Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Transform Recruiting Podcast.
Speaker: I love that in my day job, I get to come across people who I think are doing just amazingly, not so much futuristic, but amazingly impactful things in their day jobs and being able to really approach how they recruit completely differently.
Speaker: And I came across one such person who was kind enough to come on the podcast today, Mr. Gary Benedict.
Speaker: Welcome, sir.
Speaker: Thank you for having me, Brad.
Speaker: No, of course.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Like I said, I was really, really taken aback the very first time we talked.
Speaker: Went, all right, this guy gets it.
Speaker: More people need to hear about how he's trying to approach these things.
Speaker: So before we dig into that, why don't you give everyone just a little bit of background on yourself, kind of where you're coming from, and we'll jump in.
Speaker: No pressure.
Speaker: No pressure whatsoever.
Speaker: But so in a long elevator speech, Brad, my background started off in search.
Speaker: I was a full desk headhunter back in the boiler room environment days.
Speaker: I actually graduated college with an undergrad in engineering technology, and I went to a firm for them to get me a role in the functional vertical of engineering.
Speaker: They flipped it on me, and all of a sudden I was a recruiter making zero, and it was 100% commission.
Speaker: Spent five years there, did well financially, but I matured a bit in my career and I did not want to pigeonhole myself in third-party search at that time.
Speaker: So the next step was moving internal.
Speaker: And I went internal TA at a large retailer that we probably all have heard.
Speaker: It has since went bankrupt, but it was thriving when I was there.
Speaker: So I really wanted to understand the buying behavior of what I was selling.
Speaker: So I led a large group of
Speaker: corporate recruiters, and the volume was significant.
Speaker: It was 10,000 plus hires a year, and we were touching well over a million candidates annually.
Speaker: I'll get to this.
Speaker: I left that sinking ship in about 2013, and I became super curious about technology.
Speaker: This is when the gig economy was exploding.
Speaker: There was reference to AI and machine learning and all this hoopla.
Speaker: So I left the corporate world and I started consulting with startups in the city of Chicago around matching talent to jobs in an intelligent quote unquote way.
Speaker: So I started building a couple of marketplaces, mainly through the manipulation of CRMs at the time, just matching people to jobs through fields that were built in parsing.
Speaker: I then did a two year stint at Manpower Group.
Speaker: I think we're all familiar with Manpower, a giant in the industry where I became
Speaker: ingrained in the MSP business, high volume, low margin, as well as other lines of businesses around like outplacement, right management, manpower, et cetera.
Speaker: Spent two years there, then I was recruited to go to a SaaS recruitment marketplace driven off of the buzzwords that we like to hear around AI and machine learning that was intelligently matching
Speaker: About 500 employers to 15% of the Fortune 500 companies to 3,500 staffing and recruiting firms.
Speaker: The interesting piece about that, it's quite a large amount.
Speaker: And so we did a bunch of research and previously we were matching, I was matching talent to jobs.
Speaker: Now that match works.
Speaker: However, the output wasn't as pure because job descriptions are
Speaker: a whole other conversation and talent inflates their experience on paper.
Speaker: So the actual machine was matching the right two inputs, but the person wasn't really able to do the job at the rate we wanted them to.
Speaker: So what we did is we injected this layer of quote unquote experts.
Speaker: These 3,500 staffing and recruiting firms were deemed as experts in a certain job category and GL, even down to the job subcategory.
Speaker: So
Speaker: When a large bank dropped in several dozen recs into our marketplace, we were able to match those recs and predict how long it would take to fill them, what the fee percentage should be, the candidate experience, which recruiters were active, et cetera.
Speaker: So my kind of recruitment marketplace experience evolved from talent to job matching, but actually from there to
Speaker: a layer of expertise to kind of prevent that talent, the job matching.
Speaker: Now technology has gotten better since then.
Speaker: That company was abruptly acquired in June of 22, I'm sorry, 2020.
Speaker: And I started my own firm called ArchAdvisor Group.
