Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Mastering the Art of Matching: HireWell's Custom Recruiting Approach with James Hornick | Staffing Series

Transcript

Mastering the Art of Matching: HireWell's Custom Recruiting Approach with James Hornick | Staffing Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories where leaders
• 0:07
  share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
• 0:10
  how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
• 0:13
  they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
• 0:17
  the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their
• 0:20
  experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
• 0:23
  by how they've overcome adversity.
• 0:25
  My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and today's guest is James Hornick,
• 0:29
  partner and Chief Growth Officer at Hirewell.
• 0:32
  For more than 20 years, they have partnered with growing
• 0:35
  companies in various industries to help them solve their hiring
• 0:39
  needs. Their success is attributed to
• 0:41
  their passionate consultants who bring their rich experience,
• 0:44
  impressive network of professionals and knowledge in
• 0:47
  retain search, corporate recruiting and interim staffing
• 0:51
  to connect the right talent with the right opportunity.
• 0:54
  James runs A blog called Talent Rants and Sarcasm where the
• 0:59
  landing page says I do two things, talent and sarcasm and
• 1:03
  I'm fresh out of talent. So I suspect we may be in for a
• 1:06
  good laugh on today's show with James.
• 1:08
  But before we get to that good stuff, today's episode is
• 1:11
  brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where
• 1:13
  we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that
• 1:17
  are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your
• 1:19
  bottom line. One recent client was able to
• 1:22
  add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by
• 1:26
  implementing one of our proprietary programs.
• 1:28
  Results vary for each company and some organizations may not
• 1:31
  be eligible. To find out if your company
• 1:33
  qualifies, contact us today at Add Back benefitsagency.com.
• 1:38
  Now back to our guest today, the Chief Growth Officer of
• 1:41
  Hirewell. James, I appreciate you making
• 1:43
  the time to Share your story today.
• 1:45
  Yeah, thanks for having me. I I felt like you, you got the
• 1:47
  podcast intro voice down pretty well.
• 1:49
  You almost made it to the very end before slipping up I think
• 1:52
  on the last sentence. So.
• 1:53
  I I appreciate you calling everybody's attention to that.
• 1:57
  You're going to edit that in post or something like that, You
• 1:59
  know he's. The no people listening are
• 2:01
  probably like Oh my, my Internet connection must have dropped out
• 2:03
  His his voice disappeared for a second.
• 2:06
  But no, now they know the truth, thanks to James.
• 2:08
  You're welcome. All right, so James, let's let's
• 2:11
  start maybe a little bit towards the beginning.
• 2:13
  How, how did you first get started in the staffing
• 2:15
  industry? What drew you to it?
• 2:17
  Oh, I needed a job. I mean, for the reason I'd, I'd
• 2:21
  be surprised if we've had recruiters on here before.
• 2:23
  I don't know if you've had them on your podcast.
• 2:25
  Side note, I've never actually, I don't actually listen to
• 2:26
  podcasts and I run 2 podcasts. So yeah, it's, you know, a great
• 2:29
  thing. I, I'm assuming you may have had
• 2:31
  some recruiters on before. Everyone's got a, a similar.
• 2:34
  We just, everyone just fell into it.
• 2:35
  Like no one, no one chose this profession as they're a child.
• 2:38
  No one was like, I want to be a recruiter when I grow up there.
• 2:42
  There's always some story. So for me it was I graduate, I'm
• 2:47
  gonna date myself here. I graduate at the very tail end
• 2:49
  of as asthe.com bubble was bursting and there were still
• 2:54
  some a couple good years left of tech sales at my first job,
• 2:57
  early 2000s, I was working in I I was working at UU Net, which
• 3:02
  was part of Worldcom. So I.
• 3:04
  Remember those names? Yeah, well, you if you don't
• 3:07
  remember Worldcom, it's because of Enron.
• 3:09
  So Worldcom did the same thing Enron did, just slightly
• 3:12
  smaller. But yeah, it was a massive fraud
• 3:15
  meltdown, huge tech conglomerate, telecom
• 3:18
  conglomerate, because telecom used to be like a thing people
• 3:20
  sold back in those days. I got out right before it all
• 3:24
  melted down, but it was still at this.
• 3:26
  It was crazy. The early 2 like that.
• 3:28
  I I it was early 2000s, but you could sell stuff really easily
• 3:34
  without knowing what the hell you were doing.
• 3:36
  It was one of those eras where everyone was just spending all
• 3:39
  kinds of cash. And as when you're, I graduated
• 3:42
  when I was 21 years old and you know, when you're 21 and
• 3:47
  everything sells itself, you, you get a really good sense of
• 3:50
  false confidence of how good you are a salesperson and how easy
• 3:53
  the whole profession is. And then, then 2 1/2 years later
• 3:58
  or so, actually, I moved to a different job.
• 4:00
  I got, you know, got got a promotion raise during that
• 4:03
  whole process because I was so good.
• 4:06
  And then all of a sudden when like the bubble burst and all of
• 4:08
  a sudden noise by anything you realize I didn't know what the
• 4:11
  hell I was doing. It was all just luck and
• 4:13
  circumstance. So to answer your question as I
• 4:16
  ramble through this. Well, just for context for those
• 4:19
  younger folks listening, there was, yeah, there's a lot of
• 4:22
  spending in tech leading up to the year 2000.
• 4:24
  The Internet was becoming a hotter thing.
• 4:26
  Lots of people worried about Y2K, the tech issues that might
• 4:31
  occur. You know, when computers rolled
• 4:33
  over from 1999 to 2000 because they weren't set up for that.
• 4:37
  At any rate, lots of big spending.
• 4:38
  And then right after Y2K, people stopped spending.the.com bubble
• 4:43
  burst. And so, so did your bubble
• 4:46
  burst. I was able to write that ride
• 4:47
  that to like 2002. So it kept going from pretty
• 4:51
  well there. So but yeah, after, you know, 2
• 4:53
  or 2 1/2 or so years, you know, all of a sudden like the, the
• 4:56
  company I was with after that, Akamai, a great company still by
• 4:59
  the way, they laid off half their sales force.
• 5:03
  Their whole business was based on delivering, making websites
• 5:06
  at that point in time, making websites deliver faster because
• 5:09
  that was the thing people like if your website took too long to
• 5:12
  load. But this is how all that far
• 5:13
  we're going anyways. Yeah, I I lost that job and then
• 5:17
  things got real tough because no one was hiring anything.
• 5:20
  And if people think that like the current like the 2020, the
• 5:23
  2023 and current market, all things kind of down for not even
• 5:26
  in the realm or ballpark of how bad the market was like back
• 5:30
  then. Like the only thing comparable I
• 5:31
  think was like the financial crisis, like COVID bounced back
• 5:34
  quickly. So like naturally that was a
• 5:36
  market where like a lot of people lost their their jobs.
• 5:39
  Probably the biggest thing like in 2020, but it was, it was
• 5:42
  followed immediately by the biggest hiring market.
• 5:44
  Whereas like this early 2000s, like it took a while for tech
• 5:47
  specifically to come back. Like they were out of work tech
• 5:50
  people for people who couldn't get a role for a couple of years
• 5:53
  now I was just a sales guy. So what do I do?
• 5:56
  I 'cause I think you're renewal across how I got into recruiting
• 5:59
  here I am probably talking about this 5 minutes already.
• 6:03
  That was the, the main dissatisfaction I had in tech
• 6:07
  sales was that like you can sell stuff that just doesn't work.
• 6:13
  That's still the case. Now you can sell, you can be
• 6:15
  good at sales or good at what you do, but if you're at a
• 6:18
  crappy company that has bad software, like you're kind of
• 6:21
  stuck with that. What I liked about recruiting,
• 6:25
  it's not for the fact that it was easy to get a job in at that
• 6:27
  point in time because anyone want to take a shot at you
• 6:28
  because I didn't pay much, is that you do your own
• 6:32
  fulfillment. You're, you know, if you have a
• 6:34
  client needs to hire and they need somebody, it's up to you to
• 6:36
  find someone that's going to fit that.
• 6:38
  And either you're good at that or you're bad at that.
• 6:40
  But it really kind of like there's challenges with like
• 6:42
  you, you can't, you know, you can't make people accept you're
• 6:45
  but if you're, if you're good at what you do, you're good at
• 6:47
  finding matches, like over time, you're going to be more
• 6:49
  successful to people who aren't. So it's very much once you're, I
• 6:53
  knew that once you're experienced at it, once you're
• 6:55
  good at it. Like it's, it's career security,
• 6:58
  if that makes sense. You know, if you know how to
• 7:00
  find clients, you know how to find the people that they need.
• 7:02
  You don't have to rely on someone else building a widget
• 7:05
  that's any good for you to sell it.
• 7:06
  You know what I mean? So that's what I, that's kind of
• 7:09
  why I got into it, but also I kind of fell into it because the
• 7:11
  economy sucked. It was kind of the job I.
• 7:13
  Got it was kind of a, you kind of have a, a supply demand thing
• 7:16
  where you're controlling a little bit of both sides of it,
• 7:18
  which is an opportunity and also a challenge, right?
