Latest / Recruiting Evolution / Industry Spotlight | Consultative Growth and Branding: How to Stand Out in a Crowded Recruiting Market with Kelli Schutrop, CEO & Founder - Thoughtful Resound
Transcript
- Kelli Schutrop [00:00:00]: One of the biggest blind spots I've seen for years, and I'm still seeing it, is companies assuming that if they have an active brand in the market and their recruiters are behind the scenes doing recruiting and their salespeople are doing the one on one touch bases with people, that that is enough. So the blind spot on how to fix it would be start thinking about every person who is client facing or candidate facing as being a mini brand within your brand. Kortney Harmon [00:00:26]: Hi, I'm Kortney Harmon, Director of Industry relations at Crelate. This is the Industry spotl a series of the Full Desk Experience, a Crelate original podcast. In this series we will talk with top leaders and influencers who are shaping the talent industry, shining a light on popular trends, the latest news and the stories that laid the groundwork for their success. Welcome back to another episode of the Full Desk Experience Industry Spotlight. Welcome back to the Full Desk Experience where we talk about growth blockers across people, processes, technologies in this wonderful staffing and recruiting industry. I'm your host Kortney Harmon, director of Industry relations at Crelate and I am thrilled to welcome Kelli Shoetrap to the show. Kelli is the CEO and founder of Thoughtful Resound. She's a thought leadership activation firm that accelerates revenue across growing B2B companies. Kortney Harmon [00:01:24]: And Kelli, you can smack me if I'm wrong in any of this stuff. And she's had over 15 years of experience in talent acquisition marketing and she's partnered with more than 155 clients helping establish powerful brand presence and driving growth. Kelli is a LinkedIn learning instructor speaker, co host of the Full cup collective. I think I'm allowed to say that since that's just new strategic marketing breakthroughs to for growth barriers. And I am so excited to pick her brain because we've been talking about how to thrive in 2025 and I think Kelli is the perfect guest to make this all go together. So Kelli, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to talk to me. And what did I get wrong? Kelli Schutrop [00:02:03]: Hi Kortney. Thanks for having me. You didn't get anything wrong. I'm impressed you pronounced the last name right. Which, what going on 14 years or so, I'm still trying to pronounce that name right that I married into. So great job. Yeah. I'm happy to share a little bit more about my background and how I got into this space. Kortney Harmon [00:02:20]: Yes, please do. Kelli Schutrop [00:02:21]: And I'm thrilled about this topic. Thrive in 2025. Kortney Harmon [00:02:25]: Yeah, like more like your journey. Like how did you get into this crazy space? And then More about your company and kind of what you do for firms. That would be amazing. Kelli Schutrop [00:02:33]: Sure, I'd be happy to share. So going all the way back to undergrad, I majored in PR and marketing. So I've always really enjoyed the space of marketing and essentially helping companies and brands get their message out. And after undergrad, I went into the ad agency world and then met someone in the staffing industry and as we all do, fell into this space. This particular individual was fantastic. She had started her own boutique executive search firm, and she said, I need someone to build marketing from the ground up. And I don't even know what all that entails, but I need that. And I said, I don't know anything about the world of staffing recruiting, but I would love to learn that and I'd love to build marketing from the ground up. Kelli Schutrop [00:03:14]: That sounds so fun. And so I did that with her. She then merged with a boutique rpo, or recruitment process outsourcing company. And a lot of people don't know this about my journey, but I went from doing marketing within her company, also learning the ropes of recruiting, doing Boolean searches, working with candidates, to then pivoting into the RPO that had established clients. And I went in house, and they didn't need marketing. So all my marketing came off my desk, and I started doing more of the internal relations with hiring managers, sourcing candidates, all of that. And what I realized is that two things. One, I have a huge appreciation for our industry. Kelli Schutrop [00:03:50]: Two, I liked marketing for it more than I liked doing it, had a knack for it, but it wasn't feeding my soul. And so essentially started having some conversations. And that individual got recruited to join the largest single site, privately held executive search and consulting firm in the Minneapolis area. And she pulled me with her. They were looking for a marketing manager, looking for someone to essentially do that same process, right? Build from the ground up from a marketing standpoint. And I was with that family of companies for over a decade in a variety of roles, a variety of brands within that family of companies, starting with managing marketing, anything related to marketing, communications, right? So we're talking events, pr, content, social, like soup to nuts, all of the elements. And then partnering closely with people that were doing SEO and paid. So really got my arms around that full breadth of the brand side of marketing, but also the digital side of marketing. Kelli Schutrop [00:04:43]: And then I raised my hand and said, CEO, who I've worked with forever and really appreciate where we're growing, I'm ready for something new. The company is growing, but I know it's not growing fast enough for me to level up and to level the person up under me. Is there anything I'm not thinking about within our organization that I could step into? And he said, well, actually we have been partnering with some local clients, I mean big mega brands, but like local clients not in the staffing industry on their digital marketing. Would you be interested in helping us basically shape that digital marketing offering for the staffing