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00:00:00
00:00:01
Jena Dunay
59 Plays19 days ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Jena Dunay.
To keep up with or connect with Jena:
✨Recruiter Unlimited Website: https://www.recruiterunlimited.com/
✨Recruit the Employer Website: https://recruittheemployer.com/
✨Culture Uncovered Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/culture-uncovered/id1781732178
✨Jena’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenadunay/
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Jenna's Background
00:00:01
Speaker
Jenna. Hi. Hi. It's so fun to be on your podcast. Such a blast. I'm so thrilled to have you. You and I have known each other for like seven-ish years now. Something like that.
00:00:13
Speaker
Crazy pants. You are just one of my favorite women out in the world doing cool work, and I'm thrilled to have you on. But for anyone listening who doesn't know who you are, can you just say a little bit about who you are and what you do?
00:00:26
Speaker
Sure. So I am a serial entrepreneur, first and foremost. I'm a working mom, second, which actually probably should be first and foremost. And I currently run two companies, Recruit the Employer, which is focused on providing layoffs with dignity for organizations, and then Recruiter Unlimited, which provides a subscription-based recruiting solution for brands that are growing. So serial entrepreneur is probably the best way to describe myself or like a closeted creative who now wants to spin out and comes out as an entrepreneur. That's another way to describe myself. Well, you and I met when you were doing career coaching, which was kind of different iteration of Recruit the Employer. right You're incredible. You have such a fan base. You're so helpful
Career Transition to The Muse
00:01:06
Speaker
to me. But maybe we could take a step back. Before founding Recruit the Employer and Recruiter Unlimited, yeah What was your career journey?
00:01:15
Speaker
Gosh, a mess, which I think is helpful for people because oftentimes it can feel like, oh, I must do A plus B to equal C. And my journey has just not been that way at all. And it's still kind of not that way. And so when I graduated from college, I went and worked on Wall Street. I was in investment banking, so very different world that I'm living in right now. I was working 80 plus hours a week.
00:01:38
Speaker
My dad used to call me a mule in a mine. I would leave when it was dark for work, and then I would leave to go back home when it was dark. And so I realized quite quickly that that world was super not for me. Ended up pivoting and working at the New York Stock Exchange, which while it seems very similar to working in investment banking, it actually was really...
00:01:58
Speaker
liberating, exciting. i'd got to see all these companies go public that started from nothing turned into something. They threw me in front of a camera one day and were like, you have to report live from the trading floor. So I feel like they kind of saved me from investment banking and allowed me to just tinker around with different areas of business and learn about different ways that people do work. And so from there, I ended up working at a startup called The Muse, which is actually very similar to what I'm doing now in a lot of ways. I'm kind of still in that talent, culture, employer branding space, just in a very different iteration. And so I worked there for a couple of years before moving from New York City to Nashville, Tennessee, where I now live. And and that thus started my entrepreneurial
Sales Skills and Career Coaching
00:02:41
Speaker
journey. And to your point, in multiple variations. Yeah.
00:02:45
Speaker
A dynamic story. i kind of forgot about the Muse and I forgot that you worked there for a bit. I think I came across you when I was looking for career coaches because you had like hundreds of great reviews as a career coach on the Muse.
00:02:57
Speaker
When you were at NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, sorry, yeah what was the actual role there and what was kind of your dayto day to day? Yeah, I was a capital markets analyst. Whenever company was about to go public, our team would meet with the CFOs and CEOs of the company, which was actually the cool part, and tell them why they should list New York versus NASDAQ, as you had mentioned. We called it NASquack as like a joke behind the scenes. So we got to meet with all of these C-suite level people. So I had exposure at a really young age and getting to be a part of these quote unquote sales meetings. But then my actual job was a lot in Excel, was making sure that things were getting processed appropriately. And then the part where I got to report live from the trading floor was more of just like an add-on that they're like, this girl's personable. Let's just throw in front of our camera and she can report live what's happening behind us because she has just enough technical knowledge to be dangerous. And so I got to interview Jeff Gordon, NASCAR race, the CEO of
Entrepreneurial Journey Begins in Nashville
00:03:52
Speaker
Hilton when they went public. It was such a cool environment to work.