• 7:21
  Because you've got to sell to different groups.
• 7:23
  You've got to sell to the employer who's looking for
• 7:25
  somebody to convince them that you're the right person to bring
• 7:27
  them a solution. Then you've got to sell to the
• 7:31
  contractor, the employee that you're going to bring into that
• 7:33
  situation. Correct.
• 7:35
  Yes. So, OK, so you get in the
• 7:38
  staffing industry and how did you find your way to hire?
• 7:41
  Well. Like anyone who's in a their
• 7:47
  first recruiting job, your first recruiting job typically always
• 7:50
  sucks. I don't I I can count on one
• 7:52
  hand how many people I worked I've worked with or known in
• 7:55
  recruiting where the first company they went for was
• 7:58
  awesome. It's a very old school industry
• 8:01
  where it's a lot of pound the phone. 100 calls a day, at least
• 8:06
  calls back in those days, a lot of micromanagement, a lot of old
• 8:11
  school sales bullpens, pay isn't great.
• 8:14
  It's just that's, that was my first job.
• 8:16
  You have to get in somewhere, right?
• 8:19
  So, but after a year of like learning how to do it, I knew, I
• 8:21
  knew I was good at or could be good at it, but I just knew I, I
• 8:24
  wasn't in the right place. And that was when I, I kind of
• 8:27
  reached out to different contacts and trying to find like
• 8:29
  talking to companies and people I know who are user recruiters,
• 8:31
  like who are the good firms you work with, you know, And so the
• 8:36
  current firm, it wasn't called Hirewell at the time.
• 8:38
  We were at some point in time, but I had multiple contacts like
• 8:42
  refer me to people at Hirewell. And it was a small firm at the
• 8:46
  time. There's only four people, but
• 8:47
  you know, at that point in time. So I just had conversations with
• 8:51
  with Matt, who's the founder and our CEO and one other gentleman
• 8:56
  and kind of hit it off, you know, so it was one of those
• 8:58
  things where they were looking to grow.
• 8:59
  They were small, just kind of getting started.
• 9:00
  Like I said, like when I, it was like 4 people when I joined, but
• 9:03
  I knew there, I knew it was just the right crowd of people
• 9:06
  compared to like having the previous year have been at the
• 9:08
  wrong crowd of people. You know, I knew it was a good,
• 9:11
  it was worth like taking a swing at so.
• 9:13
  So if that first experience in a staffing firm was so
• 9:17
  distasteful, so unpleasant, why did you feel like, oh, I could
• 9:21
  be good at this? This is something I want to
• 9:23
  continue doing. I mean, it's just, it's just
• 9:28
  because just because you don't like the people you work with
• 9:31
  and they're awful, doesn't mean like the whole industry sucks.
• 9:34
  So. Gotcha.
• 9:35
  You can recognize like, I think I could do better somewhere
• 9:37
  else, you know, where I think I know how to feel like I'm
• 9:40
  smarter than these people. You could filter out all the
• 9:43
  noise, the micromanagement that was going on around you and the
• 9:46
  times that you were able to just do your work and focus on that.
• 9:50
  You were like, yeah, I'm good at this.
• 9:51
  I got a knack for it. And I, I guess that's another
• 9:54
  thing I'd point out too about the industry.
• 9:55
  And one of the, the challenges of it is there's, there are a
• 9:58
  lot of people who I think are so turned off by their first role
• 10:04
  in recruiting that they never come back to it.
• 10:06
  And it is kind of heartbreaking to see people that like I've,
• 10:09
  that are smart, that are capable, that I know, like
• 10:11
  they're just in a better work with a better crowd, work with a
• 10:15
  better organization that they could have had a good career.
• 10:17
  But like there is something to it where like you just, you
• 10:20
  know, you just have a bad experience and you just, it
• 10:22
  turns you off to it. And I'm sure it's not just
• 10:24
  recruiting. It's like there's a lot of
• 10:25
  fields like that. You know, you have one job.
• 10:26
  It's so bad. You realize, like you want to
• 10:28
  change your entire career as opposed to like, Hey, I just
• 10:30
  need to work with a different place, so.
• 10:32
  What personality traits do you think make an effective
• 10:35
  recruiter? I, I think that you, there's,
• 10:42
  I've known a lot of different recruiters that have different
• 10:46
  traits and been successful. So personality wise it, I think
• 10:50
  it can be all over the map. The ones that I think are
• 10:54
  universal, like you, you have to have some level of perseverance
• 10:58
  and be able to deal with frustration because especially
• 11:00
  early, you're not going to be good at it.
• 11:03
  You have to be OK with being in uncomfortable situations like
• 11:07
  you're especially when you're getting started, but really at
• 11:09
  any point, like you're talking to people about like the most
• 11:14
  important thing and they're one of the three most important
• 11:16
  things in their lives, like their job.
• 11:17
  And you're really digging it and like, and you don't do their
• 11:19
  job. So you don't know it as well as
• 11:21
  they do. But you have to be confident
• 11:22
  that you're asking the right questions and carry yourself in
• 11:25
  a way where they feel comfortable opening up to you.
• 11:27
  And they feel comfortable that like, OK, this is someone who I
• 11:30
  should open up to because they, they know what they're doing and
• 11:33
  they're going to help me out right now, that being said, the,
• 11:36
  the recruiting, especially when you're an agency recruiting
• 11:39
  externally, like I did, like the, your real client is not a
• 11:41
  job seeker. Your real client is like
• 11:43
  helping, looking to hire. So you also have to be polished
• 11:46
  enough and trustworthy enough from like a, a sales standpoint.
• 11:50
  So people who are, and here's the thing I know a lot of, and
• 11:55
  if there's a knock on the recruitment industry, there is
• 11:56
  when I was talking about my first firm a lot.
• 11:58
  But there's a lot of recruiters out there who aren't trustworthy
• 12:00
  that are kind of slimy. So I'm not sweeping that under
• 12:05
  the rug. But I think the people who can
• 12:07
  be great at it are ones who are good listeners.
• 12:10
  They're empathetic, they can deal with frustration.
• 12:14
  They know how to take requirements and from a client
• 12:17
  and find a good match. They have some sort of selling
• 12:20
  ability. They might not realize they're
• 12:22
  sales people, but you have to be able to talk to a client and
• 12:24
  carry yourself in a way where you're able to convince you're,
• 12:30
  you're able to help them understand that you're, you know
• 12:32
  what you're doing. They should take your guidance.
• 12:34
  The people you're submitting them are, are good and try to,
• 12:37
  you know, you're not making the ultimate hiring decision.
• 12:41
  But there's a lot of companies out there that don't know how to
• 12:43
  hire. So you also don't have to have
• 12:44
  to be able to influence them in that way too.
• 12:48
  So I had to I'm. Putting you to sleep.
• 12:50
  I can tell talking about recruiting is like the most
• 12:54
  boring thing in the world. I was just digging for my next
• 12:58
  question here because I, I checked out your LinkedIn
• 13:01
  profile, you know, as part of my my research and I see that you
• 13:09
  list a job there that says obligatory failed start up,
• 13:13
  which is not the way most people frame those things.
• 13:17
  Yeah, I I appreciate you remember.
• 13:19
  The name of that place? Yeah, no, that was between.
• 13:21
  That was the the year, 2 year period between Akamai, my first
• 13:26
  recruiting job, just had a friend who was trying to start
• 13:28
  some stuff out, you know, and I was trying to help him out with
• 13:30
  that and didn't go anywhere. So that's.
• 13:34
  Yeah, but most people would take that and they would still fluff
• 13:37
  it up. And you know, I was the
• 13:39
  executive director of, you know, growth for this startup that.
• 13:45
  Someplace. Leveraged synergies of, you
• 13:48
  know, like throwing in a whole bunch of buzzwords, but all of
• 13:51
  your LinkedIn experiences have very brief descriptions like you
• 13:55
  cut right through the corporate speak.
• 13:57
  They, you know, like there's your job at Akamai Technologies,
• 14:01
  which you said was a great company.
• 14:05
  And, and in fact, what you said in, in your LinkedIn profile
• 14:08
  here is great company period. I did sales, period. 5 words you
• 14:15
  know, 5 words that and that. Just sums it up.
• 14:18
  You know? I believe that writing is
• 14:21
  important and saying as few words as possible is an
• 14:23
  effective way of getting your point across so.
• 14:26
  You must have been a journalism major back in college.
• 14:29
  No, I was not typing up. Your language no I.
• 14:31
  Do a lot of write I don't even know if this is on there maybe,
• 14:34
  but if we want to go completely up tangent so I I have been we
• 14:39
  maybe we're jumping forward here.
• 14:41
  I write a lot. I, it's one of our biggest
• 14:44
  drivers if we want to Fast forward 1520 years has been how
• 14:48
  we have used content to really kind of elevate our profile and
• 14:53
  articulate what it is we do and attract talent and other kind of
• 14:56
  things. And I think part of that is like
• 14:59
  I, I wrote a kind of a comedic blog like 10-15 years ago and
• 15:04
  that was kind of unrelated to this.