industry? Because it's the space we know really well. And at that time the company had just hit a year of 50% of revenue had come from marketing sources, which was just awesome. Like it was a really cool, well oiled, machine. And I said, yes, sign me up. This sounds fantastic. Kelli Schutrop [00:05:27]: So after I said that, I started to hit a little bit of the oh, shoot. I know how to do marketing, I know how to do rebrands. I've managed multiple of them. So as I help us launch this new brand in the marketplace, that's comfort zone. What isn't comfort zone is the sales part. I had done retail sales and I'm very extroverted. I love building relationships, but I didn't want to be viewed as a commodity. And I was actually just really experiencing a lot of that fear of failure. Kelli Schutrop [00:05:53]: I know I'm good at marketing, but what if I'm not good at selling? And we also don't have our processes quite established yet. We've got clients. Like we haven't sold this in a classic way. And so I put on the hat of marketing, sales, project management, account management as the delivery team did excellent work and Parka was the name of the company. It's since pivoted. Parka now sits in more of the tech stack space, working a lot with Bullhorn and Salesforce. It's not considered a digital marketing agency anymore. They've taken it in a different direction. Kelli Schutrop [00:06:22]: But when I was with that brand for four or five years, I was able to partner with, like you mentioned, over 150 organizations within the staffing community. And the reason why this is relevant to my story and what I'd love people to hear for 2025 is that I approached sales in a different way than most people did. And it worked really, really well for me. I approached it through that lens of thought leadership. So instead of saying, I'm going to pick up the phone, I'm going to cold call, personally, I just didn't want to be viewed as a commodity. Like I said, I didn't want people to not want to answer my call. That didn't feel fun. But I had all this information from years of experience in a space that these companies were really trying to seek out for themselves. Kelli Schutrop [00:07:00]: So I started hosting Fireside chats and guest appearing on podcasts and speaking at conferences and doing webinars and every other week hopping on camera with a two or three minute. Here's something that our clients and our, our industry is facing that you can do internally to solve it yourself right within the digital marketing landscape. And what that turned into is a mechanism that went from ads running on LinkedIn and getting people from time to time to 95% of the people I worked with came inbound because they saw what I was doing on LinkedIn, they saw our brand in the market, and in fact, literally, what was it? Two weeks ago, I got reached out to someone who I'd connected with. I just realized this back in 2021 with just a simple connection request. Hey, so and so, saw you on here. I love connecting with other people who are passionate about the staffing and recruiting industry. Cheers. That was it. Kelli Schutrop [00:07:50]: And then a few weeks later had sent a message of our resources. Right. Like here's free resources. D didn't do anything else. Right. It wasn't a chasing mode. Well, anyway, fast forward a number of years and this individual reached out. Their company has a need, and now we're partnering. Kelli Schutrop [00:08:02]: And it's just really cool to see how content that you create and put out into the world to elevate your audience can work behind the scenes for you. So anyway, I know this is a long answer, but to fast forward to where we are today. I was with that family of brands for a number of years and then had the opportunity to create LinkedIn learning courses. So I have four on there around digital marketing and personal branding. And then that organization that creates digital learning courses hired me in house to do sales and marketing. And it was from there that I realized that not every company approaches sales through that lens of thought leadership. And I really had a deep passion for it. And so I launched Thoughtfull Resound about a year and a half ago. Kelli Schutrop [00:08:38]: I've now partnered with 15 organizations over that time in the B2B professional service space. I've got a few outliers that are in different industries, but mostly in that boutique size where they've got, call it 30 to 50 people in house, sometimes even smaller. They're trying to figure out how do we do marketing better instead of just check the boxes, but also how do we turn our sales people and our key leaders into thought leaders so that business comes to us and So I work with a select number of clients on retainer at a time. I have a few in advisory, but I also do marketing strategies. So let's look at your year, what you need to be doing trainings in that space. So I digress. That's a long story. That's what I'm doing now. Kelli Schutrop [00:09:19]: I'm having a ton of fun and I co founded a networking community based in Minneapolis called Full Cup Collective. So that was that you referenced in the intro. Kortney Harmon [00:09:26]: So many things. I love it and I love the perspective that you bring. It's not just this is what I've fallen into. Like, this is what I believe. It's etched in my own fabric of who I am to help these people. So I love that. And I can't wait because honestly, Kelli, our theme this year, we heard so many things last year, it was like, survive till 25. And guess what? We're here, we have arrived. Kortney Harmon [00:09:51]: Stop having the oh, woe is me. Okay, how do I change my business versus okay, we're waiting on the other foot to drop. Or you know, we're waiting. So how do we change? So I want you to think about it from your lens. We're here, we've arrived. We're thriving in 2025. We're not just surviving. As a thought leadership expert, what do you believe staffing and recruiting firms need to start doing now to position themselves for success over the next year? Because this isn't like, do it today, See the results today. Kelli Schutrop [00:10:20]: It's fascinating. Our industry evolved from people sitting at desks with telephone books, cold calling to oh, while we have websites, we can do SEO, we can do paid, we can get in front of people that way to now LinkedIn is promoting video and video that's under a minute because of TikTok and Instagram. And just this way that we digest and consume content. And I would argue that even since the pandemic, it's become a really beautiful thing to be able to connect with people, even if you're not physically in a coffee shop with them or in your office with them. So I would recommend, in order for staffing and recruiting firms to thrive in 2025, is stop thinking about your marketing and how you get in front of people and your sales as only represented by your brand. You need to think about yourself as a brand as well. So who are you when you show up in a conversation with a prospective client? And of course, there's a whole world of candidates and recruiting. But let's just talk for a second about business development. Kelli Schutrop [00:11:17]: Because I know that's a really big need across our industry, especially last year and coming into this year. What I often hear is when someone gets in a client conversation, when they get the at bat, so to speak, it's great. Yes, I'll get the search every time I'll be able to engage with them. And I'll also say our industry is so unique that essentially you're doing sales before getting paid if you're in the contingent space. So why would a client not want a partner other than maybe just their bandwidth of managing a lot of partners? So we can address that in a separate conversation, probably around like differentiators and how you really approach that. But if you have success when you're in the conversation, part of the challenge is just getting more conversations. And in order to do that, my recommendation is show up where your audience shows up. So you think about the associations and the industry events that your ideal clients spend time at. Kelli Schutrop [00:12:06]: You might already attend those events. You probably do, you might sponsor those events. But are you trying to speak at them like, what are you doing to really like get active in that community and be seen as the person that's sharing that knowledge? Give away your secret sauce, so to speak, for free. Because our industry doesn't honestly have a lot of secret sauce. It's more the clients want to know, do you do a good job and do I like working with you? Right. Like those are the big elements. But then also think about how to show up online, because most people in this space, your hiring managers and the people you want to get in front of are on LinkedIn. And so are you showing up if you post once a week on LinkedIn, you are in the top, top, top percentage of the entire usage of this platform. Kelli Schutrop [00:12:48]: So even if you can say, all right, I'm on zoom calls all the time, I could just hop into a zoom call by myself and hit record and talk for two minutes about topics that I often hear come up from my prospects and from my clients. So that's what I would encourage you to do, is create a list of those common pain points that you're hearing that to you feel like a no brainer. For example, if you can shorten the interview process, if you can make your onboarding process smoother, if you can do these types of things, you will have better odds of getting the candidates you want and retaining the right talent. Like those are the types of things that can help just become familiar in your audience's space. And of course there's all sorts of marketing tactics that you can utilize to get that in front of our audience. But those are two areas that I've not seen people utilize a lot and I think there's space to it. So, one being get active on video, in content, on LinkedIn and to get more active in the associations from a speaking standpoint and or join a committee or a board so that you have that opportunity to meet people who you'd love to work with, but in a non selling capacity. Because if you're on the membership committee, you're welcoming and onboarding them to the group, or if you're in the programming or events committee, you get to decide who speaks and maybe you decide that you're the moderator of a panel that you bring in. Kelli Schutrop [00:14:04]: So a lot of opportunities just to start showing up a bit differently in our space that can bring in revenue. Kortney Harmon [00:14:09]: I love it and it's not a hard sell. I mean, we see that from our side. I speak at conferences and I think my perspective from who I am and the salesperson going to those same events are two different things, two different outcomes. Kelli Schutrop [00:14:23]: Tell me more about that. Kortney Harmon [00:14:24]: We'll leave that for another day. I'm interviewing you, not vice versa. Kelli Schutrop [00:14:28]: Perfect. I don't know if I understood it well. Kortney Harmon [00:14:30]: Yeah, we'll talk more. I want to go into what do you anticipate. So you just told us what we could think about. Staffing is constantly evolving. However, the foundations are very fundamental. Kelli Schutrop [00:14:43]: Right. Kortney Harmon [00:14:43]: It's not rocket science, but things are changing. So based on the experience you have with all of your clients, what shifts do you anticipate in the industry by 2025 that leaders could be preparing differently for? You just said how to meet these people. But how can they continue to prepare differently for our evolving landscape? Kelli Schutrop [00:15:01]: Oh, great question. So we've seen such a surge in AI, which means everybody and their mom, including in our industry, is getting really noisy on the digital platforms, right? Like there's a ton of inmails, there's a ton of email, because now everybody is a copywriter, everybody can send these mass messages. And obviously like email marketing and marketing automation existed before AI was prominent, but now it's just even more noisy. And so I would encourage people to think about how do you continue to have that personal touch involved? Because what I think we're going to see is even