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Behind The Brand
3 Plays4 months ago
Throwback to one month into Strativis. when Erin and I were still figuring it out and somehow already running a full-blown mutual appreciation society. In this episode, you’ll hear our meet-cute, our early chaos, and why we knew we’d build something big together. Hit play and get to know us.
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Transcript
The Starbucks Meeting
00:00:06
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Three, two, one.
00:00:10
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Good morning.
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Good morning.
00:00:17
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Do you remember the first time we met?
00:00:20
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Like it was yesterday.
00:00:22
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In the Starbucks?
00:00:23
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In the Starbucks, yeah.
00:00:25
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Why didn't you have me come to the office?
00:00:27
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I don't know.
00:00:28
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I think maybe I thought it was cool.
00:00:29
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I was trying to impress you.
00:00:30
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You were sourced, remember?
00:00:33
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I do remember.
00:00:35
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I remember we just had, I got lost in our conversation.
00:00:40
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We were just chatting about recruiting and data.
Recruitment Against the Odds
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And I remember in particular that what I was trying to recruit you for and successfully did in the end.
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was to build out the entire information security function from the ground up with no time, few resources, customers with very high expectations, and maybe one of the least sexiest companies in the world from a technical branding perspective.
00:01:11
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And we were chatting a little bit about data.
00:01:14
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I remember walking out of our conversation and just going, damn,
00:01:19
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That girl is smart and she's smarter than me and I've got to have her for this project and on my team.
The Quick Hire Decision
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I get back to the desk and there's an email from you, a follow-up email, thank you and whatever.
00:01:32
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And you'd offered to send me like some samples of data or data-driven work that you had done.
00:01:38
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And I remember just thinking like, I don't need that.
00:01:41
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It was already, it was already sort of like those TikToks.
00:01:43
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Have you seen those TikToks?
00:01:45
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It's like, you know, do you want the, that don't matter.
00:01:48
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Sign here, baby girl.
00:01:50
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That's sort of how I felt sunnier.
00:01:54
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And, you know, somehow you did and, and you came in and just crush it like I knew that you would.
00:02:00
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And it was just from there, it was just so much fun working together and crushing problems.
00:02:07
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And God, I'm just, I'm so excited to be here doing it again.
00:02:11
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That's so funny.
00:02:12
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I left feeling the same way.
00:02:14
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Like at the time I was reporting into someone who was newer to leadership and I probably learned as much as I could.
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And having that conversation with you, I was like, I got to work for this woman.
00:02:32
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Like she is incredibly smart.
00:02:34
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Like she gets it.
00:02:36
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So that's funny.
00:02:39
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I'm like desperately trying.
00:02:42
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I was playing it cool, but I think I probably had, I was like, I think I probably had to beg on my knees to get the budget to get you.
00:02:51
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Make it look effortless.
00:02:53
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But you did.
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You did.
00:02:55
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Oh my goodness.
00:02:57
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Yeah.
00:02:57
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That's funny.
00:02:58
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That's.
00:03:03
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Good morning.
00:03:05
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Good morning.
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Thanks for hopping on a call.
The Strativist Journey
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I just wanted the opportunity to catch up with you now that we are one month in to establishing Strativist.
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And I also wanted the opportunity to share with my network a little bit more about you for those who haven't had the privilege of working with you.
00:03:28
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So I was going to hand that over to you in your own words to talk a little bit about your background.
00:03:34
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Yeah, happy to be here.
00:03:35
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Good morning.
00:03:37
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I, my gosh, I've been in recruiting for 15 years now, which feels really wild to say out loud.
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And like many of us, I sort of fell into it.
00:03:47
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My parents are PhD scientists, and so is my brother now.
00:03:52
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So I'm the only one in the family who's not a doctor.
00:03:54
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And I think when I was in my early 20s, trying to figure out what I would be when I grew up, I thought maybe I'd go do that.
00:04:01
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And
00:04:03
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Like some poor folks who think that and just don't have the brain that works that way, I washed out midway through and found myself sort of wandered into an internship with an HR team at Morningstar Investment Management.
00:04:20
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And it just opened my eyes to the world of business and I fell in love with it.
00:04:25
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And so I spent a lot of time in finance and in fintech.
00:04:31
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first doing a lot of recruiting and sourcing, then leading teams.
00:04:36
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I've had the pleasure of leading some fantastic teams at places like Schwab and Robinhood and recently Q2, a fintech company out of Austin, and really enjoyed my time doing those things.
00:04:50
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And I
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as I thought about what my next step would be over the last sort of six months that you and I had connected over that time, we've always been connected since working together, what feels like a lifetime ago.
00:05:02
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And, you know, I've always wanted to come back and do it again in, in a different capacity.
00:05:08
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And we've both,
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just evolved so much since that time.
00:05:12
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And I've just really enjoyed being by your side and tackling some of the crazy, complex problems that are here facing us in the market today.
00:05:23
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Yeah, that's true.
00:05:24
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It's funny you say that.
00:05:25
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I remember when I first started working with you and you told me the story of your family and the profession that they chose.
