The Future of Recruiting with Evan Sohn on Rebel HR

Evan Sohn: 0:00

Today we think work from anywhere benefits Kyle, the employee, oh, you could be anywhere you could be in Maui, you could be in Nebraska, you could be in New York work from anywhere. That really benefits me. I can work from anywhere I want, I can go live wherever I want. And it's going to have a tremendous change on the dynamic of suburbia and communities and real estate, and all these other lasting effects. And I completely agree with that.

Kyle Roed: 0:23

This is the rebel HR podcast, the podcast where we talk to human resources, innovators, about innovation in the world of HR. If you are a people leader, or you're looking for a new way to think about how to help others be successful. This is the podcast for you. Rebel on HR rebels. All right, Rebel HR listeners, welcome to this week's show really excited for our guest, Evan stone. Evan is the chairman and CEO of a site you've probably all heard of recruiter.com, which is an on demand recruiting platform that combines AI, and video job matching technology with the world's largest network of small and independent recruiters. Really looking forward to having him on the show. He's a frequent contributor to CNBC, and Yahoo, finance, and just an all around really established guy. So, Evan, thank you for joining us today. Hey, Kyle, thanks so much for having me on your show. Really excited? Absolutely. So are we so we are all about innovation in the world of HR space, and what better person to talk to about innovation than the guy who was running an on demand recruiting platform that combines AI and video job matching tech? You know, I'll take it Kyle, what's what's really interesting is I am like the least experienced recruiter at recruiter calm.

Evan Sohn: 1:51

Right, you know, I've been doing it. I've been CEO for a little over a year, I've been chairman for about two and a half years. My background really is in technology, disruptive technology, reinventing marketplaces, and, and industries. So started my first company at the age of 21 1989. So I'm not a young guy in mobile computing. So if anyone remembers what mobile look like in the 90s, my company was really at the forefront there, got acquired by Dun and Bradstreet in 98. And done a number of subsequent sort of small company to big company acquisitions really grown up, etc. And it's really excited to sort of bring my background to the recruiting industry, which you know, is just this huge, amazing industry, that's really ready to be taken to the next level ready for 2021. And leveraging I think what's going on in the world today, basically says everything is going to change, so why not have the talent acquisition at the talent acquisition side of the business change as well? How's that for a mouthful? Kyle? You know, yeah, that's

Kyle Roed: 2:58

great. Yeah. And we were talking before I hit record, I mean, that we'll talk about a timely topic. I mean, you're hearing about the the great resignation, the war for talent, you know, the the fastest recruiting is kind of what's winning right now. And in my opinion, so I've been recruiting for for well over two decades now. And I think recruiting is way behind the curve in a lot of areas. And it's really ripe for some disruption. So, so what led you from kind of, you know, the world of tech, specifically into the niche of recruiting.

Evan Sohn: 3:37

So first off, I completely agree with you. I actually came out with a piece the other day called the Golden Age of recruiting. every industry had its moment in time. So the.com, Telecom, mobile eecom, finance, real estate, home improvement, you know, every industry and sector, had its moment in time, recruiting never dead, right. And when I say recruiting, let's use the word talent acquisition, in general never had its moment in the sun. This is the golden time for recruiting. Why? Because the whole world is different now. So let's look at you have you know, pre pandemic level of unemployment, right, just incredible, right, right where we were with to the pre pandemic level, yet there is incredible underemployment, hourly workers, no one wants to go back to work. We're about to see the great resignation. We started talking about the great resignation, by the way, I think my CNBC segment last month, and we'll talk about the recruiter in depth in a while. I call that chasing candidates, right? That's really what we were saying just chasing candidates, you know, the voluntary churn in the US is usually between 22 and 27%, and different industry segments across the board there. We think there's going to be just tremendous resignation for a variety of reasons. I never want to work for From Home Again, I only want to work from home again. I've moved I don't live in New York anymore. I've moved to Florida, New York office wants me to come back in, I'm not going back in, I'm going to move to Florida work from anywhere. I think there's so many trends going on now that the pressure on the talent acquisition team, the in house talent acquisition team now whether that's the small business owner, who's running talent acquisition for their company, or the Global Head of talent for a fortune 100 company, they're under pressure now, more than ever before, they may have decimated the recruiting department a year ago. Right. So here, here, they woke up, they decimated because we're not hiring anybody. And all of a sudden now Holy crap, I need to hire, you know, 300 people in the next six months. And by the way, that's just to fill the roles I have today. You know, what's interesting, Kyle, is we have this discussion with companies or you're looking for recruiters, or you're looking for pipeline, or both. And the answer is always both. Everyone's always looking for both I need I need talent. And I need the people to help manage that talent. Now to answer your question, boy, that was a nice little detour. I love looking at these industry segments. Were during the existing industry, and you're going to reinvent it, right? I think we used to use the word disrupt. We don't use the word disrupt anymore. Let's go reinvent this industry. And what's interesting, is you look at the recruiting industry, and the model was created. I use the word recruiter that 30 years ago, right? 30 plus years ago, hey, company x needs a role they paid the role, you know, $150,000 so Hey, mister recruiter, I'm working with 16 different recruiters go find me the right person, you found the right person, I'll pay you 20% of the salary. There you go. Now that's worked fantastic. But 30 years left, but let's look at where we are today. If you saw resume, Kyle, you our recruiter, you saw our resume five years ago, five years ago, for someone that was at a company for 10 years. What would you say about that? individual?