more of a commoditized approach in the staffing industry. And I think we're going to end up unfortunately seeing more of a consolidation of companies that stay in business because the ones that are just trying to like throw resumes at walls and send as many emails out as possible, there's still only so many jobs that need to be filled. And so if hiring managers are hearing just noise, noise, noise, noise from someone and they're on the other hand developing an authentic relationship with someone else, the people that are able to develop those authentic relationships are going to get the business. And I think the organizations that are just getting noisier and noisier are probably not going to survive. And so as hard as that is to say, I think leaning into this world of how do you become an expert on what you do, even if there are 17 other competitors in your city that offer the exact same your thing part of it is just showing up and sharing the challenges that your clients are having. Kelli Schutrop [00:16:30]: I like to say make your clients problems visible and solvable because if you can say this is what you're probably experiencing and this is how you can solve it, when they hit a point where they are not able to solve it in house or they're not able to solve it with their current partners, who do you think they're going to call next? They're going to call the person who has been sharing the information. So that's what I think we'll see unfortunately is I think we're going to see a consolidation of the industry. But I think there's ways to combat that and bolster around that. As yourself is just getting to be more human with your brand. Not just the what is my brand at large but what are my individual people doing to get in the community. Chris Hesson-Ad [00:17:07]: Recruiting is complex. Sometimes you just need a hand, someone beside you to give you that nudge to keep you on course. Introducing the new Crelate copilot. Copilot is creel8ai assistant, but it's more than just artificial intelligence. Copilot brings you recruiter intelligence. Need a quick reminder to reply to a candidate's email? Or maybe you're stuck writing up that new job description. Need a nudge to send a follow up to that client who hasn't gotten back to you. Copilot is there to help you craft it effortlessly. Chris Hesson-Ad [00:17:43]: With over 30 skills at your fingertips, Crelate Copilot Pilot doesn't just keep you organized, it keeps you ahead of the game. Because recruiting isn't just about filling roles. It's about building relationships. And Crelate Copilot is the partner you've been waiting for. Check us out and create the future of recruiting. Kortney Harmon [00:18:11]: I just did a panel yesterday. We had an executive search spin specific focus panel and I had asked a Similar question. And it was funny because someone said we changed our value prop. And I'm like, elaborate more. And it was like we turned away clients, we focused and doubled down on what we were good at and we made our value about them, not about us. And she said, it has changed their business for the positive around 2 bill. And they have less people, less people with better outcome. So. Kortney Harmon [00:18:44]: And it's just amazing to say when you change the lens in which you look at things and how you service clients, we always talk here. It's like, get out of the transactional, get to the consultative. But sometimes people don't know what that means or how to accomplish that. And I think just even some of the things you're talking about today being where they are, those are the things that matter and really, truly move your business. So I'm going to try not to go on a rant, but I want to know your opinion on this. One of my core beliefs is that many firms are what we call, like the KPI hamster wheel. It's transactional tracking metrics that don't drive growth. Like, pick your brain. Kortney Harmon [00:19:21]: How do you help companies identify and focus marketing metrics that truly matter? Because, let's face it, these things that you're talking about, attribution is hard to track. It's hard to understand if they're making an impact, when they're making an impact. So talk to me about that. Kelli Schutrop [00:19:36]: Yes, I know the world of KPIs. Right. Key performance indicators. And out of my 15 years in this space, half of it was managing marketing. The other half was doing consultative selling and being accountable for a book of business and driving that growth. And so when I think about KPIs, I actually think about it through both marketing and sales. So at the highest level, if the CEO or whomever is trying to figure out if this is working, whatever is being invested into, if they were on a desert island and they couldn't talk to anyone else on their team, what numbers would they need to see to understand impact? So to me, those are the types of KPIs to track. Yes, there is nuance and detail too. Kelli Schutrop [00:20:14]: If you send out a monthly newsletter, how many people opened it and what that looks like that the marketing person can look into. But can we take that a step deeper? And what the CEO I would imagine would care about is like, okay, great people opened the newsletter, or less people opened this newsletter. Who are those people and what was their intent? Kortney Harmon [00:20:32]: Right. Kelli Schutrop [00:20:32]: So starting to dig into who actually clicked on this. Like, is there intel that we can feed back to the sales team to say this person clicked through three of the links, maybe reach out to them. It might be a good time to re engage in that conversation. So when I think about KPIs for marketing, there's a lot of details in the weeds that typically a marketer does need to track. But they can start formulating the story by really tying it back to what's happening in the sales and recruiting realm. And oftentimes sales in their ATS has one dropdown that says source and that's it. And it might be indeed or ZipRecruiter or this event that we hosted or whatever, but the more that you can create a full picture and encourage your team to just share. Yeah, actually I guess