Speaker: And to be honest with you, my focus with building ArchAdvisory was exactly not like the firms I worked with and or for throughout the past.
Speaker: So we're,
Speaker: We built Arch Advisory on three key pillars, transparency, authenticity, and speed.
Speaker: It was a wild ride for about three and a half years, and I was fortunate enough to get acquired late last year in 2023.
Speaker: So I am now part of Avenica, which is a mission-driven organization matching early and careers folks to jobs in high volume, strictly through leveling and personal assessments, not resumes, not internships, not classes or job descriptions.
Speaker: I hope that helps.
Speaker: It certainly does.
Speaker: And I'm sensing a theme throughout all of this stuff when we start thinking about what truly is a match for a job.
Speaker: What is a talent match?
Speaker: What is an actual match for the kind of people you're going to be working with, whether it's the firm you're working with to do that or anything else?
Speaker: It seems like that's kind of one of the big themes that's coming out of that.
Speaker: So when you think about the recruiting industry overall,
Speaker: What do you truly feel like is affecting our industry right now that you feel like maybe we're not paying the right amount of attention to or not exactly aware of how it's hitting our industry right now?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I will respond to this, Brad, in just some real life experiences that I've had over the last year.
Speaker: year or two, right?
Speaker: Specifically, you know, post COVID and this world really trying to normalize, especially within the recruiting industry.
Speaker: I think some of the largest things affecting the recruit industry is actually humans.
Speaker: And when I say humans, it's actually recruiters and hiring managers, right?
Speaker: Like we can talk about talent shortages and remote work dynamics and, you know, the candidate experience and skills gaps and all the stuff that we're talking about today.
Speaker: But
Speaker: When you talk about like the pure match and the expectations and the reality of wanting to fill a role on the employer side and them thinking the way that they used to do it is the way they should do it today.
Speaker: I think that's what's affecting success.
Speaker: Tell me all about that.
Speaker: I'm all ears because that is right in my wheelhouse.
Speaker: I love talking about that stuff.
Speaker: So example, I had a meeting this morning with a large client.
Speaker: They're in the manufacturing sector.
Speaker: And we're working on kind of a high-level sales role.
Speaker: And it's a mix of sales and also service.
Speaker: And we are able to identify the profiles that this hiring manager wants to see.
Speaker: That's easy, right?
Speaker: We do CIA shit.
Speaker: We find people all the time.
Speaker: I think where there's what's affecting success in putting people to work is the the deprioritization of understanding that the talents that we find wants to work for you, wants to work for that company, is aligned to that job description, is aligned to the compensation, is aligned to the travel requirements.
Speaker: So there's actually like two key pieces to this match.
Speaker: It's not just the employer wanting the right person to fill a gap or solve a problem they have, but it's that compounded with having the other side, AKA the candidate, agree to wanting what's going to be happening in their experience at that company, if that makes sense.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: And can I put it in kind of a childish way that I used to...
Speaker: I used to have speaking engagements that are all around this kind of topic that you're speaking on right now.
Speaker: So when I used to talk about it, I used to think, why are you why is the company the hiring manager or just company in general?
Speaker: Why is the job description?
Speaker: It's so amazing to work here.
Speaker: It's so awesome.
Speaker: This is why you're going to want it.
Speaker: It's going to be great for you.
Speaker: OK, you don't really know if that's what they actually want out of the job yet.
Speaker: They haven't even interviewed with you.
Speaker: They have no clue.
Speaker: What in the world are you trying to sell them on when you don't know what their pain points are, what they're actually looking to change?
Speaker: That used to hit people and they're like, well, we need candidates, though.
Speaker: I'm like, well, yeah, but those are kind of different things.
Speaker: It seems like that's kind of how you think as well.
Speaker: Like, yeah, you can push this whole thing, but are you sure they even want that?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And we try to, before we engage in a search, especially if it's executive or professional, we try to come to the table with some data, some market scrape to say, this is the available talent.
Speaker: This is the total available market based on what we're hearing you want.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that there's already like the expectation to say, here's a list of 50, for example.
