Transcript
Speaker: I got a treat for y'all today.
Speaker: Very first ever live in-person podcast recording with Mr. Justin Priest.
Speaker: Thanks for coming to the Common Grounds Coffee Shop, man.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: I've been here many years ago.
Speaker: It was like the hangout place for the young kids.
Speaker: 24 hours open, play cards, drink coffee, stay up all night.
Speaker: So it's cool to kind of come back in a different perspective, having a conversation with you.
Speaker: Well, I appreciate it.
Speaker: So let's give everyone just a little bit of background on you so that they understand kind of where you're coming from here.
Speaker: So just give them the elevator pitch.
Speaker: Yeah, so I've been in staffing recruiting for 16 years.
Speaker: I started with the company Sapphire Technologies in 2007 as a sales rep in Cleveland, Ohio.
Speaker: Did that for three years, was relatively successful.
Speaker: I guess successful enough they felt I could go to Chicago and run that market.
Speaker: So moved there in 2010 with my wife who was newly pregnant.
Speaker: At the time the office was small.
Speaker: It had been through a lot of transition and challenges.
Speaker: So it was a true rebuild and a project type office.
Speaker: And five years later, exited there.
Speaker: The office at the time I think was
Speaker: 18 staff externally billing.
Speaker: We had three people internally.
Speaker: It was like two and a half million.
Speaker: When I left in 2015, which was to come back to Cleveland because we'd had two kids at that point and needed to get back to family, it was around 20, 26 million.
Speaker: So we had grown it substantially.
Speaker: And through that kind of transition, Sapphire Technologies became Ronstad Technologies.
Speaker: We acquired a company, SFN Group, which was Technosaurs for folks in the industry familiar with it.
Speaker: And that enhanced our professional services capabilities.
Speaker: So being able to sell traditional solutions to customers too, which for me, being in the industry eight years at that point was transformational.
Speaker: It's like what kept me here as opposed to just constantly chasing job orders.
Speaker: You could start to consultatively sell with customers.
Speaker: And for me, that was, I think, just a huge shift in my growth and what I did.
Speaker: And so when I moved back to Cleveland, I took a senior leadership role running Minnesota and Iowa.
Speaker: and then have just progressively taken on new roles.
Speaker: Most recently, this year, accepted the EVP role for mid-market within Ronsal Technologies, so overseeing about $700 million in revenue, six VPs.
Speaker: We had 40 markets and like 300 sales staff.
Speaker: So it's been a cool journey from 2007 to most recently.
Speaker: You had quite the team.
Speaker: We did, yeah.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: So you have seen...
Speaker: Kind of a little bit of the up and down, because we've been through at least two cycles since you started recruiting of the up and downs.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So currently today, what do you feel like is facing the market and kind of making the biggest impact on how you and or your teams would have to operate?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker: I think everybody's searching for that, like, you know, special sauce or what's happening in the market.
Speaker: And it seems to be right where you have strong tenure and relationships with customers and with talent.
Speaker: That's been the biggest differentiator and where you're seeing people.
Speaker: either markets or customers growing, right?
Speaker: And you're seeing kind of those connections to talent where it's so important right now because they're being extremely picky because of remote work and hybrid and some companies wanting to go back to the office.
Speaker: So that's been the biggest factor that I've seen in where we've won and where we struggled, right?
Speaker: everybody's out trying to bring in new talent in terms of sales reps, in terms of recruiters.
Speaker: And you're an industry vet as am I. That's a learning curve, right?
Speaker: It takes two years to get really good and connected.
Speaker: And so where you're able to maintain your great people, that's where we're starting to see a huge differentiator.
Speaker: And then additionally, the evolution of how the staffing and recruiting industry technology has changed, right?
Speaker: And being able to adapt to that and
Speaker: help implement it into your business in an impactful way and not getting too distracted with just all the tools that are out there because there's tons and it can be overwhelming.
Speaker: So just making sure you don't lose focus on really, I mean, it's always this business is fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, it's been interesting because I had another conversation recently with someone that I was, it was a CEO of another firm.
Speaker: They were talking about, you know,
Speaker: recruiting hasn't changed.
Speaker: It's still, there's a person that needs a job.
