Recruiter.com CEO and Chairman Evan Sohn appeared on the latest episode of Hired's Talk Talent to Me podcast, hosted by Rob Stevenson, to discuss the state of the recruiting industry and how Recruiter.com aims to transform talent acquisition. 

Sohn's interview spanned a broad range of topics — here are some of the highlights: 

On the Fundamental Humanity of Recruiting: "At the end of the day, recruiting is a human interaction. There's all this conversation about AI, about bots — no one is hiring someone with an AI. You might find them with AI. You might engage them with AI. But at the end of the day, there's a conversation that takes place between a hiring manager and a candidate. That's not going to change. So how do I spend more time speaking to candidates and less time finding them? And how do I do this at a scale that excites and delights clients?"

On the Need to Rethink Traditional Recruiting Models: "When I first started looking at this industry, recruiters were treated like real estate agents. Employers would say, 'Hey, I'll give you this job. If you find someone, I'll pay you.' The reality is recruiters are more like physicians and attorneys. I might be able to download a will online, but if I'm going to take it seriously, I'm going to use an attorney. If I'm going to take hiring seriously, I'm going to use a recruiter."

On the 'Golden Age of Recruiting': "Here we are with the tightest job market ever. Talent shortages across the board. The Great Resignation is about to happen; people are going to be shifting jobs left and right. Now is the Golden Age of Recruiting. Every industry had its moment in the sun. You had the dot-com guys, the telecom guys, the mobile guys, the hedge fund guys, the real estate guys. Every industry had its moment in the sun, but recruiting never did. This is the time of the recruiter. To the recruiters out there: You are not real estate agents working on a nonexclusive basis. Can you imagine going to five attorneys and saying, 'Whoever writes the best contract, I'm going to pay them'? What? Who does that? Why would we subject ourselves to that?"

The full transcript can be found below:

[00:01:00] RS: Joining me today on Talk Talent To Me is the Chairman and CEO of Recruiter.com. Evan, welcome to the podcast. How are you this morning?

[00:01:07] ES: Hey, Rob. Thanks so much for having me on your show.  

[00:01:10] RS: Yeah, so pleased to have you. Recruiter.com is a property my audience will know well. I certainly know it well. I've spent a lot of time consuming that content, and you guys have come a long way, even since those days when I was just trying so hard to get my Intello blog posts on your front page. Well, I think we have both come a long way. So, it's kind of come full circle.

I'm so pleased to have you on to be chatting with you. I guess I would just love to hear a little bit from you at the top here. A little bit about your background and kind of how you came to Recruiter.com, and then where the product and the website is now.

[00:01:40] ES: Thanks so much, Rob. [inaudible 00:01:41] about my background, I am not a recruiter.  

[00:01:45] RS: Me neither.  

[00:01:45] ES: I’m probably the least experienced.  

[00:01:47] RS: What are we doing here?

[00:01:47] ES: Yeah. I’m the least experienced recruiter. That’s right. I'm the least experienced recruiter in the company. Yet I am the chairman and CEO of Recruiter.com. My background really is in disruptive technologies and reinventing industries. My first company I started in 1989, right out of NYU Business School in mobile computing. So, you think about what mobile looked like in the ‘90s and really created new industries around sales force automation and a variety of different industries and wireless communications, etcetera. I grew that company over a decade. It got acquired by Dun and Bradstreet in 1998 and have been involved in a number of other companies, most recently a company called Point, P-O-I-N-T. That was really changing the whole terminal industry on the payment terminal side, and that company was acquired by GoDaddy. 

I got involved with Recruiter.com, really, about two and a half years ago and became CEO last June at the heart of the pandemic, if you will, right at the beginning of the pandemic. I've had a great honor and privilege to be involved in some really fantastic companies, and Recruiter.com is really just at the epicenter of everything that's going on in the job market and really poised to really reinvent the entire recruiting industry. I am thrilled and excited to be part of that overall process.

A little bit more long-winded for you, Rob, but I've also had a separate life. I had a brother that passed away 26 years ago from cancer in 1993, and he was a Wall Street trader. His boss, friends, and my family got together and really created what's become like the preeminent conference in the hedge fund industry. It used to be called the Ira Sohn Conference. Ira was my brother. Now, we just call it the Sohn Conference. So if you Google search Evan Sohn, you'll start seeing not just Recruiter.com stuff but also financial conference, and we've raised over $95 million for pediatric cancer really on a global basis.