00:03:55
Speaker
It was such a cool environment to start to learn about what I was interested in. But yeah, my actual function was very boring, but I just finagled my way into the fun parts. That is really interesting. And then with the muse, what was the work that you were doing there when you moved over there?
00:04:09
Speaker
So I made a pretty large pivot from finance and working for this at the time was a teeny tiny startup. So it was female founded organization. Catherine and Alex were the ones who co-founded it. And I was like,
00:04:22
Speaker
30 something employee and i was like the 11th salesperson. So I pivoted from finance to sales and I'm quite convinced that the only reason why they hired me was because I could sell myself and why they needed me when I had zero experience in sales. i literally didn't even have a retail job ever in my life.
00:04:41
Speaker
But for whatever reason, they took a chance on me. And I'm actually still very close with the founders of that organization and my boss who hired me. I literally just saw him like a month ago at an event in the ah HR space. And so it was a wonderful place to learn. i was on a rocket ship. We grew a lot while I was there. And i got to work on a bunch of different projects. And for me as a creative, it was really helpful that I got to try a bunch of different things and be exposed to a bunch of different things early on.
00:05:08
Speaker
I think it's so interesting that you didn't come from a straightforward sales background, but you seem to just have such a facility for it, such an intuition around it. I know we have a lot to get through and I want listeners to have a chronology, but to stay on this for one second, why do you think you're so good at sales and what do you think makes someone a good salesperson?
00:05:28
Speaker
I mean, my initial response is trauma with a lowercase T, trying to figure out what's going to happen in front of me and like, what's the other person thinking? That's more of a joke. But I also think that I grew up being in the theater.
00:05:41
Speaker
And so I was always trying to evoke an emotion out of somebody. So I think that performance mentality to some degree really helped me in sales because I was always trying to read things. the room and trying to figure out what does this person mean? What does this person care about? And how do i show that I want to give them what's in it for them first before I figure out what's in it for me? And I think that through line has just helped me in every iteration of business and sales and just life in general. It's like, how can I make myself valuable to the person first before I ever ask for anything in return?
Challenges and Spirit of Entrepreneurship
00:06:10
Speaker
And that I think is the secret to success. That's interesting. It makes sense. And I get the joke around Trump's loyalty, but I do hear you. I feel like there's an element of being very tapped into the other person, sometimes in a really painful way. Yeah. Like it's just being observant of what's going to make them react a certain way or not react a certain way. While that may have some bad implications, maybe growing up, it helps me professionally in a lot of areas. It's reason why I think I was a successful coach back in the day, because I was always thinking through What's that other person feeling?
00:06:40
Speaker
What do they care about? How do I make sure that I make them feel confident and secure and encouraged and then lift them up so that they can do the best work that they can do? I think it's very similar like methodology in sales as well.
00:06:53
Speaker
It's interesting. i hear you on all that. When you are on a call where you're in some capacity sales or just really in tune with the person you're speaking with, when you get off that call, here's what happens for me if I'm really tuned in.
00:07:08
Speaker
I am exhausted and wired and have a hard time not thinking about it for a little bit. And I feel like I wish there was some way to be present and responsive and attuned and then also have a better energetic boundary afterwards. So I'm just curious, how do you feel after a call where you've been really, really present?
00:07:26
Speaker
I'm usually very energized, honestly. I probably don't have as much of the exhaustion maybe that you have. I have more of the exhaustion if I have to just be quiet alone in my office. So I feel like for me after this call, I won't necessarily not think about it, but I won't let it consume me. But I'll be so energized and happy after us having this conversation. and I'm like, oh, what about this idea? And what about this idea? And I'll be probably riffing in a good way.
00:07:52
Speaker
On it versus if I'm alone by myself too much, me and ChatGBT become BFFs in an unhealthy way. Do you know what I mean? I'm just mulling and re-strategizing when really I should just be executing. But for me, i think I have to create more boundaries around isolation than I do around interaction.
