Latest / Recruiting Evolution / FDE+ | The Exponential Power of AI: How Elite Recruiters Stay Ahead with Benjamin Mena, Managing Partner – Select Source Solutions

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FDE+ | The Exponential Power of AI: How Elite Recruiters Stay Ahead with Benjamin Mena, Managing Partner – Select Source Solutions · Recruiting Evolution

• Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]: Artificial intelligence isn't like the transition from the fax machine to the computer. It isn't like the transition from the horse buggy to the car. This is a time period where we are on the edge of this gigantic exponential curve where everything has a possibility of changing. These things are smarter than doctors. These things are smarter than PhDs. These things can operate 24 7. Now the question is, how are we as humans going to actually use it? Kortney Harmon [00:00:32]: Hey, guys. Kortney Harmon, host of fde. We're bringing you a special series of episodes called fde. Those are going to be highlights from our recent virtual conference where hundreds of you joined us for an incredible event focused on boosting revenue for 2025. Each of these sessions is packed with valuable insights, expert discussions, and actionable strategies to help you Dr. Growth in your business. Whether you missed the live event or want to revisit each session, we've got you covered. We're going to drop each of these 10 live events to wrap up our year and kick off the new year, right? So let's dive into today's session and uncover the key takeaways that will propel your success in the coming year. Kortney Harmon [00:01:21]: Stay tuned and let's dive in. I appreciate you taking the time. For those of you who don't know, Benjamin Mena is the host of the Elite Recruiter podcast. As an executive recruiter and founder of Select Source Solutions, he obviously has a thriving community of top recruiters, understands tools, mindset, all the things. So he is going to be talking to us about the AI advantage, how top billers can stay ahead in the recruiting game. So, Ben, I'm not going to take too much time out of your your spiel. So I'm excited to hear because I know you've done this talk other places. So I'm going to sit, listen. Benjamin Mena [00:01:58]: People don't understand, like, how nervous I get about talking in front of people, whether virtually or when it comes to, like, even in person. I went to a Pinnacle conference and I didn't talk to anybody for, like, until my talk was done. I was like, hiding in a coffee house trying to go over my notes because I, I get so worried about talking because as a podcaster, I just ask some questions and I shut up real quick. A little bit about me. My name is Benjamin Me. I am not an expert, I am not a guru, and I have nothing to sell you. I'm a government contract headhunter. I am a AI junkie. Benjamin Mena [00:02:31]: I spend probably way too much time playing around with artificial intelligence. I'm host of the Pinnacle Take podcast and then a small recruiting podcast called the Elite Recruiter Podcast. So make sure you subscribe to both of those. Pinnacle Society has their podcast. I drop one episode a month, the Elite Recruiter Podcast, one to two episodes a week. So lots of fun. Anyways, you guys are going to love this. When it comes to AI, the amount of recruiters that are going to get replaced by AI, very important number. Benjamin Mena [00:02:59]: But something also else to think about, especially when you're seeing presentations, whether in person, at a conference facility or something of that nature. Most of the time, 95% of the stats are kind of, excuse my language, BS, but if we do run into the issue where 95% of recruiters are replaced by AI, we are going to have many other issues outside of recruiting. So here's the thing that I want you to understand. Like, artificial intelligence isn't like the transition from the fax machine to the computer. It isn't like the transition from the horse buggy to the car. This is a time period where we are on the edge of this gigantic exponential curve where everything has a possibility of changing. These things are smarter than doctors. These things are smarter than PhDs. Benjamin Mena [00:03:45]: These things can operate 24 7. Now the question is, how are we as humans going to actually use it? And that's definitely not my part of this conversation. But it's something super important to think about because we are literally looking at the exponential curve right in front of our face. How things are going to change so fast. It's going to be a completely different world for your kids by the time that they're adults. Anyways, here's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about what's happening in artificial intelligence. I probably should skip that part since we just got done with an awesome AI talk. Benjamin Mena [00:04:19]: But I also want to talk about what's happening in AI and recruiting, what tools you can use to get ahead. And because everybody loves tools and all that stuff. And just an FYI, I have a QR code at the very, very end that you can get the entire tools list of pretty much all the tools that I talk about so you can figure out what tool is best for you. And then, most importantly, in this world of AI, where lots of recruiting can get replaced, how do you not be replaced by a bot? How do you become the elite recruiter that keeps on going? So we're going to talk about that. And I think that's the most important part. What AI looks like right now, we'll just run through. Since there's been a lot of AI talk. OpenAI launches ChatGPT5. Benjamin Mena [00:04:59]: I was so excited about that. I was stoked. I could not wait for. I actually held off podcast interviews because I thought it was going to be such a game changer. Well, it was, but incrementally I was a little let down, honestly. But also check out Claude and Anthropic. Like their vibe, their coding platform when it comes to AI is just absolutely incredible and getting better and better and better. Like it will code for hours for you. Benjamin Mena [00:05:24]: And also Google rolling out Gemini 2.5 with combination of VO3, which one text turns into a video, which is just absolutely insane. I mean they were trained on every single YouTube video out there. The quality is so good. Let me take a step back. I remember when like people are making fun of all the videos where it had like 17 fingers on a hand. Now the videos coming out are so good that most people don't realize that it's