Speaker: It doesn't mean 50 are interested in the job.
Speaker: That's the second step, right?
Speaker: There's a whole nother phase to this, this process.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that was always the fun part as a firm owner to, you know, kind of coach our recruiters on is that intake conversation with the hiring manager, right?
Speaker: Not only do you have to help them set expectations, but you have to be almost that bearer of bad news when they come to you and say, everyone should want to work for me in this job.
Speaker: And I'm going to do all I can to eliminate all the other options until what I'm left with is perfection.
Speaker: And you have to end up transferring that conversation more into you might want to open up what you're looking for here because here's the total market.
Speaker: And out of all of those, you're thinking, what, maybe 10, 20 percent may even be open to hearing about you.
Speaker: And then five percent may not even may hopefully, if you're lucky, be actively looking for a new job.
Speaker: So that's a tough conversation to have.
Speaker: How did you set your recruiters up to have that kind of conversation?
Speaker: And I don't want this to be like a glass half empty conversation, Brad.
Speaker: I mean, there's tons of organizations and forward thinking and modern hiring managers and leaders and employers, right?
Speaker: So, you know, so with that being said, if in full, you know, transparency being one of our key pillars, if we don't feel this is going to be mutually beneficial, we say thanks.
Speaker: But this is just something that we cannot put our full attention to.
Speaker: Therefore, you probably should engage with other vendors or other partners to solve this problem.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The word impact is super subjective.
Speaker: We don't need to win every single client and be asked to work on every single search.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We're just trying to focus on where the relationships will be authentic and mutually beneficial.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: That's fair.
Speaker: And that's kind of the whole goal of that initial conversation, right?
Speaker: Just try and really come up with those and qualify it as fast as possible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then, you know, that stems into like your delivery strategy, right?
Speaker: Like if you're feeling some, some pushback on maybe some of the coaching or some of the data that we provided, maybe the delivery strategy is adjusted to support that client.
Speaker: Like, you know, you talk about high touch, low touch, white glove, et cetera.
Speaker: You're short, onshore, offshore cost of doing business.
Speaker: Maybe there's, you know, there's things you can do behind the scenes that will not impact the way you're servicing the client.
Speaker: But I think you just need to be super transparent with the client on what we see in the market and then help coach your teams or team internally to focus on where we're going to see success.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So given all that you've seen and with this sort of approach in mind, then what do you feel like the...
Speaker: the recruiting industry has to look forward to?
Speaker: Like what's coming up?
Speaker: What is that next thing that they're going to have to need to kind of prepare themselves for, prepare their teams for?
Speaker: What's coming?
Speaker: Yeah, this is a great question.
Speaker: And I wish I could predict the future.
Speaker: What I do know is that I don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker: I think COVID secured uncertainty.
Speaker: for the rest of our lives, right?
Speaker: So obviously there's key points that we deal with and we talk to with our clients and our candidates every day around like, you know, hybrid work challenges, right?
Speaker: We see the news around some large retailers requiring folks to go to headquarters, which is impacting a ton of families and, you know, folks that have been working with some of these large Fortune 500 companies for decades, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: obviously there's things behind the scenes around like, you know, data privacy concerns, like what's real, what's not, what's spam.
Speaker: You know, you're talking about like the rejuvenation of global talent acquisition.
Speaker: We had a, we had a meeting yesterday with a client that has 150 to 160 global corporate recruiters and they're investing in upskilling that population of folks.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So kind of,
Speaker: taking an internal approach and investing in your current workforce on the TA side, which will impact the business, the employer value prop, hiring manager relationships, network motor score, et cetera.
Speaker: We're talking about the ethical use of AI.
Speaker: So it continues to play a significant role and we hear about it, we see it, we smell it, we touch it.
Speaker: But there's still concerns around bias and transparency and accountability within using AI in recruiting.
Speaker: And then we also obviously, like I just mentioned, reskilling and upskilling is something that we take pride in, specifically within the parent company that just purchased my firm.