00:05:32
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And you're like, I'm the black sheep.
00:05:33
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And I was looking at you like, you're the smartest person I've ever worked with in this field.
00:05:40
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It's crazy that you think that.
00:05:43
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But yeah, no, it's great.
00:05:44
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And it's so fun to be working together again, because we both have similar philosophies around what good looks like.
00:05:50
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And we both are very passionate about doing a good job.
00:05:56
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So it's nice to be on the same team.
00:05:58
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So, okay, we're one month in.
00:06:01
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Let's talk a little bit about your observations of the market from like the candidate and client perspective.
AI in Recruitment: Challenges and Opportunities
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this market is unlike anything I've ever seen.
00:06:12
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And I think that AI has a lot to do with that.
00:06:16
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It's hit us just smack in the face.
00:06:20
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And I love AI.
00:06:22
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You know, the fact that I will never again have to be clicking away on a keyboard or scribbling in a notebook while I'm having a conversation with somebody in order to remember it after the fact is phenomenal and just amazing.
00:06:36
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I think
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as applied to other concepts and what we do, we're still figuring it out.
00:06:43
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And it's creating some challenges for us along the way.
00:06:47
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One thing that I'm noticing and hearing a lot about from clients is this concept of how do I know who the person is in front of me?
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Because companies are using AI to generate job descriptions and
00:07:01
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on the flip side, candidates are using AI to write their resume and to match their resume to a job description in many cases.
00:07:08
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And so you're looking at all these profiles that essentially look the same because they are, they've been generated by, you know, the AI bots.
00:07:16
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And so a lot of, of what I'm hearing is this sort of trepidation around that.
00:07:22
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And how do I know I've made the right decision?
00:07:24
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And I think that's the value that we add right now in a lot of ways is,
00:07:30
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to get through that, to have the depth of conversation and skills assess so that we can help to build that confidence with our clients sort of side by side and help them make the right choice.
Balancing AI and Candidate Experience at Glassdoor
00:07:43
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Yeah, I totally agree.
00:07:45
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And there's so much uncertainty about where AI is the most effective and impactful in the process.
00:07:53
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And I'm so glad that I had the opportunity with the team at Glassdoor to like really analyze that.
00:08:01
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and think about where we could create those efficiencies without compromising on the experience of the candidate and also not increasing the days to fill because with any new implementation, there is a phase of adoption that can sometimes cause a delay in the process.
00:08:21
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But we managed to implement three tools along the hiring cycle.
00:08:29
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And that created efficiencies that enable us to scale in volume without having to increase headcount.
00:08:36
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Because as you mentioned earlier, you know, headcount's precious right now.
00:08:40
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And so making those good decisions is really important.
00:08:44
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And we still kept our days to fill like 45 days or less, like 45 days was the longest time.
00:08:52
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of our average time to fill and that was you know technology roles go to market roles were much quicker so I understand that it's a lot to navigate when people are under pressure and so any you know opportunity that we get to kind of help people through that I'm really excited about
00:09:19
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Okay, finally, let's wrap it up with what sets us apart from a more traditional consultancy.
Consultancy Experience vs. Traditional Methods
00:09:24
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So I'll kick it over to you to get that started.
00:09:26
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I think that's easy.
00:09:28
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And that's that you and I have been in-house our entire careers.
00:09:33
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And what that's meant is not only are we building strategies, executing them alongside our clients,
00:09:41
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but we are there for the results.
00:09:43
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We have to live with them.
00:09:44
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We're eating our own cooking.
00:09:46
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And a lot of consultants just haven't had that opportunity.
00:09:49
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And it can be easy to work through a set of problems, make quick choices and move on and move away.
00:09:57
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When you've had to be there for the results and deal with them, I think something gets sort of beaten into you about not making choices because they're easy, but making choices because they're right.
00:10:10
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And you anticipate pitfalls, even really small ones, and get a little bit choosier about how you frame your solution and frame it for the long term or build it for the long term.
00:10:23
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And that's the lens I'm bringing to my clients on the search side.
00:10:26
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I know that's the lens that you bring on the fractional HR side.
00:10:30
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And I'm just excited to be here with you as we build this business and work with more and more clients.
Launching Their Own Consultancy
00:10:38
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Me too.
00:10:38
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I feel the same way.
00:10:40
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I do remember about a year ago now, I had the first inkling that I thought this was a good idea and said, you know, the amount of problems that we're tackling, because as you mentioned earlier, we've always kept in touch and
00:10:54
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And, you know, when things have come up for us at our various companies, we've kind of sounded it out with each other is that if we were smart, we would set up our own consultancy because between the two of us, there's nothing in the talent and HR space that we can't solve.
00:11:09
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And then here we are doing it for companies, which is just so exciting.
00:11:14
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And I'm so fulfilled by the work that we do.
00:11:18
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Like, it really means a lot to me.
00:11:19
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And I know it does to you too.
00:11:22
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to do a good job for people and to make an impact on an organization when they're in growth stage, when they are making difficult decisions with tight budgets.
00:11:34
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These decisions have to make an impact.
00:11:36
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And I love being a part of that for our clients.