they have been saying they've been seeing what I'm doing on LinkedIn or whatever that might look like. Kelli Schutrop [00:21:17]: You can, you can help to paint that picture of what is working. And a classic example would be if your staffing firm uses three different job boards and nobody ever marked the source and so the team cut one of the job boards and you're like, shoot, I had a third of my placements from that. It doesn't matter unless you're reporting it. Right. And so I think it's really important for sales and marketing to have dialogues back and forth and oftentimes somebody has to trigger that it's not going to happen on its own. So if you are sitting here listening to this from a marketing standpoint, you have to drive that and basically ask, can I have a conversation about the placements that we're having? Like once a month, can we meet up with the people that are getting more active in their community or being More active on LinkedIn or fill in the blank and let's just dialogue anecdotally, what are they seeing and what are they experiencing? Now on the sales side, I have helped staffing firms with this where organizations, like, for a specific example, one is very strong in staffing and has recently moved into the more direct hire space. And so I established a scorecard of like, how do we track? I don't remember what I did in my to do list on Tuesday. Right. Kelli Schutrop [00:22:21]: Like, I can tell you the major themes of what I'm working on for clients. But like your 20 little things that you're doing. I don't know how many of us remember every single day, every single week what we do. And so if you were to ask one of your salespeople last week, what are your numbers? What are you doing? You fall into one or two camps. Either you're drugstore because your leadership team came out of the Robert halfs of the world and you've got every KPI dialed to the N3, or maybe you're more boutique and it's more relational based and you don't have that tracked unless a placement occurs. So I think there's somewhere in between to say, first of all, what's happening from a meeting standpoint, Submittals, placements, all of those types of things. But also what are you doing salesperson that can impact. Are you at networking events? Are you posting on LinkedIn? Like, what are you doing? So starting to incorporate some of those classic marketing metrics into the sales metrics, help to share and dictate that picture. Kortney Harmon [00:23:13]: Well, what you're saying, everybody needs to have good intentions, but I'm sure there's blind spots in this process. And since you've worked with numerous staffing companies throughout your career, what are some common blind spots that you've observed that you can kind of give our audience some insight to and maybe how to prevent them from reaching their full potential? Kelli Schutrop [00:23:34]: One of the biggest blind spots I've seen for years, and I'm still seeing it, is companies assuming that if they have an active brand in the market and their recruiters are behind the scenes doing recruiting and their salespeople are doing the one on one touch bases with people, that that is enough. So the blind spot on how to fix it would be start thinking about every person who is client facing or candidate facing as being a mini brand within your brand. Their faces need to be known beyond the one on one conversations. I think that is an area to do that. Kortney Harmon [00:24:06]: So the company's not enough anymore? That's what you're telling me? Kelli Schutrop [00:24:09]: The company's not enough anymore? Yep. And you do need to have a company presence. You do need to have a strong website, you do need to be active on social. But you can't just do that. You need to have trusted experts built into your organization. Because when you think about, all right, my prospect is at this event, there are dozens of recruiters showing up to this event. It's not enough anymore for someone to say, oh yeah, I know that recruiting firm, or I don't know that recruiting firm, like they need to build that relationship with that person. And if I were to ask you right now, let's say you need an accountant, let's say you need a this, let's say you need a that, if you have a person in your life or someone you follow on LinkedIn, that does that thing whether or not they're the right one to hire, would they not be one of your first reach outs to say, hey, I want to at least have a conversation? So the more visible your team can get themselves in the spaces that your ideal audience has spent time, the better likelihood you have of standing out and ultimately generating more revenue. Kortney Harmon [00:25:07]: I'm gonna ask you the double edged sword question because I've talked to owners that are like, I understand that's important, but then my person's gonna get bigger than my company and they're gonna pick up and leave and they're gonna take all my business with me. Like, I can hear someone listening to this podcast to be like, oh my gosh. Like, it gives me anxiety just thinking about that. What do you tell those people? Because you know as well as I do, people work with people and they connect with the people and the recruiters that they're working with and often follow them. So from a company's perspective, that might be a little taboo to be like, I'm going to lift my people up and put them out to the world and hope all is best. How do you subside those fears? What do you tell them? Kelli Schutrop [00:25:45]: Yeah, here's the reality of it. As much as that is a real fear. Would you rather experience 50 or 75% of the watermelon that person brings in today, even if it's not for the rest of their career? Or do you want to have a smaller watermelon brought in because they are not producing as much business while they're with your company? We don't live in the space anymore where people are lifelong within one organization, unless you're the founder of it or maybe a few key individuals. So at some point the people that are on your team are going to transition on and that's just the nature of it. So I tend to have a mentality of the tide rises, all