Kyle Roed: 7:07

loyal, loyal, stable? stable? Yeah, let's let's get them on the team. Yeah, that was that was the thing. You look

Evan Sohn: 7:15

at a resume today. And you see 10 years? What comes to your mind?

Kyle Roed: 7:21

Um,

Evan Sohn: 7:23

how about the word risk averse?

Kyle Roed: 7:24

Yeah, yeah. Not Yeah. Not interested in

Evan Sohn: 7:28

really expanding the horizon and trying new things, right? reluctant to change, maybe reluctant to change? Right? Yeah, we might go after that person because that person is stable. But is that the hungry, dynamic, changing person. And let's look at the opposite. You saw a resume 10 years ago of a person changing jobs every three years, and you're gonna go, Wow, this guy is a job jumper. Right? We had terms for it. Right? We had a term for it. In fact, when you wrote a resume, and we could talk about resume some other time, but you know, do I really want to put that experience there? I don't know, I was only there for a year, it does look good on my resume. Like, now you see someone that's been at three companies in nine years or three companies and for you like, wow, this person is in demand. They're really moving, you know, look at their exciting experiences they have I want someone with that experience level at my company. So this whole dynamic has changed. And by the way, how the hell do you amortize the same 20% over a career of someone that's not going to be there for three years. Right. So that whole economic model has to change. If you're a company, you're going to say I don't want to be paying 20% of a salary for someone that's not going to be there for more than 18 months or 24 months, right? I want to change that I want to change the whole way This has all happened. And when you look at the model today, the ability and what we're really doing at recruiting comm is helping companies of all sizes, augment their in house talent acquisitions team through a network of now over 30,000 independent recruiters of varying skill levels, right? We have people that have been doing it for years, and people who've been doing it for 30 years that are available on demand, like Upwork, or like any other freelance platform, and we're combining them with tools. And I think the the secret sauce that we have is we have these great AI enabled tools to search engage. And we've seen those tools before, but guess what? Very, very few companies want to have a new tool. Right? The goal of the talent acquisition manager at company x is not just sign up for new tools. They're being they're being measured on butts in seats. How do you still the candidate pipeline, so go leverage on demand recruiters and on demand recruiting technologies and fill our pipeline up with great candidates. That's what we're doing today. And to me, nothing is more excited than being able to do that time. and time again for great, really fantastic companies that we work with today.

Kyle Roed: 10:05

Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. And I hadn't really thought about that and taken a step back and said, okay, you know, yeah, job jumper job hoppers. What? You know, that's the term. Is that as big a deal anymore? And and, you know, I think the honest answer is, it depends on your hiring manager. A lot of times I struggle, at least in my industry, which is manufacturing, which is explaining that, listen, you know, the 20 year veteran and trying to, you know, court them away from a company that that may be the worst person that we can get given the, you know, what we actually need for the roll. And then I think the other challenge is, when you look at the approach towards recruiting individuals who are in high demand, is also that fear that Oh, if I, if they're in high demand, you know, we might only get them for a year. So if we're not really intentional about the job structure and what we're recruiting for, you could completely waste somebody's talent and experience in a role that's not the right fit. So it's, it's a really, really challenging time right now. But it's an area I would agree that HR in general, you know, we've typically been pretty bureaucratic. We've been focused on the stability, and compliance and some of those things, as opposed to how do I actually design jobs, processes structures, for growth, for dynamism and for the great resignation? Which whether we like it or not, it's coming. But I guess my question is, is it here to stay? Yeah. Or is it so let's?