fake. That's how scary it is. And then they just dropped out. Benjamin Mena [00:05:54]: Actually, I think this week Nano Banana, which I think is going to kind of really put a crunch on Adobe. You can literally just like take two images together, put them in the Nano Banana and it'll pump out like perfect images. It's insane. Anyways, and then Perplexity launch Comment. How many of you guys use Perplexity? Real quick drop in the chat, yes or no if you use Perplexity? I think like if you want a good laugh, I go to Perplexity first before I go to Google. But Perplexity just launched Comment, it's their new browser. And you can actually. Let me preface this, but you can log into LinkedIn, go into comment like on the browser. Benjamin Mena [00:06:32]: I need you to find 30 govcon leaders that just made a transition within 30 days. I watched it go into my sales navigator, start running that list, build that list and then printed it out for me of the GovCon leaders within the D.C. metro that made the job change. So I want to also preface this that I have not gotten a warning, but a few of my friends have gotten warnings from LinkedIn with using comment. And it's like, hey, I see that you're using AI automation. We're going to give you a warning, so be careful on using it. But it's just crazy. Like what's possible? Like how many minutes would it take you to hop into sales nav yourself when I could be like doing something else while it does it for me? Anyways, that's what AI looks like right now for you guys. Benjamin Mena [00:07:10]: And I know this is hard to type. It's a little easier when it's like in person conference. I can literally point fingers at everybody. But I want you to think about this. How are you utilizing AI right now? Like, what are some of the things that you guys are doing as great recruiters, whether recruiting managers, whether your executive search leaders. How are you using AI most of the time? It's like helping you write emails, transform job descriptions, make it sound way better, make images. The ability to make images is just now insane. Something that you would have had to hire a graphic designer for. Benjamin Mena [00:07:40]: You can literally do almost instantly with a prompt, summarize meetings and interviews. How many of you guys are using an interview Notetaker? Absolutely me here, summarizing, cleaning up your ATS or CRM. One of the fun things about ATS is all of us have dirty data. That candidate, that's that perfect candidate that's been in there for 10 years and hasn't been updated. AI can now, behind the scenes, help you get all that stuff updated. And also taking all the inventory off the mpc, there's like AI platforms right now. You can drop the resume in there and it comes out as an mpc resume ready resume within minutes or not even minutes, within seconds. I just remember those days like this. Benjamin Mena [00:08:19]: You guys are gonna laugh at this. My first recruiting job, we wanted to send over a candidate for some reason, like something wasn't working. Me running over to the copier with the letterhead of a large recruiting agency that starts with an A and into the tech, putting the resume and putting that thing on the copier, hitting print and then getting that back into the computer. All that could be done in seconds now. All right, but let's talk about this. I think they did a good job covering in the last conversation and all the rest of the conversations here. But we're just going to run through this really quick. Early. Benjamin Mena [00:08:48]: Like 2015, early adoption of artificial intelligence came to screening tools and streamlining candidate filtering, mostly around ATSS and some search stuff. 2021 is we really start seeing the AI advancements when it comes to matching algorithms and trying to find the best candidates based on the job description. And then in 2022, the world changed when ChatGPT went live. And then everything changed after that. You know, 2023, AI within recruiting was mostly focused on content creation, advanced matching. And then right now, 2025, everything says it has AI in there. Even if it shouldn't have AI in there. Everything does. Benjamin Mena [00:09:28]: Sell me this pin. It has AI in there. Anyways, what does the future of AI look like in recruiting. And this is something that I want you guys to think about. I want you guys to think about what we have seen so far. We're coming into the tail end of 2025. What has like the tools that you've seen, the capabilities out there. What does the future look like when it comes to AI and recruiting? I'd love for you guys to put in the notes, but I know it's probably too hard to type out. Benjamin Mena [00:09:54]: So that's why I'm giving you guys a second to think about that. I think there's going to be some crazy stuff happening. It's been hyped for a while, probably overhyped, but there's some cool things happening when it comes to AI and what recruiters can actually take advantage of. Anyways, here's what AI looks like at this very day. Actually, AI looked like. Some of this is months ago, even like last year. But a hiring manager can input. We work in the creative and the boring side. Benjamin Mena [00:10:21]: A hiring manager could put a job description into an AI software. The AI software will go source, it'll go reach out. Do you send multichannel reach outs to these candidates? It will do a recruiter screen with a candidate. It will schedule the interview on the hiring manager's calendar, follow the interview and give a post interview scorecard. How much of that was done by an actual recruiter? Crazy. There's also another AI staffing company that raised a few hundred million. I think they're at a $2.5 billion valuation, only a year and a half old. They're doing all their hiring through AI. Benjamin Mena [00:10:51]: They are supporting a lot of the AI companies. But our competition isn't the person that is on here. Competition is not Kevin. Competition is not Mary Lou. Competition is not Tim. We're now starting to have to compete against these AI programs, these AI tools that are coming out of Silicon Valley. That is your competition. Now another perfect example is Compass Group, made 160,000 hires with a team of just 20 recruiters. Benjamin Mena [00:11:14]: That same company that they used called Paradox, which just got bought by Workday, which is kind of funny with the Workday lawsuit for when it comes to AI. But that's a whole other story for another day. Helped that Paradox company, helped all the different Chipotle