ships pay it forward. It is rare that someone who you treat well is going to turn around and bite you in back. Like it's yes, that I'm sure does exist to a degree somewhere, but they're already known. I think that's the common misperception. Kelli Schutrop [00:26:38]: Misconception is that your recruiters, your salespeople, if they're good at what they do, they're not sitting in a hole in their home office with no one knowing about them. They're already probably getting opportunities themselves to go to competitors, to step out on their own. Right. So my thought process is elevate them while they're with your organization. It's actually going to drive more revenue for your organization while they're there if you enable them to be active. And I actually haven't come across too many organizations in the last few years that have that mindset. It was more in years past where I was seeing that. In fact, I came across one company, only one ever. Kelli Schutrop [00:27:14]: But it was fascinating to me where I was doing research because they had reached out to the digital agency that I was with prior asking about digital marketing services. And I saw two profiles for the person who reached out. And I was like, this is weird. Other than the fact that one profile is more built out and has a color headshot and the other one is less built out and has a black and white headshot, this is the same information. This is the same person. I got on the phone with them and they said, our organization creates a duplicate profile for everyone when they're hired so that all of their recruiting activities go through the company profile. So if they leave, they can't take that with them. And it felt so babysitting esque to me that I would imagine that there's people who chose not to work there. Kelli Schutrop [00:27:52]: And I would never reveal the name, but I don't even recall the name, but it was fascinating. So most companies don't operate to that level of lockdown. Most companies, I think, have the mindset of, you know what, let's do good work for our clients, let's do good work for our candidates. Elevate my people. And if they choose to go off on their own at some point, I don't have control over that right now anyway. I mean, on a handful basis, would you not generate more revenue right now while you can? If they're good at what they do and they're with your organization now. Kortney Harmon [00:28:19]: Okay, how do you take it one step further? Because I think that's probably a question on how to execute. Well, obviously, personal brand's important. How should staffing leaders approach connecting the two? Because in reality, they're separate, yet they're linked. Do you help develop content for them? Do you give them suggestions? How do you make sure this is related to this? Do you know what I mean? Kelli Schutrop [00:28:42]: Are you asking if a staffing firm owner knows that it's important to get their people as a face of the brand, how do they empower them to do that? Kortney Harmon [00:28:49]: How do they empower them to do that and then maybe share the right content? I think that's part of the other thing that I've seen. I see organizations, they have their employees. Not that it can't be their own because it is their own. Right. But then how do you also build the idea to be like, here's the things you can share. I spoke to someone yesterday that been in this industry for many years, posted his first post yesterday or this past week on LinkedIn, but at a very successful staffing firm. So I think there's a lot of, whether it's angst or there's a lot of ideas of, well, I can't post it because it's not the perfect video. So I'm going to second guess everything. Kelli Schutrop [00:29:25]: That I ever do. Kortney Harmon [00:29:26]: There's a lot of that. But like how do we aid them as a staffing agency to say this is the right thing and here's how. Kelli Schutrop [00:29:31]: To do it, or here. Kortney Harmon [00:29:32]: You know what I mean? Yeah. Kelli Schutrop [00:29:34]: Because there is trepidation around what do I post, how do I approach that, all of those things. And actually I'm working with a company right now that is a large multibillion dollar organization, different industry, and they're approaching that same thing, like, how do we teach our leaders how to be more active? And so some of the crash course recommendations I have is encourage your people to post once a week, no matter what. I'll get back to the what and how and why in a second. But part of that reason, and I felt this when I was starting out being active on LinkedIn, if you only have one post in the back of your mind and you don't know when you're going to post next, there is so much weight riding on that post because you're like, oh, it flopped, I'm never doing that again. But if you're like, you know what, I'm going to do one a week or I'm going to do two a week or whatever that number is, it's just one of many. You're creating a body of work. You could think about it like an artist, Right. They might have hundreds of paintings over their career and if one isn't their favorite, it's okay. Kelli Schutrop [00:30:29]: It's a body of work. And even if two people interact with the one post that you create, it's still living there on your LinkedIn profile. So if you are reaching out to someone, if somebody refers you and they come back and they look at you, it still lives there. So it doesn't need to be, oh, I didn't have a million people like it the first time. It's still a part of your brand. Now I know that can also be the scary thing of it lives on. What if it's not good. How do I approach this? So there are three words that became my mantra when I was posting twice a week no matter what. Kelli Schutrop [00:31:01]: Now I do once a week no matter what. Because I have different business objectives as a solopreneur, purposefully, I have a fractional sales and marketing business. And I don't have an agency model where I'm trying to work with four, six or eight or 10 new clients every single month. I work with a select few. I can take about a project on a month. But my retainer clients, I only have so much