• 15:06
  And then when content marketing started picking up, we're
• 15:10
  definitely kind of flying way forward in time, we can come
• 15:12
  back to this topic if you want. I, I recognize that a lot of the
• 15:20
  principles of like you have to be able to organize your
• 15:22
  thoughts, you have to be able to articulate what your kind of
• 15:25
  vision and value is and you have to be able to talk about.
• 15:32
  I think just I don't ever want to be like an industry expert
• 15:37
  guru by saying kind of the most trite things that this is what
• 15:41
  you see on LinkedIn all the time.
• 15:42
  Like all these so-called business leaders, they just, you
• 15:45
  know, it's a lot of fluff. It's a lot of things that people
• 15:48
  already know, you know, but I do think there's a lot of value in
• 15:51
  like trying to find like what we're seeing in real time and,
• 15:54
  and what's happening and try to break things down to more
• 15:56
  digestible level and help people solve everyday problems.
• 15:59
  Like anytime a client of ours has a challenge, we see other
• 16:02
  challenges out there how we help solve that just like talk openly
• 16:06
  about how we would go about kind of fixing these issues and that
• 16:09
  hopefully attracts people to work with us.
• 16:11
  But to your point about writing, but my blog is a lot of that,
• 16:16
  not just my, but other people at our company that kind of went
• 16:19
  down the the content rabbit hole like how we can kind of talk
• 16:22
  about like our excretion in the industry as part of that.
• 16:25
  And more recently I got into creative writing.
• 16:27
  So I've actually had like unrelated to anything, you know,
• 16:30
  business focused, I actually had five fiction stories published
• 16:33
  this year. So I just I, I believe pretty
• 16:36
  strongly in the the the power and need to be able to use the
• 16:40
  written word to develop the spoken word to flush out your
• 16:43
  thoughts, to kind of become, you know, better articulating not
• 16:46
  just your message for yourself, your company, but then talking
• 16:49
  here on this podcast. I wouldn't be able to talk about
• 16:51
  anything you want to talk about if I wasn't didn't already have
• 16:54
  it organized my mind because I wrote it down at some point in
• 16:56
  time. So writing is a way for you to
• 16:59
  process and organize your thoughts and then that allows
• 17:02
  you to speak more clearly about it.
• 17:04
  Correct. And also helps you point out
• 17:06
  like what you missed, you know, I think a lot of stuff you see
• 17:08
  up when people have half baked ideas, it's because they never
• 17:10
  took went through that process of organizing stuff to realize
• 17:13
  where the gaps were. So anyways.
• 17:15
  And so you said content's been a big driver for hire Well, so the
• 17:19
  content goes up on the Hire well blog and it's good for SEO or
• 17:24
  how else are you guys using the content?
• 17:26
  Going back in time, I can tell the, I realized kind of I've
• 17:29
  flushed one over this quickly, but like the whole story with
• 17:32
  content was in 2015, we launched our marketing recruiting
• 17:37
  practice because at that point in time, like digital marketing
• 17:39
  became like a really big thing all of a sudden overnight.
• 17:42
  So all your social media SEO, like a lot of these kind of
• 17:47
  functions, content and everything else, they existed,
• 17:49
  but they were very much like a agencies did it and maybe native
• 17:56
  web firms did it, but like your brick and mortar shops weren't
• 17:59
  doing anything digital. But then all of a sudden
• 18:01
  overnight they did all of a sudden, like every company
• 18:03
  started building these teams out.
• 18:05
  And so like I had a meeting with a real estate company and need
• 18:08
  to hire 30 digital marketers and they're like, and The thing is,
• 18:11
  at this point in time, I didn't even know if there were any
• 18:13
  firms that did marketing recruiting, not that I knew of,
• 18:15
  right? I just, it wasn't like a, it
• 18:17
  wasn't big enough, you know, to be like a market.
• 18:19
  That's surprising. It would have been minimal
• 18:21
  'cause there, there wasn't that much hiring.
• 18:22
  If they did it, it's 'cause they did other things too.
• 18:24
  And they can also help you with your marketing hire, you know,
• 18:26
  not because like they specialized in it.
• 18:29
  But then we saw we had a client that need to hire 30 people and
• 18:33
  we're like, sure, we can do that.
• 18:34
  And no, we hadn't done that, but we helped them hire 30 people.
• 18:38
  Like he figured out pretty quick.
• 18:39
  And then we had three or four other clients within 18 months
• 18:42
  that were doing similar build outs right now, fast forwarding
• 18:45
  to why we're doing it after placing a few 100 digital
• 18:49
  marketers and marketing leaders doing all these new fangled
• 18:52
  things that brick and mortar traditional firms didn't do
• 18:54
  before. And so I'm like, why aren't we
• 18:55
  doing this? Like if everyone else is
• 18:58
  figuring this out, like why aren't we?
• 18:59
  And then we hired a digital strategist, which was just OK.
• 19:02
  But then we realized I, I was speaking at a so we started like
• 19:07
  blogging and, and doing kind of the basic stuff.
• 19:10
  No one reads blogs. It was like, you know, you write
• 19:12
  something, it gets like 50 views or something.
• 19:14
  Nobody cares. I got asked to speak at a
• 19:18
  American Marketing Association conference for job speakers.
• 19:21
  And this is like a small 50 to 60 person event and they're like
• 19:25
  help, hey, can you help promote it?
• 19:27
  And I'm like, sure. So I just, this is like right
• 19:28
  when LinkedIn started doing video 'cause they didn't do
• 19:31
  video. Like, so I just like pick up my
• 19:33
  phone, do a selfie and that, you know, just talk about the event
• 19:38
  for 30 seconds and that got like 10,000 views.
• 19:41
  And then I realized, OK, we need to throw the entire playbook
• 19:43
  out. Like we need to go down the Gary
• 19:45
  Vee rabbit hole of let's like do long form.
• 19:47
  We're doing what we're doing right now, like do a, do a
• 19:49
  podcast, record it, cut the clips out, but which then took
• 19:53
  us further down the path of, OK, what are we going to talk about?
• 19:55
  Like what insights do we have? So now we actually have a, a
• 19:58
  meeting every other week. We talk about just internally an
• 20:01
  organization, OK, what are our clients struggling with?
• 20:03
  What are the new trends we're seeing?
• 20:05
  Why aren't hires happening? Whatever, just anytime someone
• 20:08
  asks you a question, they don't know the answer to whatever that
• 20:10
  answer is. It's probably something other
• 20:12
  people don't know. How do we turn that in something
• 20:14
  we want to address? So that's where that's kind of
• 20:17
  where we went. And I, The thing is, I talk, I
• 20:19
  can talk about content, so I'm blue in the face, but this is
• 20:23
  not what we sell to other people.
• 20:24
  This is just kind of how we've managed to run and grow our
• 20:26
  business. And when we doubled in size
• 20:30
  between, you know, years 2000 and I'm sorry, between 2020 and
• 20:35
  2020, two, 60% of the people we hired heard of us because they
• 20:41
  saw our LinkedIn content. It was all like inbound.
• 20:44
  So that fuel, cause in a services based organization, the
• 20:48
  more people you have, the more revenue you can make 'cause it's
• 20:50
  a directly attributable, you know, billable hours, that kind
• 20:52
  of thing, whatever your model is.
• 20:54
  But like, that's what really fueled our growth is being able
• 20:57
  to attract people to work with us just because we talk about
• 20:59
  things people want to hear about, and no one else in our
• 21:01
  industry really does that. So is it equally helpful on
• 21:07
  hiring the employees as well as attracting your core clients,
• 21:11
  the employers or is it? That was the other, that was The
• 21:14
  thing is I, I guess I skipped that too.
• 21:16
  Originally I thought we're going to do a bunch of content, we're
• 21:17
  going to get a ton of inbound traffic.
• 21:19
  Now we did, we do get inbound traffic from it, but the the two
• 21:23
  bigger things were one, being able to attract employees, but
• 21:25
  2. Staying in touch with existing
• 21:30
  people I already know without having to do 1 to one outreach
• 21:34
  every single time. Like last year I got, I got an
• 21:38
  old contact who I hadn't talked to in 10 years, reach back out
• 21:42
  to me and, and say, Hey, I've been following everything you're
• 21:45
  doing and we have to hire here. Can you help me out?
• 21:47
  You know, had I and there's been plenty of cases of that.
• 21:49
  So it's an easier way of staying top of mind with people because
• 21:53
  I think, and that's the toughest thing in any kind of sales where
• 21:56
  we have a lot of competition. So do a lot of other, you
• 21:58
  probably do too. People have lots of options.
• 22:01
  How do you stay top of mind with everyone all the time?
• 22:04
  Because that's how most businesses lost is people, you
• 22:07
  know, Some of my best contacts probably know five other
• 22:09
  recruiters. How am I the one they decided to
• 22:11
  kind of follow up with that day? It's because I was in their
• 22:13
  LinkedIn feed. They sing me all the time, that
• 22:15
  kind of thing. OK.
• 22:18
  So I'm curious when you were first starting in digital
• 22:21
  marketing recruiting when there not a lot of people were doing
• 22:25
  digital marketing. So that suggests to me that
• 22:28
  there weren't a lot of people who had experience in that.