I've always had these two worlds. I've had this disruptive technology, technology side of the world, and then this financial side of the world. I really want to figure out how to blend the two together and how to really capitalize on those things. CNBC, for instance, is a partner of ours in the foundation, and it was a real entry point for me to get on CNBC about a year ago, talking about the job market and do that on a regular basis with our Recruiter index.

[00:04:06] RS: Got it. I'm curious, given your varied background, particularly in entrepreneurship and finance, when you came to this industry, to recruiting, to HR, to people, what was kind of striking to you about the way that business was being done and the way that talent teams were operating? 

[00:04:22] ES: Yeah. So, I'll tell you what was interesting. Like most people, I viewed recruiting as either someone you pay to go find new talent and pay them 15, 20 percent of the salary, or someone doing it in house using different tools. No one was really satisfied with their overall approach. To me, I want to be a client's first phone call. I always want to be a client's first phone call. Now, I want to be up in the first three phone calls, right? But you want to be up there. The recruiting industry, there were so many like, “Hey, I have a job. I'm going to get 12 different recruiters working on it.” That’s not the industry that’s going to – That’s not really prime for success, I really wanted to figure out, “Gee, how do you change all that?”

The other thing that I really saw is that, at the end of the day here, despite the ZipRecruiter, the Indeed, the LinkedIns, recruiting is a human interaction. There is all this conversation about AI and bots. No one's hiring someone with an AI. You might find them. You might engage them, but you're not hiring them. At the end of the day, there's a conversation that takes place between the hiring manager and a candidate. That's not going to change. What we wanted to do is figure out how do I spend more time speaking to people, speaking to candidates, and less time finding them? How do we do that at a scale that's going to excite and delight clients?  

What really occurred to me is we're going to have to reinvent the entire recruiting industry, and that's what we're doing. We've capitalized on – Look, we're Recruiter.com. We’re always going to be about embracing the recruiter. We have these, now, over 30,000 recruiters on our platform and growing. We run the largest community of recruiters on LinkedIn, over 850,000 recruiters and HR professionals on LinkedIn. How do we take these recruiters and help augment existing in-house talent acquisition teams? Now, in a small company, that could be the owner. In a large company, it could be the global head of talent. It doesn't matter. But how do we augment those teams with people and technology to help them recruit talent faster? That's what we're doing, and we're doing it on a daily basis.

[00:06:31] RS: So, it begs the question. How do you?

[00:06:34] ES: Look, I think that what we're doing is, and we work with some of the greatest names in the industry. Never using names, but we're working with a pharmaceutical company that's saving lives around the planet right now. Now –

[00:06:46] RS: It might be coursing through my veins right now. 

[00:06:49] ES: It just might be coursing through your veins right now. Why would they need help? Who doesn't want to work there, right? Who doesn't want to work there? But the reality is they had two real challenges. They had lots and lots and lots of inbound candidates that they needed help screening, and they needed professionals to help screen those people. Then they had a shortage of pipeline of candidates in another side of the business. What we were able to do for them, in record time, was given them a team of on-demand recruiters, seasoned, experienced, on-demand recruiters that they've approved, leveraging our platform that are now screening those candidates.

At the same time, we're using our advanced AI search and engagement tools with recruiters actually using and clicking the buttons, because nobody wants to learn a new tool. They just want “butts in seats,” right? We're doing that by combining these on-demand recruiters and the on-demand tools to really deliver to them incredible value that they've already expanded, I think, twice with our project. They love us. We are one of their first phone calls. I actually asked their global head of talent. They had a new project. Are we your first phone call? You know what they needed? An experienced oncology recruiter. I'm like, “That's going to be so hard.” Within 48 hours, we had someone from our platform placed at this client really within like a week. Just amazing.  

Here's what the clients love about it. There's no long-term contract. It's scale up, scale down, turn on, turn off. So we're effectively like the Uber of recruiting. You need the right recruiter at the right place at the right time with the right skill set. Not only are we giving them the recruiters, to do that. We’re giving them the tools, advanced AI tools that we have, that we've acquired and built on top of to really build candidate pipelines incredibly quickly.

[00:08:35] RS: It sounds not dissimilar from an agency model, except in that it works much better for the recruiter. It feels like it's a better deal for the actual recruiter.