Evan Sohn: 11:35

Yeah, let's let's Muse on that for a little bit. Right. So what, what stops a company from downsizing? Right, let's go to the opposite. Let's go to the extreme. These are huge emotional element in downsizing a company, if ever seen it, it is incredibly depressive. You walk through the office, and cubicles are empty. And you have this huge weight on your shoulders. Hey, where's Mary? Mary's? Fantastic. Yeah, I'm sorry, we let Mary go. Where's Fred Fred's the life of the party? I'm sorry, we have to let Fred go. It's this huge emotional drain that we have. Well, guess what, if we're on a on a video screen, Hey, where'd page three go? I don't know, page three isn't on here anymore. It's it's a completely different thought process to reducing a force when you're not physically around them. And we're going to start embracing that. And companies are going to start figuring that out. So there are a few other things that I think is going to be happening. And again, if you look at the trends, you have this incredible trend in the US for freelancers, incredible 35% of all adults have a side gig in the US 50% of all millennials have a side gig. So you have all these competing forces sort of really thinking about these things. So here's the question for you. As a company, I'm going to start to say, and again, I'm exaggerating to prove a point. And I firmly believe and we are not in a either or world we're in an ad both world, right? I grew up with the VHS or Betamax. Right from Showtime, or HBO, Mac or PC, right? We don't do that anymore. We're in a complete and both world and all these worlds are going to be existing at the same time. But I think a company is going to say, Hey, you know what, the skills that I need right now are exactly what Kyle has. So hey, Kyle, I need you for the next 18 months to come to my company. And I will pay you a ridiculous amount of money to come for 18 months, and maybe it's 24 months. But the recognition is, Hey, this is not going to be a lifetime project. Come here for 18 months, come here for 24 months, I'm going to pay you a lot of money to come on this assignment. And when it's over, look, you can either go to another assignment at the company for if you want to keep doing that, or, hey, we're good. I paid you a lot of money to do that. Now, it's a different mindset. But guess what, when you're in Silicon Valley, you know, there's a four year vesting schedule on options. When you see someone at a company for more than four years, there must be an issue, right? Because you're moving, you're really moving around me or you know, you are your greatest asset. So I think as companies start to think about, gee, is this a project? Is this a skills based role that I need for a period of time and address that and embrace that embrace the skill, embrace the skill that I need for a period of time to get that job done? And by the way, let's look at it on a holistic level. I need a very experienced Java programmer for the next 18 months. I don't know if I need that same experience level programmer 18 months later. So let me go solve the problem I'm dealing with today address that program address the issue that I'm dealing with today and we'll start seeing all those movements. You know, I said the other day, on on C NBC potpie, two months ago, you know, the old give it the old college try is probably going to be an expression that goes out the door. You know, and we actually predicted we so about a year ago, when I, when I became CEO, we did what we call the recruiter index. So I surveyed our recruiters and to use their sentiment to give this to use their results as a sentiment to the overall job market. What do they see jobs increasing, decreasing? are candidates more inclined to to look at a role? What sort of roles or mode, you know, are they seeing roles in a more remote hybrid person, salary levels, industry levels, etc, a very quick two minute survey. And we started reporting on that information at a little over a year ago. And it's really interesting to sort of watch, you know, that overall sentiment of where they're seeing things actually happen. And the the interest in these these rules actually changing over time. So I find that to all be, you know, very, very exciting and really look at the skills Oh, and we started to say we predicted two months ago that we start to see the need for a college degree decreased slightly in the jobs that they were looking for. So what does that mean at a tight job market? Hey, you know what, I don't give a crap if you have a college degree and I can get the job done. Right. And you know, the first time they see that now, that's going to actually increase also, you know, very interesting statistic for you. Pre pandemic, it was the highest employment of ex cons. Huh, crazy Why? Well, look, if I need to feel fill a role, I'll fill it with anybody, right? I need to fill that role. What do you got, just give me somebody that can fill that role. Now what I was talking about with the skills level, you know, that actually resembles internships, right? When you bring on an intern, hey, look, this is a one year internship. And when it's over, let's go figure out whether you belong here. So we're doing that already today. It just hasn't morph or evolved into the more experienced roles. But you know, it's pretty cool, right? Used to be a consultant to do that. But look, if a company needs Kyle, I got to create an environment that really aligns with Kyle and cause like, Look, I don't want to be here for 20 years. So guess what, I don't want you here for 20 years, I'm gonna create incredible opportunity for you to come here for 18 months, I need you for 18 months. That's a very, very interesting mindset. And as the as the resume starts to shift away from these, you know, what expect, what, what Job did you work out for a number of years, it's going to really start to really, really get to become incredibly dynamic. And you and I know, the more that I'm at the market, the greater is for talent, acquisition people, right, things are moving around, people are coming and going and moving around, etc. And that's just a very, very exciting time.

Kyle Roed: 17:46

Well, you've got you've, you've hit on so many things. It's like, geez, I got like, 37 questions now. But I, to tack on to that I you know, I agree. 100%. And I think it's such a, it's been such a shift in mindset of stability and career into a mindset of, Okay, what do we actually need done? And how do we want to get it done. And I think what's going to be interesting is, you know, we focus so much in the HR space on trying to find the long term cultural fit, you know, and the like, and focusing on kind of the the softer skills, what you've described, to me, it sounds a little bit more impersonal. But I do think it's the reality of where we're going is with the gig economy with individuals who are predisposed to not be loyal to a company, but loyal to a profession and to something that they like to do. And if they happen to want to stick around, they can. But you know, what it what it really sounds like, to me is it's it's more about individual choice. And the power dynamic is really shifting from employer, to employee or contractor. However you want to So