space for them and so I'm really selective with how that looks. So I'm not an active business development mode constantly. But most companies are that are listening to this podcast. Kelli Schutrop [00:31:29]: Like you're like, the more people that are, the right people I can talk to. Let's bring them in. So when I was in that mindset, I filtered all of my posts through these three words. Credible, insightful, relatable. And I'll define those in a second. So if they hit those, then they had a space on my LinkedIn. So if it's credible, if it made my prospects go, oh, wow, that's impressive. It had a space, so that could be an award, an anniversary, a story about a client that we've helped, even without mentioning the brand, like, here's something that we did for our clients that someone else could see themselves in speaking somewhere. Kelli Schutrop [00:32:04]: Things that just make people stop and go, oh wow, she knows her stuff, they know their stuff, so that's credible. Those don't happen very often unless you're out on a speaking track. Those things are few and far between. So make sure to think about them and celebrate them when they happen and think about those client stories that are successes that you can tell. Two is insightful. So there's a lot of room for this. So this is where you're teaching your audience something that you can elevate them and give them information. This can be resharing a blog that your company posts. Kelli Schutrop [00:32:31]: This can be. I was recently in this conversation and somebody mentioned X, Y, Z, and I thought other people could also benefit from the response I gave them. That kind of an approach. Or it could even be as simple as you saying, I don't know what to post. I just can't quite think about how I want to share this or what I'd want to share. But your ideal audience spends time within associations and organizations. Well, those groups produce content, so you literally can reshare some of the content that those associations share. And you're being Insightful and then relatable I think is also really important. Kelli Schutrop [00:33:03]: So these are maybe a something about your family or something about your work life balance routine or how you want to have a work life balance routine, like whatever it might be. I posted something a while back about a walking treadmill that I got because I wanted to be more active. And my gosh, that post is one of the most engaged posts I had because so many people could relate to it. It didn't tell them what I offer, it didn't tell them how I helped clients. What it did is help them see themselves in it. And it was able to reach a broader audience and make people feel welcome and connected. And so content that is insightful, credible and relatable can help with that. And then of course there's the type of content the easiest is like do like copy, like write your copy and include an image. Kelli Schutrop [00:33:44]: Video is really promoted through LinkedIn right now, especially under 60 second vertical videos. I mean literally we all have iPhones or Android or whatever you use. Like you can get a good background and just record something of like I was recently experiencing xyz. There's a good example of that. I'm going to give her a shout out. Her name is Mindy Romero. M I N D I and then Romero. She is a recruiter for Construction Leadership and she has been producing really nice vertical videos that really share insights with her audience. Kelli Schutrop [00:34:13]: Another great one is Amy Volas V O L A S she does recruiting for if I'm going to get this right. Companies that are in startup and scale up mode that are hiring their first sales leader and get it wrong a lot of times. And so she is educating on how to not get that wrong because it is a critical hire. And so creating video content is another great way to stand out in the newsfeed. So anyway, all that to say there are steps you can take. Try to be active once a week. Try not to think about it as a pass and fail. And the last two things I'll share about posting content 1 Tell your team when you post content, even if you can get one buddy or two buddies who you know will click like within a couple minutes of you posting. Kelli Schutrop [00:34:51]: That can help a lot within the algorithm because LinkedIn says, huh, people like this content. I'm going to keep sharing it with people. I've had posts, I mean I've got over 10,000 followers that I am blessed to be able to share information with. I have had content that has gone dark where I posted it super late because I really wanted to get it out, but, like, nobody was spending time online or whatever it might be, and people just didn't see it. And I knew that the content was valuable to a lot of the people that I have in my network. But LinkedIn literally stops sharing it, so. Or showing it in a newsfeed because it has a lot to prioritize. So the more you can get people interacting with it within that first 20 minutes, the better. Kelli Schutrop [00:35:27]: The other way that you can do this is by rallying your own network. So we are all in our industry, very active, or most people are active on LinkedIn, and you're probably commenting on your connections, your prospects, just supporting people in your industry and in your network. If you can time that around when you do your post, it's actually going to boost your post in the algorithm. So if you post your content and then you go out and you comment on a few people's posts that you would love to have see yours, what LinkedIn does is goes, huh? Kelli and Kortney are buddies and Kelli just commented on Kortney's post. The next time Kortney is on, I'm going to show her Kelli's content. So that can be a really nice way of approaching social selling to your prospects, like, support them, get active in their content because it makes you visible and recognizable and human to them, but also they'll be more likely to see your content as well. Kortney Harmon [00:36:15]: I love it. Amazing. I feel like it's ever changing. Like, yesterday it would have a different algorithm and today it's different. And I know, gosh, I feel like