start hiring effectively. It's the same company that FedEx brought in to hire from start to 29,000 conditional offers without a single recruiter being involved because of AI. And you know, when it comes to AI, we're going to see a lot of agents, AI agents entering the recruiting space. All the agentic fun. So what I want to do is I want to kind of talk about some of the things that you could do with your desk to utilize AI. And these are things that you probably already using or things that you've done or just like a. Benjamin Mena [00:11:54]: Oh, you know what, Benjamin, you mentioned that and I haven't done that in a while. Let me jump back on that again. So first of all, writing emails, you're having trouble with a hiring manager and you want to like tell them to excuse my language. F off. But you can put it into ChatGPT or one of the cloud or Gemini or all these other programs. Hey, here's what I'm trying to get across. I need you to make this more professional, but I need you to highlight the points of like why this person, why we should get the fee, or why we like this happened. AI can help take the emotion out of it. Benjamin Mena [00:12:25]: It can help you. Right? You can do emails at scale. It's one of those things. We'll talk about that in a bit. You can also make images. You can write blog posts if you want. Guys, want a good laugh? A lot of our businesses come from LinkedIn articles. It used to take me two and a half weeks because I suck at writing two and a half weeks to write a LinkedIn article. Benjamin Mena [00:12:43]: Now I can. It probably takes me about a week because like I write it up, put it through AI, get some facts in there. But you can do so much more when it comes to quality blog posts to help you become an authority in your space. And also you can use AI to make videos. I mean, I use AI with a podcast. I do have an editor that does some magic, but there's an AI behind the scenes that helps cut videos. It helps him work faster. So, all right, some of the things that definitely it's important and we've seen like some of the biggest impacts when it comes to artificial intelligence is sourcing. Benjamin Mena [00:13:18]: How many of you guys remember the days? And I think Boolean's still important, but like you're sitting there typing in a super complex structure and then you make an error somewhere like paragraph three to try to find the people that you need it. Now there are platforms out there that you can literally type in. Like I am looking for a software engineer that has been part of a series A that's somewhere in, we'll say close to Apple's headquarters. The AI can figure that out. Like some of the things that I love about govcon recruiting is like the AI can sit there and look at like somebody's profile. They're working for Lockheed Martin. They are working in Northern Virginia. And based on the location of where they say their. Benjamin Mena [00:13:54]: Their job is and a little bit of information, it can infer what type of security clearance that that person might have. Not perfect all the time. You know, especially the TSSCI and the full scope polys are a little harder to dig through. But these AI tools are doing such a better job sourcing than I have in the past. And here's some cool things. There's actually quite a few good platforms out there. I know Crelate is dropping their platform, their discovery platform. So definitely, if you haven't checked that out, definitely check that out. Benjamin Mena [00:14:22]: Juicebox and Pinner are two other great platforms too. But yeah, it's AI sourcing is just. Absolutely. And somebody just said Creelite's discovery agent has had huge improvements on the sourcing. Awesome. That is phenomenal. And who's checking out your site? Did you guys know that you guys can use AI to figure out who's looking at your site? Drop a yes or a no if you have a contact Us form on your webpage for your company. Yes or no? Give it a yes. Benjamin Mena [00:14:46]: Give it a no. Nobody. Okay. Nobody has a Contact Us form. Okay, I have a Contact Us form. Here's the thing. Nobody ever really fills it out. There we go. Benjamin Mena [00:14:53]: Yes, yes, yes. Did you guys know that you guys can use AI to figure out who actually goes to your webpage? There are a few different tools. RB2B warmly askwid and recruiters websites has these tools. I went to. There's a company called Heyreach. They do LinkedIn automation for you. I went to their website. I'm not connected with anybody at Heyreach at all. Benjamin Mena [00:15:13]: I went to their website. Within 15 seconds, I got a LinkedIn request from their CEO to connect with me. I didn't fill out a form, but they could figure out behind the scenes using some artificial intelligence. I think they're using RB2B. Who's actually going to your website? One of my friends in the Pinnacle Society, he uses Warmly. He made over $50,000 in placements last year by being able to figure out who, what hiring manager went to their website to check it out. They never filled out a form, but they were able to figure out the person based on using Warmly and recruiters websites. One of their clients made 15 placements doing the exact same thing by being able to figure out who went to their website. Benjamin Mena [00:15:52]: But none of those people ever filled out A hey, contact us. Like, we're going to help you hire. All right. One of my favorite things with artificial intelligence is getting the chance to actually focus on the conversation. There are two great interview note takers and I really should. You know, I always joke around with Kortney behind the scenes. I think Creolik could vibe to code their own pretty soon. But like, here's the thing with like Metaview and Quill, both incredible note takers, really focused on the recruiting community and like, I get a chance to have the conversation. Benjamin Mena [00:16:19]: I get a chance to like, get to know the person. I'm not focusing on typing up the notes. I'm not focusing on behind the scenes. Like trying to think of, like, how I can like do something and then like, prior to like this new AI technology. I'll be honest with you guys, I can't read my own handwriting. I literally can't. So I'd get done with a candidate call, I'd write down the salary range that they're looking for. I'd look down or after I hang out with them, like, I cannot actually read what I wrote. Benjamin Mena [00:16:43]: And I a few times have had to call up a candidate saying, hey, you told me a number. Can you give me that number