Evan Sohn: 19:01

look, I think, at the end of the day here, you hit the nail on the head. There are a lot of things in motion. We actually called a couple weeks ago, I was on another CNBC segment, and I said that we just started to see chief remote work officer. Right, and they were cracking up, it was like a panel and they were like, cracking up. I'm like, imagine like, you know, that's my job. I sit at home on a couch and I make sure that everyone's got these remote things, but we're embracing the fact that you know, work from anywhere, right? Who do you think work from anywhere benefits it now today? We think work from anywhere benefits. Kyle? The employee? Oh, you could be anywhere you could be in Maui. You could be in Nebraska, you could be in New York work from anywhere that really benefits me. I could work from anywhere I want. I can go live wherever I want. And it's going to have a tremendous change on the dynamic of suburbia and communities and real estate and all these other lasting effects and I completely agree with that. But you know who else work from anywhere helps and helps the company. Because what used to happen is, oh, I only could find the fish that I'm fishing for is only in my geographic area. But if I can work from anywhere, you know what I could hire from anywhere also, I, I'm not limited now. And by the way, what I've seen some companies do is, hey, this group of people, they need to be in the office, this group, they could work from anywhere. But the mindset there is going to say, you know, what, what percentage should belong in the office on a regular basis, and what percentage I can deal with remotely for a variety of reasons. Maybe that industry segment doesn't like to be in the office, I don't know what they are, let's not, let's not classify the actual role themselves. But as a company, oh, man, I was avoiding going into this space, because I needed this sort of talent. And I don't have that talent here. So now I can hire anywhere. So when we say remote work from anywhere, we think, what about hiring from anywhere I can now hire from anywhere. Now we already saw that. We saw that happen in it and y2k that started to open up the whole world of outsourced IT services, and insourced in source that near shore and offshore from an IT services perspective, maybe it's back office, financial accounting, that I'm outsourcing, I really started to outsource these individual pockets of things. And by the way, in the overall.com world that we also live in, we're seeing companies that do, hey, you can outsource your HR services to a company, you can outsource this service to your company, you outsource to justworks and ADP, your PTO, your your employee benefits, you know, it's already doing these things. So why not move that down a notch and say, Hey, you know what, I need some of this stuff built. And the people that build this stuff, whatever that is, don't live near me. I can hire from anywhere. Great. I want them working for me, I want Kyle working for me, because I want his DNA as part of the organization. I want him dreaming about the company itself. But you know what, I can hire Kyle, wherever he lives, that's going to be a tremendous asset for companies. And we're going to start to see here is really the company's embrace. And this is of course, my opinion, the company's embrace this notion and say, hey, look, we're hiring from anywhere. Not just Kyle wants to work committee, we're hiring from anywhere. Very, very interesting, very, very exciting, dynamic, very exciting, dynamic, what it does for the industry.

Kyle Roed: 22:32

Absolutely. And I think, you know, this is more anecdotal, but you know, real world experience within my organization. So we are international, and we're in 11 different countries and, you know, 26 different locations, but we've started to be much more open to, you know, what I would call location agnostic, hiring, right? where it's like, Hey, where's the customer at? Oh, they're in? They're in Indonesia? Okay, well, we should probably look at somebody in Southeast Asia. Right, somebody that can get there if the customer needs him there. But, you know, regardless, which location, we need him out. Well, I don't care.

Evan Sohn: 23:08

Right, you know, yeah, by the way, think about that example, you know, about 15 minutes ago, you were worried about those four people that were work remotely at your company? And are they actually performing and getting their jobs done? And we're having those conversations 15 minutes ago? I don't know people want to work from home on Fridays, and this summer, I don't know if we should elect like, really 15 minutes ago, that was the topic of conversation. Yeah. And so let's embrace the beginning of our conversation, said, Hey, COVID changed everything. If we go under the assumption that the world is going to be a different world post COVID thing, guess what we don't we don't talk about, you know, his remote productive or not. We talked about how much how much remote? Do I want to have in my company? Right? And how does that actually work? And yes, you know, I, as a CEO struggle daily, with how do you run a virtual organization? Right? How do you do that I have like, zoom hours, like coming to my zoom, I have weekly coffee with, with, you know, half a dozen people every week. And I'm doing that because, you know, I'm struggling. As an individual who has worked in environments, I used to get on a plane to go to the office to just, you know, have FaceTime for three days, you know, every couple of weeks. That's a crazy, you know, that's how I grew up. Now, the world is actually changing, but it just creates such a dynamic flexibility. You know, for a minute, there were jobs I didn't get because I didn't want to move that. Imagine this is not a room now that we're doing that now. You know, you're an incredibly talented guy file. And now any company that wants your skill set can have that skill set. It's no longer limited to where you live. This is an amazing, amazing, you know, new addition to the world.