Speaker: There's a person that needs a job filled and having a hard time doing it.
Speaker: So they typically match up and hey, there's a recruiter.
Speaker: So that fundamental hasn't changed.
Speaker: And to your first point of what has been kind of the biggest driver of just purely keeping people happy and driving those relationships.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: But then you got that tech piece that you've been talking about of, okay, now there's this new technology that could potentially do this whole amazing thing.
Speaker: And they're talking about features, features, features.
Speaker: but how does it actually help you in your job and to create those types of relationships?
Speaker: Did you ever find any piece of technology that was like, oh my God, this makes relationships so much easier for me?
Speaker: Making relationships, that's interesting.
Speaker: I mean, the first one, when I first started LinkedIn was relatively new and that was just transformational as a product because now you could kind of create your own virtual Rolodex.
Speaker: And I think even today with some of the enhancements and features that LinkedIn has added with sales navigator and different things that you can do to
Speaker: organize your contacts or set up campaigns and outreaches.
Speaker: Those things have been huge.
Speaker: There's a lot of different products out there that help.
Speaker: We've been using a product called Gong.
Speaker: I don't know if you're familiar with it.
Speaker: Yeah, the outreach tool.
Speaker: Super cool.
Speaker: It records your meetings.
Speaker: It actually summarizes what happened in that meeting so that you then have the notes to look at and will give you action items and follow-ups that you need to circle back on.
Speaker: And then it will email your reminders.
Speaker: Have you done this?
Speaker: Have you done this?
Speaker: So it's really cool in terms of not only as a sales rep, gauging how you did, right?
Speaker: Getting recommendations on how to get better.
Speaker: But as a leader, you can watch meetings that you can attend and give people feedback and help coach them faster.
Speaker: So I think, you know, in terms of on the job training, especially being remote, we all used to sit in an office and you'd hear people run calls or you'd be able to coach on the floor.
Speaker: It gives you kind of that new virtual element, which is a game changer for sure.
Speaker: Bullpen meant it's so much easier to manage.
Speaker: I say that to people all the time.
Speaker: Like if we could just sit next to each other for a couple of days, it would be just a game changer for you in terms of what you're learning and how quickly you can ramp up.
Speaker: So do you find yourself as kind of that coaching leader, do you find yourself having to go back to those a lot?
Speaker: Like, are you really spending a lot of time listening to this thing and then reviewing it to the other person?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Especially like shadowing meetings or just replaying them and understanding what's happened to be able to give that feedback.
Speaker: That's become, I think,
Speaker: a big focus and it's a lot more time consuming because you're having to do it in one on one bites and pieces as opposed to just I mean, when I was running Chicago, I sat on the floor surrounded by all 20 people and could hear
Speaker: and stand up and say, hey, do you h ave a minute?
Speaker: Let's talk about what happened on that call and how could you have done that differently?
Speaker: So it's really challenging.
Speaker: I mean, we've come up with other unique ways like doing virtual call blitzes where everybody jumps on a virtual hangout and turns their volume down a little bit, but then has their line open so you can hear people making calls and it creates that buzz so that you feel like some connection because
Speaker: I've even gone into a little bit of BD mode this year where I'm focused on trying to get meetings.
Speaker: And I'm like, it's so lonely making calls all by yourself in the house.
Speaker: It's terrible, you know?
Speaker: And when I started the second firm, it was just me by myself to start things out.
Speaker: And I was like, wow, I missed that big bullpen.
Speaker: That was way different.
Speaker: Yeah, you have the music up so loud, just some background noise, something to make it feel like there's other people there.
Speaker: Yeah, you know, like background music we got going on here.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: Sounds like they're grinding some coffee beans right now.
Speaker: I'm telling you, ambiance.
Speaker: It's what this podcast is going to be about now.
Speaker: You've now upped the bar, so now I have to go travel to every single person that I'm meeting with.
Speaker: So thanks.
Speaker: I appreciate that one.
Speaker: Welcome, man.
Speaker: Marriott's going to love it.
Speaker: Oh, I know.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So for you, what do you feel like has been the biggest lesson that you had to learn throughout your entire career so far?
Speaker: What was that thing that the next day you had to almost stop your day after it happened, and the next day you're like,
Speaker: holy crap, that's gonna change me.