00:08:12
Speaker
That is fascinating. Are you textbook extrovert? I've only gotten more introverted since I've had children because they take so much of my energy that it's sometimes I'm like, at the end of the day, nobody touched me. Nobody talked to me. i just need to be alone in the room. Husband, you must go somewhere else. Dog can't even be around. Like I have to have my alone time, but that is not the case necessarily if i'm in a work environment at all.
00:08:33
Speaker
That makes sense. That is super interesting. Yeah. Well, thank you for indulging me on that detour. So We're at the Muse. And then i think from there is your first entrepreneurial leap. Is that right? That's correct. Yes. I decided I had started this side hustle because I made this massive pivot in my career where I went from finance, working on Wall Street to working at this teeny tiny startup. And I had been successful there and had been successful in making that transition. And so I started having a lot of people ask me, how did you do it? What did you do? And I was listening to all these entrepreneurial podcasts, which is so funny. And in my
00:09:05
Speaker
family's DNA. We have a long generational history
Exploring Nashville and Multifamily Office Experience
00:09:09
Speaker
of entrepreneurs. And I kind of thought at some point I would probably own my own business. And so actually the muse went through a layoff period yeah and I was a part of that layoff. And that's a fun story for a different day, but I'd already made plans to be moving to Nashville and launch my business full time. So it was kind of like the wink that I needed that, oh yeah, it's time for you to move on. And so I ended up moving to Nashville and launching my career coaching business full time, where I helped mid to senior level female professionals find and land and market themselves for their new job.
00:09:42
Speaker
Incredible. yeah What was it that drew you to Nashville from New York? I hated Nashville the first time I came. I was like, this city is not exciting. Because I grew up listening to country music. I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is Midwestern, basically. We're practically in Ohio, which people don't realize. And there's a lot of like Southern values that are kind of similar. And so I kind of always wanted to move to the South. Warmer weather, Pittsburgh weather is terrible. I need like the summer and the warm. But Nashville for me, it was truly like an act of God that I ended up moving here. I feel like, and I moved to Franklin, Tennessee. So I didn't even move to Nashville, the city, like Broadway, what you think of. I moved to a suburb outside of it as a 27-year-old. And I think I just needed a break from like the energy and the hustle and the bustle. And what I love about Nashville now is I can go 20 minutes and be around cows and 20 minutes be in the city. And we've grown so much since I've moved here too, that it's very metropolitan. There's a lot of companies that are moving here. And it's also a creative environment, which very much suited my brain and what I loved being around.
00:10:45
Speaker
It makes sense. and Now and I think of Nashville, I think of you, but I forget that you're not from there originally. Yeah, no. I appreciate that though. I'm so flattered. My goal in life is to be like a steel magnolia, be like an old lady with a big hat in a garden, like the movie Steel Magnolias.
00:11:00
Speaker
Oh yeah, we're very fun familiar. So then you started your own coaching. yeah Would you call it a coaching organization or would you have framed the work differently? No, I would definitely say that i was a coach. And well, maybe you can even answer this for me actually, I don't know. I created a system that helped people figure out what they wanted to do and market to what they wanted to do, which I think was the big differentiator at the time where a lot of maybe coaches or career people in the space before it got really popular,
00:11:29
Speaker
really just talked about maybe getting clarity or redo your resume. And I was really trying to help people figure out what's the value that you can bring to the marketplace. Again, kind of that idea that we were talking about, which is like what's in it for the company before what's in it for you and having people lead with that sentiment as they're figuring out what they want to do so that they can position themselves and actually land the interview and then land the job. And so for me, I created the system around it to walk them through all five stages to make that happen.
00:11:57
Speaker
It was a while ago, but I do remember it felt structured. It felt helpful. And in a lot of ways, the exercises you gave me were like the kernel of what Medbury eventually became. Wait, I didn't even know that I don't think. I think it was like.
00:12:10
Speaker
Social. Yeah. have look back at our old stuff. Yeah. What is funny though is a lot of what I call my best clients, the clients who like went on, a lot of them went on to do entrepreneurial ventures.
00:12:21
Speaker
Like the ones who really enjoyed the program. It's like I attracted probably this entrepreneurial spirit in folks and the folks that really... resonated with that, ended up launching and spinning out their own things. And it's been really cool to get to watch. And also cool because I was very active on LinkedIn during that time period when nobody was active on LinkedIn.