Kyle Roed: 24:57

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Evan Sohn: 29:05

Yes. Look, I I agree. You know, we surveyed our people, and we're about 60 employees around the contrary, you know, what do you want in terms of work, balance hybrid in person, everybody felt that they would want to come into the office every now and then. But most people were like, once a week, once every other week, once a month, you know, and it became more about social working as opposed to, you know, we need to work and learn. I will say that I think you're absolutely right. The different career stages require a different level of interaction. Certainly the younger entry level people need more mentoring. They need more hands on approaches, etc. And I think we're gonna have to figure that out. Yeah, you know, we're just gonna have to figure that out. We have a partner Should we work? And I'm actually recording this in a we work out in Silicon Valley had a couple of meetings here. And it's been amazing. And here I am, in different offices, really around the country, leveraging, you know, what really is their product of, hey, let's have a product that meets the people that want to be able to move around from we work to we work around the country, and it really enables us to do that. And we're pretty virtual organization, recruiter comm where 60 people really everywhere in the you know, really throughout the US, we were always virtual, we have people really on on the coasts in the middle of Midwest etc. And so, you know, these sorts of things, you know, how do you how do you create that cultural environment, we actually have a cultural committee, we have a committee that's really thinking about how do we do these things. And that balance that you were talking about? It's it's certainly a challenge that real companies are going to have to really figure out, I do think the benefits outweigh the challenges, right, let's not call them costs, let's call them challenges. And the challenge is going to be that the ability to retain Kyle is going to be much harder, right? Because, you know, part of why, you know, look, if there was a job I was at for probably six months longer than I want it because the commute was fantastic. You know, who doesn't want that? Oh, you like the people, you know, I'm staying at a company because I really, really like working with the people. They're my friends, we hang out, we get together, all these other things. You know, do we live to work, we work to live and like all these, all these challenges is sort of, you know, going to be churning around really, really quickly as we start to think about those things. But here's the good news. You know, in the world of talent acquisition, it's going to get more complicated, no matter what, it's going to get more complicated. We're not going back to the where we were 15 minutes ago, we're now 15 minutes ahead of that. And the challenges now are, I need a constant stream of pipeline, and any company that thinks that they do not need a constant stream of candidates coming in and looking at them is really gonna wake up one day and realize, Oh, I just lost 15% of my people.

Kyle Roed: 32:12

Absolutely. So I want to I want to dig into this a little bit, because this is something I've been saying this for years, and I view IV recruiting, very similar to real estate, where it's like, you know, okay, if you're looking for the right house, you're looking at dozens and dozens and dozens of houses, and you got everything flagged up and coming your way so that you don't miss that house, right. But even if you put down 10 offers, you may only get one accepted, especially in this market. So as we look at recruiting, I've always looked at recruiting very similar to like that, it kind of like an acquisition pipeline, right? So you just you always need to have a funnel, and you're kind of constantly funneling down, you've got to look at your value proposition and all your structures. So how do you? And I love that I love the term and that that was used here. How do you focus on Tinder is a nation of recruiting.

Evan Sohn: 33:03

You love that? Love it? Um, so? Yeah, so the Tinder zation of recruiting is really the sort of recognition that the, the actual resume that we have is going to change. You know, the resume was invented by Leonardo da Vinci. Seriously, and I think the only thing

Kyle Roed: 33:25

that true, I didn't know that,

Evan Sohn: 33:27

true, the resume was invented by Leonardo da Vinci and other than Helvetica, and the font changing and putting our email and mobile phone number on the, you know, on the resume hasn't really changed much. Right? It's just been on one page, you put your hobbies at the bottom, here are your most relevant experiences, right, that resume hasn't changed. Yet, everything else we were doing has. And I believe that the certainly for customer facing roles. Being able to watch someone in action, a video, you know, whether it's Tiktok, video, a video, resume a video screen, and we have that technology as part of our platform. But I think that's really going to be how we start to look at customer facing roles, anything that's really customer facing, or, you know, I want to make sure there's a good fit culturally, etc. You know, any, if you are hiring the comedian for a nonprofit organization event for for your event for your company, you wouldn't read their resume, you would say, you know what, show me all the comedians that aren't raunchy, that are in the Midwest, that are available during this time. And you'll get this filtered list of here the, you know, 50 people that are 20 people that aligned with what you're looking for, oh, let's filter down a little more. I don't want an old comedian, a young comedian. Here's what I'm looking for in a comedian. And now let me play 30 a 32nd spot. And I'll say, Oh, this guy is really good. This woman's really funny. Let me look at her Oh, what do you know her resume says she was on The Tonight Show. Oh, she was on this show. She was on that show that. But that's how we do it. We do things across the board, you know, and we are more than our resume. Right? Your resume, you've you've cold that resume, you've curated that resume to be the things that you think with. But you're far more than that resume. I want to see you I want to see you in action, I want to see you talk about why you love what you do. Right. And here's a 30 minute, a 32nd segment on here is me, and here's who I am, here's why you should look at my, my information. And I think that that is not again, not a 21 thing, probably a second half 22 we're going to start seeing these things really move along the way. It's too tight. Now, you know, if you're a talent acquisition manager, you don't want to get anything in the way. Right, you really don't want anything in the way right now. So it'll probably be something that will happen sometime, I'm going to say, you know, in 22 just a really get past. You know, everyone says kallithea, everyone has the word collaborate on a resume collaborated with whatever, you know, you get the buzzword everyone has these words, right? Let a team manage the process collaborated with this group interoperated with what we've all done that right and grew revenue over that. Yeah, with all these other things. You know, the joke was my first company was in New Jersey. And in those days, if you didn't have at&t on your resume in New Jersey, you probably weren't a real company att worked with everybody in New Jersey, you know, so they're always these like segments that you have. Okay, you know, here's, here's what it is. And we're we are more than our resume. By the way, here's a trick for all of your candidates that are looking for jobs, you can actually put keywords on the resume in white text. And the AI engines will pick that text up. There you go.