again? I took notes, but I just couldn't read it myself. And so like, these two things have really solved that problem. Anyways, there's also interview AI agents. I am, I'll be honest with you, I'm not a fan of AI agent interview agents. Like the voice in the video for high level positions. If you have, we'll say positions that are lower level, high volume, it can help out a lot, like literally speed. But there is no way in hell, somebody, a data scientist or an AI engineer with a TSSCI full scope poly security clearance is going to answer a question for an interview. Benjamin Mena [00:17:24]: An AI agent, they actually want to talk to a human being. So you got to pick and choose what is going to be the best tool for your niche and your business and your desk. Enhanced HTS integration. Like, all these tools are starting to play together. Kortney behind the scenes, I know she's all over the place. She is in charge of partnerships at Crelate. She's the one helping, like, manage all the tools and getting all the integration, the API access, everything talks to each other. So that way you don't have to sit there and be like, click, download the information. Benjamin Mena [00:17:52]: Let me move it over, let me type up all these notes. You know, like, it can easily move from Quill over to the creel it. The goal of these things is to save your time. And one of the things when it comes to market mapping, AI can help you with enrichment. I know there's a lot of controversy around clay. Clay is actually a really good tool, but it is so complex. They have an entire ecosystem of go to market specialists and go to market engineers to put it together. I always tell people it's like a. Benjamin Mena [00:18:22]: Unfortunately it's a 90 day learning curve. There are a lot of great things about clay, once you figure out how to use it, it's absolutely awesome. Some of the things on a super easy basic level like 101 basis, you can easily just use it to scrape LinkedIn jobs and then cross reference to figure out who the hiring managers are. You can literally do that in about two minutes. So if you want to keep track of like all the architectural engineering jobs within a certain city, you can have that run on a daily basis so that if any of Those jobs hit LinkedIn, you know about it first. Let me just also preface this. There are a lot of people out there that know nothing about recruiting, trying to sell you on clay and how it's going to solve your problem. So definitely be careful. Benjamin Mena [00:19:05]: Find if you are looking for that, that outbound, go to market specialist, make sure they have a background supporting recruiters and make sure they you get a chance to talk to some of the recruiters that they've supported. Because I know some of I've watched people drop 25k, 30k, 5k, 10k with zero results, but I've seen other people where the results are just absolutely amazing. So it's really pick and choose your thing. Full Enrich. How many of you guys have like in the past had like Alicia had a contact out, had this, had that, trying to get all these like the contact information. What Full Enrich does is it puts all that into one. It does a waterfall enrichment. So that way if you want to find Greg's email address and you don't find it on the first two things, it'll keep on going through all the different providers until it actually finds it so you don't have to pay for all these providers. Benjamin Mena [00:19:56]: And then if you have a favorite client in the world, Ocean IO, drop them in Ocean IO and see like exactly who they're like. They pull up so much data that it's all lookalike companies based on that one. So like you can literally just be like, hey, this is my favorite client. We've been doing well with them. They didn't want this perfect candidate that I had. They just didn't have the room for it or the growth opportunity for it. Let me drop my their company in there. These are other great companies I can NPC this person to. Benjamin Mena [00:20:20]: So I personally don't do this but it is a possibility. I think videos are an absolute game changer in this world of artificial intelligence. It's a way to help you stand out. It's a way to help you look more human. The crazy thing is I can now add a video into an email sequence tool where it sounds extremely personalized. It voice clones. So if I the email as it goes to somebody would be like they see me saying Greg, they see me saying Mary Louise, they see me saying Ralph, they see me saying Tim. But it's using AI to do videos at scale. Benjamin Mena [00:20:54]: Like I said, I don't do this personally but the capability is now out there with a few companies called like Loom actually has it now sensepark and a few other ones. But I say use video. It's a great game changer. Outreach at scale. How many of you guys, when you go to send an email out or email sequence out, it just, it's not getting the hits like it used to. There are so many different things now with like Yahoo and Google tightening down the reins because of so many mass spammers that makes it harder for our emails to get out. So there's two great companies that are out there instantly and smartly. Both absolutely amazing. Benjamin Mena [00:21:30]: You can have, you can cycle through a bunch of aliases all attached to you. Yep. So that way like you can actually like in instantly. I recently this week or last week bought a few different domains. It did all that special stuff behind the scenes like the DMARC and all that stuff and then it started warming the email addresses for you. So that way when I started utilizing them it started helping me land in mailboxes because one of the things also if you send like so many messages from like one mailbox now your sender score like drops down. So it helps you keep your sender score up to try to hit stay in inboxes. There's also multi channel approaches like Source Whale and Talon. Benjamin Mena [00:22:10]: But here's another thing that everybody forgets. Your own ATS also has sequencing software in there. So don't be afraid to use it. I know so many people that I've talked to, they're like oh yeah, like I, I use instantly. I'm like well cool. I love instantly too. But you know when you need to send some quick messages or a quick sequence. Have you ever thought about using like Your own ats AT crew. Benjamin Mena [00:22:30]: Oh, yeah, okay, I forgot about that. I was chasing a brand new tool. So don't forget the. The stuff that you already have. I truly believe in the future that a lot of these