• 22:31
  Was it a struggle finding folks to place?
• 22:34
  Were you having to find folks, folks that maybe had tangential
• 22:38
  experience like? No, I don't it, it was, I don't
• 22:40
  actually. It wasn't that hard because
• 22:42
  there were a lot of people that did it in agency environments.
• 22:45
  And I think, I think it's still the commonality like most people
• 22:50
  that might work in agencies eventually want to go internal.
• 22:52
  So that was the difference is those new clients I was talking
• 22:55
  about, they were all like internal companies hiring for
• 22:57
  their team. And I think at that point in
• 22:59
  time, there are plenty of people who are working, doing digital
• 23:01
  app agencies that were happy to try to find new things that were
• 23:05
  like internal roles. Just the work life balance
• 23:07
  typically is better. So.
• 23:09
  So James, I want to ask some questions to better understand
• 23:13
  the higher well process and what makes you guys unique.
• 23:15
  But before we get there, I want to ask you about the time that
• 23:19
  you had cancer. Just lay it out there just
• 23:23
  before the yeah, before the show.
• 23:25
  What were you saying is I like to ask everyone something, you
• 23:28
  know, something personal, like a struggle they had in their life.
• 23:30
  And I'm just like, I like to think that my life is just
• 23:33
  peachy keen. I did have cancer once.
• 23:34
  I forgot about that. You know, that was actually the
• 23:37
  route. At the same time, we kind of did
• 23:38
  all this, this start of the marketing thing.
• 23:40
  So that was like 2015. And yeah, yeah, it was a big
• 23:44
  year, actually, one of the biggest years of my career when
• 23:47
  I was having cancer. Yeah.
• 23:50
  So I got cancer. I did chemo, I finished it.
• 23:53
  That was it. I mean, it's a pretty.
• 23:56
  You're gonna have to give us more than that.
• 23:57
  You can't. No, you can't treat this the
• 23:59
  same way you do your LinkedIn page.
• 24:00
  Yeah, but that I actually did post about this on LinkedIn.
• 24:03
  It's actually a hysterically funny, funny video.
• 24:05
  I have 7 tips on how to do chemotherapy and actually kind
• 24:08
  of go through all of it because this is like four or five years
• 24:10
  later. People are like, that's the
• 24:12
  first time I laughed. Like hearing about cancer.
• 24:14
  No, you know, it's like for me, it was like my mom was a cancer
• 24:19
  survivor for like 20 years and she had ovarian cancer.
• 24:23
  So which is, which is not a good one, you know, but she got
• 24:26
  through it and last a long time. So the harder part I think was
• 24:30
  so when I got diagnosed, it was pretty quick.
• 24:34
  I ended up kind of going right into chemo and maybe the progno,
• 24:37
  honestly, it's because the prognosis was good.
• 24:39
  It wasn't one of those ones where it's like they were pretty
• 24:41
  sure that you're, you'll get through this.
• 24:43
  You know, you just have to come in and do the work and do chemo.
• 24:45
  That's why I can laugh because even at the time it was like, I
• 24:47
  really wasn't afraid as much as I like everyone is for the first
• 24:51
  like, you know, few days, but then when you start like
• 24:53
  reading, like, oh, this is fine. I had to do 9 weeks of chemo.
• 24:59
  But the other thing is like the drugs they give you, depending
• 25:01
  on what you're doing, the type you have and the, the drugs they
• 25:04
  give you for like your experience can be completely
• 25:06
  different. There's like 140 different types
• 25:07
  of cancer. They're all different.
• 25:09
  They're all different. Like like 1 is no different than
• 25:12
  is very different than the other.
• 25:14
  But mine was I, I, I can joke about it because it was like, it
• 25:17
  was literally like, you know, 9 weeks and done.
• 25:22
  In fact, I can the the drugs to counteract it were so good.
• 25:26
  Like I never threw up once. I mean, I was, I was kind of a
• 25:31
  being a bitch the whole time. Like you're definitely like on
• 25:33
  you're you're in a foul mood most of the time, which but I am
• 25:36
  exam. But I, I still worked out four
• 25:39
  days a week because it actually helped.
• 25:40
  And you know, I hit a when it was all over a four weeks later
• 25:45
  I hit my I lift. You can't tell I'd lift a lot.
• 25:49
  I hit a 490 LB squat in the gym was APR.
• 25:52
  So you know, didn't didn't crush me physically either.
• 25:55
  But what did change to your point to tying this all back to
• 25:59
  something positive or something use it did make me not want to
• 26:04
  do shit I just don't want to do anymore.
• 26:06
  Like I would say, like I did have the what if, if I'm not
• 26:10
  being arrogant about getting through chemo, it's that I life
• 26:15
  is too short to like do just to put up with bullshit you don't
• 26:18
  feel like putting up with anymore.
• 26:19
  Like that was kind of the the one big change I think I had.
• 26:23
  And I'm not saying this about the industry, but like I had
• 26:26
  done tech recruiting for 10 years at that point.
• 26:29
  I was good at it, but I just got burned out on it.
• 26:32
  And I think everyone gets burned out on like a lot of people.
• 26:35
  Two types of people leave recruiting people who like have
• 26:38
  a bad experience right away. And the people that did it for a
• 26:41
  decade and they're just like, God, I gotta do something else.
• 26:43
  I'm having the same conversations over and over
• 26:45
  again. People are pain in the butt to
• 26:46
  deal with. Like everyone hits that point
• 26:48
  too. And for me it was just, it was
• 26:50
  getting into a different field of it.
• 26:52
  So love tech people. They can be difficult to work
• 26:55
  with. Marketers were just completely
• 26:58
  different. Like you're having business
• 26:59
  conversations instead of like tech conversations.
• 27:01
  You're asking about challenges they solve.
• 27:02
  You're learning. I learned how to apply to my own
• 27:05
  business. You know what I mean?
• 27:05
  It was like a completely different like breath of fresh
• 27:08
  air. So but yeah, those two things
• 27:11
  kind of happening at the same time because, you know, had the
• 27:14
  cancer thing not happened, I might have been like, I don't
• 27:16
  know if I want to start this out because I'm doing good.
• 27:17
  This other area, like I might have totally chumped out and be
• 27:20
  like, I just want to stay where I'm like set in my ways and I
• 27:23
  kind of where I'm comfortable, but I'm just like, you know
• 27:25
  what, fuck it, let's just do something new.
• 27:28
  Sick of doing this? And so I'm curious, did that,
• 27:31
  that revelation come in slowly as you're going through the
• 27:34
  chemo or was it like pretty quickly, like once you got the
• 27:37
  diagnosis? Pretty quick, yeah, I think,
• 27:40
  yeah. There was a pretty big
• 27:42
  perspective change. Happened pretty fast.
• 27:44
  Maybe, yeah, probably the first. Maybe round one of chemo, which
• 27:49
  will make another joke. The first day was the worst.
• 27:52
  They didn't tell me this, that they also dosed me with Benadryl
• 27:55
  in case I had an allergic reaction.
• 27:56
  So like I I came out of that first day being like, oh shit, I
• 28:00
  got to do 9 weeks of this. And then I realized the next
• 28:02
  day, I know that that foggy unable comprehend what was going
• 28:06
  on, like out of it feeling that was actually just the Benadryl.
• 28:09
  So and it was like a high dose. But no, that first week was very
• 28:15
  much like, yeah, I'm not putting up on anything.
• 28:19
  I don't want to do anymore time to make a change so.
• 28:22
  Did you see that permeate into other parts of your life outside
• 28:25
  of work that this sort of this new idea of I don't want to do
• 28:30
  things I don't want to do? I don't know, maybe I don't
• 28:39
  think I, I don't think I ever did stuff outside of work I
• 28:41
  didn't want to do anyway. So that was like, you know.
• 28:44
  You're already a pretty free spirit outside of.
• 28:46
  That yeah, that's work. I mean, I have a lot of hobbies
• 28:48
  I outside of work, they're unrelated.
• 28:51
  I, I do think it's very important to be well-rounded.
• 28:53
  And I always have, you know, so like I, I had already been doing
• 28:56
  some writing at that point. So like, for me, like outside of
• 28:58
  work, like I, I lift weights and swim and stay in shape.
• 29:02
  I taught myself how to trade financial derivatives.
• 29:05
  So like I manage my own finances with like futures and options
• 29:08
  and I do creative writing. So those are three completely
• 29:11
  different, like unrelated things.
• 29:13
  So I, I, I stay happy kind of having, you know, different, the
• 29:19
  creative aspect, the nerdy analytical aspect, and then just
• 29:22
  like making sure keep taking care of myself aspect.
• 29:26
  But for me that's, I think outside of like friends and
• 29:29
  family, like those are the things I do that I get excited
• 29:31
  for. That's my life.
• 29:32
  And I don't, I don't think I ever got in a trap where outside
• 29:36
  of work, I was ever doing shit. I didn't want to do it.
• 29:38
  So. Fair enough.
• 29:39
  OK, let's transition back to talking about what makes the
• 29:43
  higher well process different from competitors.