Speaker: We're building this intermediary between launching careers and finding game-changing talent on the executive side.
Speaker: How do we get them from their
Speaker: early career to their dream job.
Speaker: I get I like that a lot.
Speaker: So I heard the keyword the ethical use of AI.
Speaker: So yes, I agree with you that the
Speaker: There's a lot going on with it, and there's a lot of people that have opinions about it, and there's a lot of people that think it's going to be the newest, bestest, amazing thing.
Speaker: I, for one, feel like there's a whole lot of stuff that people need to learn about it first before they try and say, all right, this is going to change everything, because what I've found in actually doing the technology implementations and helping people with this is nobody's data is in any sort of shape that they can actually take advantage of most of what AI can do.
Speaker: So shut up about it.
Speaker: You can't even use it.
Speaker: But yes, there is that part of is this even going to be ethical?
Speaker: What you're trying to do?
Speaker: You mentioned the bias side.
Speaker: What were you referring to when you're thinking about bias and AI?
Speaker: Well, I mean, let's just think of like for me personally, you know, let's just say I like sports.
Speaker: I'm from Chicago.
Speaker: I like to eat food.
Speaker: I like to take the trade into the city.
Speaker: It's calculating every single decision, every thought that I am personally putting into the system.
Speaker: Obviously, there's a buffer and there's control, but it's learning what I like and will that create bias on what I want or the people I need to hire for my firm or clients that we want to work with.
Speaker: I feel like we're all embracing this, but
Speaker: the work that you're doing within any sort of AI tool or projects is what you want it to do.
Speaker: It's almost like the same question around data integrity, right?
Speaker: And like data governance, right?
Speaker: So like your tools or your tech stack is going to be as good as the information you put into it.
Speaker: And I feel like that's in parallel with this whole AI phenomenon that we're dealing with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: People forget like,
Speaker: At some point, someone has to train that and tell it what is a positive outcome and what is a negative outcome.
Speaker: Are you going to be that person?
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: That's a lot of weight.
Speaker: That's a lot of tough, tough stuff to do.
Speaker: You mentioned tech stack, though.
Speaker: I always make sure I ask someone this question when they jump on what tech in your life, whether it's something to use for work, whether it's something that you've run a business on or whatever, what's making your job easier today?
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: That is such a loaded question, my friend.
Speaker: Coffee.
Speaker: Coffee.
Speaker: That's good technology.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: So if you've got a good coffee maker, I'll take it as a tech thing.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I can't find any better than Mr. Coffee.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I'd say like, you know, around like if I could step my fingers and wake up and just have like the perfect tech stack.
Speaker: which I'm hoping you can help me out with there, Brad, but is like specialization, right?
Speaker: Like specialize to the way that I've actually progressed in my career from like professional standpoint.
Speaker: Like I actually was just creating some prompts in ChatGPT around like, can you please separate professional from personal?
Speaker: Like, is there any way we could have...
Speaker: like a dual prompting experience that says, you know, Gary at the workplace, Gary father and husband, right?
Speaker: So, and keep those things separate.
Speaker: But like specialization and personalization, I think are two key things.
Speaker: For me, it's like the integration, right?
Speaker: Bidirectionally, things need to talk, right?
Speaker: So the stack, in my opinion, should be smooth.
Speaker: It should be very robust when it comes to the ETL process.
Speaker: So things need to be moving on demand all the time versus every hour or every day.
Speaker: Service level is a key component in my opinion.
Speaker: That's my opinion.
Speaker: But service level when, hey, I'm not...
Speaker: I have a problem on the client side that's being driven through the tech.
Speaker: Who is my point of contact that can help you with this versus sending a message into a queue, into a ticketing system with a 24 hour SLA.
Speaker: So I'd say that, that, that is, is really big in my decision-making process when creating this tech stack, you know, obviously different tools and apps within the tech, but to be able to talk to a human about a problem or a hiccup or a bug,
Speaker: at that time.
Speaker: Not saying it's reality and I get it, right?