[00:08:44] ES: When I first started looking at this industry, recruiters were treated like real estate agents, right? Hey, I'll go give you a listing. If you find someone, then I'll pay you, etc. There are some similarities there, but the reality is recruiters are more like physicians and attorneys. I might be able to download a last will and testament online but, if I'm going to take something seriously, I'm going to use a recruiter. Rob, the three decisions we make in life, the three most important decisions; where we live, who we live our life with, and the career that we choose. None of those should be done alone, and that’s why recruiting, at the end of the day, is a human interaction.  

What we're able to do is to take experienced recruiters at varying levels and turn them into and leverage the gig economy for these experts, like a physician or like a lawyer. If you live in Florida and you're having a problem with your eye, you're not going to retain a cancer specialist from San Francisco, right? You're going to find an eye doctor or retinal specialist in South Florida that's going to take care of you, right? The right physician in the right location with the right skill set in order to handle your problem. That’s recruiting. You know what? Here we are with the tightest job market ever, right? We are at the craziest, wackiest – I hate using the word unprecedented, but it's an unprecedented job market, right? Talent shortages across the board, hourly workers that don't want to go to work. Yet 35 percent of all adults have a side gig. 50 percent of all millennials have a side gig, work from anywhere, work from remote, virtual, all these other things.  

The great resignation is about to happen, where people are just going to be shifting jobs left and right. This is crazy what's about to happen. Now is the golden age of recruiting, and I know you want to talk about that. I am a firm believer in that every industry has had their moment in the sun. You had the dotcom guys. You had the telecom guys. You had the mobile guys. You had the hedge funds. You had the real estate industry, early 2000s. Every industry had their moment in the sun; recruiting never did. This is the time of the recruiter. We are now in the golden age of the recruiter. Recruiters out there, you are not real estate agents working on non-exclusive basis. Who does that?

Can you imagine going to a lawyer? I have a problem. I'm going to go to five attorneys. Whoever writes the best contract, that's the one I'm going to pay. What? Who does that? We don't do that. We don't go to five doctors and go, “Do you know what? The guy who fixes me, that’s the one I'm going to pay.”

[00:11:15] RS: None of them would take you.

[00:11:16] ES: That's right. So, why would we subject ourselves to that? I get it. You like the big high of the placement. That's fantastic. But what we're able to do is transform that, leveraging the experience that a recruiter has. By the way, we have recruiters that are working 10 hours a week, 30 hours a week, 40 hours a week. So, whether it's a full-time gig, a part-time gig, whatever assignment that it is, we have those assignments and we're able to leverage those, just like Uber, right? People work full time for Uber, and they work just in the mornings, just in the afternoons, just on the weekends. 

We're able to capitalize and take recruiters at varying experience levels and give them opportunities that alone they would never have access to, and give them tools that turn them into super recruiters because we're able to find people. We work with another company that, again, has transformed in this pandemic, just incredible. They had a big shortage of Java developers. We've sent them 107 in the last three weeks, leveraging our tools. They're blown away, absolutely blown away. 

I'll tell you what's incredible, Rob, is our clients love us. Now, they love us because we delivered to them recruiters that they would never have access to on their own, right? They don't want to hire them full time, right? They don't want to retain them just based on a percentage level. They want them on an on-demand basis, and we're allowed to do that. You love the Uber model, right? Getting an Uber driver to come, it's a better experience. I can upgrade the car. I'm getting the right I'm getting the right driver. That's an incredible experience. That's the experience that we're delivering to these clients who could scale up and scale down without these long term contracts, etc. It’s just incredible to watch.

[00:12:53] RS: Yes. I want to talk about what this means for the recruiter, for the individual who would potentially be on your platform, helping to fill roles, because it's reminding me of a conversation I had with Hung Lee about a year ago. He edits the Recruiting Brainfood newsletter, among other things, and he likes to refer to this coming trend of the unbundling of jobs. Meaning that people, especially once you can work remotely, this deal of having one company that pays you is not so not so good of a deal anymore. They're paying me to be in this place or to work 40, 50, 60 hours. My job doesn't actually take that long. My job takes like maybe 20. Then the other half of it is spent looking like I'm working, or it's spent coming and going, or it’s spent waiting for a conference room to clear out, so I can go in and have a meeting about another meeting.