00:12:40
Speaker
And I gained a following of people that still to this day will reach out to me and say, oh, I found your podcast. Or I listened to this episode. It really encouraged me in my work. Or I switched jobs and I listened to your advice on how to send that email. And I did it and I landed the job. And so for me, that was really a rewarding experience.
00:12:57
Speaker
experience. I did it for like five, six years and really enjoyed it while I was doing it. Also knowing that it woly wasn't going to be my forever business. Yeah. It's funny. Even as you're talking about some of these career beats, yeah I was thinking, I don't think you and I have directly talked on them, but I'm so familiar with them because I feel like you have done such an incredible job over the years with all of your content. As you're talking, I'm remembering this Instagram post about how you didn't like Nashville from the jump because the food lines were long or something. did you
00:13:28
Speaker
Probably, yes. That sounds like something I would say. Well, I have the note to come back to it around a closeted creative. But just to find out this bit, what happened next for you after that?
00:13:39
Speaker
So actually a fun piece that i don't really advertise as much anymore is I did take a little bit of a break from entrepreneurship. I had gotten married to my husband. Now we'd wanted to start a family and I was just honestly exhausted. The coaching space, you talked about like emotional boundaries and stuff like that. For me, coaching, especially during the 2020 era was just so exhausting because everyone was going through it, right? And so I took on a lot of responsibility from clients that I probably didn't need to. And I was just burnt out and I knew this wasn't a scalable to do it in the way that I wanted.
00:14:13
Speaker
i didn't want to be like a course person. i felt like the work was best done on that one-on-one basis, but it was a pricey or high ticket item. And I just knew it wasn't scalable. And I was sitting at dinner with my mentor and her husband, with my husband.
00:14:27
Speaker
And he turns to me and he says, Jenna, how's business going? Because he sees me on LinkedIn and all the different things. He still likes all my posts. You know, he's in his 70s. And he goes, how's it going? And said, ugh, I'm so
Return to Entrepreneurship with Recruit the Employer
00:14:37
Speaker
sick of myself. Oh, God. Because the business was me. I was the business. It was all centered around my face, my personality. And that had just worn me totally dry.
00:14:48
Speaker
And he said, you know, there's this company that is looking for someone that I think you'd be a perfect fit for. And I was like, sure, I'll have an intro. I'm never working for somebody else ever again. But sure, I'll have that conversation. Push comes to shove. I ended up accepting a job with a small multifamily office. So basically what a multifamily office was is they serve high net worth families in a variety different capacities, like the typical investments that you would think. But my role specifically was around how do we make sure that over generations, these families stay put together and unified and don't let money ruin.
00:15:23
Speaker
their infrastructure, which was such a fascinating problem to get to start to work on. And I got to meet people that I actually like idolized, which is crazy that I was working with their families. I worked with some like a hundred million dollar families, helping them navigate family dynamics that were interesting to say the least. And it was a very fascinating work. But ultimately, I knew that over time, I'm gonna be honest with you, I was bored.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, it was very slow. And I'm a fast moving person. I've made the joke to people, I'm still of great relationships with them. And I do a one off work for them only when they ask. And I made the joke that I created and produced and had more output in the past year after having my son than I did in the two and a half years of working with y'all. And you guys still loved me. And I still appreciate that. But I am like a workhorse and I need to be let free. And so i ended up leaving that opportunity after two and a half years. But they were a great organization to work for. They showed me what great leadership looks like, kindness looks like, investing in people looks like. It just wasn't the right fit long term.
00:16:30
Speaker
When you're an entrepreneur, you know you're an entrepreneur and you're an entrepreneur through and through. And just at some point, you're always going to boomerang back out. Yeah. Well, first of all, as you're talking too, I'm thinking what like the perfect marriage of your coaching and people expertise and finances. There was very, very niche. And I knew enough about the finance piece that I could actually conduct trainings for the next generation of children that have to learn like what's a trust, have to understand all these pieces to the puzzle.