Speaker: I think it's early.
Speaker: You learn it early in this business and it's the need to be resilient and be super even keeled, not get too high or too low.
Speaker: I remember my first ever job that I secured with a customer
Speaker: I got an interview, candidate looked awesome, I'm standing in the lobby waiting to walk the candidate in, and the candidate no-showed.
Speaker: And I was like, waiting with the customer, nobody comes, I called the recruiter, candidate just went MIA.
Speaker: You know, we've all been there and had that, but for that to be your first interview, it could have been so easy for me to be like, I'm done, I'm not doing this.
Speaker: through that, evaluating what could I have done differently, how could I be better, and how did I put myself in a position to be successful, that lesson, learning it early on while it was tough, and I think a lot of people might have just said, I'm out, and I've seen a lot of reps, you know, after those situations, just never come back to work and say, I'm done, this is too much.
Speaker: But that's what this job is constantly.
Speaker: It's getting better every single day, right, and learning from your mistakes and understanding what
Speaker: mistakes or things that happen that you can't control are a part of it.
Speaker: It's almost like life, right?
Speaker: Like what can you control and what can't you control?
Speaker: You can control yourself.
Speaker: You can control your attitude and what you're trying to do every day.
Speaker: But what you can't control is everything else around that.
Speaker: So you just got to put your head down and say, is there anything I could have done better?
Speaker: And if I can, I'll implement it next time and not make that same mistake.
Speaker: So explain how you could...
Speaker: Like looking back on that tiny, tiny kid that was now standing without a candidate in front of a hiring manager.
Speaker: God, I've been there.
Speaker: That sucks.
Speaker: The worst.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Looking back at that kid, what are two things you could have done to make sure that that didn't happen?
Speaker: So that in case someone's listening, they're like, oh my gosh, I sure hope that doesn't happen to me.
Speaker: Make sure the candidate shows up?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, the first thing is I should have called the candidate on my way to the interview and said, hey, I'm on my way to meet you.
Speaker: Like, how you doing?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think also, I don't know, it was probably a month or so in.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: had he done a great job of helping to sell the client to the recruiter so that the recruiter, when they get on with the candidate, could fully prep that candidate and put some sizzle on why this client and opportunity is really good, right?
Speaker: Candidate probably had a few other interviews and they're like, eh, this one isn't that great.
Speaker: you know, no big deal, I'm not going to show up.
Speaker: I think even just, you know, having a more confident approach to how I was working with my client, qualifying the job, having all the details of it.
Speaker: I mean, there's just so many things that you can do better.
Speaker: But I think back to what is most important relationships, right?
Speaker: Did we have a great relationship with the candidate?
Speaker: I don't think we had ever brought him in for an in-house interview, which I don't even know if that term exists.
Speaker: In today's market, in-house interviews, I think it's called virtual, but those bring them in the office, sit down with them for 30 minutes or an hour, start to build a relationship, and that kind of gives you that opportunity to have more, I don't want to call it control, but it is in a way, right?
Speaker: They trust you.
Speaker: They're going to show up because they've looked you eye to eye and they're not going to back out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's the ability for that candidate to show some skin in the game.
Speaker: They show up, they finally get a chance to prove themselves in front of someone.
Speaker: And then the recruiter's like, all right, this person, I get it.
Speaker: They're here now.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: They alleviate some of that.
Speaker: Oh my gosh, are they not going to show up pain?
Speaker: Have you ever seen any, like just the broad term ghosting, have you ever seen any technology that people have started to implement to reduce that or reduce the likelihood of that?
Speaker: Not as much in reducing the likelihood of ghosting.
Speaker: I know Ronstadt was piloting some different kind of chatbot AI programs that would create more connectivity to candidates, but it also had some flaws in it as well because it was just so robotic.
Speaker: Sometimes people would be turned off by the communication and how it came out.
Speaker: But I think in theory it was, right, more touch points, more communication creates more connection to Ronstadt or the recruiter to help the person show up.
Speaker: I have seen different products to vet out, you know, instead of being ghosted candidates that aren't actually who they are.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Where it can monitor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's happening in the ton, especially virtually more than I've ever seen.
Speaker: And so.