I'm just getting older and older. I feel like the old person, I'm like, I can't keep up with all this technology. But there's a method to the madness, what it comes down to. Kelli Schutrop [00:36:33]: I would encourage people to think about LinkedIn, light boots on the ground, networking happy hour, right? Like you go to a conference and you're standing at a high top and there's discussion happening. If you walk by a table and someone says something cool, whether they're a prospect or not, and you're like, oh my gosh, I really want to hear that. Like, you're going to join into the conversation, you're going to chime in, you're going to add value. If you can think about the way that you interact with people on LinkedIn in that same way, generally speaking, LinkedIn's algorithm is going to reward that because it's trying to reward authentic human behavior. I mean, it literally just banned Apollo and one other. I forget which SaaS platform it was from the automated AI setup that it had because it was starting to be a problem from a spamming standpoint. And by the time this releases, that may be reversed. But my whole point is to say, whether it's Google or LinkedIn or whatever, algorithms in general try to reward the behavior that they want to see. Kelli Schutrop [00:37:28]: And people prefer authenticity. So the more you can think about it through that lens of like, if I post content that get, that adds value, if I interact with my audience that adds value to their lives, those are the things that LinkedIn in general will always promote. Kortney Harmon [00:37:41]: I think we talk a lot about LinkedIn and I know that's kind of my world. Is there any other channels that you would recommend? I'm not gonna lie, I've heard a lot about Reddit lately in the recruiting industry. And is there any other things that people from staffing agencies and staffing firms should think of to say, is there another channel that I need to look into for 2025 in order to thrive? Kelli Schutrop [00:38:03]: Yeah, great question. I have heard rumblings about Reddit a lot more lately too. I think a lot of that is going to come down to the audience you want to get in front of. So if your clients and your candidates spend time on LinkedIn, make sure you're there. If they spend time somewhere else, make sure you're there. And it will probably take a little bit of research because our beautiful industry is such a crazy varied tapestry. Right? I've got one client that focuses on the highest level executive retained search for privately held companies. They're like the corn ferry for privately held boutique companies. Kelli Schutrop [00:38:35]: That is a very night and day different and just as important as a company that does high volume staffing in a manufacturing warehouse. Now, the client audience of the one and the client audience of the other could not be more different. And so it all comes down to where does the audience spend time. So for some companies, being active on meta or threads or Reddit might be just as relevant as LinkedIn. I have historically leaned more and more into the client side of things because most companies over the years in the staffing industry want more clients and they can find candidates. Obviously there's nuances, right? Especially with skilled trades being a bit of a different pivot right now with people not going into that space as much. But yeah, I think it all comes down to where your audience is. Kortney Harmon [00:39:17]: I love it. I'm going to ask you one more question and I know we're coming to time. So if you had to give one piece of advice to staffing and recruiting leaders who want to position their firms for growth and success in 2025, what would it be? Kelli Schutrop [00:39:30]: I would tell them to think of two to three pillars that you add value into your current clients or your current candidates and talk about those on LinkedIn. So if there are topics that continually come up with prospects and clients that you're always like, oh my gosh, why do my clients not understand this? Or everybody's facing this, there's probably even more people out there that you don't even realize need to hear that topic. So if you can create those as content pillars, and that is a fancy way of saying just talk about that, share it, post about it, share stories about it, get active about it. Whenever you hear those aha moments on the other side of the phone or the other side of the coffee table, those are the types of things that you should be sharing more because it is going to create over time that inbound pipeline for you because people understand that you get it and you can help them. Kortney Harmon [00:40:20]: Great piece of advice. I love that I need to start doing more of that myself. There's just not enough hours in a day. Kelli Schutrop [00:40:26]: Cobbler's shoes. Yeah, likewise. Right? It's true. These are all things that I. I have to remind myself of too. And even if you can just set aside 15 minutes twice a week to say I'm gonna get my thoughts down, I tend to keep a running list in my phone anytime I think of an idea so that when I have a window to post it, then I've got those topics. So I'd encourage someone to do that too. Kortney Harmon [00:40:46]: Well, I love it. I can't thank you enough for sharing your insights, valuable knowledge that you've kind of expanded experienced over the years, not just been there, but you've done it. So thank you so much. I think our perspectives and how we approach 2025 to be a growth year is we just have to make those actions be a little bit differently. So thank you so much for your time, Kylie. I greatly appreciate you. Kelli Schutrop [00:41:10]: Thank you for having me, Kortney. I really appreciate it. This has been a fun conversation. Kortney Harmon [00:41:16]: I'm Kortney Harmon with Crelate. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Industry Spotlight, a new series from the Full Desk Experience. New episodes will be dropping monthly. Be sure you're subscribed to our podcast so you can catch the next Industry Spotlight episode and all episodes of the Full Desk Experience here or wherever you listen.