00:16:56
Speaker
And I was the one helping to facilitate those conversations. And so it was a really rewarding season where I got to do that. That's cool. And I also appreciate you sharing it too, because i presume there are a lot of founders out there who are like, I'm loving it right now.
00:17:11
Speaker
I'm going to need a little bit of a break at some point. And to hear that like at a certain season in your life, if you want to slow down a little bit and take an in-house role, that it's totally okay to do that. Yes, it is okay. And I would say, I think it gave me the breathing space to be able to boomerang back out and come in with a vigor that I wouldn't have been able to come up with the ideas that I've come up with. Like none of that would have happened if I didn't have the space and the breath to not be hustling for a buck. Every founder knows this, you're hustling for a buck. And I was tired of hustling for the buck.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yeah. I just needed a break. I need to just be paid and show
Innovative Recruitment Strategies and Services
00:17:46
Speaker
up and be paid. Yeah. So speaking of hustling for a buck, though, you have had so much success since you've stepped back into your entrepreneurial role.
00:17:55
Speaker
Can you tell us all about the work that you're doing now? So whenever I left my job at my nine to five that I was working, I knew that my work actually that we had done together, kind of that methodology that I've been speaking about was not dead yet. Like it still had some life in it, but it couldn't be in the same format that selling B2C that I was doing it. And so I kind of done some research in the landscape and there's this service benefit that organizations sometimes offer when they go through layoffs and it's called outplacement. It's basically providing career coaching services, resume writing services, basically that soft place to land when somebody goes through a layoff after you let them go. And so i spun up that based off of the methodology I had created and started selling B2B. over the past kind of couple of years where we help companies conduct layoffs with dignity. So if a company really cares about their people, i feel so passionately that you cannot just provide them a cool bunch of benefits when they're in the middle of working for you. If you really care about people, you will bring the red carpet on the way in and on the way out. And so outplacement is one of those ways to do that. And so we had developed a bunch of clientele through that. And actually through that experience, we had spun out the recruiting side of the business. So I always knew this was going to be like a people transition firm that really served the people function, like the chief people officers, the CHROs, but looked at recruiting a little bit differently. A lot of recruiting firms nowadays are
00:19:21
Speaker
old, stodgy, they charge an insane amount of money. i don't mean to be rude, but like insane amount of money. And I just thought there's got to be a better way to do this. And um what a lot of recruiting firms miss is that recruiting is marketing. Recruiting is sales.
00:19:39
Speaker
And so many companies don't know how to do that. And so we kind of came into the market providing a subscription-based recruiting solution that really caters and focuses in on how do you present your company in a way that's compelling to top candidates because that is a sales motion that's going to make you more successful over the long term. Which that product, while the outplacement is so my heart, this service line gets me super excited as a business owner and as somebody who can support other companies.
00:20:06
Speaker
I'm like obsessed with the way you approach it and the way you think about it. I mean, when I was at the agency I was at for a really long time, one of the functions I oversaw was recruiting. And I felt like I do think it was a department that struggled to get the resource that it like truly deserved. It's funny. I'd never really thought about it until you're talking about in this conversation.
00:20:27
Speaker
But so much of the process and the interpersonal was very close to our sales process. We just never really thought about it that way. And I want to stay on outplacement a little because I think it's so interesting.
00:20:39
Speaker
What to you does a layoff with dignity look like? And how do you support companies that are in the unfortunate position of needing to lay off some staff? What does that look like?
00:20:50
Speaker
I think that having a plan is the first step. I think so many companies don't have a plan of not if, but when somebody has to get moved along from your organization, whether that's they weren't a good culture fit or whether you have to do a mass amount of people that you're having to let go all at once. There needs to be a plan in place, not just for onboarding, but for offboarding. And so that's like the first step is to have a plan. What are we going do? What we going to offer? What are we going to plan for? And then how to do that with dignity really comes around communication style and then packages that are offered. And so I always encourage companies that you should offer some sort of severance. But I often feel like severance, obviously, this is what we do. But severance only gets you so far if you don't have the tools and the skill set to actually find your next job, especially in this economy and the way the job market is, which we can get into. You are basically wasting dollars for that individual because they actually don't know how to find another job. And so the best thing that you can do is provide them with a good, modern, 2026 plus forward, AI forward outplacement solution. There are solutions that are out there that don't have that kind of sentiment, but teaching the people how to market themselves as an asset to an organization for the future is what we're really passionate about.