This ability for individuals to sell their services into lots of companies, I think we're going to see it in all sorts of industries. It's very exciting to see it happening in recruiting. This gig economy being pointed at more “skilled work and more specialized work,” let's call it, is very exciting to me. It’s happened a little more slowly, right? Like the gig economy being like, “Oh, you can drive a car. You can deliver a burrito,” that was sort of like on demand, turn it on, turn it off work you could do as a gig economy worker. Seeing it now pointing at recruitment is truly exciting. Why do you think that it's maybe lagged behind in more skilled work?

[00:14:25] ES: The recruiting side or the job side? The job side, right? So, they're really three things. There were three reasons to work full time at a company; 401(k), health care, and a W2 for mortgage. 401(k)s became portable. That’s a recent phenomenon, right? That actually really, really started the early migration away from companies, right? You could take your 401(k) with you. That's a new thing. Now, most people don't know that, but that's a relatively new thing. It used to be, remember the old word, “Oh, I got to stay. I got my pension. I can't leave. They’ve got my pension.” I take that with me now.”

Health care is another one, and I think you have things like Obamacare or low cost health care providers and other things that really driving that. The real challenge is really the mortgage and the W2. Banks have not caught up yet, right? I have a friend of mine. He makes a ridiculous amount of money but he doesn't pay himself a salary. He had trouble getting a mortgage. Ridiculous. That’s still the last element there, and that's got to have to change. That is going to change. So, I think that that's one.

I think this whole work remote thing really saved lots of time. All of a sudden now, I have an extra two hours a day because I'm not commuting. I'm not parking the car and going to this – Not doing any of those things, right? I'm at work within four minutes after I'm ready to go to work. I think that that's really created more opportunities for people to make more money. 

The other thing that's going to happen, in my opinion, is that the mobility, not just the employee’s mobility, right? So, you have these millennials that are leaving much faster. The average voluntary churn in the US is 22 to 27 percent, right? So there's already a churn that's going on, and we all expect that to increase significantly. But the other thing that is going to happen as more companies are working virtually and remotely. It's much, much, much easier to downsize a company when the company is working remotely.

If you’ve ever been part of a company that was downsizing, it's very, very depressing, right? You walk by, and the desks are empty, and the cubicles are empty. Or you're having this discussion, “Oh, we can't terminate Fred. Everyone loves Fred. Fred's the life of the party. Mary's so much fun.” There's this depressing element there. But, what if it's just a cube on your screen that goes away? That's very, very easy to deal with.

I think that companies are going to say, “Gee, you know what? I'm going to scale up the very experienced people for the next six months, and then I'm going to remove that and go down to a lower level.” I think that's going to happen, knowing that those skilled people are going to leave also. So, let's go back to that, right? If I need a very skilled person, do I really want to pay a recruiter 20 percent of that salary when that person is only going to stay with me, at most, 18 months? No way. I don't want to do that. So, there's an economic model there also.

Also, the company's going to recognize, “You know what? Hey, Rob, come join the company. I know you're going to leave after 18 months. So, guess what? This is an 18-month program. Maybe I'm not doing options that vest over four years anymore. I'm going to do an option that vest over a year and a half. When you're done, we're finished.”

I think there's going to be a movement for skills-based, and we sort of predicted this in our recruiter index, and we started to see more jobs open up to non-college grads. Why? Because it's skills-based. It’s not just I need a college diploma anymore. So, there's a lot of these trends that are actually happening, coupled with this whole virtual work thing. Not too long ago, there's a discussion on remote work, not remote work. No one talks about that anymore, right? Because that's now a given. It's just a given. 

The companies that are demanding people come into the office are few. There are a few but there are far fewer. You're seeing big companies, “Well, we're demanding everyone comes into the office, except for you. You could work from anywhere.” So, there are these exceptions that are going on. I think all of these things in motion are really causing a lot more migration from skilled labor, from place to place. I think companies are going to catch up and recognize that I'm not going to be able to retain the highly skilled labor for a long period of time. I need a constant pipeline.  

By the way, anytime a company needs a constant pipeline, what do they need? They need recruiters or some recruiting technology that's giving them a constant pipeline of candidates. A company today that's not actively recruiting to backfill the roles that are most important to them are doomed to wake up one day and realize, “Uh-oh. I just lost 20 percent of my highly skilled staff.” So, there is this constant need to rebuilding pipeline.