Speaker: It can sense if the person that's talking is actually the person that's speaking.
Speaker: It can monitor if they're looking at other screens or trying to pull in different ways to cheat an interview.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Where is this?
Speaker: I've never even heard of this.
Speaker: It was a product called Glider.io.
Speaker: We use it at Ronstadt for a program we deliver called Velocity, which is just heightened screening, advanced delivery of talent to our customers.
Speaker: And it was a really solid product that would just kind of give you the, is this the person that you think they are?
Speaker: How technically sound are they based on how they responded to the questions?
Speaker: And then you can make the decision as someone you want your client to interview.
Speaker: And oftentimes clients would just say, because they've gone through this program and they understand it, they can start right away.
Speaker: That's really cool.
Speaker: It's always nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That makes a lot of difference in the checkbook.
Speaker: So on that piece, you had mentioned using like the robotics and the chatbots and things to create relationships.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: that starts to bring up that AI thing in my head.
Speaker: Cause every single person is like, how do I use AI?
Speaker: AI is so crazy.
Speaker: It's going to be awesome.
Speaker: I realized we started this conversation talking about how our relationships going to be super important.
Speaker: How do those two connect to you?
Speaker: AI and relationships is there a connection?
Speaker: I don't know that it's been figured out yet.
Speaker: I feel like the biggest way AI is being utilized today is to help streamline your work processes, help write emails or templates and build out different things.
Speaker: I think you can use it in some certain ways for screening.
Speaker: Actually, I heard a podcast you were talking about where you had plugged in a job description and a resume and we're having it to ask questions, which I think is really cool, right?
Speaker: But on the relationship front,
Speaker: I don't know that it's there yet.
Speaker: It does a lot for screening, right?
Speaker: And you can test for aptitude and candidates wherewithal to learn technology products.
Speaker: But I just haven't seen anything that I've been like, yeah, from a relationship perspective, this is great because
Speaker: That's probably the reason we're going to continue to exist through an AI revolution.
Speaker: Like this industry is going to be tough to beat because it's hard to beat you and I sitting down having a coffee, having a cup of coffee.
Speaker: You haven't had your coffee yet.
Speaker: That's why that came out of your mouth.
Speaker: But you just can't beat the human interaction.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's going to be tough.
Speaker: So, yeah, I haven't seen anything yet.
Speaker: And I'm with you.
Speaker: And I may have to blow that out and make that a quote and hang that in offices of Justin Preece says, there's no chance that AI can replace us because there's nothing that can replace a relationship.
Speaker: Because I totally agree.
Speaker: And with the types of applications that you've been talking about of how you can potentially apply AI, what's been the biggest impact that you've seen either your team or you get out of AI?
Speaker: Has there been any one use case that sticks out?
Speaker: I think
Speaker: the biggest impact that I've seen is it makes you more efficient and able to do tasks that could take, I mean, there have been times when I had to put together an article for Ronstadt or some sort of a white paper and like using ChatGPT takes me an hour instead of taking me, you know, three hours or four hours, right?
Speaker: I even think with the screening elements in ways that it can help, you know, root out candidates and find the right people or ensure that they are as strong as they say they are.
Speaker: So it's added speed and enhanced, I think even the recruiting game in that way, right?
Speaker: Because you're able to get from either writing up a skill set summary for a candidate and leveraging chat GBT.
Speaker: This is a person's background and experience.
Speaker: Could you write me a one paragraph skill set summary?
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: I know recruiters used to hate that.
Speaker: They'd be like, can I just send you like three bullet points?
Speaker: I'm like, I can't send three bullet points to my client.
Speaker: I need a little something more than that, you know?
Speaker: So if that takes 15 seconds instead of 20 minutes, that's just time that recruiters have to go make more money and time kills deals.
Speaker: We know.
Speaker: So the faster you can work, the more deals you can close.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And on the quickness, the AI is definitely something I've seen to help with the quickness.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: One of the interesting pieces that I've been seeing come out of technology providers is
Speaker: is more around using the AI predictive capability to say what should be next.
Speaker: So if this person answered this many different types of questions and you guys had a conversation that was around this kind of stuff, picking up on the, well, here's what you might have missed.
Speaker: Here's what we may want to talk about.