tools are going to be able to replace virtual assistants. But I think here's the cool thing. You can make your virtual assistants now like supercharged recruiting engineers to help you out. You don't have time for clay. Benjamin Mena [00:22:49]: You don't have time to learn clay. If you have a VA, send them to Clay Bootcamp on the Clay's website 101. Have them do some of this things so that way they can do all these like crazy tech things behind the scenes. And once they start doing that, you probably also want to pay them a little more because you don't want to lose them. But you can have them learn a lot of the work, learn a lot of the tools behind the scenes. We're also going to start seeing a bunch of AI agents. I know Creel 8 has theirs. I know Juicebox has theirs. Benjamin Mena [00:23:16]: PIN has theirs. We're going to start seeing a lot more tools that work almost autonomously. You give us some instructions and it'll start doing some of the work and the digging for you. But here's the cool thing, so that way you can focus on the relationships. The coolest thing out of all the way AI is changing. If you don't like a tool, you can now start to make your own. You can do some no code automations through like make or nadn, which you can visually automate workflows. You can do vibe coding with anthropic and quad. Benjamin Mena [00:23:42]: Like, hey, I really am looking for this tool. Nobody's really done it the way I want it. Let me just type in here. Let's hop in there and just kind of like, let me play around with this. Oh, cool, this sucks. Or hey, you know, maybe there's something here. Tailored AI agents is another thing. But here's what something that I'm super excited about. Benjamin Mena [00:23:59]: We only have so much time during the day. These legacy platforms that have been around the recruiting space for a while can now use AI when it comes to coding to start kicking out products faster and faster, making improvements faster and faster. I think we're going to start seeing some of like these outside tools. The ATSS are going to be like, oh, that's now part of our platform. Hey, hey, customers, just an update. A note taker is now part of like what we have. Or hey, customers, here's an update. We just got a chance to where we can do a bunch of domains through our system. Benjamin Mena [00:24:33]: We're going to start seeing way more updates way faster from the systems that we're utilizing already. So here's just a quick run through. Here's a like a clay walkthrough from one of my buddies Deep. He's actually going to be speaking at a conference soon. If you are not building your own like GPTs on chatgpt like you are, I don't want to say wasting your time, but it is. If you're doing anything repetitive, you can build your own GPT and ChatGPT and literally can take minutes, good ones can take hours, but you can have something that literally take, you can pump out in minutes and just hop in there like okay, cool. New job description. I wanted to strip away all the client information. Benjamin Mena [00:25:07]: I wanted to make it SEO appropriate. I wanted to sound like me based on my voice. Blah blah blah blah. Instantaneous later. There you go. Over here there's a company called Lovable. If you have an idea about anything, like you want to build a website, you just type in there like I want to build a super sharp recruiting website, blah blah blah blah and it will code it for you and you could just take the code and drop it somewhere. It is like insane. Benjamin Mena [00:25:30]: So I highly recommend I have a link for that in the last thing but play around with it. It's absolutely nuts. Another super popular one that's been gaining traction is N8N. I know there's a few people on here that I know utilize it like. One of the crazy things that I know someone has done with NAN is the back end operation and the finances of 900 contractors to make sure they're all being paid on time. What took like multiple finance people now is just one finance person working about 2, 3 hours a day while the the automations behind the scene handle everything else. So those are AI tools that move the needle. And then you have anthropic which is on the right hand side, that's or quad Claude anthropic. Benjamin Mena [00:26:13]: So here's the most important thing in this world of artificial intelligence. Here's a question for you guys and I know this might be hard to type out, so feel free to type it out if you want and if you don't want to type it out, feel free to just like think about it. What makes an elite recruiter? What are the things that separate the very, very best of the best? What are those things that you've, all of us here over time, have we've experienced this or we've been the top recruiter or we know the top recruiter. What makes them different? Those small things. Those small things are why I truly believe the elite recruiters are going to be the ones still recruiting a decade from now. If you want to stay in this business, the elite recruiters are going to be the ones that are around when the world is getting rid of many recruiters. So one of the challenges of over 256 interviews or 259 published podcasts, probably about 275 interviews, I've got a chance to spend a lot of time with a lot of great recruiters. I live in a bubble of great recruiters. Benjamin Mena [00:27:18]: And I started out with a list of probably about 30 things. And it was so hard to narrow this down, mostly because so many recruiters are so individually great. There's a certain thing that makes one recruiter tick that doesn't make another recruiter tick. So I had to think about like this list of 30. How do I narrow it down for a presentation that it's not just like a list of 30 then we just walk through it. So I narrowed it down to kind of like these five. And these is in the bible of how to be elite. But I think these are the few things that you can do as an elite recruiter that you can also utilize AI to make you even better. Benjamin Mena [00:27:53]: Because here's the thing, elite recruiters are experts at relationship building. You guys are the best of the best. Why do companies do business with you? It isn't like, because you're like your sales pitch is like you can find great talent. Here's the thing, every other recruiter has access to LinkedIn too. There's no difference. Making there recruiting for many companies is the same. It's like a different flavor of ice cream, vanilla versus chocolate. But people want to do business with other people and they're choosing