Job Search Advice and Recruitment Landscape
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, it makes so much sense. Can we talk about the state of the economy and kind of your thoughts on it? You're in such an interesting position in that you see it from both the recruitment perspective, companies that are growing, hiring, and you're supporting them on like reviewing and bringing on like the exact right fit and then the onboarding side of it. So maybe to stay on offboarding for a second, when someone is laid off and they are now like, okay,
00:22:39
Speaker
things don't look great out there right now. i need to go find myself a new job. What is the experience like for them and what advice would you give them? Yeah. So I would say the first thing that they need to do is to figure out what do they want?
00:22:52
Speaker
Because if you don't know what you want, all of your marketing materials, like your resume, your LinkedIn, how you network, it's all at moot point. right like It doesn't really matter what you do at that juncture because if you don't know what you're directing that towards, you can't actually market yourself appropriately. And so I think a lot of people are make the mistake of updating their resume.
00:23:10
Speaker
And that also is not like the best in the order of operations in 2026 and beyond to be doing. So first is to get clarity. And then I would say the second piece is to really understand what's the value that you can bring to the table.
00:23:20
Speaker
What makes you unique? Why would someone want to come hire you? And start to look at job descriptions as inspiration before you look at them as places to apply. So thinking about like, why is this company hiring for this role in the first place? What is the purpose behind, again, that psychology? And how do I then position myself to be the right person for the role? So it's clarity, it's understanding the value that you bring, and then building your marketing materials in such a way that they explain that value that you bring and you absolutely positively 100% need to be updating your LinkedIn profile early, often, and be continually active on it because the way that the recruiting world is now moving is that it's very hard for organizations to just post and get quality candidates. There's a mixture of bots. There's a mixture of everyone's doing AI resumes. It's the AI talking to AI. It's just
00:24:08
Speaker
a really inefficient way for recruiting teams oftentimes to find top talent. And so they will hire either their own internal team to do this or external players like us to actively and proactively figure out what is the ICP for this candidate, for this job description, right? It's very similar to marketing.
00:24:26
Speaker
How do I then market to that individual, go find that person, tell them something that's going to be really interesting to them so that they are marketed to? And so that means there's going to be less jobs that are available online. But the way that the people do that is they utilize LinkedIn to search for those types of people. So if you don't have your LinkedIn profile done, you are already at a disadvantage. If you are not findable, you will not be brought in for interviews.
00:24:49
Speaker
second that yeah i think it's just a mixture of clarity understanding your value proposition and making sure that your marketing materials namely your linkedin really showcase who you are and what you're about and then obviously the biggest challenge that we're finding nowadays is getting your foot in the door right so leveraging networking people being very specific can be really helpful but having multiple touch points in your job application process is going to make you more effective and more impactful, similar to if you're in sales, right? You can't just rely on a post on LinkedIn. You can't just rely on one cold email. It's all of the things together and the specificity of it that makes someone respond to you. It's the same thing in the job search.
00:25:29
Speaker
Amazing. It's funny. As you're talking, I'm thinking I should do like a podcast app or a Substack send where it's like everything on LinkedIn, for example, if you're just laid off that you do, we're usually working with companies, but there's so much there. I love everything you just said.
00:25:42
Speaker
Now, what about LinkedIn? the recruitment side. Who are the companies that you're working with, the industries you're enjoying working with, and like how are you supporting them when they need to find the right people to bring them on board?
00:25:54
Speaker
We can work with a variety of different organizations, but our sweet spot and who we really love working for are Those consumer tech brands that you love basically are ones that we love working with that are hiring for a variety of those more corporate or operational type roles. So anywhere from like accounting to finance to design engineering, marketing, like all of those kind of functional roles we are really, really good fit for. And then helping tell the brand story from an employer perspective at the same time, those brands really value how they're presented into the world from a consumer perspective. We take that same kind of attitude and perspective and bring that on the employer side as well. And so we love working with those types of organizations that are in growing mode that don't want to pay obscene amounts of money for recruiters.