Kyle Roed: 37:08

That we're we are on to that. I've, I've got the habit now we're all highlight the bottom to see if I can see any white SEO. But that's the game, right? That's the game. Yeah, so I want to get a little bit tactical there if I can. So you're a tech guy. I'm just kind of curious. You know, as we look at AI and I'm wanna you know, I have an ETS, and we have a couple tools, but we, we haven't jumped all the way into the AI bandwagon yet. So So how does the, you know, how does the AI kind of make this match for a candidate? Or how does it How does it empower an internal talent acquisition team to sure to filter and find the right fit?

Evan Sohn: 37:54

Alright, so let's combine that question with the question before. So if we look at the process of recruiting, right, there was find candidates, engage the candidate screen the candidate, interview hire. Right, that's been the process. So that probably has never changed. So how do you find a candidate G In the old days, we took an ad out in the classified section in the New York Times, that's been replaced with a job board that's been replaced with a digital job board that's been replaced with monster calm, that's been replaced by careerbuilder hot jobs. And now you know, zip recruiter LinkedIn and indeed, and you know, all the other job boards. Okay, so that's how we find the candidates, then how do we engage them? Well, I would email I would use this they would engage me I would engage them, etc. And I think what the AI and we have a really cool AI does is hey, look, finding people, that's pretty easy. Right? The it the link, LinkedIn has done a great job aggregating together professionals, right. So finding people is actually pretty easy thing to do. Right? identifying Actually, let's I use the word find, identify, show me all the, you know, XYZ that are in Buffalo, New York that have at least five years of experience and all these other things. Let me find all the people. So what you really want AI to do is to use its brain a little bit to figure out Hey, when I say I want this skill set, what else do you include in case the person didn't actually put down on LinkedIn or in their resume those specific skills oops, I have these skills. You also have these skills. And guess what, I'm not just looking for Buffalo, New York. I'm looking for people that have been through Buffalo, maybe they were worked at Buffalo two companies ago, they would come back because this way they have family and whatever, whatever that is. I'm going to use AI to help find all these people and identify all these people. What I really love about our tool because I used all the other tools is our toolbox. combines email marketing, and AI search and fine. So now that we found everybody up, I now have my list of people. Now I'm going to use our built in email campaigning tools, Ai, with a B testing and subjects and all these other things to now get the candidate to raise their hand. And the real goal, I think, is to really flip the model where Kyle, instead of spending 80% of his time finding people and engaging them and 20% of the time actually speaking to really qualified people, let's flip that around, let's use tools that let us spend 20% of our time identifying and engaging people, and 80% of the time, actually speaking to qualified candidates and customers, and really figuring out matches, and here's why, you know, there are a couple of crazy statistics, the average hire costs a company $4,129, and takes 42 days in 250 resumes, we got to fix that, like we got to fix that. We're just not gonna be able to keep up. So either we have to get more people in the talent acquisition world or change the numbers, and how do we change all that. And so using tools like what we provide, and others provide to really expedite that overall identification process, engagement process, screening process, etc, to really make all that happen. Now, I think what we do from a secret sauce perspective is not just we have phenomenal tools, phenomenal tools that'll stand up anyone else's tools and access to like, a billion plus or after. It's like we have all that stuff. But we're actually able to use our on demand recruiters to actually do the the button clicking right or the screening, right? And so you have to decide as the talent acquisition manager, when do you get involved? Right? You, Hey, you know what, I will get involved when you have someone that meets these qualifications, raise their hand, you explain to them the job, and they're interested in talking more, now I'm ready to talk to them. Don't waste my time with someone who isn't ready to move back to Buffalo, right? I just don't want to talk to someone or who can't come to Buffalo once a month for the in house meeting or once a week, because we're doing a hybrid, whatever that model actually is. And so we want to do is give you more time to actually get those candidates plays, talk to customers about their requirements. And that's where these tools really need to play. And so it's not just about doing it yourself. It's about how much of that self Do you want to be doing? How much of the work? Do you want to be allocating to yourself? Now, when you're only doing three placements a month? Yeah, sure, I'll do two to three, I'm fine. I'm keeping my job, I'm really happy. That number is now four to five, I got to do a month, I got to change, I need more throughput. I got it, I got to do a better job of doing the job that I'm doing today. And I'm going to do that by leveraging tools and people.