[00:18:55] RS: Yeah. To say nothing of how long it takes to even hire a recruiter and fully on ramp that recruiter like before they can begin filling roles with this older model, right?

[00:19:05] ES: That's right.

[00:19:06] RS: That’s an extra three months before you can even begin building pipeline.

[00:19:10] ES: They got to get the culture right. Instead, leverage an on-demand recruiter who knows the space and who knows the language. It's the right recruiter with a pipeline of candidates and active curator, if you will, engaged candidate pipeline, and they're off to the races. That's all we're able to deliver to companies large and small in record time, which is why we were talking about this the other day at work. Clients love us. They love us. Giant customers are calling us up as their friend. Hey, I got a problem. What can you do to help? That's the ideal relationship.

Remember, most recruiters are really independent small businesses. If you can't be a client's first phone call, first, second, or third phone call, you don't want that as a client because now you're just fighting. You're a commodity like everybody else. What gas station do you go to, Rob? Who cares, right? There are a dozen gas stations that you go to, depending on what's necessary, right? Again, it's a commoditization of a service, and you don't want to be that. We have some legacy staffing business, and I was talking to one of our clients yesterday. I told them, “Look, we're prioritizing to be a customer's first phone call.” I go, “How many of me do you have?” She goes, “We have 7,500 partners that we work with.”

[00:20:24] RS: What?

[00:20:25] ES: So I said, “So clearly, I’m –” Clearly, right. It’s just that's the reality. You don't want to be there. You don't want to be fighting for your money.

[00:20:33] RS: Yeah. So, to extrapolate the Uber model a little bit, I'm just kind of curious about sort of the experience that talent pros have on the platform. Is this a side hustle for folks? Is this a bridge thing between jobs? Is this something that recruiters are making their full time job being on Recruiter.com? With Uber, it was always meant to be a side hustle. But then you do meet these drivers, and they're like, “Oh, yeah. I drive 50 hours a week.” What is the use case?

[00:21:00] ES: So, look. I think a very good on-demand model feeds all three of those. It feeds the side hustle, the added income, the part time and the full time, and we're able to do that. Clearly, a recruiter that's working for this giant pharmaceutical company is working full time, and they're getting paid the equivalent to do that as a 1099 on-demand recruiter. We have people that are doing it 10 hours a week. We have people doing it as a side hustle or, hey, their own job is really doing things, getting paid based on placements. So, they're working as an on-demand recruiter full time but they're still doing their other job as a side hustle. We’re really seeing all of those elements in there and we have all of those different opportunities.

The level of recruiter that we have is just phenomenal. It's just phenomenal. These are not your low level recruiters. Now, we have some of them, and we have some clients that use us as administrative functions and scheduling etc. But we are placing top recruiters on an on-demand basis for these companies, experienced tech recruiters, experienced healthcare recruiters, experienced pharmaceutical recruiters, across the board.

[00:22:08] RS: Yes. Can I tell you that if I'm a recruiter and I hate my job or I'm ready to leave my job. I'm ready to participate in the great resignation, for example. But a biweekly paycheck is addicting, and it can be scary not having something lined up. Knowing that there's an option like Recruiter.com or there's an ability for me to continue selling my skill set in a more flexible way makes quitting a lot easier. It makes not having a full-time job a lot less scary. I think, even viewed outside of like the bridge model, for example, like in the case of part time or full time or what have you, this is all just indicative of the ways I think that people can be creative about how they use their skill set, how they sell into organizations their ability to provide value.

Given this proliferation of remote work, given this gig economy being pointed at more skilled positions, how do you think talent pros can make the most of this moment? Make the most of the Golden Age of recruiting, and best capitalize on kind of the new realities of work and hiring? 

[00:23:20] ES: Part of the model that we offer to clients is that they have the ability to hire the recruiters that we’re placing to them on demand. We love that. We don't charge a lot for it. We charge a little bit for it because we love it. Like, what a success, right? You want to leave your job. You don't know what to do. You got a gig working at a giant company, fantastic named company. You were placed there far faster than you could have if you did it on your own. You love it there. You're killing it. They love you. You decide, “Hey, you know what? I'm going to make the jump.” What a great way to do it. The fact of the matter is you would want to do that in every job. Yeah. How many times did you say this like, “You know what? I really want to start out as a consultant. In case it doesn't work out, I can get the hell out of there.”