Speaker: Here's what the next question you may want to ask to maybe even prevent that next level ghosting or whatever it is.
Speaker: What product is that that you've seen?
Speaker: So it's a combination of kind of all of them.
Speaker: So on...
Speaker: On Salesforce, they have their AI engine that they call Einstein.
Speaker: Einstein now has, as of this past Dreamforce, a release that's called Copilot.
Speaker: So Copilot, you're able to essentially teach the AI what skills you want it to have.
Speaker: So you can start with a, like, what is a candidate match?
Speaker: You can describe a candidate match to Einstein.
Speaker: So now it knows to start listening for certain things.
Speaker: Then as you go throughout your day, if you're starting to enter in a candidate and those profiles in Salesforce now,
Speaker: and you also have a job that's within Salesforce and it knows to look at both of those and look for potential matches, it can start predicting those things for you before you're even, you know, like through the entire interview process.
Speaker: You could be like mid interview,
Speaker: It would pop up and say, hey, based on their responses, they could be a good potential fit for this thing.
Speaker: Think about your new people you're sitting on desk.
Speaker: They're first year out.
Speaker: They have no idea how to do that.
Speaker: No, they're just kind of faking it until you make it is the saying always.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But the trouble that I'm finding that a lot of people are right now in the AI space is the only way that you can actually make use of all that AI is to have your data in a single spot.
Speaker: And the whole CRM, ATS, everyone's own spreadsheets like data is
Speaker: everywhere right now.
Speaker: So until we can solve that, I don't think AI is really going to do a lot for us.
Speaker: Have you ever seen a system that had worked?
Speaker: I understand what you all are using it, Ron Stagg, because I saw it.
Speaker: But with all those different systems that you all have, why might you think it's difficult to have all the data in one single system and get everyone behind that one point of truth?
Speaker: I mean, I think if you look at a lot of organizations, it's probably especially large enterprise organizations, right?
Speaker: Like your top 10 firms, it's the cost.
Speaker: And just because many have come together through acquisitions and mergers, there's data everywhere.
Speaker: So to pull that all into one centralized system, while so important and probably
Speaker: if you make that investment and decision, is going to help propel your growth a heck of a lot faster because you've now consolidated everything into one place where you can truly tap in and leverage it.
Speaker: But it's just the, I think, sheer thought of this is so much work.
Speaker: How long is this going to take and how much is it going to cost?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the cost thing keeps coming up constantly.
Speaker: I mean, yes, everyone wants to do it.
Speaker: They want that to be the case.
Speaker: It's just show me the easy path.
Speaker: And I don't think anyone's had that.
Speaker: Well, here, it's easy now.
Speaker: Yeah, they just need an AI to move all the data together, and you're good.
Speaker: See, that's my next product now.
Speaker: I'm going to go out and develop the AI to import data.
Speaker: I want in.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: You know anyone that knows how to do AI?
Speaker: I'll find some people.
Speaker: I'm a recruiter.
Speaker: Done.
Speaker: Recruiters make the best business owners.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: They can just find the best people all the time.
Speaker: They do, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's so applicable to your everyday life in terms of you ask questions, you're inquisitive.
Speaker: Like, almost people that have come from that recruiting background, you can pop them into any situation, and they're
Speaker: comfortable and can have conversations and meet people and learn things about them and almost make people feel a little more comfortable being in a situation that they're not comfortable being in.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's exactly it.
Speaker: So the AI part of it, the tech that you've been seeing, your kind of movement throughout having a couple different offices, moving different locations.
Speaker: What has been the most fun thing about this industry that has kept you in it so long?
Speaker: there's not a lot of people that have been at the same company as long as you did.
Speaker: I think you have to be crazy, first of all, to be in this industry longer than like 15 years, you know, I mean, um, so it's been that it's energizing, right?
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: Um, I've worked with some of the most talented, positive, right.
Speaker: Uh, people that every single day have challenged me to become better.
Speaker: And I think
Speaker: just getting back to even that lesson around the candidate not showing up for the interview, if I'm continually progressing and getting better and I'm working with people that I enjoy, like I'm excited, right?
Speaker: I'm fulfilled and I want to go to work every single day.
Speaker: But I think it's not been stagnant.