Speaker: We all have things to do and we all have certain sizes of customers that we respond to and report back to.
Speaker: But, you know, it also, you know, from a leader on the recruitment agency side, tools that create less clicks and less work for my teams to be faster and more efficient.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So there's, there's applicant tracking systems out there that support the recruiting industry on the agency side that speak a lot of good stuff.
Speaker: But when you get into the weeds and out of the hood, it's, it's actually more work to get that task completed.
Speaker: I've seen the same sort of thing.
Speaker: They're like,
Speaker: Oh, you can do all of these different types of things.
Speaker: But yeah, that still means you have to do all of those specific things inside the app.
Speaker: Like, how are you going to take care of most of my work for me?
Speaker: Tech should be able to do that admin stuff.
Speaker: I am a person.
Speaker: I am fantastic at building human relationships.
Speaker: You tech are not.
Speaker: How are you going to make my life to be able to build relationships better?
Speaker: Yes, precisely.
Speaker: And so the way that I look at this is like supply and demand, right?
Speaker: Supply is the talent or the community of folks that you have that you will hopefully be matching to jobs.
Speaker: The demand is the party that's hiring people.
Speaker: So that tech stack should not wait or be focused on one side or the other more or less, in my opinion.
Speaker: I would prefer a stack that is hyper-focused with specialization, personalization, you know,
Speaker: integrations that create the best experience for the candidate, as well as the best experience for the hiring manager, not either or, or it's kind of off balance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's the very first time I heard you start talking about that of, you know, the fully rounded recruiting focused tech stack.
Speaker: I was like, Oh, it gets it.
Speaker: Like he definitely wants to understand not only just, yeah, make my business process better as an applicant tracking system, but,
Speaker: my gosh, there's so much more that goes into our world than just making sure you know what candidates applied to which job.
Speaker: There's so much more.
Speaker: So I appreciate you coming on and at least helping people understand that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, I'm super passionate about the candidate experience, Brad, as you know.
Speaker: So, you know, when you have hundreds of thousands of candidates in your database, just because you're not getting them a job, what other value can you bring to them from a community engagement perspective that is driven through the tech, that is productized, that is almost self-servicing?
Speaker: We get that from a lot of other things that we deal with.
Speaker: Why would one of the biggest decisions that we're going to make in our lives of a new potential job, why wouldn't that come with the same level of handholding and the same level of engagement and the same level of community building?
Speaker: Like it should, it should be a big part of that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause we all know those are great.
Speaker: Those are great conversations.
Speaker: Those are, you know, because then that starts to flip over to the demand side, right?
Speaker: You create loyalty, then they give you, you know, your best sales reps or your candidates that you're treating well.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: I'm going to use that as the poll quote, man.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, uh, anything else to leave the fellow, uh, recruiting universe with today?
Speaker: Any other points of wisdom you wanted to make sure you dropped?
Speaker: No, just, I mean, just be authentic, right?
Speaker: I think we're all dealing with our own, you know, what outside the office with family and sickness and, you know,
Speaker: this political landscape, just be authentic and just respond to people and be yourself.
Speaker: There is an ROI there.
Speaker: So just.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Agreed.
Speaker: And it's not what they're getting from a lot of others.
Speaker: So it's a great differentiator.
Speaker: So really, really appreciate it.
Speaker: Everyone, if you want to check out the notes for this episode, you will find Gary's LinkedIn.
Speaker: Please hit him up on LinkedIn.
Speaker: Let him know that you heard him here.
Speaker: And if you've got any other questions, I'm sure he'll be authentic and do his best to answer as many as he can.
Speaker: So thank you all so much for listening to another episode of the Transform Recruiting Podcast.
Speaker: You can find this episode and more at transformrecruiting.com.
Speaker: If you've got any ideas of topics you want to see covered or any individuals that you know would make a good voice, send them my way.
Speaker: It's hello at Brad Owens dot com.
Speaker: Happy to have them on the show and share that voice with the audience.
Speaker: And until next time, I will talk to you all soon.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