00:26:41
Speaker
That's really good at that Can we dig in and talk about your model a little bit? Yeah. It's kind of brilliant. I can talk about it from why I think it's valuable to the employer, but then also I think as a business owner and a founder, how I came up with this. So from the business perspective, like if you're listening to this and you are thinking about hiring for your team, you go to an external recruiting agency that maybe They say they're very niche.
00:27:03
Speaker
They might be very niche. And they're going to charge you 20% to 30% of that person's annual salary. So if you're hiring somebody, let's just use $100K. On top of that $100K and the benefits and all that kind of stuff, you're paying the recruiter $20K to $30K just for like a finder's fee.
00:27:19
Speaker
Our model flips it on its head where we want to work with organizations over long periods of time. And we have a subscription model. The packages are based off of how many requisites we're going to be working at once. So if you're an organization that's planning hiring five people throughout the year, we're going to be significantly cheaper than if you hired somebody full time on your team or if you hire that external recruiting agency. And the goal is really to understand the culture and find great culture fits, not just push resumes in front of you, which a lot of these firms can do. And there's a lot of good firms too, but we really take that culture first approach, marketing approach second, and then really making sure that from a financial perspective, there are no surprises and there's consistency in the fees.
Balancing Work and Family
00:27:56
Speaker
I remember when we just like caught up a couple months ago and you explained it. I was thinking when I was a COO for a while, we did work with an outside recruiter and it was painful for all the reasons you've just expressed. And yes I wish we'd had something like you at that time.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah, and then I think from a business owner's perspective, I think this might be helpful for other founders. We had started in the outplacement space. And you know that, despite the headlines, there's not layoffs that happen every single day for a company that's a client, right? Like they're hopefully only doing one layoff maybe a year, and maybe they're having people go out very casually. So from a cashflow perspective, that can be very stressful. And I knew that whatever I was going to build next was going to have the recurring subscription,
00:28:38
Speaker
was going to be very scalable where it didn't have to be my face and from my coaching years. And then I would have niche domain expertise. And so I did all three of those things as I was building out Recruiter Unlimited because I didn't want to build just any average recruiting agency. I wanted to build something that was truly differentiated, that really had a value prop for people that cared about finding really great people, but didn't want to spend that obscene 20% to 30% per hour.
00:29:03
Speaker
Totally. Well, as you're building these two businesses, I know there's no average day, but what is your normal-ish day in your life? Yeah. Well, I can probably go over it over the course of the week because I think that might be even helpful for folks to hear. So I predominantly work. on meetings. My meeting time is between nine and three. And the reason why that is, is because I have two littles. I have a three-year-old and I have a one-year-old who just started walking, by the way, which is so fun. So I have little kids that are on the move and i made a choice that I really wanted to be present for them in more hours than the traditional nine to five would have. And so I am leaving my office at 3 PM and I'm going to pick up my kids from their little school that they're at. And so that's when I have to get the bulk of my meetings done. And those meetings look like a mixture of
00:29:52
Speaker
podcasts, which is fun, right? In podcast meetings, meeting with chief people officers, doing interviews for a Recruiter Unlimited as we're scaling up the service, building the team around us, right? I'm still kind of stepping in on some of that service delivery. Today, I was just telling you, I was working on our website. So I am doing a lot of things, wearing a lot of different hats, but it is fun because everything's different every single day. But I'd say the majority of my time is really spent thinking about business development and growth.
00:30:17
Speaker
I like that. I also feel like in my experience with you, I think that you have the very important skill slash talent of not feeling guilt around delegation and outsourcing.
00:30:29
Speaker
Oh, no, I don't. I would love love to do it more. oh Yeah. I really don't. I will say that I do sometimes struggle with releasing control from the sense of I know that I could crush this.
00:30:41
Speaker
you I was listening to actually a podcast with the founder of SolidCore. Are you familiar with that company? I'm She's phenomenal. She should to listen to her. She's crazy, like in a good way, crazy. But she was talking about how she was doing the exercise classes in the beginning.