you to do business with because you are an expert relationship builder. Benjamin Mena [00:28:29]: You're the one that closes the candidates. You're the one that because your relationship with a candidate's so good, you are convincing them to literally to quit their job, make a decision that impacts their entire future and their entire family. Because you believe through the relationship that you made with them that this next opportunity for them will be that absolute game changer for their career. It's because you are an expert relationship builder. Whether you realize it or not. AI can help you behind the scenes. Like do like help you schedule some of the interviews, do candidate follow ups. If you have like these processes behind the scene AI can help you out that way to help that relationship be better. Benjamin Mena [00:29:07]: And somebody just dropped in especially what made them that differential factor. Absolutely. Here's also another thing, like AI can literally do incredible things when it comes to industry knowledge. But when you're sitting there on the phone with that candidate or that client and you know exactly what's happening, you can be, hey, you know what? I think you guys need to hire this person because of. I know it doesn't come across on the resume. I know it doesn't come across this. But they knew these players, they knew you're doing this. I know based on my industry knowledge why this person is such a great fit. Benjamin Mena [00:29:37]: You know, the AI can probably do that maybe one day, but it can't have that phone conversation with a hiring manager. You're hi. Like, you become the expert. Recruiters are the ones who are so often the hiring managers. Even if like they don't have an opening, they call you just like touch base. Like, hey, just want to see like how the market is. Oh, yeah, hey, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening. You need to keep an eye on this. Benjamin Mena [00:29:56]: You are the consultant. You are that industry go to person. As an elite recruiter, here's another thing. AI can help you enhance the candidate experience. How many of you guys have gotten business from somebody that you didn't even place drop a yes in there or no? I want to know if you guys have gotten business, like literally assigned contracting placements from somebody that like that you never placed. It was just a candidate that you talked to. But your candidate experience with them was so good, they wanted you to help them fill the positions, not the person that actually helped them get that job. Here's the thing, like AI can actually help you do that better. Benjamin Mena [00:30:33]: Like I was talking about, it can help you with those interview notes, like the interview prep. Hey, let me just make personalized interview like all sorts of different things available to you. I love that every single one of you guys have gotten business from somebody that you have in place. AI can now help you with the stuff behind the scene, the stuff that can took so much time. But I think here's the biggest thing that elite recruiters realize, but I think most recruiters haven't figured out the value that you guys bring to the table. It's one of those things that I don't think most recruiters understand until easily five, maybe 10 years into the game how important your job really is. And the elite recruiters, they. It's part of their core identity. Benjamin Mena [00:31:13]: They don't believe it. It is their identity. They know what they're doing is helping other people. Think about this in the government contracting space, like, I can, I have a lot more easier ways to probably like rationalize this than most people. Years ago, There was a $550 million contract over in Afghanistan. It was running the back end systems when it came to a lot of the intelligence community stuff. So if any of those systems went down, that intelligence information never make it to our troops. If that information never made it to our troops, I knew that if I didn't find the right person to make sure that stuff stayed up, it could be one of my friends that died, it could be somebody else that passed away. Benjamin Mena [00:31:52]: It's a father that would get injured. So I knew as a recruiter, it was my job to bring the best of the best. Now think about this. If you're in healthcare, you hire a doctor, how many lives can that doctor save? Because what you have done as a matchmaker, you're not just filling a doctor's job. You are now helping thousands of patients every year. You're helping like somebody, like fight cancer. If you focus on the tech sector, like, it sounds nice in government contracting, like lives and the healthcare lives. But think about this. Benjamin Mena [00:32:21]: You're in the tech sector. You're hiring that software engineer, that software engineer, that 10x software engineer that's an absolute rockstar, helps build that product, helps that product go to market, helps that company grow, helps that company go from 1 to 5 million, helps that company go from like 5 million to 20 million. But if they hired a different software engineer, not the one that you brought to the table, that absolute game changer of a candidate, that company could go out of business. That software engineer hire could make or break that organization. And you as a recruiter are bringing that value to the table. And here's another thing to think about. Okay, picture this. I know Greg is going to be talking. Benjamin Mena [00:33:02]: He is a big biller. Go back and listen to some of the interviews that he's done. I know he just had an interview recently with a UK podcast where he talks about some of those numbers. But think about this for what he's billing and we're just, I know it's much higher than this, but I'm gonna throw out an easy number. Okay, let's just say he, his billings is 500k per year. How many people, how many lives have been impacted? How much in salary is it to hit a 500k a year billing? Think about the economic impact that you make. How many Total amount of salaries of the people that you place from the year. That right there is the economic impact that you have made in your community, your network. Benjamin Mena [00:33:41]: As a recruiter, it could be millions if you have a team, millions per year. So something to think about, like, understand the value that you bring to the table. And here's the last thing, I'm just gonna be honest with you guys. I have phone fear too. I want a silver bullet that will save me the time of like being