• 29:46
  What is it that you guys are doing that other folks can't do?
• 29:51
  So the groundwork on this is the way I I define what our firm
• 29:55
  does is we place leaders and we help them build their teams.
• 29:58
  That's like the high level quick talking point view.
• 30:03
  The thing that makes us different from a delivery
• 30:05
  standpoint, which is the basis of all this, is that we spent
• 30:10
  the last 20 years building out and hiring experts in different
• 30:13
  areas of recruiting. So we have executive recruiting
• 30:17
  experts, we have tech recruiting experts, We have sales and
• 30:20
  marketing, finance and accounting, HR, operations and
• 30:24
  even industrial. So we have people in those
• 30:26
  spaces that are like, I was a tech recruiter, then I became a
• 30:29
  marketing recruiter. So like we actually have people
• 30:31
  who kind of know all those areas cold.
• 30:33
  So we're able to work with a company, you know, companies
• 30:37
  need to hire all these different areas.
• 30:38
  They're probably sick of working with 10 different firms because
• 30:41
  they need one for each we actually have.
• 30:42
  So they can work with us and know they can get coverage on
• 30:45
  all these kind of areas they work with.
• 30:47
  But the thing beyond that that we do, it's different that we
• 30:50
  can do executive recruiting, we can do your any individual
• 30:52
  search we need to do, we can do fine contractors, but it's
• 30:55
  really our solutioning. We can do RPO recruitment
• 30:59
  process or outsourcing style projects, whether they're short
• 31:04
  term, long term company comes to us and they need to make 50
• 31:07
  hires, 100 hires, 10 hires, you know, whatever it is.
• 31:11
  We can do a custom built to fit solution for them that will
• 31:16
  ensure they get the people they need on time.
• 31:18
  Just make sure it's in a budget that's going to make sense.
• 31:21
  It's accounting for that kind of extra volume where they have one
• 31:24
  centralized person kind of managing all this for them who
• 31:26
  then manages our team internally.
• 31:29
  That's the big difference. There's very, I don't want to
• 31:33
  say the word with the very few firms that do that type of work
• 31:36
  at that type of scale, especially in kind of we I'd say
• 31:38
  we operate mostly kind of mid markets.
• 31:41
  Most recruiting firms have one or two specialty areas.
• 31:44
  They do, they do search and they do contracting one of the other,
• 31:48
  you know, but the solution aspect and the volume aspect and
• 31:51
  our ability to handle that especially across different
• 31:54
  competency areas is, is probably the biggest differentiator we
• 31:57
  have. So the benefit to kind of sum it
• 32:01
  up, one of the benefits of working with Hirewell is rather
• 32:04
  than needing to work with 810 different companies because you
• 32:08
  need hires in these different specialty verticals, they can
• 32:12
  work with one umbrella, they can work with Hirewell and you guys
• 32:15
  have those individual expertise in house on staff.
• 32:19
  Correct. And we can also price in a way
• 32:21
  that makes because the traditional model that every HR
• 32:25
  person knows well, they like I can either pay through the nose
• 32:27
  for individual searches through an agency or I can hire an
• 32:30
  internal town acquisition person.
• 32:32
  But there's all this space in between where we can play where
• 32:35
  we can, we can scale up and down faster than one internal
• 32:38
  recruiter can do. And we can reduce the like
• 32:41
  recruiting expenses like you're trying to hire each position on
• 32:44
  a one off cost. We can volume package in a way
• 32:47
  where it's going to save you money versus that, that type of
• 32:49
  solution that's kind of, and we can every one of these things is
• 32:52
  going to depend on what our client's needs are, how many
• 32:54
  hires, what time frame they need them in, you know, whatever.
• 32:57
  But we're we're willing to kind of take on that type of work and
• 33:00
  and figure it out and make sure there's it's a it's a better fit
• 33:04
  for our client than either the other posing traditional
• 33:07
  solutions. So would you traditionally apply
• 33:09
  a different pricing model if somebody is hiring one person
• 33:13
  versus we need help hiring for the next six months because you
• 33:17
  can place basically place somebody on their staff for six
• 33:20
  months and that's sort of a different model than?
• 33:22
  Yes, anytime you're talking volume and it's always, it's
• 33:26
  always cost, 'cause you know, it's, it's always price to fit
• 33:28
  and it's always going to be more advantageous for me to do it
• 33:30
  that way. James, how would you describe
• 33:33
  your ideal client, whether it's, I don't know, geography,
• 33:36
  industry, employee size, revenue size?
• 33:41
  They have money and they need to hire.
• 33:44
  No, they got a, they got a bank account.
• 33:46
  Yeah, exactly. No, I would say that I do a
• 33:48
  client for us and I, I have to, I, I want to kind of lay this
• 33:52
  out there. We're, we're nationwide, half
• 33:54
  our employees at this point are remote.
• 33:56
  During the pandemic, we went kind of all in on, you know,
• 33:59
  kind of remote work. It's, it's helped us kind of
• 34:00
  scale, helped us attract great people.
• 34:02
  There's a lot of locations of the country where there's great
• 34:05
  recruiters, but not necessarily great firms to work for.
• 34:06
  But I, I say the Chicago thing is important because Chicago has
• 34:10
  the most diverse business community and by industry in the
• 34:14
  entire country. So we have experience working
• 34:17
  with SAS startups and marketing agencies and non profits and
• 34:21
  banks and manufacturing firms like, oh, like you name it, Like
• 34:24
  we have work with them because being chicago-based, like all
• 34:27
  these different insurance companies and pharma companies,
• 34:29
  they all exist here. So we, we have good success
• 34:34
  stories in most industries that are out there.
• 34:37
  I would say our ideal client is, is a place though where we we're
• 34:40
  dealing with founders or forward thinking hiring managers or HR
• 34:47
  people that, that want a true partner that can help build them
• 34:50
  a solution. Now a lot of times it's, it's a
• 34:52
  lot of mid markets. It could be a lot of SAS or
• 34:57
  software start-ups like Series A, Series B, Series C, tons of
• 35:00
  those type of places, a lot of marketing agencies or just any
• 35:05
  place that is I like working with clients where people like
• 35:10
  working there. Not every company falls into
• 35:13
  that bucket. So I like, I like making money
• 35:16
  with. Happy people.
• 35:17
  I like working with the happy people that like working with us
• 35:21
  I guess is kind of the easy way of saying it.
• 35:22
  So, but yeah, we can, we, I, I think the challenge that we have
• 35:28
  from a sales standpoint is like, I can be kind of really open
• 35:31
  about this. Recruiting is all about knowing
• 35:33
  how to recruit a skill set. Can you, you know, how to
• 35:36
  recruit an accountant? Do you know how to recruit a
• 35:38
  marketer? What industry they come, But
• 35:41
  buyers usually think of things in terms of their industry, you
• 35:43
  know, like I need someone who knows how to recruit in my
• 35:47
  industry specifically. But like part of recruiting a
• 35:49
  recruiter is understanding what industry they work in, why
• 35:52
  that's applicable to what they're doing.
• 35:53
  So, but how so our, our, our challenge and our, our, our
• 35:58
  business challenge. And one of the things we've
• 35:59
  gotten better and better at is phrasing things in a client's
• 36:02
  terms. They they feel comfortable that
• 36:04
  we know their industry cold, even though it really is more
• 36:07
  about the skill set from a realistic standpoint.
• 36:10
  Like we if you know how to recruit a certain skill set like
• 36:12
  the industry's kind of secondary.
• 36:15
  Gotcha. So Mr. Chief Growth Officer,
• 36:17
  where do you see the company growing?
• 36:20
  Where where do you guys take this?
• 36:25
  It's a good question. Things have gotten.
• 36:29
  I think that from a service standpoint like our big push is
• 36:33
  definitely the more of the solution type sales, larger
• 36:35
  engagements, RPO type solutions, whether they're a fixed cost
• 36:37
  model or that's it's some sort of hybrid model where we have
• 36:40
  all people from teams working together.
• 36:42
  Sorry, what is RPO? Recruitment process outsourcing
• 36:45
  if you're HR dorks out there. Love you guys.
• 36:48
  They know what that means but any like we always want to go
• 36:51
  towards that's this means larger business where we're kind of
• 36:54
  getting more exclusivity and we're actually getting embedded
• 36:56
  with our clients. We're actually doing not just
• 36:58
  finding people, but we're actually, you know, we've got
• 37:01
  their e-mail address and calendar working directly with
• 37:03
  the hiring managers. We're, you know creating the job
• 37:05
  descriptions. We're actually embedded with
• 37:07
  their actual like hiring plans. So we're part of their team
• 37:09
  basically. That's what we like that's where
• 37:12
  we like to play. That's not where we start
• 37:14
  because most companies they need to start out with just to hire
• 37:16
  too. But that has, that was huge in
• 37:20
  2021-2022, it dipped. I think 2023 we did like five of
• 37:24
  those deals, which is not good. We've done, we've signed 15 new
• 37:28
  clients in that space since May 1st of this year.
• 37:31
  So that things have come rallying back in 2024 and that's
• 37:34
  where ourselves, that's where we want to grow.
