are different ways to engage different candidates.
Speaker: What we've got to determine is how quickly can they tell us this isn't how I like to be engaged.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Because I think we make sometimes this one assumption, well, this is how we're going to do everything.
Speaker: How do you customize that the best way so that they get the best candidate experience?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I agree with you there.
Speaker: I think it's, there is a bell curve.
Speaker: There are some people that will, and some people that won't, and that's totally fine.
Speaker: But our, our approach should be able to.
Speaker: be flexible enough to account for all the different types of people in the world that would want to be communicated with.
Speaker: So I appreciate that.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So let's do a theoretical question here then.
Speaker: You now have unlimited time, unlimited budget, unlimited everything you could possibly think of, resources, everything else.
Speaker: You now get to solve a problem that exists in the recruiting world today.
Speaker: You've been in it quite a while.
Speaker: Maybe think about something that's net new, something that's happened forever.
Speaker: What would you put money, resources, effort, time into solving?
Speaker: I think for me, it would be
Speaker: I believe there's so much opportunity within one organization knowing about what I would call JOs and PJOs, job orders and potential job orders.
Speaker: And where I really feel that the value of our business comes from is, and one of my colleagues said this the other day, the minute the client has opened the job order, if you call them and then they tell you there's an open job order, you've lost it.
Speaker: If you didn't know this was coming, if you didn't have a relationship with that customer and all you're trying to do is to compete, to fill the job that you just found out about,
Speaker: Good luck, because the chances of that happening are so, so slim.
Speaker: So I think that there's that.
Speaker: A lot of people have tried to solve this potential job orders, which then comes down to how much of my knowledge of the customer is in a database.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Say I'm talking to Microsoft and they say they want to go this direction or Nike.
Speaker: They want to move this way.
Speaker: And when they I'm talking to the team, the e-commerce team and
Speaker: they believe there's a gap.
Speaker: And the people that work within their team on, let's say, whether cybersecurity or JavaScript or whatever it may be, there's a gap for these skill sets.
Speaker: And they know that, but it's more of a heads up that down the road, we're going to be bringing out, whether it's an RFP or we're going to be opening up some roles for you in these skill sets, right?
Speaker: And then we have our talent, which every recruiting firm out there likes to tout how large their database is.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The biggest one out there is LinkedIn, a billion members on a billion members on the platform.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So what's everyone trying to do over the years, right, is match passive candidates with what I would say are potential job orders.
Speaker: And the art of that is, has gotten lost in somewhat of once a job hits, right.
Speaker: It has to be posted now.
Speaker: Now we demand that it's posted online or our website, et cetera.
Speaker: and then candidates, whether they fit or not, or applying to that.
Speaker: To be very fair, what we really want are the people that are passively looking, either finishing up their assignments.
Speaker: So let's start first with, I'm gonna be biased.
Speaker: I want the folks that are working for us to see that in the next,
Speaker: three months, this company is going to be looking for this.
Speaker: Can we identify, hey, you're moving from our client here to another opportunity and it's coming.
Speaker: We'd like you to access that.
Speaker: So people have talked about giving them access to their database.
Speaker: I know two big companies in the top five in IT that have tried to create tools where clients go into their databases.
Speaker: to identify talent that's available, right?
Speaker: They've said, I would really like to have access to your talent pool.
Speaker: So they've created subsets of their databases so that their clients, and these are big companies, can go in and search.
Speaker: The problem is now they're doing the job of a recruiter.
Speaker: And while they like to window shop, they don't actually want to go through the process of, are you truly interested?
Speaker: Are you truly qualified?
Speaker: Is the timing work out for you, right?
Speaker: What about costs for it, right?
Speaker: Does this fit market cost rate, et cetera?
Speaker: So all of the core skills, they just want to kind of window shop and say, oh, look at this.
Speaker: This is a, it's a little bit like a dating show, right?
Speaker: Oh, hey, I'm an app dev guy.
Speaker: And look at all this Java talent, Python talents available.
Speaker: This would be awesome.
Speaker: But the art of recruiting gets really challenging.
Speaker: And that's also where I think direct sourcing is tough too, is it's great to have all this data in a cloud, but for us to say, I want to access it.
Speaker: So I'm getting away from that, but I think if I had to match it, it would be how do candidates who are currently working with or are in a database have access to a proprietary set of potential opportunities that come in the next two to four months and actually match it up and say, this is something I'm really interested in.
Speaker: And by the way, I'm super qualified for.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'm not just you.
Speaker: You can't just apply.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then have someone that's more of a what I would call a resource manager.
Speaker: Saying, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: This is perfect.
Speaker: And then I'm coming to the customer two or three weeks before your project actually kicks off and says, hey, we listen to you.
Speaker: Back in Thanksgiving of last year, you told us you're going to be looking for this at the end of Q1.
Speaker: It's March 12th.
Speaker: Here are our top people that believe that they would be really interested in your role and they'd be willing to work with you on this.
Speaker: If I can circumvent all the process of the interviews and SOWs and all of that RFPs that happen there, that to me would be a massive.
Speaker: Yeah, that'd be incredible.
Speaker: The whole time you're saying that, I'm trying to think of, okay, how am I going to start keeping track of the data that I would need to be able to activate things like that inside my database?
Speaker: the it always comes down to is the end date real and is it in the ATS or that current job that assignments on the end date is real.
Speaker: We now have something that we can match up with the potential start date of something else.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And being able to have a new rec in our system that even if it's not a confirmed start date, but a potential start date,
Speaker: I can compare those things pretty quickly.
Speaker: And I have a qualified candidate that's already set up with us.
Speaker: That's already in the database that has guaranteed skillset that we've placed them out on before.
Speaker: That makes it a pretty easy matching engine to build.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I think it is.
Speaker: And we've talked about this before for many, many years, right?
Speaker: Of, you know, even being able to have access to, let's say a mobile app for our candidates that then says, by the way, a new opportunity that's within five miles of your house has come up with us.
Speaker: we would be interested in presenting with the client.
Speaker: The challenge is you don't want to take them from one of your current clients to another one before they've completed that assignment.
Speaker: So it does come down to timing, right?
Speaker: So, but it's one of those things that we, you know, it is about the art of matching the right talent with them and then the culture and the fit and all of those things.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which, haven't found tech that's been able to do that part yet.
Speaker: Very challenging, right?
Speaker: Very challenging.
Speaker: You know, you go back in the day, right?
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: again, back in the day, it was, this was the art and the beauty of Hall Kenyon, which I think I can speak of more because that company has somewhat been acquired and it's different.
Speaker: You know, I grew up in a world at CDI early on, and then a PDS company that was really much about resumes to those.
Speaker: So then I come over to Hall Kenyon and I remember starting to work with the process and they called it custom staffing at the time.
Speaker: And the way they would go through it, if a customer was on the phone with you asking for C++ developers, the first thing out of your mouth as a salesperson would be great.
Speaker: We're in the Denver Metro marketplace.
Speaker: We probably see around 2,500 C++ developers on an annual basis.
Speaker: That'd be the case.
Speaker: We have a top list of folks that are available and would be really good for this project.
Speaker: If you can give me some more details, we could have our best person there on Monday at 8
Speaker: That's the case.
Speaker: I'm going to probably save you three to four hours of interview time back and forth.
Speaker: I was calling you setting up interviews, et cetera.
Speaker: And at the end of the day, if this person doesn't fit you culturally, because I'll guarantee you they're going to fit it technically.
Speaker: They don't fit it culturally.
Speaker: We're not going to charge you for that.
Speaker: So that was the way we tried to circumvent process back in the day was to say, you should hire us because we're experts at this.
Speaker: Now I would only say that for eight or nine skills, right?
Speaker: If somebody came out and said, you know, I'm looking for Pega developers that say, okay, we're going to have to do a hard search on this.
Speaker: But if it was the core skills that we had, someone called them golden skills, et cetera, we should be able to have our best person there on Monday.
Speaker: To be honest, why are you using us if you just want to go through and interview all the people that we just did?
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So then the process was, if that was a direct fill, if the client said, no, I can't do that.
Speaker: I called that up to other firms.
Speaker: I just can't do it.
Speaker: I'd say, great.
Speaker: I understand that.
Speaker: What times can you commit to interview within 48 hours?
Speaker: And can you dedicate those times for us so we can fill those slots for you?
Speaker: Well, I'd really like to see the candidates first.
Speaker: Again, why are you using us?
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: If we know your skill set and we screw this up, then you should fire us.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And then if they say, I can't commit to interview times with you in 48 hours, I'd say, okay, minimum 24 hours from now, can you get on the phone with my delivery team and go over what we think are our top three candidates?
Speaker: And then at that time, if they said, again, I can't do that.
Speaker: Just submit your best people to me.
Speaker: The question we would often ask is maybe we shouldn't work on this job, right?
Speaker: You have a client that just wants to call it out.
Speaker: So there are some of the art of that that goes back 20 plus years that we still have to manage through process.
Speaker: And people say, well, that's hard.
Speaker: We got VMS, we got this.
Speaker: A lot of these have evolved to still having manager relationships.
Speaker: And we know every company I've talked to, how do they qualify jobs?
Speaker: One, two, three, ABC.
Speaker: A is always, do I have manager contact?
Speaker: And can I influence the process?
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Old school continues to work year after year after year after year.
Speaker: I absolutely love it.
Speaker: Well, Joel, thank you so much for spending time with us and to be able to give us this kind of insight.
Speaker: Is there any last bit of wisdom that you'd want to leave our audience with here today?
Speaker: I always say relationships first, right?
Speaker: I mean, I know this is about technology and about the tools, and I absolutely believe that they're going to continue to make it better for us and enable us.
Speaker: But if you don't focus on the relationships, then I don't know why you're in the business.
Speaker: Have to agree.
Speaker: Yep, absolutely have to agree.
Speaker: All right, everyone.
Speaker: Well, that was another fantastic episode of the Transform Recruiting Podcast.
Speaker: Thank you all so much for listening.
Speaker: Joel, thank you so much for spending time with us today.
Speaker: For more episodes like this, please visit transformrecruiting.com.
Speaker: If you have any other people that you'd like to hear from, if you think you yourself would have some interesting insight into our audience, please share them.
Speaker: Email for me is hello at bradowens.com.
Speaker: Happy to do some networking and find some other good guests for our listeners to learn from.
Speaker: But otherwise, feel free to visit transformrecruiting.com for this episode's show notes, including where to find Joel and any other episodes that we have out there.
Speaker: So until next time, thank you all so much, and I'll see you on the next one.