Speaker: If I was still only selling job orders or only filling direct hire roles, I might get a little bit bored, right?
Speaker: But as you start to get into more
Speaker: talent services or selling bulk teams or selling managed services, that really, for me, has been what's excited me because when you get in front of a CIO and you can start to consultatively sell and you're not just like, what's your budget?
Speaker: How many hires do you have next year?
Speaker: You're on a hiring freeze, all right, I'll call you in six months, or do you want to top grade any talent, right?
Speaker: It's like you're really starting to understand initiatives, projects, right, pain points, and then being able to apply different services.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I think a lot of companies are going that route to trying to figure out how do you uncover services if they've just always been staffing?
Speaker: How do we kind of broaden so that we're not just in a box of we're not hiring like call us when you are, you know?
Speaker: So I think that's been it.
Speaker: And it's been fun.
Speaker: It's been cool to watch the evolution of Ron Stodd, Sapphire Technologies from I walked into we're here at Cleveland Clinic when I was an early rep and one of the customers wanted to do a project.
Speaker: And I came back and asked my boss like, hey, they want to bring on like 15 people in this
Speaker: And he's like, we just don't do that.
Speaker: That's not like something that we do.
Speaker: And I was so bummed out because I saw like tons of money and a huge opportunity.
Speaker: Dollar sign.
Speaker: And now like you walk in with that opportunity, right?
Speaker: And it's like, we can do that.
Speaker: We have experts that can help put the program and solution together and deliver it.
Speaker: And then you can go on and focus on the next opportunity.
Speaker: So it's pretty cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The managed services part or just services period.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That has been throughout when I started recruiting, which was also back in 2007.
Speaker: So starting recruiting then,
Speaker: being very much just job order candidate, job order candidate, job order candidate.
Speaker: Some of them are temp, some of them are perm.
Speaker: It's just that was the way that recruiting was.
Speaker: I did notice as the economy dropped a little bit, it was more people were conscious of budgets.
Speaker: They did want to go more of the temp route.
Speaker: They did want to go more of the project route.
Speaker: That was fine.
Speaker: I switched with that, and we started doing more temp type stuff.
Speaker: But I noticed that stuck after that.
Speaker: And kind of that early to mid-2010s, that was very much...
Speaker: hey, if you're not doing services related work or temp or consulting type work in your recruiting firm, you're missing out on a huge revenue stream.
Speaker: Now, as we think about being on the potential of another downturn that we've been in and the potential of the past.
Speaker: I feel like we're kind of sitting in a little bit of one right now.
Speaker: It's definitely been slow.
Speaker: And most customers are like, we're on a freeze or we're watching our spending or budgets have been cut.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: It feels like we're in the midst of one.
Speaker: It's not like the bottom's falling out, but certainly it's reminiscent of 2010, 2011, where you're just kind of like, you're not sure what's going on.
Speaker: Slow burn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So on that piece of making that jump, what do you feel like the best firms did to create that, like you call it, the consultative selling?
Speaker: What are some of the things that you maybe yourself did or you've seen other firms do that allowed them to have more of a
Speaker: a stronghold in that space.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a relationship exercise going back to it, right?
Speaker: Because oftentimes your folks that sell staffing live at the hiring manager level and they don't typically buy projects and services and teams, maybe three or four resources.
Speaker: But if you truly want to have
Speaker: where you're owning an entire initiative or effort, like getting higher up the leadership chain is going to make a big impact on that.
Speaker: Because if you're talking to the CTO, and they're going to be rolling out a massive digital transformation, they may have visibility into 150 plus headcount that they need to add to execute that.
Speaker: If you get to the SVP level, maybe it's 50, 75, right?
Speaker: So moving up in that way.
Speaker: But then also I think training and developing of your staff to get out of that just transactional, do you have a job order?
Speaker: And it's not for everybody.
Speaker: That's one thing we found is some people just have to do staffing.
Speaker: Some people could do staffing services and perm.
Speaker: Some people can only do perm.
Speaker: Some people can only do services, right?
Speaker: So just making sure I think you're taking the time to
Speaker: assess people's capability, put them in the situation, because I think a huge part of this is you got to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Speaker: That's like saying that, you know, we all hear many times.