• 37:37
  That's where we kind of see ourselves growing.
• 37:40
  Is that because the industry in general is coming back, the
• 37:43
  economy is coming back, or you guys are doing something
• 37:46
  different to attract that business?
• 37:49
  It's it's, I'd say it's well, both we the industry is
• 37:54
  absolutely coming back and anytime I see like more fear
• 37:58
  mongering post on LinkedIn or elsewhere like talking about,
• 38:00
  well, the job numbers are alive. This isn't happening.
• 38:02
  You have to realize a LinkedIn, this will get me cancelled with
• 38:04
  LinkedIn. LinkedIn is it has three people.
• 38:08
  There's three types of people going on LinkedIn, salespeople,
• 38:11
  recruiters, and really unhappy job seekers.
• 38:14
  So 1/3 of your feet at any given time is going to be people
• 38:16
  bitching about how they can't find a job.
• 38:18
  And I'm not dunking on job seekers.
• 38:21
  I totally get it. If you've been frustrated, you
• 38:23
  have the right to be frustrated. You've been given a raw deal.
• 38:26
  What I am saying though is of course the amount of people who
• 38:29
  think the economy sucks are going to be disproportionately
• 38:31
  represented on LinkedIn because that's where they're going to.
• 38:34
  Anybody who's really happy with their job isn't going to
• 38:36
  LinkedIn. They're not there to say like
• 38:38
  how great things are going. You know what I mean?
• 38:40
  So I, I guess what I'm just saying is like there's more
• 38:43
  gloom and doom on LinkedIn that actually exists.
• 38:45
  So we are seeing things have picked up pretty significantly.
• 38:49
  We just posted our best two months in the last two years in
• 38:52
  August and September and October's trend and probably the
• 38:55
  better than those two still. So things, things are definitely
• 38:59
  looking up. And then I would say and yes,
• 39:03
  we're good at kind of selling these solutions.
• 39:05
  So that's it is partially us as well too.
• 39:08
  It's also partially that not many companies sell these kind
• 39:10
  of solutions. So it's a little bit more of a
• 39:14
  what's is it blue ocean, red ocean, I forget how that works.
• 39:17
  One of those, I think it's. Blue ocean.
• 39:18
  Yeah, one of those. One of the oceans.
• 39:20
  Maybe Red Ocean has all the the blood from the sharks.
• 39:24
  Yeah. Something like that's what it
• 39:25
  was. So what, in your experience,
• 39:28
  James, is the biggest mistake that you see companies make in
• 39:32
  hiring? Good question.
• 39:40
  The biggest universal mistake, which causes a lot of other
• 39:44
  mistakes, companies just assume everyone wants to work there and
• 39:50
  just by having a job opening that they're doing everyone a
• 39:54
  favor and they just believe that everyone's going to see that
• 39:56
  we're the best company. Because if you're a, if you're a
• 39:59
  founder, if you're an executive or or whatever, the company, and
• 40:02
  this is not slagging on these companies by you're probably
• 40:05
  super excited about what you do, you're super proud of what you
• 40:08
  do and you think you're the best of what you do.
• 40:09
  And you should absolutely should.
• 40:11
  The problem is, is that you're too close to it and not everyone
• 40:15
  sees it that way. Like you have to sell job
• 40:18
  seekers on why they should want to join you.
• 40:20
  You have to give them a reason why your company is better for
• 40:22
  them and their career than their current one.
• 40:27
  And companies spend a lot of time talking, bragging about
• 40:29
  themselves, saying we've made this list, we're going to change
• 40:33
  the world. That's great.
• 40:34
  But what are you doing for the like, that's not selling a job
• 40:37
  so you could work there. That's the selling maybe why
• 40:39
  you're a good company, why you should go public, why you're
• 40:42
  going to do well. But like recognizing that
• 40:45
  there's a difference between that one, you need to phrase
• 40:48
  things in job seekers terms, but two, that like you just, you
• 40:51
  have to sell people to kind of who want to join you.
• 40:54
  And from there stems a lot of these.
• 40:56
  It's that's where your bad interview process comes from.
• 40:59
  Companies think that it's like they don't realize that you have
• 41:02
  to have you have to be upfront with job seekers about like how
• 41:06
  many steps are there? Then actually follow through on
• 41:08
  that. Like they think that's it's OK
• 41:10
  if we don't get back or if we're figuring it out as we go,
• 41:12
  because we're so good at the company that they're still going
• 41:14
  to want to work here. It's not the case.
• 41:16
  Everyone who's been through a train wreck and interview
• 41:17
  process, they're like, that's a red flag.
• 41:19
  People aren't going to want to work there.
• 41:21
  So that that stems from that. There's there's I would say most
• 41:25
  problems stem from and again, I don't want to say this note wave
• 41:28
  me room, but there's a inherent kind of like internal arrogance
• 41:32
  that is sometimes like we are so good.
• 41:34
  Everyone's going to see it. We're good post the job will be
• 41:37
  fine. Never going to want to work
• 41:38
  here. But the reality is you still
• 41:41
  have to communicate that to somebody who has no idea who you
• 41:44
  are. Exactly.
• 41:45
  Most most people will have no idea who you are.
• 41:47
  They'll have no idea why you're a good company and where you
• 41:49
  might. These might be great companies
• 41:50
  to work for, but if you don't make that clear and put it in
• 41:53
  their own terms and provide them with a positive experience in
• 41:56
  the interview process and follow up with them appropriately.
• 41:59
  And if you're hiring managers and internal recruiters or
• 42:04
  external recruiters, they aren't on the same page.
• 42:06
  They're not all telling the same story.
• 42:07
  They're not all like giving those same point.
• 42:09
  If it's feels disjointed and everyone's telling you something
• 42:11
  different as you're a job seeker, that's a big turn off
• 42:14
  and it takes a lot of intentionality to get that stuff
• 42:16
  right. So in your experience, James,
• 42:19
  what are the biggest reasons that employees leave a job?
• 42:24
  Sucks. The job itself, the pay, the
• 42:27
  benefits, the the boss, the direct manager.
• 42:31
  Everyone's got a different opinion on this.
• 42:34
  I think that it comes down to the bad days outnumber the good
• 42:39
  days. I I've said this about a lot
• 42:42
  about why I've stayed 20 years at Hirewell is because
• 42:45
  recruiting can be a frustrating job inherently.
• 42:49
  Like it's going to be, you're going to get beaten up because
• 42:51
  like, you know, just dealing with, you're dealing with people
• 42:54
  all day and you're dealing with something that's about, but the
• 42:57
  last thing I want to do is like add a level of frustration.
• 43:01
  I don't want to, I don't want to add to that, you know, as a
• 43:03
  manager, you know, and I, I do think it's kind of the same
• 43:06
  thing too, where there's people who are in environments where
• 43:10
  negativity is allowed to breed and pessimism is allowed to
• 43:13
  breed. And especially at the management
• 43:15
  level, when people aren't kind, they aren't nice, they aren't
• 43:17
  polite. It because I'm sure whatever the
• 43:20
  job is, is, is it's work. You know what I mean?
• 43:22
  It's not easy. It's you're not doing it because
• 43:24
  it's fun. But when you've got when you're,
• 43:26
  we've got jerks you're working with on top of that, like who?
• 43:29
  I think that's the biggest reason pay can be a big one too.
• 43:35
  You know, if you're people are getting underpaid, but I think
• 43:37
  if your people are at average pay, I think it's, it's the sure
• 43:41
  you can. Everyone can always find more
• 43:42
  money somewhere else. But if they like where they're
• 43:44
  working, they like who they're working with, it makes their
• 43:47
  they they can 5:00 comes and they like they're in a good
• 43:50
  place positively all day. Like people typically don't
• 43:52
  leave those jobs. They don't start looking till
• 43:54
  they fearful their job's going to go away or they're just tired
• 43:57
  of working with Dick heads all day.
• 43:59
  So what would you say is what? What's the biggest piece of
• 44:02
  advice you could give to an employer to help retain folks
• 44:05
  that they want to keep? Don't be.
• 44:08
  Jerks don't be jerks. I, I think that I don't know if
• 44:14
  surveys are the best way, but I think that so you have to, you
• 44:23
  have to, this is where like high EQ and empathy kind of come into
• 44:26
  it. You have to be able to step
• 44:29
  outside yourself and understand like what the work experience is
• 44:31
  for other people at the firm and proactively course correct if
• 44:35
  you think things are going wrong.
• 44:37
  So you have to, whether this is one-on-one conversations, being
• 44:41
  a, a good listener and kind of understanding where, where
• 44:45
  people might not be happy in the organization, whether it is
• 44:47
  doing surveys, you know what I mean?
• 44:48
  And kind of understanding whether it's 360 surveys or
• 44:50
  whatever and understanding kind of what sentiment is, but
• 44:54
  proactively making changes for the better.
• 44:58
  And but similarly, if there's, if your company is going through
• 45:02
  a hard time, because this is, I think this is another thing that
• 45:04
  gets lost on LinkedIn, especially like in the 2023
• 45:07
  downturn when companies are struggling, they're struggling
• 45:11
  financially, they're just trying to hold on, you know, to where
• 45:13
  they are. Like you can't fault them for
• 45:15
  companies about to go out of business.
• 45:17
  You can't fault them for doing layoffs.
• 45:18
  You know, like it's either do layoffs, you're out of business,
• 45:20
  right? That gets lost sometimes.
• 45:22
  But I do think that being open and transparent about the hard
• 45:27
  times you're going through, people are more likely to
• 45:31
  respond, help you come up with solutions or respond to things
• 45:35
  maybe not going their way if they didn't get the raise they
• 45:37
  thought they were going to get or other if they have to tighten
• 45:39
  the budget and you know, I can be able to make the spend they
• 45:41
  have whatever it is. It's kind of like getting people
• 45:43
  kind of upset if it's being caused by economic challenges or
• 45:47
  any other challenge you're having.
• 45:48
  Just being transparent about those because I think that we we
• 45:54
  saw a tremendous amount of companies handling the bad stuff
• 45:58
  badly last year and that turned people off this companies
• 46:01
  permanently so. Yeah.
• 46:03
  I had a guest on recently who had a theory that maybe this
• 46:08
  time around, companies that don't need all of their
• 46:11
  employees because their businesses have contracted a
• 46:13
  bit. Or maybe holding on to them a
• 46:15
  little bit longer than they would have in the past.
• 46:17
  Just because they've seen how difficult it is to then go back
• 46:21
  and hire and find, you know, good folks again once things
• 46:24
  pick back up. I'm curious if you would have
• 46:26
  any insight or if you've seen anything similar to that.
• 46:33
  That's, it's hard to say because it's subjective.
• 46:36
  I'm sure that's happening to an extent.
• 46:38
  I, I, I feel like a lot of companies cut too deep,
• 46:42
  honestly. It, it also kind of depends on
• 46:44
  what they do. So there's a few things
• 46:46
  happening like the recruitment space.
• 46:49
  What's different? I'm talking internal recruiters
• 46:50
  now, not like my area, but people who work internally,
• 46:53
  companies. It's the only job that is
• 46:58
  staying in maintenance mode. If, if your, if your company's
• 47:01
  in maintenance mode and you're a software engineer or salesperson
• 47:04
  or whatever, like your job's safe as long as they're making
• 47:06
  money, 'cause if you're in, if the company's in maintenance
• 47:09
  mode, they're not growing, you're a recruiter.
• 47:11
  They don't, there's not that you need.
• 47:13
  If there's not turnover happening or growth happening
• 47:16
  like that, that's inherently a bad place to be in for a
• 47:18
  recruiter. It's a very volatile skill set.
• 47:20
  Unfortunately, if you're an internal recruiter, a lot of
• 47:24
  recruiters, they've cut very deep.
• 47:27
  Part of the reason why our solutions business is picking up
• 47:29
  right now is because everyone already laid off all their
• 47:31
  internal recruiters. So if every company, a company
• 47:35
  used to have tenure recruiter, recruiters now has two and all
• 47:37
  of a sudden their hiring plans tripled.
• 47:38
  Like they don't have the people they need to do that.
• 47:41
  So that's why we're getting a lot of business there.
• 47:44
  Other aspects I, I wouldn't know, I would have a hard time
• 47:50
  saying across the industry that I would say it's more the norm,
• 47:55
  even outside of recruitment, because as a position circles,
• 47:57
  if it's, we're talking sales people everywhere else, I would
• 47:59
  have a hard time saying companies, you're holding on to
• 48:01
  people. They shouldn't.
• 48:03
  The only companies that, because I, I think everyone's experience
• 48:06
  is there's a lot of layoffs. You know, I think the only the,
• 48:09
  I think companies might be holding on to people because
• 48:11
  they, they feel like things are going to bounce back and they're
• 48:14
  holding on to people because they know they're going to need
• 48:16
  them as opposed to like laying them off and having to rehire
• 48:18
  again and going through that whole thing.
• 48:20
  I think forward thinking companies are planning for, Hey,
• 48:23
  let's hold on to who we want, who we need as as much as we can
• 48:26
  because we feel like next year things are going to turn around.
• 48:28
  I think that happens and I think the companies doing that don't
• 48:31
  get the credit they deserve. But I couldn't put a number on
• 48:33
  it. You know, I know some companies
• 48:35
  do, but to if you were going to tell me like if that's a a
• 48:39
  rampant, widespread thing, I wouldn't know either way.
• 48:41
  So the interesting thing that I heard you say is the fact that
• 48:45
  your solutions side of the business is picking up.
• 48:50
  It is probably a good indicator that the economy is coming back,
• 48:53
  right? Like a lot of companies, they
• 48:55
  cut the recruiting staff because things really slowed down.
• 48:58
  Like we don't need this many people, you know, helping us
• 49:00
  find new folks and then very quickly wait, wait, we, we need
• 49:06
  a lot of help. And, and so they're coming to
• 49:08
  you because they they can't get those folks on their own.
• 49:11
  I'm curious what the timeline is that you've seen this.
• 49:14
  I know it's 2024, but is it like in the last three months, last
• 49:18
  two months since the Fed raised the rates, is that picked up?
• 49:23
  I mean the uptake probably started like May 1st, I would
• 49:25
  say, where we started selling solutions.
• 49:28
  So over the summer it intensified in, we started
• 49:31
  seeing a little bit of it May, June and July, but things really
• 49:35
  exploded in August, September and now.
• 49:40
  Do you think it has anything to do with the Fed rates?
• 49:42
  I mean, August people were pretty confident that the rates
• 49:44
  were going to go up at least 1/4, maybe 1/2 point.
• 49:48
  I. Heart.
• 49:49
  How do you say? Yeah.
• 49:50
  Well, so yes and no. So the no is that I don't think
• 49:53
  that hiring a lot of time is driven by funding, whether it's
• 49:56
  VC funding or private equity deals or something like that,
• 49:59
  like companies have a new initiative they need to hire for
• 50:01
  it. I don't think that's really
• 50:02
  uptick that much yet. I don't think 1/2 a point cut
• 50:05
  into rates like in the VC space, everyone's like, all right, take
• 50:08
  our money out of T-bills and like throw it into the like the
• 50:10
  I don't it's not, it wasn't a dramatic enough cut for that to
• 50:13
  happen. But I do think seeing, I do
• 50:15
  think there's a lot of companies out there that had money on the
• 50:18
  sideline projects on hold that we're just waiting to see, OK,
• 50:21
  is this reel? Is this going to happen before
• 50:23
  we kind of go back to like, OK, it's time to start growing
• 50:26
  again? I also think that part of it too
• 50:29
  that gets overlooked is that's companies have to start growing
• 50:34
  again. Like every company either has
• 50:36
  either have invest, you're publicly traded, you have
• 50:38
  investors or you have a founder and business.
• 50:41
  And literally no one wants to say, hey, next year we're going
• 50:43
  to do the exact same thing we did this year.
• 50:45
  Like at some point, like it's, you know, it, we've had 18
• 50:48
  months, 24 months of like stagnant or contraction.
• 50:51
  At some point, everyone's like got to do it now, like can't
• 50:54
  wait anymore, it's time to go back.
• 50:56
  I do think there's a certain, like it's not really herd
• 50:58
  mentality, but there's enough companies that are fine, like
• 51:00
  all right, time to stop making excuses.
• 51:03
  We just got to get back to trying to grow the business.
• 51:05
  Tired. Of sitting on our hands and I
• 51:07
  think I think a lot of it is just that like you can't you
• 51:10
  can't go on contracting or staying stagnant long enough At
• 51:13
  some point everyone just there's enough people that just decided
• 51:16
  it's time to start moving again. And I do think the Fed rate was
• 51:19
  maybe the indicator that that OK, now's the time, but I don't
• 51:22
  think the half point rate by itself was like, oh, things are
• 51:24
  totally different now, so. Interesting perspective James,
• 51:28
  any specific books or mentors that have been helpful for you?
• 51:34
  Books. Or mentors I really.
• 51:37
  Like, well, I would say we're a podcast, but you've already said
• 51:39
  you don't listen to any podcast. Listen to I don't even listen to
• 51:43
  my podcast, so like you probably even.
• 51:45
  Listen. To this one, tell me how this
• 51:47
  went because I'll watch the clip you sent me to share on share on
• 51:50
  social media after her. But that's about it.
• 51:53
  I from a business standpoint, I really liked.
• 52:00
  There is a book called Range. I got to find out who wrote
• 52:05
  that. If you give me a second, I can
• 52:06
  probably pull that up real quick.
• 52:10
  It was really interesting. So it's called range, why
• 52:12
  generalists triumph in a specialized World by David
• 52:16
  Epstein. It's a great read because I do
• 52:19
  believe that he he relates it to is a lot of good relates it to
• 52:25
  music, relates it to sports, relates to lots of other areas.
• 52:27
  But it's really kind of ended up being about business where
• 52:31
  there's such this focus in our our society among we need to
• 52:34
  hire the best specialist for anything.
• 52:35
  But if you need to get like a bunch of tasks done, you're
• 52:37
  trying to grow a company, You need people who know how to do a
• 52:40
  lot of different things. And the more the more of a broad
• 52:43
  based background you have, the better you are able to solve new
• 52:48
  problems you've never seen before.