on the phone sometimes. But the elite recruiters in the world of artificial intelligence, they're not gonna be afraid to pick up the phone. The phone right now, old school is the new school. The phone is the absolute differentiator that I'm seeing with recruiters out there that are just crushing it versus the ones that aren't. Benjamin Mena [00:34:16]: Phone time. Because that's where the relationships are built. That's where you are having these conversations. And for a lot of other, like the recruiters that they're dealing with, they don't want any of that. But here's that where you get to come in, become that expert relationship builder over the phone. So what does the future of AI look like in recruiting? And this is just hypothetical. Okay. But I think soon with the recruiting tools, we can see boutique firms in solo recruiters absolutely crushing it. Benjamin Mena [00:34:46]: So I have a working theory. You can find this on a LinkedIn article I wrote about, but I think we can have solo and small teams consistently hitting 500k months probably within the next 18 months. The way the technology is moving, leveraging a full AI tech stack, sourcing, screening, also the outreach, automating routine tasks, focusing so that way you can focus on the human relationship aspects of it. And when I'm talking about like these numbers, I am in my head picturing a recruiter that's probably on the phone six to eight hours a day of actual talk time, you can be kicking out AI market driven insights and be able to like do things at speed. There's already technology out there and some cool tools where you can drop a resume into the tool and your interview notes and it will do a thing. It will actually go find companies to mpc. It'll find those hiring managers, their contact information and it'll customize the message for the mpc. Then you can just hit click and go. Benjamin Mena [00:35:39]: So you can start doing MPC at scale too. And also, one of the things that I think is underrated is I think for these elite recruiters, it's building a brand. I built an accidental brand. I wasn't Trying to build one. But I think a brand is going to be a differentiator between the big billers and the not big billers. Because one of the crazy things when it comes to between two recruiters and content, people perceive experts as somebody that's put out more content whether they're an expert or not. I mean that was like one of the things originally I was like, I was afraid to like kick out podcast interviews because I didn't see myself as like an expert in the space. But the crazy thing is some of these like so called experts, especially me, you might be a way better recruiter than them. Benjamin Mena [00:36:25]: You probably are a way better recruiter than them. It's just they don't know you, they don't know about you. So like find ways to start creating content to help you down the road. And you don't have to be this like salesy sleazy, get content out there, make it sound about yourself, but put stuff out there where people know about you and make sure that that's going out there. I think that's going to be where the keys of these like high billers anyways. I truly believe top billers who embrace AI can gain significant competitive edge in the recruiting industry. We're already seeing it right now. I think we're going to see more and more of that as the technology changes and get better. Benjamin Mena [00:37:00]: Yes, I know a lot of AI has been overhyped over a while, but you're seeing a lot of changes behind the scene that are getting better and better. I know somebody just talked about Crew Light's new AI, how it's helping them, like tremendously. So anyways, thoughts and questions. This is my little buddy Gabe. I have Gabe at the very end just in case my talk absolutely sucks. So that way you guys can be like, hey, look, there's such a cute baby. I don't remember a single word that Benjamin said. So any questions? Thoughts? Benjamin? Horrible. Kortney Harmon [00:37:31]: Yes. Throw the questions in the chat. Ben has a plethora of knowledge and through a bunch of tools out there. I love that you brought up the whole idea of the right stack that all should talk together. Obviously that's. I love that from accreditation aspect. But I like the numbers, the numbers to go along with that. To have a single biller do that much on a desk with AI, it's very realistic in the idea of what it can give back to you. Kortney Harmon [00:37:59]: I just did a talk at Colorado Staffing association and we talked about the time that agents can give you back and I think we determined around 22 and a half hours a week just by using the right agents. And it was crazy. It's like, well, what do you want to do with those 22 and a half hours? What business generating activities can you do? What the best sources for information and education are, in your opinion? Benjamin Mena [00:38:20]: That is like, one of the hardest things right now is just to figure out what are the best sources when it comes to education, especially with artificial intelligence. Because technically speaking, all the experts are learning as they go. All the gurus are trying to sell you something are also learning too. Half the time in the AI world, people are just like two steps ahead of you trying to do stuff. So some of the best places to probably go to is, I know OpenAI AI has courses now. Google has courses now. They're a little harder to find where you can actually go and start learning the fundamental basics of artificial intelligence. And then I would really just also start. Benjamin Mena [00:38:58]: I know Crelate has a lot of interviews with their podcasts. If you hear a firm owner that has absolutely made some game changes that have actually produced roi. One of the things I think a lot of people don't realize is half the time, a lot of the people that are on a podcast are down for a conversation. And give them a little space in case they get slammed. But definitely hit them up and ask, buy them a coffee, send them a Starbucks gift card. Hey, I'd love to virtually buy you coffees. That way I could chat with you for about 20 minutes. What are you guys actually using? So. Benjamin Mena [00:39:30]: And then you need to figure out, like, what's best for you. Not every tool is best for you. They might be good for sales, but yeah, like, figure out what's best for you. Kortney Harmon [00:39:39]: I love it. This is a question kind of twofold. Melissa and Lisa asked this question solopreneur, just getting started. What are