Speaker: But if they just can't get there, but they're phenomenal at staffing, like just keep doing staffing, you know, so where we found the most success was moving up
Speaker: in our relationships within customers, trying to get to more executive level buyers, having conversations around what they're trying to do.
Speaker: I think having subject matter expertise within your organization is extremely important too.
Speaker: I really saw the services take off as we had more subject matter experts that I could bring on meetings with me in front of customers that could talk about, I've delivered this project for this customer and whether they did it here or somewhere else, there's a ton of credibility that comes with that versus me who's like,
Speaker: The staffing guy that can do services, you know.
Speaker: So those things have helped ramp and quickly help growth in services, which has been a big segment in the businesses that I've been leading and running.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And being able to speak their language, that is totally a game changer.
Speaker: But that, to your point, that's not exactly the people we've been hiring for so long.
Speaker: We've been hiring like these hunters, the people that will go out and just fight for all that stuff.
Speaker: some subject matter experts, like that's not their jam.
Speaker: Like they've been delivering for a long time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was a totally different type of hire.
Speaker: I'd never had to do that before.
Speaker: And when I started bringing on some of those people, I was like, oh, this is different.
Speaker: They're like, wait, I'm not going to make a phone call to anybody, but I'll be on any meeting you want me on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's totally different management style.
Speaker: Well, that's awesome.
Speaker: So I promised you I'd keep the episode under a half hour and I want everyone that's walking their dog to be able to hear it all in one dog walk.
Speaker: But
Speaker: When you think about what's next, when you think about the biggest thing that's going to transform recruiting over the next two years, what's in your mind?
Speaker: That's a good question.
Speaker: You didn't prep me for that one, so I've got to think about it for a second.
Speaker: I'm asking those hard-hitting ones.
Speaker: You do.
Speaker: You're a hard-hitter.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: I think it's not going to transform that much in terms of I've talked to a lot of executive leaders from different companies out there, and one of the leaders that I talked to
Speaker: had said his focus is on capturing talent market share within the markets.
Speaker: It's not on shifting to some verticalized strategy.
Speaker: It's not in shifting to some AI driven strategy, but do we own the talent market share within the markets that we operate?
Speaker: And if we do, we're actually going to beat our competition because we know the most candidates,
Speaker: We're gonna have the most people working for customers.
Speaker: We're gonna have the most leads and be able to grow our, and I thought that was really a huge shift from where everybody else thinks, which is sales and do we know the most customers and do we have the most customers, but if you maximize your talent
Speaker: wallet share or your talent market share, you're going to be in a preferential position to drive people into customers, you know, and it's a company that's probably one of the fastest growing, right, in the IT staffing and services space.
Speaker: But, you know, over the next few years, things that are going to change, AI is going to continue to have an impact like we've talked about.
Speaker: But I think, I mean, even back to what we've talked about, like the fundamentals are always going to be there.
Speaker: Anytime you start to stray and then you look back and say, why didn't I grow as fast?
Speaker: It's like, oh, I stopped focusing on
Speaker: quality of job orders.
Speaker: I stopped setting up interview feedback calls.
Speaker: I stopped, you know, prepping candidates.
Speaker: And it's like, all those things are always going to be there.
Speaker: Yeah, no, they really will.
Speaker: Well, I appreciate you taking time out at the amazing coffee shop that you found.
Speaker: Good, good find.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Where can people find you?
Speaker: Where do you want them to find out more about Justin?
Speaker: Yeah, check me out on LinkedIn, Justin Priest, Cleveland, Ohio.
Speaker: I'd love to connect with new people and definitely open to conversations if anybody's interested in having further dialogue past this podcast.
Speaker: I appreciate you having me on, though.
Speaker: It was really cool to sit down and do this in a coffee shop.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a cool experience.
Speaker: First one, hopefully first one of many.
Speaker: But thanks so much.
Speaker: I really appreciate it.
Speaker: I will have a link to his LinkedIn down in the description of the show.
Speaker: If you want to hear more like this, it's at transformrecruiting.com.
Speaker: Got any ideas of people or topics that you want us to discuss, send me an email.
Speaker: It's hello at bradowens.com.
Speaker: And until we get a chance to talk again, I hope you all have a fantastic week and we'll talk soon.