• 52:50
  If you have, if you take a specialist who's only done one
• 52:52
  exact thing and thrown like some weird problem at them, they're
• 52:55
  going to struggle compared to the person who's done like 5 or
• 52:58
  6 different jobs in the past 10 years and had to solve new
• 53:01
  problems all the time. Like solving new problems is a
• 53:03
  skill in itself. And people who are more
• 53:05
  generalized are better at doing that.
• 53:07
  And it's a great book too, because he relates it to relates
• 53:10
  it to sports. I don't, I don't have kids, but
• 53:12
  maybe you have kids. I don't know.
• 53:13
  And like how sports have changed since you and I were young where
• 53:15
  like you play a bunch of sports and all these travelling and
• 53:18
  team sports, it points out all these different like athletes
• 53:21
  who are like at the top of their game.
• 53:22
  That was it. Patrick Rafter, I think it was,
• 53:25
  didn't start playing tennis. So he was like 18 or something,
• 53:28
  you know what I mean? Like there's a lot of people who
• 53:30
  didn't who became the best in their field without it.
• 53:33
  It was, it was Tiger Woods broke everyone's brain because Tiger
• 53:36
  Woods was playing golf when he was three.
• 53:37
  Everyone's like, this is all you have to do it.
• 53:38
  You gotta get your kids started early.
• 53:39
  Meanwhile, there's like a million other athletes just as
• 53:42
  successful or close that they just play a lot of sports and
• 53:45
  they're just better than you. That's why they're good at what
• 53:47
  they do. But it's the same type of great
• 53:50
  book. Read it easy read great audio
• 53:52
  book because of all the examples, but listen to range.
• 53:54
  It'll change your perspective on like how you should hire, how
• 53:57
  you should position your own career, and just like being good
• 54:00
  at a lot of stuff. No, we definitely hear.
• 54:03
  I've got two boys, 8:00 and 10:00.
• 54:04
  And I hear a lot of, you know, parents talk about, yeah, they
• 54:07
  want, you know, some want to get their kids hyper focused on a
• 54:10
  particular sport because they've shown an aptitude for it.
• 54:13
  They want to see what they're capable of.
• 54:14
  Their other parents are like, no, let them go out and have
• 54:16
  fun. Like, this isn't the time to
• 54:18
  burn them out on a single sport. Like, let them enjoy it.
• 54:21
  And the cross training from 1 sport to another is actually
• 54:24
  good physically for your body. You're working your muscles and
• 54:26
  your joints in different ways. Less likely to get an injury, so
• 54:30
  the theory goes. Yeah.
• 54:33
  Anyways, James, I've got one more question for you, but
• 54:35
  before I ask it, I want to do 2 things for those listening.
• 54:37
  If you like today's content, please hit the like, share or
• 54:40
  Subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.
• 54:42
  James, I also want to let people know the best way to get in
• 54:44
  touch with you. What would that be?
• 54:47
  You can reach out to me, my LinkedIn easy to find.
• 54:51
  What is my LinkedIn address? That's, well, I'm James Hornick
• 54:54
  on LinkedIn, but yeah, it's linked.
• 54:58
  It's just James Horn for the URL.
• 55:00
  So easy to find on LinkedIn. Also on Twitter, although I
• 55:03
  don't use it as much. Also just James Hornick on
• 55:05
  Twitter. You can find me there.
• 55:08
  Yeah, I guess that'd be the best.
• 55:10
  Where do they find the podcast? Podcast?
• 55:12
  I link every single one on our Talent insights.higherwall.com.
• 55:17
  You can find all of them there, but the the 10 Minute Talent
• 55:21
  Rant, which is my primary podcast.
• 55:23
  We just finished. We're doing episode 98 next
• 55:25
  week. It's 10 minutes long there.
• 55:27
  We RIP them real quick. That can be on Apple, Google,
• 55:31
  Amazon, Spotify, all the usual suspects in terms of like so 10
• 55:34
  minute talent rant. Search for it, you'll find it.
• 55:36
  Or talent insights.higherworld.com.
• 55:40
  Or again, hit me up on LinkedIn. Great.
• 55:42
  So last question for you, James. I'm curious in the next few
• 55:45
  years, what do you see are the big changes coming to the
• 55:49
  staffing industry? Oh geez, this is you.
• 55:52
  Saved this for lad on This is a quick one yeah so OK I I I am so
• 55:59
  sick of talking and hearing about AI, but you can't have
• 56:02
  this conversation without it. I believe that and I'll relate
• 56:05
  this back to the talent space, 9095% plus of the AI apps and
• 56:12
  things out there that you see are going to fail.
• 56:14
  But the other two to 5% are going to completely change how
• 56:18
  we kind of work. And I think that the way it's
• 56:21
  starting to have some effect on on talent markets.
• 56:26
  I do believe that it's going to it's going to be harmful
• 56:29
  primarily first to I was going to say like I think low level
• 56:36
  marketing roles and it's going to get hit.
• 56:39
  I think software development, good software developers will be
• 56:43
  able to do more with less people.
• 56:45
  I think that's another area. So I, I do think those, I think
• 56:48
  these things are going to evolve over time.
• 56:50
  I think we're at the early stages of what these things will
• 56:51
  do. I think a lot of the hype is
• 56:53
  still overdone and I, I get sick of hearing about it from a
• 56:55
  recruitment perspective. I think what is interesting is
• 56:58
  that it will enable companies to use lower level recruitment
• 57:05
  resources and better, better train, manage and source
• 57:12
  pipelines. Meaning if I'm able to, if I've
• 57:16
  got some, especially if you're remote, we're in this weird
• 57:18
  remote world where it's hard to kind of oversee people.
• 57:20
  You don't really know what anyone's doing on any of them
• 57:22
  bases. But if you have an AI based tool
• 57:25
  that like this video thing that we're on right now gives you a
• 57:28
  transcription. It gives you a summary of what
• 57:30
  the discussion was, if it can kick off keywords of like
• 57:33
  sentiment in terms of like what went well in the conversation
• 57:35
  with the person you're recruiting, what what didn't,
• 57:38
  where you as the recruiter did your job, didn't do your job.
• 57:40
  What you forgot, what you missed, where there's certain
• 57:42
  keywords are going to match up with like what the job things
• 57:45
  are, what other jobs you're working on that could actually
• 57:46
  fit this person. There's a lot that AI can do to
• 57:50
  help enhance how recruiters can match people and also how
• 57:54
  recruitment companies or recruitment talent managers
• 57:56
  internally can better train their teams and understand kind
• 57:59
  of like, because even in the in office world, it was really
• 58:02
  difficult to know where maybe if you're on my team, like if you
• 58:05
  just completely booted a conversation or did everything
• 58:07
  the wrong way, like how would I really know that unless I ever
• 58:09
  heard you? So I do think there's a lot of
• 58:12
  gains that we made there. I think we're not near that yet.
• 58:15
  I think a lot of the record call recording technology and
• 58:17
  transcription, that stuff's there.
• 58:19
  I think the from a management and growth perspective, a lot of
• 58:21
  those tools are still kind of under development, but I do
• 58:23
  think there's some pretty sniffing gains that can happen
• 58:25
  there. So can I assume that you're
• 58:28
  using one of those recording platforms?
• 58:31
  Probably connects into Zoom you're using.
• 58:33
  Not honestly, not yet. We're well, I think there's a
• 58:36
  good chance that we will. We're, we're side note, we're
• 58:39
  this is another thing. So we're our ATS system, which
• 58:42
  is like a CRM system for recruiters is God awful.
• 58:46
  And we're probably going to be migrating to a new one soon.
• 58:49
  But biggest problem with our current one is it doesn't
• 58:51
  integrate with any of these tools very well.
• 58:52
  So we've been a bit hamstrung in our ability to kind of adopt A
• 58:55
  lot of latest stuff because it just doesn't integrate with our
• 58:57
  with our tech stack. So but I am planning on there is
• 59:01
  a definite plan to start kind of going down that rabbit hole and
• 59:03
  doing these things once we're in a better place, hopefully, like,
• 59:05
  you know, early next year. But I've tried and demoed a lot
• 59:09
  of them. And the other thing I will say
• 59:12
  too is it will take it, it can be disruptive.
• 59:15
  I, I do think the disruptive to people's individual workflows.
• 59:20
  And when you're talking recruiting firms and as I
• 59:23
  started out and we started this conversation, a lot of these old
• 59:25
  school recruiting firms like changing how they do things is
• 59:28
  not something they enjoy doing. I do think that it'll, it, it
• 59:33
  will be people who embrace it will have to change how they do
• 59:38
  their everyday workflow, but get rewarded by it long term.
• 59:42
  So. James, I want to be the first
• 59:45
  one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story
• 59:47
  with us today. I really appreciate it.
• 59:49
  All right, hope I didn't talk too much.
• 59:51
  Make it longer than it had to be.
• 59:53
  We'll edit it out if we decide that after the fact.
• 59:56
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 59:59
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:00:00
  today.