00:30:56
Speaker
And she was saying how, yeah, could she do it and keep more money for herself? Of course. But like that was irresponsible to the rest of the members of the team and to the business itself because she was not elevating herself enough or often enough to actually build the business. And so I felt very convicted by listening to her on that. And so we've kind of got some things in place where that will allow me the,
00:31:17
Speaker
comfort and security that it's going to get done well, but then it also allows me to really sit, continue to elevate myself out of the roles that I keep putting myself in. I love that. I think it's so important. And for your nine to three, are there any little blocks in there where you're like, this is my response to email time, anything like that? or are you like, no, I go from nine to three. i email between meetings and then I go home. It depends on the day. Like today I have a little bit more free time. And so I'm working on like a project in the interim. And so there's sometimes that those things happen, but I actually try to do emails either at the end of my day or like very first thing in the morning before anyone in my house gets up.
00:31:56
Speaker
So I'm up like 5 o'clock doing some of that work. It doesn't happen every morning, believe me. And then I'll do some like in the evening once my kids go to bed if I feel so inspired. I'm much better at like the early morning than
Podcast Passion and Influence
00:32:07
Speaker
the late night. like At 3, I really should be done because my brain just stops working anyways.
00:32:13
Speaker
I hear you Well, can we talk about your podcast a little bit? Because it's incredible. Yes. Thank you. I love podcasting. I love the medium. I love the form of it, the function of it. I'm also like a serial podcaster too. So when I had the coaching business, I had a podcast. A lot of it were solo episodes, kind of just sharing some thought leadership around career change and female confidence and women in leadership. And then this one that I launched most recently ah lee is like probably the biggest genius hack I didn't even realize I created. But it's called Culture Uncovered. And each week we go behind the scenes of cool companies to work for. So we are interviewing chief people officers, chief talent officers, or CHROs of organizations. Sometimes we interview founders too, depending on the size of the organization. But we deep dive on what it's like to work there, why people want to come work there, and then help those companies through that medium find and attract great talent.
00:33:04
Speaker
feel like you're so good at podcasting. Well, I think i told you this, but when I mentioned to Julia that I was chatting with you, Julia, our head of exec content, she told me that she had been a longtime listener of your podcast when you were at Recruit the Employer. Yeah.
00:33:17
Speaker
It's so fun. And it's super flattering too. I was at a networking event locally here in Franklin, like not even Nashville, in Franklin. And at the end of the networking event, this woman comes up to me. She goes, I'm so sorry. This is so weird, but I used to listen to your podcast all the time. And I was so sad when you stopped it. And I was like, that is so encouraging and so flattering. So if you ever see somebody who's posting content that you really appreciate, like let them know, because oftentimes they feel like they're doing it in a void. Like, does anyone care? Is anyone listening? And so it's always honoring and flattering when you hear that people actually listen to what you're saying.
00:33:50
Speaker
We'll put a bunch of stuff in the show notes for you because everyone should be following you on LinkedIn. Yeah. When your new site is up. Yes. and Throw that in there because this will probably be a few weeks out. We will link to your podcast. What else could we direct people towards anywhere else that you'd want to send them if they're interested in working with you or just following along?
00:34:08
Speaker
I definitely would say that LinkedIn is the best place to access me and to connect with me. And then if you know of any people like that are interested in culture and leadership and what it's like to build a company that people want to work for, the podcast is the best place to learn more about that.
00:34:22
Speaker
So we interview a lot of really cool people. We've interviewed companies like Toshiba and ThredUp and tech companies like across the board. So it's been really fun to get to interview companies I've heard of and many of that I have not.
00:34:35
Speaker
So. For sure. Jenna, I could talk to you for hours. i know I said earlier, I'll be like exhausted after calls, but I do want to just really emphasize how you're just such an incredible energy. Every time I talk to you, I feel more energized about my own work because i just admire what you're doing so much in the way that you're going about it. And I'm just glad that you're out in the world doing your thing and that I know you. So thank you. Thank you. And I love the work that you guys are doing at Medbury and just honored that I get to work with you, which has been so fun as well. Your team is amazing and you've got just a lot of powerhouse people. Thank you so much, Jen. Thank you.