the top two programs I should start with? Or what other suggestions do you have? Benjamin Mena [00:39:52]: I would figure out what. What your pain points are. Is your pain points getting candidates. That's a different tool. Is your pain point, like dealing with, like, the not like interviews and stuff like that. That's a different tool. Is your pain point working on job orders? That's a little bit of a different tool. So, like, that. Benjamin Mena [00:40:14]: It's one of the fun things, unfortunately, about a question is like, one question creates like five more questions to try to give you the answer to that original question. I would definitely, at least many times have like an ATS and an outbound tool. Kortney Harmon [00:40:25]: There was another question from Chris. It says, are you able to use something like RB2B or Warmly to see who visits your LinkedIn page or company page when LinkedIn Premium doesn't identify them. Benjamin Mena [00:40:37]: It's for your company page. You have to embed it into your website so it can't check your LinkedIn page because you can't really embed stuff into LinkedIn. But it's for your company page to figure out who's going there. Kortney Harmon [00:40:48]: I love it. And the pain points are getting clients. That is one that I've been hearing nonstop. Just the par for the course. So Melissa wrote, pain points are getting. Clients are just getting folks to answer calls and talk to me. Benjamin Mena [00:40:59]: I would scan that link. I would go down the list to a company called SensePark. I would download SensePark and start utilizing that. Like everybody's calling and emailing. You add videos. When it comes to Lisa candidate sourcing mainly I would do a test run with Crelate's new system when it comes to like. And then on some of the links, there are some other tools out there that are, that are great too, that are absolutely amazing when it comes to sourcing stuff that I'm just like, why did I not have this like years ago? Because it just can save you so much time. One of them is actually sourcing right now and sending out emails to qualified candidates. Benjamin Mena [00:41:36]: While I'm like, while I'm giving you this presentation. Kortney Harmon [00:41:40]: Best platform to share videos from. Benjamin Mena [00:41:42]: I like to send things through SensePark. So like I drop the video into an email like, hey, blah, blah, blah, blah. I actually made this video for you and you can kind of like notify you if you actually, if somebody actually watches it. But yeah, like, I know, like, I wouldn't start with a video on the first message. I do sometimes on the candidate side, but on the like, the sales side, maybe make that like the down a little farther down the chain. Because here's the thing. Also, like, because of artificial intelligence, everybody's using AI tools like it used to be eight touch points to like really make a connection. It's now like 13 to 25. Benjamin Mena [00:42:15]: So it has gotten harder because of everything. A platform to create candidate communities. Splenda, if you go to that link, they also have an MPC tool too. If you go to that link, run all the way down the page to a LinkedIn like Lori, dropping her last name, but Lori. It's her LinkedIn link. Connect with her and, and get a chance to do a, a test with SplendUp. They actually help you build candidate communities. And they also have an, an AI NPC tool that they've built out tool also. Kortney Harmon [00:42:46]: Now the questions are rolling. Benjamin Mena [00:42:48]: I think that's it maybe. Kortney Harmon [00:42:49]: And if you haven't looked at this list and scanned this QR code, the links are endless on this. So if there's any doubt and any questions in any mind, what is out there? Oh, look at lovable. This was exactly what Matt Strange just talked about. Sensepark Video outreach. Definitely follow that and go for it. Benjamin Mena [00:43:10]: I think this next question's for you. You Kortney, when I talk about a dirty CRM and how to detox it, like what are some of the what you guys have and like some of your partners that can kind of help with that. Kortney Harmon [00:43:20]: Chris Hessen, keep that in the back of your mind whenever you talk because I think insights agent might help A dirty CRM how to detox or white that CRM where a good method or AI suggestions. We're going to talk about that. Don't go anywhere where Chris talks from 3 to 3:30, Greg talks from 3:30 to 4:30. There is still lots of good stuff to go. So hold that thought. Anything else for Ben while we have him? Benjamin Mena [00:43:46]: I just want to say thank you guys for listening to me, like coming I whatever. You're busy. I know you guys are all busy within your day getting a chance to like while you're sourcing or while you're doing emails, like you know, have me like on one of your multiple screens. I really just truly believe that the, the recruiting community is just absolutely amazing and it's been really cool to see this evolution of the community too. Where I remember when I first started recruiting many, many years ago at a very small company that starts with the A and ends in a tech, nobody talked to each other. Like everybody was like, these are my secrets. They won't share, like how they're doing, like they won't share an email. Now everybody's like, I mean not everybody's gonna share everything, but people are so much more open to sharing what they're doing than any time before. Benjamin Mena [00:44:33]: Even though like we're competitors, like, I mean now, like a lot of my competitors are also friends too. Kortney Harmon [00:44:38]: So, so many wonderful reasons for you to be a part of so many things. Thank you for always giving back, always having wonderful presentations, always having great insights and always using Crelate and saying such nice things about us. That's just a plug. So I appreciate you. Benjamin Mena [00:44:54]: Well, thank you guys so much. Kortney, keep rocking the house. Kortney Harmon [00:45:00]: We hope you found today's session insightful and inspiring. Remember to stay tuned in the upcoming weeks as we'll be sharing all of this amazing content of our virtual conference. If you miss any part of it, don't forget to subscribe to our show. You don't miss anything upcoming. And if you like this valuable content, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to share it with your network and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Together, we're building a community of growth and learning. Until next time.