These are great ways to move around in companies, and we're seeing that happen. If you work out in Silicon Valley, and you're a high-powered developer in Silicon Valley, you're not staying anywhere for four years. You're doing your job, you're getting in, you're getting something off the ground, you're moving on to the next assignment. That's what you're doing. Why are we considered, as recruiters, anything less than incredibly skilled people? We are responsible for a company's greatest asset: their people. We are at the epicenter of making sure these companies thrive and survive with talent. That is an incredible responsibility, really incredible. To accept that, “Hey, I’ll only pay you if you make a placement,” you are shortchanging yourself, absolutely shortchanging yourself.

I think that there's a lot of opportunities now to really get into these interesting jobs as a shoehorn away. If we're going to leave and participate in the great resignation, we're worried about where we're going to end up, do something on demand. Do something that's a consulting. Do something. Get your feet wet. Take two assignments. Do something that's going to really capitalize on your experience. But more importantly, get paid. Get paid to actually work. Don't get paid only if I really like what you do. Who does that? It's incredible. It's really an amazing thing. I know we're blinded by the high payouts. We’re blinded by it.

Man, by the way, to think that it's a real estate industry, the listing agent has an exclusive, right? There are things that are actually their license, their exclusives. You can't go around. How many times have you tried to chase your client? Oh, you really went through me. You found them on your own. All of a sudden, they’re a mess. We need to reinvent the entire recruiting industry in order to really capitalize on the hiring that's about to take place, the gig economy that's taking place, and just the sheer movement that's going to be happening in corporate America, of employees leaving and coming and going and coming and going. That model is going to have to change, and we're reinventing the recruiting industry.

[00:25:57] RS: I love it. We could definitely end on that note. That's definitely a nice bookend. I do have a couple follow-up questions.

 [00:26:02] ES: Sure.

 [00:26:03] RS: So, then, earlier, when you were mentioning your like three things that like bound people to a full-time job; W2 for a mortgage, healthcare, and 401(k), those are beginning to be less important or those are less anchoring now. Do you agree that the fundamental deal of the full-time job is less of a good option for the worker, even not necessarily just a recruiter?

[00:26:27] ES: Yeah. So, let's go a little macro for a second, right? If you saw a resume of someone, and they've been at the same company for 20 years, what would you say now?

[00:26:38] RS: I mean, it's shocking. It's rare.

[00:26:40] ES: You'd say lazy, right? You'd probably say, “I can't believe I’m at the same company for 20 years.” It just doesn't happen anymore. Now, not too long ago, if you saw someone that left their job every three years, you would say, “Wow, this guy's a job hopper.” Now, if you saw someone that had six experiences in 20 years, you go, “Wow, this person's got an – Look at their story. What incredible experience they've had. They were here. They were here. They were here.” So, at a macro level, this has changed, right? It's not your grandfather or your father's economy anymore where you’re at the same company for 25 years. You get a gold watch. You're done.

Again, you certainly don't want to see someone that has 20 jobs in 20 years either, right? So there's sort of this balance there. But I think the experience side, and we're seeing this really happen, it's about the experience. It’s going to be, “Gee, I'm coming out of college and I want to do something that gets me outside the US. I'm going to go work for something that gets me outside because I want the experience of working international.” All right, I did that. What's next? My next experience is going to be that. It's going to be experiences across the board there. Look, I think the final thing of this conversation is the resume, and we can have a whole another conversation about the resume. Do you know when the resume was invented, Rob? Who invented the resume?

[00:27:59] RS: I'm going to guess like a Roman or something.

 [00:28:03] ES: By the way, really, really close. Leonardo da Vinci invented – Brother, you’re actually closer than most people. Leonardo da Vinci invented the resume.

[00:28:12] RS: By the way, it was no helicopter in the realm of his inventions. 

[00:28:16] ES: That's right. You know what? What's changed in the resume? Helvetica, right? The font you use.

[00:28:22] RS: Yeah. Now, you put your skills at the top, instead of the bottom.  

[00:28:26] ES: That's right. We put our email. We put our mobile number. What else? We don't put scented paper.

[00:28:32] RS: I don't have a resume. My resume, if I dug it out of my Google Drive, I think it still has Jamba Juice on it from like 2006.

[00:28:40] ES: That's awesome. Camp counselor.

 [00:28:42] RS: Yeah. Great communication skills 

[00:28:46] ES: Yeah, that's right. Likes horseback riding. No, it probably says Microsoft Word or something, right?

[00:28:51] RS: Yeah, Microsoft Office. Yeah.

[00:28:52] ES: Microsoft as if that was like a skill. So, the resume hasn't changed, yet every other industry, can you imagine you're hiring a comedian for a charity event? Rather than looking at their video, you're reading their resume. “Oh, he says he's funny.”

[00:29:12] RS: Proficient in joke writing. Yeah, exactly.

[00:29:14] ES: Proficient in joke writing. This is – What great resume. No, you're going to look at a video and you're going to see a 30-second clip and you go, “Oh, my god. This guy's a riot.”

[00:29:21] RS: Let's see your work, yeah.  

[00:29:22] RS: Then you’re going to go, “All right, let me see what you've done,” right? So as that starts to change, the sort of full-time resume thing because everyone gets worried. How many experiences do you put on a resume, right? How do you do that? So, I think those things are going to start to evolve and change as the resume is just this is old, fuddy-duddy thing that really needs to be updated in a significant way.

Getting back, look, the W2 mortgage thing, that has to change because once that change and the bank said, “Oh, I just want to look at your tax return,” again, I'm being real serious, right? Don't look at my number based on my W2. Look at my tax return, and I'll tell you how much money I'm making. Let me show you my bank statement and I will show you what I’m – Once that changes. So imagine now. You have this huge gig economy today. Once banking changes, and that will change –

[00:30:16] RS: Because they got to sell mortgages. Yeah.

[00:30:18] ES: Oh, my god. That floodgate is going to go crazy. That floodgate is going to go wild. By the way, think about it. If you're working from home now, if you were an LLC, you could actually deduct so much more from your home, right? You have your home office. You have all these other things associated with it. It used to be, “Well, I was worried. I work from home a day a week.” Do it. Go. Go ahead and do it. There you go. Knock yourself out.

I think there'll be a very big change there across the board, and the reason I say that is you'll look today. If you saw someone that had a different job every three years, you'd be impressed. “Wow, what a great experience. You were at this company, this company. How'd that go?” “That was exciting.” You’re going to look at those things in awe, not in shame. Well, if that's true, then imagine you ran into a Java developer, and you said, “Well, tell me about your background.” “For a year and a half, I was doing development at this company. For another year and a half, I was doing development at this company. I helped build this product at this company.” You don't care what their W2 said. I don't give a – Who cares? Yeah, look at the experiences they had. That was amazing.

[00:31:23] RS: Yup. I couldn't agree more. It's an exciting time. It's exciting time to be unbundling yourself from jobs, exciting time to be a recruiter. Evan, this has been a blast chatting with you today. So much insight in here, so much opportunity for skilled talent folks, particularly on Recruiter.com. At this point, I would just say thank you so much for joining the show, for your candor, and for being yourself. I really enjoyed chatting with you today.

[00:31:44] ES: Rob, thank you so much. When I told the Co-founder of Recruiter.com, Miles Jennings, and I was doing a podcast, he's like, “Ah, I've been listening to Rob for so long. Rob’s amazing.”

[00:31:53] RS: No way.

[00:31:54] ES: So, really great stuff. Really fantastic. Congratulations on your show and all your success. Look, now really is the time for recruiters. I was telling one of our shareholders, and we're a NASDAQ company now, RCRT is the symbol, if COVID required 40 million people to move out of their homes, 40 million people had to move out of their homes, all different homes, condos, mansions, multifamily homes, across the board, every city throughout the country, 40 million homes. Then, 40 million of those homes were destroyed, right? So no one could actually go back to their home. You could imagine the government would have called out the real estate industry to come step it up to help get people back into their homes.

The National Guard for jobs are recruiters. We're here now. This is our golden time to really be part of this exciting opportunity to help people that were displaced get their jobs, to help the people that want to move get their jobs, to help the companies that are in dire need of talent to get their jobs. There's going to be lots and lots of movement here, and that is why this is the golden age for recruiters.

[00:33:01] RS: Hell yeah. I love it. Thank you so much, Evan. This has been great.

[00:33:04] ES: You bet. Thanks, Rob.