Latest / Glovisor Podcast / Ep. 20: 🚨 Your Company Isn't Struggling Because of Competition—It's Your Hiring Process
Transcript
- Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Your company is struggling because of competition, is struggling because your hiring process is broken. This episode's guests built an entire system to fix it. Our guest is the founder and CEO of Vader Rey companies, a multi-division staffing and talent solutions firm, supporting engineering, construction, and operations teams in high demand industries. With a background in the army and oil and gas, he brings a practical operator first approach to building teams and scaling businesses. He helps companies solve Critical hiring challenges by delivering experienced talent quickly, enabling growth without sacrificing quality or performance. Glovisor welcomes Darren Tompkins. Hey, Darren. Darren@vaderrey.com: Joe, how you doing, man? Joe Abreu - Glovisor: ⁓ great. Thanks. Welcome. Darren@vaderrey.com: Welcome, welcome. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, bud. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Likewise, looking forward to the conversation. All right, so Darren, what's the story behind the name Vader Rey and what do you do? Darren@vaderrey.com: Yeah, so Vader Rey is for, you know, nine-tenths of the people on the planet. It is a Star Wars reference. We're a very pop culture company, very pop culture family, as we talked before, before we got on here, I have five and eight year olds. Their names are Josie Vader-Thomkins and Izzy Rey-Thomkins. And, you know, my wife and I had been married before, so it's like, we, came to like, we had some rockin' kids names, you know, and... Vader was just something super cool that I thought Josie could carry with her throughout her life. The Rey, Izzy Rey is obviously from the newer movies. And it was, this is a very true story. It was a toss up. I wanted the name Fett, as in Boba Fett or Jango Fett. And Steph wasn't sold on it. So what happened is we did, she had a C-section and while we're in the operating room, she's like, just take a damn vote. And so. doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, okay, everybody raise their hands. Who wants Fett and who wants Rey? And the Reys got it. So that's how she ended up with her middle name. But yeah, grew up in the, know, 70s and 80s, Star Wars was everything. And I knew it was an instant hook for anybody who saw the name to put two and two together, at least if they're a fan. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Absolutely. Wow. What a conversation starter that is, huh? Yeah now tell us what you your business what is Vader Rey companies Darren@vaderrey.com: Yeah, it always grits if you laugh for sure. Yeah, Vader Rey companies is three companies all wrapped up into one. They tend to funnel into each Vader Rey recruiting is how we started. It is a executive recruiting as well as trade ⁓ up and down the ladder. Contingency search, right? No money down until we get the placement. The half part of the company or second, third, I should say, is Vader Rey engineering, which is 1099 project workers. We've done everything from infrastructure projects, which is oil and gas and like utility companies. all the way up to data center development, building, know, back office work, front of the office, whatever, whatever needs to happen. And then we have Vader Rey Virtual, which is our virtual professional team that is to there to give you as a business owner or executive, get your time back, right? Whether that's with executive assistant type work, or maybe it's your marketing, social media design, website development, whatever gets a few hours back of your time. during the week and to make up for the time you'd rather be doing something else, which who owns a business really they could get their time back to go do the things that they prefer to do rather than what they have to do. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Absolutely. So what was the moment that you realize, listen, I have to get into this industry, disrupt it, because the traditional model is not working. Darren@vaderrey.com: So I, like you, been in business a long time, right? I've been in a W-2, I was in a W-2 for a long time in the oil and gas engineering services. The bottom line is, to this week, I guarantee you Joe, when I get off this call, you get hit up by a lot of really crappy recruiters. Just happens, you know? From Indian companies that are just shooting out whatever they think they can stick, they're required to call 500 people a day just to see who's available to jobs that, I calls to do project management work on the IT sector, something I haven't done since 2014. And happens every single week because they're buying and selling old data, hoping that something will stick. using over my career, going on really bad job interviews where it's like, why am even here? It's like being on a bad date. You said you like this and you're really like this when you get front of the client or the pay is way off ⁓ or the culture stinks. the old adage of, here's your high speed work environment. And it's like cubicle with a laptop sitting in it, know, high speed type where it just drags you down. And I knew getting into the biz, I started working for a small boutique firm versus going with a big company firm that's gonna suck the life out of you. That was a big kind of sink or swim type experience where I got to learn what are the challenges for both the client, which is a hiring company. and the candidates that are looking for jobs and anybody who's been on the market for any kind of time right now, whether it's a candidate or client knows it is absolutely brutal out there. I feel for these folks because I was them and on both sides of the house. So I knew that I could do it cheaper, faster, more professional, better outcomes by getting rid of a lot of the fluff that came with traditional recruiting companies. Everybody's remote. We don't have an office that you come in, Joe, because it's like, man, You might be a client coming. Let me show you our mid rise office that we own. And it takes here's a, we're going to do this meeting with three recruiters and the director of sales, director of recruiting. My admin is going to be in there. Come check out our cool, you know, espresso machine the, in cafe. And you know, my mindset, anytime I saw that, like, man, no wonder this stuff is so expensive, right? where I'm like, let's just cut out everything and go at light speed, work lean, highly incentivize our workers. So you're not dying and you know month-to-month cash flow problems with paying overhead and Just see what we can can get out there and do and it's been very successful so far Joe Abreu - Glovisor: I like that, just removing the fluff and just getting right to it. Darren@vaderrey.com: Yeah, that's what everybody wants nowadays. Nobody cares about the car unless you're like a financial advisor or something, You don't want guy who's driving a crappy car to tell you what you do with the money. But you know, this collared shirt I'm wearing, I have like five of them now. I one suit jacket for every facet of my life. And that reflects, because as an owner, your vision of what the company should be, people rally around that, whether they are clients or candidates or your own employees. ⁓ And ⁓ that's culture we produce here. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: You All right, so when you're placing these engineers in these billion dollar projects, is the real gap between what ask for and what they really need? Darren@vaderrey.com: Yeah, that's great question. engineers an interesting bunch, right? Because people, when somebody say they're an engineer, it's like saying I'm a project manager. It's like, what type? There's a hundred different types out there. Are you trained engineer? Are a mechanical engineer, process chemical, any of that stuff, petroleum? You've got to dive down to what they want to do because the oil and gas sector, a lot of those intertwine. depending on who the client is, whether they're consulting firm or refinery, petrochem, whatever that is. So you really need to understand what it is that they do and then what do they want to do. Because if they're coming from like a refinery type job where they're hair hats and Nomex and stuff, maybe they're ready to make the shift to where to like, man, I'm just, I want to spend more time with my kids, maybe find an office job type stuff. You really need to understand what they want to get out of it and how does that match up with the client? Now our client research is equally as ⁓ detailed as the candidate search, whereas Glovisor needs a person to do whatever, right? Well, what makes, but the first question I always ask is, Joe, why the hell would anybody want to work for you in the first place? And if they start just showing, well, you know, we have this amount of money and this kind of basic stuff that doesn't really fly anymore. It's, it's the office environment's great, but why do people want to work for you? more importantly, why they stay? Because if you're having high turnover, like we're trying to fill this role for you that you've fired or people have quit five times over the past year, there's a significant cultural problem. And it's not with the candidates usually, it's the in-place team that's been there that's dealing with this high turnover. So we get down into the nitty gritty of not just Joe, but hey, how about Joe's boss? Maybe there's a problem there ⁓ below and looking at everything that's happening because you know, clients, I'm sorry, candidates, workers leave for primarily two reasons, 90 % of the time they leave for better pay or better culture. And if they're leaving, get to the bottom of it and what's happening because otherwise you're going to be in the same repeating system over and over again. Now there are 2 % why people quit. There's things you can't factor in, family problems, drug addictions, whatever. I mean, that's outside of anybody's hands. But what sets us apart is the detail that goes into both the candidate side and the client side and the AI that we use to back both of that up. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Sure. So you emphasize a lot of precision. how do you vet the talent so differently than the traditional? Darren@vaderrey.com: That's a great, and I'm going to spill the beans because I believe in just pure transparency. We, you know, traditionally we'll post a job or you will or whoever, right? And then people apply to it, whether it's be off of your company website, LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, whatever. And then, you know, you've got like the three seconds to get the recruiter's attention, right? There's a real problem nowadays, a challenge. It's both, challenging a problem where there are so many people looking for that are transitioning out of other jobs. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Hahaha Darren@vaderrey.com: and clients that are canceling jobs due to so much uncertainty of what's going on out there, whether they over budget or whatever is going on, where we have to speed everything up because the more time you give people to think about stuff, you know, the more they're going to be like, maybe not, you know, we use AI, an AI agent that we've been programming for the last two years. And it's there to help us vet candidates extremely fast. So if we get 50 over weekend, get 50 people applying to a whatever job. We have scheduler positions that are open right now. we get a job description from you obviously as the hiring company and create a numerical system of, know, pluses minuses based off the job description. When people apply, we upload their resumes. We didn't even look at them on right initially because the mistake a lot of people do is they get too vested in the person and not the candidate. Right? The person is who you're going to get along with, working with, whether that's the mutual interests or their culture, right? People will try to hire for culture first and then things don't work out because if they can't do bulleted job, the scripture requirements, why are you going to get to know them deeper anyway? You know, because otherwise you're just, it's like hiring a friend, right? You're just going to get frustrated eventually and it's going to ruin your relationship. So what happens is ⁓ AI spits this out a number between one and 10 with decimal points of how well you match on the job description. The sweet spots of 8.8 to 9.4. We rarely see anything above and anything below the 8.8. just, there's just, there's something major missing, right? It's much like I equated to Dave Portnoy, if you know who that is, he does pizza reviews. They're just, they're rated just like his. Like it's rare to find anything above that. And just, we didn't plan on that, but that's just what the AI thinks. So. Now we have a batch of people that we will schedule to interview. This all happens within seconds. We're going. We're running. And as soon as that AI batch comes back, my recruiters are dialing. And ends up happening is we have our standard interview, first screening call. For us, this can be up to an hour. We have very job description questions that go deeper than what a regular screening call will do. And then once we get that, we run it against the AI again. And very rarely will anybody actually go down and score and most people go up. And then that really starts to kind of get the cream of the crop. Cause again, once you get closer and closer to that nine, four, nine, five, that's really top of the top of the walk. So cuts everything down so quickly because before this could take a week and a half just to go through everything and schedule and up nowadays, everybody's moving so quickly. We can have this first part done in a day, day and a half. Now the challenge for you that we throw at you, the hiring manager is, well, your people. What are you going to do with them? You know, and a lot of, a lot of hiring managers based on their day-to-day work could drag this out. And that is a big no-no because if you drag the interview process out, these candidates are going to, they're going to think that not interested or this is a BS job posting or whatever. So, that's how it works. And then we go into the traditional stuff of interviewing, scheduling on-site interviews, negotiation, offer letter, and bam, we get to the finish line. Now there's million things that can go wrong between now and then dealing with people, as you know. And but we try to do what we can on the risk side to mitigate as much of that as we can. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Sure. So now I see the perspective that you work with the companies that are recruiting. But I want to throw in a question that goes towards for someone who is trying to be recruited, right? Who just submitted a resume. Is there anything that they can do that could improve it? Their chances a little bit more? Is it structure of their resume? Is it more information? It's less information. What would you suggest? Darren@vaderrey.com: So I'm going to use LinkedIn as an example. When you apply to LinkedIn to a job posting, we get an email saying, Joe applied, right? And it tells us a little that's in your headline about yourself, right? I preach this all the time. If we can't tell who you are, where you are, and what you do, there's probably no point in investigating this anymore. You you've got to be blunt. We have job titles. Yeah, you need to go for those job titles, but you also have to tailor your resume to what that job is. So if it doesn't really match up, that kind of tells us you're not taking a vested interest. In other words, if you're just applying to a job, and here's my generic resume, recruiters will pass very fast on that because we want to see that you are vested in knowing what the job is that you're doing. We talk to people all the time, Joe. Hey, hey, you apply to our role that we posted on LinkedIn. Can't wait to talk to you. OK, well, what role was that? You know, it's like, well, it's this scheduler position, scheduling, scheduling. It's like, you sent us your resume that says you're a scheduler, you know, and or they just, you know, or they're in the wrong location. They need sponsorship. There's lots of different things that that happen along there. It's a lot of back and forth, a lot of psychology involved. And if you get frustrated, easy, this is not the job for you. Even if even if you're a hiring manager at a company, it can get frustrating pretty quickly. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: what hiring mistake do companies keep repeating that could easily be avoided with the right strategy? Darren@vaderrey.com: Yeah, we always say hire slow and fire fast. you know, do your vetting. If you're using a recruiter, make sure that ⁓ they what they're doing. I'm fortunate that most, almost all of our clients are referrals. So they're people that I've worked with in the past. So they know ⁓ how good are. And I don't have to do a lot of hot sales, cold sales kind of stuff. So hire slow and fire fast. And I've been guilty of violating that myself for people that have worked for me in the past, because we can go back to like the conversation we had earlier about culture, getting to know somebody, you get invested interests in their lives, and then you're just like, man, she really is bad at this job, and I like her so much. I really feel bad if I fired her. You've got to get that out of your mindset. Otherwise, you're just gonna, they're gonna suck the money out of you, and it's just gonna be more frustrating later on. on the other side of that, what you need. Know who's going to work best with you, right? cultural questions that go into a job interview, even before you get to the job interview, are so important nowadays. And I'll give you another real-world example. We have a client that we just finished up with. They needed a controller. This is for ⁓ a warehouse company here in Houston. the owner, it's company, owned one guy. He brings his giant dogs to work. One's a Cana Corso and other's a Dobermann. Great dogs, very nice dogs, but they are intimidating as crap when you walk up to that front door and they're sitting there looking at you. A lot of people don't like dogs. People are allergic to dogs, whatever issue is. We have to ask that in the beginning. Do you like dogs? Can you work around dogs? They're like, but this isn't like a veterinary job. I'm like, yeah, but they had, this is what happens ⁓ because we ask the company owner to change his ways. It's his company, you know? So we have to tailor it to where their client is. Fortunately, that's not really an issue so far, but something that five years ago, nobody would ever have to think to ask somebody. But nowadays you have to because it's got to be a perfect match. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: So I can see where this is a major value that you're providing to owners because you can actually get a little bit more granular to their desires and the things that they want. So I would imagine that and speed is a major part of your value. So what is the fastest that you've ever filled a critical role and how did you make it happen? Darren@vaderrey.com: So we've done it in a day and a half, which is very rare. This is actually a contracts attorney position for a rolling gas company. They hit us up, man, we need somebody. And it was just like, I know a guy, you know, it's sometimes it just comes down to that. I had a buddy of mine who was at another engineering services company. was at a contracts attorney, got laid off and it's like literally, Hey Bill, called the president up and he wasn't the guy who was the approval authority. But like, Bill, I know a dude if you want to meet him today. He's like, them on down. And he, he lived like 15 miles from the, from the refinery, drove down there, had like a, ⁓ like a coffee afternoon turned into dinner that night, turned into a job offer the next morning. and that was a big deal. You know, we get paid on, percentage of the, the count compensation to get done that fast was like, Holy crap. This is like amazing, you know, because some of these jobs, they sound like should be a slam dunk. You know, they would like, we'll get it done in a few days. No problem. They drag on for months because either the candidate pool is terrible. The, the hiring manager or the company just turns out that they're dragging their feet. And some of them are like, ⁓ this going to be impossible. And then bam, they're done, you know, ⁓ very So there, again, there's a lot of ⁓ probability involved in this type of work when you're dealing with people. call them capital every now and which is really what it is, but it's very volatile, the most volatile commodity out there. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: for a company that's scaling really quickly, what is the first sign their strategy is about to become their liability? Darren@vaderrey.com: So, know, a good example of that is a company that's just killing it in sales. We're killing it in sales. Look at how much income we have for whatever widget that we're selling or service that we're providing. They get to go like, and you have a dynamic sales team, money's flowing in. Then it's like, crap, well, we need like a server guy now and we a legal assistant. Like the support services left in the dust. I've seen that happen so many times. They AP specialists to deal with all the new invoices that are coming in and nobody can get it right. Planning and communication are going to mitigate a lot of that stuff unless all of a sudden ⁓ you got a dollar order in and it's like, well, we're a three person team. What are we going to do with this? People will generally plan better, but understand who your frontliners are and the support services that are needed to support those people. High performance sales guys, man, they will run and gun all day long and they will leave you with a stack of invoices a mile high just because they, hey man, look at all the money I'm making you right now. It's like, well, damn, we really need to find him an assistant or something or their own accounting person. You know, it's gonna mess up your own internal system a bit, but just try to mitigate it as best you can, especially if you're the owner of the company, get involved. Talk to everybody. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: if you could eliminate ⁓ practice or belief from the recruiting industry, what would it be? Darren@vaderrey.com: One practice or belief, one belief that you have to get out of your head. If you're somebody who is looking for a job is at a LinkedIn post where a hundred people have applied to the job you're looking at and thinking that there's no point in it. There's so factors that go into a job that you're looking at because that hundred half of them are going to be remotely qualified for the job. You know, these are people that are just looking to get their foot in the door. Or maybe, their pay expectations are out of whack, right? Their company ATS or whoever's looking at it is gonna eliminate a huge portion of it, right? So now you're in the 50 % margin. Another 25 % of those are gonna be nixed because they need sponsorship or they don't live in the right location. Or they're looking for a hybrid job or a remote job where it's in office type stuff, right? Again, and then they weed out some more of the pay type issues. So now you're down in the top 20, 25%, which is a good place to be. don't pass up something just because you think a lot of people applied to it. There's always this good chance that most of them are involved. Every barista I've ever met thinks that they need a director position, you know, and they'll apply to that stuff. just to get out of whatever situation they're in. don't lose hope in that. is, and I have been there, I've been a job seeker so many times because here in Texas, in your in the oil and gas space, everything rides on what is the cost of barrel of crude today? When it's high, everybody hires everybody invests new technologies. And when it's low, everybody gets laid off. And I've been a member of that several times. And then going back on the job market sucks. But you just have to grind it out. It's like any other job is a full time job looking for a job. There's just no pay or benefits involved with it. So stick with it. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Great advice. All right. So where is the engineering and the technical staffing market headed over the next three years? Darren@vaderrey.com: Yeah. So, we're ⁓ the beginning throws of AI takeover, ⁓ that people are probably going to hate my ass over this, but, you know, we're also a position where companies are cutting people loose. We're talking about major oil and gas operators. My brother-in-law just got let go from one of the majors, been there 24 years as a trader. they were wishy washy about reasons that they let, what was it? 15%. of the market go is because they have old school pensions that they don't want to pay anymore. Anybody that has an old school retirement package, which is so rare to see nowadays, they're letting go. The other reason that they're the more nefarious reason is that they're using AI to take over a lot of the number crunching that's being done. And there's a million articles out there to get prepared to do a job shift. you think that your job, your career, whatever you've been doing, doesn't matter if it's a year or a hundred years, If you think it's possible AI could replace what you're doing, start looking at other options, Recruiting, I don't think it'll ever be fully automated because you and I have to talk. If you're the hiring manager on the candidate, you got to get to know me at some point, right? is why I tell people don't lie on your resume. Don't lie on your LinkedIn. If you're 80 years old and on the job market, don't try to hide your age. If you have an issue with the language, you to let them know upfront because Otherwise, and I show up, or if I show up to interview with you and retiree, gonna man, guy's probably bullshitting me about some other stuff on his resume, or whatever doesn't match up. The takeover, as everybody says, gonna happen. I you see it in meta, you see it in Microsoft, Amazon, and all that. Be ready to pivot. If you even think that there's a... case where your job could be eliminated. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Sure, now from your perspective, get to see a lot of different roles. Is there one role that you're thinking, you know what, this is not going to get replaced anytime soon. And if I were doing this over again, or I were an 18 year old, this is what I would train in today. Darren@vaderrey.com: You know, that's a great question. Again, we talk, we go back to our kids ages. You you, you're at the finish line with yours. Mine are at the beginning. We have this discussion, my wife and I, the family, we, you they have five 29s that are in place for college. They're, they're going to be great. But again, what is, what is the college curriculum going to look like? What does college look like in 10 years? You know, there was a time when, um, you know, I got my bachelor's degree where it was like, everybody needs to get an MBA if you want to get ahead in life. You know, and there are, just kind of comes and goes. the time I got done, I was so frustrated. I don't want to do this. Like it took a few more classes. You MBAs weren't worth ⁓ paper they were written on as far as employees were concerned. Nowadays they're coming back a little bit more. But with our daughters, you know, it's like, if you can't figure out what to do, there's no problem with trades. You know, they always need people to actually put stuff together. That is something that we never have a problem finding help with. Yeah. Okay. Data center help. What, what, what they really need help is people to build it. You know, that is never going to stop construction because there's only so much land and so many, so much material that something should probably think about if, especially if you're in a job where AI is going to, going to wipe it out. construction is always going to be there. anything dealing with a man, other than actually physically building, you could be in a problem. You know, we used to hire front end developers like gangbusters, man. Now, AI has taken over all that work. just, you kind of have to figure it out for yourself in whatever ⁓ you're getting into. Again, we're speculating. I'm thinking 10 years ahead of who knows what's going to happen to that point. A lot of it is political, like how much land can we give up and electricity water? But start about it now, ⁓ especially if have kids, young kids. Think about what they're going to look like here soon. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: That's true. Now, what would be the one message that you would give a founder or an operations leader who knows their team is not prepared for what's coming? Darren@vaderrey.com: Yeah, get your communication up. If you know that there's issues, you need to tell them now. Nobody likes being told after hours from HR, by the way, your position's been cut. It doesn't matter if you have a thousand people or if you have three people. Keep the communication up. Don't anybody. A lot of our team is in the Philippines, just because that's how I ⁓ formed the to cut the costs. We meet twice a week. to go over things that are going on over there right now. They're in a real fuel crunch, electricity crunch, because they're just getting hit. Asia's getting hit harder than anybody over this Iran thing. B, ⁓ some empathy for people. If you do need to cut, do it a way that's going to maintain the relationship, because it is everything nowadays. I have previous candidates that I worked with five years ago that are now managers that are coming to me to help them out, right? So. Understand that there's everybody's fighting a battle Understand you will be fighting one at some point in time and just keep the communication going man I mean that is the that is something that gets lost in business so quickly, you know, you turn around the week is up what happened I don't know. They'll send me an email summary or something and then the week later two weeks into it Everything's a disaster, you know, and it's just because you're not keeping your Your finger on what's going on Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Absolutely. Great advice. Now, Darren, who should be contacting you right now? Darren@vaderrey.com: Yeah. Anybody that needs, it's having full-time transition problems where like we talked about earlier, we're ⁓ having rotating door in and out of people and ⁓ people candidates that don't are applying. Absolutely ready to help you. If you have project work that needs happening, it doesn't matter if they're in Alaska or South America, we can get them for you depending on what you need done. And then, know, ⁓ founders and owners that just need some time back, whether it's four hours a week or 20 hours a week, we have the outreach and the know-how to get you something to do the work that you maybe necessarily don't even want to do anymore. But somebody else will be willing to take for a very small pay to do it for you. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Yeah, and where can they contact you to continue this conversation? Darren@vaderrey.com: Yeah, you can please reach me at Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N at VaderRay.com, V-A-D-E-R-R-E-Y.com. can find me anywhere. I'm very easy to find on social media. I've got a big wide range of background. You don't even need social, just Google me. There's a million pages out there. But yeah, all the contacts are there. The phone number's on every website. The phone numbers that are on every single website that I have, every other company, is directly to my cell phone. Because I'm always believe that I need to be the point man for anything, any issue, any new client, anybody that needs help. So that's just been ingrained in me because my mom was a social worker and that's just something I've kept with me my entire life. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Darren, thanks for the powerful conversation and for bringing down the work that you're doing at Vader Rey companies. It's been a pleasure having you. Darren@vaderrey.com: Joe, this has been great, man. You're running a great program here. Joe Abreu - Glovisor: Excellent. Thank you very much. Till the next time.