Kyle Roed: 42:55

So it sounds pretty similar to what what paid recruiters do right, you know, yeah, I mean, that's the same. That's the same conversation I have with someone who's taken a 20% first year salary fee up front. Plus, you know, but but you're, you're using a tool to do that. Yeah. And

Evan Sohn: 43:13

yeah, I I actually really think that the, Hey, I'll only pay you if you give me the candidate that placement, you know, that placement, that model? I think it's a flawed model in general, I think, again, for executive low recruiting, I totally agree with it makes a lot of sense. And you're gonna pay a retainer, and you're really locking that in, etc, you know, but let's go through the opposite the worst recruiter that you could find, right, so let's assume if recruiter comm is about recruiting talent faster and better, what's the slowest way to recruit? Right, so the slowest way to recruit would be to find a recruiter that has no experience in the industry you're looking for, right? Has no candidate pipeline tool, etc. and is paid on success only. Right? Because that's just the slowest way to recruit. They don't know, this individual doesn't understand the space. They don't have candidates and they're paid on success. So they're not even there's not even a motivation from to learn it right I took on now Meanwhile, you hired this person because you like them. That your friend, they're your neighbor, they're your nephews cousin or their recruiter. And again, you're obviously knowledgeable in the space, but for most people and recruiters, a recruiter so the hiring the recruiter, what do you know, Hey, how are we doing on that roll? I don't have anybody for you. Ah, not going to go find someone else. So what's the best way to do it? The best way that the fastest way would be to find the right recruiter. Right Give me the right recruiter. I need an oncology experienced oncology recruiter that knows. To find you know, these types of oncologists in this geographic area. Let them have a candidate pipeline, either curated tool or access to candidates. Access to tool to help build a candidate pipeline quickly. And I'm going to pay them for their time, I'm going to pay them for, I don't pay a lawyer and say, Hey, you know, I'm going to go hire four lawyers to go do her last will and testament and the one I liked the most, I'm going to pick, I don't go to four doctors and go, hey, look, I've got you know, here's my problem, whoever could cure me to whoever treats me that's the one I'm going to pay. But we do that for recruiters. And we think we're getting real value there. And again, I'm exaggerating prove the point, I think there's certain areas where that works. But if your requirement at your company used to be three people a month, and you need to hire, now you need to hire five or six, run the numbers, what you really want to do is augment your in house with your in house recruiting team. And that's really what you want to do. As a business owner, what you really want to do is get someone that you can hold accountable to on a week by week basis, how are we doing? Show me the people that we're doing. And if that's not working out on on demand basis, move out, I'll bring someone else in. But hey, I want I want you to fill these roles. And I'm going to augment my team to fill these roles. That's what we're delivering. And that's that's really why we're reinventing the way companies look at recruiting is what we want to do is provide you this in house experience, you have an we're going to augment your in house recruiting team with experienced professionals or you know what, you just want someone doing scheduling and screening. All right, you don't need an experienced seven year experienced oncology recruiter just just scheduling, but I need someone to do it. I need someone to help me I want to augment my in house talent acquisition team with on demand talent for this specific project. This is I need to hire these roles, or I have a constant need I want these roles. Or hey, set up my tools to make sure I have this constant pipeline. That's really what I believe people are gonna want to be doing next that really meet the challenges of tomorrow's candidate pipeline requirements.

Kyle Roed: 46:50

Absolutely. Yeah, I just, you know, if I peel back, and I think about what we're really talking about here is incentives, right? I mean, you know, it's it's the the goal for a recruiter who's paid on a per, you know, fill fee is just get someone that sticks around long enough and doesn't ruin the guarantee, period. And and then you get paid. I mean, that's really that is the primary incentive. And so it's more about speed than fit. And then you think about an incentive for, you know, for a hiring manager that has an open position. And they've come to the talent acquisition team and said, help I need this person and I need these skills. What do they want to be doing? They don't want to be sifting through 300 resumes and tell you, hey, I want to interview these three people that they want you to say, Hey, here's three people that we've pre screened, and they're, they're awesome, they kick ass, you'll want to hire all three of them. You tell me which one is best, right? That's what they want. So, you know, try to figure out how to do that as an HR person and you know, and then just find the right connection of talent to the hiring manager. In my opinion, that's really our goal. That's the job.

Evan Sohn: 47:55

Yeah, I completely agree. Right? You know, that's the at the end of the day here the talent acquisitions job is to fill those seats. Yep. And you know, there's nothing that's a bigger crime than empty hijack. Right? It's a cry, empty headcount is a crime. You got to fill those roles, and those roles are going to come it's like gonna be like a, you know, the, the turnstile just be a constant need to make sure those roles are getting filled. And when we want to do is to give talent acquisition managers, whether they're in you know, whether they're the Global Head of talent, or whether the head of HR, more time to focus on more important things, and allowing us to augment the in house team with on demand specialists, whether they're working mother, we have some on demand, we have like over 200 recruiters now out on assignment, that are all freelancers, some who've been doing it for over a year, some just started a week ago, we'll probably have, you know, more, you know, 30 days from now, this is, this is the move, you know, we're helping and these are not inexperienced recruiters. These are real serious recruiters, real serious talent acquisition professionals who are capitalizing on their skill set, getting paid for their skills. Now, by the way, they might be freelancing at night doing direct hire on a success fee basis. They can do that on their spare time, but during the day, they're actually working building pipeline for this clients that we're bringing them the opportunities that we're bringing them on an on demand basis. That's what this is really all about.

Kyle Roed: 49:29

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like if you're looking for recruiters that if any listeners out there are tired of talking about CDC mass mandates, you know, there's there's opportunity.

Evan Sohn: 49:43

Yeah, you know, the, the reality is that if you are a in house recruiter, a hiring manager or business owner, and you have a talent issue, by all means, give us a call, go to our website, recruiter comm and give us Call, I'm more than happy to help you out, I will tell you that we can help you out, I've been very surprised about the things that we've been able to do in record time, from getting a team up and running in Singapore to help a company spin up their r&d Center in Singapore to, you know, scheduling for in house, we've been helping a team of experienced recruiters with with on demand scheduling and screening people like so we're doing the whole gamut. A lot of technology, recruiting, manufacturing, Life Sciences, really across the board, it's exciting to watch. It really, really is because at the end of the day here, you know, our belief is that recruiting is a human element. Right? Despite AI, despite the digital job boards at the end of the day here, no one's hiring someone without speaking to them. Now, whether that's you, the hiring manager, or someone you hired, like, there is a conversation that's happening. And we are embracing that conversation, we're leveraging the fact that there needs to be a conversation and making sure that we're doing more conversations, not less conversation, we just want to be talking to more experienced and qualified people, then figuring out, you know, filtering those things out, and that's what we're really we're able to deliver and the result is that we're placing more candidates and filling those empty seats.

Kyle Roed: 51:17

That's awesome. Well, I'm glad to hear about the success and the growth. It's exciting. And I applaud you for driving some disruption, some reinvention into the world of of recruiting, I think it's desperately needed. And and it's exciting to watch. So appreciate the work. We're going to shift gears, we're going to go into the rebel HR flash round here. We're coming to the end of our time. So three quick questions here. Let me know when you're ready. Ready? All right, here we go. Question number one. What is your favorite or most insightful book about people

Evan Sohn: 51:53

just finished trillion dollar coach, which is about Bill Campbell, phenomenal, phenomenal coach, to really just everybody, every every leader in Silicon Valley was written by somebody, his his disciples, just a phenomenal book, a lot of fun to read, and very, very meaningful for really anyone that's managing people growing their company. Just really very insightful.

Kyle Roed: 52:17

Perfect. Alright, question number two, Who should we be listening to?

Evan Sohn: 52:23

I'm big, other than you, Kyle. Tim Ferriss is really about performance enhancement, really across lots of different areas. You know, just being the best you can be. And big fan of his. Yeah.

Kyle Roed: 52:42

I don't have a whole lot of time. His podcast get pretty long, but he's got a good Podcast Series out four hour workweek. It's great, great book. But yeah, it's like hacking, hacking your productivity and getting better. And yeah, that's great stuff.

Evan Sohn: 52:54

You know, here's a guy that's interviewed. Patrick Collison from stripe. Hugh Jackman, you know, Wolverine and rabbi, Lord, Lord Rabbi Jonathan sacks, right. So you know, this is the the breadth of this guy's interviewing. And it's really all about, you know, personality development, and just being the best you could be. And it's just really interesting stuff that I've learned from him.

Kyle Roed: 53:20

Absolutely. Yeah. Hugh Jackman hasn't returned our requests yet. So you know, someday. All right. Final question here. How can our listeners connect with you?

Evan Sohn: 53:32

Evan at recruiter comm can't be easier than that. Really? admin ebn at recruiter comm that was the easiest question.

Kyle Roed: 53:40

Hey, there you go. Man. You know, we'd like to end on a softball but and you know, we haven't talked about this yet. But I don't know how you did it or, or who you had to pay off but to get the recruiter comm handle. Good. Good on you, man. Good for you.

Evan Sohn: 53:55

That was that was before my time. one of the cofounders of the company, I think like literally mortgaged his house to get it done to got a second mortgage. It's a, you know, I'll leave this with you. You know, we're NASDAQ company. We were on NASDAQ now a little over a month symbol as our CRT. And when I tell our management team and we have a phenomenal team, the phenomenal team across the whole company, but we have a great senior management team. You know, we're a billion dollar brand. And we have the responsibility to the industry in our community of not just the 30,000 recruiters on our platform, but we manage a LinkedIn group of over 850,000 recruiting and HR professionals. You know, we owe it to the community, we owe it to our network, we owe it to our clients to really live up to the potential of our brand. And it's an exciting time for for us and really for the whole industry. And I'm really appreciative to, you know, folks like you who you know, keep pushing the pushing the ball forward across the entire industry and opening up the dialogue for conversations like these.

Kyle Roed: 54:59

Absolutely. Well, Evan, thank you again for spending some time with us. I know you're a super busy guy and really appreciate the time spent here with us today. So, with that being said, Thank you so much. And we will have all the information on how to get connected here in the show notes, as well and, and just thank you very much, Evan, appreciate it.

Evan Sohn: 55:17

Thank you, Carl. Have a great day.

Kyle Roed: 55:19

You too. Thanks. All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by readily jarred podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast.